Crystal ball says a guy with a full head of hair. [1]
> Russian culture genuinely seems to want a strongman in charge. It's just so damn aggravating because it's making their country poor.
The ambition that selects dictators has no bounds. Once they conquer everything at home, abroad is all that's left. It's never enough. Caesar visited Alexander's tomb and lamented taking 20 years longer to conquer the world. [2]
Maybe Russians are so used to it that they yield the home base ASAP and let the rest of the planet take the brunt. Kind of an inside-out, downhill version of the supply line stretch tactic against Napoleon and Hitler.
> And I really hate that China knows it gets a leg up on the US by egging them on.
I think it's the other way around, Russia is egging us on against China. A certain Russophile started a tariff war, which I promise you the Chinese are not crazy about. About 15 minutes after Covid hit, Putin's proxies were flooding Twitter trying to get the "China flu" nickname to stick.
Globalization is basically a gravity well with "everyone playing nice" at the bottom. This was the theory behind granting China MFN status in the 90s. What people seem to miss is that it largely worked. Russia restructured its economy for war. China is restructuring its economy for... clean energy.
They never got to Western-style democracy, true. But aside from policy speeches, we didn't really push for it much. They have a mechanism for selecting leaders. We could have lobbied for a tweak here, an allowing of dissent there. Over a decade or two they could have surpassed every shitty Gulf kingdom. They still could.
It's just so damn aggravating because it's making their country poor. China and the US are pushing each other economically. It's kinda ugly but it's not killing anyone, and a lot of people are getting employed out of it.
Russia could play that same game, and they've got the resources and brain power to get rich. Instead they are trying to win by dragging everyone else down.
And I really hate that China knows it gets a leg up on the US by egging them on. Not that the US is any great shakes on the moral high road but that part is genuinely killing people.