Thought experiments are usually useless, but let’s for a few minutes imagine in the years after World War II Russia/The USSR deciding to use its resources to build a better life for its citizens rather than trying to spread its ideology across the world and trying to oppose the leadership and examples of the west. Sure Capitalism was brutal and unjust, both to the lower classes in the western countries and their colonies. Espousing socialism and its virtues in opposition, keeping corporations regulated, favoring equality, would have had its place, and the message would have been much better accepted if the Soviet Union had a government that functioned well and a populace that was well-served. It could have become Norway, with vast resources helping to fund progress socially and politically. Instead, it decided to become a total pain in the ass, causing trillions and trillions of dollars and rubles better spent on education, infrastructure and health to be wasted worldwide on defense, spying, and in proxy wars.
The world we have instead is no longer the bipolar us against them of NATO vs. the Warsaw Pact. Because nuclear secrets were spread by the USSR and Pakistan, we now have even tiny, otherwise ineffectual countries like North Korea making noise, and the Chinese more and more bellicose. This had the potential to be avoided, never more so than right after World War II. A reasonable Stalin and his lackeys might have realized the true horrors of war and changed their priorities. But reason was in short supply, especially in the mind of Stalin. No matter how deluded he was about his country and government, he had to know at that point, after the terrible famines and failures of most of the government policies in the 1930s, even about basics like feeding its people, he and his advisors did not know how to govern other than through fear and violence, and his government was only good at spreading that abroad. His armies had steamrolled a Nazi army stretched thin by overreach, and this gave him the false confidence they could keep that level of success against any adversary. There were just enough westerners disappointed with how their own governments supported systems of injustice and inequality, or narcissistic enough they would sell what they knew and could steal to the USSR spy networks, and the Soviets were able to parlay that to the state of mutual assured destruction to hold most feared western aggression, at least militarily, at bay.
The next chance was when Gorbachev presented President George H.W. Bush with the opportunity to significantly disarm and de-escalate. Bush passed, skeptical, and a huge chance was lost, as Gorbachev was not the typical Russian leader and might have been able to keep his word. When an impaired Yeltsin passed the torch to the man the leadership perceived as a puppet, Putin, all chance of progress was lost, and we have now the challenge of a man like Stalin, far too full of himself, far too self-righteous, prickly, paranoid and self-confident to ever admit he is wrong or change course from the destructive path the old Soviet leaders led his country on to its ruin, thinking he can avoid the mistakes they made. Propped up only by its fossil fuel reserves and the infrastructure to distribute them (mostly set up by western corporations), it has the means to make enough trouble to threaten anyone.
But Russia is not the only threat. It has helped China assert itself and aided Iran and North Korea tremendously, both directly and by opposing any pushback against them through the United Nations and diplomacy. All of those governments would have failed long ago without Russian support, as they all share the same lack of ability to govern without force and intimidation, suppressing all dissent. The USA and its allies missed out on many opportunities to help each of those countries, always pushing unbridled and exploitative western corporations on them while failing to provide the appropriate governance, preferring strongmen who would be anti-Soviet to anyone who might want more equality and actual democracy (which might want to regulate or nationalize businesses and things like energy and water distribution, basic human necessities). The choice about who would run their lives and countries has almost never been there for most of the people of the modern world as a result.
The reason I am writing this is I have concluded Russia, historically and in its current iteration, has been the greatest scourge to humanity in its existence, surpassing even Nazi Germany, who certainly set a high bar in its brief run of horror. Germany, once it united its leadership and territory in the 1800s, was a destructive and disruptive force, but it has since redeemed itself admirably. Russia, from the treatment of the serfs through its revolution and terrible civil war, treatment of the Jews and the Ukrainians, its suppression of dissent, its near total lack of respect for human life, its horrible tradition of war crimes, its pervasive dishonesty, and its transmission and support of all of these terrible plagues to multiple other countries and cultures, has held back so much human progress over the past 150 years. Perhaps most interesting and threatening are its ongoing attempts to turn countries who have made progress and had success governing back into oppressors and authoritarian regimes, from Scandinavia, western Europe and to here in the USA, preying upon the authoritarian tendencies of leaders and their gullible supporters by using immigration and racism, propaganda from the fossil fuel industries and religion to divide citizenry who would benefit much more from working together. This has been most striking in the USA, where strident anti-communists now side with Russia even over our own government, congratulate and applaud Putin, and allow Russian propaganda and hackers to brainwash the supporters of the Republican party. There is more evidence people like Donald Trump, Tucker Carlson, Michael Flynn, Marjorie Taylor Greene and many other Republican leaders are Russian assets than patriotic Americans, and the same can be said for the right wing in many European countries. The trend they all push is away from democracy, away from freedom and justice and towards authoritarianism and repression.
This is the greatest existential threat to the world right now. Climate change is going to cause tremendous disruptions, much worse than it already has, but the worst of that is 10-20 years down the road. Right now, we have a man who is trying to destroy the USA running for president with significant support, while those supporters are also trying to undermine our whole system through the Supreme Court and election rigging. They will not do anything about Climate Change and will only make things worse for everyone but the rich (who foolishly will also have to live in an inhospitable world with all their money) in every way, destroying our education system to create an ignorant and subservient underclass who will accept any terrible job offered in order to get less inadequate healthcare for their families, and to make whatever life they can. Russia would like the entire world to return to serfdom, and the leaders of the Republican party are all on board as long as they can get and hold power.
So, we must exorcise Russia. Stop its influence and propaganda, stop the leaders who side with Putin and his cronies, and most importantly right now, stop its aggression and war crimes in the Ukraine. If we all show even a tenth of the spine the Ukrainians show, we will keep Trump and Putin’s agents in the Republican party out of power, lasso the fossil fuel industry and put it under control and on its path to obsolescence, and give humanity the potential for a future it deserves.