Russia - threadbanned users in OP

Why would he have "had to do it"? If Russia had out of the ash of the fall of the Soviet Union become more of a "European" state, a democracy, with free trade, equality etc and was run by the Scandi mindset. It would have boomed massively. With her young demographics of the time it could well have become a mini China in trade and industry. It could have retained its armed forces, but eased right back on this near medieval imperial mindset. It could have kept the US at a distance as they outsourced manufacturing and buggered their working class. Nobody will want to fight a nation you do good business with and vice versa.

Instead Russia, and it has to be said; too many Russians, are wedded to the idea of an imperial feudal society and culture and military mindset(which IMHO isn't fascist, but looks very like it, as would most pre early modern European societies look to us today) and one that goes centuries back. Even under Communism which tried to drag them out of that mindset and actually did bring Russia into the modern world and gave ordinary Russians and others, barely out of serfdom a much better life, they still clung to the czar/premier, boyars/governors mindset. Stalin's rule being the clearest example of it. When Communism fell and they felt the chaos of that they went right back to czar putin and his boyar oligarchs. Now it could be argued that to keep such a huge nation, well actually an empire, together this is one of the "better" mechanisms to do it, but it doesn't do much for the average Russian. Yeah they're quite understandably grateful that putin pulled them out of an even bigger chaos and their lives and Russia is or was in a far better state than in the 1990s, but they're back to the old ways. It's a default cultural position. Not unlike ours in Ireland where in a lesser example we like to vote parochially and vote in people just because their forefathers were politicians, or because they belong to a civil war party. That and our odd mixture of pride and insecurity. Something I have found is quite similar to Russians about Russia.

As for our debt: Irish debt and interest rates etc. Oh there are issues there, but the tax take and other economic indicators are pretty damned healthy, we have "full employment"(and that has improved since last year and through this year) and compared to our nearast once all powerful imperial neighbour who are a slow motion self inflicted car crash it's hard to look at or look away from we're doing pretty damned well thanks very much. The Rouble is a non currency beyond Russia and any of their deals are still with Dollars or Euro behind them. The Rouble is essentially worthless internationally. Russia's exports have fallen off a cliff and they're burning off their gas reserves in the millions. They're selling their oil at firesale prices. They were never internationally credit worthy and relied on being a giant oil and gas station for a large chunk of their funds and that's not in great shape now. With the unbeliveably stupid kneejerk purloining of their Boeing/Airbus fleet they effectively signed their own economic death warrant as far as international leasing, insurance, financing and accreditation goes. And the damned fools didn't have to do it. They could have gone "OK bad situation, but don't worry, we won't screw over the market and trade because of it, even if our enemies try to impose that on us". It would have cost them feck all and gained them much going forward. Now even their homegrown aero industry is fcuked because their aircraft use western engines and flight systems. That level of sheer idiocy you could barely make up and it's not the only such example.