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Noam Chomsky has had a remarkable career, but he's really old and was never anywhere within shouting distance of the political center. Neither is Current Affair

Noam Chomsky has had a remarkable career, but he's really old and was never anywhere within shouting distance of the political center. Neither is Current Affairs, for what it's worth. His argument seems to be that Putin's belligerence is effectively an act of God, and that our only choice from now until eternity is to submit to it. Dr. Chomsky's childhood was apparently so long ago, he's forgotten that appeasing a bully only ever makes him worse. For the record, no country is capable of making another country's citizens resist an invasion to the last man. Look what happened to the army in Afghanistan. Despite what Russian state TV is telling you, Ukrainians want to fight far more desperately than the rest of the world wants them to. They all grew up learning about the Holodomor, for one thing. And that was true even before Putin razed a bunch of their major cities and killed tens of thousands of people. The US is just providing weapons—many of them old and Soviet-made, no less—to a people desperate to protect themselves from what they clearly see as a fate at least as bad as, if not worse than, death. Nothing about this is inevitable. The world works however the people in it want it to work. We can build a better one, or we can all decide that we're OK repeating the endless brutality of the past. The West has (imperfectly, sporadically) chosen the former since the fall of Nazi Germany, and the result, despite all the missteps, has been an unprecedented era of global peace and prosperity. Russia was welcome to join this fraternity in the 90's, but instead was consumed by corruption and mob rule and retreated inward to misguided nationalism and xenophobia. It seems to have been forgotten in Russia that the Soviet Union was a disaster, and its primary victims were its own citizens. Stalin murdered tens of millions of his own people. It promulgated a culture that installed bloodthirsty dictators who were almost as bad in dozens of countries, and whose ideology was so ineffective that it led to devastating famine in many communist countries. It gave us Chernobyl. For all the talk about hating Nazis, the USSR (and, increasingly, Putin's regime) much more closely resembled Nazi Germany than any country you'd recognize nowadays, except maybe China or North Korea. Soviet vassal states all voted to leave the USSR by >80% margins the second the regime collapsed. Russia is hell-bent on being recognized as a great power, but there's little to substantiate that claim. The country has been hollowed out economically by seemingly endless and endemic corruption. It turns out the military is only really good at committing war crimes. Russia's two greatest military victories—a point of great national pride—are both seen by historians as much more akin to enemy self-owns than great acts of brilliance or might. Its intelligence agencies have likely been the single most destabilizing force in world politics over the last hundred-plus years, dating back to the Tsars. Many of the most persistent and idiotic conspiracy theories—e.g. the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, the CIA creating AIDS as a weapon to use against Black people—are literally fabrications of Russian intelligence programs. Your dictator deliberately creates refugee crises around "enemy" countries with the aim of exploiting their compassion and generosity to cause political unrest. And you're either one of the only countries brazen enough to regularly carry out state-sponsored assassinations, or the only ones sloppy enough to keep getting caught. You even cheat at the f--king Olympics. Case in point, here's a list of Russian oligarchs who have conveniently decided to commit suicide after killing their families in the last two months: https://www.newsweek.com/every-russian-oligarch-who-has-died-since-putin-invaded-ukraine-full-list-1700022 https://www.newsweek.com/every-russian-oligarch-who-has-died.... It's amazing how many of them have fallen from tall buildings over the years, too. You're right, as long as Russia has a bunch of nukes, they'll be treated with a certain amount of deference. But don't conflate fear—which Putin wields very effectively—with respect, which will never, ever be earned on the world stage through this kind of behavior. You can't butcher and threaten your way to esteem. It's a lesson Xi could stand to learn as well.

russiano 4y ago
I am not sure there is such a thing as "respect" at the very high level. The public opinion is easily swayed and important actions are dictated by pragmatism >Despite what Russian state TV is telling you I am trying to read as many different sources as I can. I think the only thing that every party could agree on is that ukrainians are fighting harder than expected. Nearly every other event and opinion is controversial and you have to check many sources first to get a vague idea of what's going on. The fog of war is real, despite what Twitter's collective opinion is telling you >Your dictator deliberately creates refugee crises around "enemy" countries with the aim of exploiting their compassion and generosity to cause political unrest Right, our dictator bombed Libya back to the stone age and killed Gaddafi who kept economic migrants from countries devastated by our colonial past and present at bay. Oh, wait, I am not from France! >The country has been hollowed out economically by seemingly endless and endemic corruption >Case in point, here's a list of Russian oligarchs who have conveniently decided to commit suicide after killing their families Even the thought that another great purge has begun fills my heart with warmth and childlike joy
- orochi235 4y ago
  > I am not sure there is such a thing as "respect" at the very high level. The public opinion is easily swayed and important actions are dictated by pragmatism This seems like a convenient way of just hand-waving away the entire concept of morality. Maybe this is how Russians view the world, but it's not how anyone else does. They say this is part of the problem with Putin: he just can't conceive of a world where every entity isn't a CIA or FSB puppet. It also illustrates why the civilized world feels like it can't in good conscience keep trading with a nation that acts like this. It's not like this whole thing materialized out of thin air. Ukraine has been trying to free itself from Russia's grasp for decades. Everything that's happened there has Putin's fingerprints all over it: puppet leaders who promise one thing and then betray their people to Russia; the jailing of former leaders on garbage corruption charges; the red-handed vote rigging; the not-very-well-concealed assassinations. This isn't the norm anywhere else in the developed world. Another hallmark of Putinist rhetoric is whataboutism. I mean, when everything you do is so cynical and violent, I guess it's the only real defense you have. Debating what actually happened in Libya is an enormous distraction—which may be the entire point—but the US had nothing to do with that uprising until Gaddafi sent a column of tanks after a bunch of poorly-armed rebels and the world reacted in horror. Was it a mistake to intervene? Maybe. But that's nowhere comparable to straight-up invading a peaceful country (twice!). It's funny to hear anyone in Russia hand-wringing about the well-being of "economic migrants." Russia is one of the most ethnically segregated countries in the world and has done absolutely nothing for refugees anywhere except create more of them. It's widely believed that Putin's intervention in Syria was designed to displace as many civilians into Europe as possible, with the goal of causing a populist backlash. It may be downright evil, but he's gotten away with it for years. In terms of which sources to trust, the Russian government has done nothing but lie to everybody for the last 20 years. US intelligence accurately predicted the invasion even when it seemed to take most Russian soldiers by surprise. There's all kinds of primary-source war footage, if you can stomach it. And Putin's objectives keep drastically changing, which sure makes any claims that he's succeeding seem suspect. As does the really harsh media crackdown and the threats to jail people for years just for saying the word "war." You don't have to aggressively "sway" public opinion like that when the truth is on your side. > Even the thought that another great purge has begun fills my heart with warmth and childlike joy I really hope you're kidding. Those things never stop where they're intended to, and it's certainly not your interests they're being carried out in.

russiano 4y ago

I am not sure there is such a thing as "respect" at the very high level. The public opinion is easily swayed and important actions are dictated by pragmatism >Despite what Russian state TV is telling you I am trying to read as many different sources as I can. I think the only thing that every party could agree on is that ukrainians are fighting harder than expected. Nearly every other event and opinion is controversial and you have to check many sources first to get a vague idea of what's going on. The fog of war is real, despite what Twitter's collective opinion is telling you >Your dictator deliberately creates refugee crises around "enemy" countries with the aim of exploiting their compassion and generosity to cause political unrest Right, our dictator bombed Libya back to the stone age and killed Gaddafi who kept economic migrants from countries devastated by our colonial past and present at bay. Oh, wait, I am not from France! >The country has been hollowed out economically by seemingly endless and endemic corruption >Case in point, here's a list of Russian oligarchs who have conveniently decided to commit suicide after killing their families Even the thought that another great purge has begun fills my heart with warmth and childlike joy

orochi235 4y ago
> I am not sure there is such a thing as "respect" at the very high level. The public opinion is easily swayed and important actions are dictated by pragmatism This seems like a convenient way of just hand-waving away the entire concept of morality. Maybe this is how Russians view the world, but it's not how anyone else does. They say this is part of the problem with Putin: he just can't conceive of a world where every entity isn't a CIA or FSB puppet. It also illustrates why the civilized world feels like it can't in good conscience keep trading with a nation that acts like this. It's not like this whole thing materialized out of thin air. Ukraine has been trying to free itself from Russia's grasp for decades. Everything that's happened there has Putin's fingerprints all over it: puppet leaders who promise one thing and then betray their people to Russia; the jailing of former leaders on garbage corruption charges; the red-handed vote rigging; the not-very-well-concealed assassinations. This isn't the norm anywhere else in the developed world. Another hallmark of Putinist rhetoric is whataboutism. I mean, when everything you do is so cynical and violent, I guess it's the only real defense you have. Debating what actually happened in Libya is an enormous distraction—which may be the entire point—but the US had nothing to do with that uprising until Gaddafi sent a column of tanks after a bunch of poorly-armed rebels and the world reacted in horror. Was it a mistake to intervene? Maybe. But that's nowhere comparable to straight-up invading a peaceful country (twice!). It's funny to hear anyone in Russia hand-wringing about the well-being of "economic migrants." Russia is one of the most ethnically segregated countries in the world and has done absolutely nothing for refugees anywhere except create more of them. It's widely believed that Putin's intervention in Syria was designed to displace as many civilians into Europe as possible, with the goal of causing a populist backlash. It may be downright evil, but he's gotten away with it for years. In terms of which sources to trust, the Russian government has done nothing but lie to everybody for the last 20 years. US intelligence accurately predicted the invasion even when it seemed to take most Russian soldiers by surprise. There's all kinds of primary-source war footage, if you can stomach it. And Putin's objectives keep drastically changing, which sure makes any claims that he's succeeding seem suspect. As does the really harsh media crackdown and the threats to jail people for years just for saying the word "war." You don't have to aggressively "sway" public opinion like that when the truth is on your side. > Even the thought that another great purge has begun fills my heart with warmth and childlike joy I really hope you're kidding. Those things never stop where they're intended to, and it's certainly not your interests they're being carried out in.