5 ms·

Russia won't be 'a friend again' until they stop thinking of empires. We tried the appeasement through trade route already and look at what it lead to.

ivan_gammel 1y ago
The “imperial” narrative is a made-up thing by contemporary Eastern European politicians. There are fringe political groups in Russia that think this way, but they have no significant influence and are mainly tolerated by Putin’s administration (it’s a destabilizing factor for internal politics). Russian empire ceased to exist in 1917 and whatever happened since then were not imperial projects.
- jacquesm 1y ago
  No, that narrative is taken straight from the horses mouth, one V. Putin himself, who is about as mainstream as it gets. The Russian Empire from 1917 is not the one people have in mind when they refer to this.
  - ivan_gammel 1y ago
    Simple question: in 1989 the Berlin Wall fell and there was peaceful “annexation” of GDR into FRG, in which West Germany effectively took over, with its constitution taking into effect in new federal states, the GDR assets being taken over by western economic structures etc. Was it imperial by its nature? From Russian perspective it’s kind of the same (except the war part of course). Same language spoken, shared history etc. If you look at any empire, they colonize other nations. This specific conflict is framed as imperial by analysts based on the notion that the annexed territories are where a completely separate nation forged, which is being colonized. It’s not a historical but a propaganda narrative, that attempts to hide all the complexity of this topic.
    - jacquesm 1y ago
      It's not the same because one party is clearly not willing. That's all it takes: consent. If tomorrow morning Friesland decides by majority vote it wants to be independent of the rest of NL I'd be perfectly ok with that. Likewise I'm fine with countries deciding whether or not they want to join one alliance or another. Languages and history have nothing to do with it, it is all about consent. If you plan to kill people in order to get them to join your idea what your country should look like you've already lost, then you're just another occupier. I've lived in Poland under the USSR, it was pretty clear what the Russian position was on how they viewed the Poles - and anybody else that wasn't 'properly' Russian for that matter. This was an occupation, not a league of nations, and in a way Russia got more out of WWII than even the Molotov/Ribbentrop pact would have given them. I've lived in Romania, I visited Latvia many times, I visited Ukraine, many times. Everywhere the sentiment is roughly the same: that they would rather die than live under Russian occupation again, they already know what that is like. And no amount of shared history or language (or forced relocation, which in many of those cases is the source of that shared history) is going to offset that. You're if I'm not mistaken someone with Russian roots living in Berlin. Coincidentally, I know more people that are in that position. Most of them still have family back in Russia so they are very circumspect in the positions that they take. But they have zero illusion about Russia having good intentions in any of the wars they have engaged in since the USSR fell apart and it is patently clear by the indiscriminate attacks on the Ukrainian population that Russia does not care for the people that they in the same breath claim to call their brothers and sisters.
      - ivan_gammel 1y ago
        You are just repeating the same idea without further analysis. As a German born in USSR I do know something about oppression too, however I also understand the difference between socialism, imperialism and Russian flavor of neoconservatism - 3 different ideologies that existed in Russia in last 300 years. They are very different in operation and expansion modes and those differences are very important for external observers, especially when there are few trillions of taxpayer money at stake. Russia stopped being an imperial project with colonies in 1917. Period. Soviet Union wasn’t Russian nationalist project at all, so mixing it up with contemporary history or seeing it as an extension of empire is just incompetent. Contemporary Russia of Putin’s period is claiming to extend both, but it’s just propaganda legitimizing the regime, when the motives, the goals, the government structures are very different.
    - honzabe 1y ago
      > Simple question: in 1989 the Berlin Wall fell and there was peaceful “annexation” of GDR into FRG, in which West Germany effectively took over, with its constitution taking into effect in new federal states, the GDR assets being taken over by western economic structures etc. Was it imperial by its nature? > From Russian perspective it’s kind of the same (except the war part of course). Same language spoken, shared history etc. [...] This is a truly bizarre piece of mental gymnastics. You list superficial similarities and casually gloss over the only thing that is substantial as if it were some inconsequential detail. By your "logic", rape is indistinguishable from making love. The same organs involved, the same movements (except the consent part, of course).
      - jacquesm 1y ago
        What's interesting to me is that this is an educated russian living in Berlin. So full access to all of the news, CTO of a company, so somewhat influential, not directly influenced by things happening inside russia and yet, all of the idiocy that you see on display with russians that are interviewed inside of russia, including copium, irrational reasoning and russian talking points interspersed with confused personal takes. It is fascinating in a pathological way, but it also makes me wonder to what degree there is a rational pathway out of this. If this is the best then the people inside the russian propaganda machine don't stand a chance. Fortunately I know some russians outside of russia that have their eyes wide open but they too are scared of the long arm of putin.
SilverElfin 1y ago
Well I think the benefit of containing the CCP empire is big enough to require NATO to still find a way forward with Russia. That’ll require a compromise around Ukraine though.
- jacquesm 1y ago
  That would require Russia to move in a direction that it does not seem to be willing to move in. You can't have your officials with high regularity declare that you are going to annihilate all of the West just because you don't get to beat up your neighbor. You can't indiscriminately bomb, kill and abduct civilians and expect compromise. That's just not how this works. The EU, and Germany by way of Merkel in particular for the longest time believed in 'wandel durch handel'. It turns out that this was a massive mistake and in spite of the still lingering abberations (Orban, Fico) that seem to think that sucking up to the Russian mob is going to pay off for them in the long term the sentiment has changed quite dramatically from where it was five years ago. I don't think there is any high level EU politician that still believes that we are going to go back to 'the good old days', and that is in spite of the current course of the USA, which is best described as 'confused'. Just check out what Russia did in the last 24 hours to give you an idea of how far from any kind of compromise we are. I think escalation is more likely than de-escalation and that's not something I consider lightly. But Putin has dug himself into a very deep hole and he does not seem to have a way out other than to keep on digging, he's ignored each and every off-ramp offered so far thinking that they were offered out of weakness rather than out of an aversion to war. If Europe is ever forced to go - reluctantly - to war against Russia it will be because it saw no other way out. Until then we will keep arming Ukraine and we will continue to build up our defenses. Russia's main plan: to decapitate Ukrainian leadership and to use Ukrainians to continue its operation in the South has failed so utterly it is incredible, and yet, here we are. Whether Russia will still exist in one form or another in a decade is now something you can legitimately wonder about. All they had to do was absolutely nothing, and they'd be in a far stronger position today. Just live and let live. But that idea seems to be very hard for Russian leadership to entertain: that you can create together rather than that you can only expand at someone else's expense.
- nradov 1y ago
  China can be managed with a sustained policy of containment, just like we dealt with the old USSR. Call it Cold War 2.0.

ivan_gammel 1y ago

The “imperial” narrative is a made-up thing by contemporary Eastern European politicians. There are fringe political groups in Russia that think this way, but they have no significant influence and are mainly tolerated by Putin’s administration (it’s a destabilizing factor for internal politics). Russian empire ceased to exist in 1917 and whatever happened since then were not imperial projects.

jacquesm 1y ago
No, that narrative is taken straight from the horses mouth, one V. Putin himself, who is about as mainstream as it gets. The Russian Empire from 1917 is not the one people have in mind when they refer to this.
- ivan_gammel 1y ago
  Simple question: in 1989 the Berlin Wall fell and there was peaceful “annexation” of GDR into FRG, in which West Germany effectively took over, with its constitution taking into effect in new federal states, the GDR assets being taken over by western economic structures etc. Was it imperial by its nature? From Russian perspective it’s kind of the same (except the war part of course). Same language spoken, shared history etc. If you look at any empire, they colonize other nations. This specific conflict is framed as imperial by analysts based on the notion that the annexed territories are where a completely separate nation forged, which is being colonized. It’s not a historical but a propaganda narrative, that attempts to hide all the complexity of this topic.
  - jacquesm 1y ago
    It's not the same because one party is clearly not willing. That's all it takes: consent. If tomorrow morning Friesland decides by majority vote it wants to be independent of the rest of NL I'd be perfectly ok with that. Likewise I'm fine with countries deciding whether or not they want to join one alliance or another. Languages and history have nothing to do with it, it is all about consent. If you plan to kill people in order to get them to join your idea what your country should look like you've already lost, then you're just another occupier. I've lived in Poland under the USSR, it was pretty clear what the Russian position was on how they viewed the Poles - and anybody else that wasn't 'properly' Russian for that matter. This was an occupation, not a league of nations, and in a way Russia got more out of WWII than even the Molotov/Ribbentrop pact would have given them. I've lived in Romania, I visited Latvia many times, I visited Ukraine, many times. Everywhere the sentiment is roughly the same: that they would rather die than live under Russian occupation again, they already know what that is like. And no amount of shared history or language (or forced relocation, which in many of those cases is the source of that shared history) is going to offset that. You're if I'm not mistaken someone with Russian roots living in Berlin. Coincidentally, I know more people that are in that position. Most of them still have family back in Russia so they are very circumspect in the positions that they take. But they have zero illusion about Russia having good intentions in any of the wars they have engaged in since the USSR fell apart and it is patently clear by the indiscriminate attacks on the Ukrainian population that Russia does not care for the people that they in the same breath claim to call their brothers and sisters.
    - ivan_gammel 1y ago
      You are just repeating the same idea without further analysis. As a German born in USSR I do know something about oppression too, however I also understand the difference between socialism, imperialism and Russian flavor of neoconservatism - 3 different ideologies that existed in Russia in last 300 years. They are very different in operation and expansion modes and those differences are very important for external observers, especially when there are few trillions of taxpayer money at stake. Russia stopped being an imperial project with colonies in 1917. Period. Soviet Union wasn’t Russian nationalist project at all, so mixing it up with contemporary history or seeing it as an extension of empire is just incompetent. Contemporary Russia of Putin’s period is claiming to extend both, but it’s just propaganda legitimizing the regime, when the motives, the goals, the government structures are very different.
  - honzabe 1y ago
    > Simple question: in 1989 the Berlin Wall fell and there was peaceful “annexation” of GDR into FRG, in which West Germany effectively took over, with its constitution taking into effect in new federal states, the GDR assets being taken over by western economic structures etc. Was it imperial by its nature? > From Russian perspective it’s kind of the same (except the war part of course). Same language spoken, shared history etc. [...] This is a truly bizarre piece of mental gymnastics. You list superficial similarities and casually gloss over the only thing that is substantial as if it were some inconsequential detail. By your "logic", rape is indistinguishable from making love. The same organs involved, the same movements (except the consent part, of course).
    - jacquesm 1y ago
      What's interesting to me is that this is an educated russian living in Berlin. So full access to all of the news, CTO of a company, so somewhat influential, not directly influenced by things happening inside russia and yet, all of the idiocy that you see on display with russians that are interviewed inside of russia, including copium, irrational reasoning and russian talking points interspersed with confused personal takes. It is fascinating in a pathological way, but it also makes me wonder to what degree there is a rational pathway out of this. If this is the best then the people inside the russian propaganda machine don't stand a chance. Fortunately I know some russians outside of russia that have their eyes wide open but they too are scared of the long arm of putin.

SilverElfin 1y ago

Well I think the benefit of containing the CCP empire is big enough to require NATO to still find a way forward with Russia. That’ll require a compromise around Ukraine though.

jacquesm 1y ago
That would require Russia to move in a direction that it does not seem to be willing to move in. You can't have your officials with high regularity declare that you are going to annihilate all of the West just because you don't get to beat up your neighbor. You can't indiscriminately bomb, kill and abduct civilians and expect compromise. That's just not how this works. The EU, and Germany by way of Merkel in particular for the longest time believed in 'wandel durch handel'. It turns out that this was a massive mistake and in spite of the still lingering abberations (Orban, Fico) that seem to think that sucking up to the Russian mob is going to pay off for them in the long term the sentiment has changed quite dramatically from where it was five years ago. I don't think there is any high level EU politician that still believes that we are going to go back to 'the good old days', and that is in spite of the current course of the USA, which is best described as 'confused'. Just check out what Russia did in the last 24 hours to give you an idea of how far from any kind of compromise we are. I think escalation is more likely than de-escalation and that's not something I consider lightly. But Putin has dug himself into a very deep hole and he does not seem to have a way out other than to keep on digging, he's ignored each and every off-ramp offered so far thinking that they were offered out of weakness rather than out of an aversion to war. If Europe is ever forced to go - reluctantly - to war against Russia it will be because it saw no other way out. Until then we will keep arming Ukraine and we will continue to build up our defenses. Russia's main plan: to decapitate Ukrainian leadership and to use Ukrainians to continue its operation in the South has failed so utterly it is incredible, and yet, here we are. Whether Russia will still exist in one form or another in a decade is now something you can legitimately wonder about. All they had to do was absolutely nothing, and they'd be in a far stronger position today. Just live and let live. But that idea seems to be very hard for Russian leadership to entertain: that you can create together rather than that you can only expand at someone else's expense.
nradov 1y ago
China can be managed with a sustained policy of containment, just like we dealt with the old USSR. Call it Cold War 2.0.