George Friedman & Andrey Sushentsov: Exclusive Discussion on US-Russia Relations

[Music] we have an issue with the stability direction $50 a barrel oil we receive unemployment in place like Tomsk people not getting paid banks failing in the plan the concern I have is that it would take maybe a year or two more of this without some real social upset and goodness problem is a promise to make Russia a great power and to pay everybody of the two provinces paying everybody is bigger with if they can't pay for eating habits can Helena I think that the keep money coming from oil were very unusual for Russia out put it this way from 204 to 2014 10 years plentiful years I would put it this way extraordinary extraordinary is handled probably they will never come back but you if you build your budget around that was I like for 10 years I don't think that we'd have an imprint or a birthmark of Russian economy it is much more diversified than you can expect first second truly a lot of those money words and on the social stability measures and you could do another thing with those money bearing in mind the legacy of the 90s you should have shown something to the public that the government is working again we should diversify the economy to and they did what was I don't think that that was like 100 percent what they could have done but I think that they have trying to do many things and currently well the number of sons which are coming from oil to the Russian buyers is constantly decreasing it is currently fully 44 percent it has been 80 so that what was the price but by reducing it that much what are you able to do 80 percent was in relatively you know small small oil prices when Soviet Union collapsed basically old economy collapse because the planet you're going back to their the planning economy was there and currently what we're witnessing it's not that economy is not diversified it simultaneously being replaced the planning economy is trying to be replayed by the capitalist economy and Russia and economic body was not imagined as a you know capitalist free-market resources in one part of the country in Siberia industrial base in another part of the country to deliver gas and oil layer it's actually the amount of space those resources pause is a territory of Europe completely huge amount of space and I think that if the trend that we're witnessing is a permanent one that the price would stabilize between 20 and 50 it's totally fine they will manage it I don't expect this to be a catastrophic Russia it's not a Petro state in a way that it was described Russia has its own nuclear power plant program it has its own state program in hands-on you know IT specialist its segment of Internet is very much developed its agricultural very fertile territory it's not that fragile as you can say look at structural Russian budget well when we see look at the pram when we look to the smaller towns two minor reports of demonstration here a bank there so it's nothing that we would look at and say okay this is just a falling apart but in the context of this situation we I wonder whether or not we're looking at a forerunner of much greater problems and I don't know the fragility of the Russian icon or aversion society the Russia as an entity as a as a country is an experiment as any country is actually in Russian experiments in these borders exists for approximately 300 years since be to the grid without North Caucasus and harbor excretion so these huge tutorials and never 11 our belt territory very automatically developed center of gravity in Europe 75 percent of population in GDP produced their Russian budgets and Russian economy was all the time securitized during the piece of the great security budget was up to 80 percent the ability of the government or and all the nation to mobilize resources to compete in a selected specific area is very much developed possibly Russia's a champion in this it can focus resources on the most important that Russia has the ability to solve the most pressing problem long term pressure is something that most countries clink Russia can't endure part of this is an arithmetic problem you know we have lost Russia so much so much percentage of the federal budget this in turn translates into word shortage how can we make up the shortage in crisis Russia reacts very very well there are three brushes there is the Russia that reacts very well to crisis there's the Russia that will endure poverty for a very long time much longer than other countries and is the Russia that explodes interesting story is that when the Soviet celebrations had explode it was before that no explosion it was the elite taking it apart so the question is if we have this sort of problem down not so much what happens in the countryside what happens in the elite we saw the elite make very bad decisions the fall of your effect very bad decisions when the summer you'd fell and the decision of the Eastern Europe at the timing was equally unfortunate one of the problems was that they had group thick they all thought the same thing they didn't have input for the outside this is a different elite this is elite however you always wonder what the splits are and from the outside it's very hard to tell what the splits are because they've also worked together for a very long time they've also had the experience of the fall of Soviet Union and none of the one lived through that again they must feel collectively uneasy about the barriers they have to take and they must be competing with each other as to who is going to be held responsible and so on so if we take the Falls of the hane as a model there was great endurance in people they did not rise it fell almost as a decision from the elite therefore the question for me is what kind of decisions is delete making now I'm not worried about war that's not what they go decide but can they hold together as sufficiently to manage the situation I would completely agree with your observation that it was more of an elite issue than the general implosion of the country and it strikes me that there are parallels between the collapse of the Soviet Union and the first February Russian Revolution in 1917 the elite issue at that moment was the crucial one and I recently rather reread basic Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's work on heavy revolution in Russia and he I think analytically excellently put put it his idea why the has resigned so easily was because he lost his faith in his course and the elite lost a faith in their course in this sense of unjustness of their course and wranglin the sense of powerlessness and I think comparing to this and that was also had its parallels during the time of Soviet collapse communist elite lost its sense of reality and lost a sense that its cause was just that's why I say Yeltsin was much more efficient energetic empathetic with the public and the those people who try to put the military takeover of power in the 1991 they basically lost their faith in their course comparing to this psychological effect current Russian which you see very forceful people who are ready to fight for the cause they are ready to mobilize people handle calls and as Ukraine crisis show that they are very resilient on the question even though even when they are personally affected by sanctions when they you know their family affected by sanctions I think what we had what we call in in Russian politics a Crimea consensus something that unites nation as a whole is still working I would be contemplating that Russia is in trouble when the sense of purpose would fade away but currently I see that sense of purpose is there so the question is given the crisis the academic problem call us reviewer : how long it happens before the lead starts to be set of confidence that they will recover and of course all the members don't get at the same time splits and competition and so on so we Americans are always looking at the Russians trying to understand the relationships between the various players as you look at the United States trying to understand the relationship between the players and when we look at that we see certain anomalies when Putin wasn't available for I think a week if the abbot's the possibility took a vacation was never it was never considered so these things happened we don't know but you understand that for the United States and I think most Americans haven't thought of this the decline of Russia would present a particularly dangerous problem in the sense that we experienced the fullness of the Union the nuclear question and then we had a successor state and we moved everything to the successor state and the successor state was competent enough to manage the weapons and control them so I think one of the things that the Russians believe is the United States is trying to destabilize Russia in fact among serious people there is an awareness of the next event of that I think they would be happier to understand Russia behaving in a way we want or reaching agreement than destabilizing Russia and I for one worry about the this thing with oil going out of control because I see no interest in the United States at having Russia collapse and in the contrary I see many reasons what we doesn't want to have this now in Eastern Europe of course they would feel differently some of them but I think we all think about it with the current situation Ukraine with date tant over the Baltics which we really have I would look at the situation as manageable particularly of Belarus didn't destabilize it Belarus destabilized and it would have issues but all that we managed but I think we have an asymmetry of understanding the United States is not eager to see full of the Russian regime in fact worries about the consequences not because you love the Russians but because we worry about the consequences the Americans now feel that you're trying to destabilize the United States not because you have destabilized the United States but because they feel you've tried to whether you've tried to Renata is a lot of consequence but its consequences is feeling so I've reached the conclusion that our biggest concern is anything destabilizing Russia and when we look at the various parts of our relationship the hostility growing in the United States toward Russia over this issue and the Russians did little bits here and there to jab us to let us know that it's possible that it did so they should not always be innocent victims here we played it that dangerous game with each other danger is not in the sense that a couple of emails there are dangerous in the sense that you hacked our computers because your computers dangerous in the sense that you bought attention or attention was brought to the us-russia relationship and that was the problem do you create the Ukraine changed our relationship and created a faction that saw you is far more dangerous than you are and hostile therefore who caused the events in Ukraine is important I'm trying to point out that we are evolving not to dangerous point but to have a pleasant point that could become a dangerous wait I think I would start with Ukraine and I trust that we with the United States have reached a situation of equilibrium in terms of mutual disengagement from one another I would even put it that we have normalized our relations in a way this is an or new normal of them it is too unnatural for them to be too loose or too bad and the current state of mutual suspicious mutual suspicious probably the mutual paranoia is not that bad it's much worse to have an Americans like you know just disregarding disrespecting Russians just do not notice in them on the map and if for some reasons Americans are now seeing that Russian government probably can do something that you don't want us to do to Russia that can be like a red line for you lose a year to were young to remember the Cold War and in the Cold War when we play these games the Americans tends to escalate in our expected ways then the Russians escalated but not against each other in the Middle East in Egypt didn't China we made moves so one of the things of course as the Vietnam War around down you'd supplied weapons to the Vietnamese they were defeating us we reached an agreement with the Chinese which changed the Eurasian balance of power fundamentally Russia sometimes during the Cold War took steps that they regard as fairly minor and not warranting major response the Americans regarded that as if they will take this step they will likely take this step does it warrants a major thing so we need to study what happened the Cold War I would agree I think it's a what Cold War years a lot of strategic experience which to arm up unexplored by the generations of policymaking Cuban Missile Crisis situation where nobody had a direct communication with one another but for some reasons managed to avoid the nuclear showdown and few others instances where a state of school solution was find out without a lot of people being killed but since we're living in a different environment in many ways and world is much more interconnected and the Russia and United States are not the only players okay they never work the Chinese were also players yeah the Egyptians these realism and to a lesser extent that they're now say the Russia Turkish crisis last year that was I think the closest moment when there could have been a major war between two big military powers Turkey is number two in NATO in terms of military capacity Russia's nuclear power and we basically came close to a line when the force could have been used if you observe what were the scenarios of the military exercises in Russia and Turkey without that seven months it was very clear that the probable solution to this would be able but when we looked at it we didn't think that each Turks were in any condition to initiate a Catholic and the Russians still have difficulty with large-scale logistics distance so we there Syria is not as large as the invasion of Turkey thanks I'll look what world the 21st century wouldn't look like the world the areas that would the attack would not be probably even the whole territory of the enemy satellites data centers the area yours told us before World War two that it's not need for any ground troops because now we can just come in bomb the cities and they'll surrender yeah so one of the things I've learned about military experts is they love the new technology and they assure you that this war will be much less blood even less room but look even at that time the occupation of the major country was not a feasible thing and nobody would intend to occupy a country like Russia or Turkey in many ways wars are blocked because the weapons we have available are uncertain near effect we still come down to a major question are we deescalate US Russia intentions you are suggesting that the United States ignored Russia I'm suggesting the United States while the way overreacting to Russia in Ukraine so one of the outcomes in the Ukraine is we saw Russia in a very different way unfortunately different given all of the circumstances we now see each other it's no longer a question of that it's a question of destabilization you can go back to Moscow and think about how to describe how to deescalate we will go back to Austin and try to deescalate I think the first step that we should need for Americans to consider issues of European security seriously not to say that you know those bolts poles and Russians are paranoid and they just have you know artificial complaints about the security infrastructure that is actually based geopolitical frontier there and later is a very real one and we have made a signal that we take it very seriously absolutely the Russians have made a signal by maneuvering near the borders did they take it very seriously okay now we won't normally take it seriously and I think that's a proper way to start to feel seriously about each other and history taught us that that's the first step to these codes but we remember Georgia the Russians maintained any exercise and we can discuss exactly what happened in between suddenly we had a war so let's assume for the moment that you have an exercise and some both comes across that's something you take it to be a hostile act over there in Georgia we were not there really in large numbers the Baltics we're increasing air presence you exclude an opportunity over there like the first actor like Georgia trying to manipulate United States and directing a cheeky Fanny I'm thoroughly familiar with it what happened but with the American point of view what happened was not that they manipulated the United States it is they both the United States into a situation that the Russian perception of what was going on is not the American intention you acted it had no consequence because we have no forces in Georgia a similar confrontation in the Baltics would probably bring you into contact with some small forces how a similar confrontation in Baltic Penenberg you know how it could Georgia attack a small town and the Russians take this as a not as evidence of hostile intent they killed the Russian forces we understand suppose that a the resulting small unit across the border attacks a Russian unit plus for what reason for the same reason the Georges did never look in Georgia they had an territorial dispute with these small entities which broke away from them 20 years ago and at that moment Georgians believed that by making a political point by military means they would salute two things first since the Russian force was very small they can easily took it to the border with Russia and then eventually bring Americans who would sustain this new status quo but Russians wouldn't buy it I understand and so the danger was here that a third party trying to pull a foolish man maneuver drew the Russians in and the Americans didn't come okay good I worry about a situation where the Americans are there someone does a foolish maneuver to throw the Russians in and the Russians get drawn in this is the danger of an armed frontier it is a good demarcation line it has to be better controlled than it is certainly I mean our side but the problem is that a missed signal or signal that appears hostile can bring actions that you don't intend we actually had a perfect trespass for this situation in Turkey and Russia turkey crisis I think it was Moscow's misc miscalculation to believe that Turks share the same strategic culture or restraint that Moscow shares with United States so when they stand exactly what will be the consequence of actions that you have described it Turks for some reason they have developed their own very specific strategic culture that remember also there was the shooting of the Turkish plane and Latakia I think it was in Latakia there was by by Syrians non-violence this is a discussion if you ask the Turks they get one answer if you ask the Americans we have no idea but there was all sorts of speculation that this was not a Syrian action but a Russian action I say this only in the sense not that I care about that incident it would explain why the Turks are eager to take action I think that we can still use this as a precedent because basically Turks decided to use military force to make a political point they didn't want to fight a war with Russia but that was a possibility a double digit in percent in percentage possibility of the outcome and a Russian reaction to this was moderated for few hours after the incident they waited what kind of response they would get from Washington and Brussels basically the NATO capital and the alternatives were if that NATO provocation that in Turks are basically used as a buffer as a frontier that's a one type of response if that a Turks independently acting on their own and doing what they perceive is proper in this situation that's another situation and actually a president spokesman Dmitry Peskov he sent several signals to Turkey that poor basically opening the door for them to say that that was a mistake you

Channel: Geopolitical Futures

Views: 39,149

Keywords: Russia, George Friedman, Friedman, geopolitics, foreign affairs, foreign policy, Donald Trump, Trump, international affairs, politics, international relations, Putin, economy, oil, oil prices, nuclear power, soviet union

Id: vpWFoLswLHs

Length: 26min 17sec (1577 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 02 2017