Another great big surge in military violence in Ukraine. I hope Ukraine takes back the occupied land, but citizens must be exhausted from all the back-and-forth, if they’re not dead already.
The Ukrainian troops include specialized attack units armed with Western weapons and trained in NATO tactics. The attacks on the country’s southeast mark a significant push into Russian-occupied territory.
Russian military bloggers also reported heavy fighting in the Zaporizhzhia region, a part of the front line that has long been seen as a likely target of the new Ukrainian campaign. By cutting south through the flat fields of Zaporizhzhia, Kyiv’s forces could aim to sever the corridor of land that connects mainland Russia to the occupied Crimean Peninsula, cutting off crucial Russian supply lines. It could also attempt to liberate the city of Melitopol, which Russia has established as the region’s occupied capital, and Enerhodar, where the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant is located.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky visited parts of the southern region of Kherson on Thursday, touring disaster-hit areas and speaking with evacuated people after damage to the Kakhovka dam caused devastating floods and left many homeless.
I imagine American military leaders are salivating over the prospect of testing Western military gear, doctrine, and tactics against the Russian boogey man.
People used to live here.
I have mixed feelings.
Taking out the taliban, or Saddam or in this case helping Urkraine fight off the invader are genuinely worthy causes, although American leaders and the groups who support them almost always have ulterior motives.
And för the civilians the best will be an early and desicive Russian defeat.
That the ghouls owning the arnament industry will profit is an unfortunate side effects.
The demonstration of flaws in Russian weapon systems will make Russia lose export money they might otherwise use to finance more aggression.
And if Putin “falls out of a window” we need a cheerful time.
“Here We Go”
https://youtu.be/sGNK-cOtxSs
Tune, not time. Spell check is working for Russia!
A nuclear-armed country attempting to usurp a peaceful neighbor while committing unspeakable atrocities against its citizens is a “boogeyman”? While the situation may be advantageous to the MDIs of participating countries, allowing Russia free reign to “nation-hop” across Europe is a far worse outcome.
And för the civilians the best will be an early and desicive Russian defeat.
That will be the best outcome for EVERYONE, not just Ukrainian civilians. Without a conclusive across-the-board ass-whipping, Russia will only keep on making trouble and prodding all of their neighbors looking for the next weakness to exploit, the next piece of territory to annex, the next group of pro-Russian “separatists” to manipulate or support. They’ve been doing this in Ukraine, Georgia and Armenia at least since 2009, and they’ll keep on doing it as long as they’re able to control their own losses. Russian doesn’t just have to lose, they have to lose control of their losses.
Oops, that’s “MICs” not “MDIs” — multiple document Interfaces can never be made advantageous. I’ve been programming too long …
Of course they are exhausted.
It’s worse than that though.
The Russians are taking heavy casualties due to their nation’s lack of concern for human life.
Right now, so are the Ukrainians.
They don’t disclose their killed in action and wounded in action, but all indications are that they are high. That is going to leave a mark on their society for a long time.
What choice do the Ukrainians have? None at all.
This war is Russian genocide.
They’ve said many times that Ukraine and Ukrainians don’t actually exist and they will make sure that this is the case.
Medvedev is a drunken internet troll.
He is also a high Russian government official and a former President of the Russian Federation.
He is predicting the disappearance of Ukraine, although right now the Ukrainians are disputing that fate.
The Russian invasion of Ukraine is one of the clearest examples of the battle of Light against Dark we have seen lately.
If the Russians lay down their arms, they go home, open a bottle of vodka, and see what is on TV.
If the Ukrainians lay down their arms, they disappear forever as a people and a nation.
That is what genocide is.
Not sure how reliable Raw Story is, but here’s an interesting bit of news:
Hipster couple who run ‘pagan home decor’ shop exposed as Putin agents
https://www.rawstory.com/putin-russia/
Losev and Travnikova, who run a workshop called Julleuchter by Perko which “offers exclusive pagan home decor and specializes in Yule lanterns,” have been active on social media appearing to condemn the war in Ukraine. “In all my life I have not met a single person who would want war. And despite this, wars in our world continue to occur with enviable regularity. I feel pain and powerlessness,” wrote Losev in one post.
But at some point, the couple pivoted to a secret operation to try to expand the war across Eastern Europe, the report alleged…
“According to the announcement, the freshly sanctioned Russians operated as malign influence agents in a ‘large global information operation connected to the Russian Federation that targets Ukraine, countries bordering Ukraine including Moldova, Balkan countries, the European Union, the United Kingdom, and the United States,'” said the report. “They are accused of ‘provoking, training, and overseeing’ anti-government activities in Moldova while maintaining ties to Russian intelligence services.”
Maia Sandu, the pro-NATO president of Moldova, has long warned that there is a covert Russian effort to engineer a coup in the country; Transnistria, a largely Russian-speaking region of the country, has long had a separatist movement, but the region has been drifting closer to Western alignment and Russian forces have been trying to counteract this shift.
So yeah, this wasn’t confined to Ukraine — let alone to the Crimea and Donbas bits — before, and it won’t stop there either, unless the Russians get an unequivocal ass-whipping.
Also, I’d just like to add that I’ve seen absolutely ZERO sympathy or support for Russia’s war among any Pagans in my area.
Tacitus wrote about this even in ancient Rome. He quotes a Celtic chieftain Calgacus: “where they make a desert, they call it peace” (ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appelantur). I.e., the legions come in, steal everything, rape, enslave, and murder the rest. Standing atop the smoking rubble, they declare it peaceful.
There’s a pretty good application of all this to Ukraine.
PZ, you make it sound like the end of the war depends on anyone but Putin. He could end this war at any time by recalling his thugs from Ukrainian soil and surrendering the land he stole since 2014. If he did that neither any bigwig at Raytheon, Boeing or Colt nor the US president could change anything about that.
The Ukrainians might be “exhausted”, but they’re in for the fight of their lives. They stop fighting, their nation is destroyed and their identity as people erased, so the choice they have is die on the battlefield or die in the gulag. We must help them to push off the invaders and put a check on Putin’s power if only so he doesn’t just try this stunt on other nations and subjects them to the horrors of war.
Can’t agree more with most of the comments. However misguided American foreign policy has been over the last 30 years, it doesn’t come close to what Russia is doing in Ukraine, and if they succeed, then it’s open season on the rest of the former Soviet empire (Belarus is pretty much done as an independent nation already), and Taiwan, not to mention any other regional power who decides they would be better off annexing their neighbors.
Tankies wishing for a Russian victory, or even a cease fire that gives Putin most everything he wants, because they believe anything would be better than the continued domination of United States are lining up to sign the death certificate of Ukraine and several other sovereign nations in the near future.
Signing on to basically every comment here.
Putin is employing a strategy that has a long history. He denies that the Baltic States and Ukraine are real, valid nations. Basically, they’re fake countries established by NATO and whoever else as weapons aimed at Russia. Having erased these countries and their peoples in this way, he declares himself justified in erasing them from the map.
This is a strategy employed by bigots everywhere in all ages. They invalidate the people they hate, they dehumanize them, thereby justifying whatever atrocities they want to commit against them.
For anyone keeping score, Russia has violated pretty much the entirety of the Geneva and Hague Conventions at this point. So, from Putin’s seat, he has to win or eventually get a bag over his head and he awakens at the Hague to await a rope around his neck.
Just saw an interesting presentation on youtube of Russian units, some neonazi types and Russian turncoats who have turned against Russia and actually repeatedly conducted small, underreported raids. In one raid, they go within 12 miles of a thermonuclear weapons storage facility. Being more Russian-centric, of course they suggested that the US would have had to respond against the insurgents to get the weapons under control.
Conveniently ignoring the fact that the Russian failsafe system is every bit as robust as our own…
This is going to drag on and as it does, the chances of escalation into a world war will increase, as Putin grows more desperate. What is needed is a palace revolt, which retains control of the Russian dead hand system. Otherwise, Putin could get removed, dead hand doesn’t get inhibited and our first warning would be an ICBM launch across Russian airspace that carries their nuclear activation network communications gear for dead hand, triggering an immediate launch of all Russian ICBM’s, bombers and SLBM’s.
Fortunately, there is one thing in the world’s favor. Russians aren’t stupid and know their own systems quite well.
Just don’t be surprised when another Ukrainian reactor gets melted down. The Russians have proven good at doing that. Well, that and spreading Chernobyl’s contamination far and wide.
From a Western European Perspective,we can*t ignore any longer that Russia’s War is coming for all of us, one country at a time – as long as he gets away with it.
Sorry PZ, but peace went down the drain a while ago; now we must make sure Putin’s Russia does not win – cost it whom it may, and I might be on that list…. I don’t want my child to live under that regime. Better dead than reactionary, I guess.
Agree with everything said. And that any peace short of total Russian defeat—anything that sees Russia gain even one square foot of land… guarantees Russia will do this again, and next time they’ll thing to route out the corruption and grift within their military first.
This is one of the two great fights against the darkness, in our time. The other is here at home, and we can only hope to do well enough that it doesn’t turn violent. But we must be ready for the day it does.
Topical:
Another article:
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-06-09/the-war-in-ukraine-an-environmental-disaster-getting-worse/102436654
I love how comment 4 questions Russia being a boogeyman, and is immediately followed by a dozen comments saying, “this is the ultimate battle of light against darkness”, “the Russians will never stop, they’re coming for us all”, “the only acceptable outcome is the total defeat of Russia by any means necessary”, etc., etc.
You’d never guess a democratically elected pro-Russian Ukrainian government was overthrown undemocratically – twice – as NATO seeks to absorb as much of the former Soviet Union as it can.
Silentbob: “undemocratically” overthrown by a popular revolt. Uhuh.
I guess genocide is OK in your books?
The boogey man is fake.
Russia is real. Russia is actively engaging in genocide.
@20 — Unless I misunderstood, OP used the word to connote a foe propped up by the military industrial complex to further its own agenda. While I certainly agree with that, Russia is also a genuine, dangerous enemy of humanity and should be treated as such rather than just some “boogeyman” who goes around scaring children in the night.
I hear echoes of Kremlin talking-points, which invert reality.
The actuality: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolution_of_Dignity
“from Putin’s seat, he has to win or eventually get a bag over his head and he awakens at the Hague to await a rope around his neck.”
The EU has abandoned such punishments.
IMO, capital punishment should be rare: reserved for Heads of State that cause the deaths of 10,000+ innocents. But in those cases, it should be GRUESOME.
I’ve posted this video before, but fuck it, I’m going to do it again in the almost certainly vain hope that idiots who love their “evil empire” narrative will actually try to learn something.
It goes into great detail (in 30 minutes) as to why Russia is so hellbent on keeping NATO out of Ukraine.
Spoiler: It’s not because Russians are blackhearted villians who love nothing better than a good genocide while twirling their moustaches and going Muahahaha.
You don’t have to worry that you’ll be brainwashed by Ruskies trying to steal your vital bodily fluids. It doesn’t defend Putin, just explains:
Putin has made it abundantly clear what he wants with Ukraine — to end it. He has delusions of surpassing Peter the Great and restoring the Russian Empire. From his own mouth.
O/T: Stupid Trump is officially and Federally INDICTED!!! 7 Counts of Espionage!
Read it here. :D
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/6/8/2173930/-Donald-Trump-indicted-for-illegal-retention-of-classified-documents
SilentBob: Putin explicitly compares himself to Peter the Great and wants to restore the Russian Empire. That’s why NATO is a problem for him.
He sees Ukraine as being rightfully in the sphere of influence of his Empire. When they rebel against him, he has resorted to bribery, poisoning, and invasion. Since they aren’t part of NATO he got away with it until the latest phase of his invasion.
Ukrainians don’t want to be a part of Russia, but imperialists like yourself think they don’t get to have a say in that.
Silentbob, the ‘why’ is in the past. And it’s fucking specious.
Relevant bit: Russia invaded Ukraine.
Russia did not have to invade Ukraine.
Russia has not been invaded.
Russia was not going to be invaded.
There’s a reason all those countries sought diligently to join NATO.
That reason is pretty obvious when one sees what happened to Ukraine.
Russia’s current regime wants to (not like they’ve been quiet about it) have Russia be a great power again, and exercise hegemony over all of the Balkans and Eastern Europe.
(Bah)
As the bully said: “Look what you made me do!”
wzrd1@15–
‘So, from Putin’s seat, he has to win or eventually get a bag over his head and he awakens at the Hague to await a rope around his neck.’ So long as he maintains power in Russia, or in the event he loses power the new regime would be embarrassed by a war crimes trial, he will not see the inside of a court.
Evidence: there are thousands of US war criminals walking around happily right now. OK, you might say, the US is (shamefully) not a signatory to the ICC. But then neither is Russia. And even for Australia, an ICC state party, we’ve just had a major court case where one of our SAS commanders in Afghanistan was accused of war crimes and made the fundamentally stupid decision to sue the media for defamation, which turned out very badly since not only did he lose the case, but the judge found that it was, in fact, materially proven that he committed those war crimes, hid evidence from investigators, and threatened witnesses. The billionaire media mogul who sponsored this legal misadventure still insists that the war criminal ‘is not the man I know’ and stands by him (maybe, just maybe, you might know the man a bit differently if instead of being his starstruck employer, you were an Afghani POW…or the ex-wife to whom he was so abusive that his private investigator quit in disgust). And yet strangely no-one is talking about referring this case to the ICC. Maybe it will happen eventually, but Australian politicians are such craven arses that I doubt it.
chrislawson:
How many of them are or have been heads of state for decades?
How many of them have started a war which in has resulted in many war crimes?
I reckon your analogy falls far short, facile as it tries to be.
I recommend Vlad Vexler on the sociopolitical/philosiphical aspects of this war.
Good channel.
Example:
John Morales @ 33, thanks, spot on. There’s a wee difference in scale, a few service members or a unit commander vs a leader of an entire nation throwing military force about – mostly against civilians, abandoning that which Russia is signatory and ratifier for, the Geneva and Hague Conventions.
The Hague, largely all about protecting civilians and Geneva prohibiting attacks on dams and other highly destructive force capable structures, such as, oh, nuclear reactors.
And no, SIlentbob, occupying a site under hostile conditions is not protection, any more than Germany occupying Poland was protecting Polish Jews.
It’s apologist shit like that that makes me want a cobalt-60 bombardment to 1 cm, to ensure the planet is clean enough that maybe something will eventually evolve with more sense and honor. If not, better to remain sterile.
Oh, I did suggest, way back in the ancient days of the 1990’s that we offer Russia to join NATO and some appropriate Pacific treaty organizations.
Multiple gains, non-aggression agreement inherent and protection from aggression from even a member. Russia gains warm water access by the agreement and if we ever got a missile shield, incorporate them under mutual terms.
Alas, that was rejected.
Now, we instead have Rampaging Russia, on their first Poland, once done, they’ll go for whatever their France is. Literally, using mostly the same tactics that the Waffen SS used.
The Waffen SS getting summarily executed in reprisal for war crimes in France and not allowed surrender during the Battle of the Bulge for war crime reprisal again.
I suggest objectors and those with honest interest actually read the Geneva and Hague Conventions, they’re not all that long. They’re the “laws of war” some speak of, as warfare hasn’t been lawless since the late 1800’s.
Nor should it ever have been. I know the theories that supported lawless warfare, I reject them for good reason, most reasons already well expressed by those who proposed such laws.
As for war criminal combatant vs screwing up vs military necessity vs reprisals enforcing combatant, that’s the subject of an entire paper that should be peer reviewed. It’s dense, technical and still, despite peer review, prone to be dismissed by partisans.
Putin isn’t seeing the inside of a jail. He’ll die in power. Whether he dies of natural causes or he dies from falling out the window of his underground bunker isn’t clear but retirement isn’t happening.
Just to emphasize how this is all on Putin: He could pull out right now, declare it a victory, have his propagandists agree with him and repeat this all over Russia, and also win the next election with overwhelming majority. There literally be 0 negative consequences other than his injured ego if he chooses to end the war. But he is not doing it because his ego is more important than the lives millions of people, both Russians and Ukrainians.
It is amazing how silentbob simply regurgitates previously debunked lies again and again and never addresses the rebuttals. Tankies never change.
The video cited by silentbob did a good job of explaining Russia’s viewpoint and what Russian policymakers, at least, might consider to be Russia’s legitimate security/strategic interests. The problem is that none of it really justifies any of the specific things Russia is currently doing pursuant to said interests. The old Russian Empire/USSR has fallen apart, and their present-day borders are not as easily defensible as the previous limits of the Warsaw Pact. But they don’t have any right to reconquer the land/buffer-zones they once had on those grounds, any more than Britain has a right to reconquer India and use their resources to pump up their post-imperial economy.
What Russia needs to do now — what I and a lot of people expected them to do from 1991 on — is to be more competent in responding to the new post-Soviet reality. When the USSR fell apart, and Russia made no attempt to reconstitute it at the time, most of us thought they’d just get on with their new and old neighbor-states, and just let them drift closer to their orbit, because that’s almost always what smaller states do when they have much larger neighbors. Poland, Ukraine, Belarus, the Baltic States, etc. would simply do normal business with their neighbors, and they’d all get along because no one would see any need to pick any fights. But that didn’t work: because Russia couldn’t get a grip on the idea of neighboring states being independent without being a threat; because Russia was, and is, still ruled by KGB manipulators like Putin who never learned how to deal with others (individuals or states) as equals; and because said manipulators respond to complicated socio-economic problems by manipulating people into hating and blaming foreign boogeymen.
So yeah, that video did a good job of explaining how Russian leaders saw their interests as a great power. But they’re not a great power anymore, just like Britain, France, Germany, Poland, Sweden, etc. aren’t great powers anymore; so now they need to re-evaluate their interests and their strategy in light of that fact, because trying to become a great power again will only result in huge amounts of war, killing, immiseration and heartache for everyone. Just like Britain, France, Germany, Poland, Sweden, etc. trying to restore their previous greatness.
Raging Bee: following on your points, Putin is clearly not scared of Russia getting invaded. The invasion of Ukraine has had them weaken Russian defences along all the borders, to the point that a small crew of a hundred or so Ukraine-backed Russian rebels were able to seize Russian land, and there’s been repeated aerial incursions across Western Russia from Ukraine.
This claim that Russia is afraid of being invaded by NATO is nonsense and a stupid lie.
They in fact, have pulled all their army away from the NATO borders to invade Ukraine, leaving them defenseless in conventional warfare.
Because they know NATO isn’t going to invade them, now or ever.
They don’t even need much of an army since they have almost half of the world’s nuclear weapons.
Russia has 5,889 nuclear weapons and the air, space, and ocean means to deliver them any where in the world.
No one invades a country with nuclear weapons for obvious reasons.
You’re both right to say that Russia has no real reason to fear a NATO invasion. Everyone knows it would be incredibly stupid to invade Russia. The problem is, Russia was relatively recently invaded by an incredibly stupid tyrant, and that sort of thing is very traumatizing to the people involved; so I can kinda forgive the Russians for being paranoid about another such invasion. (Note that I’m forgiving the Russians for what they’re THINKING, not what they’re DOING.) And mediocre tyrants like Putin know to direct people’s attention to foreign boogeymen (real or imagined) whenever they need to distract attention away from their own failures or incompetence.
They don’t even need much of an army since they have almost half of the world’s nuclear weapons.
Um, no, nuclear weapons are not a substitute for ground troops. That’s a dangerous mistake for anyone to make.
It’s not that Russia or Russians had no reason to fear NATO expansion, they didn’t fear it, period, because they themselves didn’t believe it was a threat to them. They did fear NATO expansion, because it severely restricted their influence over their neighbors. And Putin pretty clearly views the world in terms of spheres of influence.
Also, the political entity that was relatively recently invaded by a notorious tyrant wasn’t just Russia, it was USSR. And the territories and people that suffered the most were Belarus and Ukraine. Belarus in particular, as they lost the largest percentage of their population among the Soviet republics. And it’s telling that in Russia the most popular refrain about WWII is very different from ‘Never again’. Instead it is ‘We can repeat’.
The Netherlands has been doing great
after losing its colonies. Japan has been doing great after losing its empire. Sweden has been doing great after losing its empire. Germany is becoming the strongest industrial power in Europe.
Dubya wanted to make USA the completely dominant world power and it severely hurt the US economy and influence.
Russia fucking up even worse.
I think there is a lesson here…
Raging Bee: I didn’t say that Russia has no real reason to fear NATO invasion. I mean, I believe that as well, but that wasn’t my argument.
My argument is that Russia is not acting like it fears a NATO invasion.
If Russia (or at least Putin) actually believed NATO was a threat, they’d act differently.
Reliable public opinion polling says it was quite widely supported. I don’t particularly care if it didn’t follow established governmental norms aka what you seem to be referring to as “democracy”.
NATO doesn’t absorb other countries. Other countries beg to be let into NATO.
@26
Ukraine joining NATO changes nothing about the threat level posed by NATO to Russia.
Moreover, Russia’s current behavior is not that of someone fearing NATO invasion at any moment. Russia has spent most of their military power leaving them completely open to NATO invasion. At tis point, Poland’s military alone could probably march into Moscow in a month.
…
Raging Bee
Oh fuck this. Plenty of European countries were invaded by Hitler’s Germany, and of those countries, only Russia right now is attempting the Holocaust round #2 right now. Don’t give any bullshit excuses or try to lessen their moral culpability. You’re grossly confused at to the real reasons by saying that it’s reasonable or expected that being invaded by WW2 Germany can lead to this.
Continued:
Raging Bee:
I mean, fuck. Nearly all of the people in Russia today were not even alive when German troops were last in Russia. Go fuck yourself for these genocide apologetics.
Um, Gerrard, did you even bother to read the sentence after the one you’re reacting to? (The one in parentheses?)
Plenty of European countries were invaded by Hitler’s Germany, and of those countries, only Russia right now is attempting the Holocaust round #2 right now.
True; but those countries have recently been ruled by relatively competent and civilized regimes, while Russia has almost always been ruled by brutal incompetent dysfunctional tyrants who keep on abusing and re-traumatizing their people over and over again to prevent them from ever even thinking, let alone standing up, for themselves.
If Russia (or at least Putin) actually believed NATO was a threat, they’d act differently.
I suspect that Putin, and Russian authoritarian political and religious leaders in general, do indeed view NATO and its popularity as a threat — not because they’re afraid of a military invasion by NATO, but because they’re afraid that all those European people — especially Ukrainians so close to home — getting better and more competent forms of government than Russia/USSR ever gave them, would one day get their own people thinking they can do better for themselves too; at which point they’d have a full-blown revolution on their hands and civilization as they knew it (and want their own people to know it) would be destroyed forever.
#50 is not IMAO apologetics for genocide. #43 is.
46. “If Russia (or at least Putin) actually believed NATO was a threat, they’d act differently.”
So, supplying the latest and greatest arms isn’t different enough? Well, there’s direct warfare, all planning for the last half century says it goes thermonuclear within 72 hours. Grand idea!
Should everyone turn off the sun on our way out?
Most of the other arguments tend to be angles dancing on the head of a pin or angels dancing on the head of a pin and not comparing the idiocy of both theories.
The history of the region is complex and long, short bursts of blather won’t cover the complexities involved sociologically or even begin to brush the complexities now.
Which basically is, Russia is trying to gain their own hegemony again, as they enjoyed previously. Ukraine was going westward, socially, making it a lousy satellite state buffer. Add in prestige of recovering an empire, we get a small part of the picture. It’s ever more complex and granular than that.
Hence, turning a game of chess into a blackjack match – only on your side.
Stop simplifying everything to a quick fix route or do what you always do – fail.
Realityland: A sociopath can also be a patriot and motivations count in decision making. Patriotism can be a guiding factor for the Savior (tons of pathology there to go through).
Patriotism, well, Zealots were patriots, there were others even worse, consider LeMay, who stated he’d destroy our nation to protect it.
Want to anticipate and learn? Actually learn the cultural factors, the full sociology of a region and culture. Then, start to analyze what leaders are trying to do and actually understand the cultural acceptance.
That very well may turn into a critical factor into the survival of the human species.
Or threats carried out and cobalt-60 warheads are used.
But, it explains the multiple Geneva and Hague Conventions violations, the aggressiveness and overall discarding economics to the near point of total warfare against an opponent equivalent in the US to Texas vs Wyoming.
It’s how one analyzes behavior, you instead foolishly judge, based upon your own standards, entirely failing to comprehend anything and making war inevitable.
Note, I’ve not even mentioned a side that I support yet.
My reading is, Russia fucked up royally and Putin entirely fails to realize it, going for high stakes gambling, which is always a bad choice.
A far better, if rather longer pathway to do much the same would be a 20 year plan to trade them into position.
But now, for Russia, that boat has sailed and sank in the war and for Russia, it was the Lusitania.
Silentbob@26,
That’s an informative video, although it seriously downplays the basically fascist ideology that Putin has increasingly adopted – key to which is the belief that Ukrainians have no right to self-determination, and just have to do what Big Brother Russia tells them – as set out in his pseudo-historical essay “On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians” in 2021. And as I’ve said here before, NATO should not have expanded (indeed, should have been disbanded) after the USSR disintegrated. But absolutely none of that goes any way at all to justifying Putin’s invasions – particularly the 2022 full-scale assault and the accompanying atrocities, nor does it change the need for Ukraine to win the war.
Even on a purely pragmatic level, Putin’s decision to launch his full-scale invasion has proved utterly disastrous: the invasion itself failed to achieve its objectives and revealed the incompetence of Russia’s forces; European dependence on Russian gas and oil is well on the way to being ended; NATO has already expanded further with the addition of Finland; and the prospect of Ukraine itself joining NATO andor the EU is considerably nearer. (On the last point, it’s worth noting that until the 2014 invasion, Ukrainian public opinion was very much against joining NATO, although much in favour of joining the EU – Yanukovych’s reversal of his election promise to seek an association agreement with the EU was what set off the protest movement, the violent repression of which eventually led to his flight to Russia.) Putin has proved himself not just a psychopathic war criminal, but a stupid one.
Further to #54, the video implies that Putin had no choice, that any Russian leader would have been constrained to act in a similar way. But this is far from the case. The European dependence on Russian gas (encouraged by among others, Angela Merkel) ws not going to end any time soon (development of Ukraine’s own reserves would take a considerable time), and Russia’s alternative pipelines would have strengthened its position relative to Ukraine. The revenue could have been used to diverisfy Russia’s economy and revive its considerable educational, scientific and technological traditions.
…NATO should not have expanded (indeed, should have been disbanded) after the USSR disintegrated.
Why?
Raging Bee @56: I can’t speak for KG, but an argument I’ve heard from other people is that, if NATO had disbanded, Russia would no longer feel threatened, and thus would in turn no longer be a threat to the ex-Soviet states. To me, that seems naive given the last few centuries, but then my ethnic background is Latvian, so perhaps I’m biased.
Yeah, that’s the standard logic of the chronically insecure bully: “anything you do to protect yourself makes me feel threatened!”
KG #54
NATO disbanding could have only ever happened as a reaction to Russia ceasing to be an imperialist threat to its neighbors. If it had been disbanded in the 90s willy-nilly, Putin or some other old-school Russian strongman in charge would have simply invaded all his neighbors sooner because certain parts of the Russian elite consider empire-building and restoring ye olde tsarist glory to be their birthright.
These sorts of opinions just sound like “the police in Chicago should have disbanded after Al Capone was sent to Alcatraz”. Just horrendously naive.
NATO — a pretty thorough cover of how it goes:
Raging Bee@56&58, Rob Grigjanis@57, AugustusVerger@59,
I well recall being told, by a British general at a 1980s debate on NATO (I don’t recall his name or the exact event, but if anyone cares sufficiently I can probably find the notes I made at the time), that NATO was a purely defensive alliance, formed in response to the Soviet threat, and if that threat disappeared, of course NATO would disband. I didn’t believe it then, and of course I was right in that disbelief, because NATO always was, in large part, an instrument to guarantee the global hegemony of the rich white capitalist states, and within that, of the USA. Disbanding NATO would not have been a good idea if combined with the actual post-1991 policy of encouraging the disposal of Soviet state property at fire-sale prices to a gang of crooks (many of them ex-KGB or similar), and dismantling the social safety net which, for all its cruelties and inefficiencies, the USSR provided – leading to a plunge in life expectancy. What was required after NATO’s defeat of the USSR and the latter’s disintegration (which was in fact not desired by western leaders) was an effort on the scale of the Marshall Plan – indeed, scaled up from that plan to allow for economic growth and the huge size of the former USSR – to improve the lives of the citizens of the ex-Soviet and satellite states, Russia above all. What we got was the arrogant triumphalism of “the end of history”.
Now it’s true that even the course of action I suggest would not have guaranteed a peaceful, democratic Russia. Back in 1987, I read Alexandr Yanov’s The Russian Challenge and the Year 2000, which pointed out the potential for a post-Communist Russia to turn to fascism (including the reactionary authoritarianism and antisemitism of the sainted Solzhenitsyn). My point is that the policy of the USA and its allies – of robber-baron capitalism and the expansion of NATO – could hardly have been better adapted to maximise the probability of such a disaster occurring. For those who are sufficiently open-minded to read something differing from “Russia Bad, NATO Good”, I recommend Gilbert Achcar’s The New Cold War: The United States, Russia and China from Kosovo to Ukraine. Achcar, incidentally, supports the supply of weapons to Ukraine, as set out in his contribution to Ukraine: Voices of Resistance and Solidarity, which is entitled A Left Divided: Anti-War, Anti-Imperialism, and the Russian Invasion of Ukraine.
We can’t know whether the approach I would have liked to see would have succeeded. We can see the results of the approach actually taken. Are they sufficiently wonderful to still all thoughts that there might have been a better alternative?
Another recommendation: Daniel Immerwahr’s How to Hide an Empire – the empire in question being of course that of the USA.
KG @61: If anyone has said “NATO good” in the various discussions on this topic hereabouts, I must have missed it. “NATO necessary evil” more like.
Personally, I would have preferred a developing European Defence Community which excluded the US. Would Russia have seen this as less threatening, once its erstwhile satellites started clamouring to join? I doubt it.
What was required after NATO’s defeat of the USSR and the latter’s disintegration (which was in fact not desired by western leaders) was an effort on the scale of the Marshall Plan – indeed, scaled up from that plan to allow for economic growth and the huge size of the former USSR – to improve the lives of the citizens of the ex-Soviet and satellite states, Russia above all. What we got was the arrogant triumphalism of “the end of history”.
On this I fully agree. My only quibble here is that the Marshall-Plan-scale recovery/aftercare program would have to have been organized and funded by a coalition of nations — not even the USA could have done it alone. And the only coalition of nations available to do it would have been…NATO. And if any autocratic-reactionary elements in Russia had resisted such intervention (and yes, such resistance would surely have happened), then NATO power would have been required as an added incentive for Russia to accept the aid, rather than try to militarize their way out of their problems.
NATO was founded to protect Western Europe against Soviet aggression. But even with the USSR gone, Russia will always be a problem for the West, if not an overt threat; both because of their deeply Orthodox, reactionary, anti-Enlightenment, nationalist mindset, and because their geostrategic interests will (in their own eyes at least) never fully align with those of any Western nation. So, yeah, we need to keep NATO for the foreseeable future, and would have needed to keep it even if we’d handled the USSR’s dissolution much better than we actually did.
This is just silly. Nationalistic ambitions for imperial conquest in a culture do not just magically end from a mere change in government. The defensive alliance should have been maintained. Moreover, we should welcome more nations into the defensive alliance. That’s the only moral thing to do. Yes, it does directly come against Russia’s imperialistic ambitions – but that’s the point.
I seriously do not understand your reasoning at all. It’s bizarre. It seems like it’s a combination of “It’s ok, Russia’s all better now with the fall of the Soviet union, no threat here” plus “but if you anger Russia by threatening their imperialistic ambitions with an expanded NATO, then Russia will be more likely to attack their neighbors(?)”. Those ideas are mutually contradictory.
Or maybe you’re pursuing this ridiculous notion that NATO “expansion” was seen as a precursor and threat of NATO invading Russia, but I really hope not because that’s still preposterous. Recent events conclusively show that Russia does not view NATO as a threat via NATO directly invading Russia. If Russian leaders really believed that, they would not have wasted and continue to waste most of their military power on Ukraine.
My gut reaction is – this is obscene. On what basis do you say this regarding NATO specifically? I’m not objecting to the idea that the USA does a lot of bad things to maintain its global hegemony. That is undeniably true. I struggle to see how NATO plays a noteworthy role.
Nonsense. The best way to optimize this disaster was not to allow others to join NATO, thereby ensuring even more defenseless nations against Russian invasion.
…
Recent events have proved that Russian leaders never saw NATO as a threat via a direct military invasion. Otherwise they would not continue to waste what little military power they have against Ukraine.
I wouldn’t mind if NATO expanded…if the USA left it. Europe is big & strong, they don’t need Americans & American military bases to thrive.
If it wasn’t for the USA’s aid to Ukraine, Ukraine might have lost already. USA military aid is more than all other countries’ military aid combined. The USA being in NATO is a great thing for Europe. A certain orange buffoon was not wrong that the European countries are not paying their fair share / not maintaining their military readiness.
The Ukraine conflict is one of those extremely rare times that we can the “America! Fuck Yeah! (World Police)” song unironically.
Gerrard @67: The US doesn’t need to be a member of NATO to send aid, military or otherwise.
@Rob
And as we’ve seen, without formal obligations, that kind of military assistance can be quite slow to come; see military aid to Ukraine. Compare that to what would happen if Russian troops entered Poland and the kind of response that would happen and how soon it would happen.
And consider the difference in response with someone like Trump in office or any other isolationist with and without a formal military alliance.
The other NATO members are the most longstanding allies we’ve ever had. The last thing the USA needs to do right now is leave the only allies we haven’t already shafted one way or another. And even if we continue giving them all the support we’re currently giving them, leaving the alliance will surely be seen by the whole world as America diminishing or walking out on yet another treaty commitment. That won’t be a good look under any circumstances.
In passing, NYT story: Trump Discussed Pulling U.S. From NATO, Aides Say Amid New Concerns Over Russia by By Julian E. Barnes and Helene Cooper, Jan. 14, 2019
(https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/14/us/politics/nato-president-trump.html)
And I remember Trump’s “perfect call” with Zelensky.
Ukraine is a non-NATO member yet is receiving military aid from NATO members including, but not limited to, the USA.
NON-NATO nations are also contributing.
Australia. https://www.minister.defence.gov.au/media-releases/2022-10-27/additional-support-ukraine
New Zealand too. https://www.nzdf.mil.nz/media-centre/story-collections/support-to-ukraine/
….because, and here is a surprise for the tankies hereabouts, the illegal invasion of Ukraine by Putin is opposed by most of the world, including many Russians.
NATO membership is irrelevant in reference to either Russia’s invasion of, or the world’s defence of, Ukraine because NATO is not the reason for the invasion – just a convenient fiction. Anyone parroting that bullshit is just a Russian propagandagram.
tuatara, I too was gonna comment of the claim that “The other NATO members are the most longstanding allies we’ve ever had.”
Apparently, Australia doesn’t count.
Indeed. Perhaps Article 5 is the reason all those countries wanted to (and want to) join NATO.
Plus, as Hungary and Turkey have shown, it’s a nice lever to get benefits from existing members and concessions from applicants.
… and, as this thread is either moribund or dead, I might as well note this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lend-Lease#U.S._deliveries_to_the_Soviet_Union
(So, USA helped USSR against invaders, now USA helps Ukraine against invaders)
How quickly people forget!
On a similar theme picking at dangling threads, KG @61:
I care to the degree that I think perhaps your recollection may not be eidetic; maybe he expressed the view that it’s purpose would have been served and therefore it was no longer necessary. Or perhaps that, were the threat to disappear, NATO would in due course disappear. Or something like that.
Whether that meets the criterion of sufficient caring, I leave up to you.
No names needed, obs.
But even then, to Ukraine, the problem is not the Soviet threat, is it?
And quite honestly, I’m impressed and sorta wistful about my own nature that you actually made notes to which you still have access. I tried, but it’s not my thing.
(I know, I know… it’s the Russian Federation now)
[it’s! argh!]
[can’t resist]
https://www.bbc.com/pidgin/world-60663795
More extensively: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_battles_involving_the_Russian_Federation
I refer you to the contributions of Raging Bee and GOTS subsequent to your #63. OK no-one used the very words “NATO good”, but the remarkably naive idea that NATO was purely about defending western Europe against Soviet aggression (Raging Bee@64), and the bizarre nonsense from GOTS@65, who admits that “the USA does a lot of bad things to maintain its global hegemony” but somehow imagines its most important military alliance has nothing to do with this, make “NATO good” a succinct summary of what is apparently a majority view here.
Raging Bee@64,
On the contrary, the OSCE, to which the USSR and its satellite states, as well as all NATO states and a clutch of neutrals, already belonged, would have been the obvious choice.
This kind of “cultural essentialism” was of course applied in the not very distant past to Germany and Japan. As for “geostrategic interests”, no state’s “geostrategic interests” fully align with those of any other.
GOTS@65,
Well that could be because you either neglected to actually read my #63, or determinedly misunderstood it.
That is of course a ludicrous misrepresentation. I won’t say it’s dishonest, because your many contributions over the years make clear that you are stupid enough to believe that it accurately represents what I said. My point was and is that there were alternative possibilities for how post-Soviet Russia would evolve. The expansion of NATO was bound to make it easier for a Putinesque figure to gain and hold power by representing it as both a threat, and an insult to national pride. What matters in that regard is not whether there was any prospect of NATO invading Russia (there wasn’t), but how it would look to many ordinary Russians. And the notion that the USA’s central military alliance has no role in maintaining its global hegemony is just gobsmackingly ridiculous.
…but the remarkably naive idea that NATO was purely about defending western Europe against Soviet aggression…
Why is that “naïve?”
The expansion of NATO was bound to make it easier for a Putinesque figure to gain and hold power by representing it as both a threat, and an insult to national pride.
As I said @15, the big threat to Russian leaders from the West isn’t any sort of military alliance or aggression; it’s Western liberal-democratic ideas and the success of postwar governments based on those ideas. And “a Putinesque figure” would portray anything Western democracies did to stay stable and resist encroachment as “both a threat, and an insult to national pride,” Whether or not NATO even exists.
KG
If it’s so blindingly obvious, then you should be able to rattle off more than a few examples where NATO has been an instrument of USA hegemony. And please don’t say Serbia or Afghanistan.
Yes, and? You seem to be making the implicit (or explicit?) argument “and therefore NATO should not have expanded”. I grant your explicitly stated conclusion quoted here, but I do not grant the additional implicit argument “and therefore NATO should not have expanded”. Russia was still a threat to its neighbors, and those neighbors should have the right to join a defense alliance against Russia. This is a better outcome than not expanding NATO and leaving those nations at the mercy of Russian imperialism.
I do not endorse a strong cultural essentialism, but I endorse a weaker “cultural inertia”, the obvious claim that culture changes over time but it changes slowly over time. Russian imperialism was a threat to its neighbors for centuries, and thus the only reasonable thing to do going forward was to assume that Russian imperialism would likely continue in the future and to plan on that assumption (and hope to be proven wrong).
Again, I agree with Raging Bee, that your arguments seem to boil down to “we shouldn’t have taken a strong defensive stance because liars in Russian leadership could have used that to more easily convince the Russian people that they’re under attack and then the Russian leaders could use that as a cover or excuse to launch their imperialistic attacks on their neighbors”. Or shorter “we shouldn’t seek mutual protection against the bully because the bully might use that as an excuse that he’s being threatened”. I think you have a severe case of Chomsky-style “Western military is always bad” which is clouding your judgment.
Raging Bee@79
Because:
To spell it out a little more, NATO tied the countries of western Europe – the most developed part of the world aside from the USA itself after WW2* into a US-dominated politico-economic system, as well as directly into the US “military-industrial complex”, as NATO militaries needed to have mutually compatible equipment (this was and is very profitable for US armaments companies). It also provided the USA with military bases in many NATO states, including places which were in no plausible danger of Soviet attack, such as Iceland, Greenland and the Azores. But most fundamentally, in the wake of WW2, the only plausible challenger to US hegemony was the USSR: defending western Europe against possible Soviet attack was therefore intrinsic to maintaining US hegemony.
That would of course be considerably harder than so portraying the successive advances of NATO and its troops and equipment to the east. But more fundamentally, it misses the point: it was not in my view inevitable that any Putinesque figure would come to power in post-Soviet Russia – I reject the cultural essentialism you express: in my view, the expansion of NATO, combined with the encouragement of robber-baron capitalism by the likes of Jeffrey Sachs, made that disastrous development far more likely.
GOTS@80,
On NATO as central to US hegemony, see my response to Raging bee. But in addition, it’s not obvious why I shouldn’t mention Serbia or Afghanistan, except that they do provide additional support to my case, so you’d rather I didn’t. I’m not arguing that US hegemony is always worse than the available alternatives – as should be clear from my support of arming Ukraine: if Ukraine defeats Russia, it will undoubtedly benefit US hegemony. I regret this, but the alternative – the victory of Russian fascism – is much worse.
The examples of Germany and Japan, already cited, clearly refute this claim.
This just confirms that you’re an idiot, since my support of supplying Ukraine with Western weapons and training, obvious in this and many other threads, clearly refutes it.
*Obviously there was a lot of damage to most of those countries, but the industrial infrastructure and educated populations made it obvious the rapid recovery which did in fact happen – helped by the Marshall Plan – would be possible.
Okay, I tried to post a (rather long) comment, and it’s vanished. I guess I’ll have to come back later today to see if it ever shows up…
Trying to prove a universal claim by citing two examples? Is this a joke?
That’s how counterexamples work, Gerrard.
The claim to which KG refers is “the obvious claim that culture changes over time but it changes slowly over time.”.
Spain was like that, too, after Franco died. Another counterexample.
A remarkable cultural transformation, particularly in the arts, from my perspective half a world away and confirmed by my family there.
Well I obviously need to brush up on my history knowledge.
Here I was under the impression that NATO was formed as an alliance of North Atlantic nations as a means to secure a free and secure democratic Europe – nations who had only recently been staring down a German barrel who suddenly found themselves staring down the barrel of an aggressively expansionist Soviet Union.
But no! Apparently, even though the Soviets were annexing ‘liberated’ nations while the rest of the ‘Allies’ (of which the Soviet Union was supposed to be a member) were actually liberating them, the formation of NATO was just to further US hegemony.
How silly was I to grant any of those European nations any agency? Obviously NATO bad!
tuatara @85:
They have some agency, as long as it goes along with American interests. For example, Norway considered buying the Swedish Gripen fighter as a replacement for their F-16s. Oops.
Just a tiny piece of the huge puzzle. Things are almost always more complicated than superficial impressions.
Rob, there are always shenanigans such as that going on in international dealings.
Now as far as I remember, in 2010 neither Norway nor Sweden were NATO members. Norway joined formally this year (2023) and Sweden has yet to.
So your example of US manipulation in not directly a NATO manipulation (though I do concede it may have been a policy driver on the part of the USA, second to their need to profit by selling US made weapons of course).
Back to the general subject of the OP, an obvious point that seems to be missed (perhaps it has been covered hereabouts but I missed it) is that of ‘putin of the tiny penis’ stated goal of the eradication of Ukraine as an independent nation. Putin claims Ukraine as a part of Russia. Now, last time I looked Ukraine borders Moldova, Romania, Hungary, Slovakia and Poland to the West, Belarus to the North, Georgia to the East and of course Russia.
Of those nations to Ukraine’s West, only Moldova is not a NATO member.
So, Putins objective of obliterating Ukraine and making it part of Russia itself under the guise of providing a buffer between Russia and NATO members, is utter nonsense. Expanding Russia to the borders of Moldova, Romania, Hungary, Slovakia, and Poland puts NATO right on Russia’s [new] border.
Keeping Ukraine as an independent nation is the path for Russia’s security in the face of NATO. But after this episode is done, I would not blame Ukraine for joining NATO immediately they liberate themselves from this Russian aggression.
But NATO is not a threat to the Russian people. It never was. Keeping up the fiction of the Glorious Russian empire is the threat to the Russian people. In that sense, Russia’s only real threat is Putin himself.
Putin’s invasion of Ukraine is proof that NATO was not made obsolete with the fall of the USSR.
Oh, one more thing. I hear talk of the fire sale of Soviet assets and how this was the West’s way of keeping Russians poor. But here’s the thing. Those assets were invariably gobbled up by Russians, many of whom were members of the security services, those in the know, who became the oligarchy to Putin.
I am not the smartest guy, obviously, but some things seem obvious even to me.
Two counterexamples do not prove a universal. You need more examples. Especially when there are numerous examples on the other side.
tuatara @87: Norway was a founding member of NATO in 1949. You may be thinking of Finland.
Your block is strong, Gerrard.
Yours is the claim, the counterexamples are to your claim, and are certainly not trying to prove your claim, rather the opposite.
Yes Rob I was thinking of Norway. Sorry. My bad.
Still, US hegemony must have been how the eurofighter was developed by non-US NATO members (not to mention the French who went out alone to develop the rafale). And before those there was of course the Panavia tornado as well as the SEPECAT jaguar.
OT. I remember a tale related to me by my father of a debrief with the Americans after his encounter with a high-speed Iranian attack boat that pulled up alongside the oil tanker he was on and let rip a volley af 24 rockets straight into the side of the hull at 100m range. Shortly before the attack my father had noticed an Iranian-marked P3 Orion overflying them at less than 500ft. Dad was ex RNZAF maritime surveillance pilot so knew a P3 when he saw one.
The Americans assured him that he was mistaken. He assured them he was not. They advised him to carefully consider his claim and that he in fact WAS mistaken as to the aircraft type. He gave in. There was enough trauma in his life at that time and he didn’t need the Americans bullying him as well.
Both Japan and Germany after WW2 were countries that were bombed into rubble, had its top level decision makers go to prison or the gallows, had foreign troops stationed all over them for decades and were forced from the top to adopt new political and societal systems. This was in addition to the Marshall Plan and other economical aid.
Can you spot the point at which this comparison to the Soviet Union breaks down? I’m even embarassed that people think it applies at all here.
Augustus, it’s not a comparison, it’s counterexample to the claim that culture changes slowly over time, in the sense that these cultural changes happened over years instead of generations.
Phase changes, punctuated equilibria, call it what you want.
Actual genesis of this little digression:
The examples of Germany and Japan, already cited, clearly refute this claim.
Good point; other than, say, the Communist revolution in Russia, the comparison is hardly applicable regarding sudden cultural change. The implosion of the USSR was perhaps another rather abrupt change.
Indeed, refer to what I quoted above.
Sudden change historically happens.
(Perhaps NK sometime sooner rather than later.
Perhaps, the people there really need that)
[mutter; fix]
Actual genesis of this little digression:
The communist dictators were not fundamentally different from the Tsarist regime, they were too just another authoritarian regime reigning with terror, lies and oppression, they just swapped the base of their legitimacy from “by the grace of god” to “by the grace of a vaguely defined coming utopia”. So, another comparison that falls flat.
So, are you then arguing for Russia to change it has to become foreign occupied rubble first too? I can cite Iraq and Afghanistan as states were this approach failed so you can’t even point to any consistent success of this model.
Quite remarkably clueless, you are.
Ah, got it, you aren’t arguing for anything so you can stand for nothing.
Oh, I see. John took my statement as uncharitably as possible and inserted the word “always” into “always changes slowly”. Figures. Such a troll.
Gerrard, there was nothing uncharitable about pointing out to you the reason KG noted how those two examples refute your claim. Nothing to do with my interpretation, everything to do with your misapprehension..
I suppose one revelation at a time is all one can hope for, and now you know KG was not joking, and the basis for it.
Okay, that comment of mine is still nowhere to be found (but when I try to repost it, I get that message saying I’d already said that). So let’s see if this excerpt goes through…
First, “the expansion of NATO” and “the encouragement of robber-baron capitalism” are two very different things that have no real causal connection. The US could very easily have supported the former without ever supporting, causing or encouraging the latter. (Also, “robber-baron capitalists” have NOT historically supported alliances such as NATO; they’ve tended more toward isolationism and disdain for other countries, especially “socialist” countries like West Germany. Hell, they didn’t even support intervening to stop Hitler!)
And second, “the expansion of NATO” was not the result of militarist expansionists — it was the result of former Warsaw-Pact states and SSRs taking the initiative and rushing to join NATO. (Like Bill Maher once said, “If you [meaning Russia] don’t want other countries joining NATO, don’t be the reason other countries want to join NATO.”)
I think you have a severe case of Chomsky-style “Western military is always bad” which is clouding your judgment.
GOTS has been dead wrong about a lot of things, but he’s kinda right on this one. All this rhetoric about “US hegemony” and “the military-industrial complex” is nothing but incoherent talking-points recycled from the ’70s — vague, too detached from specific events and their real import, not at all helpful, and so over-generalized that it’s wrong even when it’s right. There’s plenty to criticize in US foreign policy, and always has been; but we’ve got to be more coherent about it than this.
FWIW :
Source : https://mkaradjis.com/2023/06/15/ukraine-myths-used-to-justify-putins-terror/
@ ^
Stevo links to a random opinion piece by a guy who calls his blog “Syrian Revolution Commentary and Analysis”, and is not exactly impartial:
https://oaklandsocialist.com/2022/05/31/michael-karadjis-to-speak/amp/
Silentbob @102: Okay, that author is “not exactly impartial.” The important question here is, which facts, if any, did the article cited get wrong?
Hm, I’ll take a look. [later] Wow, lengthy.
StevoR excerpted from the very introduction.
Title and subtitle:
The topic and the thesis are pretty clear, from that.
Since StevoR already adduced the preamble, let’s jump in.
Wow! Lengthy.
I see slant, but no particular distortion.
Overkill. I like that.
More slanted, tiptoeing, but not wrong.
Same.
Same.
Conclusion: definitely slanted, so in that sense biased, but no untruths.
… and yes, those are indeed claims I’ve seen.
But they’re not the more pernicious type, such as the insinuation that Russia was provoked into invading Ukraine, but rather elements used in the construction of the narrative.
—
So, let’s look at what Silentbob adduced in response:
Yup, sure evinces “total opposition to Putin and supports the right of Ukraine [to get weapons]” in the article I just looked at.
Silentbob, what’s wrong with that? Would you prefer he had only partial opposition to Putin and/or did not support the right of Ukraine.
Raging Bee @103 asks the obvious question.
[vaguely on topic]
My feed is polluted, yet I was amused to see this video title amongst my feed items:
“Ukraine war must end, Russia’s Putin told by South African President Ramaphosa – BBC News”.
Specifically, they wrote “Russia’s Putin”, not “Putin’s Russia”.
Very, very important to “clarify” it’s Russia’s Putin to which it refers in relation to the Ukraine war, in case one might think it was about a different Putin. ;)
(I know slant when I see it)
John: I don’t think that’s a “slant,” I think it’s BBC’s standard rules for citing heads of state in headlines and articles. “America’s Biden,” “China’s Xi,” etc. Also, they wrote “Russia’s Putin,” not “Putin’s Russia,” because that article was about Ramaphosa talking to the head of state, not the country.
Jesus wept. As John Morales@84 observes, I was using those two examples to refute your universal claim @80 that:
My examples of Germany and Japan clearly refute this claim – in the relevant area, that of aggressive militarism – because both Germany and Japan did change their culture rapidly in this regard.
tuatara@85,
You might try actually reading what others write. Just a suggestion of course. But in any case, yes, you do need to brush up on your history. The fact that the Salazar dictatorship of Portugal was a founder-member of NATO, while both Greece and Turkey went through periods of dictatorship without any obvious pressure to democratise from NATO, along with American eagerness to recruit Nazis, Italian fascists, etc., and interference in elections when it was feared the left might win might give you a few hints that the history of the Cold War is a little less one-sided and slightly more complicated than you’ve been led to believe.
Tuatara@87,
As Rob Grigjanis@89 notes, you remember wrong. Norway was a founder member of NATO.
tbc\
On the economic side:
Jesus. No principle of charity from either of them.
And your citations about the lack of moral character of some founding members of NATO do nothing to support your assertions that Russia was no longer a threat to European countries, nor the assertion that NATO was a significant instrument in the USA’s exploitation of other countries.
BTW, I’ve been watching this channel since the invasion began; here is a recent example:
As John Morales has pointed out, you have completely missed the point here. My examples were indeed intended simply to refute GOTS’s claim @82 that culture changes slowly:
GOTS has of course tried to deny that he meant it always changes slowly, but without that, clearly his assertion does not refute my claim that Russian culture could have changed rapidly after the USSR collapsed. Now obviously, he could argue, as you do, that the situation in Russia post-1991 was far less conducive to radical change than those in Japan and Germany post-WW2. That’s true; but it does not establish that such rapid change was impossible. John gave another example of rapid democratisation – Spain after Franco’s death. And there are more examples of rapid cultural and political change: Japan after Perry’s visit in 1853, South Africa at the end of apartheid, Turkey after WW1, Portugal after the death of Salazar… If you want to establish that Russia could not have taken a peaceful and democratic path after 1991, you need to argue that particular case, not to rely on a false generalisation about the limits of cultural change.
It’s fuck all to do with any lack of charity. It’s because without universality, your claim cannot do the work you want it to do.
Raging Bee@100,
Could have, perhaps, but didn’t. In my view either of the two would have been a serious error, both together were disastrous, and both stemmed from the same arrogant triumphalism of the “end of history”.
In fact, it was both. Yes, these states certainly wanted to join NATO, and fear of Russia was certainly one motivation for that, but not the only one – there were attractive deals on weapons and military training as an incentive, and simply wanting to establish themselves as parts of the rich west as well (note that for all these countries NATO membership preceded EU membership although in some cases only just). There was considerable debate within NATO, and specifically within the Clinton administration, about whether it was wise to expand NATO by admitting the first tranche of these states. Gilbert Achcar, in his The New Cold War (already cited) describes the process by which Clinton came down on the side of the expansionist “hawks” during 1993-4 (by this stage, there was no question of dissolving NATO). This involved domestic considerations, and urging from Kohl, Havel and Wałęsa , as well as aguments from such as “elder statesmen” such as Kissinger and Brzezinski, and the latter’s protege Anthony Lake, Clinton’s national security advisor. Many in the administration and military were opposed at the least to rapid expansion, including Defense Secretary Les Aspin, Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff John Shalikashvili, and Russia expert Strobe Talbott, as were a number of “elder statesmen” such as Robert Macnamara, Paul Nitze and Sam Nunn.
Do you deny these are realities? If so, you’re living in the dream world only too typical even of American liberals, who gladly admit American foreign policy is full of “mistakes” and even the odd outright crime, but can’t see that the USA behaves much like any “great power” in history. If you want specifics, I could list plenty, and I’m sure you could yourself: Iran 1953-1979, Guatemala 1954, Cuba (Bay of Pigs), Vietnam, Indonesia late 1960s, support of the “Colonels” regime in Greece, and of successive Turkish military regimes, Chile 1973, Nicaragua in the early 1980s, the training of Latin American death squads and torturers and support of right-wing dictatorships in multiple coutries there, support for apartheid South Africa and its allies (such as UNITA in Angola) up until the early 1990s, support for the Khmer Rouge (under the sainted Carter as well as Reagan) because it was anti-Soviet, support for Saddam Hussein until he got too big for his boots, support for Israel’s illegal annexations and settlement of occupied land, and racist treatment of the Palestinians, the bombing of Belgrade and support for Kosovo’s secession from Serbia*, the illegal invasion of Iraq… I’d also recommend once again Daniel Immerwahr’s How to Hide an Empire, which explains why the American Empire is largely a “pointillist” one of military bases rather than of chunks of territory – advances in military and communications technology being the main reason.
GOTS@109:
Again, you ignore the context in which I made the first point, which was in response to tuatara’s naive assertion@85 that:
As for the second, it’s just bizarre to think that you can somehow detach the USA’s primary military alliance from its general project of maintaining its hegemony, which it pursued elsewhere by more violent means. As NSC 68 set out, the USA viewed the Soviet Union as its only real competitor for global power, and NATO, additional alliance systems, and the various violent interventions and support of right-wing tyrants I’ve mentioned were all aimed at winning that competition – an effort which was indeed successful, ending in the disintegration of the USSR.
At this point I must admit a significant error of memory. I found the notes on the debate about NATO I mentioned @61 (or at least, these are the only notes on such a debate I can find), and I was wrong about the date of the debate – it was held on 31st January 1994, and the identity of the pro-NATO speaker – it was not a general, but a British civil servant seconded to NATO as Head of the Force Planning Division, one Jonathan Day. I didn’t note the venue, but I think it must have been the University of Leeds, where I was working at the time. The motion was:
,
the chair was Michael Clark of the Centre for Defence Studies, the opposer was one Peter Southwood, who I would guess is the owner of this blog, and it was sponsored by something called ProDem. Day started his speech by noting that consensus was emerging during the Warsaw Pact collapse that NATO would no longer be necessary once the “broad sunlit uplands” were reached, but that “not everyone agreed with this cosy analysis, because dismantling NATO “could lead to US/Europe relations deteriorating” and “nationalization of defence policies”. I am sceptical now, and suspect I was sceptical the,n that the response to the disappearance of NATO’s justification for existence was exactly as Day described – I suspect now, and suspect I suspected then, that it was more in the nature of “What other justification can we think up?” than “Phew, now we won’t need NATO any more” – and a new justification had to be found quick-smart. Interestingly, Day did not mention any threat from Russia, at least as far as my fairly comprehensive notes record – it was much vaguer stuff about how the future was unpredictable, nukes could fall into the hands of “potentially hostile states”, instability in thee Balkans.. There’s a lot more of interest in my notes, both from Day and from Southwood (who was making many of the arguments I’ve been making, already noting at the start of 1994 that the prospect of NATO expansion and insufficient economic aid were hardening anti-western attitudes in Russia: “Zhirinovsky is the inevitable consequence of hardline policies”, but is “now used to justify those policies”. Remember Zhirinovsky? A far-right “clown”, precursor of many we see today, who never in fact came anywhere near power, and died quite recently as part of Putin’s tame “opposition”. I can detail more of both Day’s and Southwood’s arguments if that’s of interest, but for now, I’ll call it a day, simply asking: has NATO in fact made and kept the peace in Europe since 1994?
*I don’t dispute that intervention against Milosevic’s genocidal acts was necessary, but these actions were without doubt violantions of international law and – perhaps by coincidence, perhaps not – immediately preceded the Russian atrocities of the second Chechen War and the rise of Putin to the Russian presidency.
@Op
I think it’s pretty unfair to call Russia a “boogey man”. Recent events show that the threat is very real.
Woops. Sorry. Thought this was a new thread.