RUSSIAN OPINION
(a) the west is seen as decadent and in decline in much of the world. And a visit to america, or just viewing american streets on google maps will confirm that without much difficulty.
(b) russians are frustrated because their economy was growing until 2014, but the consequences of handling the ukrainian revolution poorly have affected them disproportionately. Worse, all capital is being directed to moscow and st petersburg at the expense of the distant regions. (Again, this is a ‘gamble’ the russian government is taking, given that they expect a rapid collapse of the west – especially europe – witihn the near time horizon as demographic collapse hurts europe more so than the rest of the world.
(c) the entire world is economically equilibrating ending 600 years of european advantage in genetic destribution, institutions, culture, science, and technology, so the entire world will gravitate toward greater state responsibility for the economic condition – which is what we mean by socialism – since socialism always fails, it simply means are more mixed economy favoring state protection of labor markets and prices.
(d) We know what the future looks like and china has taught a very serious and uncomfortable lesson: the chinese are fascists not communists. They are imitating the national socialists not the communists, in every aspect of their society. IN doing so they are demonstrating that the fascists won the argument over the future economic model. Why? Because nationalism, ethonocentrism, heavy trade regulation, state as majority venture capitalism, and private sector as majority producer, is the optimum political model. The only difference is the degree of propaganda necessary to maintain the loyalty of the people to one another (nationalism, ethnocentrism), in proportion to the amount of stress that the people must endure while policy slowly take effect.