Russia Resurgent - A TL
- Thread starter Sārthākā
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I don't think it's been asked before, what is the general difference in global reception to the UN? It seems like the Peacekeepers have been more active, and in a more successful fashion, than over the same period OTL, have they shed more of their Rwanda-era reputation?
Another question: Considering that Russia and the former Soviet Union as a whole is both much richer and (relatively) more free and accountable to its citizens, and there was a 'popular TV show' about the event a little over ten years after it which presumably boosted its public profile, what is the condition of the people most affected by the Chernobyl Disaster? The people of Pripyat and the rest of the Exclusion Zone forced to evacuate their homes, the hundreds of miners that tunnelled below the reactor to build the heat exchanger, the thousands of 'biorobots' that got lifetime doses of radiation in little over a minute clearing debris from the roof, the hundreds of thousands of liquidators that otherwise got significant doses in their time near the station, the children that were born and grew up in the huge area which received some amount of fallout? Did they get recognition and/or compensation beyond what they received IOTL, or is/was giving it to them a political issue?
it's complicated....for example the UN peacekeeping in kosovo still failed otl, and the division of kosovo only happened due to Russian and American diplomacy. And whilst the UN peacekeeping in the Suez succeeded, the peacekeeping in Egypt itself failed horribly, leading to till now 2 years of heavy conflict.
Initially it was a political issue, as the Russian and Ukrainian economies were recovering, there was no room to give compensation, however as the economies recovered, the survivors and affected got around 2/3 more compensation ittl than otl.
it's not stable, but it's not unstable either. It's muddling through, like an average nation
Would you consider making a post about the society and culture of Iran and Central Asia, complementary to the posts of those same topics regards to Russia, and how they're different to the real world?
If Iran is reformist, and (tentatively) liberalising, what is the balance of people in the west who recognises that vs. the people still understanding it as a member of the 'Axis of Evil'?
How true is it still to characterise the 'Stans as, in general, being a region of significant poverty and extremely authoritarian regimes? On a scale between North Korea, with no freedom of the press and where people can be disappeared at will to protect the head of states power, and TTL Russia, where there are some understandable worries about just how much power is invested in the highest offices but at least (for now) those offices are term-limited and filled by free and fair elections, where do the 'Stans sit? And what is the overseas/Western perception of that region, as a separate question? To take the example of the character Borat, a part of him is a mockery of the authoritarian petty kingdoms of post-Soviet Central Asia, but most of him is to mock First World, predominantly American, indifference and general ignorance about other places and peoples. 90% of the joke is that people are ready to assume this cartoon character is actually a real person just because he's foreign. OTL Sacha Baron Cohen picked Kazakhstan to be Borat's place of origin precisely because the one thing that most people in the US or Britain that could be expected to say about Kazakhstan was that it was some post-Soviet state, so probably very poor and ruled by an authoritarian. Would TTL Sacha Baron Cohen be able to do that to make the joke land with Kazakhstan or any of the other 'Stans?
That doesn't really answer their question. Wouldn't an "average nation" be safely categorised as "stable", in that it doesn't have its existence or territorial boundaries under immediate or short-term threat of dissolution? If you didn't feel right calling it stable, then what are its problems, and what stops those problems from being so serious that you didn't want to call them unstable either?
i will. I am currently doing a write up on the EU countries
Well liberalization has never been a real problem for America against Iran. Their interests clashing is a bigger concern and problem
Eh the entire Borat joke about post soviet states is largely redundant ittl.
That part is coming in the Middle East Writeup
I didn't just mean the perception of Iran within the population of the Neo-con geopolitics wonks, I mean among the general public of the west. In our world, while American conservatives and liberals are basically in agreement that Iran isn't a good place to live, there is a decent number of people (they tend to be liberals) who are aware that there are a large amount of people in the country who want political and social reform, and a smaller number understands that there even is some level of official recognition of these people by Iran's political system; Not much, it should be said, but it's democratic in comparison to the Saudis. How could it not have become a point during the US presidential campaign that Iran had just come out of its own elections with it's reformers winning in a landslide, for example?
Even if speeches to woo over the general public can't display a nuance about Iran, in their heads American political figures have to be thinking about ten or twenty years into the future; if their partisan line is to foam at the mouth for regime change in Iran whatever the cost, can they be sure they aren't just demanding something that's probably going to happen by itself anyway, with the cost of continuing to push Iran into Russia's arms? Russia will then have a Middle East ally that it will be able to rely on more and more as time goes on, as the two socially liberalise and accept more of the same ideological groundings. While the US is entangled with Saudi Arabia, an ally that already by that point is proven thoroughly unreliable and within which barely anything other than a total social 'reset' ala 1789 or 1917 will modify in the foreseeable future a society that the vast majority of Americans despise.
Surely somebody in the American foreign policy scene is thinking that the cost of rapprochement with Iran is worth it if it means pulling a potential valuable ally out of the Russian/Eurasian orbit? For now, I understand it being a minority position, but it couldn't be unthinkable, right?
How is it redundant? Do you mean that the 'nugget of truth' about the post-soviet states factually just isn't there, or are you talking about their perception from abroad?
I can see a lot of rhetorical fodder being made in the blogosphere about America's grumbling about Russia's economic deals with the EU. Finally, 60 years later, the Marshal Plan has gone through a roleswap, with Russia fronting the help to Europe and America trying to block it. I get France, what with being the cornerstone of the EU's anti-Russia bloc, but this just seems like a stupid diplomatic hill for America to die on (but then Rudy Guliani is POTUS, so...), they just look like they trying to dictate Europe's economic policy to them while showing they have no will to enforce that. With Britain not joining in with the Iraq War and collaborating in economics and even force projection with Russia, might it be that France, in its pact of opposition with the US towards Russia, gets the reputation in Europe of being America's lapdog?
Much of the French interest in persuing European integration had been to boost its economy and to keep itself surrounded in Europe with friendly powers, so that France could project power abroad and remain, if not a superpower, then at least a nation of sufficient weight that it must be respected. Leaving the EU means possibly putting a bullet in the head of decades of entanglement between its economy and the economies of its neighbours, as well as taking itself off of the scales that are currently balanced between the pro-Russia and anti-Russia factions of Europe. If France is stuck trying to work out how its economy and international trade is supposed to function, and within the EU it's Germany, Britain, and Italy pushing for greater collaboration with Russia with the only voices of resistance being a bunch of poor post-Communist newbies, then it is really difficult to see how France's geopolitical position is improved over where it is now, where already Russia has displayed the leverage to crowbar France's neo-empire in Africa away from it. And yes, Brexit was also a clearly idiotic move that still happened anyway, but it should be clear that the situation is not so comparable to Britain IOTL. Our EU at least is fairly united on its position regarding Russia, the only main difference is how intense that suspicion and disapproval is, France would have to know where the consensus in the EU will shift without them supplying the No. 2 voice. Also, France was occupied in the Second World War, it fully knows, culturally as well as politically, how badly things can go for itself if it cocks up its geopolitical strategy, a French President in David Cameron's position wouldn't think to run France through such risks, probably even if they knew it would cost them the election. Better to have won and then crushingly lose after one term, than to earn two terms and use them to force France to give up much of the international influence it has.