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Comment by adventured | Hacker News Reader

I'd like to see it go a step further: brain drain Russia again, as happened after the fall of the USSR. Poach the talent.

Russia has plenty of brilliant, highly skilled people. Get as many of them to abandon the nation as possible (and make their journey to a new home as easy as possible). The US, EU and their allies can easily make this happen.

Confronting Russia obviously has to be a many front effort. Oil and gas are valuable resources, yes, and they get a lot of attention in terms of how to best constrain Russia. A well organized brain drain against the Russian economy would also hurt enormously across the next decade.

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No, rather the opposite: you want Russia to be as smart and wealthy as possible. The more a country has to lose the less the chance that they will start wars with their neighbors.

Germany had to be brain drained 3 times, and then destroyed as a nation, and rebuilt to force it to become "normal."

I see rationality in what you say in principle, but the window of opportunity for applying that method was lost in nineties, after the West disengaged from trying to make Russia a normal country, and left it to become a rouge state.

The West stopped propping up democratic politicians in Russia shortly after they felt that "job's done," and, bizarrely to 16 years old me 15 years ago, started working for the anti-democratic camp. What's the point I asked myself? And this was the time when I discovered the "our bastard" theory, practised religiously by some Western politicians.

Similarly to how Putin turned into "our bastard" for the West 20 years ago, NSDAPers were once propped up into power on hopes of getting pliable "our bastards" for major powers in light of their own problems.

Curious what those 3 times would be? I am, of course, well aware of the atrocious self-brain drain after '33.

Other than that, most scholars would disagree: the treatment of Germany after WWI (notably no destruction due to the war, Germany capitulated before the war reached German borders) in Versailles is what made Hitler's rise possible in the first place.

Rebuilding (Marshall plan) rather than destroying (Morgenthau plan) made Germany what it is today after WWII. Japan shows that one could have skipped the whole 2nd act in Europe: Japan wasn't destroyed at all, but rebuilt after WWII, and seized to be a threat to the world.

I mean, obviously Japanese cities were systematically bombed, but there was no ground war. They could even keep their emperor.

The risk here is hiring a spy, same applies for hiring Chinese born as well.

Some might say that's a part of the problem. After the cold war, many Eastern European states received financial and other support and thrived as western-style democracies while Russia was more marginalised and went through period of economic decline, leading to rise of Putin as president after the "Chechen terrorist" apartment bombings and the demise in all but name of the fledgling democratic system. Parallels with history of Germany after WW1 / Weimar / Reichstag.

Ideal outcome may be that Russia ends up with different leadership after this disaster, and a strong, healthy democracy, with more of a stake in the global order - similar to Germany post WW2. Wishful thinking at this stage perhaps...

The US, EU and their allies can easily make this happen.

Can they? These days, China looks a much better option for a young ambitious scientist than the US. That said, if the war for control in the Ukraine brings more competition between the major powers I'm all for it, monopolies never did anyone any good, this includes the Wolfowitz doctrine.

I apologize if I'm misinterpreting you, but do you honestly believe that China is a more attractive location to a young ambitious scientist than the US? Or is this some sort of a joke that I'm not getting?

China is becoming a very attractive location for the sciences: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-00084-7

No joke at all.

Fair enough. Many might consider things other than just the level of funding when choosing where to take up residence and do research.

From a culture and language viewpoint, most Russian scientists would find it much easier to adjust to your average Western country than to China. Plus, Western countries generally have much more experience at integrating immigrants than China does, which suggests they are likely to do a better job at it than China.

So your thesis is that now, Russia is a land of superior standard of living, where milk and honey flow, but if one could finally make that stop and make citizens struggle after an external force has taken away their good economy, then the Putins would just disappear and everyone would live happily ever after?

The comment above posits none of that, this is just a baity strawman.

What else is the above post offering then?

It's not even intended as a strawman, I cannot honestly see how any of that would have positive impact: In the history of mankind, having an external force that makes people's lives worse, will, if anything, give the autocrat more support. Also, it's not like well-trained Russians aren't already leaving the country.

Edit: I am honestly asking. Thanks for giving a comment. But to me, the above comment looks almost comically naive. What am I missing?

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