Quote Originally Posted by Stan View Post
A great question with no Western answer.

We refuse to listen to people that have dealt with Vovo for years.
What's the big deal in admitting you have not a friggin clue and just spout BS via diplomatic channels as if you were somebody ?

Even the playing field and do as they do. That's the only thing they understand and the only way we can get by. Nobody wins BTW.

We better accept the fact that we will not win. Unless we want to entertain 2 million soldiers locked in a nuke war.

Only then, can a compromise be had.
The other thing to consider is that the conception of 'democracy' and what it means is different in the Russian tradition than the Western one (whether it's French, American, etc). Russians had their first taste of a democratic practice with the introduction of the Duma under the Czar, and it's powers were extremely limited. This was briefly replaced by a provisional republican government immediately prior to the October Rebolution, and then followed by then Soviet government and the CPSU with its emphasis on "democratic centralism" and organization by council. Even the Stalin Constitution formally granted rights and implemented democratic mechanisms although these were never respected in any sense acceptable in the West (due mostly to the consolidation of power, officially and mostly unofficially, by Stalin through the domination of the CPSU, as opposed to the actual relationships of the state bureaucracies). And at least in these early formulations of 'democracy', even when the CPSU approved candidates and many short-lists only had one name, citizens had a genuine confidence in the system of voting. Of course that revolutionary zeal eventually faded, until the Soviet system was replaced by the chaos of the oligarch model under Yeltsin, which in many ways was no more democratic in practice than the USSR - the elite just stopped paying lip service to the working class.

So now last week we have this latest about how Russians view democracy, and it's again clear that the Russian tradition of democracy is not at all like the Western one. Political order and social stability are priorities and civil rights and freedom of speech are treated more like bonuses instead of inalienable rights. If Putin is a criminal, evil, corrupt, a rogue, and whatever other characterizations provided of him, what's the source of his legitimacy in Russia? And if Russian democracy is formulated differently than in the West, and we are to respect political sovereignty, then how do we reconcile the differences in policy outcomes?