Capitol Hill Blue Forums Political Issues Foreign Policy & News The long and winding road to Dumbass

I just want to know if it's wrongheaded to oppose Putin's ambitions in Europe, that's all.
I'm not getting much of a response to my earlier scenario in which Ukraine, from say perhaps 1998 onward, would have had its fate sealed forever as
a Putin colony, is no longer relevant as a possible "Western friendly" European nation, and whether or not Putin would view that fate accompli as permission to
advance on other neighboring countries in a series of succesive restoration of the old Soviet style sphere of influence.

By the way, if you really want to argue whether or not Putin has embraced fascism or not, in the end it doesn't matter on the surface once one
reaches a certain level of authoritarian power, because at street level, you are told what to do and think regardless.
But at the top level, the friends of power are markedly different.
And they have PERSONAL and INDIVIDUAL wants and needs that may be markedly different.

The fictional Arthur Jensen in Paddy Chayefsky's "Network" asked Howard Beale:

"What do you think the Russians talk about in their councils of state -- Karl Marx? They get out their linear programming charts, statistical decision theories, minimax solutions, and compute the price-cost probabilities of their transactions and investments, just like we do."

Well, what do you think the Russians talk about in their councils of state today --- Adolf Hitler?
No, they talk about leveraging oil hegemony mostly, because petroleum is about ---- what, seventy percent of the Russian economy now?
Its industrial structure dramatically shifted away from heavy investment in manufacturing and agriculture toward market services, oil, gas, and mining since the fall of the socialist command economy to a capitalistic market system in 1990.

Russia is desperate for capital investment from the West and the only way they're going to get it is if they soften the ground a lot more as regards attitudes toward Putin's advancement in Eastern Europe.
From Wiki:

Lithuania:
chemical products and plastics (17.8%), machinery and appliances (15.8%), mineral products (14.7%), wood and furniture (12.5%).

Ukraine:
one of the world's largest grain exporters.

Moldova:
a well-established wine industry. It has a vineyard area of 147,000 hectares (360,000 acres), of which 102,500 ha (253,000 acres) are used for commercial production. Most of the country's wine production is made for export. Moldova's agricultural products include vegetables, fruits, grapes, wine, and grains.

Estonia:
Oil shale energy, telecommunications, textiles, chemical products, banking, services, food and fishing, timber, shipbuilding, electronics, and transportation are key sectors of the economy.

Czech Republic:
In 2018 the largest companies by revenue in the Czech Republic were: automobile manufacturer Å koda Auto, utility company ÄŒEZ Group, conglomerate Agrofert, energy trading company EPH, oil processing company Unipetrol, electronics manufacturer Foxconn CZ and steel producer Moravia Steel.

Bulgaria:
Extraction of metals and minerals, production of chemicals, machine building, steel, biotechnology, tobacco, food processing and petroleum refining are among the major industrial activities.

Hungary:
See "Science and Technology"

----So Putin stands to gain a huge windfall by rejiggering the political fortunes and future of these countries, and of course, adding their output almost directly to Moscow,
because when you're an authoritarian at his level, that's what you do, regardless of whether you do it via a network of communist "collectives" or if you do it by stuffing the pockets
of your oligarch buddies.

Suddenly the Russian Federation gets a very diverse basket of goods and services to round out and empower their already moribund petro-dominated economy, and that further fuels his peristaltic advance into the Western world.

Seems the above nations already would have jumped into his lap all by themselves a long time ago if he'd offered a better deal than the West, dontcha think?