The General Russia Thread

The trick is that such force is unsustainable. The need to oppose the world laid low the Soviet Union, when they chose to abandon Khrushchev's attempts at reform both because they did not believe in them and because they were more concerned with power politics. Similarly here Putin was at a crossroads, immediately after Medvedev: continue trying to build economic dynamism at home, take the offered reset button from Washington, and be a player in the multipolar world, if in an inferior capacity, or try to go it alone and rebuild the old sphere of influence.

It's the same mistake, and will lead to the same outcome. The trouble is whether the world wants to be there to catch Russia when she falls next time, or not, or whether anything quite as moronic as Yeltsin's shock therapy will be tried, mucking it all up again.

@Ach: excellent analysis, dude.

@Odo: I am a little confused regarding your position. What policy do you want the West to pursue that could convince Putin to pull back his support of the Ukrainian rebels?

Well, they can't. What they can do is make it so that the next Donbas doesn't happen, because the Russians have been content to exercise soft power instead of harder leverage.

OK, so what policy could we pursue that would accomplish that?

Don't obviously feed the troll.

More specifically, don't ignore and undermine Russian concerns about issues and just press forward blindly.

Specifics, please. What concerns are you referring to, and what do you expect the West to do about it?

@Ogodei

The world won't be there to catch Russia when it falls. It will make sure it does all it can to tip it, to ensure it doesn't recover, to "contain" it once and for all. That's what the world is doing already.

Which is why I still think that Ukraine is still the winner of all this. Thinking of moving there, even. The world will do all it can to help it recover, and for the next few years it will be everyone's pet project.

If we disagree, that much, at least, we have in common

You may be right, up to a point. The West objects to Russia's aggressive nationalism, but the real source of the problem is the level of corruption within the Russian government, since, at least in my humble opinion, the nationalism is mostly meant to cover up the corruption. As long as Russia is being run by what is effectively a kleptocracy, conflict of some kind is probably inevitable.

The collapse of the Soviet Union also affected several local large mammals.

"We're all paper, we're all scissors, we're all fightin' with our mirrors, scared we'll never find somebody to love."

That's what happened before. It wa everyone's pet project to help the poor post-soviet countries that finally escaped from the clutches of the big mean empire. And look where they are now, proper civilised Europe.

But Russia - everyone was happy it fell and made sure it remained that way.

Not saying that internal differences in policies within the countris did not matter there, but the reaction of the world was vastly different, and it made some differences indeed.

If we disagree, that much, at least, we have in common

You know, I don't think that's exactly true.

Only the Baltic countries managed to join the "proper, civilized EU". They had their own specifics - they were small enough, so that corruption was marginally easier to root out, and, even in the USSR, they had far more autonomy than the other republics. Not to mention the deeply seated nationalism and grudge towards Russia for the occupation, which drove them to actually strive towards the EU/NATO/whatever would defend them against further possible Russian aggression (and - yes, it borders on paranoia, but that's no thanks to Russia's aggressive policy towards us in the whole X Xth century, or even before that). Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia were properly motivated, they more or less successfully jumped through all the required hoops and achieved their aim.

Now, with all the other post-Soviet countries, and especially Russia, the aim was not that clear. Mostly the will of the people was an abstract "to live better, like the West". There was nobody in Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Georgia or Kazakhstan to push through any reforms or fight the cutthroat oligarchate/quasi-bandits. Chaos and economical downfall ensued (even Belarus was very chaotic until Lukashenko came to power), money didn't get down to the people, which ensured a disillusionment with the West (a mix of successfully directed propaganda and old suspicions from the Cold War).

Now, what I think the West actually did was - not risk it. They saw the mess Russia or Ukraine was in, and went like "you guys sort it out, then we'll talk". Partially that was also because of Cold War mistrust ("what if the Russian bear rises again?"), partially because of the huge instability and unpredictability of Russian/Ukrainian/Georgian politics. It was not that the West "tried to tip Russia over", it was more like "the West watched Russia implode while eating popcorn". And only after the color revolutions, when it seemed some modicum of stability would be brought to Ukraine and Georgia, did the West seriously entertain the possibility of them joining the western bloc.

Khto tse, mamo-mamo?

In fact, Bush '88 actually played a restraining role when the USSR collapsed: Nunn-Lugar happened under his watch, and while some of his more hawkish advisors wanted to give the USSR a shove or two, Bush ended up holding back the US with a wiser, more cautious wait-and-see approach.

There wasn't much love lost between himself and the USSR, but the general consensus appeared to have been towards caution instead of exulting immediately over the USSR's decline.

Charlie Stross's cheerful, optimistic predictions for 2017, part one of three.

The Eastern European states managed it to, the West pretty much ate the Warsaw Pact in a few big bites. We got the Baltic States to but nobody was going to try for the former USSR while we still had eastern Europe to bring in from the cold.

But if we get another collapse, well Eastern Europe is pretty secure now, so we can focus on the former USSR in the event of another collapse. That means Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova, Georgia and maybe even some future states that might pop out of a broken Russia (though they could easily end up being left for later as the former USSR was post the Soviet collapse).

You know when I describe it that way the Russian fear doesn't seem that illogical, it sounds almost like Salami Tactics.

“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ Cyran

And they won't even try to bring Russia itself into the fold. It can die and rot and become a third world country for all they care.

(sigh) Makes me bitter sometimes. I wouldn't mind them winning if it meant assimilation, but that won't happen.

If we disagree, that much, at least, we have in common

It's been tried by the EU, but not by Putin:

Russia refused to join the EU's European Neighbourhood Policy when it was offered in 2004 because it felt it would make it a "junior partner", so the EU was kind enough to set up a bespoke system just for Russia. The four "Common Spheres" gave Russia all the benefits of the ENP but without the implications of subordinate position, essentially because the EU was keen for Russia-EU relations to grow. But that's as far as Russia wanted to come: Silvio Berlusconi repeatedly make overtures suggesting at future Russian EU membership, all of which were rejected by Russia. Admittedly, even if Russia had expressed interest, it might have been a pretty fraught process getting the post-Soviet states to agree - but Moscow never even tried.

The simple fact is that the EU membership has political, economic, and human rights criteria that Russia does not meet and has never had any intention of meeting. The forces that now control Russia cannot survive EU membership - or a Western-style liberalization more generally - and the EU could not survive compromising its fundamental political criteria to permit Russian entry as Russia is set up now. To turn your perspective on its head: allowing Russia as it is presently led into the EU would let the siloviki and the oligarchs set and influence pan-European policy and the future course of European integration. How exactly would that be good for either polity?

edited 20th Jan '15 4:36:32 AM by Achaemenid

Schild und Schwert der Partei

Russia might have thought differently if it was courted like the former Soviet countries were. Like Ukraine was courted.

If we disagree, that much, at least, we have in common

Do you mean the government? Or the people?

Khto tse, mamo-mamo?

Both, most likely.

Both. The West went to a considerable effort to bring the former Union countries into the fold - much more than a simple offer.

If we disagree, that much, at least, we have in common

I'm not up on most details of this but I once read a book (United States of Europe) that dared to suggest that Russia might eventually want to join (and be allowed into) the European Union. Being a bit of a Europhile, I thought that'd be awesome. Kinda still do. I want us to get along. And be a bigger player against the US and China :)

edited 20th Jan '15 5:09:38 AM by betaalpha

5 Chechens have been arrested in France on suspicion of terrorism, one day after a huge anti-Charlie Hebdo rally in Groznyy was led by Ramzan Kadyrov.

Khto tse, mamo-mamo?

People blow up his stuff and kill his relatives, while his mind is preoccupied with cartoons. Heh. He can rest easy though. Nobody will even translate Hebdo into English(I can't French. Le sadly), so he's not seeing the content of it anytime soon.

Ach, the Baltic states were properly motivated to agree(getting the hell away from us is motivation enough), Russia was not. The thing is... neither Putin nor the people of Russia have ever seen a good reason to agree to this. Both see the Western world as a purely antagonistic and competitive entity, both for their own reasons. This is how I see it:

Putin sees EU and US as threats to his power. Hence why the "junior" thing brought up. In Putin's mind, accepting EU's offers means subjugating himself to the EU, becoming what, say, Belarus is to him. And he wants to keep his power. That's why in his speeches there's one particular recurring element - "looks like monopolar world model doesn't work, eh, USA?"

Putin wants to be seen as the West's equal. His mentality is closer to that of The Rival. He doesn't harbor particular hate towards the Western way of life, even probably sees himself as a moderate towards it(his "gay visitors are fine, just don't touch children" line seems like a horrible attempt at being moderate). If he likes an American law, he's happy to duplicate it(smoking bans in restaurants and bars, for example).

That's why he'll always refuse any attempts at cooperation, unless they favor him in a bloated and obvious way. He wants to be the head of his own bloc, not a limb in someone else's.

As far as the people... well. The 90s brought the Western way of life to us, but it was accompanied by the shadow and ruin that, since then, became assosiated with the West. But it didn't stop there. Your very own media digs itself deeper on that one. The West is very self-critical, especially America. It'll expose every bad thing about itself, it'll keep on and on about those bad things. Now, this is neccessary for these bad things to be solved. Part of the progress. But internationally, Putin media grabs those bad things and milks them for all their worth. So when both Putin and America proclaim that America sucks, what else can a given Russian person think?

Who cares? Why is this even an issue? I would think that the main focus for Russians right now are problems within Russia. You ever fix your shit, you will easily be our equal, and more power to you. But as long as you dont, you will always fall short. What America thinks of you, what the EU thinks of you, what the Western media thinks of you, what anybody thinks of you, really doesnt matter. What do you think of you? There's the key to your future.

It matters because I can't exactly win hearts and minds by going like "Hey guys! You know that place with the housing crisis and Guantanamo? Let's be like them!"

Because we won't be treated like any other country. It would require much more effort, much more appeasing, much more guarantees, much more bowing and scraping and "we'll do everything you want and be good boys" for Russia to be accepted, while other countries will be offered help and concessions and not judged that harshly because it is in your interest to get them out of our sphere of influence.

Not saying that it can't be done, but I think it would be self-deseption to claim that the starting situations are equal. Yes, with a lot of dedicated work it might be possible to overcome that sort of prejudice, but it is not the same as prejudice not being there. With them, you'd be inclined to agree by defaul unless they annoy you too much. With us, you'd be incined to refuse by default unless we make a very, very convicing claim.

Georgia is just as unsafe, crony and corrupt as Russia is, yet they are seen as worthy allies by default because they had problems with Russia.

edited 20th Jan '15 9:40:03 AM by Beholderess

If we disagree, that much, at least, we have in common