These two answers essentially span the spectrum of explanations for the phone calls: few attribute noble motives to President Poroshenko. Even officials only a step or two down from the president often seem loath to explain or justify his more controversial behavior, such as his unwillingness to replace corrupt military officers or ministers. Among Ukrainians, this translates into a deep malaise. Four years after the flight from Kiev of Poroshenko’s predecessor, Viktor Yanukovych, who was forced out by months of protests that paralyzed the capital, many Ukrainians are disillusioned with their leaders and the political class in general, demoralized by the weak economy, worried about the frozen conflict in eastern Ukraine, and frustrated by the president’s failure to address the systemic corruption that permeates all aspects of life. In many cases Poroshenko has fought hard to protect controversial figures like Prosecutor-General Viktor Shokin, whom he defended for over a year before firing him only when US Vice President Joe Biden threatened to withdraw a $1 billion loan guarantee. [...]
Gerard Toal’s Near Abroad is a rich and dense study of geopolitics in and around the now-independent states that once composed the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics,1 probably the best available today.2 He argues forcefully against reducing complicated geopolitical issues to facile formulas, and particularly against the US tendency to back leaders who talk a good line, preferably in English. “Embracing Bonapartism in the Caucasus or shoring up select Ukrainian oligarchs, no matter how good a game they talk, is not ‘support for freedom,’” he writes. At the center of Toal’s book is the 2008 NATO summit in Bucharest, where the alliance declared that Georgia and Ukraine would eventually become members. Putin warned that this would be viewed as a “direct threat” to Russian security. That summer he invaded Georgia, consolidating Moscow’s control over the two breakaway territories of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. Russian troops continue to nibble away at Georgia’s border with Russian-occupied South Ossetia, a few yards at a time. [...]
Toal quotes the US political scientist John Mearsheimer’s description of Putin as “a first-class strategist who should be feared and respected by anyone challenging him on foreign policy,” but does not seem convinced by it. He suggests that Putin’s character can be more usefully understood with reference to his hypermasculinity and the role of affect, or emotion, in his political choices. Putin’s lengthy record indeed indicates that his reactions are often provoked by a sense of spite or revenge. Russian analysts—some loyal, others critical—have long noted that under Putin action often precedes policy. Some have resorted to slang to define his leadership style, perceiving elements of the sovok—the constantly aggrieved, misogynist, racist post-Soviet man in the street—in his behavior. He is clearly a gosudarstvennik, a firm believer in the dignity of the state (gosudarstvo), who believes that this dignity must be protected at any price, including that of the truth. Another intriguing glimpse of Putin’s psychological makeup comes from Putin himself. In an early political biography he confided with apparent pride to one of his interviewers that he had not gone through the Soviet youth movements but had instead been a shpana, a young tough or punk.
No comments:
Post a Comment