Russia and NATO...again

The Russians are oozing paranoia again while showing the world exactly how toothless they are. Frex. There are some good reasons not to like NATO, but its not eactly built around the idea of launching offensive operations against the Soviet Union, ahem, Russia.

The reason that Georgia and Ukraine would like to become members is to avoid being swallowed by a resurgent, or at least revanchist, Russia. Under the umbrella of NATO protection that is not possible. If you read at least Ukraine's history, I think you can understand the sentiment. I wish I had even a basic knowledge of Georgian history to make any comments from that POV: its on the list, but down there a ways.

I my ideal world, Russia would be getting ready to make their own leap into NATO and the EU. They'd have another decade and change to get there, but I'd think they'd really want to do this. Their falling population, weak borders, decaying military, and having an aggressive and growing future superpower on its southeastern border makes it seem to me that finding permanent friends in the form of NATO and EU membership an obvious and even best possible choice.

However, the Russians don't think like that. At least those in power. There's this damned Great Russian mentality that haunts and infects almost all their decisions. Russia has been one of the great nations in terms of power for a very long time (mostly true, at least since the beginning of the modern era, but only true now because of their decaying nuclear arsenal) and will be for the far, far future (prolly false). The chauvanism that runs through this mentality can be seen through their attitudes to Ukrainians, frex, in that they see it as there are no Ukrainians, only malorus - Little Russians. Through this, they have alienated even the Left Bank Ukrainians who are russophonic.

The Great Russians seem to believe that they can continue and stand as a separate pillar of power in the future. They have convinced themselves that Russia can have all the influence that the old Soviet Union had or at least that of what Czarist Russia had. If you look at the growth rates, I don't think its going to be possible. Brazil is in the process of overtaking Russia as an economic power. The EU, PRC, USA, and Republic of India are all leaping ahead like economic juggernauts with ten league boots. Sadly, the rate Russia is growing and her true economic and military strength will put her in a position to be at best playing a Canada or Finland tune to either the EU or the PRC.

They say pride goeth before the fall. This pride seems to be lasting even through the first fall. That might have been the disentegration of the Soviet Union was the smaller of the two falls. We'll see if the coming one will be as bad. It might be. It might be worse. Their - the Great Russian - irrelevancy to the rest of the world might be interesting to see as time and again they're ignored for the EU, American, Indian, or Chinese opinions. Hopefully it won't spawn anything ugly.