And yet, it's Russia and it's strong-arm tactics that are desperately trying to keep Kazakhstan's regime in power.
Think about it: Russia is even sending it's paratroopers to Kazakhstan to stomp out unrest. Not the US. Not the EU. Not Switzerland. No, Russia.
How do you fit that into your mental model?
Do they still need Finland as a "buffer state" [1]?
Yes and no. Had the Winter war not happened, Finland wouldn't have joined the German attack.
If it's all just a "cold war mindset".
Complete waste of resources from US side! Russia is very successful at making people in ex-USSR countries hate it as-is, making western propaganda completely redundant! But I know a lot of people who actively participated in Maidan revolution and are still waiting for their dirty CIA $$$. Hopefully Obama will pay his debts some day...
I participated in both (2004 and 2014). Where do I register for the "dirty CIA $$$"? I somehow missed it during the original briefing.
And this is exactly what we are seeing in Kazakhstan: people riot over increasing cost of living and the president blames it on foreign agitators. Because that is easier and more convenient than actually engaging with the issue.
Not always.
See for example "US Army Field Manual FM 31-20-3, Foreign Internal Defense Tactics Techniques and Procedures for Special Forces". This one is outdated and was based on US operations in Central/South America.
I'm sure Russians have something similar.
If Russia is so influential over Kazakhstan, why all natural resources and power plants in Kazakhstan belong to Western companies?
Why Nazarbaev had replaced Cyrillic alphabet with Latin? It was clearly a jab at Russia.
Kazakhstan was/is clearly under heavy western influence.
> Think about it: Russia is even sending it's paratroopers to Kazakhstan to stomp out unrest. Not the US. Not the EU. Not Switzerland. No, Russia.
What will US do if in case of civil unrest in Mexico, Russia will send troops to Mexico?
This is false. Kazakhstan retains most oil revenues and its joint ventures with foreign companies for oil exploration and drilling include not just Western, but also for example Chinese companies.
>Why Nazarbaev had replaced Cyrillic alphabet with Latin?
Because he saw clearly how Putin is weaponizing language and identity rhetoric to justify wars of aggression and Anschluss-style annexations against its neighbours. The script you use is rather symbolic, but those symbols do matter. Otherwise, Russia itself wouldn't have stamped out the Latin script and forced those minority languages, already few in number, to use Cyrillic in the 2000s.
This makes no sense, no one is alleging Mexico is under Russia’s thumb so this makes no sense. Replace Mexico with Cuba circa 1970 and it would be relevant. And also yes, if Cuba in 1970, I would not be surprised if Russia sent in troops if Castro asked.
This makes no sense, because no strong independent sovereign country (there're very few of them in the world, about 5-6) will allow foreign troops to land in the neighboring country.
If Russia would send troops under any pretext in any situation to Mexico, USA would start a World War III.
What languages are you talking about?
Please don't try to change the subject. Putin sent Russia's paratroopers to Kazakhstan to use them against Kazakhstan's civilian population to quelsh unrest. It's not the US, Switzerland, Finland, the EU, nothing. This is Russia intervening in Kazakhstan to preserve Russia's interests, and no amount of whataboutism changes this.
Also I'm not changing the subject because we have a whole branching forum here, not a single coversation that can talk only about one thing at a time.
If you are not interested in that branch of the discussion simply skip it.
Just to be clear you are blaming “the west” (US, UK, Sweden, France, Canada, Switzerland, etc.) for Russian intervention in Kazakhstan because those countries buy Russian products? (Leaving aside all the other countries in the world which do the same but w/e).
Contrast Kazakhstan with Ukraine. The U.S. would not sit silently by if Russia were to send troops into the Ukraine again.
I'm not blaming anybody for anything. It's just business.
What these countries has to do in Kazakhstan? Russia and Kazakhstan has a treaty: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collective_Security_Treaty_Org...
Also, significant percent of population of Kazakhstan is Russian.
So what? They are citizens of Kazakhstan. Russia does not have some sort of "claim" over every person in the world who is of Russian descent.
Maybe things are not as simple as Fox News makes them.
HN is generally bad at understanding that people will willingly forgo some wealth in exchange for political/ideological/religious goals when the forgoing takes any form other than paying more taxes to fund something you approve of.
They get it when your example is something they all support like the US fighting a civil war over slavery but when you try to generalize that behavior up a step and then use it to explain the actions of people supporting something they don't agree with you get something like this[1].