... could go it alone with its allies within the socialist camp, even if there was no consensus with China, in the teeth of objections from China and in the face of active antipathy from China. China too would make this mistake later, in relation to the USSR. By “go it alone” or go it with one’s allies but without each other, not only meant in world affairs in general but more specifically and much worse, in relations with the US and the West.
Within this matryoshka doll was another: the notion that the search for negotiations and pacts with the USA was strategically more important than, and on a qualitatively superior plane to the relationship with China. China would make the same mistake ...
... military and economic—when taken together, seem to suggest that the goal and objective of the West is to initiate the endgame of the Long Cold War and to win it, imposing a zero-sum outcome. What was thought to be its end with the collapse of the USSR and unilateral retrenchment of Russia, did not amount to the sustainable victory that the West thought it would be. It now appears that a final gamble on the military advantage of the West has inspired a drive that goes beyond ‘containment’ to one of active encirclement and ‘roll back’ (to use a hawkish concept which had a short shelf-life ...
... modernization of the socialist system and gaining immense moral authority. However, already in 1989 all these necessary but belated measures let off a cumulative mass of contradictions that had built up over years. The collapse of the socialist bloc and the USSR itself was a totally unexpected disaster, which was swift and irreversible. It is not surprising that the West won a convincing victory. But the victory was over the Soviet Union and the Soviet bloc, not the socialist project or the left idea as such.
Following the Cold War, Russia spent a long time flailing in search of a new identity and ideology. Interestingly,...
Should the West be concerned about the Eurasian Economic Union? Is it a disguised attempt to resurrect the Soviet Union?
Does Vladimir Putin want to restore the Soviet Union? Nobody can irrefutably prove that he does not. However, nobody can prove either that ...
... economy was the weak link. Foreign policy has compensated for that weakness so far. But this resource is now close to exhaustion. The country has regained its military potential at a qualitatively new level and at still tolerable costs. The expansion of Western alliances to the territories Russia considers vital to its security has been stemmed, although it had to pay a dear price for that. The West is developing the long-awaited awareness that Russia’s interests have to be taken into account. ...
... simply failed.
In 2005, Vladimir Putin described the disintegration of the Soviet Union as a major geopolitical catastrophe. The West viewed this statement as evidence of Putin’s nostalgia for the days of Soviet – and with it, Russian – ... ... of motives. Neither the Baltic nor the South Caucusus republics, nor even Ukraine could have caused as big a country as the USSR to disappear so quickly. Only the will of the Russian establishment – the old one that was trying to hold onto the ...
... Foreign Policy:
Interests, Opportunities and Constraints
These different readings of the situation add an extra element of conflict to the division of the Soviet legacy and thus impede the completion of the historical process of the disintegration of the USSR. On the face of it, the West should be very interested in seeing the end of that process, but by its interference it makes that prospect more remote. Moreover, the remaining conflicts lend additional impetus to the existence of the post-Soviet space. Without regulating the confrontations ...
... expanding the Soviet Union's sphere of influence, but the start of its decline. In short, the Soviet leadership correctly sensed (probably instinctively rather than rationally) the moment when they needed to "hold onto their winnings."
The West at that moment had just lived through an internal crisis, caused in part by foreign policy failures. Europe and the U.S. were undergoing a wave of civil rights struggles, the catalyst for which was America's loss in Vietnam, and that of France in ...
