The Soviet Union was the kind of place that hundreds could die because a maintenance worker could take the clogged filters out of the exhaust system of a bioweapons plant, write "replace the filters!" on a post-it and have his supervisor release anthrax into a city because he wasn't looking for post-its. I remember Chernobyl, too. Every kid in town had parents who could explain at length why Chernobyl happened there and couldn't happen here. My dad was the only one on standby to hop on a cargo jet if the Soviets accepted our help. They didn't, because they were Soviets. There's a lot of duty and honor and stoicism in HBO's Chernobyl. There isn't a lot of hubris. Chernobyl happened because the Soviets were poor and didn’t want the world to know they were punching above their weight. Keep bargain-basement nuclear reactors out of the control of command economies run by nepotism and the odds of a meltdown go way down.
As it stands with Russia today, too. As a country, Russia is basically Moscow and the 100 mile oblast around it, St Petersburg (for foreign tourism), and the Black Sea coast (for vacationing Russians). Their economy is tiny. Their infrastructure is almost non-existent (on a per-capita basis). And yet we are continually told to consider them our single largest threat on the planet. I've never understood the US's utter fascination with making Russia the boogeyman... it's completely out of scope with their ability to project power more than walking distance from their border. Chernobyl happened because the Soviets were poor and didn’t want the world to know they were punching above their weight.
At the end of WWII there were two countries left standing - the US and the USSR. There were two ideologies left standing - capitalism and Marxism-Leninism. They battled until they were eyeball to eyeball and then partitioned the world. Who can you make the bogeyman if not the one nation you aren't dealing with? Make a spectrum. Put your direst enemy on one end, yourself on the other. You can deal with everyone on the spectrum except your direst enemy because everyone else is a matter of degree. And as soon as the Soviets tested nukes it was gonna be proxies all over the world forever and ever amen.I've never understood the US's utter fascination with making Russia the boogeyman...
Sure sure sure. I get/know all that. I lived through most of it. What I don't get is the continued fascination with Russia and fetishization of them as Dr Evil-type nogoodniks. I guess there are just too many John Bolton's still clinging to power. Old scared white men are our fucking cross to bear, aren't they? TOMORROW leaders could flip the script on Russia, expose their sad economic numbers, their lack of ability to mobilize, their cartoonish Cold War-style efforts in the various -istans, and their flaccid attempts at projecting power in the middle east, and quickly turn the Russia narrative from Evil Empire to the KGB's Clown-like Grandchildren. Seems like a much more powerful narrative, and one that we could control easily. Also puts us in a solid position to do better business with China, and become a real collaborative trading partner, rather than a begging dog at the foot of whichever loony is currently running China. (Deng?)
Seriously? 'cuz as soon as Yeltsin was out, our Free Market Makeover of Russia was over and the KGB was running things same as they ever were. How the fuck do you expect to sell $350m F-35s with that kind of attitude, young man?What I don't get is the continued fascination with Russia and fetishization of them as Dr Evil-type nogoodniks.
TOMORROW leaders could flip the script on Russia, expose their sad economic numbers, their lack of ability to mobilize, their cartoonish Cold War-style efforts in the various -istans, and their flaccid attempts at projecting power in the middle east, and quickly turn the Russia narrative from Evil Empire to the KGB's Clown-like Grandchildren.