U.S. pushes Japan and other allies to join China chip curbs
asia.nikkei.com
asia.nikkei.com
The train's leaving the station without us. There's a political, multipolar, realignment between the Global South, i.e. the non 'golden billion', and Eurasia - and we're not playing a leading role when we should be.
Unipolarity is a unique abnormality throughout history; why do we think the current status quo of the U.S. hegemon is the default for the future?
Moves like this only serve to confirm it.
They are an isolationist authoritarian nation, with already-large and still-growing influence over world politics and economic matters. Perhaps what the West is doing right now to attempt to curb this is the wrong move, but I don't think the "fear-mongering" is unwarranted at all.
Your first part doesn't really go with the second.
I agree, China is very isolationist. But that's precisely why I'm not concerned about this "influence". They're absolutely not interested in converting other countries to their system, they will work with anyone who they can do business with.
Foreign companies have a very large presence in China's internal market. It would be difficult to give a full overview, so I'll give a few examples to illustrate the point:
* Volkswagen has the largest share of the Chinese automobile market.
* China is Nvidia's 2nd largest market (nearly $4 billion in revenue, which is more than Nvidia takes in in the US or the EU).
* Airbus and Boeing dominate the aircraft market in China. Airbus just announced a $17 billion deal two days ago.
* Starbucks runs 6,000 locations in China.
There are countless examples like this. Suffice it to say that China is one of the most important markets for a very large fraction of multinationals.
if the success of the Tiangong space station is any indication, we're not playing a role at all. the Tiangong analysis on HN alone should serve as a sobering wake up call that things like the wolf amendment have basically neutered the US ability to engage with what is by many standards a parity player thats met or exceeded most western technological touchstones.
this chipmaking technology, its not magic or really even exclusive no matter how badly the west wishes it were. its predicated on the fundamentals of well funded STEM education, well funded research and development, intellectual curiosity and a collective motivation and morale to succeed. this country invented Artemisinin, Non-invasive prenatal diagnostic testing for Down Syndrome, synthetic insulin, and even discovered things like Chens prime and finite element methodology.
The last time the US shunned them from a space station they built one that was in many ways better than the ISS. I for one am excited to see what new chip technology emerges in the next few years.
> I for one am excited to see what new chip technology emerges in the next few years.
Will you actually see it, though? Assuming new tech does come out, I expect the techniques and know-how required to manufacture it will only be available to Chinese companies. But hey, the West will be able to buy products with it for cheap, so I guess that's fine!
ask Chinese, they will tell you there is constant US fear mongering in their media. Every year they have a blockbuster where US are the bad guys and China has to fight them. Chinese media is 100% party controlled. They are grooming population for accepting eventual conflict, most likely over Taiwan invasion.
Who is "we"?
Not snark. A deep question.
Answering that will reveal a lot.
I'd love to leave it there as an exercise for the reader, but I can see it would be misinterpreted, or at least potentially so (this isn't about any particular characteristics of our leadership today, either hypothetical or real, my point is much more generic and world-historic than that), so I will expand with this bit: The leadership of the US has for the past several decades essentially been the most powerful leadership in the world. China challenges that now, as does Russia. Of course the leadership wants to stop that. You or I may not care in the slightest, because just because China is a peer force on the world stage or not may not impact our lives greatly, it's not like the only nice place to live in the world is exactly and precisely the most powerful one.But the leadership can care a lot more than the people they lead. This always happens when control and power fades. You can see many instances in history of such leadership of all forms and sources lashing out in rather predictable manners in ways that are oblivious to or even actively negative for the people they lead.
I think the citizenry of the US would generally be better off with a controlled welcome and some space given to these other up-and-coming powers, rather than fighting a war to hold on to power that they can't retain anyhow. I personally think even our military position would be better off, because it's better to retain your force projection ability and not fight, than to expend it uselessly and potentially enter into a situation where you have nothing at all. But a dumbass war on behalf of our leadership at the active expense of our citizenry is likely what we'll get even so.
The US and the (relatively small) global democratic order (of which Japan and Taiwan are a part), is deeply flawed in many ways, but thus far it seems a better system than what China is selling, which is outright and unveiled autocracy and totalitarianism. Complicit in everything wrong with North Korea. It's easy to envy the efficiency of totalitarian regimes like XJ's but none of us would trade citizenship with someone living in it.
China as a geographic area was dominated by superpowers for eons, but they were relatively isolated from half the planet for most of it, separated by mountains, deserts, and oceans as they are. Their history is replete with a changing nature of what "China" was, e.g. the Kara-Khanids were not the Han, though they were an empire. It's a bit intellectually lazy or a function of over-generalization to think of China as being a continuous empire, but it's quite useful rhetorically. Chinese culture is longer-lived than any system of government it's had.
I think it's also a logical fallacy to assume that the status of being an empire is indelible. England was nothing for eons until it became arguably the greatest planet-scale empire for a relatively short time, and then it wasn't anymore. "China" has never been a planet-scale empire. Nobody is expecting the Persians to ever be a shadow of what that empire once was. I'm not sure China has a "rightful-place" more than anyone else. To presume it does also assumes that China will not balkanize over time, and that it survives intact despite its own belligerent and weaselly policies on the global stage.
We have good reason to fear and distrust the US far more, since we’re from countries that were targets of coups, sanctions, bombings or invasions.
Also, Tokyo will likely push for concessions in exchange from Washington regarding military basing and other hot button issues.
This is simply not true, at least to me. Chinese tools used to be cheap and bad. But, these days I find them cheap and better than Japanese expensive tools.
The contentious bit is that local authorities don't have control over this and are overridden by Tokyo. But that's an internal matter.
The same will happen for AI (machine learning).
The United States wouldn’t have gone to the moon in the 1960’s if it weren’t for The Soviet Union.
IP protectionism on the other hand does promote competition[0]. If an inventor is able to create and market a successful product than competition has to invent their own versions. Not through theft, but through innovation. This will mean they do things differently. It also means they will NEED to gain some edge (either reduced cost or higher utility or different niche).
While there was a lot of theft in the space program, it wasn't the same as it is today with the current situation. The supply chain issues mean that innovation still had to occur. The current situation is more like you subcontract a company to manufacture parts for you and then that company says "thanks for the instructions, we'll now just sell our own." There's no innovation pressure in this framework.
[0] Too much protectionism also does hurt. If intellectual rights are provided for too long than a technology that has failed to properly be marketed by the creators is lost to society. Similarly, too broad of protection can also hinder competition. But there is a sweet spot which gives inventors the first rights and isn't too broad. This promotes competition.
https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/aws-sells-assets-...
https://www.geekwire.com/2019/building-wall-around-cloud-chi...
This move is not short sighted. It is simply about not giving China the IP they want to copy. China will get there anyway, just a little slower.
So the best and most ambitious minds in China will go into politics or leave the country.
Throw in the coming demographic collapse I think China's peak is behind us.
Peak growth rate yes; total peak no. China failed to emulate Japan, Taiwan and South Korea's rapid acceleration. They will continue to grow at a faster rate than already wealthy nations but not at double digit speed and nowhere near the speed of Japan. It took Japan 30 years to go from poor to second largest economy. China "opened" in ~1980 and has failed to come close to that rate in 40 years. And as you say there is a time limit on rapid growth because it slows down as the country ages. China is aging too fast to maintain double digit growth which it has already lost for some years now IIRC.
As for PRC talent, no bamboo ceiling and increasing mccarthyism targetting PRC individuals big perk. Most people are happy being mere millionaires than billionaires. And even billionaires fine if you don't go full retard like Ma and try to challenge state regulators. Best of PRC minds are staying in PRC, this isn't the 80s-00s when PRC was sending their best as state initiave to be educated abroad, most of the students going to west now are those with some English proficieny but can't hack it in gaokao. There's a reason why more and more sea turtles are returning to PRC for better prospects. Or why US has to literally sanction Chinese Americans from working in PRC semi.
Plus PRC high skill demographic divident, the kind that drives innovation + high tech, high value development is just starting. The greatest pool of high end talent in human history is being churned out as we speak despite broader demographic decline that only makes PRC more resource independant. PRC won't peak for another 20 years, by then they will likely have sufficiently caught up in most advanced sectors to start eating the west's lunch. The convergence will be PRC closing gap which will erode western dominance by denying PRC market and wrestling shares from emerging economies fine with cheap PRC exports at the expense of west.
It's not about money. Creating a new technology or business is like giving birth and if you are based in China, Xi and his friends can come and rip the baby out of your crib. It doesn't matter how successful or high profile you are, some communist party leader can and will rape you, figuratively and literally (See Peng Shuai).
People take chance if reward offsets. And it's easy money if business aligns with state interests, with Ma being properly fucked over after being warned many times when his ponzi lending proposal scheme. Because prospect of stupid amount money made his brain go dumb dumb and think it was fine challenging regulators. See how PRC hard tech jobs that 5year proposal is prioritizing is seeing explosion in compensation and opportunities when cracked down sectors of soft sci aren't. In which case Xi and his friends come over and give you personal handjobs along with bags of of state subsidies.
Or as if sexual harassment meaningfully impacts competitiveness US business enviroment. Or that sports star is a business leader now? That's like saying kpop / jp idols / hollywood will fail because you can fuck your way to success. As if fucking way to top is CCP exclusive trick.
The fact of the matter remains, more high skilled PRC nationals are staying or returning to PRC than ever to work in well compensated PRC industries where there aren't bamboo ceilings and with recent developments like China initiative, less targetted political prosecution. At least in PRC you get fucked for doing too well, and raped to get ahead, vs in US where PRC nationals are increasingly being fucked and kept down due to whims of domestic politics. Again, PRC is so alluring for Chinese Americans that US has to literally sanction and start kangaroo courts to scare folks from working in China.
You believe it is a short-sighted move, because you only considered those two options, without considering the third one (which is much closer to the current reality than those two).
As others have pointed out, it isn't a choice between "let China develop their own domestic tech on their own by making the US pull out" and "let the US companies grow by developing their stuff in China".
It is a choice between "let China develop their own domestic tech on their own by making the US pull out" and "let China develop their own domestic tech even faster and with a higher chance of success, by allowing them to openly steal the tech developed in China by US companies, all while with China kneecapping and maintaining the de facto power over those US subsidiaries located in China".
The sanctions have no real impact on industrial espionage and the like.
I have no illusions that the industrial espionage will stop entirely as soon as the US pulls out of China. Even now, without pulling out, FBI and DOJ routinely catch their spies red-handed in their attempts to steal tech from within the US territory.
I imagine that after the US pulls out, industrial espionage efforts of China from within the US territory will only increase, as their previous main avenue for that (aka the US subsidiaries located in China) ceases to exist. However, doing so makes things more difficult, risky, and expensive for them, thus slowing down the rate of gains from industrial espionage.
many of the most well known sanctioned nations (north korea, iran, turkiye, etc.) have just made their own stuff to varying degrees, based on how much they aren't allowed to buy.
furthermore bigger nations like china can fire back hard if need be.
we saw how europe's sanctions against russia were met with gas denial.
all in all, sanctions usually don't do much outside of wartime other than piss off the target of said sanctions, and actually push them to rely on you less.
1. In the case of china, we are forcing them to spend more on very high tech, strategic investments, effectively accelerating their march up the value chain.
2. It's true that there is a cost in the extra R&D spending, but there is also a cost in the lost revenue of western chip makers. NVIDIA is going to take a bath -- that will cut into their R&D budget, etc.
So we are also imposing costs on our own R&D spending while accelerating the R&D spending of our adversary - and let's just admit that China is an adversary.
This is a very strange departure from how these types of trade wars have been historically waged. Normally if you want to hurt some countries' industry and help your own, you put a tariff on their stuff and you subsidize your stuff. E.g. make it harder for China to sell their cars here and easier to sell your cars there. You encourage more exports and discourage imports.
What we are doing now is making it harder to sell our stuff there, but no tariff on the importation of Chinese chips into the U.S. So we are discouraging exports without blocking imports. And this policy is supposed to hurt China and help the US, which I find completely baffling.
This is, unfortunately, par for the course with sanctions mania, where the only policy lever we appear to have with anyone is sanctions. These sanctions are economically disastrous for the US and for Western nations generally. The only thing I can think of is that because we don't see the impact when we sanction small nations such as Cuba, we think there will still be no impact when we sanction big economies. But there is an impact, and future economic historians will look on this period of sanctions as being far more economically suicidal than the mania on trade barriers. Because a sanction is just a one way trade barrier -- directed only at yourself and your own industry.
That seems kind of backwards to me. My read of the sanctions is that intelligence indicated that the presence of this tech was accelerating China's (largely espionage-based) development, so the policy answer was to reduce access to the tech.
I can't reference this story[1] enough. The Chinese government literally stole ARM China right out from underneath ARM's nose. This sort of brazen technology heist won't be possible given sanctions.
[1] https://www.semianalysis.com/p/the-semiconductor-heist-of-th...
A lot of the commenters in this thread appear to be completely unaware of how massive of a shift has occurred with the dictatorship of Xi Jinping.
Xi is not Hu Jintao (whom he had marched out of the CCP Congress in public view for maximum humiliation). He is not only a dictator, but also deeply insecure. This isn't another highly competent "engineer turned leader" like his predecessors. Xi is a thoroughly mediocre, lifelong political creature. He has consolidated power to the greatest degree since Chairman Mao, and has turned the CCP into a cult of personality.
He is running the Chinese economy off a cliff, meaning that China's ability to develop the tech domestically is cratering. It's hard to emphasize how different China is than before 2012. If a leader like Hu Jintao was running China, they would be able to develop this tech relatively quickly. But Xi? Everything he micromanages turns to shit.
If you believed such a ridiculous notion, what else do you believe that is false?
What tech would that be?
Btw, China has already surpassed USA in scientific output [1]. Putting their research in applied use is just around the corner, and believing that they can't do it is just wishful thinking.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_number_of...
Another indicator you can look at is R&D expenditure as a percentage of GDP. China hasn't caught up with the US yet, but it has been steadily ramping up: [1].
0. https://www.nature.com/nature-index/country-outputs/generate...
1. https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/GB.XPD.RSDV.GD.ZS?locat...
Also there's no information from that link on who is citing these papers. Maybe it's circular citations.
Seems like a poor measure without further information.
So what the US companies get in the bargain with the US Government to offset their lost revenues due to this measure seems unclear.
Common sense says that making espionage even slightly harder has fantastic results, look at how restrictions on nuclear technology have been successful at preventing proliferation for decades. North Korea only got their nukes after the US lifted sanctions under Clinton for a few years and China helped them
The wisdom and second order effects of those policies is a secondary discussion.
It's OK if country X decides to subsidize sector A or B -- it's just free money for the world. The logic of this is the same as within countries. It's OK if Google uses search to subsidize it's smart phone operations. On the highest layer, it's still capitalism and should still work. We don't kick Google out of US markets just because it's internal departments don't use free markets to allocate goods.
The international free market is still supposed to work even if a country doesn't have internal free markets. That the US is going back on the first shows that in the end, it was always about geopolitics. When free markets aligned with US geopolitics, it was nice to be able to say "oh we're being principled".
Tell that to the American steel industry.
He was mentioning it in connection with the French government of the time (I think he wrote all that down during Napoleon's reign, even though it could have been during the Restoration, too lazy to check) subsidising the export of their "luxury" products, the Sèvres porcelain if I remember correctly. He was explaining that, in effect, the French government was putting money in the pockets of foreign clients/entities.
As such, the same thing will happen (happens) when it comes to US steel industry, even though in this case one also has to take into consideration the opportunity costs of losing the knowhow of that industry for good if it is allowed to die in the face of foreign competition. One could say that today's US taxpayers, by in effect subsidising the US steel industry, are paying for future generations to have the opportunity to build tanks and munitions and other war-related stuff without having to worry about having enough steel stocks at hand.
That is self-proving as false and does not follow automatically what-so-ever. You're talking about mediocre economic theories that don't even make sense in theory.
> That the US is going back on the first
The US has never been the free market in practice or ideology that you're proposing. Not at any point in its history.
The US has very heavily utilized things like tariffs and restrictive trade agreements throughout its history, as have all large economies and without exception. The US has even utilized sanctions and blockades when it sees fit, going back 60+ years. If it was ever close to being a free market, that is well over a century in the past.
I find it astounding that anybody could be confused about the US being a particularly free market economy today. It's not even close to that. All you need is to have a primitive grasp of the scope of its vast economic regulations, its huge welfare state, and taxation to understand that. The US is a bureaucracy-heavy mixed economy at best.
I think we should err on the side of "freer" markets, but market restrictions have their place, and are often an essential tool to achieve good outcomes.
To the extent that anyone believes free markets are good, the usual argument of their goodness does not at all rely on sub-levels to be free markets. Now you might be saying even "free markets are good" is suspect. Attacking that axiom is fine in my book.
> The US has very heavily utilized things like tariffs and restrictive trade agreements throughout its history,
I support this view. However, the early 90s "Washington Consensus" was that in international spheres to talk up how good free markets are. The US should drop that pretense entirely then.
Is that really the case? You mention Google but there's a reason we have antitrust laws and try to keep monopolies under control.
Or take a family, if the mother gives the nephew a lot of spending money, that's also not free markets.
Yet families and startups in the US work well on the country level.
Is chip fabrication on the negative list? I can't find any references to it being on the negative list. On the contrary, I've found references to foreign investment in semiconductors being explicitly encouraged by a few provincial governements.[0]
0. https://cms.law/en/chn/publication/china-releases-its-revise....
China has been in a state of economic warfare since the 1920's.
Would that make you feel better? It would be some steps in the directions of ending hypocrisy and double-standards anyway.
Like there's nothing new about this. Also the market was never free ...
Similarly shouldn't weapons to Russia either, and it would be silly to complained about the free market when they are literally killing people right now.
- Who is ranting about the free market. Republicans? Really just a select few and only in specific contexts. But they haven't ever voted in that interest so I'm not sure this is anything new.
- It feels like it is implying China has the moral upper hand. The same country who takes US invented products and sells them 10x cheaper under a different brand, violating international intellectual property laws. Buy Spot for $75k or Weilan's Alpha Dog or Unitree's Go for $2.5k?
- China complains about US taking their technology and talent while taking US technology and talent. Is this not hypocritical, double-standard protectionism, or even economic warfare?
- The comment implies that one side is morally right and the other isn't. Instead it is quite possible that the two have been engaged in soft economic warfare for decades and that neither is morally "right" (who has the high ground is arguable, but they definitely both are in the mud).
- This comment is boiling the situation down and decades of (complex) context into a singular point of time and singular action. It discourages looking at the events that led to this event and why the choices involved were made. This is bad faith.
So I want to encourage discussion on the topic, but I don't understand how this comment is anything but bait. It is reactionary and promoting reactionary comments. I suggest others don't take the bait.
If I'm wrong in my analysis I'm open to it. But I needed to explain why I don't think this comment is engaging in good faith nor promoting a healthy and fruitful discussion.
This is right out of the USA playbook from the the late 1700s.
<< Under the Patent Act of 1793, the United States barred foreign inventors from receiving patents at the same time as granting patents to Americans who had pirated technology from other countries. “America thus became, by national policy and legislative act, the world’s premier legal sanctuary for industrial pirates. Any American could bring a foreign innovation to the United States and commercialize the idea, all with total legal immunity.” >> [0]
[0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_United_States_paten...
The US doing something bad 200 years ago doesn't justify the bad actions of today. Either it is bad in both cases or it is okay/good in both cases. It is unclear which you are saying because I'm interpreting it as whatbaoutism. That's not productive nor in good faith. Especially referencing something that happened 200 years ago. There were a lot of bad stuff that we did 200 years ago and that doesn't matter who "we" is. Thomas Jefferson was still Secretary of State at this time. The nation was less than 20 years old. That applies to literally every country on the planet. We've all progressed.
But also, this problem was resolved by 1836, when foreigners could be granted patents. Thomas Jefferson had only been dead for 10 years by this time. This is still decades before the civil war and a century before America became part of the global stage. There were only 25 US states at this time and it wasn't long after the Louisiana Purchase happened. Decades before Texas was annexed. So I'm extra confused.
This comment too feels like bait because I can't find any relevance to the conversation at hand. It appears to be pure distraction and not in good faith. No one is saying America didn't do a lot of bad shit in the past (Americans are pretty open about our historical atrocities). But in absolutely no way do historical atrocities justify actions of today. I mean what, are you going to say that the Trail of Tears justifies genocide of Ughygurs or that it justifies Hitler killing the Jews? Clearly it doesn't. All these things are wrong. Now and then. One historical wrong doing in absolutely no way shape or manner justifies modern wrongdoings.
Please don't astroturf.
The US has always done it. It backstabbed the Brits and the French, stealing their nuclear fission research and not giving them access to Manhattan Project. It kept doing corporate spying on everyone including its allies using ECHELON. So much that a few years ago entire US State Dept. diplomat cadre were ordered to do corporate spying by the US State Dept itself.
The US, the UK, all its satellites. It was 40 years of 'free trade and free market for all' cacophony. Everyone were either persuaded to it, or were coup'ed or bombed into doing it.
But now that the US is losing the competition, voila, suddenly free market is not cool anymore.
But its ok - the US can bring back protectionism and mercantilism under the excuse 'national security'. No one will bat an eye in Angloamerica.
> - The comment implies that one side is morally right and the other isn't.
The comment does not imply that. It outright says that. The US has been pushing 'free market' down everyone's throats. Now that it is losing the competition, its literally eating its own words. That's morally wrong.
> This comment is boiling the situation down and decades of (complex) context
There is no complex context in this. The US has always employed double-speak. It was 'free market for me, not for thee'. Even the closest allies were subjected to tariffs and quotas in order to be able to export anything to the US even at the heyday of 'free market'. So it was doublespeak from the start.
Today, we just see the dropping of the public facade of something that the US was always doing. Japanese would know - they got the Plaza Accords. China is bad, because it did not even entertain signing any such sociopathic document.
> The US, the UK, all its satellites. It was 40 years of 'free trade and free market for all' cacophony. Everyone were either persuaded to it, or were coup'ed or bombed into doing it.
I'm not sure why you are cherry picking my argument. This too feels like bait. You're painting with a really broad brush, putting things into neat aggregated boxes, and ignoring the difference between history and current days. I also don't think one country doing wrong in the past (or even currently) justifies another country doing wrong.
Can we just all agree that if something is wrong that it doesn't matter who does it? I've assumed this is such a non-controversial statement that it need not be said, but it appears I am wrong.
It likely feels so because especially the people who live in the US have internalized all the propaganda. You are born into the 'free market' propaganda, and you never notice that it exists. Hence you don't notice any stark difference.
But overseas, the 'free market' propaganda was an immutable cacophony that dominated the privately owned press for ~40 years now. All the neoliberal reforms that were pushed on our countries were pushed by being backed and rationalized on that propaganda.
And now all the principles that were sold to us are being invalidated, being proven to be lies from the start.
> Can we just all agree that if something is wrong that it doesn't matter who does it?
Really, we cannot - there is one country that pushed all of this onto ENTIRE world. Forcing them to adopt its false religion and to privatize, literally sell out everything in every country to corporate profit. We got coups, regime changes, invasions, bombins to make it happen. The US did it. This is still going on. It hasnt gone anywhere. Even as the US itself closing its economy to everyone, its still forcing others to open up its economy.
Calling this out is long overdue. And that is something everyone including you, should do. Because the establishment that is responsible with this has no qualms in destroying its own for profit like it destroyed everyone else. And it is already doing that.
Its amazing how this even needs to be said...
Not sure who you're talking about, the Biden administration has definitely not been "ranting about 'free market'".
I'm thankful every day that I live in the world the US created and shaped, and not the world that was created and shaped by China (or the Soviet Union, or the British Empire)
https://www.forbes.com/sites/arielcohen/2022/09/29/russian-s...
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-russia-turkmenistan-gas-s...
Peeling Europe away from a US alliance through energy partnership and trade, especially trade denominated in Euros which greatly benefited Europeans, was such a powerful lever to play in Russian geopolitical strategy that people claiming Russia blew up their own pipelines and threw this lever away have worms in their brain and simply haven't paid attention to the long term dynamics.
Having Germany/Europe on your side, vs them being on your biggest adversary's side is such an order of magnitude net benefit than saving money on contracts, this is just ridiculous.
Additionally, even if consideration of blowing up the pipelines ever made any sense whatsoever for Russia, blowing them up right now before winter, before further deterioration of Germany/European industrial economy, and before potential financial/energy crisis really bites right around the corner or next year is absurd. If this was a few years from now we could entertain theories of why not having the pipes and trade with Europe is better than having them (it still wouldn't make sense).
But Russia "panic bombing" their own pipelines right before pressure on Europe is about to increase which would potentially get them to capitulate on their sanctions is silly.
This is US propaganda and you bought it. Many different political leaders in congress, the white house, and the administrative state like Victoria Nuland, Ron Johnson, Ted Cruz, Joe Biden, Trump, Marco Rubio, Condoleeza Rice, Lindsey Graham just to name a few have for years attacked the project and promised destruction of Nord Stream.
Anthony Blinken wrote a book in 1988 called "Ally vs Ally" that speculated about blowing up Soviet gas pipelines flowing into Europe, and discussed the Reagan administrations deep opposition to expanding energy trade between Europe and Russia. This is a long term existential threat to US hegemony and dominance of European affairs.
If Russia maybe having to pay a few fees, which I'm sure they could just avoid if they wanted to, was more important than potential energy alliance between Russia and Europe, then multiple US administrations would not have talked and acted to end the project so intensely.
This is another example of the all to common delusional thinking that for some reason, the world hegemon that controls financial system, trade lanes, has massive military power and spending advantage, whose empire is very dependent upon global reserve currency and influence of energy trade, won't actually act like a hegemon and apply their power to suit their interests and thwart rivals building their own power.
What makes you think the US who promised Nord Stream would be stopped, wouldn't stop it with kinetic force and sabotage? This is the Occam's razor, "cui bono" explanation.
Your article claims Russia hasn't called the attacks attacks. They have. Also, it correctly states that destruction of the pipelines "signals a point of no return". Yes, exactly, which is why it makes 0 sense for Russia to do it, and complete sense for US (either directly or through deputized vassals like UK) to do it.
Why would Russia want to reach a point of no return on potential alliance with Germany/Europe against the US?
See Mackinder's heartland theory on potential global power emanating from control of the "world island"/Eurasia:
Who rules East Europe commands the Heartland;
who rules the Heartland commands the World-Island;
who rules the World-Island commands the world
A particular path to this goal that he and many others leading US/NATO/UK security strategy saw was a German/Russia alliance, something US has wanted to prevent for over 100 years. Putin would never throw away potential for this, something he was building towards for decades, in a matter of weeks before circumstances could lead to its realization.
Denmark, Sweden, and Germany have begun investigations but have not blamed Russia [0] and in particular are having issues coordinating the investigation and are individually maintaining secrecy about their findings.
Sweden has elected to have a partial separate investigation apart from Germany and Denmark citing national security concerns [1]. The point here is the issue is not resolved and there is confusion on all sides; aside from US media elements or US politicians, the investigators themselves have not said Russia was responsible and you won't find a European official at center of investigation making claims of Russian responsibility.
[1] https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/sweden-shuns-formal-joi...
In reference to sources for original comment:
- Ron Johnson & Victoria Nuland https://youtu.be/rBUIlHM9WSo
- Ted Cruz years of comments attacking Nord Stream https://twitter.com/search?q=from%3Atedcruz%20%22nord%20stre...
- Condoleezza Rice https://youtu.be/aF0uYIjaTNE
- referencing Antony Blinken's book "Ally vs Ally" about US opposing Russian/European pipeline gas from 1988, and hypothetical bombing of pipelines to stop gas trade https://twitter.com/frankoz95967943/status/15767507942667141...
- link to book: https://www.amazon.com/dp/0275924106/ref=cm_sw_r_tw_dp_GB2BX...
- Victoria Nuland again: "Nord Stream 2 will not move forward" https://twitter.com/ricwe123/status/1586101294334443520
- Biden: "there will be no longer a Nord Stream 2. We will bring an end to it...I promise you we will do that" https://twitter.com/YoThatsCrazyyy/status/157741285229332480...
In the absence of evidence and with only finger-pointing at this stage, I am inclined to believe that Russia is responsible since they have damaged their own pipelines several times in the past and lied about those instances, too. If Russia had any credibility before, they have essentially none now, and they do not deserve the benefit of the doubt.
As for their motives, there are several: to avoid paying the "force majeure" penalty, to give an unambiguous signal that no more gas is forthcoming in the immediate future, to threaten Europe's own energy infrastructure with a demonstration, to weaken the alliance by making some EU countries suspect the US, and for Putin to warn Russia's oligarchs that they can't just depose him and resume gas shipments - Russia is now all-in and can't go back to normal anytime soon even after a regime change.
As for Biden saying he would "stop" the pipeline earlier this year, he was talking about a different pipeline, Nord Stream 2 (which had not yet started operation at the time he made that remark), not Nord Stream 1. He was threatening to work with US allies to block it from opening in the first place.
The US has forbidden Ukraine from attacking Russian territory with US weapons, why would we take the escalatory step of attacking Russian infrastructure ourselves? We could have just let Ukraine do whatever they wanted with US weapons and denied responsibility, but the US was careful to avoid provoking Russia too much. It makes no sense that after all that tip-toeing around we would say "to hell with it" and launch a direct attack.
No. It is it not "different" seeing as that very pipeline was attacked and damaged, along with the other one. Nord Stream 1 and 2 were both attacked and damaged. They run parallel for much of their path except at certain parts.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_Nord_Stream_gas_leaks
>block it from opening.
Yes, and given the energy crisis now affecting Europe and Germany, inflation, and potential shortages of gas when winter comes and/or next year plus industrial needs for natural gas as input, it is exceedingly ridiculous that Russia would preempt these immanent crises and throw away their leverage for potential alliance with Europe in opposition to US right as the mounting pressures incentivize Europe to abandon sanctions and push for rapprochement.
You bring up war crimes and war decisions. First of all all wars involved war crimes, including the current one on the Ukrainian side. But put morality aside for a second, I'm addressing interests and realpolitik. That Russia saw it in there interest to attack is one thing. I dispute that they saw it in their interest to blow up their own pipeline and their primary point of leverage and economic strength towards an alliance with Europe in opposition to their primary enemy. No benefit of the doubt is required here to see this reality.
It's actually in the US's interest for the Nord Stream 1 to remain operational for at least a few more months so that Europe can fill its reserves. The extra money Russia/Gazprom pulls in from that is not going to make much of a difference to the war effort, while the extra gas will help ensure that Europe's resolve doesn't break this winter. Next winter hopefully they'll have further transitioned to green energy and LNG. So just looking it at that way, the US should not attack the pipeline at this time. Maybe next string, but not now!
I presented numerous possible motives for Russia to damage its own pipelines at this time, as well as a record of similar past behavior. I think I made a compelling case. I can see where you are coming from, but I disagree with your conclusions. If you don't agree with any of my points and won't budge on this at all then that's fine, but there's nothing more to debate here.
The obvious answer is because regardless of how much text people write, it was clearly Russia who had the most to gain and the easiest ability to do it.
Gazprom has maintenance robots that can be sent down the pipes and could be used to cause an internal explosion.
Much more likely and reasonable than some sort of fanciful special operations mission.
Why? Why after pausing Nord 1? Please enlighten us if you are going to use "obvious" without any source.
There is disadvantage to Russia from every perspective if they blew Nord Stream. To me it doesn't make any sense to commit suicide.
In contrast, that other side of the world has actual products, resources and services backing their money and wealth. They dont allow shenanigans like how Wall Street does to invent new 'derivatives' to bloat the financial sector even more and increase its disconnect from the actual physical economy.
As of this moment, the US government is busy pumping dollars into Ukraine to take them out of circulation to combat inflation by getting it channeled back to the US defense sector to be racked up as profit and stock value. The wealth that was generated in the Angloamerican West is so weakly supported by the physical sectors of the economy that it requires such things to keep it from crashing down.
I intentionally singled out the Angloamerican countries. Because these countries are the ones who allow practically unregulated financial sectors to bloat their economy. The regulations are more strict everywhere including Europe, and neither stock values nor the financial economy are so bloated like in the US.
https://www.wita.org/ustrade/us-trade-trends/the-us-trade-de...
So, the US, Australia, NZ, Britain, the EU, and Japan (whose constitution was written by the US.) Also of course the Saudis, but amusingly, not Israel. India's support will be dependent on us ignoring when they start to put Muslims into concentration camps, which we will be happy to do.
"The good guys"
Which is fine, but it's always couched in layers of bs because it allows for the propaganda of "liberal democracy" values of US to obscure good old power and dominance and maintain moral superiority.
They have military bases all over Europe, and rest of world, they control the global financial system especially amongst their "allies" and have dominant world reserve currency. They sanction and invade countries and leaders that go against their interests.
NATO: "To keep the Americans in, the Russians out, and the Germans down". Always they are suppressing and sowing conflict amongst rival powers especially on "world island" / Eurasia. And this makes perfect sense, but to not call it a conquest is silly.
>self-determination
Just to take a recent example, they absolutely did not allow Germany and Russia to make an alliance over energy trade through Nord Stream pipelines, sanctioning all involved players and companies for many years, and making dozens of promises to destroy the project.
They also banned Huawei and demanded Western allies comply, not permit self-determination to do business of their own regard.
You'll say something to the effect of "well when the rules are broken..". Yes being able to write your own rules and have your vassals comply is called conquest.
There's almost always been some hegemon. When the world wasn't as connected, they were regional, then continental, and now world-wide. The US is the current one for a large portion of the world, but in the past you had Britain, France, Spain, HRE, Mongols, Rome..etc. Asia has seen its fair share of regional hegemonies, so has Africa and the pre-contact Americas. So it seems like that's a power void that needs to be filled by _some_ entity, and if left empty it doesn't remain so for long.
Personally, what bothers me more than the US being in charge, given that I'm American, is the way the US regime runs things in the homeland. The values, ideology and culture which is cultivated at home is not consistent with the type of foreign conquest/hegemony/will to power externally. One can see this with the way military recruiting for example is suffering. I would prefer, like empires of the past, that a warrior culture and values promoting power and vitality were encouraged at home. That they are not, and woke culture is ascendant makes some like me not very motivated to "fight" for the nation's interest overseas or support a more aggressive heavy handed "hegemony". There are big contradictions, in other words. (I'm a military vet who fought in Iraq and Afghanistan, so these issues are meaningful to me... I see the country I fought for not representing my interests, so I have less will to fight for it or support it's fight. Make sense?).
If one is not American, and say, European. They should want Europe to be powerful, not the US. I can't tell you how many Europeans I get in conversation with online that for some reason don't even support their own continent or countries to be powerful on the world state. To assert their own interests. To have a military that can enforce their will, or do whatever is necessary to oppose US meddling in their affairs. As if it is some unquestionable fact that the US should dictate to them or that it is better the US have power over them than Europe rivaling US for global power.
> To assert their own interests.
Who's to say their current interests aren't "Let's let the US play world police and take care of the military stuff." Perhaps it's just that I've played too many 4x games, but it seems to me that sometimes the best strategy is to be buddy buddy with the big bad dude on the block, rather than try to be the big bad dude himself.
And these advantages allowed them to get away with this fake soft power narrative. In other words their advantages in materials and geography enabled what I see as a disadvantage in ideological frame that will eventually lead to weakness in my opinion. Most Americans, and American society at large are shielded from the harsh realities of power politics, empire, and conflict that their nation cultivates far away from them to weaken rest of world. European civilization benefited from rotating powers and repeated conflict among themselves which was a selection pressure to further power, technological development, civilizational advancement etc. "Hard times make strong men".
>who's to say
Yes for a while. But now I see that power directed at them to suppress their own interests which I view were a closer alignment with Russia, purchase of their cheap resources to fuel European industrial power, and a rise of Euro as additional reserve currency which they could print for cheap Russian commodities. Now they've sanctioned Russian reserves at the behest of US interests (crushing the idea of Euro as something energy exporters will want to stockpile in reserve, eliminating the Euro as a "petro"-currency), and they've self-sanctioned out of cheap Russian energy, Nord Stream etc and potential alliance and close relations with their neighbor (relative peace in western hemisphere benefits US, chaos on "world island"/Eurasia benefits US, hurts Europe). Relatively speaking European industry will get crushed compared to US who has cheaper input costs and can print money for energy (for now).
Europe arguably would have been better building long ago their independence from US, and some sort of alliance with Russia since they are neighbors, and built their own military strength so they could oppose these developments and assert their power on the European continent, instead of fade into irrelevance if the energy issues lead to industrial decline, companies/citizens leaving to US etc.
I'd argue that this is only coming to the front (some 80 years the development of nukes) due to historical nuance. The US and USSR kept each other, more or less, in check. When the USSR collapsed the US not only had immense soft power, but also lacked any any remotely viable competitor. But that's all changed rapidly. Russia largely rebuilt, China is becoming the dominant world power, India is coming into their own, the Mideast is no longer content just being a lapdog, and even much of Europe is increasingly being coerced into agreement rather than genuinely seeing eye to eye with the US.
So the US wants to stay the dominant world power, but has no viable claims to such, let alone means to enforce that. We're headed to a multipolar world, or nuclear war and then a multipolar world. Once choice is clearly optimal.
If that starts to wane, much of the other aspects of liberal culture might not be able to fill the gap in "hard times" like atomisation, declining social cohesion, increasing polarization, declining military recruiting numbers and disillusion within much of veteran community of past few years. Much of the legitimacy of our institutions and leaders is predicated upon certain narratives. If they fail..
And it did. FDR administration calculated that the US would end up in de facto control of 75% of the world, and drafted a 'world' in which every country would function as a colony of the US with a certain good or resource to produce for the US industry. Indonesia, for example, were tasked with producing rubber. When they got a socialist administration and tried 'independent development', trying to manufacture things that they shouldnt, voila - they got a coup, NYT celebrated as 'a great win for democracy' even as the coup government proceeded to bury 300,000 intellectuals, left wingers, trade union leaders, communists etc alive. And Indonesia went back to 'knowing its place' and doing what its master wanted.
Same situation with China - they became way more than a slave labor shop for the US business. And 'the master' is trying to 'put them in their place' right now. Like it did to Japan with the Plaza Accords.
The US lost grip on China once the civil war ended, and it could be argued that one of the reasons why the KMT lost was, in fact, the lack of military support by the US.
The US's foreign policy - in all its aspects including trade - has generally been extraordinarily mutually-beneficial / positive-sum. The biggest exceptions to this have been US policy in the Middle East and with respect to state-level adversaries.
Yes, but that does not at all preclude that said actions would be largely ones of self-interest. Is it not possible that the US realized that by not maximizing their benefit all the time, they could ensure a much more stable environment for their own growth and power gain? Grease the squeaky wheel and it'll work for you longer than if you just force it to keep going until it completely breaks.
Yes, it's entirely possible. Regardless, this strategy that the US has-pursued/pursues makes it preferrable to most other comparable historical states as a global hegemonic power.
Ultimately, you are forced to make rational decisions based on history and international politics. What hegemony is more aligned with your interests?
It is blatantly obvious that the chinese governance is immoral, and that it is not even controlled by the chinese people. Say what you will about the US, the bigger picture is that one nation is a free-democracy-with-exceptions and the other is a dictatorship that murders political dissidents and harvests their organs. There is no reasonable moral judgement that can be made that considers US dominance to be comparable to Chinese dominance.
In the same sense that there is an asymmetry in the freedom of US/Chinese markets, there is an asymmetry in the freedom of US/Chinese marketplaces of ideas. Just consider the preconditions of this argument: There is simply no equivalent chinese forum where they openly discuss the misdeeds of their own nation, so the anti-American argument is globally over-represented.
As a citizen of a Western nation, living in a liberal democracy, wouldn't it be logical to wish for a nation of similar values to maintain high global influence? Wouldn't it be reasonable to be against the rise in influence of an authoritarian nation that wants the rest of the world to allow it to dictate their cultural norms?
I frankly do not give a damn whether or not China could have benefited more over the past several decades if it would have meant the spread of the Chinese government's values to other nations.
I don't wish for the US to lose their global influence either, I rather like what I get out of that. But I am under no delusion that this is a lucky happenstance and that the interests of the US could change to ones that I am not happy with, and that China, and any other nation will have their own interests that they pursue; Within their moral codes, within their systems of values, interests that we here may judge as wrong or counter to our beliefs, may well be the opposite and acceptable in their origin nations.
So if you want to interact with those nations in any fashion, you need to throw away some of these notions of morality, or at least reify them to things that are relatively universal, of which there aren't as many as one would think on a geopolitical scale. You say that we need to consider where we come from and where we're going. I say that we cannot do that in a vacuum, so if you want to really understand, you have to understand the other side too.
Yes, the US's liberal democracy isn't in the best of shape (to put it mildly), but China is an isolationist, authoritarian nation where state censorship and human-rights abuses are the norm, not the exception.
Not to mention not being a signatory to major treaties and conventions that are are part of that "rules based order", like UNCLoS, ICJ, ICC and also hasn't ratified significant components of the Geneva Convention.
The US is pushing Europe into complete destitution. it's the furthest from an ally imaginable, just by subtle economic warfare.
Henry Kissinger, Nobel Peace Prize recipient, United States Secretary of State, war criminal.
How so?
remember the EUR was envisioned when the gold standard was dropped by USD because the Europeans knew the USD would become the defacto global standard which is bad for their economy.
EU is a beautiful concept. Unfortunately they are unable to make their own independent decision and will always be a gutless spineless laptop to American military industrial complex.
Only this time taking on Russia and China at same time is going to be a bigger bite than they can chew. EU is already getting closer to China and US doesnt like this one bit.
Colonization finally coming home to roost.
Russia did that. The US would never risk getting caught doing that but Putin doesn't give a fuck.
"forcing EU to join them in war"
Actually they are sensibly opposing Putin to prevent future threats. It would be insane to just let Putin do whatever he wants, it would just embolden him.
Historically the US hasn't been that big on Colonization.
Lie down with dogs, get up with fleas.
Many countries' establishments have a fear of lying, due to the repercussions of what happens if they were caught. That is the very reason why Soviet establishment chose not to lie, as we see from the period's records. Which made their propaganda much less effective compared to the emotional manipulation - especially atrocity propaganda - that Angloamerica uses.
Lying is an establishment practice in Angloamerica only because Angloamerican public uses ignoring their own lot's offenses and directing their ire at external enemies as a way to create and protect group cohesion. They are not dumb. They believe the lies that they are told willingly for that purpose and ignore the offenses of those who perpetuate them for the above reason. That's why the entire administrations who lied about things like Iraqi WMDs, Vietnam etc and murdered tens of millions of people over 30-40 years are still on top of the establishment instead of getting persecuted.
The history of the atrocity propaganda as a policy tool in Angloamerica goes back to Elizabethan England, which used a lot of smears against its Spanish enemies and it worked. In the following centuries, we see the English establishment using lies about external enemies and atrocity propaganda as a means to scare the English to support the aristocratic regime and justify wars. From the war of Jenkins' Ear to whatever example one may pick. "Evildoers are about to beat our fleet and invade our islands" is the constant propaganda in between 1560-1760.
In World War I, atrocity propaganda was institutionalized - there was no other way to justify a millions of commoners dying for aristocratic monarchies whose monarchs were cousins among themselves. So was invented the "Germans murdered and raped babies in Belgium" lie, which STILL goes on today with many people believing that Germans actuall did that.
It worked very well for Britain in Ww I. From that point on, Britain never let go of atrocity propaganda and lies, and the US copied a lot of their practices. Iraqi WMD case is just a trifle compared to the constant lying, smearing and 'wag the dog' cases over ~100 years of recent history.
I love the things insane tankies say.
...
Its only insane because you have no knowledge of actual history, less, the actual declassified documents of the USSR and instead 'know' things based on the cold war propaganda that you sucked up over the years.
Like how 'propaganda' was something that only 'others' did, and there was 'free press' in 'the West.
You realise that Russia and the USSR lied nearly constantly right? And you can hear about it from like hundreds of millions of post soviet citizens?.
I mean it’s gotta be beyond clear to anyone that Russia lies to its own citizens there soldiers dug defences in one of the most radioactive parts of the world.
No. We dont. That's what the American propaganda tells us. Not the circumstances and actual declassified documents. Character assassination, nothing else.
> hundreds of millions of post soviet citizens?.
Hundreds of millions of post soviet citizens do not say anything like that.
https://www.thetrumpet.com/18312-poll-two-thirds-of-russians...
> I mean it’s gotta be beyond clear to anyone that Russia lies
That's a religious statement. Nothing else.
The US lied about nonexistent WMDs for EIGHT years. And yet, its propaganda is the one that's being trusted to determine the trustworthiness of others. That's just crazy.
You realise multiple countries can lie? its not a zero sum game?.
So if Russia doesn't lie can you explain this?.
https://tass.com/politics/1400517
>> Russian MFA says Russia won’t invade Ukraine, blames US for ‘aggressive plans’
'Can' lie is not the same as 'using lying as a policy tool'. The Angloamerican establishment have been doing it for so long that they have a nickname in diplomacy and political science that goes 200 years back.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfidious_Albion
>> So if Russia doesn't lie can you explain this?.
It was later revealed that Russia was doing 'maneuvers' at the border to force the Ukrainian government to give up invading the Russian speaking breakaway regions like it did 5-10 times in the last 8 years. Russia expected the Ukrainian government to do the same again, but this time they seem to have chosen to go ahead due to US pressure.
Those regions are part of Ukraine you cannot invade yourself.
> Russia expected the Ukrainian government to do the same again, but this time they seem to have chosen to go ahead due to US pressure.
You’re really determined to defend Russia on every front aren’t you?.
I’m just glad that most people know the truth and that your clear propaganda is failing.
I presume you believe Ukraine has black magic battalions and biologically engineered super soldiers as well?.
Because that’s what Russian media has been reporting.
I dont 'believe'. We have their declassified records. We know what they did, what they decided to do. We know that they withheld information or the truth. But we know that they did not lie or misrepresent because they decided the risk of getting caught was too high. This is not a matter of belief, its what they decided.
'They lied' is the cold war propaganda of their enemy. Whose entire propaganda has been based on lies for over 60 years. And amazingly, the village liar is calling everyone else liars and the villagers just BELIEVE it.
You are detached from reality.
" We know what they did"
Yeh, they lied about everything all the time
* Chernobyl
* Korean Air Lines Flight 007
* The Katyn massacre
* Soviet government always claimed that people’s living conditions in the Western countries were worse than in the Soviet Union. As they say, the bigger the lie the more they’ll believe in it…until you see the evidence to the contrary.
In 1939, Finland successfully fought off the Soviet Union in the Winter War. Finland had gained independence in 1917 and built a social democracy, geared towards the needs of its people.
Few Soviet people who visited Finland in 1980s thought they landed on another planet. And then they had to return to the USSR and listen to fairy tales about the “socialist paradise.”
A children’s movie “Mikko from Tampere Asks for Advice” was a joint Soviet-Finnish production that came out in 1986.
On the surface, it was stock propaganda patronizing the “little nation.” Finnish boy Mikko wants to meet a famous Soviet cat tamer, Kuklachev so he could teach him how to take care of his cat.
The film director went for realism and shot many scenes in Finland, inadvertently allowing millions of Soviet children (including this author) to have a glimpse of their peers‘ lives behind the Iron Curtain.
Let’s take a close look at some scenes from the movie to understand why it caused such an uproar among the Soviet children and their parents.
Mikke’s dad works as a driver. The driver’s family is supposed to share a communal apartment with ten families, yet they live in their own private house, which is not a one-room-plus-kitchen country cottage with an outhouse toilet either. There are at least three rooms in the house! There is a living room with wonderful, bright furniture. The concept of living room was novel to Soviet people so many of them were wondering where are the beds.
The driver’s family house also had a dining room with a large cool table and beautiful bright chairs for all the family members. Dining room was also a novel concept to most of the Soviet viewers: they cooked and ate in the kitchen. And lo and behold, there is the second floor with a nice, painted staircase!
Soviet children expected to see an attic with a tiny room upstairs. Mikko had his own comfortable room, and what was really hard to swallow - his own bathroom!
Viewers weren't looking at Mikko dad’s minivan. All eyes were on the surrounding houses. They looked beautiful and neat, no Soviet flaky wall paint that was always explained by “we have a cold climate.”
Mikko plays in the children's band. The children have all the musical instruments that they needed. Mikko’s dad bought him a guitar and wasn’t humiliated with sorrowful stories about the Soviet state and Comrade Gorbachev personally taking care of the children of the world, so there’s nothing left for him.
Soviet children immediately paid attention to how Finnish children were dressed: jeans, fashionable pants, bright and colorful print t-shirts. No scary school uniform made of ugly synthetic-wool fabric. Bright clothes, bicycles, their own rooms, interesting hobbies - all these things Finnish children had without having to listen to stories about the leading role of the Communist Party and the "international duty" in Afghanistan. In other words, they had a great life without 24/7 propaganda.
Five years later the Soviet Union had run out of magic tricks and ended its short but eventful existence.
> Chernobyl
Withholding information is not the same with lying. Many Americans still don't know about Three Mile Island, leave aside having any idea that the regulatory agency keeps reducing the safety standards for US reactors to keep 40+ year old reactors operating.
> Korean Air Lines Flight 007
Where's the lie in that. Multiple times the USSR warned about violations of their airspace, and shot them down when they have not complied.
> The Katyn massacre
Reported by Nazis, whose memoirs worry about someone investigating the bullets found on the location and getting the event linked to the Germans. Even if you trust the Nazis, Soviets did not lie about the incident, they did not release any information.
> * Soviet government always claimed that people’s living conditions in the Western countries were worse than in the Soviet Union
Kennedy administration's internal memos say the same. Soviets were raising their life standards too fast. Which was 'worrying' because other countries could copy them and try 'independent development' (socialism), leaving US axis. Leading to what is today called 'the domino theory', and to Vietnam war and all the atrocities that followed it. Along with the arms and space race that the Kennedy administration started to starve them of GDP as economic warfare.
There was no lie in it. They were correct.
The reality is to the opposite and its so much worse - USSR told Soviets that there was much poverty in the US and there were a lot of homeless even in places like NY. Soviets did not believe them. ~40 years later, there are still Russians who believe that there are no homeless in the US.
> Soviet-Finnish production that came out in 1986.
By 1986, the Soviet administration was co-opted with many Yeltsinites doing whatever the US asked of them. There is no 'Soviet' at that point. They even went to the extent of doing EVERY single thing that the 'chicago boys' wanted. They did things that were not even imaginable as policies during Reagan era in the US.
And sorry, but if a movie is your basis for opinion, your opinion stands on shaky grounds.
Here is what the former citizens of the Eastern Bloc think.
https://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/homesick-for-a-...
I recommend you do your own independent reading. Starting from the cold war relic Angloamerican and satellite press and publications, you won't get anywhere near the truth.
You completely missed the point. By the 80s standards of living in the US and Western Europe were vastly better than inside the USSR but the USSR lied to its population. This is why a movie showing average middle class life inside Finland was so shocking to the average Russian.
as for Korean Air Lines Flight 007 the USSR initially LIED and said they didn't shoot the plane down. They later admitted the TRUTH that they did shoot down the plane, but they lied about the true nature of the plane. The USSR also lied about "no remains of the victims, the instruments or their components or the flight recorders have so far been discovered". This statement was subsequently shown to be untrue by Boris Yeltsin's release in 1993 of a November 1983 memo from KGB head Viktor Chebrikov and Defence Minister Dmitriy Ustinov to Yuri Andropov. This memo stated, "In the third decade of October this year the equipment in question (the recorder of in-flight parameters and the recorder of voice communications by the flight crew with ground air traffic surveillance stations and between themselves) was brought aboard a search vessel and forwarded to Moscow by air for decoding and translation at the Air Force Scientific Research Institute." The Soviet Government statement would further be contradicted by Soviet civilian divers who later recalled that they viewed the wreckage of the aircraft on the bottom of the sea for the first time on September 15, two weeks after the plane had been shot down.
Concealing information IS lying when it comes to situations like this.
"Even if you trust the Nazis, Soviets did not lie about the incident, they did not release any information."
Soviet leaders insisted for decades that the Polish officers found at Katyn had been killed by the invading Germans in 1941. This explanation was accepted without protest by successive Polish communist governments until the late 1980s, when the Soviet Union allowed a noncommunist coalition government to come to power in Poland. In March 1989 this government officially shifted the blame for the Katyn Massacre from the Germans to the Soviet secret police, the NKVD. In 1992 the Russian government released documents proving that the Soviet Politburo and the NKVD had been responsible for the massacre and cover-up and revealing that there may have been more than 20,000 victims. In 2000 a memorial was opened at the site of the killings in Katyn.
Lie by omission https://www.google.com/search?q=Lie+by+omission