Everyone was so young then (including myself-- I turned 20 that year!).
Why accept that they really believe it? Given the choice of A) every Russian leader is stupid / irrational or B) they are saying something they don’t really believe because they think it makes for good rhetoric or propaganda why on earth is A) the most likely choice?
It’s completely reasonable that Russians in the 1950s were hugely suspicious of Germany, and committed to never experiencing the disaster of World War II again.
By the 1970s anyone paying attention would clearly see that Germany was a stable prosperous and peaceful nation that was well past the point of starting a war with the USSR. And that NATO as a whole was massively outgunned by the USSR and in all likelihood incapable of defending its own territory (with conventional weapons), let alone being capable of offensive action. Still, you could argue that leaders who’d directly experienced the war (as Krushchev and Brezhnev’s generation had) had a certain excuse to be a bit irrational about the issue.
But now another 50 years have passed. World War II is history. The idea that modern Russian leaders see NATO as a military threat is absurd on its face. It’s a useful bit of rhetoric for stirring up nationalist feeling and scoring diplomatic points. It’s an excuse for bad behavior. And I don’t think someone like Putin believes a word of it.
Yeah, in terms of what Putin and the Kleptocrats want, I think it’s just that they hate the idea of a somewhat democratic Slavic country with a free media AND Russian speakers right on Russia’s border.
Exactly. They don’t believe it. It’s a propaganda tool, which is why it’s the primary argument for the Putin apologists (Tucker Carlson being the loudest and stupidest).
I hate to go back to 1938-39 but similarly facile arguments about how Germany deserved security and the unification of Germanic peoples basically allowed them to get as far as they did. I don’t mean this to say that Russia is going to follow up by invading western europe, but rather to say that these are similarly bad faith arguments (security and uniting the slavs!) deployed to defuse opposition to naked acts of aggression.
Trying to understand why Russian leaders do things is hardly appeasement. And I categorically reject the argument that it is absurd for Russians to fear Western nations. I agree totally that NATO is not going to attack the Russians, for about a billion reasons. And I agree that there is a lot of bullshit that comes out of the Kremlin that is all posturing and which does not represent the beliefs of a rather cynical bunch of strongmen, any more than the Communist rhetoric really mattered (after about the mid-1970s at least) during the days of the USSR.
That does not preclude Russians actually believing at some level that the West poses a military threat to them. We often make the mistake of thinking everyone else is just like us, and apply the same sorts of filters to their actions or positions we would to our own leaders. While the opposite is also dangerous–thinking the other is totally alien to us–this sort of equivalence thinking is dangerous and borderline ethnocentric at best. Russia is not the USA. It’s not Germany. It’s not France. It’s Russia. And Russia is complicated. No one is apologizing for asshat-in-chief Putin and his band of cronies. Pretty much everyone here disdains that regime whole heartedly. But if you really want to develop effective counters to things Russia actually does–and they do some nasty things for sure–you need to develop understanding that goes beyond knee-jerk rejection of any nuanced explanation.
Scuzz
2027
I think it is logical to admit that Russian national paranoia doesn’t have to make sense to others, especially non-Europeans. It doesn’t make it right, but I think it is historical.
They are like modern versions of Spartans, who retain their internal social identity as invaders who overtook the previous leadership by violent means, and are constantly on aggressive edge waiting for the inevitable retribution and counter-revolution kicking them out. Even though their peer national political leaderships just considers them another legacy entrenched autocracy at this point.
Timex
2029
On a lighter note regarding Russia:
Aceris
2030
These Russian art galleries are amateurs. In New York those eyes would have doubled the value of the piece. It speaks to how we do not see the faces of others, but merely echoes of our own conciousness.
RichVR
2031
I would have taped a banana to the middle one as a smile. :)
People do believe propaganda, even westerners.
It’s the Restoration Master’s time to shine!
Thanks, but I don’t think some in this crowd can actually internalize that. It’s all knee-jerking.
True, but think about that statement. If someone is making propaganda, they are doing it for a reason. And if it is believed, it is believable for a reason. The people telling the people that the West is a threat, and the people who believe these people, may all genuinely believe the West is a threat.
I don’t for a moment dispute that there are whole swaths of the world living in disinformation bubbles, here and abroad. I just reject the idea that there is a single so-called truth that only a few really understand, with the rest being befuddled and deceived. I also believe that the dominant Western way of looking at politics and international affairs–a way I was trained in certainly in grad school and which I still find has a lot of validity–is not the only epistemological framework that is possible, or valid. Different societies view the same circumstances through different lenses. It makes no difference whether those lenses are, to us, terribly distorted. The reality is the reality. Russians at some level find allegations of threat from the West believable. That is the context within which their leaders operate. What we do about it has to take that into account; it does not, certainly, mean we have to agree with them.
Well then what’s the actionable info you can take out of “Russia fears invasion from the west”?
On his first day on the job,
I’m guessing that was also his last day on the job. Feller’s not too bright, is he?
Not much, admittedly, other than to calibrate your responses to avoid giving away freebies. As in, do what you need to do but don’t do stupid things that push the wrong buttons unnecessarily. There are ways off conducting discussions that don’t give anything away for free, and don’t “appease,” but also avoid unnecessarily provocative or uselessly antagonistic rhetoric or posturing.
tl;dr, keep it real, be blunt in private, leave maneuvering room in public, and in short, walk softly and carry a big stick.
Sounds like good diplomacy with anyone tbh
