We see war crimes unfolding in Ukraine.
Let’s not forget that, for years, some Western politicians/commentators have supported Putin, peddled his propaganda, and undermined the public support for a stauncher stance against his aggressions.
A short 🧵 with edifying statements.
In France, three politicians totalling around 40% of voting intentions have overtly backed Putin in the past: on the far left Melenchon, on the far right Zemmour and Le Pen (in the order of this incredible video, ht @benjaminhaddad).
In Italy, the former Deputy Prime Minister, and far right politician, Salvini went all-in with his support to Putin.
Salvini had more than one Putin T-shirt as he demonstrated by wearing another one in Brussels.
In Britain, Nigel Farage admired the military genius of Putin...
In the US, the TV commentator Tucker Carlson, in 2019, talking about Russia’s war against Ukraine: “Why shouldn’t I root for Russia? which by the way I am.”
This complacency with Putin’s regime has certainly been helped by the flow of money from Russia to Western politicians to support their election… and retirement.
Today they say “we did not know”.
But the methods used by Putin in Ukraine were already here for everybody to see. In truth those who supported Putin did not want to know, or did not want to care.
End 🧵
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Will Putin fall?
At the moment, Metaculus, a website aggregating individual forecasts, gives a 20% chance of this happening by Feb 2023.
So: popular uprising, coup or hardening of the regime? A few quick considerations. 🧵
First it is important to understand the nature of the Russian regime. Seemingly on the path to democratisation after 1989, Russia has progressively become more & more authoritarian while retaining some democratic features (e.g. access to internet) which limit the regime’s power.
The growing authoritarianism seems however to have transformed Russia in a very personal dictatorship centred around Putin. So what could happen? slate.com/news-and-polit…
It is regrettable that many Western commentators repeated Putin’s narrative that the problem came from an aggressive NATO expansion aimed at encircling Russia.
Time for a reset of narratives. Here are some simple insights, informed by our work on the game theory of alliances. 🧵
NATO is a voluntary association, and an association with Russia would also have (initially) been largely voluntarily.
But Eastern European countries *demanded* to join NATO. While NATO countries were initially not warm about this prospect.
What about countries from the former USSR (Georgia, Armenia, Ukraine)? Russia proposed an economic integration, the “Community of Independent States” (CIS). It failed because the other countries resisted integration.
CIS 👇
There has been a recent debate on Twitter on the notion of “utility” in economics. I’ll try to give some perspective to help understand the disagreements. 🧵
One reason why the discussion about utility can be confusing is that two types of interpretation co-exist in economics. On the one hand, economic students are typically told in introductory microeconomics that utility is just a number to reflect the order of preferences.
On the other hand, students will be presented either explicitly or implicitly with interpretations of utility as measuring some kind of satisfaction in other courses.
This is an amazing story. In 1912, Greek soldiers took an island from the Ottoman Empire. The soldiers were thinking that the inhabitants were Greek, but the local kids said "No, we are Romans".
And they were Romans... from the former Roman Empire. 1/6
In the West, we date the end of the Roman Empire to around 476BC. But the "Eastern" Roman Empire persisted and its people *were* Romans. This Roman identity persisted even after the fall of Constantinople in 1453. 2/6
This is the extent of the Roman Empire in 555BC. It still included Rome! And it continued to include the city until the 8th century.
Rome had not been the capital of the Empire for a long time and losing Rome did not change their self-identification as "Romans". 3/6
In Italy, fascist groups used violence against political opponents to deter them and prevent them from seating in Parliament.
from Ebner's amazon.com/Ordinary-Viole…
In France, militarised leagues went close to what seems a coup d'Etat in 1934, with riots generated by conspiracy theories around a corruption affair.
from Kalman's amazon.com.au/Extreme-Right-…
Eventually, Germany's and Italy's democracy decayed into dictatorships.
There is definitely a lesson from history: democratic institutions can fail and we should not take them for granted.