Utisz wrote: ↑Sat Mar 05, 2022 6:37 am
They are, to date, the only country to voluntarily give up their nuclear weapons (albeit impotent ones).
Actually not true, South Africa did too between 1990/1991. Like Israel (who actually covertly helped them obtain the weapons) they were never a member of the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) as so were an unofficial 'nuclear' power. Although this wasn't technically equivalent because they had no nuclear armed rival within their neighbourhood who could feasibly blackmail them, and besides the conditions for South Africa's need of a deterrence were dissolving away by that point.
Spain also was seriously considering an independent nuclear deterrence between the 1960s to when they entered the then EC. Franco decided against it as he didn't want American sanctions, although France gave a lot of logistic support. France, which didn't join the NPT until much later, actually aided Israel, South Africa and Spain all try to develop independent nuclear deterrents as they were fearful of the effects of the US (and UK) having a monopoly of these weapons. Spain kept the program after the transition to democracy but ultimately used this as one of their few bargaining chips to enter the EC on good terms given the relative poverty of the country at the time.
My understanding is Argentina and Brazil also had early nuclear weapons programs that were bought to an end by the signing of the Treaty of Tlatelolco in 1967 although both countries were late signatories to the Non Proliferation Treaty (as were France, Spain, S. Africa, etc.). India, Pakinstan and Israel never signed it. I mean Saudi Arabia and Iran are members of the NPT and it is an open secret they are building nukes as a counter to each other.
The truth is that treaty relied a great deal on the USSR and USA providing mutual nuclear umbrellas which meant independent deterrents were a moot point, that doesn't really apply so much now in an increasingly multipolar world. Which also makes a nuclear war more likely now in some ways, as the conditions and scripts in which they might be use are more complex and poorly understand than they were in the Cold War. The situation in which they would have been deployed in the Cold War was a Soviet invasion of Western Europe across the Fulda gap between East and West Germany. Both sides analysed and understood this arrangement intensely, and it was well known that the West had a disavantage in conventional forces which is why NATO open signalled a first use policy (of tactical battlefield nukes). But the signals and escalation levels were clear and well understood, albeit the situation was more tense because of the posibility of a proxy war outside Europe being the trigger for one inside it. In some ways the situation now is the reverse, the Soviet Union lost conventional superiority to new American technology and doctrine in the late 80s as was demonstrated by the Iraqi army being dismembered in the Gulf War even before the Soviet Union collapsed. The situation now faced by Russia is akin to that faced by NATO in the Cold War, they are the likely first users of battlefield tactical nukes due to the inferiority of Russian forces even in spite of the Serdyukov reforms of the last 15 years.
The triggers in Europe now are more complicated, probably the biggest NATO hamstring is the Sulwalski gap between Belarus and Kaliningrad and that would be a clear signal of a full-scale war between NATO and Russia and an attempt to choke the Baltic states from the rest of Europe. The Baltic states are clearly the weak spot in NATO's defence and probably the most tempting targets for Putin being ex-Soviet Republics (albeit it ones that were not entirely recognised by the West after their annexation by Stalin in 1940). The problem is there are many, many others ways in which we might end up scaling the escalation ladder, many within Ukraine but also the Transnistrian situation in Moldova and a Romanian intervenion to help their ethnic brothers, the rumbling situation in Bosnia, the entry to NATO of Finland and Sweden, a possible revolution in Belarus, Hungary or France or some other country pulling out of NATO and allying themselves with Russia.
I honestly don't see how Russia can realistically use conventional force, even without NATO intervention to turn countries like Poland, Romania, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary back into obedient satellites (energy dependency only gets you so far), although maybe Putin is playing for the long game there. If the long term goal of Putin is to reincorporate Poland as part of new reborn Russian empire as Putin's favourite philosopher Dugin suggests this is probably something akin to a declaration of war on the whole West not unlike the German invasion of Poland in 1939 and I can't see how the West wouldn't risk nuclear war to prevent that unless it was announcing its own position as a Russian satellite.
Madrigal wrote: ↑Wed May 04, 2022 3:08 pm
I don't think Ireland is in danger, but if I were in a NATO country, I'd be looking at other countries to live in.
I'm not sure Putin makes much of a distinction between NATO and EU countries based on his understanding of geopolitics. After all the EU does have mutual aid (rather than defence) clause also albeit it much weaker and watered down that NATO Article V.
Senseye wrote: ↑Sun Apr 10, 2022 4:35 am
I'm surprised Navalny is still alive.
Given the shit going down in Ukraine, it's obvious Putin is a full blown psychopath who feels no remorse about anything. One might think a suspicious Navalny death would prove inconvenient for Putin from a p.r. perspective, but given the ridiculous level of propaganda on the state controlled Russian media these days, Navalny's passing could be easily glossed over or simply never mentioned.
Or he is useful in some way. Navalny has a coloured past and so Western support for him can easily be parlayed into accusations of Western hypocrisy for audiences receptive to that. Similar to the situation with the far-right Azov battalion in Ukraine*.
* Of course both sides use far-right mercenaries and paramilitaries (see Russia's Wagner group). Let's be honest Nazis and fascists, like Islamic fundamentalists (c.f. the Chechens), have a level of brutality and purpose that makes them useful shock troops for all involved.
Madrigal wrote: ↑Thu Mar 10, 2022 4:00 pm
Just haven't had the time to post here since. I'm frustrated the talks failed again today. Is this guy really prolonging the war on his people because he won't give up the Donbass? What the fuck does he expect will happen if this is allowed to continue? Part of me thinks Zelensky is stalling for NATO involvement, which would be criminal if true. The more this lasts the more I think this guy is letting his people be slaughtered.
Small countries always want to keep the conflict going as long as a bigger partner can come in by hook or by crook and get them a better outcome. It is classic realpolitik. That is true of Ukraine now and was true of Castro's calculations in 1962 too - which is why Castro never forgave Khruschev for negotiating a settlement.
Dot wrote: ↑Sat Mar 05, 2022 7:37 am
This seems to connect to a recurring issue. Ukrainians also weren't trained on the most modern weapons which is why weapon supplies from neighboring countries (notably Germany) have been less than optimal. But these practical factors don't change the narrative.
This is why the West is supplying Ukraine with Soviet weaponry that their armed forced are familiar with that several Eastern European countries have large stock piles of like Poland and Romania (as well as Finland due to their neutral status in the Cold War). For example the UK is supplying Poland with Challenger tanks (which the Poles will have time to train in) so they are free to send T-72s to Ukraine. An exception to this are the Stringer missles, as the Mujadeen in Afghanistan showed they don't need that much professional training to be a major threat.
Madrigal wrote: ↑Wed Mar 02, 2022 4:49 pm
the USSR sent troops to fight Franco and Mussolini's fascist forces in a prelude to WW2
Well, sort of. They sent a few tank crews and fighter pilots, but Stalin never supported the Republic with anywhere near same level of military force that Germany and Italy did the Nationalists, which involved whole legions of ground troops, airbases in Mallorca bombing Spanish cities etc. Partially because he couldn't due to logistical problems and partially because he saw them as a lost cause and partially because he was more interested before Munich in 1938 in trying to come to a mutual defense pact with Britain and France against Germany which meant some pretense of not breaking neutrality too much.
But anyway, he did manage to eliminate a lot of internationally pesky Trotskyists and anarchists and ship a bunch of gold back to Moscow so it wasn't all bad for him.
Dot wrote: ↑Sat Mar 05, 2022 11:34 am
I think Arendt's quote here fits, since Putin is trying to immerse himself and Russia in a past era: “one of the greatest advantages of the totalitarian elites of the twenties and thirties was to turn any statement of fact into a question of motive.”
Hmm, that quote is in a specific context:
https://progressivegeographies.com/2020 ... quotation/
jyng1 wrote: ↑Thu Mar 03, 2022 11:05 pm
I'm waiting for a Ukrainian strike on Russian soil.
https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/bl ... 022-04-27/
Madrigal wrote: ↑Wed Mar 02, 2022 7:53 pm
Did you hear about that article that popped up on Russian state media announcing that Ukraine was once again rightfully a part of Russia, and it was quickly taken down as if it had been a mistake? I am thinking Putin wants to mindfuck the West into believing his endgame is keeping all of Ukraine so that he can bargain for neutrality and demilitarization.
I'm not sure, I think Putin does genuinely believe and want this. He is imbided in Russian nationalist and Orthodox philosophy and does seem to think Russia has a great civilisation role as the third Rome that goes back to Vladimir the Great baptism in Crimea in 987 and the holy triune unity of Russia, Belarus and Ukraine - the All-Russian nation. I mean, he has a painting of Peter the Great - who was given Kiev by Poland in exchange for his neurtalising the Crimean Tartars let us not forget - in his office. It's important to understand what people want and what they talk about. I feel this is one of the great failings of both the liberal West and much of the left wing. Not that this is any new - people had rationalisations for Hitler too in the past. I sense liberal Westerners are so caught up in their Western Christian morality, which they swim in as if a fish, that they fail to notice certain other people have other values and are willing to fight against them. I saw this same error with respect to Islamic fundamentalists, with Russia, with their anachronistic interpretations of history. A failure to actually listen to what people are saying, understand their values and interpret their actions from that, instead of seeing everything as a cover or inventing convoluted explanations that would explain ultimately their respect for liberal values in the end. It's not that complicated - I remember understanding this in terms of understanding how different ancient people were in their moral values than us. This lack of being able to put oneself in another's mind leads to some really bad decisions and also failure to see many obvious signals..
Now despite all that Putin does play within what he sees as a realist situation, though I wonder if his many, many years in power or his recent isolation may have warped his perception of it. That is to say they won't neccessarily go for the maximalist version of some ideal or that they are incapable of a compromise. But I don't really see a lasting peace as Putin does seem to have a vision of how to remake the world, even if that means a applying a series of tactics and realpolitik coup de mains to get to where he wants to be eventually. Dima Vorobiev, who worked for the Russian government, lives there and who knew Putin and posts on Quora is very good on this. Strategic uncertainty is a very good way to keep your enemy unbalanced. It's also a good way to increase the change of a nuclear war.
It's also the case that Putin probably sees Eastern Ukraine up to Kiev as a higher priority. The Western part was too heavily westernised by the Polish-Lithuanian commonwealth and the Austro-Hungarian Empire - both of which empires he blames as having invented Ukrainian nationality to destroy a unified Russian identity - to be whole-heartedly Russian and so this one would have to imagine to be the primary target. The late Zhirinovsky, court jester of the Putin regime, openly talked about a deal whereby Poland and Hungary got parts of Western Ukraine in exchange for recognising Russia's control of the West.
Madrigal wrote: ↑Wed Mar 02, 2022 4:49 pm
You're making it sound as if it's everyone's god-given and democratic right to join NATO if that's what they really want. I ask you then whether you also think it's everyone's god-given right to hold a gun to their neighbor's head.
I mean there are two sides to this. Russia's worry about nuclear missiles near their border - which of course was also a bone of contention in the Cuban Missle Crisis with the Jupiter missles in Turkey that Kennedy quietly withdrew a few months later as part of quid-pro-quo with Khruschev. And independent countries that, since 1918 have consistently feared their overweening and powerful neighbours and have sought mutual defence pacts and protection from military superior countries, whether that was the little entente of Poland, Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia and France in the interwar period or even in the Warsaw pact in a way to the extent their existence was guarenteed against a theoretically revanchist Germany - still a great fear of Poland in the run up to Germany reunification in 1991, the CDU in Germany supported the recovery of previously German lands east of the Oder as a major campaign point well into the 1960s. These are countries that fear invasion, or at least an erosion of the soveriegnty, due to military force akin to what happened to Czechslovakia in 1938 or 1968, in Hungary in 1956, in Poland in 1939 or in 1980/81 or Finland in 1939, or even just nuclear blackmail. The thing is that the proposed solution to this - a Finlandisation that took place after the Continuation war was predicated on a certain set of rules of good faith, a robust level of non-intervention in domestic affairs in exchange for a neutral foreign policy and some mild level of censorship - requires some level of good faith. The USSR and Finland had a fairly good level of mutual understanding of the boundaries (at least until Gorbachev came along). I am not sure any of these countries is prepared to believe in Putin's ability to uphold this sincerely. Maybe 10 years ago - and the Budapest agreement in a very different time was a statement of this. But now given the increasingly revanchist tone of his political discourses it is hard to imagine it is possible now. In a strange way we forget Putin was also a product of the Bush years and some of the realpolitik he saw take place then by that administration are probably the lessons he learnt was that pushing the boundaries just a bit further and ignoring the sovereignty of other countries gets you results with little real blowback beyond handwringing. It kind of speaks to the unravelling of the tacit rules on both sides that have led to a much higher possibility of misunderstanding.
jyng1 wrote: ↑Thu May 05, 2022 3:52 am
This nuclear posturing is just because Russia is losing and losing badly.
I guess it is worth remembering that the use of a tactical nuclear weapon would likely not go down well with his ally (or at least enemy of an enemy) China at all given the long term implications that has for Chinese security. So presumably that is a factor in holding off that possibility for now.
Senseye wrote: ↑Wed May 04, 2022 11:49 pm
And I hear his likely successor (Patrushev) is an even more ruthless psycho. Fun times indeed.
I mean that is another possible reason why Putin has become more aggressive in recent years. Not because he is mad but in order to stay one step ahead of a public opinion enraged and radicalised online (and let's not pretend this hasn't happened in the West too) who support even more hardline nationalists nursing grievances for Russia's post-1989 treatment. Who might try to take things into their own hands and precipitate a coup. In reality we don't really know.
Madrigal wrote: ↑Tue Mar 01, 2022 5:30 pm
As for the number of people who support Putin, it's been pretty crazy but there is a sizeable portion of the international left (not the far left, but the kind of weird-ass illiberal left that has blindly supported people like Maduro and Assad in recent years) that have always seen Putin's challenges to US hegemony favorably and are basically supporting this war 100%.
George Galloway is probably the greatest exponent of this in the UK. They are nicknamed 'tankies' by the very online. Although he has also become increasingly connected to the alt-right and Steve Bannon figures in recent years too, which is ironic as it involved his dumping his old fan base of Muslim supporters who were the core of his old 'Respect' anti-New Labour coalition and going for a more anti-immigration, anti-Islam line. Some might say this is all about political opportunism but perish the thought I might be so cynical. And, for what it is worth I suspect a lot of the alt-right love of Putin is the wish they could have governments of their own to enact revanchist landgrabs of their old territory, but given the mutual incompatible nature of these territorial demands in different countries it doesn't bode well for a coherent 'nationalist international' movement in the long run, but Russian demands are all sufficiently far from what would overlap these to be a relatively safe fellow traveller.