Will Russia Collapse in 2025?
Paul Craig Roberts

Is Putin’s Government Trying to Be a 19th century liberal government in the brutal evil world of the 21st century?

I raise this question not only because Putin has been fighting in his gentlemanly way a war on Russian territory in Ukraine for six months longer without yet winning than it took Stalin’s Red Army to defeat the formidable German Wehrmacht in World War II, and still Putin has not cleared Ukrainian troops from the small Donbas area or from the Ukrainian invasion of Russian Kursk.  Does anyone remember when Putin declared that Russia would never again fight a war on its own territory? Putin has been fighting a war on Russia’s own territory for longer than the Soviet offensive took to drive the German invaders out of Russia.  Moreover, Putin and Lavrov seem to be relying on Trump, not the Russian military, to bring the conflict in Ukraine to an end by agreeing to a mutual security treaty.

None of Putin’s declarations have had any effect on Washington’s determination to further breakup Russia, a constraint on American hegemony. Neither have any of the super weapons that Putin has waved in the face of the West. Putin’s reliance on useless “agreements,” such as the Minsk Agreement and the Astana Agreement that sunk Syria, together with Putin’s clamps on the Russian military in Donbas, has convinced Washington that Putin will not fight. Washington finds it extraordinary that it took Putin eight years after Washington’s coup in Kiev, which placed a Washington Puppet in charge of Ukraine, to come to grips with the fact that he had a problem, deceived as he was by his useless Minsk Agreement.

After Putin’s intervention in Syria that prevented US President Obama’s invasion of Syria, Putin’s only proactive move, Putin refused to allow Syria to use Russian air defense systems to prevent Israeli attacks on Syria and on Iranian officials.  During the entire time of the Russian Air Force’s domination of Syrian air space, Putin permitted Israel and Washington to attack Syrian territory at will. One wonders why Putin ever bothered to intervene in Syria. The can got kicked down the road for awhile, but the final result was that Putin ran from the Israeli/Washington invasion and placed the Syria he had defended  in the hands of Washington and Israel. Putin simply wrote off 8 or more years of the Russian Air Force fighting in the defense of a Syrian government elected by Syrians. 

Now the road is open for Israel to occupy Lebanon.  No more embarrassing defeats of the vaunted Israeli Army at the hands of the Hezbollah militia devoid of an air force or heavy weapons. Twice the Israeli Army, good only for killing women and children, ran for its life from Hezbollah.  But now thanks to Putin, Syria is no more, and there is no way to resupply Hezbollah. Hezbollah sat on its butt and did nothing while Israel assassinated all of its leaders and commanders and cut off its resupply routes. Inaction always leads to defeat, and Putin’s inaction is leading to Russia’s defeat. In the final days, to avoid this Russian defeat will the button be pushed?  

Iran is now also isolated and wonders what trust it can put in Putin, who is so averse to fighting. The Chinese and the BRICS now face the same question.  Can Russia be counted on in a showdown?

My critical words do not comprise even a beginning of Putin’s long list of strategic mistakes.  I have written about some of them on this website.  But many I have not have had a chance to address.

Consider this one for example. Russia is a federation, a weak political structure as it amounts to a tower of babel, and it has Muslim provinces.  Putin’s policies in the Middle East have favored Israel over Muslims.  Recently, perhaps in response to Israel’s genocide of Palestine, Russian Muslims attacked Jews in a Muslim province of the Russian Federation. Why there were Jews there is incomprehensible. Putin’s government immediately arrested the Russian Muslims and committed Russia’s Muslim citizens to 7 and 8 years in prison for assaulting Jews.  But Putin has done nothing about Israel’s murderous assaults on Palestine and Lebanon and Syria. 

So why is Putin on Israel’s side and not on the side of the Russian Federation’s own Muslim citizens? The Putin government’s persecution of its own citizens for their expressed opposition to Israel’s murderous treatment of Muslims raises the question whether Putin is really a nationalist leader or just another Israeli puppet like Washington. Even Trump’s government is overwhelmingly Zionist.

Russia’s Muslim province just gave the green light to polygamy. This is inconsistent with Russian law. Here we have a new breakage in the Russian Federation, a double breakage considering the Russian government taking the side of Israel over the Russian Muslim population. Little doubt the Muslim leaders will have to reverse the decision.  What an extraordinary gift Putin has handed to Washington’s neoconservatives to exploit. Here we have Putin helping Washington’s breakup of the Russian Federation.

Let’s see.  During the years Putin has been in office, Washington has established missile bases on Russia’s borders in Poland, Romania, and Ukraine. Ukraine, formerly a Russia friendly country, has become Washington’s ally in a war against Russia, still not acknowledged by the Russian Foreign Ministry, which seems unable to acknowledge any reality. 

Putin the Unready was not ready for the US/Georgian invasion of South Ossetia, nor for Washington’s Maidan Coup in Ukraine, nor for the necessary Russian intervention in Donbas, nor for the defense of Syria, host of Russia’s naval and air bases for the projection of Russian power, nor for Armenia, nor for Washington’s ongoing color revolution in Georgia.  Putin is never ready for anything but a worthless paper agreement with his enemies.  https://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2024/12/19/is-putin-capable-of-strategic-thinking/ 

Putin has guaranteed that Washington’s provocations of the Russian government will continue until Putin has only two choices:  surrender or war.  Putin is capable of surrendering, but will the Russian General Staff  take the decision out of his hands?  The war will be due not only to Washington’s aggressions but also to Putin’s lack of response and strategic ability.

I have wondered if the shakeup of the Russian generals with departures and indictments are actually moves against corruption as announced or moves against Russian patriots who think they are watching Putin’s sell out of Russia to Washington, just as the CIA and US Joint Chiefs of Staff saw America’s leader, US President John F. Kennedy, selling out America to the Soviet Union.

Putin’s inability to put his foot down, except verbally, is leading the world into nuclear war. Putin’s new weapon lets him pretend the war won’t be nuclear, but it will be, because no one but Putin has the new super weapon. Putin and Lavrov’s warnings about war are always undercut by their own denials. Consequently, Russian warnings carry zero weight.

We cannot look to Trump for peace. Trump has appointed mainly a Zionist government. Having lost Syria, Russia is on the defensive. Part of making America great again is the restoration of Washington’s hegemony, which Putin challenged until he collapsed. What this means is that it is unrealistic to expect Trump to agree to a Ukrainian settlement on Putin’s announced terms.

If Trump agrees to Putin’s reasonable terms, the presstitute media will discredit Trump with his own supporters by declaring him a Putin agent who settled Putin’s aggression on Putin’s terms.  Trump will become the President “who lost Ukraine.”

It remains to be seen how much longer the Russian General Staff will tolerate Putin’s ineptitude as a war leader.

 

Hon. Paul Craig Roberts is the John M. Olin Fellow at the Institute for Political Economy, Senior Research Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, and Research Fellow at the Independent Institute. A former editor and columnist for The Wall Street Journal and columnist for Business Week and the Scripps Howard News Service, he is a nationally syndicated columnist for Creators Syndicate in Los Angeles and a columnist for Investor's Business Daily. In 1992 he received the Warren Brookes Award for Excellence in Journalism. In 1993 the Forbes Media Guide ranked him as one of the top seven journalists.

He was Distinguished Fellow at the Cato Institute from 1993 to 1996. From 1982 through 1993, he held the William E. Simon Chair in Political Economy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. During 1981-82 he served as Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy. President Reagan and Treasury Secretary Regan credited him with a major role in the Economic Recovery Tax Act of 1981, and he was awarded the Treasury Department's Meritorious Service Award for "his outstanding contributions to the formulation of United States economic policy." From 1975 to 1978, Dr. Roberts served on the congressional staff where he drafted the Kemp-Roth bill and played a leading role in developing bipartisan support for a supply-side economic policy.

In 1987 the French government recognized him as "the artisan of a renewal in economic science and policy after half a century of state interventionism" and inducted him into the Legion of Honor.

Dr. Roberts' latest books are The Tyranny of Good Intentions, co-authored with IPE Fellow Lawrence Stratton, and published by Prima Publishing in May 2000, and Chile: Two Visions - The Allende-Pinochet Era, co-authored with IPE Fellow Karen Araujo, and published in Spanish by Universidad Nacional Andres Bello in Santiago, Chile, in November 2000. The Capitalist Revolution in Latin America, co-authored with IPE Fellow Karen LaFollette Araujo, was published by Oxford University Press in 1997. A Spanish language edition was published by Oxford in 1999. The New Colorline: How Quotas and Privilege Destroy Democracy, co-authored with Lawrence Stratton, was published by Regnery in 1995. A paperback edition was published in 1997. Meltdown: Inside the Soviet Economy, co-authored with Karen LaFollette, was published by the Cato Institute in 1990. Harvard University Press published his book, The Supply-Side Revolution, in 1984. Widely reviewed and favorably received, the book was praised by Forbes as "a timely masterpiece that will have real impact on economic thinking in the years ahead." Dr. Roberts is the author of Alienation and the Soviet Economy, published in 1971 and republished in 1990. He is the author of Marx's Theory of Exchange, Alienation and Crisis, published in 1973 and republished in 1983. A Spanish language edition was published in 1974.

Dr. Roberts has held numerous academic appointments. He has contributed chapters to numerous books and has published many articles in journals of scholarship, including the Journal of Political Economy, Oxford Economic Papers, Journal of Law and Economics, Studies in Banking and Finance, Journal of Monetary Economics, Public Finance Quarterly, Public Choice, Classica et Mediaevalia, Ethics, Slavic Review, Soviet Studies, Rivista de Political Economica, and Zeitschrift fur Wirtschafspolitik. He has entries in the McGraw-Hill Encyclopedia of Economics and the New Palgrave Dictionary of Money and Finance. He has contributed to Commentary, The Public Interest, The National Interest, Harper's, the New York Times, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, Fortune, London Times, The Financial Times, TLS, The Spectator, Il Sole 24 Ore, Le Figaro, Liberation, and the Nihon Keizai Shimbun. He has testified before committees of Congress on 30 occasions.

Dr. Roberts was educated at the Georgia Institute of Technology (B.S.), the University of Virginia (Ph.D.), the University of California at Berkeley and Oxford University where he was a member of Merton College.

He is listed in Who's Who in America, Who's Who in the World, The Dictionary of International Biography, Outstanding People of the Twentieth Century, and 1000 Leaders of World Influence. His latest book, HOW THE ECONOMY WAS LOST, has just been published by CounterPunch/AK Press. He can be reached at: [email protected]

 

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