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Generational Dynamics Web Log for 4-Sept-04
Russian President Vladimir Putin appears to be calling for revenge

Web Log - September, 2004

Russian President Vladimir Putin appears to be calling for revenge

Putin said that Russian "weakness in the face of danger" has caused Russia to be "beaten up" in the face of "a total and full-blown war."

A shaken Putin made his somber and angry remarks to a nationwide radio and television audience, after more than 340 people, including 156 children, were killed in a terrorist hostage-taking incident in Northern Ossetia.

This was only the most recent of three major terrorist acts in ten days, including the bombing of two airplanes in flight and a subway bombing in Moscow.

According to Putin, Russia has two choices: To "rebuff" the terrorists or to "begin obeying their orders." He added that "[our] actions [must] become proportionate to the size of the new threats."

In Putin's own words:

The terrorists believe they are stronger than ourselves, that their cruelty will intimidate us, paralyze our will and degenerate our society. Here we have a seeming alternative -- to rebuff them or to begin obeying their orders. The second means to give in and to let them partition Russia in a hope that they will somehow let us alone.

As President of the Russian state, a person who gave an oath to defend the nation and its territorial integrity, and last but not least, as a Russian citizen, I am confident that we have no such alternative.

The moment we give in to their blackmail and succumb to panic, we will plunge millions of people into an endless chain of bloodletting conflicts.... What we have on our hands is not the scattered acts of intimidation or odd terrorist sorties. This is direct intervention on the part of international terrorism in Russia. It is a total and full-blown war that keeps claiming the lives of our compatriots.

But world experience proves that such wars do not end quickly. Given this situation, we cannot afford complacent treatment of it anymore.

We must set up a much more efficient system of security and make demands to our law enforcement system that its actions become proportionate to the size of new threats.

The main thing, however, is to mobilize the consciousness of the nation in the face of a common threat. Events in other countries show that terrorists get the most adequate responses in the places where they run into the power of the state, on the one hand, and organized and united civic society, on the other.

From a Generational Dynamics point of view, the call for national unity is significant. A nation in a generational crisis period experiences a series of shocks and surprises that unify the country against a common enemy and elicit a desire for revenge. In other (non-crisis) periods, the country is rent by political differences, and seeks to respond to challenges by means of compromise and containment. But in a crisis period, when the generation of people who lived through the last crisis war disappear (retire or die), the visceral reaction is revenge, not compromise. This eventually leads to a new crisis war.

Troubled areas in Caucasus region - including North Ossetia and Chechnya

Troubled areas in Caucasus region - including North Ossetia and Chechnya

According to President Putin, "The people who sent the terrorists to commit that utterly heinous crime harbored a hope to set on our peoples to fight with one another and unleash a bloody feud in Northern Caucasus."

Thus, Putin is going to try to walk a difficult line. On the one hand, he plans to invoke whatever measures are required to "rebuff" the terrorists. On the other hand, he wants to prevent war in the Caucasus.

Unfortunately, these are conflicting objectives. His enemies, the Chechen terrorists, are also in a crisis period; they're also becoming more and more unified, and they are also looking for revenge.

So any action that Putin takes in Chechnya will have to be fairly harsh, and any harsh actions will only lead to a harsh response. That's what happens during generational crisis periods, until a new crisis war occurs.

The Caucasus region is one of the most dangerous regions of the world right now. From the point of view of Generational Dynamics, it's even more dangerous than the Palestine region, since it's farther into a generational crisis period. It's a major front line in the centuries old war between Orthodox Christians and Muslims. (4-Sept-04) Permanent Link
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Generational Dynamics Web Log for 4-Sept-04 Russian President Vladimir Putin appears to be calling for revenge

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Generational Dynamics Web Log for 4-Sept-04
Russian President Vladimir Putin appears to be calling for revenge