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Back when I read books, one of my favorites was "My traitor's heart" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Traitor%27s_Heart https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Traito

by xrd 4y ago

Back when I read books, one of my favorites was "My traitor's heart" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Traitor%27s_Heart https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Traitor%27s_Heart) which is a riveting, honest and balanced (IMHO) look at post-apartheid from a man who fled the country in the 80s, then returned to revisit his homeland, acknowledging his own family's terrible history in SA. I also found this funny: The SA government became involved to avoid having a hostile Soviet-aligned country on their doorstep facilitating an armed resistance against their rule (at least that’s what they claimed, and there are reasons to believe them) - the ANC was involved, because, well, they saw themselves (and many members still do, as I pointed out above) as a revolutionary member of a community of anti-imperialist forces aimed at the emancipation of the African proletariat. I read over and over about strategists in all governments playing their chess pieces to avoid domination by other world powers. There is no laughable irony in what happened in Afghanistan when you read back about the soviet and US involvement and the revolving door of friendships that turned into enemies, and then back. It seems crazy that we have a bonafide war in Ukraine right now, and so many world powers are avoiding getting involved directly, but are constantly involved indirectly and surreptitiously over and over to great detriment. I wonder how the people in power form their opinions about what actions are necessary, and how the people making these decisions climb higher and higher into positions of power and decision making when the results all seem so awful. I suppose I'm only hearing about the bad outcomes, not the successes. Does anyone have examples of a world power funding a revolutionary force and it ending in peace and prosperity?

neves 4y ago
>Does anyone have examples of a world power funding a revolutionary force and it ending in peace and prosperity? China. This is the greatest example of all. Search for "Soviet support for Mao"
Synaesthesia 4y ago
I wouldn't say that South Africa ended in peace and prosperity, for some yes. It embraced a US style neoliberal solution which led to great outcomes for the top of the population, and probably why it was so praised by elites. But really it's a country with a lot of problems, as the.blog post details. But we still have a lot of advantages which could be to our benefit. I also enjoyed My Traitor's Heart"
bobthepanda 4y ago
Depends on the definition of “peace”, “prosperity”, and for whom. The French helped out the American revolution and the two haven’t had a major military conflict. Although it did end up bankrupting the French monarchy and causing the Revolution.
- ununoctium87 4y ago
  Arguably good outcomes for the French as well
  - christkv 4y ago
    Well the French Revolution lead to the Napoleonic wars. While military deaths are invariably put at between 2.5 million and 3.5 million, civilian death tolls vary from 750,000 to 3 million. Thus estimates of total dead, both military and civilian, range from 3,250,000 to 6,500,000.
    - cm2187 4y ago
      It’s what makes me laugh about Pinker’s The Better Angels of Our Nature. He has a whole chapter about how terrible was the spanish inquisition and how life was much better after the enlightments. But if you plot the number of deaths of the inquisition (a few thousands over a century), then those of the french revolution (in the 100ks), napoleonic war, ww1, ww2 and nazism, and then the wider communism, I see an exponential increase. It’s only capitalism and nuclear weapons that brought peace to an otherwise out of control spiral of violence, caused by crazy ideologues.
      - Beltalowda 4y ago
        > if you plot the number of deaths of the inquisition (a few thousands over a century), then those of the french revolution (in the 100ks), napoleonic war, ww1, ww2 and nazism, and then the wider communism, I see an exponential increase. That is of course very selective; I have no read Pinker's book, but I don't think he argues that horrible wars never occurred, just less so. It's important to keep in mind that the population has also grown in the intervening period. For example, Caesar's conquest of Gaul cost the lives of about a million Celts, with a further million enslaved (estimates). While "1 million" and even "2 million" seems low compared to, say, the second world war, it was a huge percentage of the population, up to as much as ~25%. There are many such truly staggering figures if you look at history. No one really remembers it in the same way as we do more modern atrocities, which is why we can have fun Asterix & Obelix cartoons about it, but the numbers of historical battles are often truly staggering. I don't know if Pinker was right or wrong, but I do think you really need to actually look at the numbers to get a good overview throughout the centuries and you can't just rely on "armchair analysis" for this sort of thing, as there will be a strong bias towards more recent events.
bpodgursky 4y ago
Are you suggesting that the US is funding a revolutionary force in Ukraine?
watwut 4y ago
Classifying Ukraine war as revolution is a step that not even Russia took. Also, real help for Ukraine started now. The power were happy for Russia to take pieces for years with only token support. Or even, with American president trying to extort Ukrainian president to persecute familly of his political opponents so that he can cheat elections in USA ...
seydor 4y ago
> funding a revolutionary force and it ending in peace and prosperity? It is "revolution" when it ends in positive (for the west) outcomes It is "terrorism" when it does not
- the_lonely_road 4y ago
  What about the cuban revolution? This comment is about as low brow as they come.
  - eli_gottlieb 4y ago
    Yeah, everyone knows that it's revolution when the outcomes are positive for (checks notes) the Soviet Union or the Chinese Communist Party.
colpabar 4y ago
> I wonder how the people in power form their opinions about what actions are necessary, and how the people making these decisions climb higher and higher into positions of power and decision making when the results all seem so awful. I suppose I'm only hearing about the bad outcomes, not the successes. The simple answer is that the US military industrial complex dominates our foreign policy decisions. "Success" is measured in how much money was given to boeing and how much boeing agrees to give back through political donations and "speaking fees" after the politicians are out of office.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
colechristensen 4y ago
>Does anyone have examples of a world power funding a revolutionary force and it ending in peace and prosperity? Western Europe in and post WWII would seem to apply. Israel is pretty prosperous if you're Israeli. The problem is that basically wherever you go in the world, you can find lack of peace and prosperity, and you can usually find some reason or another to attribute some blame to one power or another involved in the last major change. Any location you name will welcome a "what about X!?" The whole world though, the whole of human civilization is now and has been for a long time on a significant upward trend in peace and prosperity. If you smooth out the bumps there is a very significant increase in every metric you could think was positive. Consistently. For centuries. Is that a result of world power using force? Probably to a significant extent.
- hutzlibu 4y ago
  "If you smooth out the bumps there is a very significant increase in every metric you could think was positive" The problem here is solid data, but I believe we are at an all time high with the need and use of antidepressants and co. "has been for a long time on a significant upward trend in peace and prosperity" Prosperity paid for with a coming climate collaps and deforestation and constant fear of nuclear holocaust. I am really not an back-to-the-trees kind of guy, but knowing rough and wild nature life and knowing and seeing the systematic suffering in our modern meatfactories (whether for humans or pigs) I remain very sceptical that everything is so much better now, than how it used to be.
  - gumby 4y ago
    > I believe we are at an all time high with the need and use of antidepressants and co. And I am glad people are getting help they need. I wish more were.
  - helloworld11 4y ago
    >I am really not an back-to-the-trees kind of guy, but knowing rough and wild nature life and knowing and seeing the systematic suffering in our modern meatfactories (whether for humans or pigs) I remain very sceptical that everything is so much better now, than how it used to be. Yes, unequivocally, and by every real measure life is better now than it has ever been for more people than ever before. You claim to "know rough and wild nature life" but how do you propose forcing it upon 8 billion human beings with your self indulgent logic? Nothing stops you from living this supposed rough life consistently, yet here you are regularly commenting on HN, participating in tech industries and contributing to the use of a wast, worldwide high technology infrastructure that extracts resources from the Earth to sustain itself. It's not just meat farms that contribute to massive natural resource use. The aside about antidepressant use as an argument against the previous claim about improved living standards is just bizarre, because for one thing it does the opposite of negate a claim of improved conditions for people and secondly, it's such a minor thing relative to billions of people living longer, better, more calorically and medically stable lives than has ever been the case in any previous century.
lmm 4y ago
> Does anyone have examples of a world power funding a revolutionary force and it ending in peace and prosperity? Northern Ireland, although the US funding was always indirect/deniable.
- disgruntledphd2 4y ago
  Let's be clear (and I'm again proving the point at the top of the thread) the US support for the Provisional IRA didn't cause peace to spontaneously break out in Northern Ireland. That was a bunch of pro democratic forces in both communities, aided by the official US involvement. All the funding of the IRA achieved was pointless, violent deaths.
  - lmm 4y ago
    On the contrary, without the actions of the IRA the UK would never have been willing to offer the kind of equitable terms that make a lasting peace possible. You can see the shift in their negotiating stance. I don't like it but you can't ignore the results.
    - disgruntledphd2 4y ago
      I'm not sure about that, given the existence of the Sunningdale agreement: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunningdale_Agreement https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunningdale_Agreement
- MrManBooks 4y ago
  I'm not sure if you are trolling, or unbelievably clueless if you think funding paramilitaries in NI has helped lead to peace and prosperity.
janef0421 4y ago
North Vietnam received aid from USSR during the Vietnam war, and that has ended fairly well. Whether it would be appropriate to describe North Vietnam in that time period as "revolutionary" is somewhat more complex, though.
- throwaway-blaze 4y ago
  In what way would you say it's "ended fairly well"? They are saddled with a putatively communist government that simply rent-seeks bribes and other assorted parasitic encumbrances from the private sector that has grown since liberalization. The people are certainly better off financially, thanks largely to the creativity and drive of entrepreneurs and workers. But go down to the public square and challenge the powers that be verbally. See how that ends for you. Hint: they still send a bill for the bullets to the family.
  - janef0421 4y ago
    You answered the question yourself; People are better off financially. Yes, that is due to entrepreneurs and workers, but the government is essential in creating the environment where that can happen.
wrp 4y ago
I may be displaying a shameful lack of knowledge about modern history, but I can't think of any revolution besides the American that didn't result in a worsening of social and economic conditions for at least a generation. The only maybe I can think of is the Meiji Restoration in 19th century Japan, which was not foreign funded and was deliberately not referred to as a "revolution".
- pirate787 4y ago
  There are internal revolutions and revolutions against a colonial power, which seem to fare better. I think the breakup of the Soviet Empire (the velvet revolution etc) has brought widespread prosperity, if not complete peace. Of the internal kind, there's Augusto Pinochet -- Chile is still the 2nd wealthiest country in Latin America in terms of per capita GDP (Uruguay being 1st)
  - tshaddox 4y ago
    > Chile is still the 2nd wealthiest country in Latin America in terms of per capita GDP (Uruguay being 1st) Do what now? From what I have read it seems like Panama, Chile, and several Caribbean island nations all have higher per-capita GDP than Uruguay.
refurb 4y ago
Does anyone have examples of a world power funding a revolutionary force and it ending in peace and prosperity? Greece? Post-WW2, the US-aligned powers funded a anti-communist drive in Greece, which successfully kept Greece on this side of the Iron Curtain.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
mikrotikker 4y ago
> I wonder how the people in power form their opinions about what actions are necessary, and how the people making these decisions climb higher and higher into positions of power and decision making when the results all seem so awful. I suppose I'm only hearing about the bad outcomes, not the successes. Maybe paying more attention to geopolitics would yield this answer to you. The base of most conflicts is usually a resource war or outright coups to enable imperialism. With your example of Ukraine, the finding of large oil and gas fields under the east, west and Crimean regions in 2012 sealed it's fate. The Maidan revolution 2 years later was nothing more than a coup setup by Jonn McCain and Lindsey Graham. Then Shell moved in to look at how to extract said resources. Then it would have been likely Ukraine would be used as a base to cut off Russia's access to the middle east through the Volgograd Gap in order to more easily topple Assad, allowing the Qatar-Turkey pipeline to complete it's route through Syria, thus giving Europe an out from the Russian gas monopoly. Of course the Russians couldn't stand for any of that, so they formed their own opinions about what actions were necessary. The action they chose ended up hurting them with Germany being forced into, (not even forming their own opinions), the necessary actions of dropping the Nord Stream pipelines, adding $100bn to their military budget and signing a deal with Qatari's for access to the yet to be completed Qatar-Turkey pipeline. Of course all of this benefits the respective populations and corporations allowing them to climb into higher positions of power. We like to think that politicians don't think further than the next election cycle and it's mostly true. But the deeper structures in the respective state, the states needs, and corporate profit ARE in fact playing the long game, causing the politicians to almost stumble upwards in some twisted version of natural selection. When you take into account that US war corps get to test new weapons systems against a near peer adversary without having to sacrifice US lives, it's a perfect storm. Like that old Bill Hicks bit... "Bring up G12 Tommy; says here it destroys everything but the fillings in their teeth!"

by xrd 4y ago

neves 4y ago

>Does anyone have examples of a world power funding a revolutionary force and it ending in peace and prosperity? China. This is the greatest example of all. Search for "Soviet support for Mao"

Synaesthesia 4y ago

I wouldn't say that South Africa ended in peace and prosperity, for some yes. It embraced a US style neoliberal solution which led to great outcomes for the top of the population, and probably why it was so praised by elites. But really it's a country with a lot of problems, as the.blog post details. But we still have a lot of advantages which could be to our benefit. I also enjoyed My Traitor's Heart"

bobthepanda 4y ago

Depends on the definition of “peace”, “prosperity”, and for whom. The French helped out the American revolution and the two haven’t had a major military conflict. Although it did end up bankrupting the French monarchy and causing the Revolution.

ununoctium87 4y ago
Arguably good outcomes for the French as well
- christkv 4y ago
  Well the French Revolution lead to the Napoleonic wars. While military deaths are invariably put at between 2.5 million and 3.5 million, civilian death tolls vary from 750,000 to 3 million. Thus estimates of total dead, both military and civilian, range from 3,250,000 to 6,500,000.
  - cm2187 4y ago
    It’s what makes me laugh about Pinker’s The Better Angels of Our Nature. He has a whole chapter about how terrible was the spanish inquisition and how life was much better after the enlightments. But if you plot the number of deaths of the inquisition (a few thousands over a century), then those of the french revolution (in the 100ks), napoleonic war, ww1, ww2 and nazism, and then the wider communism, I see an exponential increase. It’s only capitalism and nuclear weapons that brought peace to an otherwise out of control spiral of violence, caused by crazy ideologues.
    - Beltalowda 4y ago
      > if you plot the number of deaths of the inquisition (a few thousands over a century), then those of the french revolution (in the 100ks), napoleonic war, ww1, ww2 and nazism, and then the wider communism, I see an exponential increase. That is of course very selective; I have no read Pinker's book, but I don't think he argues that horrible wars never occurred, just less so. It's important to keep in mind that the population has also grown in the intervening period. For example, Caesar's conquest of Gaul cost the lives of about a million Celts, with a further million enslaved (estimates). While "1 million" and even "2 million" seems low compared to, say, the second world war, it was a huge percentage of the population, up to as much as ~25%. There are many such truly staggering figures if you look at history. No one really remembers it in the same way as we do more modern atrocities, which is why we can have fun Asterix & Obelix cartoons about it, but the numbers of historical battles are often truly staggering. I don't know if Pinker was right or wrong, but I do think you really need to actually look at the numbers to get a good overview throughout the centuries and you can't just rely on "armchair analysis" for this sort of thing, as there will be a strong bias towards more recent events.

bpodgursky 4y ago

Are you suggesting that the US is funding a revolutionary force in Ukraine?

watwut 4y ago

Classifying Ukraine war as revolution is a step that not even Russia took. Also, real help for Ukraine started now. The power were happy for Russia to take pieces for years with only token support. Or even, with American president trying to extort Ukrainian president to persecute familly of his political opponents so that he can cheat elections in USA ...

seydor 4y ago

> funding a revolutionary force and it ending in peace and prosperity? It is "revolution" when it ends in positive (for the west) outcomes It is "terrorism" when it does not

the_lonely_road 4y ago
What about the cuban revolution? This comment is about as low brow as they come.
- eli_gottlieb 4y ago
  Yeah, everyone knows that it's revolution when the outcomes are positive for (checks notes) the Soviet Union or the Chinese Communist Party.

colpabar 4y ago

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

colechristensen 4y ago

>Does anyone have examples of a world power funding a revolutionary force and it ending in peace and prosperity? Western Europe in and post WWII would seem to apply. Israel is pretty prosperous if you're Israeli. The problem is that basically wherever you go in the world, you can find lack of peace and prosperity, and you can usually find some reason or another to attribute some blame to one power or another involved in the last major change. Any location you name will welcome a "what about X!?" The whole world though, the whole of human civilization is now and has been for a long time on a significant upward trend in peace and prosperity. If you smooth out the bumps there is a very significant increase in every metric you could think was positive. Consistently. For centuries. Is that a result of world power using force? Probably to a significant extent.

hutzlibu 4y ago
"If you smooth out the bumps there is a very significant increase in every metric you could think was positive" The problem here is solid data, but I believe we are at an all time high with the need and use of antidepressants and co. "has been for a long time on a significant upward trend in peace and prosperity" Prosperity paid for with a coming climate collaps and deforestation and constant fear of nuclear holocaust. I am really not an back-to-the-trees kind of guy, but knowing rough and wild nature life and knowing and seeing the systematic suffering in our modern meatfactories (whether for humans or pigs) I remain very sceptical that everything is so much better now, than how it used to be.
- gumby 4y ago
  > I believe we are at an all time high with the need and use of antidepressants and co. And I am glad people are getting help they need. I wish more were.
- helloworld11 4y ago
  >I am really not an back-to-the-trees kind of guy, but knowing rough and wild nature life and knowing and seeing the systematic suffering in our modern meatfactories (whether for humans or pigs) I remain very sceptical that everything is so much better now, than how it used to be. Yes, unequivocally, and by every real measure life is better now than it has ever been for more people than ever before. You claim to "know rough and wild nature life" but how do you propose forcing it upon 8 billion human beings with your self indulgent logic? Nothing stops you from living this supposed rough life consistently, yet here you are regularly commenting on HN, participating in tech industries and contributing to the use of a wast, worldwide high technology infrastructure that extracts resources from the Earth to sustain itself. It's not just meat farms that contribute to massive natural resource use. The aside about antidepressant use as an argument against the previous claim about improved living standards is just bizarre, because for one thing it does the opposite of negate a claim of improved conditions for people and secondly, it's such a minor thing relative to billions of people living longer, better, more calorically and medically stable lives than has ever been the case in any previous century.

lmm 4y ago

> Does anyone have examples of a world power funding a revolutionary force and it ending in peace and prosperity? Northern Ireland, although the US funding was always indirect/deniable.

disgruntledphd2 4y ago
Let's be clear (and I'm again proving the point at the top of the thread) the US support for the Provisional IRA didn't cause peace to spontaneously break out in Northern Ireland. That was a bunch of pro democratic forces in both communities, aided by the official US involvement. All the funding of the IRA achieved was pointless, violent deaths.
- lmm 4y ago
  On the contrary, without the actions of the IRA the UK would never have been willing to offer the kind of equitable terms that make a lasting peace possible. You can see the shift in their negotiating stance. I don't like it but you can't ignore the results.
  - disgruntledphd2 4y ago
    I'm not sure about that, given the existence of the Sunningdale agreement: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunningdale_Agreement https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunningdale_Agreement
MrManBooks 4y ago
I'm not sure if you are trolling, or unbelievably clueless if you think funding paramilitaries in NI has helped lead to peace and prosperity.

janef0421 4y ago

North Vietnam received aid from USSR during the Vietnam war, and that has ended fairly well. Whether it would be appropriate to describe North Vietnam in that time period as "revolutionary" is somewhat more complex, though.

throwaway-blaze 4y ago
In what way would you say it's "ended fairly well"? They are saddled with a putatively communist government that simply rent-seeks bribes and other assorted parasitic encumbrances from the private sector that has grown since liberalization. The people are certainly better off financially, thanks largely to the creativity and drive of entrepreneurs and workers. But go down to the public square and challenge the powers that be verbally. See how that ends for you. Hint: they still send a bill for the bullets to the family.
- janef0421 4y ago
  You answered the question yourself; People are better off financially. Yes, that is due to entrepreneurs and workers, but the government is essential in creating the environment where that can happen.

wrp 4y ago

I may be displaying a shameful lack of knowledge about modern history, but I can't think of any revolution besides the American that didn't result in a worsening of social and economic conditions for at least a generation. The only maybe I can think of is the Meiji Restoration in 19th century Japan, which was not foreign funded and was deliberately not referred to as a "revolution".

pirate787 4y ago
There are internal revolutions and revolutions against a colonial power, which seem to fare better. I think the breakup of the Soviet Empire (the velvet revolution etc) has brought widespread prosperity, if not complete peace. Of the internal kind, there's Augusto Pinochet -- Chile is still the 2nd wealthiest country in Latin America in terms of per capita GDP (Uruguay being 1st)
- tshaddox 4y ago
  > Chile is still the 2nd wealthiest country in Latin America in terms of per capita GDP (Uruguay being 1st) Do what now? From what I have read it seems like Panama, Chile, and several Caribbean island nations all have higher per-capita GDP than Uruguay.

refurb 4y ago

Does anyone have examples of a world power funding a revolutionary force and it ending in peace and prosperity? Greece? Post-WW2, the US-aligned powers funded a anti-communist drive in Greece, which successfully kept Greece on this side of the Iron Curtain.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

mikrotikker 4y ago

> I wonder how the people in power form their opinions about what actions are necessary, and how the people making these decisions climb higher and higher into positions of power and decision making when the results all seem so awful. I suppose I'm only hearing about the bad outcomes, not the successes. Maybe paying more attention to geopolitics would yield this answer to you. The base of most conflicts is usually a resource war or outright coups to enable imperialism. With your example of Ukraine, the finding of large oil and gas fields under the east, west and Crimean regions in 2012 sealed it's fate. The Maidan revolution 2 years later was nothing more than a coup setup by Jonn McCain and Lindsey Graham. Then Shell moved in to look at how to extract said resources. Then it would have been likely Ukraine would be used as a base to cut off Russia's access to the middle east through the Volgograd Gap in order to more easily topple Assad, allowing the Qatar-Turkey pipeline to complete it's route through Syria, thus giving Europe an out from the Russian gas monopoly. Of course the Russians couldn't stand for any of that, so they formed their own opinions about what actions were necessary. The action they chose ended up hurting them with Germany being forced into, (not even forming their own opinions), the necessary actions of dropping the Nord Stream pipelines, adding $100bn to their military budget and signing a deal with Qatari's for access to the yet to be completed Qatar-Turkey pipeline. Of course all of this benefits the respective populations and corporations allowing them to climb into higher positions of power. We like to think that politicians don't think further than the next election cycle and it's mostly true. But the deeper structures in the respective state, the states needs, and corporate profit ARE in fact playing the long game, causing the politicians to almost stumble upwards in some twisted version of natural selection. When you take into account that US war corps get to test new weapons systems against a near peer adversary without having to sacrifice US lives, it's a perfect storm. Like that old Bill Hicks bit... "Bring up G12 Tommy; says here it destroys everything but the fillings in their teeth!"