Why arm their satellite nations? As far as backing down…How about not jumping foward in the first place?
Not our fault the Eastern European countries who lived under Russia’s domination, and the satellite countries which broke away in '91 fear the big bear.
I believe the Russians were first to export their kind of totalitarian government in Europe and the Western Hemisphere.
They jumped forward first.
[quote]Gkhan wrote:
Not our fault the Eastern European countries who lived under Russia’s domination, and the satellite countries which broke away in '91 fear the big bear.
I believe the Russians were first to export their kind of totalitarian government in Europe and the Western Hemisphere.
They jumped forward first.[/quote]
Well, I wish the E. European coutnries luck, but that’s it.
It’s their country. They can place missles anywhere, within their borders, they please. This is what I would respond with.
They are playing a game they can’t win. Let them make all the the threats they like. Let’s see how the rest of the world reacts to that.
Holy shit.
I’m amazed at the level of ignorance about Russia and Eastern Europe shown in this thread.
And this is precisely the reason you Americans fucked up in Iraq. No knowledge whatsoever of the perceived “enemy”, and thinking in simplified black and white terms - “good” vs. “bad” guys.
I’ve read some pretty ignorant stuff in this thread. Danger of Russian tanks rolling through Belarus and Ukraine? Please.
Newsflash: Lukashenko in Belarus is an old-school Soviet dictator who is opresssing his fiefdom much more blatantly and directly that anyone does in Russia proper. Let’s just say that he keeps begging for a union with Russia for over a decade.
Ukraine? Invasion? Why? The Russians are controlling the political situation - Yanukovich is a Russian puppet, and whenever the nominally “pro-Western” coalition tries to do something remotely anti-Russian Putin and Medveded drive a wedge into the ruling coalition by pressuring Yulia Timoshenko.
It’s like they’re laughing openly: “You’ve had your Orange revolution, and look how it got you nowhere, bitches”.
Medvedev and Putin are playing a ruthless, tough and cynical game of world politics. Failing to understand their motives and plans is typical of the general political establishment in the US of A.
The Russian sabre-rattling is seen by you Yanks as another manifestation of their irrational desire to “conquer the world”.
Actually, what they’re doing is pretty easy to understand from the realpolitik standpoint. By upping the stakes early they’re trying to gauge the influence of some old anti-Russian foes (Zbigniew Brzezinski comes to mind) and forcing Obama to make a stand on some unpopular Bush commitments.
[quote]loppar wrote:
Medvedev and Putin are playing a ruthless, tough and cynical game of world politics. Failing to understand their motives and plans is typical of the general political establishment in the US of A.
The Russian sabre-rattling is seen by you Yanks as another manifestation of their irrational desire to “conquer the world”.
Actually, what they’re doing is pretty easy to understand from the realpolitik standpoint. By upping the stakes early they’re trying to gauge the influence of some old anti-Russian foes (Zbigniew Brzezinski comes to mind) and forcing Obama to make a stand on some unpopular Bush commitments.
[/quote]
So, what in your opinion, should our next move be?
[quote]Gkhan wrote:
loppar wrote:
Medvedev and Putin are playing a ruthless, tough and cynical game of world politics. Failing to understand their motives and plans is typical of the general political establishment in the US of A.
The Russian sabre-rattling is seen by you Yanks as another manifestation of their irrational desire to “conquer the world”.
Actually, what they’re doing is pretty easy to understand from the realpolitik standpoint. By upping the stakes early they’re trying to gauge the influence of some old anti-Russian foes (Zbigniew Brzezinski comes to mind) and forcing Obama to make a stand on some unpopular Bush commitments.
So, what in your opinion, should our next move be?[/quote]
Loppar got it right on the money. This is about moving the pawns for The Kremlin.
The United States has no answer to the kind of economic(Natural Gas Pipelines) squeeze Russia has on eastern and, in a lesser degree, on western European nations.
The best move would be a energy infrastructure development agreement to accompany the missile defense shield project.
The project should be aimed at developing electric power and heating mediated by western European nations and built by AMERICAN companies in unison with our(U.S.) development projects(sister projects to alleviate the engineering and manufacturing burdens).
This would accomplish multiple objectives…
- Gaining a foothold politically(ex soviet block) in return for funding projects.
- Expediting and expanding domestic energy infrastructure scaling(economies of scale).
- Reducing or removing the leverage Russia has in the region and finaly…
- Forcing Russia to be more amicable to the united states in cooperation on IRAN.(This only works if Russian market softening can be linked with there inability to control European energy markets.)
As a side note…
As a Soviet-born American and a Grandson of Soviet-born Soviet Capitalists, I just hope my parents and grandparents don’t have to live through the collapse of another bastardization of Marxism…
This THING…a willful infection of a popular disease…whatever the name…is the DEATH of nations.
http://www.csmonitor.com/...01s04-wogn.html
“There is a clear desire in Moscow to work toward breaking what it perceives as US dominance of the world economy”
What is interesting about this article is A: The timing of this move by Russia to align itself with Iran and B: It shows in a very obvious manner Russia’s strategic intent to officially align itself with those considered enemies of the US and also their ever gradual alignment with OPEC.
“You cannot separate economics from politics. After all, this is energy, and it obviously has a national security dimension,”
It seems Russia are making a play how will the US cover it?
Just noticed the link I posted above is no longer working, Yahoo carried the same story.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081021/ap_on_re_mi_ea/ml_gas_cartel
What I have to wonder about is, if the tables were turned - and the US ended up with the vast reserves of natural resources - would it have any reservations about flaunting that wealth? Would the US really NOT use it to gain some kind of advantage on the international playing field, putting pressure on competitors?
It’s easy to say “Russia’s evil”. It’s easy to say that Putin looks evil and angry, and is ex-KGB, and makes people disappear, and use all that to ignore the good work he’s doing. Quite frankly, as president, he inherited a country in complete and utter ruin.
He’s trying to rebuild it - bring up the economy, enforce some kind of control, and for the first time in decades, instill some feelings of patriotism in the Russian people. Pretty much everything had to be changed.
Yes, it meant ruling with an iron fist, destroying many people and businesses, and making some dangerous moves and statements. The approach certainly hasn’t been excessively democratic.
But wake up - every government “makes people disappear”, and silences some of the most dangerous (if not necessarily the most vocal) opponents. And damn it if Russia didn’t need someone to finally take control.
International goodwill? I fail to see how assisting nations in distress, such as during the earthquakes in China, is not good will.
Hell, there was that whole “Friendship of Nations” thing in the Soviet Union, where Third-World countries received military, economic, and manpower support, not to mention little things like open immigration and free housing and education in Russian universities.
But globally friendly? Not exactly, neither then nor now. Rather, the current government of Russia is protecting her people’s interests, and financial situation. Which basically means using everything to its maximal potential, making friends and shaking hands where necessary, and coldly ignoring anything disadvantageous.
The rest - such as fear of invasion - is pure paranoia. Invading old Soviet satellite states is dangerous, expensive, and ultimately useless. This is an echo of the Red Scare at best.
[quote]Gkhan wrote:
Anyone sneeking into Russia? They had to build walls to keep their people in.[/quote]
Actually, yes, immigration - especially illegal immigration - is becoming an important issue. For example, a huge number of Georgians live in Russia, and form the backbone of the country’s labour force.
They earn far more than they could in their native country, and use that money to support their families back home. People from Armenia, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, etc. have flowed into Russia within the last decade because of the new opportunities across many different industries and areas, either integrating into Russian society, or carving their own, homogeneous niches within it.
[quote]pushharder wrote:
FWIW, I have no problem with the rest of your post. I just wanted to say how laughable it is that you think it’s preposterous that Russian tanks would never roam the Kiev and/or Minsk streets again.
[/quote]
Didn’t you read what I wrote? Why should they? They are actually controlling both of them. Belarus has the dubious honor of being, alongside Transdniepr region, the only old school Soviet country in Europe.
Lukashenko’s riot police is more than capable quashing any pathetic forms of dissent currently being displayed in Belarus.
This is another typically American misconception thinking in black/white terms, expecting “pro-democracy” masses fighting the “evil opressors”. Russian tanks in Minsk would go unnoticed. After all, Belarus military forces are more Soviet than the Russians. So in a sense they are there now.
As for Ukraine, for the embarassment of the Orange revolution, Putin humiliated Yuschenko by forcing him into a short-lived coalition with pro-Russian Yanukovich. There’s no better way of saying “I own you guys”. When western Ukrainians start to squiggle a little, the Russians start talking about charging market prices for gas or instigate pro-Russian demonstrations in the east of the country.
I don’t know if you’ve been in eastern Ukraine, but for all practical considerations it is a part of Russia.
[quote]Gkhan wrote:
So, what in your opinion, should our next move be?[/quote]
[/quote]
Actually, the best comparison I’ve read is The Sopranos.
In short, Russian leaders want “respect”.
Being a quarter Russian, I had the dubious honor as a kid of living in “socialism” as well as travelling to the USSR occasionally.
In those times, respect was everything for the Soviets. You may be driving a Volga, eating kefir and pickled cucumbers, but go abroad to “friendly” countries even as a petty official and see Czech, Romanians, Bulgarians grovel at your feet. Back then, being Russian meant something. And Russians loved this. Like in former Yugoslavia and Iraq, when you take the privileges from the ruling class/ethnic group problems ensue.
A typical Russian is paranoid, very racist(despises Georgians Caucasians - Uzbeks, Tajiks, Chechens…) but has a healthy dose of hatred for former satellites - especially Poles with strong pro-American policy, as well as Estonians who are taking revenge for decades of abuse by discriminating their Russian minority.
Also, he blames (not without reason) the Americans for the free market catastrophes in the early nineties and the media humiliations of the Yeltsin years.
Now with the resurgence of power comes the desire to “teach the upstarts and Americans” a lesson. Talk to a middle-aged Russian on the street about foreign policy, and he wants that “respect” back, nothing more. Like my mother’s uncle would say “so they realize they can’t fuck with us”.
The Bush administration managed, as usual, to mess things up perfectly. For example, Cheney did a tour of nominally pro-Western guys in the former Soviet states, praising their “western style democracies”, while they are just glorified dictatorships (Georgia’s Shalikashvili, Kazakhstan’s Nazarbayev…). What enraged the Russians is the neocon belief that they could take over their sphere of influence without any backing up, saying: “You are such pushovers that we just have to send a VP on a plane and win a country for us”.
Shalikashvili took such American gestures sign of unconditional support by the US (and not just retarded neocon policy and empty words), so he “paid his dues” by sending Georgian troops to Iraq and decided to rock it out with the Abkhazians and the Ossetians.
From a Russian perspective, this meant something like this: “we stood idly while you put your guy in power in what is our backyard (think Cuba), and now he has the nerve to attack and openly ridicule us”
Not kicking Shalikashvili’s ass would destroy Russian standing in the Causacus, and their newly rediscovered “respect”.
Of course, Medvedev is now playing the hypocrisy game back, recognizing South Ossetia and Abkhazia (payback for Kosovo) and playing international great power with the mediation in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.
In short America should try to give them respect. Not friendship, but respect. During the Cold War, there wasn’t any amicability, but there was a grudging respect by both sides.
[quote]pushharder wrote:
ephrem wrote:
…how the two nations ‘sell’ their ideologies is different, but the goal is the same for both. I do think that because the US has been far better at public relations than the russians, they’ve won the aura of ‘good guy’ but that doesn’t mean that they actually áre the good guys. The only ones still believing that are the gullible americans themselves…
The earth is flat too.[/quote]
…and yet a great number of americans believe that the earth is 6000 years old, that man walked with dinosaurs, that the universe was created in 6 days, that evolution is bogus, that homosexuality is a choice and that the invasion of Iraq was just. It isn’t a stretch that, if a large portion of your nation’s citizens believe all of that crap, they’d believe any lie their government tells them: “We’re the good guys!”…
…wake up will you? Stop being a ‘impuls-respons only’ type of guy, and contemplate a little on what makes you believe what you do, and why. Then, after a couple of years, you’ll see. Not that i will get through to you, or anyone like you on this forum, that would be silly of me…
[quote]pushharder wrote:
ephrem wrote:
pushharder wrote:
ephrem wrote:
…how the two nations ‘sell’ their ideologies is different, but the goal is the same for both. I do think that because the US has been far better at public relations than the russians, they’ve won the aura of ‘good guy’ but that doesn’t mean that they actually áre the good guys. The only ones still believing that are the gullible americans themselves…
The earth is flat too.
…and yet a great number of americans believe that the earth is 6000 years old, that man walked with dinosaurs, that the universe was created in 6 days, that evolution is bogus, that homosexuality is a choice and that the invasion of Iraq was just. It isn’t a stretch that, if a large portion of your nation’s citizens believe all of that crap, they’d believe any lie their government tells them: “We’re the good guys!”…
…wake up will you? Stop being a ‘impuls-respons only’ type of guy, and contemplate a little on what makes you believe what you do, and why. Then, after a couple of years, you’ll see. Not that i will get through to you, or anyone like you on this forum, that would be silly of me…
Yes, I’ve been sleeping. Thanks for the wake up call. We Americans need a good talkin-to from intellectually superior Dutch dudes like you; dudes that have it all figured out. Again, my sincerest regrets for not recognizing your vastly superior cerebral acumen sooner.
Now take another hit or two off your water pipe and check back with me in the morning.[/quote]
Ja, that is the next thing where common sense rules in Holland as opposed to other countries I could name…
[quote]loppar wrote:
Gkhan wrote:
So, what in your opinion, should our next move be?
Actually, the best comparison I’ve read is The Sopranos.
In short, Russian leaders want “respect”.
Being a quarter Russian, I had the dubious honor as a kid of living in “socialism” as well as travelling to the USSR occasionally.
In those times, respect was everything for the Soviets. You may be driving a Volga, eating kefir and pickled cucumbers, but go abroad to “friendly” countries even as a petty official and see Czech, Romanians, Bulgarians grovel at your feet. Back then, being Russian meant something. And Russians loved this. Like in former Yugoslavia and Iraq, when you take the privileges from the ruling class/ethnic group problems ensue.
A typical Russian is paranoid, very racist(despises Georgians Caucasians - Uzbeks, Tajiks, Chechens…) but has a healthy dose of hatred for former satellites - especially Poles with strong pro-American policy, as well as Estonians who are taking revenge for decades of abuse by discriminating their Russian minority.
Also, he blames (not without reason) the Americans for the free market catastrophes in the early nineties and the media humiliations of the Yeltsin years.
Now with the resurgence of power comes the desire to “teach the upstarts and Americans” a lesson. Talk to a middle-aged Russian on the street about foreign policy, and he wants that “respect” back, nothing more. Like my mother’s uncle would say “so they realize they can’t fuck with us”.
The Bush administration managed, as usual, to mess things up perfectly. For example, Cheney did a tour of nominally pro-Western guys in the former Soviet states, praising their “western style democracies”, while they are just glorified dictatorships (Georgia’s Shalikashvili, Kazakhstan’s Nazarbayev…). What enraged the Russians is the neocon belief that they could take over their sphere of influence without any backing up, saying: “You are such pushovers that we just have to send a VP on a plane and win a country for us”.
Shalikashvili took such American gestures sign of unconditional support by the US (and not just retarded neocon policy and empty words), so he “paid his dues” by sending Georgian troops to Iraq and decided to rock it out with the Abkhazians and the Ossetians.
From a Russian perspective, this meant something like this: “we stood idly while you put your guy in power in what is our backyard (think Cuba), and now he has the nerve to attack and openly ridicule us”
Not kicking Shalikashvili’s ass would destroy Russian standing in the Causacus, and their newly rediscovered “respect”.
Of course, Medvedev is now playing the hypocrisy game back, recognizing South Ossetia and Abkhazia (payback for Kosovo) and playing international great power with the mediation in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.
In short America should try to give them respect. Not friendship, but respect. During the Cold War, there wasn’t any amicability, but there was a grudging respect by both sides. [/quote]
Great posts, a good contrast to the usual mindless Cold War thought process displayed on this thread.
Daniel Larison on this today:
“While there is an impulse among Obama?s supporters to crow about Moscow?s apparent volte-face, what we should take away from the last few days is that Moscow is willing to respond rationally when those in charge of the next administration leave an opening for flexible, constructive engagement and when they refuse to endorse needless provocation as a matter of course. If Obama would now just pull back from the absurd campaign rhetoric in which he called for ?immediate? membership for Ukraine and Georgia in NATO, we might be getting somewhere.”
http://www.amconmag.com/larison/2008/11/10/obama-and-the-russians/
[quote]GDollars37 wrote:
loppar wrote:
Gkhan wrote:
So, what in your opinion, should our next move be?
Actually, the best comparison I’ve read is The Sopranos.
In short, Russian leaders want “respect”.
Being a quarter Russian, I had the dubious honor as a kid of living in “socialism” as well as travelling to the USSR occasionally.
In those times, respect was everything for the Soviets. You may be driving a Volga, eating kefir and pickled cucumbers, but go abroad to “friendly” countries even as a petty official and see Czech, Romanians, Bulgarians grovel at your feet. Back then, being Russian meant something. And Russians loved this. Like in former Yugoslavia and Iraq, when you take the privileges from the ruling class/ethnic group problems ensue.
A typical Russian is paranoid, very racist(despises Georgians Caucasians - Uzbeks, Tajiks, Chechens…) but has a healthy dose of hatred for former satellites - especially Poles with strong pro-American policy, as well as Estonians who are taking revenge for decades of abuse by discriminating their Russian minority.
Also, he blames (not without reason) the Americans for the free market catastrophes in the early nineties and the media humiliations of the Yeltsin years.
Now with the resurgence of power comes the desire to “teach the upstarts and Americans” a lesson. Talk to a middle-aged Russian on the street about foreign policy, and he wants that “respect” back, nothing more. Like my mother’s uncle would say “so they realize they can’t fuck with us”.
The Bush administration managed, as usual, to mess things up perfectly. For example, Cheney did a tour of nominally pro-Western guys in the former Soviet states, praising their “western style democracies”, while they are just glorified dictatorships (Georgia’s Shalikashvili, Kazakhstan’s Nazarbayev…). What enraged the Russians is the neocon belief that they could take over their sphere of influence without any backing up, saying: “You are such pushovers that we just have to send a VP on a plane and win a country for us”.
Shalikashvili took such American gestures sign of unconditional support by the US (and not just retarded neocon policy and empty words), so he “paid his dues” by sending Georgian troops to Iraq and decided to rock it out with the Abkhazians and the Ossetians.
From a Russian perspective, this meant something like this: “we stood idly while you put your guy in power in what is our backyard (think Cuba), and now he has the nerve to attack and openly ridicule us”
Not kicking Shalikashvili’s ass would destroy Russian standing in the Causacus, and their newly rediscovered “respect”.
Of course, Medvedev is now playing the hypocrisy game back, recognizing South Ossetia and Abkhazia (payback for Kosovo) and playing international great power with the mediation in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.
In short America should try to give them respect. Not friendship, but respect. During the Cold War, there wasn’t any amicability, but there was a grudging respect by both sides.
Great posts, a good contrast to the usual mindless Cold War thought process displayed on this thread.
Daniel Larison on this today:
“While there is an impulse among Obama?s supporters to crow about Moscow?s apparent volte-face, what we should take away from the last few days is that Moscow is willing to respond rationally when those in charge of the next administration leave an opening for flexible, constructive engagement and when they refuse to endorse needless provocation as a matter of course. If Obama would now just pull back from the absurd campaign rhetoric in which he called for ?immediate? membership for Ukraine and Georgia in NATO, we might be getting somewhere.”
http://www.amconmag.com/larison/2008/11/10/obama-and-the-russians/
[/quote]
I agree with you in part.
Russians want respect.
They also want co-equal dominance with the United States.
It’s not in the interest of United States to be reactionary and aggressive towards Russia, but it’s not in our interest(assuming YOU ARE also interested in the welfare of the United States) to allow them to leverage their interests against ours unopposed.
I don’t know what constitutes “giving them respect” in your minds, but I’m fairly certain Putin, and probably Medvedyev, consider their internal political and economic environment more heavily than the tone or policies of the U.S. when announcing and making policy decisions.
[quote]TooHuman wrote:
Russians want respect.
They also want co-equal dominance with the United States.
It’s not in the interest of United States to be reactionary and aggressive towards Russia, but it’s not in our interest(assuming YOU ARE also interested in the welfare of the United States) to allow them to leverage their interests against ours unopposed.
[/quote]
I’s pretty simple. Let me use a night club analogy from my bouncing days.
You and your girlfriend are in a nightclub and spot an empty sofa behind some velvet ropes. You jump over and make yourselves comfortable on the sofa. Suddenly, a 250 pound 20-0 MMA fighter working as a bouncer comes over and says “Sir, Madam, this is a private area. Would you be so kind and please vacate the sofa.” Do you leave the sofa? Yes. You may later claim to your girlfriend how you would have kicked his ass if he said something, but you leave. And you’re glad you were given a saving face exit which hasn’t damaged your ego.
Now, let’s imagine instead of the MMA fighter that the bouncer in question is a 110 pound weakling who comes over starts yelling “I’ll crush your face bitch” at both of you and starts violently pulling your girlfriend from the sofa. Do you take a swing at him?
And that is the crux of the problem. The neocon adminstration treated Russia under Putin like “Yeltsin the amusing drunk” was still in Kremlin, tried to encroach in the traditional area of Russian interests without having anything to back up their actions with the US resources being stretched in Iraq and Afghanistan.
I guess the believed that a few military contractors training the Georgian army were sufficient to scare the Russians into submission. Stupid, as expected.
Now when their bluff was called, the right-wing establishment resorted to hysterical Cold War comparisons and endless “Putin is a evil dictator” op-ed pieces.
The point is, if you talk shit to someone, make sure he fully knows you can back it up and be prepared to back it up. If not, don’t talk shit at all and try to reach a reasonable compromise.