by CapricornNoble | 2025-12-13 15:55:36+00:00
>There was no "narrow window" in 1999-2007. The window for keeping Russia on a path toward becoming a normal European state closed around 1995.

Expecting Russia to ever become a "normal European state" is the main mistake. My entire point is to accept that Russia is authoritarian. Consider the examples of Turkey, Egypt, and Pakistan, especially Egypt: nobody preaches liberal democracy as the solution to getting Egypt to do what we want. Instead we came to an understanding with the military elite, who we've essentially bribed (via foreign aid and other ways) to keep a lid on their population and avoid direct conflict with Israel. Figure out what the KGB-military elite want, and give it to them in exchange for a shift in their security posture. The Soviet dinosaurs want to suck the Baltic states dry? Go for it....but we want them to step up their mobilization exercises in Siberia for the next decade. And we want them to start doing joint US-Russian nuclear submarine patrols in the East China Sea. Otherwise we can't be friends....and the last time we weren't friends, it didn't end well for Russia. More carrot, less stick...but still some stick.

If it gets us one step closer to Russia's nuclear arsenal (the largest in the world with the most capable ICBMs) possibly pointing at Chinese cities instead of the West, it's worth it. The price might include "fluffing the Russian national ego". Instead US think-tankers and statesmen have done their best to trample on it....with predictable results.

One of the best opportunities for improving US-Russian relations was 9/11 and especially the 2004 Beslan school attack: there was recognition of a mutual problem of "Islamic terrorism", and coordinating to fight it was a part of thawing the adversarial relationship between the security apparatuses of the two powers. Read the joint statement from Bush and Putin from 2002:

https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/joint-declaration-...

then read this piece by F William Engdahl from 2006, skip to the section on US nuclear primacy:

https://apjjf.org/f-william-engdahl/2256/article

then finally read Putin's speech from the 2007 Munich Security Conference (which is when the window for improving relations closed):

http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/transcripts/24034

> For them, challenging the US and expanding Russia through coercion and war to the full territorial extent of the former Eastern Bloc is the endgame.

The former Eastern Bloc should have been Finlandized: economic intermediaries between Russia and Western Europe, with just enough domestic military capability to discourage Russian hard power, but no actual US military alliance integration to keep the Russians from getting jittery either.

> They don't give two shits about China.

Which is why after the Sino-Soviet split Russia and the Soviet Union before it always kept high-readiness divisions on the Chinese border. The Russians know that China isn't really their friend. Russia is a European country, they shouldn't be bosom buddies with the Far East.

> They want a return to the privileged heyday of the KGB-military elites in the 1970s

They were on that path, printing money selling natgas and oil to Europe.

> Antagonism toward the US lies at their very core, and no amount of buttering will change that. The possibility of cooperation is merely an illusion they sell you to blind you to the next move they make against you.

The Russians didn't unilaterally pull out of the ABM Treaty in 2002, the US did. Then we went and followed that up by announcing we wanted ABM sites on Russia's doorstep to protect Europe from "errant Iranian nuclear missiles" which was obvious bullshit.

https://www.realinstitutoelcano.org/en/analyses/americas-abm...

Look, I understand that everyone in Eastern Europe has a well-earned eternal hatred of the Russians since you are barely a generation removed from their oppression, but do you guys not notice all the ridiculous antagonistic shit we Americans do that is entirely optional?