litwin wrote:". So was Russia in its past. "
in its past ?
Litwin Russia has declined a lot since 1991. It is a shadow of what it once was in terms of 'empire' and it wants what it once thought it controlled. That is the reason for the present war with Ukraine. It wants to be what it used to be with the USSR. But the USSR were a large group of nations with unequal power relationships, corruption and badly done consumer goods planning brought it all crashing down. They got to accept it was a self made failure and move on with their much smaller control. But you got Putin the dictator wanting to do a dictator thing. So you got a war now.
Another lesson for you to realize that no matter which nation has the IMPERIAL mentality? Get rid of it. Move on from lessons learned from the past. Once you have made the mistakes you can't bring back a blast from the past. Not in today's world.
Got to stop with the conquer the world shitty mentality. You can't. The world is big with a lot of variables for world conquest and trying to compete with nations with different power levels, histories and places in time is for fools. If you are a good leader you assess your own circumstances and work with what you got and move forward.
A woman I once taught in my class asked me once, 'but if I work hard at this and I am not successful and fail at graduating from high school, I will be devastated. I dropped out of school ten years ago and have been paying for it with lost opportunities all the time. Why should I emotionally invest in trying hard only to fail at it in the end?'
My reply to her was, 'You better start changing your mindset now. Because regardless of what happened in the past that you can't change, you can still control your present now, and change your future. You will be ten years older in the future. Do you want to be ten years older and still be without a high school diploma, and losing more opportunities? Or do you want to be graduated from high school, done with some career you chose for yourself and in a job you always liked and wanted to do? Because the ten years are coming for sure. What you do with them is up to you. It depends on not trying to do something but getting it done. Now. And making that a bridge to a better world of opportunities. It is up to you. Put in the effort and sacrifice now....or accept being stuck in the past and never moving forward. Time stops for no one.'
That advice goes for countries too Litwin.
Russia could have invested in its youth, its great scientific minds that it has always had, its mathematicians, engineers, and even could have worked on improving pensions for old people, opened manufacturing, and did alternative energy models, put more money into sports programs and improved housing and heating for many rural towns in Russia. Did a lot with what it had. Instead of fattening a bunch of mafioso oligarchs' wallets and having a bunch of Stars Coffee shops backed by greedy imitators of Yankee entrepreneurs who never liked paying their employees a living wage stateside.
Russia is living stuck in its past. And a bad past of Ivan the Terrible, Russian Tsars, Rasputin, and BULLSHIT authoritarianism from hell. Should have left Ukraine alone.