Thread by @EHunterChristie

1/ I did my early career in applied economic research with a focus on East. Europe. Everything I saw was about helping former Eastern bloc nations to modernise and become prosperous. Russia, too, benefitted from enormous generosity from the West at its time of greatest distress.

2/ Russia had a miserable time in the 90s because it spent decades pursuing ridiculous economic policies while also holding down a gigantic empire and a gigantic military machine. It then chose to collapse its own empire, and of course everybody who could made a run for it.

3/ While some Russians were learning humility, a deeply resentful, violent, and criminally-minded set of elites took back control in 1999 following a palace coup and what appeared to be false-flag terrorist attacks against their own civilian population.

4/ The Putin regime from the very beginning built its power and legitimacy on war - the second Chechen War. Economically, the regime was lucky, by 1999, some reforms had been enacted, the worst of the transitional recession was over - and the oil price picked up. They got lucky.

5/ At every turn, Western governments went out of their way to help Russia economically, markets opened up, Russia was admitted to the WTO, European companies jostled to buy Russian energy products and to invest deep inside Russia.

6/ Foolish notions were applied equally to Russia and to China - the very vague and hopeful idea that economic engagement would lead to democratic transformation. That assumption was sacrosanct from the early 1990s until well into the 2010s.
This was a disastrously wrong idea.

7/ The insight that economic support and openness towards a large dictatorship is foolish might be one of the rare points of agreement between hard realists such as Mearsheimer, and advocates of liberal democracy. The West pursued this deeply flawed policy for 30 years.

8/ For reasons that are now all too evident, it is insanity to help the likes of Russia and China become richer. They will use the proceeds to become military threats. This has already happened. The data is in. The demonstration is done.

9/ And yet even now, on the brink of a large war in Europe, with rising tensions in Asia and a burgeoning Moscow-Beijing relationship, our nations balk at the notion of economic decoupling. We keep on feeding both the bear and the dragon, and we are less and less secure.

10/ One could understand this if it were part of an overall strategy to secure gains from trade while also financing robust defence & security goals.
Instead, we have a short-sighted protection of trade and investment interests without proper investments in defence & security.

11/ It is past time that Western governments, most of all the governments of Western Europe, get serious about their military capabilities, and about making it much harder for Russia and China to develop and finance the means to coerce us. END.