So it’s all America’s fault, heh, Mr Putin? The Russian-Georgian War as a “wag-the-dog” kind of operation aimed at making John McCain the next US president. Sure. And what about that Third Tower, Mr. Prime Minister?
Mr Putin’s unhinged, Oliver Stone-like conspiracy reminds me of Nikita Khrushchev’s refusal to believe, when he visiting the U.S at the height of the Cold War, that the cars in a car park outside a Detroit factory belonged to the workers. Who owned them then, the Premier was asked? “The CIA have their ways”, he retorted knowingly.
Unlike his predecessor’s, Mr. Putin’s statement is not private. Given in an interview with CNN, it is intended for both foreign and domestic consumption. Blaming the U.S for what was clearly premeditated Russian aggression triggered by Georgia military adventurism is smart. But it does tell us something about the Russian leader’s mindset.
First, while most Americans have lost all faith in the U.S government, let alone the intelligence-military system – following failures of intelligence before 9/11 and of military strategy in Iraq – the Russian leadership still believes in the G-Man. It is hard to shake 70-odd years of belief in the state, however venal that state is.
Second, the Russian leader genuinely seems to believe that the U.S and Britain function like Russia. That is, when the media run a story it is because somebody powerful wanted the story run. When someone makes a statement, it is because somebody powerful made them. When a court delivers a verdict, it is because somebody powerful told them to. Denying this only makes you naïve, a subject of false consciousness, or a foil for your handlers and superiors.
Since Mr. Putin is so sure that the U.S military-intelligence complex runs pretty much everything for the partisan benefit of the Republican Party it seems fitting, in trying to understand his thinking, to consult the CIA’s own resources.
In Leaders and Their Followers in a Dangerous World: The Psychology of Political Behavior, Jerrold M. Post, a psychoanalyst and director of the Center for the Analysis of Personality and Political Behavior at the CIA, talks about what makes a “pathological political leader”. He puts forward a number of key traits, including splitting off “the bad and evil” to a group outside the self by projection; externalization of blame and responsibility onto others; oversimplification of the issues for increased persuasiveness and demagoguery; reductionist, absolutist thinking, such as “it’s all because of such and such… “; a profound lack of empathy; and an aggrandizement of the self, all leading to a polarized reality for the leader.
Sound familiar?
No doubt Vladimir Putin has a formidable psychic arsenal that allows him to mentally outgun most world leaders. His psychological stamina is hitched to a cold, rational geopolitical strategy. Russia does not want any competition in its neighborhood, neither for control of resources, security arrangements nor ideology. As U.S. diplomat George Kennan wrote in 1944, the “jealous eye of the Kremlin can distinguish, in the end, only vassals and enemies; and the neighbors of Russia, if they do not wish to be one, must reconcile themselves to being the other.”
But we now know that with Mr. Putin’s steeliness, with his rational furtherance of Russian interests comes an unhinged, make-belief mentality that sees him living in a bygone era of CIA machinations, and untrammeled U.S power. His underling, Dmitrij Medvedev, says Russia is not afraid of a new Cold War. In many ways, Mr. Putin’s already living in one – of his own imagination.
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