97 - Legitimacy is Fundamental to Keeping Power and Pursuing War
Political legitimacy is hard won, and easily lost. The passing of Queen Elizabeth II illustrates how over decades a youthful queen achieved legitimacy in the eyes and hearts of her subjects. Born into what we call traditional legitimacy – a quality that only sovereigns and paramount chiefs enjoy – Queen Elizabeth gradually became a fully legitimate ruler. Her subjects accorded her fealty that went beyond perfunctory obedience. King Charles III now inherits her position as a traditionally legitimate ruler. Whether he can in time also achieve a fuller legitimacy and become intrinsic to the social contract between ruler and ruled will be seen over time. A few wrong steps, and he will quickly break his end of the unwritten social contract and lose the legitimacy that makes presiding and acting magisterially much easier and much more potent.
In the parts of the world that concerns this Newsletter and many of its readers, legitimacy is a useful optic to judge what someone in Putin’s shoes must consider carefully as a foolish and increasingly illegitimate war develops dangers to Putin inside mother Russia.
Putin established his rational legitimacy in the eyes of the long-suffering Russian public after the messy dismantling of the Soviet structure. He gave the re-born nation strength and a sense of itself, just as Kemal Ataturk revived Turkey after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire and gained legitimacy in the eyes of a battered Turkish-speaking citizenry. Ataturk banished the fez, Europeanized (modernized) Anatolia, and brought the core of the empire back into a sense of rightness and importance.
Putin achieved legitimacy by providing order and a sense of security and safety for Russians. He quelled disorderly provinces like Chechnya, albeit by disreputable means. But his legitimacy grew genuinely. He could ooze power and competence in a manner that enabled citizens to overlook his ruthlessness and corrupt dealings. Legitimacy is bestowed, ultimately, by the masses – the followers. Putin riding bareback and shirtless enhanced his legitimacy in the eyes of a gullible Russian public.
Losing an unprovoked war hardly enhances legitimacy. That is what is now at stake for Putin. He must sense that as soon as his rational legitimacy fades, it could quickly crumble to the point of near vanishing. Last week, two dozen brave Russian editors and media commentators urged him to go. This week, Russia’s leading pop singer joined them and condemned the war.
In such situations coercive power (which Putin still wields) can delay that decay of legitimacy. Or it could spell the end – often over many months if not years, alas – of a Czarist pretender who has run out of time and abused loyalty.
The fact the Putin paid obeisance to Xi Jinping, rather than being perceived globally (and maybe at home) as an equal, is telling. Even Russians wooed by Putin’s pursuit of Nazis propaganda and his lies about the course of the Ukrainian war will have noticed the exchanges and postures in Uzbekistan. The fact that Putin was up on a new Ferris wheel while President Voldymyr Zelensky was simultaneously raising Ukraine’s blue and gold flag in the center of liberated Izium may also have been noted. Subliminal affects are important.
Putin gained legitimacy at home, and serious backing, when he invaded and held Crimea. A lightening capture of Kyiv would have bolstered his leadership legitimacy even more – whatever the spurious nature of his claims and his ridiculous revanchist notions.
Instead, the crown of unequaled legitimacy has been passed (thanks to the war) to Putin’s chosen adversary – Zelensky. Ukraine’s president achieved some legitimacy on being elected. But his bumbling dealings with Trump could not have impressed Ukrainians. Fortunately for Ukraine and for the freedom of the world, Putin ushered Zelensky onto the global stage. On it his legitimacy with Ukrainians and with the world has grown by proverbial leaps and bounds. Adversity has turned tables on Putin, who leaks legitimacy at every pore.
Such an analysis hardly means that Putin will soon be ousted by his generals or by arrays of popular protests. Russians are too easily chained by their long decades of suffering under unjust authority. And Putin still wields a massive coercive apparatus. But, to save himself and his reign, Putin may need to pare back. He may even begin to notice that a perceived loss of legitimacy affects his ability to give orders and gain easy compliance. He might not yet know it, but the social contract that is the basis of order in society has been sullied, and has begun to have less and less binding effect.
Our greatest American presidents gained legitimacy both through their words and their signal accomplishments. But both Abraham Lincoln and Franklin D. Roosevelt had to earn their legitimacy. Neither did so simply by the act of being elected. Both were divisive victors who triumphed by exuding the kind of integrity of action that slowly brought the American people to recognize them as champions not of ideological persuasions but of a rectitude that could deliver answers to the dilemmas of their ages.
Zelensky has done much of that by raising high the torch of freedom selflessly and courageously. Nelson Mandela reached out to embrace all of his Rainbow Nation, and gained legitimacy from every quarter. Putin’s bullying, and now his toadying to China, should at least limit his maneuverability as a warmonger. Legitimacy is easy to forfeit. And when it slides, it soon vanishes.