The results of 20 years in Afghanistan should be enough.
The results of 20 years in Iraq if its NOT enough.
The CIA didn’t flip either of these countries.
Nor are they going to change Russia or Ukraine.
But the Russians suffer from not having the kind of efficient administrative state and regulatory structure to ensure that the competence of the educated elite guides economic growth and development.
/sarc
Well a shorty that has another take on that... :
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/wzW2hgNpZuI
Proof the everything globohomo leftist touch turns to crap and starts a disaster.
The Russians were able to buy businesses at fire sale prices, when they have lower operating, energy, electricity, regulatory and labor costs.
Western “leadership” and trying to penalize Russia’s business classed turn them against Putin. Instead they enriched them
Western goofball “leadership” thought that cutting off OnlyFans, ApplePay and McDonalds would bring Russia down to collapse.
No wonder the West is losing this war !
Yep, pretty much nails it.
I think the example of McDonald’s is probably the best. McDonald’s, for obvious cost reasons, not only opened up restaurants in Russia, they set up entire supply chains in Russia, right back to the farms that grew the grains and raised the livestock...obviously with something like 99% of the employees being Russian.
So when it was time for McDonald’s to leave, after a few months of changing signs and getting adjusted, the re-named McDonald’s was back in business, except without the having to send its profits to the US...same menu, different names for the food, but same food.
Finally, the new McDonald’s is doing so well that they are now opening new restaurants under their own name in Russia.
Incredible, just how much the ‘sanctions’ backfired.
This is hands-down the best explanation I've heard on why sanctions on Russia backfired, and why they were never going to succeed in the first place.By economist James K. Galbraith, professor at the University of Texas at Austin.
Best quote of his explanation: "This is a situation in which the sanctions were imposed by one important sector of the world economy which then cut itself off from resources that it needs - and that's particularly true of Western Europe - in return for cutting Russia off from various things that Russia doesn't really need."
Second best quote: "If you go back to the period before the introduction of the sanctions [...] the Russian economy was very heavily colonized by Western firms. That was true in automobiles, it was true in aircrafts, it was true in everything from fast food restaurants to big box stores. Western firms were present all throughout the Russian economy. A great many of them [...] either chose to exit Russia or were pressured to exit Russia after early 2022. So on what terms did they leave? Well, they were required, if they were leaving permanently, to sell their capital equipment, their factories and so forth, to let's say a Russian business which would get a loan from Russian banks or maybe have other sources of financing, at a very favorable price for the Russians. So effectively a lot of capital wealth, which was partly owned by the West, has been transferred to Russian ownership. And you now have an economy which is moving forward and has the advantage compared to Europe of relatively low resource costs because Russia is a great producer of resources, oil and gas and fertilizer and food stuff and so forth. And so while the Europeans are paying maybe twice in Germany what they were paying for energy, the Russians are not, they're paying perhaps less than they were paying before the war. So again I characterize the effect of the sanctions, in fact as being in certain respects a gift to the Russian economy. And this is, I think, quite different from what the authors of the sanctions expected. [...] And the essence of the situation is this would not have happened without the sanctions. You could have had the war, and it would have gone pretty much as it has gone. But the Russian government in 2022 was in no position to force the exit of Western firms. It didn't want to, wouldn't have done that. It was in no position to force its oligarchs to choose between Russia and the West. It didn't wish to do that. These choices were imposed by the West, and the results were actually, in many respects, favorable to the long-term independent development of the Russian Federation's economy."
Great article, how true !
In a roundabout way the sanctions were about the best thing what could have happen to Russia, as they woke up a sleeping Giant.
