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Geopolitics
- Thread starter Mciahel Goodman
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In the latest episode of the United Hour Podcast, Nik @Rood and Imran @Annihilate Now! start with the good news by celebrating Manchester United Women's emphatic FA Cup win over Spurs at Wembley and the future of manager Marc Skinner.
Then it's the bad news and the ever worsening form of our Men with losses to Arsenal and Palace.
Finally the main debate - ETH Out now or keep him until the end of the season - if not longer. Are you Team Nik or Team Imran?
Replying here instead but they should do something like that. Accept the terms except maybe push back on territorial extent of the separatist regions, the EU condition, and negotiate economic settlement contingent upon sanctions relief. That is basically what I thought was an ideal situation yesterday but one that would never be offered. Now it has been offered. They should try push back as far as they can, accept best verison of that deal, and reevaluate in five or ten years time.
I don't doubt the war is going bad for Russia, but I also don't doubt it is going bad for Ukraine and will get much worse the longer it goes on. Kiev will be reduced to rubble. I'd avoid all that now and reach a political settlement which you can go back on, in theory, within five or ten years anyway (the "bloc" part, but not the Nato part).
I don't think it should be a case of re-evaluation in 5 or 10 years. Don't expect Russia to respect an agreement either, they will go away after this and assess their military failures and be back before you know it with a much more capable invasion force. Ukraine has to act fast.
I know EU membership application takes years but can Nato be done quickly, so much so that they can apply and join before Russia can respond.
I’ve seen this posted a few times and I just don’t have the time to patiently listen to this. If anyone has seen this already, can you please tell me what’s going on?
Can't EU membership be fast-tracked considering the circumstances? If they reach a deal along those lines, the EU would be criminal not to provisionally accept greater Ukraine pending reforms as per usual. Get that enforced on a multilateral basis and you have a track to peace but Nato just won't happen for Ukraine imo.
I don't see a better deal being reached in the short or long-term than something along the lines of what has been offered. Most of it is already the (de facto) case.
I don't think it can be fast tracked and to be honest nor should it. EU membership is such a broad ranging thing the due diligence process is a necessary step from both sides that goes beyond simply meeting the Copenhagen requirements.
Plus, what purpose does it serve in this situation? It's not going to help them against the Russian invasion.
I mean as part of the ceasefire agreement, Russian acceptance of eventual Ukrainian membership in the EU (which might take five or more years during a transitional phase). NATO won't help either, as Russia will destroy itself before it allows NATO to be established in Ukraine.
I don’t think Russia would in the future invade an EU country, especially if that country can trigger the article 42.7 of The Lisbon treaty.
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What the UK government is doing is shameful. It's shameful because they are among the loudest voices urging the continuation of the war and doing among the least to solve the refugee crisis that will get far worse in weeks and months ahead.
Israeli press review: Shaked worries not enough Ukrainian refugees are Jewish
Minister says 90 percent of Ukrainian refugees are not Jewish
Israeli officials have been encouraging tens of thousands of Ukrainian Jews to flee the Russian invasion and come to Israel - but according to Interior Minister Ayelet Shaked, almost 90 percent of the Ukrainians that have arrived so far aren't Jewish.
According to Haaretz, Shaked said on Sunday that from 2,034 Ukrainian refugees who arrived at Israel's borders, less than 10 percent of them were Jews.
https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/...iving-majority-not-jewish-shaked-press-review
Minister says 90 percent of Ukrainian refugees are not Jewish
Israeli officials have been encouraging tens of thousands of Ukrainian Jews to flee the Russian invasion and come to Israel - but according to Interior Minister Ayelet Shaked, almost 90 percent of the Ukrainians that have arrived so far aren't Jewish.
According to Haaretz, Shaked said on Sunday that from 2,034 Ukrainian refugees who arrived at Israel's borders, less than 10 percent of them were Jews.
https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/...iving-majority-not-jewish-shaked-press-review
Haikus suck these days.
First thing to note is that this video is from May 2021 so in no way was made as part of some recent Russian propaganda for the war.
These realities will being swept under the rug in the name of beating the Russians, sort of similar to how the US was funding Islamist extremists in Afghanistan and hailing them as heros, or extremists against Assad that saw the rise of ISIS, or dictators against communists in the 70's who murdered innocent people. The Ukrainian goverment really needs to be careful before empowering them with this war and strengthening their numbers.
While that in no way indicates Ukraine is being 'over-run' with Nazis, it is really concerning to see that they are legitamized by the government and on their payroll. Also if I, as a brown person, saw the march they were doing in the middle of Kyiv, I'd be sh*t scared.
Good post. I think the obvious reason for Putin not leaning west, despite all the obvious financial and geopolitical gains he would have clearly made; is that there would be one giant democracy sized pill that he'd have had to swallow.
The biggest problem that Putin has had in his entire tenure is that he's trying to protect a prehistoric governance structure in a region (particularly west of his territory) that has rapidly and overwhelmingly rejected it.
Leaning west would be signing his own political death warrant. You can't be a mafioso authoritarian dictator long term whilst also maintaining a good relationship with western democracies on their border. It just isn't feasible. You either give enough power to the electorate for them to dispose of you; or you give them too little and you get progressively sanctioned to oblivion and democracy comes to your doorstep involuntarily (upon which time that you need military action and a propagandist North Korean like state to prevent it). The nonsense about Nato expansion is clearly just that. Democracy is the obvious enemy. NATO is the correlation of democracies trying to maintain their political structure rather than the causation that authoritarian propogandists would have you believe.
Don't get me wrong; I think if he'd played his cards right the level of wealth creation (and with it living standards) he'd have presided over would likely render him elected in 5-6 elections after his succession to power. However that is not true power. True power is absolute and isn't at the behest of the masses.
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He criticizes "liberal hegemony". The short version of his argument: Liberalism has an universalistic impulse. It wants to replicate/spread around the world for at least three broad reasons. a) protect/guarantee universalist human rights abroad in countries, that violate it b) international peace ("liberal peace" is one of the big ideas in IR) c) protect liberalism at home (against illiberal forces). In a multipolar world other ideas (security/balancing) trump these ideals, but in a unipolar world (=USA after the end of the cold war), the security concerns are not binding anymore. In this situation, the spread of liberalism became the primary doctrine. This project is unrealistic/too ambitious, but liberals are oblivious to that. It won't work. 1) The required social engineering is completely unworkable; especially after invading a country, deposing their government and destroying them in the process. 2) Nationalism tends to trump other ideologies and is persistent. 3) individual rights, the core concept of liberalism, is't as self evident or universally shared as liberals want to believe 4) countries tend to balance against hegemons (thats particularly important for non-liberal states, that naturally fear the spread of liberalism).
The consequence is a highly militarized (liberal) society (in the USA), that gets in one war/conflict after another and ends up losing almost all these conflicts (not the war itself). Yet, because of they are so far ahead in terms of wealth/military (supported by their privileged geography), they don't have to bear substantial costs. The countries that get invaded do. Another oversight of "liberal hegemony" is, that as a militarized state, it tends to undermine liberalism at home.
I'm sure this has been raised before and will get some unpleasant reactions but why exactly is there such an incredible and universal backlash against Russia/its companies/teams/products? What they're doing is obviously wrong but why was there no sympathy for Iraq etc and backlash against the US /UK for those invasions? Is it the whole US/UK good, Russia /Iran/Iraq bad narrative were all supposed to lap up ?
Many reasons (mostly wrong but oh well):
1. It's white people being killed this time
2. The "West" = good and East being bad narrative
3. Iraq - Saddam was a dictator, and people bought the WMD story initially
4. Afghanistan - 9/11
5. Complaining about the US / acting against them is tantamount to economic suicide
That being said, Feck Putin. It's sad that ordinary Russians have to suffer, but that is war. Ordinary Ukranians are starving and being shot at.
It has.
There was.
It isn't.
I think the whataboutism thread was created for this.
I think it's primarily the deep rooted fear of nuclear war. It's still Russia overall. In general, for most people in the West it is much closer than Syria or Iraq which in itself brings more attention to the conflict (and thus more people are exposed to the atrocities which are being committed) and on top of that, as heartbreaking as the images and stories from Syria, Afghanistan or Iraq were, there was never a real threat of nuclear strikes.
To an extent this is probably also responsible for the strict reactions of non-European or American countries. A war between NATO and Russia would probably affect the whole world not only economically but also ecologically. On top of all that, it most likely also has to do with what's happening in Europe affecting more countries and economies severely on a geopolitical level.
All its sectarian problems aside, Israel's parliament is firmly within the mode of western democracy (problem being does it function that way for all? and most would say no, but a different topic). Look at its borders. Egypt is an absolutely authoritarian state and has been so for decades with explicit support from the US because it maintains good relationships with Israel (a western democracy). The US backed Sisi's coup after the Arab Spring and continues to back him. Not sure about the rest of your post, but this point isn't accurate. You could also add Franco's Spain and Greece for European examples.
Really good post
The US and UK dont have to be good. What matters is that Putin and Saddam are bad, no moral ambiguity to speak of.
And there was an outpouring of sympathy and outrage for Iraqi civilians.
Also, this is pretty much the first major war in human history that the whole planet can follow along on in real time via social media.
So you agree then
And so are the US going by the same logic? Outpouring of sympathy for Iraq I guess but no real boycott and the universal condemnation of the US. Just because one can't afford to?
Wait, isn't the US still the only country to use a nuclear bomb in warfare?
I think democracies have felt more and more insecure over the last decade. Countries have started turning towards strongmen: Trump, Bolsonaro, your very own Modi. Right wing nationalists have sprung up across Europe too - Poland, Hungary, Austria etc. Now we have a democracy under attack from a literal kleptocracy which then threatens the rest of us with nuclear war. Liberalism's been taking a stuffing, sees this as an opportunity to fight back.
The US are what? Bad? Maybe in hindsight, but not during the Iraq war.
At the time of the Iraq invasion the US were going after a genocidal despot who most believed was making WMDs. And there were no civilians with camera phones recording and posting all of the destruction and chaos on twitter in real time. So of course there wasn't the same level of anger or boycotts etc.
Dick Cheney carved out a little corner of the Pentagon after they told him there was no evidence of WMDs in Iraq, and took one questionable informant claim of him looking for yellow Cake in the whole pile of worldwide intelligence to base an entire war on, I sure as hell knew at the time it was BS. But if you weren't paying close attention you could have easily missed it.
For every action that Russia takes, one could find an equivalent or worse action that the West has taken in other country. But this thread is all about Russia bashing and hatred for Putin, and of course gleeful clapping when 8 to 10 yr old Ukranian kids are helping their parents build Molotov cocktails. So that is the "topic" and everything else is "whataboutism".
There is even a thread that has been started where all the whataboutists can express their opinion.
Not sure that would have been a problem. As long as Russia doesn't join the EU (which wasn't what I meant), it's leader can be an autocrat all he wants (as long as it's not too outrageous - which current Russia obviously is). And Putin probably would have been able to stay in power for a long time one way or another. I mean, him two terms, twice Medvedev, Putin again twice - and we're some decades further. No big deal.
I was also thinking Putin's selfishness is a big of a disturbance in all this theoretical geopolitical reasoning. He has clearly put his own fate above Russia's (by turning more and more tyrannical to stay in power), which I think rather obviously has not been the best rational choice for Russia's wellbeing.
Plus: governing Russia this way has made the country seem very unattractive to anyone in the are of its desired sphere of influence - another layer complicating the story for the geopolitical theorists (or what has been discussed of it here).
Wow, so salty
Daft post. This is the "Russian invasion of Ukraine" thread, so obviously it's about bashing the nation bombing civilians and hating the megalomaniac leader of said nation.
take a step back and have a look at this current conflict. Putin is the pure evil here.
also, accept that the west will look out more for itself than for other parts of the world - it’s the reality and always has been. While you’re at it, accept that this is completely normal and understandable, because the west, as divided and diverse it might seem at times, we have much more in common than we think. Yes, Europe is more important soil for a European and an American than Iraq, Korea and Vietnam are. Is it really that hard to grasp?
No. It is not hard to grasp. And I am not looking for any validation or acceptance of hypocrisy. I think all humans are hypocrites in one thing or another. We get triggered by things that happen to people that we associate with while same things happening to others is a bit meh!!
I am just replying to a poster who is pointing to the hypocrisy on the thread.
It would be funny if Putin's downfall came by way of a popular revolution (internally) because the opposition is the communist party of Russia and whilst they may not have the popular support needed post-Putin to gain control, do people think that Russians will be happy to trade one Putin for another? Having exposed the oligarchic system, which some see Putin as having kept curtailed by his own control of the state, where does Russia move next? The irony of a Western-led effort to replace Putin only for a socialist Russia to reemerge would be immense (the West is banking on a liberal democratic Russia rather than a socialist democracy, but there is no way to tell what emerges in such an uncertain void).
I don't think it's either hipocrisy nor irrational to look out for those closer to you, than for those more far away from you, honestly. Obviously, I will care more about my neighbor than for another random person across town. It's because we're reliant on each other and share cultural, economical, social and factual similarities and in case of need, it's a person more likely to help me.
There's nothing immoral or hypocritical about it, really.
I agree although I find it a bit baffling that there are still people defending the war on Iraq.
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They went there for oil and that was it, they also committed a lot of war crimes and used cluster bombs and setup Guantanamo Bay.
It’s obvious it matters more now because white people are dying from an albeit democratic country. You could argue Russia are going to Ukraine for their resources also which is probably the main reason of attack.
It’s still bad, I mean they’re the nuclear weapon bearing equivalent of the taliban. It’s not good in this day and age.
Should europe do more around the world to help? Would Asian and African people around the world who have been subject to all sorts of heinous crimes be happy western states are now shitting themselves, My guess is yes.
Isn't Haaretz an Israeli newspaper? Interesting that they're writing this.
1) Saddam was an evil dictator who the world was better off without. People were cheering in the streets when the Americans arrived. That's obviously not the case with Ukraine.
2) there was backlash, once we realised we'd all been lied to.
Much as it's fun to bash them, it's a long time since the US invaded a country that didn't want it.
There were HUGE protests in the UK