Putin Throws Baby Out With Bath Water

The West's recipe for victory over Russia.

A global single market of democracies is needed to protect the democracy.

Putin has thrown the baby out with the bath water. His recent expropriation of Western companies will actually help the West by damaging the Russian economy.

The expropriation of the Russian assets of France's Danone and Denmark's Carlsberg is reprehensible, but unwittingly Putin is actually damaging Russia. He is quarrelling with his bread and butter.

The more ties are severed between Russia and the West, the more the Russian economy will suffer. Russia will find it harder to finance its aggression, and Russians will become poorer and more disillusioned about the Russian regime.

It does not matter exactly how the Russian economy will be isolated: through Western sanctions, the benign and voluntary withdrawal of Western companies from Russia, or Putin's expropriation of the assets of non-benign companies. All these paths lead to disconnection of Russia from the global economy.

'Desert Island' Economy

Russia should have been economically isolated from the world already after invading Ukraine on February 24, 2022. Western governments failed to impose widespread sanctions and not many Western companies have voluntarily left Russia since then.

Everything Putin is doing to cut Russia off from Western investment and markets is actually helping us finish the job we failed to do fully on our own.

In addition to the actual expropriation, Western companies will assess the risk of such expropriation plus the embarrassment of feeling that they are in Russia to profit. Russia is steadily moving towards becoming a "desert island" economy.

If we can turn Russia into a desert island economy, it will be destroyed. After all, Russia is more dependent on exports as a percentage of its GNP than any other major country because it produces far more oil, gas and minerals than it needs. This dependence on the West is Russia's Achilles' heel. If Russia is cut off from the West, it cannot survive as an independent economy.

Reasons Why Economic Isolation From Russia Is Good

The West should not shuffle, but do everything it can to weaken the Russian economy. We are already waging a mediation war with Russia in a military sense and a direct war for values. No matter how you slice it, Putin is the enemy of every democratic state and person, and the Russian economy should be considered an "enemy economy."

The West should encourage the newly emerged tendency to establish two economic blocs in the world.

Russia will become more and more dependent on China, which is a much less wealthy market compared to the OECD countries. If China supports Russia with excess trade to compensate for this gap, it will make something that is now economically disadvantageous, similar to the way the eastern bloc countries were forced to trade with each other before the collapse of the USSR. This worsened economic situation will be solved either by Russia which will take the "price brunt" on itself or by China which will be forced to support Russia at its own expense, which will only weaken one or both of these undemocratic countries.

Our Goal

Isolating Russia is the first step towards dividing the world into two economic blocs: the "democratic market" and the "undemocratic market". Autocratic and totalitarian countries like Russia and China will co-operate with each other for lack of alternatives and will together grow poorer and less powerful. The "democratic market", or "democratic economy" will be many times larger and will make democratic countries much richer than countries ruled by dictators. Eventually there will be free trade between the US, EU, UK, India and all democratic countries, and there will be trade barriers for the totalitarian and autocratic world.

We need to eliminate the wealth gap that divides people and developed and developing countries, and deliberately apply that gap to democratic and non-democratic countries. If a non-democratic country wants to avoid economic decline, it must become democratic. Its people will be motivated to remove their dictator in order to gain access to a "democratic market." We need to create a free market where economic survival will be the reward for democratic behaviour and economic collapse will be the consequence of undemocratic or totalitarian behaviour.

It depends on the way we seize our economic opportunities: either we give democracy a chance to dominate the planet for years to come - or we continue to fund totalitarianism until it eventually overtakes democracy.

Mark Dixon, Liga.net