As someone living "on the edge" (in one of the post-soviet countries which are now belonging to the "western world") I... don't understand your sentiment. I liv

As someone living "on the edge" (in one of the post-soviet countries which are now belonging to the "western world") I... don't understand your sentiment. I live in the EU, frequently travel to the western Europe and across the ocean for work meetings and conferences, and I worked for two years in France, so I'm pretty familiar with the west. On the other hand, for recreation I often travel south (think balcans) and east (excluding two obvious unfriendly countries). And these countries, their norms, laws, everyday problems, are basically the same as in the western Europe. I don't mean in abstract "we are all people", I mean really the post-USSR counties are very similar, just slightly poorer, less mature (getting used to democracy is not easy and not everyone succeeds immediately), and with the post-soviet "oriental" vibe that western people like to exaggregate. In short, I think this is a simplistic point of view, and one that is unfair to the people living in the countries you deem dangerous to "western" people.