Russians are White Christians, descended from the same people as us (Moscow is/was the 3rd Rome after Constantinople). Their royal family was in the same network as ours. The atrocity of the reds is in the past. They're not our enemies, they're our kin.

That's a hot take and a half.

I think their constitution and culture are way different from ours.

They can be useful. But until they aren't authoritarian, they are just going to be a thug dictatorship.

Don't try to explain it to him. He'll never understand. The blood of all of Europe and more than a little of the Middle East and northern Africa flows through Russia's veins. But they're just a bunch of mud hut hicks who can barely rub a couple sticks together to make fire to the geniuses of PaRD.

It's disgusting.

Being authoritarian doesn't exclude a country from being a key ally though. Look at Saudi Arabia, they legit are living in past centuries when it comes to women's right, minority rights. They have modern day slavery through the Kafala system. And guess what? they are a 'key' US ally. There's other example of this through ME.

Russia is a lot more like us when it comes to values. But again this is beside the point. The point is they are useful to US to act as a counterbalance to China. It was huge geopolitical miscalculation to drive them to China's sphere.

You're completely propagandized. Their constitution and culture is not very different from "ours" (we in Canada DON'T EVEN HAVE a constitution or rights).

They're not "authoritarian", and they're not a "dictatorship". These are propaganda meaningless buzzwords intended to evoke an emotion

You STILL have it backwards! Look where the majority of our production is. Look at the cooperation in energy generation and the excessive wealth China is pulling in due to a green power scam that is destroying the American grid. We're propping up China. And blocking off Russia. The Kissinger plan was to offset Russia with China. Instead, we've enriched one communist nation while fucking a czarist nation that is still getting back on it's feet to our own detriment.

We are serving communists. And in the process of serving them we insured the Russians had no place to turn. We've never sought a counterbalance to China. You're simply wrong.

This post was edited by InsaneBobb on Feb 18 2025 10:06am

Let's put it this way. China didn't knock on America's door to go there and invest. They just open it up and let whoever who wants to come come. And the Americans went in. So it is not exactly their fault.

Furthermore, Democrats should have learnt a thing or two from Kissinger and used Russia to counter China, but they didn't. Why? Because there is an immense amount of Wealth to be Siphon off the Chinese.
The mistakes that the Americans made is simple. They didn't expect the squinty eyes impoverished " Communists " to turn and upgrade in such a manner.

So too bad I guess.

As a matter of fact they should have learnt their lessons with Japan during the late 70s and 80s up till the very early 90s. America was successful in making the Japanese bend their knees since Japan is emasculated by the Americans like the Germans after WW2.
But the Chinese is a whole different ball game.

You can't make them bend no matter how much you want them to bend their knees. It will be very difficult.

This post was edited by Hamsterbaby on Feb 18 2025 10:14am

A+ post. I don't agree with all of it, but you got the broad strokes spot on.

You're talking about stuff that was true 70 years ago. The world has changed. The USSR beast is dead, we don't have any reason or use to prop up China to continue to beat that dead horse.

Today the geopolitical enemy is China, and its been evident for at least a decade now. That's why you saw this huge pivot to Asia. The point now is to actually follow through to the pivot to Asia and stop being spread thin across theaters (i.e. Ukraine) that are completely irrelevant.

This post was edited by ofthevoid on Feb 18 2025 10:24am

The Kissinger plan never stopped. After the fall of the USSR, the propping up of China continued. Democrat policies increased the incentives to outsource, to the point where even R&D started being sourced to China.

It's really wild, friend. You don't understand. The United States does not meet readiness standards thanks to everything we tossed into Ukraine. We don't have the production capacity to replace what we gave away. We don't have trained people to run those factories, they had to be repowered. You know all this, yes? We sanctioned Russia, we supported a proxy war against Russia, yes? Now we are at the lowest military readiness at any point since prior to the bombing of Pearl Harbor, and half the products that make our nation function are coming from China, which includes 90% of our pharmaceuticals.

The shit goes deeper, fren. You don't understand. We have enriched China constantly. We've taken NO action against them at ANY point. We have taken constant, nonstop action against Russia. Trump is guilty of that too. He was the one who put on the sanctions that took us to a point where the only way to go up from there was to start seizing the assets of their citizens.

In what world do you think, do you TRULY think, that any action or strategy has been implemented to counter China?