You were talking about countries not on my radar. Why would do think Russia is not on my radar right now?
The thing is, even within the CIS, Russia is the biggest threat to CIS members, not NATO. That's why Georgia left after it was invaded by Russia.
And this is the big problem with Russia: Russia has always invaded its allies. It also invaded Czechoslovakia and Hungary when they were Russian allies. There's no value in allying with Russia, whereas NATO members don't get invaded.
Lol, the only reason CIS is relevant is because of Russias nukes. Their combined GDP is a paltry $1.828 trillion which is below that of each Italy, France and Germany.
And the EU would be open to that if the CIS countries (especially Russia) were democratic, had rule of law, and respected human and civil rights. 20 years ago there was even talk of Russia possibly joining NATO, until Putin made it clear that he wanted special treatment.
It's dictatorships and countries governed by corruption instead of rule of law that will always make the EU jump into bed with the US. If Russia and China want to weaken the relationship between the EU and US, they should embrace democracy, freedom of speech, freedom of information (no censorship) and respect human rights. Once that happens, the EU can afford to be critical of the US' many, many flaws.
I’d question whether American disfunctional democracy (sure you can vote, it just doesn’t make any difference) and terrible human rights record (denying human rights thanks to religious extremists, world’s highest percentage of population in jails, common and unpunished police murders) are really that much better compared to China.
They are. They are far, far from perfect, and very wrong in as lot of terrible ways. The US certainly doesn't have the moral high ground they often love to claim, but they're still much better than China or Russia on issues of democracy, human rights, freedom of speech, etc. A large minority of the US is working hard to change that, but they're not there yet.
I’d say mentioning China and Russia together in the same sentence already shows a massive bias. The only common thing they have is they are both hated by US.
I think that statement shows massive bias. There are massive differences between the two countries, but neither are beacons of freedom and human rights.
China has no elections at all, Russia has elections, but they're not remotely fair; any credible opposition tends to have "accidents". In both countries, criticism of the leader will be punished, though in different ways.
Neither has freedom of speech or a free press. It's much more structural in China, but in Russia you can still go to prison for years simply for calling the war a war. Any attempt at independent media gets harassed in various ways.
The main difference is in corruption and rule of law: Russia is pretty much entirely a mafia state now. Any assets you have are easily stolen by someone with better connections. Any of those rich oligarchs (who generally got wealthy through corruption and connections) who speaks out against Putin, is likely to lose what they have. In China, investments are safer, because China wants to attract business. And China does make real effort to fight corruption.
China's oppression of the Uyghurs is well documented, and is a process to destroy Uyghurs as a people: a form of genocide. I don't think Russia is doing anything remotely like that domestically, but both Putin and Russian state media do argue in various ways for genocide against Ukrainians.
China is a dictatorship through rule of law; they officially deny people their rights, but at least you know what to expect. Russia is a dictatorship through extreme corruption; you might nominally have rights, but you're likely to get an "accident" if you try to exercise those rights.
Russia is (obviously) far more aggressive and expansionist. China is more interested in soft power, expanding their economy, and influencing other countries through their economic expansion; much more in line with how the EU works, for example.
But no matter how you turn it, both really hate modern liberal values like democracy, free speech, free press, and don't care much for human and civil rights.
And sure, the US has a flawed democracy and has had its share of civil and human rights violations, some of which have still not been prosecuted (Guantanamo Bay), but at least nominally they do care about those issues, many of the people care about those issues, and demand improvement on those issues. Admittedly, there's also a very vocal minority that seems to prefer turning the US into an authoritarian dictatorship (more likely Russian-style and China-style), but they're a minority and they failed at their coup.
Like I said, the US is far from perfect, but if the EU needs an ally, the US is still the only real choice. The EU should probably learn to stand on its own feet and become more independent from the US, but it should not be naive about Russia and China (which it absolutely has been).
>China's oppression of the Uyghurs is well documented, and is a process to destroy Uyghurs as a people
It’s easy to demonstrate it’s not true: Uighurs, like other minorities, have certain privileges, like teaching kids their own language, or not being subject to one child policy. The oppression is a way to combat terrorism; essentially China is fighting the same problem US did, but in a more humanitarian fashion instead of bombing and droning.
Have you noticed that just from your description above Russia is much closer to US than to China? From unfair elections, to systemic oppression of racial minorities, to invading other countries.
Have you actually read that link? You're right, there are elections, but only at the local level. There's only a single party, and the national government interferes in local elections.
What China does well, though, is to get capable people in positions of power. I guess that's partially because the people don't get a direct say. Someone like Trump would never have been able to rise to power there.
> Uighurs, like other minorities, have certain privileges, like teaching kids their own language, or not being subject to one child policy.
> Have you noticed that just from your description above Russia is much closer to US than to China? From unfair elections, to systemic oppression of racial minorities, to invading other countries.
Oh, absolutely. Like I said, the US has more than its fair share of problems. These need to be addressed. But it's not a dictatorship yet, and while there are people who want to end US democracy, there are also a lot of people who want to strengthen it and address its problems. But it's absolutely true that under Trump, the US moved to become closer to Putin and more like Russia. And that is not a good direction to be moving in.
>You're right, there are elections, but only at the local level.
It's called "indirect elections", and is also used in US for presidential elections.
>There's only a single party
Which is fundamentally different from a two party system, right? :->
>And also to forced sterilisation and forced labour
Which also happen in American prisons.
See, here's the problem: I know precisely what you're trying to say, I used to believe it myself. But then I realised that this belief simply isn't backed by facts.
Americans have a chance to change stuff by voting for change , in Russia or China you need to wait for a revolution. Maybe is hard to change stuff in US but you should ask people that live in regimes where one guy is president for life and thinks he is the father of the nation and smartest person in the world if it was ever possible to change something or have the leader admit he is wrong or unwanted and leave.
You do realize that in China they also vote for changes? That’s why the country is changing so fast, as opposed to stagnating like Russia or US. China doesn’t have a president for life, this guy needs to have support or he’ll be voted out.
But this is kind of besides the point. What matters is what “real life” looks like. Are Chinese scared to call an ambulance, because it would bankrupt them? Are random black people being shot on the street?
Putin is also not a president for life in theory, there are "fair elections". As far as I know China elections are the same, same as we had in Romania during Communist party, the same dude always wins the elections, the ones that criticize him got deported or got killed, we had a comedian that made a joke about the president speech problems and he got poisoned so I understand how single party countries work, I am not from US so the black lives matters what about trolling does not work for me.
But for sure Russians should look at China and think something like "WTF we are not like China and we are a dump like North Korea, if Putin screws us at least if we got some better level of living".
Not sure if you are from China, I don't care about who is president there or to impose my country values on your culture, I was just explaining the big dangers of one party one man political system, there is corruption, misreporting, backstabbing, paranoia that eventually screws the population over. If the Chinese people decide freely to support the current political system(one party, no freedom of thinking and expression) then I respect their choice.
Also I don't know as much about China, Russia is here our neighbor so I know more about them, their politics, their mentality and their history so correct me if I got any factual thing wrong.
Here's a random fact about China: remember the Tienanmen massacre (which is being taught about in Chinese schools, btw)? The prime minister at that time spent the rest of his life in house arrest. (You might compare this to Kent State. Nobody got punished there.) But it shows that "the same dude" can be replaced when he screws up. Those aren't fake elections; they actually work.
It looks like that guy was just the fall guy, we had similar election in communist Romania, only 1 party , the president always won, the people with different ideas got sent to prison or suffered "accidents". Is your president term limited or he can be candidate forever?
Let me tell you a joke/story from communist Romania, at a farm a pig gives birth to 2 piglets, the engineer there thinks "shit, this is bad only 2, the local communist party guy will replace me so he writes in the papers 4 piglets and submits the report, his superior seens 4 piblets and thinks is bad and he updats the report to 6, the reports is sent up and up until it reaches Ceausescu - the Romanian for life president, father of the nation and smartest dude in the country in his opinion , he reads the report and sees 12 piglets, so he decides "send 2 to export and 10 will be used to feed out people" . We were super poor, there was not enough food, fuel and stuff ... with the democarcy we get corrupted politicians that we change them and a president can at most stay for 8 years, on top of that ex prime ministers, politicians were put in prison for corruption eventually so things started to work.
China is doing good economically in present but I saying there is a danger of things going wrong if the leadership is not refreshed and some dude ass gets glued to the chair, like why would only 1 dude can be president, can't be that he is the only competent person.
Thanks for chatting, because of the language difference and distance there is not much we can know about China, but remember in this case Ukraine is my neighbor and Russia also was and kind of is our neighbor too (I had to learn Russian in school too) so we the people in East Europe we know and understand things better , there is no CIA or US media that influenced our opinion and for sure "What about USA" arguments won't work on Europeans or especially Easter Europeans. So if you don't trust american media I can provide you links to local papers and maybe Google translate can help you read them, we have many policial parties so there is no excuse that some group controls all the media, and for sure we have our idiots that would prefer not to upset Putin because there are scared of what the mad man will do.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commonwealth_of_Independent_St...