It is difficult to see a stable, liberal Russian democracy that America can and should respect without either changing its borders or massively empowering its non-ethnic Russians and peripheral regions. That’s the sort of power and wealth transfer that usually takes civil war or unconditional surrender to achieve.
Like in the US and UK and Australia and New Zealand and Canada?
On the peripheral front, absolutely. Texans and Alaskans are rich and powerful off their oil, and have the power to tell Washington to go screw itself in major respects. (Similar for Albertans.)
Ethnic tensions are more complex, and on this unexpectedly Putin represents the liberal front, but both American tribes and Canadian First Nations have more legal autonomy than e.g. Siberia. (Chechnya being an unfortunate model exception.)
In the end, China may succeed where America failed. Where America saw a potential democracy, Beijing sees a spigot of resources with a contained military with which Moscow cannot create trouble outside its own borders. That may be the least-worst solution for the time being.
I can remember no less than five different genocides in Russia just off the top of my head. As for civil rights, these are being rolled back at an amazing speed.
You might too, if you'd stop lashing out strangers like this.
It might surprise you that Russia and especially the USSR did none of those things.
Please -- don't bother. We all know exactly what went down in both the Tsarist and Soviet empires, and when.
[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wars_of_national_liberation
I'd seriously suggest you try visiting some of these countries sometime. Or at least talk a few people who actually grew up there. You might learn something.
Hmm -- this really is quite a presumptuous (and basically highly obnoxious) attitude to take.
A place that would never have gotten rid of Nazism had it not been for the Soviet Union.
And which likely never would have been invaded in the first place, had Stalin not greenlighted Hitler's plans via a certain famous agreement in 1939.
How about fighting 70% of the Wehrmacht. Read about the Eastern Front instead of just watching Saving Private Ryan :)
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastern_Front_(World_War_II)
> But what we do know from the historical record -- is that most of these places likely never would have been invaded in the first place, had Stalin not greenlighted Hitler's plans via a certain famous agreement in 1939.
What often doesn't get mentioned in history classes is that before the infamous Stalin-Hitler pact, USSR tried to obtain a military pact with the West and that the West prologned the signing of any such agreements. Some even say that the Western powers (UK especially) hoped that Hitler would only focus his effort to the East and in that way deal with the rise of worldwide communist movement.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/russia/322...
So Stalin went to Hitler. He was really mad guy, paranoid, former gangster.
Maybe he was just street smart :)
Oh, boo-hoo. And (just as with its successor state today), its feelings were sooo hurt, it just had to steamroll over those decadent neighboring countries (that should have known better than to be situated on its doorstep anyway). And accidentally deport a good chunk of their population to a place with low survival rates. And accidentally dig those holes in the forest that 22,000 civilians and former military personnel just happened to fall into.
USSR was not the same as Russia
In terms of whose overall interests it was serving -- of course it was.
Also, the Russian poverty rate is 12%. The poverty level is $2200.
> I would be jumping for joy to be honest. Just living here you hit the jackpot.
Lol. Keep this comming please
This would create an economic super-bloc that even China could not confront.
I think that is the real threat to American hegemony: Europe and Russia, getting along. It'd be awesome, but not so much in Washington DC ..
But rest assured, Russians have been concerned about it for years. It is a thing for them. They know what our armed forces have been doing, even if we don't ..
Could it just be inertia of thinking from the Cold War? The USSR was known to be powerful, and Russia is kinda the USSR, so it's assumed Russia has to be kinda powerful.
It's going to be interesting to observe how will Russian standing in the world change, now that the war is revealing that the Tsar has no clothes.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Realpolitik