Excellent documentary. While it has been criticized for factual errors and omissions, it is by a wide margin the best documentary conveying the feeling of living through that time: the emptiness of not knowing where you are and what you should do to reach any kind of normal, stable, predictible life.
Many people in the west nowadays believe that they are living in end times because they are overwhelmed by the many things changing around them. That documentary shows the opposite. The silence that arrives when the music stops. You are hungry, stores are empty, no one knows when and if ever they'll be restocked. Society just grinds to a halt and stops functioning. Completely unimaginable situation for modern people who are used to abundance.
Extending an olive branch in the 90s could have cemented a better Russia today.
Instead, the country went straight to shit, Make Russia Great Again reactionaries won the vote, and have spent the next two decades carrying out their agenda (Which has managed to pull the country out of the hole it's been in, but as with any fascist movement, require an external enemy).
From the perspective of any sane Russian who lived through the cold war, and then the 90s, entering the 00s and expecting the West to act as a partner, as opposed to an adversary would be absolute lunacy. Fool me once, shame on me, and so forth... So the reformists got all the blame, and the hardliners took over.
The seeds of war get sown in peacetime. But hey, every one of those seeds had some pretext or other for it...
The parent poster's link describes the complete disinterest in engaging with it on economic aid. Reformists actually succeeding in their transition from communism might have nipped the problem in the bud.
With aid come strings, those strings could have been used to softly steer the internal political clusterfuck in a better direction.
NS2 work started in 2011, Russia needed help twenty years earlier.
But yes, alt history is bullshit, and nobody knows what would have if-only, if-only, if-only, but we can observe and shoot the shit about what did happen. And what did happen did not win many friends in it.
There's no shortage of blame to go around within Russia. Yeltsin was a walking autocratic disaster, and handed the country right over to Putin.
We were talking about economic aid, but if you want to talk about broken promises...
I'm sure if you dig just a bit further you might find some other agreements that have been made, and then broken (by NATO nations), prior to the start of the war in Lugansk/Donetsk/Ukraine as a whole.
Gorbachev - one of Russia's few non-shitty statesmen, after his resignation, took a lot of issue with those violations of them, and you're going to have a hard time describing him as either an expansionist warhawk, or an enemy of the West. (The guy spent spent the last three decades of his life trying to patch up east-west relations, and was appalled and devastated by the war in Ukraine. If he thinks that there's something rotten about how NATO behaved in the late-90s and 00s, listen to him.)
Combined with large parts of NATO starting (for the first time in it's history) a string of offensive operations (some on good pretenses, and some on absolutely terrible, illegal ones), and even a dove will start getting security anxieties.
I'm sure if you dig just a bit further you might find some other agreements that have been made, and then broken (by NATO nations), prior to the start of the war in Lugansk/Donetsk/Ukraine as a whole.
Except you can't, because no (legal) "agreements" as such were ever made.
Meanwhile the Budapest Memorandum is an agreement with treaty status, and it was unequivocally violated by Russia starting with the 2014 invasion.
> Except you can't, because no (legal) "agreements" as such were ever made.
Nobody's ever considered those promises to be legal. They were just that - promises.
The thing about promises is that when you break them, you shouldn't be surprised that your counterparty stops trusting anything else you do. You no longer have a co-operative or neutral relationship, you've turned it adversarial.
The transition from NATO being a defensive alliance (Against Warsaw pact aggression) to an offensive alliance (Second part of Yugoslavia, Iraq[1], Libya, Syria[1])[2] was a huge shift that took place in the 90s-00s.
This was the root of Gorbachev's anxieties, and it is nothing but fuel for Putin's 'they are all conspiring against us' rhetoric. Which didn't begin in 2000, by the way, but closer to 2008, with the Ruso-Georgian war being fought over an Ossetian pretext, but really about NATO expansion.
---
[1] Not per-se NATO operations, but both with an incredible overlap with its membership.
[2] Afghanistan omitted because it was both defensive (an Article 5 invocation), and internationally sanctioned.
If the context starts with the Budapest Memorandum, then you mention "other agreements", it's natural to assume you meant legal agreements.
And unless we're going to talk about legal agreements -- none of this dissecting of what was said verbally or how it was understood at the time has any bearing on how the West should respond to the current situation. Now that Russia has made unilateral decision to move the relationship beyond merely "adversarial", and into the realm of outright aggression.
I don't think splitting hairs about "Oh, that was just a broken promise, not a broken contract" is the win that you're looking for, when it comes to answering the question of "Did NATO behave in an antagonistic/untrustworthy/threatening manner against Russia during its decade of weakness."
You ask about olive branches, I give you examples, you say that those examples were legally allowed. Okay, sure, they were, but that's got nothing to do with the price of butter. Just because you can do something from a position of strength doesn't mean doing it was a good idea, or served your long-term aims in a relationship.
Conflating „broken promises (by individuals)“ and „broken agreements“ is not ok. It takes huge efforts and many people to get an agreement signed and it must mean something. If you decide to call that „hair splitting“ it makes it impossible for me to take your reasoning seriously.
It can certainly be argued that NATO expansion was bad policy, intrinsically antagonistic, and basically in the wrong spirit of the way the world should have re-organized itself post-1989. That's actually my gut feeling as well.
But it doesn't rise to level of casus belli or even a rational reason for Russia to feel directly (tangibly) threatened. And it's definitely not the "reason" Putin started the war.
And you're leaving out other stuff, such as the fact that Yeltsin greenlighted the earliest round of new admissions (PL, CZ, HU), and that Gorbachev himself downplayed the significance of the expansion issue during negotiations to which you are referring -- as he made clear in that famous RBTH interview:
"The topic of 'NATO expansion' was not discussed at all, and it wasn't brought up in those years. I say this with full responsibility. Not a single Eastern European country raised the issue, not even after the Warsaw Pact ceased to exist in 1991. Western leaders didn't bring it up either."
And that while it was a constant source of tension and grumbling -- the NATO issue never seemed to matter all that much to Russia until the Rose and Orange revolutions in 2003/2004. That's what really started to make Putin's back arch -- not any paramount concerns about NATO expansion itself.
As far as "antagonistic" is concerned, I think there's a much stronger case to be made in regard to the intentional decision by US policy makers not to provide extensive economic aid (a "Marshall Plan") to its former adversary, its insistence on shock reforms, and so on. But this is another topic. And it's not as if Russia didn' also "behave in an antagonistic/untrustworthy/threatening manner" against its would-be benefactor during its hour of need.[0][1]
World War I & we won!
But did we bother to win the peace?
Make ’em suffer!
Let ‘em starve!
Led direct to the Nazis
After World War II, we learned
Rebuilt Germany and Japan
But when the Soviet Union fell
Where was our Marshall Plan?
We created Putin
We created Putin
We created Putin, yeah!
Real James Bond villain
We lost!
See him prancing, half naked
On his horse
Side saddle, the blushing bride
Clings with those little hands
Stared into his eyes
We saw his soul
He saw how dumb our leaders are
We’ll hack and ruin everything we want
'til your democracy’s a joke
Like ours
We created Putin
We created Putin
We created Putin, yeah!
Capitalism has failed
Mob corruption everywhere
Not true comrade, can’t you see
It’s working perfectly
We’re more like russia every day
Oligarchs steal everything
Crime families like Kushner and Trumps
To Koch&Head, Zuckergoogle and Bezos chumps
Loot the country, loot the banks
Cook up another ’08 crash
Barrack and Biden chickened
No one went to jail
Kleptocracy’s too big to fail
We created Putin!
(Jello Biafra and the Guantanamo School of Medicine)
I highly recommend this movie if only because it's a hilarious combination of excellent production value, terrible acting, and some of the most boring and openly delusional film you'll ever witness.
Thanks! The acting/direction does incorporate sort of a plastic style. Perhaps they meant to really convey that this is all fictionalized history. I agree that it's a transparent hagiography. But American history is replete with hagiographies, and no patriot is repulsed by stories of President Washington and the cherry tree, or Paul Revere's heroicism, Betsy Ross's project, Susan B. Anthony's defense of women and children, or Abe Lincoln's bold proclamations. I mean, today we're not. In the moment, there were certainly plenty of dissenters and grumblers, but bro, history is written by winners, and President Reagan won many elections and established a library. There's nothing delusional about winning!
By the way, I read a compilation of letters, I believe the title was, "I Love You, Ronnie" and it became clear that Mrs. Nancy was the driving force in his White House. She cared for him in many ways despite his profound incapacity (perhaps like Dr. Jill Biden today) and First Ladies have been ever more emboldened to use very real influence and femininity to complement the Executive branch. Nancy's role was quite downplayed in the film, but any admirer of Jackie or Michele would need to acknowledge the First Lady's accomplishments.
Despite funding the CIA with many billions of dollars every year there are many surprises.
This isn't because the CIA is incompetent. No politicians don't want want to hear what the CIA has to say. The US intelligence services isn't run by some tinker tailor spy spy master. It's just another Washington bureaucrat playing politics.
They train people who speak the language and absorb the culture and their reports are ignored.
The collapse of the Soviet Union started the moment Stalin got rid of Lenin's New Economic Policy.
By the time they realized the rot,it was too late and the Soviet Union could not be saved .
Had the leaders reintroduced NEP after Stalin's death in the early 50s ,the Soviet Union would still be around with a GDP of 10 or 15 trillion dollars .
China is a Soviet Union with NEP
A collapse that goes on for 60 years and includes and survives a massive invasion of the own land with over 20 million dead .. is a different definition of collapse than I would use.
Partly true. Stalinist planned economy (aka Socialism in One Country: as opposed to waiting for world revolution) excelled in macro matters, and was particularly vital to the Soviet war effort and post war rebuilding. However Soviets could never really solve micro matters, like empty supermarket shelves. Gorbachov reforms nominally tried to solve these problems.
China is a Soviet Union with NEP minus exporting world revolution.
> The collapse of the Soviet Union started the moment Stalin got rid of Lenin's New Economic Policy.
What? The Soviet economy grew like crazy under Stalin, and he even pushed the Germans back to Berlin. Workers from depression racked Western Europe moved to Russia for work in the 1930s.
It was when Khrushchev took over that the economy began to sink.
It was when Khrushchev took over that the economy began to sink.
My understanding was that the Soviet economy actually boomed from the mid 50s to the late 60s (Khruschev's tenure from 1953-1964) -- but that once Brezhnev took over, that's when it started hitting the brakes.
The economy didn't sink under Khruschev. It just grew slower than capitalist nations (and public expectations of growth of QOL).
Over the decades, this difference in growth compounded, until you hit Brezhnev where growth in friction, inefficiency, and corruption exceeded growth in productivity.
And then you had a lot of, uh, degrowth with Yeltsin's shock therapy.
> Yes and no. What a country needs to do to be prosperous is fairly easy - liberal, free market capitalism. No other system has come close to that.
That's not enough. You also need to be at war with other countries, win those wars and impose war reparations so high the losing party is obliged to grant you control of its tariff and industries to repay an ever increasing and eternal debt. "It wasn't fair they didn't want to buy our opium".
Please note that during the last big war, your much vaunted capitalist economy. was turned into a planed economy. This was done in order to focus it into a war winning machine.
However, I do agree that in general the most good is done for the most people by application of the the free market.
Liberal free market capitalism is far from easy. Russia tried it in the 90s, but it failed catastrophically. They just could not make it work in the situation they were, with the people and institutions they had.
I think there was also a lot of misunderstanding in the West how things could go. Having easily accessible strong rights systems outside of Russia but a weak one inside combined certainly in expected ways - derailing ideas of how these things would form inside Russia as a necessity.
Can you give an example of a country that started poor, adopted laissez-faire capitalism, and became a prosperous nation? It seems that the best predictor of whether a country is prosperous in 2024 is whether it was prosperous in 1724.
It's also easy to forget that Russia was quasi-medieval almost up to the 20th century.
The countries that were prosperous in 1724 were the ones that had highly developed trade networks and a market full of not-very-constrained individual players.
It is precisely by mimicking them that capitalism spread into other nations and pushed out various previous feudal forms, even though the local nobles fought back against the tide for decades and centuries, sometimes managing to stop it for a while.
If you take a historical map of Europe in the 18th century and mark various instances of liberalizing legislation on it, you can see the spread quite nicely. It is almost like an ink blotch spreading on a table.
The places that resisted the new ideas the most (the Ottoman Empire, the Russian Empire) and managed to keep their old feudal norms deep into the 19th century were the ones that ended up on the bottom, and had to speedrun industrialization and development in the 20th century under top-down reformers like Lenin and Ataturk.
Singapore is not a liberal democracy. Israel has a very particular situation which I'm not gonna get into. Norway might be the best example on that list, but it's also the flagship example of a mixed economy; hardly laissez-faire turbo capitalism.
Germany? Didn't even exist in 1724 and the area was heavily destroyed by the 30 year war the century before. But depends what you mean by "laissez-faire capitalism".
Singapore has a great coat of paint over its economic system so westerners think it’s pure capitalism but that’s a mirage.
- The majority of locals work directly (PSD, Government, Education) or indirectly (Temasek / GIC owned entities like CapitalLand, Surbana, Singapore Airlines, the three local banks, etc.
- 80% of the property market is directly under government control (HDB), with 20% heavily regulated but “free”
I could go on, but Singapore works precisely because it’s not free for all capitalism but a tightly controlled economy that makes sure the country benefits
> Can you give an example of a country that started poor, adopted laissez-faire capitalism, and became a prosperous nation?
Most of Eastern Europe. In the early 1990s, average wages were ~30 USD per month, that is, less than dollar a day. Now they are rapidly catching up with Western Europe.
Laissez-faire capitalism wasn't a choice, but the only responsible option left when you have no meaningful national economy. People were told that the state budget is empty and there's no money to hand out, and that they have to find a way to survive on their own. And they did.
I tend to think that destroying the nazis and the empire of japan was worth the extremely high cost. I'd hazard a guess that most ukrainians and russians and koreans and chinese and a whole swath of southeast asian peoples would agree.
Anyway, it's not a valid comparison when we're actively refusing to get involved in the conflict in any way that would risk our imperial interests.
Entire existence rather.. Nuclear weapons made any direct conflict between major states extremely risky
> southeast asian peoples would agree.
I specifically excluded Japan. In theory US could have went to war with it while ignoring Europe. I doubt most people in Southeast Asia were particularly concerned about Germany, if anything it made their path to independence more straightforward
> where ukraine will end up being fed to the wolves.
the wolves came regardless. The west's help is no altruism, but it is also what ukraine would need (and more).
> Propping up a defense industry that's feeling the lack of demand; forcing europe to coalesce around the us instead of china; restricting european access to cheap russian gas
trying to frame it as some sort of american conspiracy to power grab is either you propogating mis/disinformation/propaganda, or just utterly stupid to the point of an own goal (assuming you're aligned with the west).
> Just because you lack the imagination or historical understanding to see how else this could have played out doesn't exclude these counterfactuals from possibility.
Enlighten me, how I lack imagination or historical understanding about my own country that is being invaded right now.
You simplify it too much. There was a million people on maidan in Kyiv. Nation voted for EU - they were done with Russian kleptocrats meddling with Ukrainian politics and influencing country all the time.
Looks to me you’re thinking about all of this like it’s some tabletop or RTS game.
You should travel to parts of the Eastern Europe that used to be under Soviet occupation someday. Share your views on Russia with the locals over beer and you'll find out rather quckly why "blithely trusting the state department" is a hell of a lot better than dealing with the Russians. Not to say that people are wholly uncritical of the US. But having experienced Russia up close it's clear as day what's worse.
Also as a reminder Russia could end the war today by withdrawing its armed forces from the internationally recognized territory of Ukraine.
What does our discussion have to do with western media?
> That doesn't mean this was smart
No offence, but who are you, someone sitting in thousands kilometers away and not knowing an iota about challenges that Ukraine faced since God knows when, to say what is stupid? Democratic revolution to oust Russian politics out of your country is stupid to you?
Were American Revolution war and American Civil war stupid? People died, after all. Could’ve stayed colony or kept slaves.
> It didn't.
Yes it did, lol. And full scale invasion only solidified the victory. Russian language is increasingly vilified, Russian/Soviet symbols are being removed, corruption is being fought, national identity is being restored. It’s going to be nigh impossible to do again what Russians could afford to do in the open for 30 years.
They could have waited a year and then won the next election if they thought they had such a clear case. But they didn’t because they weren’t so sure. They chose revolution to overthrow a government elected through regular elections.
I don't doubt that a big chunk of Ukraine wanted to join up with the West. After all, we are more prosperous. The question is to what extent that is possible when one considers geopolitical constraints. I think what some people are saying is, Ukrainians would probably not have been for the current situation if they had known in advance. I don't think they would have been for war with Russia, to break away from them. I don't think that's what maidan was about. I think what some people are also saying is that the US knew this would lead to war and pushed Ukraine into it, anyway. And that is also the reason why France and Germany were more reluctant on the matter, because this is not good for us here in Europe.
I personally don't know what to think. I think the US framing of the situation is childish: "the Ukrainians wanted to leave and Russia doesn't want them to". As if they wouldn't do exactly the same thing, where they in that situation. Seems to me that you cannot ignore the geopolitics. At the same time, a people have sovereignty over their land and a right to do with it what they please, but that is only an ideal and not true in practice. Well, there is nobody enforcing such ideals so you need to go to war...
Even way back before Ukraine, people question why Russia has been kept as an enemy after the fall of the Soviet Union. Because they don't submit to the US hegemony? But they could be allies. India doesn't submit either, for that matter, but they are semi-allies. But not Russia. Because? We wouldn't be in the current situation if Russia wasn't antagonized so hard way back then.
I think it is very hard to parse objectively what is happening because there is so much propaganda and heated opinions on the topic. And not everyone has the same objectives, and people can always contort themselves to blame everything on those they despise.
> I personally don't know what to think. I think the US framing of the situation is childish: "the Ukrainians wanted to leave and Russia doesn't want them to".
They’re framing nothing. This is literally what happened.
> As if they wouldn't do exactly the same thing, where they in that situation.
That’s irrelevant to the current situation.
> Even way back before Ukraine, people question why Russia has been kept as an enemy after the fall of the Soviet Union. Because they don't submit to the US hegemony? But they could be allies. India doesn't submit either, for that matter, but they are semi-allies. But not Russia. Because? We wouldn't be in the current situation if Russia wasn't antagonized so hard way back then.
Chechnya, Georgia, Ukraine, Syria. Constant meddling in business of other post-Soviet republics. Wow, poor Russia being antagonized by evil West!
> I think it is very hard to parse objectively what is happening because there is so much propaganda and heated opinions on the topic.
Ah, old “hard to know REAL truth”. Straight out of Russia’s metodichka.
> Even way back before Ukraine, people question why Russia has been kept as an enemy after the fall of the Soviet Union. Because they don't submit to the US hegemony? But they could be allies. India doesn't submit either, for that matter, but they are semi-allies. But not Russia. Because? We wouldn't be in the current situation if Russia wasn't antagonized so hard way back then.
Eastern Europe is celebrating 30-year-anniversary of departure of Russian troops. In some countries, it happened in 1993, in others, in 1994. They left behind lots of graffiti with messages such as "the masters will be back". Not only regular soldiers, but diplomats and high officials have maintained the same attitude throughout decades since then. Countries in Eastern Europe are still referred to as "near abroad", distinct from "real" foreign countries, as if they were rebelling colonies. Instead of seeking reconciliation like Germany after the WWII, Russia has done nothing but denied its crimes in Eastern Europe and mocked victims. By trying to sabotage integration with international organizations, Russia has done everything they could to ruin the future too and keep those countries internationally isolated. Instead of respecting sovereignty, they have relentlessly meddled with internal affairs, supported extremists, fueled social division and instigated violent protests. In Ukraine, they went a step further and started the largest war in Europe since Hitler's invasion of Poland. Hundreds of thousands are dead and material damages are in hundreds of billions only because Ukraine wanted closer trade relations with the European Union.
> War was avoidable. Ukraine only entered into armed conflict because they were promised support that never showed up.
That is such a blatant lie. As a person who was in the middle of it I am so tired of people trying to change the timeline to fit their favourite conspiracy.
First period of full scale invasion was driven from the bottom. The president and government was in shock and disorganised trying to work on some sort of a surrender plan while people were standing in lines for ammunition giveaway.
President was not able to accept surrender because the most active people where enlisting and fighting and had their first big win - stopping the "3-day operation" and pushing russians away from Kyiv.
After than happened, it became obvious how in only few weeks of occupation, russians did numerous war crimes - executing elected leaders in small cities, indiscriminate tortures, raping and so on. Read about what happened in Bucha and Irpin, but that was just the most famous places. I have friends who lived under occupation and it the same things happened in other places. It was systematic.
Pushing russia from Kyiv left people in Ukraine in shock what the "brotherly" nation is willing to do just for fun. And it became very clear for everyone what the surrender would mean.
But even besides all that, the war in Ukraine shapes and destabilises European politics right now. Allowing russia to win will have a devastating effect in the whole EU.
The president and government was in shock and disorganised trying to work on some sort of a surrender plan while people were standing in lines for ammunition giveaway.
This part I wasn't aware of - can you go into more detail, please?
The impression from the beginning (and if it was a façade, it seems it was a very elaborate one) was that Zelenskyy and his crew were never for a moment considering surrendering. As in this famous video they made in the early hours of Feb 25th:
It is somewhat documented in the Wikipedia page [1].
"During a series of meetings, by the end of March Russia and Ukraine negotiators produced the Istanbul Communiqué, "Key Provisions of the Treaty on Ukraine's Security Guarantees" - a framework of a possible agreement. The agreement would have declared Ukraine to be a neutral state, put a limit on its military, and list Russia and Western countries, including the US and the UK, as guarantors, obliged to assist Ukraine in case of aggression against it. The talks almost reached agreement, with both sides "consider[ing] far-reaching concessions", but stopped in May 2022 due to a combination of several factors."
And this quote:
"Deputy Kremlin Chief of Staff Dmitry Kozak said in 2022 that he had negotiated an agreement with Ukraine within a few days of the invasion. This settlement would have ended hostilities in exchange for guarantees that Ukraine would not join NATO. The agreement was however blocked by Putin, who "expanded his objectives to include annexing swathes of Ukrainian territory". A Kremlin spokesman denied the story."
According to the drafts - these "security guarantees" were effectively a surrender, as Ukraine had to limit its army to some very small number making any type of resistance impossible. Adding western countries as guarantors is just sugar coating as with stripped down military, assistance will be impossible and there is no such reality in which UK and US will send their troops against Russia.
Even as bad as this treaty was for Ukraine, Russians never actually considered this negotiations seriously. Top Ukrainian officials were working on this treaty with third-tier diplomats from the Russia side. At that time, Russia was absolutely sure to overpower Ukraine by force and to use this negotiations as the smoke screen or for propaganda purposes in the future.
Okay, so you're referring to events later in March then (I thought you were referring to the situation just as the invasion was starting).
According to the drafts - these "security guarantees" were effectively a surrender, as Ukraine had to limit its army to some very small number making any type of resistance impossible.
Strong agreement there. But isn't it also true that it was precisely the obviously flimsy and deceptive "security guarantees" (which apparently were buried in an annex of a much larger document) were (along with the territorial demands, and the atrocities happening on the ground) precisely what convinced the Ukrainian side to back out, once they found out about them?
The point here is that I'm not sure it's fair to say they were giving serious consideration to a "surrender plan" as such. The impression I have is that they were hoping to find a way to negotiate a Russian retreat in exchange for more or less symbolic concessions (e.g. "Ukraine not join NATO"), but no territorial concessions or drastic reductions in armed forces (which seems not unreasonable if your country is being overrun, and you want to avoid the prospect the prospect of being at war indefinitely like it is now). But that once they found out about (and/or Putin's team shifted their terms to include) the "surrender bits", and the news of the atrocities in Bucha/Irpin started coming in, that's when the process broke down.
This is such a disgusting formulation that I struggle to be civil when responding to it. Ukraine was invaded, both in 2014 and 2022. Saying that a victim of an invasion "entered into armed conflict" is like saying that a victim of a rape "had sex".
An invaded country can either capitulate outright (like Czechoslovakia in 1968), or fight back. Most countries, if their strategic position isn't catastrophic from the onset, tend to fight back: that is the whole point of having a military. And east of the former Iron Curtain, most nations would fight back just based on their terrible experience with former Russian control. From Finland to at least Georgia, "Never again" is the common sentiment.
(There are exceptions to this rule, like Slovakia and Hungary.)
"because they were promised support that never showed up"
Are you rewriting a very recent history? In the first weeks, the West was mostly treading lightly about the situation, because they were afraid of the Big Bad Bear. The German Foreign Minister told the Ukrainian ambassador Melnik in no uncertain terms that they were goners, and Germany sent them some old helmets, ffs. France's Macron had his head full of diplomatic-solution dreams that just never materialized, and sat on the phone to Moscow for weeks. Again, there were important exceptions like the UK or Poland, which started sending efficient help immediately, but the West as a whole only started taking support of Ukraine seriously when the Ukrainian army stopped the initial onslaught and pressured the Russian army north of Kyiv to withdraw. Only then it became clear that the Russians overextended themselves and that the country is not about to fall, at least not immediately.
"That's the whole point of sovereignity."
According to Putin, who really likes to speak about sovereignty, the whole point of sovereignty is to do whatever you want.
Remember folks, all Russia has to do is leave Ukraine’s internationally recognized borders and repatriate its citizens, and the war will be over at status quo ante bellum.
"As the Soviet Union came to an end, American anxiety yielded to an odd euphoria. Americans hadn’t expected revolution and disintegration. And yet many were now speaking with confidence about what must follow: a durable capitalist equilibrium would bring with it democracy and freedom."
Yeah, yeah. I do not think the neocons would be happy about a democratic Russia with an economy of the size of the U.S. and oil payments settled in rubles.
Russian economy was nowhere near the size of the American one in the real world.
I grew up in late stage Communism; the only thing that the dying regimes were reliably producing were impressive, and completely fraudulent, statistics.
On paper, we were all economic tigers, but in the street, people queued in front of the shops whenever something rare, such as washing machines, was promised to be delivered.
And the Soviet Union was even less developed than Czechoslovakia. Plus, the more developed regions like the Baltics didn't want to stay subjugated to Russia.
Russia proper was underdeveloped. No surprise for a country whose access to the sea is limited and distances are absolutely vast. Such places tend to be underdeveloped everywhere - Kazakhstan, inner Congo, inner Brazil, Australian outback, even many places in the flyover US.
Of course, hence the "what must follow" in the quoted text. These were predictions by the people who publicly always talk about bringing democracy and freedom. What they say in private is a different matter.
The dissolution of Soviet Empire and power grab that happened afterwards was definitely a catastrophe for newly formed states and a huge miss for western powers.
Those states could’ve been part of western block and now big chunk of them is slowly drifting to China.
I have been travelling to the Baltics since 2000, and the development associated with their Western re-orientation is just massive. Nowadays, Riga or Tallinn feel like Nordic metropolises again. Not as rich as Copenhagen yet, but on their way.
In the immediately post-Soviet era, they were just ghastly.
This statistics looks shocking at the first glance, but many Balts are coming back from their Western jobs and building nice houses back home. Some migration is temporary. The idea that you make a lot of money in the West and come back home is fairly widespread in Central and Eastern Europe. IDK how many Poles worked abroad, but at the height of their exodus, there were several magazines just specializing in advertising foreign jobs. It didn't hurt Poland that much, though. Much of their money flew home as remittances and helped build the country.
Part 1 of 4. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ke600MgW1F0&t=3s&pp=2AEDkAIB