What put Putin on a collision route with the West if in the 2000s he went along with us and even seemed to like west?

FROM:

https://www.quora.com/What-put-Putin-on-a-collision-route-with-the-West-if-in-the-2000s-he-went-along-with-us-and-even-seemed-to-like-west

Dima Vorobiev, Former Soviet propaganda executive

Updated Jun 12, 2020

One of the considerations (not the main one, though) on the part of oligarchs who put Putin on the throne in 1999, was his image of a “KGB liberal”.

Putin came into politics as a fixer for the liberal mayor of St. Petersburg. He worked superbly with Western investors in the city. He spent some time in Europe. He was a known Germanofil and built a decent international business network in the 1990s. He had never been known for xenophobia or anti-Semitism. Besides, KGB traditionally had an image of people who know how to see eye-to-eye with Western bourgeois guys, when necessary.

Putin looked like a perfect man for building bridges from Russia westward.

Therefore, his explicit mandate included finding a way to get Western recognition for Russian oligarchical fortunes, irrespective of their provenance (Project Londongrad). Oligarchs held in the 1990s their part of the bargain, preventing Communists from re-taking power and aligning with the West on global issues. Now, they wanted the West to acknowledge their effort. They required an equal place at the G-8 table of global power.

This is where Putin’s inquiry about the NATO membership in 2000 came from, as well as several hints from his aides at joining the EU. This is also why he was the first to call Bush and offered him help after 9/11. This is also why he agreed to the NATO military logistics bases not only in Central Asia, but also in Ulyanovsk in Russia (“American military boots trampling the Russian soil!” was the line from our radical nationalists at the time).

Then, the following happened:

• NATO accepted the Baltics as new members
• USA withdrew from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, and 'revealed an intent of deploying new ABM systems in Central Europe
• USA invaded Iraq, in spite of Putin’s vehement objections
• Pro-Western Rose revolution happened in Georgia in 2003
• Orange Revolution happened in Ukraine in 2005 and prevented a pro-Russian president from taking office
• Oil price skyrocketed and filled the Russian state budget to a degree unprecedented in our history, see the graph below

From which Putin made the following conclusions:

1. It doesn’t pay to be nice with the US and NATO
2. The US and NATO try to find a way to get rid of him
3. He needs to set up a watertight perimeter preventing outside forces from “color revolutions” against him
4. Everything is happening because no one cared to formalize the terms of the Soviet surrender in 1991. The good news is that it opens for renegotiating the outcome of the Cold war!
5. Russia has money to stand up against the West and push forward a revision of the Cold war’s outcome.
6. The West must accept a New Yalta deal with Putin—not in exchange for some new favors from Putin, but as compensation for Russia’s past favors in 1990–2005.

Useless Idiots

Dear Editor  - exclusive to the Times; NOT for publication in the Express and Star or the Birmingham Post.

Useless Idiots

You wrote, “Nato was created in 1949 as an alliance of free nations to deter Soviet expansionism and aggression.” THE TIMES 15 September.

The ‘Guardian’ in February 2014​,​ proved in their four page spread that it was not the USSR but the UK that has had their armed forces in action in other countries in every single year since at least 1914.  It was hoped that 2015 would be the first year since at least 1914 that the UK was not killing foreigners in their own lands.

It seems that the Cold War was stoked and Nato formed by the West out of paranoia that it was about to be attacked and overrun by the Soviet Union.  This, mind you, after the Russians had just sacrificed about 25 million of their people to help us win a war they had no part in starting! Nato was formed in 1949 and continues.  Their equivalent, the Warsaw Pact lasted from 1955 to 1991. In other words, ​formed ​in response to the West’s unfriendly alliance that they felt threatened them.​ They dissolved their military alliance in 1991.  Since ​then​, the West has continued to spread its influence eastwards to diminish Russian influence and to expand the West’s EU and Nato membership.

Fear of attack by Russia was also used to justify a huge arsenal of weapons of every description.  Nato helped to give respectability to the three leading members for their many wars of expansionism, aggression and regime change around the world.  So much for setting a fine example to other countries! If you make yourself an enemy, you must expect to be treated as an enemy.

The West has unilaterally strengthened itself while the Russians dissolved the Warsaw Pact and saw it Eastern bloc friends go over to the West.​  Ukraine was the most damaging, led to Crimea annexation and civil war that continues to this day.​ The West stirred things up. Useless idiots.

Tim Weller​  (contact details at the foot)

My comment on Harry Leslie Smith's piece in the 'Guardian'

from: 'IAdmireAngelinaJolie':

"He has been dead a long time now, but I doubt very much that he would want to lay a wreath at the

Cenotaph. He was opposed to all forms of aggression... and the memorializing of such aggression. The

folly of man is best forgotten." (the comment that 'IAdmireAngelinaJolie' comments on, now:)

Yes. Well. Amos Oz said:The only alternative to continuing the Israeli military operation is simply to follow 

Jesus Christ and turn the other cheek. I never agreed with Jesus Christ about the need to turn the other 

cheek to an enemy. Unlike European pacifists I never believed the ultimate evil in the world is war. In my view 

the ultimate evil in the world is aggression, and the only way to repel aggression is unfortunately by force.

That is where the difference lies between a European pacifist and an Israeli peacenik like myself. And if I may

add a little anecdote: A relative of mine who survived the Nazi Holocaust in Theresienstadt always reminded 

her children and her grandchildren that her life was saved in 1945 not by peace demonstrators with placards 

and flowers but by Soviet soldiers and submachine guns.

http://www.dw.de/oz-lose-lose-situation-for-israel/a-17822511

SELF:

This is similar to the non-violent, English Baptist member of a Christian Peacemaker team who was 

kidnapped by al Qaeda in Iraq and then was rescued by the SAS.

I do find it strange that an Israeli peacenik, Amos Oz should write, "In my view the ultimate evil in the world is  

aggression, and the only way to repel aggression is unfortunately by force."

Is not using force or violence, aggression also?  Both Israelis and Palestinians accuse the other of just that -

aggression.  It gets them nowhere but to yet more revenge violence.  Revenge is so sweet for the victim of

aggression.  However, when the victim of aggression hits back, we call that terrorism.  Hence, al Qaeda, the

Taliban, Hamas, Hezbollah, Islamic State, some Palestinians are all terrorists.  Our side - NATO and Israel - 

are the peaceniks, the peacemakers because we use our violence and aggression - whoops, I mean force - 

to bring peace out of aggression by our military might is right!

This is all absolutely absurd.  Better to talk to terrorists, who are people like us and get a negotiated,

permanent settlement - as in N Ireland.  Netanyahu and Abbas may then become the Israel/Palestinian 

Chuckle Brothers like Paisley and McGuinness were in N Ireland.  That is even more absurd!

Are our intelligence services as intelligent and as essential and as useful as they want us to think?

Dear Prof Richard

I was the guy who asked the question on Sunday morning, "Were we unnecessarily paranoid about Soviet Russia in the decades of MAD.  Why all the fuss and nonsense from our spies when it was MAD that just about prevented a nuclear holocaust?"

Please could you check, clarify and comment on my report, below of what you said on Sunday.  Ignore my rather jaundiced, unpatriotic, despairing and dissident interpretation over the usefulness of our secret services!

Very many thanks, if you are able to oblige.

Tim

Richard Aldrich replied and confirmed the facts as being correct.

​The offering, below is after his sub editing and that he called "a fiesty piece !!!!" The facts and annual costs of £2/3 billions are his; the conclusions I have drawn are mine:-​

​At the Wigtown Book Festival on Sunday, I heard Richard Aldrich, Professor of International Security at the University of Warwick, speak about his book about GCHQ.  From what I heard, our top ranking intelligent intelligence officers (probably mostly from Oxbridge) got things wrong over Saddam Hussein's chemical weapons at the time of the Gulf War in 1990/91.  They told the politicians that he did not have any WMD but, it seems that he did have them all the time, and lots of them!  So in 2002/3 there was not only political pressure on them "to bend the intelligence" towards invasion but, also a fear of getting it wrong a second time. Ironically, this led them to over-correct and, again to get things wrong, by telling Blair and Bush that this time they were fairly sure he had them.  Therefore, twice they have been mistaken in the case of only one country.  Aldrich said that "Saddam Hussein was deliberately ambiguous over his WMD" in order to keep his enemies, like Iran, guessing.

Therefore, are the 

​two or three ​

billions of pounds spent every year on GCHQ, MI5 and MI6 worth all the money?  They all work so closely  with America's National Security Agency, too that there must be much duplication of wasted effort of finite resources and much hot air - of dangerous greenhouse gases.

It seems that all kinds of weird and wonderful shenanigans went  on over bugs in embassies during the Cold War that was all a complete waste of everyone's time and money.  Time and again, our intelligence officers were taken by surprise at what was known by the Russians despite exhaustive efforts to keep it all secret!  I can only conclude that it was mutually assured destruction (MAD) - and mutual destruction very many times over, too - that prevented nuclear annihilation.

Aldrich asserted in one slide that 'The Cold War was HOT!'  He explained that some of the submarines and aircraft used to collect intelligence near Soviet bases became involved in actual fighting.  Some of our submarines were depth-charged by the Russians while working on behalf of GCHQ. I noted down that he said, "GCHQ failed in its main mission to crack top level Soviet cyphers."

​

Aldrich gave so many examples of wasted effort by intelligent officers that I came away feeling that it was some sort of no expense spared, elaborate game that was played out between the secret services of both - the ever so virtuous Christian West and the very wicked Communist East.

I also came away thinking that the evil Communists did exactly what they liked and when they liked (just as our side did), without the West's secret service being able to stop them - even if they did know in time which, on so many occasions, they did not!​

Bringing freedom, democracy and Western culture to those who don't know better

There is nothing wrong with us all (very nearly) voting for the war parties (doing it and fueling it) while our votes keep the war well away from our shores.  While we don't get killed, we must carry on supporting our heroes when they return in either body bags or upright, regardless of how many they have killed in defending us in foreign lands, on distant shores, thousands of miles away.

Let them carry on sorting out these weak, war torn and sorry countries so that they take on board our right and good way of doing things.

Of course, the West won the war against Western Nazism, next we won it against Soviet Communism and got them to introduce our capitalism.  We never beat Chinese communism but we just got them to introduce capitalism, anyway.  And, without bringing our capitalism down the barrel of a gun, like Mao tse Tung tried to do with his revolution!  Now we are winning the war against those Muslim terrorists who think they can challenge our Western, Christian presence on their holy Muslim soil.  We pay their masters good money for making much better use of their gas and oil than they would ever do!

It simply boils down to the fact that what we do - violent or not - is always morally right and our enemies violent opposition is always morally wrong.  We are the virtuous West against the Islamic terrorists.  The West just can't help being the winners, all along the way - at the expense of the rest of poor humanity!!

The West is simply best.