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Russia and American elections, now featuring radical republicans as co-stars


Pancho

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57 minutes ago, Onboard 2.0 said:

The KGB never went away, it just took a deep breath, went deep cover, and re emerged as it felt the times allowed.  It took advantage of the strength, and weakness of man, to forgive, and go on, and a short memory.

Speaking of short memory; wonder how the spy we extracted three years ago is getting along?

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On 1/25/2021 at 1:28 PM, 956 Worldwide said:

Awesome points as well, this is stuff you're clearly deeply engaged with.  

So I'd first say that I need to clarify-- I believe that the polling is accurate and that Russian's don't like Navalny.  The proposal I make is that given the near complete control of the information space in Russia, any opinion polling is really just a gauge of how effective Kremlin propaganda is.  (The answer-- extremely effective in stoking fear and anger at targets the Kremlin chooses, but less so at creating genuine support for Putin/United Russia). 

Zyuganov and the Communists and Zhirninovsky and LDPR are the definition of controlled opposition.  They have supporters and get votes because Putin needs the illusion of democratic choice.  They are given media space and allowed to participate in the political process as an outlet for lingering Communist nostalgia and for xenophobic nationalism. Incidentally, the tolerance extended to Zhirinovsky belies the cries of "but Navalny is a FASCIST" you hear from Kremlin apologists, despite Navalny's genuinely noxious statements in the past. Western observers looking for the seeds of opposition properly ignore them, not because they are distasteful, but because they aren't really opposition. 

I'd also say that the Kremlin may have made a bad bet and turned Navalny into something far bigger than he was, so comparisons to his relevance in 2013 and 2014 are not analogous to his appeal today.  Supporting the protesters who are in the streets is not an endorsement of Navalny and all his positions, it's support for those Russians who do not want to live under a regime that carries out political assassinations with chemical weapons and jails anyone who is an actual dissident. And it's the Kremlin who wants to frame it as a binary equation, that if you protest what happened to Navalny, then you must support him as an individual.

Putin's regime is sophisticated in the extreme, and is very good with all the autocrats' tricks. It's no surprise that genuine opposition in Russia is either effete or distasteful, that is by design.  The Kremlin very much wants everyone to sit on their thumbs waiting for a "respectable" opposition to surface.......

This is a fantastic post. The entire idea of LDPR and the Commies being controlled is correct, IMO. But to be honest, I believe Navalny was controlled as well until 2017 or so. Now whether he has decided to blaze his own trail or whether he is now receiving Western backing is unclear to me, but as Churchill so accurately said about those engaged in Kremlinology: Russia is a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma. And this statement was made before the advent of modern external statecraft/espionage etc.

 

I hope this won't provoke charges of "Russian Shill!" (which is an unfortunate byproduct of the idiot Trumpkins who licked Putin's boots over the past four years) but in my opinion, the idea that Russia - with an intelligence agency that really is only bested by the Mossad, IMO - would depend on a dated method that is so easily traced to Russia such as Novichok to off someone they deemed dangerous is a head-scratcher to me. When the KGB wants to kill someone, they typically do. So I think this is worth considering that this is something along the lines of two-bit bunglers with tenuous ties to the FSB that essentially went rogue (and went wrong). The whole underwear thing, after first being reported as being a poisoned water bottle, seems to indicate less than "professional" wetwork. 

 

Now, if one accepts the official line of the New York Times and Washington Posts and Guardians of the world, then I think what Brisket said in a prior post is exactly right...they must fear something. But that is an assumption that some of us make, and some of us don't...and that is something that I can't say is correct or incorrect. I genuinely don't think I have much of a clue...but I do know that I don't trust any of them when it comes to matters of complicated foreign affairs. These are the same people who swore by WMD, assured us that we would be greeted as liberators...on and on.

 

What I will say is that historically when it has come to actual US involvement in Russian affairs (or the affairs of Russia's neighbors), the truth is somewhere far away from what is being reported on the cover stories of The NY Times or CNN or Rossiyskaya Gazeta or RT. I don't know if it is somewhere in the middle or out in another universe entirely, but I do firmly believe that the truth is nowhere near the actuality of what is typed on those respective front pages.

 

Take Ukraine for example. The story regarding the lead-up of the Maidan/Russia's invasion of Crimea in the major western papers was very overly simplified and frankly, it was bullshit....most of Europe knew it, Russia knew it, but the US media swallowed and pushed it out whole. And the versions promulgated in Rossiyskaya Gazeta or RT were also Bullshit. The US was very much involved in pre-maidan operations in Kiev prior to the Maidan revolution actually kicking off, and so were the Russians. Hell, we have audio tape of Victoria Nuland and Geoffrey Pyatt selecting which potential revolutionary was acceptable to the US as potential government leaders - and which were not. I watched that story unfold in Germany, in Moscow and in to some degree in the US and frankly I was stunned to see how bizarrely it was covered in the US. The Russians clearly tapped the call and released it, but the news coverage only referenced Nuland's statement of "Fuck the EU" and completely ignored the latter half of the call in which we have primary source material - not disputed whatsoever by Foggy Bottom showing Nuland - our own Undersecretary of State and Pyatt, our Ambassador to Ukraine- literally picking and choosing which individuals should govern in a post-revolution Ukraine and which should not. And then, post-Maidan, the new government was formed...and then the most popular politician was left out of government (Klischko)....and then the call was leaked showing that the US explicitly refused to accept him as a part of the Government and the neo-Nazi (and yes, he is a Neo-Nazi) Yatsenyuk as their choice...and Yatsenyuk low and behold got the gig and Klischko was shut out to the surprise/dismay of most Ukrainians. Nuland also references US influence over the UN, which did in fact play out as she said it would, and the UN showed up just as she said she wanted them to to call for government change in Kiev. It was not a present sense impression...it was a prediction that came to fruition exactly as our operatives sought. 

 

I don't mean to digress into the Ukrainian topic, but the point I am making is that we have our people that we "wanted" in place in Kiev. We have them in Minsk. We have them in Damascus and we have them in Baghdad. We have them prepped in Tehran and we have them in Riyadh and we have them in Kabul and we have them in Islamabad. We have them in Central America and we have them in Egypt. We have them in Libya and we have them in Lebanon. Yet, for some reason, the idea that we have "our desired guy" in Moscow is seen as insane. As though we - the champions of foreign involvement - curiously don't have someone in Moscow who we prefer and whom we will advocate for in the pages of our own closely-letter-agency-affiliated media outlets...the subterranean workings in Moscow, the crown jewel of letter-agency operations for over 70 years, is going to have much more going on than what is on the surface.

 

Is it wrong to have "our guy"? No. It is simply us engaging in Realpolitik. But for some reason, we don't accept that we do that to a hyper-degree all around the world. Yes, we foment revolution. Yes, we topple democratic leaders and install strongmen in their place. Yes, we look the other way while funding and guiding Saudi planes to destroy Yemeni villages. But for some reason, the idea that we have a policy to destabilize Russia with our chosen people ist fore some reason considered forboden.

 

And I guess my point in all of this is that we need to recognize that Navalny very well may be "our guy". And that isn't wrong... 

Edited by Shady Ray
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Interesting background there @Shady Ray. Food for thought. Navalny or someone has a YouTube video out on Putin (it's subtitled so meant for wide distribution). I'm not a YouTube viewer for politics, I tend to use it for regular stuff like food prep or home repair, but I'll include it in the next post in case folks are interested.

 

Something that didn't come up in yesterday's discussion but will perhaps gain some traction under the new administration is that there are still two Americans imprisoned in Russia.

Trevor Reed: sentenced to 9 years. The Senate had Resolution 667 calling for his release but it died in committee. Thanks Mitch. Pompeo made statements upon the sentencing, but other than that, it doesn't appear that much progress was made.

Paul Whelan: accused of espionage, sentenced to 16 years. His background is more shady on a personal level, but there is suspicion that it was retaliation for Maria Butina's arrest and subsequent deportation. Putin has said that Russia doesn't do that kind of thing(!), but officials have expressed a willingness to 'do that kind of thing.'

Pompeo made a few remarks about it in January of 2019, and then again in June of last year when Whelan was sentenced, again it doesn't appear to have moved forward.

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42 minutes ago, Mrs Whiggins said:

Interesting background there @Shady Ray. Food for thought. Navalny or someone has a YouTube video out on Putin (it's subtitled so meant for wide distribution). I'm not a YouTube viewer for politics, I tend to use it for regular stuff like food prep or home repair, but I'll include it in the next post in case folks are interested.

Thanks @Mrs Whiggins. This is actually one of the things that has me skeptical of Navalny's story. Long story short, the US media keeps saying that Navalny's new video blew the curtains off re Putin's corruption, particularly relating to his 1 billion euro palatial estate. Which is bullshit. I remember as far back as 2017 seeing photos of this place in Russian tabloids. Putin's cronies denied it, of course, but everyone knew about this. It simply isn't new info. Hell, he even hosted Narendra Modi and Bashar al-Assad there with the media present...the below is from May 2018..and there are dozens upon dozens of similar articles all around the world about this. And plenty of similar videos in Russian: 

https://www.wionews.com/photos/pm-modi-to-visit-putin's-'personal'-palace-with-gold-plated-swimming-pool%2C-helipads-138647#putins-palace-at-sochi-138636

His corruption is common knowledge in Russia...as is his Palace on Idokopas. So while it is infuriating, the idea that the Russian people simply didn't know about how it was financed...and that it was financed on their own backs...is absurd. As so many people on this thread have accurately stated, Russian leaders grift. They skim. They thieve. They trade on corruption. This isn't only known, but it is expected. So the idea that all of these people are livid over this video about a well known Putin grift beggars the imagination.

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36 minutes ago, Shady Ray said:

Thanks @Mrs Whiggins. This is actually one of the things that has me skeptical of Navalny's story. Long story short, the US media keeps saying that Navalny's new video blew the curtains off re Putin's corruption, particularly relating to his 1 billion euro palatial estate. Which is bullshit. I remember as far back as 2017 seeing photos of this place in Russian tabloids. Putin's cronies denied it, of course, but everyone knew about this. It simply isn't new info. Hell, he even hosted Narendra Modi and Bashar al-Assad there with the media present...the below is from May 2018..and there are dozens upon dozens of similar articles all around the world about this. And plenty of similar videos in Russian: 

https://www.wionews.com/photos/pm-modi-to-visit-putin's-'personal'-palace-with-gold-plated-swimming-pool%2C-helipads-138647#putins-palace-at-sochi-138636

His corruption is common knowledge in Russia...as is his Palace on Idokopas. So while it is infuriating, the idea that the Russian people simply didn't know about how it was financed...and that it was financed on their own backs...is absurd. As so many people on this thread have accurately stated, Russian leaders grift. They skim. They thieve. They trade on corruption. This isn't only known, but it is expected. So the idea that all of these people are livid over this video about a well known Putin grift beggars the imagination.

I'm no media expert, but the video was slick which implied (to me) some premeditation. That's neither here nor there, but something I noticed.

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1 minute ago, Mrs Whiggins said:

I'm no media expert, but the video was slick which implied (to me) some premeditation. That's neither here nor there, but something I noticed.

The facts have been known, but the video has gone absolutely viral throughout the Russian social media space.  TikTok memes, Insta stories.  Lots of Russian influencers have been commenting on it as well, and Putin even felt the need to address it in a (obviously pre-planned) Q&A session with students.  So even if there was a bit of astro-turfing, it's now a genuine cultural touchstone. 

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31 minutes ago, Woland said:

It’s not just Russian American leaders who are involved in corruption. Corruption is engrained in Russian American society and has been for hundreds of years.

We may have more guardrails, but I'm not kidding myself that my local developer/city council cabal is always following the straight and narrow, and knowing in particular some specific mischief that occurred with respect to prominent officials and their children, whether the rule of law is applied equally. In my book, that qualifies as corruption even if it is not at the same level throughout. It is still expected in our society and that is a problem.

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2 hours ago, Shady Ray said:

Now, if one accepts the official line of the New York Times and Washington Posts and Guardians of the world, then I think what Brisket said in a prior post is exactly right...they must fear something. But that is an assumption that some of us make, and some of us don't...and that is something that I can't say is correct or incorrect. 

we know the extent to which dissidents are jailed or removed from their normal life but how often do assassinations or disappearances happen?  

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9 minutes ago, Mrs Whiggins said:

We may have more guardrails, but I'm not kidding myself that my local developer/city council cabal is always following the straight and narrow, and knowing in particular some specific mischief that occurred with respect to prominent officials and their children, whether the rule of law is applied equally. In my book, that qualifies as corruption even if it is not at the same level throughout. It is still expected in our society and that is a problem.

There's a definite difference in attitudes and acceptability of corruption, though I wouldn't go so far as to call it "DNA." A popular way that people in former socialist countries describe it is "if you aren't stealing from the state (you can insert any large institution), then you are stealing from you family." 

It's just a whole different level.  Corruption in the post-Soviet space (exempting the Baltics) is simply on a different plane of existence in scale, sophistication, persistence, etc......even when you stack it against places like Latin America or South Asia that Americans think of as "corrupt."

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26 minutes ago, 956 Worldwide said:

The facts have been known, but the video has gone absolutely viral throughout the Russian social media space.  TikTok memes, Insta stories.  Lots of Russian influencers have been commenting on it as well, and Putin even felt the need to address it in a (obviously pre-planned) Q&A session with students.  So even if there was a bit of astro-turfing, it's now a genuine cultural touchstone. 

I don't know if constitutes a touchstone yet, per se, but you may be proven right. The TikTok piece really is an important one, IMO. It goes back to what we were discussing yesterday...how far does this expand beyond the "TikTok Generation"?

 

I don't know that anyone really knows as of today, but I think they are planning on another round this weekend, so we will soon find out. If we start seeing a greater cross section of the populace in these next ones, then something truly may be afoot...at least insofar as the anti-corruption movement goes.

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9 minutes ago, 956 Worldwide said:

There's a definite difference in attitudes and acceptability of corruption, though I wouldn't go so far as to call it "DNA." A popular way that people in former socialist countries describe it is "if you aren't stealing from the state (you can insert any large institution), then you are stealing from you family." 

It's just a whole different level.  Corruption in the post-Soviet space (exempting the Baltics) is simply on a different plane of existence in scale, sophistication, persistence, etc......even when you stack it against places like Latin America or South Asia that Americans think of as "corrupt."

I can imagine a lot, but I strongly suspect my imagination fails in the breadth and depth of its pervasiveness.

 

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  • 2 weeks later...

In Putin Russia, window throws you out!  

Please Lord, somebody ask Trump to comment on this just so I can his face work through the machinations.  

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  • 1 month later...

It's very astute, and a short listen to the clip of Kasparov. Added bonus is his pronunciation of 'vessels,' which brings Star Trek to mind.

Also true, and the America First!! platform:

 

 

Edited by Mrs Whiggins
I should note for the unaware that Borowitz is a satirist but how sad is it that the difficulty to discern it is so great?
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  • 2 weeks later...
On 1/26/2021 at 1:09 AM, Lagunamadre said:

I think with Trump crippling the world order coupled with every country preoccupied with Covid, Russia has been and will be more brazen. They know other countries don't have the political will to pick a fight right now. What is scary is once you push the line forward, it's hard to go back. It feels like they are going to keep escalating things until they find the line, unclear who in the world has the fortitude to draw the line. 

Things are starting to heat up between Russia/Belarus and the Ukraine again. Troops and equipment being massed along the border.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/putin-accuses-ukraine-provoking-clashes-090420442.html

https://www.yahoo.com/finance/news/russia-invade-ukraine-000000688.html

 

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Remember the spy that Senator Ron Johnson was friendly with? The one who assisted their trip to Russia, etc before she was kicked out of the US?

She's a working girl...

I'm sure her former GOP pals don't care, it's not like anything happens to them regardless.

Edited by Mrs Whiggins
Edit to add--notice the similarity in her reporting to Fox News style. Remarkable, isn't it? RT and Fox, such a pair.
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Cross posting from COVID-19 forum.

This is not U.S. COVID, but I want to draw attention to the craziest damn COVID story in the world—- Slovakia.

Backstory: As the country suffered spiraling death and hospital rates, the Prime Minister— without consulting his cabinet— purchased millions of vials of Sputnik V and had a celebratory press conference at the airport. This sparked a huge backlash within his pro-West coalition, who had previously said that they’d only accept EU certified vaccines.

The quarrel devolved into a crisis that ultimately resulted in a cabinet reshuffle and the Prime Minister stepping down only to return as Finance Minister. Sputnik went off to storage as they tried to figure out what to do with the stuff. 

This week, the Slovak State Drug Control Institute released a bombshell— the samples of Sputnik V vaccine that got sent to Slovakia are significantly different than the vaccine analyzed in the famous Lancet study that showed the Russian vaccine’s effectiveness.  

The former Prime Minister— now FinanceMinister and still chair of the leadingcoalition party— jetted off to Moscow, again without telling anyone. For most of the day he’s been shitposting on Facebook against Sputnik V opponents. And the Russians announced that Slovakia violated their agreement by sending the vaccines to an “uncertified lab” and are calling the bombshell “Fake News.” On Sputnik’s English language Twitter. 

TL; DR — Russia is sending God knows what around the world and successfully used vaccine hybrid war to blow up aNATO Ally’s government.

 

 

 

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4 minutes ago, 956 Worldwide said:

TL; DR — Russia is sending God knows what around the world and successfully used vaccine hybrid war to blow up aNATO Ally’s government.

Best we can hope for is Russia fouled up and sent some of their Olympics PEDs to them by mistake and, as a result, helped one of our allies make some super soldiers.

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16 minutes ago, 956 Worldwide said:

Cross posting from COVID-19 forum.

This is not U.S. COVID, but I want to draw attention to the craziest damn COVID story in the world—- Slovakia.

TL; DR — Russia is sending God knows what around the world and successfully used vaccine hybrid war to blow up aNATO Ally’s government.

 

 

The anti-vaxxers stateside and the agents who assist in disinfo are going to run with this 'contaminated/altered' vaccine theme.

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Curious to see how this impacts us here in Bavaria. Our governor, Markus Söder, announced yesterday that he has signed an MOU with Russia for 2.5m doses of Sputnik, all of which are to be produced here in the state. Söder is currently one of - if not the - favorites to replace Merkel in the fall and he does nothing without calculation.

 

Mecklenburg-West Pom followed Bavaria shortly thereafter and Thuringia said they would do the same today. And now the EU has said that they will not sign an agreement with Russia for Sputnik, so Germany's Federal Health Minister said that if the EU doesn't do it, then Germany will go it alone with Russia* and pursue its own approvals and contracts.

 

Momentum within Europe over the past three days has been decidedly pro-Sputnik, so I'd imagine there are people in Berlin who are going to be looking into this story very closely.

*cue Operation Barbarossa jokes

Edited by Shady Ray
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Curious to see how this impacts us here in Bavaria. Our governor, Markus Söder, announced yesterday that he has signed an MOU with Russia for 2.5m doses of Sputnik, all of which are to be produced here in the state. Söder is currently one of - if not the - favorites to replace Merkel in the fall and he does nothing without calculation.
 
Mecklenburg-West Pom followed Bavaria shortly thereafter and Thuringia said they would do the same today. And now the EU has said that they will not sign an agreement with Russia for Sputnik, so Germany's Federal Health Minister said that if the EU doesn't do it, then Germany will go it alone with Russia* and pursue its own approvals and contracts.
 
Momentum within Europe over the past three days has been decidedly pro-Sputnik, so I'd imagine there are people in Berlin who are going to be looking into this story very closely.
*cue Operation Barbarossa jokes

Watch your cornhole, Poland.
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1 hour ago, 956 Worldwide said:

All the German agreements are contingent on EMA approval (so far) and it’s hard to see that this latest turmoil does to help advance that case.  It doesn’t appear that Russia is even making an honest effort to receive EMA approval.  

I imagine part of this may be the Union's (and the SPD minister-president in Meck Pom) attempt at a brushback pitch to back the US off the whole Nord Stream 2 pressure campaign that they have been ramping up lately. NS2 is very important to the Union (and obviously to Meck Pom generally given the NS2's landfall station is there), and it is still popular with most Germans. Blinken's statement that the US was going to sanction Germany if NS2 was completed didn't sit well whatsoever with the average Union/SPD voter and this may be the Union's attempt to use whatever leverage they have by at least threatening to give Sputnik a veneer of legitimacy in Europe.

 

Of course, it is an election year here and both NS2 and our lagging vaccine rollout are huge, huge issues. The future of the chancellorship completely depends on how a party approaches these two things, and they are very much intertwined in the German's self worldview at the moment. The race is tightening considerably and there is a real risk that the Union loses its control over the country via a variety of potential coalitions if the Greens continue to rise. 

 

The problems with the rollout have become an embarrassment to a country that prided itself on its effective discipline early on re lockdowns and masks, etc. The bumbling response by the government by outsourcing procurement to Ursula fucking Von der Leyen in Brussels, as well as scandals involving the Union and mask procurement deals with some state governments, has really embarrassed the average German. Taking orders from the US via threat of sanctions on a matter of what is perceived as strictly a matter of energy policy/independence would be an additional blow to the collective ego. I think the leaders in the race to run the country feel that they must show something that they can lead on.

 

And it is worth noting...there is nothing-absolutely nothing - that strikes to the core of the German ego than watching the Brits perform better in ANYTHING. Given that they are damn near at herd immunity, ambitious pols can read the writing on the wall.

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If it’s really a brushback pitch it’s a miscalculation. Of course the U.S. would rather Allies not let Russians tally vaccine diplomacy wins,  but we’re unlikely to make a big stink either way about what shots end up in what arms especially since we’re not bearing a solution ourselves at the moment.  But NS2 is a very big deal for us and a rare point of bipartisan solidarity as well as a source of serious internal EU friction.  There’s little that will change that calculus.

It’s been fascinating to watch the cultural divides play out in this crisis.  Europe (Germans) is quite good at organizing society, appealing to common responsibility, respect for authority, and managing problems which really served them well early on. The Anglo-Saxon nations, not so much any of that, but they did prove quite adept at marshaling resources into place, and taking action to not manage, but smash a problem. At a significant cost of life, money, and health for failing to do the first stuff as well. As it’s been for centuries, we’re not very good at waiting for directions and are most happy doing the big lift. 

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1 hour ago, Shady Ray said:

 

Really appreciate your on-the-ground insight regarding the situation there in Deutschland. I've got a couple of comments/questions:

  1. As an (obviously) American who was a teenager in the 1980s, but having spent a year in France and a summer in Germany during the early 1990s so I'm not a total rube, I don't understand the desire by the German government to entangle their energy policy with the Kremlin and potentially becoming dependent on Russian natural gas (looking at you Ukraine). Do they see it as an absolute necessity or is it more of a diplomacy deal to demonstrate goodwill toward the Russians? I understand they're dumping coal as a fuel source and need a replacement, but do they really see Russia as the best choice?  
  2. I'm sort of surprised about you calling out the Greens as being a potential thorn in the side for increased EU integration. If you've got the time, can you expand upon that further?

Thanks in advance.

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@bolverk, I’m not on the ground in Deutschland but I am on the ground in Europe. I also know more about NS2 than I should and can answer from a U.S.-Central European perspective.

First, NS2 doesn’t really bring in any new sources of gas to Germany or Western Europe.  They are getting their gas from Russia/Central Asia and will continue do so with or without NS2.  What NS2 will do is bypass transit countries— most importantly Ukraine but also lots of EU countries, like Slovakia and the Czech Republic.  With a terminal in Germany, NS2 will allow Russia to turn off the flow of gas to Ukraine, and also to threaten to do so to these smaller, weaker Central European neighbors without jeopardizing major customers in Western Europe.  Not without coincidence, the Central and Eastern European wing of the EU is generally much more closely linked up with the U.S. and much more skeptical of German pure intentions within the EU. These countries will also stand to lose billions in transit fees that they currently collect. 
 

The Germans respond that there is significant gain to be made by cutting out transit fees. They frequently accuse the U.S. of being totally mercenary and only interested in selling LNG (this is mostly hand-waving and not really believed by the people making the arguments— it says more about their own motivations by projection).  And it’s hard to overestimate German hardheaded “a deals a deal” mentality. Once it’s been made, you keep it.  And it would be naive in the extreme not to take note of the many powerful Germans who are deeply tied to Gazprom and who stand to become fabulously wealthy. The German public is not terrifically sensitive to the security arguments of Central/Eastern Europe and don’t necessarily see it as a bad thing that these small nations will have one less bargaining chip and a bit softer voice at the “EU big kids” table. 
 

From the Russian perspective it is a purely political and strategic tool (divide the Europeans, set the U.S. against the Germans, turn the screws on Ukraine and any little nation that steps out of line). Or it’s an opportunity to get fantastically wealthy as a contractor, middleman, and grifter. There are very few serious energy and financial analysts out there who will argue that the damn thing makes any dollar sense to Gazprom or the Russian state.

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9 minutes ago, 956 Worldwide said:

 

Thanks. I completely understand the Russian motivation from a geopolitical standpoint but am surprise that Germany isn't looking out better for its eastern hinterland/sphere of influence.

Which country are you living in, if you don't mind my asking? You've made a couple of comments here and there in the past that lead me to believe you're in a former Warsaw Pact one like Hungary.

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In the Czech Republic now and have lived in three former Warsaw Pact countries and one former Soviet republic—- and lots of time on the ground in Russia itself.

Germany, having been thoroughly cured of its sphere of influence vision, really has a hard time thinking in strategic terms about anything to its East.  They don’t have that kind of paternalistic, global vision.  They want to stay rich within the EU and not rock the boat with Russia at all, they believe Russia can be pacified with some concessions that they don’t really have to make themselves. 

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Also, while we are talking Russia, the Kremlin is broadcasting its intentions in eastern Ukraine and undertaking a massive force buildup along the border.  You should read this statement from Putin’s spokesperson in the voice of Paulie Walnuts shaking down a contractor. “All this construction material might be a fire hazard!”

Quote

The Kremlin has fears that a civil war could resume in Ukraine," spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Friday, reacting to statements by German Chancellor Angela Merkel and White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki. "If a civil war — a full-scale military action — resumes near our borders that would threaten the Russian Federation's security," he said.

https://www.dw.com/en/russia-says-it-fears-full-scale-fighting-may-resume-in-ukraine/a-57149486
 

 

 

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35 minutes ago, bolverk said:

Really appreciate your on-the-ground insight regarding the situation there in Deutschland. I've got a couple of comments/questions:

  1. As an (obviously) American who was a teenager in the 1980s, but having spent a year in France and a summer in Germany during the early 1990s so I'm not a total rube, I don't understand the desire by the German government to entangle their energy policy with the Kremlin and potentially becoming dependent on Russian natural gas (looking at you Ukraine). Do they see it as an absolute necessity or is it more of a diplomacy deal to demonstrate goodwill toward the Russians? I understand they're dumping coal as a fuel source and need a replacement, but do they really see Russia as the best choice?  
  2. I'm sort of surprised about you calling out the Greens as being a potential thorn in the side for increased EU integration. If you've got the time, can you expand upon that further?

Thanks in advance.

I will do #2 first, as I think I may have fucked up by not clearly defining "Union" here. When I say "Union", I mean the Christian Democratic Union and their sister Bavarian party, the Christian Social Union, which are referred to at the Union within German politics. So basically the center-right party, which has been in power since Merkel beat Gerhardt Schroeder in 2005. Greens aren't a thorn for further EU integration...they love that shit. 

 

I will give you my best stab with respect to #1: The Germans - and by that I mean both German politicians, as well as German populace at large - don't see Russia nearly as spooky as the Americans and former Eastern Europeans do. And of course with respect to East/Central Europe, that is understandable. No one sees Putin as some type of kind, neighborly fellow, but he is certainly seen as predictable and a rational actor. And I think the "rational actor" element is frequently overlooked, but shouldn't be underestimated when it comes to this. Germans have been buying gas from the Russians since the days of the USSR, and the US - stretching back to Reagan - has been unhappy about it. The Soviets were seen here as far more expansionary than Putin's Russia and at some point America's continuous drum-beat of "Russian dependency" has not played out as predicted. At least not yet, and most Germans doubt it ever will. You can read press from the 80s and it is the exact same language as the Germans hear today about getting into bed with Putin. Germans have been in bed with Russia economically for decades...nothing is going to change that. Are they a huge market for Germany? No, but generally speaking, Germany views Russia as important and worthy of an even-handed posture geopolitically speaking.

 

Germans also don't care much about anything to the east of Dresden and they certainly don't give a fuck about anything to the east of Prague. Once you hit Poland's or Slovakia's eastern front, that shit is all Russian to the average German. Russian aggression in Crimea? Doesn't even register here. The situation in Ukraine is certainly not seen as some type of struggle for freedom and democracy, but rather just a forum for what many, many Germans view as simply one set of fascistic Slavs wearing Blue and Yellow badges fighting another set of autocratic-backed Slavs wearing a white, blue and red tricolor in some area that not one German gives a flying fuck about. I can't imagine a German that would view anything going over there in Ukraine or Georgia as worthy of one shittily-trained Bundeswehr soldier acting at NATO's behest, and the average German DEFINITELY does not want Ukraine in the EU...under ANY circumstance. Basically, I think the German's general chauvinism towards Slavs is still a form of xenophobia that is seen as tolerable so long as it is subtle, and it plays out in the form of general apathy regarding the issue of whether some slavic country is bypassed and deprived of transit fees at the expense of German direct access to Russian energy plugged in at Meck-Pom.

 

Russia is an important regional power and has been forever...and one of the things that I just never realized before moving here is just how familiar the two countries are with each other. Russians are here. Everywhere. Yes, they are often seen as street thugs and pimps and other nefarious elements, but there is a familiarity, and familiarity tends to decrease fear of a specific "other".

 

It is also worth pointing out - and don't shoot the messenger - that Germans do not generally care for the US in the way they did prior to 2000 or so. George W. Bush's legacy in the realm of German geopolitical affairs is that he tarred the U.S. as hyper-aggressive and, unfortunately, very unpredictable...not nearly as rational of an actor as Russia. Iraq did major damage to our image as trustworthy or reliable; and then the steady frolics and detours of Libya, Syria, Yemen in a big way...the eternal occupation of a failed state in Afghanistan, the unilateral termination of the Iran deal, etc. have only served to reinforce the opinion of John Q. Kraut that the U.S. gets itself into unjust and unnecessary foreign entanglements - regardless of R or D behind the name - and then expects German support under the banner of NATO. I am not saying that they are correct in viewing us this way, but it has to be seen as at least reasonable given our track record the past 20 years. While the US news is filled with domestic drama day in and out, our nightly news is foreign affairs, foreign affairs, foreign affairs. And our dirty deeds are not buried under who is fucking who or who is pissing in what Target bathroom.

 

Meanwhile, as far as Germans are concerned...Russia since 2000 has been, well, crickets. Yes, they are brutal and corrupt internally to their people and they have had some ugly situations on their borders (or, in the case of Syria, an ugly situation in an area of long-held interest), but they don't sew chaos in far flung regions of the world and they certainly don't involve themselves in the internal affairs of Germany. I hear it all the time with colleagues..."Well yeah, they kill their dissidents in Moscow while your lot just carpet bombs swathes of innocents everywhere else." We have lost the authority of righteousness in the eyes of many in the West and unfortunately that creates apathy in Deutschland, the O.G. home of nihilism. 

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they certainly don't involve themselves in the internal affairs of Germany.

*Laughs in Sergei Lavrov*

Quote

"It's clear that the girl did not disappear voluntarily for 30 hours," Russia's Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said during a news conference in Moscow on Tuesday, accusing German officials of a politically-motivated cover up.

"I hope that these problems are not swept under the carpet and that there'll be no repeat cases like that of our Lisa."

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Thousands of Russian-speakers took to the streets across Germany at the weekend protesting against what they say is a cover-up by police.....

The demonstrators were angry after reports on the popular Russian television station Channel One that a 13-year-old girl from a Russian-immigrant family had been abducted on her way to school and gang-raped by "southern-looking" asylum-seekers.

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The case of Lisa dominated the headlines and impacted on German public discussion for two weeks in January 2016. The 13 year old Russian-German girl had gone missing for 30 hours and was reported by First Russian TV to have been raped by migrants. The story turned out to be fake (the German police were able to establish that she had been with a friend that night) but was intensively reported in Russian domestic and foreign media, and ended in diplomatic tensions between Germany and Russia. 

In the “Lisa case“ we see evidence, for the first time, of several of the different Russian elements of influence that are described in this article working in a coordinated way:

- A journalist from the First Russian TV channel picked up the case of the Russian-German girl and brought it to the main news in Russia;
- Russian foreign media like RT, Sputnik and RT Deutsch reported on the case;
- Social media as well as rightwing groups distributed the information on the internet;
- Demonstrations were organised via Facebook involving representatives of the German-Russian minority (Deutschlandrussen) as well as neo-Nazi groups;
- Russian foreign media in Germany reported from these demonstrations, which brought it to the German mainstream media;
- Finally, at the top political level, Russian Foreign Minister Sergej Lavrov made two public statements about his concerns about the inability of the German police and legal system to take such cases seriously because of political correctness. 

For a good write up on some of the reasons Germans have a benign view of Russia, and it involves lots of powerful Germans having a compelling interest in promoting that image...Like a former chancellor chairing Rosneft....

https://www.nato.int/docu/review/articles/2016/07/25/the-lisa-case-germany-as-a-target-of-russian-disinformation/index.html

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Because of its close social, political and economic interweavement with Russia, Germany is a special case in relations with Moscow. Over the past 25 years, the goal of German elites was always to build up trust via networks and to support "change through interweavement with Russia" at all levels.

Because of its close social, political and economic interweavement with Russia, Germany is a special case in relations with Moscow. Over the past 25 years, the goal of German elites was always to build up trust via networks and to support "change through interweavement with Russia" at all levels.

 

 

 

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11 hours ago, 956 Worldwide said:

*Laughs in Sergei Lavrov*

For a good write up on some of the reasons Germans have a benign view of Russia, and it involves lots of powerful Germans having a compelling interest in promoting that image...Like a former chancellor chairing Rosneft....

https://www.nato.int/docu/review/articles/2016/07/25/the-lisa-case-germany-as-a-target-of-russian-disinformation/index.html

 

 

 

Oh, definitely. There are incidents like the Lisa affair which are seen to be somewhat minor, but ultimately, that (and some others like it) was a blip on the media landscape...the mobilization of a few thousand poor Russian Germans in the east to bitch and moan over a couple of days about migrants tends not to impact the collective psyche to the degree required to alter perception generally. I remember media coverage on that lasted a couple of days and was buried under other matters.



Anyone not affiliated with the AfD (or even further to the right) saw that for what it was immediately and it’s impact was negligible (if any at all) on German domestic affairs. And, in the grand scheme of the chaos that was the migrant crisis in 2015-16, it was even less significant. Poor, poorly-integrated German Russians in the east hating freshly-arrived brown people isn’t particularly a new idea to the masses here. 



The other point there is that the average German’s understanding of east-west geopolitics is much more nuanced than it is in middle-America or Nizhny Novgorod. Neither side is seen as inherently good or bad; they are seen to simply act in their own political interests, some of which are justified and some of which are not. And the Lisa situation was openly acknowledged on our news programming as being directly tied to Russia’s accusation that Germany’s leadership (seemingly reluctantly) was placating the US by extending sanctions, even over its own instincts. Basically an attempt at a muscle-flex a la Erdogan with his legitimately influential pull over large swathes of Turks in Germany. It was seen as a shot across the bow and frankly, plenty here were sympathetic to the position that Ukraine was none of Germany’s business and was at its inception an issue relating to Russian-Ukrainian beef which then morphed into a proxy battlefield for NATO expansion, which has no traction here, particularly with respect to Ukraine. Hell, roughly half of Germans don’t even support intervening military in defense of another NATO ally, so no one is going to justify doing so for non-member Ukraine.



Compare that to what is seen by most Germans as a years-long coordinated campaign by the US to leverage German leadership to act in a way that is seen (rightly or wrongly, doesn't matter) as detrimental to their own domestic population in thwarting a popular energy project (which is the highest-profile foreign policy project going) and and its understandable why the US is perceived as far more brutish in its meddling in internal German affairs. The only way to change this is to change the perception of cost-benefit to the people, and this message is really only being pushed by American's or those seen to be in bed with the US. And unfortunately, as discussed earlier, the American imprimatur doesn't have the cache that it used to.



At the same time, everyone knows that “Gazprom Gerhardt” Schroeder and Putin were (and remain) bosom buddies and that it was their relationship while he was Chancellor that drove NS2’s inception. But again, this is realpolitik/geo-economics and no one really cares that it arose out of less than pure ideals. It’s seen as a welcomed, large-scale infrastructure improvement, which increases reliability and cuts out the need to use leaky, inefficient Ukrainian pipelines...and nothing gets German dicks hard like shiny, new, large-scale infrastructure upgrades. So it’s as simple as that to the average German...reliable/known partner provides reliable/known product via reliable/known method via reliable/known route. 



But yeah, I totally agree that there are plenty of big fish here who do - and would continue to - benefit from continued Russian-German economic integration. And they have been very effective in spinning this continued cooperation as beneficial to Germany as a whole. No doubt about that.

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You can say more nuanced, or you can argue the opposite— that German sophistication and shades of grey thinking are born from 75 years of not being responsible for their own security.  No matter what else you say, the U.S. and Russia look at the world and know that they are responsible for themselves and no one is coming to bail them out.  In the U.S. case, you can add on that they are responsible for Europe, the Western Hemisphere, and a good chunk of Asia and an increasingly rickety “global system” as well. 

It’s really hard to overstate just how self- limited Germany is for a nation of its size and power.  Not just the truly neglected German military, but the whole toolkit of diplomacy, development, and influence. Germany’s approach to foreign affairs really is- 1. Try to do business. 2. Donate to international organizations and EU cohesion funds. 3. Wait for the Americans, British, and (to a lesser extent, French) to solve real security problems.  Step three often involves a lot of backseat driving and sniping from the sidelines. 
 

Washington learned this lesson the hard way in the 1990s, when all agreed that Europe (read: Germany) would solve a European problem in the Balkans by using European means.  And of course that proved pathetically inadequate, with Europe unable to stop an ongoing genocide and old-fashioned armor and infantry war on its doorstep.  Or to manage the increasing likelihood of spillover and a refugee/migration crisis. True to form, the United States stepped in and solved the issue after a fashion. Just like today, the as French are trying to stave off an African migration crisis at its source and are conducti g anti-terror operations in sub-Saharan Africa while the Germans sit by the Rhine and donate to the World Food Programme.
 

And so not only German policy makers but the German public have come to mistake not being responsible for European (and German) security with European security being unimportant. They have come to mistake reliance on the U.S. military for not needing a military at all.  You’re absolutely correct that Germans don’t give a shit about anything to the east of Prague. But that’s not nuance or sophistication, that’s provincialism. That swathe of Europe is crammed full of VW factories, component makers for German industry, and a massive export market that has made and will continue to make Germans very rich.  Its stability is vital to German security and prosperity, the Germans simply don’t have to worry about it.

Thats not to say that the Germans are always wrong.  We absolutely should have heeded their warnings about Iraq, for instance.  And for very good reasons, Germany has not been given the option to tend to their own security; the aforementioned muscular transatlantic powers determined that the world is better off with an effete and pacified Germany as opposed to the alternative. 
 

But in exchange— Washington expects some  acknowledgement that this grand bargain has overall worked out really well for Germany. And expects that Germany will at the very least not undertake projects that directly undermine the security system that they have the luxury to not think about (NS2). And Washington certainly will not buy into the kabuki theater that something like NS2 is just a really an awesome great shiny infrastructure deal between themselves and the Russians and a Swiss-incorporated shell company and that its unthinkable—-unthinkable— for the arrogant Yankees to stick our noses in “their business.” 

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21 hours ago, 956 Worldwide said:

You can say more nuanced, or you can argue the opposite— that German sophistication and shades of grey thinking are born from 75 years of not being responsible for their own security.  No matter what else you say, the U.S. and Russia look at the world and know that they are responsible for themselves and no one is coming to bail them out.  In the U.S. case, you can add on that they are responsible for Europe, the Western Hemisphere, and a good chunk of Asia and an increasingly rickety “global system” as well. 

It’s really hard to overstate just how self- limited Germany is for a nation of its size and power.  Not just the truly neglected German military, but the whole toolkit of diplomacy, development, and influence. Germany’s approach to foreign affairs really is- 1. Try to do business. 2. Donate to international organizations and EU cohesion funds. 3. Wait for the Americans, British, and (to a lesser extent, French) to solve real security problems.  Step three often involves a lot of backseat driving and sniping from the sidelines. 
 

Washington learned this lesson the hard way in the 1990s, when all agreed that Europe (read: Germany) would solve a European problem in the Balkans by using European means.  And of course that proved pathetically inadequate, with Europe unable to stop an ongoing genocide and old-fashioned armor and infantry war on its doorstep.  Or to manage the increasing likelihood of spillover and a refugee/migration crisis. True to form, the United States stepped in and solved the issue after a fashion. Just like today, the as French are trying to stave off an African migration crisis at its source and are conducti g anti-terror operations in sub-Saharan Africa while the Germans sit by the Rhine and donate to the World Food Programme.
 

And so not only German policy makers but the German public have come to mistake not being responsible for European (and German) security with European security being unimportant. They have come to mistake reliance on the U.S. military for not needing a military at all.  You’re absolutely correct that Germans don’t give a shit about anything to the east of Prague. But that’s not nuance or sophistication, that’s provincialism. That swathe of Europe is crammed full of VW factories, component makers for German industry, and a massive export market that has made and will continue to make Germans very rich.  Its stability is vital to German security and prosperity, the Germans simply don’t have to worry about it.

Thats not to say that the Germans are always wrong.  We absolutely should have heeded their warnings about Iraq, for instance.  And for very good reasons, Germany has not been given the option to tend to their own security; the aforementioned muscular transatlantic powers determined that the world is better off with an effete and pacified Germany as opposed to the alternative. 
 

But in exchange— Washington expects some  acknowledgement that this grand bargain has overall worked out really well for Germany. And expects that Germany will at the very least not undertake projects that directly undermine the security system that they have the luxury to not think about (NS2). And Washington certainly will not buy into the kabuki theater that something like NS2 is just a really an awesome great shiny infrastructure deal between themselves and the Russians and a Swiss-incorporated shell company and that its unthinkable—-unthinkable— for the arrogant Yankees to stick our noses in “their business.” 

I think much of what you are saying is true. And to the extent I disagree, i nevertheless see your position as absolutely reasonable.



Yeah, the state of the Bundeswehr is abysmal and truly should be much more of a source  of national shame than it is. But hell, not only did Ursula fucking von der Leyen run it even further into the ground (which is an accomplishment unto itself given how bad it was that twit got it) but - even as Germans were calling for her head - Merkel succeeded in having her installed to head the EU, which is perhaps the biggest example of failing upward that I have ever seen...so let no one doubt the amount of control the Germans have over Brussels indirectly.  



However, I think much of your point operates from the position that Germany is acting in some way contrary to what the post-War system was designed to produce. I think it is correct that the post-war infrastructure (NATO, EU) was designed in part to eliminate Germany’s ability to do anything unilaterally OTHER than to refuse to participate in collective NATO action and snipe from the sidelines when they don’t agree when NATO gets trigger happy. And so this is what they do. When NATO -fueled by French and American geopolitical interests-wanted to set up no-fly zones in Libya and further destabilize an already unstable situation, which was a terrible decision in my opinion, Germany refused to participate and rightly criticized it. When the US ran weapons by the billions of USD into Syria supporting so-called moderate Islamist rebels, Germany refused to allow it to occur with its support or over its soil. So when you say the US expects an acknowledgement that the arrangement has worked out well for Germany, I don’t see how much more emphatic German leaders can be domestically on this subject. They constantly extol the virtue of the alliance and no one but the AfD actively disparages it in any way, but they do openly acknowledge the desire of the German government - and the German people to an overwhelming degree - not to see NATO continue to expand east. Anything more is electorally unacceptable here. This goes back to unification and the understanding with Moscow that NATO expansion would stop at the borders of a reunified Germany. Which, of course, rightly or wrongly was ignored immediately thereafter and continues to be to date. 



And that is ultimately where the nuance that I refer to comes in. The average American truly believes that NATO is purely defensive. And the average Russian truly believes that it is purely offensive. And in my opinion, both of those opinions are completely naive and overlysimplified; the truth is in the middle and the average German gets this. Because they don’t see the US as an inviolable force for good and they don’t see the Russians as inherently expansionist and aggressive. They see them as acting in their own self-interests and Germans (and Europeans as a whole) simply have no desire to allow Europe to return to a cold-war battleground where it Is dependent on an American foreign policy doctrine that is becoming increasingly incoherent and aggressive.



I’ll use Maidan as an example: When the audio tapes of Victoria Nuland and the US ambassador to Ukraine leaked showing then explicitly discussing US plans for Ukraine and it’s direct coordination with Ukrainian opposition as to who was acceptable to the US to govern the country before Yanukovych had even fled, all the US media focused on was her “Fuck the EU” comment. That’s it. And that  element of the leak was completely irrelevant. Who cares if Victoria Nuland said “Fuck the EU” on a seemingly secure line. The real issue there was the rest of the content showing that the US was, in fact, inserting itself in / coordinating, planning and guiding a revolution in Ukraine with full knowledge that Ukraine - and more specifically - Crimea, was seen by Moscow to be an existential issue to Russian security. Yet the coverage here was very even-handed and while no one excused the Russian actions there, the general population also didn’t see Ukraine as some type of nascent democratic flower waiting to bloom. They simply saw it as the next theater in which the US and Russia were going to engage in territorial pissings, where intel operations were ongoing by both sides, where empires were jostling for strategic territory, and as such, a theater that needed to be frozen and contained to Ukraine. They were also well aware of the far-right nature of significant swathes of the revolutionary elements within the Ukrainian revolutionary forces and they generally aren’t going to be convinced that anything that goes on over there is cut and dry/right and wrong. So when I say nuanced, that is what I mean, and on issues such as that, I do believe it is much more sophisticated and accurate than the wholesale swallowing of media stenographers’ BS that Ukraine situation consists of “freedom fighters seeking to democratize” narrative so often presented in the US or the “NATO preparing for regime change in Moscow” narrative coming out of Russia. It's similar to the situation in Syria...buncha assholes, so leave 'em be.

 

That's what makes this Ukraine situation so tenuous...in my opinion, it could result in either an entirely new generation of Europeans finding value and security in NATO if Russia is successfully painted to be the unhinged aggressor; but in the alternative, if it is seen by the people to be a byproduct of "empire games" partially exacerbated by the Ukraine and US at our external borders, I think there could be a furious backlash resulting in an expedited exploration of a specifically Euro-centric military force. Zelensky is seen as an incompetent idiot Ukrainian TV star who is essentially the Ukrainian version of Trump, and the US now has to overcome the lack of confidence that its recent foreign policy miscalculations have brought while at the hip of such a questionable talent.

 

But that aside, I think the position that Europe gets some lopsided benefit by having the US act as guarantor of its security is overly simplified. There have been discussions on changing course here and regaining control over Europe's own security obligations and responsibilities; and literally each and every time over the last few years that European leaders have taken even minute steps in discussing a common European military to the exclusion of NATO- as sure as night follows day - the US throws an absolute tantrum. They go on about how it would lead to duplication of efforts and they explicitly attack even the slightest plans to limit European spending to European-headquartered companies in the event such a defense project comes to fruition. And this latter point drives this much more than the American military's concern over inefficient use of resources due to duplication, which is fuuuckin rich. NATO provides an incalculable benefit to the US in the form of billions and billions of dollars in defense contracts, but more importantly, it is the single greatest enabler of power projection into Eurasia and Africa. The US position militarily would be greatly reduced globally if it didn’t have complete and total control of military matters on the European peninsula and the US will take every step under the sun to ensure that it never loses its military primacy here. And fortunately for the US, Europe is insularly focused enough to allow this to remain so long as stupid proxy wars generally stay off the Continent. So of course we can debate whether the Europeans are genuinely interested in such a project (taking Merkel and Macron at their words, they are) or if they could align themselves to the degree required to formulate a common EU military, but ultimately, that would require an initial first step and every time that first step is made, the US pulls every lever of power it has within Europe to shut it down before any momentum gains. 

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Diplomatic historians for generations will argue over what was really promised Russia about NATO expansion. The most generous interpretation on the U.S. side is that we were clearly discussing only the reintegration of Germany and not a word on former Warsaw Pact states. The most generous interpretation on the Russian end is an ironclad promise of no expansion into the former Easten Bloc. The truth is probably that the Russians choose, when it’s politically convenient, to take deliberately treat some statements made during talks as a final agreement. 
 

Regardless, the Russian view of NATO a expansion is telling about their view on the world.  First, the genuinely believe the U.S. is the “ruler” of NATO that has the authority and ability to make these unilateral decisions about who to admit and when. They cannot conceive that the Czechs, Poles, Hungarians, Slovaks, etc. badly wanted to join of their own accord. And for good reason— those nations have never enjoyed greater peace, prosperity, sovereignty and security than they have within the Transatlantic fold.  Neither has the rest of Europe for that matter. The results are inarguable.

Second, that Russia views security as a zero sum game. It’s security is directly tied to the insecurity and weakness of its neighbors, which is what the whole game is about in Ukraine. It’s a fundamentally different, darker vision of how Alliances should work. And it should give thoughtful Germans pause about what the genuine aim is with regard to NS2 and Russia as a “reliable” partner.  History is not exactly littered with examples of win-win cooperation with the Russians. 

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11 hours ago, 956 Worldwide said:

Diplomatic historians for generations will argue over what was really promised Russia about NATO expansion. The most generous interpretation on the U.S. side is that we were clearly discussing only the reintegration of Germany and not a word on former Warsaw Pact states. The most generous interpretation on the Russian end is an ironclad promise of no expansion into the former Easten Bloc. The truth is probably that the Russians choose, when it’s politically convenient, to take deliberately treat some statements made during talks as a final agreement. 
 

Regardless, the Russian view of NATO a expansion is telling about their view on the world.  First, the genuinely believe the U.S. is the “ruler” of NATO that has the authority and ability to make these unilateral decisions about who to admit and when. They cannot conceive that the Czechs, Poles, Hungarians, Slovaks, etc. badly wanted to join of their own accord. And for good reason— those nations have never enjoyed greater peace, prosperity, sovereignty and security than they have within the Transatlantic fold.  Neither has the rest of Europe for that matter. The results are inarguable.

Second, that Russia views security as a zero sum game. It’s security is directly tied to the insecurity and weakness of its neighbors, which is what the whole game is about in Ukraine. It’s a fundamentally different, darker vision of how Alliances should work. And it should give thoughtful Germans pause about what the genuine aim is with regard to NS2 and Russia as a “reliable” partner.  History is not exactly littered with examples of win-win cooperation with the Russians. 

While it is true that formal agreement on the topic of NATO expansion could have and should have been more formalized during the period of Unification and the final days of the USSR, it is indisputable that a whole host of western leaders and diplomats acknowledged Gorbachev's concern about Russian security re NATO and gave some degree of assurance that what ended up happening would not, in fact, happen. There are all kinds of records showing how important this subject was to the Soviet leadership and how extensive the US, British and West German discussions actually were, even extending to formally discussing a hypothetical re NATO's admission of Warsaw in the event they sought to join NATO. The present sense impressions of those around these discussions ranging from diplomats to pols to intel officers present at discussions are extensive and are recorded at the National Security Archive. Sure, that doesn't mean that the archives are dispositive, because they certainly are not, but to say that the Russians are just picking and choosing when politically convenient is a bit of a stretch when the archival record at a minimum puts their perception that a deal was broken at least within the realm of "reasonableness". 

 

https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/russia-programs/2017-12-12/nato-expansion-what-gorbachev-heard-western-leaders-early#_edn4

 

Of course, that certainly doesn't diminish the rest of your point about depriving agency to ex-Warsaw Pact states, but as you rightly pointed out, membership is a two-way street and the leading voices in NATO at the time (The Bush Sr. Admin, Thatcher, Kohl, Genscher, etc)  at a minimum could reasonably be seen based on evidence to have given Gorbachev reason to believe that our lane on that two-way street was going to be closed and they were well aware that Gorbachev was taking these discussions back to Moscow to the larger leadership as a whole. And - at least from the Russian perspective- the "closed lane" was essentially about as "closed" the left lane on the autobahn as soon as shit settled down.

 

But I think your assertion that Russia has an unreasonably dark view of how alliances work is missing the context of how we have been perceived to have acted over the last 30 years at some pivotal moments in their post-Soviet development. I have referenced this before, I think, but I lived in Moscow for all of 2002 and Vilnius in 2003-2004, and the perceptions of what had happened over the preceding ten years by young Russians and young Balts was night and day, which is understandable. The younger, "soon-to-be-managerial-class" of Balts that I knew of course had essentially identical perspectives of what we see in our media day in and day out re the potential for Russian aggression. The young Russian lawyers with whom I worked at the time - all of whom had been western educated to some degree - genuinely viewed us as having 1) Lied about NATO expansion, 2) Single-handedly financed/installed a corrupt and incompetent president in the form of Yeltsin and by extension his corrupt system of privatization cronyism (which of course we proceeded to reinforce by blasting boastful, triumphant first-person accounts in our media of how we literally did just that) and 3) Via the entire situation, which I think we discussed upthread) with the Harvard crowd like Larry Summers, Robert Rubin, Hay, etc. fleeced large amounts of Russian national wealth alongside the oligarchs that they supported in the 90s. Was much of this due to their exposure to Russian media-spin at the time? Of course, but we did do a ton of what we were accused of doing, so they weren't entirely wrong.

 

To be clear, I am not saying that I agree with this as being the "whole story", but there is absolutely valid criticism of our actions and I think that viewing the conflict on Russia's borders in a vacuum like the American media tends to do a disservice to anyone seeking an accurate understanding of what is driving this. Literally the exact same people... (or their proteges in the case of Victoria Nuland and Blinken and Sullivan) facilitated money/advisors/media networks to bring Yeltsin back from the political grave...and then proceeded to carry out the original NATO Expansion in the late-1990s ... and then went to thinktanks during GWB years and penned weekly missives in the pages of Brookings' journal advocating regime change in Russia...only to then come back into government to literally work at the Kiev Embassy during the original Maidan...and now the exact same people/proteges are back as the literal top of the diplomatic/national security apparatus in Washington. Of course, the fact that people in positions of power here like Nuland are married to people like the single largest piece-of-shit Neo-con, Robert Kagan, who played an enormous role by actively deceiving the American people pushing us into the Bullshit that we have conducted in the Middle East, does not tend to alleviate their concerns that maybe we have additional objectives beyond just Ukrainian safety.

 

 

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I think the most charitable read you can give the NATO debate for the Russian side is that some seriously savvy late Soviet operators were taken like babes in the woods and conceded a vital strategic interest in exchange for the diplomatic version of a pinkie promise.  
 

But on a deeper level what you have going on with Russian behavior is two things.  First, a seriously unhealthy victimhood complex that even if partially justified, is not helpful and manipulated.  I spent over a year in Russia around the same time you did, but farther East (Nizhni Novgorod) and that victim hood complex is powerful. Second—- even if  you concede (and I don’t) all the worst about the U.S. and the West— Russia is STILL the asshole. (I’m restricting myself here to Europe and Russia’s Near Abroad). 

NATO Expansion:  Russia’s real complaint here is that it’s no longer possible to meddle and destabilize their now-NATO neighbors, and that’s not fair because it’s their traditional hood. But even if NATO is nothing more than American power politics, it’s unarguable that said politics brought first world status, democratic elections, human rights, and unprecedented prosperity to the region.  A Russian sphere of influence brought poverty, show trials, and the odd military invasion. (For all the whining about how Russia doesn’t meddle and respects sovereignty, it has been the Russians and Soviets— and no one else— who have intervened militarily in the territory of the former Warsaw Pact. Hungary in 1956, Czechoslovakia 1968, Georgia 2008, Ukraine 2014.  Add to that Poland in 1980 when Jaruzelski got the ultimatum to crush Solidarity himself or let Soviet tanks do it for him).  So even if someone “stole” your wife, you were still an abusive drunk.

Ukraine:  Again, if you accept Russia’s narrative (I don’t) it boils down to “how dare you Americans meddle after we rigged their election fair and square!” If you are Ivan in Lviv, what meddling do you prefer?  And while of course there are no angels and pure hearted Democrats in Ukraine, much the same could have been said about Czechoslovakia, or the Baltics, or Croatia. The one sure bet is that things will never get better for Ukraine from within the Russian sphere of influence, because Russia’s policy is strength through others’ weakness. 
 

And all this plays into a specifically Russian interpretation of sovereignty and respect—- that allowing Russia’s neighbors to pick their own friends and chart their own course constitutes an intolerable affront to Russian dignity.  They give the game away in the process, other nations don’t really matter, they are just chess pieces for the big players to squabble over. 
 

So when “respecting Russia” requires the West to abandon millions of people to cruel and inept Russian domination, the proper response is to firmly tell Russia to get bent; not to tell the battered spouse to “just stop provoking him.”  Russia can play a productive and vigorous role in the world, but they’ve got to clean themselves up first and offer something attractive to the world instead of simply threats and corruption.  Victim complexes, even when partially justified, are a dangerous thing when indulged, whether domestically (see Trump, Donald and the alt-right) or internationally. Like Germany and Japan, Russia lost a (cold) war. Unlike them, they also chose to lose the peace that followed. 

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