50 years from now the official position of representatives of powers (Russia, US, China, Israel, etc.) on their own actions from today will still be completely avoiding the topic. But some might, at best, halfheartedly admit that what happened "back then" was not their proudest moment and they could have done better, all while actually being worse. But that will be their water under someone else's bridge and as long as that water sill allows them to reap the benefits of their "not proudest moments" then it's just going to happen again and again with the next generations getting a minor point of conversation.
If Russia can "poison" Eastern Ukraine for their benefit, if the US can cut the legs from under a democracy for their benefit, if Israel can eradicate the people from a land for their benefit, etc. and live to fully enjoy that benefit, people are going to have these conversations on "ancient" history time and time again.
Its sad but that's a reality of the world. The idea that freedom and democracy mean some 100% fair and just system, where amoral actions just don't happen, or if they happen they are either very well justifiable or always punished are lovely, we all like that idea very much but... thats not the reality, not in 2024, not even with champions of western democracies.
Reality is extremely messy, mistakes, negligence, or sometimes outright evil behavior does and will happen.
There is the saying - the bigger dog f*ks all other dogs.
TBH such behavior massively feeds pro-russian propaganda and emotions in ie Europe or Middle east. Since they don't really have to invent massive fantasies just spin mildly actual history, if even needed and continue from there. I manage to see easily forest for the trees so to say, but I personally know quite a few smart people fail at that and lean more into anti-american sentiment, and with less educated minds its even easier.
It is, indeed, true that the dead-eyed psychotics who run the US view the world this way. As do many of the folks who have had that rule inflicted on them, inside the US and out.
Looking at the actual relations between, say, the Soviets and Korea or China or Vietnam and the picture of every state as a vassal of a larger state doesn't seem to hold- there are a lot of reasons the USSR was not as interventionist in various people in the US would like to believe. And there are a lot of reasons China and Iran are both viewed as monstrous threats by folks in the US (and their vassals) and thought of as benign (compared to the US) by much of the wider world: if you're not part of a multi-century colonialist project then "establishing world dominance" doesn't make sense.
If you see yourself as "the big dog" and you view a "dog-eat-dog world" as a historical necessity, then if you have enough resources you can create that reality.
> But that will be their water under someone else's bridge and as long as that water sill allows them to reap the benefits of their "not proudest moments" then it's just going to happen again and again with the next generations getting a minor point of conversation.
You are claiming at once that deepening our understanding of historic CIA misdeeds misses the forest for the trees, and then ignoring the trees to project current CIA misdeeds out 50+ years.
It's like the coastline paradox and the gambler's fallacy had a baby.
On the off chance that this was not written by some bad LLM that will miss the point again... I'm claiming that some countries with power are in a never ending cycle of pulling some appalling, odious crap that furthers their interest and keep that crap buried for a generation or so, then after enough time passes the crap surfaces and the new generation who also benefited from that offers some weak platitudes about how the appalling, odious crap "was not a very nice thing to do" while pulling their generation's version of odious, appalling crap to further their interest and keep that crap buried for a generation or so. And so on.
In the chorus of voices that say today "wow, what the CIA was doing back then was pretty not ok" are people who benefit from what the CIA did and is still doing as we speak. People who vote, support, subsidize these acts, or take part in committing them even without knowing.
If you just read to answer you'll never get the point. And big words can only take you so far in hiding it.
If Russia can "poison" Eastern Ukraine for their benefit, if the US can cut the legs from under a democracy for their benefit, if Israel can eradicate the people from a land for their benefit, etc. and live to fully enjoy that benefit, people are going to have these conversations on "ancient" history time and time again.