Washington and the West struggle for a way forward with Putin’s Russia : worldnews

[-] OrnluWolfjarl@lemmygrad.ml 23 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

The Russophobia and propaganda are just oozing out of the article. It's essentially a call for a new Cold War.

It's mind-boggling how they twist events to make Putin appear as the bloodthirsty warlord who's bend on destroying the democratic and benevolent West.

It's worth reading to understand the deranged mindset of these people.

[-] yogthos@lemmygrad.ml 24 points 1 month ago

The most interesting aspect of the article is that it basically admits that the west has no idea what to do now. The whole talk of isolating Russia is just pure copium given that they've already tried doing that for the past two years. The opposite is happening with the west finding itself increasingly isolated globally. They can't bring themselves to treat Russia as an equal and recognize that Russia has legitimate interests. So, their only solution has been to just keep escalating, and now they've reached a point where it's either negotiations or WW3.

[-] OrnluWolfjarl@lemmygrad.ml 16 points 1 month ago

Indeed, because if they accepted they'd need to treat Russia as an equal, it would be an admission of defeat in their minds. They can never accept losing primacy.

[-] yogthos@lemmygrad.ml 11 points 1 month ago

Pretty much, the big question now is if they're willing to end the world over it.

[-] l0tusc0bra@lemmygrad.ml 15 points 1 month ago

When their stupid ass plans don't work out domestically they can just shrug and blame it on an external factor and move on, or shuffle the deck electorally. They're not accustomed to being in a situation where they physically, materially cannot get what they want and no amount of reality warping and coddling by their institutions can change that. It does not compute.

[-] yogthos@lemmygrad.ml 14 points 1 month ago

Indeed, and it's also worth noting that the US was able to do whatever it wanted geopolitically after USSR dissolved. All the people running things now formed their core beliefs during that brief unipolar period, and they never adjusted their view to match current reality. There was an implicit assumption that they just had to blow hard enough and Russia would collapse like a house of cards. Now the realization that Russia will not bow is starting to sink in, and we can see the panic growing.

[-] SadArtemis@lemmygrad.ml 14 points 1 month ago

Honestly, in some ways I'm glad. They cannot and will not change, and they will bring down the justice and consequences of 500 years of barbarism upon their heads for it.

I just hope they don't take the rest of humanity down with them, and that in time even the masses of the west will dispose of the trash before it's too late.

[-] l0tusc0bra@lemmygrad.ml 11 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Yeah 10 years ago (when I was a lib) it was maybe debatable that western leaders could sober up and turn things around but the past 4 years alone have informed me that they are in fact high on their own supply and truly think they're enlightened individuals who deserve the power they wield, rather than mere puppets (or collaborators) who will stick to the script no matter what.

[-] SadArtemis@lemmygrad.ml 9 points 1 month ago

Pretty much. And those who aren't high on their own supply are no better- all of them, they're rotten to the core, and will do anything to cling to power and empire. That's how they got to where they are, after all.

[-] l0tusc0bra@lemmygrad.ml 11 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

I suppose it's one of those paradoxes that makes you cross your eyes thinking about it; if they didn't buy the bs about The West being superior, they wouldn't have made it to a position of power at all. They live in glamour and splendor and are surrounded by people whose job it is to use scientific-sounding terms to assure them that their empire is secure. Of course you'd think Everything Is Fine in that environment.

[-] multitotal@lemmygrad.ml 12 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

wow

Putin’s most formidable challenger, Alexei Navalny

LMAO

challenge posed by the Kremlin, not just militarily but also to the Western values of freedom and democracy.

Propaganda is just covers of old hits.

“The biggest danger that we have is not military might or the economy,” Latvian President Edgars Rinkevics said in an interview. “This penetration that those regimes are still good at, and addressing the core values of our societies, that’s where our strategy is not very well thought out and successful.”

Read: "We must institutionalise neoliberalism in the EU, crush dissent and shut down anything pro-RU, anti-EU, anti-NATO."

Putin and other autocrats — China’s Xi Jinping, Iran’s leaders and North Korea’s Kim Jong Un — perceive America to be stumbling, and see an opportunity to reject democracy and promote autocracy.

4 countries, one of which is the DPRK (who the collective West has been laughing at for decades), versus some 35-40 countries in the pro-UA coalition. They dunk on themselves with this kind of rhetoric.

“The West is going to lose, not because it is fundamentally weak, but because there are no real leaders in the West,” he [Khodorovsky] added. “You have to be bold, decisive. You have to tell your populations, ‘Look, we’re living through the Cold War, which could quickly descend into the Third World War.’”
spoiler
On 20 December 2013, Putin signed a pardon freeing Khodorkovsky.[152] Following his release, Khodorkovsky addressed the media at a news conference in Berlin, Germany. He referred to himself as a "political prisoner", and stated he would not re-enter business or politics.[153] Khodorkovsky stated in a December 2014 interview that he was not violating his promise to Putin to avoid politics, but was only engaged in "civil society work... politics is in essence a battle to get yourself elected, personally. I'm not interested in this.

Putin broke him.

“He is building a dictatorship,” Kara-Murza said. “An ideology has to be introduced in order to make those very young Russians into good Russian soldiers who can one day go and invade yet another territory of yet another independent state.”

“An ideology has to be introduced in order to make those very young Americans into good American soldiers who can one day go and invade yet another territory of yet another independent state.”

It's only bad when Russia does it.

“Once we saw the massive Ukraine invasion plan, we knew definitively that Putin wasn’t buying ‘stable and predictable,’” Victoria Nuland, who was the third-ranking official at the State Department, said in an interview.

They betray themselves with their own mouth.

“To get a coherent Russia strategy, one needs also to figure out how to build a China strategy,” said Rinkevics, the Latvian president. “Those are going to be very interlinked in coming years.”

Lmao, who gives a shit what the president of Latvia, a neoliberal hellhole thinks (population 1,842,226 and dropping).

[-] PolandIsAStateOfMind@lemmygrad.ml 8 points 1 month ago

“To get a coherent Russia strategy, one needs also to figure out how to build a China strategy,” said Rinkevics, the Latvian president. “Those are going to be very interlinked in coming years.”

Lmao, who gives a shit what the president of Latvia, a neoliberal hellhole thinks (population 1,842,226 and dropping).

That was actually the best part, openly said what we tankies were cassandraing for years that the attack on Russia is actually the prelude to attack on China which is the real target.

[-] Sodium_nitride@lemmygrad.ml 11 points 1 month ago

My God these articles piss me off so much. The world is more uncertain, unpredictable and risky than ever before? Western values are being undermined?

Stfu. Not only does the lib speak grate on my ears, but even after saying these things, the approach outlined does not change in the slightest.

It's still just calls for more of the same failed strategy that the west has been using since the end of ww2.

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