4 ms·

I dont think that the argument that the west might be a hypocritical imperialist power but it isnt quite as bad as Russia is the rallying cry the Economist seem

by pydry 5y ago

I dont think that the argument that the west might be a hypocritical imperialist power but it isnt quite as bad as Russia is the rallying cry the Economist seems to think it is. The west is fighting for a unipolar world but the rest of the world would probably rather have a multipolar world. It gives them more options.

jacquesm 5y ago
We already have a multipolar world. Effectively there are now two superpowers left, the US and China, each with their own approach to politics and leadership. What this war has mostly done is laid bare the illusion that if we interconnect the world strongly by trade that we can avoid war. This is what will cause a massive re-drawing of the lines in the near future and that is what was at stake in Ukraine. Putin pulled away the curtain in a way that leaves no doubt about this and the aftereffects of that are far larger than Ukraine itself.
- zaphirplane 5y ago
  I think the opposite, the us and NATO response is to show the world that say invading Taiwan will be very painful Invading by NATO members is as always ok, Libya Syria Afghanistan Iraq
  - jacquesm 5y ago
    I'm sure that is part of the motivation, but it definitely isn't the main motivation, besides that the situation around Taiwan and China is not comparable in many ways to the one between Russia and Ukraine.
  - Cthulhu_ 5y ago
    Were any of those invasions unprovoked? Was Russia's invasion of Ukraine provoked? Like, has there been evidence of the claimed nazis (which AFAIK isn't grounds for invasion) or whatever? Did Ukraine strike first?
    - jacquesm 5y ago
      Don't get drawn into whataboutism.
    - pydry 5y ago
      The Azov brigades are pretty openly nazi and were explicitly and openly used by the non nazi Ukrainian government to cling on to the ethnically russian bits of ukraine as they were trying to declare independence from kyiv. If western ukraine were trying to break away and kyiv used nazi soldiers to cling on to lviv im pretty sure that the western propaganda organs (and by extension, you) wouldnt feel so ambivalent about the swastika tattoos and their war crimes and yea, it probably would be used as grounds for an intervention.
- k__ 5y ago
  To me that whole thing seems to polarize even more. I don't know how good Russia will come out of this. But at least in Europe it seems to weld countries together a bit more and moving focus away from US help to being more self-sustained in many different aspects. In the best case it can lead the Europe to become a real global contender besides China and USA again.
  - jacquesm 5y ago
    Putin has done more for European unity and (public and political) support for NATO in five weeks than the rest of the countries in Europe and NATO combined could do in the last three decades.
  - timeon 5y ago
    > in Europe it seems to weld countries together Maybe this is true but there is also huge division in Europe. You can see many countries blaming Germany. Fidesz keeping power. Le Pen rising again in France. Pro-Russian parties likely to win in 2 years in Slovakia... and so on.
- kkfx 5y ago
  USA and China actually, contrary to most common beliefs, are on the same social design line, their élites both consider citizens as sheep to be treated like any farming animals, following classic Gustave Le Bon, Eduard Bernays considerations on general population. Both are really deeply neoliberist [1] with just marginal differences in appearances, not in substance: USA try to appear a Democracy while is a corporatocracy led by few historically rich and influential families not much different than Chinese élites, they both want a mean poor population that need to live paycheck to paycheck to obey, they both have a narrative apparatus and media control to makes people imaging a mock reality. Yes they are competing for third party resources and they booth need them with no choices... [1] some might consider this word an error, it's not. It's an old scam liberist have done to be called "liberals" for masking better their real nature
  - spaetzleesser 5y ago
    “élites both consider citizens as sheep to be treated like any farming animals,” That’s pretty much the natural state of human society. It sometimes gets shaken up by wars or revolutions and slowly goes back to that state during peacetime.
    - kkfx 5y ago
      Well, effectively looking at human history that's seems to be a common pattern, but since we have evolved from caves to the stars... I hope things might be different now that we can have far more wealthy people and far more people of culture than before. Surely a certain cohort of citizens will always be unable to improve much, that's part of natural selection, but the size and nature of such cohort vary, actual regimes, both westerns formal (not substantial) democracies and classic eastern/southern dictatorships seems to consider 99% of humans as farming animals... I have encountered various kind of people, some really hopeless by nature, and NOT necessary poor (just yesterday a friend, reasonably middle class, with a comfortable life and a nice job asked me what I think about a "revolutionary investment scheme", a classic Ponzi's one so badly presented even a little child smell the stench miles away) but others are just trapped in social organization while having a formal potential the society fails to let them develop. Nothing is perfect, of course, but from perfection to the actual state of things...........
matthewdgreen 5y ago
> The West is fighting for a unipolar world This may be what the West is fighting for, in a cynical fashion. And it’s not exactly wrong: “the West” is a lot of people and some have motivations that are less than noble. But an alternative argument is that the West is fighting for liberal democracy as an alternative to authoritarian governance (or “democracy in name only” authoritarianism.) It's become fashionable recently to claim that liberal democracy is on the ropes, and to argue that the future will be full of effective authoritarian governments (despite over a century of such governments being out-competed by modern democracies.) The Ukraine war is a hell of a showcase for the weakness of that strategy. At the end of the day, the real lesson the world should take from this war is that democracy (and particularly liberal democracy) simply works better than authoritarian systems: not because it’s perfect, but because it gives societies a way to course-correct and recover from corruption and stupid mistakes. During peaceful times it's really easy to forget this and get frustrated by democracy: there’s a lot of appeal to the idea of handing governance over to an effective strongman. But even if you somehow luck into a brilliant strongman, dictators eventually age and make mistakes. When that inevitably happens your government won't have the structures necessary to correct them. The performance of the Russian military in Ukraine is an extreme example that shows how naturally self-limiting this strategy can be.
- pydry 5y ago
  >an alternative argument is that the West is fighting for liberal democracy Trying to reverse the results of a referendum where 80% voted and 90% voted yes and multiple western polls confirm the result doesnt exactly show a resounding commitment to democracy. Nor does being besties with Saudi Arabia. From an imperialistic perspective both make perfect sense though. Saudi is a global energy chokepoint and Crimea is a regional strategic chokepoint for a rival empire.
  - matthewdgreen 5y ago
    I choose not to give much weight to a referendum held under military occupation. More generally, "the West is a lot of different people." Many of them are lousy and have made lousy decisions, such as the support for Saudi Arabia. Democracy doesn't mean perfection, and I'm hugely in favor of making it better. I don't think supporting the current basket of authoritarian regimes on offer is "better". We can agree to disagree.

by pydry 5y ago

jacquesm 5y ago

We already have a multipolar world. Effectively there are now two superpowers left, the US and China, each with their own approach to politics and leadership. What this war has mostly done is laid bare the illusion that if we interconnect the world strongly by trade that we can avoid war. This is what will cause a massive re-drawing of the lines in the near future and that is what was at stake in Ukraine. Putin pulled away the curtain in a way that leaves no doubt about this and the aftereffects of that are far larger than Ukraine itself.

zaphirplane 5y ago
I think the opposite, the us and NATO response is to show the world that say invading Taiwan will be very painful Invading by NATO members is as always ok, Libya Syria Afghanistan Iraq
- jacquesm 5y ago
  I'm sure that is part of the motivation, but it definitely isn't the main motivation, besides that the situation around Taiwan and China is not comparable in many ways to the one between Russia and Ukraine.
- Cthulhu_ 5y ago
  Were any of those invasions unprovoked? Was Russia's invasion of Ukraine provoked? Like, has there been evidence of the claimed nazis (which AFAIK isn't grounds for invasion) or whatever? Did Ukraine strike first?
  - jacquesm 5y ago
    Don't get drawn into whataboutism.
  - pydry 5y ago
    The Azov brigades are pretty openly nazi and were explicitly and openly used by the non nazi Ukrainian government to cling on to the ethnically russian bits of ukraine as they were trying to declare independence from kyiv. If western ukraine were trying to break away and kyiv used nazi soldiers to cling on to lviv im pretty sure that the western propaganda organs (and by extension, you) wouldnt feel so ambivalent about the swastika tattoos and their war crimes and yea, it probably would be used as grounds for an intervention.
k__ 5y ago
To me that whole thing seems to polarize even more. I don't know how good Russia will come out of this. But at least in Europe it seems to weld countries together a bit more and moving focus away from US help to being more self-sustained in many different aspects. In the best case it can lead the Europe to become a real global contender besides China and USA again.
- jacquesm 5y ago
  Putin has done more for European unity and (public and political) support for NATO in five weeks than the rest of the countries in Europe and NATO combined could do in the last three decades.
- timeon 5y ago
  > in Europe it seems to weld countries together Maybe this is true but there is also huge division in Europe. You can see many countries blaming Germany. Fidesz keeping power. Le Pen rising again in France. Pro-Russian parties likely to win in 2 years in Slovakia... and so on.
kkfx 5y ago
USA and China actually, contrary to most common beliefs, are on the same social design line, their élites both consider citizens as sheep to be treated like any farming animals, following classic Gustave Le Bon, Eduard Bernays considerations on general population. Both are really deeply neoliberist [1] with just marginal differences in appearances, not in substance: USA try to appear a Democracy while is a corporatocracy led by few historically rich and influential families not much different than Chinese élites, they both want a mean poor population that need to live paycheck to paycheck to obey, they both have a narrative apparatus and media control to makes people imaging a mock reality. Yes they are competing for third party resources and they booth need them with no choices... [1] some might consider this word an error, it's not. It's an old scam liberist have done to be called "liberals" for masking better their real nature
- spaetzleesser 5y ago
  “élites both consider citizens as sheep to be treated like any farming animals,” That’s pretty much the natural state of human society. It sometimes gets shaken up by wars or revolutions and slowly goes back to that state during peacetime.
  - kkfx 5y ago
    Well, effectively looking at human history that's seems to be a common pattern, but since we have evolved from caves to the stars... I hope things might be different now that we can have far more wealthy people and far more people of culture than before. Surely a certain cohort of citizens will always be unable to improve much, that's part of natural selection, but the size and nature of such cohort vary, actual regimes, both westerns formal (not substantial) democracies and classic eastern/southern dictatorships seems to consider 99% of humans as farming animals... I have encountered various kind of people, some really hopeless by nature, and NOT necessary poor (just yesterday a friend, reasonably middle class, with a comfortable life and a nice job asked me what I think about a "revolutionary investment scheme", a classic Ponzi's one so badly presented even a little child smell the stench miles away) but others are just trapped in social organization while having a formal potential the society fails to let them develop. Nothing is perfect, of course, but from perfection to the actual state of things...........

matthewdgreen 5y ago

> The West is fighting for a unipolar world This may be what the West is fighting for, in a cynical fashion. And it’s not exactly wrong: “the West” is a lot of people and some have motivations that are less than noble. But an alternative argument is that the West is fighting for liberal democracy as an alternative to authoritarian governance (or “democracy in name only” authoritarianism.) It's become fashionable recently to claim that liberal democracy is on the ropes, and to argue that the future will be full of effective authoritarian governments (despite over a century of such governments being out-competed by modern democracies.) The Ukraine war is a hell of a showcase for the weakness of that strategy. At the end of the day, the real lesson the world should take from this war is that democracy (and particularly liberal democracy) simply works better than authoritarian systems: not because it’s perfect, but because it gives societies a way to course-correct and recover from corruption and stupid mistakes. During peaceful times it's really easy to forget this and get frustrated by democracy: there’s a lot of appeal to the idea of handing governance over to an effective strongman. But even if you somehow luck into a brilliant strongman, dictators eventually age and make mistakes. When that inevitably happens your government won't have the structures necessary to correct them. The performance of the Russian military in Ukraine is an extreme example that shows how naturally self-limiting this strategy can be.

pydry 5y ago
>an alternative argument is that the West is fighting for liberal democracy Trying to reverse the results of a referendum where 80% voted and 90% voted yes and multiple western polls confirm the result doesnt exactly show a resounding commitment to democracy. Nor does being besties with Saudi Arabia. From an imperialistic perspective both make perfect sense though. Saudi is a global energy chokepoint and Crimea is a regional strategic chokepoint for a rival empire.
- matthewdgreen 5y ago
  I choose not to give much weight to a referendum held under military occupation. More generally, "the West is a lot of different people." Many of them are lousy and have made lousy decisions, such as the support for Saudi Arabia. Democracy doesn't mean perfection, and I'm hugely in favor of making it better. I don't think supporting the current basket of authoritarian regimes on offer is "better". We can agree to disagree.