The key to a successful economic policy is a nation’s national sovereignty, Russian President Vladimir Putin said at his four-hour dialogue during the Valdai Discussion Club Forum held in Sochi on Nov. 7. It is national sovereignty that can steer between too much or too little government.
Putin was responding to a question from the well-known Greek journalist Dimitris Konstantakopoulos, one of the founders of the Defend Democracy website. In summary, Konstantapopoulos prefaced with a reference to the collapse now 40 years ago of “both the European welfare Keynesian capitalism and the Soviet hyper-centralized system,” followed in the four decades by “economic crises, wars, ecological problems, and many other problems.” Then he asked about a return toward a kind of planned economy at the national, regional and international levels, in the way Putin had described earlier, “a combination of market and plan, a system like the one you tried to apply in your country.”
President Putin answered: “The more acute the crisis, the more planning is required, because greater state intervention is required to address the emerging problems. But as wealth and accumulated resources grow, calls for a purely market-based approach become louder. Then, let’s imagine, liberals and democrats come in and start spending all that was amassed by the conservatives. Then some time passes, and crises of overproduction emerge again—notionally, or crises related to it, and the whole thing repeats over and over again, everything comes full circle.
“Each country has the sovereign right to shape its own economic policy. China has found these opportunities. And do you know why it succeeded? Largely because China is a sovereign state.
