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The Crazy SOB Actually Did it!

Started by indianasmith, February 23, 2022, 11:16:30 PM

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ER

What does not kill me makes me stranger.

Morpheus, the unwoke.

They will come back, come back again, As long as the red earth rolls. He never wasted a leaf or a tree. Do you think he would squander souls?" ― Ruyard Kipling

We all come from the goddess and to her we shall return, like a drop of rain flowing to the ocean.

Morpheus, the unwoke.

#707
Just when you thought it could not get worse, poot's army is using old fashioned 'drones' in the latest phase, drones that bleed.

https://m.dailykos.com/stories/2022/11/30/2139167/-Ukraine-update-Russia-is-developing-it-s-own-kind-of-combined-arms-centered-on-drones-that-bleed
They will come back, come back again, As long as the red earth rolls. He never wasted a leaf or a tree. Do you think he would squander souls?" ― Ruyard Kipling

We all come from the goddess and to her we shall return, like a drop of rain flowing to the ocean.

ralfy

A notable view from Thomas Palley, written right before the invasion:

https://thomaspalley.com/?p=2092

QuoteThe baseline for the argument is recognition that the US has an implacable antipathy to Russia. That antipathy has a long history. In 1918 the US invaded Siberia, intervening in the Russian civil war between the Tsarist Whites and Reds. The invasion set the stage for pre-Cold War hatred of the Soviet Union.

Today, US antipathy is driven by the triumph of Neocon thinking which maintains no country should be able to challenge the US anywhere in the world. That makes Russia an existential enemy as it still can. Additionally, US antipathy is driven by need for an external enemy. That enemy helps channel the country's intrinsic aggression and distracts the US from its own internal failings. It is why every cold war will always be followed by a new cold war.

The last few points are remarkable: the internal failings of the U.S. essentially consists of an economy controlled by the rich and needs others to keep using the dollar so that it can continue borrowing and spending heavily. To do that, it uses combinations of foreign policies, the military, and aid or loans with strings attached. An example is IMF-WB structural adjustment.

To aid that manipulation, it has to create a new cold war, moving from attacking Russia and even China because they're communist to attacking them because they're imperialists.

In reality, though, neither is such. Instead, they grew stronger ironically because the use of the dollar as a reserve currency forced them to save and export. Those savings were used for industrialization.

Some countries, though, were not able to do that, and one is Ukraine, which is now poorer than countries like Thailand and Malaysia. Meanwhile, those countries want to remain neutral and are resisting U.S. influence.

ralfy

Interestingly enough, a 2014 article from a neoliberal and right-wing but anti-neoconservative group, the Cato Institute:

"Washington Should Not Defend Ukraine or Expand NATO: U.S. Should Shift Responsibility For Europe's Defense to Europe"

https://www.cato.org/commentary/washington-should-not-defend-ukraine-or-expand-nato-us-should-shift-responsibility

QuoteWhen European nations demobilized after the disappearance of their one serious threat, the principal burden of integrating and defending the new members fell on America. Yet Washington waved a dozen new applicants through, treating alliance memberships as candies to be put on guest pillows by hotel staff at night.

NATO even committed to include Georgia and Ukraine. However, America's European partners proved wary of inducting these two countries, which had significant political problems at home and more serious potential conflicts with Moscow. Hence, NATO was saved from the legal obligation to intervene during Tbilisi's 2008 war with Russia.

In short, the Europeans did not see Russia as a threat because the latter was more interested in not only engaging in more deals with the EU but even joining NATO.

However, Washington saw Russia as an economic threat, together with China, because both together with the rest of BRICS were growing stronger economically, and the main reason why the U.S. has been able to keep its economy afloat is global dependence on the dollar for trade. That's why even oil has to be priced in dollars.

With that, it's like that the U.S. used NATO as a shield, and that it had to be expanded to encircle Russia. Hence, manipulation in Ukraine, one of the remaining states that was still not in the orbit of U.S. dominance.

This might also explain Nuland's "F*** the EU" statement.







ralfy

Here's something from Robert Kagan, an American neoconservative scholar and husband of Victoria Nuland:

https://www.persuasion.community/p/kagan#details

There are two notable points for me:

QuoteHenry Kissinger wrote a book called A World Restored. He discusses the Congress of Vienna at great length. If you read biographies of Kissinger, it's pretty clear that that is the ideal situation for him. From it, he and other realists derive the idea that you can't let ideology get in the way of the stable balance of power that allegedly exists. At the Congress of Vienna, you had countries that didn't necessarily agree. Britain and Austria didn't share political or ideological perspectives. But they did share a desire to maintain the balance of power. If you go back and read Hans Morgenthau, realists' greatest fear is Napoleon. Napoleon is the great disaster, because he had universalist pretensions, of which realists are all highly suspicious. In their view, communism and liberal democracy were in a sense equally messianic, and therefore equally likely to lead the world to destruction. They didn't think that because the United States was a democracy, it was necessarily better for world peace than the Soviet Union. That leads them to miss a lot of things. And I think the thing that they most miss is the success of the American order. They missed the possibility of a unilateral hegemon in the world, because it's not a theory. It's just a reality of geography and wealth and power, but it has turned out to be a very stable situation, as you mentioned. 

Realists also leave out the key element of that stability, which is that those within the American security umbrella, those who are willing participants in the American-led liberal order, are themselves liberals. That's critical, because Europeans, from the beginning, welcomed and even invited American power. I think that's because of ideological affinity. They knew that American power does not threaten their fundamental freedoms, whereas the rise of other great powers who don't share these liberal values would inherently threaten their liberal values. So, you do need to put the unique circumstances of American power together with the historically unusual fact that you have a universalist, liberal democracy that also happens to be the global hegemon, and those two things together create a highly unique set of circumstances which you can't really replicate in any other way. In a way, it's anti-theory. It just happened as a series of historical accidents. But it is a powerful force, nevertheless, as we've seen.

Thus, the U.S. was likely imagining something like a council whose members did not necessarily agree with one another but would figure out how to maintain the balance of power.

The problem with this analogy is that that Congress of Vienna worked in a time where the world consisted of a few countries, and everything else was meant for exploitation. In contrast, the world today is much larger, with many of those exploited now in positions of power. What council will work in such a situation?

What about an American-led liberal order? The same ironically led to growing strength for those who were made part of it, and they are also moving away from it due to nationalism. Put simply, in contrast to the view that Russia and China merely want to take over from the U.S., what's more likely is that they aren't, and not yet, and because they don't want to end up like the U.S., with high levels of debt and decadence. Maybe that will happen to them in time, but not immediately.

Finally, what about stability? From what I gathered, the reason why forty countries became stronger economically is because of stability. Where did the instability come from? Here a clue: who has the largest military in the world and has been using it to sow chaos in places like Iraq and Afghanistan?


Morpheus, the unwoke.

They will come back, come back again, As long as the red earth rolls. He never wasted a leaf or a tree. Do you think he would squander souls?" ― Ruyard Kipling

We all come from the goddess and to her we shall return, like a drop of rain flowing to the ocean.

ralfy

On more for today, from 2014, and not only criticizes neocons, Putin, and Obama, but also refers to one interesting point from one of Kagan's books:

https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2014/3/10/reckless-in-kiev-neocons-putin-and-ukraine

Quote"F*** the EU" is the new improvised version of Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney and the neocons' hostility towards "Old Europe". In his 2003 book, "Of Paradise and Power", Robert Kagan highlighted the difference and division between the US and Europe – Americans from Mars, Europeans from Venus.

The Kagans reckon Europe should be marginalized because it's too soft, overly diplomatic. A charge the Europeans reject. Especially when it's the Polish, America's close friends in Europe, who have spearheaded EU diplomacy in Kiev before and after the crisis broke out in Ukraine.

That is, Europe likely considers Russia as a fellow member, while Russia sees Ukraine as the same. There should be some truth to this given the point that they've been together for hundreds of years. Perhaps that's another meaning of "Old Europe." It also helps when one realizes that major trading partners of the EU include not only Russia but also China and even countries like Saudi Arabia.

Another point to consider, in contrast to the blinkered neocon view, is that many of these countries aren't exactly liberal, and yet liberal countries conveniently trade with them.

But the "New World" sees things differently, and it helps that it is divided from the Old One by a large pond. In which case, the former is at least shielded from any debacle that takes place in the former, just like what happened during WW2.

So, it uses countries like Poland to bring in the remaining states in its shield, even if members of the same shield are reluctant members of the same. I wonder why they're so reluctant.

ralfy

Will yawn but post anyway. Don't forget the lion meme. Or maybe post more poetry? LOL.



ralfy

QuoteTurning and turning in the widening gyre   
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere   
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst   
Are full of passionate intensity.

indianasmith

For crying out loud, just cut it short and post "AMERICA BAD!" every time someone replies here.
"I shall smite you in the nostrils with a rod of iron, and wax your spleen with Efferdent!!"

ER

While I disagree with almost everything ralfy has posted in this thread, he's stayed reasonably polite and has stuck to his convictions even amid mockery and disagreement. I do give him credit there.
What does not kill me makes me stranger.

Allhallowsday

If you want to view paradise . . . simply look around and view it!

Rev. Powell

Quote from: ER on December 02, 2022, 07:26:15 AM
While I disagree with almost everything ralfy has posted in this thread, he's stayed reasonably polite and has stuck to his convictions even amid mockery and disagreement. I do give him credit there.

That is true and ralfy does deserve credit for not turning troll.

On the other hand, he doesn't seem to realize how disruptive his posting style is. He clutters up the thread with 5 times as many posts as anyone else, each a wall of text, sometimes containing multiple supporting links. I don't have the free time or interest to respond to him in the level of detail he insists on, and I have to fight the urge to post snarky rejoinders (which don't have an effect on his posting habits). So I feel I am left with no option but to ignore him. The rest of us are having a water cooler conversation, he is defending a Ph.D. thesis.
I'll take you places the hand of man has not yet set foot...

ER

Ralfy, can I ask what your background is? Some of us were wondering if you were an academic but I was thinking that observing the geopolitical landscape was more of a hobby of interest to you.
What does not kill me makes me stranger.