Why Putin Will Prevail

Author’s Preface: I am not pro-Putin or pro-Ukraine. I believe firmly it is not our fight. This article is meant to simply explain some of the reasons the author believes Russia will prevail. Others have written on the military elements, so this will focus more on economic.

We are in the midst of a strange time in history. Russia has invaded a territory which used to belong to Russia and people are crying about how evil this is. Condoleezza Rice even had the audacity to nod in agreement when Harris Faulkner said that invading a sovereign country is a war crime.

For you Zoomers out there, Dr. Rice is a long-time apparatchik of the Imperial System, serving under multiple presidents including holding the positions of National Security Advisor and Secretary of State during the George W. Bush presidency. She was a large proponent of the Iraq War and is at least partially to blame for the multiple invasions by the United States of sovereign countries in recent memory.

Now, to punish dastardly Putin, American-based companies are ceasing to do business in Russia. We’ve already seen the ruble plummet in value and many of the usual suspects are clapping and assuming the fall of Russia is inevitable. While the decline in the value of the ruble is certainly a concern for Russians, there are no indications that Russia is going to go the way of Weimar or Zimbabwe. Certainly, there’s going to be unrest, and likely already is, but the value of the ruble will likely bounce back soon after the conflict is over. In any event, these policies from the United States and the various U.S.-based businesses are going to backfire for several reasons.

The first is that embargoes tend to work if you can starve out a country, but not if they can get support elsewhere.  Cuba got subsidized by the USSR during the U.S. embargo, for example, and is still a Marxist state.  While Russia isn’t going to be subsidized by a greater power, the U.S. policies aren’t going to be copied by the necessary actors to starve out Russia.  Europe needs Russian oil, despite pretending to be green.  While the U.S. may buy Venezuelan oil, that doesn’t seem a possible choice for the European powers, so they’ll still buy from Putin while publicly speaking out against him.

The second reason these policies will backfire is that it decreases the businesses’ own market share. There is a theoretical surge that could happen to a customer base when a business engages in the public sphere.  If a company expresses a policy that the masses like, then they could get new consumers or more loyal consumers.  However, the public is fairly fickle. Additionally, companies these days tend to try to influence public opinion rather than respond to it. Besides that, anyone that is pro-Ukraine would be purchasing these goods already (Nikes, Starbucks, etc). Publicly countersignaling Russia’s policies while still doing business in Russia may be hypocritical, but it’s good business (and is precisely what many businesses did during the Second World War and the Cold War).  That’s not what they’re doing, though.  They’re actively pulling out and refusing to do business with Russia.  That’s 144 million consumers they are missing out selling to.

Let’s say they’re not concerned with market share but rather out of principal want to oppose Putin.  Even if that were true (the use of borderline slave labor by Nike and such companies indicates it isn’t), this is a terrible way to do it.  The embargo on Cuba arguably strengthened support for Fidel Castro as he could push it as a nationalistic thing.  He was able to express the sentiment that “foreigners are attempting to dictate how we live. Even if you’re unhappy with me, are you going to let foreigners tell you what government to have?”  While there’s no telling how much actual support Castro had while alive, the hundreds of assassination attempts aren’t a good indicator, the reality is that his hold over the island was greater than of any previous Cuban leader.   

Likewise, Putin seems to be one of the more popular leaders in recent Russian history. He has also wanted to decouple from Western influence for a while.  Not to go down too deep a rabbit hole, but these companies obviously exert social influence. We can see that in the commercials they run promoting homosexuality and interracial relationships.  It’s a lot easier to stop an entity from entering your land and spreading propaganda if you can remove the desire to enter in the first place. Besides, if Putin had banned Netflix, McDonalds, and the other companies, that’s a tyrannical step, and will make people hate him for the hardship from his policy. The foreign countries or companies doing the policy makes the hardship clearly from a foreign force, so it should cause people to double down support for Putin in a process called Belief Perseverance.

Besides the fact that Putin can’t be directly blamed for these actions of foreign entities, these policies also justify the plan to seize the assets of the exiting companies. After all, these companies are doing these things to try to force regime change in Russia. It doesn’t take a stellar jurist to argue why such motivation and actions therefore justifies punishment by the Russian government.

So, Putin gets rid of these companies that spend money on propaganda while blaming the economic hardship on foreigners while simultaneously creating a vacuum by which new entrepreneurs/oligarchs can rise up to fill that gap (who will be beholden to Putin).  He simultaneously removes foreign influence, gets Russians to double down on support for him (as his regime becomes conflated with Russian autonomy from the West), and begins creating a more globally independent Russia and dependent political class surrounding him. 

One other issue is that by decoupling more from the West, the demand for the U.S. dollar logically will go down.  For example, Russia is turning to Chinese payment systems now that Visa and Mastercard won’t do business with Russia. This means you’ll see more trade in yuans and rubles rather than dollars.  China’s sphere of influence has been growing for some time and it shouldn’t be long before the dollar stops being the global reserve currency.  That doesn’t mean that the yuan or ruble shall be, only that there may be regional reserve currencies from now on, rather than a global one. Russia decoupling from the West and the dollar now may very well help their economy out in the long run.

I want to bring up the hypocrisy of all this because it does connect with my final point. Just like when Hollywood boycotted the American state of Georgia for some alleged anti-gay law, while simultaneously filming in China (which has concentration camps) or in Arab Gulf states (which have far stricter anti-gay laws than anything in the U.S.), the entire situation reeks of hypocrisy. Athletes get applauded for refusing to compete with Russia and standing up for “human rights,” but are lambasted for similar stances regarding Israel’s treatment of Palestinians. Frankly, why we care about an athlete’s opinions on global politics makes little sense to me, but if you’re going to respect an athlete’s right to take a stand against a policy of a foreign government, you need to be consistent.

One German clinic went as far as to refuse treatment to Russians and Belarussians because of the invasion of Ukraine.  Yes, they’re now refusing treatment of people because of their ethnicity (or at least nationality, which in the latter case correlates with ethnicity at an almost 1:1 ratio).  How this is legal in the Current Year where Germany bans speech that could be seen as racist towards immigrants is baffling.  Of course, those laws are only meant to protect non-White people, and different ethnic groups that are still White can be discriminated against without recourse (just ask the Poles in the UK).

Facebook has banned Trump “indefinitely” for inciting violence but has explicitly stated they will tolerate calls for violence against Russian Invaders. At least their lawyers, or their PR department, had the good sense to qualify it with the “invader” addition, but what that will mean in practice is hard to tell.  After all, all Whites are called “invaders” by leftists and non-White activists. 

These anti-Russian policies in Western countries may have a silver lining for Putin, too.  It will lead to more Russians returning to their homeland.   While that would certainly increase unemployment and decrease wages at least in the short term, it will also reverse the brain drain of emigration in the longer term.  Again, because Putin can paint all this in nationalistic terms (and apparently even in terms of fighting against a Satanic World Order), he can avoid the normal decline in popularity that happens when economic situations worsen under an incumbent.  It provides a “why” for the Russian people to endure the hardship.  As Victor Frankl said, slant-quoting Friedreich Nietzsche, “one who has a ‘why’ to live for can endure almost any ‘how.’”  I can think of no greater “why” than fighting against evil.  If such rhetoric works, then Putin may very well possess Kiev within the month and one day be remembered, at least within Russia, as one of Russia’s greatest statesmen.