Joanna
----- Original Message ----- Joanna: " But I do chuckle at the fact that every U.S. mistake makes Russia stronger."
[WS:] Not really. Russia is struggling under its own weight and what the US does has very little to do with it. It is Reaganite propaganda that falsely takes credit for "defeating the evil empire". In reality, Russia swallowed more territory than it could effectively control, and that was its main problem. Randall Collins (_Weberian Sociological Theory_ chapter 8) convincingly argued that in 1986 - when most pundits were clueless about upcoming changes. His argument is that territorial control offers an advantage that countervailed by the cost of military control of that territory, which in turn depends on geopolitics. Russian territorial grab was an advantage in the 18th and 19th centuries, but ceased to be so in the 20th century. It therefore made sense for them to dump not only their third world satellites, but also internally colonized territories, the "stans", the Baltics, Mongolia, and Eastern Europe. It cost them more to control these lands than any benefits they could derive from them.
In the 21 century, the first world countries do not need to militarily control third world countries to get what they want. They can buy what they want with their pocket change, and third world leaders are lining up hats in hand to offer their good to the first world markets. It is the economic Minotaur, if you will. The Russians finally caught up with it and gave up their 19th century geopolitics. The problem is that they still have a lot of baggage which they cannot easily dump.
On Wed, Aug 28, 2013 at 5:33 PM, JOANNA A. <123hop at comcast.net> wrote:
>
> . It's a Reagan thing. Obama has no big picture but he has a
> committee of big picture types and he is trying to sort out a `consensus'
> big picture. Unfortunately, there is no big picture collage that seems to
> make sense, hence the foot dragging on every important issue. So whatever
> the decision, it won't make sense, because there is no sense to be made.
>
> CG
> ___________________________________
>
> There's no big picture except war profiteering. But I do chuckle at the
> fact that every U.S. mistake makes Russia stronger.
>
> Joanna
> ___________________________________
> http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk
>
-- Wojtek
"An anarchist is a neoliberal without money." ___________________________________ http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk