There are interpreters of the post-Cold War world who cannot get over 1989, the year their hopes for a socialist world were finally laid to rest. Every peep or murmur, however sotto voce, is met with loud hoots and hollers that Russia is being unfairly victimized and blamed for ills that would better be blamed on capitalism and the west. And so the old Cold War lives on.
And I will admit there are striking similarities. Russia’s current crop of oligarchs, starting at the very top, look very much like the USSR’s old crop of oligarchs, having merely replaced the hammer and sickle with the Russian Orthodox cross. And global capitalism is, well, still global capitalism. Leaner, less regulated, more free-wheeling than its Fordist Cold War ancestor, but still very much what it is.
However, let us accept (just for the sake of argument) that the big difference between old Cold War and the new is that Putin’s Russia would very much like to be admitted into the elite group of global, capitalist, powers. Even as he amassed more than 100,000 troops on the Ukrainian border, Putin held a highly publicized video call to Italy’s top business leaders. Moreover, Nord Stream 2 unequivocally reverses the power relation that once prevailed between east and west. No “belt and road” initiative — yet — Putin very much wants Russia to be viewed by the rest of the world as a reliable and desirable player in global markets, thereby perhaps realizing comrade Joseph Stalin’s dream of beating the west at its own game. Russia is capitalist. Or, more to the point, Putin’s policies aim to increase the marginal product enjoyed by Russian manufacturers and investors.
One way Russia could do this is to open Russia up to a second round of neoliberalization. In the first round, we will recall, high ranking party members teamed up with global capitalists and sold (and bought) the shop, leaving rank-and-file party members with absolutely nothing, or worse. Western investors made off like bandits. But so too did high-ranking party members. A win-win . . . ? A second round would differ from the first. It would be governed by the rule of law, by the robust enforcement of property rights, and with an eye on sharing the marginal product — all of which makes perfect sense until you take a look at Russian courts, Russian property law enforcement, and public institutions, all of which are highly compromised.
A second way for Russia to open up is to drive down the marginal product among its international competitors. It could do this: (1) by holding a monopoly over the goods its competitors crave, chiefly energy; and (2) interfere with the rule of law, and drive up transaction costs among its competitors — say by promoting divisions and bringing its competitors to distrust public institutions.
Many may not be aware that Putin’s role before 1989 was as a disinformation expert for the Kremlin. Soviet strategists theorized that disinformation and division were as effective as or even more effective, both economically and geopolitically, than tanks and bombers. They may have been right.
Think for a moment how tirelessly western oligarchs have worked to silence the free press and curtail political freedoms. Think for a moment about how tirelessly Mitch McConnell, indeed the entire Republican leadership, plus Joe Manchin and Krysten Sinema, have worked to undermine democratic institutions. Putin and McConnell are working from the same playbook.
The epitaph for this final stage of history might well be not “workers of the world unite,” but “oligarchs of the world unite.” Which makes it worlds different from your mother’s Cold War.