Oh, there's a lot between not doing anything at all and repeating the mistakes from Iranian days:
- provide economic / humanitarian aid contingent on progress in democratic values and actually audit where the money goes. This ended being effective around 2010 when China began hitting the global stage though.
- supporting countries or democratic, pro-Western parties/groups that are threatened by an aggressor (e.g. every former Soviet state)
- when supposed "allies" end up funding our enemies (e.g. Saudi-Arabia, who not just financed Bin Laden and is the main ideological driver in fundamentalist madrasas (religious schools) all over the world, thus being the main contributor to Islamist terrorism), cut them off. Hell the Saudis butchered a journalist (a father of U.S. citizens) in an embassy and we didn't do shit. Instead, we allow Saudi-Arabia and Qatar to host fucking World Cups. What a bunch of bullshit.
- aggressive, actually effective sanctions instead of just making the lives of a few oligarchs a tiny bit more difficult
- increase our own security posture in terms of military and provide a credible retaliation threat towards any potential aggressor
- invest into academic research on other countries. That one got shamefully disbanded after the collapse of the USSR and the shift towards prioritizing STEM over humanities - we now lack the academic capacity for actually understanding other countries or provide actual evidence-backed advice to politicians. Instead we got completely dependent on think tanks and consultancies.
- respond in-kind to Russia and China banning Western activities: they effectively force pro-democracy organizations to close shop? Fine, no more Chinese police stations in Western countries. They engage in cyberwarfare? Fine, we cut them off from the Internet. They refuse to allow Western countries fair and equal access to their markets? Fine, we ban investments from China and force-divest existing investments, and raise tariffs on their exports.
The last part is the easiest... over decades we believed in "change by trade", we hoped that they would become similar to us culturally. That worked in certain areas - McDonald's and Coca-Cola show that - but politically, we didn't give a slightest interest in both countries getting ever more authoritarian. And now it's biting us in our collective arses.
Every one? I am from one of those states, and most of them are even worse democracy-wise than Russia.
The only thing we have over Russia is not going after neighbors' territories, and even that's debatable (see conflicts between Armenia and Azerbaijan, Kyrgyzstan vs Tajikistan).
Your governments do overlook serious human rights violations, though, when it suits them. We had widespread protests in January 2022 that were brutally suppressed by the government, which ended up killing more than 300 protesters (that's according to official figures that are thought to be undercounted).
No fucks given by Western propaganda or government talking heads because several European, US, and Canadian companies have massive investments in our oil, gas, and minerals industry.
About six months ago Macron visited Astana to beg for uranium fuel after France got kicked off from Niger, and a group of political activists tried to seize the rare moment and did everything they could to meet him for a few minutes and talk about human rights violations in our country. You can probably guess the result of that endeavor.
One of the major gas projects (managed by Shell IIRC) ends in 2030, and I have a strong suspicion "human rights violations" will become a permanent theme in our relations right after that moment.
I agree, and part of the cause is that us Western countries don't give a shit. We don't even give a shit about those countries right on our border like Ukraine or Bosnia.
> No fucks given by Western propaganda or government talking heads because several European, US, and Canadian companies have massive investments in our oil, gas, and minerals industry.
Or because they were bought off such as in the case with the massive corruption by Azerbaijan.
> About six months ago Macron visited Astana to beg for uranium fuel after France got kicked off from Niger, and a group of political activists tried to seize the rare moment and did everything they could to meet him for a few minutes and talk about human rights violations in our country. You can probably guess the result of that endeavor.
My opinion of Macron is probably just as low as yours, the only thing the guy can do is talk. All talk, no act.
Edit: as opposed to China and Russia that pour serious money into large infrastructure projects like the new Silk Road. Russia has only started doing this recently, though. People have their reservations about those countries, but can't help but see the difference between e.g. China that builds railroads and power plants, and Western countries that only suck out money, paying tiny salaries to local workers and circumventing things like air pollution regulations.