Fifty-Cent Word
There is a fancy “fifty-cent” word: kleptocracy. Most of us know what a kleptomaniac is – someone who can’t stop stealing. A “kleptocracy” is a government made up of thieves. This is beyond what happens here in the United States, the “garden variety” kind of corruption. Just recently in Ohio, the former Speaker of the State House of Representatives, Larry Householder, was expelled from his elected seat. A Federal Grand Jury indicted him for accepting a $61 million bribe from the First Energy Corporation, in order to get them financing to maintain their nuclear reactors in Ohio. Three others involved in the conspiracy have pled guilty – Householder still maintains his innocence. The majority of his own political party in the House, Republicans, disagree with him and voter for his removal.
While there were (are?) people at the top of the political food-chain that are corrupt, that doesn’t make Ohio a kleptocracy. In a kleptocracy the thievery uses the government to further the leadership’s own private financial interest. It is an accepted goal of the government. In the US, we don’t find that goal acceptable (though it certainly happens from time to time). But in Russia – that’s the way it is.
Godfather
The head of the Russia Federation is Vladimir Putin. He is the ultimate “gangster”, one who has effectively used his Soviet KGB (secret police) training to reach the top of the Russian government. The richest Russians are rich by virtue of Putin’s permission. Those that tried to gain their fortune without his say-so ended up in exile, or prison, or taking that long step out of a fifteenth floor window. The old neighborhood “protection” racket – pay me so that I don’t burn your business, is writ large in Russia. Pay the kleptocrats their “cut”, and you get to have your business.
Corruption is nothing new in Russia either. The Soviet government was rife with corruption, and so was the Czarist monarchy before. But Putin has created a Russian “cash-cow” for himself and the top echelons of his government. According to Fox Business Putin personally is worth at least $40 billion. Others like Bill Browder, an American businessman under indictment in Russia, and Gary Kasparov, world chess master and Russian dissident, claim Putin has trillions of dollars and may be the richest man in the world.
A meeting then between President Biden and Putin is more like a President meeting the Godfather than a foreign leader. Former National Security Advisor John Bolton and Kasparov argue that Biden shouldn’t have met with Putin. They believe that the meeting, “raises” Putin to a legitimacy he doesn’t deserve, and treats Russia, the eleventh largest economy in the world behind South Korea and Canada, like a major world power.
Leftovers
But Putin does have two things that require the United States to deal with him. First are the leftover nuclear weapons from the end of the Soviet regime. US President Reagan “won” the Cold War by forcing the Soviet Union to spend itself into destruction to keep pace with American strategic weapons development. The US economy could afford the expense, the Soviet economy could not. The Soviet government finally collapsed, but they left behind all of the weapons they developed to keep up with the US. And those weapons are still active today.
The Cold War between the US and allies and the Soviet Union is long over, but the weapons from that war are still housed in silos and submarines and armories. And Vladimir Putin now control those weapons, an estimated 4500 nuclear warheads (Bulletin of Atomic Scientists). The United States has 5500 (Center for Arms Control). Whether Putin is a gangster or not, it is vital that the US and Russia have an understanding of how to control those weapons, and what the “rules” for their use are.
While we are not on the precarious edge of nuclear holocaust of the late 1970’s and early 1980’s, the weapons that could create that disaster still exist, and are still targeted.
President Biden made it clear that nuclear weapons “stabilization” was a main goal of his meeting with Putin.
Cyber-War
And Russia is waging a second “cold war”, this one with a new weapon – cyber-hacking. The United States has been the frequent target of cyber-attacks from Russia, both from the Russian intelligence services and “independent” cyber-criminals in Russia. Biden discussed these attacks with Putin and made it clear that cyber-attacks from Russia will result in retaliation from the United States – regardless of whether it was made by the government or “just” criminals. In a kleptocracy like Russia, there is little difference between the two.
Another “fifty-cent” word used to describe the US-Russia relationship is “asymmetric”. The Russian annual Gross Domestic Product is $1.7 trillion, the United States $22 trillion. While economically the US and Russia are nowhere near equal, it is about nuclear weapons and cyber-warfare that the two nations need to find “stabilization”. And for those reasons, it was important for Joe Biden to remind Vladimir Putin that the United States “is back”.
