From Shock Therapy to Putin's War
Although Vladimir Putin alone is responsible for the war in Ukraine, it is worth remembering that prominent Westerners played a key role in shaping Russia's post-Soviet trajectory. They insisted that market reforms must take priority over political reforms, and we are still living with that choice.
Katharina PIston Project Syndicate 28 February 2022
How 'shock therapy' created Russian oligarchs and paved the path for Putin
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"We are on a path of escalation to nuclear war, nothing less" - Jeffrey D. Sachs
What Caused the Ukraine War?
World War I occurred over a century ago, yet historians still write books debating what caused it. Did it start because a Serbian terrorist assassinated an Austrian archduke in 1914, or did it have more to do with ascendant German power challenging Britain, or rising nationalism throughout Europe?
The answer is “all of the above, plus more.” But war was not inevitable until it actually broke out in August 1914; and even then, it was not inevitable that four years of carnage had to follow.
As historian Christopher Clark notes in his book about the origins of WWI, The Sleepwalkers, in 1914, “the future was still open – just.” Poor policy choices were a crucial cause of the catastrophe.
NATO’s decision at its 2008 summit in Bucharest to include Ukraine (and Georgia) as potential future members simply confirmed Putin’s worst expectations about the West.
Moreover, after seven decades of central planning, a sudden transformation into a flourishing market economy was impossible. Efforts to force through such rapid changes could not fail to produce enormous disruptions, corruption, and extreme inequality
Unable to cope with the political fallout of deteriorating economic conditions, Yeltsin, then in declining health, turned to Putin, the unknown ex-KGB agent, to help him restore order.
Joseph S. Nye Jr ProjectSyndicate 4 October 2022
Joseph S. Nye, Jr. is a professor at Harvard University and author of Do Morals Matter? Presidents and Foreign Policy from FDR to Trump (Oxford University Press, 2019).
The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914
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