Putin's People – a groundbreaking study that follows the money

Disclaimer: I'm no politician or economist, but while I do believe the US has military superiority still, they won't be able to wage a large scale war at the moment; they simply cannot afford it. They would have to take out even more loans, and right now the US' money lenders are the UAE and China; given that they are both close to Russia, they may opt to not lend money to fund the US' wars. And even without the threat, they may opt to not lend the money because the US will never be able to pay it back.

I suspect WW3 is kept at bay not because of MAD anymore, but because of financial interests. If a country decides "fuck it, we'll forfeit this debt", we'll likely see more armed conflicts.

I don't see Russia opting for a conflict though, they too cannot afford it. Not unless they're backed by a well-to-do country like China.

I don't believe China would become a direct aggressor either, if they would, then their economy would quickly grind to a halt due to sanctions and import stops from the US and Europe. They'd probably a proxy like North Korea.

Not as successful as it might have been. US troops had once been on russian soil[1] but were withdrawn. If they'd provided more assistance Wrangel might've had more luck in ukraine[2].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Expeditionary_Force,_...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_Civil_War#South_Russia...

Russia's economy is the sum of 3 countries in Europe ( I think France, Belgium and Netherlands would do) and they redirect an insane amount of their GDP % to military.

But even then their army is ancient and mostly predates the fall of Soviet Union.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_active_Russian_militar...

A completely corrupt regime which puts incredibly little value on human rights in it's country. We (as in NATO, but mostly done by the executor of NATO, the US) don't really care about human rights globally either, but we're very adapt at pretending to when it's to our advantage, e.g. when we can use it to mobilize the population against China, or Russia. We're also very good at looking away when it's about our allies or our wars.

I don't know whether "it" is working and if it is, how successful it is. I believe that it's a colossal mistake to say "well, there is anti EU sentiment, so Putin's strategy is successful" as if that sentiment couldn't exist without any outside influence. The same goes for racial tensions, they are not a new thing at all, and they go back to before Putin was born, so to ascribe them (in full or in significant part) to Russian influence is questionable at best.

Here is my take: I'm sure there are Russian intelligence operations. I'm also convinced that they aren't "behind it all". Much like we did with the civil war in Syria (that is: provide money, guns, and training, because we wanted Assad gone), they are adding a bit of oil to the fire, but they can't start something where there is nothing to start a fire with.

This whole "it's Russian propaganda, you're a bot/paid shill" bit, that also get thrown around on HN on relevant posts, is just a lazy way to silence dissent, and usually followed up with "the moderators should look into the posting patterns and ban these people". I'm sure the moderators would disclose it if it happened, and they haven't, so my money is on there being no such thing here, but still people believe in it, because it's an easy explanation for the experience of people disagreeing with them.

The same, I believe, is true in society in general. If people can just hand-wave away different opinions with "ah, the Russian influence has created a movement", they're happy to do so, because it allows them to not question whether the other side might have a point. The Russians do the same, only to them it's American Agents that have infiltrated Russia and want to harm the Russian people.

I see your point with respect to the US, there's a very corporatist oligarchic tendency on the right, but I really don't see that in Europe at all. Europe has gone to great lengths to stand up to corporations, and that includes many European conservatives of which I count myself one. There's a much broader acceptance among moderate European conservatives that regulation is essential to well functioning market economies for example.

In terms of facing up to Putin though, despite the fact that European governments, and as a result the EU, are less corporatist than the US they also tend to be softer on Putin. The Germans particularly, for example their support for the Russian gas pipeline.

Meanwhile the US has tended to want to be much tougher on Putin. In this respect Trump is an outlier. He definitely does seem to see Putin as a kindred sprit personally and seems incapable of dealign with him effectively, but this is not at all representative of Republican policy and attitude towards Putin over the last few decades. If anything it was the Democrats who tended to be over-optimistic about the chances of rapprochement with Russia as in the failed "reset' of relations under Obama.

So yes there are definitely corporatist oligarchic forces in the west that bear comparison with the Russian system, but I see them as mainly being US based not western in general. However that doesn't make them natural allies with Russian oligarchism, rather they're directly competitive power structures. Their similarities can potentially make them less compatible with each other not more. If they were to work out how to become compatible with each other we'd really be in terrible trouble.