Soviet Stock Markets

I want to piggy back on AB and give my own bit on isolationism and the elephant in the room of his post: Russia's ongoing annexation of Crimea.  

I will skip the legitimacy issue, which I think is, oddly enough mostly on Russia's side in this one. (Note: I could instead expound on Russia/Putin's absolute idiocy in fixing an election that he would have easily won and seizing a region that would have mostly gone over willingly.  But I won't do that either.)  The parts of this affair I find interesting are directly related to how this is and is not similar to Russia's invasion of Afghanistan.  

Similarities are obvious enough, Russian invasion and annexation with little to no opposition against their overwhelming force.  International outcry.  Russia attempting to use petro-state influence to sideline the West (especially Europe).  

Differences are much more interesting.  The existence of a Russian stock market.  There was no such stock market in the USSR.  In a matter of days, taking into account ongoing fluctuations, the Ruble has sunk to a five-year low and lost somewhere from 20-25% of it's value.  This is all without a single formal sanction being enacted.  It'll be interesting to see if this trend continues or abates, now that the first sanctions have been passed.  (Note: I would assume that the devaluation is going to start reversing, since the trend was mostly a product of investor fears over possible sanctions.)

I had a brief but friendly squabble on Facebook with a more conservative friend, quoting an article comparing Putin's more "traditional/materialist" view of power and Obama/Kerry's wishy-washy idea of power as being "on the right side of history."  I can appreciate that Putin was, apparently, working towards more concrete goals (naval ports and some generic talking point about "gas pipelines", even though all Crimean pipelines run through Western Ukraine, so that gain is dubious at best) but that's the real point here.  The US had almost nothing to gain here, except for some vague goal of resisting Putin, while Putin had an entire country and very well an entire region's worth of influence to gain here.  And on both counts he has failed spectacularly.  Kiev is, diplomatically and internally speaking, more united in opposition to the Kremlin than ever and the rest of the region has been left far from cowed and if anything, are more wary of a Russian government which is none too worried about international norms like territorial integrity.  

And a crashed Russian stock market to boot.  Them's been some expensive ports.

My main critique with the saber-rattling "get-tough-with-Putin" types and the "America is turning isolationist" types is that, at least in this case, it clearly wasn't needed.  I don't think any honest, sober assessment of the situation makes a case that anything or anyone could come between Russian and Crimea if the Kremlin was dead-set on taking it.  And they clearly were.  So if stopping this annexation was a foregone conclusion, the only positive result possible (in the interests of the West) is for Putin/Russia to suffer a penalty so punitive, as to be dissuaded from making such a decision in the near future.  The goal should be to change the Kremlin’s calculations.  On this I think most rational critics of the US administration agree.  

With that in mind, the reason why I don’t think it is honest of either camp to cry foul in this instance is that, Obama/Kerry’s actions or in actions have worked.  Russia is/will suffer a massive economic hardship from this and is only going to fall further into economic slowdown.  The calculations are going to change.  Mission accomplished.

 It is my strong belief that this entire enterprise is spin on a massive level.  Putin’s equivalent of being denied the deed to a store, settling with taking some clothes off the nearest rack, and pretending that this was his goal in the first place and is a great personal victory as well.  I find it sad that most of the MSM/Beltway insiders seem to buy into this spin.  This was a monumental miscalculation for Putin, which I have heard can be chalked up to an inner circle that no longer contains any sane voices who understand/care one iota about economic policy.   I understand something which, I believe, Obama/Kerry understands as well.  This did not need big pushes.  It needed a few small nudges.  You can call it isolationism when their inactions are having a negative effect on US/allied influence in the world but that is simply not the case here.  This has worked.  Anyone who thinks that a government can watch its currency lose 25% of its value almost overnight, for factors directly tied to its actions, and not have to re-assess its strategy is living in even more of a fantasy world than Vladamir Putin.