Not a Russian, don’t particularly like Russia, my criticism focuses on the West because that’s my home and I want to clean house. That ad-hominin attack on my intention does not make sense. This tautological notion that because I disagree with your framing I must be Russian and therefore wrong.
Russia is worried they will be Balkanized by the west and that is clearly against the interest of the Russian leadership. To not understand that Russian are willing to pay an enormous cost to do so is to not understand Russian history, beyond Afghanistan where they really didn’t want to be there in the first place.
As a policy I would rather see Russian tanks turned around and go into China. The West courted China in order to undermine Russia but underestimated China and overestimated Russia. Russia was successfully turned against Germany in WWII and if the west was smarter we would swallow our pride and do that again for WWIII. Having your enemies engaged in destructive conflicts is a big part of realpolitik and an essential part of remaining a dominant hegemon.
I’m repeatedly bemused by those who emphatically declare that Russia will fail because it is corrupt as if they have discovered something that the Russians themselves are not aware of. Russia has taken a learn-by-doing approach which is the only way of improving war-fighting capability in such an endemically corrupt country. This externalizes the negative signal for bad ideas, those failed excursions having died are no longer able to make future decisions. The average intelligence of those who remain has gone up. To paraphrase Napoleon; we mustn’t teach our enemies to fight by fighting them too often.
The media is telling the truth when it’s in their interest to do so. I’m not sure how you are trying to generalize this to them always being right when clearly they contradict themselves on so many matters. In the weeks before the invasion I was telling right wingers that they are about to look like fools when Russia really does invade. US intel provided proof by noting the movement of blood supplies to Western Russia which would only be done in preparation for a war as opposed to the exercises that was claimed.
Russia is worried they will be Balkanized by the west and that is clearly against the interest of the Russian leadership. To not understand that Russian are willing to pay an enormous cost to do so is to not understand Russian history, beyond Afghanistan where they really didn’t want to be there in the first place.
As a policy I would rather see Russian tanks turned around and go into China. The West courted China in order to undermine Russia but underestimated China and overestimated Russia. Russia was successfully turned against Germany in WWII and if the west was smarter we would swallow our pride and do that again for WWIII. Having your enemies engaged in destructive conflicts is a big part of realpolitik and an essential part of remaining a dominant hegemon.
I’m repeatedly bemused by those who emphatically declare that Russia will fail because it is corrupt as if they have discovered something that the Russians themselves are not aware of. Russia has taken a learn-by-doing approach which is the only way of improving war-fighting capability in such an endemically corrupt country. This externalizes the negative signal for bad ideas, those failed excursions having died are no longer able to make future decisions. The average intelligence of those who remain has gone up. To paraphrase Napoleon; we mustn’t teach our enemies to fight by fighting them too often.
The media is telling the truth when it’s in their interest to do so. I’m not sure how you are trying to generalize this to them always being right when clearly they contradict themselves on so many matters. In the weeks before the invasion I was telling right wingers that they are about to look like fools when Russia really does invade. US intel provided proof by noting the movement of blood supplies to Western Russia which would only be done in preparation for a war as opposed to the exercises that was claimed.