Of course, pretty easy for those in power in Russia to make a big deal to people there about their industry being bought by foreign powers, to make that unattractive or even illegal, and to then snap it all up for next to nothing. The West should have foreseen this and had an alternative plan, more like local partnerships or whatever.
In the first century B.C.E., Julius Caesar implemented a series of redistributionist land reforms [1]. One component was a minimum-hold period to prevent the aristocrats from just going and buying it all back up again.
The re-concentration was absolutely foreseeable. Classical history is no longer fashionable in America elite education, so I get how this was overlooked by the bankers. But it points to a lack of a give-a-shit-factor which, in my agreement with you, does not confer responsibility, but does represent a massive missed opportunity.
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Triumvirate#Caesar’s_c... search Lex agraria
In general I think the west tends to underestimate how frail a young democracy is.
Western-style Democracy isn't something that spontaneously happens when a despot is removed. It takes a long-ass time for the institutions to establish legitimacy, and when installed in an environment when there's large inequalities from the get-go, things may change, but they will also stay the same.
Manufacturing prosperity through something like the Marshall plan is one way to actually let things settle in the right way.
As the climate crisis shows, we are perpetually and knowingly heading for the proverbial brick wall full steam ahead in the name of a quick buck.
As I said, I don't know if it's true, but it's certainly an interesting notion. Maybe it's true at least in the sense that during the cold war, the west couldn't really afford to rest on its laurels. Even the most dysfunctional market had to be compelled to beat the Soviet null hypothesis as a matter of survival for the way of life.
Same reason we did in 1948: to preserve and strengthen a hard-won peace.
> was in full asset stripping mode in the USA itself in the mid 90s
I’ve never seen someone tie FDR’s New Deal to the Marshall Plan. Curious if there’s a substantiated link.
The other factor, aside from greed, that caused the asset stripping madness was the worry that the socialists would retake power in Russia as they had a significant presence in parliament. I’ve heard that part of the need for speed (and lack of longterm plan) was the perception that Russia needed to see off that threat ASAP.
But came next was much worse.
Communists. But you are right, every opposition leader in Russia cries wolf how they should not have supported Yeltsin rigging elections and how it all went astray since then
Try to send a few billion in Russia. How much do you expect to be stolen?
The asset stripping and oligarchisarion we permitted in the early 90s isn’t quite the stuff of the Treaty of Versailles. But it certainly rhymes in that a vanquished power laid prostrate was left to the vultures.