zestokryl i agree with many of your points, but i think we tend to exaggerate the global economic aspect, in this day and age, if your economic capacity is sufficient (for countries the size of Russia or even Turkey) to feed mouths and if your infrastructure, energy, education, health system is in place, concentration of focus is directed at improving the intellectual capacity of the nation. intellectual capacity/capital determines the total value of said country's capabilities.
currently countries at the size of Russia with indigenous capability to develop and improve projects of magnitude, ia. cutting energy demans via nuclear power plants, improving military industrial complex etc doesn't require Western markets. i don't even feel the urgency to mention alternative growth markets that replaces the "West", like China, India, Brazil, Indonesia and so on
Russia, has some science and technology infrastructure and scientists, but devil is in the details ...
Russia gone through 90 era , devastated in terms of society, destroyed industrial cooperation, education, agriculture
Maybe Russia does not need desperately western markets, but they do need western technologies. For example, german diesel engines for coast guard ships , UAVs, electronic system for satelites, industrial automatics and more stuff
Second russian problem is declining oil and gas prices. State owned oil and gas mega companies, are making much of the internal demand for goods and services. Many jobs depend on theirs orders, and thats the problem in addition, goverment has much less assets for investing, after oil and gas price drops
China is taking a lead in some departments, but western technologies are sometimes irreplacable. Even, when thats not the case, chinese are playing sleazy. For example, they are ready to sell some satellite hardware to Russia, but in exchange, they are demanding production licence for russia space rocket engines, since Russia cant no longer acquire
european or american ones
Germany and some other EU countries were perfect partners to do bussiness with in the tech field, but the USA destroyed theirs relationship on purpose, by creating ukrainian crisis and casting sanctions upon Russia
One of the examples, is russian ongoing program to restart famous Antonov 2, airplane production, with composite made fuselage and new engines. Since there are no small turboprop production in Russia , they planned to buy 300 Honeywell turboprops, for the project. But, now, ties got cut, and there are no other way to acquire such engines outside western countries. You are, generally right, there are many rising economies, but sadly, some technologies/ products, are duopoly of the few countries on the planet
Political conflicts turned into a civil war.
It was political conflict, just for show , in the beginning. While demonstrations were taking places loads of arms and armed gangs were pouring into Syria
I remember reading interview with some syrian pharmacist couple, who menaged to flee Syria and end up in Russia. They have sad, no one took any actions against demonstations, till someone, set off bomb mounted on motor bike at the army check point. Maybe they simplified theirs story somehow, but armed diversional groups were being prepared to cross the border and carry out diversions and killings inside Syria
Demonstrations were show for western media, under the radar whole different plan was ongoing. To instigate bloodshed and hatred, with assasinations , diversions and arms distrubution
