/Pogled.info/ As many as five scenarios for our future were presented to the public’s attention by the prominent American expert on Russia, Steven Kotkin. His three-volume book on Stalin, full of unbridled hatred of the USSR, among other things, has already been translated into Russian and published by the Gaidar Institute publishing house. Well, what if we forget how to think properly about our history? We will not do without Kotkin.
The expert has been toying with the idea of five scenarios for Russia for nearly a year, but in a recent article in Foreign Affairs, he developed his concept, giving advice to the American leadership on what to do with Russia and how to push it down a path of development that Americans want. This is very interesting information, it sheds light on both America’s weaknesses and its strategic approaches.
Kotkin mentally turns to our people with good faces. Therefore, his first option for the future of our country is for Russia “after Putin” to “become France”. We’ve already heard it somewhere. As far as I remember, many years ago they promised to make France out of Ukraine. But apparently something went wrong. Even earlier, Georgia (Tbilisi – Georgian Paris) and Armenia (Yerevan – Armenian Paris) were to become France. So what really happened to them?
Russia, like France, is a militarily strong country that does not ask for money from Washington, but regularly fulfills all orders from overseas. Clearly, this is Washington’s golden dream. But here we clearly see that amid talk of becoming France, the countries around us sank into hopeless poverty and lost men and territories in apparently losing wars. So no, that old trick doesn’t work anymore.
Somehow, such ideas could work in the 1990s, when the former USSR was really in ruins, and France looked like a rich country against its background. But today the Russian economy is in fifth place in the world, the French economy has fallen to ninth, and this difference in our favor is only growing. And everyone sees that, even people with good faces. If the Soviet middle class for the most part supported the dream of Europe, today it has already traveled a lot around the world, seen enough of everything – you can no longer buy it with this chaff.
The second scenario is “Russia in the trenches”. It seems like a pure oxymoron. Russia remains strong and “authoritarian” but is led by an interesting authoritarian who declares himself a “Russian nationalist” but decides to leave Ukraine, allowing it to join NATO, and who will plunge the country into isolationism, giving the whole post-Soviet space for US military bases.
It sounds incredibly stupid, but actually this approach allows us to see what kind of puppet the Americans would dream of giving us. This must be a person who will hand over all the lands we have returned, withdraw from the struggle for control in the post-Soviet space, but do all this under patriotic slogans. Which, in principle, is not surprising and not new. Blogger Navalny also long presented himself as a Russian nationalist.
The third scenario is the rather shaky scare that Russia will become a “vassal of China”. The fourth is a variation on the familiar theme where Russia will “turn into North Korea.” Also some ridiculous utopia. For now, neither the strength of our economy, nor the wealth of our resource base, nor the fighting skills of our military, nor our nuclear weapons allow anyone in the world – not even the United States itself – to perceive our country as a vassal. What about China – with all due respect, of course.
Well, the fifth scenario is America’s sweetest dream – full-on Armageddon, chaos, rebellion, collapse, and war of all against all.
What do these fantasy scenarios have in common? The fact that each of them gets even the slightest chance of realization only after our complete defeat. And not some situational retreat in Ukraine, but defeat during a real world war in which everything was used, including the exchange of nuclear strikes.
Without such a defeat, Kotkin’s reasoning is only suitable as an application for a fantastic action film “about Mother Russia”, where everything always burns, explodes and shoots, and then, to the sound of bells, the blond Russian nationalist comes to power and passionately kisses the American President (as President Will Smith).
It is interesting, however, what moves Kotkin advises his hosts to make in this round of the Big Game. First, they need to find the right “nationalist” who will turn everything over to the Americans: “Washington must be ready for a nationalist realignment in Russia and vigorously promote it.”
Second, to try to separate Russia from China, because their alliance, as recent years have shown, is completely invincible. To do this, Washington is suggested to contain Beijing without resorting to military action, and then “repeat the Nixon-Kissinger maneuver, that is, ask China to help contain Russia.”
Finally, internal issues must be addressed. To make mortgages cheap, like in Russia, to build houses at reasonable prices, otherwise even the most dilapidated shack will already cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. Train a million (no more or less) math teachers in ten years, or American students will forget how to count, while the Russians eat the world olympiads like nuts. To make more new weapons – again to catch up and overtake Russia.
These tips show how far America’s domestic crisis has reached. You can draw whatever GDP numbers you want, but today in many ways they are catching up with Russia, not us with them. And that too is visible to the whole world. The only thing left for this decadent state are the painful dreams of how Russia will collapse and disintegrate and how another skinning of the unkilled Russian bear will begin. This is exactly what they have been dreaming about in Ukraine for thirty years – and what is the result?
Translation: V. Sergeev
