[ctrlp]

The US would be quite lucky if Russia turned back to a frenemy relationship with NATO. It seems highly unlikely that will happen given the last 15 years of conflict. The attempt to Balkanize and neuter Russia looks like an abject failure. Throwing more arms and Ukrainian youth into that meat grinder is a very cynical way to proceed. Rather than growing closer to Europe via trade and energy interdependence, the strategy in Ukraine and Syria has driven Russia further into alliance with China and Iran. Looks like a mistake in hindsight. Would have been better to cultivate Russia against China and align Russian interests with Europe rather than Beijing.

[ctrlp]

Before the negative reviews come pouring, consider that the rise of China was the result of exactly this strategy in reverse. At the time "Nixon in China" was an attempt to support a largely agrarian Chinese communist state to give Russia (the stronger competitor) something to worry about on its eastern flank. Strengthening and emboldening the communist "little brother" was a deliberate foreign policy goal during the Cold War. This strategy was what the protean Henry Kissinger was most famous for at the time. Talk about unforeseen consequences. Maybe we bet on the wrong horse. China in 2025 seems like a much more serious global competitor than Russia. Ask yourself, who would you rather compete with?

[stephen_g]

I mean, the US is also sort of responsible for what happened in Russia too, with the oligarch class being born out of the 'shock therapy' that US-based institutions and economists pushed for...

Russia might be a much more democratic place today if not for the massive economic problems that caused...

[_DeadFred_]

US experts also came up with the voucher system that allowed Oligarchs to buy everything up.

[ctrlp]

That is true and also deliberate US policy to ensure there would never be a strong Russia again. Russia has always loomed large over Europe since probably the Huns. There have been times when the Russian state was Europhilic (e.g., Peter the Great or when the language of the Russian court was French). And times when the Slavic and Eastern impulses have reigned. The claims that Putin is trying to rebuild the Soviet Empire is probably mostly propaganda. But something can be literally false, but spiritually true. Given its geographic perch across Eurasia, Russia's spiritual destiny may demand Empire or Death. It's an open question whether the Russian Federation can accept a subordinate role on the world stage. They will likely continue to aspire to being a sovereign pole in proposed multipolar world order.

[_DeadFred_]

"The claims that Putin is trying to rebuild the Soviet Empire is probably mostly propaganda" is correct by Putin's own he words. He just wants control of everywhere in the ex-Soviet where Russian speakers live.

[ctrlp]

Russian speakers live everywhere. Russian majority states are a smaller set than the old USSR.

[hobs]

You do realize nobody wanted to do that, and Putin's aggressive thuggery is 100% the reason why Russia has been isolated. Cultivating an invader doesn't make sense for anyone.

[ctrlp]

Respectfully, you clearly don't know much about the history or about geopolitics if you believe such things.

[panick21_]

Its seems you have bought into the Russian propaganda about how they were victimized with NATO. The reality is Russia got everything it needed, its economy was doing comparatively well, its elites were welcome all over Europe. Europe ignored all the shade stuff they continue to do all the time. The Russian elite enriched itself buying all the luxury products of Europe and going to St.Moriz and living in London.

[ctrlp]

I have only bought into my readings in history. The events I credit are:

- The 1970s opening of China by Nixon and the documented policy goals contra the USSR.

- The waning years of the Cold War when the Soviet Union was weakened and falling apart leading to 1989 and the aftermath in Eastern Europe and Russia.

- The documented US policy of economic warfare against the remnant of the Soviet Union as written about by George Kennan and others that destroyed the Russian economy and handed key industries individual gangsters (the "oligarchs").

- The documented US policy of color revolutions in Ukraine to undermine democratically elected but "pro-Russian" leadership.

- The placing of bioweapons labs and other military installations in Ukraine, intentionally provoking Putin and creating internal pressure on Putin vis a vis Russia's own military hawks.

- Using Ukraine as a poison pawn in a documented policy to provoke Russia into an "unwinnable" war intended to bankrupt the country, isolate it via sanctions, deplete Russia's military, and ultimately, depose achieve regime change to a more pliable Western allied Russian leadership (essentially to do to Russia what was done in Ukraine). The ultimate policy goal being to "balkanize" (weaken) the Russian Federation to achieve Western dominance over Russian policy and resources.

I'm not terribly concerned with whether this was sound policy or not. Or what corrupt "elites" do with their ill-gotten gains. I'm just interested in the facts of history. This doesn't say that Putin is blameless or even a "good leader". Takes that say something is 100% clearly one side's fault are just stupid. Germans may be the biggest dupes of all in this whole mess. I get that Russia has traditional regional enemies who want Europe and the US to make this about good vs evil, and Russia being a local thug antagonizing smaller countries "for no reasons whatsoever", but that's a story for children.

[watwut]

Duuuude, Ukraine does not need to be someones pawn to not want rule of a country like Russia. And Ukraine protests were all Ukrainians - because large mass of citizens wanted to be in a democratic pro European country.

NATO was enlarging, because countries begged to be members of a nato.

Russian citizens are super poor, living in a country with little to offer. Not wanting to be part of that is only natural, especially when you look like Europeans live.

[mopsi]

  - The placing of bioweapons labs and other military installations in Ukraine, intentionally provoking Putin and creating internal pressure on Putin vis a vis Russia's own military hawks.

This is literally garbage-tier Russian propaganda that has no connection to reality. We can easily test it: name one foreign military installation in Ukraine. Just one.

You won't find any, because it's just not true. These claims circulate mainly on the social media, alongside conspiracy theories about the Earth being flat and vaccines causing autism. High-quality sources offer a completely different picture than the one you've gathered from low-quality sources.

[ctrlp]

Why were prominent US policy folks so concerned about the Ukraine biolabs? Why did the US invest hundreds of millions to build dozens of labs in Ukraine?

I'll tell you what I think.

After the fall of the Soviet Union, the US saw newly unemployed Soviet bioscientists as geopolitical risks under the assumption that they were actively engaged in bioweapons development under the Soviet Union and were now vulnerable to being picked up by new patrons hostile to US interests. Rather than allowing a bunch of bioweapons experts to become free agents, we built them a bunch of labs to keep them out of the hands of our enemies. What would they work on? Well, developing bioweapons is illegal, didn't you know? And the US observes all international law, didn't you know? So, instead of developing bioweapons, we'll have them develop biosafety! See how that works? But to develop biosafety we'll also need to build the unsafe things so we can build the vaccines and antidotes to the bad things. We'll never ever use those bad things, or God forbid, have bad opsec and allow them to escape one of these completely independent and in no way associated with military research labs. Never. Never. Never. That sounds like conspiracy theories. What made you even think that?

[beveldropshadow]

Color revolution theory is Putin's paranoid delusion. The US frequently backfired tremendously in such endeavours, and that was when actively arming coups, not something as complicated and subtle as brainwashing a population towards revolution.

For anyone interested in understanding Putin's obsession with ghosts of color, see this excellent video essay: https://youtu.be/7OFyn_KSy80

[panick21_]

> - The documented US policy of economic warfare against the remnant of the Soviet Union as written about by George Kennan and others that destroyed the Russian economy and handed key industries individual gangsters (the "oligarchs").

They had the same policies in Russia as in other parts of the former Soviet Union. And in many places the much attacked 'Schock Thearapy' actually worked, see the Baltics, Poland and so on.

The simple fact is, the oligarchs were strong in Russia. They barley had any legal system, they had 10x more former KGB members then judges. To blame the US for Oligarchs is utterly ridiculous.

Russia after the collapse of the Soviet Union was not conquered Germany or Japan. And the actual influence of the US was far more limited then some people (including Russian) claim.

And the whole reason, the Soviet Union collapsed in the first place, was because the oligarchs didn't want to defend it and were happy to get rid of it because then they could buy German cars and French wine easier.

> - The documented US policy of color revolutions in Ukraine to undermine democratically elected but "pro-Russian" leadership.

You seem to be one of those that only looks as states as acting. This is simply not the case. People act. Just because a leader is democratically elected, doesn't mean people can't go to the streets and demand they leave. And that includes people who initially voted for them. You are just repeating absurd Russian propaganda that all anti-Russian protest and organization are a CIA plot.

The idea that the CIA has these magical powers where the can just create popular revolution out of nowhere is nonsense, its only believed by dictators and maybe the CIA itself.

The reason for the colored revolutions are quite simply that Russian gansters/oligarchs try to control and dominate those states and victimize its population, against the democratic will of the people. See this in action right now in Georgia.

This isn't history, you are just repeating Russian propaganda talking points. Because I mean for sure, the only reason somebody could be against 'GREAT RUSSIA' is that they are a paid spy. Do you also believe this was the reasons for the popular revolutions against the Soviet Union?

> - The placing of bioweapons labs and other military installations in Ukraine, intentionally provoking Putin and creating internal pressure on Putin vis a vis Russia's own military hawks.

Oh so now Putin is the poor victim of internal pressure? You got to be kidding me. Putin invaded Ukraine because he wanted to. Recreating the Russian empire was Putins goal from the beginning. The only difference was that early on he hoped to do it with Western buy in and that they would care that Russia builds a 'Sphere of Incidence'.

And if the US and others were as strategic about trying to create a war, why was the response to Crimea in 2014 so limited?

This position again, just pure Russian and Putin propaganda with no basis in reality. Bioweapons, you got to be brain-dead to believe that. You are deep-deep down the Russian conspiracy rabbit-hole.

> - Using Ukraine as a poison pawn in a documented policy to provoke Russia into an "unwinnable" war

And yet most in the US government thought that Russia would win quickly and lost cause was put forward as an argument why giving them weapons is pointless.

And please, show me these official documents that claim this.

> isolate it via sanctions

Why then were they so hesitant to sanction Russia over Crimea and Syria? If this was US strategy, they could have done far more far earlier.

The claim that there was this grand strategy by US to destroy Russia is nonsense, its simply not factual. Maybe some element and people in the US thought so. But there is and was an even larger trend that hoped to eventually align Russia with Europe against China in the future. You are basically cherry picking every possible thing on one side of the argument, while ignoring all the others. US policy has been far from consistent on this and they never had an explicit policy of trying to balkanize Russia. Please show me primary first hand evidence that this was policy at any point.

Your story is what happening in the head of Russian conspiracy theorists, but it has no bases in actual history.

This is basically the whole Rome only thought defensive wars and conquered most of the known world. Always be the play the victim even if you are clearly the perpetrator. Some people might buy it.

> I'm just interested in the facts of history.

The 'facts' brought to you by the Russian propaganda machine maybe and while ignoring many other facts at. the same time.

> I get that Russia has traditional regional enemies who want Europe and the US to make this about good vs evil, and Russia being a local thug antagonizing smaller countries "for no reasons whatsoever", but that's a story for children.

No its actual called simply real politics and its not a children story. Sometimes leadership of countries are simply not nice, they are self interested and they don't give a shit about the people who will be harmed by what they are doing.

Russia is 'strong' and threw its history it beat up on its weaker Neighbors, why the fuck do you think Russia is so big?

What is a story for children is your story, one where these weak neighbors anytime they disagree with Russia are instantly called puppets of the Ottoman, the British, the Germans or the US. As Russia has done for all of its history. Stalin famous position was that small states don't exist, they are either Soviet puppets or British puppets. And Putin is using this exact same logic. And you seem to do so too.

Generally a pretty good checkup on who is 'good' and who is 'bad', I suggest you look at who sent an army over border and started instantly victimizing the population. But you are above such simple moral judgment. You understand that the US was sponsoring a "Transgender Theater" in Kharkiv or whatever and that of course was all part of the CIA pyops against Russia, so they had to go in and slaughter 100000s of people.

Congratulation you rationalized yourself into supporting the largest offensive war in European history since WW2 and you claim the clear and obvious aggressor isn't actually bad.

> "for no reasons whatsoever"

Yeah this is like if I say to you 'your dumb' and then you pull out a gun shoot me in the head, and before court you say 'I had good reason to shoot'.

> Takes that say something is 100% clearly one side's fault are just stupid.

Again whenever people say '100%' of course its never true. But your line of argument is not about if its 90% or 95%. The arguments you are putting forward are exactly the arguments that people use that want to justify Russia and sometimes even claim Ukraine was to blame outright.

[ctrlp]

You seem quite animated and zealous about the topic and I certainly don't want to antagonize you. I don't recognize my own positions in your portrait. You seem very passionate about it and I suppose you have particular interests in the region. Very well, but I don't and can look at the situation from afar and it just looks like typical great power politics. Every great power employs propaganda, not just Russia. And every state is subject to foreign influence. Every leader is subject to internal pressures. You seem to subscribe to a position that Putin is some kind of Stalin with absolute power. I don't see that. In fact, even Stalin wasn't Stalin. It's a fantasy to think one person can operate as leader of any great power with impunity.

I don't claim that all Western foreign policy is unified. There are ascendant factions at different moments. For the moment the China hawks are back in the driver's seat of US foreign policy and the Atlanticists are out of power for now. But Ukraine policy has been driven (very effectively) by that faction of neoconservatives for over a decade. Get a subscription to Foreign Affairs if you want the consensus opinion of State, DoD, CIA. It matters little that there are diverse opinions, only which opinions drive policy.

I don't think "only states act". Rather, the populace is a player that can be leveraged by those controlling state power. Much of the recent foreign aid debacle is about shedding some light on how these slush funds operate to both launder bribes and to fund foreign influence operations. I don't think Russia is the only power that tries to project influence abroad. Every state tries to do so for its own interests.

That said, there is rarely unity in the population. The US had a recent "people in the streets" moment and two things are both true about that. First, many, many people (perhaps a majority) did not agree with "popular opinion" so called. Not just with the more radical expressions of it but the overall framework. Second, much of the "organic" appearance of those protests were in fact astroturfed. I know several "community organizers" who were active in "getting people out in the streets" and they are currently lamenting their dried up funding. It's mostly fake. The masses will not spontaneously gather for more than a moment without organized activism keeping them on message. So, please. It is a fantasy.

It's also a fantasy that leadership is ever nice. Sovereign politics are in a state of nature. That is, a war of all against all. If some have elected to cooperate, it is because it is in their interest to do so, not because their leadership is "nice". Those are bedtime stories.

Your "primary first hand evidence" demand is a bit lazy but you can find general neoconservative policy (btw all consensus US foreign policy is neoconservative) explained in the Project for a New American Century or by carefully reading policy papers published by RAND on the topic. Or as mentioned Foreign Affairs magazine as a popularizer and influence on public opinion.

I doubt you'll take the time to upgrade your mental software but for any other readers, here are some sources that specifically deal with US post cold war policy in eastern Europe, including Ukraine and Russia.

1992 Defense Planning Guide (the Wolfowitz Papers) or read about it on Wikipedia for some choice quotes https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolfowitz_Doctrine

1994 speech by Bill Clinton "A whole Europe and Free" outlines plans for NATO expansion.

1995 State Department report on NATO Enlargement.

1995 National Security Strategy of Engagement and Enlargement

2002 National Security Strategy document by Condoleeza Rice and Wolfowitz.

Orchestrated color revolutions as a tactic of regime change are implied as tools of democracy by influential neocon Natan Sharansky in his book The Case for Democracy from 2004. NED and USAID we're created to as cold war influence weapons abroad. The OG Orange color revolution in Ukraine wa in 2004, iirc. But that's just a coincidence, right?

Anyway, go read some stuff or don't. I can't hope to help someone so prejudiced. But maybe someone else can benefit from this exchange.

[panick21_]

That's EXACTLY WHAT THEY DID. Literally all of Europe and the US bent over backwards for Russia. German made it one of there central geopolitical missions to integrate Russia. They invaded Georgia and did many other questionable things, then took Crimea and still most countries were willing to basically not upset the Apple cart. So they did 'cultivate' Russia.

Russia always loves to only talk about NATO and how bad it is. But NATO actually helped Russia because it let the Eastern European feel save and that convinced them that economic collaboration with Russia was in their benefit. And it also passivized these countries, making them far less militarist. Without NATO, these countries would have invested far more in conventional defense for the last 30 years and would have refused any Russian integration.

But at some point cultivation goes to far and you can't just forever say 'well we need Russia against China so they can have Ukraine', 'well we need Russia against China so the can have Georgia', 'well we need Russia against China so they can have the Baltics'.

Like at some point 'cultivating' only works if you have a partner on the other side that has even the slightest interest in cooperation. Russia elites care about their own power, and that power is threatened by justice and democracy, not China. They will not switch and view China as their enemy unless China want to start to be an enforcer of democracy or actively take Russian land.

China knows this and is prepared to wait to get back their Russian territory (and maybe more). China is well aware that Russia is a massively declining power, suffering from massive brain-drain, bad demographics, surviving off left over Soviet industry and massive amount of natural resources (that China can already acquire). So China, despite Russia owning a lot of land that China absolutely believes is theirs, will focus on the US because the West, is a much bigger economic, political and ideological competitor.

So the simply reality is, as long as China has major 'Western' allies close to its borders, you will simply not get Russia and China to really go at each other as they did during the Communist competition days. No matter what day dreaming old Cold Wars have about doing the Sino-Soviet split again.

> Throwing more arms and Ukrainian youth into that meat grinder is a very cynical way to proceed.

Its not cynical if the population there actually wants that. This is not a case where Ukraine has some dictator who is doing some vanity invasion of foreign territory. Its not even like Afghanistan. Because in Ukraine you actually have a pontifical system that can be converted into a long time useful ally.

> driven Russia further into alliance with China and Iran

This is always the fear mongering people use. But this has a number of limitations. First, non of these countries actually like each other. Russia and Iran work together but don't like each other. Russia and China are the same. Russia know well that China really wants to own 80% of Russia, even if this isn't their primary focus right now. They will never be true allies as the US is in NATO, its just not happening. Unless maybe where one is a complete client state of the other.

And in terms of commercial relationship, oil and weapons, they are already doing that. Appeasing Russia in Europe doesn't massively pull them away from China and Iran. Sure maybe they sell slightly less oil in that direction, but the relationships aren't effected that much.

At the end of the day, these 3 regimes, have one thing in common, they don't want Western values based system of values and worst of all democracy. So they will always cooperate along that line.

PS:

> The attempt to Balkanize and neuter Russia looks like an abject failure.

Overall, its not except its not a failure at all. Finland, Baltics, Poland and all the others are now well integrated into Europe and will never go back to being Russian in any sense.

[ctrlp]

Agree that China is playing a long game and has tremendous patience. If I read your argument right, you're saying that it is foolish to think Russia could be "won over" to Europe, that they were always destined to be autocratic, and therefore their "values" are just too opposed to the West to ever be a partner.

Ok, but I don't think Russia has to be a "Western-style" democracy to not be an active ally of China. They have interests like any other sovereign nation. Maybe breaking up the Russian Federation is a bridge too far, but the achievable policy goal is to weaken Russia internally and make it quite inconvenient for Russia to be allied with other US geopolitical rivals. These are, primarily, China, our true superpower rival, and regionally, Iran (Persia), that asserts privileges in the Middle East that threaten US interests. Russia is the one that could be inconvenienced by alliance with either China or Iran. It was inconvenient and costly for Russia to support Iran ally Syria. There are some pipeline interests for Russia there but Syria is more important to Iran than Putin. Instead of making it costly for Russia to support China, we've made it costly for Russia not to support China. The opposite of what is needed to destabilize our rivals.

Look, I like Europe and have spent a lot of time there and have family there, but I care mostly about American prosperity. To the extent that Europe promotes American prosperity, our interests align. But Ukraine is also about disciplining Europe. Europe has shirked its own security obligations to police its European neighborhood. Worse, some European powers (ahem, Germany) have tried to assert independence from US political control by exploiting access to Russian energy and trying to achieve some kind of energy independence from the US. No bueno. Given its history, the calls for Germany to raise an army and invade Eastern Europe in a war for independence sound like a bit of farce, don't you think? Anyway, not going to happen. Europe must remilitarize, but only to a point. They need to spend enough money to carry their share of the burden, but not to achieve political independence.

I would also challenge the coherence of any arguments based on "Western values" and democracy. Those are terms that have many possible meanings, or no meaning at all.