As we watch internal developments in Russia and see pressure from sanctions growing, I’ve been getting questions as to whether we will see a change of leadership in Russia. A short thread drawing in lessons from Venezuela & Iraq. 1/
We often conflate personnel change with regime change and even state change, but these are three different things and depending on what our preferred outcome is elites and power brokers react quite differently. 2/
In the West, we experience personnel change all the time, but the regime—the rules, institutions, pathways into the elite, the parameters of winning and losing—remain constant and predictable. The mantra in politics or business is win some, lose some, but the stakes are not 3/
existential. In contrast, when regimes change, incentives change. The most basic: what happens to you when you give up power? Track record in places like Egypt or even Georgia with its troubled transition to democracy is that the fate of ex-presidents/prime ministers doesn’t 4/
inspire confidence. Now on to the larger question. The Russian elite, like the former Iraqi elite and the current Venezuelan elite, is trying to determine what the conditions for settling affairs with the West will be. 5/
Is the ask for a complete reversal of policy in return for going back to something like the pre-February status quo? Is the West saying that a return to normalcy can’t occur until President Putin is retired? Those are policy and personnel changes that would t fundamentally 6/
change the system or the current incentive structure. Or will some degree or even complete change in the regime be required—wholesale changes not only in the system but those who occupy its positions? Or will there be demands for substantial restructuring of the state itself 7/
including how it generates power and wealth? Elite incentives to support each of these options decreases because sanctions are an annoyance but regime or state change is an existential issue. 8/
In Iraq after the fall of Hussein, when it became clear that the U.S. was not going to simply want replacement of Hussein, his sons and his inner circle, but was going to pursue massive regime and elite change and the restructuring of the Iraqi state, an elite that hasn’t 9/
offered to the death resistance during the invasion (in part based on mixed signals that decapitation of Hussein from power was a satisfactory outcome) reevaluated their options. Citing again the @EricLevitz principle: analysis, not approval, that elite turned to
active resistance. Note, we may have had very good strategic and even moral reasons for de-Baathification, but we should have expected the outcome. 11/
In Venezuela, the initial wave of popular protests against the Madurai government led U.S. policy makers to believe Juan Guiado had momentum for not only personnel but regime change-to replace Maduro & replace the Chavista regime. That assessment was too optimistic. 12/
Subsequent discrete talks with key parts of the existing elite to see whether a transition could be brokered broke down over whether the goal was replacing Maduro, an option some in the elite could accept, versus major change. The U.S. also vacillated. Three years later 13/
Maduro remains. U.S. has applied major sanctions which have devastated Venezuela but U.S. pressure has been insufficient to force elite “unconditional surrender” esp. since actual threats of death are not on the table if capitulation is not forthcoming. 14/
Russian elites are losing money, yachts, lifestyles, but also are calculating, if Putin goes, does the whole system go, and we with it? Moreover, does Russia as it is currently configured and which is a source of power, also go? And are there pathways for negotiating 15/
transition from the old elite to the new elite within a new regime? If the answer is no, then, as we’ve also seen in Belarus, even an unpopular leader can remain in place. 16/
At the @carnegiecouncil event on Ukraine earlier this week, I mentioned the four ways conflicts end. Ukraine will want the unconditional surrender model, but we didn’t get that even with the Soviet collapse on 1991, and so no outside occupation and reshaping as in Germany 17/
& Japan. The Russians love Napoleonic precedents, but would the West accept a Russian Talleyrand who would accept some territorial losses and some regime change, in returning for preserving much of the system and Russia reintegrated into the system still as a great power? /18
I don’t see that either. But it can help explain why, unless the situation becomes existentially dire in Russia, the system will continue to close ranks. END
“Wouldn’t”
“Maduro”
Addendum: link to @carnegiecouncil event. carnegiecouncil.org/studio/multime…
Addendum: @DrRadchenko provides direct Russian/Soviet historical context to this discussion.
https://twitter.com/drradchenko/status/1499272892172935168
Addendum: @DAlperovitch’s comments:
https://twitter.com/mitchellreports/status/1499463766622314505
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