Russia, politics and power: internal & external(new title)

[Ron Humphrey]

Strange. Why should one need to "counter" the Russians?
Cooperation should still be in the repertoire of foreign policy.

The Russians/Gazprom do now EXACTLY what a rational economist in charge would do:
1) Don't give your goods away to someone who didn't buy them.
2) Don't sell your goods at a tiny fraction of their worth.

Why indeed? Supply and demand right. And of course it's not unreasonable to expect them to work towards their own interests.

The Eastern European non-NATO nations got natural gas for a half or less of the price charged on the Western Europeans. The Ukraine did not negotiate a new contract that satisfied the Russians in time, so they didn't get any deliveries any more. It needs no evil plan for this; rational economic behavior is enough explanation..

True enough on the first part, not quite so sure about the latter

It's understandable that Russia subsidizes close friends like Belarus, but there's no reason for subsidizing Ukraine, a nation that has a Russian minority that's a regional majority in some places and doesn't want to talk about this.

The(first) article is about a small great power game; such things happen all the time in our world and our governments aren't exactly role models for fairness either..

While supporting your friends while sticking it to those who aren't may very well fall in the categories of both rational and well within the realm of "normal" governmental behaviours; still not certain that the particular means in this case match any rational expectations for ends in that it seems to presume that an awful lot of folks are gonna go along with it simply because they have no other choice.

If one considers Surferbeetle's posts above:

OK, Russia has product and the ability to demand an "acceptable" payment for it. They are concerned that should certain countries through which said product would have to flow have disagreement with errr their particular mode of barter or some actions then said supply might be interrupted thereby by costing them more than they might want to pay, both in loss of monetary income as well as any larger actions which might be required in order to get the product flowing again.

So thus the game begins, what to do what to do????
OH If we get an alternate line through a country with whom we believe we can ensure continuous flow regardless what we choose to do elsewhere than it frees us to use both but helps minimize any sort of possible burden should the on land routes go down for any reason.

Here's the gist of my question to you. This may make great sense to Russia, Germany but exactly why in the world would anyone else there in the region who looks to suffer so great a risk from such things(It's not exactly like Russia has tried hiding their intent) choose to rationally accept or help facilitate such a thing. And in such case exactly how rational is it to think that theres not going to be a ton of issues in doing it.

All part of the game right.

By the way; the U.S.Americans and the British have in my opinion still no right to criticize Russia for its comparably civil great power games. Great powers who waged a war of aggression should better wait for a decade or two till they criticize others' great power games.
The Russians pursue their interests with great rationality and demonstrated the ability to limit their aims to what's easily achievable. That's a great situation for cooperation. Most of their national interests are justifiable - security against invasion in general and advance of a nearby foreign alliance, for example.
Putin knows about the limits of Russia's abilities (unlike the USA and UK) and this limits the problems that he creates.

We can fall back to containment strategies once Russia recovered as state, society and military from the downfall of the 90's and the sins of the 70's.

While much of what you state carrys truth, it might be important to note that we at least try to learn from our mistakes rather than simply trying to find different ways to pull off the same ol tricks.