181–190 of 205 posts
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It's also the only scenario that guarantees long-term stability. Also, it's not like we've hadn't been through this twenty years ago already, and the result was quite good.
How does it guarantee long-term stability?
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> The people of Russia don't seem to want this war, they are conscripted. (From what I've read from afar.) My understanding of Russian politics is that it is primarily driven by apathy: the population will support what the government does, so long as it doesn't affect them. Russian mobilization is a violation of that tacit agreement, which is why it seems that mobilization is being targeted more at marginal groups wi…
Apathy is one consequence of living in a post-truth society, created out of using decades of gaslighting and disinformation on your own people.
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> The Russian economy peaked in 2013 and has been going down hill since then Do you have anything substantial to back this claim? Cuz to me (actually living in Russia) it seems like exactly the opposite - the economy had been slowly decomposing up until the financial crisis of 2014, when the exchange rates had shifted so that roubles became cheaper. Until then it was extremely hard to build a sustainable business in…
The US likes GDP because it lets us report growth based on all sorts of unproductive financial instruments like interest payments on medical debt.
The real losers are Europe.
"Please submit the original source. If a post reports on something found on another site, submit the latter."
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>Chop that machine into 4 or 5 pieces and it's far less scary. Ask the people living on the Borders of Latvia, Estonia or Georgia what they think of that. These warlords won't respect borders. >even if they are capable of using them, they are at a more precarious position than eg. Putin at the helm of Mighty Russia. I think they have even more incentive to use them, far less consequences if they do. Losing your posit…
Milosevic of Serbia was taken to court. Gaddafi was captured and killed before any court could protect him. Putin is never going to stand trial, unless somehow Russia rats him out (but I struggle to imagine that). Smaller dictators can do less harm, not more.
I'm sure Serbs and Libyans had said the same about Milosevic and Gaddafi for years before they were removed from power.
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I will reiterate. Baltic states, Poland, Ukraine, Georgia, are constantly harassed and reminded that Russia doesn't really see them as sovereign states. They fly bombers into their airspaces (oops), deploys military manoeuvres at their borders, rambles about aiming their nukes at the capital cities. It actually invaded Ukraine for the second time in a decade! And even as this is all going on, Russia happily says, "he…
> They fly bombers into their airspaces (oops), deploys military manoeuvres at their borders, rambles about aiming their nukes at the capital cities. Your argument would be valid, if this was something exclusive to Russia, and not a common mutual thing between Russia and NATO. NATO bombers just as well fly into Russian airspace, NATO deploys military manoeuvres at Russian borders, and NATO states politicians are just…
What's the source on that claim?
Call it what you want. Russia is switching from export to internal consumption. Getting something like 30 years mortgage on house, was unheard of until recently. If West can run quantitative easing for 15 years, why not Russia?
Because the US dollar is the reserve currency of the world. This won't work if you're an isolated economy with a barely traded currency.
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> They fly bombers into their airspaces (oops), deploys military manoeuvres at their borders, rambles about aiming their nukes at the capital cities. Your argument would be valid, if this was something exclusive to Russia, and not a common mutual thing between Russia and NATO. NATO bombers just as well fly into Russian airspace, NATO deploys military manoeuvres at Russian borders, and NATO states politicians are just…
Russia has, in my lifetime, conducted no fewer than five invasions, all of which could be fairly characterized as driven by naked territorial aggression ("this land deserves to be ours"). In the same time, the US has invaded three times, none of which could be characterized as naked territorial aggression, even if you squint at it really, really hard.