a Quora - about us taking totally wrong friendly tack on Russia after 1991

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Tomaž Vargazon
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Practicing atheist Jan 18

Are people of EU not afraid of cornered Russia going berserk like
Germany did after WWI? Russia constantly complains about NATO expansion,
why not let them be?
Well yes, we are. That’s exactly the reason for the current predicament.

Russia (orange) and NATO (green). Sweden is practicing their submarine
skills on this map.

For years, decades even, the EU did everything humanly possible and then
some to make Russia feel at peace and secure. We made sure they could
sell their gas to EU, build pipelines and entangle their economy with
our own. We didn’t criticise Russia for their antics in Chechnya. We
turned a blind eye to Russian internal politics altogether. We allowed
Russian propaganda channels to run amok in the west and didn’t create
our own to compete for Russian audience. We rejected membership to NATO
for Ukraine and Georgia, even though both pleaded quite desperately to
get in.

As a nice thank you, Russia invaded Georgia in 2008, Ukraine in 2014 and
in 2022, they’re threatning us nuclear war and Russian television speaks
openly about expanding the war to NATO member states, taking the Baltics
and invading Poland.

It was a mistake to treat Russia as a partner. We screwed up in 1991 and
the years that followed. What we should have done is treat them like a
beaten dog and clamp down on them with an iron fist. No sales of
energents, without major concessions: no public television in Russia,
all TV programming will be done by Western TV stations (including public
ones) that will run Russian languague programs. No wars either, if an
area wants to walk free you can send in the police but not the army, or
else your aid programs stop. Nuclear disarnament, EU can’t be in range
of more Russian weapons than EU countries can land on Russia, etc.

Had we done so Russia would be a friend now. Alas, we can but learn from
our mistakes.

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353 comments from
Werner Janik
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Werner Janik
· Jan 18
Good comment thanks. I am also one of these silly guys who believed in a
peaceful coexistence with Russia and was dreaming of a Russian
integration into a greater Europe for the good of all of us.

What an illusion!

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G Watts
· Jan 18
Myself as well. I was a real Russophile. Russia must be de-fanged and
isolated - Putin has started the process and is doing a great job from
that context/perspective.

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David North
· Fri
This is the danger of human nature. Men like Putin can appear at any
time in nations that are weak, compromised, immoral or struggling.

We severely underestimate the individual human factor too much when
analyzing geopolitics. In nations where single leaders have excessive
control, all the predictions and forecasts based on economics,
geography, trade, population, etc. can be completely upended by a
single, obsessed and amoral person with delusions of grandeur.

Most of us don’t think like homicidal psychopaths and would find the
sort of thinking they have distressing and unimaginable. Yet for them,
it is “just another day”.

Pathological killers come in two flavors: those who are born that way
due to vagaries of brain development coupled with childhood experiences
and those who simply choose to act like them. For both, it is a
narcissistic lack of empathy coupled with a love of self over all that
make them internally almost the same.

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Mally Duck
· Fri
Just like Hamas, they attack but play the victim. Don't stop til these
terrorists are neutered.


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Nic Harvard
· Jan 18
The (modern) western mental approach is that “war is an extension of
diplomacy”

This is not the case in Africa, most of Asia, South America (somewhat)
or Eastern Europe (somewhat)

War, in their mind, has no rules.

Lies, propaganda, pillage, rape, despoiling or attacking the civilian
population, ethic cleansing via deportation, cultural and linguistic
suppression, or even outright murder are simply tools of war.

“Haha, our lads gave them a good pasting! And they cannot even complain!
They are all dead or hiding. Job well done. Now let’s split the loot.”

This mode of behaviour has been frowned apon in civilised countries
since the 17th century.

And when in conflict with an entity who thinks like this, you have to
play by their (lack of) rules or else they think they are winning.

Witness the current Gaza mess.

I believe that it was Churchill who said “The Hun is either at your feet
or at your throat”

They need to KNOW they are beaten.

The first modern example of two relatively industrial nations which
shows this being applied effectively was, interestingly enough, probably
the Boer War, which he covered as a journalist/observer/military
correspondent.

Cary Mcdonald
· Sat
And Trump was derided and laughed at in 2017 when he openly told Germany
at the United Nations that they were nuts to be dependent on Russia for
gas. Even in the US media today, they try to paint Trump as a Russian tool.


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David North
· Fri
It’s human nature to instinctively think people are mostly “like you”
and a lot of progressive ideology has this as it’s foundational principle.

It’s not until you finally meet those people who are not only unlike you
but who are really unlike you that it starts to shake people’s dearly
held perspectives.

Two of the largest and most predatory countries in the world today are
where they are precisely because everyone tried to “nice” them into
becoming good countries.

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Paul Brawley
· Jan 18
I had thought the same.

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Paul Vincent
· Sat
It may yet come about once Nazi Russia is defeated.

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Antonio Defilippo
· Sun
your comment is spot on.The illusion is not Russia but infact the war
mongering U.S.A

along with the faithfully little lapdog the U.K.and sovereign less E.U.


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Tomaž Vargazon
· 2h
Me too, but I wouldn't call it silly. After all, Germany and Japan were,
if anything, worse and look at them now.

Nations can change, then can be turned upside down within a single
lifetime. We’ve seen it happen, we did it to some. It is absolutely
possible for a nation to change for the better or for the worse. We just
believed Russia would turn out better than it did.

That wasn't stupid. Overly optimistic maybe, but not silly. If you
simply expect the worst you make it a self-fulfilling prophecy. You're
often right then. Yay you.

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Jarkko Holkkunen
· Jan 18
It starts to look like the only long-term path is to chop Russia up into
smaller countries.

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Chris Cottrell
· Jan 18
Absolutely Jarkko, though it should not be the west that does the
chopping up; but the peoples of the Russian Federation seeking self
determination - as people did in the Baltic States in the 80s.

Perhaps the free world could help by publicly offering western support
to any states that do break off from the Russian Federation.

Bradley Betts
· Jan 18
Problem is, we tried the Iron Fist approach with Germany after WW1 and
the resentment it caused led pretty directly to WW2. While I agree that
we let Russia get away with more than we should have, I can see why
western powers tried a friendlier approach in the 1990s.

It’s easy to say, with the advantage of hindsight, that that was the
wrong approach. But I think it was a reasonable approach at the time,
given recent history.

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Ivor Somrak
· Jan 18
It was a half-assed, exploitative approach. The “friendliness” was
directed at Russian oligarchs selling away resources on the cheap and
pocketing the money. Russian people, in the meantime, had a very bad
day. Nobody really gave a shit about that, back then.

That’s why it didn’t work. Made friends with the wrong people, for the
wrong reasons.


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Zacharias Luber
· Thu
But irrelevant. The west neither had the responsibility nor the power to
control inner workings in Russia.

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Gordon Stewart
· Sat
Literally did in the 1990s. We decided their elections and whether they
get IMF money or not. The place was a basket case with no economy and
everything looted left and right.

Thing is, too many people still have daydreams of delusions of grandeur
that we can reestablish the decade of humiliation of Russia or even the
century of humiliation of China. It's just not happening, times have
changed, but attitudes lagged behind.

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Nic Harvard
· Jan 18
No

No one used an iron fist there.

That was exactly the problem.

The Germans were convinced that they hadn’t been beaten.

Allowing them to surrender under conditions which were not enforced was
THE cause of WW2.

Rob Oliver
With few clothes 😁
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Ivor Somrak
· Jan 18
What we should have done is treat them like a beaten dog and clamp down
on them with an iron fist.

You and what army? You always seem to forget about the nukes. USSR fell
apart, but the core was very much intact and very much able to ram that
iron fist up the ass of anyone who tried anything.

The rest is just pure fantasy. As usual.

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Tomaž Vargazon
· Jan 18
Yeah, nukes. Cute. When Lithuania declared independence of the USSR, the
Kremlin wanted to send in the arms. Western world told them thus: “look,
it’s your country, do what you want. But do you remember that $100
billion we promised you so you wouldn’t starve? That’s off the table if
you do anything.”

The USSR fell a few short months later. You probably don’t realize just
how hopelessly weak and mismanaged Russia was at the time. The country
with the largest agricultural potential in the world couldn’t even feed
itself.

But nukes!!!!11 Yeah. Cute.