How do we solve a problem like Putin? Five leading writers on Russia have their say.

Well, I've just read the article with its 5 essays plus BTL comments and I'm seriously depressed.

1. Tom Burgis: ‘To confront his kleptocracy, we must first cease our complicity in it’.
2. Catriona Kelly: ‘We must try to understand the complex history of Russian imperialism’.
3. Oliver Bullough: ‘We can deprive him and his cronies of access to their wealth’.
4. Ruth Deyermond: ‘Closing contact will confirm Putin’s narrative that the west wants to destroy Russia’.
5. Peter Pomerantsev: ‘Solving the problem means confronting the psychological grip he has on people’.

Essay 1/5

What do we think happens to the money we pay for Russian gas? How do we imagine western multinationals secure oil-drilling rights dispensed by a regime we know to be corrupt? Who do we think is behind the companies of anonymous ownership, registered in places like Guernsey, Cyprus and the British Virgin Islands, that we continue to allow to participate in our economies?

How on earth can we stop buying gas? Even if we recognise the danger of fossil fuels, we remain highly dependent on them for the foreseeable future. Our 'addiction' remains even if we switch from one autocratic regime to another. We feed them as they feed us...

The other pipe-line of 'dirty money' and the UK's PM blusterings of turning it off.
Well, pull the other one...
But a good point made of the dangers of a shadow global economy.

Sanctions-busting deals between Iran, Venezuela and Russia – respectively kleptocracies with Islamist, socialist and imperialist masks – reveal that this alternative is already taking shape. The leaders of the Chinese kleptocracy will use this opportunity to bolster their position at the head of this new order

We are watching the rise of what I’ve called Kleptopia.*
An undeclared, unconventional war between kleptocracy and democracy has been under way since long before Putin’s troops marched into Ukraine.

* How do we deal with that?

Reply to Amity
I'm not sure what you want from this situation. America and the west are purely countries within an order and time and place. The question is more what's happening and I think the liberal individualist/capitalist experiment has shown cracks with afghanistan, covid, domestic issues like university, genders etc and it looks like our economy will be eclipsed by china. What is happening in afghanistan and even india and russia/ukraine, is more or less developing past that and you cannot expect america to be anything but a speed bump until it solves its own issues and develops an actual philosophical position which solves these really embarrassingly terrible positions.

Reply to Shwah
Under discussion is the article; the 5 essays within and relevant comments.

Reply to Amity
You said "the way forward?" and "how do we deal with that?" and I explained the limit of any meaningful "way" or solution. Again I'm not even sure what you're asking. How do you stop russia from invading ukraine? It's like asking the yankee north to not invade the confederate states for them.
It's just not a meaningful question from any perspective you must refer to for any question you may have.

Your title is "How to solve a problem: like Putin" and I thought it may be about the different archetypes of "problem-solving" using Putin as a stand-in for an archetype and as a case study.

I feel like I'm missing a lot of background assumptions. You want to overthrow Putin and establish a liberal democracy you prefer? That still runs into issues and many cultures reject that approach so how do we solve that? Just as I said.

Thanks for your response.
You are right. Following a reading of the first essay, suggesting possible ways forward, I asked "How do we deal with that?" in relation to the rise of Kleptopia, a term new to me.

It was a throw-away line of thought, a question arising...perhaps not meaningful to you.
You see limits to any 'way' or 'solution', I agree.

Does that mean that the discussion can't proceed with regard to the article and essays?
Again, your response suggests that you haven't even read it.
You are trying to steer it in another direction:
Quoting Shwah

The question is more what's happening

Not the focus of this discussion.

[ I note you have edited your post to further explain your confusion. The title is now changed ]

Reply to Amity
They only reference the kleptocracy of russia in the first essay (and once in the third) and never "kleptopia" (which is a much larger discussion).
So you just mean how to solve kleptocracy as detailed in the first essay (business elites get passing mention in the second)?

Reply to Amity
So you just want to talk about the writers thoughts with not much reference outside that?

Reply to Shwah
Quoting Shwah

They only reference the kleptocracy of russia in the first essay (and once in the third) and never "kleptopia" (which is a much larger discussion).
So you just mean how to solve kleptocracy as detailed in the first essay (business elites get passing mention in the second)?

So, you did a word search? And you still got it wrong.
I'm taking it one essay at a time.

I think you know very well what I'm trying to do here.
And doing your very best to thwart that.
I was giving you the benefit of the doubt.
Please desist.

The assumption seems to be that Russia's invasion of Ukraine is a war orchestrated by Putin and his oligarchs alone.

I think this is clearly wrong.

Ukraine is a key factor in multiple strategic and geopolitical challenges for Russia, including access to the Black Sea and Europe.

Getting rid of Putin does not change the fact that Russia inherently will be interested in control over this region, and whoever were to succeed him will have to face the same challenges and questions.

Essay 2/5
Catriona Kelly: ‘We must try to understand the complex history of Russian imperialism’

I'm not sure how many really have the motivation or capability to do that.
However, reading on...

Much as I share Tolstoy’s scepticism about the individual’s impact on history, to a significant extent this is Vladimir Putin’s war. Determined to reverse the entropy for which he blames Gorbachev, Putin believes in the transhistorical unity of Great Russia, Little Russia and White Russia. Ukraine as such does not exist.

So, the problem: Putin's determination to 'defeat and purge independent Ukraine'.
And yes, it's not necessarily the case that a rational solution would appear if Putin and his gang were removed.

As the author says, many in Russia still support him. Those who hold prejudices about Ukraine, fear the West and so on.

The suggestions for 'what may be achievable' include:

Listening to voices from the region. A good place to start is Ukrainian activist and historian Taras Bilous’s essay, A Letter to the Western Left from Kyiv (published recently on openDemocracy), which corrects many of the British media cliches about insuperable linguistic, cultural, historical and geographical divides and the influence of the far right...

... Rather than ostracising works of art, try to understand the complex history of Russian imperialism. Pushkin’s To the Slanderers of Russia (1831) told western critics that Russia’s repression of Poland was a family affair. But Evdokiya Rostopchina’s The Forced Marriage (1845) presented Russia and Poland as an abusive husband and defiant wife – provoking outrage in Nicholas I.

A worthwhile read; instructive and informative.

Quoting Amity

Well, I've just read the article with its 5 essays plus BTL comments and I'm seriously depressed.

1. Tom Burgis: ‘To confront his kleptocracy, we must first cease our complicity in it’.
2. Catriona Kelly: ‘We must try to understand the complex history of Russian imperialism’.
3. Oliver Bullough: ‘We can deprive him and his cronies of access to their wealth’.
4. Ruth Deyermond: ‘Closing contact will confirm Putin’s narrative that the west wants to destroy Russia’.
5. Peter Pomerantsev: ‘Solving the problem means confronting the psychological grip he has on people’.

So of the five experts consulted, three of them focus directly on our complicity and insist that addressing it is crucial to stopping Putin. All of whom address the problem of simply bleating on about how 'bad' Putin is in the stark light of our own wrongdoings.

Tom Burgis:
The rulers of the west applied the same logic to Putin as they applied to the rulers of DRC or Kazakhstan. They wanted to buy these countries’ commodities so they pretended the kleptocrats were legitimate leaders with whom they could do business. They kept this up when he murdered exiled dissidents abroad, when he stole South Ossetia in 2008 and Crimea in 2014, all the while developing a tribal imperialist spiel to stir fealty at home. After 22 years of this, Putin evidently believes his own propaganda that he is a statesman

As well as accepting that we have so emboldened him that we may well have to meet him on the battlefield, to confront Putin’s kleptocracy, we must first cease our complicity in it. What do we think happens to the money we pay for Russian gas? How do we imagine western multinationals secure oil-drilling rights dispensed by a regime we know to be corrupt? Who do we think is behind the companies of anonymous ownership, registered in places like Guernsey, Cyprus and the British Virgin Islands, that we continue to allow to participate in our economies?

Catriona Kelly:Push for proper peace talks, accompanied by a full ceasefire, and with participation in the talks of observers trusted by both sides.

Oliver Bullough:Putin is not Hitler or Benito Mussolini, he is not even Joseph Stalin, he is a modern problem, and solving a problem like him requires new skills, new sacrifices, and new laws.

[The oligarchs] have moved at least half of their wealth out of Russia, and spent it on houses, yachts, football clubs, fine art and more. Their investment managers have been in London, Luxembourg and New York

Being able to bury their wealth deep in our economies has allowed Russia’s rulers to avoid the consequences of their own greed: their children have studied in English schools; their wealth has been invested in western funds; their German-built yachts fly under the flags of British tax havens.

Ruth Deyermond:European states and the US need to recognise that there is no going back to the world before February 2022. On issues of strategic stability, cooperation, energy security, and indulgence towards the oligarch money that has corrupted their politics, there has to be a commitment to permanent change.

Western states also need to acknowledge how badly they miscalculated both their relationship with Russia and the international significance of Russia’s relations with its post-Soviet neighbours. Too often in the 30 years since the collapse of the USSR, the US, the UK and others have treated Russia as little more than an irritating obstacle to getting on with the more serious business of world politics in the Middle East or east Asia. At the same time, some European states clearly prioritised energy relations with Russia over questions about where Russian foreign policy was heading.

One of the triggers for Russia’s aggression against Ukraine seems to have been the mixed signalling over Ukraine’s Nato membership, which was neither ruled out nor firmly ruled in. Nato and the EU both need to decide, and to communicate clearly, whether they plan to admit the remaining post-Soviet states that want to become members, and what the relationship with them will look like if they don’t.

At the same time, even if it is unpalatable to talk about it now, there will also need to be engagement with the Russian government in some areas, as there was between the west and the USSR even in dark periods of the cold war such as the early 1980s.

Accept that we've emboldened him, accept our role in financing him, accept that we're going to have to negotiate with him, push for proper peace talks, Putin is not Hitler, acknowledge our miscalculations, acknowledge our mess over our involvement in Ukraine...

These are exactly the talking points being so decried on the other thread.

Notice how not one of them advises just whitewashing Putins' victims, spotlighting him and him alone to create a Disney version of events so transparent that a child could point out the plot holes, and then fiercely repelling anyone not toeing that line.

Any closer now to understanding those arguments?

Self-criticism. This is my way. If a person practices self-criticism, that person cannot be so destructive, because that person will continuously ask to herself: “What am I doing? Is it good? Is it intelligent? Will it help progress?”. If Hitler had a habit of self-criticism, he would have thought, every second of his life: “What am I doing?”.
Now you can realize that this practice is quite difficult because, at first, you will feel unsecure, uncomfortable, not knowing what to do, uncertain, unable to make a definite choice. But this happens just because you are not familiar with this practice, you are starting doing it while still having in your mind your traditional background.
This has a lot to do with philosophy. You can see that even by just writing a message here you can feel uncomfortable if you ask yourself too much “What am I doing?”.
In my opinion violence has its basic, elementary, roots on the belief in some established truth, some objective reality. This becomes automatically your truth, your reality, and nothing will be able to defeat it: it becomes fanaticism. If you believe in some truth, you are not like Putin just because you don’t apply the extreme consequences of your belief, or you mix it with other thoughts. Violent people are those who apply to their extreme consequences their belief in (their) truth.

I have heard a lot of people saying that, without an objective morality, humanity would be in a disaster, because anybody would feel able to do whatever they want, for example killing whoever they don’t like.
But actually it is the opposite: objective morality makes the world violent, because it becomes automatically your morality, that you feel authorized to impose to everybody, because it is the objective morality. If you believe in any objective morality, you won’t ask “What am I doing?”, because you think that it is right, because this is what (your) objective morality says.
This is Putin, this was Hitler: they believed, in their closed mind, that they were right, they didn’t question their thoughts, their morality, they just thought “What I am doing is right, simply because it is, there is no need of any discussion”.

Essay 3/5
Oliver Bullough: ‘We can deprive him and his cronies of access to their wealth’

Otherwise known as sanctions, already being carried out to some degree or other, depending on what suits e.g. the corrupt UK Tory party.

Useful background to an old yet modern 'problem':

Putin himself calls the Ukrainians Nazis, as if this unprovoked aggression is somehow a rerun of the Soviet people’s self-defence in the second world war. That accusation is disgusting, but it’s harder to dismiss the parallels between Putin’s own behaviour and those of the dictators of the mid-20th century.

He is driven by a perverse misreading of history to deny his neighbours’ humanity. Russian officials and politicians are aggressive in their patriotism. The orange-and-black striped medal ribbon became the nationalist symbol when Putin invaded Ukraine in 2014, and the air-recognition-mark “Z” has rapidly morphed into an equivalent for this new war.

Putin is a bully who invades his neighbours and kills his critics, and whose government lies compulsively, even about facts that are so self-evidently true that denying them seems self-defeating...

...The Russian elite’s patriotism and anti-western posturing is performative...

The gap between words and reality.
Perhaps they even begin to believe their own lies as they indulge in the luxuries.
Moving their wealth out of Russia to serve their own desires.
How patriotic. The evergrowing gap between the rich and the poor.
Everywhere. And yet, where are the revolutions, the outcry for a necessary change?
Protests, even where allowed, are not listened to.
Perhaps only when votes are needed. Never the case in a dictatorship.

If the problem can only be solved by the Russians, then what?
If they don't see that there is a problem...

Essay 4/5

Ruth Deyermond: ‘Closing contact will confirm Putin’s narrative that the west wants to destroy Russia’

Based on the view that Putin will stay in power. The question then is:
How western states respond to a Putin-led Russia and how they organise their relationships with one another.

Their (still) corrupt politics with close ties to Putin meant a blind eye was turned to Russian aggression to Ukraine in 2014 ( and others previously).
So, what to do now?

The problem: the grave risk of escalation to a wider Europe, involving nuclear possibilities.
How can other countries be protected, if possible.
Nato is seen as a defensive military alliance; not so by Russia, threatened by its expansion.
Putin seems to have been triggered by mixed messaging from Nato over Ukraine's potential membership.

Neutrality is largely in the eye of the beholder, and if the Kremlin regards states as de facto allies of the US, lack of Nato membership is unlikely to protect them from whatever forms of aggression it will be capable of after Ukraine.

The way forward is related to Nato and EU decision-making and communication about future membership and relationships with the remaining post-Soviet states.
Most importantly:

However hostile the relationship between Russia and the west becomes, dialogue on nuclear matters needs to be maintained.

Finally, the author concentrates on how we engage with ordinary Russian society.
Closing contacts, as per some sanctions, is not helpful.
It gives Putin more ammunition in his narrative of the West as the enemy intent on destroying Russia. We need to avoid an easy slip into becoming anti-Russian.
There should remain the possibilities of exchange of ideas; study and culture.

So, it's about keeping doors open. Even if Putin wants them tightly shut with no light shining in.

Quoting Amity

How do we deal with that?

Through revolutions, like we did in the past.

Reply to Amity Just that first one would not only diminish the likelihood of Putin staying in power but also other autocrats rising to power and greatly affect our own oligarchs like Besos, Zuckerberg, Musk, Gates etc. and all the corporate and political leeches benefiting from this system. The salient point in that essay for me was :

Tom Burgis:declarations that we are turning it off – that, as Boris Johnson put it, “there is no place for dirty money in the UK” – are laughable. A few names on sanctions lists and some loophole-ridden reforms to economic crime laws not backed by budgets to enforce them are close to meaningless while we still permit financial secrecy.

In a nutshell, declare "action taken", general population applauds, no extra money or effort just a few letters added to laws we don't really enforce, no change.

If we want to be serious about change, the change needs to be fundamental, which means more, better and more effective democracy, not just political but especially economical.

This is further complicated by hero worship having shifted to business men. We look to oligarchs for answers in fields they don't know anything about.

I think fundamentally a system that reduces everything into monetary value and measures effectiveness in what's cheapest, just doesn't capture what's essential at all. Not fucking up the environment means local produce instead of fish caught in Norway, frozen, shipped to China, defrosted, chopped into pieces, frozen again and sold in Europe six months later. But this happens because it's cheap, resulting in crappy tasteless fish everywhere and gallons upon gallons of gasoline spend to move things about. Economists assure me this is efficient; I call bullshit. I would think having a one day old fish on my plate that was never frozen is efficient.

So we need political, cultural and economic change and these changes need to be fundamental. The incremental or technocratic tweaking of liberals and democratic socialists is never going to be good enough.

Essay 5/5
Peter Pomerantsev: ‘Solving the problem means confronting the psychological grip he has on people’

An interesting start to the essay:
the senior news producer who waved the anti-war placard on prime-time Russian state television. This was a brave act, given the new law passed by Putin where you get 12 years in jail for mentioning the word “war”.

She described her act as a desperate attempt to cleanse her conscience for having “zombified” the Russian people.

No matter if you think it's a little bit too late, at least it's a start.
How many people saw that and could minds have been changed?
The problem: Putin's psychological grip.

The mental model of Putinism, the worldview it constructs with propaganda of word and deed to keep Russians under control, is built on several foundations: it appeals to nostalgia; it projects a conspiratorial perspective and it insists that Putin can get away with anything, that there is no alternative to Putin.

Again, the continuing thread is about the need to communicate. What and How?
Some can use virtual private networks or satellite TV but not all.
And how would it cut through any deep-seated anger and other emotions.

The nostalgia narrative allows the Kremlin to transfer its own brutality on to a shadowy outside “enemy”, and then help people relieve their pent-up anger through aggression. The abusive, sadistic tone of Putin’s speeches, and the ones of his leading TV propagandists such as Vladimir Solovyov, give people an emotional path to articulate and validate their darkest and most violent feelings. It’s OK to be vicious and mean, this propaganda implies, it’s all history’s fault.

This narrative is not Putin's alone. If his mission has been to “bring Russia off its knees”, then consider Trump's “make America great again”. The UK's Brexit slogan: 'Take back control'.

Looking forward:
Does Putin have a positive vision for the future, apart from his own maintenance of power?

Thinking about the future means concentrating on political reforms, cleaning up the courts, abolishing corruption – all things Putin cannot achieve, as they will put his own system in danger...

Media and communication with the Russian people needs to focus on these questions about the future. Both on the personal level, but also in terms of the future of the country.

Again, the way forward involves keeping the door open:

...a group of Russian academics led by historian Alexander Etkind propose to create a university in the Baltics that will bring students from Russia and its neighbours to work on common challenges such as the environment.

This is balanced with sanctions.
They might kick in if and when people experience and see the gap between the elite and themselves.
How might that be revealed by investigative journalism not allowed in Russia?

They will have to rely on tracing documents and open-source investigations. We will need a whole new iteration of what the Russian journalist and editor Roman Badanin, founder of the investigative online media outlet Agentstvo, calls “offshore journalism”: exile media that uses modern tools to stay as close to the home country as possible.

The problem:

Putin will turn to the power ministries to use oppression rather than ideas. This has always been his final argument: that he can carry out any crimes at home, any invasion abroad, any war crime from Grozny to Aleppo, and get away with it.

I think that Trump would call this 'genius' and has already said he could get away with anything.
Beware America. Be alert. Do you want a dictatorship?
This is scary. The argument that he is strong, the opposition weak.

In Ukraine, Putin is purposefully targeting humanitarian corridors, bombing refugees and hospitals in order to break the will of the people. It’s a message to the world that all statements about humanitarian values, the UN’s “responsibility to protect”, “safe zones” is guff.
His argument is that might is right, and in the futureless new world the ones who are most ruthless, from Beijing to Riyadh and Moscow, will flourish.

Even with all the crimes against humanity, there is some controversy over the next suggestion:

One small, first, but hopefully important step has been taken by the human rights lawyer and author Philippe Sands, who is trying to create a Nuremberg-style tribunal for those who began this war, not merely for war crimes but for having started a completely unprovoked invasion in the first place.

Who would you begin with?
Putin is not alone. And he wouldn't even recognise the right of the tribunal to so try him....

Quoting Benkei

In a nutshell, declare "action taken", general population applauds, no extra money or effort just a few letters added to laws we don't really enforce, no change.

If we want to be serious about change, the change needs to be fundamental, which means more, better and more effective democracy, not just political but especially economical.

Totally agree. But how or where to begin...

Quoting Benkei

This is further complicated by hero worship having shifted to business men. We look to oligarchs for answers in fields they don't know anything about.

There might be some hero worship of oligarchs in that they are owners of football clubs and have all the trappings of success. And yes, if mega-rich businessmen are in charge of the economy or the state, then we can be sure they are in it for themselves and their friends. Not for the good of the public, even if they claim that is the case.

In the UK, we have Rishi Sunak* who during the covid pandemic urged us all to "Eat Out to Help Out".
This appears to have accelerated Covid cases. And so on...

My main concern has always been that there are no long-term commitments to any important areas, like Health and Education. The uncertainty and bias of continual changes according to party ideologies.
Ministers being in charge of and taking decisions in fields they know anything of.
The unwillingness to take on board any of the Reports commissioned, if not toeing the line.
They set these up, after an outcry, so as to 'learn lessons' from their mistakes.
The thing is, these 'mistakes' should not have been made in the first place.
Think Grenfell Tower tragedy, amongst many others.

Quoting Benkei

So we need political, cultural and economic change and these changes need to be fundamental. The incremental or technocratic tweaking of liberals and democratic socialists is never going to be good enough.

Absolutely.
How does that change happen in electoral systems 'tweaked' and manipulated by the likes of Putin?

--------
*

As a finance minister of UK or Chancellor of the Exchequer, Rishi Sunak will get salary around £71,090 so if we make prediction then his net worth would be around £2 million. Apart from this, he is also a director of the investment firm owned by his father in law named Catamaran Ventures.

Reply to Amity I'm less concerned with fixing Russia before my own country and the EU are fixed. I think an intermediary step that is getting traction more widely is a stakeholder capitalism. If we must have a tweak, at least let's have that.

I think more economic and tax justice in our own countries will mean they are less prone to abuse by foreign oligarchs as well. An unintended consequence could be that foreign directive investment in countries where people already have it worse, will increase and they will be even worse off as the money allows the corrupt to stay in power.

Quoting Benkei

'm less concerned with fixing Russia before my own country and the EU are fixed.

Understood and understandable.

The article is about 'a problem like Putin' with a focus on his war.
We are concerned because of the wider repercussions and implications.
That includes our own countries.
Putin presents the biggest and most present danger not only to Ukraine...

Quoting Benkei

I think an intermediary step that is getting traction more widely is a stakeholder capitalism.

Thanks. I don't know enough about economics to discuss this. Or even where or how it is getting traction. Perhaps I'll look further, later. *
I agree that anything which leads to less corruption of power in politics can only be better than whatever Putin brings to the table. But perhaps any system has inherent human flaws no matter what.
Competing philosophical and economic theories abound...it's how they work in practice...

***
Perhaps my original title would have been more interesting from a philosophical standpoint?
Pragmatism. What say you @Ciceronianus?

Quoting Shwah

Your title is "How to solve a problem: like Putin" and I thought it may be about the different archetypes of "problem-solving" using Putin as a stand-in for an archetype and as a case study.

***

Quoting Benkei

I think more economic and tax justice in our own countries will mean they are less prone to abuse by foreign oligarchs as well.

Again, yes. But if we are already in the grip of those aligned with oligarchs, what chance?

I hope you agree that the article did its job in delivering different perspectives to the problem.
I enjoyed the final one by Peter Pomerantsev.
I look forward to hearing from @SophistiCat who knows more about him and his work.


* I did find this for future reference, I am sure there's more out there:
https://mainstreetcrypto.com/articles/what-is-stakeholder-capitalism/

Reply to Amity
I think it's been over-said that your conversation topic being limited to the 5 essays will never answer your question and that you should've been clear you wanted no more answer than what the 5 essays professed.

Quoting Shwah

I think it's been over-said that your conversation topic being limited to the 5 essays will never answer your question and that you should've been clear you wanted no more answer than what the 5 essays professed.

For me, and possibly others, the reading of the article provided 5 different perspectives on 'a problem like Putin'. For consideration and comment to improve understanding.

I admit it was difficult for me to focus on this alone; given further questions arising along the way.
As to 'professed' answers; I saw most as suggestions and open, in that any list was not perfect.

I recognised, in my last post, that there could have been a more interesting way to look at this.
So, if you have a different way - perhaps more interesting philosophically - then I would be pleased to hear it.

Reply to Amity
I mean as anybody has said, the issue is clearly meta. There's nothing in even the most perverse of interpretations of Putin that suggest getting rid of him, or even his friends, would help. It's been said even more that getting rid of Russia wouldn't help (it hasn't been said but this applies to asia as well). At a certain point the obvious solution of ridding things or focusing on just Putin won't suffice.
I think an interesting point was the "kleptopia" (an honestly useless neologism where "late-stage capitalism" or a derived perspective from a fuller body of work may have sufficed) argument and that may solve issues that precipitate into issues that the articles touched upon. Introducing social credit system as an economic system of value or even promoting digital currencies may help but we have to see this completely as a failure of the west or the west loses the right of hegemony as a superpower (which it's already had chipped away). The sanctions are further arguing against any proper western hegemony.
For history this will be viewed less as "Putin's war" and more as a continual fall of western hegemony that started with its domestic issues, went through afghanistan and the covid conspiracies and finally here.

Say please, sorry, and thank you.

Magic words in the Anglophone world! Must work on Russians too (fingers crossed).

Quoting Amity

Understood and understandable.

The article is about 'a problem like Putin' with a focus on his war.
We are concerned because of the wider repercussions and implications.
That includes our own countries.
Putin presents the biggest and most present danger not only to Ukraine...

Yes, sorry for not staying too much on topic. I guess the intricacies of these issues push me into abstractions even further without a clear way to get there.

Reply to Shwah
Thank you for your considered response.
I appreciate your sharing and it has given me even more food for thought.

Quoting Benkei

Yes, sorry for not staying too much on topic. I guess the intricacies of these issues push me into abstractions even further without a clear way to get there.

No worries. The intricacies have given me a headache.
Time for some fresh air and a walk on the wild side :cool:

Reply to Amity And any closer to a solution?

I do think block chain offers an interesting opportunity to track equity ownership that could be utilised to manage stakeholder equity in an efficient manner. I'm working on an idea where I try to combine that with a dynamic equity system. I used that in a startup and it avoided a lot of discussions and problems most startups have to deal with normally.

If the government sets it up and it offers a tax break (since redistribution is build into the system) it might actually just work within the existing system.

Quoting Benkei

And any closer to a solution?

Yes, I have a better idea of the problems now - and that is a good place to start.
Both you and @Shwah have concentrated on the economic side; the systems and sanctions.

Quoting Benkei

If the government sets it up and it offers a tax break (since redistribution is build into the system) it might actually just work within the existing system.

Quoting Shwah

Introducing social credit system as an economic system of value or even promoting digital currencies may help but we have to see this completely as a failure of the west or the west loses the right of hegemony as a superpower (which it's already had chipped away). The sanctions are further arguing against any proper western hegemony.
For history this will be viewed less as "Putin's war" and more as a continual fall of western hegemony that started with its domestic issues, went through afghanistan and the covid conspiracies and finally here.

Not sure about the last paragraph in the last quote. However, will move on...
Thoughts about money and values reminded me of this clip from Ch4 News which I can't forget:

https://www.channel4.com/news/youre-asking-me-to-choose-which-children-live-and-which-children-die-says-wfp-head

A roughly remembered quote from the 3min segment:
" No child should die from starvation today, given the 430 trillions of dollars around the world".

It was a heartfelt plea with statistics from David Beasley, Executive Director, World Food Programme.
The dire lack of dwindling funds and the exact figure required to solve the problem was set out so that any oligarch, queen or corrupt politician should squirm on their golden thrones.

So tempting to think of Revolution. But what would we revolve to?

Quoting Olivier5

How do we deal with that?
— Amity
Through revolutions, like we did in the past

Perhaps cutting off their collective heads through 'sanctions'; not just for the wicked, war-mongering.
I note some non-UK royal figures have opened up their property to refugees.
I don't see that happening anytime soon here.
For where would it end...removal of their crowns, glory and riches; their God-given right to rule?
They salve their conscience by donating some money all the time visiting and receiving extravagant gifts from the likes of the Saudis.
If Princess Anne's attitude is anything to go by:
"The poor will always be with us". They really don't give a damn.

The poor (not just in money) and the public are filled full of propaganda and beliefs about what it is to be a success. Who are the winners in life that take it all and fight so hard to keep more wealth than they can ever spend?

So, yes - a more equitable distribution of funds, education about all of life's aspects. And so on.
Dealing with human drives, met and unmet. The way we think and feel. The way to deal with problems of emotion and self.

In philosophy or psychology - a practical process to learn so that it becomes second nature.
A step back to critical thinking. However, I don't think even this works in the way described below:

Quoting Angelo Cannata

Self-criticism. This is my way. If a person practices self-criticism, that person cannot be so destructive, because that person will continuously ask to herself: “What am I doing? Is it good? Is it intelligent? Will it help progress?”. If Hitler had a habit of self-criticism, he would have thought, every second of his life: “What am I doing?”.

For people with delusions or paranoia - mad or bad, it is not possible to reason like this.
They have no reason to.

OK, that's my early morning rant.
Going out now. To find some peace and balance in a world seemingly gone mad.

Reply to Amity I think we'll always have poor people but if being poor still means you have dignity in your work (toilet breaks Mr Besos and other oligarchs!), get paid enough (minimum wage and corrections for inflation politicians!) to support a family on your own and live debt free and not one health bill away from losing it all (public healthcare), then being poor is acceptable I suppose.

Reply to Benkei
A quick nod in agreement :smile:
Poverty is relative.
A basic standard of life and health...that would help to resolve some problems but not all.
Violence and greed will always be with us. The need for power.
And who is it that tends to be that way and why...

Complexity rules.
Bye for now :sparkle:

Depends on who "we" are. If we're Russians, the answer is something along the lines of the mass protests that chased Mubarak out of office in Egypt. These are not without major risks, but neither is living under a dictatorship with a collapsing economy.

For the rest of the world, the answer is something more similar to Cold War containment doctrine. Essentially, a long term strategy to isolate them and thus impede their ability to wage war. The current sanctions regime is a good example if it actually holds long term.

A drastic step up in investment for European nuclear, wind, tidal, and solar power would be the real key. Nuclear energy represents the current best bet for green energy and energy independence from dictators, and yet public opinion, largely shaped by myths and flaws in the nuclear technology of 60 years ago, remains a major obstacle.

The risk here in terms of grand strategy is that an isolated Russia essentially becomes a vassal of / resource market for China. China has its own significant issues with aggression, lack of political freedoms, etc. China has generally been far more rational than Russia, and less aggressive, but, because it has a dictatorship system without a clear successor to Xi, this could change. And whereas the Russian military is demonstrating that it is not particularly competent, the threat posed by the Chinese military is less clear.

Of course, a major barrier for any of this is various liberal democracies voting for their own pseudo-strong men who have their own aggressive policies they want to implement.

To @Shwah
Quoting Amity

I think you know very well what I'm trying to do here.
And doing your very best to thwart that.
I was giving you the benefit of the doubt.
Please desist.

Apologies for this.
I have edited my OP accordingly, thanks :sparkle:

Reply to Count Timothy von Icarus
Excellent points in a substantive, thought-provoking post.
Unfortunately, I don't have time to read and respond carefully right now or tomorrow.
Hope others can give feedback, thanks! :up:

Reply to Amity How do we solve a problem like Putin?

A person isn't a problem to solve.

As for the situation at hand, the solution is simple, but people generally refuse to implement it: Act in good faith, with common decency, and treat people like people.

But most people will rather have their right hand cut off and their eyes plucked out than act in good faith, with common decency, and treat people like people.

They generally refuse to do so in peace time, what to speak of doing so in times of war.


I'm not going to mention names, but some of the people who wrote those essays you're refering to generally sound like lumpenproletariat with advanced degrees.

Quoting Amity

Self-criticism. This is my way. If a person practices self-criticism, that person cannot be so destructive, because that person will continuously ask to herself: “What am I doing? Is it good? Is it intelligent? Will it help progress?”. If Hitler had a habit of self-criticism, he would have thought, every second of his life: “What am I doing?”.
— Angelo Cannata

For people with delusions or paranoia - mad or bad, it is not possible to reason like this.
They have no reason to.

What makes you think Hitler wasn't being critical of himself? What evidence do you have, either from existing recordings of him, or what appear to be his writings (published or private)?

What makes you think that self-criticism should result in exactly one kind of answers? Namely, those pleasing to the current mainstream politically correct agenda?

This reminds me of a Christian preacher who said, "If you're honest, you will realize that Jesus is your Lord and Savior. And if you don't realize that Jesus is your Lord and Savior, then you're simply not being honest." He imposed his standards of honesty onto others.

You're doing the same kind of thing: Imposing what the result of self-criticism should be, and that if a person seems to lack that result, it can only be that they aren't self-critical.


This is a philosophy forum, not the watercooler. "Gut feeling" is not an argument.

Quoting Isaac

Accept that we've emboldened him

This is still part of the narrative "Putin is evil/a monster/bully/etc. and everything he says and does must be interpreted in line with this fact".

This is where it all goes wrong. It's acting in bad faith. Acting in bad faith goes wrong as long as the other party still has some strength to resist it. The only times when acting in bad faith seems to work out fine is when the other party is too weak to offer much resistance.

The actual problem at hand is operating on the idea that acting in bad faith is good, or at least not problematic.


Quoting Amity

So, it's about keeping doors open. Even if Putin wants them tightly shut with no light shining in.

There you go: The West's supremacism. It radiates through every crack.

Westerners insist in their supremacism and entitlement, while there are still people in the world who refuse to submit to it. And yet they are the bad guys!

Reply to Amity Sorry, I don't have anything to contribute to this discussion. To be honest, I am skeptical of such advises: Putin/Russia/Europe/etc. ought to do this or that. OK, how do you imagine this is going to happen? Will Putin listen to your advice? Will Russia or Europe (what could that even mean?) Are you just advising the universe on how it should proceed going forward? (You may as well, for all the good it will do...) Or is this more like a prayer? But then why get into such specifics? Keep it simple: "Thy will be done..."

For personal advice, I like this proverb best: do what you ought, come what may. That's all that any one of us can aspire to.

Quoting SophistiCat

Sorry, I don't have anything to contribute to this discussion.

Like I said to @Count Timothy von Icarus, I can't respond fully today.
However, both you and @baker have contributed to this discussion in thought-provoking ways.
The article for me was a starting point.
There are clearly more perspectives and issues to be explored.
For example, the religious ideology you hint at.
Also the philosophy of what, if any, actions can or should be taken.

I haven't heard that proverb before:
"Do what you ought, come what may".

I think it is ambiguous. What does it mean, to and for you?
Does it reflect a particular philosopher's theory/practice?

I don't know which is worse? Killing people (Putin) or letting people die (Biden)? :chin:

Is this the Russian version of The Trolley Problem? Utilitarians!

I'm too tired - physically and mentally - to continue the discussion I started.
Thanks to all who participated. It's been a learning experience.

Quoting Amity

I haven't heard that proverb before:
"Do what you ought, come what may".

I think it is ambiguous. What does it mean, to and for you?
Does it reflect a particular philosopher's theory/practice?

I have seen this saying variously attributed to Seneca, Marcus Aurelius and Leo Tolstoy. It was also adopted as a favorite motto by the Soviet physicist and human rights advocate Andrei Sakharov. It means (for me) that you should do what your conscience tells you to do, even when you have little knowledge and control over the outcome.

Quoting baker

This is where it all goes wrong. It's acting in bad faith.

I'm not entirely sure what you mean by "acting in bad faith", but I don't think accepting we've emboldened Putin matches any understanding of the term I know of.

I agree with the problems of acting in bad faith insofar as dishonesty, but I don't think that extends to necessarily being charitable, at least not with those in power. Those in power need to be held to account, it's one of the most important controls on power there is. So if Putin appears to be a tyrannical dictator I don't think anyone's under any obligation to look for the most charitable explanation of his actions, only one that is plausible and, most importantly, benefits those in most need.

My objection to the adolescent 'Putin bad man' argument so many posters here want to insist on, is not that it is a bad faith argument (he does seem quite bad, surely!), it's that it benefits those in power at the expense of those in need. It lends succour to the American arms industry, the 'reconstruction' loans, the IMF, by making it harder to sell any position other than 'fight to the death - every last man' (which just prolongs their extremely profitable war). Conversely it further impoverishes the powerless (in this case the Ukrainians) who must die in their thousands, just to keep Russia occupied for a bit, and then live as serfs to pay back the, now tripled, debts they owe at a new 'just-out-of-war' interest rate.

If all this bullshit moral flag-waiving actually got anyone anywhere I might quietly keep my English sense of disgust at the public display of emotion to myself, I don't mind the odd bit of bad faith among the drama-queen generation we seem to have somehow bred - but here, it's actually immiserating people and it's that which bothers me.

Quoting Isaac

I'm not entirely sure what you mean by "acting in bad faith", but I don't think accepting we've emboldened Putin matches any understanding of the term I know of.

You've used the image of the bully on the block in other discussions about this topic. Thus taking for granted that he's a bully (and that "we" need to find ways not to provoke him).

What would you do if someone called you evil, a monster, and would persist in that for a long time? Eventually, you'd probably conclude that the person doesn't mean well to you and you would take some action against them, depending on the circumstances and your resources. Would that make you an monster, a bully? Or just someone concerned about his own safety and wellbeing?

I think the same kind of scenario happened to Russia, on a much greater scale, of course. The West has always belittled and demonized Russians, and acted against them. The Russians were fully justified to conclude that the West doesn't mean well to them, and that proactive self-defensive action needs to be taken.

It's why I think the West didn't "embolden" Putin. To "embolden" Putin implies that he's a thug who just needed a little push.

My point is that the moment one thinks of another person as evil/a bully/etc. and treats them accordingly, the interaction is bound to deteriorate. You can observe how this happens between individual people, and between countries.

There is, of course, a tendency to minimize the context in which one sees the matter, people tend to ignore the initial bad faith in which they entered the interaction, and all they do is look at the other person's negative reaction.

In contrast, when one genuinely means well to others and acts accordingly, the other person will generally reciprocate in kind.

If the West would be fair and goodwilled toward Russians from the onset, the Russians would have no reason to think the West doesn't mean well to them, and there'd be no conflict. No war.

The West is like someone who hits the other person first, and then cries foul if the other person hits them back. "Look what he did to me! He hit me! He must be destroyed!"

Quoting baker

He must be destroyed!

:smile: Yes, yes, let's destroy him...her...it...er...who was it you wanted to destroy? It won't hurt will it?