Should We Prepare For (the Next) Break-up of Russia?

will in Russia disintegrate or become a failed state by 2033 in response to this question posed to 167 International policy experts by the Atlantic Council think tank as many as 77 of them answered yes that's almost 50 percent Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine has failed to achieve any of the kremlin's goals and accelerated the process of State disintegration Jamestown Foundation analyst Janus bugaski believes that Russia is nearing the end of its Imperial cycle and that its current formula is running out of steam there has not been a time since the collapse of the Soviet Union when the Russian Federation has experienced so many simultaneous crises which now includes the inability of the central government to ensure sustainable Economic Development growing disparities between Moscow and the provinces an impending military defeat or at least an indefinite impasse in Ukraine resulting in increasingly severe sanctions the arguments that the collapse of the Russian Federation is not simply an abstract scenario are multiplying It Is by no means an inevitable event but the size of the Russian giant its human military and raw material resources make this a very serious Prospect the implications of the chaos to follow the Colossus collapsing showed that the scenario of the Russian State failure shouldn't be avoided but in fact monitored and subjected to constant analysis why is this a plausible scenario and what might it suggest about Russia's potential fall welcome to the 20s report [Music] if you appreciate the video consider leaving a like to help boost the algorithm we cannot begin an analysis of such a complex issue without first looking at the past indeed with a broader view into history we are able to discern certain recurring patterns Russia under various names and forms has existed for 800 years the granted Doshi of Moscow the Forerunner of today's Russian Federation was first a distinct entity in the 13th century for its first 200 years it was a vassal state of the Mongolian golden horde during this period the muscovite leaders from a group of several subordinate centers of The Horde won the Rivalry in the region of today's Northwestern Russia this resulted in the incorporation of further territories adjacent to moscow's borders including the previously Superior principality of Vladimir eventually Moscow became powerful enough to break free from the rule of the golden horde in the war of 1480. successive rulers of the Uric Dynasty subjugated further new territories to Moscow in the early days pushing above all into the sparsely populated East territorial expansion was halted by the death of the last of the rurik dynasty Ivan the Terrible in 1584 and the state descended into chaos today known as smuta or the time of troubles the Kremlin was occupied by the polls for two years and the liberation of Moscow from polish occupation in 1612 is today celebrated in Russia as National Unity day however the country reunited under the Romanov Dynasty and managed to recover from its internal problems it annexed further territories this time successfully biting into Europe in the 17th and 18th centuries it subjugated the territories of present-day Ukraine and in the 90th Century it reached the height of its territorial power culminating in the annexation of Manchuria in 1900 after centuries of Wars expansion and colonization the Russian Empire stretched from Poland's kalish to Lucian coup in China's Manchuria from finland's rovanemi to the Persian city of rasht the Southern Caspian Sea it was a Colossus 22 million square kilometers this territorial power translated into a massive population for the time 125 million people it was nearly twice as big as the United States which at that time had a population of 76 million people this potential was recognized by Western industrialists who invested mildly in Russian industry the convergence of territorial human and Industrial potential was to make Russia the world's greatest economic power exactly this was the prediction made in 1914 by the eminent French Economist Edmond ferry in his book La transformation economic de la Rosine in 1948 Russia would overtake all Western economies and with a population of 344 million people would be second only to China in theory everything heralded that the 20th century would be the century of Russia and the Russians however what testified to moscow's power was at the same time the herald of its Twilight why let's start with geography looking at Russia's history it is difficult not to see a recurring motive of State action the moscow-centered states modus operandi has been constant territorial expansion however the Russians did not do this for some unique Gene that made them more eager for control then let's say the Swiss throughout their centuries of existence the actions of one and the other were influenced by the space that surrounded them located around Moscow in the Northwestern part of today's Russian Federation the muscovites were surrounded by almost no major natural barriers neither mountains nor Seas almost no Great Rivers this translated into a chronic sense of anxiety for moscow's rulers which included incursions and invasions so having Consolidated the stay and emerged from under the Yoke of the golden horde in the 15th century the muscovines did not stop and pushed on in search of natural barriers that would reduce this looming threat expansion to the east was relatively easy given that they were and still are very sparsely populated areas the Russians reached as far as the Pacific Ocean even crossing their Bering Strait and settling present-day Alaska from the south and from China Russia was separated by the Gobi desert as well as the altai karakarum and Tien Shan mountains from India and Pakistan the karakoram and Hindu Kush mountains from Persia the Albert's Mountains and the Caspian Sea and from the Turks by the Caucasus Mountains and the Black Sea still the biggest problem was the Western border the central European plane which begins in France passing through the Netherlands Germany and Poland widens in Western Europe and fully fans out going into Russia the problem was all the greater because in the last 800 years Europe represented a much more developed and economically concentrated area than the vast and backward Russian steps but this problem too was to be solved there was a sequence of events that was favorable to the Kremlin the rebellion of Bogdan milnitsky which developed into a regular kosak Uprising against the Polish Lithuanian Commonwealth followed by the Swedish Deluge and the Polish Russian war opened the gates for Moscow to enter Ukraine and then Poland the whole process began with the conclusion of the 1654 Perez love agreement between the milnitsuki hetmonade and tsarist Russia there was also the failure of the 1658 Treaty of hajjad which was to add ruthenia as a third subject to the Commonwealth which Poland Lithuania and trutania would now form as equals yet it all ended with the partitions of Poland in conjunction with Austrian Prussia at the end of the 18th century the solution to moscow's greatest geographical challenge in the west was becoming a reality after centuries of unrest the Russians had the largest buffer zone in the world for any potential Invader to reach the core Moscow would need to pass thousands of kilometers nevertheless if Tsar Nicolas had actually stopped at what Moscow had managed to absorb by the end of the 90th century and had concentrated on improving the internal situation Russia would have a chance to fulfill edwintery's prediction what the Frenchman did not foresee however was that for the Kremlin no matter who was in office there was no Finish Line no end point at which the Russian rulers would consider to be enough first born out of sense of unease and unfavorable geography years later the Russian imperative by default became a search for further expansion colonization and the imposition of its own will on subordinate Nations this was doctrinally accepted as the solution to every geopolitical challenge in parallel of course Moscow was creating an ideological interpretation for its imperialism the concept of Moscow as a third Rome emerged Moscow was to be a successor to the Western and Eastern Roman Empires every Russian expansion in the west and south was motivated by the desire to quote protect the Orthodox population in these areas which sounds rather familiar given today doesn't it this is also how we arrive at the Russian paradox Russia was the largest Consolidated in one piece state in the world almost all its borders were based on an impressive natural barrier mountain range desert or sea and it had thousands of kilometers of buffer zone also according to many a bright future cover this was still not enough for Moscow a mere glance at the map aroused the imperialist arrogance of the Kremlin tars an arrogance that as it later turned out was not as deeply embedded in reality as the Kremlin fought territory by itself does not constitute any power but can mean a huge burden the Russians had more than 100 different nationalities within their borders and many if not most of these emanated pure hatred towards Moscow according to the 1897 census Russians became a minority in their own State saris Russia was inhabited by an impressive 125 million people of whom only 55 million were Russians or 44 percent moreover the Empire although AV inspiring on the map was overstretched poorly communicated and chronically underdeveloped all of which contributed to gigantic corruption poor equipment non-existent military training and an abysmal command at the end of the 19th century saris to Russia was at the height of its territorial power this gave birth to Imperial arrogance which in turn led to poor strategic calculation the whole thing in retrospect was a recipe for disaster and that's what actually happened at the beginning of the 20th century tsarist Russia entered two Wars that exposed its weaknesses and marked the beginning of the end of Moscow as a word hegemon or superpower or perhaps even a state as we know it today the Russians first became embroiled in a war with Japan in 1904 1905 which in practice they lost Russia's defeat gave new hopes of Independence to many nations oppressed inside the Empire including the polls the Empire began to boil internally and seal unrest swept through the country culverts are Nicolas II did not stop and in line with the doctrine of his predecessors considered attack to be the best defense with the entrance to the central European plane secured by controlling Poland Zara Nicolas II took the Balkans as his Target a conflict with Austria-Hungary was instigated resulting in the outbreak of the first world war after that it only took three years for tsaris Russia to cease to exist this vividly demonstrates the fragility of the Russian Colossus then and is an important lesson for today foreign foreign military disasters and economic meltdown in the early 20th century led to a revolution That was supposed to bring the end of the aristocracy and equality for all people all it brought was death starvation and even more suffering the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 was act 1 of Russia's downfall however Bolshevik Russia managed to retain most of its controlled territories those on the periphery of the Empire poles and Finns among others managed to escape from under moscow's boot overall the Soviets lost only 3.6 percent of Taris Russia's territories the Soviet Union made up for this lost 20 years later despite being the aggressor and initiator of the second world war Moscow ended up on the Victor's side thanks to a favorable balance of power that had already changed during the war nevertheless if it had not been for American Military and Industrial support in the form of the land lease act the Soviets would probably have lost to the Germans after the war Moscow in line with its implicit imperative expanded its fear of influence again now in addition to Soviet republics Moscow included satellite states such as Hungary Czechoslovakia and Poland in its Imperial reach perhaps not surprisingly this massive gain still did not satisfy Russian appetites the Soviet Union had grasped deep into Continental Europe and there was a legitimate risk of conventional aggression against Western Europe however Europe was saved from War by The Growing Power of the United States and the development of nuclear weapons the use of which was feared by both sides despite moscow's anxiousnesses the General trento State Decay initiated after the wars of the early 20th century had not been reversed the bright demographic prospects of the early 20th century had turned to dust let's recall that according to the 1914 prognosis Russia was supposed to have a population of 344 million in 1948. in actuality it ended up with half of that some 175 million an incalculable number of people died because of famine war and slave labor the number of lives lost is likely to be well over 100 million Russian weakness during the second world war was countered by American Aid and the sheer mass of the Red Army covered the Sea of Bloodshed hollowed out the large parts of male population and the extremely inefficient communist social contract remained thus ensuring that the potential emanating from this powerful area was systematically wasted after almost five Decades of the Cold War the hegemonic Rivalry with the United States that saw the Space Race nuclear tests threats of the World War III the redressed Empire the Soviet Union collapsed again this time almost overnight Act 2 of The Fall had revealed itself this time the scale of losses was much greater than in 1917. Moscow lost almost 24 percent of its territory nearly 50 percent of its population and more than 40 percent of its GDP did anyone in the 1980s foresee such a scenario the subject was practically non-existent the territorial Integrity of the Colossus was taken for granted nevertheless there were a few forecasts accurately predicting the future for one Andre amalrix 1969 Essay with the telling title quote will the Soviet Union survive until 1984. similarly U.S senator Daniel Patrick monican predicted that the collapse of the USSR would be the most important event of the 1980s however these voices were singular and are generally ignored when the Soviet giant did actually collapse the world was shocked Western leaders did not follow the course of events fast enough instead of shaping and moderating the ussr's collapse key decision makers were caught totally unprepared while George H.W bush even publicly warned against Ukrainian Independence in retrospect it is difficult to understand how Western decision makers could have been so short-sighted Moscow was mired in a third war in Afghanistan burdened by Decades of an inefficient system that had led to economic stagnation and once again left Moscow struggling to maintain control of its continent-wide Colonial Empire as Casey Michael noted in the financial times that although the cracks were visible as they Western officials and politicians focused on their narrow area of Interest failed to see the bigger picture after the collapse of the USSR Moscow quickly went under a different Banner as it had after the fall of charist Russia and attempted to once again redefine itself seventy years before this had been totalitarian communism while in the 1990s it was to become a market economy yet this transformation failed and state assets were looted by a narrow group of individuals who divided power among themselves the only corks they want to blame for this state of affairs in popular opinion was of course the west and capitalism not only did ordinary citizens continue to be poor or even poorer but they were also deprived of their pride provided by Soviet superpower this Pride as well as the improving economic situation was restored by Vladimir Putin and his Entourage the country embarked on a path of economic growth fueled by the sale of endless natural resources to Europe and China this combination provided an almost inexhaustible source of funding for the kremlin's plans again not surprisingly these plants were merely an evolved version of the classic Russian models operandi the reconquest of lost lands and the potential conquest of new ones Georgia Crimea and the donbass and on the eve of war with Ukraine threats against NATO and the countries that voluntarily joined the alliance after 1999 emerged the Kremlin as it did at the end of the 90th Century has once again Fallen prey to delusions of grandeur it overconfidently believed both in its own prowess and in the weakness of other International actors in a word the arrogance that accompanied Tsar Nicolas II has now affected Tsar Vladimir Putin in essentially the same way the result of all this now in 2023 is a country plunged into a war Quagmire while deep into the greatest economic isolation of modern times literally all prospects are bad in the short term Russia faces a deficit running into hundreds of billions of dollars in 2023 alone while long term according to the Russian energy Ministry they are running out of profitable to extract oil reserves we discussed both of these issues more extensively in one of our recent reports on the state of the Russian economy to top this all off Russia has lost its most important customer Europe while any quick turn to Asia is wishful thinking and will realistically take the better part of 15 or 20 years the other Ace in the Russian deck besides natural resources the world's second best army has faced a huge and negative status check after the Sir Duke of and shoiguru reforms the Russian military was supposed to be a professional modern Army one that breaks with the historical stereotype of the poorly equipped Russian soldier as it turned out the Russian army is a mirror of the Russian social model one stepped in corruption and disorder for centuries a byproduct of both his Moscow ever diminishing credibility on the international stage even it's usually humble neighbors such as Armenia and Kazakhstan are showing blatant insubordination towards Moscow not even long ago this would have been Unthinkable an even more dangerous offshoot is the kremlin's increasingly weak Authority inside Russia itself in particular among local Warlords moscow's Elite or even Ordinary People until now the social model was based on pride of being able to live in a superpower that the whole world feared together with the meeting of basic needs this was enough for many not to question the social contract these days the economic crisis and the identity crisis are changing the dynamic of the Tsar people relationship although the current order is not yet openly challenged however when it is this could bring consequences similar to those of 1917 or 1991. this is all the more so because Moscow traditionally wages war with the resources of the provinces meaning almost everyone dies and mass at the front just not the people of Moscow although this last fact does not change that for more than 20 years Russians have been one of the fastest dying nationalities in their own country between 2002 and the year 2020 the number of people declaring themselves Russian shrunk by nearly 10 million that's equivalent to a country the size of czechia or Hungary disappearing in 20 years this population shift affects more than Russians the global economy is too interconnected like last month when Russia cut its oil output by a 500 000 barrels Prices rose for over 75 million people even in Western economies half of Americans making six figures currently leave paycheck to paycheck a financial storm is brewing and even Goldman Sachs says the stock market is headed nowhere now money managers like a Goldman are pouring hundreds of millions into low correlation assets that don't always fall when stocks do according to a recent Citibank report of these assets the one with the lowest correlation is Art in fact as stocks and bonds struggled last year art Prices rose in average 29 percent luckily we have been partnered with Masterworks since 2022. you can use their platform to invest in multi-million dollar paintings without needing Millions when one you're invested in sells again you see a potential return so far Masterworks has a track record of 11 exits all profitable with the last three returning 10 13 and 35 percent net Masterworks has had new offerings sell out in minutes and there is even a wait list but you can get VIP access to their latest offerings right now in the description however one could ask the question if Russia is to break up why do we not hear about the secessionist inclinations of individual regions or nations as buganski quoted earlier points out ethnic minorities in Russia will not suddenly seek secession whoever rears his head first runs a high risk of danger as one exiled tatterson government official recently said quote our struggle for Independence has not yet begun unquote however when the time comes and the province senses the weakness of the core we may witness a domino effect and Independence movements in many parts of the country we will talk more extensively about this in the next episode a journey through the history of the State located around Moscow allows us to see a certain recurring cycle a rise of the state's position in the world followed by a rise of imperialists and expansionist sentiments leading to a misreading of the international and the domestic situation the entanglement in war both kinetic and stride and finally rapid collapse moscow's current situation forces us to conclude that the Russian Federation is once again relieving this cycle what is especially bad for the Kremlin is that it is in its penultimate stage the two Great Falls of Moscow in the last century were different in character and Dynamics but taking a broader perspective they can be seen to have followed a similar pattern as we are making this report the kremlin's third grade Gambit is underway and its outcome could be similar to or even worse than the other two no one has a crystal ball to predict when or if at all Russia will collapse but the multitude of problems and repeated historical patterns mean that the west and the world in general must be ready for any scenario including a possible soviet-style breakup historian Michael hodorkovski wrote in 2016 quote we should not be surprised if one day Russia implodes on its own as the U.S has started all Empires eventually collapse to think that putins and Russia's will be any different is just another failure of imagination in a recent discussion with a YouTube analyst she advised me to ask our audience for direct reactions to help the channel grow so if you enjoyed this material please give it a thumbs up or leave a comment to improve the algorithm you might also consider supporting us on patreon foreign

Channel: Good Times Bad Times

Views: 531,957

Keywords: good times bad times, geopolitics, 20s report, moscow, Putin, russian history, Ivan the Terrible, Smuta, Romanov Dynasty, tsarist russia, fall of russia, cycle of russian decline, bolshevik russia, union of soviet socialist republics, soviet union, disintegration of russian federation, russia

Id: 5iWy_nOAjXc

Length: 26min 50sec (1610 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 03 2023