Politics/Slapfights - Ancient history to modern day!

[Ragabul]

Just got back from voting in the primaries. Official right to complain reinstated. I've never voted in a primary on actual election day before. I usually do early voting. I don't know what actual election day on primaries tend to look like here but there were probably 3 times as many people at the Republican tables as the Dem tables. This could mean a lot or basically nothing given that Dems like early voting more and there's next to no point in voting in the Democrat primary here anyway. Elementary school one street over from me also became a polling place for the first time and my neighborhood is working class so it could just be that too.

[FrozenShadow]

We're talking about the one country that stopped the Red Army during WWII. If Putin has a hard time going through Ukraine which is a relatively flat and hospitable country, they are going to get decimated in Finland.

The Baltic states however are something entirely different, but once again, Putin is going to have to divert many troops to take Ukraine...and he's going to lose a lot of them - and with the various sanctions, he ain't going to easily replace whatever he loses.

Of course I might be wrong and he might take Kyiv next week, but that does not look like it, and the more time passes, the more Russia will be in deep shit. Just like other countries suffered when they invaded Russia, actually.

Well, the reality is that even with Finland's persistence during Winter War and Continuation War, we would have eventually gotten decimated.

Finland was mostly saved because Stalin had much more important things/goals to think about than Finland. During Winter war, when the war lasted longer than expected, Stalin faced a threat of UK and France potentially coming to help Finland against them, something he couldn't risk. Especially so, when Stalin knew that Germany will be attacking sooner or later. This meant that Soviets didn't have much men nor time to waste with Finland during Winter war. As for Continuation wars case, Stalin was in hurry to start to build new eastern block and for that he needed to capture Balkan areas and Poland. And of course, there was beginning stages race for the Berlin between Allies. Either way, Stalin needed all of his men for those, not trying to waste them in lost cause of military occupation of Finland.

Basically Finland was saved thanks to our persistence, but most of all timely luck amidst of the larger realities of world war II.

Yeah, and that's why it's really damn good for us and the world in general that Ukraine is fighting so damn hard against Russians. Just imagine, what kind of trouble the rest of world would be with this seeming imperialist Russia, if they would've gotten all of the weaponry Ukraine had before the war started. We are talking about larger army than pretty much any other European country, when it comes to tanks (more than top 5 best European countries together), armoured vehicles and other equipment. Now, not only Russia is not getting all of these, they are also losing large portion of their own too.

The Baltic states however are something entirely different, but once again, Putin is going to have to divert many troops to take Ukraine...and he's going to lose a lot of them - and with the various sanctions, he ain't going to easily replace whatever he loses.

This is something I have to disagree, we in the west can't really comprehend of how much easier it's for Russia to replace what they lost. Yes, hardware might be more difficult to get, but they could very easily replace their lost soldier with about 45M fit-to-service manpower. Sure, not everyone of these can be armed or even trained, but were are still talking about multi million soldier army, maybe even low two-digit numbers.

Especially if we consider the following 4 "joker cards".

1. West hasn't probably even realized yet, that Putin had had 10, maybe up to 15 years to build and prepare for this "imperialistic war" of his. We have no idea of how well he had brainwashed his citizens or what kind of army he might have trained in deep into Siperia. Yes, US might use satellites to spy on vast Siperians areas, but its also easy hide things there. Especially so, if training had been masked to look like something else.

2. While Russia certainly hasn't the nationalistic fervor that they had during WWII, if Putin would managed to create one through lying and false propaganda, there would be trouble. Russia could potentially overrun most of current armies in Europe with sheer manpower in this case. This is mostly thanks to russian temperament. If you get nationalistic berserk state going on, Russian won't give rats ass of how many soldier they lose or how many civilians to bombard to death.

Most troubling part in this is the years long brainwashing that Putin had done with Russian propaganda media. They had spent years to manipulate russians to think and see the world certain way and they obviously tried to use "liberation" of Ukraine as a next step in their plan with this.

3. China. A true joker card here. In worse case scenario, Russia could promise of its oil and gas in exchange of China arming Russia, which could happen relatively fast even. I'm no expert, but I'm pretty certain that both China and Russia have large amount of hardware, especially old hardware lying around some storage, which could be given to Russia.

4. NATO being really untested truly. Nato is nice on paper, but there is no real proven proof that NATO would really work. Especially in the case of US actually coming in Europe to fight against Russia.

Considering the damn divided the US is now with BLM, "pronouns and binary generations" and Trump + GOP (with their somewhat pro-russian views) vs. Democrats polarization, I'm not certain US would want to come to save Europe from Russia. Especially so, when they know they would need to bear the largest burden and with that deaths in all of that fighting. It's easy to go in Iraq or Syria, where there is no real army against you. This is especially so, if Trump manages to get himself re-elected or the next election is damn close by. Now President wants to be the one to send his citizens in war against Russia.



Of course, all of the above is just for the worst case scenario. Right now it looks like that Russia have hard enough time to just beat one country. So, taking direct fight against NATO doesn't look that likely.

[Ragabul]

Will add big WoT later (I want to play Cyberpunk), but one little thing I have seen pointed out that is a very pertinent point. It took us 2 weeks to take Baghdad and that was considered an insanely fast campaign. It's early days yet.

[FrozenShadow]

The other major defeat is the EU reaction. He expected them to be indecisive and meek because the EU has never been focused on military - but as a result, he got several countries supplying weapons to Ukraine, the EU itself moving funds to help Ukraine resist, and even more spectacularly, he got freaking GERMANY to suddenly decide it needed to unlock €100 billion to modernize its army (from what I read it's 3 times their yearly budget, so it's no spare change). The same Germany he had basically bullied into inaction by playing both on German guilt over WWII in Russia and on their dependence on Russian gas.

Forgot to quote the this part. Putin's attack had managed to make many Europeans countries do quite unexpected and even downright impossible turns in their decades long policies.

Not only Germany is going spend that single use of 113 billion for their Army, but they also plan to commit for yearly 2% of GDP commitment for Nato membership. Finland is also sending weapons to Ukraine. Sweden had also broken their tradition and sent weapons too. And the recent addition to tradition breakers is Norway, who also had decided to send weapons to conflict zone and to non-Nato country to boot. And the most unbelievable addition is Switzerland, who remained totally neutral through whole WWII had also joined against Russia be freezing damn lots of their assets.

Not only that, but no Russian plain can literally fly in anywhere in Europe or even Canada.

And then the most miraculous part, Russia attack had even managed to get Taliban to make comment, where they want both sided to restrain and aim for peace. A damn near terrorist organization wants peace here.

Russia is also shut off pretty much from most sport leagues, events and sport in general.

[FrozenShadow]

Will add big WoT later (I want to play Cyberpunk), but one little thing I have seen pointed out that is a very pertinent point. It took us 2 weeks to take Baghdad and that was considered an insanely fast campaign. It's early days yet.

Oh definitely. Thought the clear difference then and now is that Iraqis didn't bother fighting much, if I remember right. They didn't particularly liked Saddam Hussein and his government. But yeah, it's quite certain that Russia might win this war and occupy at least some part of the country.

But they have lost the hearths and minds of Ukrainians and that way lost the real war. There is no way Russia can create a pro-Russian puppet government to Ukraine and not expect people to raise up and eliminate it. It's even possible that most Ukrainians are ready to die in masses than to submit to Russia at this point. This makes military occupation of Ukraine practically impossible to Russia and if they try it, they will probably suffer more than Soviets and American did together in Afghanistan and Vietnam.

[Sinekein]

Will add big WoT later (I want to play Cyberpunk), but one little thing I have seen pointed out that is a very pertinent point. It took us 2 weeks to take Baghdad and that was considered an insanely fast campaign. It's early days yet.

Oh definitely. Thought the clear difference then and now is that Iraqis didn't bother fighting much, if I remember right. They didn't particularly liked Saddam Hussein and his government. But yeah, it's quite certain that Russia might win this war and occupy at least some part of the country.

But they have lost the hearths and minds of Ukrainians and that way lost the real war. There is no way Russia can create a pro-Russian puppet government to Ukraine and not expect people to raise up and eliminate it. It's even possible that most Ukrainians are ready to die in masses than to submit to Russia at this point. This makes military occupation of Ukraine practically impossible to Russia and if they try it, they will probably suffer more than Soviets and American did together in Afghanistan and Vietnam.

A major difference that should be in Russia's favor is that the US attack on Iraq was an overseas (over many seas, actually) one, so the logistics were extremely complex even with a couple of military bases in the Middle East. Meanwhile Russia invaded a neighboring country. While the "bomb stuff with planes" part is probably not so different due to the US having a number of aircraft carriers, when it comes to put soldiers and vehicles on the ground to go in the streets of a city, it is quite complex when they come from 10.000km away.

One thing that is absolutely certain though - even though there is likely a bias in Western reports, and Ukraine is likely to embellish its situation a bit for morale - is that Putin hoped to just walk in Ukraine, seize power, put a puppet or something in charge, purge the country from its opponents, and be done with it. But his actions have led to a massive opposition forming, so even in the case of a "relatively fast Russian victory", he's likely to get years of civil war before the country starts functioning again. Zelensky also surprises me, but he is a TV dude, so it's logical to see him being so adept at using his image. But his actions are bound to make Ukrainians even more resilient.

And the more resilient they are, the more Putin is going to face the "US in the Middle East conundrum", in that invading armies are -never- popular, and the more they invade (and kill civilians), the less popular they are. Which is probably why he wants to crush Kyiv asap.

Finland was mostly saved because Stalin had much more important things/goals to think about than Finland. During Winter war, when the war lasted longer than expected, Stalin faced a threat of UK and France potentially coming to help Finland against them, something he couldn't risk. Especially so, when Stalin knew that Germany will be attacking sooner or later. This meant that Soviets didn't have much men nor time to waste with Finland during Winter war. As for Continuation wars case, Stalin was in hurry to start to build new eastern block and for that he needed to capture Balkan areas and Poland. And of course, there was beginning stages race for the Berlin between Allies. Either way, Stalin needed all of his men for those, not trying to waste them in lost cause of military occupation of Finland.

That will be the same case here were it to happen. Finland is not a priority target, and if Russia ends up declaring war...they'll be at war against 25 other EU countries - probably more, I'm pretty sure the UK will join too for example. And I do think some EU countries have a technological edge over Russia, even if it is not a numerical one. Plus, I'm sure that even though Sweden or Finland have been technically "neutral", among the things their armies prepare for, a Russian invasion must be at the top of the list (I read something about Sweden learning how to detect Russian submarines because Russia kept trying to sneak in their territorial waters).

Now it's a worst case scenario too. The two countries that are the most at risk are Ukraine (obviously) and Moldova. Then you have the Baltics. And then maybe you have Finland...but on a tier similar to Poland for example, and assuming Ukraine is done for - which is unlikely to happen, even were Kyiv to fall, it's very possible we'd see Ukrainian loyalists retreat to Lviv for example where it would be easier for the West to supply them in material.

1. West hasn't probably even realized yet, that Putin had had 10, maybe up to 15 years to build and prepare for this "imperialistic war" of his. We have no idea of how well he had brainwashed his citizens or what kind of army he might have trained in deep into Siperia. Yes, US might use satellites to spy on vast Siperians areas, but its also easy hide things there. Especially so, if training had been masked to look like something else.

2. While Russia certainly hasn't the nationalistic fervor that they had during WWII, if Putin would managed to create one through lying and false propaganda, there would be trouble. Russia could potentially overrun most of current armies in Europe with sheer manpower in this case. This is mostly thanks to russian temperament. If you get nationalistic berserk state going on, Russian won't give rats ass of how many soldier they lose or how many civilians to bombard to death.

Most troubling part in this is the years long brainwashing that Putin had done with Russian propaganda media. They had spent years to manipulate russians to think and see the world certain way and they obviously tried to use "liberation" of Ukraine as a next step in their plan with this.

3. China. A true joker card here. In worse case scenario, Russia could promise of its oil and gas in exchange of China arming Russia, which could happen relatively fast even. I'm no expert, but I'm pretty certain that both China and Russia have large amount of hardware, especially old hardware lying around some storage, which could be given to Russia.

4. NATO being really untested truly. Nato is nice on paper, but there is no real proven proof that NATO would really work. Especially in the case of US actually coming in Europe to fight against Russia.

Considering the damn divided the US is now with BLM, "pronouns and binary generations" and Trump + GOP (with their somewhat pro-russian views) vs. Democrats polarization, I'm not certain US would want to come to save Europe from Russia. Especially so, when they know they would need to bear the largest burden and with that deaths in all of that fighting. It's easy to go in Iraq or Syria, where there is no real army against you. This is especially so, if Trump manages to get himself re-elected or the next election is damn close by. Now President wants to be the one to send his citizens in war against Russia.

1. I'm pretty sure the West knows. Either because those are scenarios that have been circulating since the Cold War era, or because countries have noticed Putin becoming more hostile in the last decades. Maybe the invasion of Georgia in 2008 or Crimea in 2014 flew under the radar of the mainstream media overall, but it certainly was not ignored by European militaries. As for how stealthy Russia is...I think that today it is extremely hard to hide military installations, no matter how hard you try. If Putin has huge reserves in Siberia, they'll get spotted on their way to Europe. I doubt he dug a 5000km long tunnel to invade Eastern Europe honestly.

Another thing to note is that Russian or Western intelligence don't have the same goal at all. Russia wants to project power (hence some high-profile poisonings for example). Western intelligence wants to be stealthy, because EU public opinion is unlikely to love the kind of dirty work some agents get promoted in Russia for. So I'm sure Western intelligence knows many things about Russia's state of affairs - but does not disclose it.

2. Honestly I doubt it. Russia does not have the manpower to take over the entirety of Europe, and it definitely does not have the tech superiority for it either. The last two that succeeded in "dominating Europe" were Hitler and Napoleon.
- Hitler never faced more than one enemy at a time (Poland, then France, then the UK). As soon as it changed (Russia), he stopped advancing. He also had a major ally in Italy. And his conquest of France was kinda helped by radars not existing yet, else the Ardennes crossing would have been spotted by the (admittedly not very good) French army command.
- Napoleon, while a very good general himself, probably won so many battles so quickly for two reasons: one, he did away with aristocratic command, meaning his marshalls were not the best-born commanders, but the best commanders period, and two, his logistics (designed by Marshall Berthier) gave his army corps a pace that his opponents could not dream of, which allowed him to usually fight with a huge tactical advantage.
Today, I don't think Russia has any edge on Europe. I mean, and without disrespect - they are having a hard time to take over Ukraine. Ukraine's defence budget is a tenth of that of France, the UK or Germany.

3. I highly doubt China would risk that. They would risk to utterly piss the US and EU off to gain what? They are leaders in some renewable energies, own a ton of natural resources, and the current evolution of the world is heavily favoring them so far. They have an export-based economy - if they enter an all-out war for the sake of Russia, they are going to absolutely obliterate it, because there won't be anyone to buy all the stuff they're crafting in their factories. Also, they only are "allied" to Russia insofar as they both oppose the US, but their endgames are not aligned. Both see themselves are dominant Asian superpowers, so their "alliance" is more of the "Stalin and Hitler" kind than of the "Churchill and Roosevelt" kind.

I think China will just sit and wait. Now, if Russia got invaded, that would be different, but as it stands, they're likely to just observe and try to draw conclusions regarding some of their own goals - Taiwan, Southeast Asia, etc.

They also are in a will-they-won't-they situation with India (another Russia "ally" - customer more like, who actually hasn't condemned the invasion for the record). So it's way more complicated than "Communist and former Communist against the Western world".

4. I think the US would come to Europe were Russia to invade NATO territory, which Ukraine is not so far. Until then, they'll just supply weapons. But in any event, I doubt Russia has the army to invade the entirety of Europe anyway, and even if I don't want to see it, I don't think the US would be required to win an all-out war.

[Ragabul]

We have no business being a superpower

I'm as guilty of using the word superpower as anybody but in many ways it's a kind of nebulous, nonsense word that can mean whatever you want it to mean. A better word for what we have been since the fall of the USSR is a hegemon. And we specifically became the first ever global hegemon during that period. Britain got close during part of the 19th century. A functional definition of global hegemon might be "unrivaled dominance of all the oceans" because this is what is necessary to project power all over the world. Extended today to also include unrivaled dominance of the air probably.

And great power is really a better term for the dominant states of the pre 1989 world and for the new world order emerging (or rather returning to the historical norm).

It is the case that great powers can chose whether to be overtly imperial or not. We have actually been a historically benign empire in the "do we forcibly seize land from our neighbors?" aspect of being an empire. The biggest aggressive land grab was the SW taken from Mexico. We do also have a few small islands left over from the war with Spain. We had the Philippines for a bit but we also released them after not much time at all. This is a drop in the bucket compared to pretty much any other historical empire you care you name. (Settler colonialism is a whole other kettle of fish. Suffice to say I'm aware we did this as part of Westward expansion. Getting into how this overlaps with empire and where it doesn't would be another WoT of this size I don't want to go down right now. I took an entire class one time whose premise was "what is an empire?" Giant books have been written about it and delivered no definitive answer. I am simplifying by talking about it in terms of behavior between states to make this word have any meaning whatever).

There's also coercive power which we have wielded much more consistently and since the very earliest days. The Monroe Doctrine much? The Perry Expedition? The only thing that changed is we did not have the economic, military, & demographic power to really back these tendencies up on a global scale until around the turn of the 20th century.

But at a certain point, a great power cannot choose whether it's a great power or not. I'll use Nigeria as a hypothetical. It's got a population around 200 million, the biggest in Africa. Let's say it gets a run of good luck and gets 1) multiple decades of very competent governance, 2) some kind of wonderful economic windfall, say, discovery of some very important valuable resource it possesses in large quantities. Its very competent government wisely invests the proceeds from this economic windfall into infrastructure improvements, education, public health, & diversifying its economy. Over time its GDP massively rises, its standard of living improves markedly, its workforce gets steadily more educated and skilled and after say 75ish years of this is attains status of a developed country. It has 0 imperial ambitions of any kind. It wants to conquer nobody and its official policy is to be as neutral as possible. Nonetheless, simply by virtue of having a population of 200 million+ & that kind of economy, it will absolutely become the most powerful country in Africa.

Realistically this is not how most great powers actually develop but Japan and Germany are somewhat cases in point. Since 1945, they have been the very opposite of expansionist. They really haven't even been particularly coercive (Germany has been somewhat within Europe itself) and yet they are 3rd and 4th biggest economies in the world. They also have tremendous cultural power. (How many German brands can you name? How many Japanese movies have you seen?) They are great powers merely by existing.

In this sense, there is 0 the USA could do to not be a great power. We are the richest country on Earth. We have the 3rd biggest population. We are 3rd or 4th largest by landmass (depending on how you count it). And on top of having that much land, a ludicrously large percentage of it is wonderful land. Central Valley of California is among best farmland on Earth. Entirety of the Great Plains is great agricultural land. We have ludicrous amounts of fossil fuel deposits. We have multiple gigantic, highly navigable rivers that cross half the country. We have multiple, multiple wonderfully placed natural deep water harbors. We have huge timber reserves. We have a temperate climate. Even the places that get very hot (Texas) or very cold (Maine) don't stay that way all the time. Our geography makes us highly inconvenient for anybody to invade. We also have a remarkably stable government with only one 4 year detour in 250 years.

This being what it is, the only way we could avoid being among the most powerful countries on Earth would be to be comically incompetent, have cosmically bad luck like being hit by a huge asteroid, or consciously choose to become Buddhist monks or whatever and stick to that unerringly forever.

Exporting that to the world has brought an immense amount of material comfort to people, and been ruinous to everything else.

Our wealth was mostly internally forged by Westward expansion. We are a kind of strange interesting parallel to the Russians in that sense. They just went East to the Pacific instead. Yankee enterprise very much predates our status as great power and hegemon. Yankee merchantmen and whalers were trading in every port in the globe very early on which is one reason in the 1830s de Tocqueville rightly predicted we would eventually supplant the British on the seas. There is a lot overstated in the New History of Capitalism type analysis but they are not wrong that we produced *huge* quantities of cotton and amassed ludicrous amounts of wealth exporting it. Our internally directed economic growth was so large the native population couldn't supply all the bodies to keep up with it which is one reason we imported massive numbers of European immigrants and never ran out of places to put them or stuff for them to do.

We actually more closely followed the Asian model of development than the European model. Prosperity brought about by massive *internal* development and not chiefly by extractive relationships and captive markets with various colonial possessions. We did eventually turn outward, but we were already quite prosperous when we did so. The seeds of our behavior in the 20th century is very much grounded in our historical character.

Book plug:



Very good summary/review of this book here.

To define "democracy" loose enough to fit our republic, has the number and nature of treaties we're bound by helped, harmed, or had no effect on the spirit and practical effect of democracy?

I'm using the term "democracy" flippantly too. I don't mean literal democracy. I mean states with liberal systems which at its most basic is just 1) has reasonably free and fair elections, 2) has civil rights enshrined and meaningfully enforced by law.

Given how cavalier the USA tends to be with international agreements, I'd say a much bigger damper on the original spirit of the constitution has not been us surrendering sovereignty to a global order but by out of control judicial decisions and bureaucracy growing like weeds of the last roughly 80 years.

Under the Constitution, and not what man has made of it, what are you obligated to do or not do if you disagree with its ratification?

Well, it utterly neutered the power of the states relative to the Articles of Confederation for one. The Articles were obviously a clusterfuck, but there's a ton of highly localized regional, cultural issues I'd love to see addressed at the state level but they can't be because of stuff like the Commerce Clause.

And you have to unpack "what men have made of it." Constitutional amendments that follow the constitutional process are obviously completely within the parameters the founders intended. We are also a common law country, which means that a huge chunk of our law is set by judicial precedent, which we inherited from Britain and is also 100% something the founders knew and intended. Our peculiar attachment to jury trials as one example is because of this. Most non common law systems have a much, much more limited role for jury trials.

I got no say in any of that elaborate process even though a huge bulk of it was unambiguously constitutional.

An overgrown fence in the middle of a field should be torn down then?

How is liberalism itself not an overgrown fence in this analogy? If a thing should be defended merely for being venerable how does this not apply to liberal republics?

Putting my earlier point another way, why can't I take the stones of the crumbling old building and use them for building something else? There is a fundamental difference in this and razing the old building and salting the ground where it stood.

If the US had made it clear we were against regime change in Ukraine, publicly and privately, would there be a war in Ukraine right now?

Depends on whether or not regime change would have happened regardless of what we did. This is unknowable but there is much, much stronger evidence Yanukovych would have gotten pushed out even if we utterly ignored Ukraine than for most other mass protests pushing out governments in various stagnant, autocratic states in recent years. Again, a huge part of this really isn't even about NATO. A big part of the original protests broke out because the government of Ukraine at the time opted for a trade deal with Russia instead of the EU and this pissed off a bunch of Ukrainians. A large part of it was about economics. Ukraine is not happy about this:



And a large part of that is because Russia has intentionally kept them as a neutered buffer state. Us telling Ukraine it can't join NATO and even us saying we have 0 opinion and won't interfere in regime change in Ukraine, would not magically make Ukrainians happy about their stagnant economy. And Russia is fundamentally unhappy with any future in which Ukraine is not either a province of Russia or has it in a state of suzerainty.

The Ukrainians are currently fighting and dying in mass to defend their country against the Russians. Do you think we somehow manufactured that sentiment in them? That we hopped them up on hopeful delusions that the USA would save them? Do you really think Ukraine of all places is that naive? After being sandwiched between warring great powers for hundreds of years? After the Holodomor? After the Einsatzgruppen rampaging through their countryside? There are still people alive in Ukraine who remember all this stuff.

There is probably a world in which we *forcibly* prevent Ukrainian integration into Europe but this is being just as imperial, only in another direction.

*Edit*

Also feel I might need to point out my sentiments explicitly after all that.

I am *not* in favor of direct US military engagement in Ukraine. I also worry that utterly tanking Russian economy might produce very unpredictable results.

That being said, Russia is a dangerous, expansionist state and will continue to push for as much as the West is willing to let it take. It makes sense to not present it with easy targets and to pursue economic policies that don't leave people beholden to it as much as possible.

I am pro NATO as it should be, which is everybody paying their fair share and taking it seriously and have been pretty frustrated with how NATO has been where various states have been free-riding to some degree. Make even more irksome by the people most consistently paying being poorer countries and richer countries not so much.

I think European integration limited to not much more than a monetary union is a bad idea on multiple levels. Some kind of actual European Confederation with hard power to back soft power *could* be a good thing for the world.

I firmly believe we are in for multipolar world in the coming decades. Worst plausible multipolar world is USA, China, & Russia. Best plausible multipolar world is USA, EU, & China.

[Vol]

Will add big WoT later (I want to play Cyberpunk), but one little thing I have seen pointed out that is a very pertinent point. It took us 2 weeks to take Baghdad and that was considered an insanely fast campaign. It's early days yet.

From the places I browse, the people who claim to see through the obvious propaganda (for morale), and seem to have a lick of actual military knowledge, are saying Ukraine is fighting an impossible delaying action. If you're creating the Volkssturm in the first week, the invasion is going to succeed, in essence. Which is about what I figured. They also claim Russia is using old weapons and green troops, to "preserve the valuable resources" in the initial action, but I'm not a military hardware guy.

[Ragabul]

My current sentiment is that Ukraine will not win conventional war. My two big questions are:

Can/will Ukraine field some kind of reasonably persistent insurgency?
How crazy is Putin? Meaning if we bleed him by sanctions & financing Ukrainian insurgency, how much Russian blood is he willing to spend on it? If he's backed in a corner, what will he do?

I don't know the answers to either of these.

Also, in one of the more "Great Man Theory" type scenarios in real life, I highly suspect Russia is an example of a state that would considerably chill out if Putin was dead and would not just collapse into mass chaos like Iraq or Libya. If there was some kind of magical "make Vladimir Putin choke on his grape" button, I'd be pretty tempted to push it.

*Edit*

One more and then I'm going to bed. I do also think that a hefty percentage of what success Ukraine has so far comes down to Zelensky not fleeing. I think Russians were counting on this and I think Ukrainian forces would have collapsed immediately if he did.

All of this is very potent reminder that individuals do have agency. I tend to think structural/process based stuff and random chance explains most of history and most of everything in general but there is such thing as human agency. And sometimes that agency becomes the proverbial butterfly flapping its wings and creating a hurricane.

[FrozenShadow]

Well, who ever said that media has a huge power and responsibility, they couldn't be more right.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-60571737

This gives glimpse of Russian TV shows this war in Ukraine.

[Sinekein]

I have been watching the "Dictator's handbook" series on ARTE, the French-German TV channel. There are 6 episodes, I've seen four so far (not in the right order) - Kim Il-Sung, Idi Amin Dada, Francisco Franco, Manuel Noriega. It was released on Youtube the day Russia attacked Ukraine. I still have Mussolini and Saddam Hussein to watch.

Watching them back-to-back helps seeing the similarities in methods used by all these men, even though obviously they wildly vary in methods and objectives (or craziness).

Also interesting that two of them - Franco and Noriega - have been US allies (until the end in Franco's case). I had the bad idea of checking on the death of Hugo Spadafera, a left-wing revolutionary who opposed Noriega and was killed in 1985, and to say that it might have been the most nauseating death I have read about in my life would be an understatement, fucking hell.

But it's interesting that what really undid Noriega, or more accurately, the reason the US removed him from power, was actually...the mainstream media. A journalist published a detailed investigation of the links between the CIA and Noriega, and it started unravelling Noriega's power until he was dropped altogether. The Reagan administration was super fine with him butchering (again, I think it's too weak a word) opponents and sending tons of drugs around the world (while there was a "War on Drugs" to boot), even paying him...but it had to be secret.

[FrozenShadow]

4. I think the US would come to Europe were Russia to invade NATO territory, which Ukraine is not so far. Until then, they'll just supply weapons. But in any event, I doubt Russia has the army to invade the entirety of Europe anyway, and even if I don't want to see it, I don't think the US would be required to win an all-out war.

Well, I thought about it and I think that it might be possible that NATO wouldn't end up helping.

So, far it seems that EU and NATO especially is weary, even downright scared off Russia's "nuclear option" threat. Yes, it sensible to avoid the potential nuclear war that would kill us all. But it does seems that this is also "ace" or total bluff in Putin's cards. However, this is something that NATO had call at some point. Basically, NATO had to risk the chance for Nuclear war at some point with Russia or else NATO is letting Russia roam free.

I mean, if NATO ultimately remains scared of Russia nuclear threat, we might see Ukraine fighting heroicly....yet West ultimately sacrifices them to save themselves from the nuclear war, because Ukraine is non NATO and EU country. If this happen, then it will just inspire Russia to go on and what would happen then, if NATO and West as large would still remain scared of nuclear war? Would they "sacrifice Finland and Sweden as neutral countries next (sure, they give weapons and volunteers, but eventually that's it)?

And what happens, if Russia then conquers both Finland and Sweden, making defending Baltic countries, that are indeed NATO countries. Would NATO and West still risk a nuclear war over countries, that might be NATO members, but literally impossible help and defend and go war over them in this case? And what if NATO wouldn't help? Could it lead to total falling down of NATO and every one is left on their own?

Let's be honest here, there is always change that US and Canada might leave Europe on their own for Russia to do what they want with the threat of Nuclear war as they would be totally safe behind Atlantic Ocean. Sure, of course this ain't likely for now, but there is no idea what will happen if this Russia-Ukraine war starts to spread out and gets more bloody and thanks to that they select more isolationist President for US in the future?

Yes, most of this is suppositions, "what ifs" and guesses. But the important point remains. So far the world had let Russia to do whatever they want in Ukraine thanks to being more or less scared of Russia nuclear option threat. Yet, this is something you've to risk at some point or else Russia left to roam free.

Another topic here, This war is just recent example of showing how damn ineffective UN really is. Especially so, if the permanent member is part or in anyway related to the actual conflict going on. Might be good time to chance or at least update the charter of UN.

[FrozenShadow]

Uh, maybe the Biden is really starting to suffer from his old age. I hear that he managed to confuse Ukrainians to Iranian in his State of the Union speech.

Yes, might be harmless slip of the tongue, but definitely not the best of places to do it.

Either way, right now the world has one leader suffering from old age and one whom state of mind is rather questionable with two big red buttons. Yes, we live in interesting times indeed.

[Ragabul]

The UN is a joke. No great power is ever going to cede its foreign policy to a bunch of miscellaneous little states that otherwise couldn't do anything about it. It's decent at helping on coordination issues that nobody finds controversial like improving health in sub-Saharan Africa or relief efforts following natural disasters and such. But in its main purpose of preventing wars, it's consistently been useless where great powers were involved.

I think USA would come to Europe if a European NATO state was attacked by some obviously expansionist external threat like Russia. We would probably not commit maximum forces and power if like Montenegro was invaded. I think the calculus for places like Latvia is stronger not so much because we actually care about Latvia more than Montenegro but because its geographic significance and such is understood. Of all states expecting our protection looking down the barrel of a gun, the one who should be most concerned is probably Taiwan.

@ Biden

Not saying he doesn't suffer from any old age issues but he also has a stutter since he was a boy and is known to hang on a word and hastily interject some other word to try to cover the stutter. Could be that and he just made a mistake. I didn't watch the speech. He's also just a notably bad speaker and always has been and is very gaffe prone.

@ Dictator documentary

That came on PBS a few years back and I watched it but I don't remember too much. I would say there's sub-categories of dictators though. Some really are mostly opportunists who don't believe in anything in particular but their own power but aren't necessarily deeply violent. Standard issue former Soviet republic kleptocrat fits this bill. Some are genuine ideological demagogues. Some are basically mafiosos. They will often overlap.

The mafiosos tend to be the elaborate personal vendetta kind who will butcher specific enemies in grotesque ways. But the bloodiest overall are the ideological demagogues like Hitler and Mao. Putin seems to be some combination of these from what little I know.

[FrozenShadow]

Well, well, well, this Ukraine vs Russia war is getting much more complex.

It seems that China not only knew about attack against Ukraine, but Russia had shared enough information with them that China had actually asked Russia to attack only after Olympics. This even fits to a captured secret battle plans of Russians attack that Ukraine managed to get. Of course, it's also possible that they're totally fake or some planted stuff left behind on purpose.

But if those are real, they show that the attack plans were accepted 18th January and all the callsign codes were planned for February 20 to March 6.

Basically, China knew what was coming, but wanted to make them look better in the eyes of the world. And Russia had already planned to attack, so everything Putin and every other member of Russian government said "they are just military practices", "we're not going to attack" and so on.....total lies.

Like I said, especially the latter part could be just Ukrainian war propaganda, but if it's not.....well, China just got thrown in rather nasty spot now. I wonder if this leads to repeat of WWII, except this time around the aggressors in this new war are Russia on Europe and China on Pacific.

That, or the world goes totally crazy at the same time and everyone starts dig up the buried hatches. Russia against West, China takes Taiwan and mineral rich Kuril Islands. Syria and other Islamistics countries decides to finally remove the pesky Israel issue away. India and Pakistan starts to violently solve the case of who gets the Kashmir area. Africa will probably tear itself apart too and I'm sure the South and Central American countries have their own border disputes to solve.

[Vol]

DeSantis made some remark that if Putin invaded France, they'd fold. People who have a high school education retort with, "The French Resistance existed," and surely French people in 1940 are exactly the same as those in 2022. It's a very stupid situation, but it makes me wonder about the hypothetical. As we've talked out in this thread, probably more than once, the modern man thinks of nationalism either as a bad thing or a slightly archaic concept that they don't really embody, but advocate for anyway. Nations and demographics don't really matter, it's "ideas," and even those are subject to change. Standard, post-modern, western thought, and I fairly assume we can apply it to the majority of fighting-aged people in our countries.

America, I imagine, would be pretty similar to Red Dawn. Most people would put their head down and go along with the invaders, if they're promised stability (Keep your stuff, won't be harmed), even if they're shown to be lying. Then some minority of Americans would go to the hills and wage guerilla war, for however long they could. "A rifle behind every blade of grass" is a romantic idea, but taking my daily walks, the people I see are not going to sacrifice their 401k or life for the country they walked into to make money and/or dislike. The demographics are of a certain kind here. Whereas the deep South would be a nightmare.

I would think Ukraine is about the "peak" of what a westernized nation could achieve, right now, in terms of nationalist resistance. They run literal camps to teach kids and adults why their country is so great and why you should die for it (Albeit the documentary I saw was clearly of a Neo-Nazi paramilitary force running it), and they still had to forcibly conscript men immediately after invasion, and are putting out the call to arms for any foreign mercenaries. I dunno, maybe hardcore, effective nationalist movements died with the IRA. Great time for tyrants to make their moves, anyway.

[Sinekein]

The thing is, the closer you live from a very agressive, hostile, imperialistic country, the more prepared you will be to resist an invasion. France has lived in peace for 75 years without its borders even being threatened, so obviously, you won't find a large part of the population ready to just grab a gun and shoot at soldiers. Go in Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Poland, Armenia, or in various Southeast Asia countries bordering China but not exactly aligned with it, and you are guaranteed to find many more people ready to die for their country, because the possibility is part of their lives.

But if DeSantis' point is "French surrender ahaha" (which - GOP, so I'm pretty sure that's the case at least partially), I'm convinced an invasion in the US, or the UK, or Germany, or Canada, wouldn't be any different. The US have virtually never seen an invader up close in the 20th century, and for all the gun-toting and outright gun lunacy up there, I'm certain that most people would just flee in the event of a foreign force invading the land (or just get along with whoever invades as long as they aren't the ones being targeted for elimination).

Also of course, DeSantis' remark is ripe with stupidity: if Russia arrived to France it would have crossed Poland and Germany first at least (and probably Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Romania, Austria...), and...well, I think that if that happens, in all likelihood, several nukes will be dropped already, in Russia and in Europe. Russia just doesn't have the forces, the air forces in particular, to conquer all those without a large part of its military getting bombed to oblivion.

[Vol]

Just got back from voting in the primaries.

Isn't the near totality of Texas Democrats in Austin/Dallas? Well, that and the border, which is the point. Seems like Beto against another GOP incumbent, but unless the national perception is majorly overestimating his favorability, should be a layup.

This being what it is, the only way we could avoid being among the most powerful countries on Earth would be to be comically incompetent, have cosmically bad luck like being hit by a huge asteroid, or consciously choose to become Buddhist monks or whatever and stick to that unerringly forever.

Then America's position is one of those unavoidable patterns? I'm not sure. For all the advantages and reasons, it did require Europe blowing itself to hell, for the second time, to create the void and opportunities to ascend. However influential we might have been is impossible to guess with a Europe intact and not suffering cultural PTSD. That we would exploit our advantages, as the centralization was unavoidable, would certainly make us *a* power.

Re: How Asia Works: What was most interesting was the first chunk of synopsis. First, the pattern of landlord extracting the most possible from their serfs, even to the point of death, but not quite enough to make murdering them seem more reasonable. It's the same pattern we're in, and probably always have been. I was talking to someone earlier about hideous luxury condos going up across the street from me, where trees, homes, businesses, and even a small factory, once stood. Ukrainian Jews convinced our township to use eminent domain to seize the land, bulldoze it, and build condos. It was a beautiful moment of diverse international economic coordination, and it's miserable to look at it. The units will be, minimum, $1500 a month for a studio, as is the standard, if not more because of inflation. And it is the same pattern as the Chinese farmers, but with less direct oversight. Instead of a master who can see you daily and knows what you have, to take as much as possible, abstract forces fill the same position. Obviously, they're better off than people who starved every spring by the millions, by a lot, but that a "landlord," physical and metaphysical, always finds a way to exist, is interesting to me. Break the back of exploitative serfdom, something will take the place inevitably.

Second was Korea. Because the rapid transformation from rural kingdom to first world cultural exporter was a tremendous victory of the west. But they also have a sub-1 replacement rate. Meaning, less than 1 child for every 4 grandparents. Meaning, 1 worker for more than 4 elderly. Meaning, tough times ahead, and no reason to suspect trends reverse. Adopting western ways uplifted Koreans from farming to high-tech, and it also killed them off. And as in all our cases, the answer to every crack, hole, and looming pit, is immigrants. Wherever humans exist and can be used to spackle glaring flaws in the structure. We don't get to say "How Korea Works," if the effect is a boom/bust, with a demographic collapse. Land reform, skyscrapers, and family planning mean nothing if there's no one left to appreciate it except the people brought in from countries without it to change bedpans and run bodegas. Like the civilization version of getting addicted to benzos. It didn't work, it didn't fix anything, it was a brief, beautiful mirage.

tldr; If prosperity results in life not continuing, it's not prosperity.

Edit: Made this rant before. Point is, the bounty of the west is a monkey's paw.

How is liberalism itself not an overgrown fence in this analogy? If a thing should be defended merely for being venerable how does this not apply to liberal republics?

Putting my earlier point another way, why can't I take the stones of the crumbling old building and use them for building something else? There is a fundamental difference in this and razing the old building and salting the ground where it stood.

It is, too, but it's not time for the reformers to question why we keep that silly old thing around yet. It's coming, you can smell it in the air. Tolerance for ideological enemies is intuitively wrong + Smart-looking people all support powerful organizations, that's my bet on the way it'll happen. The Canadian protests, how they were crushed, was a little spoonful of sherbet.

That's entirely what I want. Understanding exactly why the old building is there, and crumbling, then taking the good stone to build again. Won't be the same, but it'll be a bit more wisely placed. Until a distant descendant does the exact same thing.

Well, who ever said that media has a huge power and responsibility, they couldn't be more right.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-60571737

This gives glimpse of Russian TV shows this war in Ukraine.

I took a glimpse into Russian propaganda a few days ago. There was a news segment of a soldier going to visit his parents, presumably in the eastern Ukraine separatist region, and they're all hugging and crying, then his mother makes him his favorite potatoes and some sausage in onions, while his father talks about how happy he is this is happening. Oddly wholesome.

Everyone is lying about everything. Pictures and videos aren't to be trusted, within reason, either, same with anything any government puts out, and the attempts to create a Marvel-esque narrative about the Ukrainian resistance. So if anyone claims to be telling the truth in the fog of war, they're to be trusted much less than the obvious liar.

I have been watching the "Dictator's handbook" series on ARTE, the French-German TV channel. There are 6 episodes, I've seen four so far (not in the right order) - Kim Il-Sung, Idi Amin Dada, Francisco Franco, Manuel Noriega. It was released on Youtube the day Russia attacked Ukraine. I still have Mussolini and Saddam Hussein to watch.

Having read quite a bit about Mao in the last few years, what was always queer about him was that he was only ever de facto Emperor, never de jure, never even tried. Head of all the important committees and groups, sure, but he didn't dare reach for the throne, and that meant the politicking he had to do was different than a monarch's, despite similar if not superior power, because he could be legally removed by vote of his peers. He could and did brutalize them, have them arrested, tortured, exiled, but he still had to play along with the PRC system.

Was that true of all those men too?

[Vol]

But if DeSantis' point is "French surrender ahaha" (which - GOP, so I'm pretty sure that's the case at least partially), I'm convinced an invasion in the US, or the UK, or Germany, or Canada, wouldn't be any different. The US have virtually never seen an invader up close in the 20th century, and for all the gun-toting and outright gun lunacy up there, I'm certain that most people would just flee in the event of a foreign force invading the land (or just get along with whoever invades as long as they aren't the ones being targeted for elimination).

Also of course, DeSantis' remark is ripe with stupidity: if Russia arrived to France it would have crossed Poland and Germany first at least (and probably Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Romania, Austria...), and...well, I think that if that happens, in all likelihood, several nukes will be dropped already, in Russia and in Europe. Russia just doesn't have the forces, the air forces in particular, to conquer all those without a large part of its military getting bombed to oblivion.

Almost assuredly. For a lot of people I know, that's the extent of our shared history. Though the "cheese-eating surrender monkey" jokes were really funny at the time (late 90's). Educationally, I don't recall hearing about the Resistance until...at least middle school, and never in detail, not even in college. So history was, in short, "Blitzkrieg around Maginot->Surrender->Hitler in Paris->some rebels->America rolls in."

I don't know the full context, and I don't care enough to find it, but I'll take a guess and say he was trying to compliment the Ukrainians for being so willing to fight (while ignoring the conscription probably), and mocking France to make the point. Common cultural mythos and all that. So yes, a dumb joke to rile up his supporters, more than anything meaningful, nor was it meant to be. C'est la vie.

[Ragabul]

Then America's position is one of those unavoidable patterns?

Us being global hegemon did require luck + concerted willingness to embrace the role. Us becoming a great power would require concerted bad luck, consistent mismanagement, or active effort to avoid for it to not become so. The biggest hurdles/wild cards were the Union failing to consolidate or dissolving into a bunch of petty states. But our trajectory was much more predictable than some place like, say, Britain which spent history until about 500 years ago being a sparsely populated smallish, cold wet island that was an utterly irrelevant backwater.

Great power is a fuzzy relative term but its baseline definition is something like "a state pretty much all other states cannot afford to ignore." I'd say states that unambiguously fit this definition today are USA, China, Russia, Japan, & Germany and *maybe* the UK and France. Simply possessing nuclear weapons might be enough to bump states into this category. States that have high potential to become great powers include India, Brazil, certainly consolidated EU. There's some other places that could make this plausible list I just frankly don't know enough about to access.

Again, I'm not discounting agency. My point is that anybody eager to pursue greatness finds themselves in a much better starting position in USA in 1830 than he does in Congo in 1830 or Ireland in 1830.

@ the low birthrate thing

I've said a thousand times I agree below replacement birthrates cause massive problems and that unending low-skill immigration is a terrible idea. (It can join the club of things that cause massive problems and are terrible ideas). That being said, I super extra doubleplus don't get the concerted deep-seated skepticism in *everything* brought about by this that comes up on the right all the time. It's 100% the equivalent of the eco-doom people on the left. Human fertility rates flex over history. All civilizations eventually fall from something.

The historical population growth rate was like 1% a year or less between 0 AD and today. It has to be by simple logic. Assume a population of 100,000 around 0 AD which is of course much lower than it was. With a growth rate of 5% a year, you'd end up with 2,157,357,266 inside 999 years, which is as high as the dumb calculator I found would go. Imagine how absurd that number would be with another 1000 years. (I'm too lazy to look up the actual numbers, but the 1% or so growth rate is from historians doing their best to discern world population circa 0 AD and 1600 AD. I've read this before without remembering what the specific population numbers were. GDP per capita growth rate was also really low as well. Again, 1ish%). Obviously, there's much higher mortality and lots of other such things to take into account, but even with women having 5+ kids or whatever they were consistently attaining growth rates below such up and coming places as Ohio and West Virginia. And this logic applies just as well within a particular territory as for the whole world.

I've posted umpteen things about the notable variance in human fertility stats over time and culture (age of marriage, # of kids, # of permanent singletons). Nobody has presented any evidence so far that we can't adjust again to deal with this stuff in the future. If a child turned adult working human being becomes an insanely valuable resource (as they would be in a very geriatric world), why on Earth wouldn't the people already inclined to make children start making more of them?

Demographics is a perfectly good predictor of economic belt tightening in future. I'm really not seeing Camp of the Saints or whatever. Why is this any more plausible than the "climate change makes half the planet uninhabitable" type arguments on the left?

(If you are not making the doom argument, but merely the decline argument, feel free to ignore all this at leisure. But for the decline argument to make the modern progress not worth it in the end, we would need to regress to a level *below* that of typical feudal peasant).

*Edit* I would be super interested in seeing some kind of data on what the historical ratio of humans that are functionally useless at any kind of production (babies, bed-ridden invalids, toothless old grannies who can barely walk) vs only mostly useless (young children, old men with bad backs) vs useful actually has been and how it's shifted over time. I've never seen an attempted analysis like this.

Isn't the near totality of Texas Democrats in Austin/Dallas? Well, that and the border, which is the point. Seems like Beto against another GOP incumbent, but unless the national perception is majorly overestimating his favorability, should be a layup.

Austin is general Dem landslide. Houston/Dallas/San Antonio has an overwhelmingly Dem urban core and is surrounded by a bunch of high population suburban, exurb counties which are solidly red in some cases or purple. Most any city of like 150,000 to 350,000 (of which there are multiple) tends Republican or purple at least. I'm sure this will all shift eventually. I've stopped following the nuances so closely because when/if it does flip we will not become a blue wall. We will go purple and almost assuredly remain purple for a long time. Dems salivate over another California and its just not happening here unless some anvil falling from sky unexpected event shifts things somehow.

*Edit* Correction to above.

I meant GDP growth rate. Not GDP per capita.

[Sinekein]

Great power is a fuzzy relative term but its baseline definition is something like "a state pretty much all other states cannot afford to ignore." I'd say states that unambiguously fit this definition today are USA, China, Russia, Japan, & Germany and *maybe* the UK and France. Simply possessing nuclear weapons might be enough to bump states into this category. States that have high potential to become great powers include India, Brazil, certainly consolidated EU. There's some other places that could make this plausible list I just frankly don't know enough about to access.

Germany is not a great power as per your definition. It might become one if it finally decides to bother with foreign military policy, but as it stands it is not. I would even say that both Russia and the USA have bullied Germany more than almost any other country in the past five years - Trump's USA, that is, when he decided to put tariffs on German goods because America first (I think?).

Japan counts because its proximity to two relatively hostile powers (China & NK) forced it to at least have a strong defensive military. But Germany is far from that case.

[Ragabul]

Could be. It's a fuzzy definition. And I imagine a great power having some combination of economic, military, and cultural power. Germany has a ton of economic power, a pretty high amount of cultural power, and not so much on military. From the economic perspective at least, it's not a place that a good chunk of the world can ignore.

*Edit*

Went down a weird rabbit hole and was looking at maps of projected nuclear targets in the USA and fallout. Big Bend area is apparently one of the best areas to be to avoid nuclear strikes and fallout. It's also really pretty and probably just a nice place to live:





Sign from the gods?

*Edit*

Valery Gergiev dismissed as chief conductor of the Munich Philharmonic

This the kind of place mindless, righteous outrage thinking can take people into.

I Am Asking for a Coherent Set of Consistent Principles That Are Equally Applied to the United States and Russia

Socialist dude I read has apparently been getting pilloried for pretty standard socialist take that "America is the biggest, evilest thing ever actually." I'm not much interested in contending with that assertion which is closer to a religious opinion than to something that even could be honestly grappled with. (No, I'm not defending the umpteen shitty things USA has done over the years it should not have done. I do dispute the idea it is somehow *uniquely* evil or hypocritical though).

But he does accidentally put forward the question of asking what is the standard the USA has been using to justify the shitty things in a cost/benefit sense? There's lots of popular answers to this from "it's about the oil!" or "it's about freeing people from oppression!" or "it's just standard empire stuff." But there's always been weird contradictions that make all these false. Why did we give Kuwait back if we just wanted their oil? Why do we bother supporting Euromaiden in the name of liberty when Ukraine is irrelevant to us on any practical grounds but then squash legitimate mass popular movements in other countries that are equally irrelevant? If we are just a standard empire, why don't we just crush the irksome gnat that is Cuba and turn it into an inert dependent like Puerto Rico?

My best answer to this comes in 4 stages. We tried our hand at standard empire stuff at the turn of the 19th to 20th century and gave it up almost at once.

From 1945 to 1989 our policy was "other countries may be whatever they want so long as they aren't communist. If they try to go communist, we will instill any kind of government whatever (democracy, monarchy, dictatorship, theocracy) that will fight the communists." He talks about NATO's purpose being "fuck Russia." But it's original purpose was "fuck communism" and the biggest communist thing is the USSR.

Then a hiatus.

Then 2001-2011 or so we tried our hand at some kind of "you may be whatever you want so long as its not Islamist." (With notably poor definitions of Islamist, of course).

This also explain why communists and Islamists in particular are the persuasions most likely to regard us as the Great Satan.

Then another hiatus and we are now sorting out what our position is again.

These have obviously justified all kinds of horrors, but it does answer the question of why we really don't/haven't behaved like a standard empire for much of our history. There is actually a grain of consistency of us caring about other countries self-determination excluding certain things like communism and Islamism. This does not make us "the good guys" but it certainly undermines anybody pretending we are Nazis either.

Also an argument to be made that USA going into a standard "this is our zone of influence and any other great powers must fuck off!" empire stance probably means we start way fewer petty wars and undermine way fewer countries. But it also significantly raises chances of WWIII when zones we define as "ours" overlap with some other great power. Can't win for losing.

[FrozenShadow]

The die is cast.

It seems that Putin had really decided to go all in with this war and/or he has lost his mind. Either way, it's starting to seem that he will either take Ukraine or level the whole country and it's people to oblivion. Not only Russians have started to bombard civilian targets, they have started to use their Thermobaric weapons on cities too. And they fight over Zaporizhzian nuclear power plant seems to be starting on.....fighting and artillery bombing close to Nuclear Power Plant, what could possibly go wrong?

And Putin had just given speech to safety countil or so were he had repeated that Russian and Ukrainians are the people (and Putin will never give up that though) and Ukrainians are "brainwashed" and frightened, it's up to Russian to liberate them form nazis again.

It does look more and more likely that Putin ain't exactly "stable" anymore and this war will end only three way.

1. Total genocide of Ukrainians, while the West just watches it happening.
2. West makes intervention (something that US doesn't seem to be all that willing to do) and we have WWIII, potentially nuclear war too.
3. Someone in Russia takes matters in their own hands and eliminates Putin.

Never thought that I would see a situation, where I would seriously need to consider the need to protect my country with my life, but seems more and more than we are indeed living on those times now.

[FrozenShadow]

I Am Asking for a Coherent Set of Consistent Principles That Are Equally Applied to the United States and Russia

Socialist dude I read has apparently been getting pilloried for pretty standard socialist take that "America is the biggest, evilest thing ever actually." I'm not much interested in contending with that assertion which is closer to a religious opinion than to something that even could be honestly grappled with. (No, I'm not defending the umpteen shitty things USA has done over the years it should not have done. I do dispute the idea it is somehow *uniquely* evil or hypocritical though).

But he does accidentally put forward the question of asking what is the standard the USA has been using to justify the shitty things in a cost/benefit sense? There's lots of popular answers to this from "it's about the oil!" or "it's about freeing people from oppression!" or "it's just standard empire stuff." But there's always been weird contradictions that make all these false. Why did we give Kuwait back if we just wanted their oil? Why do we bother supporting Euromaiden in the name of liberty but then squash legitimate mass popular movements in other countries? If we are just a standard empire, why don't we just crush the irksome gnat that is Cuba and turn it into an inert dependent like Puerto Rico?

My best answer to this comes in 4 stages. We tried our hand at standard empire stuff at the turn of the 19th to 20th century and gave it up almost at once.

From 1945 to 1989 our policy was "other countries may be whatever they want so long as they aren't communist. If they try to go communist, we will instill any kind of government whatever (democracy, monarchy, dictatorship, theocracy) that will fight the communists." He talks about NATO's purpose being "fuck Russia." But it's original purpose was "fuck communism" and the biggest communist thing is the USSR.

Then a hiatus.

Then 2001-2011 or so we tried our hand at some kind of "you may be whatever you want so long as its not Islamist." (With notably poor definitions of Islamist, of course).

This also explain why communists and Islamists in particular are the persuasions most likely to regard us as the Great Satan.

Then another hiatus and we are now sorting out what our position is again.

These have obviously justified all kinds of horrors, but it does answer the question of why we really don't/haven't behaved like a standard empire for much of our history. There is actually a grain of consistency of us caring about other countries self-determination excluding certain things like communism and Islamism. This does not make us "the good guys" but it certainly undermines anybody pretending we are Nazis either.

This is interesting point. I'm in no way expert here, don't even know much of how history written and seen in US, but here what I think based on reading and what our history books write about US history.

While rest of world sees US as great imperialistic evil fighting wars in all over (which is true to a degree as US history since WWII is full of wars/conflicts), US has never been really imperialistis-colonist county like most of the countries attacking against others. What I mean is that while US does attack here and there, they don't do that with idea of conquering new land for them, like European countries did for centuries or like Russia is wanting to do now.

Quite the contrary, to me it seems that US is using a feudal system from medieval Europe times. Back then many countries had vassals who answered either to a monarchs or other larger liege lords. In this system vassals had certain obligation towards their lieges, while they do had some responsibilities towards their vassals. Except is this case, we're not just talking about singular vassal, but vassal states and vassal rulers.

Vietnam war, Afghanistan and Iraqi wars were clearest examples of vassal state policy. In all three cases, US went in these countries and more or less created a favourable government to support them. Sure, US did this through seemingly democratic process, where the citizens could choose their leader. But in reality it never worked. In all three cases, people who voted didn't really now what they were doing or what it really meant to vote your leaders. US financial support also meant more or less that only the "right" person could be selected as the president. Both in Vietnam and in Afghanistan US intelligence and other operations worked in overtime to find the "right" leader, someone who would be the most favourable for US and then backed them financially. Either way, with all of these three cases, US did choose a puppet government (sometimes with really damn long and loose strings, but puppet nonetheless), which could not survive without US support.

Another option is of course these vassal rulers, which is the US indirect approach. This is mainly done by CIA in more or less in secret and it's result are much more fickle. We will probably never know in how many regime chances the CIA had been in involved, but some of them have royally backfired and even turned against US too. Best examples are Ayatollah Khomeini and CIA early support with Taliban back in 1980s. Either way, this vassal ruler allowed US to indirectly choose leaders, who were more open to US.

Either way, in both Vassal State and Vassal ruler cases, the main purposely was to to have US favourable government or warlord, which allowed US to more influence in the countries, better trade deals or more or less exclusivity to resources or large building processes. Depending on different circumstances, this was achieved by threats, blackmail, lost money in many form of corruption or really honest attempts to trade or improve the country US was on. Sadly, US fell to a same trap as most liege Lords did in feudal times. They got either too greedy or never really learned or even wanted to understand their vassals, which have always resulted to troubles or downright spectacular failures like with Vietnam and 40-50 years later with Afghanistan.

Now, why US had chosen this "Vassal" route with their imperialistic goals? I think it's for following reasons. US historical reasons, geopolitical location, logistics, improvement of technology and nation and its citizens temperament.

Historical reasons.

Thanks to being old British colony and the American revolutionary war, US knew what it was to be under someone rule and what it needed to fight out of that rule. Also, thanks to US origins being in Europeans countries, most of them still felt those countries were somewhat their home, so US didn't ever have need to go to fight against Europeans countries....well in Europe at least. Of course, after WWII, this took completely different direction as US didn't go around conquering lands, but become sort of "world police" and "Opposition for Communism".

Either way, not wanting to fight against Europeans in Europe this didn't work with Indians, which resulted some really bloody wars and some horrific actions during the late 1700s and 1800s. Civil war also hit hard and wars against Mexico and expansionism on Pacific during late 1800s and early 1900s all caused the same thing. US became both weary off war and understood the logistical difficulties. It's hard to wage war, when there is large Ocean in both directions.

Geopolitical location

As I said, US geopolitical location is such that its really difficult to attack against US, let alone try to conquer it. But it also works both ways. If US would try to fully conquer other countries, it's near impossible to mass large enough army to not only do it in the first place, but the be able to actually uphold the occupation and then attempt to assimilate locals to your ideology. I was simply not possible before airplanes and even with those it would be near impossible to uphold the logistics of said occupation.

Another matter here is that US lucky enough with the natural resources that US had little of everything, so they don't need to wage war to get anything....well except of oil. But that's mostly because people in US waste it way too much. You could say the whole US life style is literally build on oil and gas use. This is the main reason, why US actually went to war in Iraq and tries to work on Middle East oil rich areas.

Logistics and improved technology

As said, any kind of true occupation of foreign country would be total logistical nightmare for US. It was bad enough in Afghanistan and Iraq, where you had established friendly government. But without that, there is absolutely now way US could effectively occupy the whole country at the other side of the world from logistical perspective and US knows this. Yes, today the massive military transport planes allow you to move lots of material in both directions. But in order for you to do that, you need some serious foothold in the country you try to conquer. It's even harder to keep those shipping coming, if you're at the same time fighting completely hostile territory. Luckily for US, in both Afghanistan and Iraq cases, they had friendly foothold in the country to build on their forces, otherwise it would've been hell.

Nation and its citizens temperament

This is probably the most intriguing aspect here. When it comes to war and people temper for it, there is two diametrically opposite sides going on at the same with US citizens. On one hand, US people are extremely nationalist and proud of their flak and it meaning. They are also ready to fight to death and risk their life for country, if people feel like it's getting attacked (WWII and 9/11). But at the same there are lots of people, who won't give shit in some wars. And even if people care at first, if US won't get results fast, people start to dislike the war. Or even worse, be completely apathetic towards it. This latter happened large scale with Vietnam and then with both "terrorist wars". I remember reading stories, where young soldier were risking their lives in Iraq, but at home, no one gave shit of their suffering there, when the war had went on +5 years.

Not only that, but US seems to be extremely susceptible for heavy losses. The more Americans you lose, the more the overall morale goes down. This is something that makes US actually less effective in war. It also makes it totally impossible to go for large scale imperialistic invasion as that would often require tens if not hundreds of thousands deaths. This is something that the nation would simply not accept and the government and military especially knows that.

Maybe this is why people is US glamour some much for Navy Seals. They perfectly represent not only the US army, but nations morale as well. Seals are highly effective, well-trained and brass heavy hitters that gets the job done fast, yet they are gone even faster as they don't tend to stay in one place for long. And if Seal team loses one member, they are large heroes, but if the whole team is lost, there in larger outcry over it. Sure, I know public probably won't know full Seal team losses, but it's about ideological comparison.

Either way, the above is just one example, why US has seemingly assumed this "Vassal" route for their foreign expansion. Basically, if you really want to simplify all of this, it's the following. US has realized that it's much easier base foreign action for trading and money in general between themselves and foreign country than trying to go around conquering areas and then spend long process trying to assimilate them to your nation.

[Ragabul]

I agree there's a severe logistical hurdle to any kind of attempted annexation of territory in the Old World. But such hurdles never stopped Britain and we clearly had the Navy for it post WW1. And other then that one war we had with Mexico, we've never made violent land grabs against any countries in the Western Hemisphere where those hurdles don't apply. We did try to invade Canada during some wars but that was because they were still controlled by Britain at the time and we were at war with Britain.

We also clearly try to use trade as power projection, but many of these escapades are the exact opposite of something pursued for economic interest. Vietnam was functionally worthless to us but we expended ludicrous amounts of money on it. Same with Afghanistan. At the time of the Korean War, Korea was also functionally useless. These are all pretty much worthless as vassal states.

There is like *no* sensible reason for us to have been in Vietnam for as long as we were. More Americans killed for this pissant country in Asia than any wars we ever fought but Civil War or in the World Wars. You just don't do something like that if you aren't high on your own ideological supply to some degree.

I'm not saying there's not lots of cultural, economic, historical, and geographical reasons at play here, but there's aspects of our behavior that just doesn't make sense if we didn't believe our own ideology at all.

*Edit*

Will also note that the wars we flag on with morale are the really pointless wars like Iraq and Vietnam. There's no real evidence we flag on wars people actually support any faster than anybody else.

I do completely agree we think of Europe differently than anywhere else which is why we've not done anything like in Europe like we have in other places. (We did rig an Italian election one time. I remember reading about it but remember like 0 of the details. This).

*Edit*

Apparently Putin wrote an autobiography: https://www.amazon.com/First-Person-Ast ... oks&sr=1-2

Might be interesting to read though it's from 2000 and really old.

For balance, there's also this biography of him: https://www.amazon.com/Putins-People-To ... oks&sr=1-1
which apparently so pissed people off it's under like 5 lawsuits from various Russians companies and oligarchs.

Might look at those at some point.

[Sinekein]

And there's a nuclear plant on fire following Russian bombing (or, I assume, sabotage, if you watch TV in Russia). The largest in Europe, in fact.

This is fine.

Apparently Putin would be okay with conquering a smoking crater of a country.

[Ragabul]

Also, apparently we may be providing targeting intel to Ukraine: https://www.politico.com/newsletters/na ... e-00013954

[Sinekein]

Well, I'll be honest, Putin is doing everything in his power to make me believe that we would be better off waging a war right now.

I know that it's hypocritical because there are armed conflicts on the planet already and this one only seems to matter more because it's closer to home, but I am having a little bit of trouble sleeping at night knowing that the reason for our "peace" is that there are several layers of human targets between Alsace & the Russian border. Even if France was never part of the USSR and as such might not be part of Putin's megalomaniacal plans, several NATO countries are. I am more and more convinced that if he takes Ukraine over - which is 90% likely to occur eventually IMO - he's not going to stop. There'll be Moldavia next, and then it's the Baltic States or Poland.

Him bombing a nuclear plant makes me believe that the nuclear threat he has been using is actually serious. It's either that or the Russian Army sucks so much they can't avoid hitting such a large target. I don't know whether incompetence or malevolence is the most frightening right now.

It's just...is there even a way to stop a guy ready to burn nuclear plants down? Except by either folding to his crazy demands, or beating him into submission?

[Mobius_118]

I'm thinking about going to Ukraine. Got blue-balled for 8 years and now we have a legitimate threat against Democracy as a whole, since I highly doubt Putin will stop with Ukraine.

[Vol]

Again, I'm not discounting agency. My point is that anybody eager to pursue greatness finds themselves in a much better starting position in USA in 1830 than he does in Congo in 1830 or Ireland in 1830.

I'm trying to model this in my head. The narrative of humanity has to play out, we have no access to it, at best an imperfect awareness. Even if Trajan doesn't fall sick and die on his way back to Rome, the Roman empire still falls. But then we also have moments where agency is the pivotal moment, such as Mao, working at a book store, choosing the Communists over the Kuomintang out of petty self-interest. And then we have moments where agency is irrelevant, George Washington could have been hit by a cannonball, got an infection, or fell off a horse, at any point, and then we might have an American kingdom right now. But we'd still be in a recognizably similar political situation to this one, because it had to play out like this. But Babel always falls, it has to, though we can never know when and how. So in this sense, why not trim the tower down, so there's not much to fall, the foundation remains strong, rather than sending masons to frantically reinforce it as long as possible? Or in more literal terms, steadily withdraw from being the global hegemon, become mostly self-sufficient, wind down by choice.

(Because it's a ludicrous idea if you tried to sell it and no one's ever done it.)

Nobody has presented any evidence so far that we can't adjust again to deal with this stuff in the future. If a child turned adult working human being becomes an insanely valuable resource (as they would be in a very geriatric world), why on Earth wouldn't the people already inclined to make children start making more of them?

I struckthrough that part of my post, but I have a better answer this time. Because the population collapse is baked into the cake. War, plagues, local economic trends, r/k selection theory, those are externally imposed and transitory. But our issue is intrinsic to the western lifestyle. Whatever factors you want to name, birth control, high survival rates, cost of childcare, cost of good schooling, feminism, career women, manchildren, climate change, you cannot unbake the cake and take out the ingredients. People float the idea of more government, more central planning, more assistance to encourage family growth, and the countries that have tried have had nothing to show for it. Generous models and America's laissez faire model are producing the same result. It's like asking a colonial government how to preserve the native culture, they necessarily are unable to achieve the goal. You cannot separate the eggs from the chocolate cake. You can scrape off the frosting, but there's still sugar in the sponge. Any artificial incentive to overcome, "I don't want to," is to use perverse methods to deal with a perverse situation, and that can only lead to perverse outcome.

So I took that birthday cake, and threw it on the ground!

(If you are not making the doom argument, but merely the decline argument, feel free to ignore all this at leisure. But for the decline argument to make the modern progress not worth it in the end, we would need to regress to a level *below* that of typical feudal peasant).

My issue isn't that we're engaging in cultural eugenics, that people of a certain stripe are voluntarily making themselves extinct, it's "why" it's happening, but to a much, much larger extent, what government is doing about it. If there was no mass immigration panacea (and abortion was a capital offense), so be it. Decline is fine, it's natural, and life would, uh, find a way.

And there's a nuclear plant on fire following Russian bombing (or, I assume, sabotage, if you watch TV in Russia). The largest in Europe, in fact.

This is fine.

Apparently Putin would be okay with conquering a smoking crater of a country.

I would imagine any nuclear reactor built after 1960 would require direct, sustained shelling to breach, and would shut down long before then. Though scattering radioactive particles is very possible, causing another Chernobyl can't be as simple as "drop a bomb on it."

Though symbolically, yeah, scary as hell.

I'm thinking about going to Ukraine. Got blue-balled for 8 years and now we have a legitimate threat against Democracy as a whole, since I highly doubt Putin will stop with Ukraine.

Well, they badly need men right now, and I'm hearing people all over the place are talking of doing merc work. Though I saw an unsourced claim that Russia won't be treating foreign troops as POWs.

[Ragabul]

I struckthrough that part of my post

Will respond more later, but I will address this. There is unfortunately no chagrined emoji. I should have been a lawyer. When someone says "the sky is blue" I want to argue with them.

Can't find the damn thing but there is New Yorker cartoon with this dude at a bus stop talking to another guy. He says "I'm a freelance intellectual. Care for an opinion?" with the other guy looking at him like he's insane. I'm quite self-aware I'm this guy.

[Mobius_118]

Well, they badly need men right now, and I'm hearing people all over the place are talking of doing merc work. Though I saw an unsourced claim that Russia won't be treating foreign troops as POWs.

Looks like decent swaths of Russian conscripts are cutting and running, ditching their weapons and gear. Unfortunately I have to contend with money problems if I fly over and supply 8 hard years of Infantry and Combat Engineer training. Training that is based on a mix of force-on-force and irregular warfare. Another issue is those thermobaric missiles. You can survive conventional bombing and artillery, you can't survive a shockwave that pulverizes reality and burns the air.

Not getting treated like a POW by Russia is pretty standard. Human rights violations doesn't bother the higher ups.

[Vol]

Looks like decent swaths of Russian conscripts are cutting and running, ditching their weapons and gear. Unfortunately I have to contend with money problems if I fly over and supply 8 hard years of Infantry and Combat Engineer training. Training that is based on a mix of force-on-force and irregular warfare. Another issue is those thermobaric missiles. You can survive conventional bombing and artillery, you can't survive a shockwave that pulverizes reality and burns the air.

Not getting treated like a POW by Russia is pretty standard. Human rights violations doesn't bother the higher ups.

Armchair generals are saying the Russians have been sending their greenest men and oldest equipment in first, so the "real" army is in the wings, but I am not remotely qualified to speak on that. I'd think that the longer this drags on, the worse the measures employed will be. I was surprised with how low even the propaganda causality numbers were, but it seems like the gloves are coming off.

Will respond more later, but I will address this. There is unfortunately no chagrined emoji. I should have been a lawyer. When someone says "the sky is blue" I want to argue with them.

Can't find the damn thing but there is New Yorker cartoon with this dude at a bus stop talking to another guy. He says "I'm a freelance intellectual. Care for an opinion?" with the other guy looking at him like he's insane. I'm quite self-aware I'm this guy.

"Achshually"

I'm that guy, only not an intellectual, and nobody I speak to knows what I'm talking about, so I awkwardly try to translate on the fly. Though my dad has taken an interest in politics over the last few years, so it's been a nice way of bonding to try and connect when we have so little else in common.

[Ragabul]

stuff about inevitability vs agency

At core what I'm saying is that humans in aggregate are pretty predictable. I cannot tell you what 1 specific guy will do. I also can't tell exactly what an aggregated mass of people will do in this specific battle. Or what this country specifically will do this year. But I can tell you what teenagers are like and why they are very different from old people and also very different from 5 year olds. I can tell you that people who live on giant grasslands will probably be nomadic and pastoral. I can tell you that dense civilizations usually begin in river valleys. I can tell you that people who develop elaborate needs to count things and keep track of counted things usually invent some kind of writing system to do it. I can tell you that farm collectivization has a very high chance of creating a gigantic famine. I can tell you that bustling cosmopolitan metropoles are better locations for innovation and science than random rural villages. You get the gist.

So in this sense, why not trim the tower down, so there's not much to fall, the foundation remains strong, rather than sending masons to frantically reinforce it as long as possible? Or in more literal terms, steadily withdraw from being the global hegemon, become mostly self-sufficient, wind down by choice.

I'm saying I think this will get trimmed down whether we want it to or not. In this case, maybe talking in the abstract is less useful. A question we must answer: what is Europe to us? What is the string of republics in the Pacific to us? These are the only not North America questions I care about answering.

Another way of putting it. The time of global hegemony is almost certainly over. Do we abandon the core zone we have cultivated or do we *focus* on it now being spread less thin? Do we stop being a forcible shaper of things and become merely a defender of things that already exist? We could certainly pull off autarky better than most. Should we?

birthrates

And yet there are clearly still people inclined to child rearing. Statistically most women still have children in their lifetime. 85% per this. If they *needed* to have more children, truly needed to in some acute way and not in some abstracted "we might have to raise the age people get Social Security benefits by 2 years" kind of way, why would these women who already produced some not produce more? And why wouldn't some of the ambivalent (like me) in the 15% not also produce some? In what society with low birth rates is the need for more children actually materially acute and unavoidable by any means but producing more children?

@armchair general stuff

Also heard Russian special forces (which is mostly what he's used in his various other little wars) is pretty good but standard Russian army is "meh" and he overestimated what he could actually do with them. This seems vaguely plausible but I have 0 idea.

[Mobius_118]

Not getting treated like a POW by Russia is pretty standard. Human rights violations doesn't bother the higher ups.

Armchair generals are saying the Russians have been sending their greenest men and oldest equipment in first, so the "real" army is in the wings, but I am not remotely qualified to speak on that. I'd think that the longer this drags on, the worse the measures employed will be. I was surprised with how low even the propaganda causality numbers were, but it seems like the gloves are coming off.
[/quote]

Usual Russian assault doctrine is to send in the hardened combat troops to pulverize the target then have the Conscripts hold it. This is either a vast overestimation of the Russian military or Putin pulled a sneaky. Probably pulled a sneaky, toss waves of expendable conscripts to wear down the Ukrainians then send in the T-90M's and Black Sharks to wipe out what remains.

Burning a nuclear powerplant, hitting civilian populaces with thermobaric weapons, shelling hospitals and schools...Yeah, seems like phase 2 of making Russia great again is underway. Although there was a Chechen general that got killed along with most of his strike force, and Wagner Group, Putin's private mercenary company, seems to have been wiped.

[Ragabul]

This is getting out of hand: https://twitter.com/nexta_tv/status/1499289953443930113

My cat is officially cancelled. He's a British Shorthair but his dad was imported from a Russian breeder.

[Vol]

Usual Russian assault doctrine is to send in the hardened combat troops to pulverize the target then have the Conscripts hold it. This is either a vast overestimation of the Russian military or Putin pulled a sneaky. Probably pulled a sneaky, toss waves of expendable conscripts to wear down the Ukrainians then send in the T-90M's and Black Sharks to wipe out what remains.

Burning a nuclear powerplant, hitting civilian populaces with thermobaric weapons, shelling hospitals and schools...Yeah, seems like phase 2 of making Russia great again is underway. Although there was a Chechen general that got killed along with most of his strike force, and Wagner Group, Putin's private mercenary company, seems to have been wiped.

Man, I couldn't begin to tell you. Everyone is lying about everything, and even pictures and videos are bullshit half the time. It *appears* some first wave troops didn't even know they were at war, and it was a training exercise, until they were shot at and surrendered. But it's getting worse, that much at least is clear.

This is getting out of hand: https://twitter.com/nexta_tv/status/1499289953443930113

My cat is officially cancelled. He's a British Shorthair but his dad was imported from a Russian breeder.

I'm going to need you to disavow your cat, and pledge not to pet him, lest your patriotism be taken for granted, comrade.

[Sinekein]

Wagner Group, Putin's private mercenary company, seems to have been wiped.

So there are actual nazis being killed in this War after all! Putin spoke the truth it seems.

[Vol]

https://twitter.com/Rasmussen_Poll/stat ... 9893327872

"People who would have to fight the war want it least."

[TTTX]

I'm thinking about going to Ukraine. Got blue-balled for 8 years and now we have a legitimate threat against Democracy as a whole, since I highly doubt Putin will stop with Ukraine.

don't worry Mob, I'm sure china will follow Russia example soon enough.

[Someone With Mass]

Out of pure curiosity and excluding the accomplishments of exceptional individuals (such as astronauts, Olympic gymnasts, scientists etc) as well as natural resources, what has Russia contributed that benefited humanity on a global scale?

[TTTX]

Out of pure curiosity and excluding the accomplishments of exceptional individuals (such as astronauts, Olympic gymnasts, scientists etc) as well as natural resources, what has Russia contributed that benefited humanity on a global scale?

well it is russia and they have always been the odd ball and behind everyone else in Europe before trying to catch up.

so it is not really an easy answer.

[FrozenShadow]

And there's a nuclear plant on fire following Russian bombing (or, I assume, sabotage, if you watch TV in Russia). The largest in Europe, in fact.

This is fine.

Apparently Putin would be okay with conquering a smoking crater of a country.

My worst fear is that, if Putin can't get Ukraine, he will completely annihilate it. He might even go so far and think "well, if I can't get, I make sure know one else can use it against Russia me" and one way or another make the current Ukraine a nuclear wasteland. Couple nukes there or destroying any of Ukraine Nuclear Power Plant would achieve that. After that no one can use Ukraine.

Sure, this is totally crazy, but it's starting to look like Putin too has completely lost his mind. Insane man with access to Nuclear weapons and military that seems to blindly follow him.......

And my absolutely nightmarish scenario is that Putin decides to do the same with Finland too. 3-4 small nukes here and current Finland is wasteland and nice buffer zone for new Russia. Sure, you could say that Putin won't use nukes so close to St. Petersburg, but it's also obvious that Putin is one those crazy lunatic dictators, who won't give flying fuck about other people, be they opponent or Russians own citizens. All that matters is achieving whatever he wants.

[FrozenShadow]

Out of pure curiosity and excluding the accomplishments of exceptional individuals (such as astronauts, Olympic gymnasts, scientists etc) as well as natural resources, what has Russia contributed that benefited humanity on a global scale?

Well, technically you could ask the same about every single country. It's pretty much always exceptional individuals from every country that have benefited the world at large.

One could argue that US did a good thing for humanity in getting rid of Nazi-Germany and defeating Japan. Yet at the same time US created and used Atomic Bombs, which was important part if creating Cold War and might now even end up destroying the whole damn world, thanks to Putin.

What I mean, it seems that even all the good things that a single country does to the world have some negative sides somewhere. It might be small at the time, but years later it could end up being really damn destructive on global scale.

[Someone With Mass]

Well, technically you could ask the same about every single country. It's pretty much always exceptional individuals from every country that have benefited the world at large.

One could argue that US did a good thing for humanity in getting rid of Nazi-Germany and defeating Japan. Yet at the same time US created and used Atomic Bombs, which was important part if creating Cold War and might now even end up destroying the whole damn world, thanks to Putin.

What I mean, it seems that even all the good things that a single country does to the world have some negative sides somewhere. It might be small at the time, but years later it could end up being really damn destructive on global scale.

Fair enough. I guess I mean that it feels like Russia is not contributing at all to the betterment of any society outside their borders. Which makes it feel even more ridiculous when our countries have to dance to their tone-deaf tune simply because they have nukes.

[Ragabul]

Out of pure curiosity and excluding the accomplishments of exceptional individuals (such as astronauts, Olympic gymnasts, scientists etc) as well as natural resources, what has Russia contributed that benefited humanity on a global scale?

Depends on how much you value art and spiritual stuff I suppose but Russian art in general is world renown (architecture, novels, dance, etc) and they are also the epicenter of the Orthodox Church. And I'd say this is not just an amazing individuals thing. There is something in Russian culture itself that spurs a lot of this. Like I said in the book thread, they are serious contender for producing the best novelists in the world in general. Also the value of this is relative and its not just Russian but they have IMO the coolest mythology (Slavic) of anybody in Europe.

*Edit* My niece is super into song, dance, & theatre and she holds the Russian performing arts in general in semi-awe. Again, strong contendor for best in general at this stuff:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5PB0TG7QNXU

[FrozenShadow]

Well, it does seem that Ukraine indeed have rising neo-nazi problem. There is Azov in the armed forces, youth camp's with nationalistic ideologies and military stuff taught to young members, and there seems to be National Militia consisting Ultranationalist members and seemingly even increasing numbers of nazis and other far-right groups on the political area. There is actually surprisingly many articles and videos of this, even from larger news sites like BBC.

And now West is actually arming these people to the the teeth against Russia.I can understand, why it would look really bad for Russia as they still traumatized of Nazi Germany's attack during WWII.

Of course, these "far-right to neo-nazi" groups might not represent the whole country and Ukraine is definitely not run by them. Yet those groups have increased their popularity ever since Russia attacked on Crimea and helped to create rebels parts on the far-eastern parts of Ukraine (so, this popularity increase is sort of Russia own fault, when you think about it). Either way, point is that various neo-nazi, far-right and hyper nationalistic groups are getting stronger and entering in the political area too, which could end up being really damn dangerous. It's good to remember that German SS forces consisted only about 10% max of German armed forces or that Nazi party formed just small numbers of German...yet, there were only under 10 Million party members and less than 1 million SS forces, but those small numbers just managed to get the whole damn world in trouble with their heinous actions.

Yet, the largest issue here, is not Ukraine's past problems with Neo-nazis, but what will happen in the future after this war.

If Russian wins, it will probably mean a systematic killings of all Azov, far-right and nationalistic members...basically a selective genocide of tens of thousands, if not millions Ukrainian. Now, while I could agree the the removal of power from hardcore neo-nazis, just eliminating them on masses ain't good. Especially not, when there will be plenty of other totally innocents getting killed by Russian forces too.

If Ukraine wins......well there lies a huge danger. Most of normal people will be more than happy, when the war ends and normal life returns. But the neo-nazi, far-rigth and other nationalistic groups....this war against Russia is probably best thing to happen to them, if they win. Not only there is now actually common enemy (Russia), Russian bombing civilians and destroying cities just radicalize people witnessing these actions. This also creates an atmosphere that is apt for extremity. Basically, what this war might do is radicalize many Ukrainian the same way as happens to jihadist terrorist. The only difference is that jihadist go around blown themselves up, while radicalized far-right people wants to basically inflict harm to others.

What this might mean is that after this war is over, hyper nationalistic and far-right groups, even openly nazi groups might be seen as real heroes and not just on the battlefield, but on the political area as well. This could actually lead to far-right or openly nazi-groups achieving political majority in the next election and create openly fascist Ukraine. And even if Ukrainian voters won't let that happen, these groups will get more power, which probably leads to a truly hard times for Russian-Ukrainians. They might face open persecution in future, (especially now that even common Ukrainian people hates Russian at some level), they might get beaten and be forced to move to Russia (so that Ukraine is left for Ukrainians as some of these far-right group members so aptly says). I wouldn't even count out a possibility that after the war normal people are too happy, awed or scared of these far-right groups action in the war that they might not even want to resist them, especially so if these groups decides to act moderately enough at first. But at some point, Ukraine winning the war might lead to more or less systematic obbression and even elimination of people that favourable of Russian (There is already one ex-mayor, who was Pro-Russian, which is now found shot to the dead by head shot.)

Basically, if Ukraine wins, we might soon see the first openly nazi-esque fascist government in the Europe, since Nazi Germany. Though the ironic part is that, if this do happen, it's actually totally Russia fault as they will have created it by attacking Ukraine. Basically, Russia might have end up creating the very thing they tried to prevent happening in the first place.

Either way, another very interesting thing about Neo-Nazism. United Nation had tried to ban the neo-nazi organizations for years, but it had never succeed. And can you guess, what are the few countries that have systematically vote "No" over the years.......United States and Ukraine. Ain't that interesting, especially so, when all kind nazisms and its glorification is on the raise in both countries?

There is also something else. Not sure if this is by accident or by design, but 2014 Captain America: Winter Soldier movie has very interesting correlations to the real world we're living on. In the movie we had Hydra, which had infiltrated in the Shield and political system to some degree after their WWII defeat, buying their time in creating their new slower rise. And if you think about conversation between Cap, Black Widows and Dr. Zola's conversation and then what's happening in real world.....could something like that have happened for real? After all, recent decades sure had made us willing give up our freedoms, so that government can protect us or that we are "safer".

Scary thought, isn't it.

[Ragabul]

Silly Cold War song I posted in the music thread a while back. Even more appropriate now: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jHh_Z7RgCEk

[FrozenShadow]

Oh, and this fits nicely to my previous post.

Neitzsche once said: "Beware that, when fighting monsters, you yourself do not become a monster... for when you gaze long into the abyss. The abyss gazes also into you." This seems to be fitting rather nicely to the Putin and his recent actions.

In Russia, they just kept a brainwashing internet class to all students of how the situation in Ukraine is just "special operation" with heading for the class being "Peace keepers/Peace defenders". Military historian Pjotr Iskhov explained to a students, how Russia is not hitting homes or civilian targets (def not schools) and how they force peace on Ukraine so that they could not raise against Russia or remove worldwide threat at the same time. They also repeated again how this whole "special operation" is about demilitarization and de-nazification. This class also taught student of how to spot Fake news (basically everything else is false, but state approved media).

Second news is that State Duma and Federation Council have passed new laws, which are supposed to support "special operations in Ukraine". New law says that "Spreading purposely wrong information about Russia military and its action" can give you 15 years in prison at most. The interesting part is that it will affect every citizen of every nation, not just Russians. Aleksandr Hinshtein (director of State Dumas information and technology committee) says that foreign citizen are in their home countries, this law will not affect them. But as "grand offences" have long expiration date, chance for prosecution might stay for a long time.

Another accepted law is that any kind of public encouragement for sanction against Russia is now punishable action. You either get fines or 6kk- 3 years prison time. There is also addition to old Dima Yakovlev law (basically law that allow to put sanctions or limitation against US citizens), except now it consist citizens of every nations. "If any foreign national breaks/offends basic rights or freedom of any Russian or other humans or does crimes against Russians abroad", Russia can now introduce sanction for them. These sanction might be prohibition on entry, right to confiscate finances or shares, ban to make any kind of deals or investments, close up of businesses these people run and end of any authority on any business that's registered on Russia.

All of this is done, because Russia was forced to start "militaristic peacekeeping operation" on Ukraine and this way prevent the chance of NATO starting a war from Ukraine territory.

Now, as I had to translate above on from Finnish newspaper, translation might not be the best. But I guess you get the gist. If you make a tweet about Russia war action in Ukraine or tweet about their seemingly horrible losses, you might get up to 15 years prison time.....and all of that even if you are German, Italian or American and then visit Russia in the future. Now isn't that nice.

I guess Putin and his government has failed to see what their current actions are making them. After all, fascist governments works exactly like that. Putin went to war against monsters of fascism, yet he don't see anymore that he had become the monster itself.

Edit: Of course, Putin has to sign these, but we will know he will do it, tomorrow at latest.

[Someone With Mass]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fG9pxkZXiTw&ab_channel=MSNBC

And this video was made before Russia's military decided to just bomb/shoot everything indiscriminately in Ukraine.

Makes sense why him and Trump get along so well. Both are incredibly insecure and incompetent idiots that can't do anything but destroy their competition that makes them look bad by simply existing. Biggest difference is that Trump's idiocy was at least somewhat reined in by people with common sense.