(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . The Treacherous Path to a Better Russia: Ukraine's Future and Putin's Fate [1] ['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.'] Date: 2023-06-20 The July/August 2023 issue of Foreign Affairs magazine has an article by Andrea Kendall-Taylor and Erica Frantz which looks at the probable result inside Russia of the war in Ukraine. It goes into a lot of analysis looking at different scenarios. I’m going to summarize it a lot. (Any errors I make are probably due to my attempting to summarize too much.) The original article (which is paywalled) can be found at www.foreignaffairs.com/… or by buying a copy of the magazine. (I usually ended up buying a copy of the magazine when I flew somewhere. But now I’ve finally gotten around to paying for a subscription. Obviously I think the $40/year for six issues is worth it, but your mileage may vary.) The basis of the author’s analysis is looking at how other authoritarian states handle power transitions and power maintenance since the Cold War ended. The bad news is that, contrary to Fukuyama’s thesis in The End of History, the world isn’t moving inevitably to liberal democracies. The vast majority of authoritarian rulers in place since the Cold War ended were replaced by other authoritarian leaders. And the longer an authoritarian leader survives in power, the more likely that the next leader will also be an authoritarian leader. One reason for this is that the power structure around the old leader is best maintained by merely replacing that leader. The other option of a radical restructuring of the power structure will result in too much loss of power among the currently powerful. To make is worse, wars generally increase the power of the leader, and this has been happening in Russia. According to the authors, “even his death may not usher in significant change.” The primary exception found by the authors are the cases when an authoritarian country loses a war. That can, but usually doesn’t, result in a popular uprising against the losing government. Unfortunately, the odds of it happening are roughly 20%, so even if Russia loses against Ukraine I would still want good odds before betting that Russia will end up a liberal democracy. And this victory must be “seismic”, not merely Ukraine stopping Russia from taking more territory. They think it might entail returning to the 1991 borders. The good news is that (according to Giacomo Chiozza and H. E. Goemans), a significant military loss results in the leader losing power about 50% of the time. The bad news is that they’re usually just replaced with another authoritarian leader. (The article goes on to explain why this sort of event may cause a popular uprising.) The dangers of a popular uprising (to the authors) include a failure of Russia as a state or a significant civil war within the country. The result of such action probably include significant loss of life within Russia and by its subject ethnicities. And in such an environment, it is likely that the winners of such action are likely to be new authoritarian leaders. But even if we get a popular uprising, there’s no guarantee that the new government will be a liberal democracy. The examples in the article showed that the popular uprisings that removed Hosni Mubarak (Egypt), Omar al-Bashir (Sudan), and Mohamed Morsi (Egypt) resulted in yet newer authoritarian leaders. However, even though the results aren’t guaranteed, popular uprisings have the best chance of turning Russia in a better direction. The final section of the article discusses how to prepare for a Post-Putin Russia. And here’s where I have more issues with the paper. Much of the recommendations given by the authors seem to be very close to nation building. And our history with nation building is sketchy at best, disastrous at worst. I would recommend more of a watchful hands off approach. Let the Russia people figure out what they want to do with their country. But don’t ignore the developments inside of Russia; history has multiple examples of new authoritarian leaders using invasion as a way to solidify support for their government. We need to maintain our watch so that if the new Russia becomes aggressive, we are able to slap them down immediately. We are currently ramping up our military spending and military preparedness for obvious reasons. If we attempt to cash in the “peace dividend” at the end of the Ukraine War, we may find ourselves woefully unprepared for the actions of the next Russia government. Or at least this is what I got out of the article. I think that the authors’ make a compelling case that Russia won’t be all unicorns and butterflies after the war. And for this, we need to remain prepared. Hopefully you found this diary interesting. There are more articles in the latest issue of Foreign Affairs related to Ukraine I’ll be looking at in the future. And if they’re as interesting as this one, I’ll be posting about them, too. Also, if you have suggestions that would improve my summary of the article, please let me know. [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/6/20/2176541/-The-Treacherous-Path-to-a-Better-Russia-Ukraine-s-Future-and-Putin-s-Fate Published and (C) by Daily Kos Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/