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What deeper integration would that have been? Geniunely curious, I don't see what could have worked once the oligarchs were minted. They only care about selling

What deeper integration would that have been? Geniunely curious, I don't see what could have worked once the oligarchs were minted. They only care about selling simple low-effort stuff, easily corrupted, like oil.

neom 3y ago
We talk a lot about economic integration but we rarely talk about cultural integration. imo part of what will keep us safe in the future is cultural integration. We have multiple generations of families established across many borders now. With enough of that, the appetite for world war in theory might be decreased. I don't know the answer here, but I do feel we don't think about cultural integration as a national security asset often, and it probably could be.
- krisoft 3y ago
  > We have multiple generations of families established across many borders now. With enough of that, the appetite for world war in theory might be decreased. Like the multi-generational families some of their members living in Ukraine, some in Russia? Didn't seem to stop the war sadly.
  - neom 3y ago
    You're totally correct, to be clear I don't know if this is a good prognosis for regional conflict, I was more alluding to something like WW3.
lr1970 3y ago
> What deeper integration would that have been? Boris Yeltsyn was proposing to Bill Clinton to admit Russia into NATO. This way Russian ambitions would be tamed and channeled into something more constructive.
- actionfromafar 3y ago
  Of course, we can't know what a Russian NATO membership could have lead to. But a few red flags - Russia just barely held together at that time and had its own civil war. Also, there's the risk of Russia joining just to walk away with the keys to the kingdom at any later point. If the CFE inspections (1) were anything to go by, Russia didn't exactly play fair. 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_on_Conventional_Armed_Forces_in_Europe https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_on_Conventional_Armed_F...
  - protomolecule 3y ago
    That's comical that you mention CFE. Your own link says: "The treaty proposed equal limits for the two "groups of states-parties", the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the Warsaw Pact" and later "most former non-USSR Warsaw Treaty members subsequently joined NATO, followed later by the Baltic states and the states of the former Yugoslavia". "CFE-II took into account the different geopolitical situation of the post-Cold War era by setting national instead of bloc-based limits on conventional armed forces. NATO members refused however to ratify the treaty..." [0] What a surprise. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_on_Conventional_Armed_Forces_in_Europe#Follow-up_agreements https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_on_Conventional_Armed_F...
    - actionfromafar 3y ago
      I'm not saying there wasn't mistrust from all sides. I'm saying Russia may have had ulterior motives to join NATO.
      - protomolecule 3y ago
        "Ulterior motives" like what?
        actionfromafar 3y ago
        Having a veto on who gets in the alliance, gathering intelligence, who knows? Not me. I just don't think Russia joining NATO is an apparent slam dunk success. Maybe it would have been great, we can never know for sure, but I can understand the suspicion.
danmaz74 3y ago
Putin has pushing this lie that he tried to get closer to NATO and was rebuffed for a long time, but it's simply not true. His ideology has always been completely against being junior partner in a US led alliance.
riehwvfbk 3y ago
It might be difficult to believe, but in the 1990s the people of Russia truly wanted to be in Europe (kind of like Ukrainians do now). That sentiment is now gone, and it's not (just) due to propaganda. The common people believe that Ukrainians will just be used to achieve some goal in the US vs. Russia power struggle and then abandoned. https://www.politico.eu/article/how-the-us-broke-kosovo-and-what-that-means-for-ukraine/ https://www.politico.eu/article/how-the-us-broke-kosovo-and-...
- andrepd 3y ago
  Doesn't help, the whole history of the US (and USSR) using regional proxy conflicts to advance their purposes, and then discarding their "allies".
- holoduke 3y ago
  Where do you got that info. Most Russians want to be part of Europe. Its not that Russian people dont have a way to think freely. They all watch youtube and other social media. And they all love to ski in Austria or to visit Italy for a holiday. I don't know one russian person who is not pro Europe. Even Putin himself is pro europe.
  - jnsaff2 3y ago
    Why does this "pro" manifest itself in trying to murder one part of europe and trying to freeze the rest?
thriftwy 3y ago
For starters, pre-2014 Russians would be glad to have a visa waiver with the EU. But they never got that. Then 2014 and Crimea affair came and EU didn't have that lever to pull. Things like student exchanges, etc, were also severily limited in scope. Russians only ever saw EU as tourists, not as neighbours. And tourists can sure swap one destination for the another. Russians knew that they live in Europe, but did not feel the neighbourly presense of the EU.
- rcatcher 3y ago
  > Russians knew that they live in Europe This is not accurate. In the USSR and after its collapse, Russians generally don't consider themselves European. I also think this aligns more or less with how the rest of the world sees Russia if you consider the standards of living and the freedoms citizens have in Russia (e.g., no freedom of speech; not being able to freely travel to most of the world). On top of that, don't forget that geographically, most of Russia is in Asia.
  - omrigan 3y ago
    Russia is a 100% European country. > standards of living Comparable and exceeding some countries in EU (e.g. Bulgaria) > freedoms citizens have in Russia (e.g., no freedom of speech) Some freedoms are there, some are not. Before 2022 it was similar to some parts of Europe. Also, freedom is not synonymous to Europe. > able to freely travel to most of the world It is not that bad. 127 visa-free countries, more than e. g. Montenegro, Moldova, Albaina - all of which are 100% European. > geographically, most of Russia is in Asia This is a meaningless argument. Britan was 90% not in Europe in the year 1912. But no one would say it was not European.
    - wojciii 3y ago
      Russia is not an European country. It requires running water and indoor toilets for this. Also not being run by mafia. The current conflict is going to break it up into smaller chunks sooner or later. I'm going to enjoy watching it burn.
protomolecule 3y ago
Like this (2010): No more tariffs. No more visas. Vastly more economic cooperation between Russia and the European Union. That's the vision presented by Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin in an editorial contribution to the German daily Süddeutsche Zeitung on Thursday. "We propose the creation of a harmonious economic community stretching from Lisbon to Vladivostok," Putin writes. "In the future, we could even consider a free trade zone or even more advanced forms of economic integration. The result would be a unified continental market with a capacity worth trillions of euros." [0] [0] https://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/from-lisbon-to-vladivostok-putin-envisions-a-russia-eu-free-trade-zone-a-731109.html https://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/from-lisbon-to-v...
- EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK 3y ago
  Yeah, I believe visas issue is what actually broke the camel's back. Putin and the Russians felt humiliated when Ukrainians got visa free travel and they didn't. Humiliation is a very powerful emotion.
  - protomolecule 3y ago
    I don't know. I'm Russian and I didn't feel humiliated. I don't even remember when it happened.

neom 3y ago

We talk a lot about economic integration but we rarely talk about cultural integration. imo part of what will keep us safe in the future is cultural integration. We have multiple generations of families established across many borders now. With enough of that, the appetite for world war in theory might be decreased. I don't know the answer here, but I do feel we don't think about cultural integration as a national security asset often, and it probably could be.

krisoft 3y ago
> We have multiple generations of families established across many borders now. With enough of that, the appetite for world war in theory might be decreased. Like the multi-generational families some of their members living in Ukraine, some in Russia? Didn't seem to stop the war sadly.
- neom 3y ago
  You're totally correct, to be clear I don't know if this is a good prognosis for regional conflict, I was more alluding to something like WW3.

lr1970 3y ago

> What deeper integration would that have been? Boris Yeltsyn was proposing to Bill Clinton to admit Russia into NATO. This way Russian ambitions would be tamed and channeled into something more constructive.

actionfromafar 3y ago
Of course, we can't know what a Russian NATO membership could have lead to. But a few red flags - Russia just barely held together at that time and had its own civil war. Also, there's the risk of Russia joining just to walk away with the keys to the kingdom at any later point. If the CFE inspections (1) were anything to go by, Russia didn't exactly play fair. 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_on_Conventional_Armed_Forces_in_Europe https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_on_Conventional_Armed_F...
- protomolecule 3y ago
  That's comical that you mention CFE. Your own link says: "The treaty proposed equal limits for the two "groups of states-parties", the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the Warsaw Pact" and later "most former non-USSR Warsaw Treaty members subsequently joined NATO, followed later by the Baltic states and the states of the former Yugoslavia". "CFE-II took into account the different geopolitical situation of the post-Cold War era by setting national instead of bloc-based limits on conventional armed forces. NATO members refused however to ratify the treaty..." [0] What a surprise. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_on_Conventional_Armed_Forces_in_Europe#Follow-up_agreements https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_on_Conventional_Armed_F...
  - actionfromafar 3y ago
    I'm not saying there wasn't mistrust from all sides. I'm saying Russia may have had ulterior motives to join NATO.
    - protomolecule 3y ago
      "Ulterior motives" like what?
      - actionfromafar 3y ago
        Having a veto on who gets in the alliance, gathering intelligence, who knows? Not me. I just don't think Russia joining NATO is an apparent slam dunk success. Maybe it would have been great, we can never know for sure, but I can understand the suspicion.

danmaz74 3y ago

Putin has pushing this lie that he tried to get closer to NATO and was rebuffed for a long time, but it's simply not true. His ideology has always been completely against being junior partner in a US led alliance.

riehwvfbk 3y ago

It might be difficult to believe, but in the 1990s the people of Russia truly wanted to be in Europe (kind of like Ukrainians do now). That sentiment is now gone, and it's not (just) due to propaganda. The common people believe that Ukrainians will just be used to achieve some goal in the US vs. Russia power struggle and then abandoned. https://www.politico.eu/article/how-the-us-broke-kosovo-and-what-that-means-for-ukraine/ https://www.politico.eu/article/how-the-us-broke-kosovo-and-...

andrepd 3y ago
Doesn't help, the whole history of the US (and USSR) using regional proxy conflicts to advance their purposes, and then discarding their "allies".
holoduke 3y ago
Where do you got that info. Most Russians want to be part of Europe. Its not that Russian people dont have a way to think freely. They all watch youtube and other social media. And they all love to ski in Austria or to visit Italy for a holiday. I don't know one russian person who is not pro Europe. Even Putin himself is pro europe.
- jnsaff2 3y ago
  Why does this "pro" manifest itself in trying to murder one part of europe and trying to freeze the rest?

thriftwy 3y ago

For starters, pre-2014 Russians would be glad to have a visa waiver with the EU. But they never got that. Then 2014 and Crimea affair came and EU didn't have that lever to pull. Things like student exchanges, etc, were also severily limited in scope. Russians only ever saw EU as tourists, not as neighbours. And tourists can sure swap one destination for the another. Russians knew that they live in Europe, but did not feel the neighbourly presense of the EU.

rcatcher 3y ago
> Russians knew that they live in Europe This is not accurate. In the USSR and after its collapse, Russians generally don't consider themselves European. I also think this aligns more or less with how the rest of the world sees Russia if you consider the standards of living and the freedoms citizens have in Russia (e.g., no freedom of speech; not being able to freely travel to most of the world). On top of that, don't forget that geographically, most of Russia is in Asia.
- omrigan 3y ago
  Russia is a 100% European country. > standards of living Comparable and exceeding some countries in EU (e.g. Bulgaria) > freedoms citizens have in Russia (e.g., no freedom of speech) Some freedoms are there, some are not. Before 2022 it was similar to some parts of Europe. Also, freedom is not synonymous to Europe. > able to freely travel to most of the world It is not that bad. 127 visa-free countries, more than e. g. Montenegro, Moldova, Albaina - all of which are 100% European. > geographically, most of Russia is in Asia This is a meaningless argument. Britan was 90% not in Europe in the year 1912. But no one would say it was not European.
  - wojciii 3y ago
    Russia is not an European country. It requires running water and indoor toilets for this. Also not being run by mafia. The current conflict is going to break it up into smaller chunks sooner or later. I'm going to enjoy watching it burn.

protomolecule 3y ago

Like this (2010): No more tariffs. No more visas. Vastly more economic cooperation between Russia and the European Union. That's the vision presented by Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin in an editorial contribution to the German daily Süddeutsche Zeitung on Thursday. "We propose the creation of a harmonious economic community stretching from Lisbon to Vladivostok," Putin writes. "In the future, we could even consider a free trade zone or even more advanced forms of economic integration. The result would be a unified continental market with a capacity worth trillions of euros." [0] [0] https://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/from-lisbon-to-vladivostok-putin-envisions-a-russia-eu-free-trade-zone-a-731109.html https://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/from-lisbon-to-v...

EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK 3y ago
Yeah, I believe visas issue is what actually broke the camel's back. Putin and the Russians felt humiliated when Ukrainians got visa free travel and they didn't. Humiliation is a very powerful emotion.
- protomolecule 3y ago
  I don't know. I'm Russian and I didn't feel humiliated. I don't even remember when it happened.