Mitch McConell says the quiet part out loud.
Exact full quote from CNN:
“People think, increasingly it appears, that we shouldn’t be doing this. Well, let me start by saying we haven’t lost a single American in this war,” McConnell said. “Most of the money that we spend related to Ukraine is actually spent in the US, replenishing weapons, more modern weapons. So it’s actually employing people here and improving our own military for what may lie ahead.”
cross-posted from: https://lemm.ee/post/4085063
So, why didn’t Belarus improve at the same rate as the Baltic countries?
They both started from the bottom, right?
So, why didn’t Belarus improve at the same rate as the Baltic countries?
If you think that the answer to this is simply “because Russia bad” you have the mind of a child.
Eastern European countries that opened to western trade and diplomatic relationships improved significantly.
Eastern European countries that became Russian puppets didn’t.
Explain that.
imagine ignoring the absolutely ruthless, western led cannibalization of the former soviet union and pretending history’s baseline started AFTER the largest decline of living standards in global history.
human trafficking, prostitution, alcoholism, food/energy insecurity, diseases of despair all exploded when the west forced capitalism and privatization onto the former soviet union in the immediate aftermath. Gorbachev thought he was going to get some easy-going nordic social democracy, but instead the west carved up their public sector like a christmas ham. maybe you were too young, but in the 1980s the propaganda portrait the west had of russian women were all heavy-set, ugly babushkas. suddenly, after 1989, the mail order beautiful russian bride phenomenon exploded. they were fleeing the gutting of the public sector and the shattering of the social safety net, which made it near impossible to raise a family in the eastern bloc without becoming a sex worker.
the west sponsored every retrograde nationalist reactionary psycho to undermine any hint of democratic resistance to economic liberalization schemes and bombed the shit out of infrastructure (Yugoslavia) whenever they could get away with it. the west has the most blood on its hands for the aftermath of the USSR, but people like you want to ignore those early days and then claim credit for the “winners” the west propped up in the aftermath of all that chaos. like a killer who torched a town but kidnapped a few kids and now touts his heroic rescue of them. the most ignorant and disgusting take.
The Balts were immediately used as forward positions for NATO and were allowed to keep their state programs and industry. Belarus got the same treatment as Russia.
You should probably know the answer to your own snarky questions before you ask them.
So, what you’re saying is that the countries that sided with the West got a better deal than the ones that became Russian puppets?
