Well the elections in Russia are over, and I can’t even feign surprise at the outcome. Not only am I not surprised that the Czar won, nor am I shocked at the way he did it.
What is shocking to me, and should be disturbing to the West is why he did it. Putin undermined the fledgling democracy in Russia when he had no reason to do so, he would have won regardless.
Let us take a brief, stereotypical, look at the kind of leadership that the Russians hail as great. Ivan the Terrible, also killed large swaths of people, expanding Russia into the Siberian wonderland, and destroyed entire populations on the mere possibility that they may betray him.
Carrying on the tradition of might makes right is or good friend Peter the Great, who despite having a better nickname than Ivan, did some of the same nasty stuff. The modern father of Russia, Peter did some very forcible stuff in order to modernize Russia and make it a world power.
Then of course is the self named “Man of Steel” Stalin himself. Who ruled with brutal authority where morality was never even an afterthought. Stalin’s quote, “The death of one man is a tragedy, the death of a million is a statistic” gives us a unique look into his mindset.
Then of course we have Bush’s buddy Putin. Though he doesn’t have the body count, Putin gives what the Russian people typically crave: vodka. Seriously though, they desire a leader that does two things, makes decisions that makes Russia a strong global power, and gives them edible food at home.
How successful has this policy been for the Russian people? Lets put it this way, they had controlled the Balkans and most of the ‘Stans, and there was about a third of the violence that is going on now.
Putin fits this mold as a former KGB agent of making the hard decisions no matter the moral implications and only focusing on the National Interest. That happens to fit the mold of the Russian leaders to a t, combined with what the Russians call a personality, and he was golden.
What is troubling is the lengths he went to in order to secure that electoral victory, by fooling with the process. Unfortunately, rampant insecurity is also a Russian leadership trait that can have disastrous results. For there comes a time when leaders lose the ability to function competently and do more harm than good. President Bush hit that barrier in early 2000.
What these two have in common besides misunderestimating the other is a dunce, is damaging making decisions that damage their respective countries in the short term, but set precedents in place that could cause untold damage in the future.
Not that we couldn’t see this coming, as they are both self entitled personalities that believe they have moral authority to do what they wish. It also helps that their political opposition is too afraid to challenge these bullies of in their respective playgrounds. Hopefully I am wrong, but that would be Czar-Prising.
