David B. Rivkin Jr. and Carlos Ramos-Mrosovsky – Target the Kremlin Pocketbooks – washingtonpost.com
Moscow is dominated by a network of ex-KGB siloviks and wealthy Kremlin-friendly tycoons. Despite their gangsteresque behavior — including assassinations of business and political rivals — Russia is a member, albeit a thuggish one, of the global economic system. Bereft of any significant civilian manufacturing, Russia’s economy depends on natural resources exports. As a result, Russia, though grotesquely corrupt, is tightly plugged into global financial and commercial networks.
The shady cadre running modern Russia has embraced globalization. These “Chekist oligarchs” — to distinguish them from the Western-oriented robber barons who rose in the 1990s, only to be purged by Putin — increasingly dominate lists of the world’s richest individuals.
Clearly, something far more dangerous than mere authoritarianism has arisen in Putin’s Russia. A peculiar blend of political autocracy and corruption, seamlessly fusing political, economic and military power, threatens world peace. Challenging this state of affairs is a strategic necessity.