Russia and the West: a Debate

[Terxpahseyton]

Still making my way through this thread, but for now I would like to say that it is probably important to also think less in abstract terms and focus more on who actually calls the shots. Saying, Putin.
And in that regard it is worth noting that in the beginning Putin presented him-self like more or less as Pro-Western as his predecessor. He came to the German parliament and in German made a speech which was not about confrontation at all. Now imagine that today.
My knowledge is really flimsy over all, but from what I have gathered in the media it seems that Putin personally was disappointed by the West. An example was where he spoke at the Munich Security Conference - in the end without really anyone giving a crap about hs POV. We say Russia demands more respect for this or that abstract reason. To me it seems Putin demanded more respect and recognition. Instead he got a lot of bad press. Which I would like to speculate he took as a personal attack as well as an attack on Russia.
In the end - here is how it looks to me:
While the West may have made this and that symbolic accommodation - the West didn't really care about Russia's POV any more. Instead it kept making demands regarding values associated with democracy. That, so my speculation, did not sit well with Putin. And, so my speculation continues, he mad sure it would not sit will with the Russian population likewise. Let's remember that Putin seems to pretty much control the Russian media.
And now, Putin tries to use the power of Russia to make clear: You will respect me. And it seems to work. Though it also hurts Russia, given recent reports on its economy.

 

[LoneRebel]

No. The problem is NATO expansion. The problem is the complete and utter llack of even the most elementary respect for Russia's interests. Actually the US does a lot more to accommodate China's geopolitical goals when you think about it. The US does very little and ultimately doesn't even care about the human rights situation and the various subjugated nations in the PRC, whose human rights situation is actually far worse than Russia's.

That's funny, I don't see Russia caring about the human rights situation in China either, so where is this coming from?

It seems that Princeps' entire line of argument is based on claiming that the USSR was not about to collapse and could have endured for another hundred years. After all, if the USSR was on the verge of collapse, then that kind of harms your idea that they voluntarily gave their empire away, doesn't it?

You say that they could have cut down their unsustainable military spending and so averted their collapse. Well, if they did that, they would be even less capable of suppressing any uprisings or even outright invasions by NATO and/or China. So they were in a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" situation.

As for the USSR having been able to undergo reforms as China did, out of the question. The USSR, having 1/4th of China's population, lacked China's main asset - a vast cheap labor force. The other reason the USSR could not do that is China itself. In your hypothetical world where the USSR survived past 1991, the USSR and China would be in competition, and there is simply no way foreign multinationals would ever choose to establish their factories in Russia instead of China, assuming the USSR even opened itself up to foreign investment in the first place.

In sum, the evidence you've provided does not convince me that the USSR could have endured for long past 1991 and into the 21st century. You like to say with an almost perverse pleasure that the USSR could have crushed uprisings in the subject states, haven't you learned? You can never keep people down with brute force alone, not forever.

NATO is an anti-russian coalition with no other purpose: it usually comes with various economic programs meant to isolate Russia. Its perfectly reasonable for Russia to try to keep it beyond its borders. If NATO expands to Ukraine, where large Russian industry and ethnic population exists, it will be the average Russian who stands to lose the most. If NATO or in general, western power spreads to central Asia, and the Caspian pipeline is realized along with further NATO infrastructure in the region, it will be the Russians who suffer the economic penalties.

Oh, please. Don't overestimate Russia's importance. China is far more powerful than Russia and more of a threat to NATO and its allies (and Russia, for that matter) these days. Demographic trends will see Russia slide farther and farther into irrelevance by 2050, more so by 2100. Russia is just large and has a lot of nukes, that's all. Which aren't even relevant in this discussion because if Russia ever uses its nuclear arsenal, NATO will retaliate and everything will be destroyed, including Russia. That is not a victory for Russia.

Denying the sincere promises made to Russia is dishonest and self-serving. Denying the past reality of the Empire is like denying gravity. Denying that Russia has strong, legitimate interests in Ukraine is also like denying gravity. You can do it, but its not healthy.

We live in the 21st century, not the 19th. In this day and age, a nation's self-proclaimed "right" to empire is not something anyone has to respect.

 

[Princeps]

You say that they could have cut down their unsustainable military spending and so averted their collapse. Well, if they did that, they would be even less capable of suppressing any uprisings or even outright invasions by NATO and/or China. So they were in a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" situation.

Utter nonsense. The opposite is the truth actually: the Soviet empire could have been sustained with a much smaller force, probably even better than with a larger one which relied on the co-operation of local forces, thus increasing the availability of weaponry to Moscow's rivals.

NATO nor China would never attack the USSR directly due to the nuclear umbrella and the USSR's vast and forbidding geographic extent.

As for the USSR having been able to undergo reforms as China did, out of the question. The USSR, having 1/4th of China's population, lacked China's main asset - a vast cheap labor force. The other reason the USSR could not do that is China itself. In your hypothetical world where the USSR survived past 1991, the USSR and China would be in competition, and there is simply no way foreign multinationals would ever choose to establish their factories in Russia instead of China, assuming the USSR even opened itself up to foreign investment in the first place.

Your argument is confused. You presume that Russia and China can only have identical strengths. Obviously they don't. If the USSR reformed its agriculture and military industrial complex, they would have lost their main hard currency bleed, the grain trade. That alone would have been enough to preserve the regime through difficult 1990s. In the 2000s, energy prices would have shot up anyway once China grows and with that, the US and Saudi deal to keep energy prices low would have floundered, and the USSR with its combined Kazakh and Russian energy reserves would have supplied Europe and/or China, raking in massive hard currency reserves, enough to preserve the empire for a hundred years more (assuming further economic reforms down the line, obviously).

Oh, please. Don't overestimate Russia's importance. China is far more powerful than Russia and more of a threat to NATO and its allies (and Russia, for that matter) these days. Demographic trends will see Russia slide farther and farther into irrelevance by 2050, more so by 2100. Russia is just large and has a lot of nukes, that's all. Which aren't even relevant in this discussion because if Russia ever uses its nuclear arsenal, NATO will retaliate and everything will be destroyed, including Russia. That is not a victory for Russia.

Utter, utter nonsense. The demographic trends in Russia are not remarkable.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/markadomanis/2014/05/27/the-chinese-invasion-of-siberia-is-a-myth/

http://www.forbes.com/sites/markado...an-demography-that-vanity-fair-wont-tell-you/

 

[Tahuti]

Oh, please. Don't overestimate Russia's importance. China is far more powerful than Russia and more of a threat to NATO and its allies (and Russia, for that matter) these days. Demographic trends will see Russia slide farther and farther into irrelevance by 2050, more so by 2100. Russia is just large and has a lot of nukes, that's all. Which aren't even relevant in this discussion because if Russia ever uses its nuclear arsenal, NATO will retaliate and everything will be destroyed, including Russia. That is not a victory for Russia.

Demographics isn't everything. China lacks the resource wealth Russia has. Russia has a larger arsenal of nukes. Russia demographic situation may be poor, yet that is hardly in the way of being a superpower. It still has more inhabitants and able-bodied men than France, which would be the 2nd most powerful country in the world.

 

[Winner]

If we're speaking about Putin, it's important to understand how his regime operates:


Link to video.

 

[luiz]

It is hokum to assert that respecting Russia's wishes is "preferential treatment". Russia is the only major power in history, as far as I can tell, which has voluntarily dissolved its own Empire in return for certain guarantees: mainly that NATO would not expand to its former imperial domains. The red empire that extended from east Germany to the far east, suffocating under its yoke numerous European nations and capitals, was willingly and unilaterally dissolved by Russia: first by Gorbachev in Eastern Europe and then by Yeltsin in the USSR (after Gorbachev had tried to reform the USSR into a very loose confederacy). Many people have foolishly taken credit in the west for the fall of the USSR, trying to depict Russia as a "defeated power" and the collapse of the Red Empire as a western accomplishment, while in reality the main powers behind its dissolution were Yuri Andropov, Gorbachev and Yeltsin, not Reagan or Lech Walesa. Almost at any point, until the very final days, these reforms could have been reversed by Moscow and the tanks could have crushed the subject peoples, but time and time again it was Russia that refused to do so.

Basically, Russia gave away its immense empire: the empire it largely won in a heroic and defensive war.

Yet, in return for this unprecedented and benign action Russia has received only the most spiteful hatred and contempt. When it comes to forming their policy or views regarding Russia, Westerners mainly listen to Eastern Europeans, especially the Baltics, which are often viscerally russophobic and probably would have ethnically cleansed their local Russian populations if it weren't for the threat of foreign intervention. The politics in the Baltic countries are deeply poisoned by ethnic hatreds, yet their views on Russia are often taken as somehow deeply insightful.

And then there is this western obsession with Russian politics. We're always told that Putin crushed Russian democracy and that Russia was this happy liberal paradise of democracy under the rule of Yeltsin. Nevermind that he fired at the parliament building with tanks. Nevermind that numerous journalists disappeared under his reign as well. Nevermind that Yeltsin probably stole the 1996 elections. Nope its all Putin's fault.

Westerners seem to have this silly delusion that authoritarian rulers like Putin and Saddam are just isolated evils. Get rid of the bad guy and democracy and liberty will flourish! Of course they refuse to accept that such characters stem from a rotten political culture at large. Russia went from Czarist absolutism straight to Stalinism and only now has its first taste of so called liberal democracy. There is no tradition of civil society or democracy in Russia: so leaders like Putin are more or less inevitable and so we should try to work with him rather than mock him at every turn.

You're a smart guy and so I don't know how you came to these rather bizarre conclusions, which are silly in extremis.

The Soviet Empire was not dismantled "voluntarily" any more than the British Empire was. In both cases the imperial power did have the resources to crush the "natives" militarily, but it was just not worth it in a scenario of increasing economic difficulties and resistance to imperial rule. By 1989 the Soviet Union was broke; any idea of competing with the USA over world hegemony seemed like a ridiculous joke. Their economy was dwarfed by the American; in terms of the whole computer/informational revolution going on the USSR was lagging behind even some third world countries. World opinion had already turned decisively against them, nobody except a few mentally challenged folks saw the USSR as a model to follow. What exactly would sending the tanks to crush the independence movements accomplish? The whole system was falling apart and the economy could no longer sustain an empire.

Finally, nobody in the West believes Yeltsin's years were golden nor that removing Putin would automatically fix all of Russia's problems. You're attacking a strawman of you own creation. Still, I don't see why people shouldn't criticize Putin for his authoritarianism, cronyism and etc.

 

[Mechanicalsalvation]

And this is another common 'argument' that pops up every time: "The West/USA has never realized the Cold War has ended."

-> Where are your arguments for that view? On what actual policies or behaviour on the international stage are you basing it?

In my view, the West embraced the end of the Cold War eagerly - perhaps even too eagerly. Europe quickly decided to capitalize on the "peace dividend" and began dismantling its military to the point where nowadays they're about 1/10th of what they've been in 1989.

The US, being thrust into the position of the single superpower and the de-facto world policeman, has shifted attention to issues undermining global stability (rogue states, state failures, terrorism, tensions in East Asia); it didn't challenge Russia after the USSR has collapsed. It continued to reduce its nuclear stockpile and nuclear delivery systems - it even helped Russia fund the decommissioning of its unneeded nuclear warheads.

NATO expanded not because of any wish to corner Russia, but because the post-Communist countries wished to join for reasons I explained in my previous post. NATO umbrella was also seen as an stabilising force. The EU's role in the latter was even more significant.

So far, wherever I look I see signs that the West has happily abandoned Cold War policies for new policies of engagement and co-operation with Russia. So where is your evidence to the contrary?

Boy boy, you should read some of this:

Our first objective is to prevent the re-emergence of a new rival, either on the territory of the former Soviet Union or elsewhere, that poses a threat on the order of that posed formerly by the Soviet Union. This is a dominant consideration underlying the new regional defense strategy and requires that we endeavor to prevent any hostile power from dominating a region whose resources would, under consolidated control, be sufficient to generate global power.

 

[REDY]

Question: Since the Cold War is over, why hasn't Russia been offered NATO membership? Why does NATO even exist today?
EDIT: I don't think Russia is no longer a super power, any nation capable of destroying the World several times over (through nuclear weapons) , is still a superpower in my book...

Bump.
I know that Yeltsin told that ultimate goal of Russia is join NATO, but I dont know whose fault was that it has not happened.

 

[gay_Aleks]

Boy boy, you should read some of this:

That seems more like common sense rather than anything. A post-Cold War following of doctrines made back then would be pretty much if we sanctioned Russia into the nether(lands) world.

 

[warpus]

It is hokum to assert that respecting Russia's wishes is "preferential treatment". Russia is the only major power in history, as far as I can tell, which has voluntarily dissolved its own Empire in return for certain guarantees: mainly that NATO would not expand to its former imperial domains.

The Russians did not have a choice in the matter and didn't really find themselves in a good bargaining position when the Soviet Union crumbled away.

It might have had wishes, but it was in no position to enforce them or expect them to be respected.

If they expected NATO to dissolve or at least stop its expansion, that was never going to happen.

 

[Princeps]

The Soviet Empire was not dismantled "voluntarily" any more than the British Empire was.

Yes it was. In the mid 1980s the USSR was still a perfectly viable entity -- at least as far as regime survival goes. Unlike the British Empire, which had fought two world wars before its sun finally set, the Soviet economy was not trashed by total war nor were its numerous subject peoples up in arms: they were actually rather docile and the red empire was still quite absolute.

In both cases the imperial power did have the resources to crush the "natives" militarily, but it was just not worth it in a scenario of increasing economic difficulties and resistance to imperial rule. By 1989 the Soviet Union was broke; any idea of competing with the USA over world hegemony seemed like a ridiculous joke.

yes, but by 1989, Gorbachev's meddling had created a chaotic system that undermined the planned economy and its internal logic. The Brezhnev economy, despite its obvious faults, wasn't as plagued by instability.

Their economy was dwarfed by the American; in terms of the whole computer/informational revolution going on the USSR was lagging behind even some third world countries. World opinion had already turned decisively against them, nobody except a few mentally challenged folks saw the USSR as a model to follow. What exactly would sending the tanks to crush the independence movements accomplish? The whole system was falling apart and the economy could no longer sustain an empire.

The Chinese economy was worse during at that time, it still remains less developed than Russia despite all the rage about China's miraculous development.

Why crush independence movements? Well pride and fear are good motivators.

I really fail to see your point. Nothing in the Soviet collapse was inevitable. If Gorbachev had done what Yuri Andropov pretty much expected him to do, reform agriculture and cut military spending, he would have resolved the main problems facing the Empire. The other reforms were less existentially urgent. Gorby could have chosen to preserve the totalitarian system and remained the leader to this very day. Imagine that. Gorby still in charge.

Finally, nobody in the West believes Yeltsin's years were golden nor that removing Putin would automatically fix all of Russia's problems. You're attacking a strawman of you own creation. Still, I don't see why people shouldn't criticize Putin for his authoritarianism, cronyism and etc.

Actually, there are surprisingly many people who still think that the Yeltsin years were actually better and Putin ruined everything. There's this one oddball crazy lady called Masha Gessen who tried to argue as much during a televised debate. That was fun.

Which brings me to another point. One of the reasons why Putin is so strong is because his opposition is stupid: the liberals are bizarre idiots who are still infatuated with the Yeltsin years and the commies are bathorsehocky loons who want to bring back Stalin. There is little alternative for people to vote for.

 

[gay_Aleks]

Insane old ladies do have a thing for the past, for some reason. If you look hard enough, I'm sure you'll find a lot of seniors who will debate that communism is actually pretty great, you guys.

 

[Mechanicalsalvation]

Bump.
I know that Yeltsin told that ultimate goal of Russia is join NATO, but I dont know whose fault was that it has not happened.

If your goal is world domination it doesnt make sense to make alliance with your potential rival. That is something you learn through playing Civ games.

That seems more like common sense rather than anything. A post-Cold War following of doctrines made back then would be pretty much if we sanctioned Russia into the nether(lands) world.

To view any rising power as a hostile development is common sense of PC gaming mentality,

 

[gay_Aleks]

Because we're still remembering the whole "hey, remember that one time two powers held enough nukes to blow the whole world sevenfold"?

 

[Mechanicalsalvation]

Because we're still remembering the whole "hey, remember that one time two powers held enough nukes to blow the whole world sevenfold"?

What is your point? There are still enough nukes around to do that....

 

[gay_Aleks]

But only one power is holding them! The power of democracy!

Seriously though, USA isn't currently at a direct or proxy conflict with any power holding enough nuclear power, so currently we're relatively safe from a nuclear apocalypse.

 

[Mechanicalsalvation]

But only one power is holding them! The power of democracy!

Seriously though, USA isn't currently at a direct or proxy conflict with any power holding enough nuclear power, so currently we're relatively safe from a nuclear apocalypse.

Imposing sanctions is an act of war.

 

[gay_Aleks]

Not really, considering the situation. Sadly, that would mean this thread would derail into yet another 'UKRAINE UKRAINE UKRAINE" thread, so I'll save you this.

 

[Phrossack]

Imposing sanctions is an act of war.

Depends on what you're sanctioning. If it's a ban on DVDs and water skis like what was done to pressure Kim Jong Il, no. If you're blockading shipments of food, water, medicine, and other essentials, yes.

But nobody's doing that to Russia.

 

[Mechanicalsalvation]

Not really, considering the situation. Sadly, that would mean this thread would derail into yet another 'UKRAINE UKRAINE UKRAINE" thread, so I'll save you this.

Actually it is within the limits of this thread but do you really think that US of A isnt in any conflict with Russia or China? That sounds quite naive...