... which was a regular western fear whenever Radio Moscow started looping "Swan Lake" in the past.
Whenever there is political turmoil in Russia, TV stations, in fear of reporting 'wrong' things that may be unpopular with whoever will be in power tomorrow start showing Swan Lake - it's perfectly unpolitical.
Might not be so. Competent and rational actors might have given up on playing for the top levels of Russian political game.
Russia might be so messed up that leading it is not desirable and attainable for anyone except quite crazy persons that are at the same time smart + competent enough.
Our current world order seems to have created a "power niche" in Russia that can only be filled by persons at the same time smart, crazy and competent enough! ...and we should also be wary of what kind of personal qualities we select for in people in eg. NATO or Chinese leadership, one could imagine embarking on crazier-than-thou leadership race.
This is scary as f! The rarity of the smart+crazy+competent combo is why we didn't off ourselves so far with nukes or by hacking into being stuff like, dunno, "covid ultra pro+ with prionic-inserts" or other horrible world-ending tech that is getting cheaper and cheaper...
For anyone else confused, 55 Tufton St. is home to a number of right-wing think tanks advocating for euroscepticism and for Brexit, and against climate change mitigation policies and against immigration.
55 Tufton St. is home to a number of opaquely-funded right-wing lobby groups, hiding behind a thin pretence of being "think tanks" and "policy institutes".
Fortunately, on closer inspection, Chatham House does not appear to be of that ilk.
My apologies. That kind of organisation has got a very poor reputation, for funding reasons. I did not know much about this one, and it appears that the assumption was not accurate in this case.
It's entirely reasonable: whenever you see "think tank", you should think "propaganda sockpuppet", and ask yourself whether they're likely to be on your side or not based on who they're funded by.
Chatham House are on the respectable end of the spectrum.
It's reasonable to question. It's less reasonable to find their About page and post vague FUD about where they're physically located while ignoring the easily-accessible disclosure of funding sources.
This comment is confusing. They’re often cited as being left wing, but are objectively one of the most independent / non-aligned think tanks in the UK[1]. Hardly comparable to any of the 9 overtly right-wing think tanks associated with 55 Turton Street.
My apologies. That kind of organisation has got a very poor reputation, for funding reasons. I assumed that "overtly right-wing think tanks" In reality opaquely-funded right-wing lobby groups, was the only kind left.
Nobody knows what is after Putin, though we have educated guesses they could be wrong.
Regardless I want to attempt to deal fairly with each one and hopefully bring Russia a better world. (My view of a better world, which is roughly western, but may not be yours).
To be honest I have more hope for Africa, there are a lot of countries and several are making useful steps in the right direction to encourage. It will be interesting to see how west meets Africa works out.
“Anti-Western sentiment, though by no means universal, has been inflamed by Putin and has taken a firm hold in the hearts and minds of many Russian citizens – including, depending on the particular topic in question, among young people.
“This is not going to change after Putin’s departure, in part because Russian society also suffers from a post-imperial syndrome characterized by a state of deep resentment towards the West, which to Russian eyes neither allows the country to remain a superpower nor has provided it with a decent place within the international system.”
This might give some context to why many Russians seem to support this war. It seems more persuasive than the idea that they have all just been gulled by propaganda.
> Myth 03: ‘Russia was promised that NATO would not enlarge’
> This particular myth argues that the West deceived Russia by reneging on its promises at the end of the Cold War not to enlarge NATO
then further down
> Its chief lament was that several leaders of NATO countries in early 1990 had ruled out the possibility of NATO enlargement, and that the West had misled Russia. As Russia’s former foreign minister, Yevgeny Primakov, noted later with regret, there was no legal force to the statements by Western leaders even though, in his view, legally based commitments would have been possible at the time.
So it sounds like the myth is no myth and promises were made, but there were no legal guarantees given instead? Am I misunderstanding something?
> So it sounds like the myth is no myth and promises were made, but there were no legal guarantees given instead?
That, and the various "interventions" of the early 90s Russia. There is a reason why the Visegrad states (back-then Czechoslovakia, Poland and Hungary) were the first ones to literally beg NATO to allow them in - they were completely afraid of Russia after well over 100k people ending up dead in their neighborhood.
It was Russian aggression that drove the former Eastern Bloc countries to NATO.
I don't think it's a mistake as much as it is multiple parties making statements, interpreting them and/or using them rhetorically in whatever way served their purposes.
Imo, a straightforward rendering is
A - russians strongly desired that NATO would not expand east, except maybe east Germany.
B - Various Western diplomats made unofficial, nonbinding statements
C - russian leaders knew these were not binding statements, but present the statements as commitments in order to legitimise their demands and grievances
D - almost all russian neighbors mistrust them, want defensive alliances to help avoid russian influence in their borders.
E - western leaders ignored russian nervousness about NATO expansion.
I think you can make a case for "US should have been less scary." NATO is an anti-russian alliance, and it means hostile troops on russian borders.
Itoh, it's disingenuous to ignore the case that russian influence has been malign. Political, social & economic disfunction are near guarantees if your country falls in thee "russian sphere." No o e wants to be Belarus.
The russian desire for estonia, Latvia, Poland, etc to be like Belarus is one hell of a demand. The people of those country certainly don't want that.
In any case, I think the "legitimate russian security concerns" discussion is a dead horse now. The Ukrainian invasion and Putin's imperialist speech moots the whole thing. Russia declared Ukrainian statehood void and Imperial Russia as the legitimate source for territorial claims. You can't declare that and also argue for legitimate security concerns.
Also, Russia assured Ukrainian independence. Where's that promise?
This is a treaty document that says that if, at any time, Russia (or anyone else) violates the territorial integrity of Ukraine (/Belarus/Kazakhstan), with Crimea specifically called out, ironically, the United Kingdom and the United States have to immediately declare war on Russia and open hostilities. France has a separate treaty with Ukraine containing the same promise, as do a number of other countries.
Putin invaded Crimea. Many countries declared openly that Russia violated the "Budapest memorandum" ... and did nothing. Minimal sanctions (especially in the case of Italy, they could have done a lot. They did nothing)
What people don't realize about president Zelensky is that he, quite a bit before the war with Russia started, commented and even partially planned the development of nuclear weapons. He's gone further and suggested previous governments agreed to denuclearization, not out of the interest of Ukraine but because they were corrupt and paid by Putin. I'm saying there's even a small chance he might see it as treason not to agree to develop nuclear weapons once this is over. I'm just saying, one of the things that's bound to be coming from Ukraine ... we might not like very much.
Ukraine has all the necessary resources and know how to rapidly develop nuclear weapons, from Uranium to nuclear physics research departments (plural), homegrown rocket engines and control systems. They probably can develop ICBM nuclear weapons (and, again, they don't have to match US state of the art weapons, they only have to match Russia. And when it comes to money, they have an economy that allows them to outspend Russia's nuclear weapons programs by a lot)
This illustrates Russia's problem: long term (think 50 years) Ukraine will win from Russia. That is essentially unavoidable.
Promises, documents, international law itself is not worth the often copious amounts of paper dedicated to them.
You're drastically misinterpreting the Budapest Memorandum. All the signatories agree to assurances regarding Ukrainian territorial integrity, that's all. Nobody guarantees Ukrainian territorial integrity under threat of arms ( what you're claiming), just a bunch of countries saying "Sure, i won't violate your independence and occupy your lands". There's nothing there about consequences for reneging on that promise.
> with Crimea specifically called out, ironically, the United Kingdom and the United States have to immediately declare war on Russia and open hostilities.
It says no such thing (as the Wikipedia article you linked points out). The most it says is that they shall seek "immediate United Nations Security Council action" if "Ukraine should become a victim of an act of aggression or an object of a threat of aggression in which nuclear weapons are used."
But that's kind of a problem for the future. Right now, given what's happening at the moment and what's been happening in the decades leading up to it, he has to go.
You can only cope with so much realpolitik and cynical thinking before you eventually catch your reflection in a mirror and have to fight your gag reflex.
Sure, some people are immune to that, but as a society on average not everyone will be, and it takes a surprisingly few people to start a reaction.
The minds of the people might not be aligned with this in Russia, according to the article, and it might be very much the case, but if the external pressure of the current financial and political shunning lasts for more than a few weeks something will have to give.
And EU won't feel a countercrunch due to energy restrictions until next winter (yeah sure there will be disruptions to industry but whatever). The people of EU are very much aligned with this mindset as of now, and they won't need to suffer for it until winter in their daily life.
I'm not quite sure what the context/purpose of this text... but it reads like debating notes. Each "myth" is essentially a russian grievance, debating point used by Russian apologists or Western critique of "NATO policy."
Below each myth is what reads like a suggested retort. Some are reasonable. Some are very weak.
The retort to (myth 13) - "liberaliaation & privatisation were bad for Russia" is literally: "radical policies of the early 90s did not cause economic failures of the late 90s" followed by a neoliberal version of "real communism has never been tried."
I found this op-ed in RT to be reasonable and insightful [1]. It argues that a unitary global power is less sustainable than a harmonious (my word) global system that integrates diverse centers of power. I tend to agree on principle and note that this is not a proposed myth. However, it is unclear what policies would enable this kind of ruling diversity without war. It probably means allowing for some degree of authoritarianism, communism, religious extremism and other unpalatable systems. It may even mean allowing for regional armed conflicts of some kind—but a line must certainly be drawn to avoid wars of aggression between powerful nation states.
The Soviet Union before the wall fell was brought to its knees through economic mismanagement. Putin was a stable entity until a few years ago. Sure he made unfortunate choices and policy decisions that probably cost Russia a lot in terms of economic development. But as a whole the country had economic growth and some notion of stability and wealth. That's why he was so popular.
I think it's safe to say that most of that progress is now undone and Russia is close to being back on its knees begging for access to international markets with very little else to offer than violence, vodka, and gas/oil. The only problem with that is that the rest of the world just learned that depending on Russia for gas/oil is not such a great idea.
Rebuilding that trust is going to take a few things; it's not a given that Russia will sell a lot of gas to Europe in the next years. Putin simply isn't the right person to rebuilt that trust given that he just made this issue very personal. He's now the primary obstacle between some very pissed off oligarchs and access to their money.
A little Kremlin coup is nothing unusual. It's an old tradition there. Just ask Gorbachev. All it takes is a few generals deciding their orders suck and that they'd rather take them from somebody else. I hear Navalny is available. Perfect guy for it given he's best buddies with several European leaders and he'd probably be able to restore some normality pretty swiftly. All that takes is a few of his recently locked out their accounts billionaire buddies to pool together and make it happen. Whether it is Navalny or someone else doesn't matter. All they need is somebody that is less of a liability than Putin currently is. Putin has burned a lot of bridges lately and quite a few domestically in the last few years. Lots of powerful people with grudges.
Possibly that's why Putin is so paranoid right now: they really are after him. They have been for years. Recent events are not helping him.
Navalny is detested by Russians. He has successfully been painted as everything evil: hopelessly corrupt, western stooge, nazi. I don't have any idea how much of that is true, probably mostly fabricated or exaggerated, but Putin understanders will confirm my statement and that it is actually true for all of these things.
Chatham House is generally reasonable, but their hand-waving away of the criminal Iraq war in Myth 1 is rather glib. Neither the US nor British government have any moral standing to criticize Russia. But "The West" is more than just those two nations.
Saying the UNSC did not criticize the Iraq War is technically true, but neither did it criticize the Russian invasion of Ukraine, since then as now one of the interested parties is the aggressor.
This article is wonderful and it changed my mind about Russia.
Before reading it, I was convinced that Russia was indeed behaving similarly to the USA (in Yugoslavia, Cuba, Iraq etc). But it seems I was ignoring a lot of differences that I should not have.
I had also been blaming the West for not engaging (diplomatically) enough with Russia prior to the start of aggressions (not only with the recent attacks on the whole of Ukraine, but since the Krimea annexation) as it was basically ignoring any kind of argument from the Russians, pushing them to the edge and, in their minds, leaving nothing left to do but launch military attacks to be taken seriously.
But this article makes very strong points showing that this was not the case. Russia has been quite aggressive the whole time (with Putin and without him) since the end of the USSR and does not seem at all to have anything in common with the West, or want to arrive at any sort of agreement.
This sentence, specifically, hit me hard:
"Western policymakers, politicians and populations need to be constantly reminded not only that the people who run Russia are not like them, do not like them and do not wish to be like them, but also that there are good reasons why attempts to find common ground with Russia consistently fail."
It makes the prospects for a peaceful resolution of this conflict (as of writing, representatives of both sides are meeting in Belarus to try to arrive at a peaceful solution to this) very, very bleak indeed. Well, I do hope they are wrong, how wonderful would be if they could arrive at some compromise to immediately end this brutal war.
All you need to look at is Finland. We seemingly had the best non-bound relationship as a borner nation with Russia a few weeks ago. We never relaxed our defense because we knew that the USSR is run by leaders who after years of climbing political ranks come out as revisionist as they can be.
Nowhere is it more evident than in the revisionism surrounding the cause of the war between USSR and Finland.
If USSR/Russia can be this hostile towards a small nation on its border that has zero ambitions for global domination then does anyone really stand a chance?
Pretty much the only reason Finland has not been on Russia’s list of enemies to subjugate is that there has been the credible threat of joining Nato since the 90s. Now Putin has shown he is even more out there than we even wanted to believe and ranted about correcting Lenin’s mistakes (one of them being granting the Grand Duchy of Finland independence in 1917 in the hopes that we go through a communist revolution and voluntarily join the USSR).
44 comments
[ 1.5 ms ] story [ 108 ms ] threadWhenever there is political turmoil in Russia, TV stations, in fear of reporting 'wrong' things that may be unpopular with whoever will be in power tomorrow start showing Swan Lake - it's perfectly unpolitical.
Russia might be so messed up that leading it is not desirable and attainable for anyone except quite crazy persons that are at the same time smart + competent enough.
Our current world order seems to have created a "power niche" in Russia that can only be filled by persons at the same time smart, crazy and competent enough! ...and we should also be wary of what kind of personal qualities we select for in people in eg. NATO or Chinese leadership, one could imagine embarking on crazier-than-thou leadership race.
This is scary as f! The rarity of the smart+crazy+competent combo is why we didn't off ourselves so far with nukes or by hacking into being stuff like, dunno, "covid ultra pro+ with prionic-inserts" or other horrible world-ending tech that is getting cheaper and cheaper...
https://www.chathamhouse.org/about-us
Sure you are. Who funds you?
google maps tells me that this organisation is on St James's Square, not Tufton Street, but how much distance is that, really?
[0]: https://www.chathamhouse.org/about-us/our-funding/donors-cha...
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chatham_House
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/55_Tufton_Street
Fortunately, on closer inspection, Chatham House does not appear to be of that ilk.
Did you find something nefarious?
wow, what a tone. it’s world renown leading think tank dating from 1920 with funding from across the free world:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chatham_House
they’re extremely open about funding:
https://www.chathamhouse.org/about-us/our-funding/donors-cha...
Chatham House are on the respectable end of the spectrum.
this is a myopic view.
[1] https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/1461670X.2017.13...
Regardless I want to attempt to deal fairly with each one and hopefully bring Russia a better world. (My view of a better world, which is roughly western, but may not be yours).
To be honest I have more hope for Africa, there are a lot of countries and several are making useful steps in the right direction to encourage. It will be interesting to see how west meets Africa works out.
“Anti-Western sentiment, though by no means universal, has been inflamed by Putin and has taken a firm hold in the hearts and minds of many Russian citizens – including, depending on the particular topic in question, among young people.
“This is not going to change after Putin’s departure, in part because Russian society also suffers from a post-imperial syndrome characterized by a state of deep resentment towards the West, which to Russian eyes neither allows the country to remain a superpower nor has provided it with a decent place within the international system.”
This might give some context to why many Russians seem to support this war. It seems more persuasive than the idea that they have all just been gulled by propaganda.
Russia is not the only country with this kind of insecurity problem.
> This particular myth argues that the West deceived Russia by reneging on its promises at the end of the Cold War not to enlarge NATO
then further down
> Its chief lament was that several leaders of NATO countries in early 1990 had ruled out the possibility of NATO enlargement, and that the West had misled Russia. As Russia’s former foreign minister, Yevgeny Primakov, noted later with regret, there was no legal force to the statements by Western leaders even though, in his view, legally based commitments would have been possible at the time.
So it sounds like the myth is no myth and promises were made, but there were no legal guarantees given instead? Am I misunderstanding something?
That, and the various "interventions" of the early 90s Russia. There is a reason why the Visegrad states (back-then Czechoslovakia, Poland and Hungary) were the first ones to literally beg NATO to allow them in - they were completely afraid of Russia after well over 100k people ending up dead in their neighborhood.
It was Russian aggression that drove the former Eastern Bloc countries to NATO.
NATO made no such promise - some members of NATO informally made statements, but no treaties or agreements were ever formally put into place.
The mistake seems to be that they relied on individual leaders and general sentiment instead of codifying it into something concrete
Imo, a straightforward rendering is
I think you can make a case for "US should have been less scary." NATO is an anti-russian alliance, and it means hostile troops on russian borders.Itoh, it's disingenuous to ignore the case that russian influence has been malign. Political, social & economic disfunction are near guarantees if your country falls in thee "russian sphere." No o e wants to be Belarus.
The russian desire for estonia, Latvia, Poland, etc to be like Belarus is one hell of a demand. The people of those country certainly don't want that.
In any case, I think the "legitimate russian security concerns" discussion is a dead horse now. The Ukrainian invasion and Putin's imperialist speech moots the whole thing. Russia declared Ukrainian statehood void and Imperial Russia as the legitimate source for territorial claims. You can't declare that and also argue for legitimate security concerns.
Also, Russia assured Ukrainian independence. Where's that promise?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budapest_Memorandum_on_Securit...
This is a treaty document that says that if, at any time, Russia (or anyone else) violates the territorial integrity of Ukraine (/Belarus/Kazakhstan), with Crimea specifically called out, ironically, the United Kingdom and the United States have to immediately declare war on Russia and open hostilities. France has a separate treaty with Ukraine containing the same promise, as do a number of other countries.
Putin invaded Crimea. Many countries declared openly that Russia violated the "Budapest memorandum" ... and did nothing. Minimal sanctions (especially in the case of Italy, they could have done a lot. They did nothing)
What people don't realize about president Zelensky is that he, quite a bit before the war with Russia started, commented and even partially planned the development of nuclear weapons. He's gone further and suggested previous governments agreed to denuclearization, not out of the interest of Ukraine but because they were corrupt and paid by Putin. I'm saying there's even a small chance he might see it as treason not to agree to develop nuclear weapons once this is over. I'm just saying, one of the things that's bound to be coming from Ukraine ... we might not like very much.
Ukraine has all the necessary resources and know how to rapidly develop nuclear weapons, from Uranium to nuclear physics research departments (plural), homegrown rocket engines and control systems. They probably can develop ICBM nuclear weapons (and, again, they don't have to match US state of the art weapons, they only have to match Russia. And when it comes to money, they have an economy that allows them to outspend Russia's nuclear weapons programs by a lot)
This illustrates Russia's problem: long term (think 50 years) Ukraine will win from Russia. That is essentially unavoidable.
Promises, documents, international law itself is not worth the often copious amounts of paper dedicated to them.
It says no such thing (as the Wikipedia article you linked points out). The most it says is that they shall seek "immediate United Nations Security Council action" if "Ukraine should become a victim of an act of aggression or an object of a threat of aggression in which nuclear weapons are used."
https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Ukraine._Memorandum_on_Securi...
That and statements made by individuals do not necessarily reflect the intentions of the whole organisation.
But that's kind of a problem for the future. Right now, given what's happening at the moment and what's been happening in the decades leading up to it, he has to go.
You can only cope with so much realpolitik and cynical thinking before you eventually catch your reflection in a mirror and have to fight your gag reflex.
Sure, some people are immune to that, but as a society on average not everyone will be, and it takes a surprisingly few people to start a reaction.
The minds of the people might not be aligned with this in Russia, according to the article, and it might be very much the case, but if the external pressure of the current financial and political shunning lasts for more than a few weeks something will have to give.
And EU won't feel a countercrunch due to energy restrictions until next winter (yeah sure there will be disruptions to industry but whatever). The people of EU are very much aligned with this mindset as of now, and they won't need to suffer for it until winter in their daily life.
Below each myth is what reads like a suggested retort. Some are reasonable. Some are very weak.
The retort to (myth 13) - "liberaliaation & privatisation were bad for Russia" is literally: "radical policies of the early 90s did not cause economic failures of the late 90s" followed by a neoliberal version of "real communism has never been tried."
https://www.rt.com/russia/550873-ukraine-action-end-era/
[1] not saying I agree with its entirety.
I think it's safe to say that most of that progress is now undone and Russia is close to being back on its knees begging for access to international markets with very little else to offer than violence, vodka, and gas/oil. The only problem with that is that the rest of the world just learned that depending on Russia for gas/oil is not such a great idea.
Rebuilding that trust is going to take a few things; it's not a given that Russia will sell a lot of gas to Europe in the next years. Putin simply isn't the right person to rebuilt that trust given that he just made this issue very personal. He's now the primary obstacle between some very pissed off oligarchs and access to their money.
A little Kremlin coup is nothing unusual. It's an old tradition there. Just ask Gorbachev. All it takes is a few generals deciding their orders suck and that they'd rather take them from somebody else. I hear Navalny is available. Perfect guy for it given he's best buddies with several European leaders and he'd probably be able to restore some normality pretty swiftly. All that takes is a few of his recently locked out their accounts billionaire buddies to pool together and make it happen. Whether it is Navalny or someone else doesn't matter. All they need is somebody that is less of a liability than Putin currently is. Putin has burned a lot of bridges lately and quite a few domestically in the last few years. Lots of powerful people with grudges.
Possibly that's why Putin is so paranoid right now: they really are after him. They have been for years. Recent events are not helping him.
Saying the UNSC did not criticize the Iraq War is technically true, but neither did it criticize the Russian invasion of Ukraine, since then as now one of the interested parties is the aggressor.
Before reading it, I was convinced that Russia was indeed behaving similarly to the USA (in Yugoslavia, Cuba, Iraq etc). But it seems I was ignoring a lot of differences that I should not have.
I had also been blaming the West for not engaging (diplomatically) enough with Russia prior to the start of aggressions (not only with the recent attacks on the whole of Ukraine, but since the Krimea annexation) as it was basically ignoring any kind of argument from the Russians, pushing them to the edge and, in their minds, leaving nothing left to do but launch military attacks to be taken seriously.
But this article makes very strong points showing that this was not the case. Russia has been quite aggressive the whole time (with Putin and without him) since the end of the USSR and does not seem at all to have anything in common with the West, or want to arrive at any sort of agreement.
This sentence, specifically, hit me hard:
"Western policymakers, politicians and populations need to be constantly reminded not only that the people who run Russia are not like them, do not like them and do not wish to be like them, but also that there are good reasons why attempts to find common ground with Russia consistently fail."
It makes the prospects for a peaceful resolution of this conflict (as of writing, representatives of both sides are meeting in Belarus to try to arrive at a peaceful solution to this) very, very bleak indeed. Well, I do hope they are wrong, how wonderful would be if they could arrive at some compromise to immediately end this brutal war.
Nowhere is it more evident than in the revisionism surrounding the cause of the war between USSR and Finland.
If USSR/Russia can be this hostile towards a small nation on its border that has zero ambitions for global domination then does anyone really stand a chance?
Pretty much the only reason Finland has not been on Russia’s list of enemies to subjugate is that there has been the credible threat of joining Nato since the 90s. Now Putin has shown he is even more out there than we even wanted to believe and ranted about correcting Lenin’s mistakes (one of them being granting the Grand Duchy of Finland independence in 1917 in the hopes that we go through a communist revolution and voluntarily join the USSR).