harlekin.me

Asi­de from being a part of the Rus­si­an, East Euro­pean, and Eura­si­an Stu­dies frac­tion in Yale of course.

Is - that he tal­ked about the ele­phant in the room, which was the 50 years time­frame, that rus­sia sought a solu­ti­on for.

The rea­son was baked into its demo­gra­phics. The youn­ger Eura­si­an stu­dies majors appar­ent­ly need to igno­re that actively, becau­se they still need to get pro­mo­ted of course.

But the who­le demo­gra­phic situa­ti­on of rus­sia dic­ta­ted it.

src: click

Its even men­tio­ned in the talk, in terms of the long­stan­ding US posi­ti­on in for­eign poli­cy deba­tes that “rus­sia was over”. Demo­gra­phi­cal­ly - it would stron­gly con­tract in num­bers, no mat­ter what. A dying for­mal­ly (not so gre­at) gre­at power.

So rus­sia was inte­res­ted in nego­tia­ting 50 year or 100 year time­frames (men­tio­ned in the video abo­ve, by Tho­mas Gra­ham). Becau­se if they got “will sur­vi­ve two US admi­nis­tra­ti­ons” time­frames in terms of secu­ri­ty gua­ran­ties, they would have had to ren­ego­tia­te at a time, when they’d not be able to achie­ve anything clo­se to a “buf­fer zone” (Putin just men­tio­ned that term today, and the Ukrai­ne prompt­ly reac­ted publicly, so goog­le it) with “poli­ti­cal influ­ence” in place, using mili­ta­ry power as a means to get the­re. Even in nego­tia­ti­ons. So rus­si­as posi­ti­on would have stron­gly worsened, sim­ply becau­se of demo­gra­phics. So regard­less of what hap­pen­ed, their mili­ta­ry power would have decli­ned (hal­fed!) in the years to come.

So as soon as the US went the “pro­mi­se not­hing” and “we need to dis­cuss this in much lar­ger deba­ting plat­forms” and “here are some con­ces­si­ons on the num­bers of wea­pons we will be sta­tio­ning in NATO-Ukraine” rou­te - the rus­si­an power eli­te, or whats left of it under Putin, knew that the talks had fai­led from their perspective.

(F.e. not being able to keep their mili­ta­ry fleet sta­tio­ned in the black sea (Sewas­to­pol), which is pro­jec­ting rus­si­as mili­ta­ry power into the medi­ter­ra­ne­an, afri­ca and the near east as a result. (see: click))

The other demo­gra­phic ele­phant in the room of cour­se being, that someo­ne mana­ged to pre­sent this

src: click

As a coun­try with a gre­at eco­no­mic future, and demo­cra­tic will to beco­me a euro­pean demo­cra­cy, high­ly important to the EU as a growth market.

src: click (digitallibrary.un.org)

See also:

Heri­ta­ge Foun­da­ti­ons Eco­no­mic Free­dom Index

I mean that the youn­ger popu­la­ti­on in that coun­try would pre­do­mi­nant­ly try to move to more pro­spe­rous regi­ons is a given. And that that wouldnt have been rus­sia by choice also is a given.

But we know that rus­sia would have been fine with EU mem­bers­hip in April of 2022, accord­ing to the draft peace deal that the Wall Street Jour­nal got to see (ori­gi­nal link: click) - as long as Ukrai­ne would beco­me a mili­ta­ri­ly neu­tral country.

Oh, and by shun­ned, I mean this:

Veröffentlicht by me am Montag, 18. März 2024 unter Allgemein, Media.