Putin is garbage and I will celebrate the day he dies.
I've yet to encounter anyone defending Putin, but I've sure seen plenty of people try to twist criticisms of Ukraine and NATO's involvement with it into accusations of being a Putin-loving Russian disinformation bot. At least we get to squabble like idiots over foreign policy we have no influence over rather than find common ground over the remaining 90% of politics we probably have in common (and also have no influence over).
I don’t doubt that Putin defenders exist, though, just that they’re prominent enough to warrant near daily memes about how stupid tankies are ruining everything. Surely the bigger threat to the shared objectives of left wing politics is infighting.
Fuck Russia, fuck China, fuck the US too. I'm not going to gaslight myself in to thinking someone else is doing it right just because the West is also fucked.
Working class people all over the planet are getting fucked by billionaires who've purchased their governments, few places are exempt from that problem.
I think the military industrial complex will be the end of us all. Generally, I think military spending is fucking atrocious and is a huge contributor to the myriad problems we as people face on a daily basis.
While I agree, Russia has no right to annex territory in Ukraine or Georgia or anywhere else, and I agree, like any rational person will, that Ukraine has every right to defend itself to the fullest extent, including matching on Moscow and fucking up the place, that's decidedly not our problem.
Ukraine found a fucking massive oil ans natural gas deposit, large enough it threatens Russia's market dominance. Ukraine kicked out it's Russian puppet. Russia wants control back and will bleed itself dry to obtain it. In so doing, they're bleeding us too.
I wish Ukraine the best, I really do. But at the top, this isn't about defending the freedom of a downtrodden underdog. That's a convenient story to sell to the American public. It's about resources, and resource wars will only become more common.
While I agree, Russia has no right to annex territory in Ukraine or Georgia or anywhere else, and I agree, like any rational person will, that Ukraine has every right to defend itself to the fullest extent, including matching on Moscow and fucking up the place, that’s decidedly not our problem.
How convenient that every time a moral issue comes up that we're on the right side of, it's not our problem.
You're thinking of World War 1, which the communists were 100% vindicated for not supporting.
MLs in World War 2 wanted us to support the USSR. Curious how supporting the communists put us on the right side of history, while all the times we fought against communists we were very clearly on the wrong side of it - must be a coincidence.
It's only a moral issue because it's being billed as one. For the prime actually making the decisions it's strictly strategic, you're fooling yourself if you think it's more than that. You think all of a sudden their making altruistic choices?
It's greed. It's all greed. Always has been. This greed is just convenient.
What's funny is how frequently I get downvoted to oblivion for daring to suggest that genocide isn't acceptable in any circumstances, including when voting for US presidents.
It's you guys that seem to be ok with it when your guy is the one supporting it.
When confronted with two evils, one must choose the lesser evil if there is no realistic alternative; as letting the greater evil in helps literally no one.
Is that too complex? Do I need to simplify it further?
"Genocide is good if 'the lesser evil' is doing it!"
You claim genocide is always evil yet you make excuses for it. What's the difference between an authoritarian dictatorship carrying out genocide and a plutocracy giving you a Fisher-Price voting ballot that will result in genocide no matter which option you pick?
Kindly inform me of the non-genocide vote that is more effectual than throwing my vote away in the United States.
Palestine will be gone long before third party is elected in America, or the revolution happens. An optimist would hope that the genocide in Gaza would initiate mass resistance in america, but a realist knows that it won't happen in time to stop the Israeli march on Gaza.
In the meantime I'm putting my bets on the somewhat-less-genocide guy while continuing to advocate for third parties and the revolution and sending support however I can, personally.
We live in a broken system that forces you to vote for politicians who believe things that you don't believe in, this is the reality of American politics.
Pro tip; you can continue to protest and advocate AND vote for the lesser of two evils. We don't live in a vacuum we're voting for Joe Biden suddenly renders you his full political supporter. Voting is a tool not a declaration of fealty.
You can acknowledge that we are stuck between a rock and a hard place without defaulting to doing what amounts to nothing and complaining that others won't do nothing in protest with you.
This is also ignoring the fact that there are real consequences for the outcome of the election for those who live in the United States itself.
Not every person has the privilege to care about the outcomes of the US election internationally when they are struggling to survive under the current leadership.
Would you tell these people to vote for the politician that changes nothing or the politician that makes things worse?
I wish politics was so simple as " politician supports bad thing and we all stopped voting for him ". It is unfortunately not.
If we had STAR voting I could give these two guys a 1 and a 2 while progressives all get 8 to 10. Unfortunately, that isn't a reality we exist in. In reality only one of these two guys will win.
There is no realistic scenario this year where a third party candidate receives enough EC votes to become president. Like both guys would have to die before the election and the third party would have to be a popular household name.
Given that these two are the only realistic candidates, my only option on this issue is throwing my vote in the trash (expressing that one doesn't give a fuck how many Palestinians die, no preference either way) or voting for the person I think will kill fewer Palestinians.
Disagree. The putin propaganda parties are fucking up every democracy possible - most importantly, or perhaps most relevantly to this topic, the US. And the invasion and destruction of Ukraine is the proof that it’s working. We’ve got to help Ukraine win, rebuild, and be a peaceful and prosperous democracy because russia will stop at nothing to bend everything to them.
trump and the Qult will stop at nothing to help putin destroy the US ideals and become a malleable Christofascist oligopoly like they are. If you think Ukraine is not our problem you’re not addressing our problem. Ukraine is the leading edge of the problem.
fucking up every democracy possible - most importantly, or perhaps most relevantly to this topic, the US
I'm sorry but that's peak lib. "We're a democracy, they're the bad guys, they're affecting us, the US is the center of the world".
To start off: fuck the imperialist illegal invasion of Ukraine, Russia's government is on a spiral towards fascism and anyone who actively supports the current Russian government is a ghoul.
Now let's examine closer the far right propaganda and where it's coming from. Ben Shapiro, Russian asset? The Daily Wire, Russian asset? Jordan Peterson, Andrew Tate, Russian assets? Sure, they may align in some of their goals, but these people have their own agenda and a funding of their own: western capitalist sources. The same applies in Europe for most far right influencers, propagandists, politicians and mouthpieces. Like, come on, who owns private media in Europe, leftist progressive movements or capitalist companies interested in their own profit? Our social media is mostly American, with the most popular platforms being Xitter, IG, Facebook... and of course TikTok, which everyone talks about being Chinese, and fair enough, but nobody says anything about the rest of social media in Europe being US-based. There's PLENTY of far right in the west without the need for Russian intervention in that process, and while it's true that there are links, it doesn't mean that Russia is to blame, just rather collaterally profiting from it. You have a ton of interested parties such as tobacco, fossil fuels, multinational companies and such, profiting from harming the left in Europe and the US, and fascism is a really good tool historically to get rid of those pesky leftists. Let's not even comment on western governments directly supporting fascism all over the world, such as in the case of Pinochet in Chile or Franco in Spain. Let's not pretend that the west is the enemy of fascism and the upholder of democracy, we're more than capable of creating fascism by ourselves. It's important to understand the degree to which Russian interference is helping the far right and fight against it, but remember, all of this is done with a vast majority of western support and funding, and would likely happen anyway.
Regarding the peace negotiations. I don't know why in this platform, which is supposedly progressive, every time peace negotiations are brought up, people are labeled Putin bots or tankies. Like, how the fuck do people think most wars end, with unconditional surrender of one side or total conquest? (There were in fact peace talks towards the beginning of the war)[https://archive.ph/Y2Ok8], and they almost managed to get to a peace deal, which sadly never ended up happening, for disputed reasons that I won't get into. The only "progress" of this war so far are some territorial gains from one side or the other going back and forth, hundreds of thousands of deaths, and millions of refugees, on both sides of the conflict mind you. "But saying peace negotiations amounts to saying Putin's invasion was right!" No, it amounts to wanting the least amount of deaths and suffering possible and reaching an AGREEMENT between the countries, not an unconditional surrender of Ukraine. Given the history of usage of weapons by the EU for the past half a century, it's no wonder that many people on the left are skeptical of increased military budgets, especially when linked to NATO. Sure, the EU should have a military alliance, but why does the US have to be in there? Do you really think that a non-US-intervened cooperative military in the EU wouldn't be a more stabilizing, less threatening force in the region? Why push NATO towards the East, which Russia (understandably) perceives as a threat, when instead NATO could be dismantled and Europe could have its own military alliance?
Fuck, even if we go to the modern state of Russia, how did it even appear? The current Russian oligarchs and kleptocrats that control the country are a consequence of the 90s neoliberal shock therapy upon the dismantling of the USSR, when the country was illegally and corruptly auctioned not even to the highest bidder, but to the most corrupt one. This was all done under the watchful direction of MIT economist "experts" and our beloved IMF. The west has a huge part to play in this, and we're reaping the benefits of enabling an imperialist capitalist oligarchy in the rule of one of the world's biggest powers.
So all in all, we have a ton of problems with the far right to looks inwards, more than we look outwards. We must keep sight of the Kremlin propaganda for sure, and fight against it, but we must keep an even closer look at the propaganda coming from ourselves, and fight it even harder since we're actually responsible for it.
I'm western-european mate, I prefaced my long-ass comment with a condemnation of the russian government and the war, and said multiple times through it that russian propaganda has an influence if you cared to read it. But sure, block me because you're too bothered to read a comment because the nickname sounds russian (it's a reference to Lenin because I'm a commie, the current Russian government is as far from communism as the US)
Nation states largely exist to protect the power of their respective elites. No country is immune, but there are shining examples in the world, like the nordic model, that other nations choose to ignore because, unlike those nations, most nation's decision maker's goal isn't to maximize the well being of their people, but to maximize their own individual power, which capital is a form of.
The problem with your analysis is that it views each country as an island and imagines that they have no effect on the world around them. The Nordic countries are indeed very good places to live for the people who live there, but they are also participants in the international system of unequal exchange that sees trillions of dollars in wealth siphoned away from the global south every year, contributing massively to unhappiness in those countries which are victims to it.
Is it worth keeping ten Africans in perpetual poverty for each European who gets to live a comfy life? I would say "no", but...
Google it. "Fidel Castro wealth" search turns up with various claims ranging from a net worth of 100 million to "more than 900 million $". And that's just a small part of what he had access to.
When you are the sole and absolute ruler of a country, you have access to all the wealth of the state and its people (which are fucking poor) and have little to no accountability.
.Do you really think he was as poor as all the other people of Cuba?
Oh yeah, the famous Forbes claims of Castro being rich because "he had control of the state in a communist country where the means of production belonged to the state". No reference to his frugal lifestyle, no serious data backing up the claim other than "YOLO". The fact that he could conceivably and potentially have access to certain goods or services that other people didn't have access too, and an assumption from Forbes that he did access them and "died a multi-millionaire", tells us more about Forbes and the writer than about Fidel.
cause a loss for the west is a win for the third world. its not russia that has been couping, invading and generally fucking with most of planet earth.
you can't fuck us for a couple of centuries then expect us to be on your side, we will take a status quo thats less bad.
And Russia literally teamed up with the Nazis and only fought back because they were stupid enough to get betrayed. Russia has a pretty colorful history if you wanna get down to the nitty gritty of things.
Seems it is you that should study history. Russia fought the Nazis only once Hitler turned on them.
The Soviet Union and Nazi Germany signed the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact in August 1939. It was publicly a non-aggression treaty, but it included a secret protocol in which eastern European countries were divided into spheres of interest.
understand the context in which you are saying this before equating the soviet union to modern russia.
Awfully similar if you ask me.
✔️Dictator then and now.
✔️Russia choosing to invade their neighbors instead of allying with Europe for the common good
✔️ Russia working secretly with their allies to carve up Eastern Europe
If it looks like an orc, and walks like an orc....
Every time you people equate the Russian Federation with the USSR, you're telling on yourselves. The government completely changed, the current one destroyed the old one, and the only continuity is the location and the people. So if you equate the two, then it sounds to me what you're really saying is that Russian skull shape or whatever makes them inherently inclined towards violence regardless what form of government they adopt. Which begs the question, what is your ultimate, you know, final solution for this apparently genetically inferior race?
you have been continuously killing brown people nonstop for what? at least 50years now?
Would be more like 200 something, no? Since the inception of the nation, basically, right?
Edit: actually, scratch that, it would be before the nation was even formed, as soon as the colonies were first beginning to be settled. I think before that they were generally too low on the totem pole and too weird as far as strange religious sects to go around and kill people, but I could be wrong.
Op's a tankie and I'm not defending him, but I'm pretty sure there's some countries/cultures that haven't done anything outside of their own borders. One example that I know of, unless I'm forgetting something, is Romania. Always been on the defense, never the aggressor, afaik. Pretty sure some island nations are the same. Maybe some African ones as well. Some native american and australian as well, I think.
Nice what aboutism. Not like russia did just as many atrocious things, but keep pretending. Just makes you look like a russian troll, not like a "third worlder"
It took me a while to sort out that meme, then it suddenly hit me - I've not only succeeded in eliminating the tankies from my Lemmy experience, but have done so so effectively that I started to forget that they even exist.
At this point, the only people I see trying to defend Russia are a handful of angry right-wing morons who have bought in to the propaganda spread by Russia's assets in the GOP, and they're few and far between.
Upvoting, but I do not admin my own instance, so can only block the instance as a personal user, which means e.g. that they can still mass-downvote me if they so choose. :-(
Also I can still view their comments everywhere, I just don't receive a notification from them anymore if someone replies directly to me, and I could replace my individual per-community blocks with the one instance one for them all. It is nowhere close to "eliminating" them altogether, even though it does cut down on the aggravation a lot.
But I know what you mean, and yes I would like that! Do you know of any instances that blocks those big 3 Axis powers? I looked last week among all the most popular ones listed at that fediverse explorer site but could not find a single one that does. Even Kbin.social only blocks 2 of the 3 but not lemmy.ml...
Plus their alts on other instances, b/c knowing that they have been blocked, some users seem to have decided to evade our intentions. "No means no" is a weakness, according to those for whom consent means little (or nothing), so terribly sadly, that many of us would rather choose the bear than that...:-( (/s but you know what I mean:-P)
For instance, I also don't like petulant techbro libertarians with political views that are warped by their desperate, yearning need to try to compensate for their inferiority complexes.
Tankies have less hesitancy calling more libertarian leftists and liberals "fascists" than the various flavors of the modern far-right, because "Stalin's definition of fascism".
I'm moving around online leftist circles for more than a decade. First I wanted to have some unity with tankies, but I had to slowly learn that it's a futile attempt, with the main issue being their idea of unity being total assimilation.
First of all, just like their authoritarian-right counterparts, don't play by the rules, but expect other to do so, except it's only for the libertarian-left (or anyone who's not as authoritarian as Stalin). This leads to them forming online (and from what I've heard, real life) spaces to their liking, usually with the intent to turn what they call "moderates" into "full-fledged Marxist-Leninists". If you don't they will bait others to harass you, usually by finding something in your past. Often they also work in tandem with far-right groups by providing anonymous information to them, and register accounts to their forums (kiwifarms etc) to get help from them. They often managed to even manipulate the discourse around social causes, they singlehandedly managed to remind people that "spook" also used to be an anti-black slur (they got really angry at egoist leftist memes), and part of the reason why some online leftists are sometimes terminally online about loli/shota (around that time, they really wanted to cancel sex-positive leftists en masse, consensual-noncon also got a hit but that wasn't really part of a fandom that needed a "safe space" for right wingers, hence the frequent cooperation with the right).
One of their greatest display of "manipulating the rules" is their constant redefinition of authoritarianism into "the will of the people" rather than "a hierarchial system of power formed around a select number of people, whom must be submitted to by the rest of the people". On some level, authoritarianism is "will of the people", but tankies (likely intentionally) forget that dictators having pet projects and banning things they don't like isn't the same as liberation of the people who often want to free themselves from those strongmen, and not replace them with someone who promises to be kind. This is not their only use of the "redefinition game": they often like to redefine porn as something inherently exploitative, while promising general sexuality will be fine, then they proceed to act in ways people who define porn as "an ungodly act of perversion", but pretend they're doing it in favor of "progress" rather than saving the masses from the eternal burning fire. On paper, "authoritarian social justice" sounds good, but in practice it can be only be done with things that are "concrete". You can stop people from denying the holocaust, you probably could also stop social media accounts calling all LGBTQ+ people pedophiles, but then there's the issue of sexual objectification in media, which will be on very shaky grounds, and should not be put into law. China put a lot of effort into trying to regulate it, but other than tankie puriteens on Twitter, no one likes it, and often gets workarounds.
Sorry for my personal ramble here, even forgot why I was answering your comment, but the TLDR is that the auth-left and auth-right have way more in common than the auth-left and lib-left, which is especially sad since capitalism itself is a form of authority around wealth.
I think the problem with tankies is that they let their perception of what is "pragmatic" and "realistic" poison and overpower their true ideals, which tends to steer them towards authoritarianism. So scared of losing, that they lose themselves in pursuit of victory.
I think the exact opposite is true: they use the excuse of pragmatism while arguing exactly in favor of what they idolize. It'd be more convincing if their concessions to anti-socialism advanced or preserved leftist causes, but largely that's simply not the case. What you described is the exact problem some Anarchists have, where they idolize praxis to such a degree that they argue against making optimal moves in favor of keeping themselves ideologically pure. Anarchists sometimes argue against voting on principle whereas Tankies will argue that you should vote for the newest ML party. The ML party will decry not doing enough for workers, propose nothing of substance, and call Biden evil for helping Ukraine resist Russia.
Ok so obviously this is anecdotal evidence but my personal experience with this is that the people who support Russia are pretty much all right wing. The farther to the right they are , the harder they're buying into Russian propaganda.
I haven't seen actual support from the left in real life, but more some sort of vague both-siding and "understanding" and stuff like that. And that's come from both left and right (not center-left or center-right), but as a minority opinion. Old Stalinists, some left-wingers closer to the left side than center, then some right to far right. I think for the left it might also be the heritage of USSR alignment and peace mindedness. For the right, I'm not even really sure. Some sort of "anti-West" in the sort of "anti-globalism" sense which make you go hmmmm and then there's been some pretty sus financial ties.
But I thought tankie (and not just authoritarian or some other word) meant leftists (specifically communists) that are pro-authoritarianism. I've seen people often saying that tankies aren't leftists but to me it just seems like they are, but just the shit kind. Would be a lot nicer not to share even the vague space of "leftism" with them but I think there's not much to be done about that.
Nah, people who support authoritarianism can't be leftists or communists by definition. Marx defined communism as stateless. There's no such thing as a communist who supports the state.
The stateless communism is the end state and I think many authoritarian communists still (at least claim to) believe and want that, but they are fine with authoritarianism of one sort or another while building towards that end goal. Marxism-Leninism is like that I believe.
There's a lot of currents of communism and leftism that are fine with authoritarianism as a "temporary necessity" or some other justification like that. I think both Marx and Engels wrote about that.
I feel like left-wing is similar sort of vague grouping as right-wing that it incorporates both authoritarian and anti-authoritarian views and ideologies.
But their actual plan for the socialist state "withering way" amounts to pixie tears and fairy dust. People who theoretically want leftism but have no plan of action to achieve it are just liberals.
But their actual plan for the socialist state "withering way" amounts to pixie tears and fairy dust.
A lot of people say that about communism in general. There's quite a few prominent leftist ideologies that are utopian and I wouldn't use that to claim they're not actually leftist.
People who theoretically want leftism but have no plan of action to achieve it are just liberals.
I don't understand how that would make it liberalism. That'd just make them impractical or utopian or maybe even half-baked but I see no reason to claim they're not leftist. "Leftist" isn't a guarantee of quality in itself, after all. It's just a vague grouping of very distinct ideologies.
I'm not entirely sure about this one but wasn't Marx's ideas also at least somewhat without a proper plan of action since it was rather a vision of things to come than a guide?
Marxism-Leninism isn't about authoritarianism, the idea of a vanguard party composed of intellectual revolutionaries that guides the broader people to revolution, isn't authoritarian in and out of itself, as much as anticommunist leftists try to smear it. It's about understanding the usefulness of centralization and coalition in a wide front that shows unity in action. That doesn't go against democracy.
What a ridiculous and reductionist thing to say. Marx and Engles strongly and frequently criticized anarchists, instead taking the position that after the revolution, the state would need to be maintained under a "dictatorship of the proletariat" at least until the social conditions that created it had been changed, at which point it would gradually "wither away." Of course the end goal is a stateless society, but it's plain as day in his writings and his opposition to anarchists that he believed it was necessary to use the state to achieve the necessary conditions for that end goal. Regardless of what you think of it, that's just a historical fact.
Except for the part where he didn't actually believe in a communist revolution until his later years when he saw the failures of the vanguard. Hey, we're not all born perfect, we have to learn from experiences.
Ironically, they'll call you a "lib" for holding any position in between "we should revoke Obamacare" to "it'd be nice if we could organize more unions".
You're literally looking at a post with the word "leftists" to talk about people who support Putin, do you really not think there hasn't been a slide of what "tankie" means to the point that now some people like OP will use it indistinguishably?
The use has expanded but I haven't seen it used as a general term for the left, if that's what you mean.
The term is now extended to describe people who endorse, defend, or deny the crimes committed by communist leaders such as Vladimir Lenin,[9][10] Joseph Stalin and Mao Zedong. In recent times, the term has been used across the political spectrum and in a geopolitical context to describe those who have a bias in favour of anti-Western states, authoritarian states or states with a socialist legacy, such as Belarus, Cuba, China,[4] Syria,[11] North Korea, and Russia. Additionally, the term pejoratively describes political activists who are said to have a tendency to be favorable towards non-socialist states and political groupings with no affiliation to socialism if they are opposed to the United States, regardless of their ideology, such as Iran or Hezbollah.
Can be pretty vague but doesn't really label all leftists as tankies, rather those that are authoritarian or apologists for authoritarians. Last part is pretty vague though, but I haven't seen it used like that iirc.
OP should, but the entire reason he posted it was to pretend that anyone to his left is a Russian sympathizer, and to try to discredit anyone who opposes genocide elsewhere.
Oh, so now you're in favor of me calling people tankies? Curious, because you've repeatedly complained when the label is applied. Almost like this is agreeing with someone in bad faith.
Fucking hilarious, considering the things I've said about Israel in general and the Israeli right in particular. But I suppose you'd have nothing to say if you didn't have blatant lies at hand.
The first article is about the ceasefire proposal. It has not stopped the flow of weapons, and Biden still will not call it the genocide it is.
The second article is an opinion piece that speculates that Biden is losing patience with Netanyahu, which we've heard before without any alteration to US policy.
Says the person who gets their shit removed for misinformation…. You love accusing people of the exact opposite of what they say in their own defense of your accusations… PJ has said plenty enough for anyone in their right mind to know where they stand on the issue.
The only one here that is doubtful, is you. And there’s receipts.
Am I not allowed to comment on anything said in any post if you commented first now? What’s this, third grade?
If you said dumb shit in a comment thread, I’m allowed to respond to it. Otherwise, if this is how you want to play it- never respond to anyting I say anywhere, else you’re admittedly stalking. .
Again, I’m not following you around. I followed the thread and saw your nonsense posted as a comment here and had a point to make.
That’s how social media works. If you’re butthurt about being banned, maybe don’t do dumb shit to get banned. Either way. I’m going to get back to the point:
You’re trying to discredit someone for misinformation and lying. There is proof in their history to support what they are saying is true. Meanwhile, I said that YOU have a history of misinformation any lying. There is proof in your history to support what I said is true.
To summarize: Proof appears to be a thing that you seem to have trouble with. Maybe don’t go around attacking people over things that you are guilty of. It’s a bad look.
Like, gee. It's almost like Lemmy is a relatively small platform where usernames are easily recognized and you're likely to run into the same people. "Stalking" lmfao
I've also found ensign crab will speak in such round about ways that you have no idea what he's saying, and then he can take either position depending how it goes.
I know we all hate uhhh, nuanced takes, and I'm especially too much of a brainlet to really have a good take on global politics, but I think I can give a crack at it, going by the rest of the shit in this thread.
Generally, war is bad, because it kills the poor of a nation, the racial minorities which can get sent to the front lines, and the political radicals which can do outreach (leftist, or, also, leftist), who would attempt mutual aid in those circumstances. It's a circumstance in which you can more easily justify any number of pretty horrible actions.
I think if I'm looking at the war with an ultra-cynical lens, as I think would befit global politics broadly, the united states isn't taking an interest in ukraine so much because they're some sacred ally, but because they see it as a way to drain russia of a bunch of money, keep the military industrial complex running, and do it while not sparking international incident and also while not expending any of their own troops.
I also don't really know at what point this war is thought to end. If we give russia's horrible oligarchic power structure more leeway, if we give them some sort of concession, then they're just gonna keep that and leave ukraine to get fucked or worse. Probably it would result in less loss of life, which is good, but, generally not a desirable outcome, even if I'm not really sure ukraine is a tipping point in terms of resource gain for russia, and making russia an international player. I think the economy has been pretty much in the shitter since like, russia was formed, and probably in the immediate post revolutionary period, from what I understand, like, after industrialization, they were just kinda fucked like, around stalin times, maybe.
At the same time, though, the most I can really think of is that this war might end when internal support from russians, mostly from the russian oligarchy outside of putin, puts enough pressure on it that it either stops entirely or results in some sort of internal power struggle. I don't know if that's really going to happen, they all seem pretty much insanely corrupt, and I dunno what america might do other than kind of, attempt to spark internal dissent, which also seems like a bad idea based on how much success we've had with that historically. The russian people seem to be maybe the most propagandized people on earth, even considering the americans and chinese, which is saying something, so I dunno if internal dissent from the populous would ever mount enough to overthrow anything, as much as we might hope.
If we pull out, that doesn't solve the problem long term, but it would give maybe some amount of time to kind of pursue other avenues with which the russian government might be dealt with more thoroughly. I also don't know, right, because right now we're sort of in a position where, since we've entered the war, everyone on either side is going to be very recalcitrant to end it. The costs, they are too sunk. It would've been much better had this war ended before it began, but unfortunately that wasn't really in anyone's geopolitical interest, and ukraine, once again, is fucked over. Realistically we should've sped up them becoming part of the UN, before a full-blown war came up, but then maybe that was the big L in the first place, and I dunno if there's a circumstance in which they get out without russia getting some pie, just because of where they kind of ended up historically. Probably if I had to guess, the war is going to end either when russia concedes (which, as said, doesn't seem likely unless russia's internal bureaucracy collapses or undergoes some sort of change), or when russia gains some amount of territory in negotiations, gains something as a concession, and then hopefully the rest of ukraine can actually become part of the UN, in which case I will feel really dumb, because we could've just got there from the beginning without an ultramassive loss of life.
I think probably ending the war sooner is better rather than later, because at the very least that maybe gives us more time for putin to slowly age out of his position, but it would still be a decade before he's even biden's age, so, kind of dubious, and given where they're at right now, probably some other jerkoff would just get appointed, so there would have to be some amount of change in the intervening time.
I dunno, war seems uhh, bad, maybe. If you want the tankie take, it's going to basically be that this is a war which kills people (not based), that geopolitically benefits america (not based, as america sucks), and also that they more broadly align with BRICS as a kind of, more forward thinking, and perhaps better alternative to america, mostly as it exists through china. The problem as I see it is that every other country in that initiative outside of china and maybe south africa, is pretty much a diet-fascist shithole, and china is also very tenuously better than the US, it seems to me, to be very much an open question, as to whether or not the chinese shadow government will come out once america collapses and go full sicko commie mode, or if they'll just turn like, extreme golden age neofascist company town garbage mode. I would like to believe one, but in my heart of hearts, I know that nothing good ever happens, so, I think probably we're just fucked and BRICS will also suck once they probably take over in wake of a probably graceless collapse of american empire, if that's even allowed to really happen.
Ukraine is already part of the UN, man. The issue is that Ukraine wants to join NATO, to avoid this very thing from happening (Russia invading), and Russia regards the prospect of Ukraine in NATO as a threat (to their ability to invade Ukraine and extract concessions). Russian peace negotiations have consistently had the destruction of Ukrainian sovereignty and ability to defend itself as core demands, from the very start of the war.
"Multipolarism" is just multiple countries doing imperialism, not the antidote for imperialism.
One time, I could in no way convince a tankie, that Chinese loans weren't just "money given as present", and called any news about them being paid back as "fake news", because in their mind, China is a generous country that helps other out of their good heart, with no strings attached.
How they can't see the belt and road initiative as an attempt at establishing hegemony blows my mind. They really think China is doing it out of the goodness of their hearts.
It's Empowering the Global South to create a United Front against Western Neoliberal Imperialism(tm)
I don't know if it's fortunate or unfortunate that China is in the process of learning the old lesson of "If you owe the bank a million dollars, you have a problem; if you owe the bank a billion dollars, the bank has a problem".
Nobody thinks that China is giving loans as a present. Of course there's self interest on their part and establishing an alternative to the American-lead international financial order benefits them.
...but it also benefits pretty much every single other nation that joins it. Imagine if there were a bunch of countries that could trade with Cuba without consequences because they don't rely on US dollars. Imagine if countries in Africa could nationalize their resources and redistribute their wealth without fear of international economic reprisal. Imagine if the hegemon of this new financial bloc regularly forgave loans when the investments didn't turn out as hoped, instead of imposing neoliberal austerity laws they wrote themselves on the countries that took them.
I'm in one of those countries receiving the Belt and Road initiative (Hungary), and we still have the austerity measures, but hey, there's a percentage-based tax break system that gives more to people the richer they're (they had to put a limit on the maximum amount of money after too many backlash), and no one in the Chinese government are complaining (not requesting to change it, complaining) about most of the media is in the hands of party henchmen.
AFAIK, austerity in Hungary is the current program of the conservative ruling party, not an imposition by a foreign institution like the EU or the IMF. The BRI investments in Hungary are also relatively recent so it's too early to say if they've succeeded or failed, what I was referencing was the wave of loan forgiveness China has offered to poorer countries, mostly in response to the economic fallout from COVID.
