Hacker News Reader

Comment by ArchD | Hacker News Reader

I wonder how much of the authoritarian tendencies of the government of certain countries (e.g. Russia, China, Iran) is driven by a desire to maintain the stability and control presumably needed to resist hostile actions by the US empire that ironically professes freedom and democracy.

View on HN

That makes sense to me, and it's also the impression I got from watching this interview with Vladimir Putin:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m6pJd6O_NT0

I don't think Putin is fully honest, but ignoring what he says doesn't seem like a good idea either, and I found the interview fairly enlightening.

I think an important clue here is that all the authoritarian regimes (Russia, Belarus, China, Iran, North Korea, etc.) seem much more likely to form alliances with one another even in the absence of an obvious shared national interest.

An interesting case study may be the recent secular coup attempt in Turkey. Secular values are closer to western values, and according to this editorial in Turkish state news, when given the chance to come out in favor of democracy and political stability (by opposing the coup) or western values (by not opposing it), Europe chose the latter

https://www.aa.com.tr/en/analysis/opinion-the-july-15-coup-h...

Basically I see the modern geopolitical divide as being countries focused on human rights and secular western values on the one hand (US and its allies) and countries focused on stability on the other hand (Russia/China and friends). Both positions have some merit in my view. For example, I think Putin makes a good point that the US screwed up in Libya--we were aiming to achieve human rights but we ended up just destabilizing the region. IMO there has to be a balance between both human rights and stability considerations.

Chomsky is fighting the last war when he talks about US actions in past decades in South America. Back then the global divide was capitalism vs communism. Now it's about human rights vs stability IMO.

Do you even have basic knowledge of communist history? Please read some.

All communist parties had party cleansing before they even gain power in their own countries. And the first thing they did after they gain power was newer round of party cleansing, killing millions. No, communist parties are not book clubs. In mao’s expression: 干革命不是请客吃饭。

This is a good starting point: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Purge

That's besides the point. Countries can change their systems; political regimes are not permanent and don't exist in a vacuum but respond to the environment. Who is to say that US actions did not give more domestic political legitimacy to the CPC so that democratic reform/revolution was down-regulated?

> I wonder how much of the authoritarian tendencies of the government of certain countries (e.g. Russia, China, Iran) is driven by a desire to maintain the stability and control presumably needed to resist hostile actions by the US empire that ironically professes freedom and democracy.

There is a really interesting passage in Ron Suskind's book 'One Percent Doctrine' about the 2004 release of Bin Laden video, released four days before the US presidential election (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004_Osama_bin_Laden_video). The intelligence consensus was that this was released to help re-elect Bush, as the Bush-led US gives legitimacy to Al Queda's actions as much as much as Al Queda's actions legitimize US war on terror.

edited: corrected the book reference.

Authoritarian tendencies existed well before the US came to power. The best defence against the US 'empire' is to avoid authoritarian tendencies.

Tell that to Mohammad Mosaddegh, the democratically-elected Prime Minister of Iran until some hostile action by the CIA.

Or, consider Saudi Arabia, which has a monarchy. They are on very friendly terms with the US.

I've just listed two examples out of many that can be easily found by anyone who is interested to know.

Please do, you have a single example of Iran and another that is the complete opposite of what I proposed. Then compare that to the powers US has had conflicts with during the 20/21st century, either directly or by proxy.

The point was also 'best defence', not 'option that completely negates any possible US threat'.

On odds, what country will most likely come into conflict with the US on probability, one of authoritarian rule or one of elected leaders?

Or accept our puppet dictators and our NGO "help."

Reply on news.ycombinator.com