Well…
For the equal partner bit they’d probably have had to respect election results and stop murdering political rivals.
And that would just be a step too far.
Barely. They were in the G8. Even after being kicked out trade kept going as normal, new pipelines were being built, nuclear power plants were being shut down because who needs a fallback?
Saudi Arabia gets full honors on the international stage, despite publicly executing people for criticizing the government or having independent thought, and cutting up a journalist in a consulate abroad.
Not too sure about that. We’re pals-y with plenty of authoritarian states. Even in the late 2000s and early 2010s we were so desperate to include Russia, corruption and authoritarianism and all, in the international order.
Above everything, you can get in good with the current international order simply by not making trouble for other countries. Russia, apparently, couldn’t abide by even that minor restriction.
Honestly if Russia didn’t do a full scale invasion and just annexed the lands they were originally aiming for I think the west would have probably ignored it like all their other activities in the region.
I suspect the irritation over the previous annexation of Crimea and Ukraine’s increasingly pro-Western orientation would have led to a Western response even if the invasion wasn’t full scale, but it’s certainly not impossible that the West would’ve prioritized keeping things ‘calm’ over protecting Ukraine’s sovereignty in such a scenario.
As long as they kept it to murdering political rivals within the country they would have been fine.
Everybody still does business with PRC, Saudi Arabia, etc
And that would just be a step too far.
Eh. Through the history of the 90s, it looked like they might have a shot at establishing a free and stable democracy.
Then privatization and mishandled foreign aid created their oligarchs, quality of life fell through the floor in basically all the post-Soviet states, people got mad, tired, and scared, Putin stepped in to “stabilize the situation”— Then the politicians and journalists started dying, crazy siloviks and vatniks fully captured what was left of their political institutions I guess, and now they’re doing a lot of evil murder and various interesting atrocities.
There might have been/probably were underlying cultural factors that made it impossible for Russia to ever stabilize as a “normal” country at that point. But those are hard to see from an outside perspective, and I guess they’re probably pretty hard to see from inside as well.
Also 2000-2011 was time of “I’m outside of politics” and “let serious people handle situation” propaganda. Kinda also why war happened.
Also a lot of human rights violation that was done with help of “democratic” states, like DPI systems from Israel, theater of security from US and general surveliance from around the world(mostly US, Turkey and Israel).
It got even worse than during Soviet time, because back then there were no option for nomenclature to send kids abroad for better quality of life while enshittify quality of life domestically.
I think first thing after baning “remote digital voting” should be calling FSB criminal organization, lustrations and publishing of everything in archives without exception.
Also 2000-2011 was time of “I’m outside of politics” and “let serious people handle situation” propaganda. Kinda also why war happened.
Yeah. Vlad Vexler (and Perun too) talks a lot about the engineered depoliticization of the Russian people, post-truth paralysis I guess, and the “Let serious people handle it” type of thinking. Pretty alien to me in a Western country, at that scale… But at the same time feels so familiar too, because you meet people in personal life too who do awful things or let awful things happen because it’s more comfortable for them to stick their head in the sand.
Also a lot of human rights violation that was done with help of “democratic” states, like DPI systems from Israel, theater of security from US and general surveliance from around the world(mostly US, Turkey and Israel).
Nothing makes what Russia is doing to Ukraine and to Ukrainian people today okay. But at the same time, when I read of the history of the 90s and early 2000s, I get the sense that that was probably our best chance for a better world, and “we” really dropped the ball there— “We” meaning “the West”, I suppose, simply because the West was in a massive position of power at that point— Not our responsibility to fix Russia, but a missed opportunity for everyone. Doing nothing might have been a better option than accidentally propping up the Chubais Clique, shock therapy and oligarchs and undermining democracy. …Poor Albania, too (and Ukraine too, of course).
I think first thing after baning “remote digital voting” should be calling FSB criminal organization, lustrations and publishing of everything in archives without exception.
…“Remote digital voting”. Wow. I had no idea that was even a thing. It looks like there’s barely any English-speaking news about it, and not even an English Wikipedia page. Scary— Should be scary, but also utterly unsurprising on some level… Almost feels inconsequential next to everything else, tiring.
Maybe I’m just jaded by the situation in the US where they/we have (mostly) public archives and data, but people just ignore that information because it’s boring and so they latch on to politically and emotionally convenient narratives instead, but part of me thinks “publishing of everything in archives without exception” would just be ignored, or even weaponized for new types of autocratizing propaganda, especially in the looming global-cultural trust-apocalypse of LLMs— You sound politically and morally engaged and passionate, and I guess I think/have been learning it’s an easy mistake for people like that to make to imagine that if everyone had access to the same information, then surely we would mostly be in agreement, when in reality I guess a lot of people just don’t care, or have different values that they’re starting from, even if you give them access to full information— But I suppose the truth being available, even if it still ends up ignored, is still a qualitatively and transformatively morally and practically better state of being than the truth being hidden.
You sound like you’re personally familiar with this stuff. Sorry about it, I guess. Oh, and I’m curious what do you think about “Vlad Vexler Chat” channel on Youtube? What he says seems to line up and resonate with reality, causality, and empathy to my view, but I don’t actually know and can’t actually say. Would you say he’s usually on point in assessing and explaining the state of the Russian government, people, and political climate?
I legitimately feel bad for the Russian people as a lot of them don’t agree with what’s going on and had to either leave the country to avoid getting jailed for protesting or are forced to suffer in silence.
i know few of them personally and generally those who live outside of Russia are against the regime and those who live inside Russia say they are not affected and are apolitical or that all countries to the west are controlled by US and want to steal Russian land + resources.
It’s also funny to hear what they get to hear in tv aside from UK like that time they were told that in Europe it is so dry that people don’t have water to drink or that people are freezing in winter because no RU gas
meanwhile in russian crimea, there is no water to drink and the gas line recently got blasted.
gonna be a shitty winter in crimea lol
I run a, let’s say… “Social Club” on discord (Okay it’s an Erotic Roleplay server) one of our regulars is Russian, I actually worry about him quite a bit. He wishes he could leave the country, he’s very lucid of the entire situation.
(Edit: I said he was 18+ instead of Russian because I get confused and word association happens. Of course he’s 18+. It’s an erp server literally everyone is.)
did you really have to mention that you run an erotic roleplay discord server just to say that some russians want to flee the country?
I buy dolls from one of the biggest toy makers on Etsy, and I helped donate to her fund to escape eastern Ukraine when the war started.
It might not seem necessary, but details like that humanize who we are talking about and allow us to emotionally resonate with the speaker and the subject. It’s how basic human communication works.
You’re minimizing the effect of propaganda.
The Russians have been subjected to it (about this war) intensely those last five years.
OTOH, and I don’t know where you are from, the US people have been subjected to it intensely since 1955 (the US propaganda machine is probably the best in the world, many books have been written about it).
And if you’re from the US and it makes you buckle, just consider that it’s the same for the Russians that have been indoctrinated for a while.
Anyway, not to defend the Russians, but it’s a sad situation all around. And as usual, the civilians are the victims. But they will cheer their oppressors, because they are idiots.
Sadly not a new story, most of the world considered Hitler a great man (He made the cover of Time Magazine) and had an “Aww shucks” attitude to most of the negatives what he did… then he started invading other countries, and even then the first one (Poland) got a shrug at first
“Not In My Backyard!” types have let all kinds of fuckery grow until it became their problem
It’s worth reading the actual Times article that they ran with that cover.
https://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,760539,00.html
Führer of the German people, Commander-in-Chief of the German Army, Navy & Air Force, Chancellor of the Third Reich, Herr Hitler reaped on that day at Munich the harvest of an audacious, defiant, ruthless foreign policy he had pursued for five and a half years. He had torn the Treaty of Versailles to shreds. He had rearmed Germany to the teeth— or as close to the teeth as he was able. He had stolen Austria before the eyes of a horrified and apparently impotent world.
It’s not complimentary. Time’s Man of the Year is based on influence. It’s not saying that influence is good.
Same reason Trump was on it during his presidency iirc. Quoting them:
TIME has a long history of featuring presidents on the cover and Trump, whose presidency defied precedents and fractured norms, has been no exception. Eight of the top 10 people to appear most often on TIME’s cover are U.S. presidents.
Nixon, Reagan, and Bill Clinton have all been on more than Trump.
Eating Chinese pussy is also good.
I’m just saying, if we’re already sucking the dick… why not diversify our genital portfolio a little.
