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Your comment makes it sounds like you believe the U.S. had the power to decide whether or not Russia would turn into a kleptocracy or not. Maybe I'm misinterpre

Your comment makes it sounds like you believe the U.S. had the power to decide whether or not Russia would turn into a kleptocracy or not. Maybe I'm misinterpreting you, but if I'm not, I'm skeptical. Marshall plan notwithstanding, I would give credit to the people and government of Japan for their post-war success: it could easily have gone another direction, and the U.S. couldn't have stopped that from happening. Likewise, the people of Russia and their government are ultimately the ones with agency in their case. I don't think the U.S. should take on the burden of developing other countries; going down that road has been a bad idea more often than not.

lapcat 4y ago
> Your comment makes it sounds like you believe the U.S. had the power to decide whether or not Russia would turn into a kleptocracy or not. There's a lot of evidence that US kleptocrats collaborated to help turn Russia into a kleptocracy. Practically encouraged rather than discouraged that outcome.
- avmich 4y ago
  I'm sceptical that turning Russia into a kleptocracy was a plan. Usually participants just want to quickly enrich themselves. So I can agree that "let's make it good" plan didn't work well enough, but for planned degradation I'd like to see more arguments.
- koheripbal 4y ago
  You cite no evidence for this conspiratorial claim.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - vladTheInhaler 4y ago
    https://www.thenation.com/article/world/harvard-boys-do-russia/ https://www.thenation.com/article/world/harvard-boys-do-russ... American consultants were instrumental in organizing the massive selloff of state assets, and quite a few of them turned around and used their knowledge of the system they created to become quite rich. Andrei Shleifer said as much in an interview on the topic, though I can't find it now. edit: it seems like someone else posted the same link while I was looking for the interview.
DubiousPusher 4y ago
> I would give credit to the people and government of Japan for their post-war success: it could easily have gone another direction, and the U.S. couldn't have stopped that from happening. I suggest you read more about the post war occupation of Japan. The U.S. put its thumb heavily on the scale forcing Japan to accept democratization throughout. Unusual for the U.S. this included pushing economic democracy by supporting Japan's very successful land redistribution scheme.
- MichaelCollins 4y ago
  > The U.S. put its thumb heavily on the scale More than a thumb. The Constitution of Japan was written by Americans. America stomped on the scale, and that time it seems to have worked.
  - agumonkey 4y ago
    isn't it cultural ? japanese seems to be ok struggling under american control and keep reaching higher. People say US money made Japan thrive but so many time throwing money at a large problem fails.. I think the population was just more mentally compatible. Or maybe the post soviet Russia was dealt a bad hand. Hard to know (just like here, you can find infinite streams of contradictory arguments)
    - MichaelCollins 4y ago
      Hard to say. I suspect the horrific bombing of Japanese cities probably had something to do with their willingness to submit. Leaving their Emperor intact as a figurehead probably helped a lot. Perhaps American willingness to help Japan rebuild immediately after such a bitter war also played a role. There were probably innumerable factors that went into it. But there are a lot of differences between that situation and the fall of the Soviet Union.
      - AnimalMuppet 4y ago
        Chief among them is, the US did not conquer or occupy the USSR. We had definite say in Japan (and West Germany). We didn't in the USSR.
mannykannot 4y ago
The Marshall plan was partly a plan to create allies capable of resisting further Soviet expansion, but also a response to how the Versailles treaty set the stage for resurgent German militarism. The response to the fall of the USSR was neither, but I recall breathless reports in the US press of how Harvard MBAs were going to Russia to help it transition to a free market economy, and ruefully thinking it would be better if they aimed for emulating Western European economies. And, outside of the former USSR, Europe had the most to gain if this could have been effected - as is now all too clear. Insofar as anything might have helped, this was not only the US's bag.
- pkaye 4y ago
  Western Europe was in it for buying the cheap oil and selling luxury goods to the Oligarchs.
vkou 4y ago
> Your comment makes it sounds like you believe the U.S. had the power to decide whether or not Russia would turn into a kleptocracy or not. Given the utter unmitigated disaster of the Russian economy in the 90s, I'd daresay that it certainly had the ability to influence it away from the hard swing towards strongman authoritarianism that followed. The Washington Consensus was a disaster, and strongly soured the country on working with the West.
- makeitdouble 4y ago
  The US had a very consistent pattern of going for the Oil during that period, and the results are pretty clear. I'm not sure more US influence in Russia would have gone the way people hope.
colechristensen 4y ago
> I don't think the U.S. should take on the burden of developing other countries; going down that road has been a bad idea more often than not. From what I can tell from history, our successes involved US taking sovereignty and ruling absolutely for a period of years while setting up a government of our choosing to replace us. Our failures involved quickly setting up a local democracy and allowing self rule while we tried and failed to help. It seems we lost the stomach to use power after military victory and the incompetent governments we set up doom the countries involved to decades of failure. I really don’t think we should continue getting involved in places we don’t have the guts to set up a military government for a decade. It is clear you have to force societal change on a place at gunpoint in order to get good outcomes, if you’re just going to topple governments and hope whatever rises from the ashes is nice, you might as well not bother.
- gpm 4y ago
  What successes are you thinking of? The only two that come to mind for me are Korea and Japan (I could easily be overlooking some), and really the former happened as a part of the latter (Korea was ruled by Japan for the 35 years prior to WWII). As I understand it South Korea was at least nominally under local democratic rule from the start. I'm not sure that's a big enough sample set to be making generalizations from, and even if you are happy with a sample set of 2 I'm not really sure south korea fits the mold you're describing. That said, I could definitely be missing some examples that would make the argument more convincing.
  - drpancake 4y ago
    Post-WW2 Germany, too. Although that was a joint effort.
- cowtools 4y ago
  It depends. Pulling out of afganistan earlier would have saved us a lot of time and money.
- qwytw 4y ago
  > our successes involved US taking sovereignty and ruling absolutely for a period of years while setting up a government of our choosing to replace us Like Haiti, Cuba or the Philippines, right? Those were obviously great successes...
modo_mario 4y ago
>I would give credit to the people and government of Japan for their post-war success Perhaps a bit of both. We can also give credit to both for it's decline/stagnation. It wasn't the Japanese people that wanted quotas for US made cars, semiconductor technology transfers to the US, economic policy that didn't fit em, etc

lapcat 4y ago

> Your comment makes it sounds like you believe the U.S. had the power to decide whether or not Russia would turn into a kleptocracy or not. There's a lot of evidence that US kleptocrats collaborated to help turn Russia into a kleptocracy. Practically encouraged rather than discouraged that outcome.

avmich 4y ago
I'm sceptical that turning Russia into a kleptocracy was a plan. Usually participants just want to quickly enrich themselves. So I can agree that "let's make it good" plan didn't work well enough, but for planned degradation I'd like to see more arguments.
koheripbal 4y ago
You cite no evidence for this conspiratorial claim.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- vladTheInhaler 4y ago
  https://www.thenation.com/article/world/harvard-boys-do-russia/ https://www.thenation.com/article/world/harvard-boys-do-russ... American consultants were instrumental in organizing the massive selloff of state assets, and quite a few of them turned around and used their knowledge of the system they created to become quite rich. Andrei Shleifer said as much in an interview on the topic, though I can't find it now. edit: it seems like someone else posted the same link while I was looking for the interview.

DubiousPusher 4y ago

> I would give credit to the people and government of Japan for their post-war success: it could easily have gone another direction, and the U.S. couldn't have stopped that from happening. I suggest you read more about the post war occupation of Japan. The U.S. put its thumb heavily on the scale forcing Japan to accept democratization throughout. Unusual for the U.S. this included pushing economic democracy by supporting Japan's very successful land redistribution scheme.

MichaelCollins 4y ago
> The U.S. put its thumb heavily on the scale More than a thumb. The Constitution of Japan was written by Americans. America stomped on the scale, and that time it seems to have worked.
- agumonkey 4y ago
  isn't it cultural ? japanese seems to be ok struggling under american control and keep reaching higher. People say US money made Japan thrive but so many time throwing money at a large problem fails.. I think the population was just more mentally compatible. Or maybe the post soviet Russia was dealt a bad hand. Hard to know (just like here, you can find infinite streams of contradictory arguments)
  - MichaelCollins 4y ago
    Hard to say. I suspect the horrific bombing of Japanese cities probably had something to do with their willingness to submit. Leaving their Emperor intact as a figurehead probably helped a lot. Perhaps American willingness to help Japan rebuild immediately after such a bitter war also played a role. There were probably innumerable factors that went into it. But there are a lot of differences between that situation and the fall of the Soviet Union.
    - AnimalMuppet 4y ago
      Chief among them is, the US did not conquer or occupy the USSR. We had definite say in Japan (and West Germany). We didn't in the USSR.

mannykannot 4y ago

The Marshall plan was partly a plan to create allies capable of resisting further Soviet expansion, but also a response to how the Versailles treaty set the stage for resurgent German militarism. The response to the fall of the USSR was neither, but I recall breathless reports in the US press of how Harvard MBAs were going to Russia to help it transition to a free market economy, and ruefully thinking it would be better if they aimed for emulating Western European economies. And, outside of the former USSR, Europe had the most to gain if this could have been effected - as is now all too clear. Insofar as anything might have helped, this was not only the US's bag.

pkaye 4y ago
Western Europe was in it for buying the cheap oil and selling luxury goods to the Oligarchs.

vkou 4y ago

> Your comment makes it sounds like you believe the U.S. had the power to decide whether or not Russia would turn into a kleptocracy or not. Given the utter unmitigated disaster of the Russian economy in the 90s, I'd daresay that it certainly had the ability to influence it away from the hard swing towards strongman authoritarianism that followed. The Washington Consensus was a disaster, and strongly soured the country on working with the West.

makeitdouble 4y ago
The US had a very consistent pattern of going for the Oil during that period, and the results are pretty clear. I'm not sure more US influence in Russia would have gone the way people hope.

colechristensen 4y ago

> I don't think the U.S. should take on the burden of developing other countries; going down that road has been a bad idea more often than not. From what I can tell from history, our successes involved US taking sovereignty and ruling absolutely for a period of years while setting up a government of our choosing to replace us. Our failures involved quickly setting up a local democracy and allowing self rule while we tried and failed to help. It seems we lost the stomach to use power after military victory and the incompetent governments we set up doom the countries involved to decades of failure. I really don’t think we should continue getting involved in places we don’t have the guts to set up a military government for a decade. It is clear you have to force societal change on a place at gunpoint in order to get good outcomes, if you’re just going to topple governments and hope whatever rises from the ashes is nice, you might as well not bother.

gpm 4y ago
What successes are you thinking of? The only two that come to mind for me are Korea and Japan (I could easily be overlooking some), and really the former happened as a part of the latter (Korea was ruled by Japan for the 35 years prior to WWII). As I understand it South Korea was at least nominally under local democratic rule from the start. I'm not sure that's a big enough sample set to be making generalizations from, and even if you are happy with a sample set of 2 I'm not really sure south korea fits the mold you're describing. That said, I could definitely be missing some examples that would make the argument more convincing.
- drpancake 4y ago
  Post-WW2 Germany, too. Although that was a joint effort.
cowtools 4y ago
It depends. Pulling out of afganistan earlier would have saved us a lot of time and money.
qwytw 4y ago
> our successes involved US taking sovereignty and ruling absolutely for a period of years while setting up a government of our choosing to replace us Like Haiti, Cuba or the Philippines, right? Those were obviously great successes...

modo_mario 4y ago

>I would give credit to the people and government of Japan for their post-war success Perhaps a bit of both. We can also give credit to both for it's decline/stagnation. It wasn't the Japanese people that wanted quotas for US made cars, semiconductor technology transfers to the US, economic policy that didn't fit em, etc