Autocracy Means Plunder, in Russia and Beyond
Reliance on Fossil Fuels Props up Putin's Criminal Regime
"Let's not kid ourselves: Putin will not stop at Ukraine," said U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin to the U.S.-led Ukraine Defense Contract Group in Germany the other day, referring to the Russian president's imperialist ambitions. While Sec. Austin noted the "staggering cost" Russia has paid in terms of casualties for its war on Ukraine, he also reminded the representatives of more than 50 nations of Russia's strengths. Assistance from its autocratic allies in North Korea and Iran has allowed Russia to ramp up defense production, while the Ukrainian military is now rationing ammunition.
Sec. Austin might have added another advantage Russia currently holds: the support of the Republican party of America, which is trying to game the conflict for Putin by blocking U.S. military aid. The consequences of this attempt to engineer the defeat of Ukraine go way beyond the battlefield, as the Russians and their Republican allies know.
As Peter Pomerantsev observed in Dec. 2022, the conflict in Ukraine is not just about Russian expansion, but the empowerment of "a whole network of authoritarian regimes" and their wars against human rights, truth, humanitarianism, protection of children and women from trafficking, and reduction of reliance on fossil fuels —oil and gas being the lubricants of Putin's kleptocracy and a main source of financing for his imperialist campaign.
This wider set of dystopian goals is shared by GOP nominee Donald Trump, who has promised Americans and the world that he will act as a dictator if elected in November, with his priorities being to close the border and "drill, drill, drill."
Plunder is a useful concept to discuss the intentions of autocrats and the tragic outcomes of their actions. Plunder covers the strongman's obsessive drive to control and exploit bodies, territory, and wealth. Since the avaricious autocrat sees everything and everyone in terms of possession, plunder is key to understanding the organization of autocracy.
Putin's regime is a case in point. As a kleptocracy, it has institutionalized plunder. Putin's cronies and enablers take "loans" from state banks and use no-bid procurement, asset stripping, stock manipulation, extortion, and threats to plunder state companies.
These methods were built into the system from the start. From 2000 to 2010, the state targeted one-third of Russian businesses for raids, and thousands of business owners went into exile. By 2018, one in six Russian business owners faced prosecution. A 2013 amnesty that freed 10,000 business owners merely highlights the scope of the state's actions.
The energy conglomerate Gazprom, which produces up to 80% of Russia’s oil, is key to Putin's kleptocratic machine. As part of the system, it, too, has been routinely plundered. $60 billion worth of assets were exfiltrated (meaning they were taken out of the country and laundered or placed in the offshore accounts of Kremlin cronies) between 2004 and 2007. The recession was not the only reason its market value declined from $369 billion in 2008 to $60 billion in 2019.
Since the start of the war on Ukraine, the Gazprom group's core earnings have plummeted, with an almost 40% decrease in 2023, and it is a point of interest that so many victims of "Sudden Russian Death Syndrome," as Elaine Godfrey has referred to the dozens of untimely deaths of Russian elites, have been people working in Russia's energy sector. A Jan. 2024 Atlantic Council report called the oil and gas industries "vital but vulnerable."
In the meantime, the continued global reliance on fossil fuels keeps this criminal regime going. Even foreign states that may be Putin's next targets, such as the Baltic nations, buy oil and gas from Russia. In 2022, Russian sales to Latvia, Estonia, and Lithuania rose 77%, 42%. and 8.5%, respectively, although some of these purchases were destined for Ukraine, which refuses to buy from Russia directly.
When your models of governance and economic productivity are based on criminal operations of plunder, expansion means acquiring not just territory but millions of new bodies to exploit and markets to loot.
Obsessed with visions of imperial grandeur, Putin will certainly not stop at Ukraine. There are indications that Russia is preparing for a longer and more expansive war with NATO, because they are betting on Trump returning to the White House and, in Trump's words, allowing Russia to do "whatever the hell they want" in Europe. In this way, Trump’s “drill, drill, drill” message was also directed to Putin: he was telling him that he will be his partner in plunder, whatever that entails.
I wish the West would confiscate Putin's money on deposit in the West and give it to Ukraine, so Ukraine could buy the weapons and ammo it needs from the US to defeat Putin.
Great insights as always
This squares beautifully with Russian sociologist Kamil Galeev’s ideas about violent entrepreneurs (autocrats, strongmen, mobsters) and non-violent entrepreneurs. The violent autocrats eventually will plunder everything from the nonviolent unless the violent ones are continually removed . This creates a dynamic where innovation is totally disincentivized. What remains lucrative is natural resources and established essentials.
And if you want to expand such an economy, you need more resources and non-violent entrepreneurs to plunder. So this is why Russia’s Wagner group is causing trouble in central Africa, plundering gold, in exchange for propping up the strongman of the month.
One piece of this that gets often lost imo - when people say “Russia won’t stop at Ukraine” they often fail to convey that Ukraine’s resources (and strategic location) would also strengthen Russia in a huge way. There seems to be a sense that Russia’s invasion has been costly and it has. But given a few years to recover, Russia would be far more dangerous with the benefit of Ukraine’s riches.