Russia was always the weird case of a country with a cruel, Asian steppe mentality (early in the days of the Dutchy of Moscow, they were conquered and thoroughly subjugated by the Mongols, the Mongol mark of cruelty and disdain for human life is still there in XXI century) that is also Christian. The Christianity has confused Western leaders throught the ages, who thought Russia is like any other European country, and can be reasoned with.
Right. The English, the French, the Germans, the Dutch, the Swedish, the Spanish, the Portuguese, the Romans, the Greeks, the Austrians, the Belgians, ..., the Cossacks ... none of those ever did anything to show any kind of "cruel mentality". Right.
This kind of completely unhinged dehumanizing nonsense is bordering hate speech.
> All gave up their psychotic empire-building games (or at least sublimated into forms not involving large-scale military conflict) long ago.
They did not. They were subjugated by the current empire, the US and are all just fiefdoms nowadays, some of them are even occupied by military forces, called bases.
I am not dehumanising Russians, merely their political culture and political traditions. A country can have a lot of decent people and, at the same time, be a hate and death-monger - just see the Nazi Germany. All depends on current leadership and their policies, which in large part depends on country's political culture and history (e.g. Putin wouldn't really fly as a leader of Canada, and Trudeau would get murdered in no time if he somehow became a leader of Russia).
I agree with a slight patch-- the Asian cruel steppe mentality is called "meritocracy" (which the Mongols, or at least Chinggis & his direct successors down thru Kublai, iirc, was enamoured of..)
Russians, ironically, defeated the tartars when they managed to out-meritocrat the greatkhanless hordes somescore later,
-Then they basically reverted to divine right of kings*, aka the mandate of heaven..
-until the time of Lenin, when the cycle began anew..
*Apologies for ignoring the slight detour of Peter the Great** (known to be enlighteningly cruel) whose table of ranks could have been said to have set "his Excellency" (Prevoskhoditel’stvo) Ulyanov up for life
**but we should also pay attention to the current phenomenon of lionizing Catherine as a monarch more Christian than Peter
[Recall that the christians did not meritocracy until roughly... 1848 (again, ignoring the Glourious Revolution) over thence we had Weber retconning for his tribe]
To be fair, NVR may have sung the lines and sat in the Duma, but I think (я думаю?) the songwriter (IIM?) was probably more of a thinker than a sitter and knew exactly what they were doing.
(not sure if the russian fleet really kept the royal navy away during the US Civil War; my impression had been that the Confederacy had waited too long to revolt, and the second-cheapest supplier of cotton [egypt?] for british mills was not much more expensive than the CSA would've been in any case)
NATO as it exists today is a welfare program where US taxpayers subsidize the defense budgets of European countries so they can afford lavish social benefits programs for their citizens while the US drowns in both personal and federal debt. You were never going to come help us, and the exploitative relationship between our countries is now over. Good luck.
NATO needs the US a lot more than the US needs NATO. It wasn't always this way, but today we really don't get anything out of being allied with a deindustrialized and demilitarized Europe that is currently doing its absolute best to provoke an irrational and unstable neighboring world power.
I might be mistaken, but as far as I remember, there were NATO troops (that were not US troops) in Afghanistan, for decades, not because any European country declared war to Afghanistan.
I am not expert in history, but I cannot recall Europeans using US troops in an active war since creation of NATO. The opposite can be said in this century, though.
I do not deny that having the back of US, that has possibly the biggest military in the world, is favourable for European countries.
But I am absolutely tired of this discourse that NATO only benefits the others, and that USA doesn't get any benefit from it.
It is beneficial for all parts, and that is the reason it is an alliance. And USA has used it for its benefit for quite long; thus, it is not unreasonable that allies might rely on its help.
Besides, it is beneficial for USA to keep Europe stable and in peace — most clearly, for macro-economic reasons.
Fair point, although the way things are currently shaping up with his administration, I'm expecting there to be some serious consequences for the spooks that orchestrated all of this.
