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MiddleOne posted:The question here is whether the international community helped or poured gasoline on the fire. Hint: they poured gasoline on the fire.
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Apr 4, 2018 13:17
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No joke, I learn so much reading this thread.
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Apr 4, 2018 13:39
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Raspberry Jam It In Me posted:There was much more shady western stuff going on in 1996 than just IMF loans. Supposedly, Yeltsin was working directly with american campaign advisors during that election. But that's not the point. The point is that by 1993(or 1996) Russia was already a burned out wreck and it did that to itself. The west literally sat and applauded as Yeltsin completely and utterly wrecked Russia, up to and including cheering him on as he illegally deposed the elected parliament and rewrote the constitution as well as helping him rig the aforementioned election that kept the wrecking going. The whole shock therapy concept was recommended to Yeltsin by western advisors. It's obvious that the Russians would be extremely suspicious against the supposed good intentions of the west after that, in fact any sane country would.
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Apr 4, 2018 13:40
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Cerebral Bore posted:they made an honest effort to play nice with the west in the 90s and ended up in one of the worst political and humanitarian catastrophes in modern times for their trouble This is by far the most salient and persuasive post in this whole mess. Sadly I don't think there is much Europe can do to address this antagonism, because if Russians are strongly resentful of Europe because of economic liberalism, then that cuts off the most powerful avenue of approach Europe has for making friends.
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Apr 4, 2018 13:46
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No, it’s just the deep-brain instinct of the Asiatic Slav to hate freedom and love the State, preferably masochistically as that state revokes his pension and public services and makes him burn furniture in a barrel for warmth. They prefer things that way
icantfindaname fucked around with this message at 13:50 on Apr 4, 2018 |
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Apr 4, 2018 13:46
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Raspberry Jam It In Me posted:There was much more shady western stuff going on in 1996 than just IMF loans. Supposedly, Yeltsin was working directly with american campaign advisors during that election. But that's not the point. The point is that by 1993(or 1996) Russia was already a burned out wreck and it did that to itself. This is quality. Those goalposts moved so fast they fell apart.
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Apr 4, 2018 14:09
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Cerebral Bore posted:The west literally sat and applauded as Yeltsin completely and utterly wrecked Russia, up to and including cheering him on as he illegally deposed the elected parliament and rewrote the constitution as well as helping him rig the aforementioned election that kept the wrecking going. The whole shock therapy concept was recommended to Yeltsin by western advisors. It's obvious that the Russians would be extremely suspicious against the supposed good intentions of the west after that, in fact any sane country would. The Russia Chapter of Shock Doctrine was a real loving eye opener to me.
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Apr 4, 2018 14:18
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A Buttery Pastry posted:Germany: A prosperous and productive state, that through prudent policies ensures stability and order. Survival, stability and hoping the future might be a little bit better than the present? -------------------------------------------- Btw, Jerry Sachs himself, probably the most key American advisor (in his late 30s at the time....), flat out says that the Russians were begging for loans in 1992/1993 from the US as everything was falling apart and large numbers of people were quite literally starving...we completely ignored them. (Granted Sachs doesn't mention that the Russian state by selling assets for pennies on the dollar would also cause massive suffering...probably because he had recommended it.) Ardennes fucked around with this message at 14:24 on Apr 4, 2018 |
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Apr 4, 2018 14:19
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Ardennes posted:Btw, Jerry Sachs himself, probably the most key American advisor (in his late 30s at the time....), flat out says that the Russians were begging for loans in 1992/1993 from the US as everything was falling apart and large numbers of people were quite literally starving...we completely ignored them. How many illusions did the Russian government really have about European/American willingness to provide economic aid? It can't have been a big surprise to them that we didn't give a poo poo. It's not like we suddenly turned FYGM with Russia or Greece, we have always been that way. forkboy84 posted:This is quality. Those goalposts moved so fast they fell apart. Very nice flyby poo poo post there, bud. Care to elaborate? 
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Apr 4, 2018 14:48
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Raspberry Jam It In Me posted:How many illusions did the Russian government really have about European/American willingness to provide economic aid? It can't have been a big surprise to them that we didn't give a poo poo. It's not like we suddenly turned FYGM with Russia or Greece, we have always been that way. This was in 1992, they were absolutely floored and in a panic. They had assumed they were doing everything right (remember Yeltsin was absolutely a true believer in capitalism/the Western system). The Russian Ruble was already rapidly inflating without significant reserves to back it up, high inflation became hyperinflation, placing heavy pressure on the population including increasing mass malnutrition and a catastrophic fall in life expectancy. It also fed into the 1993 Constitutional Crisis/Coup after the Parliment became to block continued reform, after which Yeltsin responded with tanks. By late 1995/ early 1996, Yeltsin's polls were subterranean. An American advisor team was sent there in March 1996, and by April 1996, Yeltsin's polls turned around. It is why the general opinion of both Gorbachev/Yeltsin in Russia was that they were naive if dangerous idiots. (It is also why many Russians kind of just shrug at Navalny.) Ardennes fucked around with this message at 15:13 on Apr 4, 2018 |
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Apr 4, 2018 14:50
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steinrokkan posted:This is by far the most salient and persuasive post in this whole mess. If economic liberalism is europes way of making friends it's a wonder we haven't gotten nuked yet.
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Apr 4, 2018 15:11
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Ardennes posted:This was in 1992, they were absolutely floored and in a panic. They had assumed they were doing everything right (remember Yeltsin was absolutely a true believer in capitalism/the Western system). The Russian Ruble was already rapidly inflating without significant reserves to back it up, high inflation became hyperinflation, placing heavy pressure on the population including increasing mass malnutrition and a catastrophic fall in life expectancy. How much did the unwillingness to provide aid actually fuel antagonism towards the West? My impression has always been that it produced a lot of resentment (like in Greece), but the actual antagonism only started with the eastward NATO expansion?
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Apr 4, 2018 15:22
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His Divine Shadow posted:If economic liberalism is europes way of making friends it's a wonder we haven't gotten nuked yet. It kind of objectively is, though. The common market is the only thing foreign countries have a material reason to care about.
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Apr 4, 2018 15:26
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steinrokkan posted:It kind of objectively is, though. The common market is the only thing people have a material reason to care about. The cohesion fund makes up a decent chunk of many country's GDPs, the ECJ does some good stuff, free press& anti-corruption support/oversight from the EU is also nice
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Apr 4, 2018 15:31
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Raspberry Jam It In Me posted:How much did the unwillingness to provide aid actually fuel antagonism towards the West? My impression has always been that it produced a lot of resentment (like in Greece), but the actual antagonism only started with the eastward NATO expansion? This is a bad question, because the whole economic chaos and the west's response to it laid the entire groundwork for the later antagonism. These issues aren't separable.
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Apr 4, 2018 15:35
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Raspberry Jam It In Me posted:The cohesion fund makes up a decent chunk of many country's GDPs, the ECJ does some good stuff, free press& anti-corruption support/oversight from the EU is also nice Sorry, I only later changed the post to read "foreign countries". From that perspective, foreign aid is a minor thing, there is some security assistance for a small number of partners, the ECJ, the Court isn't applicable, and political liberalization is seen as a price to be paid by foreign regimes in exchange for access, not as a benefit in itself (perspectives may differ in society, of course). So ultimately the one incentive there is for being friendly with Europe is some form of a privileged economic union like Turkey has.
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Apr 4, 2018 15:39
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Raspberry Jam It In Me posted:How much did the unwillingness to provide aid actually fuel antagonism towards the West? My impression has always been that it produced a lot of resentment (like in Greece), but the actual antagonism only started with the eastward NATO expansion? I would say it started in 1990s then especially considering it was Zyganov (and the Communist Party) that started to make inroads in 1995 not relative pro-western liberals like Yavlinsky. However, Russian society remained pretty split, and the real break may have been the Kosovo War in 1999 and everything after that was just dogpiling on top of growing resentment. Through most of the 2000s, the relationship was rather workable at least at the governmental level and if anything also remained so after 2008 under Medvedev. I would say if anything the stability of the Western-Russian relationship through the late 90s/early 2000s covered up actually much of the growing distrust of the populace. If anything it is probably what pushed Putin in a more nationalist direction (in the sense he wanted to harness that potential support). (Also, the aid issue is probably something not many average people actually knew about. They just knew their rubles now won't buy them a loaf of bread) Ardennes fucked around with this message at 15:47 on Apr 4, 2018 |
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Apr 4, 2018 15:40
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Ardennes posted:Survival, stability and hoping the future might be a little bit better than the present? That said, Russia being in that sorta mode also makes it extremely difficult to deal with for any of its neighbors, since basically any action might piss off Russia enough to lash out in some weird desperation. Exchanging the anxiety of being unaligned next to Russia with being aligned against it but under America's protection becomes an extremely rational choice.
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Apr 4, 2018 15:49
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A Buttery Pastry posted:So basically, Russia is so down in the dumps that it can't even imagine itself as much more than it is now? Like, not even a(n obviously negative) dream of rising up and becoming a great imperial power again, just hoping to at some point be a little better off in the future. I can certainly see why Russia acts the way it does then, it sounds like it's basically in siege mode - contrast that with China, which basically sees itself as powering up to take over the world. It also is why it incentivizes Russians to use force in overly paranoid and dramatic fashion, and why the Russian public is generally fine with it. Also, the priority on stability comes into play while things are seemingly still workable if not slowly getting better. It also means why change is view with suspicion since it also comes with the deep fear of the entire system falling apart again. If anything this fear was probably even deeper in the Soviet period, and it finally took the Soviet economy to meltdown and survival becoming the over-riding issue. (The word "tankie" for example kind of bounces off Russians.)
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Apr 4, 2018 16:11
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Cerebral Bore posted:This is a bad question, because the whole economic chaos and the west's response to it laid the entire groundwork for the later antagonism. These issues aren't separable. They are not the same thing either, nor does one have to lead to the other. No matter how much you spin it, withholding economic aid/loans and providing bad economic advice are not hostile acts (the latter is what the IMF does for a living all around the world, so do certain EU institutions withing Europe). Russia was never entitled to loans/aid, and, as a sovereign nation, nobody forced it to let Yeltsin grab power. The NATO expansion(after Russia has been assured that it would not happen) can be interpreted as a hostile act. So can the Kosovo intervention.
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Apr 4, 2018 17:13
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Raspberry Jam It In Me posted:They are not the same thing either, nor does one have to lead to the other. No matter how much you spin it, withholding economic aid/loans and providing bad economic advice are not hostile acts (the latter is what the IMF does for a living all around the world, so do certain EU institutions withing Europe). Russia was never entitled to loans/aid, and, as a sovereign nation, nobody forced it to let Yeltsin grab power. It's nice that you think so, but your opinion unfortunately is not the only one that matters. The Russian people think they got hosed over by the West (and I agree), and unless you're capable of dealing that fact in some diplomatic sense, you are increasing the chance of escalation in tensions by calling them out for being entitled as well when Russians raise the issue. Do you think that Versailles peace treaty had anything at all to do with the rise of Hitler, incidentally? Or was that all Germans fault as well?
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Apr 4, 2018 17:19
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Raspberry Jam It In Me posted:They are not the same thing either, nor does one have to lead to the other. No matter how much you spin it, withholding economic aid/loans and providing bad economic advice are not hostile acts (the latter is what the IMF does for a living all around the world, so do certain EU institutions withing Europe). Russia was never entitled to loans/aid, and, as a sovereign nation, nobody forced it to let Yeltsin grab power. How the hell do you manage to be this dense? For anybody who might be able to grasp some nuance, let me tell you why Russia is being so aggressive. So we've got the early 90s and the cold war is over and there's a lot of talk about how we all can get along and poo poo. Then the 90s happen, and Russia goes straight off the cliff and the people who drove the bus are fully backed and advised by the west. Then in the late 90s NATO expansion starts and ends with the former main enemy on Russia's doorstep. Now, if we leave aside all moral and such considerations and look at this sequence of events from the point of view of pure cold power politics, what does this look like? Interestingly enough it looks exactly like what you would want to do in order to relegate a former rival to a permanent status of powerless inferiority. First you cripple their government and economy, and then you put them in an untenable military position while they're too weak to resist. So regardless of the actual intentions behind propping up Yeltsin and NATO expansion, they're both easily explainable as part of an aggressive economic-political strategy directed against Russia, and even worse, one that only worked because Russia trusted the west. So obviously you'd get somebody like Putin eventually, and obviously they'd start acting aggressively, because from their point of view they're fighting back from a position of great inferiority. Incidentally this is also why many foreign policy experts were against NATO expansion, because they knew how the Russians would see it.
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Apr 4, 2018 19:04
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https://twitter.com/USEnergyAssn/status/981169910653988868 America's real plans for Eastern Europe have been revealed.
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Apr 4, 2018 19:05
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Cerebral Bore posted:So obviously you'd get somebody like Putin eventually, and obviously they'd start acting aggressively, because from their point of view they're fighting back from a position of great inferiority. Incidentally this is also why many foreign policy experts were against NATO expansion, because they knew how the Russians would see it. The NATO expansion has brought nothing but security and success for the countries in question, while two of the countries who didn't make it have been invaded by Russia since, and one (Moldova) still has a slice of it occupied. Boo loving hoo to poor old Russia.
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Apr 4, 2018 21:28
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Cerebral Bore posted:many foreign policy experts were against NATO expansion, because they knew how the Russians would see it. experts of which countries or institutions?
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Apr 4, 2018 21:39
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pigdog posted:The NATO expansion has brought nothing but security and success for the countries in question, while two of the countries who didn't make it have been invaded by Russia since, and one (Moldova) still has a slice of it occupied. Boo loving hoo to poor old Russia. You don't see it possible that there might be a connection between NATO expansionism and Russian expansionism?
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Apr 4, 2018 22:01
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Cerebral Bore posted:Whether you think they should be or not, Russia is especially vigilant because they made an honest effort to play nice with the west in the 90s and ended up in one of the worst political and humanitarian catastrophes in modern times for their trouble. That's basically the root cause of all this poo poo, and not some orentalist bullshit about the inherently warmongering slav. That explains the relative popularity of Putin, and general lack of faith in western style institutions. The 90's does not explain anything at all in regards to thinking the west wants to murder them.
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Apr 4, 2018 22:07
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pigdog posted:The NATO expansion has brought nothing but security and success for the countries in question, while two of the countries who didn't make it have been invaded by Russia since, and one (Moldova) still has a slice of it occupied. Boo loving hoo to poor old Russia. Congrats for not being able to read, I guess?
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Apr 4, 2018 22:10
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A Buttery Pastry posted:https://twitter.com/USEnergyAssn/status/981169910653988868 Incredible. "Which map should I use? Hell, any one. Any one will do".
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Apr 4, 2018 22:27
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Fabulous Knight posted:Incredible. "Which map should I use? Hell, any one. Any one will do". I bet it was a really pretty map though.
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Apr 4, 2018 22:30
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Cerebral Bore posted:How the hell do you manage to be this dense? No dude you don't get it. NATO expands to spread democracy - an absolute dumbshit
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Apr 4, 2018 22:33
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steinrokkan posted:experts of which countries or institutions? https://www.armscontrol.org/act/1997_06-07/natolet quote:In Russia, NATO expansion, which continues to be opposed across the entire political spectrum, will strengthen the nondemocratic opposition, undercut those who favor reform and cooperation with the West, bring the Russians to question the entire post-Cold War settlement, and galvanize resistance in the Duma to the START II and III treaties; In Europe, NATO expansion will draw a new line of division between the "ins" and the "outs," foster instability, and ultimately diminish the sense of security of those countries which are not included; This was written in 1997, and lo and behold, poo poo went down exactly as predicted.
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Apr 5, 2018 05:50
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So that article summarizes the American perspective well. It says nothing about the opinions of security experts in the zone NATO was expanding into. For them the question is, would have Russia been any more accepting of her former satellites going their own way had she not been ignored during the transitional period in the 90s and not sidelined during the NATO expansion? Or would a stronger, more stable Russia have been so pissed off and controlling as well?
steinrokkan fucked around with this message at 07:44 on Apr 5, 2018 |
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Apr 5, 2018 07:42
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German media has been doing some decent back paddling on the Skripal case the last couple of days ("May loses ground", "May government still not able to show evidence for Russian involvement", etc.). Guess we are done with this one? See you after the next attack.
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Apr 5, 2018 09:22
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Raspberry Jam It In Me posted:German media has been doing some decent back paddling on the Skripal case the last couple of days ("May loses ground", "May government still not able to show evidence for Russian involvement", etc.). Guess we are done with this one? See you after the next attack. probably, Boris blatantly lied in an interview with die welle and is now attempting to damage the credibility of Porton Down to save face. The UK government have massively overreached the circumstancial evidence and decided that the obvious is the same as the demonstrable.
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Apr 5, 2018 12:56
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Spangly A posted:probably, Boris blatantly lied in an interview with die welle and is now attempting to damage the credibility of Porton Down to save face. The UK government have massively overreached the circumstancial evidence and decided that the obvious is the same as the demonstrable. It is a big equalizing factor there is such massive arrogance and incompetence. One would think the poisoning would be a slamdunk diplomatically speaking. (Also it is predictable how this is going to be seen in Russia itself).
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Apr 5, 2018 14:12
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Ardennes posted:It is a big equalizing factor there is such massive arrogance and incompetence. One would think the poisoning would be a slamdunk diplomatically speaking.
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Apr 5, 2018 16:17
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true.spoon posted:From my somewhat limited online exposure and speaking very generally, Russians seem to have mastered the art of being very proud that Russia can act like this while at the same time feeling unfairly victimized by the evil west. Is that an accurate impression? My answer is...read the last few pages of the thread.
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Apr 5, 2018 16:49
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true.spoon posted:From my somewhat limited online exposure and speaking very generally, Russians seem to have mastered the art of being very proud that Russia can act like this while at the same time feeling unfairly victimized by the evil west. Is that an accurate impression? Russians hate non-Russians and there is no cultural dishonour in what you do to non-Russians. However if a country retaliates against Russia for the actions of Russia then Russia will be very indignant over this act of aggression. Actually you can probably ascribe every failed invasion attempt of Russia as "invaders failing to understand Russian culture" If you conquer a Central European country the farmers and workers will keep performing their trade for your benefit as long as you maintain the status quo to a degree. Russian farmers will burn their fields and kill you before they sell you their produce as a foreign invader.
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Apr 5, 2018 18:01
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Puigdemont is free again -for now The German court in question decided Puigdemont couldn't be convicted for what Spain wanted him in prison, since the equivalent for the Spanish charge of "rebellion" ("Hochverrat") needs a violent act. So since Puigdemont didn't murder Spanish people with his own bare hands, he can only be tried for corruption, even if in the end Germany decides to extradite him. (The article says that by German law, you can only be extradited to a country if their courts basically do the same thing a German court would. So if Spain wants him, they can't just put him for 30 years into prison, or he'll just stay free, and in Germany.) There was the small matter of a 75k € bail, but apparently friends of a free Catalonia already collected and paid for it, so he is free to go. Inside Germany. And he has to contact the police every week. And tell the authorities every time he wants to move. I'm joking though, this is a rather mild and unexpected judgement! Too bad for Spain, though. 
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