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Inside Putin's Circle

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Re: Inside Putin's Circle

#211

Post by amai »

„ Ukraine’s place in this doctrine was accurately summed up by former US national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski: “Without Ukraine, Russia ceases to be a Eurasian empire.” The Russian establishment entirely agrees.“

This statement about Ukraine was presented by Brezezinski without any proof. In fact he just copied that idea from 19th century British geopolitics, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Geographical_Pivot_of_Hist....

This theory was already controversial in 19th century, but in 21st century it is completely absurd. If you want to be an empire nowadays, you don‘t need a huge Black Sea fleet or a huge amount of land. You need a very strong economy. But occupying Ukraine will not help Russia accomplishing that.

It is absurd, that the Russian elite believes into a theory written by an American, which was originally proposed by the British in the 19th century to explain why they need to fight the Russian empire in the Crimean War of 1853.

Re: Inside Putin's Circle

#212

Post by singularity2001 »

the_lonely_road wrote: post #94
hcarvalhoalves wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The idea of a centralised planned state fell with the USSR, and it was widely argued that it fell _because_ of central planning. China is becoming a counter-example for the people who have always been fond of the idea of having a state ruled by an "elite", with the perception that democracy is fragile and doesn't work for long-term (more than a 4/5 years mandate) planning.

The world changed in a very significant way over the last 70 years. Even more so over the last 20 years. It may very well end up that the Information Age has tipped the scales and our large meandering decentralized democracies are no longer the superior model they were back when it took 4 weeks to get a letter from New York City to Washington DC. Now it’s a synchronous call with satellite footage of every inch of the…

On the other hand, the Information Age might for the first time in history enable true democracy, where every political decision can instantaneously be made by the voting populous. (not that farce of a democracy where a highspeed jet is allegedly steered by the binary input of "left" or "right" every four years)

Re: Inside Putin's Circle

#213

Post by euroderf »

mikkom wrote: post #119

Evaluation of Russia by Finnish Intelligence Colonel (subtitles) https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=kF9KretXqJw I think this is something you should watch if you are interested in how russia works. It's very straight talk and clarified russian mindset a lot for me at least.

Watching this, I felt it all was a bit reductionist. But then again, if it does seem to explain how things work there...

Re: Inside Putin's Circle

#214

Post by JudasGoat »

tartoran wrote: post #138
trhway wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good news - as result of Ukraine war failure these lowlifes are starting to eat each other - the director of foreign intelligence of FSB has just got arrested for "embezzling money intended for sabotage and gathering of intelligence in Ukraine and for providing false information about political situation in Ukraine" :) From https://www.thedailybeast.com/now-russia-is-bombing-western-... : "Meanwhile, panic appears to…

Putin surrounded himself with yes men. These people are afraid to displease Putin and end up taking shortcuts left and right to give him what he wants. Only fear is keeping this system from crumbling, they’re all afraid of eachother. “ Soldierov told the British Times that it could well be that the FSB had realistic knowledge of the situation in Ukraine - the only question was what was passed on to Putin. "The proble…

"Putin surrounded himself with yes men." This is an interesting article from an alledged fsb employee that backs that statement. https://noteplan.co/n/3D073DDB-CB0F-4ABC-BC93-01A94141445B

Re: Inside Putin's Circle

#215

Post by tim333 »

>Even otherwise calm and reasonable members of the Russian establishment have snarled with fury when I have dared to suggest in conversation that it might be better for Russia itself to let Ukraine go.

This all seems a bit unfortunate. I mean there are many examples of similar countries next to each other - US/Canada, France/Belgium, maybe even England/Scotland and it's no really tragedy to let the less powerful one do it's own thing and be independent if it wants. In England in the past we've made efforts to control Ireland and it's caused a bunch of problems compared to if we had just let the thing go without the Donbass / Northern Ireland stuff.

Re: Inside Putin's Circle

#216

Post by yucky »

geoka9 wrote: post #162
yucky wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>don't be surprised when Putin invades Latvia and Estonia. They are NATO countries, so no. People are acting all surprised by this Ukraine invasion but it's been an ongoing thing for many years. This didn't just happen. Even before the coup/revolution in 2014.

> They are NATO countries, so no. Why? Because Latvia and Estonia would sue the rest of NATO for not abiding by the treaty? Is there any other reason the West would not try to prevent a nuclear apocalypse by appeasing Putin with these "token" countries? Does the rest of the NATO countries really want to die for them? Do we really want to test that hypothesis? Take a look at the Putin's speeches starting with the 2007…

Well if an invasion of a NATO country doesn't invoke Article 5, then NATO ceases to exist. Is that what you think would happen? You think Putin sees Latvia which is backed by the largest military in the world as the same risk as Ukraine which has no such backing?

Re: Inside Putin's Circle

#217

Post by yucky »

dillondoyle wrote: post #167
yucky wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Russian friendly views such as Mearsheimer I don't know that I would refer to Professor Mearsheimer's view as pro-Russian, he has plenty of criticism of Putin and the Russian political system in general. But the fact that he has been railing on the likely consequences of our approach for dealing with the Russia/Ukraine situation for years, and been proved right, should make his writing and interviews required for an…

What would the better approach be? Sorry Ukraine, the Maidan was cute but no, you can not join 'the west'

Well it's at least telling that we're not allowed to refer to that as a coup, isn't it? I mean, what else would we call a revolution where a democratically elected government is removed from power and replaced with one backed by an adversary, which then immediately rewrites the Constitution to put that country in an adversarial foreign policy position to their powerful neighbor?

Is that not a coup? Is that not a recipe for war?

Re: Inside Putin's Circle

#218

Post by tim333 »

istjohn wrote: post #181
ZeroGravitas wrote: post #128

The bit about welcoming the patriotism of war reminded me of the 'conspiracy theory' that Putin blew up some of his own people in order to consolidate his power. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_apartment_bombings Now, some people believe that, some people don't, but since just before he invaded Ukraine he announced that they were one people, he's literally done the same thing again, blowing up "his own people",…

There really is no question that Putin was behind the bombings. This American Life had a recent episode about them. https://www.thisamericanlife.org/763/transcript

That's impressively evil really.

Re: Inside Putin's Circle

#219

Post by yucky »

jacquesm wrote: post #209
yucky wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't take much imagination to think what the US would do if China began to make a "special pact" with Mexico. The US would very aggressively put that to an end, one way or another. This is essentially the same. Of course if we continue to coax the expansion of NATO (ie the international arm of the US military) onto the Russian border it will cause problems. Why would we ever pretend otherwise?

> It doesn't take much imagination to think what the US would do if China began to make a "special pact" with Mexico. Shall we stick to the world as it is? Also, that's a pretty bad analogy, and no, it is not 'essentially the same'.

Perhaps some historical context would help? Going back 25 years there has been universal acknowledgement that the further expansion of NATO to Russian borders was guaranteed to trigger conflict and potentially WWIII - https://www.armscontrol.org/act/1997-06/arms-control-today/o...

Re: Inside Putin's Circle

#220

Post by heavenlyblue »

singularity2001 wrote: post #212
the_lonely_road wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The world changed in a very significant way over the last 70 years. Even more so over the last 20 years. It may very well end up that the Information Age has tipped the scales and our large meandering decentralized democracies are no longer the superior model they were back when it took 4 weeks to get a letter from New York City to Washington DC. Now it’s a synchronous call with satellite footage of every inch of the…

On the other hand, the Information Age might for the first time in history enable true democracy, where every political decision can instantaneously be made by the voting populous. (not that farce of a democracy where a highspeed jet is allegedly steered by the binary input of "left" or "right" every four years)

You can technically vote on any little detail but it doesn’t mean you have time to analyse every one of those little details.
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