And Russia.
In the harsh world of realpolitik no one cares if Venezuela falls apart, except for the Venezuelans.
If Russia falls apart it's a serious problem for everyone, because it won't fall apart quietly or peacefully.
In the harsh world of realpolitik no one cares if Venezuela falls apart, except for the Venezuelans.
If Russia falls apart it's a serious problem for everyone, because it won't fall apart quietly or peacefully.
It might still be an improvement over its current approach - which is not falling apart, but is neither quiet nor peaceful. There's a fair bit of political analysis that suggests that Russia is for example about to test NATO by starting a war with Turkey, and that it is deliberately killing civilians in Syria to increase the flow of refugees to Europe (which destabilises the EU, naturally).
I'll take a Russia falling apart noisily over a Russia attempting to hegemonise half of Europe again...
You mean propaganda?
There's the numerous videos and reports from organisations like Amnesty International, accusing Russia of basically doing the Assad thing of bombing the shit out of civilian populations in Syria (which is bound to cause more refugees to flee). And then the whole Turkey airspace thing. And then reports of Russian troops conducting large "training exercises" in the exact region they'd need to be to start a war with Turkey... There's the Crimea/Ukraine thing, which fit into that pattern as well.
Overall, no matter which source you read, Russia is currently spelling trouble. I was worried about Trump being elected and starting World War 3 - I'm now worried that even without Trump we might get there thanks to Putin.
As for creating a Syrian humanitarian crisis, the regime, the rebels, and Isis are doing a perfectly fine job on their own.
So I think the reality is the other way round.
At least in current Russia there is someone in control. If the oligarchs tire of Putin and have him taken care of, Russia could fall into a civil war. Normally, this would not be a huge problem, but Russia has ~5k nukes laying around.
Think Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, but with nukes scattered about.
The lower value of their currency has actually caused them to engage in import substitution (something Saudi can't do because they basically don't have any local industries) and started to make Russian industry more competitive in export markets.
This is basically what China did to itself deliberately in order to turn itself into an exporting and manufacturing powerhouse.
Russia is still hurting but there's a big silver lining for them that doesn't exist for, say, Venezuela.
Outside of oil, gas, timber and weaponry what products are they known for exporting?
We got lucky that it was him in charge rather than somebody else.