Originally Posted by
LandingCheck
While the problems you point out are real, the solution you posit is simply not realistic in the space-time continuum in which I live.
Russia, firstly, has all of the problems (an large and possibly hostile Islamic population, low birth rates and essentially dying or dead value-added design/manufacturing sector) at a level that makes Europe look positively dynamic.
Second, the decision maker(s) (to be charitable) have no intention to serve in Heaven when they can reign in Hell, as far as the actual costs of European integration to realize any benefit, decades in the future.
The Russian alliance with China is borne of necessity, but even it just represents another brick in the wall of self-defeating Russian foreign policy that has at its base some insane notion of a once and future MittelEuropa superarmy marching under some modern Polish Charles the XII because really what the US and Western Europe want to do is some regime change in Moscow. Really, the Russian elite believes a version of reality like this, which is one of the few ways anyone who routinely selects the correct shoe/foot combination would believe the Baltic states are some proto-fascist lodgment for the 23 remaining operational panzers to roll into downtown St. Petersburg, versus an indefensible resource sump for Western defense investment.
Ultimately, Russian political and economic integration into Europe will only happen if the Russian elite decides they want Russia to be a normal country, and that will require a fundamental, perhaps impossible shift in the Russian psyche.
Why would you believe that intelligent people ruling Russia are so bereft of sense that they would prefer to ride a dying system to a serious restructuring?
My take is that the European integration effort (aka Nord Stream 2) is getting red lights from the US and from local European politicians. That makes Moscow's stance easier to understand.
What I cannot understand is that none of these politicians has dared stick his/her head above the parapet to say the truth, that Europe needs Russia to save itself from irrelevance.