- Joined
- Dec 12, 2015
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- 3,566
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Putin isn't nearly as bad as many people are made to believe. When he came to power I think the household Russian income was like $8000 and over the next decade he increased it to $20,000 American. The people there love him. After the fall of the Soviet union America installed western loyal companies and oligarchs to extort the Russian economy. Putin expelled them, jailed them, or turned them. As Putin most recently said, riot police in Russia don't even carry batons or pepper spray. We do though.
So journalists get killed sometimes, they're called American spies.
I don't claim Putin is innocent, but he's not all bad and I think from a long term(I know that's hard for many AMericans) strategy, it's best economically, militarily, and culturally that the west align itself with Russia. China is a Beast and this will be China's century if we let it be.
I don't know if this is just a case or imprecise language, but why in the bloody hell would the West align itself with Russia and not the other way around? Our deck is stacked to the gills with resources and weapons, Russia's isn't. We all know every few months the Russians release a story about some new super weaponry, but there's zero evidence that their military at this point even comes close to matching the US (and Nato). Yes, they've got a nuclear arsenal, which obviously makes them extremely dangerous, but that still doesn't mean they could hope to win a real conflict with one of the allies....at least not until recently, when it was still a given that the US would come to their defense, which doesn't seem to be a certainty anymore.
And yes, China is a beast, and also ideologically much closer aligned to Russia than to the West. So why should we move closer to their shit systems (let's not kid ourselves: they're both dictatorships), when we've clearly got a superior system? I'll say it again, Russia isn't holding a good a hand, and the only way they can become a real threat to the West at this point if they succeed in breaking up the old post-WW2 alliances.