Attacked from the inside, Putin regime in serious trouble

“I say, therefore, that the arms with which a prince defends his state are either his own, or they are mercenaries, auxiliaries, or mixed. Mercenaries and auxiliaries are useless and dangerous; and if one holds his state based on these arms, he will stand neither firm nor safe; for they are disunited, ambitious, and without discipline, unfaithful, valiant before friends, cowardly before enemies; they have neither the fear of God nor fidelity to men… the fact is, they have no other attraction or reason for keeping the field than a trifle of stipend, which is not sufficient to make them willing to die for you.”

- Niccolò Machiavelli; “The Prince”.

Machiavelli was writing on the nomenclature of Italian city-state governments circa the Florence of 1513. It is, however, worth pondering whether, in all his KGB training and subsequent study of “Dictatorship 101”, Mr. Putin ever took up The Prince as bedtime reading. If he had, he might very likely have chucked it, anyway, since Machiavelli was not aiming to establish a dictatorship, and Mr. Putin is nothing if not concentrated on the ends, rather than the means.

Had he delved into it very far, though, there’s a powerful lesson to be learned at its heart: “hiring it done” may be fine for cleaning a pigsty, but it’s a rotten way to try to run a “special military operation.” Last week’s debacle with the “Wagner Group” – a mercenary army titularly under command of the Russian Federation – certainly proves the point.

Machiavelli’s major point of attack on this subject draws heavily on the idea that if the people of a province/nation/feudal kingdom are not invested enough in a government to fight for it, that government should think twice about invading its neighbors.  

A few months ago, I seem to remember scribbling something on these pages about Mr. Putin and his close affinity with the processes and procedures of certain types of criminal gang. He was, I suggested, the front man for an assemblage of greedy oilmen, carpetbagging politicians, nationalist nuts, and other marginalia. I also suggested that if things did not go as planned in Ukraine he’d be abandoned by these folks as a bad deal, and they’d go looking for other assets.

The Ukraine war never worked out as the miserably incompetent Pollyanna crew in Moscow had hoped. The Russian people, I’d speculate, have never been enthusiastic about this adventure – and as evidence of this I’d simply count the number of surly Russian ex-pats lounging on Turkish beaches, where they’d fled when he tried to institute a draft. Conscription didn’t work, so he hired it done – the bulk of the gory bloodletting of the war was dumped on the mercenaries of The Wagner Group.

Machiavelli goes on to warn: “The mercenary captains are either capable men or they are not; if they are, you cannot trust them, because they always aspire to their own greatness, either by oppressing you, who are their master, or others contrary to your intentions …” And this is exactly what has happened. Wagner Group leader Yevgeny Prigozhin has proven to be skillful, but he’s proved entirely untrustworthy, and certainly has nasty ambitions of his own.

As long as the mafioso-style operation in Russia was gambling with its own private gunsels on the outcome in Ukraine, the common folks (who were always under threat of being shipped off to the gulags, or worse) kept their mouths shut. But that won’t last.

Attacked from inside by his own hired thugs; an angry populace; a restive (if not complicit) military, and no hope of conscripting more cannon fodder, all indicate that the regime is in serious trouble.  The time for negotiation is now - but that can’t happen with Putin in place.

A little more pressure, on the battlefield or off of it, may force Mr. Putin out and open the door to real dealmaking.

Bruce Anderson is the Dr. Sarah D. and L. Kirk McKay Jr. Endowed Chair in American History, Government, and Civics and Miller Distinguished Professor of Political Science at Florida Southern College.  He is also a columnist for The Ledger.

This article originally appeared on The Ledger: Attacked from the inside, Putin regime in serious trouble