I mean, Russia would gain a country’s worth of land if Europe and America would just fuck off, so I’d say he has as much to gain as any given billionaire in America and Europe. And politically weakening your opponents by sowing division among their electorate seems like a relatively easy way to do it. Hell, there’s even a book about it.
Certainly, those billionaires have been pushing in the same direction, but I think they have help.
There is no way in hell that present day Russia could take over Europe, especially in light of what we see in Ukraine were Russia has advantages only in manpower, conventional airpower and stores of Soviet time vehicles and they’ve still been brought to a stop and are slowly losing most of those advantages.
They have no such advantages versus even just a small coalition of European countries as long as one of the big ones is in it: France alone in a war footing would fuck them up. I even suspect just a coalition of EE countries would fuck them up if Poland was included.
Further, Far-Right parties are nationalists - they’ll hapilly take Russian money to fund their growth but they will never turn their countries into vassals of Russia, if only because their members would quite literally murder any leaders who tried it. It would only ever go as far as Orban took it - fine with taking a pro-Russia position against a different set of foreigners (whilst very likely being paid for it) but not with Hungary actually being subservient to Russia in its internal affairs.
Russia might capture one or two small EE countries if the EU breaks up, and China gains from the West being too disorganised to oppose their rise to being the prime superpower (which is mainly about the US, since Europe is pretty mild about it) and that’s served by political chaos in the West, not necessarilly the Far Right (and again, the Far Right being nationalists means that their rise might actually harden the European stance towards China).
I think we are in agreement that all of them are pushing for it a bit, it’s just that I think that the possible gains for the ultra rich in stopping the rise of the Left of Europe are far larger, more immediate, concrete and guaranteed - trillions in avoided taxes and keeping their wealth untaxed not to mention the money they make from markets that should never have been privatised - than the geostrategical gains for Russia, much less China, even if one has goes with a wildly fantastical idea of what the Russian military can achieve even in Europe.
I mean, Russia would gain a country’s worth of land if Europe and America would just fuck off, so I’d say he has as much to gain as any given billionaire in America and Europe. And politically weakening your opponents by sowing division among their electorate seems like a relatively easy way to do it. Hell, there’s even a book about it.
Certainly, those billionaires have been pushing in the same direction, but I think they have help.
There is no way in hell that present day Russia could take over Europe, especially in light of what we see in Ukraine were Russia has advantages only in manpower, conventional airpower and stores of Soviet time vehicles and they’ve still been brought to a stop and are slowly losing most of those advantages.
They have no such advantages versus even just a small coalition of European countries as long as one of the big ones is in it: France alone in a war footing would fuck them up. I even suspect just a coalition of EE countries would fuck them up if Poland was included.
Further, Far-Right parties are nationalists - they’ll hapilly take Russian money to fund their growth but they will never turn their countries into vassals of Russia, if only because their members would quite literally murder any leaders who tried it. It would only ever go as far as Orban took it - fine with taking a pro-Russia position against a different set of foreigners (whilst very likely being paid for it) but not with Hungary actually being subservient to Russia in its internal affairs.
Russia might capture one or two small EE countries if the EU breaks up, and China gains from the West being too disorganised to oppose their rise to being the prime superpower (which is mainly about the US, since Europe is pretty mild about it) and that’s served by political chaos in the West, not necessarilly the Far Right (and again, the Far Right being nationalists means that their rise might actually harden the European stance towards China).
I think we are in agreement that all of them are pushing for it a bit, it’s just that I think that the possible gains for the ultra rich in stopping the rise of the Left of Europe are far larger, more immediate, concrete and guaranteed - trillions in avoided taxes and keeping their wealth untaxed not to mention the money they make from markets that should never have been privatised - than the geostrategical gains for Russia, much less China, even if one has goes with a wildly fantastical idea of what the Russian military can achieve even in Europe.
A whole screen of text and you didn’t even finish the first sentence of my comment, and don’t appear to have read the second to last one…
Oops, “country” not “continent”.
My bad.
I still think that rich insiders have vastly more influence than most foreign nations, but none the less you make a valid point.
Well shit, now I feel like a bit of an ass. Sorry for the snark.
You were right and your reaction was understandable, but thanks for the “sorry”!