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Gennady Rudkevich Profile picture
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17 May, 8 tweets, 2 min read
This is what a formal military alliance with Russia buys you.
Russia's alliance system presents countries with interesting trade-offs. Joining entails giving up most of your foreign policy autonomy & making extensive economic concessions. In exchange, you get offers of mediation when a rival tries to invade what you think is your territory.
It's also good to remember that Russia invaded Georgia when both were part of CIS, despite that organization having some elements of a military alliance. Russia also invaded Ukraine despite being one of the parties (Budapest Memorandum) assuring Ukraine's territorial integrity.
Russia is constantly threatening Moldova with military action (not to mention its ongoing military support for Moldova's separatist region) despite both being part of the aforementioned CIS. carnegieendowment.org/2021/05/17/inv…
The above makes Russia's supposed anger at being lied to (in a private conversation involving no binding or even non-binding documents) over NATO expansion all that much harder to fathom.
Forgot to mention the time Russia played a major role in overthrowing the government of an allied (CSTO, the same alliance Armenia is in) state. washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content…
Or when Russia threatened to invade another CSTO member if protesters succeeded in overthrowing their ruler. washingtonpost.com/world/europe/r…
For Russia, military alliances are eerily similar to how the Soviets viewed the Warsaw Pact. The reason countries join Russian-led alliances is not for military protection but as an attempt to gain favorable conditions in what is effectively a surrender.

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More from @grudkev

Gennady Rudkevich Profile picture
15 Nov 20
Biden will win the popular vote by 4-5%. If he did 0.75% worse, this would be the electoral map. A similar vote tally in House and Senate elections gives the Dems a bare majority of House seats and 48-50 Senate ones. The GOP can control every branch of gov't on 48.5% of the vote.
With GOP legislatures in control of the redistricting process in most states, it's conceivable that an identical 4-5% popular defeat in 2024 will hand the House to the Republican Party. The same is likely true for the Senate.
The results are even more lopsided at the state level. A 4-5% national majority failed to flip a single State House or Senate to the Democrats (instead they lost both in NH and likely lost one in Alaska). Democrats now control 18.5 state legislatures. ballotpedia.org/Partisan_compo…
Read 6 tweets
Gennady Rudkevich Profile picture
17 Feb 20
Time for a thread on the USSR, since some on the left seem to have a soft spot for the communist regime. Here's why any sane progressive would have opposed the Soviet Union. I'll even exclude Stalin's quarter-century-long reign.
While the USSR did initially expand rights of women, it was far from progressive by the end of its existence. Women were banned from hundreds of occupations, including the best-paying ones. Yes, wages were not equal. Male-dominated fields paid far more. rferl.org/a/russia-women…
Only 3 women ever served as a full member of the Soviet Politburo (its highest policy-making body). The final Politburo (1990-1991) had 1 female full member (Galina Semenova) out of 20+. She was the first female full member since 1960. ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%9F%D0…
Read 15 tweets
Gennady Rudkevich Profile picture
10 Dec 19
After watching Russian news for the past few days, I can say without any exaggeration that a regular viewer is far better positioned to understand the world around them than someone who watches Fox News. While Russian news has a clear pro-Putin bias, most stories are informative.
You could catch the one news item intended to make the West look bad. And there's always a story that makes Putin look good. But beyond those, most of the news items wouldn't be out of place on a 2nd-tier American news network. The only fantasy is about Russia's global standing.
What you don't see on Russian TV is the framing of each story as being a part of an overarching narrative glorifying Putin. Most news is just news. The propaganda (for the most part) is an ad hoc addition. Compare that to Fox News, where a majority of news items relate to Trump.
Read 8 tweets
Gennady Rudkevich Profile picture
19 Mar 19
Kazakh president Nazarbayev has resigned! Unexpected to say the least.
To put this resignation in perspective, this is only the third time in Central Asian post-Soviet history that a leader stepped down without a metaphorical gun to his head (both of the other instances were in Kyrgyzstan).
Nazarbayev was the 8th longest serving de facto ruler in the world. Central Asia does still have Rahmon, who comes in at #12 (with Nazarbayev gone).
Read 8 tweets
Gennady Rudkevich Profile picture
4 Nov 18
It's become fashionable in certain circles to call NATO expansion a mistake responsible for current enmity between Russia and the US. The main mistake these analysts make is to ignore the counterfactual: what would central and eastern Europe look like without NATO expansion?
1. Given the revival of nationalism in central and eastern Europe (CEE), numerous incompatibilities between nations and states, a long and bloody history of conflict, and no security guarantees from the West, war would be an almost foregone conclusion.
2. Without pressure from NATO to create professional militaries under the firm control of civilian officials, coups would be a constant concern, especially in countries on the losing end of the aforementioned wars. Democratization would be all but impossible in this environment.
Read 6 tweets
Gennady Rudkevich Profile picture
27 May 18
There are dozens of excellent civil war scholars whose entire job consists of calculating the likelihood of various civil war-related outcomes, and this story cites historians of a single civil war that took place 150 years ago. Seriously?
This is the kind of bullshit that makes people dismiss political science, except in this case, the journalist didn't bother to consult a single political scientist. If you exclude secessionist conflicts, the likelihood of a civil war in a rich democracy is basically nil.
So from where do these "experts" (they are experts, but not in the area they're being asked to make a prediction) derive their probability of a US civil war? From a sample of one that they studied? And from their non-existent experience with quantitative methods?
Read 7 tweets

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