Michael Brenner. President Vladimir Putin as the Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. Irritation and Envy.

Michael Brenner is Professor Emeritus of International Affairs at the University of Pittsburgh and a Fellow of the Center for Transatlantic Relations at SAIS/Johns Hopkins.

I found the excerpt remarkable because it included this, on might say, anti-capitalistic statement:

That 'green' statement will rile those people who argue for free markets and a right to sell bullshit in ever more flavors. In their view the fight against such 'communists' thinking must be renewed.

As the full English transcript of Putin's speech and the two and a half hour Q&A is now available I can also quote another interesting passage where Putin talks about capitalism and the role of the state. His standpoint seems very pragmatic to me:

Pope Francis said recently that capitalism has run its course. Russia has been living under capitalism for 30 years. Is it time to search for an alternative? Is there an alternative? Could it be the revival of the left-wing idea or something radically new?

Putin: Lenin spoke about the birthmarks of capitalism, and so on. It cannot be said that we have lived these past 30 years in a full-fledged market economy. In fact, we are only gradually building it, and its institutions. [..]

You know, capitalism, the way you have described it, existed in a more or less pure form at the beginning of the previous century. But everything changed after what happened in the global economy and in the United States in the 1920s and 1930s, after World War I. We have already discussed this on a number of occasions. I do not remember if I have mentioned this at Valdai Club meetings, but experts who know this subject better than I do and with whom I regularly communicate, they are saying obvious and well-known things.

When everything is fine, and the macro economic indicators are stable, various funds are building up their assets, consumption is on the rise and so on. In such times, you hear more and more that the state only stands in the way, and that a pure market economy would be more effective. But as soon as crises and challenges arise, everyone turns to the state, calling for the reinforcement of its supervisory functions. This goes on and on, like a sinusoidal curve. This is what happened during the preceding crises, including the recent ones, like in 2008.

I remember very well how the key shareholders of Russia’s largest corporations that are also major European and global players came to me proposing that the state buy their assets for one dollar or one ruble. They were afraid of assuming responsibility for their employees, pressured by margin calls, and the like. This time, our businesses have acted differently. No one is seeking to evade responsibility. on the contrary, they are even using their own funds, and are quite generous in doing so. The responses may differ, but overall, businesses have been really committed to social responsibility, for which I am grateful to these people, and I want them to know this.

Therefore, at present, we cannot really find a fully planned economy, can we? Take China. Is it a purely planned economy? No. And there is not a single purely market economy either. Nevertheless, the government’s regulatory functions are certainly important. [..]

We just need to determine for ourselves the reasonable level of the state's involvement in the economy; how quickly that involvement needs to be reduced, if at all, and where exactly. I often hear that Russia’s economy is overregulated. But during crises like this current pandemic, when we are forced to restrict business activity, and cargo traffic shrinks, and not only cargo traffic, but passenger traffic as well, we have to ask ourselves – what do we do with aviation now that passengers avoid flying or fly rarely, what do we do? Well, the state is a necessary fixture, there is no way they could do without state support.

So, again, no model is pure or rigid, neither the market economy nor the command economy today, but we simply have to determine the level of the state's involvement in the economy. What do we use as a baseline for this decision? Expediency. We need to avoid using any templates, and so far, we have successfully avoided that.

Then comes a paragraph that shows where Russia differs from the current 'western' economic policies of negative interest rates and deflation:

Of course, the Central Bank and the Government are among the most important state institutions. Therefore, it was in fact through the joint efforts of the Central Bank and the Government that inflation was reduced to 4 percent, because the Government invests substantial resources through its social programmes and national projects and has an impact on our monetary policy. It went down to 3.9 percent, and the Governor of the Central Bank has told me that we will most likely keep it around the estimated target of around 4 percent. This is the regulating function of the state; there is no way around it. However, stifling development through an excessive presence of the state in the economy or through excessive regulation would be fatal as well. You know, this is a form of art, which the Government has been applying skilfully, at least for now.

Keeping inflation up by a bit will make it easier for Russian consumers and companies to pay back their loans. It is economically healthier than the deflationary policies of western societies.

Russia is well on its way to overtake Germany as the fifth biggest economy. Putin's pragmatic positions towards the role of the state in the economy and his relative generous policies of social programs and large national projects have contributed to that.

The many questions and answers on foreign policy in the Valdai talk show a similar pragmatism on other issues. For those interested in those here is again the link to the transcript.

I have received an uncommon number of replies to the material re. Vladimir Putin which I distributed a few days ago. That is not entirely surprising. People find it hard to make him out. He gets under their skin. Unusually, that seems due less to what the man actually does than what he is. I personally have a far more benign view of Putin as a statesman than most others. That has come across in other commentaries of mine. To delve into detail, though, is not the point of these remarks. I simply will make two assertions. one, he has been more forthright in elaborating his views about world affairs, his conception of Russia's place in the world system, and the most salient issues of his times than any other leader of a major power whom I can recall. Two, the vast majority of the analysis and interpretation of Putin and his policies is singularly distorted, misleading and often a downright misrepresentation.1

The question that fascinates me is "why is this?" In trying to answer it, I will climb farther out on the limb where I already am perched. The first thing to say is that it is normal for humans to be anxious, if not fearful, of what they don't understand. Putin is not easily understood because he fits into no simple category. He is not a 'type.' His complex personality demands an unusual amount of application and sophistication. Both qualities are scant these days.

Second, he stands in stark contrast to his predecessor - and, perhaps more important, what we expected of a post-Soviet Russian chief. Stephen F. Cohen put it succinctly:

“At the time of Putin’s succession, they expected and wanted a sober Yeltsin. That is to say someone content to be subservient to the United States, marginalized in Europe and a non-factor elsewhere in the world. In addition, lucrative investment opportunities were foreseen in the usual neo-liberal fashion. It soon became apparent, though, that Putin was a formidable leader bent on applying his singular talents to restoring the Russian state and the country’s legitimate place in global affairs. That made him, and the renewed Russia that he was fashioning, unpalatable.”

That turn of events greatly irritates us. For it complicates American foreign policy, it challenges our vision of a liberal "new world order," and it implicitly raises uncomfortable doubts as to whether our America-centered conception of world history as a pageant of progress is as immutable as we have thought.