Destroying your country for delusions of grandeur

I came across this article yesterday. Do give it a read. One can ascertain from its core argument from its title, "The Putin Super Power Myth", and from this subhed: Putin destroyed in a year an energy business that took three generations to build. As it turns out, Russia needed Europe far more than Europe needed Russia. Here are a couple of excerpts which I find telling:

[T]he [Kremlin was] sure the winter of 2023 would bring to Europe: a brutal reckoning for their support of Ukraine and betrayal of their energy overlord, Russia.

It turned out, it was mostly hubris. A warm winter, low energy prices, and Europe’s rapid turn away from Russian energy have revealed that the balance of power wasn’t quite as durable as the Kremlin had predicted. Moreover, the now nearly two-month G7 and E.U. price cap on seaborne exports of Russian oil has produced surprising results, further cutting into the Kremlin’s energy dominance of the West.

Now, I haven't written much about this price cap, which caps the price at which Russian oil can be sold. How on earth could the West achieve this? Quite simply:

Well, after much negotiation and haggling—the price cap was set at $60 per barrel for Russia’s unique Urals crude—the measure was rolled out on December 5. The mechanism was that companies from G7 or E.U. countries (plus Australia) were forbidden from providing services—like insurance, say, or marketing, or logistics—to any entity selling Russian crude or oil from a Russian tanker, or from one leaving a Russian port, unless they abide by the price cap.

Now, here's the thing. All that oil traveling all over the world on tankers? And the tankers? And all the ancillary costs, like the marketing and logistics mentioned above? All these services are almost exclusively Western-dominated. Russia doesn't have the services needed to move its oil. China doesn't have the insurance industry to insure it and the ships which carry it. India? Surely, you jest. All the commodities which traverse the globe are insured and backed by Western industries. And nothing moves without them. Putin had the oil and gas; but the West had the financial underpinnings without which they were worthless.

Of course, Putin said this was a nonstarter. However:

According to Bloomberg, which has been following these developments closely, there are now, really, only three main purchasers of Russian seaborne crude: Turkey, China, and India. “There are not that many places where Russia can sell its crude anymore,” [Daniel] Yergin told me. “It’s made people more cautious in dealing with Russian oil. There’s enough ambiguity about violating the price cap, that people will continue being very cautious.”

Russia has tried to get around this price cap of $60 a barrel by having a "ghost fleet" of two hundred ships to deliver its oil. It's not nearly enough. And a hit to its oil is a hit to Russia, as the state pegs its budget to the price of its oil.

Yesterday, the big news was that the US and other Western nations have agreed to supply Ukraine with main battle tanks: Leopards from Germany (and other states which use the Leopard), and Abrams from the US. The UK had already pledged to send its Challenger 2 tanks.

This "special military operation" was supposed to have been over within a week, with Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelenskyy either dead or in a Russian prison, and a pliant puppet installed in Kyiv. And it might very well have been over the quickly, had Russia not proven itself to be a paper tiger, its vaunted military unable to take a supposedly militarily inferior nation due to the fact that its strategy beggared belief. Ukraine fended off the first onslaught, won the Battle of Kyiv, and proved itself to the West that it was a smart investment. And now Western main battle tanks are about to be in the field against Russia's dilapidated tank corps. The tanks by themselves won't win the war for Ukraine; but their presence allows Ukrainian generals to adapt their strategy and deliver decisive blows. Ukraine has shown itself able to alter strategies and tactics as the situations warrant, something which the sclerotic Russian general staff seems absolutely unable to do. The tanks will be a force multiplier.

Vladimir Putin has miscalculated at every step of this misbegotten adventure. He overestimated his military, and woefully underestimated that of Ukraine's. He misread President Joe Biden, thinking him weak. He likewise misread the West's resolve. He completely discounted the horror that would erupt among the main Western nations at his launching the first major land war in Europe in almost eighty years. He is a secret policeman, with a secret policeman's dullness of intellect. And he combines that with an overinflated sense of his own world-historical importance. And now that the US and NATO are going all in on supplying Ukraine with purely offensive weaponry, he's reduced to having his lackeys in various capitals shake their fists and stomp their feet.

But he has no other recourse. He has to see this out and try to salvage something. However, his time is running out. Once the Leopards, Abrams, and Challengers become integrated into military units, and Ukraine begins its spring offensive, it may very well soon be over. Now is his chance to work a deal and escape with his life. However, I doubt he'll take it. In the end, Russia will be defeated, and will have to spend the following thirty years, or more, rebuilding from this catastrophe. That is, if the Federation even survives as a state. 

Hubris. It will bring you down every time.

***

Like what you're reading? Never miss another post! Get notified via email here.

Donate at the link below to keep us going.