Full Version: Vladimir Putin is Time's Man of the Year
Here is a long article from Time about their pick for Man of the Year for 2008.
Link
To be debated:
1. Was this a good choice for Man of the Year? (Remember this means the individual who did the most to make news, not necessarily good or bad.)
2. Has the Putin regime done more good or more harm to Russia? Was the restoration of economic stability and international power worth the loss of freedom?
3. Is the Putin regime good or bad for the United States and the rest of the world? Does it make international relations more or less dangerous?
4. Is Russia once again a superpower, or will it soon be one again?
Link
QUOTE
To achieve stability, Putin and his administration have dramatically curtailed freedoms. His government has shut down TV stations and newspapers, jailed businessmen whose wealth and influence challenged the Kremlin's hold on power, defanged opposition political parties and arrested those who confront his rule. Yet this grand bargain—of freedom for security—appeals to his Russian subjects, who had grown cynical over earlier regimes' promises of the magical fruits of Western-style democracy. Putin's popularity ratings are routinely around 70%.
To be debated:
1. Was this a good choice for Man of the Year? (Remember this means the individual who did the most to make news, not necessarily good or bad.)
2. Has the Putin regime done more good or more harm to Russia? Was the restoration of economic stability and international power worth the loss of freedom?
3. Is the Putin regime good or bad for the United States and the rest of the world? Does it make international relations more or less dangerous?
4. Is Russia once again a superpower, or will it soon be one again?
1. Was this a good choice for Man of the Year? (Remember this means the individual who did the most to make news, not necessarily good or bad.)
I'm not a regular reader of Time, but I get the impression that the "Man of the Year" award is as much to create a little controversy and generate publicity (and circulation & ad revenue) for the magazine as it is to identify the single most newswortyh and important individual of the past year.
As such, I think Putin is a reasonable choice, but he must have had stiff competititon from Sarkozy and Musharref in terms of the amount of press and media heat they've generated in the past year.
2. Has the Putin regime done more good or more harm to Russia? Was the restoration of economic stability and international power worth the loss of freedom?
Putin has had the most important thing that any political leader can wish for - good fortune. He's been in office while the newly-privatised Russian oil & gas industries have been able to exploit the record high prices for those commodities, and the tax revenues that come from that business have boosted his coffers, and while Western businesses have been trying desperately to cut costs and outsource manufacturing and services to low wage, high-skill ecomonies. While China, India and Indonesia have been at the forefront, former communist states in Eatern Europe (including Russia) have also benefited.
Most of the heavy lifting - marketisation and privatisation of ossified former-state-owned businesses (with a good deal more shady practices on the side than happened in - say - Britain under the Thatcher government) was done under the now-villified Yelstin government and the consequent unemployment and poverty and instability we more or less inevtiable side-effects of such rapid and momentous change. Once those changes began to really bed in, Yeltsin was out on his ear and couldn't take the credit (and would probably have been too drunk to notice even if he'd been around) so Putin got the warm afterglow.
I think it's important to remember that Russia has a big inferiority complex - despite the problems they've always had, Russians have always considered themselves the equal or superior of any other nation (with some justification, especially when it comes to how important a player they were in WWII) and it was very harsh on the national psyche to have lost the Cold War, suffered the economic pain that followed, and then see their former satellite states queueing up to join NATO (which they still regard as their enemy - again, with some justification, if only historically).
And Russians have never been "free" in the American sense (hardly anybody else has), so there isn't the sense of sacrifice of "losing" freedoms that they never previously had, and which came hand-in-hand with painful economic circumstances. There's a kind of Pavlovian association now between "freedom" and "chaos" which many Russians, especially the more muscular nationalists that Putin plays to, translate into support for Putin's repressions.
3. Is the Putin regime good or bad for the United States and the rest of the world? Does it make international relations more or less dangerous?
So far, I think it has been broadly a good thing and has made international relations no more dangerous (they haven't made things worse either, but that's not really Putin's or Russia's fault). How the second part of the "Putin era" plays out depends not just on the outcome of the US Presidential elections next year (and that's a big one) but also on how independent-minded his chosen successor as president turns out to be. If the new guy grows bold enough, and can develop the support to do it, he may realise that the Russian constitution allows the President to dismiss the Prime Minister (Putin's new job) if he chooses to do so.
It's possible, though unlikely, that Putin will not be on the radar at all this time next year.
4. Is Russia once again a superpower, or will it soon be one again?
Not yet, but there is some appetite for regaining their former status (like has historically been true of the English understanding of being British in theUK, the identity of the wider Soviet Union was pretty much synonymous with Russia for Russians, unlike the Georgians, Latvians, Belarussians, Kazakhs, etc.), and with the high energy prices they have most of the resources they would need to set them on that path again if that's the one they choose.
Like many other things in international politics, much will depend on the outcome of the US presidential elections. If someone comes in who ditches the "missile shield" idea, or who has the imagination to take up the Putin offer of including Russia in it which Bush rejected, it would do much to reassure Russia that they are being treated with the status they feel they deserve. Similarly, efforts to include Russian troops in UN or other multilateral actions will help them feel that the rest of the world thinks they have something to contribute.
Ultimately they could become a "partner superpower" to the USA rather than the "rival superpower" of history. This depends, as much as anything else, on whether the USA can reconcile itself to sharing the spotlight and cooperate as often as they compete. This in turn depends on a change of foreign policy attitude (if not an immediate change of the policies themselves) from the often unilateralist impulses of the Bush administration.
As with anyone with an inferiority complex, the most important thing to them is not how they think about themselves, or how we think about them, but their perception of how we think about them. Managing perceptions - which requires nuance and subtlety - will be more crucial than ever if there is to be a happy outcome.
I'm hopeful that Russia will (slowly) become more and more "European" in outlook (relatively free and democratic, if only relative to how they were historically) They will never be a carbon copy of America, but few outside America aspire to that goal anyway. In the longer term (20 years or so) I think there's a good chance they might join the EU (or whatever that turns into by then), if only so that they can be part of a trading bloc that can hope to compete politically (more than economically) with the giants that India and China will have become by then. (I also have a hunch that the USA will be trying to join or form a trading bloc - perhaps an extension of NAFTA - by then, for much the same reasons).
I'm not a regular reader of Time, but I get the impression that the "Man of the Year" award is as much to create a little controversy and generate publicity (and circulation & ad revenue) for the magazine as it is to identify the single most newswortyh and important individual of the past year.
As such, I think Putin is a reasonable choice, but he must have had stiff competititon from Sarkozy and Musharref in terms of the amount of press and media heat they've generated in the past year.
2. Has the Putin regime done more good or more harm to Russia? Was the restoration of economic stability and international power worth the loss of freedom?
Putin has had the most important thing that any political leader can wish for - good fortune. He's been in office while the newly-privatised Russian oil & gas industries have been able to exploit the record high prices for those commodities, and the tax revenues that come from that business have boosted his coffers, and while Western businesses have been trying desperately to cut costs and outsource manufacturing and services to low wage, high-skill ecomonies. While China, India and Indonesia have been at the forefront, former communist states in Eatern Europe (including Russia) have also benefited.
Most of the heavy lifting - marketisation and privatisation of ossified former-state-owned businesses (with a good deal more shady practices on the side than happened in - say - Britain under the Thatcher government) was done under the now-villified Yelstin government and the consequent unemployment and poverty and instability we more or less inevtiable side-effects of such rapid and momentous change. Once those changes began to really bed in, Yeltsin was out on his ear and couldn't take the credit (and would probably have been too drunk to notice even if he'd been around) so Putin got the warm afterglow.
I think it's important to remember that Russia has a big inferiority complex - despite the problems they've always had, Russians have always considered themselves the equal or superior of any other nation (with some justification, especially when it comes to how important a player they were in WWII) and it was very harsh on the national psyche to have lost the Cold War, suffered the economic pain that followed, and then see their former satellite states queueing up to join NATO (which they still regard as their enemy - again, with some justification, if only historically).
And Russians have never been "free" in the American sense (hardly anybody else has), so there isn't the sense of sacrifice of "losing" freedoms that they never previously had, and which came hand-in-hand with painful economic circumstances. There's a kind of Pavlovian association now between "freedom" and "chaos" which many Russians, especially the more muscular nationalists that Putin plays to, translate into support for Putin's repressions.
3. Is the Putin regime good or bad for the United States and the rest of the world? Does it make international relations more or less dangerous?
So far, I think it has been broadly a good thing and has made international relations no more dangerous (they haven't made things worse either, but that's not really Putin's or Russia's fault). How the second part of the "Putin era" plays out depends not just on the outcome of the US Presidential elections next year (and that's a big one) but also on how independent-minded his chosen successor as president turns out to be. If the new guy grows bold enough, and can develop the support to do it, he may realise that the Russian constitution allows the President to dismiss the Prime Minister (Putin's new job) if he chooses to do so.
It's possible, though unlikely, that Putin will not be on the radar at all this time next year.
4. Is Russia once again a superpower, or will it soon be one again?
Not yet, but there is some appetite for regaining their former status (like has historically been true of the English understanding of being British in theUK, the identity of the wider Soviet Union was pretty much synonymous with Russia for Russians, unlike the Georgians, Latvians, Belarussians, Kazakhs, etc.), and with the high energy prices they have most of the resources they would need to set them on that path again if that's the one they choose.
Like many other things in international politics, much will depend on the outcome of the US presidential elections. If someone comes in who ditches the "missile shield" idea, or who has the imagination to take up the Putin offer of including Russia in it which Bush rejected, it would do much to reassure Russia that they are being treated with the status they feel they deserve. Similarly, efforts to include Russian troops in UN or other multilateral actions will help them feel that the rest of the world thinks they have something to contribute.
Ultimately they could become a "partner superpower" to the USA rather than the "rival superpower" of history. This depends, as much as anything else, on whether the USA can reconcile itself to sharing the spotlight and cooperate as often as they compete. This in turn depends on a change of foreign policy attitude (if not an immediate change of the policies themselves) from the often unilateralist impulses of the Bush administration.
As with anyone with an inferiority complex, the most important thing to them is not how they think about themselves, or how we think about them, but their perception of how we think about them. Managing perceptions - which requires nuance and subtlety - will be more crucial than ever if there is to be a happy outcome.
I'm hopeful that Russia will (slowly) become more and more "European" in outlook (relatively free and democratic, if only relative to how they were historically) They will never be a carbon copy of America, but few outside America aspire to that goal anyway. In the longer term (20 years or so) I think there's a good chance they might join the EU (or whatever that turns into by then), if only so that they can be part of a trading bloc that can hope to compete politically (more than economically) with the giants that India and China will have become by then. (I also have a hunch that the USA will be trying to join or form a trading bloc - perhaps an extension of NAFTA - by then, for much the same reasons).
QUOTE
1. Was this a good choice for Man of the Year? (Remember this means the individual who did the most to make news, not necessarily good or bad.)
2. Has the Putin regime done more good or more harm to Russia? Was the restoration of economic stability and international power worth the loss of freedom?
3. Is the Putin regime good or bad for the United States and the rest of the world? Does it make international relations more or less dangerous?
4. Is Russia once again a superpower, or will it soon be one again?
2. Has the Putin regime done more good or more harm to Russia? Was the restoration of economic stability and international power worth the loss of freedom?
3. Is the Putin regime good or bad for the United States and the rest of the world? Does it make international relations more or less dangerous?
4. Is Russia once again a superpower, or will it soon be one again?
I believe that it was a good choice. His time as president of Russia has overseen a reversal of the economic free fall that they were experiencing in the '90s due to listeningto one too many economic advisors from America.
He has also created stability and he has never had to call the army to shell the parliament building due to hardliners. The Putin regime is good for America in that we don't have to deal with a radical ruler, bent upon worldwide expansion and domination. It has also been beneficial in that he keeps the satellite republics around him in line. The situation could definitely be worse and that is something I don't believe a lot of people understand. I don't believe Russia is a superpower, nor will it ever be again. Putin likes to have his aging Tupelov bombers fly their old cold war routes for show. He wants to project a strong Russia, but economic growth and stability have clearly been his ultimate objective. He has definitely created a good platform for his successor to take over. This is a simplified version of our main content. To view the full version with more information, formatting and images, please click here.