And yet Russia is currently fighting for more influence in Europe, trying to destabilise countries with misinformation, bots, spies, etc - causing extremist parties, both left and right wing, to rise (partly by helping them with misinformation campaigns, partly by directly giving them money), polarising the population, and will probably successfully annex Ukraine if Trump gets elected (which isn’t unlikely currently), allowing him to start the game he’s been playing with Ukraine since 2004 with the next country.
The time to lay back and stop worrying about the cold war isn’t here yet. There has been a break, but it’s fully running again.
I have to disagree, I’d say the main focus of the cold war was influence. You don’t build a huge military to show others that your economic system is better, you do it to have more influence.
Why would you even care which economic system others use? It’s better for you when other countries are economically weaker, so it’s better when they use an economic system of which you think it’s inferior.
Current Russia is purely a capitalist country, their lobbying structure is a bit different than in States, but it’s exactly the same kind of corruption and economy is developed in very similar way. Not to say that USSR was a communist country in anything but a name, it was just Stalin that decided to skip the socialism part and figured he might as well call his invention by name of what he promised to deliver. And further still, it’s not like Cold War was about ideology instead of influence, which USSR clearly lost by, you know, dissolving.
As you said, it’s not about ideology, it’s about influence. And Russia is trying its best to increase its influence in Europe (and also other parts of the world), and if Trump gets elected they likely will gain much more influence (given he really stops supporting Ukraine, weakens NATO support, doesn’t care if Russia continues taking other “unimportant” countries. All those things are things that he promised his voters.)
If too many people ignore Russian’s spreading influence they’ll only be forced to stop ignoring it when it’s too late and they’ve set up a few more puppet states already.
And yet Russia is currently fighting for more influence in Europe, trying to destabilise countries with misinformation, bots, spies, etc - causing extremist parties, both left and right wing, to rise (partly by helping them with misinformation campaigns, partly by directly giving them money), polarising the population, and will probably successfully annex Ukraine if Trump gets elected (which isn’t unlikely currently), allowing him to start the game he’s been playing with Ukraine since 2004 with the next country.
The time to lay back and stop worrying about the cold war isn’t here yet. There has been a break, but it’s fully running again.
Yeah but this is different, that’s all geopolitics. The cold war was more about economic systems, which capitalism has undoubtedly come out on top of.
I have to disagree, I’d say the main focus of the cold war was influence. You don’t build a huge military to show others that your economic system is better, you do it to have more influence.
Why would you even care which economic system others use? It’s better for you when other countries are economically weaker, so it’s better when they use an economic system of which you think it’s inferior.
Current Russia is purely a capitalist country, their lobbying structure is a bit different than in States, but it’s exactly the same kind of corruption and economy is developed in very similar way. Not to say that USSR was a communist country in anything but a name, it was just Stalin that decided to skip the socialism part and figured he might as well call his invention by name of what he promised to deliver. And further still, it’s not like Cold War was about ideology instead of influence, which USSR clearly lost by, you know, dissolving.
As you said, it’s not about ideology, it’s about influence. And Russia is trying its best to increase its influence in Europe (and also other parts of the world), and if Trump gets elected they likely will gain much more influence (given he really stops supporting Ukraine, weakens NATO support, doesn’t care if Russia continues taking other “unimportant” countries. All those things are things that he promised his voters.)
If too many people ignore Russian’s spreading influence they’ll only be forced to stop ignoring it when it’s too late and they’ve set up a few more puppet states already.
There was never a break. Things cooled down for a bit in the 90s, when they were dealing with the collapse, but it never ended.