Saturday, June 18, 2022

Unbundling Putin: The St. Petersburg Speech



  1. Putin fashions himself an intellectual. That is a good thing. I want him to be making arguments. I like the idea of him trying to convince people, especially inside Russia.
  2. He takes great pride in what he calls the Russian character. "Honey Badger don't take no s_____ from nobody!" I compared him to a honey badger years ago in a blog post.
  3. It is a matter of great pride to him that he gave Edward Snowden political asylum. He might have considered the same for Julian Assange, except that dude reeks too much of free speech. No power on earth could have Snowden looked to, except of course the Russian Putin. Only Putin can stand up to America. He wears that like a badge of honor.
  4. I do think one national currency being the de facto global currency is a bad idea. A bad idea also for the US economy. It creates all sorts of distortions. But invading a small neighbor is not my idea of dislodging the dollar. Bitcoin? Maybe.
  5. Putin is saying, look, the US is printing dollars and buying stuff for free. As in, it exports the dollar that it prints for free, and gets goods and services for free basically. That is unfair.
  6. That can be debates. But invading a small neighbor sort of ends the debate destroying the very forum for that debate.
  7. Yes, the world is going multi-polar. It is already not unipolar. China today is not the China of 1990. Russia itself is no joke. You have India. You have the major European powers. But the multipolar nature of the world today is a fact does not need to be stated. Invading a small neighbor is not any way to inform the world that it has now become multipolar. The world has been multipolar for a while now. And Russia just went back 20 years economically.
  8. He fashions himself Peter The Great. A few days ago I saw a video where he is talking to middle school kids about how "we took back what was ours." That is child abuse. Choose an appropriate audience.
  9. To say Russia is not blocking Ukrainian wheat exports is a tortured argument.
  10. I agree it is not war. It has been an invasion. Two different things.
  11. The economic sanctions are biting.
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