Foolish and Stupid Americans Ruined Relationships with Russia

[timelets]

- Litvinenko poisoning
- Annexation of Crimea
- War in Donbass
- The downing of the Malaysian Boeing
- Chemical attacks in Syria
- Elections hacking
- Novichok poisoning

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Comments

[lxe]

The Magnitsky Act, in this perspective, was a gravely belated step in the right direction.
I am not the right person to tell when exactly it went too late. In 1991/1992 no particular road had been taken, and any could yet be. By 1996, it was observationally confirmed that the civilized world (quote the phrase or not) would accept any Russian administration as long as it doesn't play hammer and sickle. There was a possibility of escape in 1998/1999 but all major international players had already lost interest. By 2000, there was the psychopath with a zero-sum-game worldview in the Kremlin and anything short of shooting him down made him stronger.
As far as I understand aillarionov, he is not promoting the assumption that a Supreme Council victory would rule the autocratic degeneration scenario out. His point rather boils down to "stand for the institutions and come what can"; that would also have been "American" in the true sense.

[timelets]

It's quite possible that supporting Yeltsin in 1996 was foolish, but there's no evidence that the support made the relationship worse. As you've said, "the civilized world (quote the phrase or not) would accept any Russian administration as long as it doesn't play hammer and sickle."

Moreover, after Putin called Bush on 9/11 and the famous "looked into his eyes" the relationship reached its peak. Russia even didn't veto the UN Resolution on Iraq.

It went downhill somewhere around 2007
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russia%E2%80%93United_States_relations#Controversy_over_U.S._plan_to_station_missiles_in_Poland

[lxe]

but there's no evidence that the support made the relationship worse.

The PoV I am outlining here is that the relationships could have been better without a Putin, and the actual Putin was (to an extent) a product of giving Yeltsin's administration a free pass. I am not considering Putin an independent parameter here.

(Actually, under the assumption of (a; any) Putin in the Kremlin, the conclusion would be trivially true because the "no Putin" precondition would be trivially false. But that's not the essence of what I meant.)

[timelets]

This is a hypothetical. Maybe there exists an alternative universe where due to a Communist victory in Russia in 1996 the relationships between Russia and the US are better than in the present universe. I have no access to that universe. More importantly, the person whose twit we are discussing doesn't have any problem with the universe where Putin is in charge of Russia. In this context, a discussion about what if Putin was not in power in Russia in the alternative universe sounds irrelevant to me.

[timelets]

Actually, 2011 was the turning point because Putin thought that after public protests over rigged elections the US was about to instigate a "color revolution" in Russia.