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PaperclipPerfector  10d ago (text post)   1626 thread views

Transnational Thursday for March 20, 2025

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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That’s blatantly not true, though.

This is blatantly true, and getting even more true every day. Ruled based order is order of permanent gangrenous wounds that will never heal.

North vs South Korea. Armenia vs AZ. North vs South Cyprus. Israel vs Syria and Lebanon. India vs Pakistan. Etc, etc. There is no active shooting war for most of the time, but there is no peace either, and no hope there will ever be one.

For comparison, see, for example from 19th century, war of 1870. War ended with great victory for Germans, great humiliation for French. France lost two provinces, lots of cash and honor.

What happened afterwards? Peace. Bad feelings remained, but diplomatic relations were restored, French could travel to Germany and vice versa, no walls and barbed wire on the borders. Not thinkable today.

Not that I would expect Russia to pull out in shame.

Do you expect the relationships returning to normal, do you expect the "international community" recognizing that things are back as they were in 2014, only Russia got little bigger.

No. End of the war would mean permanent ceasefire and permanent DMZ, permanent walls and mine fields watched by killer robots. Good for nature and wildlife, not for anyone else.

North vs South Korea. Armenia vs AZ. North vs South Cyprus. Israel vs Syria and Lebanon. India vs Pakistan. Etc, etc.

The United Kingdom vs Argentina, France vs Algeria, Vietnam vs France and then America..

For comparison, see, for example from 19th century, war of 1870. War ended with great victory for Germans, great humiliation for French. France lost two provinces, lots of cash and honor.

What happened afterwards? Peace. Bad feelings remained, but diplomatic relations were restored, French could travel to Germany and vice versa, no walls and barbed wire on the borders. Not thinkable today.

...well, that's certainly one reading of the war that did more than anything else to set up two world wars and the repeated future ethnic cleansings of Germans.

For comparison, see, for example from 19th century, war of 1870. War ended with great victory for Germans, great humiliation for French. France lost two provinces, lots of cash and honor.

What happened afterwards? Peace. Bad feelings remained, but diplomatic relations were restored, French could travel to Germany and vice versa, no walls and barbed wire on the borders. Not thinkable today.

It was precisely this war, however, that deepened Franco-German resentment, which contributed to both World Wars, as both empires sought to see the other ground under their heel in the name of their blood feud.

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