The Madness of One Man: Vladimir Putin and the Pitfalls of Autocracy
Robert Cole
There is no war in Ukraine without Vladimir Putin, at whose feet should be laid the hundreds of civilian deaths that have already occurred since the campaign began. He has been the most powerful man in Russia since most UNC students were born, gaining and maintaining power through a combination of political guile and the brutal crushing of dissent. His opponents both within Russia and without have been shot, stabbed, strangled, and poisoned with radioactive isotopes. His greatest political opponent in recent memory, Alexi Navalny, currently sits in a Russian prison camp. Russia’s legislature, known as the Duma, is controlled by Putin allies, who frequently resort to intimidation and legal sanctions to prevent opponents from winning elections. It is safe to say therefore that nothing happens in Russian policy without Putin’s seal of approval. At no point in recent memory has such a conflict been so clearly the work of one man.
Given that the course of such a world-shaking conflict is controlled by Putin, there has been an increasing focus on the man himself and what would motivate such a bellicose and seemingly rash decision as that to invade Ukraine. World leaders and diplomats are increasingly concerned about his mental state, remarking on “how different the Putin of today was to the Putin of three years ago”. Though it is notoriously difficult to understand the internal workings of an autocratic government, the glimpses we get are of an extremely physically isolated leader, whose own measures to prevent covid infection have led to a limited understanding of the course of the world outside. Even members of his own government have been shown in recent broadcasts at a great physical distance from Putin, most notably in a highly choreographed recording of a meeting with his ministers, where he sat yards away from the assembled leaders of the Russian government.
Nearly all of us experienced some degree of physical and social isolation during the pandemic, so it is relatively easy to grasp some of the implications of Putin’s dramatic covid security. However, no one reading this article (presumably) is a political leader. Powerful people, when separated from their traditional means of gauging the political temperature, become targets for the ambitious and unscrupulous. It is quite possible that Putin came under the sway of advisers pushing for a war in Ukraine or was able to convince himself such an action was feasible during his lengthy separation from people or information sources that could have argued for the contrary. This could explain why he endorsed an invasion plan that foresaw Kiev falling to the Russians in 48 hours.
This goes to one of the great practical failings of autocracy. This invasion was tremendously unpopular domestically, terribly planned, and begun without any clear exit strategy. Yet in an autocracy, none of these factors represented a barrier to one man’s ambition. Autocratic government depends on unfailingly wise and practical leadership, which is simply impossible to expect from anyone, much less someone who has detached himself from the world for nearly three years. The implications of autocracy are now presenting themselves in a manner with implications greater than any conflict previously seen in this century, given that Russia controls the world's largest nuclear arsenal, a terrifying weapon Putin has already threatened to deploy to prevent international meddling in his butchery of Ukraine. As Ukrainian resistance continues to embarrass him, the world waits with bated breath to see just how far Putin is willing to go in order to satisfy his own ambition, without the fetters of democracy to pull him back from the brink.