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Overton's window creates opportunities for the brave

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Re: Overton's window creates opportunities for the brave

#61

Post by int_19h »

labster wrote: post #50
int_19h wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it was inevitable for Russia to end up so firmly in the anti-West camp. Back in 1993 - and, really, all the way until the end of 90s - it was very much at the crossroads. The mistake is claiming that the path it ended up choosing, it chose because of something the West did or didn't do. It was all about choices that people made - and back then, elections in Russia still meant something - in response to…

Nothing in history is truly inevitable, but it’s hard for me to see Russia — and particularly Muscovites — to abandon empire and corrupt oligarchy. Yeltsin let oligarchs emerge to help him consolidate power, but then was trapped in the system. He chose Putin as his successor so that he could retire safely. To keep stability, Russia plays to the idea of themselves as a great empire, despite the reality that many citiz…

I grew up in Russia in the 90s. The country was corrupt as hell under Yeltsin, but it was still a democracy, and there were different parties with genuinely different platforms then. Yeltsin couldn't just choose his successor - he had to actually sell him to the public. And mass media wasn't all controlled by the state, so there was plenty of very sharp criticism of Putin as he was still working his way to the top. At the end of the day, the people still willingly voted for "the strong hand", and so, here we are.

Re: Overton's window creates opportunities for the brave

#62

Post by int_19h »

pydry wrote: post #60
int_19h wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it was inevitable for Russia to end up so firmly in the anti-West camp. Back in 1993 - and, really, all the way until the end of 90s - it was very much at the crossroads. The mistake is claiming that the path it ended up choosing, it chose because of something the West did or didn't do. It was all about choices that people made - and back then, elections in Russia still meant something - in response to…

>The mistake is claiming that the path it ended up choosing, it chose because of something the West did or didn't do. This isn't a mistake either. Putin was open towards pursuing a deeper partnership with the west in the early 2000s. He asked to join NATO (as equals) and rather than leaping on the opportunity NATO told him to join the back of the queue. In subsequent years we launched an unprovoked invasion of Iraq a…

I wasn't talking about Putin's choices, but rather about the choices of people that led to Putin gaining power.

But also - Putin always fancied himself the restorer of imperial glory, so joining NATO was never seriously on the table without also asserting claim to all the "lost lands".

Re: Overton's window creates opportunities for the brave

#64

Post by plasticchris »

ithkuil wrote: post #58
foverzar wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> despite the reality that many citizens of the “republics” have never seen indoor plumbing. Oh please, where do you even find these kind of myths? I've been living and traveling Russia for years - I just can't wrap my head where people get these kinds of idiotic narratives. I mean srsly "never seen indoor plumbing" - do you actually really believe this? Where did you even get an image like that? I'm just really puzz…

Yeah, it's sad how people intentionally misrepresent and mistranslate things because they want to believe in something. The real Rosstat statistic speak of "centralized sewage" not indoor plumbing. I live in Italy less than 10km outside a provincial capital and I also don't have access to centralized sewage. I assume the situation in rural Russia is no different. How is it in rural America? Low density areas often do…

It is the same in rural America, there are regulations but in many places people still use a lagoon. Central sewage is only in big developments or inside the city limits.

Re: Overton's window creates opportunities for the brave

#65

Post by roenxi »

int_19h wrote: post #37
billiam wrote: post #16

It never ceases to amaze me how experts at something can't resist trying to be experts at everything. His examples from political science are just so off, but I have to concentrate on his example of Mearsheimer. Far from being one step or two ahead of the crowd, Mearsheimer's problem has been that he's still standing back in the 1980s. His realpolitik approach was refreshing and appealing for the time whensomewhat ph…

I don't think it was inevitable for Russia to end up so firmly in the anti-West camp. Back in 1993 - and, really, all the way until the end of 90s - it was very much at the crossroads. The mistake is claiming that the path it ended up choosing, it chose because of something the West did or didn't do. It was all about choices that people made - and back then, elections in Russia still meant something - in response to…

While the actions of Russia are ultimately the responsibility of the Russians, the end of the 90s is also around the time NATO started picking up ex-Soviet states [0].

It is underplaying the West's power here to ignore the effect of marching our anti-Russia alliance towards Russia. It is unreasonable to expect good relations while preparing that sort of military threat. The strategy here - driven by the US - fosters poor relations.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enlargement_of_NATO

Re: Overton's window creates opportunities for the brave

#66

Post by pydry »

int_19h wrote: post #62
pydry wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The mistake is claiming that the path it ended up choosing, it chose because of something the West did or didn't do. This isn't a mistake either. Putin was open towards pursuing a deeper partnership with the west in the early 2000s. He asked to join NATO (as equals) and rather than leaping on the opportunity NATO told him to join the back of the queue. In subsequent years we launched an unprovoked invasion of Iraq a…

I wasn't talking about Putin's choices, but rather about the choices of people that led to Putin gaining power. But also - Putin always fancied himself the restorer of imperial glory, so joining NATO was never seriously on the table without also asserting claim to all the "lost lands".

>Putin always fancied himself the restorer of imperial glory

This is certainly how western media has tried to depict him. Our media is more a reflection of our own imperial neuroses than it is a window into his subconscious though.

Occam's razor suggests that when he asked to join NATO it was because he wanted to be a member.

Re: Overton's window creates opportunities for the brave

#67

Post by c7b »

Frankly, this sounds more like an "everything was better in the old days" rant than anything else.

Cherry-picked anecdotes to make the case that we somehow have less information now than we used to, agrandissement ("When you’re one step ahead of the crowd, you’re a genius.") and carefully avoiding making any testable predictions or even just concrete recommendations, beyond hollow phrases like "dare to think differently".

Re: Overton's window creates opportunities for the brave

#68

Post by yourapostasy »

pydry wrote: post #60
int_19h wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it was inevitable for Russia to end up so firmly in the anti-West camp. Back in 1993 - and, really, all the way until the end of 90s - it was very much at the crossroads. The mistake is claiming that the path it ended up choosing, it chose because of something the West did or didn't do. It was all about choices that people made - and back then, elections in Russia still meant something - in response to…

>The mistake is claiming that the path it ended up choosing, it chose because of something the West did or didn't do. This isn't a mistake either. Putin was open towards pursuing a deeper partnership with the west in the early 2000s. He asked to join NATO (as equals) and rather than leaping on the opportunity NATO told him to join the back of the queue. In subsequent years we launched an unprovoked invasion of Iraq a…

> He asked to join NATO (as equals) and rather than leaping on the opportunity NATO told him to join the back of the queue.

It is a little more nuanced than that [1].

"Join the back of the queue" is an uncharitable way to express "treated equally to all potential partner nations". There is no queue to apply to NATO other than logistical limitations.

Putin sought deferential treatment to affirm Russia's greatness and assuage the wounded national pride. He didn't get it, and the ensuing delay for a diplomatic solution soured into suspicions that opened divisions that deepened into today's chasm.

There was a very intriguing article [2] now behind a paywall that described Eastern European intelligence agencies warning their Western counterparts for decades that rapprochement with Russia shall always founder upon a deep, dark cruelty within Russian national character until that stain is removed by Russians. I don't know if that is true as I've never seen that first-hand in the Russians I've befriended in the West (perhaps I fell victim to the same Western naivete the article describes of the West) but if so, then perhaps joining NATO back then was needed to gradually draw out that poison.

Personally with the layman's perspective upon international affairs I have, I didn't see the harm in the symbolic gesture of inviting Russia to join NATO in a diplomatic manner that didn't slight the nations already underway in their application process. There must have been some pretty compelling inside baseball to have switched Clinton from a "sure, why not" off the cuff response to no follow up, though.

History would certainly have taken an interesting twist if a Jerry Pournelle'sh "Quad-Dominium" emerged with a CN, EU, RU, and US unipolar alliance.

[1] https://www.trtworld.com/magazine/russia-could-have-joined-n...

[2] https://ekspress.delfi.ee/artikkel/120084966

Re: Overton's window creates opportunities for the brave

#69

Post by ribit »

roenxi wrote: post #65
int_19h wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it was inevitable for Russia to end up so firmly in the anti-West camp. Back in 1993 - and, really, all the way until the end of 90s - it was very much at the crossroads. The mistake is claiming that the path it ended up choosing, it chose because of something the West did or didn't do. It was all about choices that people made - and back then, elections in Russia still meant something - in response to…

While the actions of Russia are ultimately the responsibility of the Russians, the end of the 90s is also around the time NATO started picking up ex-Soviet states [0]. It is underplaying the West's power here to ignore the effect of marching our anti-Russia alliance towards Russia. It is unreasonable to expect good relations while preparing that sort of military threat. The strategy here - driven by the US - fosters…

This rhetorics misses two crucial facts: first, that the eastern slavic states were eager to join NATO simply because they were worried about the Russian threat. Russian chauvinism towards ex-soviet nations is not a recent thing and Russia's attempts to coerce and pressure neighbours into submission and dependence started immediately after the dissolution of the Soviet Union. For someone like me who grew up in Ukraine where the Russian threat was an everyday topic, the narrative of "aggressive NATO expansion" is a great illustration how people pushing it are far from understanding the post-Soviet reality. And second, in the 90ties there were negotiations about Russia joining NATO as well, which ultimately broke down in the early 2000s as Russia embraced state terrorism as a regular political instrument.

The point is very simple: NATO or not NATO, Russian fascism and Russian imperialism would still be there. Without the NATO expansion however the Baltic states would have probably been annexed a decade ago.

Re: Overton's window creates opportunities for the brave

#70

Post by pydry »

yourapostasy wrote: post #68
pydry wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The mistake is claiming that the path it ended up choosing, it chose because of something the West did or didn't do. This isn't a mistake either. Putin was open towards pursuing a deeper partnership with the west in the early 2000s. He asked to join NATO (as equals) and rather than leaping on the opportunity NATO told him to join the back of the queue. In subsequent years we launched an unprovoked invasion of Iraq a…

> He asked to join NATO (as equals) and rather than leaping on the opportunity NATO told him to join the back of the queue. It is a little more nuanced than that [1]. "Join the back of the queue" is an uncharitable way to express "treated equally to all potential partner nations". There is no queue to apply to NATO other than logistical limitations. Putin sought deferential treatment to affirm Russia's greatness and…

>Join the back of the queue" is an uncharitable way to express "treated equally to all potential partner nations"

Member nations in NATO are not equal. Never have been never will be.

In not so many words, it meant that Russia would have to join the transnational gang as a foot soldier (Estonia) rather than a capo (UK) let alone a boss (US).

Were peace with Russia a primary goal we would have started negotiations rather than rebuffing. It never was.

America would have liked to bring Russia into NATO but as a client state or a group of balkanized client states, not as a partner.

>Eastern European intelligence agencies warning their Western counterparts for decades that rapprochement with Russia shall always founder upon a deep, dark cruelty within Russian national character until that stain is removed by Russians. I don't know if that is true

There is similar German commentary on the character of minority groups in their country from 1939.

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