> This is hilarious because absolutely the same argument could be applied to most of Europe getting closely integrated economically with Germany through organisations such as the European Coal and Steel Community, European Economic Area, European Union. Germany is a nation with a long history of imperialism and autocracy, why did they do it? Was France stupid to risk depending on a country that invaded them thrice in the last century?
There's a major, major difference between postwar (West) Germany and post-USSR Russia: France, the UK, and US all had troops stationed in Germany with enough manpower to crush any aggression on the part of the Germans. Obviously there were never troops of another country stationed in Russia to keep them down and reform the country's government, so the autocracy, oligarchy and imperialism continued.
> The general hope was that economic integration will lead to closer relations and liberalisation in Russia (like it did in most of Eastern Europe). It sadly didn't happen, but it wasn't that out of the question.
That's the line we're typically fed but that was only going to happen in minor/middle power countries. I think they knew this at the time but didn't have any real way to do anything else with regards to Russia and China, and of course, the market demanded an unending flow of cheap natural gas and electronics, and who is the post-WWII world order to deny the shareholders?
> Yes, because the US was doing this even when Russia was on its best behaviour, so it really really looked like nobody in the US had remembered to update the "who to be scared of" instructions. Now they have and they won't fucking shut up about China, which is annoying, same as it was back when it was about Russia.
Russia was never on its best behavior. It was flattening Grozny with artillery fire in the 90s. Oligarchs had subverted the transfer to the market economic system through voucher dilution/theft. Government openly collaborated with the Bratva. Corruption was rampant. Former KGB agents responsible for being the iron fist of single-party totalitarianism through imprisonment and murder were free to place themselves in the halls of power and undermine budding democratic traditions through false flag attacks and violations of human rights in the open.
And now, we see this with China. People look at a country that spent the first decade-and-a-half of its digital transformation hacking international targets and wonder why no one wants Huawei telecoms infrastructure or TikTok installed on half of the phones in the country.