April 23rd Forum Summary and PowerPoint Presentation:
WHITHER PUTIN/ WHITHER RUSSIA?
Dr. Tyrus W. Cobb gave a comprehensive presentation on the dramatic and troubling new directions that Russian President Vladimir Putin has taken the country.
- Cobb highlighted concerning domestic developments, challenging demographic trends, a recent downward turn in economic growth following 15 years of substantial growth, and, despite this dip, rapidly accelerating military spending.
- In his review of domestic developments, he highlighted the repression of the media, elimination of competing centers of power, and constant adulation of Putin alongside sharp denigration of the U.S. and the West. Cobb sees a return of the Tsarist themes of “Autocracy, Orthodoxy, and Nationalism”.
- He drew attention to the shrinking ethnic Russian population, with deaths last year exceeding births for the first time, alongside the rapid expansion of the Muslim population.
- Cobb noted that Russia continues to depend heavily on exports of raw materials, especially oil and gas (which constitute 50% of its hard currency earnings.) At the same time he stressed the leverage that Moscow has over the recipient countries, particularly in West Europe.
- He examined the means employed by Moscow to accomplish the annexation of Crimea and drew parallels to events along the eastern border of Ukraine, with concerns over what Putin has meant by vowing to extend protection to Russian-speaking populations in the “Near Abroad”—countries bordering Russia, many of which were part of the former Soviet Union.
- Cobb cautioned that Moscow has considerable leverage itself, and not just in its fossil fuel exports. This includes permitting the US to utilize Russian territory and air space for transit of material to support the war effort in Afghanistan.
- Cobb noted that the economic and personal sanctions imposed by the West have already had severe negative impacts on Russia’s economy—one estimate said that over $40 billion had already fled the country. The sanctions are also a factor in some expert predictions that Russia will actually experience negative GDP growth this year!
- Finally, Cobb underlined that Russia’s greatest vulnerability lies in its dependence on oil and gas exports and on high world prices for those fuels. He concluded that while it is not a short term solution, the most effective means of constraining Putin’s ambitions in the future would be for West to rapidly develop its own natural gas and oil resources to flood the world market, lower the world price of the resources, diminish Moscow’s hard currency earnings, and lessen Russia’s leverage over its neighbors.
Click here for Dr. Cobb’s PowerPoint presentation.