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PaperclipPerfector  2mo ago (text post)   1386 thread views

Transnational Thursday for August 29, 2024

Transnational Thursday is a thread for people to discuss international news, foreign policy or international relations history. Feel free as well to drop in with coverage of countries you’re interested in, talk about ongoing dynamics like the wars in Israel or Ukraine, or even just whatever you’re reading.

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Why not? It's not like you'll be banned / doxed / pursued for being pro-Russian here, as long as you're not insulting other posters too much in the process.

Which goes for most positions here.

I suppose why do people stan for a country that is clearly an enemy of the west/europe/america and invading sovereign countries with little justification? is more of my question.

I think here it's more anti-Western elite than actual pro-Russia, certainly compared to Twitter.

I suppose why do people stan for a country that is clearly an enemy of the west/europe/america

Presumably they don't like the way the West/Europe/America is going and would like to see the current ruling institutions and elites embarrased.

and invading sovereign countries with little justification?

What counts as a justification for war is up for debate. Some people reject the moral view of diplomacy that cares about things like sovereignty and justifications and think that a view based on threats and interests is more realistic. In this view things like a trend of NATO expansion become a trigger for war even if Ukraine didn't actually join NATO or do anything to harm Russia directly, and the only way this war could have been avoided and future wars also is if Western diplomats stop looking at things in idealistic moral terms and start thinking about how to preserve the balance of power.

There is a risk of implying too much about Russia with this model, if Western leaders are all idealists their enemies must be the opposite and therefore Putin is a rational calculator right? I can see someone convincing themselves into the pro-Russia camp this way, but looking at diplomacy in terms of threats and interests means you have to be open to the possibility of people misjudging their interests and the 'Putin made a huge blunder' case has also been made here.

Because western elites themselves are an enemy of the west / Europe / America. All you can do is pick your poison.

These two issues seem pretty orthogonal. Russia succeeding in Ukraine would certainly upset a lot of western elites, so I suppose someone could support them for that reason, but I'm not sure whether there's any strategic logic to it.

nah, empires need to continually expand to keep the spoils coming for the interior. Globalists exhausting themselves in the ME and eastern Europe, especially with China on the rise could easily end them. At the very least it'd ruin their hopes for some eventual whole world centralized control.

And the answer is the same- it's not like you'll be banned / doxed / pursued for such a stance here, as long you're not insulting other posters too much in the process.

Since this is a contrast to large parts of the 'normal' internet, the places you can simultaneously openly express such views without being in an ideological echo chamber are limited. Hence, the Motte gets a lot more of those sort of people than places that actively weed them out.

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