[0] "The good man, though a slave, is free; the wicked, though he reigns, is a slave, and not the slave of a single man, but, what is worse, the slave of as many masters as he has vices. "
(-;
Must be: new Weekend-book-stuff, or ?
regards...
No he doesn't? Chomsky's views on Ukraine are batshit.
Example: https://youtu.be/L7IHiJBIkns
This is also very conveniently a Russian talking point to just make Ukraine bend over and take it.
If we want to stop the risk of nuclear war from increasing drastically in future we need to help defend Ukraine itself from Russia to the fullest.
If we don't, it will become clear to the world that only nuclear weapons can defend a country from having their land grabbed by Russia and other countries and nuclear proliferation will go through the roof.
Nuclear proliferation going through the roof will drastically increase the chance of a nuclear exchange in the future.
That cat's out of the bag, it has been common wisdom for decades that countries with nukes don't get invaded and other deterrents aren't nearly as effective or economical. Mutually assured destruction is one of the biggest reasons the world's been so peaceful recently. No major wars, just various nuclear powers occasionally invading various non-nuclear powers. MAD is mad effective.
Yes but you can still defeat a state that has nuclear weapons when they invade.
If you try and change that that rhetoric by saying you can also only defend yourself when you have nuclear weapons then the entire dynamic changes and a lot more countries will start active nuclear weapons programs.
This how I feel a lot more countries will start feeling if Ukraine doesn't win or Russia successfully uses their nuclear blackmail to win or get concessions in the war.
Look at what is happening in the world. Country after country standing up and saying they will continue to have their own relations with Russia, they see right through the hypocrisy of the west.
A nuclear armed superpower threatening to nuke the country it invaded cause it's starting to lose a war, is certainly new when did that happen last?.
That's not at all clear in this case.
EDIT: ... because they may be willing to use nukes when they realize they're losing. I think that explains why the West is not really going crazy about defending Ukraine... the West could do a hell of a lot more if it really wanted to, but maybe doing that would trigger desperate reactions from Russia as they've made it clear already many times that for them, losing this war is an "existential" threat (same words Ukrainians are using).
the USSR has lot multiple wars against non nuclear armed states.
so has the US.
> EDIT: ... because they may be willing to use nukes when they realize they're losing.
Welcome to the end of the Russian federation.
Any use of a nuke would mean they lose both the war and their country collapses.
How did you come up with that conclusion :D. That seems so hyperbolic as to be kind of funny.
Only one country has used nuclear weapons to this day, and if we do like you did and extrapolate from past events, that went quite well for them.
How much differently do you think things would have gone if Japan was also a nuclear state at the time?
I'd seriously reconsider the logic pf your position.
At the time it was known that
* Germany had a nuclear weapons program.
* Japan had a nuclear weapons program.
* Russia, an ally, had contacts who were key personal in the US weapons program.
* The UK MAUD group blueprinted the path to implementation and talked a reluctant USofA into development.
( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_nuclear_weapons_progr... )
At the time no one was entirely sure who did and did not have a weapon - the entire US effort was premised on a race to get there before the Germans.
The nuclear scientists of the era were international and inter connected.
What do you not understand about the human condition?
We are energy/cost optimizers. We want to achieve resolutions of conflict as cheap, and as quickly as possible, i.e. with minimal cost.
We made a bomb. Arguably the biggest bomb there had been any indication of anyone having gotten working before.
Truman was looking at war projections of costs to invade Japan. Then he got the papers that said we could make an entire city disappear with 1 plane, and one bomb.
Do you really think it would have worked out any different for anyone else?
I say: No. It wouldn't have, because using it as soon as you got it is just human nature.
Neither of them has lost a war in which they were defending their own country.
Nukes are much less effective in offensive wars, especially when fighting or even attempting to conquer a neighbor.
Exactly and Russia isn’t defending its country its trying to invade another country so why would it use one?.
There are some real historians that would agree with a lot of 'Russian Talking Points' does that mean they are bat-shit crazy? OR, is Russia pretty good at adding into their talking points enough 'reality' to make it convincing.
"Just accept Russia invading you because maybe nukes" could potentially be used for anything. "Give us a favorable trade deal because otherwise we might nuke you."
How many times have Russian officials saber rattled about nukes and red lines and escalation when a Western partner provides small arms or artillery or tanks or jets, only for the red lines to be crossed and they do nothing?
Short of someone invading Russia or nuking Russia, it's obviously a bluff, and by trying to sue for peace prematurely, you're playing into their rhetorical ploy. It's a transparently cheap tactic that only works on Putinverstehers.
One can only puke thinking about that.
Everyone tried to talk him out of it, but dude wants his empire.
I’m always amused by people who think that if the USA ceased its war mongering efforts no nation would try to fill that void and everyone would just get along nicely.
Orwell said it pretty well:
> It is also worth emphasising once again that nationalist feeling can be purely negative. There are, for example, Trotskyists who have become simply enemies of the U.S.S.R. without developing a corresponding loyalty to any other unit.
From "Notes On Nationalism"
My point is that some people just hate the USA, think everything bad is somehow the USA's fault (even to the point of thinking all revolutions or coups are CIA plots, as if Those People had no agency of their own) and base their whole worldview on that hatred.
Some people write off every CIA plot as a harebrained conspiracy theory until they publish the papers about it 50 years later.
That would have made it much more difficult for aspiring regional hegemons to one day supplant it, as most countries would be attached to a rules based international order if it existed.
But they didn't and now Russia gets to play the "same shit, different hegemon" card and instead of the entire world pushing back against the invasion of Ukraine, it's just ~40 of the US's closest allies. The rest of the world doesn't care.
The UN is a pretty good map of how the world feels about the war I feel.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_General_Assem....
77.90% of UN members voted for it, a handle of nations outside of Russia voted against it.
Not even Russias apparent biggest ally (China) voted against it they abstained instead.
* They are nonbinding, so they are purely symbolic.
* Countries lean on each other all the time to vote one way or another. Especially hegemons.
* Only 50% of those countries are even nominally run by democratic governments.
* Most governments hate secessionism on principle (whether democratic or not), which is reflected in the votes, but I doubt, say, the average Spaniard is especially bothered about Kosovo or Scotland's independence. It bothers the Spanish government though because Catalonia.
> * They are nonbinding, so they are purely symbolic.
So then why didn't more of Russias allies vote for Russia and why did so much of the world vote for Ukraine?.
Except for Belarus (and despite the appearance given by the existence of the CSTO) I don’t think Russia substantively has allies.
As I mentioned. You did read what I wrote, right?
It mirrors this map:
https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:State_positions_Ir...
Where, again, the distribution of opinions is more easily explained by "we don't generally want to endorse invasions as a concept, because we're afraid of them" and "we got leaned on".
Although the UN vote was presented as an unequivocal condemnation of Ukraine invasion, the condemnation of the invasion actually came from countries representing just over 40% of the world's population.
The % of the world population that sanctioned Russia (i.e. that made a gesture that involved sacrifice) was smaller still.
I dunno if you've even looked at both maps they look nothing like each other.
The support for the resolution for Russia to leave Ukraine has far more support then the invasion of Iraq and even has large amounts of support amongst people with didn't support the invasion of Iraq.
> Although the UN vote was presented as an unequivocal condemnation of Ukraine invasion, the condemnation of the invasion actually came from countries representing just over 40% of the world's population.
Yeah and what percentage of the population voted against it?, im gonna guess without even really googling that is <3% of world population.
Duh. It mirrors because the support America could muster for its invasion was not much more than the support Russia mustered for its invasion.
This was also when America was at the height of its power and could cajole and bully other countries more easily.
>Yeah and what percentage of the population voted against it?
Probably a similar order of magnitude that supported the invasion of Iraq (in spite of furious and enormous protests for doing so).
This is literally not true.
The invasion of Iraq had support of the following countries.
> Australia, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Denmark, Hungary, Italy, Japan, Latvia, Lithuania, Netherlands, Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Spain, Ukraine, United Kingdom and (United States).
The opposition to the motion on Ukraine is supported by these countries.
> Belarus, Eritrea, North Korea, Russia, Syria
The invasion of Iraq was supported by closed to 10x more countries.
> Probably a similar order of magnitude that supported the invasion of Iraq (in spite of furious and enormous protests for doing so).
Once against objectively not true.
The population of the counties that voted against the motion for Russia to leave Ukraine
> 203.65 million
The population of the countries that voted to invade Iraq.
> 954.346 million
There was 5x more support nearly to the invasion of Iraq than the opposition to the bill of Russia to leave Ukraine.
4x. More, because America's power to lean on other countries is higher. As I said.
203 million and 954 million are also within the same order of magnitude.
I think no more discussion is warranted here.
What you really mean is “per some made up number I pulled out of thin air”.
You’re mad because you asserted things that all turned out to be incorrect and now you’re trying to apply made up maths to prove yourself right.
> 203 million and 954 million are also within the same order of magnitude.
By the tiniest amount you were able to be vaguely correct congrats. Nearly 5x as many people supported the invasion of Iraq compared to the invasion of Ukraine.
> I think no more discussion is warranted here.
Go ahead and scurry into the darkness like the rest of the Russian propagandists with confronted with reality.