Richard Wolff calls Ram Charan’s views on Russia war “flawed”

Noted American economist and public intellectual Richard D. Wolff has described a recent column in Barron’s by Indian-American business consultant Ram Charan on the Russia-Ukraine war as deeply flawed and simplistic.

This is how Charan starts off his write-up: “Chinese President Xi Jinping is keeping Russia’s war in Ukraine going. Simply put, Xi’s purchases of Russian oil are preventing Russian President Vladimir Putin’s economy from collapsing. Oil, in this war as in others, is leverage. Seen in the larger context of Xi’s global ambitions, this means the Ukraine war has become a proxy conflict between the US and China. It isn’t clear President Donald Trump recognises that.” Like China, India is also on the list of major buyers of Russian oil and defends its position saying its priorities are energy security and national interests.

Wolff, founder of the media platform Democracy at Work, is Professor of Economics Emeritus at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and a Visiting Professor in the Graduate Program in International Affairs at the New School. He has earlier taught economics at Yale University and City University of New York and is an alumnus of Harvard College, Stanford University, and Yale University.

Wolff says of Charan’s column, “It is deeply flawed by the usual tendency to take one aspect of a complex reality and simplify it by making that chosen aspect (chosen by the analyst) THE key determinant of the totality.” Barron’s is a weekly American publication from Dow Jones & Company.

Charan had noted in his article that Trump failed to realise that the trajectory of Putin’s war is heavily constrained by Xi and Xi’s oil purchases. He went on to add, “Any decision to continue the war, escalate it, or seek a pause will depend on whether the Chinese leader decides to twist Putin’s arm by cutting back the order—or not. Trump’s leverage pales in comparison.”

Charan, who dwelled in his write-up on former President Joe Biden’s and Trump’s strategies to weaken the Russian economy, argued that “Washington must be ready for a long struggle and full recognition that China’s objective in backing Putin is to weaken the West’s industrial capacity, deplete its resources, and measure its readiness for a larger conflict.”

Charan, whose next book is on US-China tensions, also stated that the Ukraine war is a contest of systems in which China sets the boundaries, Russia carries out the fight, and the West must decide how far it is willing to go in counteracting Beijing to prevail.

Wolff contests Charan’s arguments, saying, “You can think of this (column) as a kind of self-promotion by the analyst: ‘what I focus on is the most important object to focus on.’ For Indians who obsess about China, as for Barron’s readers who do likewise, this is the sort of article they like and publish and quote to one another endlessly.” In fact, amidst the US’s tariff war on the rest of the world, India has said that it is determined to improve its ties with China. “We are committed to progressing our relations based on mutual respect, trust, and sensitivities,” Prime Minister Modi had told Xi Jinping on the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) summit a few months ago.

Wolff, whose best-known books include Capitalism Hits the Fan; Democracy at Work; Economics of Colonialism; The Sickness is the System and so on, points out that many variables shape Russia’s decision to wage and continue the Ukraine war, and not just the leverage China may exercise. “Many diverse objectives, domestic as well as international, shape China’s strategy and tactics. Reducing analysis to Trump or Putin is itself more of that reductionist logic that undercuts the article as a whole,” he says.

The American author also warns that the United States’ leaders never understood Chinese development: not before 1949 and the successful revolution, not during the period of Mao’s government, not during its economic development post-entry to the WTO, and not now either. “Mostly the US’s own economic problems and its Cold War mentality obscured its analyses: and that continues now, as this article reflects,” states Wolff.

According to the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA), an organisation that tracks physical flows of fossil fuels, “Russia’s fossil

fuel exports remain highly concentrated, with China dominating coal and crude oil purchases, Turkiye dominating purchases of oil products, and the EU still the largest buyer of LNG and pipeline gas.” According to CREA, from 5 December 2022 until the end of September 2025, China bought 47% of Russia’s crude exports, followed by India (38%), Turkiye (6%), and the EU (6%). In oil products, a CREA report said that Turkiye is the largest buyer, purchasing 26% of Russia’s oil product exports, followed by China (12%), Brazil (12%), and Singapore (8%). In LNG, the report says, the EU remains the largest buyer for Russia and has bought half of Russia’s total LNG exports. Again, the EU, which is aligned with the US, is the largest buyer of Russia’s pipeline gas. As with Turkiye, it is a member of the US-led NATO.

Although the West has ramped up pressure on India and China to slash Russian oil imports, with Washington even claiming that India has halved its purchases of Russian oil, Indian officials have suggested no such change in policy. A Reuters report quoting Indian industry sources said that New Delhi had not informed refiners of any request to cut Russian imports. For its part, Beijing has warned the United States against any bullying tactics and unilateral sanctions that affect China’s interests, stating that there was nothing illegal about oil purchases from Russia.

Ironically, as several Reuters reports and stats offered by global think tanks confirm, Russia continues to be the largest exporter of fertilisers into the 27-nation EU. In 2024, the US imported around $1.27 billion of Russian fertilisers, up slightly from $1.14 billion in 2021. The US also continued to purchase enriched uranium and plutonium from Russia worth around $624 million in 2024 compared with $646 million in 2021. Again, Russia also exports palladium to the US.