Level Zero: Extraction insta-bans player on launching the game.
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You're viewing this through the lens of a "single USSR." Which is belied by it's own title. The union of states was already breaking apart, and as you said, aggression would have led to a unified purpose.
So.. the KGB applied that aggression against the states gaining more freedom, which unified the people against their coup, and setup Yeltsin to lead.
The deep irony of this, and the reason I put it all this way, is because Yeltsin ended up having to hand the Russian state back over to a former KGB officer.
In any case "we beat the because we were nice," even if it were kinda sorta true (it isn't), it misses the real plot. And even if it didn't, name me one country we could level with explosives and then walk away calling it "good diplomacy."
That isn't really true though, in terms of the actual population, as amply demonstrated by the referendum in 1991: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1991_Soviet_Union_referendum
The lowest result was in Ukraine and Russia itself.
The USSR broke apart because the elites wanted it broken apart.
Because the elites wanted what they got (massive wealth through corruption and graft and selling of privatized state enterprises for scrap, logistics control, etc. etc. etc.).
The elites were given this possibility because the USA basically promised them the possibility and provided bank accounts to store the wealth and yachts and houses in Italy to spend it on. Which is what I call being nice.
Russian elites today were instead promised pain and suffering instead of massive additional wealth. Given the stick instead of the carrot. Russian elites are pretty much 99% behind Putin and Xi, because anything is better than being a beggar under a bunch of whimsical sanctions applied willy-nilly by a bunch of fart-sniffing retards. And also they are ornery fucks who want revenge for having their stuff taken.
The war in Ukraine could have been won by the west in three easy steps 2 years ago, by being nice: