Over the past two weeks, I have argued that analysts should use a wider set of tools to understand international politics. The tools of structural analysis, such as comparisons of the wealth or military capabilities of different countries, are both useful and insufficient. At the end of the day, every government decision, from the introduction of a new housing policy to the invasion of another country, is made by people, so focusing exclusively on physical factors overlooks the psychological determinants of policy. As psychology and behavioral economics have made clear, people are not rational, so two people may view the same set of facts in completely different ways. Consequently, analysts should become familiar with the tools of psychological analysis, which outline how the thoughts and beliefs of world leaders can influence their decision-making.
One tool that could serve this purpose is values analysis. Although most Values Added articles have focused on the moral compasses of large groups of people (e.g. conservatives, libertarians), it may be possible to determine the values of a specific person if they have well documented views. I call this a moral portrait, as this term illustrates its personal nature. Long-serving world leaders, who have spent years giving speeches and enacting policy, are solid candidates for moral portraits, as analysts have a wealth of evidence available to draw conclusions from.
As mentioned in my previous article, I’m not certain that this approach will work. Values analysis is most effective when it uses large groups of people as the subject of study, because it can be extremely difficult to determine how one person will react in one situation. Individuals are erratic in their behaviour, while groups are far more predictable. Nevertheless, the stakes are high enough that, even if moral portraits only improve our understanding international politics marginally, they would be still worth exploring.
So, let’s give it a try by attempting to develop a moral portrait for Russian President Vladimir Putin. With the truly horrific stories coming out of Ukraine, it might be tempting to conclude that Putin has no morality, that he is “morally dead”. That view may help us sleep at night, but it sheds no light on how to handle the man, deter him from escalating the conflict, or nudge him to seek peace. No doubt, Putin believes his actions to be right, suggesting that he has a moral code; his speech announcing the “special military operation” in Ukraine dripped with moral indignation. He described the war as noble, even as stories of atrocities become clear to everyone who is willing to pay attention. He appears dead-set on cementing his legacy as a great Russian ruler, and he seems to be confident that history will judge him fondly. Correct or not, these views are derived from his values.
To be explicit: this is not a piece of apologia for Putin. I have a moral compass too, and it tells me that the President of Russia is a war criminal and a murderer. I also don’t wish for this article to be read as a piece of disconnected wonkishness. Academics and policy analysts are often rightfully charged with detachment, as crises are viewed as opportunities to flex their intellectual muscles, test their models, and prove how insightful they are. I don’t wish to lose sight of the tens of thousands of lives that have been lost or the millions of lives that have been permanently altered. Far more attention should be paid to the victims of war than to anything I write here.
But putting our heads in the sand will not improve matters. Putin is the key decisionmaker for Russian actions, and this is his war. It was his decision to send tanks over the border, so understanding his thoughts and beliefs are critical to bringing peace. Rather than justifythem, this article seeks to describehis moral values, detestable or otherwise.
The Moral Portrait of Vladimir Putin
As a brief recap, moral foundations theory argues that people hold six values to various degrees, and our personal weighting of each value helps guide our actions. When a stimulus (e.g. an event, a news article) resonates with our values, we tend to support it. When it violates our values, we feel a deep repulsion and oppose it. Although it is possible to override these reactions with our rational mind, it’s not easy, so most people prefer to follow their immediate moral reactions.
With this is mind, let’s go value by value. I will assess President Putin’s attachment to each value and provide evidence to back up my conclusion.
Care/harm: low
The historical record illustrates conclusively that Vladimir Putin has a low attachment to the care/harm value. Famously called a “killer” by Joe Biden, Putin doesn’t appear to have a particularly strong moral revulsion to the suffering of others. He’s shown a willingness to tacitly support the use of chemical weapons in Syria, and to deploy them to settle political scores, such as in the killing of Alexander Litvinenko, the botched assassination of Sergei Skripal, and the poisoning of dissident Alexei Navalny.
The use of such weapons says much about the values of their users. Chemical weapons aren’t banned because they are effective (they’re not particularly useful tools of war at all). Machine guns, missiles, and artillery are far more capable of causing mass death, with the bonus of helping armies achieve military objectives and win wars.
Rather, chemical weapons are forbidden because they lead to horrible suffering. The effects of sarin gas, which was used in Syria, are difficult to contemplate. Such agents turn people’s nervous systems against their bodies, forcing regular bodily functions to occur to the point of excess. Victims’ eyes begin to cry uncontrollably, their mouths drool and vomit, and their digestive systems evacuate themselves. Within one to ten minutes, the body begins to shut down, leading to convulsions, paralysis, and death. The endpoint is no different than stepping on a mine or being blown up by a rocket: death is death. However, perishing by chemical attack is one of the worst ways to go. It’s no wonder that the chemical attacks in Syria received special international opprobrium. Most people’s care/harm value was being violated as they watched videos of Syrian civilians foaming at the mouth, and the moral reaction was immediate and fierce.
Vladimir Putin doesn’t appear to care though. He has stood steadfastly behind Syrian war criminals, and he has exported similarly brutal methods to his other allies. When the government in Belarus was teetering, Putin dispatched experts in social control to shore up Lukashenko’s regime, bringing a gameplan of arrest, torture, and rape to cow the unruly populace into submission. The Russian government has also adopted these methods for its own population in response to anti-war protests.
Clearly, Vladimir Putin’s actions are not being primarily driven by a desire to reduce human suffering. Is he a sadist who revels in brutality? It’s not clear. But we can conclude that cruelty doesn’t bother him much.
Fairness/cheating: moderate
Domestically, Putin’s government oversees a kleptocratic regime, where a few men (and it’s almost exclusively men) who were in the right place at the right time were able to amass extreme wealth through the privatization of Soviet assets. It has been suggested that Putin’s economic and political system is unfair, but that’s not necessarily true. Gross inequality of wealth can also be considered just if the outcomes are proportional to efforts. In the United States, a country that by some metrics is more unequal than Russia, billionaires often defend their accumulation of riches by arguing that it is the result of hard work. True or not, this response is based in the fairness/cheating value, as it’s argued that billionaires deserve their privileges and society is better for it. This same reasoning could be applied to the Russian oligarchs. It could be claimed that Russian oligarchs acquired their assets through completely legitimate means, and their management prowess drive the Russian economy and create jobs. Consequently, it is difficult for me to draw any solid conclusions about Putin’s attachment to the fairness/cheating value from his domestic politics.
However, on the international stage, fairness considerations are central to Russian justifications for aggression. In defending their attempts to bully its neighbours, the Russian government has made a consistent moral argument: the West does it too. From its perspective, interventions in Serbia, Iraq, Libya, and Syria proved that Western countries are no different. They use military force to browbeat enemies and dress up their actions in flowery language of human rights. Logicians may deride this argument as “whataboutism”, but that does not reduce its moral power. This argument works.
In fact, the conduct of some Russian operations suggests an attempt to imitate past Western interventions. Two days before the full-scale invasion, Putin announced that he was sending “peacekeepers” into the Donbas to protect the “newly independent” republics of Donetsk and Luhansk. The phrasing obviously echoes the NATO intervention in Kosovo, when NATO-led peacekeepers provided the conditions necessary to enable Kosovo’s declaration of independence in 2008, a move the Kremlin strongly opposed. Putin likely drew this parallel intentionally to underline the West’s alleged hypocrisy.
Overall, it’s fair to conclude that Putin is partially driven by considerations of fairness. To him, it’s a double-standard to lecture Russia about sovereignty while Western forces don’t always respect the same constraints.
Liberty/oppression: low
This one will be quick. Putin doesn’t believe that his own citizens should be allowed to freely run for office, operate independent media outlets, or even use unapproved language. The Russian Constitution, which guarantees free speech and prohibits state censorship, is nothing more than a piece of paper now. Putin shows no compunction in undermining the individual rights of Russians and increasing the control of the state over their lives, nor does he seem to believe that Ukrainians should be able to follow their own paths. In short, he doesn’t value liberty.
Loyalty/betrayal: high
This appears to be the primary value of Vladimir Putin, as there are several clues that suggest that his moral views are driven primarily by it. First, much has been written about Putin’s intense nationalism, an idea that is tightly wound with the loyalty/betrayal value. Nationalism creates an “in-group” based on territory and national heritage, and members of the nation have special moral responsibilities to their countrymen. Following the annexation of Crimea in 2014, there was an explosion of patriotic fervor in Russia, which Putin encouraged with nationalist rallies. “Crimea is ours” became a slogan of national pride in Russia. The term “ours” is key; the speaker is emphasizing their membership in the group, which provides the moral power of the rallying cry. “Crimea is Russia’s” just doesn’t have the same force, illustrating how the loyalty/betrayal value can elicit strong emotional reactions.
Second, Putin’s choice of words for his enemies are suggestive of the loyalty/betrayal value. Ukrainians who oppose his armies are “Nazis”, perhaps Russia’s greatest existential threat in history. Aligning with Nazis is a betrayal of the highest order. In a chilling remark, Putin called pro-Western Russians “scum and traitors” and encouraged his countrymen to “spit them out like a fly.” This would lead to a “natural and necessary self-cleansing of society will only strengthen our country, our solidarity, cohesion, and readiness to meet any challenge.” Such comments flow naturally from the loyalty/betrayal value, where opponents to the “in-group” are considered immoral and merit special condemnation.
Third, Putin is obsessed with history, another subject that suggests a strong adherence to the loyalty/betrayal value. In mid-2021, Putin published an essay entitled On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians, which outlined his views on Ukraine. The first half is a long diatribe on the shared history of Russia and Ukraine, stretching back to the 9th century. This section is intended to morally justify Russia’s position vis-a-vis its neighbour by aligning current Russian policy with a particular historical narrative in which Russia and Ukraine are closely bonded. Consequently, to Putin, the Russian government in simply implementing the policies of his ancestors by ensuring that the two countries remain this way. In other words, he is honoring the legacy of his nation.
Such historical interpretation combined with a high fidelity to the loyalty/betrayal value is a toxic concoction that has significant explanatory power for the current conflict. In his essay, Putin made the argument that Russians, Belarusians, and Ukrainians are one super-nation (“one people”), and the Ukrainian government has embarked on a policy of “forced assimilation”, one that millions of Ukrainians – according to Putin – resisted. As members of a meta-nation with Russians, these millions of Ukrainians are part of Putin’s “in-group”, and any leader of moral worth would seek to protect them. As well, the leadership of Ukraine are traitors to their people, history, and culture, so they deserve the traditional punishment for treason: death.
In my assessment, this worldview is completely out of touch with reality, but that’s not important. What matters is whether Putin believes it and whether he believes it enough to justify a violent war. On both counts, the evidence suggests the affirmative. Values are powerful, and they can coalesce into a “higher purpose” that justifies short-term brutality.
Authority/subversion: high
Putin is an authoritarian, in part due to his obsession with order and phobia of instability. Although in his early days a leader, he appeared to have democratic impulses, those have been extinguished over years in power. Crackdowns on internal dissent are common, and his efforts to stay in power by amending the Constitution demonstrate the importance he places on personal authority. To justify this, Putin argues that he has used this authority effectively, and so it is a moral failing to oppose him. In the first decade of his reign, he presided over an economic miracle in Russia; from 2000 to 2010, the GDP per capita in Russia grew sixfold, bringing unprecedented material comfort to his people. To Putin, the urban professionals that protest in the streets are displaying “caprice” and treating him unfairly; they are committing a sin by bucking rightfully wielded authority.
This authoritarianism colours his relations with Ukraine, as he believes there to be a similar bargain in place. In his essay cited above, Putin argues that the Russian government gave Ukraine significant financial and economic support following its independence, support that was allegedly continued even after the events of Maidan in 2014. However, the Ukrainian government was insufficiently appreciative of these efforts, and instead spent their time allegedly looting the state and rabble-rousing against Russia to hide their corruption (i.e. misusing authority).
This view of Russian generosity and Ukrainian avarice dovetails with Putin’s historical perspective. Past Russian thinkers, and it seems Putin as well, have long taken a paternalistic view of Ukrainians, calling them Little Russians. This language exposes the moral underpinnings of a particular worldview, subscribed to by Putin among others, in which Russia is the leader, and Ukraine the subservient follower. Russia takes care of Ukraine, and Ukraine should show sufficient deference to its big brother. Consequently, Putin believes that Ukraine is acting immorally when it rebels against Russia. And sometimes, force is needed to reassert authority.
Sanctity/degradation: moderate
Putin’s alliance with the Orthodox Church has been profitable for Putin, as the Patriarch seems willing to stump for any and all of his policies, including a brutal war on fellow Orthodox Slavs. Putin himself appears to be fairly religious and holds traditional values, including heteronormative and patriarchal ideals of family and gender. These views tend to be rooted in the sanctity/degradation value, as many people (such as Putin) with strong traditional values believe that homosexuality and feminism are unnatural and corrode the moral fabric of society. These views have driven Russian domestic policies, from the passing of laws against “gay propaganda” to the denial of (or implicit support for) the purging of homosexuals in the Russian region of Chechnya. Such a view has contributed to Putin’s strong reputation within social conservative circles, even in the West. He unapologetically holds and defends traditional values rooted in the sanctity/degradation value, while Western politicians, more focused on the care/harm value, are far less likely to take such a strong stance on these issues.
Even the sanctity/degradation value has contributed to his decision to invade Ukraine. The moral repulsion that Putin feels to alternative sexual orientations and gender identities has coloured his views of Western countries. As bastions of secular immorality, Putin believes that Europe (which has been denigrated in Russian propaganda as “Gayropa”) is exporting depravity and undermining the traditional values of Christian society. But don’t take my word for it; he said so in his speech announcing the invasion of Ukraine:
[The West] sought to destroy our traditional values and force on us their false values that would erode us, our people from within, the attitudes they have been aggressively imposing on their countries, attitudes that are directly leading to degradation and degeneration, because they are contrary to human nature. [emphasis added.]
It doesn’t get clearer than that. To Putin, Western influence is corroding the moral fabric of Ukrainians – who are, he understands, not much different from Russians. This gives Russia a moral obligation to intervene, as it sees Ukraine slipping further into the orbit of Western thought.
Conclusion
That concludes this values analysis. Here is an overview of what we’ve learned:
This is a rough outline of Putin’s moral portrait. I think the conclusions could be honed by analysts who have far deeper expertise in Russian politics, particularly on the domestic front. My analysis above is almost certainly missing a significant amount of nuance that experts in the field would note. Values analysis is a tool, and it should be put in the right hands to be most useful. On this subject, those hands are not mine. However, I think this exercise proves that values analysis is worth exploring further.
Next week, I’ll look into the implications of this moral portrait for the West’s policy on Russia. If we now understand more about how Putin thinks, how can we then act on this information to draft more productive policies?