If Sanctions Against Russia Succeed, What Follows Putin?
And that brings with it a huge problem. Putin’s tacit social contract with the Russian people is based on a very basic exchange: Putin makes sure the Russian people become materially better off, and the Russian people leave the politics to Putin. So far, both sides have delivered. The crushing majority of Russians support the Kremlin’s line or avoid politics like the plague, and the GDP per capita has increased from $1,771 when Putin came to power in 2000, to more than $14,000 today. That’s a faster growth rate than China’s. “If there were a material change in the way people live in Russia,” says Weafer, “we’d see a change in the political dynamic like we’ve never seen before.”
Geopolitics and the economy are Putin’s two sources of strength, and both are failing him now. In eastern Ukraine, he is increasingly boxed-in, and the economy has been sputtering for about a year, thanks to corruption, inefficiency, and the Sochi Olympics. Capital flight has already reached $75 billion for the first half of 2014, according to the Russian government’s own data, and that’s before the real sanctions were introduced. (By comparison, capital flight for all of 2013 was $63 billion, and in 2012, it was $49 billion.) Russia is not technically in a recession, but that’s because growth has been hovering at zero all year. The Ministry of Economic Development has been using the term “stagnation” since December. Stagnation felled the Soviet Union, and, if the economy dips into recession, it could easily topple Putin, too.
But before the West celebrates the possibility of Putin being forced from the throne, we should consider what might come after him. This is not an argument against sanctions or against political change in Russia. But the country’s history tells us that prolonged economic malaise often brings about political turmoil, the result of which has never been a democratic Russia.
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