Westerners swim in our Enlightenment-based grand theory of personal freedom, the rule of law and free-market capitalism like a fish swims in water. We are so imbued with these principles that it can be difficult to understand a competing grand theory that has little in common. Assuming that an adversary will feel that his self-interest will coincide with what we would consider self-interest can lead to radical mistakes.
For example, Russia is being subjected to financially ruinous sanctions which would be very disruptive in the West. However, given Russia’s history of autocracy and violence these sanctions may be almost meaningless.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/22/opinion/russia-ukraine-pu…
**The Grand Theory Driving Putin to War**
**By Jane Burbank, The New York Times, March 22, 2022**
**Dr. Burbank is a professor of Russian history, recently retired from New York University.**
**...**
**To understand the war in Ukraine, we must go beyond the political projects of Western leaders and Mr. Putin’s psyche. The ardor and content of Mr. Putin’s declarations are not new or unique to him. Since the 1990s, plans to reunite Ukraine and other post-Soviet states into a transcontinental superpower have been brewing in Russia. A revitalized theory of Eurasian empire informs Mr. Putin’s every move....**
**Emerging from the collapse of the Russian Empire in 1917, Eurasianism posited Russia as a Eurasian polity formed by a deep history of cultural exchanges among people of Turkic, Slavic, Mongol and other Asian origins. ... Eurasian geopolitics, Russian Orthodoxy and traditional values — these goals shaped Russia’s self-image under Mr. Putin’s leadership...Ukrainian sovereignty presented a “huge danger to all of Eurasia.” Total military and political control of the whole north coast of the Black Sea was an “absolute imperative” of Russian geopolitics....**
**This brew of attitudes — complaints about Western aggression, exaltation of traditional values over the decadence of individual rights, assertions of Russia’s duty to unite Eurasia and subordinate Ukraine — developed in the cauldron of post-imperial resentment. Now they infuse Mr. Putin’s worldview and inspire his brutal war.**
**The goal, plainly, is empire. And the line will not be drawn at Ukraine.**
[end quote]
A pre-existing grand theory of Eurasianism is far more dangerous than Putin’s simple autocracy, just as pre-existing theories of “racial purity” became extremely dangerous in Hitler’s strategy. Several NATO countries, including Poland, the Baltic States, Czech Republic, etc. are ethnically Slavic and once belonged to the Russian Empire.
The NATO alliance and China will both be threatened by a Russia impelled by a theory to regain superpower status by conquering free nations around it.
As investors, we need to be aware that the world economic situation can deteriorate suddenly and rapidly. Not to mention the threat of nuclear war.
Wendy