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PaperclipPerfector  2mo ago (text post)   1372 thread views

Transnational Thursday for October 17, 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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Seems like North Korea is sending soldiers to Russia.

WELT article, German and paywalled: https://www.welt.de/politik/ausland/plus254140716/Putins-Nordkoreaner-Erstmals-seit-dem-Mongolensturm-Wenn-der-Ferne-Osten-in-den-Krieg-eintritt.html

Commentary in NZZ, also German and paywalled: https://www.nzz.ch/meinung/nordkoreas-intervention-im-ukraine-krieg-erfordert-eine-harsche-gegenreaktion-ld.1853967

So I don't actually know a damn thing about it all.

It looks like there has been an assassination attempt against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. A large Hezbollah drone struck one of Netanyahu’s homes in the Galilee region. Netanyahu was not home at the time, and no one was injured. It seems like there was fairly high level authorization for this attack from Iran. There are murmurings from the Israeli government that this attack merits retaliation against high level figures in the Iranian government.

I see nothing wrong with directly targeting your opponent's leader, rather than having to kill all the plebs in between first. Israel especially cannot complain, given their policiy and tactics. If I were Netanyahu, my response (after the initial nerves and shock) would be along the lines of "Fair play, but you're not good enough."

Normally I would agree. In this situation though I think it’s irresponsible for either of them to be doing that since it’s a nuclear power and an imminent nuclear power. That’s how you get millions of people killed over personal defense interests of the leadership.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2024/10/17/zelensky-ukraine-seek-nuclear-weapons-join-nato

“Either Ukraine will have nuclear weapons, which will serve as protection, or it must be part of some kind of alliance. Apart from Nato, we do not know of such an effective alliance,” Mr Zelensky said.

Ukraine has four nuclear power stations and German magazine Bild quoted a Ukrainian official specialising in weapons procurement who said that Kyiv could build a nuclear missile.

“We have the material, we have the knowledge. If the order is given, we will only need a few weeks to have the first bomb,” he said. “The West should think less about Russia’s red lines and more about our red lines.”

Despite this, the Ukrainians are also accusing poor Julian Ropcke of the Bild of spreading disinformation:

https://www.unian.ua/weapons/yaderna-zbroya-u-zelenskogo-vidreaguvali-na-informaciyu-pro-namir-ukrajini-vidnoviti-arsenal-12791010.html

According to Dmitry Litvin, an adviser to President Vladimir Zelensky, it has long been possible to confuse where the words of Bild military columnist Julian Röpke, and where the statements of Russian propagandists, writes 24 Channel.

"Because both Röpke and rospropaganda are 'turning the same nonsense into informorism,'" he added.

Later on the Bild publication as well responded head of the Anti-Disinformation Center Andriy Kovalenko. He stressed that "any fantasies of Western journalists about Ukrainian nuclear weapons are fabrications."

I guess they're trying to tone it down, or perhaps someone has reminded them of the likely outcomes of nuclear escalation against a country with an overwhelmingly larger nuclear arsenal. Zelensky probably received some very angry phone-calls from the 'you're totally joining NATO at some unspecified future time' crowd for this one and was forced to backtrack.

Ukraine is now in a very unpleasant position and they're not making it any better by constantly trying to wriggle out of it. There isn't some cheat code that lets Ukraine win the war, whether it's long range strikes, F-16s (which seem not to have produced any significant effect) or even nuclear weapons.

At this point the West should stop all kind of aid for ukraine for couple of months just to teach this loudmouth who is really in charge. And make it official - no face savings.

They might disintegrate if we did that - the battlefield situation is not looking very good even with continual spurts of aid.

There are already lots of angry Ukrainians who feel betrayed or deceived by the West, many of whom now have plentiful access to MANPADs, ATGMs, top-tier killer drones and experience using them. I wouldn't want to be the politician who is seen to pull the plug on these people.

This whole situation has become a complete disaster, I have a few shreds of sympathy for the Pentagon/State Department goons in charge of this operation. No matter what they decide on, there's going to be huge backblast. Steady-as-she-goes: Ukraine bleeds out on the battlefield. Cut and run: accusations of betrayal, the usual suspects shrieking 'with a bit of backbone we could've fought off the tyrannical rampage of this genocidal monster', Ukrainian collapse and decent probability of 'stabbed in the back' terror attacks. Pump up aid: military readiness declines further, escalation risks, Russia takes hostile actions elsewhere, still very unlikely Ukraine secures 2014 borders.

Of course, if the experts actually understood what they were doing we would never have rowed up shit creek at all.

Pump up aid: military readiness declines further, escalation risks, Russia takes hostile actions elsewhere, still very unlikely Ukraine secures 2014 borders.

I doubt more aid will really affect American military readiness, the bigger question is what the US gets back. Zelensky is not able to answer the big unspoken question: why should anyone help Ukraine win the war decisively?

There's option A: the US spends 100 billion dollars, Ukraine and Russia bleed out on the battlefield, at least one of them sells its prime assets to MNCs to fix the economy

And there's option B: the US spends 500 billion dollars, Ukraine kicks Russia out, at most one of them sells its prime assets to MNCs to fix the economy

Why spend more money on a potentially worse outcome?

B) also implies civil war in Russia

Not necessarily. A civil war requires competing elites, and Putin has been constantly pruning anything that could be considered a nascent counter-elite. Given how even Ukraine didn't really have a civil war I doubt Russia will. The PRC could support separatists in the Far East, but this would mean the bigger part of Russia would realign itself with the US, which not what they need.

Given how even Ukraine didn't really have a civil war I doubt Russia will.

Russia and Ukraine are having a civil war right now, it's just one that happens to straddle an existing border.

Don't forget in option B: Russian ethnics are dispossessed at least and massacred at worst in Crimea and DPR/LPR, with NATO weapons.

Russian ethnics are dispossessed at least and massacred at worst in

Russian ethnics are being dispossessed at least and massacred at worst in Ukraine right now, by Russians.

Yes but not, or at least only marginally, with US support and weapons.

...isn't that.... too much? if they want to punish Zelensky, they can sanction some of his property or send his wife back

The point is not to punish Zelensky but to humiliate him.

Cuba has lost power. The electrical grid has collapsed and the whole country is in a blackout.

https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/cuba-implements-emergency-measures-millions-go-without-electricity-2024-10-18/

One wonders if Cuba's government might also lose power, but that feels hard to imagine.

They have a relatively effective and well established police state with a large elite caste of true believers. Hard to see it collapsing easily, protests are still relatively rare.

Yahya Sinwar, the military wing commander of Hamas in Gaza, and the planner of the October 7 attacks, has been killed.

Is this why negotiations dried up after Netanyahu refused to compromise on the Philadelphi Corridor? From the sound of his possessions, he seemed to be ready to try to flee across the border.

Yahya Sinwar

For orchestrating the abduction and killing of two Israeli soldiers and four Palestinians he considered to be collaborators in 1989, Sinwar was sentenced to four life sentences by Israel, of which he served 22 years until his release among 1,026 others in a 2011 prisoner exchange for Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit.

This was the gift that keeps on giving. I hope governments everywhere are taking notes.

Edit: Some prior discussion on the Gilad Shalit exchange.

Not only has he been released, before that, while in jail, he was cured of brain cancer in Israeli hospital.

The reporting is very unclear. Apparently they just randomly came upon him trying to maneuver above ground yesterday? Strange.

Israeli soldiers on field training for a command course noticed some suspicious movement and called reinforcements. Once the forces were gathered, they engaged the terrorists (without knowing who that was) and reportedly wounded Sinwar. He was hiding on the second store of the building (there's a video clip of him trying to fight off IDF drone with a stick) and the IDF soldiers called in tank support (also a trainee on a tank commander course), still without knowing who exactly is there, the tank fired on the building and the building collapsed, taking three terrorists inside with it. During the cleanup, the soldiers noticed that one of the corpses in the rubble looks very familiar.

So yes, it was random, but also not so random - IDF established control over the area and methodically surveyed it and engaged enemy forces wherever they showed up. It's not random occurrence, it's the result of long and methodical work done by many people day to day, and that's exactly why forces on the ground in Rafah were necessary. The time and the numbers were on their side - Sinwar had to get less then perfectly lucky just once, and that's what happened today. Of course, the fact that if were not some elite force but regular bunch of trainees doing regular patrol, adds some pungency to the story.

Excellent. That shitheel's life was saved by the Israelis and look how he repaid them. They did brain surgery on him while he was imprisoned around a decade ago. The surgeon's nephew was killed on Oct 7.

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