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Putin’s new strategy
Hello,
Putin is a great strategist, it’s obvious to everyone.
Today he signed up 40 military agreement with 40 African countries.
It’s a great move I believe. Yes he’s aligning with some of the poorest countries and more corrupt governments on the planet (I love Africa I think it’s a fact though). But he’s playing the numbers game. So he’s gaining a lot of power. Great move.
It also shows that he tapped into alliances that were neglected by the West. Recently apparently Macron had a patronizing speech at an African summit. It shows that they considered them below them. Big mistake.
Also militarily speaking it’s great. Even if they’re just customers and not military allies of their own rights. They will tend to follow his lead on key issues since now they depend more on him to get weapons. Especially important for corrupt gouvernement to avoid being toppled. Also for divided countries with rebels and active civil wars. So huge leverage on these African government. And they are close to Europe so geographically speaking it’s a great move just as he can rely on Belarus to attack Ukraine.
So I think it’s also a veiled threat to Europe.
I would sum up his strategy like that:
Recruit low status low power allies in high number who were previously humiliated by your enemy.
I know Africa is a huge continent with various levels of developments and access to high tech for some countries. The fact is that 1 country like the USA has more GDP and firepower than many African countries put together.
So instead of having one powerful ally have many less powerful ones. It’s easier to make alliances since you’re in the top position.
However the overhead (cost of maintaining these alliances) is higher due to the number of participants. It might be marginally so though. I don’t know the exact figures.
Interesting, thank you for sharing, John.
I personally don't know enough to comment.
Somewhat linked to this is a topic I'm also interested in when it comes to effective strategy and "winning in the long term".
I think we can make a distinction between strategists here:
- Individual strategists
- Leader strategists
At an individual level, the dark triads often have an advantage.
Putin himself excelled there to get where he is.
But they lose that advantage when they fight and compete against "better systems" that are based on democracies and (at least some) meritocracy -sometimes "better systems" also include "better leaders", albeit not necessarily so-.
There was actually a great recent speech by Biden to the senata that said exactly that (probably someone wrote it for him):
Democratic and open systems always beat despotic ones (couldn't find the full one, if anyone has it, please do share).
Not a novelty: the USSR, bigger and with endless resources, has always lagged behind and struggled to keep up (with pretty much the whole Western world).
With the recent war, Putin reminded everyone of the limitations of a despotic system.
Thanks Lucio.
I like to explore the ramifications of strategy. It’s like power dynamics. It’s a whole universe in itself.
I think your distinction totally makes sense. Just like the distinction between psychology and social sciences makes sense.
That’s also what I observed: that open (and democratic) societies are superior to closed ones.
The ability to collaborate is limited by the ability to communicate (also between hierarchical layers). Also with too much restriction we miss synergistic effects. That is in a too strict hierarchical system people just execute what the above layer says. So they cannot use all their personal resources for outside reasons. They cannot be as creative as they’re not allowed to have ideas. Only the « thinking heads » can (as we say in French). So it’s more a few minds rather than many. So closed systems lose a lot of Human Resources (in terms of human capacity). So there’s a lot of waste.
As an example the capacity of innovation of USA vs China. They’re Worlds apart. I studied with a Chinese friend. He was used to cheating and copying. Cutting corners all the time. Doing subpar work. Not because he’s a dishonest person at core. Rather because in his environment that’s how you succeeded: cheating and copying. Everyone knows about it from students to professors so it’s tolerated or even accepted. That’s what he told me. I’m not generalizing though. It’s the one example I know that corroborates this. Actually here is another one: research. It’s said that a huge chunk of biomedical research is junk because it’s made in China (or in China) with dubious methods. I’m not talking about the people here. I’m talking about a system and the culture it creates. Some could see links with collectivist societies vs individualistic ones. I think there’s something of it but it goes beyond that. Food for thought though.
Also having observed how high trust societies perform better. The Nordic countries, Switzerland, the Netherlands. These are some of the richest countries per capita in the World. Always in the top 10 of human development index and others. So that goes again with the waste. If you cannot trust someone opportunity collaboration is lost. Or it will be a one-off after defection. And as I learned here humans thrive through collaboration.
Yep, you said it.
In more open, trusting, collaborative, ad meritocratic societies where individuals are respected and freely decide to do something and where they gnerally see (part of) the fruits of their good work to come to them (rather than being all stolen from the top), those individuals simply produce and innovate more.
It's the same across smaller groups as well as nations.
Put an asshole or a despot on top, and for the gain of the asshole (and his few cronies) the whole group is worse off.
That's one of the rationale behind TPM's mission BTW: more good men on top, better for almost everyone.
Thanks, Lucio.
I love to read these ideas. Just the beauty of the logic of it. And yet so hard to make a reality. I think in a sense Adam Smith was right even if I haven't read his book. From my understanding: that it is our selfishness that pushes us to collaborate. That's very elegant as a mechanism that evolved. That's probably why humans are so unstoppable: the more we are selfish the more we collaborate (if we go win-win) and the more we accumulate. It just never stops (if we don't destroy our environment first of course). (Probably being a tad idealistic here)
