Let's take a break from Thatcherlad arguing with Marxlad and talk about geopolitics. So what do we reckon about this year's bi-annual lurching forward of the doomsday clock?
Standing back from the situation it seems obvious that US led brinkmanship and almost psychopathic foreign policy only makes a bad situation worse. The extent to which the media portrays Russia as the unambiguous bad guys while NATO continues to push them borders on completely delusional, like saying the sky is green or the sea is made of sand. Russia and Putin are no saints by any means, but what did we (the West) expect by constantly encroaching on their security interests?
The UK and EU badly need to distance themselves from America, I feel like they are going to become dangerous friends to have if moments like this and China's overtures on Taiwan play out as their own Suez crisis.
>>42156>>42155 It would have been Marvellous if Z just called him out on his bullshit in front of the world. He's obviously trying to push Ukraine off the table as fast as possible while striking as shit a deal as he can.
>>42161 So I'll overlook that at least half those headlines pre-date Zelenskyy becoming president, for now. However, would you have brought up the similar flaws within Iraqi society back in 2003 as a justification for the invasion? Or what about what's happening in the eastern DRC right now? Is it okay for Rwanda to conquer and pillage because, hey, there's probably a bit of graft and homophobia out there too? I suspect not. I'm not sure where pro-Putin types get off advocating for the LGBT community, I mean, pull the other one, m9.
Also, maybe someone else can show that I'm mistaken, but the headline most personally damning to Zelenskyy is from "New Europe", an organisation I can't find any evidence of actually existing.
Yes, no, you're absolutely right. We should let Russia just have Ukraine, as Russia is not corrupt, authoritarian, far right leaning, and they definitely do not attack journalists.
>>42164 Yeah, obviously. I was putting in the leg work to explain why it's bullshit. I don't know if you've noticed, but a lot of people don't care when you just say "this is propaganda/bad/wrong" and nothing else, so it's worth taking a moment to highlight why something is a load of old bollocks. If you were already aware of everything I said in my post, then congrats, it wasn't for your benefit to begin with.
Is this where people's heads are at nowadays? The idea of explaining your argument is completely alien to them? Should I have just called Russialad a "dickhead" and left it at that? You might have liked it more, but it wouldn't be terribly constructive.
>>42165 Let us turn our attention now to those right-wing Baltic 'countries' where ethnic Russians are oppressed. As a British patriot I say that our Tornado fighter jets should be used to battle people smugglers in the channel and in delivering winter fuel payments to elderly invalids rather than protecting CIA gender transition houses.
>Is this where people's heads are at nowadays? The idea of explaining your argument is completely alien to them? Should I have just called Russialad a "dickhead" and left it at that? You might have liked it more, but it wouldn't be terribly constructive
Frankly yes. They are an adult. If they aren't willing to engage their brain at this point they are beyond saving. You are unfortunately wasting your valuable energy by even entertaining them. They won't respond to logic they will only respond to being shamed out of their position through ridicule because that is the only language they understand. Anything else would be accepting the premise of their argument as valid.
>>42170 >Anything else would be accepting the premise of their argument as valid.
This sounds like it makes sense, but it doesn't at all. If someone tells me dogs are born with three legs and I say otherwise, I haven't ceded ground or "legitimised" their argument. If that person insists on puppies having three legs and refuses to accept any and all evidence to the contrary, then you can probably start ignoring them, but I don't think skipping right to that stage is worthwhile.
>They won't respond to logic they will only respond to being shamed out of their position through ridicule because that is the only language they understand.
This is complete make believe. It's somehow less true than dogs being born with three legs. You've additionally ignored the fact that the person I replied to isn't going to be the only one too see my post, and thus my argument wasn't made only for his benefit. If mockery and name calling worked to "shame people out of their beliefs" then everyone on .gs would have stopped questioning me years ago.
>If they aren't willing to engage their brain at this point they are beyond saving.
Call it persaution, call it de-radicalisation, call it whatever, it has more merit than vapid mockery for one's own self-satisifaction.
>>42169 No problem. I clearly like the sound of my own voice, so to speak, so no harm done.
Really the silver lining in all this is that the rest of the West is waking up to just how unreliable and self-interested American foreign policy is, and why they are absolutely a liability as the leaders of NATO. They can have their isolationism if they want. I don't buy the "weakening the western alliance" nonsense, there's no alliance with a partner that won't have your back when push comes to shove anyway.
It's a shame it took years of fighting, untold thousands of deaths, and a spoiled pampered spunkstain like Trump who has never faced significant danger or hardship in his entire life, insulting the leader of a country fighting off an ongoing invasion on fucking television in front of the entire world; and it's a shame Ukraine is just going to get sold out and we're all going to forget about it within a couple of years like Afghanistan and Iraq anyway, but I don't think the USA's international credibility is going to recover from it.
>Really the silver lining in all this is that the rest of the West is waking up to just how unreliable and self-interested American foreign policy is, and why they are absolutely a liability as the leaders of NATO.
Worth remembering that NATO was founded pretty much at the behest of the United States and with the three (unofficially) stated goals, as quipped by its first Secretary General, Lord Ismay, of "keeping the Russians out [of Europe], the Americans in, and the Germans down". It served that purpose well up until the end of the Cold War, but it's fair to say that NATO then went through a period of doldrums where for all intents and purposes, it wasn't really needed anymore. Which is reflected in various conflicts of the 1990s and early 2000s that were outside NATO's mandates and mission statements, from Operation Desert Storm to the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq in 2002 and 2003, and international intervention in places like Yugoslavia and other parts of the world.
All this was happening while NATO was continuously, and for the most part somewhat quietly expanding eastward, let's not forget. But I guess my point is, the Americans have always treated NATO as just one of several arrows in their quiver of foreign policy, military-backed or not. Which also means that although it wasn't always obvious, the Americans' commitment to NATO has always only been as far as it served their own interests. Stopping the Soviet Union from gaining territory and power in Western Europe after WWII was in line with American interests, which were to protect both American military installations and business and trade ties and stakes in the region. And then after the Cold War and the dissolution of the Soviet Union, it was in the Americans' interest to keep Russia as the Soviet Union's core member state down and prevent it from regaining its old strength, in order to assert America's ambitions to be the only remaining global superpower.
With Trump now back in power and subverting what were until now America's foreign policy goals and visions, whether he's a Russian secret service asset or not, it's becoming obvious that as objectives and directives change at the top level, so does NATO become less important and is declared a liability by the Americans. Because, again, NATO is only useful to them as long as it serves their agenda. And if Trump suddenly decides that it no longer does, then he'll abandon NATO without hesitation and leave its European members out in the cold.
>Russian fighter jet provokes French Reaper drone over Mediterranean, French Defense Minister says
https://kyivindependent.com/russian-fighter-jet-confronts-french-reaper-drone-in-mediterranean-france-reports/ This sort of thing has happened a lot in the past - countries who aren't quite at war will often report a plane from the other side pushing the limits. I'm curious why. It doesn't achieve very much, I can't see what they'll learn from it. And how far up the chain of command does it come from? Is it just the pilot being a daredevil or has Putin gone "Yeah send one random plane to this place in particular and see if they shoot it down" for some reason I can't discern?
Provoking a reaction gives you a lot of information that a covert operation wouldn't. If your opponent immediately scrambles a fighter intercept, then you get to watch the whole thing. You can see their response times and get an insight into their planning. If they don't scramble the fighters, then you've also learned something valuable about their willingness to confront you. You can expand your area of operations and push further into their territory, establishing a new norm that's more favourable to you.
With the right ISTAR equipment on board, you can sniff out a lot of valuable intelligence about enemy aircraft from close interception. Having a really good picture of what they look like on radar, what their radio transmissions are and what kind of heat signature they emit is invaluable in tuning your detection and interception systems.
We do similar things all the time. The RAF regularly flies reconnaissance sorties out of Romania, sniffing around Crimea and the Black Sea.
>>42174 Talking out of my arse it's probably to gather information.
At the very least they'd learn response and persuit parameters. It could be the jet is carry a detection tool that might intercept data between the drone and it's control center, or maybe the drone
It's all about various types of intel gathering.
Who knows, maybe there's been some other issue in French-Russian relations and they're pushing on a pressure point or summat
>>42175 >>42176 I did think of that but I suppose I just assume most countries are capable of smuggling or building surveillance in other countries if they want to check out technical data, a covert listening post could get more while being unseen for a greater period of time than a flyby - and the scrambled response time to a single plane doesn't correlate (at least to my mind) with how quickly they'd react to a show of real force.
>>42179 >the scrambled response time to a single plane doesn't correlate (at least to my mind) with how quickly they'd react to a show of real force.
Again talking out of my arse, nobody wants a full force open fight where the likelyhood of victory is uncertain. Hopping the fence, however, is entirely possible without provoking serious issues. I presume the likelyhood of triggering outright war is unlikely considering diplomatic channels and that.
So that single fighter jet might be enough 'show of force' to achieve an influencial given end, say the targetting of a general at an opportune time, without actually having to commit to an all out war (granted, openly assassinating a general is a heavy attack and would trigger war. Maybe someone knowledgeable could offer a more realistic scenario).
Perhaps their covert listening posts have identified shift patterns and they're poking a very specific seargent for their response under preasure (or whatever has the control in the situaion, I don't know). With that info they could better judge how well interference in their personal life might influence future responses. From there they could develop a strategy based on that potential vulnerability.
Whether that's worth risking the possibility of a significant retaliation comes down to how confident the parties are in their relationship.
There are a number of intelligence types (at least 5 off the top of my head, can name only 2) that all come together to stack the odds, rather than a single listening station picking up all the secrets.
>>42180 >whatever has the control in the situaion, I don't know). With that info they could better judge how well interference in their personal life might influence future responses. From there they could develop a strategy based on that potential vulnerability.
This seems a bit far-fetched, if you test that sergeant then his behaviour will change because of it. Notwithstanding that him taking a while to respond due to being out collecting his free Big Whopper this time doesn't mean you can rely on it happening twice.
>So that single fighter jet might be enough 'show of force' to achieve an influencial given end, say the targetting of a general at an opportune time, without actually having to commit to an all out war
I don't understand what this means.
>>42181 >This seems a bit far-fetched
Yes it absolutely does, which is argueably enough to convince targetted people it's not really happening. Does the person know it's a test? When they see the approaching threat is their thought and decision making process influenced by anything?
I recognise I'm swerving from the original scenario but it's relevant to a degree.
>I don't understand what this means.
Neither do I to be honest. I'm thinking there might be situations or opportunities that could radically change the playingfield if exploited in time - but doing so would require a great range of capabilities.
So if an actor can reliably generate a 30 second window of insecurity, their sides position on the world stage could be radically changed (by introducing the responsible officer to a love interest who influences them to eat a chemically contaminated Big Whopper that causes them to shit themselves throughout the entirety of their next shift).
So bringing it back to reality; maybe regular tests of response times reveal a baseline behaviour from which to can measure deviations.
>>42182 >Does the person know it's a test?
I would imagine telemetry is good enough to tell that it's just the one plane and not a full-fledged invasion force. They could use a full fledged invasion force if they wanted a realistic simulation but that would probably have repercussions.
The asset in place could just as easily murder the sergeant in a real situation in which case giving him the shits would be pointless to measure - doubly pointless as presumably there's someone who'll take over the post If the primary is incapacitated due to Big Whopper shits. If the fly by was happening simultaneously with honeypots poisoning the men on duty I can think of better ways to test the effects of drugs that don't involve so much expenditure and risk of losing the asset planting the drugs or otherwise burning the whole setup. What you're suggesting seems out of the realms of cost/benefit and realistic expectations of human competence.
Though now I am wondering how many Russian sleeper assets are spread around Europe in the guise of Ukrainian refugees.
I still don't think so, if he was there would be some solid evidence, and it WOULD have been leaked by now.
I think you have to face the conclusion which is worse than him being a Manchurian Candidate, he's basically just got a very genuine and earnest mixture of fear and admiration for Russia/Putin, and he wants to be mates with Russia much more than he thinks he will lose from backstabbing Europe to do it. He's not being coerced or working for The Enemy, he genuinely legitimately thinks he's doing the right thing for America by pacifying a long term adversary, and then the unspoken part, trying to pull them away from China.
It's that last part where he'll come undone. The error in his calculations is that he thinks Russia will, after the better part of a century of being the defacto villain for mainstream American politicians, take a friendship with America at all seriously, just because one guy comes along who really wants to butter them up. They're not stupid. They'll use it to their advantage, but under the full understanding that America's word is as good as meaningless.
Europe just needs to take that lesson to heart too.
The argument of he is a fanboy protodictator jingoist or if he is directly a spy is somewhat immaterial, what matters is his actions make him a direct enemy of the west, and friend to all of it's traditional enemies.
>>42172 >>42173 The NATO agreement is irrelevant in a Russian border war with a non NATO member
The state of NATO has always been quite simple anyway
If you read the original NATO agreement
It says that the 'all for one and one for all' concept, where members will back up each other with military force, is actually optional
Not compulsory
And many of the countries could hardly show up if they wanted to
So when you sweep away all of the mediocre media chatter over the decades since its creation, really the underlying purpose and framework of NATO is this -
The USA is going to swoop in and back up whatever country with their military, but only if they feel like it
It was simply a message to Russia - 'Stay back, the Soviet Union is big enough already. We will help the capitalist west of Europe against you if we have to'
The wind has changed and so has the landscape. Russia is not trying to expand the Soviet union beyond the East Germany of yesterday. It isn't invading France, or trying to retake Poland. It isn't 1949 anymore
Russia is having a border war with a place that used to be called 'Little Russia' long before the Soviet years, and the place has a large population of Russian speakers
Zelensky requesting a fast track into NATO membership, putting NATO on the border of modern Russia, trying to absorb the nearby Russian diaspora into an anti-Russia military force...
The modern USA-UK alliance lecturing Russia on unjust wars is also a hypocritical farce, and the NATO agreement was written on tissue paper to begin with
No one who speaks English can find Ukraine on a map
How many layers of futility are we trying to stack up in this thought experiment? What is the actual point of anything that has happened in the last 3 years?
>What is the actual point of anything that has happened in the last 3 years?
That's a loaded question. I know most people in Europe think that the Democrats are the good guys compared to the imperialist capitalist swines that the MAGA Republican lot admittedly are. But even though the Democrats tend to use less hard power and more soft power, they are very firmly in the neoliberal camp as well, and their agenda has, with no less determination, been to assert America's global dominance and prevent another superpower from (re-)emerging, just as much as the Republicans. It's not self evident trying to pinpoint when the Democrats turned neoliberal, but at least in recent years, you can consider Hillary Clinton a driving force, if you study her stance and opinions more closely, and especially her work as Secretary of State under Biden.
The Americans have a long history of fostering pro-Western governments in Ukraine, all the way back, and even beyond the Orange Revolution of the early 2000s. This was done knowing that influence over Ukraine is of material importance to Russia, both for its natural resources and as being a bridgehead into the rest of eastern Europe and giving Russia access to the Black Sea. To cut Ukraine off from Russian influence is to deprive Russia of one of its main building blocks for a reemergence as a superpower. Putin knows it, and the Americans know it. And in that sense, it's not just a tug of war over Ukraine. It's about whether Russia can be kept down and will not threaten American global predominance.
You will rightly say that the Orange Revolution happened during the Bush jr. days. But it was during the Obama and then Biden years that Western foreign influence in Ukraine was again stepped up, and efforts were made to tie Ukraine even closer into the Western sphere of influence.
Does that justify Putin's actions? No. It does not. He still attacked a sovereign country which was free to choose its political alliances in accordance with widely agreed-upon international law and treaties. But the whole thing wasn't as entirely unpredicted as you are meant to believe.
This has been what has consistently bothered me since the start of it all. As soon as it all kicked off, the last decade or so of western relations (and interference, you could call it) were immediately memory holed and it was boiled down to this simple narrative about Putin invading entirely unprovoked and for no reason other than because he wants to take over the world. Which, without exclusing it at all, is just entirely dishonest.
The problem is that quite apart from the morally correct stance of supporting Ukraine's defence, it still entirely undermines the western stance. Look at everything that has suddenly changed now that Trump and co are in and calling the whole thing a sunk cost. Europe is left with its dick in hand, between a rock and a hard place.
Also, nobody remembers all the headlines from before the war, as recently as 2020 or 2021, when government and institutional corruption in Ukraine was rife and the country was a bottomless pit for foreign investment of any kind. Not few commentators saw Ukraine teetering on the brink of being a failed state. And then after the invasion, suddenly there was talk of fast tracking Ukraine for NATO and EU membership. When Ukraine has at no point been in a position, both before and after the invasion, of fulfilling the criteria for EU membership.
I'm not saying that Ukraine shouldn't aspire to EU membership, but even without the war happening in the meantime, it probably would have taken Ukraine at least a decade or two to get its shit together enough to realistically be a promising EU candidate.
Also though, NATO statutes forbid the joining of a country with active and ongoing border disputes. Which is a very understated way of saying that Ukraine should normally not have a chance in hell while the war is still going on.
In the end, as we've said, it's about far more than protecting the virtue of one peripheral European country. It's a Great Game around global geostrategic dominance.
In other news; I for one welcome Kaja Kallas as the leader of the Free World.
It really is a case of the right man at the right time, EU positions are normally stacked with ineffectual bureaucrats by design but she's really come into her element and it's obvious this pisses off EU member states.
>>42362 >>42363 >>42364 No I think we've now seen what the opposite is to supposed unparalleled domination of the world by the West and its institutions which is barbarism clothed in the language that has evolved into nothing but naked imperialism. By the way, Russia was interfering in Ukraine long before any election with the shameless poisoning of its leader and the West was lukewarm at best on Ukraine. It's a total lie that the west fermented revolution and its people throughout waved the flags that represent European ideals while under fire from autocrats and thugs that represented the tip of the spear for a global conspiracy of autocracies.
>Also, nobody remembers all the headlines from before the war, as recently as 2020 or 2021, when government and institutional corruption in Ukraine was rife and the country was a bottomless pit for foreign investment of any kind
Ukraine has in recent years done everything asked of it.
>Vladimir Putin’s chief delegate at peace talks with Ukraine is a historian who once claimed that Russians have an extra chromosome due to their superiority.
https://archive.is/P6xX2
>>42444 The new tactic of saying literally anything as long as it gets into the news has been around longer than we thought. Our politicians, and the American ones, say imbecilic bollocks all the time, deliberately trying to ensure they stay in the public consciousness. Five years from now, they’ll be in charge and people will dig up the bollocks they’re saying now, but it’ll be too late then.
>>42447 It's a tangent, but I can't stop thinking about the possibility that the only thing we've got on Stalin is that our powerful people are wealthier and more secure in their position and so can use subtler means of control. We imagine that because nobody will be gulaged over having the wrong idea, we're pretty free, but why gulag a scientist when you can just say you'll only fund him if he works on something else? Use the carrot and the stick, and if he complains it's a normal workplace grumble about funding rather than a sign of severe political repression. A lot of carrot and a little stick, or all stick, both get the same results but one makes you look benevolent - if you can afford it.
Eh, some people called him a monster some of the time. A lot of people who really should have known better were willing to overlook or downplay his crimes when it suited their ends. Uncle Joe was our best mate during the war. Walter Duranty won a Pulitzer Prize for helping to cover up the Soviet famine. Orwell made a lot of enemies on the British Left for being staunchly opposed to Stalin.
I'm sure that if Stalin were around today, he'd have plenty of defenders.
>Orwell made a lot of enemies on the British Left for being staunchly opposed to Stalin.
My favourite kind of lefties are the ones on Rudgwick who immediately sperg out and seethe about Orwell being a grass. Like, yeah, and thank fuck he was, we didn't and don't need deranged tankies making us all look like fruitloops. Stalin is not somebody you want to be defending if you want at all reasonable optics for your particular sub-genre of leftyness.
Those people are also forgetting that at the time, the left was not so completely and utterly frozen out of the establishment as it is today. Ratting a few tankies out was not the open contempt and betrayal of socialist ideals as, say, publishing hit pieces about Corbyn being an anti-semite was in 2019. There was still a concrete and viable coalition of the trade unions and popular working class support back then.
TL;DR Getting deranged about Orwell is the quickest way to spot a nutjob in your socialist reading group.
>>42451 >Uncle Joe was our best mate during the war.
Churchill said of an alliance with Stalin 'If Hitler invaded Hell I would make at least a favourable reference to the Devil in the House of Commons'. They weren't friends and everything was subject to intense negotiation even when it looked like the Soviets were going to be knocked out.
Stalin would have plenty of defenders yes but equally I don't doubt that if that story of him breaking a calf's leg were true then the British public would have him swinging on a lamppost.
