by Larry C. Johnson, Sonar21:
Con Coughlin’s September 30 column in the Telegraph tells readers that Vladimir Putin’s decision to raise defense spending is a “desperate gamble” that could end with Russia following the Soviet Union into economic collapse. It is a familiar story. Western commentators have been predicting Russia’s economic implosion since the first sanctions packages in 2022. What the story lacks, as it did then, is evidence.
I have just returned from my eighth visit to Russia since 2023. I have walked the streets of Moscow and St. Petersburg, eaten in their restaurants, and sat in their traffic. I saw no sign of the turmoil Coughlin describes. Restaurants and shops were full. Businesses are thriving. The highways are clogged with cars. That is not what an economy on the brink of collapse looks like.
TRUTH LIVES on at https://sgtreport.tv/
What actually brings governments down
Coughlin rests his argument on a historical analogy, so let us test it against history. Governments have been brought down by economic collapse, but the record shows that collapse alone is rarely enough. The pattern is consistent.
In February 1917, wartime inflation and bread shortages put the workers of Petrograd in the streets, and the tsar fell when the garrison refused to fire on the crowds. In 1789, a bankrupt French crown and record bread prices brought down the monarchy. Indonesia’s Suharto resigned in 1998 after the Asian financial crisis destroyed the rupiah, set off riots and led the army and his own ministers to abandon him. Argentina’s President De la Rúa fled by helicopter in 2001 after a bank freeze and default emptied people’s savings. Sri Lanka’s president fled the country in 2022 after default left the nation without fuel, food and medicine.
Every case shares three ingredients: shortages of basic goods that ordinary people can see and feel; inflation or currency collapse that wipes out the pay of soldiers, police and civil servants; and a ruling elite or army that decides the leader has become a liability. Where those ingredients are missing, regimes survive even severe economic pain. Germany’s hyperinflation of 1923 did not bring down the Weimar Republic.
Now look at Russia. There are no bread lines and no fuel queues in Moscow. The security services are paid and loyal. And there is no sign of an elite revolt; the Duma elections just concluded without incident. None of the conditions that have toppled governments in the past is present.
