Here is my new piece for PunditWire on Vladimir Putin’s State of the Nation speech. I previously added some other glosses on it here, with special focus on its sprawling mustiness:

Otherwise the speech showed that a Russian president is no different from his Western counterparts when it comes to emitting hollow musty exhortations on economic policy:

  • We must learn to harmonise two goals: containing inflation and stimulating growth
  • We must escape the trap of zero-level growth
  • Within three to five years, we must provide our customers with high-quality and affordable medicines and food produced mostly in Russia
  • We must lessen our critical dependence on foreign technology
  • Our commodities and infrastructure companies … must rely on domestic producers
  • We must only buy distinctly unique equipment and technology abroad
  • We must prevent internal monopolism
  • Import substitution programmes must encourage the creation of a large group of competitive industrial companies
  • We must remove as many of these restrictions as possible. We must provide investment incentives
  • We have large domestic savings, which must be used
  • We must invest as much as we save. Our savings must work for the national economy and development, rather than the export of capital. To do this, we must seriously strengthen the stability of our banking system

There were dozens more musty expressions of different sorts in this speech. Poor technique.

This sort of language purports to show leadership and purpose. In fact it points to a leader’s refusal to face personal responsibility for specific outcomes, and suggests an inability to analyse correctly what is going on. If so many important things ‘must’ or ‘should’ happen or are ‘crucial’, why have they not happened so far? And why should anyone expect them to happen in the future?

Otherwise it was interesting if depressing to see President Putin slumping into utter KGB-style nonsense when he insinuated that Western policy towards Russia/Ukraine is driven by some sort of Dark Plan to ‘contain’ or ‘take advantage of’ Russia, or even break the country up:

President Putin sought to drum up domestic support for his international policies by asserting that Western governments have been scheming down the ages to break Russia apart, as illustrated by Western support for Chechen terrorists in the 1990s and, now, sanctions over Ukraine/Crimea:

Sanctions are not just a knee-jerk reaction on behalf of the United States or its allies to our position regarding the events and the coup in Ukraine, or even the so-called Crimean Spring… if none of that had ever happened, they would have come up with some other excuse to try to contain Russia’s growing capabilities, affect our country in some way, or even take advantage of it.

The policy of containment was not invented yesterday. It has been carried out against our country for many years, always, for decades, if not centuries. In short, whenever someone thinks that Russia has become too strong or independent, these tools are quickly put into use…

[T]he support for separatism in Russia from across the pond, including information, political and financial support and support provided by the special services – was absolutely obvious and left no doubt that they would gladly let Russia follow the Yugoslav scenario of disintegration and dismemberment.

This, of course, is drivel if not paranoia. Western governments fell over themselves to look the other way as Moscow killed tens of thousands of its own citizens in Chechnya. More! They continued their generous support programmes to the Yeltsin administration while these massacres continued, precisely to help the new post-communist leaders head off any risks to the sprawling country breaking apart.

Recently at Harvard Poland’s Radek Sikorski gave a vigorous refutation of all the specious arguments that the West has been trying to undermine or ‘humiliate’ Russia, urging Russia to return to the World of Rules.

Read the whole thing, then gallop through the speech itself. The extent of the mustiness throughout his text was really striking. A powerful top-end example of an attempt to sound strong that ends up sounding weak.