I dunno. In the last few days, we Pakistanis have discovered that Armenia apparently, thinks we are their enemy. The response had been; i) why , ii) what does this mean and iii) hold on, where the hell is “Armenia”.
So, unrequited hate is apparently a thing.
Did you somehow miss all the reasons pointed out in the article?
No. Hating someone for no reason is stupid, everyone has reasons. Its just that feelings are not necessarily reciprocated, which is what was said in the quoted post.
Depends on the “any other”. Stalin or any Communist leader other (possibly) that Gorbachev, yes. But the kind of international commitments Gorbachev and Yeltsin made about how relationships would be managed would rather seem to preclude, for example, sending people to assassinate even renegade spies in the capital of country you’re supposedly building a friendly and co-operative relationship with - especially not since it was such crude and obvious repetition of what the old USSR had done in the Markov case in 1978.
While you could understand raison d’état arguments for the west turning a blind-ish eye to the whole issue of how Russia handled Chechnya, the murkiness surrounding the trigger (the apartment bombings in Moscow in 1999) were already a warning sign. And the messiness of Georgia/Abkhazia didn’t preclude Russia from using the usual international channels to try and resolve it without resorting to force first.
It’s your feelings vs. the feelings of whoever wrote the article. So, a total of two feelings.
That’s why we have threat assessments, isn’t it? I mean, if someone who can’t hurt you happens to hate you - as my grandmother would say, they should live and be well. But if someone who poses an actual threat, great or small, to your country and your national interests considers you their enemy, then maybe you should take certain precautions.
Agreed. Given what Trump said thus far, NATO is in for some confusing US policy positions in the near term.
My previous commentary with respect to US/NATO policy and actions (to date) regarding Russia stands.
Yes.
Frenemies. Sometimes we get along really well and help each other out (I mean we’re still bumming rides to the ISS from them). Sometimes we’re assholes to each other. Never an outright fistfight though.
What threat does Russia pose to the US or its national interests?
No, of course not. But only a useful idiot would think that the Russian government isn’t up to no good.
I do think that their actions can best be understood through the lens of history (Understanding the Russian Mindset).
Russia endured centuries of bloody invasions until Peter the Great established the policy of creating a buffer zone around Russia by conquering neighboring nations and colonizing them with Russians. These satellite states were deliberately kept weak by appointing only Moscow-approved leaders. Putin is just continuing with this centuries-old imperialist policy.
EDIT: I’m not excusing Russia’s bad behavior, just explaining some of their motivations.
Yeah… if a country with nukes thinks you’re enemies, you’re enemies.
By that definition, the US is enemies with the UL, China, France, India, Pakistan, Israel, and South Africa too. The US has nothing to fight with Russia over. The only conflict is over the Ukraine. However, the Ukraine is always going to matter more to Russia than it does to the US. The US wants peace there in the sense that we want peace everywhere but it is not a US interest.
Enemy, no, The US and Russia are 2 sides of the same bad coin, worldly powers of fear, which is the enemy to God’s kingdom of Love, tolerated for a bit for now, but not long to endure.
Peace
Agreed. If ever there was a common enemy that both US and Russia could unite around, it’s god.
Given the respective nuclear stockpiles, I bet we could nuke god from orbit.
What is this ‘Russia’? We have always been at war with Eastasia.
I’m not sure how to answer this as I’m unsure how this plays into what you quoted from me. Since the end of the cold war, at least according to the polls, the average Russian had a fairly good opinion of the US…until very recently. If you look at the 3rd chart in this link you can see how it changed over time. While I wouldn’t say that Russians ever loved the US, it’s pretty steady, with a few dips into the 30’s and going as high as into the 50’s…until 2013-14 where it dropped like a rock. For some, um, reason.
They don’t, unfortunately, have the same sort of graph in the first link, but here is how Russia is viewed by the same polling organization. You can see that the US doesn’t particularly like Russia either at this point (and, actually and probably unsurprisingly, not very many other countries do either based on their recent displays). It would be nice to see similar polls from both perspectives and going back to before the end of the cold war, but I’d have to say that we are probably at or near an all time low on both sides. However, while both seemingly view the other in very negative lights I don’t think the average US citizen feels Russia is an ‘enemy’…merely what they are, an unfriendly power (i.e. their government is quite obviously unfriendly towards the US and is acting aggressively towards its neighbors).
I feel like the USSR was our enemy, but Russia today is a rival akin to China.
This is similar to how I think about them. More in terms of stability operations doctrine where we didn’t discuss enemies/threats. We had competitors who’s interests were different than our own. Enemy vs friend seems so much like an old Hollywood western white hats vs black hats.
That said I’ve seen the areas where we can cooperate to find a mutually beneficial solution drawing down since the Russian-Georgian War in 2008. That was a major turning point IMO. Prior to that we’d seen Russia join The NATO Cooperation Council and Partnership for Peace program in the years immediately following the end of the Cold War. In 2001 we had the creation of the NATO-Russia Council to provide a forum for cooperation even if talks of becoming a NATO partner state had faded. Then things changed.
Since 2008, and the still unrecognized by NATO occupation of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, relations have continued to worsen, emphasizing competition rather than cooperation. IMO that was the signalling event for the new era of relations becoming as contentious as they currently are.