Putin Listening to Both Party of War and Party of Peace within His Regime

Window on Eurasia ^ | Mar 31, 2018 | Vladimir Felgenhauer

[GoldenState_Rose]

Vladimir Putin is listening both to “a peace party” within his administration and “a war party,” responding positively first to the appeals of the first that Russia cannot afford an arms race and saying there won’t be one and then positively to the arguments of the second that Russia must be ready to defend itself."

The peace party, which includes Finance Minister Anton Siluanov, Central Bank chief Elvira Nabiullina, Presidential assistant Andrey Belousov, and former Finance Minister Aleksey Kudrin, argues that Russia must cut military spending to meet social needs and thus must reduce tensions with the West.

Without such steps, they say, “the economy simply won’t grow.” On occasion, Putin has appeared to agree with them, saying in response to the new tough line from Washington that Russia “will not be dragged into an arms race because we are smarter than that."

The war party in contrast is extremely powerful and has won many battles for the Russian president’s soul. It argues that Russia must re-arm because it is “surrounded by enemies” who may attack at any moment” because “the threat of such action is growing. There is no other way to block the aggression of America except with murderous new kinds of arms.”

They also dismiss arguments that defense spending killed the USSR and could kill Russia. That is possible but it won’t happen tomorrow or indeed anytime soon as long as Russia has oil, gas, metals and so on to sell. These things “will always have value;” and consequently, the economy may not be growing but under conditions of stagnation, “it is possible to live.”

Some military projects may have to be delayed or even cancelled because there isn’t enough money.

[GoldenState_Rose]

under Hillary, money was poured into* Russia.
no Nuremberg kinda thing like* postwar Germany went through.

sorry typos.

[Mariner]

Whether this is accurate, or not, I highly doubt a blog writer is privy to the internal deliberations of the closed regime of Russia.

Certainly he does not know where Putin takes his counsel, if anywhere.

[mac_truck]

Whether this is accurate, or not, I highly doubt a blog writer is privy to the internal deliberations of the closed regime of Russia.

Its the mind readers illusion...author Michael Wolf used this technique to great effect also.

[SunkenCiv]

The Three Amigos

Iran's President Hassan Rouhani, Russia's Vladimir Putin and Turkey's Tayyip Erdogan meet in Sochi, Russia November 22, 2017. (photo credit: SPUTNIK/MIKHAIL METZEL/KREMLIN VIA REUTERS)