6 at most.
When does Russia collapse? I give it 3 weeks.
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Probably going to take more time.
Last year, even before the more recent protests started, I predicted the Iranian regime to fall, this year. A majority there hates the system. Inflation makes it even worse. Still the Mullahs survived the massive protests.
The Russian regime is in an even more comfortable position than the Iranian. Also, there are too many people in regime and country who really want the Soviet collapse to never repeat again and will probably make great effort not to let that happen.
Authoritarianism is very frustrating and difficult to predict. In most cases, it ends very sudden and unexpectedly.
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What do you mean by "collapse"? That some of its autonomous republics break away and form new independent states? That Putin and his cronies are ousted by military coup? That a popular rebellion is sparked and turns into a full-blown social revolution?
I don't expect to see any of those things.
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"I honestly don't know why people aren't talking about this."
Well, people have been speculating about this for decades. By "this," I mean the idea that China will make a move to take back all the territory that was ceded to tsarist Russia by imperial China in 1858 and 1860.
Logic seems to be that of course the Chinese are fueled by a desire for revenge to completely overturn the "Century of Humiliation." But are they? Doesn't seem that way. Prime opportunity for China to seize that Russian territory was in the 1990s.
Taiwan, meanwhile, is different. To the mainland Chinese, it's governed by a bunch of pro-Japanese traitors. That's far worse than some Putin apparatchik running Primorsky Krai.
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"I Prime opportunity for China to seize that Russian territory was in the 1990s.
Taiwan, meanwhile, is different. To the mainland Chinese, it's governed by a bunch of pro-Japanese traitors. That's far worse than some Putin apparatchik running Primorsky Krai.Perhaps. Truly, Russia was a mess after collapse of USSR, but China was in a vastly different place: working out economic reforms, less ascendant, less militarily mighty. Now Russia's on a back foot militarily. And Taiwan would be costly.
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It's all down to the military. If they mutiny, the regime is done (though the next one would be no better). If they keep walking to their deaths, it'll hold on indefinitely.
The Muscovites are too heavily invested in the regime to tear it down as that would destroy their QoL and put many of them against the wall. The provincials don't have the resources to actually sustain a movement through to conclusion.