cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/23478977
We are forced to choose: Is our priority in Russia fledgling democracy or market economics?
Same mistakes happened in Iraq after the second Gulf War. Bush and co assumed building democracy would be easy and fell on their face.
Yeah we thought it ended
Russia didn’t and now 40 years of psychological warfare is bearing fruit globally
Neither the US or Ukraine did anything to Russia.
Without rule of law, you get neither markets nor democracy.
Is there any evidence that the US dictated Russian economic policy? The tankies love to say that the US robbed Russia after the collapse but I haven’t seen any evidence of it. How much of the shock therapy policy was influence by the US and how much of it was just anti-communism and political power games?
“robbed” as in the IMF went in there and did a harsher and obviously larger scale version of what they demanded in Greece and Portugal. They were expecting a Marshall plan and got shock therapy from disaster capitalists instead. This is not a tankie fantasy, because you see the same type of disaster capitalist vultures constantly flying over Western countries’ heads (and developing countries too) trying to privatize everything and cut back in social assurances
What they gloss over is that this is not western countries “attacking” russia, this is global ultraneoliberals preying on anyone who puts themselves in a dire position of need, like the USSR did after decades of mismanagement, but also like Argentina or the “PIIGS”. Gorby had the right idea, but it was too little too late to avoid putting yourself in the hands of the international banksters.
No no no, the USA has never made any mistakes, either after during or before the Cold War.
