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.
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.
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.
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?
Equal partner? The EU doesn’t even treat their own poorer member states as equal partners. It remains to be seen whose dick tastes better the coming decades.
why the anti-eu shit? Russian dick sounds tasty to you or what?
and which of these poorer countries do you think id worse off since joining the EU? other than maybe Hungary but that has nothing to do with the EU, lol
We’re 100% better off in the EU than we would be out of it, but there is a lot of favoritism and “Rules for thee but not for me” shit that rolls eastward.
Romania and Bulgaria are now suing the Austrian government for blocking our entrance into Schengen despite fulfilling every single point asked of us, and they still turn around and go “Lol no, you’re not western EU, you don’t deserve to be in this club”.
Also, wtf is this shit France is talking about with tiered membership? I fully suspect they’ll use this to try and strip poorer EU countries of voting rights if they get their way.
Exactly, like, the EU is not perfect, shit sucks sometimes, internal conflict is frequent. But let’s not pretend like the alternative being turning into a soviet vassal state is all roses and singing.
Romania and Bulgaria are now suing the Austrian government for blocking our entrance into Schengen despite fulfilling every single point asked of us, and they still turn around and go “Lol no, you’re not western EU, you don’t deserve to be in this club”.
Isn’t that just a function of small numbers of dissenting countries being able to gum up the entire EU more than favoritism from the organization itself, though? I feel like I hear similar scenarios from the EU all the time.
Also, wtf is this shit France is talking about with tiered membership? I fully suspect they’ll use this to try and strip poorer EU countries of voting rights if they get their way.
To be fair countries like Hungary and Poland have exposed the obvious weaknesses of a fully equal partnership that’s present in the EU, it’s all nice and stuff untill the whole EU pulls together, once you have bad actors fucking up quasi dictatorships like HUngary can stop your shit way too easily.
“Rules for thee but not for me” shit that rolls eastward.
I feel like that would exist regardless of EU or not and while present in the EU it would be worse without it.
I mean don’t get me wrong, the EU isn’t perfect, but the person I replied to is clearly doing a false equivalence shit, comparing an imperfect EU with the fuckstorm that is russia.
Worse off I’m not sure, but you bet Greece, Italy and Spain are not treated as equal partners to France, Germany or even Belgium.
This doesn’t mean I’m anti EU, I’m just realistic in that Russia would never be treated the same.
I’m also not confident that US/EU will be on top forever. China is gaining ground.
I would advise you to not confuse your preference for the US/EU with reality. And not every form of criticism means advocating for the other side.
There is still far too many people hurt by the Cold War or its fallout, which many Westerners forget lead to the deaths of millions, for any partnership with Russia to be anything other than tenuous.
far too many people hurt by the cold war
And all of those people hurt are a result of the Soviet Union being a hell state.
The USSR was not the hellscape you think it was for many people and the decline of the second wealthiest nation brought about real struggles for people in the aftermath.
We’re literally pumping money into our poorer members to get them up to speed
We’re giving them loans, that they have to repay and with the provision that they have to enact austerity. The welfare being cut is being replaced by companies from richer countries, making a lot of money out of it. It’s basically the same thing the IMF does to a lot of developing countries.
The implication here is that the west has a good relationship with Russia at some point, and that has never been true.
Well, in early nineties it had good relations. Then it stopped having good relation with Russia and started having good relation with oligarchs and later Putin’s mafia.
Kept their space station going for a while, and then built a new one together. What’s left of Roscosmos and the old Soviet space program would not exist without the US propping them up.
Not entirely for altruistic reasons, mind you. Didn’t want their rocket engineers running off to other countries to make ICBMs. Now that Best Korea has them, though, it’s no longer that important.
What’s left of Roscosmos and the old Soviet space program would not exist without the US propping them up.
Rogozin’s mansions won’t pay for themselves, it didn’t stop from everything in Roscosmos from being stolen.
Not entirely for altruistic reasons, mind you. Didn’t want their rocket engineers running off to other countries to make ICBMs.
Btw when Soviet Union had ICBMs, Soviet Union had ICBMs, not just Russia. Also reason why Putin invaded Ukraine. If Ukraine wasn’t forced to give up their NWs, Putin would think infinitely many times before invading. Fuck Putin, fuck United Russia.
Yeah, in the nineties there was a lot of optimism and in fact, some decent cooperation.
However, a major flaw is that Russia suffered a lot and people didn’t see that prosperity everyone just assumed would follow.
So while in the West, we were partying down about our prospective new buddies, the situation was actually pretty bad in Russia, and Putin found a receiptive audience in that context.
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.
