Political Science

First all the people who write on the op-ed page and yack on TV were experts on immigration policy. Then they suddenly became experts on infectious disease epidemiology, and now they're all experts on war strategy. It's amazing. This happens instantly, they don't even need to go back to school.

Anyhow, I'm not a real doctor, I'm a doctor of philosophy, but to gain the letters after my name I had to pass qualifying examinations in political science. Back then, however, we did not pay a lot of attention to dictatorial or totalitarian regimes, partly because at the time the Soviet Union was collapsing and China appeared to be liberalizing, so it didn't seem so urgent; and also because the program was mostly about domestic U.S. policy anyway. (Although the Heller School does now offer global studies.) 

So I have to admit I expected Uncle Vlad to be deposed  or at least sidelined after the horrific debacle of the Ukraine invasion. I didn't realize how far the totalitarian process had gone in Russia. He's been working over the years to become coup proof. When the so-called oligarchs started denouncing the invasion, people thought that would cause Putin's demise or at least make him change course, but in fact they aren't oligarchs at all. They're guys who got rich looting the assets of the Soviet Union but he has detached them from political power. Any who dissent have their assets confiscated and they end up in jail or dead. Many of them fled the country long ago.

He's similarly made himself coup-proof with the military. That's actually an important reason why the Russian military is so ineffectual. All the high ranking officers are shadowed by what were called commissars in Soviet days, party functionaries who monitor their loyalty. They aren't allowed to communicate with each other privately. Lower ranking officers can't make decisions, they can only channel orders from above, and there are no noncoms at all. 

This means organizing a coup, or even a more localized mutiny, is very difficult. (The situation is bad enough that mutinies are happening, but they haven't been very consequential yet.) This means that Russian forces can't react flexibly to conditions on the ground, and their actions are poorly coordinated. Nevertheless, despite their failures they can't adapt, and they can't rise up against the regime either. 

I have what I hope is more sophisticated insight into our own very unpleasant situation here in the U.S., which I'll get to next.