Estonian Benefits of the Russian Sanctions

[cassowary]

In the Ukraine what the "good people" have achieved is making the war last longer and make sure more people are going to get killed. All for the glory of the US exceptionalism...

We know, Sertorio. You would much prefer Ukraine's sovereignty crushed by Putin as swiftly as possible so he can get on with the task of carving out a new Russian empire. How very altruistic of you.

Haven't you exhausted yet this strawman?...

Sertorio always support the most evil dictators.

[Sertorio]

In the Ukraine what the "good people" have achieved is making the war last longer and make sure more people are going to get killed. All for the glory of the US exceptionalism...

We know, Sertorio. You would much prefer Ukraine's sovereignty crushed by Putin as swiftly as possible so he can get on with the task of carving out a new Russian empire. How very altruistic of you.

Haven't you exhausted yet this strawman?...

Sertorio always support the most evil dictators.

I support whoever helps destroying the US empire and its tool NATO.

[cassowary]

In the Ukraine what the "good people" have achieved is making the war last longer and make sure more people are going to get killed. All for the glory of the US exceptionalism...

We know, Sertorio. You would much prefer Ukraine's sovereignty crushed by Putin as swiftly as possible so he can get on with the task of carving out a new Russian empire. How very altruistic of you.

Haven't you exhausted yet this strawman?...

Sertorio always support the most evil dictators.

I support whoever helps destroying the US empire and its tool NATO.

The US is not an evil empire and NATO is a fortress set up by Athena US to protect against evil empires like Putin’s Russia.

[neverfail]

I support whoever helps destroying the US empire and its tool NATO.

The US is not an evil empire and NATO is a fortress set up by Athena US to protect against evil empires like Putin’s Russia.

Putin, who was employed as a KGB operative in the Soviet puppet state of east Germany when the Berlin Wall fell, blamed the collapse of the USSR on "The West". It apparently never occurred to his blame shifting self that the reason might lay closer to home. That the political, social and economic architecture of the USSR itself was inherently unsound and waiting to crumble.

(In that regard proud American nationalists have no reason to claim that America "won" the Cold War. Their power bloc did not defeat the Soviet Union in the conventional meaning of the word "defeat": their country and the alliance it led merely outlasted that of their rival - sort of like "the last soldier left standing on the battlefield; presumably because it was/is closer to the mark in terms of sound constitutional set-up.)

I have only recently learned that in 1991 the Soviet Union was dissolved by mutual agreement among the heads of the component Socialist republics. Michael Gorbachev, the last General Secretary of the USSR Communist Party believed that the Soviet Union could be saved through a policy of glasnost (openness) and perestroika (reform) attracted enemies and opponents within. Boris Yeltsin, who had been president of the Russian SSR seized centre stage during a revolt in Moscow but was apparently among the reactionaries opposed to Gorbachev's program.

Yeltsin apparently organized that fatal meeting of SSR presidents that dissolved the USSR for the sole purpose of undercutting Michael Gorbachev. If there were no more USSR then Gorbachev became irrelevant.
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The expansion of NATO eastward made little geostrategic sense in the 1990's looking at it as a defense pact for mainland Europe and it seems that during that 1990's decade within power circles in Washington there was passive opposition to expansion. Yet the stampede of ex-Warsaw Pact vassals of the Soviet Union along with former USSR republics like the Baltics to enlist with NATO during the latter 1990's and early 2000's testifies to how real fears of a revived autocratic/expansionist Russian state was in these countries. The ex-Soviet states, unlike the clueless West of the time, were taking a very long view of the situation and seeking to buy insurance against the feared future development. It turned out that they were wise.
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Sertorio: you will not live long enough to see the destruction of the US or of NATO. The old Warsaw pact was a contrived one of conscripted states who had no shared community of mutual interest centred on Moscow. NATO is not like that but, along with the web of commercial ties that provide it with lifeblood, sustained by a shared community solidarity: not by a power relationship running back to the United States as you seem to imagine.

[neverfail]

Might I remind readers that while Russia is important to mainland Europe as a source of hydrocarbons energy it is commercially insignificant in all other ways.

Germany has the biggest economy in Europe reliant on international trade for around 42% of GDP. Yet Russia does not even make it into Germany's top ten external trading partners either as buyer of the country's exports or as a source of imports:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_t ... of_Germany

Germany which combines proximity with strong purchasing power due to affluence is a particular lodestone for trans-European commerce and trade.

I did the same for several smaller European countries located east of Germany but west of Russia. These included Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania and Estonia. Only in the case of Estonia did Russia appear within the top ten and even in the case of Estonia Russia was not included in its top five.

(Another factor that stared me in the face was the evident pattern that in Europe countries tend to trade most intently with other countries relatively close to them in what appears to be principally a cross-border trade in goods and serves. Why this surprises me is because I live in a country whose chief external customers and sources of supply have tended to be geographically quite remote from our shores. Currently Australia's biggest are respectively the Peoples Republic of China; Japan; South Korea; India and The United States in that order. A lifetime ago before the Asia-Pacific region opened up and developed our biggest external trading partner by far was the United Kingdom: located on almost the exact opposite side of planet Earth to our country. Can you therefore comprehend my bemusement when I find that other countries abroad are not in a similar situation, where major trading partners are far away, to my own?)

[Sertorio]

Sertorio: you will not live long enough to see the destruction of the US or of NATO. The old Warsaw pact was a contrived one of conscripted states who had no shared community of mutual interest centred on Moscow. NATO is not like that but, along with the web of commercial ties that provide it with lifeblood, sustained by a shared community solidarity: not by a power relationship running back to the United States as you seem to imagine.

I am old, but I hope I do not have to live much longer to see the demise of NATO. After 77 years occupation by US troops, I hope there is enough pride and dignity left in Europe to realize that we can defend ourselves, particularly from imaginary threats. The defeat of the second largest army in Europe (Ukrainian's) with a powerless NATO just looking at it happening, is proof enough that NATO is a useless paper tiger. I'm sure I will not have to suffer the indignity of dying as a serf of the US...