padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
think this through from the opposite perspective too
always useful, ofc. there was a similar thing w/Iran at the height of the Iraq/Afghan wars. Americans on both sides combined w/deeply paranoid regime.

it can be, is, true at the same time that the current Russian regime is super fucked up and that its fears of encirclement kind of make sense, even without the paranoia. it's a pretty old, traditional narrative too in Russia, no? Definitely it was on Stalin's mind, the USSR in general. Russian rulers have been obsessed with things like access to warm water ports for centuries. folk memories of centuries paying tribute to the Mongols etc. + so on. doesn't excuse any of the fucked up things but you can understand the thought process.
 

DannyL

Wild Horses
I read Tim Marshall's book "Prisoners of Geography" last year sometime. He puts down Russian paranoia to fears centring on the North East European Plain which is an arrangement of flat land which spreads from Russia throughout Europe, part of which is a direct corridor from Moscow to Poland. It'd be very hard to defend across it's breadth. He says the Russians have fought wars on or around this plain every 30 years since Napoleon's invasion in 1812. What screwed him was length of supply lines. It's an interesting argument (that I'm not doing justice to) - he also mentions NATO encirclement as well IIRC.
 

vimothy

yurp
Forgetting about morality for a second and taking a strictly realist view, I think it's obvious why Russia feels threatened - because they are threatened.
 

luka

Well-known member
how far do you think it goes?
it was the point we started the thread at after all.
 

luka

Well-known member
not that im going to get involved in this thread btw that just slipped out accidentally.
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
how far do you think it goes?
it was the point we started the thread at after all.

Well as vim said, it's a political but not a moral observation. It carries with it the implication that the USA and Russia each need their own 'back yard', and that the only way for Russia not to feel threatened (and not to feel that it constantly has to engage in 'offensive defence') is for Western powers to concede that eastern Europe and central Asia essentially belong to Russia, just as they did in the Soviet era.
 

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
taking a strictly realist view, I think it's obvious why Russia feels threatened - because they are threatened.
a concise version of what I was saying, minus the historical context

always more useful to view geopolitics thru realpolitik lens. regimes act in what they perceive to be their self-interest. those actions may/not be morally objectionable.

do think historical context is important here. Russian rulers have always been concerned w/access to year-round ports, Central Asia (Great Game etc), influence in E Europe, etc. add inherent paranoia of siloviki ruling class, post-Cold War tension lingering resentment over American/W European role in absolute mess of 90s Russia, to traditional Russian fears and losing my edge worries over diminished global role. easy to forget Putin was (still is to some extent? idk) v popular when he came to power, stabilizing things, restoring Russian pride killing many, many Chechens. I'm sure many Russians, even some opponents, appreciate him standing up to the West, if perhaps not the repressive state security apparatus, murdered journalists, corruption, etc. + obv no one should be surprised that a regime of ex-KGB guys is totally into disinformation and information warfare.
 

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
has to be said also U.S. has also played some pretty bad hands, Georgia esp, Ukraine. Syria too tho that's a trickier one, the Georgia thing was just so fucking dumb.

more generally like virtually every major U.S. setback of the last 15+ years it's deeply tied into imperial overreach. Putin should thank OBL at least once every day.

he should also thank Lawrence Summers et al for midwifing the brutal shock adjustment to a market economy + allowing Putin to swoop in as a savior reining in the chaos
 

droid

Well-known member
One thing that I think is often overlooked is just how fucked Russia is socially & demographically. Mortality rates & life expectancy were already in the red in the last years of the USSR (its 56 for men ATM) & alcoholism is/was endemic. Shock treatment in the 90's devastated the country. If you check out the numbers in detail, youre basically looking at the kind of casualty levels you'd expect to see during wartime.

450px-Natural_Population_Growth_of_Russia.PNG


Oliver Bullough (who I have dissed here in the past for his Centrism) wrote a very good book on this - 'Last Man in Russia'. Take into account the fact that it's economy is about the same size as Italys, has become almost entirely dependent on energy exports and suffers from crumbling infrastructure and collapsed institutions... its basically a failed state by most metrics - hence the move into aggressive soft warfare & non-conventional power projection.
 
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padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
this is the original sin as far as this whole story goes as far as im concerned
that is exactly correct

you should never kick your enemy when they're down unless you plan on finishing the job salting the earth style, which obv wasn't an option
 

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
One thing that I think is often overlooked is just how fucked Russia is socially demographically
totally. I thought about mentioning all that as well.

Iran has similar concerns afaik - inverted age table, dependence on energy exports, + a massive heroin problem (highest addiction in the world supposedly)

it v much does go back to that original sin of shock treatment w/Russia tho
 

droid

Well-known member
Unsurprisingly, I agree with this. I think it's a false equivalence to compare the two, just because of the super-power status. Russia is a much more oppressive state by pretty much any metric - journalistic freedom in Russia is non-existent, and the heads of any organised opposition that looks like gaining any purchase tend to end up in jail if not killed - look at the fortunes of Alexi Navalny for an example. I kinda forget that not everyone has read up on the post-modern nature of Russian power projection - trolling as state policy, basically - as well as the endemic corruption and state-sanctioned violence - so threads like this always surprise me somewhat. A world with increased Russian power is one on a rapid downhill slide to fascism in my view. We can see what this looks like in practice in Syria right now.

The US currently runs a for profit prison slave system which disproportionately targets blacks and the poor, its state security services snatches brown people off the street (including children and the terminally ill) for deportation or incarceration without trial, and regularly murders people with impunity and then exonerates the killers in kangaroo courts. It runs assassination campaigns against domestic activists and political dissidents, kills thousands in extrajudicial drone wars (including hundreds of civilians), tortures hundreds of people in secret black sites and then promotes the torturers to the highest offices, supports the worst dictatorships, is the biggest arms dealer in the world and regularly launches catastrophically dangerous and destabilising interventions.

Russia is appalling, there's no dichotomy here, but I would suggest that the reason one doesnt view a world with ascendant US power as on a downhill slide to fascism is because we're not on the receiving end.
 

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
all true, but despite that + even w/Trump the U.S. is still much more a nation of laws than Russia, and less of a failed state

(ironically due in part to its continuing ability to attract mostly non-white en masse immigration to offset Europe/Japan style demographic crisis)

all empires have been based on oceans of blood + misery, the U.S. is no different, the blood is just more sublimated (for some)

highly doubt greater Chinese hegemony will be an improvement, or any other future empire

it is a positive that journalists can mostly operate here w/o fear of being murdered, there is at least the prospect of consequences for (some) abuses of state power, etc
 

DannyL

Wild Horses
I don't disagree you with Droid but I think Padraig is on the money though. I'd add that our laws, discourses of freedom etc are one of the things that's directly exploited and threatened by Russia's hybrid warfare. Background Russian campaigns have tended to highlight divisions and exacerbate already existing tensions i.e. running fake Black Lives Matters accounts and encouraging Black voters to disengage with the Presidential election, funding and agitating for every kind of far right party all over Europe. See in particular all the work being on Open Democracy about Russian money finding it's way to Aaron Banks and UKIP. I'm interested in ways in which the more democratic discourses and spaces can be expanded in our own societies rather than damning it all to hell as totally flawed.
 
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luka

Well-known member
highly doubt greater Chinese hegemony will be an improvement, or any other future empire

"it could be a lot better"

"it could be a lot worse"

is the crux of the conservative/progressive divide.
 

DannyL

Wild Horses
In condensed, clearer form - Truth, justice, human rights. Al these are public goods, even if their realisation in our societies is imperfect (to put it mildly). All three are under direct assault from the Russian state. Our failures to realise these values will worsen and deepen significantly as Russia gains more global influence.

Syria is a case in point - the conflict says in bold terms, fuck legitimacy, power and a monopoly on violence is all that matters, and the conflict shows a continual weakening of any international attempts to mitigate this violence.
 
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