https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/comment/2135509
this is practically a child’s view of the world. good guy vs bad guy. Russia = bad, NATO = good. plus, someone should tell her she has it completely backwards: ending russia is kinda natos entire thing
If you’re anti soviet union then you’re pro nazi germany
ending the soviet union is kinda the nazis thing
initiating liberal self destruct button
Sorry I missed the part where NATO was an authoritarian regime that genocided people en masse.
Also hasn’t Russia repeatedly threatened countries to not join NATO? https://www.cnbc.com/2022/05/12/russia-threatens-retaliatory-steps-if-finland-joins-nato.html
I get that NATO is a primary threat towards Russia because, y’know, they’re currently attempting genocide against Ukrainians, but to compare NATO to Nazi Germany is a little disingenuous don’t you think?
Sorry I missed the part where NATO was an authoritarian regime that genocided people en masse.
clearly
Those Libyans chose to be slaves/s
It’s just the free market at work, you wouldn’t understand you commie.
The countries in NATO have been engaged as aggressors in almost all wars in the 21st century.
I mean for sure, but also that’s not addressing the other points in my comment. Russia is clearly the aggressor in this case.
I’m not sure why people are whole-hog against NATO when there’s a more imminent threat against world peace pounding on the door of its neighbors. Y’know, the same one that was found to have directly affected the election of the US. The same one that’s also stomping human rights into the ground (okay the US is also doing this to its own people for this one, you got me).
Maybe once Putin keels over we can dissolve NATO.
Russia is clearly the aggressor in this case.
Why did Ukraine break two seperate ceasefires with the seperatist regions? If they didn’t this wouldn’t be a problem.
I’m not sure why people are whole-hog against NATO when there’s a more imminent threat against world peace pounding on the door of its neighbors.
Because you’re wrong and NATO is the much larger threat, demonstrated through their whole bloody history.
Y’know, the same one that was found to have directly affected the election of the US.
US allies also spend similar amounts or greater on advertisements around the US election. Russiagate was kind of just xenophobia applied to something everyone has been doing.
Maybe once Putin keels over we can dissolve NATO.
Oh, okay, you’re operating on great man theory and not material analysis. This makes your content make sense.
"The official Twitter account of the Donetsk rebels said in the early hours of Sunday that its forces were “taking Mariupol”, but later accused Ukraine of breaking the ceasefire. Fighters from the Azov battalion, who are defending the town, said their positions had come under Grad rocket fire.
Earlier on Saturday the truce had appeared to be holding, with only minor violations reported, as hopes mounted that the deal struck in Minsk on Friday could bring an end to the violence that has left more than 2,000 dead in recent months.
Both sides accused the other of violating the ceasefire, but there did not appear to be any serious exchanges of fire and no casualties were reported."
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/sep/06/eastern-ukraine-ceasefire-russia
" The war began in April 2014 when armed Russian-backed separatists seized government buildings and the Ukrainian military launched an operation against them. It continued until it was subsumed by the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022."
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_in_Donbas_(2014–2022)
At least be correct about what you’re citing. Russian backed separatists claim to be “taking Mariupol” and then backtrack with "oh no! We didn’t break the ceasefire! I promise! ".
Unsourced guardian article and Wikipedia lmao
The person I’m replying to did not even attempt to cite anything, but you’re gonna try and discredit my sources. Okay lol
Love using twitter as Casus Belli and waving the bloody shirt of literal Nazis. Also the Guardian being your basis for these events is so fucking telling
Please enlighten me as to how an official account for a separatist group declaring they’re attacking is not cause for retaliation.
Russia is literally a fascist government.
Russia is clearly the aggressor in this case.
The war that started in 2014 where Ukraine broke two ceasefires with the separatist regions, and has been doing ethnic cleansing against ethnic Russians on the Russian border, that Russia didn’t join until 2022?
Y’know, the same one that was found to have directly affected the election of the US
lol
How do you libs still believe in Russiagate?
Mostly based on the fact that Russian disinformation campaigns were found to have a widespread effect on the election and people’s voting decisions. There’s nothing to “believe” in, it’s just a fact that it happened.
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Didn’t you hear? Nature is funded by Russians.
Russian disinformation campaigns were found to have a widespread effect on the election and people’s voting decisions
lmfao America is just full of reactionaries and racists who liked the idea of voting for a billionaire, building a wall, and killing immigrants. They didn’t need to be brainwashed by Putin into voting for Trump.
no it isn’t
Americans could never vote for a pos like Trump its the Russians fault
100,000 dollars in Facebook ads counts as “widespread effect on the election” to you? Are you being serious?
You’re looking at this from an emotional standpoint, not geopolitical.
NATO’s existence is why Russia js aggressive. Think on it geopolitically, not emotionally:
You’re the leader of a country. The vast majority of your western border - the half of the country most inhabited by your population - is surrounded by hostile nations. The hostilities date back a few decades to the Cold War but that ended when the previous political system of the country dissolved. You spent the first decade or so of the new political system trying to make friends with these nations, but they keep refusing, all the while portraying you in all their media as the bad guys. Any move you make on the geopolitical scale for your own nation’s sake is tarred, while similar actions by the other countries are praised. No matter what you do, you cannot please these other countries, and they continue to threaten to put military bases and nuclear weapons on your border, eventually sealing your entire western border away behind hostilities.
What the fuck is one expected to do in this situation, and if this shit was happening to the US or anywhere in Europe, you know full well they wouldn’t take it lying down. Why is there an expectation that Russia does, when the world wouldn’t?
Maybe I’m drinking stupid juice, but I think that people hating Russia isn’t really a valid reason for them to invade Ukraine. I know that’s not specifically what you’re saying, but in essence that’s the line of reasoning that I’ve heard throughout this thread.
That said, Russia can’t be painted as “innocent” like so many posters here are stating. They routinely violate human rights. See:
Russian censorship of, among many other things, the internet: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_in_Russia
Russia’s anti-lgbt policies: https://www.cnn.com/2022/11/30/europe/russia-upper-parliament-lgbt-propaganda-law-intl/index.html
Russia’s anti-protest laws: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_assembly_in_Russia
Russia’s general laundry list of human rights violations: https://www.amnesty.org/en/location/europe-and-central-asia/russia/report-russia/
I’m not saying the US is much better, although it is marginally, but claiming that Russia is just “scared and defending itself” doesn’t really track. It’s an authoritarian regime.
If I’m misunderstanding this, somehow, please let me know.
Yes boss, you have catastrophically misunderstood the point.
The point isn’t that people were mean tk Russia and therefore they’re allowed little a invasion as a treat. The point is that they’ve been encircled by hostile nations since the 1990s despite all attempts at overture to them, and that the encirclement continues to get worse. NATO was formed explicitly to take on Russia, and the point of this thought experiment is to try and see this not from an emotional point of view (aka Russia bad) but from a geopolitical point of view of a nation’s leader.
Go back and read my post again. If you were the leader of Russia, knowing that decades of attempted détente didn’t work and that the organization who’s express goal is to break your country apart, and that that organization is doing its best to place troops and nuclear armaments on every inch of your border, would you accept that, or would you perhaps try and prevent that?
We know what happened when the shoe was on the other foot. The US placed nuclear missiles a thousand miles from Moscow on the Black Sea. When the USSR understandably got annoyed and placed nukes in Cuba, the US was seconds away from ending the entire world despite the Soviets repeatedly saying the nukes were defensive response to the Black Sea nukes.
So if we know that the US won’t accept hostile nations arming up on their border, why do we expect others to just kowtow to that?
Passing laws against use of the Russian language and bombing a linguistic minority is just “not liking someone” don’t ya know?
I found this to be a good video on the subject https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JrMiSQAGOS4 also no one here is defending Russia when it comes to their human rights abuses
Just to reiterate if the other post is not clear upon first reading, I could not imagine missing the points all over this thread more than the way you did in this comment. I would re-read it many more times. It’s a huge disagreement at basic ways of understanding geopolitics that the gap is either unbridgeable between you and these thoughts or it will seem like a mindfuck when you get what’s being said
Do you think politics is just good guys and bad guys?
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to compare NATO to Nazi Germany is a little disingenuous don’t you think?
No, it’s about right. I mean, the US is essentially Nazi Germany except successful. They even directly inspired Nazi Germany’s policies.
Also NATO was made up of literal Nazis from the jump, Adolf Heusinger was the fucking chairman of NATO like 15 years after being one of the heads of the Nazi army
Sorry I missed the part where NATO was an authoritarian regime that genocided people en masse.
Where the fuck have you been the past decades you absolute buffoon
to compare NATO to Nazi Germany is a little disingenuous don’t you think?
Hmm…
HMMMMMMM…
NATO gave informal promises to Gorbachev to not expand eastward (Gorbachev was stupid to believe these promises and not get them in writing as formal, legally-binding promises)
HMMMMMMMMMM?!?!?!?!
???
!!!
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Sorry I missed the part where NATO was an authoritarian regime that genocided people en masse.
For the first 40 years of NATO’s existence it sought to undermine democracy and reinforce the states of NATO aligned countries in Europe through terrorism and assassination.
They then rather genocidally carpet bombed Yugoslavia killing and wounding thousands of civilians ( many of whom were from Kosovo the people they purportedly wanted to help), 3 foreign diplomats by bombing a foreign embassy not in anyway involved in a conflict and completely destroying the infrastructure of Serbia.
They then genocidally invaded Afghanistan where they destabilized the country, toppled the government and then put pedophile psychos in charge because they were the ones willing to work with us, killed nearly 100,000 civilians, and then ended up putting the original government back in charge 20 years later.
Finally they genocidally took the most prosperous country in Africa, a country with universal college, healthcare, jobs programs, and housing, a desert country that had a 200 year supply of water and bombed the fuck out of it, destroying the water supply, plundering the gold, supporting the precursors to ISIS, and turned the country into a place with fucking slave auctions.
But yeah NATO isn’t genocidal, they just topple governments and bomb/terrorize civilians.
Don’t forget that they dumped ~15 tonnes of depleted uranium in Serbia. A year later European researchers found DU in all three nearby seas. In case somebody didn’t know, Serbia is a landlocked country.
They’ve recently admitted that DU does in fact cause heavy metal poisoning, birth defects, and increases the number of stillborns and miscarriages. That shit enters the waterways, gets absorbed by plants, after that it spreads throughout the entire food network, where it stays and remains a problem for centuries.
Now let’s remember that they dropped thousands of tonnes of it in Iraq.
I remember back in 2003, when liberals were able to call Bush out on his “with us or against us” shit. I swear something badly broke liberals (more than usual) in the last decade.
they are being scratched
I mean, yeah, but it seems like liberals have been really, really unhinged since 2016.
for sure. blue maga is too real
The establishment neocons and blue dog D’s started being as loudly anti-Trump as possible, which grew the Democrat’s tent. When your hammer is anti-Trump, anything Trump agrees with is a nail.
Looking from outside the US it was very clearly Trump. I’m sure there are other factors but it seems to be the major one.
I don’t know about that. Trump accelerated it, but it was clearly present in the 2016 Democratic primaries, when no one was taking Trump seriously (and the Clinton campaign was promoting him).
Oh sure, I didn’t mean to say that trump was the main catalyst or the first one, just that it was the strongest (that accelerated it, like you said). But yeah my previous comment wasn’t clear.
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If you’re pro-piss then you’re anti-shit. Makes perfect sense.
ACTCHEWALLLLY its “if you’re anti-shit then you’re pro-piss.”
in the year 885, shortly after founding Kievan Rus, Oleg the Wise proclaimed, “ending nato is kinda our whole thing”
Actually it’s Kyivan Ukr
critical support for oleg the wise in his struggle against the genocidal amerikkkan empire
The entire purpose of NATO was to destroy the USSR. But the USSR does not exist anymore. So now, its only purpose is to keep the military-industrial complex going. American corporations are 100% willing to immiserate the people of Eastern Europe and even Germany (Nordstream) to keep their weapons sales up. Hey, we abandoned Iraq and Afghanistan, and Taiwan is too risky - gotta use those weapons somewhere.
The goal is to “Latin Americanise” Eastern Europe and let them join the EU on unequal terms. Ask Greece how that goes when the EU has a financial crisis.
How can anyone be pro NATO? It’s part of the imperial core/triad’s powers monopoly on military force and intervention, that oppresses left wing or even general anti colonial movements globally, including within their own countries. There are plenty of people in the global south that are anti NATO and not even left wing! Imagine being to the right of Imran Khan on the issue of NATO and global monopolies of power!
If you are not against the imperial core/triad practicing a form of collective imperialism and neocolonialism by the use of organisations like NATO, the World Bank, IMF and the WTO, how can you even be on the left? Is the left not internationalist?
If you do not oppose the “monopoly of five advantages” the imperial core/the west aims to have in weapons of mass destruction, mass communication systems, financial and banking services, technology and access to natural resources through imperial rents, how can you even have hope for a better world?
One of the most surprising things about the war in Ukraine is that it revealed a very sharp difference in the perception between Western left and the rest of the world.
The Western left sees Russia as an imperialist power trying to conquer Ukraine, while most leftists in the Global South see Russia as a victim of Western imperialism and Ukraine as an extension of the Western imperialist arm.
Maybe the lived experience of being outside of the imperial core, and thus being exposed to the direct impact of imperialism, makes one evaluate the global situation differently than those living inside it?
Being from the “backyard” of the USA, I can say that many many people back home are much more aware of the Empire’s doings in general.
That doesn’t mean that it made all of them leftists. There are a lot of liberals and fascists as well. But they kinda openly accept and praise the Empire.
People in the core live in this weird fantasy land where reality is entirely fabricated by myths forged by propaganda.
To the point where a major “experience” many more political people have is “waking up to the truth”.
Learning shit we used to learn in school for the first time in their lives lmao
Then either becoming communists or nazis.
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20 upvotes, no replies. “We’re anarchists btw”
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ending nato is kinda russias whole thing
I think you got that backwards pal, Russia’s whole thing is being a large country where people live. The military alliance formed with the single goal to encircle and eventually destroy the Soviet Union on the other hand, they’re kinda focused on destroying Russia
I tried replying to that comment, but the thread was locked or something.
I’m anti-nato and anti-russia, fuck all imperialism. This take really pissed me off
yeah thread got locked shortly after Ada replied
welcome home btw
no chasers tolerated here, or any other form of bigotry. only left unity as far as the eye can see
If we can support Syria and Iran critically, we can do the same for Russia in its fight against American imperialism.
amen. emphasis on critically tho. too many liberals think “critical support” means “super extra support”. all of us here understand that Russia is capitalist and pretty horrible on LGBTQ rights (not rlly worse than amerika tho). the difference is that NATO represents western empire: an institution that suppresses most of the world and extracts $10 trillion every year from the global south. Russia’s imperial ambitions are strictly regional, thus much easier to curtail by AES states. the global empire is infinitely more harmful to the proletariat of the world than a regional empire. im preaching to the choir here but i hope lemmy libs read this and understand
I agree on all your points except for the existence of Russian imperialism. By Lenin’s definition—correct me if I’m wrong—imperialism is when finance capital is consolidated enough in a given country for that country to begin exporting capital abroad. This might have been the case before the war since so many Russian oligarchs had their billions stashed in western banks, but the contradictions of imperialism itself—its need to grow and consume itself from the inside—now mean that this is no longer the case. Those Russian billions are either frozen or withdrawn as far as I know. Russia’s alignment with China and the BRICS, its long history of fighting for the global south (consider the images we’ve seen for years now of African protestors waving Russian flags), suggest to me that Russia is not actually imperialist and that it is indeed fighting for its life and existence (as it says). Putin is an opportunist appointed by Yeltsin (himself appointed by Clinton!), but opportunism can sometimes point in the right direction because there is no other way for it to survive. (The current president of South Africa is a criminal who likewise deserves our critical support due to his alignment with the BRICS, although none of us are going to be complaining if the EFF takes over next year.) All of us likewise know that a NATO victory in this war will just begin another nightmarish chapter of imperialism in eastern Europe, while a NATO defeat will present opportunities for workers around the world to throw off the American yoke.
they certainly are fighting for their existence. but part of the existence they are fighting for is their status as an imperial power. their ability to partake in imperialism has definitely been diminished by the recent sanctions, but they still hold on to imperialist practices. check their foreign investments. they have certainly been forcibly divested from the western sphere of influence, but they have responded by increasing investments in wealthy eastern countries and the eastern global south
check their foreign investments. they have certainly been forcibly divested from the western sphere of influence, but they have responded by increasing investments in wealthy eastern countries and the eastern global south
I don’t understand this line of logic, is China imperialist then? A lot of countries invest in other countries.
The post-1971 world is arranged in such a way that every other country is subservient to a single, super-imperialist power that is the US empire.
This condition did not exist in the pre-WWI “multi-polar” order between the European imperialists. Previously, the global imperialist hegemons (e.g. the British Empire) were net creditors to the world, today, the hegemon (the US empire) is a net debtor to the world. It literally just prints dollar out of thin air to control the world. This is the major difference.
Today, the US controls key global financial institutions that dictate the economic policies of the rest of the world.
The US controls the IMF - which uses monetary imperialism to control the fiscal and monetary policies of other countries (the Russian Central Bank, for example, is particularly obedient to the IMF recommendations even to this very day - which is why you see the ruble depreciated, an act that only benefited Western imperialism).
The US dollar comprises 85% of the world’s transaction - the world runs around dollar, like it or not. There is not a single country, not even China, can compete with the US on financial capital.
Russia’s finance capital is a drop in the bucket in a sea of global capital dominated by the dollar. If you look at what the Central Bank of Russia is doing, it is literally helping the US with its monetary policies (rate hikes, ruble depreciation) and a direct antagonism Putin’s nationalist policy that focuses more on the real sector (industrial capital).
The US controls the World Bank - which controls the agricultural policy of the developing world and forced them to invest in export crops that can be sold cheap to Western consumers, rather than food for self-sufficiency. If you do not obey their policies you can be cut off from importing essential goods (like energy).
The US controls the WTO - which controls the trade policy (and thereby the economic and industrial policy) of the developing world, forcing countries to lower the wages of their labor in order to become competitive exporters and allowing Western capitalists to enter their market for exploitation.
Russia does not and will never have control of these global financial institutions. In fact, the goal for Russia is dedollarization, which means to weaken the hold of the financial institutions on to their own country and the world, such that they can take actually a breath after being choked by neoliberalism for almost half a century.
Even if they have the ambitions, Russia has to realize that there is no way to become an imperialist power even after they succeed in dedollarization (and that’s a big IF). Nobody can really afford to get rid of the dollar, and in order to convince them, you actually have to offer real, tangible benefits - and this means the Global South will have a lot to say in shaping new multi-polar order. Russia cannot survive the sanctions without deepening cooperation with the Global South, and in this process, the rest of the world will ensure that not a single country can exert their imperialistic ambitions like the US does today.
great comment and very solid points! i concede that calling Russia imperialist is arguable, but as western hegemony has been faltering in the past couple decades, Russian capitalists have picked up a lot of slack (see their relationship with Syria and Turkey; its hard to argue that their support goes beyond expanding the foreign interests of Russian capitalists). and surely you see the problem with comparing foreign investment of Russia vs China. Russian investments are privately held and aim to produce profit. investments from China are a mix of public and private, and they are demonstrably focused on mutual prosperity
Can you provide sources? The share of SOE in Russia in terms of market cap and % of GDP are variously estimated at ~30%, which is already higher than most countries and only comparatively lower than China’s.
Having said that, yes there is a lot of corruption in SOEs and that includes in both Russia and China.
sorry, i was talking to family. this is a great discussion tho!
SOEs is another topic. it’s a good sign that Russia still has plenty of these, but the state is still under the control of capitalists. and as a capitalist state Russian foreign investment is in practice imperialism via unequal exchange. Russian private foreign direct investment was worth $385 billion in Q2 of 2020. while the Russia’s sovereign wealth fund is valued at $10 billion
additionally, as a bourgeois state, Russian “public” foreign investments operate to carry out the will of Russian capitalists
The values there seem to be from before the war? They were investing mostly in the Cayman Islands (lol), and my guess is that that money has either been withdrawn or stolen at this point, although I honestly don’t know.
there are enough values updated during the war to draw some conclusions. yeah, the money moves around so much its impossible to know the extent of how this affects Russian capitalists. this recent hit to Russian capital is great tho, increases the chance of revolution to take hold there
For context, were you alive and politically aware in 1991?
Can you please explain how you think Bill Clinton appointed Yeltsin? Or are you playing with words and just referring to cooperation between the Clinton administration and Yeltsin’s?
The USA was attempting to destroy the USSR from day one, and even invaded Russia (unprovoked) within months of the October Revolution. Yeltsin would have lost the ‘96 election to the communists without Clinton’s direct intervention. When you combine this with the USA’s relentless obsession with funding Nazis worldwide to destroy communism both within and without the USSR, it becomes quite clear that the situation with Russia and Ukraine today is a direct consequence of American meddling overseas.
and even invaded Russia
Which is just not taught in American schools by the way
Yes, very mysteriously even the best history teachers in the country seem to have trouble finding the time to mention this. I took APUSH five days a week an hour a day (or so?) for a year and it was never brought up. Curious! It’s almost as though the USA looks like the bad guy throughout the 20th century and into the 21st when this fact is mentioned. It also completely recontextualizes the Cold War. Very concerning!
I didn’t know any of that. Naturally I go reading to learn more and find this laughable article.
Anyone happen to have a non-lib source to read about this?
The U.S. soldiers in northern Russia, the U.S. Army’s 339th regiment, were chosen for the deployment because they were mostly from Michigan, so military commanders figured they could handle the war zone’s extreme cold
While the Polar Bears played a reluctant role in the Russian Civil War, the U.S. commander in Siberia, General William Graves, did his best to keep his troops out of it.
Everything I know about Graves has me screaming at that
This seems so weird. Funding Nazis? What do you mean by that?
The Nazis were funded with American capital. There are many, many other examples of this from around the world. The Batista regime in Cuba, the Contras, the US-backed fascists who built South Korea or Taiwan, the list just goes on and on. I will cite sources at your request, but I would ask you to do a simple google search—i.e., “was Park Chung Hee a fascist?”—and a little reading before doing so.
You could baby bird that shit right into their mouths and they probably still wouldn’t get it.
I dunno ask Time magazine
Found the article. No mention of appointments anywhere. :(
“@confusedbytheBasics”
Can you share more about your perspective concerning treatment of LGBTQ+ citizens between the two nations?
both countries treat queer ppl horribly
How can you think that? Being queer in one nation is a crime punishable with jail time in the other nation being queer is totally legal, celebrated with parades, and same sex marriage is valid nation wide.
lol which nation punishes being queer with jail time?
that was a rhetorical question. like i said, both nations have horrible track records w respect to LGBTQ communities, but neither jails ppl for being queer. at least not anymore, amerika had anti-sodomy laws until 2003. Russia does not jail ppl for gay sex
also the pride parades in amerika have been completely co-opted by capitalism. cops are allowed and even praised at most pride events and many of these events exclude different parts of the queer community
I was thinking of Chechnya which doesn’t represent the whole Russian Republic. I’ll update my info there. None the less persecution is ongoing.
You are still arguing a losing point. USA legally protects LGBT status and same sex marriages. The anti sodomy laws were invalidated 20 years ago.
Russia constitutionally banned same sex unions in 2020. There are no special protections for LGBT citizens.
It’s night and day.
if you are looking for a “night and day” comparison, compare either of these countries to Cuba, a country so legitimately dedicated to LGBTQ rights they amended their constitution to include them. the amerikan legal protections are flimsy and ineffective. i dont care abt being able to marry my partner as much as i care abt being denied health care, being assaulted or killed, and having our children taken away by the state. all of these acts of violence are permitted and perpetuated by the amerikan state.
Hasn’t Russia’s war on Ukraine done more to reinvigorate NATO than anything else in the past decade? If the goal is the diminishment of NATO, then Russia’s war on Ukraine is definitely bad for that goal.
allowing Ukraine to join NATO would be much more invigorating. denying them the oblasts east of the Dnieper River means NATO loses out on a ton of industrial and agricultural capacity
plus, this war is tearing NATO apart. many Europeans are not content with becoming even more subjugated to amerika so global capital can keep expanding its hoarded wealth
many Europeans are not content…
I don’t think that’s true. I’m an eastern European, and speaking anecdotally, support for Ukraine and consequently NATO is absolutely surging. Looking at polls, it seems that 85% of people in my country have a positive view of NATO atm.
thanks for the context! looking at the wealthier countries further from Russia (Germany, France) they seem to oppose NATO support for this conflict. only 46% of Germans support sending weapons
Germany is a special case for this. Post WW2, they’ve had a strong pacifism streak. It was absolutely shocking at the time that they decided to send offensive weapons at all. Would have been unthinkable 2 years ago.
Personally I still don’t think Germany should even be allowed to have weapons in the first place
Yeah, but people love to hate Russians, and does it really matter if the people like or dislike nato? I’ve got a suspicion that working people in your country have as little influence on nato actions as the workers anywhere else in Europe.
Completely agree that it doesn’t really matter at the end of the day. Politicians will use polls that are useful to them and ignore those that aren’t. I was replying to the point that this war is fomenting anti-NATO sentiment, which I don’t think is true.
I also think you’re right.
The war with nato was always going to be “reinvigorated” whenever it chose to start a war with Russia. There’s nothing Russia can do about that. They just need to win. Also, it’s not as if the war wasn’t inevitable. There’s so much money to be pulled out of Russia while the nato armies are on their way to China. There’s no way the richest westerners were just gonna leave it on the table.
It’s very easy to say “they just need to win!” when you have no skin in the game. Eastern Europe knows what it’s like to be under Russian subjugation, and no amount of anti-NATO critical support will change that fact.
I meant for Russia, whenever this war happens (which is now), all they can do on their end is win. They can’t control how other European countries direct nationalist sentiments. Also, my “support” is literally just musing on this website.
I’ve always mixed with a lot of eastern Europeans in the US, and trying to figure out if Russia was really a bogeyman that was a dark cloud over their lives has always been really murky. I’ve known jews that had to leave when the USSR was collapsing and rightwing nationalists were becoming terrifying.
I known a lot of Polish workers that had their lives upended by rightwing nationalists as the USSR collapsed. They came to the US trying to scrape a living together.
Of course people process the experience in all kinds of ways, arriving at coherent and incoherent conclusions.
The one universal is that unless they agree everything is the fault of Russians and absolve all of their country’s rightwing opportunists and collaborators from 1917 on, their stories aren’t part of the broader media narratives.
I guess what I’m getting at, when I talk to people in the diaspora, the relationship with Russia might be highly contingent on class and heavily colored by ethnic nationalism.
Thank you for this comment. I mean that very honestly. Far too many people see countries as monoliths, and I fall into that trap when trying to make a point from time to time.
About the overarching media narratives, the most rabidly anti-Russian atm are Poland, Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia, just fyi.
I was really worried about saying well ackshually to someone actually living in eastern Europe. Here in my part of the US the wildest anti-Russian media narratives also center on Poles and Lithuanians.
I’ll never fault anyone for talking about facts and their experiences. Even (especially!) if they contradict mine, I’ll always appreciate someone talking to me in good faith.
How do you think this war started?
Most immediately, a escalating genocide in the Donbas that Russia intervened in after several years. Otherwise it’s a story that would probably make the most sense to start in the early 20th century.
It’s depleted NATO’s stockpile, armed a new generation of radicalized right-wing mercenaries (who will definitely not sit quietly in Europe after the war ends) and has deindustrialized Europe through the energy crisis
It hasn’t benefited NATO countries, it’s benefited the US momentarily, until it blunders into another foreign policy mess
depleted NATO’s stockpile
Of obsolete equipment that was just sitting in storage costing the US money. Other countries are looking at this as an opportunity to modernize cheaply by getting the US to replace what they’re sending with better gear.
Armed a new generation of radicalized right-wing mercenaries
No comment. You might be right about that, remains to be seen.
Deindustrialized Europe
Absolutely not true. The EU has managed to recover from the pipelines turning off, and have built up LNG terminals to keep on chugging without issue. It cost and will cost a lot of money, but the industry will flow. If anything, the big loser in this is the global south who might not have the cash to compete with the EU buying up LNG, not Europe.
It’s not just obsolete equipment, in most NATO countries it’s the only equipment these countries have, and there’s no definition of “obsolete” that includes Himars, patriots, strykers, Bradleys, Ceasars, Leopards, Challengers, those are the mainstays of western armaments, and there is no such thing as “cheap” modernization, especially not when it comes to the US arms industry
Absolutely not true. The EU has managed to recover from the pipelines turning off, and have built up LNG terminals to keep on chugging without issue.
What you’re asserting simply isn’t true, https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/europe-facing-costly-winter-without-enough-long-term-lng-deals-2023-04-06/
The German manufacturing PMI index has sunk to 38.8 (50 is supposed to signal recession), that’s the lowest level since 2020 at 32.0 during the height of the Covid depression
The number of modern systems in play is tiny. The vast majority of the aid has been old systems. 4 HIMARS and 50 Bradleys are hardly going to deplete US supply, let’s be real here.
About the various links, none of that contradicts what I’m saying. I didn’t say that this had no cost, quite on the contrary. I said that EU funds buying up supply will hurt more than the EU, and the EU does have the cash to afford this.
About the PMI, your own link does not connect this to the energy sector. It connects this to weaker demand for goods. Comparing and contrasting with Italy, France, Czech Republic, Poland and Romania shows a similar story: companies are dropping production due to expectations that demand is dipping as people are tightening their purses.
The number of modern systems in play is tiny.
Bro what are you talking about?
4 HIMARS and 50 Bradleys are hardly going to deplete US supply
That’s incorrect it’s 38+ Himars and 186 Bradleys so far from the US alone, also I’m not only talking about US stockpiles, I said “NATO countries” and it’s not the launcher systems that are in danger of being depleted, it’s the ammunition they fire
It connects this to weaker demand for goods. Comparing and contrasting with Italy, France, Czech Republic, Poland and Romania shows a similar story: companies are dropping production due to expectations that demand is dipping as people are tightening their purses.
Yes, weaker consumer demand because the money in those tight purses are going to personnel energy costs which have skyrocketed again despite the summer dip, hence the recession numbers across the board, there’s no sector of the economy that doesn’t affect the others
Sorry, I was looking at old numbers. 38 HIMARS and 186 bradleys is no danger to US stockpiles either. Ammo though, that’s a more interesting question. Arms industries are ramping up production like mad. This is an absolute godsend for arms companies. This isn’t hurting NATO, this is lining the pockets of military industrial sectors worldwide.
On the financial front, I’m rapidly reaching the limit of my knowledge. I will concede the point, but warn that at least in the east, people are willing to absorb a lot of financial pain if it means punching the Russian empire in the face. Western Europe may be forced, kicking and screaming, to follow suit for fear of fracturing Europe.
Have they recovered though? Germany especially is stupid because their greens pushed to turn off nuclear plants and won, after they already started sanctioning Russia. Consumer inflation is high in the Nato-sphere because cost of transport and energy went way up.
I guess we’ll see if EU pushes for a ceasefire after another winter of expensive natural gas. I’m surprised the nordstream bombing didn’t piss off more Germans.
Global south countries seem to be working around how expensive war made some things by trading with Russia directly for stuff instead of paying market rate, which is why all those African countries don’t feel like condemning the invasion.
Consumer inflation…
Yeah, very much the case. I feel this every day. It’s caused some grumbling, but not many people are linking this with NATO. The tendency seems to be blaming Russia. Again, anecdotally, but still.
EU ceasefire
No chance. Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Romania, Poland and Bulgaria would riot. All of the Bucharest Nine are firmly against giving Russia time to rearm, replenish and come back for round two, which is what they expect Russia would use the ceasefire for.
Global south…
Unfortunately very true. Russia blowing up the grain shipment deal didn’t help. Hopefully Turkey can bring them back to the negotiating table.
Important to note that Russia didn’t wantonly scrap the grain deal, they just didn’t renew it when it expired - for the simple reason that the other side didn’t uphold even one single part of their end of the bargain.
There are obviously a lot of ways to look at the war between Russia and Ukraine, but if we are looking at it from its geopolitical antagonism with NATO, then it needs to be understood as a conflict that the West has wanted and taken action to foment for decades. Some people speak of Russia invading Ukraine as if it was something done on a whim rather than a military action that was at least viewed as necessary for Russian national security. While the invasion soured Russia’s image and has ruined relations with some bordering countries, Russia almost certainly didn’t see any other course of action other than invasion due to the threat of NATO encirclement along with the western puppet government of Ukraine. Regardless of the goals of diminishing NATO or not, this conflict was a seemingly inevitable proxy war between NATO and Russia following Maidan. The fact that the war is happening at all is a victory for NATO and the west because it means they’ve driven a semi-permanent wedge between Russia and Ukraine, at this point its about limiting further NATO gains. I find it deeply tragic that there weren’t diplomatic ways to ensure the security of both Ukraine and Russia and wish that the war wasn’t deemed necessary, add it to the list of post-soviet tragedies.
All that said, if we are discussing how this conflict relates to the dissolution of NATO. I don’t think it does, at least not immediately or directly which is why I think the sooner the war is over the better. Russia is most a threat to the imperial core through providing military support to anti-imperialist efforts like those in West Africa, but they can’t ignore dangerous western provocation in neighboring countries either.
TIL Ireland is a puppet of Russia.
Its funny the ROI didn’t recognize the USSR till 1973, meanwhile a year earlier Andropov was putting forth a plan called “Plan for the Operation of a Shipment of Weapons to the Irish Friends”
People don’t realize that all these “evil” states that are around are given their power by the US/NATO serving as a unifying boogie man. Russia has power with non-western countries because western foreign policy has been horrible over the hundreds of years. If you’re really anti-russia, you also have to be anti-NATO. I do not like what I know about Russia, but they’re only truly powerful as the counter end to NATO. If NATO disappeared overnight, Russia would become less powerful, not more powerful. It’s like the second Americans left Afghanistan, the Taliban is already starting to show cracks.
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If you’re pro-nato you’re not a “leftist”, you can be “on the left” or a “progressive”; but you’re not a leftist
You cant be progressive and be pro nato
I think you can, that’s why “progressive politics” are so limited
No being progressive on domestic policy qndcs neocon on foreign policy is not and never will be progressive or on the left the reverse whould never be tolerated.
Look I’m not saying “progressive” is “good person”, and I’m not interesting in claiming the label, let nato shills keep “progressive” and criticize “progressives” when they have to divert money from social issues to military expenditures
I guess thst makes sense
I wonder how Libyans feel about this:
NATO gave informal promises to Gorbachev to not expand eastward (Gorbachev was stupid to believe these promises and not get them in writing as formal, legally-binding promises)
The Soviet Union tried to join NATO in 1954 but wasn’t allowed
Meanwhile NATO kept expanding
and including “former” nazis in its ranks
Gorbachev was stupid to believe these promises and not get them in writing as formal, legally-binding promises
If he had them as formal promises it wouldn’t matter. You can just break international agreements what are they gonna do call a cop
Good point. I made that point less about the actual prevention of NATO expansion, which, yes, wasn’t gonna happen either way, and more about NATO today taking advantage of Gorbachev’s stupidity and thus having plausible deniability that claims were ever made in the first place, since none of those promises were formal, legally binding, and documented outside of recently-declassified British archives.
