I was thinking about the same thing a few days ago. One of the most interesting takeaways from this war is how soft power is very underrated, and lack of any soft power whatsoever is one of the reasons behind Russia's problems.
Russia has spend billions to gain soft power by hosting the 2018 world cup, the winter Olympics etc.
However the only "soft power" that has actually worked for Russia are their hundreds of thousands of social media disinfo sockpuppet accounts. They have convinced half of India, Nigeria, Hungary and Kentucky that Ukraine created COVID-19.
I think they count as soft power, but on the energy front, everyone (even Europe itself) completely overestimated how strong it was. Russia very much expected that energy dependency would keep Europe out of the conflict, even if it would put them on a path towards breaking that dependency in the long term. No one seemed to truly expect that the reaction would be so strong that it'd take less than a year to mostly eliminate that dependency.
In fact that went very poorly. They cut off gas to Europe in an attempt to freeze them and make them come to the bargaining table, but Europe responded very strongly and largely still supports Ukraine. The winter was even very mild. In cutting off the crutch, Russia forced Europe to go cold turkey instead of delaying it for a decade like they wanted to. Now Russia has to settle for selling the gas to other places at a steep discount, and Europe may never buy Russian gas again.
There's even a fun parallel to draw with the floating LNG terminals off the coast and WWII floating harbors for Normandy
True, but presumably because of the fear of losing energy supply, Europe chose _not_ to react to earlier provocations, including the invasion of the Crimea.
Yes, the whole salami slice expansion method seems to be designed, to use other diplomats as an abblative layer for empire expansion. Basically using your oponents wish for peace to slowly expand creeping.
And there is a whole diplomat generation standing by to be useful idiots again if not an example is placed like a statue every 3 generations.
I'm not saying you are wrong but why stop here? Why are the ruling guys stupid? Why do stupid guys get to rule?
I also am not sure stupidity is binary or all encompassing. I think they must be doing something right to be rulers to a country. Why do russian citizen take it? Maybe that's where stupid is the final answer, but maybe not.
As for international relations, I am more and more coming to the conclusion that everyone tries to project their own logic to others and being mostly wrong about it.
russia does not work according to the logic that France and Germany want to project onto it.
China does not work according to the logic US and Germany want to project onto it.
US and EU don't work according to the logic China and russia want to project onto it.
Ukraine does not work like EU, US and muscovy project their logic onto it.
This seems to be a weakspot of alot of ideological groups in the west(left/right) but also in the east(ccp), the assumption that one can just "sing" a version of reality into beeing by loudness. What is usually archieved is a placation act, by which the lower status parties involved pretends to kotau, but then gets on with its own life in its own style, with the calmed priesthood.
Its a very strange state of affairs. For objective, measurable scientific reality to be experienced, this process is completely orthogonal. Its better to know what is, even if unpleasant or stressfull, then only to find out at the breaking point?
If you have the power to force people to pretend a lie is the truth and behave accordingly, it doesn't matter if they accept it.
A few weeks ago, millions of Americans believed their government was at war with alien spacecraft, or an invasion of Chinese balloons. That was reality. Now that reality has been flipped off like a light switch, and a new reality turned on. As Karl Rove once said "We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality — judiciously, as you will — we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too."
People don't experience objective, measurable scientific reality, they experience a subjective hyperreality as the sum of signals from corporate media, pop culture and disinformation agents (including their own media and government.) This is what the whole "post truth" theory is about - not that objective reality can be manufactured, but that power comes from manipulating the perception of reality.
And eventually, many people will believe it. Humans are not rational beings that consider truth by the most mathematically precise and logically sound methods available, we are emotional beings driven by the need to square the circles of our lives by any means necessary. That's how propaganda and great lies work. It's how innocent people can enter an interrogation and come out convinced of the narrative of their guilt, to the point of having fabricated memories of it.
Russia has a nearly unbroken 150-200 year history of tyrannical government (sometimes in just the classical sense of power vested in a single individual, but often in the more modern sense where oppression is added to that). Sometimes there have been rebellions, but always the end result is the same in Russia: power resides in a single individual. Most other countries, east, west, and other, put up more resistance to the kinds of power structures Russia historically has had.
It's not projecting to postulate that maybe, just maybe, Russians (in aggregate, individual exceptions likely exist) are just okay with that.
> It's not projecting to postulate that maybe, just maybe, Russians (in aggregate, individual exceptions likely exist) are just okay with that.
just like germans were ok with nazis; italians, spanish, portuguese, with fascists; americans, brits, dutch, french, with slave owners
i mean honnestly, is russia worst than the nato country turkey? not to mention the faithful western ally saudi arabia? is donbas really that different from kosovo? who are we kidding with this virtue hypocricy
i fear that by the time people in large become sober about this hypocricy it will be too late and world will only become more polarized
how fitting as a response to what i just wrote to post a link to an anglo saxon lecturing slavs about their history and what "rusophobia" really means
but maybe Snyder is right. maybe all these rusophobic, racist statements are made by russian state agents maskarading as hn readers to show russians that their imperial war against ukraine is justified
and then again. shame on russia. US or UK never played the victim when pursuing their imperial ambissions
Well the power structure has never changed bar a short period after USSR colapse than people gladly elected another strong man who shifted back to the same arrangment that was in place for centuries. You have a figure head (Tsar, General Secretery etc.) who holds all the power and appoints regional managers to rule a particular area. The expansionist agenda is always the key to the ideology.
Being russian is not a race, just a passport type. They have a lot of blonde blue eyed people on the west (courtesy of vikings raping and killing those areas for centuries), brown, black haired, asian in the east (courtesy of mongols doing exactly the same), typical muslim visage on the south. Basically all mixtures apart from Africans.
Also, being russian is sort of lifestyle and comes with certain mindset, as internet memes documented darn too well in past decades.
As for OP's remark, its harsh but not incorrect, same happened to most enslaved nations. Unless freedom was won by bloody mass revolution and whole movememnt had some momentum, tribes and nations who suddenly gained freedom know very little what to actually do with it, and mess up quite a few things in transition. I've seen it first hand in eastern Europe, as soon as russians moved away from their decades long enslaving occupation.
I am ethnically Russian, and I have never held Russian citizenship (and have no desire to), and also have never lived there. You're just waving hands around trying to cover your *-cisms. Next you'll be telling us that Russians do not exist (you're already basically saying that). Now, who does that one remind me of, let me think...
I recognize that I live in a bubble and have a small circle of friends, but neither I, nor any one of them adhere to that stereotype you've mentioned that is supposedly required to "be Russian".
lol this is so stupid. being russian is as much an ethnicity as it is a nationality. if you make derisive prejudicial comments about an ethnic group that is racism
With that logic, you can't say ever any critical remark about a group of people (since they can self-identify as ethnicity XYZ and who are you to say otherwise), because it all gets siphoned into 'that's racism' outrage. If anything, it should be labeled 'ethnicism', in fact thats a proper word so lets be factual.
What about, instead of this totalitarian auto-censorship outrages in anonymous online forums, we discuss actual topics? I wasn't bashing russians specifically mind you, rather pointing out that generally nations that got their freedom way too fast then didn't know how to handle such freedom well. Collapse of CCCP created a massive sphere of such countries. As somebody coming form such a nation and lived during such times, I have unfortunately quite a bit of experience in this regard
I don't "self-identify" as anyone, I have a birth certificate issued by the Kazakh government that plainly identifies me as ethnically Russian. Since the beginning of 2022, that has been enough to receive limitless amounts of vitriol and death threats from people such as yourself.
ops remark that russians have a brainwashed slave mentality is plain-as-day racist. you saying that its harsh but true is also racist. you saying that being russian is somehow a lifestyle choice also makes it very hard to take you seriously
> As somebody coming form such a nation and lived during such times, I have unfortunately quite a bit of experience in this regard
Kazakhstan is as authoritarian as Russia was before 2022. They'll pretend there is some conflict with Putin while still supplying sanctioned goods to Russia and serving as banking gateway to bypass financial sanctions.
Russia doesn’t seem very interested in soft power either. Under Putin they seem more interested in violence, helping some local insurgents, installing strong men.
Even in Ukraine previously sympathetic Ukrainian officials in Ukraine reported getting cold calls from Russians telling them they better fall in line and threatened them. You would think it would be easier to throw them a bone / bribe… but nope.
They don’t seem to understand much outside the bullying sphere.
It is not a coincidence that 2 out of 4 of Russia's "separatist commanders" in eastern Ukraine were killed because of "infighting" between 2014 and 2022.
Yes, hopefully some of the federated republics will start civil wars to break away from the Russian empire. Continue the disintegration process that started in 1991.
Hoping that a nuclear power breaks apart is a nightmare. This is true for states like Pakistan but when you have a stockpile in the thousands and a nuclear logistical distribution like Russia it is nearly guarantee that we have several (terroristic) nuclear explosions over the next decades and probably half a dozen rogue states more.
And do not assume that this is a peaceful transition. Putin is very much concerned about the integrity of Russia.
You can draw a straight line from the USSR breaking up, to Ukraine giving away their nuclear weapons via the Budapest Memorandum, to the invasion of Ukraine by Russia (which was a signatory). States are going to be less likely to give up their nuclear weapons, even with treaties, because treaties can be easily broken.
What is not yet visible, but might be a bringer of future conflict, is the many turk nations that could form a federation of there own. Turkey, Aserbaidschan , Turkmenistan and the Uighurs even, could form quite a mini-union themselves. If they manage for once to be at piece with all the other ethnicities they traditionally supressed similar to the russians.
Seems very unlikely to me. Between things like permissive action links, maintenance require to keep the bombs in working order, and expertise in how to use them, I would be dubious of rogue states getting them, wanting to use them, and actually being able to execute on them. Terrorists tend to have some sort of goal. Not just scary bad guys who want to blow stuff up. We typically see nukes are just used to establish legitimacy of authoritarian rulers via idle threats. using nukes is a losing move.
Putin is only concerned about integrity of his own political power and physical body. There is bunch of regions and cities in government databases that was never ever under any kind of military control. Russia is literally have imaginary state border.
Concern does not equal the ability to prevent or master a situation. Putin was also concerned with aquiring ukraine. Between that dictator impersonating aparatschik, the ground is liquifying as we speak.
