Monday 5 March 2018

Who is going to stand up to Putin?

The presidential election in Russia will take place on March 18. The result is already known. Vladimir Putin will win another six-year term, taking him to 2024 when he will be 71. Trump may or may not be president of the United States at that stage. Probably not. Whether he is or not, who is going to stand up to Putin in his next six-year administration? So far, Trump's Russia-collusion battle has prevented him from making friends with the Russian leader, and the result is that Putin has seized his moment to be as tough and as belligerent as possible. His thinking, I guess, is, "there's no chance of being on good terms with Washington so I might as well be as provocative as I can to throw down the gauntlet now in preparation for when an American president, either Trump or someone else, is prepared to do battle with me or woo me". So, after his reelection this month, I reckon Putin will enjoy a few glory years of building a big military machine, nuclear and conventional, while Washington disappears into further political chaos. Confusion and chaos in Washington is sweet music to a man who enjoys total power in his own country. Trump does not and will never enjoy total power Putin-style and right now the White House is such a mixed-up assortment of personalities, all desperately wondering what on earth they are doing from day to day, that it's a wonder any decisions are made. Last week Putin showed off all his latest nukes and boasted of beng able to send missiles round the world and back again, trying to cause more fear and dismay in Washington. Well, people like Jim Mattis at Defence and Mike Pompeo at the CIA won't have been fooled by that. Russia is probably a long way off from putting these weapons into service and one does wonder, why does Putin want a cruise missile that can go anywhere in the world. Who does he want to hit? But the whole point of Putin's showing off last week was to demonstrate to Trump that he, the president of Russia, can do what the hell he likes - economy-willing - while the president of the United States is stuck in a kind of political anarchy. So I ask again, who is going to stand up to Putin over the next six years?

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