For American writer Tom G. Palmer, the unfolding of the Ukrainian War has shown President Vladimir Putin, in the worst way, what happens when you become a dictator.
In this scenario, your advisors and advisors don’t want to give bad news, fearing ending up in prison or having an ill-explained accident, and without a clear understanding of the scenario, you come to believe your own propaganda and make decisions based on poor analysis.
“That becomes clear when Putin fires his closest intelligence advisers,” he says, referring to reports that there would have been a purge of the Kremlin after the war lasted longer than initially anticipated. “All [os oficiais] they were afraid to tell him what the real situation of the Russian army was and the real condition of Ukraine’s resistance.”
Until the beginning of the conflict, the politician believed that his forces would march on the neighbor very easily and, later, that the Kremlin would have enough supporters in the country to seize power. “None of this was true,” says Palmer, a doctor of political science at the University of Oxford.
Researcher at the Cato Institute think tank and vice president of the Atlas Network — an organization focused on promoting liberal ideas —, he has been active in Eastern Europe since the late 1980s, when, at the end of the Soviet Union, he smuggled books and even Xerox machines. to spread libertarian ideas in socialist republics in the region.
The author has just returned from Ukraine, where he saw up close some of the effects of the war, which in less than two months left more than 5 million refugees, in the most accelerated migration crisis since the Second World War. As a volunteer, he participated in humanitarian aid operations, delivering materials to hospitals and evacuating refugees across Poland.
“All the people I helped to get out, all of them, spoke Russian. Some didn’t even understand Ukrainian well. And they all said they didn’t agree with this supposed ‘liberation’. They had Russian as their main language, but they said they wanted to continue to be Ukrainians.” , reports.
According to the researcher, Putin’s Russia, like Xi Jinping’s China, has made the transition from an authoritarian state to a totalitarian one.
In the past, while occupying the field of authoritarianism, these countries allowed some level of disagreement with the regime, especially in academic circles, as they considered that it was not worth the strain of repressing ideas that would circulate little, since the State had control over practically all the press.
“They let intellectuals produce criticism and allowed vehicles like Novaia Gazeta, which were not necessarily a threat because most of the population is informed by television, and the regime controls this medium”, he says, referring to the independent Russian newspaper whose editor- Boss won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2021 for defending freedom of expression.
But the situation in Beijing and Moscow has developed to the point where no dissent is tolerated, he says, thus consolidating themselves as totalitarian regimes. “Everyone must fully agree with the leader’s thoughts or they will be punished, as is the case with those who protest against war.” In Russia, calling what the Kremlin calls a “special military operation” in Ukraine a war can lead to 15 years in prison.
At the same time that Putin takes these totalitarian measures, on the other side of the front Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky also banned opposition political parties, one of them with 44 seats in Parliament, after the war started.
Asked how this measure cannot be classified as authoritarian either, Palmer says that the suspension was not because they were opposition parties, but because they were financed by Russia, pro-Kremlin and, in part, contrary to Ukrainian independence itself.
“It’s a context of conflict. Switzerland closed the Nazi party [em 1940, na Segunda Guerra]. The UK also shut down the British Union of Fascists party while warring against Mussolini. It is not an uncommon measure in times of war to ban groups that defend the aggressor. But what’s interesting is that, until the war started, these parties were in full swing. Unlike Russia, which ended internal opposition in peacetime. That seems to me to make a lot of difference.”
Palmer has just released the book “Development with Dignity – Self-determination, Localization, and the End to Poverty”, still without translation in Brazil, in which he argues that the The end of poverty can only be achieved by prioritizing human dignity and that full prosperity depends on the recognition of the autonomy of the individual.
An observer of international politics, not only from Eastern Europe, he also closely follows Brazil and says he is concerned that the country has been “going through a very difficult period” in recent years, aggravated by the Covid-19 pandemic. In addition to the effects of the disease, he warns of the damage that denialism has caused in the fight against the health crisis.
“Something similar to what happened in the US happened, with a strange culture war in relation to the pandemic, in which in the end the [ex-presidente Donald] Trump was booed when he embarrassedly admitted that he had taken the Covid-19 vaccine. A very strange episode to witness and that recalls the situation in Brazil. I believe that these are extremely disruptive and harmful things to the country,” he says.
A libertarian activist, Palmer also says he is concerned about the frequent public demonstrations of President Jair Bolsonaro (PL) in support of the military dictatorship. “It’s definitely not something to be proud of. Brazilians should be proud to come out of the dictatorship, not to have been one. The military’s job is to protect the country, not to command it. The idea of ​​going back to that is worrying.” .”
