How to tame Putin?!?!

Http://www.politico.com/story/2017/10/02/russia-cybersecurity-transatlantic-solutions-243170

Well one thing...ratchet up the sanctions even more, drop the price of oil/energy, watch them squirm even more.

 

It all sounds good.

I don't understand why Russia can't become a "normal" country (like France, U.K., Italy, Poland, Germany, etc.) and integrate into the West. Russians are Europeans, right? Aren't there more similarities than differences between Russia and the West?

My graduate studies in American history sadly included little about Russia and its relations with the West. Is the problem with us? It seems we should have been more welcoming when the Soviet Union collapsed. Or is the problem with Russia? Are they just too paranoid of the West to ever feel comfortable with us? Is the concept of a democracy so weak in Russia that they'll never be like us?

I can't help to think of what a giant wasted opportunity we have here. Finland, Ukraine, and the Baltic states seem very capable of getting along with the West. Why not Russia?

 

Russia(ns), for the...most..part are Europeans. It's big, straddles Europe/Asia, and you'll hear it's Eurasia, not fully Europe, but some part of Asia.

No I don't think the problems with us. Russia just seems paranoid so to speak , with the west, they don't fully understand western mindset. They may feel uncomfortable if absorbed into "western thinking"and lose their self awareness. In other words being "subordinate", not an alternative to western idealism.

Finland, Baltics have different philosophies from the Russians...they're not Slavic people's..like the Russians.

It may take a couple more generations to change more of the mindset in Russia, one can hope.

 

The current power structure in Russia grew up in the USSR. From their first memories the enemy of the Rodina were the evil capitalist yankees and NATO. They were already in the late 20's when things finally fell apart and a lifetime of indoctrination does not simply evaporate overnight.

Seems to me when cast around for an external enemy Putin couldn't have picked a more obvious choice than the west and the US in particular given history.

 

It seems like a big, wasted opportunity. Russia should be incorporated into the West. It would make life more pleasant for them and us. They would get rich. We would have one less problem to deal with.

It's so frustrating.

 

Putin is one of those vestige of the former SU, which seems on sticking around...for a long time.

 

then watch them build and aim more
Satan 2s at us http://www.cnn.com/2016/10/26/europe/russia-nuclear-missile-satan-2/index.html

 

Its a generational thing.

 

Some say that the Russians are almost genetically militant. It goes back to the Mongols raping and pillaging them.

 

Some say.... a most "flexible" device, wot?

 

What does that mean?

 

lol you'd get paranoidal if your country was destroyed and the perpetrators then say it 'collapsed' huh.

 

The Cold War was a battle between two ideologies. One was good, the other was evil. One had to lose. The weaker, evil ideology couldn't keep up. It collapsed under the weight of competition.

 

bullshit, it was the West vs the East, no matter on what pretext, ideology or race etc.

 

Russians wanted to be part of the West, but the World Government had another plan, their plan was to dismember Russia and to destroy their culture.

Today RF is more European and more Christian than the West, that may be the reason why the World Government hates RF more than they used to hate the SU.

 

Almost as bad as having your country invaded, your people murdered and the perpetrators calling themselves pioneers or settlers.

 

It's a mongol kink they possess.

 

The Russians seem to have much practise at that.

 

Do you know what the 1990s were like for Russia? Life expectancy plummeted.Prices were up, nobody had jobs, and the only thing there was to do was to drink yourself to death. Everything got grabbed up by new oligarchs who used to be government officials. The Bush and Clinton administrations interfered in Russian elections to ensure the communists wouldn't win, because they were still popular enough that their bloc was the biggest in their parliament. Yeltsin used tanks to forcibly dissolve parliament and consolidate power.

Russia is the way it is now because America crippled it in the early 90s and they got up angrier and more disfigured for it.

 

It was all about ideology. In spite of the small (but growing) leftist segment in the U.S., communism is counter to everything the U.S. stands for. Asking an American about communism is like asking the Pope about devil worship.

 

"Russia is the way it is now", sure, they went head to head with us, it's like 2 boxers in a ring, one has to win!?!?

 

Do you know what America did to piss them off in the first place? The US backed the whites in the civil war, who committed pogroms. Then they repeatedly sabotaged the USSR at the cost of Soviet citizens, such as forcing the USSR to trade only in grain during a grain shortage.

 

Which civil war? As in Bolshevik revolution in 1917?
"Sabotage" the USSR,? Grain shortage? Funny, as I recall a distant family member stating they had NKVD guarding piles of grain so locals wouldn't steal for food...hence the famine in ukraine?

 

They learned it from the Europeans in Australia, Tasmania, the Americas etc.

 

the revolution was when the bolsheviks overthrew the provisional government in petrograd. the ensuing civil war is considered a distinct but connected event by historians

funny how everyone has a distant family member from the eastern bloc