134
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 08 Nov 2024
134 points (98.6% liked)
news
24770 readers
607 users here now
Welcome to c/news! We aim to foster a book-club type environment for discussion and critical analysis of the news. Our policy objectives are:
-
To learn about and discuss meaningful news, analysis and perspectives from around the world, with a focus on news outside the Anglosphere and beyond what is normally seen in corporate media (e.g. anti-imperialist, anti-Zionist, Marxist, Indigenous, LGBTQ, people of colour).
-
To encourage community members to contribute commentary and for others to thoughtfully engage with this material.
-
To support healthy and good faith discussion as comrades, sharpening our analytical skills and helping one another better understand geopolitics.
We ask community members to appreciate the uncertainty inherent in critical analysis of current events, the need to constantly learn, and take part in the community with humility. None of us are the One True Leftist, not even you, the reader.
Newcomm and Newsmega Rules:
The Hexbear Code of Conduct and Terms of Service apply here.
-
Link titles: Please use informative link titles. Overly editorialized titles, particularly if they link to opinion pieces, may get your post removed.
-
Content warnings: Posts on the newscomm and top-level replies on the newsmega should use content warnings appropriately. Please be thoughtful about wording and triggers when describing awful things in post titles.
-
Fake news: No fake news posts ever, including April 1st. Deliberate fake news posting is a bannable offense. If you mistakenly post fake news the mod team may ask you to delete/modify the post or we may delete it ourselves.
-
Link sources: All posts must include a link to their source. Screenshots are fine IF you include the link in the post body. If you are citing a Twitter post as news, please include the Xcancel.com (or another Nitter instance) or at least strip out identifier information from the twitter link. There is also a Firefox extension that can redirect Twitter links to a Nitter instance, such as Libredirect or archive them as you would any other reactionary source.
-
Archive sites: We highly encourage use of non-paywalled archive sites (i.e. archive.is, web.archive.org, ghostarchive.org) so that links are widely accessible to the community and so that reactionary sources don’t derive data/ad revenue from Hexbear users. If you see a link without an archive link, please archive it yourself and add it to the thread, ask the OP to fix it, or report to mods. Including text of articles in threads is welcome.
-
Low effort material: Avoid memes/jokes/shitposts in newscomm posts and top-level replies to the newsmega. This kind of content is OK in post replies and in newsmega sub-threads. We encourage the community to balance their contribution of low effort material with effort posts, links to real news/analysis, and meaningful engagement with material posted in the community.
-
American politics: Discussion and effort posts on the (potential) material impacts of American electoral politics is welcome, but the never-ending circus of American Politics© Brought to You by Mountain Dew™ is not welcome. This refers to polling, pundit reactions, electoral horse races, rumors of who might run, etc.
-
Electoralism: Please try to avoid struggle sessions about the value of voting/taking part in the electoral system in the West. c/electoralism is right over there.
-
AI Slop: Don't post AI generated content. Posts about AI race/chip wars/data centers are fine.
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
I don't think that's true. Turkey has never been a subordinate to the US not to the same degree as any EU country. They've always been a wildcard in NATO. Likewise Russia especially Putin's Russia would be easy to subordinate. Putin needs flattery, he wants recognition that he's part of the club. Had America flattered Putin through official means 95-2010, Russia would be in the tank. There's very little actual ideological difference between the two countries ruling parties. If Putin was treated like a France level ally, where they're allowed their own sphere of influence and can influence/direct NATO operations, Putin would have fallen in line.
Just think about it, Russia-Chechnya is a copy-paste of a NATO counter terrorism operation. If Russia was in NATO and could say, hey lets do counterterrorism in Chechnya, whenever the US said "jump" they'd say "how high?"
The west was literally trying to get regime change in Turkey in the last election, and Turkey is now shifting towards BRICS as a direct result of that. Meanwhile, Russia is a far bigger and more powerful country than Turkey with a large military industry that rivals the US. That alone would simply not be acceptable to US because it would diminish its own power within NATO.
The goal of the west has always been to try t Balkanize Russia and then plunder the resources. This is what they tried to do during Yeltsin years and what Putin ultimately put a stop to. While Russia is capitalist, it does have its own interests and it does not see itself as an inferior to the west. That's the real point of contention.
I agree with this. My point is that I think this would also been possible through tiered neocolonialism by giving Russia a seat at the table.
Turkey has always been playing both sides. It's bought Russian weapons throughout the 2000's to the detriment of NATO weapons dealers. Turkey has never been a rank and file loyal soldier. The US will always have to do this intranacine management within NATO, esp. with Turkey. In the case of France it has been resisting this kind of management and instead letting France manage it's own colonial legacy through NATO. France has resisted many hegemonic actions spearheaded by the US and the US has simply done internal propaganda against it and has left it mostly alone. My point is that this would have been a viable strategy for managing Russia within NATO and would have worked a lot better against it because unlike France who has a restive population, Russia has a captive population and is well-managed through its hypercapitalist oligarchy.
Not only that but tighter economic ties that would come through NATO would actually have allowed America to over time disassemble Putin's stranglehold within the country had they played the long game. Building up a cadre of oligarchs that overshadow Putin's power would have been a lot easier with NATO alliances, because everyone would get rich and many would not have wanted to rock the boat. The West's best tools of hegemony are economic and cultural. By attempting to isolate Russia they are fighting with one hand behind their back.
Putin's positioning in the 2000's was that he wanted a France-style relationship with NATO, not a Turkey one. He wanted NATO to roll out the red carpet as a show of that. That's ultimately why Russia and NATO fell out. Putin sought his own way.
The other benefit to this is that by giving Russia a France-style seat, it diminishes the power of France. France has special rules because in reality France is the leading military power of continental Europe. The UK is just a tag-a-long. By having 2 large military powers in continental Europe in NATO, the US can easily play one off of the other.
And I'm saying it wasn't possible because that would be directly at odds with the interests of the existing domestic oligarchs and the political class in Russia. They had no interest in handing the country over to the west.
Right, and that's why there are growing tensions with the west now. The only reason Turkey gets concessions is because NATO wants to have access to Black Sea, and that makes Turkey strategically important. However, the attempts at regime change clearly demonstrate that the west is not content with the status quo.
France may have resisted more than the rest of Europe, but it is politically captured by the US to a huge extent today. As we saw during recent elections, the Atlanticist centre was not displaced even despite being deeply unpopular with the public. France continues to pursue self destructive policy that benefits US in regards to Russia and China.
It's also worth noting that what you're describing is precisely the strategy that US took towards China. The US leadership thought that if they brought China into the fold, created economic ties, and so on, then eventually it would become a vassal. It didn't work in China and it wouldn't have worked in Russia.
All that said, it is true that Putin very much wanted to have friendly relations with the west at the start. I do think that if NATO was capable of treating Russia with respect then good relations would've been possible. However, my original point is precisely that equal relations were never on the table.
I think this only holds true if you copy-paste Putin and the oligarchs from 2024 onto Putin and oligarchs in 2000. Putin is the reason oligarchs in Russia found ideological consistency and power ranking. During the years of Yeltsin and the early years of Putin, oligarchs were hypercapitalist outgrowths of organized crime, corrupt Soviet politican holdovers, and a new class of educated liberals leveraging knowledge and forging western ties. All of these people simply were stealing from the same pot, and trying to kneecap each other. They were all essentially vors, the oligarchs didn't care about "handing the country over to the West", they cared about personal enrichment. In fact the educated liberal oligarchs would have loved more Western ties.
In this critical period if the US blitzed strong economic ties and huge foreign direct investment, they would have easily bound Russia. If every oligarch regardless of position was offered significantly good deals from the US overnight, Putin would have either been forced into making a real mistake to capitulate to it or he would have had to fight it during a time where he was relatively weak.
The end of this period really started with the jailing of Mikhail Khodorkovsky in 2003, that's the point where Putin's direction and dominance finally crystalized. Compared to the jailing of Khodorkovsky the killing of Boris Nemtsov or any other actions against dissidents were swatting away flies. If in 2000 the red carpet was rolled out Russia would have been captured, and would only need the typical maintenance that the US offers to Gulf States.
Sure Turkey is embattled, but it's restrained. That's the point. By allowing Russia to slip out of NATO's grasp Russia doesn't have the same restraints.
Marcon's unpopular policy decisions such as raising the retirement rate, and neoliberal economic reforms wouldn't even raise an eyebrow in Russia with the public. Just look at how quickly Ukranians who are much more annoying as a population capitulated to IMF capture of their farmlands despite the existence of constitutional barriers. Conscription is deeply unpopular in Russia since WW2, and that barely creates resistance 3 years into a meat-grinder war.
The problem with the US-China relation is the ultimate problem of the US as a Capitalist Empire. Capitalists and the runaway displacement of manufacturing were responsible for the US screwing up keeping the lid on China. In 1995-2003 Russia would not have represented a real shift away from US manufacturing given your previous observation and my agreement with that Russia is in fact a gigantic strip mine for natural resources.
I agree, however I think that they weren't on the table more from the US side, than they were from the Russian side.
I think it's important not to fall for the whole great man theory here. Putin undoubtedly played a role in shaping Russia, but the reason somebody like Putin got in charge was rooted in the historical and material conditions after the collapse of USSR.
I do think you're right that if US treated Russia differently during the period after collapse, and actually helped Russia then the relationship could've been very different today. Sachs talks about this a lot incidentally.
There was a fundamental difference in perspective however. Russia didn't see itself as being defeated by the west. They initially saw dissolution of USSR as a peaceful gesture, and a step towards finding a common ground with the west. However, they quickly found out that the west wasn't interested in that and was looking to dominate. That's when the relationship started to turn sour.
It's true, but a big difference here is that Turkey was never in the same class as Russia which the biggest nuclear power with a huge military. The two can't be meaningfully compared.
They very much would I assure you. Labor rights in Russia are still in a far better state than most western countries as a legacy of USSR, this is a great post on the subject https://archive.is/9tMtq
I agree with that, but I do think the real issue is that Russia sees itself as a sovereign power. That's where the similarity with China lies. The US can only deal with vassals, and they see sovereignty of other countries as being fundamentally unacceptable. So, I do think you are correct that the problem largely lies on the US side of the equation. Ultimately, the west would have benefited greatly from treating Russia as an equal and using it as a counterbalance to China.