7 ms·

It’s pretty easy to look at North Korea, Cambodia, or Eastern Europe during the Cold War and say “hmm, it’s worth going to extreme lengths to prevent this from

by creato 5y ago

It’s pretty easy to look at North Korea, Cambodia, or Eastern Europe during the Cold War and say “hmm, it’s worth going to extreme lengths to prevent this from happening elsewhere”. That may have been misguided in many instances, but the basic motivation is sound. Characterizing the situation as “overthrowing democratic governments in favor of brutal dictators” is a vast oversimplification if not outright wrong at least in many cases.

pphysch 5y ago
> It’s pretty easy to look at North Korea, Cambodia, or Eastern Europe during the Cold War and say “hmm, it’s worth going to extreme lengths to prevent this from happening elsewhere”. That may have been misguided in many instances, but the basic motivation is sound. Careful, this is literally Moscow's reason for its invasion of Ukraine -- to prevent the rise of a hostile fascist entity in its frontyard.
- solveit 5y ago
  A bad actor claiming reasonable motivation does not make the motivation unreasonable... Obviously you have to also be sincere (debatable in Russia's case) and correct (Russian claims are simply wrong).
  - pessimizer 5y ago
    Russian claims of an interest in controlling the government of Ukraine are at least as legitimate as US claims of an interest in controlling Korea, or Afghanistan.
    - solveit 5y ago
      And is the Ukrainean state actually fascist? How about Korea? In the absence of UN intervention, would there have arisen an authoritarian state that was a menace to not only its own citizens but every neighbouring country? Clearly Ukraine is not fascist and Korea would have been. There is a difference.
      - pphysch 5y ago
        North Korea is fascist, but harmlessly so. Despite endless flexing and threat inflation, they haven't actually done much harm since invading the South 70 years ago. The main problem with fascism in Nazi Germany, Zionist Israel, and Banderite Ukraine is that these fascist states have overt policies of ethnic cleansing. IOW the "fascism" part isn't necessarily bad (unless you are a liberal chauvinist), it's the ethnic cleansing part that is bad.
        kelnos 5y ago
        > Banderite Ukraine This is something that... doesn't really exist today? I mean, sure there are still nazis in Ukraine, even in its government and military, but by and large it doesn't seem that they're anywhere near a majority or have significant influence... despite what Putin's propaganda would like us to believe. > IOW the "fascism" part isn't necessarily bad (unless you are a liberal chauvinist) If you truly believe that, I don't think you're going to have a productive discussion on this topic here. Most people here (myself included) would not characterize hard-right authoritarianism that way. I believe that form of government is objectively bad for the people under it, at least those outside the ruling class.
        pphysch 5y ago
        > If you truly believe that, I don't think you're going to have a productive discussion on this topic here. Of course; many folks here are ideologically hyper-individualists, liberals, liberal anarchists, libertarians, etc. The idea that various collectivisms including "fascism" are okay is offensive to those ideologies. However, the onus is not on me to pander to their ideological limitations.
        throwaway894345 5y ago
        In what sense is NK’s fascism “harmless”? In the nuclear sense or in the oppression sense or something else?
        solveit 5y ago
        I suppose you're not concerned about the misery they inflict on their own citizens? While they don't do ethnic cleansing per se (not many ethnicities to cleanse in North Korea), they absolutely do wipe out entire bloodlines for crimes of a single member. And I won't even get into the rest of their human rights record. Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, they also semi-regularly engage in armed conflict with South Korea, killing usually tens of people, and they occasionally kidnap foreign nationals. Admittedly small fare for a rogue state. They also have nukes but it must be fine since they haven't used them yet.
    - throwaway894345 5y ago
      Yes, but the salient distinction is that the US doesn’t want to control either place.
- kelnos 5y ago
  Except Ukraine isn't a "hostile fascist entity", and Putin knows that. Ukraine is (well, sadly, was) in danger of becoming more democratically- and West-aligned, which Putin (irrationally, IMO) feared, but my take on it is that he's really motivated mostly by fallen-empire envy. (Granted, that's just my opinion; I don't know what Putin is actually thinking.)
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - pphysch 5y ago
    We're seeing the fascism part of full display as Zelensky refuses to surrender, instead preferring to throw civilian bodies to the altar in sacrifice of the Nation. Imagine cheering on Saddam Hussein as he hopelessly hung onto power and sacrificed thousands of innocents. This is precisely what the Western establishment media is doing right now, modulo Zelensky, because he's the "good guy". The hostile part has been obvious for 8 years, and escalated last year. 14,000 dead, war declared on Russian Crimea last year, etc.
    - pegasus 5y ago
      Is that you, Putin?
quantum_solanum 5y ago
The US killed millions of people in North Korea, and was also largely responsible for the Khmer Rouge taking power in Cambodia in the first place.
- thevagrant 5y ago
  Can you explain further? "In the 1970s, the Khmer Rouge were largely supported and funded by the Chinese Communist Party, receiving approval from Mao Zedong; it is estimated that at least 90% of the foreign aid which was provided to the Khmer Rouge came from China." https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khmer_Rouge https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khmer_Rouge
  - quantum_solanum 5y ago
    [1] > In 1970, the United States had orchestrated a coup to oust Prince Sihanouk, and installed Lon Nol, a general who was supposed to be Cambodia’s Suharto. His forces trained in Bandung, not far from the site of Sukarno’s 1955 Afro-Asian Conference. During Lon Nol’s rule the United States continued to bomb the country indiscriminately, killing hundreds of thousands of people, mostly peasants, in a futile attempt to stop Vietnamese communists from moving through the countryside. The United States dropped three times the tonnage on Cambodia that fell on Japan during World War II, atom bombs included. > [...] > The disregard for life was staggering, and well understood in Southeast Asia. Traumatized refugees flooded Cambodia’s cities. After the US-backed coup that deposed him, the ousted prince, Sihanouk, published a book of memoirs titled My War with the CIA. “We refused to become US puppets, or join in the anti-communist crusade,” he wrote. “That was our crime.” He threw his support behind the small, shadowy, and strange group of Marxists he had repressed while in power. The Khmer Rouge, as he called them in the old colonial language, were the only ones fighting against Lon Nol and the US Army, which was wiping out entire swathes of the population. Pol Pot was convinced of the necessity of armed struggle by the annihilation of the PKI in Indonesia. There ~1 million people were killed with the encouragement of the US and Britain, who supplied arms, kill lists, and promises of economic development. [2] > In a “historical lessons” document composed in early 1977, Pol Pot looked back on the 1966 period as follows: “If our analysis had failed, we would have been in greater danger than [were the communists] in Indonesia. But our analysis was victorious, because our analysis was agreed upon, because most of our cadres were in life-and-death contradiction with the enemy; the enemy sought to exterminate them constantly.” After Vietnam invaded Cambodia and put a stop to the Khmer Rouge's Killing Fields: [3] > The United States chose to recognize the remnants of the Khmer Rouge at the United Nations, keeping its tiny regime alive, and refusing to recognize the Vietnamese-allied government. This would last for years. Partly, it was a way to appease Carter’s new ally in Beijing. But Benny knew that it was something else too. “They hated Vietnam too much,” Benny said. “They couldn’t forgive them for winning the war.” [4] > And to insure that Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge would fight the Vietnamese occupiers, the Carter Administration helped arrange continued Chinese aid. > "I encourage the Chinese to support Pol Pot," said Zbigniew Brzezinski, the national security adviser at the time. "The question was how to help the Cambodian people. Pol Pot was an abomination. We could never support him, but China could." > At the United Nations, the United States, along with most countries of Europe and Asia, gave the Cambodia seat to the Khmer Rouge Government by itself and, after 1983, in coalition with other anti-Vietnamese Cambodian groups. > All attempts even to describe the Khmer Rouge regime as genocidal were rejected by the United States as counterproductive to finding peace. Only in 1989, with the beginning of the Paris peace process, was the word genocide spoken in reference to a regime responsible for the deaths of more than a million people. [1][2][3] - The Jakarta Method, chapters 2, 4, and 10 (also contains more detailed sources) [4] - https://www.nytimes.com/1998/04/17/world/death-of-pol-pot-the-diplomacy-pol-pot-s-end-won-t-stop-us-pursuit-of-his-circle.html https://www.nytimes.com/1998/04/17/world/death-of-pol-pot-th...

by creato 5y ago

pphysch 5y ago

> It’s pretty easy to look at North Korea, Cambodia, or Eastern Europe during the Cold War and say “hmm, it’s worth going to extreme lengths to prevent this from happening elsewhere”. That may have been misguided in many instances, but the basic motivation is sound. Careful, this is literally Moscow's reason for its invasion of Ukraine -- to prevent the rise of a hostile fascist entity in its frontyard.

solveit 5y ago
A bad actor claiming reasonable motivation does not make the motivation unreasonable... Obviously you have to also be sincere (debatable in Russia's case) and correct (Russian claims are simply wrong).
- pessimizer 5y ago
  Russian claims of an interest in controlling the government of Ukraine are at least as legitimate as US claims of an interest in controlling Korea, or Afghanistan.
  - solveit 5y ago
    And is the Ukrainean state actually fascist? How about Korea? In the absence of UN intervention, would there have arisen an authoritarian state that was a menace to not only its own citizens but every neighbouring country? Clearly Ukraine is not fascist and Korea would have been. There is a difference.
    - pphysch 5y ago
      North Korea is fascist, but harmlessly so. Despite endless flexing and threat inflation, they haven't actually done much harm since invading the South 70 years ago. The main problem with fascism in Nazi Germany, Zionist Israel, and Banderite Ukraine is that these fascist states have overt policies of ethnic cleansing. IOW the "fascism" part isn't necessarily bad (unless you are a liberal chauvinist), it's the ethnic cleansing part that is bad.
      - kelnos 5y ago
        > Banderite Ukraine This is something that... doesn't really exist today? I mean, sure there are still nazis in Ukraine, even in its government and military, but by and large it doesn't seem that they're anywhere near a majority or have significant influence... despite what Putin's propaganda would like us to believe. > IOW the "fascism" part isn't necessarily bad (unless you are a liberal chauvinist) If you truly believe that, I don't think you're going to have a productive discussion on this topic here. Most people here (myself included) would not characterize hard-right authoritarianism that way. I believe that form of government is objectively bad for the people under it, at least those outside the ruling class.
        pphysch 5y ago
        > If you truly believe that, I don't think you're going to have a productive discussion on this topic here. Of course; many folks here are ideologically hyper-individualists, liberals, liberal anarchists, libertarians, etc. The idea that various collectivisms including "fascism" are okay is offensive to those ideologies. However, the onus is not on me to pander to their ideological limitations.
      - throwaway894345 5y ago
        In what sense is NK’s fascism “harmless”? In the nuclear sense or in the oppression sense or something else?
      - solveit 5y ago
        I suppose you're not concerned about the misery they inflict on their own citizens? While they don't do ethnic cleansing per se (not many ethnicities to cleanse in North Korea), they absolutely do wipe out entire bloodlines for crimes of a single member. And I won't even get into the rest of their human rights record. Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, they also semi-regularly engage in armed conflict with South Korea, killing usually tens of people, and they occasionally kidnap foreign nationals. Admittedly small fare for a rogue state. They also have nukes but it must be fine since they haven't used them yet.
  - throwaway894345 5y ago
    Yes, but the salient distinction is that the US doesn’t want to control either place.
kelnos 5y ago
Except Ukraine isn't a "hostile fascist entity", and Putin knows that. Ukraine is (well, sadly, was) in danger of becoming more democratically- and West-aligned, which Putin (irrationally, IMO) feared, but my take on it is that he's really motivated mostly by fallen-empire envy. (Granted, that's just my opinion; I don't know what Putin is actually thinking.)
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- pphysch 5y ago
  We're seeing the fascism part of full display as Zelensky refuses to surrender, instead preferring to throw civilian bodies to the altar in sacrifice of the Nation. Imagine cheering on Saddam Hussein as he hopelessly hung onto power and sacrificed thousands of innocents. This is precisely what the Western establishment media is doing right now, modulo Zelensky, because he's the "good guy". The hostile part has been obvious for 8 years, and escalated last year. 14,000 dead, war declared on Russian Crimea last year, etc.
  - pegasus 5y ago
    Is that you, Putin?

quantum_solanum 5y ago

The US killed millions of people in North Korea, and was also largely responsible for the Khmer Rouge taking power in Cambodia in the first place.

thevagrant 5y ago
Can you explain further? "In the 1970s, the Khmer Rouge were largely supported and funded by the Chinese Communist Party, receiving approval from Mao Zedong; it is estimated that at least 90% of the foreign aid which was provided to the Khmer Rouge came from China." https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khmer_Rouge https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khmer_Rouge
- quantum_solanum 5y ago
  [1] > In 1970, the United States had orchestrated a coup to oust Prince Sihanouk, and installed Lon Nol, a general who was supposed to be Cambodia’s Suharto. His forces trained in Bandung, not far from the site of Sukarno’s 1955 Afro-Asian Conference. During Lon Nol’s rule the United States continued to bomb the country indiscriminately, killing hundreds of thousands of people, mostly peasants, in a futile attempt to stop Vietnamese communists from moving through the countryside. The United States dropped three times the tonnage on Cambodia that fell on Japan during World War II, atom bombs included. > [...] > The disregard for life was staggering, and well understood in Southeast Asia. Traumatized refugees flooded Cambodia’s cities. After the US-backed coup that deposed him, the ousted prince, Sihanouk, published a book of memoirs titled My War with the CIA. “We refused to become US puppets, or join in the anti-communist crusade,” he wrote. “That was our crime.” He threw his support behind the small, shadowy, and strange group of Marxists he had repressed while in power. The Khmer Rouge, as he called them in the old colonial language, were the only ones fighting against Lon Nol and the US Army, which was wiping out entire swathes of the population. Pol Pot was convinced of the necessity of armed struggle by the annihilation of the PKI in Indonesia. There ~1 million people were killed with the encouragement of the US and Britain, who supplied arms, kill lists, and promises of economic development. [2] > In a “historical lessons” document composed in early 1977, Pol Pot looked back on the 1966 period as follows: “If our analysis had failed, we would have been in greater danger than [were the communists] in Indonesia. But our analysis was victorious, because our analysis was agreed upon, because most of our cadres were in life-and-death contradiction with the enemy; the enemy sought to exterminate them constantly.” After Vietnam invaded Cambodia and put a stop to the Khmer Rouge's Killing Fields: [3] > The United States chose to recognize the remnants of the Khmer Rouge at the United Nations, keeping its tiny regime alive, and refusing to recognize the Vietnamese-allied government. This would last for years. Partly, it was a way to appease Carter’s new ally in Beijing. But Benny knew that it was something else too. “They hated Vietnam too much,” Benny said. “They couldn’t forgive them for winning the war.” [4] > And to insure that Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge would fight the Vietnamese occupiers, the Carter Administration helped arrange continued Chinese aid. > "I encourage the Chinese to support Pol Pot," said Zbigniew Brzezinski, the national security adviser at the time. "The question was how to help the Cambodian people. Pol Pot was an abomination. We could never support him, but China could." > At the United Nations, the United States, along with most countries of Europe and Asia, gave the Cambodia seat to the Khmer Rouge Government by itself and, after 1983, in coalition with other anti-Vietnamese Cambodian groups. > All attempts even to describe the Khmer Rouge regime as genocidal were rejected by the United States as counterproductive to finding peace. Only in 1989, with the beginning of the Paris peace process, was the word genocide spoken in reference to a regime responsible for the deaths of more than a million people. [1][2][3] - The Jakarta Method, chapters 2, 4, and 10 (also contains more detailed sources) [4] - https://www.nytimes.com/1998/04/17/world/death-of-pol-pot-the-diplomacy-pol-pot-s-end-won-t-stop-us-pursuit-of-his-circle.html https://www.nytimes.com/1998/04/17/world/death-of-pol-pot-th...