I’m not an apologist for Russian imperialism, other than, I suppose, in the sense that
All right, here we go...
I acknowledge that the Russian leadership and (many) Russian people believe that Russia has a right to play role in the politics of its neighbours, both in order to support the interests of the Russian state and to support the rights of Russians living in those countries,
You really have a knack for nesting obfuscation within obfuscation, you know? I have to respect the craft. Here, we already have two nested within just a few dependent clauses. Let's take a look.
So, first of all, "play[ing] a role in the politics of its neighbours" can mean a lot of different things. We're not talking about Russia today because Putin endorsed Zelenskyy's opponent in the next election, are we? We're talking about a
very specific "role" being "played". One which, if you were actually honest about what you're talking about, you'd have a lot more trouble defending.
Second, of course, this whole statement is entirely irrelevant to begin with, because no one disputes it. No one disagrees that Putin "believes Russia has a right" to practice imperialism, or that a majority of Russians agree with him (having near-total control over political discourse within the country sure helps with that). In point of fact, my first post in this thread was
specifically arguing that very premise. Nobody denies that this is what Putin and many Russians
believe. The question, of course - a question that you keep desperately worming your way out of having to answer - is whether they are
right to believe that or not. Of course, we all know why you won't answer it.
and that this viewpoint is not going to go away any time soon and that I don’t believe this is something that we in the West can change.
Another misdirection, albeit a somewhat subtler one. Of course, I have never argued that the West has the power to unilaterally change Russia's imperial mindset either. It would be nice if Russians could develop a less imperialistic mindset, but we've learned from our own histories that such changes of heart are rare and take a long time to take hold. The point is not to change anyone's mind - the point is to change Russia's
behavior. Behaviors, we all know, can be changed through reward and punishment, and hopefully the punishment of losing a ruinous war to Ukraine will convince Putin (or whoever rules Russia by that point) that imperialism is simply not in their best interest.
That aside, the point of posting the map is to emphasise that the United States and Russia aren’t that different, realistically.
That may or may not be true (depending on what your personal threshold for "that different" is), but it is, once again, responding to an argument no one made. It could very well be that Russia and the US were imperialistic to exactly the same degree, and that still wouldn't invalidate this thread in any way. There have been plenty of threads on this forum dedicated to discussing aspects of US imperialism, so I don't see what's wrong with a thread discussing Russian imperialism. Unless, again, you have a vested interest in blunting any critique of the latter.
Both are continent spanning empires; both were built on conquest and bloodshed;
Sure.
both countries have historically claimed the right to a sphere of influence; and the elites of both countries have an imperialistic mindset (albeit flavoured differently).
Yes, although it is significant that the US
has noticeably toned down its claims to a "sphere of influence" over time - rhetorically since WW2, and in practice much more recently than that, but no less tangibly. Latin America in the past two or three decades has had plenty of regimes that were far more overly hostile to the US than Zelenskyy's Ukraine was to Russia. Of course, the US has tried to influence politics there, but the only time in recent history where there was any effort at regime change (and at that, a very half-assed and performative effort) was with Venezuela after it had fully transitioned into an authoritarian regime. If you want to go to the US explicitly seeking to overthrow a democratic regime, you have to go back to Chile half a century ago. As for the US forcibly annexing territory from a neighbor, you need to go back to 1848. Not exactly recent history if you ask me.
Americans, of course, like to pretend that they’re special and elite Americans love to flaunt their country’s supposed ‘values’, but really the only thing that marks them out from Russians is the language that they speak and the size of their waists.
Congratulations! Here, at the very end, you have finally grown the spine to make a direct, substantive claim that is relevant to the point at hand. Of course it's one I disagree with, but that's fine - that's how it goes between honest interlocutors.
Anyway, there
is a meaningful difference between naked imperialism and an imperialism like the US' which is couched in a set of values about how international relations ought to be conducted. By building the famed "liberal international order", the US has aligned its interests on the continued existence of that order. Not completely or perfectly, of course, but still to a substantive extent. For the US to deviate from that order too dramatically (by, for example, invading Mexico because of a disagreement with its president) it would ultimately undermine its own position on top of that order (even invading Iraq, which was far more defensible under a liberal international framework than Russia's invasion of Ukraine, significantly damaged the US' position in the world and is widely regarded as a mistake for this very reason). This creates
some constraints on the ways US imperialism exerts itself that are clearly not present for Russia.
