“Curt, are you going to comment on the situation that is transpiring in Belarus?

—“Curt, are you going to comment on the situation that is transpiring in Belarus?”—James Robertson

Disappointing. I won’t go into the economics (Watch Shirvan’s video if you want background). But he’s run out the clock on the soviet model and post-soviet infrastructure. He’s run up the debt. He can’t afford to modernize. He’s going to fight to stay in power just as Putin is. He plays west and east off against one another so that he stays free of invasion by Putin, but can demand protection from Putin to stay in power.

My advice to Putin would be to use it to correct the Ukrainian mistake, and invite Svetlana (the opposition) to Moscow for ‘talks’ and come to an arrangement. Then to tell Lukashenko that he has been a hero but it is time to move on. He could then use that credibility to approach Ukraine for a peaceful settlement of the territorial issues and compensate Ukraine by a discount on petroleum products.

This is the smart move. This would be the optimum political solution for Russia.

But Putin has a bad habit of overly paranoic behavior so he won’t restore his reputation this way. He’ll probably wait for an opportunity rather than decisively produce outcomes.

Russians are masters of the slow game. They seize opportunities. Chinese are masters of the long game of incrementalism. (We are only masters of rapid adaptation. And we have lost that mastery.)