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Why couldn't we have helped Russia after the collapse of the USSR instead of letting it languish and turn into what it has become today? That would've saved a lot of lives, but I suppose then you couldn't have that eternal enemy to show off how much of a patriot you are.
We could have, and we should have. But those choices were made by different people than us. Maybe if we had made some other choices instead of just nationalist ones we could have had an ally by now. But as you said, we'd have no eternal enemy to point to, and imperialists love state enemies.
The choices being made right now are being made by different people than us (the literal us). Voters largely have little say in US foreign policy.
Voters absolutely have a say in foreign policy because they absolutely have control over how their representatives vote. If anything, they have undue influence due to rampant gerrymandering.
Are you being sarcastic? I can't tell because I've seen your other posts and let's just say your takes are really something, so it's hard to tell if you're being serious.
My takes are the truth, which rubs a lot of people here the wrong way.
If you don't believe you have a say in foreign policy, consider that maybe as small a number as 100k Americans just ousted the Speaker of the House.
It's not my fault most people don't understand politics at all.
I both agree and disagree, but you are blaming the US/West far too much. Russia was not a US colony, and there is no manual on how to fix a country when it collapses. It's not entirely clear how we could've helped, especially in a manner that didn't just look like enriching private corporations or wealthy Russian oligarchs.
What happened in the end is a very common story -- a place is having economic hardship and struggle, a strongman leader restores stability, the strongman rules as a tyrant. The tyrant longs for old days of glory, and so forth.
I disagree with the commenter above that we should relish the thought of Russia's defeat because they were a former adversary. I wish things had happened far differently. My disdain is largely for Putin, not for Russia itself. We can learn from the past, but the fact remains -- Putin and Russia must fail in Ukraine for peace to be established, innocent lives to be saved, and sovereignty to be respected. Ukraine is not Russia's colony, and Putin needs to be punished for forgetting that.
Say Russia loses and Putin is deposed. What do you think the US and West should do in that situation? This isn't some gotcha question, I'm genuinely interested in what you think would be the best path forward for the Russian people to thrive and have a peaceful democracy.
There is a manual on how to fix a country when it collapses and it was written after world war 2. We saw how Germany was punished after world war 1 and how it didn't solve the underlying problems. The problem was solved when Germany got proper support instead of being let to fester in economic misery. It takes a village to raise to raise a child and a world to raise a country. Instead, the US sought to exploit the fall of the USSR with "free market" BS and laundering money for the wealthy to maximize wealth extraction.
When this war has ended, my hope is that the world extends a hand to help Russia diversify its economy and become more stable. We should also dismantle cold war era organizations like NATO, whose only goal is to act as an adversary. We need to emphasize cooperation.
That's the thing though, proper support and enriching the wealthy aren't mutually exclusive here. Whatever aid we provide, some big companies will benefit and oligarchs will get richer. Either way though, I think we can agree that while the West was not obligated to do more, they should have done more. And I am completely with you on a global effort to rebuild and stabilize Russia as a liberal democracy. We need to make sure the country doesn't fall into ruin again and give us Putin 2.0.
I will have to disagree on NATO though, largely because countries like Ukraine are going to want defensive assurances for a very long time after this. It provides peace of mind to the smaller nations that we won't allow them to be conquered by neo imperialist upstarts. What I do think though is NATO needs to expand into a general defensive pact. Perhaps it should become an agreement by the largest military powers that they will defend all democracies from attack, or something.
Things like NATO will naturally die when they are no longer relevant. People really didn't care as much about it before the Ukraine invasion, and much of the left questioned why we even had it. Russia has made it relevant again. In a hundred years, it may exist only on paper, if Russia and the West have jolly cooperation.
NATO was no longer relevant when the USSR collapsed and the cold war supposedly ended. It took over a quarter of a century of irrelevance for this war to happen and it's not unreasonable to think that NATO played a role of escalation in order to ensure job security.
NATO is application only. It's growth is because Russia sought to exert power through punishment instead of cooperation. It drove people to NATO for safety.
The NATO bombing killed about 1,000 members of the Yugoslav security forces in addition to between 489 and 528 civilians. It destroyed or damaged bridges, industrial plants, hospitals, schools, cultural monuments, private businesses as well as barracks and military installations.
Turns out when a country is commiting genocide and refuses to stop, military action is required.
Plus, wasn't this a UN sanctioned attack?
Read the article there's a whole section on why this wasn't a good idea: Arguments against strategic air power
It didn't help the situation, and ended up killing a lot of civilians.
It is not definitively stated that it didn't help the situation. The article provides just as much evidence that it was decisive in Yugoslavia capitulating.
At the end of the day, we can agree that the civilian casualties were unacceptable, and upon discovering unexpected conditions, NATO should have called off the attack and reconsidered their approach.
It's intellectually dishonest however to make a condemnation either way with certainty. It's a disputed event without consensus. It's perfectly valid to say that it's unclear if it actually helped the situation or made it worse, but it's incorrect to suggest a historical consensus on its judgment. As with pretty much every modern conflict, you'll have academics who condemn US intervention and who condemn US inaction.
The one thing I can definitely say though is it was unconscionable to use cluster bombs, and that was incredibly fucked up.
I don't believe for a second that NATO cared about the civilians or infrastructure. They were governing by force like you said Russia was in your first comment.
Regarding shady actions, the US has thrown its weight around in the region perhaps the whole time: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2004/nov/26/ukraine.usa
We did help Russia after the collapse of the USSR.
https://2001-2009.state.gov/r/pa/ho/pubs/fs/85962.htm#:~:text=July%201993%3A%20Additional%20Economic%20Assistance%20to%20Russia&text=The%20Summit's%20Economic%20Declaration%20called,and%20the%20former%20Soviet%20republics.
Russians are a broken people culturally inured to welcoming and even demanding tyrants.
I wouldn't call the terrible market reforms that created the oligarchs "help". That "broken people culturally inured" line is nonsense. You're like those racists who think black people are genetically programmed for crime.
Except unlike racism, which is nonsense, countries do in fact have a persistent cultural zeitgeist
So when the US elected Trump, they were "a broken people culturally inured to welcoming and even demanding tyrants"?
No, rather the US is very prone to demagoguery by nationalists.
Dressing up the word doesn't change anything. Nationalism runs rampant in the US. You can see it in all the flag-waving, the chants of "U-S-A, U-S-A, Number 1, Number 1!", American exceptionalism, and constant claims of being the greatest country on Earth.
It's not dressing up a word, it's just using the right word.
You're making my point back to me