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US Missile Shield: Technology & Psychology · 25 February 2008

Australia’s Foreign Minister, Stephen Smith, says that missile defence technology has evolved and that the Government was now giving “careful consideration” to participating in US missile shield arrangements.

Yes Stephen, technology does evolve, but psychology changes little! And, military technology is not as benign as Santa Claus.

While the US claims missile defence is nothing but a shield, many other countries will see it as little more than a device to protect the US while it swings its sword where it wants. And the experiences of General Caulaincourt, Reich Marshal Goering, and ex-general Colin Powell, suggest that they have a point.

In 1812, General Caulaincourt, who had been French Ambassador to Moscow and had experience of the Russian winter, had a five hour conversation with Napoleon Bonaparte trying to persuade him not to invade Russia; many years later Hermann Goering had a conversation of similar length on the same issue with Hitler; and, according to Colin Powell, as Secretary of State he spent two and a half hours with the George W. Bush trying to persuade him not to invade Iraq: I tried to avoid this war. I took him through the consequences of going into an Arab country and becoming the occupiers.

Leaders and countries sometimes do very stupid things when they feel that they have enough power to get away with it. Russia, no-more than any other country, cannot afford to assume that other countries will not abuse their power and there are many ways of doing this other than an outright invasion.

In mid-2007 I was in a park in Pushkin on the outskirts of St. Petersburg when a 10-year old girl pointed out to me that this is where the Germans were beaten (in World War 2). Several days later, in the evening, I hailed down a private car to take me to Pushkin. The driver, a lawyer looking for a little extra money by acting as a taxi for me, made the same point about the Germans.

Like most people in almost all countries, most Russians see things from their position and can find it difficult to see things from the other side. In a recent survey, more than 60 percent of young Russians said they sympathize with Putin’s calling the collapse of the Soviet Union the twentieth century’s greatest geopolitical catastrophe. Another survey has found that just 10 percent of young Russians think Russia should apologize for the Baltic occupation, and Estonia’s recent removal of a Red Army war memorial from its capital led to genuine anger in Russian.

Sometimes nationalism is no more than a political card in recognition that the majority of people in almost any country (including Australia) are emotionally, and stupidly, vulnerable to this but there can also be legitimate issues. This is where US foreign policy is so important.

The inability of the present American and Australian leadership to understand the nuanced feelings of people in other countries is the greatest friend that anti-democrats and rampant xenophobic nationalists in those countries have.

In 1812, General Caulaincourt tried to get Napoleon to see the view from the other side when Napoleon complained that Europe could not see that Russia was the real enemy: As a matter of fact, it is Your Majesty who is the cause of everyone’s anxiety and prevents them from seeing other dangers. The governments are afraid there is going to be a World State.

Perhaps Putin has read Caulaincourt, or perhaps he is just reacting like the Europe that Napoleon was complaining about. At the Munich security conference in 2007, Putin said the US has overstepped its borders in all spheres and has imposed itself on other states. This is a world of one master, one sovereign, he said.

The US has for some time being acting in a way that provides considerable justification for Russian fears (the invasion of Iraq being the most notable example). And, like Napoleon’s Europe, Russia will react in some way.

First Deputy Prime Minister Ivanov has, for example, suggested that Russia will retaliate to the placing of missile defense facilities in Poland by putting missiles in Kaliningrad. Russian defence analyst Pavel Felgenhauer described Ivanov’s comments about Kaliningrad as an “empty threat” on the basis that Russia had no missiles with the right range to be fired from Kaliningrad and hit the proposed interceptors in Poland.

Felgenhauer misses the point. Arms races, which Ivanov is suggesting in a limited sense, are drawn out and unpredictable affairs. The lead up to WWI was a long time in coming, but was nourished by mutual suspicion and an arms race. Sarajevo was only a spark. This is not to suggest another war, but Russia (and not Russia alone) will react to US moves and that its reaction, supported by public opinion, will be to stymie US power in any way it can.

I made a presenation (listed on the left-hand side, “US Missile Defence”) to the Australian Institute of International Affairs (Sydney Branch) at the beginning of Putin’s time in power.

Putin, Gillard, Medvedev, Abbott · 19 November 2012

My internet site www.russianeconomicreform.ru has an implied theme that Russian economic policy makers could learn much from the approach of Australia over the last few decades.

While historical factors and in-place institutional arrangements place substantial limits on what leaders as ultimate economic policy makers can influence and control, their own personal psychological make-ups will influence their chosen policies and implementation.

This article briefly summarizes the personalities (psychological make-ups) of the two most important political figures in Australia and Russia, and the implications of these for the most crucial economic issues facing these two countries. In the case of Australia, I take the most crucial issue to be dealing with the rising economic and political power of Asia (in particular non-NE Asia). In the case of Russia, I take this to be dealing with internal economic reform and the wishes of the middle classes for political power.

In essence, my view is that at an intellectual and psychological level Russia presently has superior leaders to Australia. (I have written a number of articles (blogs) on each of the individuals, which can be accessed on this site)

Intellectually and in terms of a balanced personality, Dimitry Medvedev (despite his short physical stature) stands head and shoulders above Vladimir Putin, Julia Gillard and Tony Abbott. He does not appear to have any personal basic pathological (read abnormal or diseased psychology) issues. He is very open to new ideas and experiences even if this enthusiasm includes a touch of naivety, and he has displayed excessive loyalty to Putin.

Vladimir Putin also does not have significant basic pathological issues—- his main problem is that too much time in power has begun to warp his thinking, and he now regards himself as much more indispensable than he really is. However, his basic psychological make-up (judging by his career and the way he has conducted himself while in public office) seems to have been defensive rather than a need to project himself to high office or deeds of greatness in order to prove that he is a worthy person. While intelligent, Putin is not as intelligent as Medvedev.

Gillard has a great need for personal achievement there is a pathological issue at play. Gillard lacks any sort of talent for originality or vision. For her, achievement is signified by power; only in this way can she prove to herself and others that she is a worthy person. Intellectually, she is several notches below Putin. However, like him, she is very self-disciplined in fact, even more so!

Abbott is intellectually superior to Gillard, but he lacks her enormous self-discipline when it comes to focus on issues. However, Abbott is no match for Medvedev in either intellectual terms or openness to ideas and new directions. He seems constrained by a personal system of beliefs (feelings) which will all too easily override rationality. Intellectually, he may in theory be the equal of Putin but Putin would always win a contest of the mind because of his self-discipline.

Overall, intellectual and in terms of psychological balance, Medvedev comes out on top while Gillard occupies the lowest level. In terms of overall capability, Russia presently has superior leaders to Australia.

Comparing Russia and Australia in these terms, one might be tempted to conclude that a semi-authoritarian political system is better for Russia than the likes of Gillard and Abbott. However, in Australian history the low-standard Abbott/Gillard act is probably a depressing aberration.

In terms of the implications for crucial economic policy issues the rising economic and political power of Asia for Australia and internal economic and political reform for Russian the signs are not particularly good.

Putin, Gillard and Abbott fear change.

While Putin has a need for control, his main fears basically derive for the chaos of the Yeltsin years. His view of internal Russian affairs suffers from this. However, he has a reasonably sophisticated world view.

Gillard’s fears have a more personal psychological aspect as do Abbott’s. Both are astonishingly ignorant people once they step outside the familiar areas of domestic politics and the Anglo-sphere. An example is the simplistic way in which they both talk about learning foreign languages (neither Putin nor Medvedev, who have put in the effort to learn a language or two, would be so clueless).

Neither Gillard nor Abbott has the desirable combination of intelligence, curiosity or emotional flexibility to handle the rise of Asia to the best advantage of Australia.

Putin has also become a negative factor for Russia. He understands the details of many issues, but his inflexibility and need for control will grow over time — and, even worse, will be accompanied by a decreased capacity/desire to work hard on details.

Medvedev is the most willing of all to consider and embrace change. With its better institutional environment, Australia would probably perform wonders if he was one on its leaders.

Putin’s dangerous reading! · 6 November 2011

Anatoly Sobchak, the reformist mayor of Saint Petersburg with whom Vladimir Putin worked after he left the KGB in 1990, once suggested that Putin might be Russia’s Napoleon Bonaparte. And, in a sense Sobchak was right, and much of what I foresaw in a March 2000 article has occurred (see “Putin in 2000” in left-hand column)

Now, in order to justify his impending return to the presidency, Putin has invoked the cases of Franklin D. Roosevelt, Charles De Gaulle and Helmut Kohl as men who held power for a long time and who have been treated quite well by history in contrast to Russia’s own Leonid Brezhnev.

Dmitry Peskov, his press secretary has said: Putin reads all the time, mostly about the history of Russia. He reads memoirs, the memoirs of Russian historical state figures.

This is dangerous reading!

Contrary to what Peskov and Putin undoubtedly think, such reading concentrated on Russian historical state figures adds to the evidence that Putin will increasingly become a negative influence on the development of Russia.

The reading selection is very narrow and unbalanced, particularly for someone who has little experience of a more liberal democracy, and will work to reinforce rather than moderate Putin’s natural psychological instincts. Putin will increasingly see Russia in terms of his own desires and needs, rather than the real desires and needs of Russia. He will unconsciously distort his views of the latter so that they fit in with the former.

Josef Stalin said to Sergo Beria: If you want to know the people around you, find out what they read. But we can also get a sense of Stalin from his own reading: he wrote in the margin of a biography of Ivan the Terrible: teacher teacher.

Mao Zedong, like Stalin, read a lot of pre-communist history for guidance. Li Zhisui, Mao’s doctor, wrote that Mao turned to the past for instruction on how to rule: Immersed as he was in Chinese history, and thus in the power struggles and political intrigues that were part of every court, Mao expected political intrigue within his own imperial court, and he played the same games himself. Even if aspirants to power told Mao the objective truth, he could not accept it because he saw conspiracies everywhere.

The reading of Stalin and Mao distorted their thinking. While I am not equating Putin with Stalin or Mao, Putin’s concentrated reading about Russian historical state figures suggests that he is beginning to see himself as such an historical figure.

Napoleon, Stalin and Mao during their times in power increasingly saw themselves as indispensible to their countries. And, in all cases the consequences of this were negative; although the negatives were greater in some cases than in others.

In 1812 Napoleon told General Caulaincourt that he was the only man alive who knows the French thoroughly, as well as the needs of the peoples and of European society. France needs me for another ten years. If I were to die there would be general chaos. Caulaincourt noted, that as far as any opposition in France to his policies was concerned, Napoleon paid little attention to it and attributed it in general to narrow views, and to the fact that few people were capable of grasping his great projects in their entirety.

In 1952, Stalin expressed his self-belief to the Communist Party’s Central Committee when ordering further investigations of Soviet citizens: Here, look at you blind men, kittens, you don’t see the enemy; what will you do without me? the country will perish because you are not able to recognise the enemy.

Mao was no different. His long-time chief body-guard, Wang Dongxing, noted that Mao considers no one in the whole of the Communist party indispensable to the party except himself. Dr Li wrote that Mao had an almost mystical faith in the role of the leader. He never doubted that his leadership, and only his leadership, would save and transform China.

The attitudes of Napoleon, Stalin and Mao were influenced by their success. In the words of Louis de Bourreinne who was Napoleon’s friend and first secretary: Intoxication which is occasioned by success produces in the heads of the ambitious a sort of cerebral congestion.

Of course, Napoleon, Stalin and Mao are not the only dictatorial personalities in history, and some have left a more positive long-term legacy.

One example of the latter is Kemal Ataturk of Turkey. In 1938, with tensions rising in Europe, the dying Ataturk said: If this second world war catches me when I’m still in bed, who knows what will become of the nation. It is I who must return to be in a position to take charge of government affairs.

Like Napoleon, Stalin and Mao, Ataturk saw himself as indispensible—and in a very positive light. In 1937, Ataturk explained his position in these terms: Man, as an individual, is condemned to death. To work, not for oneself but for those who will come after, is the first condition of happiness that any individual can reach in life. Each person has his own preferences. Some people like gardening and growing flowers. Others prefer to train men. Does the man who grows flowers expect anything from them? He who trains men ought to work like a man who grows flowers.

So, why did Ataturk have a more long-lived positive influence than the others? There are a number of reasons related to the circumstances of the time and their own personalities, but Ataturk was not obsessed as Mao and Stalin with reading about the influence of individual historical figures, and he was not obsessed as Napoleon in boosting the international power of his own country. Rather, he looked at Turkey with a much greater eye on the future than on the past. Singapore’s Lee Kuan Yew who is also reportedly admired by Putin was similar.

According to a 1 November Reuters article, Peskov said Putin had a keen interest in Tsarist Prime Minister Pyotr Stolypin and Russian Orthodox philosopher Ivan Ilyin, who said Russia should plot an independent course between dictatorship and democracy. Putin has made no secret of his respect for Stolypin, who crushed dissent but also introduced land reform as prime minister from 1906 to 1911 under Czar Nicholas II. Putin said in July that a statue of Stolypin should be placed outside the Russian government’s headquarters in Moscow.

A true patriot and a wise politician, he understood that both radicalism of all sorts as well as stagnation, a lack of reforms, were equally dangerous for the country, Putin said of Stolypin.

In justifying rejection of radicalism Putin has the personal experience of the 1990s, but this along with his own personality has made him too fearful of change. Reading history is an excellent way of understanding the nature of people and their actions and reactions, but that understanding then has to be applied in a contemporary context with an eye to the future and not used to justify existing notions.

Putin would be well advised to read more widely; he has already read enough Russian history!

Imaging the Putin Personality Cult · 25 December 2009

On Friday 18 December, according to the Moscow Times, Vladimir Putin entered the hall of St. Petersburg’s School of Sport Mastery dressed in a white judogi and black belt, to applause from the assembled squad. After bowing, he went onto the mats, throwing squad members half his age and even tackling the chief trainer, Olympic gold medalist Ezio Gamba. Then, over tea and cakes, Putin made the suggestion. If you need direct help, you can include me in the team, he told the trainer, an Italian who won gold at the 1980 Moscow Olympics. Officials praised Putin’s technique in the Japanese martial art and dismissed any hint that he may have been allowed to win. He has the psychology of a winner, the psychology of the victorious, said Georgy Kukoverov, the school’s chief.

Reading this evoked thoughts of 1939, when foreign correspondents were invited to watch Benito Mussolini engage in various sporting activities, including horse-riding, fencing and tennis. An American onlooker commented:

The dictator, garbed in a beige polo shirt and shorts which revealed the scar of the wound he had received in the thigh during World War I, was playing doubles. He was serving underarm like a novice, and he violated every tennis rule and tradition by walking at least two steps beyond the base line to serve. Even so, the two athletes who were playing against him Rome’s leading professional tennis player, and a member of Italy’s national soccer team had difficulty in returning soap bubble his serves. Whenever the ball was returned, it floated slowly up so that a lame man with a broken arm could have hit it. Il Duce lobbed, smashed, and smiled, pleased with his triumph.

Mussolini, of course, won the game!

Putin is, no doubt, better at judo than Mussolini at tennis, but the central idea of promoting the leader as a winner in physical contests is the same. And visual image is the best way to do this. After all, seeing is believing!

Kemal Ataturk believed in looking the part, telling an early colleague that it was a fool’s belief that people like their leaders only with ideals. They want them dressed in the pomp of power and invested with the insignia of their office. His military uniforms, including that of Field Marshal, were used as an important prop early in his career.

The writer, Emil Ludwig was with a group of journalists in a hotel foyer in 1931 when they saw an example of Hitler’s image management:

Clad in a brand new overcoat, he was ambling lazily down the wide staircase, playing with the metal rod attached to the hotel keys to make guests remember to hand them over to the porter before leaving. He was whirling the key round the rod, to his own great amusement. Suddenly, about 20 paces off, he became aware of our group. That very second he dropped his hand to his side, stiffened his arms and legs, put on an expression of gloom, and, for our benefit, was transformed into Napoleon. Moved to the depths of his own schemes, he strode slowly past us.

In 1956, against the advice of colleagues, Mao Zedong swam in the Yangtze River, and his later conversation with Zhu Zhongli made it clear that he understood the importance of looking the part not only for the audience, but for the boost it gives leader himself!

Mao: People should not like to show off. I swam for too long! I felt utterly exhausted, but I wanted to show off, so I kept going. If it hadn’t been for Ye Zilong (one of Mao’s lieutenants) making me get back on the ship, I would have died.

Zhu: I don’t believe that. You swim very well.

Mao: You don’t believe and the audience on the banks of the river didn’t believe either. I understood the illusion therefore the more I swam, the more I was encouraged.

Yet there are subtleties and dangers in such image games!

The image needs to suit the audience and some audiences are not as easily impressed by the image of raw physical power, determination and vigor. Nuance is sometimes required to make the raw power aspect seem less threatening and thus more attractive! Such nuancing seemed to work well with the mind and emotions of Albert Speer.

Speer was surprised at the appearance of Hitler when he saw him for the first time in January 1931 as he addressed students of Berlin University and the Institute of Technology: On posters and in caricatures I had seen him in military tunic, with shoulder straps, swastika armband, and hair flapping. But here he was wearing a well-fitted blue suit and looking markedly respectable. Everything about him bore out the note of reasonable modesty.

With this particular audience, Hitler knew that a military uniform would evoke more negative than positive reactions. He thus acted to reduce any sense of threat to the audience themselves.

The next time Speer saw Hitler, the audience and the clothes were different. Now he presented the image of a purposeful winner. I saw Hitler reproving one of his companions because the cars had not yet arrived. He paced back and forth angrily, slashing at the tops of his high boots with a dog whip and giving the general impression of a cross, uncontrolled man who treats his associates contemptuously. This Hitler was very different from the man of calm and civilised manner who had so impressed me at the student meeting. I was seeing an example of Hitler’s remarkable duplicity indeed, multiplicity would be a better word. With enormous histrionic intuition he could shape his behavior to changing situations in public.

So, image making is a complex and sometimes dangerous process.

Mao put himself in danger, but there is also the issue of blowback. The Yugoslavian politician, Milovan Djilas, who had close dealings with Stalin and his lieutenants from 1944, observed:

The deification of Stalin, or the cult of the personality, as it is now called, was at least as much the work of Stalin’s circle and the bureaucracy, who required such a leader, as it was his own doing. Of course, the relationship changed. Turned into a deity, Stalin became so powerful that in time he ceased to pay attention to the changing needs and desires of those who had exalted him.

It is also possible to try to push the image too far. Mao was lucky that he did not overstep the mark swimming and make himself look silly which is absolutely one of the last things a leader should ever do. According to Hitler’s photographer, Heinrich Hoffman, he was careful what pictures he took because Hitler had a horror of appearing ridiculous. One journalist perhaps with the tennis match in mind noted that Mussolini sometimes looked like a circus performer in off hours.

This is why Putin could not risk being seen to lose to a serious opponent at judo. He has condemned the personality cult that surrounded Stalin, but he now is also part of a similar game. He, and his supporters, aim to send the message that he has the psychology of a winner, the psychology of the victorious.

So, were Putin’s judo fights fixed a la Mussolini-style? Probably! But it is also possible that his opponents were psyched-out by the thought of fighting the Russian leader.

And, this thought brings us to a conclusion about the future leadership of Russia.

My guess is that Dimitry Medvedev believes that he is the best person to be president after the 2012 presidential elections. But power is as much about the psychological need for power and, not surprisingly, Putin’s need has grown with time in power as it is about intellectual analysis. Medvedev’s visual image is very lackluster, and unless he can do something about it in early 2010 and boost his self-confidence (a la Mao) he will be psyched-out both privately and publicly by Putin.

Putin in 2000 · 23 March 2000

This article appeared in the AFR on 23 March 2000.

The post-USSR chaos in Russia was bound to throw up a leader whose instinct was more authoritarian and nationalistic than Boris Yeltsin. This leader has now arrived. His name is Vladimir Putin and he will be elected president of Russia this Sunday.

Anatoly Sobchak, the late reformist mayor of Saint Petersburg with whom Putin worked after he left the KGB in 1990, once suggested that Putin might be Russia’s Napoleon Bonaparte. Napoleon’s career received a spectacular boost in 1795 when, as a less than senior general, he dispersed a Parisian mob with, in his words, a whiff of grapeshot. It killed about 100 people, earned him the gratitude of the Convention and command of the interior army.

Putin’s rise has been as rapid as Napoleon’s and has more than a little to do with his uncompromising militaristic attitude to Chechnya. Putin is not going to lose sleep over a few thousand civilian deaths in Chechnya if they help him achieve his aims.

So what are these aims? It might well be that he will become a sort of Napoleon who, after becoming first consul in 1799, reorganized French administration under strong central control and reformed the tax and legal systems. Certainly after the 1990s, Russians and the world will welcome a more focused and disciplined leader.

The 1990’s chaos resulted from both the nature of Yeltsin, who was essentially an instinctive revolutionary rather than a thoughtful administrator or builder, and the desire of society to escape the State-enforced order of the USSR. Yeltsin and society complemented each other in their goals in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

While Yeltsin wanted to destroy communism forever and build a democratic capitalist state, neither he nor his Russian or Western economic advisers had thought enough about what really makes a modern democratic capitalist country function. Yeltsin did not understand that not only are good laws needed, but they must be effectively and impartially administered; that, wrongly handled, privatization may as easily created thieves as capitalists; and that markets, unless transparent and free, are easily cornered.

The Putin discipline will not be without downside. Domestically, liberalism as generally understood in the West will take a back seat to notions of rebuilding the State and nationalism. In 1989, Boris Yeltsin, a member of the Supreme Soviet, was leading a group seeking amendments to the USSR Constitution at the Second Congress of People’s Deputies. The dissident Yeltsin wanted to uphold the principle of diversity and explained: Unity has already inflicted a great deal of damage on our country. Unity stood for thinking exactly the same way the supreme leader thought. It is time we got rid of this stereotype. It is in the clash of opinions that the best solution develops.

The wheel has now turned almost full circle. Before Yeltsin’s resignation on New Year’s Eve, and Putin’s appointment as acting President, the Kremlin thought it necessary to create a new political party to help it gain control of the Duma (the lower house of parliament) at the December 1999 elections. The party was named Unity. It describes itself as Putin’s party and is backing him for election as president.

In 1989 Unity was a dirty word, but now both society and Putin want it. In this sense, the desires of Putin and society complement each other in much the same way as did Yeltsin and society a decade earlier. Putin will be seeking to reconstruct some of what Yeltsin sought to destroy. Whereas Yeltsin sought, in his own way, to promote diversity within society and to free the Russian regional governments from the centre, Putin will be aiming for consolidation.

Yeltsin generally tolerated the communists, but Putin will actively work with them because of their nationalism. Yeltsin offered the regions elected governors, but Putin would find it hard to knock back any opportunity to appoint them from Moscow. In one sense, Putin the leader will be more like Gorbachev than Yeltsin. Gorbachev did not like disorder. He wanted to change the political system to make it more humane and the economy more efficient, but he did not want to pull it down. Indeed, Putin may be even less inclined than Gorbachev to promote liberal change. From this point of view, Russians are probably lucky that they are giving Putin a weakened State apparatus rather than the highly centralized one that Gorbachev inherited.

Western leaders such as Britain’s Prime Minister, Tony Blair, and US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright meet Putin and are relieved to find that he can behave himself in a meeting (in this regard Putin is also more like Gorbachev than Yeltsin who was always too spontaneous for the liking of Western leaders) and seems to understand the points being made. Moreover, he has even allowed himself to make the fatuous suggestion that Russia could one day join NATO.

But the West should beware. Putin’s electoral victory will mainly be the result of an expectation that he will get things done and if that has echoes of the toughness he has shown in Chechnya, then so be it. Putin has neither the Yeltsin verve nor the capacity to inspire that could sustain his popularity through a period of inaction. Unless he brings results quickly, his popularity will fade rapidly. Once he has power in his own right he will grow to like it very much. There is enough nationalism in Russia to make it the obvious card to play. The stronger Russia becomes economically, the stronger (ironically) is likely to be its nationalism. Thereafter, Putin may be continually forced to play harder ball with the West.

Russia is not an inward-looking country. It is expansive, and the West will have to increasingly deal with this over Putin’s four-year term as he eyes the electorate for a possible second term. Putin may not be a conqueror like Napoleon, but he will miss no opportunity to boost Russian power and influence.

Putin: New Faces and Flaws in the Weave · 11 July 2010

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin recently issued reprimands to six deputy ministers for not fulfilling Dmitry Medvedev’s presidential orders in a timely fashion.

Apparently, under the Russian Labor Code, a reprimand is the lightest possible form of punishment.

Last year, only one in six presidential orders was completed on time, while for the first five months of 2010, one in five was finished, the head of the Kremlin’s control department, told Medvedev on 21 June. At that meeting, Medvedev ordered the government (headed by Putin in his position as prime minister) to give him a list of those to blame, including their punishments, “right up to termination.”

One newspaper article then carried this paragraph: The government treats the president’s orders just as seriously as any other orders, a government official said. The official suggested that people close to Medvedev could be pressing the issue because they are uncomfortable with the prime minister’s political clout.

Despite Medvedev’s comments, neither Putin nor Medvedev seem generally inclined to use the termination option as a management tool. After the disastrous Yeltsin years, both Putin and Medvedev crave stability in the Russian governmental system.

But there is also a difference. Medvedev is probably disinclined to use termination because of his intellectual nature which seems to generally focus on the good in people. Putin, however, is clearly more manipulative and inclined to use force.

Putin’s reluctance to use the termination option can be explained, at least in part, by considering how some historical strong-men have approached this issue.

There will be an element of Stalin in Putin’s approach. Sergo Beria, son of Lavrentiy and who had his own professional dealings with Stalin, wrote that above a certain level in the hierarchy of Party and State, Stalin appointed only individuals he knew personally. He sent for them from time to time and never ceased studying them. Before promoting a cadre he spent a long time analysing him. He had one unchanging rule: one can never be too suspicious.

Such analysis and study takes time, so there is a lot to be said for sticking with old faces. Louis Bourreinne, Napoleon’s first secretary, wrote that Napoleon had an extreme aversion for mediocrity, and generally rejected a man of that character when recommended to him; but if he had known such a man long, he yielded to the influence of habit, dreading nothing so much as change, or, as he was accustomed to say himself, new faces. Napoleon’s third private secretary, Fain, confirmed that Napoleon had a horror of change, feared new faces, and held single-mindedly to conserving all the men who were formed under his shadow.

All this sounds like Putin who had a solid eight years as president beginning in 2000 to choose who would progress under his shadow and those who have so progressed generally seem at little risk from new faces.

At Nuremberg, Herman Goering said that Adolf Hitler found it extremely hard to get used to new faces, and that he did not like to make changes in his entourage. He preferred to continue working with men whom he did not like, rather than change them.

Albert Speer explained that Hitler was generally pleased if his lieutenants showed some flaw in the weave, and quoted one of them, Karl Hanke:

It is all to the good if associates have faults and know that the superior is aware of them. That is why the Fuhrer so seldom changes his assistants. For he finds them easiest to work with. Almost every one of then has his defect; that helps keep them in line.

In Hitler’s case, wrote Speer, immoral conduct, remote Jewish ancestors, or recent membership in the party were counted as flaws in the weave.

Mao Zedong operated on a similar principle. His doctor, Li Zhisui, wrote of Mao’s method of finding the flaw in the weave and of the control this gave him:

Repeatedly in my years with Mao I watched him win loyalty from others in the same way he had won it from me. He would begin by charming people, winning their trust, getting them to open up, to confess their faults just as I had told him about my problematic bourgeois past. Mao would then forgive them, save them, and make them feel safe. Thus redeemed, they became loyal.

Dr Li then added:

His loyalists, in turn, would become dependent on him, and the longer they depended on him, the more they had to depend on him, the more impossible life outside his circle became.

This is a very similar comment to that of Speer who wrote that all of Hitler’s lieutenants who had worked closely with him for a long time were entirely dependent and obedient.

Somewhat paradoxically, Speer also wrote that Hitler loved to see new faces, to try out new persons. The paradox would seem best explained by the combination of factors. Firstly, Hitler recognised his own hypnotic powers and ability to fascinate; so it was a bit of a game some diversion from the familiar servile faces around him and possibly a chance to overcome his loneliness at the top.

Secondly, it accorded with his tendency to divide power wherever he encountered it. Speer noted that Hitler often had two or three competitors for each important position, all of whom he directed immediately (personally). Thus, Hitler was all to ready to treat the second men in an organisation, as soon as they were presented to him, as members of his staff and to make assignments directly to them.

Hitler was an instinctive psychologist of genius in his manipulation of people. In this he differed from Stalin, Mao and even Napoleon who had a more methodical approach. Indeed, Speer wrote that Hitler seemed to have no sense of methodical deceit that is, he did not plan his moves in advance like a chess-player or a Stalin. In his approach to divide and rule Hitler was more instinctive than Stalin etc

From the point of view of manipulation and deceit, Putin is no Hitler. His psychological approach is closer to the methodical Stalin, Mao and Napoleon.

So what is the result of all this?

General Caulaincourt, a close aide to Napoleon, wrote of a positive effect of not liking new faces: The master’s well-known dislike of any change (among his entourage) gave everyone a sense of security which proved greatly to the advantage of truth.

This aversion to new faces also had another benefit in that Napoleon’s lieutenants generally had little fear of exposing their own lieutenants to Napoleon. His third secretary, Fain, wrote about the Administrative Councils: Each minister was careful to bring with him to the council the colleague who could be most useful to him. It thus helped ministers avoid the type of reaction that Speer noted, when he wrote that in order to avoid raising up … a rival in his own household, many a minister took care not to appoint an intelligent and vigorous deputy.

So, this could be one benefit of Putin’s approach; and indeed I suspect that it is.

The disadvantage is that too many incompetent (and corrupt) people remain in the highest levels of government, and this impedes the progress of Russia. Medvedev may well understand this better than Putin, and his proding on this issue may be more than simply being “uncomfortable with the prime minister’s political clout”.

The Similar Psychology of Supporters of Bush and Saddam · 18 September 2006

There was outrage last Thursday, 14 September, when the chief judge in the trial of Saddam Hussein, Abdullah al-Amiri, said to him: You were not a dictator. However, the people or the individuals and officials surrounding you created a dictator (out of you). It was not you in particular. It happens all over the world.

Touche! Napoleon, Hitler, Stalin, Ataturk, Mussolini and Mao were like Saddam Hussein highly intelligent, skillful, ruthless, possessed of enormous will-power and self-belief, and (when they wanted to be) charming men. But it was the people around them who surrendered their own independence who enabled these men to realize their ambitions for power.

There are a host of reasons while people become servile. Napoleon summed them up nicely when he said that there are two levers for moving men interest and fear. On the interest side may be included ambition for money, prestige, the power to boss other, and the sheer excitement of being part of events; and there is also love of country or tribal-group, and a desire to contribute even if the man in power is not well thought of. On the fear side, there is the potential loss of what one has: life, liberty, family, and all those interests which come with being subordinate and servile.

Yet, there is also something else and it is illustrated by a recent survey which links trust in George Bush to an individual’s concept of God. The study, American Piety in the 21st Century, released last week by the Baylor Institute for Religious Studies, showed that 32% of people who believed in a god which was highly involved in their daily lives and world affairs also trusted Bush a lot. The researchers called this type of god authoritarian.

The study also identified three other categories of god benevolent, critical and distant. The benevolent god is very active on our daily lives but less so in the affairs of the world than the authoritarian god, and less wrathful; only 23% of believers in such a god trusted Bush a lot. Only 12% of people who believed in a god that really does not interact with the world a critical god trusted Bush a lot; and the figure was only 9% for those who saw god as distant, more as a cosmic force which set the laws of nature in motion.

In short, people most anxious to believe in a highly involved god in spite of a complete lack of evidence that any sort of god exists at all also want to believe in Bush. They are very ready to surrender their own critical thinking to an authority figure, be it a god or a man. When they have to think, they as the researchers note believe that God helps them with their-decision making. It is God at the controls! Albert Speer explained the phenomenon, and his support for Hitler, this way: My inclination (was) to be relieved of having to think, particularly about unpleasant facts In this I did not differ from millions of others.

There is an almost willful blindness to reality in this attitude which leads to extreme gullibility. In spite of a complete lack of evidence once again 54% of those who believed in an authoritarian god also believed that Saddam Hussein was involved in the September 11 terrorist attacks. This percentage declines rapidly when people are less dependent on authority, and more willing to take responsibility for their own thinking: it is 44% for those who believe in a benevolent god; 32% for a critical god; and 24% for a distant god.

Those people who strongly desire to believe in someone and hand-over their critical thinking to another be it god or man, or both are ripe pickings for aspiring dictators who market themselves as the Man. Angling to rise from First Consul to Emperor, Napoleon put out a pamphlet comparing himself to Caesar and Cromwell, who in classical times would have been considered as living under the protection of a genie, or a god. Hans Frank described what he thought was the secret of Hitler’s power: He stood up and pounded his fist, and shouted, I am the Man! and he shouted about his strength and determination and so the public surrendered to him with hysterical enthusiasm. George Bush would love to get the same response; and, in some quarters, he does.

People are generally fearful, gullible, and ever-willing to believe in a savior. It is ironic, and even terrifying (for a rational mind, perhaps even more terrifying than terrorists) to think that psychologically at least Bush’s strongest supporters are also those who may have most favorably looked upon Saddam Hussein.

Dangerous Psychology of Secret Courts / Military Tribunals · 4 September 2006

Psychologist and ex-army officer, Norman F. Dixon, in his book, On the Psychology of Military Incompetence, wrote about the staggering irrationality which can beset the thinking of otherwise highly competent, intelligent, conscientious individuals when they begin to act as group. The Penguin Dictionary of Psychology notes that the group-think tendency has been suggested as one of the prime reasons why politicians operating in closed groups so often make disastrous decisions.

The symptoms of group-think include: collective attempts to ignore or rationalize away items of information which might otherwise lead the group to reconsider shaky but cherished assumptions; an unquestioned belief in the group’s inherent morality, thus enabling members to overlook the ethical consequences of their decision; stereotyping people outside the group as less worthy in some ways; shared illusion of unanimity in a majority viewpoint, augmented by the false assumption that silence means consent; self-appointed mind-guards to protect the group from adverse information that might shatter complacency about the effectiveness and morality of their decisions.

Dixon notes that homogeneity of the group in such areas as education, experience will tend to increase the chances of group-think. He notes that this will particularly be the case with military officers. He also notes that it is a feature of armed services that the penalty for error is very much more substantial than the reward for success. The net result of this bias toward negative reinforcement will be that fear of failure rather than hope of success tends to be the dominant motive in decision-making. Such fear increases the tendency for group-think, particularly as the militarist is relatively prejudiced and authoritarian person socially conformist security-seeking, prestige-orientated anti-intellectual, … Dixon adds that they are lacking in complexity of thinking, independence, and relatively high in anxiety.

Dixon notes the connection between the conservatism syndrome and a liking for militarism. In Political Conservatism as Motivated Social Cognition, Jost, Glaser etc. note that conservatives perceive the world as generally threatening. High profile terrorist attacks such as those on September 11, 2001, might simultaneously increase the cognitive accessibility of death and the appeal of political conservatism. In turn, mortality salience leads people to defend culturally valued norms and practices to a stronger degree and to distance themselves from, and even to derogate, out-group members to a greater extent And, in turn, mortality salience has also been shown to evoke greater punitiveness, and even aggression, toward those who violate cultural values.

This combination of the general tendency to group-think and of military minds will make it very difficult for a military court/tribunal such as at Guantanamo Bay to objectively evaluate information and make balanced decisions. Secrecy will make it almost impossible.

But what about secret civilian courts, or civilian courts where important evidence is heard in secret?

Almost by definition there is little in the way of public information about the operation of secret civilian courts. However, the operation of open criminal courts provides examples of how lack of public scrutiny can lead to distorted results. There is the case of a prominent former Australian judge who pleaded not guilty to a driving offence on the grounds that someone else was driving his car. The Court accepted his defense. It was only through the efforts of a journalist that it subsequently emerged that the supposed driver was actually dead at the time. If the former judge’s evidence had been given in secret court, or as secret evidence, the lie would have stood.

And, how much easier it must have been for the magistrate (judge) hearing this traffic case to accept the excuse of the former judge precisely because he was a former judge the magistrate would not only have not suspected, but would have psychologically resisted the idea, that someone in his identification group would lie to a court.

The same is true for in-house court experts. The Australian Family Court is effectively a semi-secret court because legal restrictions on identifying people before it mean that there is no media interest in reporting any of its proceedings; something that the Court finds very useful in allowing it to engage in its own group-think. The Court employs so-called counselors/mediators to make assessment of the psychological situation of families. Once a family assessment has been made and presented to the court, it will be very difficult for a judge to take a significantly different view. Indeed, the judge may feel that he must act to exclude contrary evidence; and he may frame his reasons for judgment in terms that ensure appeal court judges will be biased toward the biased conclusion that he has reached a conclusion that is not so much his, as that of the counselor/mediator!

Like the Family Court, military tribunals will receive evidence from in-house experts (in this case, in-house will mean military / security people who are effectively part of the military identification group) and this evidence in unlikely to be subjected to a great deal of scrutiny.

As with military courts, the Family Court judge’s group-think will be promoted by feelings of the groups inherent morality and superiority to others. (This site has an account of a Family Court case in which these characteristics of group-think were on ample display—see article “Which Judge? Deceit dressed as profound policy!”)

Thus anyone before a secret court or military tribunal runs the risk of suffering the same fate as Japan’s General Yamashita. According to a 2004 CRS Report to Congress, Military Tribunals: Historical Patterns and Lessons, Yamashita was charged as a war criminal in 1945 with neglect of duty in controlling his troops. According to the CRS Report, none of the charges established a direct link between Yamashita and the underlying criminal acts. Nevertheless, Yamashita was found guilty as charged.

According to the CRS report, twelve international correspondents covering the trial voted 12 to zero that Yamashita should have been acquitted. Frank Reel, a (US army officer and lawyer) member of the defence team, concluded that Yamashita was not hanged because he was in command of troops who committed atrocities. He was hanged because he was in command of troops who committed atrocities ON THE LOSING SIDE.

If a public military tribunal can convict a man without evidence, just imagine what a secret military tribunal can do!

Psychologies of Putin and USA · 14 August 2012

Vladimir Putin as an individual and the USA as a country have a lot in common although they would both hate the comparison. Both Putin and the US are very fearful of the changing world around them. They do not fully understand it and have the same basic and all too human —reaction to the feeling that they are facing reduced ability to influence, if not control, events.

In this sense, countries are like individuals when it comes to power; it is addictive and no individual or country wants to give it up or see it reduced.

Putin and the USA see themselves as bulwarks against anarchy and injustice in Russia and the World; and to a certain degree both are right. For several years after his election as president of Russia in 2000 Putin was on balance an anchor of stability for Russia, and for much of the post-Second World War period the US was again, on balance the mainstay of a more stable and better world.

These achievements, and the resulting accolades of others, have contributed to both Putin and the USA feeling indispensible for the future well-being of, respectively, Russia and the World.

Time is also a factor here. The longer an individual or a country has power, the harder it is to cede.

The second chapter of my book, Dictatorial CEOs & their Lieutenants – Inside the Executive Suites of Napoleon, Stalin, Ataturk, Mussolini, Hitler and Mao, is entitled The Power Personality and has sections on self-belief, passion and focus, and will-power. I think that these categories can be used to examine countries as well as individuals.

Vladimir Frolov, a former Russian Government insider and now head of a PR company, recently wrote in a Moscow Times article that Putin is quite sincere when he emphasizes the importance of continuity of government as a prerequisite for development and sees his job swap with Dmitry Medvedev as an efficient way of combining change with continuity:

He honestly thinks he is acting in the nation’s best interests and that nobody else has a better plan. Maintaining the continuity of his rule is the best long-term strategy for Russia. A change of regime means upheaval and would be bad for the country. Therefore, those who advocate a Russia without Putin are Russia’s enemies, and their coming to power should be prevented.

An article by Condoleezza Rice, published in the Financial Times on July 26, 2012, seems to nicely summarize the basic US attitude. She wrote that:

American pre-eminence safeguards rather than impedes global progress. The US is not just any other country: we are exceptional in the clarity of our conviction. and in our willingness to act on those beliefs. Failure to do so would leave a vacuum, likely filled by those who will not champion a balance of power that favours freedom. That would be a tragedy for American interests and values and those who share them.

In many ways, there is little difference in the basic attitudes of Putin and the US.

No matter how much Putin and the US may wish for a better Russia and a better World, their fears are blinding them to the obvious: that their self-belief and intransigence is likely to eventually promote, rather than reduce, what they most fear. That is uncertainty and instability!

Unless pushed into an absolute corner, neither Russia’s domestic protesters nor country regimes, such as China, are interested in a death struggle with Putin or the USA. Both are trying to achieve recognition of what, they believe, are their legitimate aspirations which have been boosted by their economic success. And, this means greater control over their own lives and environment.

The new claimants for political power in Russia and the World are not totally united, and in some cases are even fearful of each other. This opens the possibility for both Putin and the US to engage in certain divide and rule tactics.

Both there are other reasons for much of the support that Putin and the US still enjoy.

In my book, I divided the reason that a lieutenant serves a dictator (or a very powerful leader of any sort) into the following categories: lieutenant’s respect, admiration and attribution for the leader; the leader makes lieutenant feel personally needed; the leader shows loyalty to lieutenant; the lieutenant is nothing without the dictatorial leader; love of the country, the company, or the organization; and excitement, ambition, money, prestige, power to boss others.

Anyone with experience in organizational life should easily see how these reasons might cause many people around Putin to support him. Of course, in reality, no one reason accounts for why one individual will support Putin; there will be some sort of mixture.

However, it may be less obvious how these categories can be applied in international relations and/or in the case of the relationship between the US and other countries.

But consider the following:

Lieutenant’s respect, admiration and attribution for the leader. The US certainly garners are lot of support for its many admirable attributes, ideas, and actions both historical and present-day. But, there is also often attribution of positive qualities to the US that exist only in the mind of admirers;

The leader makes lieutenant feel personally needed. Hints by US leaders of special relationships and various (although ultimately self-serving) signs of a willingness to consult is something that the US seems particularly good at;

The leader shows loyalty to lieutenant. The most stark example of this is probably the willingness of the US to support unsavory governments if it feels that these governments will support US interests;

The lieutenant is nothing without the dictatorial leader. The UK seems to be an example of this. As a country it is under almost no conceivable threat, but clings to its so-called special relationship with the US to try to contain the continual slide in its own international influence;

Love of the country, the company, or the organization. In international relations terms, such sentiments are probably best thought of in terms of a feeling of being part of “something bigger”, and that the welfare of this something is promoted by cooperating with its most powerful individual element. While any organization or country cannot function without some explicit or implicit concept of cooperation, people who fear change often become excessively attached to (in love with) the organization, country, or World as it is (or as they think it is);

Excitement, ambition, money, prestige, power to boss others. There can be no doubt that many non-US leaders are attracted by the excitement and prestige of personal meetings with high-ranking US officials. In their own countries this helps to further their ambitions and maintain power to boss others. As far as money is concerned, the US can be quite generous to those countries which offer it support.

But, where does all this lead? Can personal and organizational psychology help understanding of relationships between countries?

It needs to be recognized that the aspirations of Russia’s domestic protesters and of other countries, such as China, cannot be eliminated. They can only be suppressed for a period of time.

But, how long is the period? And, how best to suppress? What will the end result be?

Each of the dictators covered in my book held power for a prolonged period. While many of the circumstances are different, there are commonalities. Based on my knowledge of them (and others such as Castro, Mugabe) I offer the following thoughts on Putin (who as yet, remains more authoritarian than dictatorial):

Firstly, Putin will cede power only when he feels that he has no choice, and then will try to recoup the losses. Secondly, his psychological hold over others is such that he will remain top dog for longer than non-psychological factors would suggest. Thirdly, once that psychological hold is sufficiently disrupted, change can come quite quickly—and possibly violently. Fourthly, Putin can best prolong his power, and avoid the use of reactive force by others, by eschewing overreach and excessive abuse of power.

I suggest that the same thoughts could apply to the US when dealing with the changing world.

Peter FitzSimmons, George Pell, bias and group think. · 3 March 2019

Peter FitzSimons has written that it is an undeniable fact that Pell is guilty (Doubter’s outcry over Pell verdict disrespectful to jury, legal system, Sydney Morning Herald). He adds that to the rest of the community, it is extraordinarily disrespectful to the jury members who, after weighting all the evidence, listening to all the testimony, came to the conclusion that he was guilty. He then quotes Judge Kidd in support of the jury decision: He did it. He engaged is some shocking conduct against two boys. I’m not making guesses about what else he might have done as King of the Castle.

Perhaps because I presently live in Russia and have read a lot of Russian history, I find the secrecy attached to this trial very unnerving. Secret evidence in trials is, deservedly, criticized in other countries, but seems to be acceptable in the Pell case.

There are several other points worth noting. If it was in a Russian court, there would be much criticism of a judge speaking as Kidd did when he strongly implied that Pell has committed other crimes as King of the Castle without giving any evidence. It would smack of a political show trial.

There is also the question of group think. We know nothing about the composition of the jury, their possible prejudices or level of intelligence. But it is easy to imagine that several conditions existed for group think. These include insulation of the jury group, belief in their inherent morality vis–vis Pell (and possibly the Catholic Church more generally), directive leadership (which Kidd may have at least implicitly given throughout the trial and thus effectively joined the anti-Pell ingroup, before later making it explicitly clear what his views were), and probably high stress brought about by the need to come to a decision. We do not know about the cohesiveness of the jury group nor any pressure that there may have been on dissenters.

Groups like this can become impervious to rational argument. And, it can happen in plain sight for all to see. A US Senate Intelligence Committee identified group think as one of the factors that led the Bush Administration (and many supposedly independent, but in reality ingroup, analysts) to claim that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction (and invade that country) despite all the objective evidence to the contrary. We now see some similar thinking in the Putin led Russian government’s attitudes to the US.

I have no idea whether Pell is guilty or innocent, but the words of Kidd and the possibilities for group think raise lots of suspicions.