• barsoap@lemm.ee
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    1 year ago

    the great game of empire and there are very good reasons why it was always the conventional wisdom

    That wisdom is called appeasement and has failed again and again. Empires will empire, if you give them a finger they’ll wait for a bit and then take an arm.

    You seem to be completely realism-pilled. I have my issues with Kraut but watch this, it’s good stuff.

    If they are sovereign states then let them be sovereign states and deal with problems on their own

    If they are unemployed and homeless then let them be independent and deal with problems on their own. The fuck. And you call yourself a leftist.

    • ShimmeringKoi [comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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      1 year ago

      That wisdom is called appeasement and has failed again and again. Empires will empire, if you give them a finger they’ll wait for a bit and then take an arm.

      I agree, the US should be forcibly disbanded by an international peacekeeping force after the last two centuries of imperialism and genocide. No point in waiting for us to get worse, we need to be stopped now.

      • You joke (I think) but you actually illustrate why so many people are supporting Ukraine. The reaction of a lot of people to “the US should be forcibly disbanded by an international peacekeeping force” would be one of indignation and fury at the suggestion that foreign powers should violate one’s home and put their loved ones in danger in order to satisfy global political objectives.

        • ShimmeringKoi [comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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          1 year ago

          Uhh given the last eight years of ethnic cleansing in the Donbas region by our coup regime in Ukraine, it’s really a better example of why so mamy countries around the world are supporting the russian federation here.

      • barsoap@lemm.ee
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        1 year ago

        I appreciate the sentiment but I don’t want to see what certain states will be up to if they don’t have the federal level to keep them in check.

    • usernamesaredifficul [he/him]@hexbear.net
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      1 year ago

      That wisdom is called appeasement and has failed again and again. Empires will empire, if you give them a finger they’ll wait for a bit and then take an arm.

      No it’s called a sphere of influence and it’s just playing by the old cold war rules.

      If they are unemployed and homeless then let them be independent and deal with problems on their own. The fuck.

      countries are not people.

      • barsoap@lemm.ee
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        1 year ago

        No it’s called a sphere of influence

        You say that as if geopolitical realism was the truth to end all inquiry, the insight to end all history.

              • barsoap@lemm.ee
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                1 year ago

                Why should we still play the old war game? How do realists decide which country is a poker chip and which is a player (one area where US and European realists differ btw: In the European view, Russia is not a player)? What do you do if a country doesn’t want to be a poker chip? Can you really ignore internal forces, can it all be boiled down to power politics? Why stick to a theory that was completely blind-sided by the end of the cold war and after that argued to subsidise the east so that it can continue?

                That’s just the tip of the iceberg.

                • usernamesaredifficul [he/him]@hexbear.net
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                  1 year ago

                  we play the old game for the same reason we started in the first place because the major powers have the ability to demand concessions because of the power of their militaries and economies.

                  Russia is a player because it has a vast army and nuclear weapons

                  if Ukraine wants to not do as they are told by Russia they are more than welcome to fight them. America and the other powers involving themselves in that fight risks major war however also it has proved ruinously expensive to the actual populations of those countries.

                  Internal politics only matter if they are backed up by something

                  this theory wasn’t blindsided by the end of the cold war. At the end of the cold war Russia was weak from crisis (incidentally largely because the Ukrainian local government so badly fucked up running a power plant and the early stages of a disaster that all the money in the soviet union was required to clean up the mess) anyway when Russia was weak and eating itself they couldn’t enforce the rights they had because of their strength now they are strong again they can