History keeps accelerating. Nazarbayev, one of the savviest politicians on the planet, scraps the Eurasian energy-rent model of accumulation and tells the Putinists to step off, all at once:
Address of the head of state to the people of Kazakhstan, November 11, 2014
Translation: "Don't even think about pulling a Crimea on our northern territories, Putin. Remember how us Kazakh soldiers ripped apart the Wehrmacht in WW II with our bare hands? Well guess what -- your nice, polite gentlemen would be facing 5 million of us... on our home turf. Now if you'll excuse us, we're going to get ridiculously rich by investing our oil wealth in infrastructure and trade with China and India."
In short, Kazakhstan just bailed from Putinism's phantom empire.
Which leads to an obvious question. Lukaschenko is backing Ukraine's sovereignty and cozying up with the EU, Tajikistan is getting $6 billion from China's Silk Road project to co-develop Central Asia, Mongolia is a stable democracy, and Georgia is gone from the imperial fold. So who exactly was supposed to join Putinism's mighty empire?
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