This is hilarious because absolutely the same argument could be applied to most of Europe getting closely integrated economically with Germany through organisations such as the European Coal and Steel Community, European Economic Area, European Union. Germany is a nation with a long history of imperialism and autocracy, why did they do it? Was France stupid to risk depending on a country that invaded them thrice in the last century?
The general hope was that economic integration will lead to closer relations and liberalisation in Russia (like it did in most of Eastern Europe). It sadly didn't happen, but it wasn't that out of the question.
> The US was begging its NATO allies across the Atlantic to have a more skeptical view of Russia for most of the 90s and 00s, not just 10s, and concerns were brushed off as the ramblings of unsophisticated cowboys
Yes, because the US was doing this even when Russia was on its best behaviour, so it really really looked like nobody in the US had remembered to update the "who to be scared of" instructions. Now they have and they won't fucking shut up about China, which is annoying, same as it was back when it was about Russia.
Why is it annoying?
Instead of focusing on the actual stuff like the concentration camps or abusive work practices or neoimperialism.
There's a major, major difference between postwar (West) Germany and post-USSR Russia: France, the UK, and US all had troops stationed in Germany with enough manpower to crush any aggression on the part of the Germans. Obviously there were never troops of another country stationed in Russia to keep them down and reform the country's government, so the autocracy, oligarchy and imperialism continued.
> The general hope was that economic integration will lead to closer relations and liberalisation in Russia (like it did in most of Eastern Europe). It sadly didn't happen, but it wasn't that out of the question.
That's the line we're typically fed but that was only going to happen in minor/middle power countries. I think they knew this at the time but didn't have any real way to do anything else with regards to Russia and China, and of course, the market demanded an unending flow of cheap natural gas and electronics, and who is the post-WWII world order to deny the shareholders?
> Yes, because the US was doing this even when Russia was on its best behaviour, so it really really looked like nobody in the US had remembered to update the "who to be scared of" instructions. Now they have and they won't fucking shut up about China, which is annoying, same as it was back when it was about Russia.
Russia was never on its best behavior. It was flattening Grozny with artillery fire in the 90s. Oligarchs had subverted the transfer to the market economic system through voucher dilution/theft. Government openly collaborated with the Bratva. Corruption was rampant. Former KGB agents responsible for being the iron fist of single-party totalitarianism through imprisonment and murder were free to place themselves in the halls of power and undermine budding democratic traditions through false flag attacks and violations of human rights in the open.
And now, we see this with China. People look at a country that spent the first decade-and-a-half of its digital transformation hacking international targets and wonder why no one wants Huawei telecoms infrastructure or TikTok installed on half of the phones in the country.
Anyway, that's how it is. The german economy profited quite well from the cheap gas. It was actually a strong decision to drop it, as the economy has a lot of heavy industry that apparently requires gas/oil. We will see how it goes in the next 5-10 years.
Let's say the factories that make MacBooks get infiltrated by Chinese intelligence and they somehow managed to put some sort of technology in the product that allowed for them to compromise it. Sooner or later US intelligence is going to find out, at which point someone in the US government is going to have a very stern talk with Tim Cook about terminating any and all business with their Chinese suppliers now.
This causes ripple effects as other countries drop Chinese suppliers, causing economic problems for the country. The CCP, for all of its faults, knows that it can't continue to piss on the basic rights of Chinese citizens if the economy goes south there. It's a careful balancing act of bread, circuses, and brutally repressive totalitarian single-party politics.
If you start buying Huawei infrastructure en masse, you lose that leverage over the Chinese to keep their snooping gear out of the stuff you buy from them.
Again, when the mainland Chinese developed any real computer-based telecommunications in their country between 2000 and 2010, the first thing they decided to do with it was start tearing into other countries' networks and infrastructure. They did this before even creating recognizable Chinese brand names for consumer devices. They used their chance at a first impression to brand themselves as state-backed black hats, and they're going to suffer from that until there's major reforms in the Chinese government.
Energy security AND national security. It was insane to build an economy on natural gas from a country with a long history of imperialism and autocracy, but Germans did it anyways. To be fair, the US did much the same with China with regards to manufacturing.
The US was begging its NATO allies across the Atlantic to have a more skeptical view of Russia for most of the 90s and 00s, not just 10s, and concerns were brushed off as the ramblings of unsophisticated cowboys. I remember talking to Germans in January 2022 who still thought that the Russians wouldn't invade Ukraine.