For World war 2, the major winner who caused the most destruction for the nazi empire and made most of the sacrifices is the USSR, like the USSR or not (and I don't mostly) but that is the fact.
Now trying to make a direct relationship between Western prosperity and the "democracy" is very famous opinion (after all this the official ideology of US, and it's the brand/image that they want to sell to the world). But there are many different variables here, for example the west has a long history of colonialism that allowed them to make fortunes off the resources and the power of other people, even what looks like peacefull countries now, benefited from this.
I'm not saying that having freedom of speech is not necessary, but it's merely a catalyst. Actually USSR (and even Nazi Germany) made huge jumps in the scientific and technological fields but the western bloc won eventually. You can probably make a direct link between the US control over the oil industry (by means of very dirty wars and alliances, see for example KSA relation with the British Empire then the US).
There is a nice critic for the marxist prediction that the working class will make a revolution in the capitalist world and the working class is one unified entity in all the world, the critics said that this didn't happen because the colonialism allowed the capitalist regimes to give the working class in their countries more money / value that's extracted from the colonised countries. Now apply this logic to the western bloc and it you will have altrnative view, the western bloc is not ruling because it's democratic, and it's not stable becuase it has freedom of speech and not rich because of the magic of the free market, it's because of those countries being rich and able to control the other countries they were able to pump fortunes and make even the poor worker much better than his colleagues in the 3rd world countries.
If my prosperity and my cheap energy was dependent on making a war in a far place called the middle east and making alliances with any dirty tyranny there then I'll be more prepared to buy into the official propganda that we're going there to fight for our values.
So while technically there is good amount of freedom of speech, but in practice there is rarely deviation from the main narrative and even the alternative naratives are too weak or they're not radically different from the mainstream ones, this is one of the reasons that the west countries had been relatively stable, in our Third world countries we're always in active fight about the big choices to take so we're mostly on the edge of civil wars and revolutions and wars with external enemies.
P.S I'm really in no position to defend Russia, but just imagine that US faced similar danger on it's border similar to Russia with NATO backed Ukraine, actually no need to imagine, this happened multiple times From Cuba to Venezuela to many south american countries, the thing is the US in most cases didn't need to go into direct war instead it needed to orchestrate coups and civil wars and then convince the world it's all about democracy.
I'm familiar with the ideas you're summarizing here. There is no question that colonialism, explicit previously, implicit and less obvious recently, has made big contributions towards the wealth of Western countries. The question is how much.
Is it a critical ingredient? Do cheaper raw materials and cheaper labor for things we've previously done locally, make enough of a difference that in a fair competition, an economic system with much worse incentives and individual freedoms for keeping the fruits of one's labor, will actually do equally well as Western ideals?
I have concluded that this is not the case; we would still see countries with Western values as economically more powerful in such a scenario. They would be less wealthy than they are today, but not in a different league entirely. The colonialist strategies amplified the success, but were not a requirement.
I'm not convinced of the comparison to the situation in South America. St. Petersburg and Moscow are already a short IRBM flight from Estonia. NATO does not have five hundred years of history as an expansionist empire, Russia has. NATO does not have ambitions of expansion; countries threatened by Russia wish to join NATO for their security against invasions that have hundreds of years of precedent. The USA does not conquer other countries and ship their industrial surplus back home, Russia does.
But yes, USA has orchestrated coups and toppled well-functioning, locally-chosen governments. There are geopolitical analogies here, and I'm not as certain of the last point as I am of the first.
> I have concluded that this is not the case; we would still see countries with Western values as economically more powerful
We have many examples of countries doing very well in science research and technology development without necessarily adopting liberal democratic values, such as USSR, Nazi Germany, China (which is catching up very quickly even on advanced research topics despite it was on the edge of famine not so long ago), even small countries are doing very well given their situation (Sanctions and wars) such as Cuba & Iran. Actually most of the advancement in the history of humans happened under non-liberal/democratic civilizations. And for fighting poverty China pulled a relative miracle by pulling hundreds of millions of people from poverty (recently they declared the success of getting rid of extreme poverty in China).
> an economic system with much worse incentives and individual freedoms for keeping the fruits of one's labor, will actually do equally well as Western ideals
Ok this is about the "free market" myth (in my opinion), if we looked carefully we can see that most of the advancements happened because of wars (especially WW2) and governments funded programs (example: Internet, Space programs), attributing the majority of the advancements to the free market need serious evidence. Also you're underestimating the importance of the cheap resources, cheap labor and open markets this makes most of the difference. It's not only about that, the success of the US to attach it's currency to the oil industry allowed it to make free money just by controlling and "protecting" the oil sources (especially in Middle east)
It's important to say that of course the colonial countries are for sure they should have some advancement to be able to colonize other countries but the bar is relatively low in comparison the profits that can be made, and the positive feedback loop that kicks in.
> NATO does not have ambitions of expansion
USSR begs to differ, US gave the falling USSR guarantees that it won't expand to the east but it did, and it was planning to do this again in Ukraine probably.
> countries threatened by Russia wish to join NATO for their security
That's the point about coups and wars, it allows the US to change the regime by means of force and/or disinformation campaigns (or alliance with terrorists, such as AL-Qaeda) and then install puppet regime with ruling class that's has deep interests with the west and viola, that regime will voluntarily want to join the NATO and do most of what the US wishes. That's the point of being the strongest empire in the history, you have thousands of playing cards that you can use, and you still get to look like the good guy.
Also note that for example Ukraine was almost invented by Lenin (Ukraine didn't exist at the time), also many of the territories of eastern Ukraine has majorities or big minorities of Russian people so things are more nuanced than the mainstream narrative.
> NATO does not have five hundred years of history as an expansionist empire
Yes they just colonize whole continents and practically exterminate the whole native citizens, if we're talking about history.
Also UK, France, Belgium... are in the NATO should I say exactly what this means in the last 500 years?
> The USA does not conquer other countries and ship their industrial surplus back home
They're doing this right now, even in small occupied territories in eastern Syria (and you guessed it, it's the oil and wheat rich territories). Sure US doesn't always steal like that, but they protect the regimes in the Persian Gulf and they sell them weapons, they burn whole countries to the ground (Iraq, Korea, Vietnam), they force the economical structures on the countries (If you're in the orbit of the US, you can't sign meaningful deals with China, they use the UN organisations to force certain structure on the economies even for big countries), they sanction whole countries for decades (Iraq, Syria, Iran, Cuba, Venezuela, Nkorea...). They support apartheid regimes (S. Africa, Israel) and the list goes on. Actually any comparison of the US and any random Tyranny will almost always be in favor of the tyranny.
Now trying to make a direct relationship between Western prosperity and the "democracy" is very famous opinion (after all this the official ideology of US, and it's the brand/image that they want to sell to the world). But there are many different variables here, for example the west has a long history of colonialism that allowed them to make fortunes off the resources and the power of other people, even what looks like peacefull countries now, benefited from this. I'm not saying that having freedom of speech is not necessary, but it's merely a catalyst. Actually USSR (and even Nazi Germany) made huge jumps in the scientific and technological fields but the western bloc won eventually. You can probably make a direct link between the US control over the oil industry (by means of very dirty wars and alliances, see for example KSA relation with the British Empire then the US). There is a nice critic for the marxist prediction that the working class will make a revolution in the capitalist world and the working class is one unified entity in all the world, the critics said that this didn't happen because the colonialism allowed the capitalist regimes to give the working class in their countries more money / value that's extracted from the colonised countries. Now apply this logic to the western bloc and it you will have altrnative view, the western bloc is not ruling because it's democratic, and it's not stable becuase it has freedom of speech and not rich because of the magic of the free market, it's because of those countries being rich and able to control the other countries they were able to pump fortunes and make even the poor worker much better than his colleagues in the 3rd world countries. If my prosperity and my cheap energy was dependent on making a war in a far place called the middle east and making alliances with any dirty tyranny there then I'll be more prepared to buy into the official propganda that we're going there to fight for our values. So while technically there is good amount of freedom of speech, but in practice there is rarely deviation from the main narrative and even the alternative naratives are too weak or they're not radically different from the mainstream ones, this is one of the reasons that the west countries had been relatively stable, in our Third world countries we're always in active fight about the big choices to take so we're mostly on the edge of civil wars and revolutions and wars with external enemies.
P.S I'm really in no position to defend Russia, but just imagine that US faced similar danger on it's border similar to Russia with NATO backed Ukraine, actually no need to imagine, this happened multiple times From Cuba to Venezuela to many south american countries, the thing is the US in most cases didn't need to go into direct war instead it needed to orchestrate coups and civil wars and then convince the world it's all about democracy.