Instead of Examining Their Own Failures, the Russian Public Officials Look for Holes in the American System
While recently everyone has come to realize that there’s something terribly wrong with the American way of doing things, the fact that things are no better at home has so far evaded most. But as the state begins to admit that it’s not all quiet on the Eastern front, a new and twisted logic emerges – the U.S. democratic system is to blame for the global financial collapse, because it is, well, too slow. But then it remains unclear why investors are pulling money out of an efficient, authoritarian Russia in favor of the U.S. mammoth.
There is a joke that bureaucratic functionaries like to tell members of the intelligentsia in a mentoring tone: an apartment gets flooded. The residents call a plumber. He takes the toilet bowl apart, and then puts it back together. He bangs on pipes and climbs under the bathtub; but the water keeps on dripping. The plumber pensively shakes his head and says: no, boss, simple renovation won’t help. You need to change the system. The bureaucracy’s moral is this: don’t get so worked up, because you’re acting like that plumber. Instead of making some normal improvements, you want to go and change the system.
But the situation changes as soon as the conversation turns to America, here, and partially in Europe as well. Both here and there the big political bosses readily condemn the American model of existence. They condemn it namely as a general model, without details or tints. With one little difference: having revealed and scorned the American terrors, our people exclaim: See, this is what America is like, look at what it dares to do! So we can do it too! We also have the right! While European leaders, having gone on and on about the shamelessness and the militarism, about the habit of impudently meddling with other people’s affairs, suddenly change their countenance and throw the last reproach at the United States: how dare you leave us alone with this Russia?!
What’s happening now? Now everyone – children, adolescents, senior citizens, and even Russia’s self-absorbed writers – realizes that something is deeply wrong with America. It is shaking and shivering; fierce convulsions run through the stock market; banks go bankrupt and insurance companies are ruined; oh, how absolutely terrible. The fact that something similar is happening here didn’t really worry anyone, up until recently. Less than one percent of the population plays on the stock market here. A large part of the population knows what stock is only from Nikolay Nosov’s brilliant children’s book, “Neznaika on the Moon,” where a character named Ponchik forestalls MMM’s Sergei Mavrodi by creating a pyramid, which does not end well. The population believed the Minister of Finance Alexey Kudrin’s soothing words: our stock market is like peaceful backwater. But we’ve confused “backwater” with “whirlpool,” and need I remind you that still waters run deep?
Now, the same people are claiming the opposite: our market is unlikely to recover fast; the ruble will stop growing stronger; and a series of technical defaults is possible in the third-echelon stock, because everyone borrowed some money, while only the most important ones get loaned up. And this is probably much closer to the truth. There is one very interesting aspect, however.
The most interesting logic was voiced during the government’s meeting session on October 1. America is responsible for the global market collapse. Why is this so? Because its system is incapable of quickly reacting to events; of taking any timely measures necessary to overcome the crisis. The system is clumsy; it doesn’t conform to reality and is, overall, doomed. Which system was being referred to? It wasn’t specified. Obviously, it wasn’t the economic one, but the system of making the chief decisions, including (but not limited to) financial ones.
In other words, if we understood the prime minister’s thinly veiled hint correctly, his “buddy George Bush” is actually a decent guy and a normal president, but his arms and legs are tied by democratic procedures that don’t allow him to act like an autocrat when the circumstances so demand. If he did not need to have the Congress approve the handing of $700 billion to the Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, so that the latter could pour a cement pillow under the collapsing foundation of the market, we might not have gotten crushed. That’s too complicated: writing a petition to the Congress. All congresses are incompliant in a pre-election year; the congressmen only care about helping “their” candidate, and they don’t care a bit about what’s happening in the world. Instead of working for the good of the country and the world, they work for the good of the party conspiracy. As a result, everything goes down the drain, including the Russian trading floor. The conclusion is: America needs to change its system. Or, if worst comes to worst, everyone else should forget about this clumsy and slow democracy. Real market liberalism calls for authoritative politics, for firm manual control. That is the secret of success in the 21st century. This is the direction Russia should really be moving in.
That’s so, but really not so. Despite all of its imperfections, the American democracy is not the cause of the crisis, and definitely not the impediment to resolving the crisis. Our “manual control” permitted to make the decision in a flash; although, to do so, it first had to bring the Russian market to the point of absolute catastrophe. It did so by the dangerous TNK-BP games, and by the Mechel jokes against the background of the general decline, and by the recognition of separatists, and by the lazy watching of the edge of the financial abyss moving closer. Without any coordination with the Duma or the Federation Council. The Russian market had to nearly destroy itself for the readjustment money to start flowing in. At that, until the very last moment there was serious discussion of the idea of directly purchasing the cheapened stock in favor of the state; economists were clutching their heads. Moreover, the main reason of our stock market crash is the flight of investment. Where were the investors in such a hurry to get to? Oh, to where Paulson and Bush coordinate their belated measures with the Congress. Where the system is good-for-nothing, because money, like mercury, rolls down a sloping surface to a place where it’ll be better off.
Despite all this, the prime minister was initially correct. Of course, the system needs to be changed. The question is – how exactly should it be changed? And certainly, the main reason behind the incipient worldwide decline is not us, not Europe, and not even China. It is the most powerful, the richest, the strongest and the sickest country of the modern world – America. Not because it is a democracy, though, but because it is a belated postmodernist empire. Belated – because the 20th century has run dry. And that’s where the residual imperial world order is coming from.
An empire – because it is doomed to keep infinitely broadening its influence, at any cost; it cannot stop, just like the late Rome couldn’t, just like the 19th-century Russia couldn’t stop at the threshold of Central Asia. If it stops expanding outward, it will just shrink and collapse. And it has long lost the inner strength necessary for its former scope of intentions; it somehow found enough for Afghanistan, Iraq is a complete flop, and Iran is still up in the air.
Postmodernist – because it is impossible to harmoniously combine an imperial impulse to go outward with an egotistic servicing of the citizenry’s everyday needs, without the ability and the right to ask them to tighten their belts. You can’t spend trillions of dollars on strategic control of the world and at the same time give out unsecured mortgage loans to make life comfortable for the people. An ordinary empire conquers colonies to suck precious juices out of the others and to use them to take care of its own people. Or at least of the elites. A postmodernist empire controls colonies just for the sake of controlling them. And it has to feed its citizens at the expense of inner resources, which are not infinite. And the acquired market outlets are not able to cover the expense.
It’s funny that we, both the authoritarians and the democrats, are having heated discussions about the American model, which is not for us to improve/worsen/keep. Our goal is not to understand America better, but to use its example for our own self-determination. What we consider our own flop and what is a success. What should we give up, and what should we stake on. Where is the leak– in our home, not at the neighbors’. And how exactly do we need to change our system.
