Russia: Friend of the West

Among the countries that border Russia, there are five kinds of nations. The first is a state that is too powerful for Russia to mess with it (China). The second is an odd sui generis geopolitical exception (Mongolia). The third is pet dictatorships: Ukraine pre-Euromaidan, Belarus, Azerbaijan, the countries that end with -stan, and North Korea to a degree. The fourth is states that opted not to join NATO and that tried to walk a path of neutrality. Every single one has without exception been reduced to a mutilated rump state by Russian invasions. This would be Georgia, Moldavia, and post-Euromaidan Ukraine. The fifth is NATO nations.
And a sixth: Finland.
 
I do think it is possible to have a West-allied Russia from the late '80s onwards, and ironically enough, I think that retaining as much of the USSR as possible (both territory and political infrastructure) makes this task easier.

To do this, you need:

1) Less loss of territory/less resentment of the West/less traumatic '90s

2) Common adversaries

With regards to the first point, it is acceptable for the WarPac countries to join NATO/the EU, and -maybe- OK for the Baltic and Central Asian SSRs to become independent, but IMO you have to keep Ukraine and Belarus in the Union, and it certainly helps to keep the Caucasian SSRs - as well as the Central Asian and Baltic SSRs - in as well. If you can get concrete US/NATO/Western intervention on the Russian side in the Chechen conflicts - even if it is only symbolic - will go a long ways towards disarming the Russians - communicating to them that the expansion of NATO/Western institutions is not aimed at them, but rather through them, so to speak.

Secondly, you will need a common adversary that the West and *Russia can share, most obviously a hardline, expansionistic, or otherwise pre-Deng/pre-Nixon China. Arguably, we are already starting to see that today with the renewed collision of Russian and Chinese interests in Central (and East?) Asia. Other than that, I can't really see any common adversaries other than terrorist threats.
 
When Volgograd was still Petrograd the West was friends with Russia. There's been about a century of unrepentant hatred between the two spheres of thought, it'd take a literal miracle from a God (or Red China invading Siberia) for West-RU relations to get better at more than a snails pace since both sides have conflicting interests in the same areas. /my two cents.
 
When Volgograd was still Petrograd the West was friends with Russia. There's been about a century of unrepentant hatred between the two spheres of thought, it'd take a literal miracle from a God (or Red China invading Siberia) for West-RU relations to get better at more than a snails pace since both sides have conflicting interests in the same areas. /my two cents.

Btw, Volgograd was Stalingrad, and before that Tsaritsyn, not Petrograd. Petrograd is what St.Petersburg was renamed during WWI (and during the Communist period it's name was changed to Leningrad).
 
They had every intention of joining the western alliance, there is a reason Georgia and Ukraine (alongside most of eastern Europe) sent troops to Iraq, and it wasn't concerns about WMDs.

Agreed.

They were thinking that the US will fight their battles, because they fight US battles. But that doesen't works that way.
 
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