4 ms·

We can debate the scale/scope/impact of the US's influence campaigns, but the outcomes are clear: they definitely contributed to souring US-Russian relations.

We can debate the scale/scope/impact of the US's influence campaigns, but the outcomes are clear: they definitely contributed to souring US-Russian relations. Here's why I consider this whole issue important, and it has very little to do with self-determination in Ukraine: China is the greatest adversary the US has ever faced. Greater than the Soviet Union, IMO. We will need help from every major nation on the planet if we really intend to remain the hegemonic superpower. We had a narrow window circa 1999-2007 where we could have integrated an Authoritarian Russia into a security and economic framework that would put China in a vulnerable strategic position. We failed because we went full-bore on the ideological "Liberal democracy uber alles!" agenda, which was doomed to fail in Russia and has now wasted the monumental accomplishment of the Sino-Soviet Split. The Eurasian landmass is now dominated by China-Russia-Iran, three powers with internal lines of communication. Read Zbigniew Brzezinski's The Grand Chessboard, and what we've done is exactly how to LOSE the game. https://www.cia.gov/library/abbottabad-compound/36/36669B7894E857AC4F3445EA646BFFE1_Zbigniew_Brzezinski_-_The_Grand_ChessBoard.doc.pdf https://www.cia.gov/library/abbottabad-compound/36/36669B789... Potentially, the most dangerous scenario would be a grand coalition of China, Russia, and perhaps Iran, an "antihegemonic" coalition united not by ideology but by complementary grievances. It would be reminiscent in scale and scope of the challenge once posed by the Sino-Soviet bloc, though this time China would likely be the leader and Russia the follower. Averting this contingency, however remote it may be, will require a display of U.S. geostrategic skill on the western, eastern, and southern perimeters of Eurasia simultaneously. Well golly-gee-willikers, I daresay we've thoroughly punted that into the stands. Note that ZBig goes on to prescribe solutions that I heavily disagree with. But he was able to cogently articulate the problem.

af78 10mo ago
I am now convinced that Russian complaints about supposed US influence campaigns, “NATO expansion” etc. were never sincere. Russia has conducted info-ops in the West forever, during the Cold War and after. If there's an expansionist power here in Europe, it's Russia. Liberal democracy stands in its way so it's no wonder Russia fights against it in every way, both at home and abroad. Authoritarian regimes are notorious for using grievances, real or made-up, to justify their authoritarian rule and hostile actions toward other countries. Nazi Germany: Versailles treaty, supposed oppression of Germans in Sudetenland; Hungary: Trianon treaty; Serbia: Ottoman rule; China: opium wars. I could go on but the last example is interesting: Russia took land from China in the 19th century, yet China only talks about the actions of Western nations. Which shows IMO that these grievances are a mere tool to advance geopolitical interests and should not be taken too seriously. Many moves were made to bring Russia and West closer: Russian leaders showed repeatedly by their actions that they were not interested. There is not shortage of narratives Russian propagandists disseminate via influencers or useful idiots, tuned for the appropriate audience. You identify as a pacifist? Russia is a peaceful nation, it's its adversaries that are the warmongers! (Don't ask how Russia became so large.) You oppose colonialism? Russia stands against US hegemony, demands a multi-polar world! (In reality Russia behaves as a colonial empire and has a long history of oppression of the nations it has conquered.) You identify as a conservative? Russia is the main defender of order and traditional Christian values! (Well, the Russian Orthodox Church is just an arm of the state security services; church attendance is low; crime and divorce rates are high; Russia has no problem with Islamic regimes like the Taliban, Iran, Hamas or Kadyrov's Chechnya.) I do not deny the threat China poses and that the way the West approached globalization was naive. Indeed, China has close ties with regimes of Russia, Iran and North Korea. Given this reality, what I don't understand is the policies of the current US administration. China is churning out missiles, warships etc. at an alarming rate, yet the US reduces military spending. China's reach via TikTok is growing yet the US administration does next to nothing about it. The US sided with Russia and North Korea on UN votes about Ukraine (https://news.un.org/en/story/2025/02/1160456 https://news.un.org/en/story/2025/02/1160456). Trump antagonizes traditional EU allies, except those with authoritarian tendencies like Orban's Hungary. On the other hand, he has only kind words for Putin, Xi, Kim; his only complaint seems to be that he's not a member of their club.
- CapricornNoble 10mo ago
  > Trump antagonizes traditional EU allies, except those with authoritarian tendencies like Orban's Hungary. Trump in his first term warned Europe about sucking on the teet of Russian natgas, and those "traditional allies" laughed in his face. He told Europe to meet its NATO treaty obligations and increase military spending, and they dragged their feet. Now Europe's industry is struggling under substantially-increased energy input costs, and has been caught flat-footed with its armories empty while trying to subsidize the largest land conflict on the continent since WW2. An economic and quasi-military bloc with 500+ million people is begging 350 million people on another continent to protect them from a mere 140 million drunk & corrupt Russians. ....and you don't understand why Trump, who has a fragile ego and is well-known for holding grudges, is antagonistic to the feckless idiot empty-suit bureaucrats who manage Europe? He's a thin-skinned bully and now he's gonna walk all over Europe to do whatever is most advantageous (in his perception) for the US....but it's only possible because European leadership is just as weak as he thinks it is. Plus he's trying to dump The Ukraine Problem in their lap because the US doesn't really have the capacity to square off against China and manage...well, possibly ANY other additional conflict. If our actions to counter China don't make any sense or seem incongruent, that's because most of the administration is simply too incompetent to get the results needed, even if they understand the nature and scope of the problem.
  - af78 10mo ago
    European leaders are far from blameless. I fully agree European countries should have weaned themselves from Russian gas and ramped up military spending much sooner. Meanwhile for a long time the US retained control of NATO military structures in Europe. And recently Trump granted a waiver allowing Hungary to continue importing Russian oil. And there is talk from the US about reviving Nordstream, that both Trump and Biden harshly (and fairly IMO) criticized. Trump being thin-skinned does not explain much. The latest strategy document where the US administration explicitly says it will do its utmost to bring far-right parties to power in Europe goes far beyond that. It's clearly not just Trump. And again, it definitely does not help keep friends to face China. Neither does twisting Ukraine's arm to accept a disastrous deal in exchange for vague promises of riches for Trump and his clan. History shows appeasing an aggressor invites more aggression. Russia's partner, China, is watching, will sense weakness and draw conclusions neither Europe nor America will like.
mopsi 10mo ago
> We had a narrow window circa 1999-2007 where we could have integrated an Authoritarian Russia into a security and economic framework that would put China in a vulnerable strategic position. Says who? Top Russian diplomats, starting with some of the former foreign ministers themselves, maintain that the disintegration of Russian democracy is the fault of the former KGB and military power structures, which enjoyed privileged positions in the Soviet system. They were sidelined when the USSR fell apart, but by the mid-1990s, had crawled back and consolidated enough power to begin wiping out all other competition, from political parties to the free press. If any blame lies with external actors, they say, it is for failing to support and pressure Russia enough to develop into a modern European state. Instead, the US and the EU continued to butter the KGB-military faction well into the 2010s, doing their best to ignore war crimes, human rights abuses, attacks on political freedoms, the suppression of political rights, and the outright murder of political opponents. There was no "narrow window" in 1999-2007. The window for keeping Russia on a path toward becoming a normal European state closed around 1995. 1999 marks the year Putin rose to the highest levels of government, and by that point the outcome was pretty much decided. By spring 2000, Putin had openly raided and taken over NTV, the last major independent television channel in Russia. In 2002, the powers of the security services were expanded and notorious "extremism" laws were adopted, which have been used to suppress everything from opposition parties to NGOs. In 2003, Putin took over oil and gas company Yukos and arrested and imprisoned its owner, the richest man in Russia, Mikhail Khodorkovsky. By the end of 2003, Russia had no independent national media, no effective parliamentary opposition, and instead had laws enabling repression under legal cover and security services embedded in political governance. Property rights, even for the richest and most influential people in the country, had become conditional on loyalty to Putin. Russian democrats, who had lost their influence by the mid-1990s, could have become partners of the US and EU, but the KGB-military elite - never. Even suggesting this signals an absolute lack of understanding of who they are and where they come from. For them, challenging the US and expanding Russia through coercion and war to the full territorial extent of the former Eastern Bloc is the endgame. They don't give two shits about China. They want a return to the privileged heyday of the KGB-military elites in the 1970s, when Europe was divided by the Iron Curtain and the USSR was believed to be an equal to the US. This is the "normal state of the world" of his youth that Putin desperately wants to return to. Antagonism toward the US lies at their very core, and no amount of buttering will change that. The possibility of cooperation is merely an illusion they sell you to blind you to the next move they make against you.

af78 10mo ago

I am now convinced that Russian complaints about supposed US influence campaigns, “NATO expansion” etc. were never sincere. Russia has conducted info-ops in the West forever, during the Cold War and after. If there's an expansionist power here in Europe, it's Russia. Liberal democracy stands in its way so it's no wonder Russia fights against it in every way, both at home and abroad. Authoritarian regimes are notorious for using grievances, real or made-up, to justify their authoritarian rule and hostile actions toward other countries. Nazi Germany: Versailles treaty, supposed oppression of Germans in Sudetenland; Hungary: Trianon treaty; Serbia: Ottoman rule; China: opium wars. I could go on but the last example is interesting: Russia took land from China in the 19th century, yet China only talks about the actions of Western nations. Which shows IMO that these grievances are a mere tool to advance geopolitical interests and should not be taken too seriously. Many moves were made to bring Russia and West closer: Russian leaders showed repeatedly by their actions that they were not interested. There is not shortage of narratives Russian propagandists disseminate via influencers or useful idiots, tuned for the appropriate audience. You identify as a pacifist? Russia is a peaceful nation, it's its adversaries that are the warmongers! (Don't ask how Russia became so large.) You oppose colonialism? Russia stands against US hegemony, demands a multi-polar world! (In reality Russia behaves as a colonial empire and has a long history of oppression of the nations it has conquered.) You identify as a conservative? Russia is the main defender of order and traditional Christian values! (Well, the Russian Orthodox Church is just an arm of the state security services; church attendance is low; crime and divorce rates are high; Russia has no problem with Islamic regimes like the Taliban, Iran, Hamas or Kadyrov's Chechnya.) I do not deny the threat China poses and that the way the West approached globalization was naive. Indeed, China has close ties with regimes of Russia, Iran and North Korea. Given this reality, what I don't understand is the policies of the current US administration. China is churning out missiles, warships etc. at an alarming rate, yet the US reduces military spending. China's reach via TikTok is growing yet the US administration does next to nothing about it. The US sided with Russia and North Korea on UN votes about Ukraine (https://news.un.org/en/story/2025/02/1160456 https://news.un.org/en/story/2025/02/1160456). Trump antagonizes traditional EU allies, except those with authoritarian tendencies like Orban's Hungary. On the other hand, he has only kind words for Putin, Xi, Kim; his only complaint seems to be that he's not a member of their club.

CapricornNoble 10mo ago
> Trump antagonizes traditional EU allies, except those with authoritarian tendencies like Orban's Hungary. Trump in his first term warned Europe about sucking on the teet of Russian natgas, and those "traditional allies" laughed in his face. He told Europe to meet its NATO treaty obligations and increase military spending, and they dragged their feet. Now Europe's industry is struggling under substantially-increased energy input costs, and has been caught flat-footed with its armories empty while trying to subsidize the largest land conflict on the continent since WW2. An economic and quasi-military bloc with 500+ million people is begging 350 million people on another continent to protect them from a mere 140 million drunk & corrupt Russians. ....and you don't understand why Trump, who has a fragile ego and is well-known for holding grudges, is antagonistic to the feckless idiot empty-suit bureaucrats who manage Europe? He's a thin-skinned bully and now he's gonna walk all over Europe to do whatever is most advantageous (in his perception) for the US....but it's only possible because European leadership is just as weak as he thinks it is. Plus he's trying to dump The Ukraine Problem in their lap because the US doesn't really have the capacity to square off against China and manage...well, possibly ANY other additional conflict. If our actions to counter China don't make any sense or seem incongruent, that's because most of the administration is simply too incompetent to get the results needed, even if they understand the nature and scope of the problem.
- af78 10mo ago
  European leaders are far from blameless. I fully agree European countries should have weaned themselves from Russian gas and ramped up military spending much sooner. Meanwhile for a long time the US retained control of NATO military structures in Europe. And recently Trump granted a waiver allowing Hungary to continue importing Russian oil. And there is talk from the US about reviving Nordstream, that both Trump and Biden harshly (and fairly IMO) criticized. Trump being thin-skinned does not explain much. The latest strategy document where the US administration explicitly says it will do its utmost to bring far-right parties to power in Europe goes far beyond that. It's clearly not just Trump. And again, it definitely does not help keep friends to face China. Neither does twisting Ukraine's arm to accept a disastrous deal in exchange for vague promises of riches for Trump and his clan. History shows appeasing an aggressor invites more aggression. Russia's partner, China, is watching, will sense weakness and draw conclusions neither Europe nor America will like.

mopsi 10mo ago

> We had a narrow window circa 1999-2007 where we could have integrated an Authoritarian Russia into a security and economic framework that would put China in a vulnerable strategic position. Says who? Top Russian diplomats, starting with some of the former foreign ministers themselves, maintain that the disintegration of Russian democracy is the fault of the former KGB and military power structures, which enjoyed privileged positions in the Soviet system. They were sidelined when the USSR fell apart, but by the mid-1990s, had crawled back and consolidated enough power to begin wiping out all other competition, from political parties to the free press. If any blame lies with external actors, they say, it is for failing to support and pressure Russia enough to develop into a modern European state. Instead, the US and the EU continued to butter the KGB-military faction well into the 2010s, doing their best to ignore war crimes, human rights abuses, attacks on political freedoms, the suppression of political rights, and the outright murder of political opponents. There was no "narrow window" in 1999-2007. The window for keeping Russia on a path toward becoming a normal European state closed around 1995. 1999 marks the year Putin rose to the highest levels of government, and by that point the outcome was pretty much decided. By spring 2000, Putin had openly raided and taken over NTV, the last major independent television channel in Russia. In 2002, the powers of the security services were expanded and notorious "extremism" laws were adopted, which have been used to suppress everything from opposition parties to NGOs. In 2003, Putin took over oil and gas company Yukos and arrested and imprisoned its owner, the richest man in Russia, Mikhail Khodorkovsky. By the end of 2003, Russia had no independent national media, no effective parliamentary opposition, and instead had laws enabling repression under legal cover and security services embedded in political governance. Property rights, even for the richest and most influential people in the country, had become conditional on loyalty to Putin. Russian democrats, who had lost their influence by the mid-1990s, could have become partners of the US and EU, but the KGB-military elite - never. Even suggesting this signals an absolute lack of understanding of who they are and where they come from. For them, challenging the US and expanding Russia through coercion and war to the full territorial extent of the former Eastern Bloc is the endgame. They don't give two shits about China. They want a return to the privileged heyday of the KGB-military elites in the 1970s, when Europe was divided by the Iron Curtain and the USSR was believed to be an equal to the US. This is the "normal state of the world" of his youth that Putin desperately wants to return to. Antagonism toward the US lies at their very core, and no amount of buttering will change that. The possibility of cooperation is merely an illusion they sell you to blind you to the next move they make against you.