# Is Russia determined to be an empire again? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [August 9, 2008, 2:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-russia-determined-to-be-an-empire-again/459370 "2008-08-09T02:18:03Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 12
**Author:** ![mswas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e99b99/32.png) [@mswas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mswas)\ **Post date:** [August 13, 2008, 6:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-russia-determined-to-be-an-empire-again/459370/221 "2008-08-13T06:49:57Z")
[QUOTE=Oy!] I imagine a President Obama may be a bit more successful with the Germans that GWB has been - knock on wood. Hell, he may be better at dealing with _Russia_ that GWB, because I truly think, when push comes to shove, that Obama is tougher than Bush. He won’t have the bureaucratic in-fighting or the constant leaks that Bush has had. He’ll have a meritocracy, rather than loyalty tests and cronyism. Don’t get me wrong; he’ll have some trusted friends in high places, because he’ll trust their abilities and their mutual goals. But there won’t be any "Heckuva job, Brownie"s or stacking Justice’s deck. Putin probably had W’s number from the first time they met, amd knew he could play him for a sucker any time he wanted. Still don’t know if the cease-fire has actually taken hold. Holbrook said tonight on the News Hour that it was the 32nd cease-fire that finally actually took hold. Gotta go to bed. Goodnight! [/QUOTE] Well the reality of the situation is that Bush pushing the Baltic states toward NATO is what precipitated all this. So you’re advocating Bush’s solution to the problem. When the Soviet Union collapsed we promised we wouldn’t push those states into NATO. So Russia doesn’t want Georgia in NATO so they did this. Your solution is to sign them up for NATO immediately. Remember all those revolutions they had? Orange, Rose etc… Bush had a lot to do with that. ---
**Author:** ![Svejk\_1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ea666f/32.png) [@Svejk\_1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Svejk_1)\ **Post date:** [August 13, 2008, 8:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-russia-determined-to-be-an-empire-again/459370/222 "2008-08-13T08:36:59Z")
What do you mean by ‘pushing countries toward NATO’? It’s not like the new joiners were sort of reluctant to join and needed cajoling - all of the new joiners were knocking on NATO’s doors from day one. Whether admitting them was a smart move is another question, but the main drive that caused for instance the Baltics to join NATO and turn their backs on Russia came from the Baltic states, and was inspired by what they call fifty years of Russian occupation. As to those ‘revolutions’ - it’s true that the US, the EU and, for instance, George Soros’s Open Society Institute supported the opposition, but these _were_ endogenous movements, it’s not like they were imposed from outside. Exaggerating Western influence, like the Russians are doing, causes us to ignore the fact that the move towards the West, towards the EU and NATO and the Euro and away from Russia is something that comes from inside these countries. ---
**Author:** ![tagos](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/bbe5ce/32.png) [@tagos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tagos)\ **Post date:** [August 13, 2008, 10:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-russia-determined-to-be-an-empire-again/459370/223 "2008-08-13T10:42:38Z")
We need to understand that Georgia rocketed a city - they attacked civilians indiscriminately causing massive casualties. They did what the Serbs did, they committed a heinous war crime and there is no excuse, no provocation that justifies that and Russia was always going to respond. [Shattered city is a ghost town](http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.20080813.OSSETIASCENE13/TPStory/TPInternational/Europe/) > [@](#): > > The colonel was part of a Russian Special Forces team that escorted foreign journalists into South Ossetia yesterday during a highly managed tour of the devastated capital. > > The Georgian offensive began early Friday, and today, Tskhinvali is a battle-scarred ghost town. Nearly all of its main buildings - the Soviet-era parliament buildings, the university and concert halls - are destroyed. > > The capital’s detritus-filled streets also provided evidence of vicious street fighting. Two burned out Georgian tanks sat in the middle of an intersection across from a railway station. Russian officials said South Ossetian rebel fighters hurled grenades at the Georgian tanks. Nearby, a severed foot lay on the sidewalk, which residents said belonged to an occupant of one of the tanks. > > Largely deserted, Tskhinvali’s streets are calm now, and there was no sound of gunfire. A few old men wandered the narrow streets of a badly damaged southern residential neighbourhood, picking through rubble. > > Only about 2,000 of the capital’s 30,000 residents remain. Most of the rest have fled to Russia. > > Most of those who stayed behind are old men and women with no place to go. Some residents refused to leave their homes even though they are uninhabitable. This is uncontested. European TV, journalists and UNHCR confirm it. [One of many accounts](http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/aug/13/georgia.russia3) > [@](#): > > Close to the centre of the city Russian officers led the group to the city’s main hospital which was hit by small arms fire and shells during the first days of fighting. Doctors at the hospital said they had been forced to carry out operations in corridors and the basement of the building without electricity, water or light. > > Tina Zakharova, one of the doctors, pointed out chunks of shrapnel which had hit the building. > > “This is the humanitarian aid that Georgia sent us,” she said, “and that,” she said, pointing at a field hospital nearby, “is the help we received from Russia. Which do you think we should chose?” She added: “I’ve never heard anything so monstrous as people shelling a hospital.” > > In total, said Zakharova, 224 injured people had been treated at the hospital and two people had died there. Just south of the city centre a group of reporters were shown a street entirely destroyed by a Grad missile attack. Homes along the 100m street had been reduced to rubble. > > One man showed the Guardian the metal casing of a Grad rocket lodged in the ruins of his home: “We managed to escape to the shelter just in time,” he said, pointing at the mouth of a cellar protected by huge chunks of concrete. [BBC report](http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7556044.stm) > [@](#): > > Reports from the UNHCR and Russian media speak of total devastation in the South Ossetian capital Tskhinvali, with few buildings left intact after intense bombardments and street fighting. > > Russian television showed pictures of a heavily damaged hospital in Tskhinvali, with wounded civilians lying in makeshift wards in the basement. > > Families huddled in cellars, trapped by the fighting. They said they had had very little food and water for several days. Allegedly - and I expect it is true because they’d have to under the circumstances - as part of the surprise attack the Georgian contingent of the joint peacekeeping force killed their Russian counterparts. No doubt other atrocities will be alleged and some confirmed on all sides. This is a brutal part of the world. How the frack did they expect the Russians to respond? The Russian Army is not noted for its humanitarian outlook and no doubt has committed its own atrocities, as will have Georgian and Ossetian militias. But the Russians have not flattened Gori in retaliation despite CNN showing footage of the South Ossetian damage and claiming it was from Gori. So please - no more romantic bullshit about plucky innocent Georgia. They are no different from the rest of the savages in that part of the world. They are led by a lunatic elected in a rigged poll and heads a parliament whose elections, as I have already cited, were not judged to meet international standards. And they broke a peace agreement to try and reimpose long lost control over an autonomous province they unilaterally decided to change the status of in 1992. Then they launched a vicious rocketing and shelling of a city and surrounding villages, killing hundreds if not thousands of civilians and creating a massive refugee crisis. When people the West doesn’t like do this, we call it ethnic cleansing. So cry me a bloody river about the poor plucky Georgians. They got nothing like what they dished out. If we can’t see the situation for what it actually is rather than getting our Cold War tinted spectacles on then this thread might as well be moved to MPIMS. [Here’s a good article by one of Britain’s most experienced foreign journalists](http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/aug/13/russia.georgia). It is well worth a read. > [@](#): > > This week’s operation in Georgia has displayed the failure of the west’s policy of belligerence towards Vladimir Putin’s Russia. The policy was meant to weaken Russia, and has strengthened it. The policy was meant to humiliate Russia with Nato encirclement, and has merely fed its neo-imperialism. The policy was meant to show that Russia “understands only firmness” and instead has shown the west as a bunch of tough-talking windbags. > > Georgia, a supposed western ally and applicant to Nato, has been treated by Russia to a brutal lesson in power politics. The west has lost all leverage and can do nothing. Seldom was a policy so crashingly stupid. > [@](#): > > Every student of the Caucasus has known since the fall of the Soviet empire that this part of the world was an explosion waiting to happen. The crisscrossing fault lines of ethnicity, religion and nationalism, fuelled by gas and oil, would not long survive the removal of the Red Army and communist discipline. There were too many old scores to settle, too much territory in dispute and too much wealth at stake - rivalries brilliantly portrayed in Kurban Said’s classic novel of Edwardian Azerbaijan, Ali & Nino. > > In every crisis the west craves goodies and baddies. The media finds it impossible to report a modern conflict without taking sides. In Yugoslavia, where a similar clash of separatist minorities occurred in the 1990s, coverage was so biased that Kosovo is still “plucky little” and the Serbs can still do no right. > [@](#): > > The truth is that the world has no conceptual framework for adjudicating, let alone resolving, these timeless border conflicts. Where poverty is rife, it takes only a clan war and a ready supply of guns for hostilities to break out. The only question is how to stop them escalating. > > Once such conflicts could be quarantined by the United Nations’ requirement to respect national sovereignty. That has been shot to pieces by the liberal interventionism of George Bush and Tony Blair. The result has reinvigorated separatist movements across the world. Small-statism is not an evil in itself: witness its quadrennial festival at the Olympics. But the process of achieving it is usually bitter and bloody. > > The west’s eagerness to intervene in favour of partition, manifest in Yugoslavia, Iraq and Sudan, is more than meddling. It encouraged every oppressed people and province on earth to be “the mouse that roared”, to think it could ensnare a great power in its cause. > [@](#): > > The west has done everything to isolate Putin, as he rides the tiger of Russian emergence from everlasting dictatorship. This has encouraged him to care not a fig for world opinion. Equally the west has encouraged Saakashvili to taunt Putin beyond endurance. The policy has led to war. If ever there were a place just to leave alone, it is surely the Caucasus. Russia has played a superb game and left the West looking like weak, blustering fools. We have now conclusively demonstrated that there is nothing we can do to protect nominal allies well outside the effective area of NATO operations. And given the dubious nature of our ‘allies’ in that region, given their propensity to go all brutal over poxy little ethnic problems they should just grow the fuck out of, why should we risk WW3 for them. The only answer is energy. ---
**Author:** ![RedFury](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/ec9cab/32.png) [@RedFury](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RedFury)\ **Post date:** [August 13, 2008, 3:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-russia-determined-to-be-an-empire-again/459370/224 "2008-08-13T15:03:24Z")
**Oy!** Ironically enough when I was about to devote some time to responding to your post and elucidating further on my [prior one](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=10092418&postcount=198), I happened to find this article on-line which I believe does a much better job in doing both. I highly recommend you give it a read: [**The Bear Wakes Up**](http://www.nationalinterest.org/Article.aspx?id=19562) It addresses in much further depth some of the criticisms I brought up about American Foreign Policy from the days of the the break-up of the former Soviet Union, including the miss-handling of the NATO alliance as some sort of come one come all club for all of those who wished to punch the caged Bear in the nose. Problem being, as I’ve already said a number of times, the Bear is no longer caged nor are we living the unipolar world of the early 90’s through Bush’s first term. Lot’s happened since – and likely number one in that list is the Neocon-fiction/mantra that “they can male their own reality.” No. They can’t and never could. And to see that one only need to look around at the world (starting with your own nation, the US of A) as stands today vs how it was a short 8 years ago – I highly doubt that’s the “reality” they were aiming for. How about accepting the truism for starters and working anew from there? ---
**Author:** ![mswas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e99b99/32.png) [@mswas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mswas)\ **Post date:** [August 13, 2008, 3:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-russia-determined-to-be-an-empire-again/459370/225 "2008-08-13T15:26:46Z")
**Svejk** Here from RedFury’s posted article: > [@](#): > > Quite simply Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili gambled and lost. Whatever Russia’s constant provocations and Vladimir Putin’s contempt for him personally, Saakashvili appears to have thought he could quickly retake South Ossetia in a fait accompli or, if he got in trouble, the United States and other NATO nations would send forces to rescue him. That misjudgment proved disastrous for his country. It is no apology for the disproportionate Russian response to acknowledge that Russia is the regional power, and for tiny Georgia to repeatedly antagonize and then directly engage it in armed conflict without real support is supreme folly. It is amazing that we let this dangerous situation percolate for so long and did not provide a restraining influence over Saakashvili, having dealt with him for the last four years. Just because someone wants to join NATO doesn’t mean it’s a good idea to let them. There has to be a certain level of maturity and understanding on the part of a NATO member. They can’t go bear-baiting and expect everyone to back them up. In this regard, it shows that there was some wisdom in keeping them out of NATO in the first place. The push by Bush to get all these nations signed up and strapped in is a bit of a mistake. Pushing NATO right up to the border of Russia is just asking for there to be a conflict where NATO has no recourse but to get involved taking what would be a small region conflict and turning it into a large one, ultimately causing the death of NATO. NATO cannot afford the Saakashvili’s of the world. ---
**Author:** ![Magiver](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/4491bb/32.png) [@Magiver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Magiver)\ **Post date:** [August 13, 2008, 3:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-russia-determined-to-be-an-empire-again/459370/226 "2008-08-13T15:29:28Z")
[QUOTE=Measure for Measure] Separately, **RTFirefly** ’s response to **Magiver** bears repeating: those currently pushing a military alliance with a weak state prone to military adventurism like Georgia are writing a recipe for either weakness and treaty-breaking or war. The National Review and wingers such as Scheunemann fall in this camp. [/QUOTE] Military adventurism? it’s a civil war. Which is why Georgia is not part of NATO. It’s not politically stable. ---
**Author:** ![Svejk\_1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ea666f/32.png) [@Svejk\_1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Svejk_1)\ **Post date:** [August 13, 2008, 3:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-russia-determined-to-be-an-empire-again/459370/227 "2008-08-13T15:31:43Z")
[QUOTE=mswas] Just because someone wants to join NATO doesn’t mean it’s a good idea to let them. There has to be a certain level of maturity and understanding on the part of a NATO member. They can’t go bear-baiting and expect everyone to back them up. In this regard, it shows that there was some wisdom in keeping them out of NATO in the first place. The push by Bush to get all these nations signed up and strapped in is a bit of a mistake. Pushing NATO right up to the border of Russia is just asking for there to be a conflict where NATO has no recourse but to get involved taking what would be a small region conflict and turning it into a large one, ultimately causing the death of NATO. NATO cannot afford the Saakashvili’s of the world. [/QUOTE] Yeah, I know. Now tell me what this has to do with my post, please. ---
**Author:** ![Magiver](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/4491bb/32.png) [@Magiver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Magiver)\ **Post date:** [August 13, 2008, 3:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-russia-determined-to-be-an-empire-again/459370/228 "2008-08-13T15:37:00Z")
[QUOTE=Little Nemo] I think you’re discounting what was a very real possibility. Georgia was being strongly considered for NATO membership. If that had happened last year and the situation were the same, we’d be at war with Russia right now. That’s what NATO’s all about - if anyone attacks any NATO member, all of the other NATO members go to war. [/QUOTE] there’s a certain chicken and egg aspect of your statement. If Georgia had been a member of NATO, Russia would not have attacked. But they’re not because of political instability. ---
**Author:** ![tagos](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/bbe5ce/32.png) [@tagos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tagos)\ **Post date:** [August 13, 2008, 3:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-russia-determined-to-be-an-empire-again/459370/229 "2008-08-13T15:37:25Z")
[QUOTE=Švejk] Yeah, I know. Now tell me what this has to do with my post, please. [/QUOTE] The point is this crappy little states, still boiling over with their petty barbarous feuds, want to join NATO so they have a big brother to hold their coat and back them up while they murderously settle old scores. ---
**Author:** ![Svejk\_1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ea666f/32.png) [@Svejk\_1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Svejk_1)\ **Post date:** [August 13, 2008, 3:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-russia-determined-to-be-an-empire-again/459370/230 "2008-08-13T15:43:15Z")
look, I get that. I asked **mswas** in post #221 what he meant by pushing things and then went on to say that these states needed no pushing - which is exactly what seems to appear from **redfury** ’s article - and also that the rose and orange revolutions that **mswas** alledges Dubya had a hand in did come about through political processes internal to respectively Georgia and Ukraine. These countries don’t need encouragement to resist and resent Russian influence and turn to the West for whatever they can get from the West. That’s all. ---
**Author:** ![tagos](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/bbe5ce/32.png) [@tagos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tagos)\ **Post date:** [August 13, 2008, 3:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-russia-determined-to-be-an-empire-again/459370/231 "2008-08-13T15:51:07Z")
From the latest reports it seems like roving packs of the South Ossetian variety of savages are sweeping along behind the Russians. And the Russians are claiming their tanks went into Gori ‘looking for the local authorities to jointly organise the ceasefire’. They are probably on their way to Tiblisi ‘to borrow a cup of sugar’ as we speak. :rolleyes: Those who sow the wind reap the whirlwind holds true it seems. ---
**Author:** ![RedFury](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/ec9cab/32.png) [@RedFury](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RedFury)\ **Post date:** [August 13, 2008, 3:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-russia-determined-to-be-an-empire-again/459370/232 "2008-08-13T15:57:28Z")
[QUOTE=Švejk] What do you mean by ‘pushing countries toward NATO’? It’s not like the new joiners were sort of reluctant to join and needed cajoling - all of the new joiners were knocking on NATO’s doors from day one. Whether admitting them was a smart move is another question, but the main drive that caused for instance the Baltics to join NATO and turn their backs on Russia came from the Baltic states, and was inspired by what they call fifty years of Russian occupation. As to those ‘revolutions’ - it’s true that the US, the EU and, for instance, George Soros’s Open Society Institute supported the opposition, but these _were_ endogenous movements, it’s not like they were imposed from outside. Exaggerating Western influence, like the Russians are doing, causes us to ignore the fact that the move towards the West, towards the EU and NATO and the Euro and away from Russia is something that comes from inside these countries. [/QUOTE] Yes but you see, just as the US won’t allow any number of countries to do as they will in what it considers its “Sphere of Influence” (there’s a long history behind geopolitical fact as you well know) neither will Putin’s Russia – something the larger European nations know all too well (Germany, France, Italy, Spain) This article might help you connect the dots so to speak: [**Moscow’s growing influence over NATO**](http://edition.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/europe/04/02/nato.analysis/index.html) Mind you, not that I am disagreeing with you assessment on the will of those countries to go West, but more to do with you own query “if it was the right thing to do.” And specially in such a hasty way…I mean do we really want to be on the brink of WWIII every time a (per instance) Georgia wants to flex its borrowed muscle? ---
**Author:** ![mswas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e99b99/32.png) [@mswas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mswas)\ **Post date:** [August 13, 2008, 4:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-russia-determined-to-be-an-empire-again/459370/233 "2008-08-13T16:05:15Z")
[QUOTE=Švejk] look, I get that. I asked **mswas** in post #221 what he meant by pushing things and then went on to say that these states needed no pushing - which is exactly what seems to appear from **redfury** ’s article - and also that the rose and orange revolutions that **mswas** alledges Dubya had a hand in did come about through political processes internal to respectively Georgia and Ukraine. These countries don’t need encouragement to resist and resent Russian influence and turn to the West for whatever they can get from the West. That’s all. [/QUOTE] They received material support from the US. I thought that was sort of obvious as it’s been written about in pretty much every article on the topic. ---
**Author:** ![Svejk\_1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ea666f/32.png) [@Svejk\_1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Svejk_1)\ **Post date:** [August 13, 2008, 4:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-russia-determined-to-be-an-empire-again/459370/234 "2008-08-13T16:06:11Z")
[QUOTE=RedFury] Mind you, not that I am disagreeing with you assessment on the will of those countries to go West, but more to do with you own query “if it was the right thing to do.” [/quote] My query? > [@](#): > > And specially in such a hasty way…I mean do we really want to be on the brink of WWIII every time a (per instance) Georgia wants to flex its borrowed muscle? to be fair, everybody is talking about that NATO is too big and all the examples of what might go wrong are based on a country that never made it into the membership of NATO. If any borrowed muscle was flexed by one of the Baltic states or Poland or the Czech Republic or some such, that’d lend much more weight to the things being said about: > [@tagos](#): > > (…)crappy little states, still boiling over with their petty barbarous feuds (…) ---
**Author:** ![RedFury](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/ec9cab/32.png) [@RedFury](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RedFury)\ **Post date:** [August 13, 2008, 4:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-russia-determined-to-be-an-empire-again/459370/235 "2008-08-13T16:11:49Z")
I’ll quote this part of my original article in the interesting of yet again advancing both my criticism of the way unilateralism after the fall of the Soviet Union was taken as a fait à compli and the bullish (thoughtless even) way NATO’S expansionism has been progressing since: > [@Morton Abramowitz](#): > > … **But the most dangerous concept was to think time had stopped, history declaring us victors. The uncontrolled expansion of NATO in the nineties—often in violation of promises made to Russia—was the major manifestation of this widespread sentiment. We forced the hapless Russians, still struggling to restore their country, to accept in their eyes ever-greater humiliation.** They would get over it and it was a farsighted strategic move to expand the NATO alliance into Russia’s backyard, or so we thought. > > **Russian anger was further deepened by the Bush-administration decision to put advanced missile defenses in the Czech Republic and Poland, over strong Russian objections, and our securing independence for Kosovo. Worse we proclaimed Georgia an ally, helping train its forces, and promising it would get into NATO, a red flag if there ever was one for Putin.** He hated Saakashvili precisely because of his close ties to the West, his efforts to make Georgia an anti-Russian bastion, and its desire to join NATO. **Shrugging off the Russians is of course okay if you can back up your commitments, however implicit. We could not. Nor is this to assert moral equivalence—only that prudence and understanding of what realistically can be done once circumstances change are necessary.** – bolding mine. Much more at source. ---
**Author:** ![tagos](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/bbe5ce/32.png) [@tagos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tagos)\ **Post date:** [August 13, 2008, 4:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-russia-determined-to-be-an-empire-again/459370/236 "2008-08-13T16:13:24Z")
[QUOTE=Švejk] My query? to be fair, everybody is talking about that NATO is too big and all the examples of what might go wrong are based on a country that never made it into the membership of NATO. If any borrowed muscle was flexed by one of the Baltic states or Poland or the Czech Republic or some such, that’d lend much more weight to the things being said about: [/QUOTE] Poland and the Czech Republic don’t fit that category. Note the Czechs and Slovaks peacefully went their own way. The Soviet Union froze a lot of ethnic conflicts and laid the seeds for other with massive population transfers which have left significant Russian minorities all over the shop, or other minorities displaced from their homeland and forming cuckoo’s in some other nest ticking away like time bombs. Look what happened with the demise of Yugoslavia. They could not wait to get at each other’s throats, pick up where they left off. Hell, the Serbs still bitch endlessly about how the Croats sided with the Nazi’s and therefore it’s fine to kick the shit out of them. Germany and France are right to block NATO membership until these problems are solved. ---
**Author:** ![RedFury](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/ec9cab/32.png) [@RedFury](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RedFury)\ **Post date:** [August 13, 2008, 4:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-russia-determined-to-be-an-empire-again/459370/237 "2008-08-13T16:16:17Z")
[QUOTE=Švejk] My query? [/quote] Yes. > [@Švejk](#): > > [Whether admitting them was a smart move is another question…](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=10094245&postcount=222) > [@](#): > > to be fair, everybody is talking about that NATO is too big and all the examples of what might go wrong are based on a country that never made it into the membership of NATO. If any borrowed muscle was flexed by one of the Baltic states or Poland or the Czech Republic or some such, that’d lend much more weight to the things being said about: I don’t want to wait for that to happen. Do you? ---
**Author:** ![Svejk\_1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ea666f/32.png) [@Svejk\_1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Svejk_1)\ **Post date:** [August 13, 2008, 4:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-russia-determined-to-be-an-empire-again/459370/238 "2008-08-13T16:23:28Z")
[QUOTE=RedFury] I don’t want to wait for that to happen. Do you? [/QUOTE] Erm, no… I’m just saying that it’s not that likely to happen either, that is, not as likely as some of the people in this thread are saying - which I meant to make clear by pointing to some actually existing new NATO members from the former sphere of influence of Russia which are obviously not, as **tagos** calls them, ‘(…)crappy little states, still boiling over with their petty barbarous feuds (…)’. I mean, notice the username? I know that the Czech Republic is none of those things - although I think some problems might yet come about with the large Russian population in the Baltics. ETA: As to the ‘my query thing’ - I just that whether we allow countries into NATO or not is another question than the one being discussed, which it is, but not that it’s a question that I want answered. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Oy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/bc8723/32.png) [@Oy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Oy)\ **Post date:** [August 13, 2008, 4:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-russia-determined-to-be-an-empire-again/459370/239 "2008-08-13T16:27:48Z")
**Red Fury** , thank you. That was an excellent article, and made clear how badly the US has screwed the pooch here. That being said, I think **Svejk** ’s point must be considered - the impetus for countries like Georgia to join NATO has come from both directions, and it has not just been that “crazy” Saakashvili who has been driving it. Now, I think we can all agree that the South Ossetia business was idiotic. No one, but no one, has suggested that Georgia was right to do what it did; the most anyone has done was to suggest that maybe they weren’t _entirely_ wrong. That was me, and I’ll freely admit that I was mistaken. They deserved to be tossed out of S. Ossetia and they were. But that’s not where it stopped, and it seems pretty obvious that that wasn’t what this was really about, although **mswas** seems to want to keep bringing it back to that. Every analyst and ambassador I’ve seen on PBS, not exactly a bastion of the neo-cons or the right wing, has said that this is about Georgia’s relations with the west and about regime change in Georgia. They have also said that Russia’s response has been far disproportionate to what Georgia did in S. Ossetia. Almost every article you folks have shown me has said the same. And in fact, rather than trying to reinstate the Cold War, Bush has spent his entire administration cuddling up to Putin and saying what a great guy he was and how he was his new BFF. That hasn’t stopped him from also cozying up from Georgia, but it’s hardly been attempting to scare the US about the great Russian Bear. They’ve been too busy trying to terrify us about the Evil Islamo-Fascists[sup]TM[/sup]. So I think that if I’m paranoid about Russia, I’m doing that one on my own, without the help of the neo-cons this time (not outside the realm of possibility, mind you). Now I understand that you think it’s ridiculous to allow ‘should’ and ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ to enter into this kind of discussion, but I grew up in the sixties, and I just can’t shake the old habits. So I’m having real trouble with the idea of just ending all of this by slapping Georgia’s nose and saying “Bad Georgia! BAD!!!” and then turning to Russia and saying “All right then, carry on.” I actually believe that if the people of Georgia or any of the other former Russian Republics want trade alliances with the west, they ought to be able to make them without having Russia bomb their country, irrespective of what we did in Serbia in the nineties. I understand that thanks to the policies of Bush, we don’t have any military options. I don’t know that they’d be appropriate if we had them available anyway (never a CIA or a State Dept. around when you need it!). But I think there’s a middle ground here. I can’t believe that the only thing that would register with Russia would be our beating the crap out of them. Perhaps the wise middle ground would be NOT to allow Georgia into NATO, but rather something else. Again, I don’t have access to the resources that will tell me that. I don’t understand Russian thinking well enough to judge. But, **mswas** , there’s no need to insult me by suggesting that I take W’s position on anything! That’s hitting below the belt! 😃 ---
**Author:** ![RedFury](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/ec9cab/32.png) [@RedFury](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RedFury)\ **Post date:** [August 13, 2008, 4:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-russia-determined-to-be-an-empire-again/459370/240 "2008-08-13T16:35:29Z")
[QUOTE=Švejk] Erm, no… I’m just saying that it’s not that likely to happen either, that is, not as likely as some of the people in this thread are saying - which I meant to make clear by pointing to some actually existing new NATO members from the former sphere of influence of Russia which are obviously not, as **tagos** calls them, ‘(…)crappy little states, still boiling over with their petty barbarous feuds (…)’. I mean, notice the username? I know that the Czech Republic is none of those things - although I think some problems might yet come about with the large Russian population in the Baltics. [/quote] Yet another quote, this time coming from Putin’s stance, from one of my prior links: > [@](#): > > Russia, of course, sees it differently. It fears the missile sites could be turned into offensive weapon sites. **In consequence, to the alarm of some NATO members, it has scrapped an agreement on conventional force levels in Europe and threatened to target missiles on countries which house missile defense installations for the U.S.** – bolding mine. Yep. Bit alarming I’d say. > [@](#): > > ETA: As to the ‘my query thing’ - I just that whether we allow countries into NATO or not is another question than the one being discussed, which it is, but not that it’s a question that I want answered. 🙂 Might I get back to you on this once I put it through BabelFish?. 😕 😉 [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-russia-determined-to-be-an-empire-again/459370.md?page=11) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-russia-determined-to-be-an-empire-again/459370.md?page=13)