The asset stripping and oligarchisarion we permitted in the early 90s isn’t quite the stuff of the Treaty of Versailles. But it certainly rhymes in that a vanquished power laid prostrate was left to the vultures.
Of course, pretty easy for those in power in Russia to make a big deal to people there about their industry being bought by foreign powers, to make that unattractive or even illegal, and to then snap it all up for next to nothing. The West should have foreseen this and had an alternative plan, more like local partnerships or whatever.
In the first century B.C.E., Julius Caesar implemented a series of redistributionist land reforms [1]. One component was a minimum-hold period to prevent the aristocrats from just going and buying it all back up again.
The re-concentration was absolutely foreseeable. Classical history is no longer fashionable in American elite education, so I get how this was overlooked by the bankers. But it points to a lack of a give-a-shit-factor which, in my agreement with you, does not confer responsibility, but does represent a massive missed opportunity.
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Triumvirate#Caesar’s_c... search Lex agraria
In general I think the west tends to underestimate how frail a young democracy is.
Western-style Democracy isn't something that spontaneously happens when a despot is removed. It takes a long-ass time for the institutions to establish legitimacy, and when installed in an environment when there's large inequalities from the get-go, things may change, but they will also stay the same.
Manufacturing prosperity through something like the Marshall plan is one way to actually let things settle in the right way.
Same reason we did in 1948: to preserve and strengthen a hard-won peace.
> was in full asset stripping mode in the USA itself in the mid 90s
I’ve never seen someone tie FDR’s New Deal to the Marshall Plan. Curious if there’s a substantiated link.
The other factor, aside from greed, that caused the asset stripping madness was the worry that the socialists would retake power in Russia as they had a significant presence in parliament. I’ve heard that part of the need for speed (and lack of longterm plan) was the perception that Russia needed to see off that threat ASAP.
But came next was much worse.
Communists. But you are right, every opposition leader in Russia cries wolf how they should not have supported Yeltsin rigging elections and how it all went astray since then
Try to send a few billion in Russia. How much do you expect to be stolen?
Maybe if Clinton hadn't fucked up and had done a Marshall Plan for Russia, thing would be different.
"Helped deactivate 5,000 former Soviet nuclear warheads, over 600 missile launchers (including over 360 ICBM silos), over 540 ICBMs and SLBMs, 64 heavy bombers and 15 missile submarines through U.S.-Russian cooperative threat reduction programs. The Clinton Administration also worked with Russia to ensure successful denuclearization efforts in Ukraine, Belarus and Kazakstan; 3,300 nuclear warheads were moved to Russia and placed in storage. And today, no Russian nuclear weapons are targeted at an American city."
"Prevented the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction from Russia through the Expanded Threat Reduction Initiative (ETRI), complementing and reinforcing other nonproliferation efforts, such as in 1995, when Russia agreed to forego sales of cryogenic rocket engines to India. The Clinton Administration also provided critical support to safeguard fissile material that was not properly stored or protected. A June 2000 agreement between President Clinton and President Putin provides for the safe, transparent and irreversible destruction of 68 metric tons of Russian and American (34 tons each) weapons grade plutonium - enough plutonium to make thousands of nuclear weapons."
"Promoted regional security and integration by strengthening the independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity of the New Independent States. The Clinton Administration also sought to promote Russia's integration with the new Europe and its participation in institutions such as the G-8. Russia withdrew its troops from the Baltic states and Central Europe. Russia reaffirmed the sovereignty, territorial integrity and independence of Ukraine as part of the landmark 1994 U.S.-Ukrainian-Russian agreement on post-Soviet denuclearization. Russia signed the NATO-Russia Founding Act in 1997, codifying a cooperative relationship with NATO, despite Russian objections to NATO enlargement. For the first time since World War II, Russian and American troops serve side by side in Bosnia and in Kosovo. Russian diplomacy was critically important during the Kosovo conflict. "
And much more.. --> https://clintonwhitehouse5.archives.gov/WH/EOP/NSC/html/nsc-...
>> Today, under NATO’s nuclear sharing program, the remaining bombs complement the alliance’s collective security deterrent against threats, principally Russia.
https://armscontrolcenter.org/fact-sheet-u-s-nuclear-weapons...
That's such an odd statement for the White House to make. I have to assume that they meant that on a political level. Nobody was interested in MAD anymore at the time and nuclear weapons suddenly felt like relics of a bygone era. It's not like they went to every installation and removed the targeting data in whatever form.
You mean the ones in Ukraine that, were they still there would act as a deterrent to the invasion?
I don’t think many Americans realize how tenuous the hold on power Russian politicians was in the 1990s.
Free shit.
This would create an economic super-bloc that even China could not confront.
I think that is the real threat to American hegemony: Europe and Russia, getting along. It'd be awesome, but not so much in Washington DC ..
Could it just be inertia of thinking from the Cold War? The USSR was known to be powerful, and Russia is kinda the USSR, so it's assumed Russia has to be kinda powerful.
It's going to be interesting to observe how will Russian standing in the world change, now that the war is revealing that the Tsar has no clothes.
>The development of Russia in the post-Cold War period was not the result of a Western plot or Western actions. Russian officials chose, within a narrow range of options, how to behave, and they could have chosen differently. The Russian invasion of Ukraine, in February, 2022, was no more inevitable or foreordained than the U.S. invasion of Iraq, in 2003. Still, it’s worth asking what other course we might have followed.
* Bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999
* Invasion of Iraq in 2003
* Recognition of Kosovo in 2008
* Military intervention in Libya 2011
* Snowden's revelations of global surveillance in 2013
* Military intervention in Syria 2014
Curiously, it was the US support for Syrian head-chopping Islamic freedom fighters that Putin said was the final straw for tolerating US unilateralism.
Nobody followed the human rights or no-foreign military intervention chapters of international law, ever. Not in the Cold War [1]. Not in the 90s [2][3].
The one chapter that was held sacrosanct by the Great Powers was no annexing. There was Metternichean proxy governing. But no annexing. That is the red line Putin blundered through.
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_interventions_by_the...
Wow that is amazing considering the history of the country you're attempting to support here. None of this is a precedent, the Russians/USSR did it all way before any of this even happened.
> Curiously, it was the US support for Syrian head-chopping Islamic freedom fighters that Putin said was the final straw for tolerating US unilateralism.
I think you will find that it was Putins ambitions for imperialism that was the final straw in Putins actions.
Mitt Romney was also mocked for calling Russia the greatest threat in 2012. I was one of those people. I was wrong.
Note that the doctrine applies to all countries external to the USA. Which includes allies such as the EU.
Quote: "On the summit’s first day, Gorbachev lamented the sad state of his economy and ..."
Communist economy was a bankrupt one, based on pillaging, not by producing anything new and good. Their "golden" years, of 50's and 60's was based on actually pillaging all the Eastern Bloc countries and leave them poorer. In every single country the USSR imposed an export-import type of firms, that "imported" Russian stuff, old and outdated from the 20's and 30's which were valued like they were the latest and greatest and exported that country best resource (be it gold, oil or grain). Once those resources were pillaged so the USSR economic decline started.
For more than 4 decades this was slavery with extra steps. So yeah, the Russians are hated by every single former Eastern Bloc country, because we did not forget their heavy boot throughout of "red enlightenment" era.
