this post was submitted on 24 Feb 2024
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People, and importantly western leadership, absolutely thought they could force a regime change in Russia when the war started. For example, recall all the whole rouble will be rubble talk. The plan was for the west to isolate Russia economically using sanctions and intimidate other countries to stop trading with Russia. Russian economy was supposed to collapse as a result, and people were gonna overthrow the government.
This is why Europe went all in on the whole thing, they thought they’re gonna ride it out for a few months and then the west would get to put in a compliant regime in Russia like they did in Ukraine. After that, everything would get back to business as usual, and the regime would start selling off Russia to western companies the way Ukraine is currently being sold off.
Of course that’s not how it went, and now we're seeing a narrative shift because it's becoming clear that the west failed to break Russia economically. Not only that, but Russia is emerging more assertive and has the backing of the Global South. This is the worst possible outcome for the west, and Europe in particular.
Maybe I'm not doing the best at explaining myself, but my intent was for my comment to say much the same as yours (which I totally agree with). I was just trying to say that I didn't hear many people who thought Ukraine could actually win a war against Russia through fighting. There was definitely hope that Russia would have a regime change due to the pressure and that would put an end to the war, but that outcome seems more like Russia just ending fighting rather than Ukraine winning. I suppose my comment was moreso just arguing semantics on the word "win" in terms of this conflict, which is ultimately a bit pointless.
Oh yeah, I completely agree with that. The idea was to have Ukraine hold the line while the economic war does the real damage. We're very much on the same page here.
I agree with everything, except the fact that the outcome is bad for Europe. Would be much worse had western governments reached their goals.
The problem for Europe now is that it's been effectively cut off from Russian resources. Now that Russia has managed to reorient their trade towards the east, I doubt they'll want to deal with Europe going forward. Why bother trying to do trade with people who hate you and are constantly trying to undermine you when you can work with friendly partners instead. Any trade with Europe will be seen as being a very risky proposition by Russia unless there's a dramatic political shift in Europe going forward.
European leaders should've realized that it was in their interest to do everything possible to prevent the war from starting in the first place. Yet, they chose to follow Pied Piper right off the cliff instead.