[quote]TooHuman wrote:
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/
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]
You cannot separate the two, if Putin lets some thing slide that are seen as a provocation by many Russians they will start to think he is a pussy and that would not do.