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Originally Posted by FromRussiaWithLove
I completely agree with you. It's amazing how Americans are completely clueless and do not know a single thing about Russia, its politics or its people.
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The people who aer clueless are the ones who said the things below.
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Originally Posted by Russophile
Personally speaking, I believe it will be between the US (duh) and Russia. Not souley speaking as a Russophile, but honestly, with the Medvedev/Putin Alliance, I can only see bad things coming for the both of our countries.
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World War between the two countries? Russia couldn't afford the Cold War . . . and if it was "Hot War" it woudl have to be very quick, because they couldn't afford that either. Russia is not interested in any way, let alone a world war with the world's lone (currently) superpower.
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Originally Posted by FromRussiaWithLove
I hate to break it to you, but the U.S. will also probably need oil! And you need to read up on history and foreign policy...if you would, you would know that there is no chance in hell that Russia and the U.S. will join on the same side.
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Ummm . . . yeah, they already have - twice in the past century. The enemy of my enemy is my friend, that will ALWAYS be the case in geopolitical issues.
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Originally Posted by FromRussiaWithLove
I'm not talking about France, Germany or England. You shouldn't hold Europe as a model for the rest of the world, it's quite ethnocentric. And the history I'm talking about is post-Cold War between the U.S. and the Soviet Union, not history in general. It’s ironic that the U.S. wants to democratize the world and when given a chance after the collapse of the Soviet Union, it completely ignores the newly created democracy. And people wonder why when Putin came to power, Russia reverted to statism instead??? It’s because democracy and the West have proven to be unreliable, which is an obvious cause of the tensions, particularly between the U.S. and Russia. Russia is not simply just going to forgive and forget.
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You didn't say anything post Cold-War history, which is less than twenty years old by the way, but you probably already knew that since you are a history scholar.
It isn't democracy and the West which have proved unreliable, it is the Russian ledership and their poor economy which has proven to be unreliable. There are examples of nations who have embraced democracy after having no experience with it previously and they have been successful. Russia's failures have very little to do with the West or democracy. It also isn't the West's or democracy's fault that Putin wants Russia to be more autocratic, his statist policies have more to do with him wanting more control than anything else.