Russian President Putin and U.S. President Obama   


Let's try today to see world events through a moral realist lense. In short, let's ask: does the moral realist model work? Can we use it to understand the real world that we see every day in the news? 

I think we can. In the past, the two men (Putin and Obama) pictured above have often seemed to genuinely dislike each other. My read on them is that Obama really does want a world in which more and more people have the opportunity to live in peace and prosperity without being dependent on or ruled over by the U.S. He seeks to make allies. Friends. However, Putin wants to return Russia to its days of empire. Obama genuinely believes in the principles that underlie democracy. Putin does not. 

An old friend of mine who was half Russian, spoke the language, and had visited there several times had settled in Canada after living through chaos during WWII. He spoke six languages and did translation work in all of them regularly. He once told me that the way to understand the Russians was to always remember that they have lived since the days of Ivan the Terrible under the fist. Deep down, in my friend's view, the Russians don't understand democracy and don't trust it. They even think the "democracies" of the world are shams. The true situation always, they believe, is a few powerful, ruthless people run the show, sometimes with a gentler hand, sometimes a rougher one, but underneath the tinsel shows put on for the media, the U.S. is run by 200 - 300 super rich people who collude to pick the candidates that will get nominated to run for the presidency. Then, once a winner has been determined by a farce election, these people simply run the president like an appliance. 

For the hardest of hard core Russian patriots, America is more powerful now, but Russia is on its way back up and it will be top dog again in a generation or so if it can get another leader with a steely grip and resolve to succeed Putin once he begins to wear out.  




   

                    Russian Foreign Minister, Sergey Lavrov and U.S. Secretary or State, John Kerry
                                    (who today announced a deal intended to stop the fighting in Syria)  

Obama, in the meantime, really does believe that a government of, by, and for the people can work and can produce not only stability, but also wealth and, yes, power. Democracy has been his guiding star through all of the navigating he has done, not just over the past ten years (since his days as a senator from Illinois), but since long before the time when he got into politics. And he has evidence to support this belief. Real evidence. He is an African-American man, and yet in America, in spite of all of its problems with race, he got elected president of the whole country. Twice. 

The deep and subtle irony for me is that in this conflict between Putin and Obama, Obama keeps winning. In the moral realist analysis, the evidence is clear. Obama, via his influence with allies in the G20 countries, can get economic sanctions imposed on Russia. Russia can not wield anything like that kind of power. And those sanctions are hurting. Russia got into the Syrian Civil War in the first place to try to force the U.S. back into negotiations of some kind, any kind, after harsh sanctions were imposed in response to Russia's occupation of the Crimea. Russia's aggression under Putin has been put on the defensive over and over by Obama.

Similar talking nice is likely going to come out of North Korea soon. As of today, even China, North Korea's one ally is getting fed up. Another nuclear test, an even bigger one this time. Once the Syrian conflict begins to resolve, ISIS will be broken, as will the Taliban and Al Quaeda. Then, under the weight of the world's sanctions, North Korea will begin to cave. 

What we really should be asking, as theorists of History, is why? Why are the developed nations the ones in the position to control the agenda? 

The answer is that the democratic way works. Not perfectly, but better than the alternatives out there in the world right now. The West has power because its people work hard and produce a lot of goods and services ...yes, this is true. But people in many parts of the world are hard workers. 

The developed world's secret is the general level of honesty and transparency of the majority of its people and especially of its authorities, from building inspectors to presidents and prime ministers. Graft and corruption are neither widespread nor widely viewed as inevitable in the developed world. And let us make no mistake: it is corrupt officials who suck the life out of a country. The people of the developing world can work with levels of industry and sacrifice that are heartbreaking and still never get ahead because the wealth they produce is squandered by corruption. Corrupt officials produce no goods or services at all. They destroy wealth, never make it. This is a fact of the mechanics of human societies. 

And so, we in the developed world have the economies that can produce the continually newer, more powerful, more effective technologies and the people who know how to use them. The rest are constantly, as athletes say, playing catch-up. 

In other words, decency and sense, courage balanced by wisdom and freedom balanced by brotherly love, really are strong. Over millions of people and centuries of time, values are very strong. Strong enough to enable people who really believe and live these ideals/values to make wealth. 

Love is stronger than hate, my gentle readers, in the hard terms of the real world. Never doubt it. Live decently and sensibly and your whole nation will prosper because of millions like you, and then as what goes around comes around, you will prosper too. 

In the shadow of the mushroom cloud, nevertheless, have a good day.