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PaperclipPerfector  5d ago (text post)   25714 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 17, 2025

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It depends on how you see the recent history of Ukraine.

First of all, Ukraine (with generous help from the West) had a color revolution in 2014. This was eventually to lead to Zelensky taking power in Ukraine. This leads to Ukraine becoming much more friendly to the West, and petitioning and working toward membership in the EU and protection from NATO. That’s a big shift from Ukraine as before it had a Russian friendly government and was aligned to Russian interests.

The "eventually" here involves Russia removing a large part of the constituency for pro-Russian parties by invading Ukraine and occupying the territory where their voters lived. Yanukovych was a viable candidate in an intact Ukraine (at least until he tore up the EU association agreement that was the only sane economic policy for Ukraine). Zelensky was the least anti-Russian candidate that was viable in a Ukraine that did not include Crimea or the Donbass.

If you uncritically accept Russia's position that they have the right to dominate Ukraine, then the Ukrainians did start it by not applying their tongues to Russian boots with sufficient vigor. However, I refer you to my remark about thuggish worldviews. Russia has no more right to demand subservience from Ukraine than the US does from Canada or Mexico.

It's hard to see how a change of government in a neighboring country justifies invading them (twice!) and engaging in naked land grabs.

with generous help from the West

What exactly does this mean? The "Euromaiden was fake/astroturf" position runs aground on the absolutely massive, cross-spectrum popular participation.

It’s just quite simply reality. No state on Earth is going to allow a country on its border to make an alliance with a foreign country that it find hostile. We invaded Cuba because of missiles on our border, and Cuba is separated from the USA by the Gulf of Mexico and was and is a much weaker state. Had it been Canada or Mexico gone full communist and been importing weapons and getting trained by the USSR, it would be considered an act of war.

Ukraine is the same thing for Russia. It sucks for the post-Soviet states of Eastern Europe, but because they exist next to Russia, they’re not entirely free to do anything they want. If they get too friendly with the West, they’re getting the same thing. And on the other hand, Europe, Mexico, Canada, and South America are in our sphere of influence and we don’t allow them to get too far off reservation. We’re powerful enough to do so mostly by sanctions and soft power, but the longevity of a regime in our sphere of influence that openly sides with our enemies isn’t that long.

We invaded Cuba because of missiles on our border

No, we didn't. Bay of Pigs predated the Missile Crisis, and there was no subsequent invasion. Cuba is still communist. If the best equivalence one can draw is a failed covert op sixty years ago against a recently established dictator, America is looking pretty good by comparison.

Cuba isn't even a good comparison. Cuba was openly authoritarian and there's a fairly obvious asymmetry between nuclear missiles and a trade deal with the EU. A more appropriate one would probably be the coup targeting Arbenz in Guatemala. And, you know, the coup in Guatemala was completely unjustifiable. It didn't advance US interests or security in any meaningful way - it was simply a manifestation of anti-communist paranoia and extremely petty corporate interests.

Europe, Mexico, Canada, and South America are in our sphere of influence and we don’t allow them to get too far off reservation.

The reservation must be pretty fucking massive, then, because we've had anti-American governments in Latin America for decades. European governments routinely ignore US desires and if they told the US to get out the we would do so.

And yet we failed to overthrow the government of Cuba and it remains communist to this day. Just because every country wishes they had a sphere of influence and will take steps to obtain one doesn't mean we are under any obligation to give it to them. European nations freely ignored the Monroe Doctrine for decades after it was promulgated until they were too weak relative to the US to do so.

Russia has no more right to demand subservience from Ukraine than the US does from Canada or Mexico.

You're just wrong on the face of it. It's realpolitik, lets not indulge in transparent lies. If China decided to have a little color revolution of their own in mexico, the us would be taking that government over faster than you can blink.

If you were Canada & Mexico would you be spinning up a nuclear weapons program right now? I ask because I can't imagine a world where Poland,Turkey,Greace and Germany are not arming themselves with at least 200 warheads each over the next 10 years.

If you were Canada & Mexico would you be spinning up a nuclear weapons program right now?

Right now? No. That window has closed.
A few years ago? Absolutely.

(The tricky bit about spinning up a nuclear weapons program is that it invites immediate reprisal, but dissuades longer-term reprisal. Spinning up a nuclear weapons program when your neighbor is dropping thinly-veiled hints of invasions is already too late.)

Now... quietly making sure you have the CFD horsepower available, and the people with CFD expertise available for said research, and ideally as much design and development as you are confident you can get away with doing quietly without the physical fissile material? Absolutely. Tricky bit here being that sims are a whole lot harder to do without calibration data that neither Canada nor Mexico have access to.

I’m not uncritical of the Russian version of the story. Both versions are likely at least somewhat true in the sense that while the Revolution seems to have been organic, it was helped along by the West. But to my mind, you really can’t engage with the war and the causes or likely outcomes unless you can explain what all sides actually believe is going on and why they’re making the decisions they’re making. The most important part of the Russian version of the color revolution story is that this is what Russia believes about the color revolution.

If I want to understand Vietnam and the American war in Vietnam, im going to have to know what Americans thought they were fighting for and what they believed was going on. Does that make Domino Theory true? No. But refusing to engage with that theory just means I don’t understand it.

it was helped along by the West

Again, in what way? Specifically. I suppose you could say that the EU created friction by offering Ukraine a trade deal that was liable to agitate Russia, but that just brings us back to the issue of Russia feeling entitled to dominate Ukraine.

But to my mind, you really can’t engage with the war and the causes or likely outcomes unless you can explain what all sides actually believe is going on and why they’re making the decisions they’re making.

When Trump says "You should never have started it", he's not engaging in cold-blooded causal analysis and I see no reason to pretend that he is. Like, yes, obviously Russia/Putin has a perspective on why the war is justified, but there isn't actually that much divergence between pro and anti-Russian positions on why Russia invaded Ukraine, just in how seriously you take their justifications.

Again, in what way? Specifically

Up to 2014 the US had spent at least ~$5 billion on 'pro-democracy', 'civil society' and 'independent journalism' operations directly and via NGO of the sorts to see their funding cut recently.

He is not engaging in causal analysis at all, he is criticizing Ukrainian leadership for not making a deal. This is literally his next sentence. Trump is not a guy who speaks precisely, you can’t read so deeply into his throwaway comments.

His 'throwaway comments' are backed up by a 'peace negotiation' where to all appearances he is planning on selling out to Russia. He's also doubled down on this line, so apparently more than just a throwaway comment.

More broadly, Trump is President of the United States. People are going to take him seriously, and they should take him seriously. That Trump says ten insane things a day and he only means three of them is not an indication that you should write off what he says.

It is, however, a perfect example of how (not) to engage in media coverage over him.

The domino theory was, quite literally, true- Laos and Cambodia became communist in addition to south Vietnam.

What exactly does this mean? The "Euromaiden was fake/astroturf" position runs aground on the absolutely massive, cross-spectrum popular participation.

That something was a color revolution doesn't imply that the participants were altogether fake.

Every country has its dissidents. An intelligence agency can help them to fund their activities, grow their networks, spread their message, etc. I would say that for something to be a color revolution it wouldn't have happened but for the covert participation of another state.

"Color revolution" is a just a term for a post-soviet/communist protest movement. Ukraine had a color revolution in 2004 as well (also involving Yanukovych, though that time it was about election fraud, not his backing out of an EU trade deal, but both cases involved the underlying perception of Russia violating Ukrainian sovereignty).

Every country has its dissidents

The Euromaidan protests involved hundreds of thousands to millions of active protestors from basically every part of the Ukrainian political spectrum except the pro-Russia faction. This is more that "dissidents > 0". Defending the claim that it was instigated by Western powers in a meaningful way is going to take more than allusions to possible foreign involvement.

I don’t think that means they didn’t get Western support though. Obama did support Euromaidan. And while I don’t think they instigated the events, I think they helped the people organizing the movement both morally and materially.

Russia has no more right to demand subservience from Ukraine than the US does from Canada or Mexico.

And yet the United States has a long, long history of demanding subservience from both:

•Invading Canada twice in 1777 and 1813 for not sufficiently supporting the American revolutionary project

•Sponsoring and funding a breakaway republic from Mexico in 1836, then officially recognizing that breakaway republic

•Launching a Special Military Operation against Mexico in 1848 and extracting massive territorial concessions because Mexico tried to destroy that breakaway republic

•Threatening to invade Canada in 1862 because their mother-state was providing aid to America’s own attempted breakaway republic

•Allowing foreign insurgents to stage in Minnesota and perpetrate multiple massive cross-border terrorist attacks into Canada between 1866 and 1871 resulting in hundreds of deaths

•Invading Mexico in 1913 to try to rendition a high value target that perpetrated a cross-border terrorist attack against the US

•Seizing the port of Veracruz in Mexico in 1912 to ensure access by military shipping

•Stationing numerous troops and military facilities in Canada

•Extracting trade concessions from both Canada and Mexico

Sponsoring and funding a breakaway republic from Mexico in 1836, then officially recognizing that breakaway republic

The U.S. never officially recognized the republic of Texas. Annexing the republic of Texas came about because democrats needed a victory vs the whigs; the country supporting Texas nationalism full throttle was actually France.

There’s an interesting alternative history where the USA votes against annexing Texas. I’ve thought about writing it up and posting it on, like, a Friday fun thread. But the long and short of it is that president Tyler wanted to annex Texas to shore up a pro-slavery position, and the democrats in the next election successfully framed it as a referendum on US territorial expansion while they whigs wanted to punt the issue to try to avoid talking about slavery. Mexico in this era had many breakaway republics and it was generally thought that Britain and France would seek to weaken the Mexican empire to carve out new world spheres of influence by taking the breakaways as Allies; these were the two major backers of the republic of Texas, which spent its entire existence at war and heavily indebted.

And yet the United States has a long, long history of demanding subservience from both:

And? Leaving aside some of the dodgy specifics herein, it would be pretty brazen to suggest that, e.g. Canada was really at fault for the Fenian Raids. If the point is merely that sometimes powerful nations bully weaker ones, no one was contesting that.

The point is that powerful nations take an interest in the behaviour of their neighbours, especially when those neighbours are aligning themselves with rival nations, and act accordingly. America is no exception. See e.g. Bay of Pigs, or the medieval friction between England and the Scots (because the latter often allied with France).

America has lately been able to act as though it would never do this only because it's had no major rivals for 30 years and its neighbouring nations are thoroughly cowed. If Mexico or Canada start entertaining an alliance with China, perhaps involving the stationing of Chinese troops, America will change its tune VERY quickly.

I reiterate: And?

The problem with the thug's worldview is that they create the world they think they are merely describing. Nobody in Eastern Europe would be clamoring for an alliance with Uncle Sam if not for Russia's own behavior.

And therefore American politicians are hypocrites (wittingly or not) when they say that large countries like Russia have no right to exert influence on their neighbours.

If they believe the same for America (which I doubt, they’ve never been shy about steering their vassals allies away from getting involved with geopolitical rivals, see Nord Stream 2) it is because they are the proverbial man in a gated community patrolled by police who believes that nobody has the right to self-defence.

Now, it may be that you personally would strongly oppose any such behaviour by America as strongly as you oppose it when done by Russia. But I don’t think many Americans would, and I certainly don’t think America’s government would.

Personally, as an Englishman I would vote for taking action should Ireland or a hypothetical independent Scotland start discussing alliance with enemy nations for example. Letting yourself be put into a position of weakness just because nobody has actually used it against you yet is stupid. So I can hardly order that nobody else does so. Of course, one hopes it never comes to that, but part of making sure it doesn’t is that everyone has to take care not to tread on each others’ toes.

And therefore American politicians are hypocrites

And?

it is because they are the proverbial man in a gated community patrolled by police who believes that nobody has the right to self-defence

This is the strangest conceptualization of self-defense I've seen in a while.

And?

You stated that "Russia has no more right to demand subservience from Ukraine than the US does from Canada or Mexico". Others have pointed out that the US acts as if it does have that right, and always has. To the extent that you believe what you say, you are rare. The majority of people who assert that Russia has no right to care about its neighbour's alliances are hypocrites who willfully refuse to put themselves in Russia's shoes, which they don't have to because America owns most of a continent and quelled its only neighbours centuries ago.

it is because they are the proverbial man in a gated community patrolled by police who believes that nobody has the right to self-defence

It's a fairly standard criticism of the kind of people who condemn others for physically defending themselves against assault - that the condemners can afford to take a high-minded view on such matters only because they live in a fortified community from which potentially-dangerous elements of the underclass have been forcibly excluded.

It's hard to see how a change of government in a neighboring country justifies invading them (twice!) and engaging in naked land grabs.

The Cuban Missile Crisis and the Bay of Pigs Invasion would like to have a word with you.

If Russia started positioning missile batteries, and putting military bases in Canada and Mexico, and the governments of Canada and Mexico were not responsive to our protest, I have zero illusions that a competent administration wouldn't practice "diplomacy by other means" to stop it.

We used to understand that countries had legitimate security interest inside their sphere of influence. We didn't have to like it, we just had to be realistic that it's not always (or hardly ever) in America's national interest to intervene in every conflict on the face of the Earth.

The Cuban Missile Crisis and the Bay of Pigs Invasion would like to have a word with you.

At least with that one, we did have to go to the negotiating table a little sooner, and it also played into the conspiracy theory narrative of "JFK was so burned by Bay of Pigs that he considered disbanding the CIA, who in turn set up his assassination as punishment."

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