Amid Russia's impending invasion of Ukraine, a development that dashes the hopes I expressed in a 2018 email below, it strikes me as peculiar that Ethical Codes within academia are fixated on penalizing nearly everything, even going so far as to scrutinize excessive self-citations. Strangely absent, however, is any ethical code globally capable of holding academics accountable for warmongering, a far more distressing phenomenon than the comparatively trivial matter of excessive self-citations. What does this discrepancy reveal about the values of academia? Is it a blind spot or an act of cowardice?
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De: F. Pacheco Torgal
Enviado: 12 de Março de 2018 7:09
Assunto: Is Russia the next big country to join the European Union ?
Following the email below i would say that for Russia a much more intelligent approach to boost is economic performance would encompass strengthen ties with Europe research area in the same way that they already did with the Erasmus program that last year reached a record participation from Russia, a program which is by far the most sucessfull European program.
The truth is that Russia is not a sustainable country. Not only because of not being economically competitive but also because it spends too much on millitary expenses. https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/russia-economic-stagnation-structural-reform-by-konstantin-sonin-2018-02 No surprise then that it has a GDP/capita (10.700 USD) which is 4 times lower than the average GDP/capita of the European Union and that will keep on droping, not to mention the almost 20 million Russians that live in poverty. Also let´s no forget that until 2050 Russia risk to lose 40 million inhabitants when it will have almost the same population as Turkey of around 100 million inhabitants https://www.brookings.edu/blog/up-front/2015/04/02/the-russian-economy-in-2050-heading-for-labor-based-stagnation/
So the day that Russia finally lose his ilusions about the greatness of old and its traditional and unsustainable "thirsty for power" https://www.diploweb.com/-The-Geopolitics-of-Europe-From-the-60-.html and stop to rethink its current geopolitical strategy will be the day that they will start to change internally in order to be able to meet the demanding European standards and to join the European Union. And i´m confident that will took place during my life time maybe even before 2050 fullfiling the vision of a Europe "from the Atlantic to the Urals". In the medium term Russia not only has much more to do with EU than Turkey but its also more important so Europe can keep up with the rise of Asia and most importantly to assure a sustainable peace in the area from the Atlantic to the Urals.
