My Analysis of Putin’s Speech, Part V

Remember how well Putin’s speech started? He actually found the courage to talk about the collapse of the current state model and the profound changes the contemporary state is undergoing. Such a great introduction that was but it was only a huge red herring. All Putin wanted was to engage in his favorite game of US-bashing. And he doesn’t stop at blaming the expiration of the nation-state on. . . the United States!

Let’s ask ourselves, how comfortable are we with this, how safe are we, how happy living in this world, and how fair and rational has it become? Maybe, we have no real reasons to worry, argue and ask awkward questions? Maybe the United States’ exceptional position and the way they are carrying out their leadership really is a blessing for us all, and their meddling in events all around the world is bringing peace, prosperity, progress, growth and democracy, and we should maybe just relax and enjoy it all?

Let me say that this is not the case, absolutely not the case.

Putin is lucky in that he has somebody to blame for the developments of modern history. It’s very easy to choose a bugbear (or, in psychoanalytic terms, a shadow) and blame everything that goes wrong anywhere on the planet on that single evil figure. 

A unilateral diktat and imposing one’s own models produces the opposite result.

Let’s remember that “one’s own models” in Putin-speak refers specifically to representational democracy and individual rights. He is saying that they are not what everybody needs and it is unfair of Americans to push these values onto the people who have no interest in them.