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thekeeshman posted:A lot of "anti-imperialists" have grown up in an era when only America was really powerful enough to do imperialism without consequences, so in practice their ideology is just anti-American/NATO-ism. The fact that America is on the unambiguously right side of a conflict is deeply uncomfortable for them, which is why they desperately have to look for reasons to hate Ukraine, while ignoring the fact that every single one of those reasons applies 10x to Russia. See also: NATO intervention in Kosovo.
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Dec 18, 2022 05:14
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Ogmius815 posted:See also: NATO intervention in Kosovo.
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Dec 18, 2022 05:39
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MikeC posted:everything I just wanted to give thanks for all that. It's pretty easy to shitpost about the realists without giving the details on what the positions are. I've personally even forgotten about Mearsheimer even though I think I saw something from him about all riiight before everything kicked off. I think I would have even went for it if the initial coup thing actually happened, but it just looks so bad to me now.
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Dec 18, 2022 06:42
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MikeC posted:Just FYI, the twitter dude you are quoting is a Cato institute researcher. They are borderline isolationist in their FP thinking. They heavily argue against intervention and adventurism and it is through this lens they view the Russo-Ukrainian war. I'll assume this was a good-faith question. Most IR analysts of the realist school also do not view this war in isolation, especially US-based analysts who view this conflict as just one of many issues that need to be managed in order for the United States to maintain its hegemonic grip in the world that is growing evermore multipolar. Within this framework, Ukrainian territorial integrity is of minimal consequence to the United States. Unlike the bipolar world of the post-war era, proxy wars against *the* rival center of power are no longer zero-sum games. Since the emergence of China as a player with Great Power ambitions, any decrease in stability or power projection of the Russian state to protect its traditional spheres of influence necessarily results in the ability of Beijing to incorporate these regions into its own. This expansion is no longer theoretical with China emerging as Central Asia's security guarantor in the most recent SCO meeting held in Samarkand which saw Putin politically isolated and playing second fiddle with many CTSO countries that nominally rely on Russia as the guarantor and arbiter of security issues in the region. So do the realists just write off the EU as permanent American stooges with no agency? Because I feel like the transatlantic relationship also has to be taken into account, especially after Trump spent four years making GBS threads all over it and giving Europeans ideas that maybe they should be investing more chips in China's stable geniuses.
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Dec 18, 2022 07:35
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Yes.
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Dec 18, 2022 09:00
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Quixzlizx posted:So do the realists just write off the EU as permanent American stooges with no agency? Because I feel like the transatlantic relationship also has to be taken into account, especially after Trump spent four years making GBS threads all over it and giving Europeans ideas that maybe they should be investing more chips in China's stable geniuses. Look, you must understand Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia. Eurasia is our ally. (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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Dec 18, 2022 10:36
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Samopsa posted:A Russian slow and steady approach with actually briefed troops supported by a proper logistical chain is probably capable of pushing to Kiev given time. It'll take a while, but if Russia commits and keeps pushing on multiple well supplied fronts, like southwards from Gomel & Chernobyl into Kiev and from Kursk & Belgrogrod into Kharkiv and Sumy while holding the line in the Donbas and pressuring them like they're doing now... It'll be very difficult for Ukraine to hold them. Maybe if it was the start of the war this was the strategy, but that's nearly a year ago now. Even if lets theoretically say Russia manages to reverse course and conquers Ukraine. They're not holding it. To hold a country successfully you need 1 soldier for I think it's every 15 people. Or they can just bleed you badly with an insurgency. Russia's military simply doesn't have the numbers to support that.
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Dec 18, 2022 10:41
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Nelson Mandingo posted:To hold a country successfully you need 1 soldier for I think it's every 15 people. What about the century of the British Raj? I guess you'll say that was unsuccessful because it eventually collapsed, but that was still a century of brutal rule and material extraction
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Dec 18, 2022 11:10
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Nelson Mandingo posted:Maybe if it was the start of the war this was the strategy, but that's nearly a year ago now. Even if lets theoretically say Russia manages to reverse course and conquers Ukraine. They're not holding it. To hold a country successfully you need 1 soldier for I think it's every 15 people. Or they can just bleed you badly with an insurgency. Russia's military simply doesn't have the numbers to support that. Seems to me the Russians would be happy to thin the populace down to whatever ratio is appropriate for their remaining forces.
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Dec 18, 2022 11:29
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MikeC posted:Outstanding post Hey thank you, that was really informative; I hadn’t considered things in those terms before. Makes a lot of sense in a depressing way and puts a lot of takes I’ve read through gritted teeth into perspective.
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Dec 18, 2022 11:29
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They're gonna try to buy off locals to set up a militia to do the dirty work. Dunno if that's gonna work out but I doubt that they're gonna go with Russian troops.
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Dec 18, 2022 11:38
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BrutalistMcDonalds posted:
This is more or less how people in China handled the cultural revolution, in which a LOT of people got into denouncing and counter-denouncing and pre-emptively denouncing their friends and neighbours for reasons that made sense at the time, and a lot of physical and mental cruelty was visited on people who hadn’t really done anything to deserve it, and after the dust had cleared everyone was kind of side-eyeing each other, and Chinese writers spent the 1980s writing books to try to reconcile their belief in themselves as decent people with the knowledge of how they got through it.
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Dec 18, 2022 13:05
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Hopefully true https://twitter.com/NOELreports/status/1604399781090152451
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Dec 18, 2022 13:17
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Samopsa posted:
Dude, they can't manage to take Bakhmut. Nelson Mandingo posted:Maybe if it was the start of the war this was the strategy, but that's nearly a year ago now. Even if lets theoretically say Russia manages to reverse course and conquers Ukraine. They're not holding it. To hold a country successfully you need 1 soldier for I think it's every 15 people. Or they can just bleed you badly with an insurgency. Russia's military simply doesn't have the numbers to support that. As we've seen by now, yeah, Russia doesn't seem to intend to tolerate an insurgent population; the plan was clearly mass genocide and deportation, and then re-population by non-ukrainians.
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Dec 18, 2022 13:33
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:Dude, they can't manage to take Bakhmut. i'm quite sure all those mobile crematoriums weren't just for their own casualties, they had some nice big lists of who to dispose of in one form of another... it's fight or die and i can't see compromise ever being on the table.
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Dec 18, 2022 13:48
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Failed Imagineer posted:What about the century of the British Raj? I guess you'll say that was unsuccessful because it eventually collapsed, but that was still a century of brutal rule and material extraction This is dumb, the British didn't just show up one day and declare war on all of India, their take-over was slow and used local rulers for most of the control. Also, India had fallen a bit behind times when the Europeans started throwing their weight around, it's not like a large alliance of people was quietly supplying Indians with training, ammunition and equipment. Also again, a lot of the Indish nobility was all in on the British Empire. Only the poor people felt the oppression at first, and nobody cared.
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Dec 18, 2022 13:53
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Libluini posted:This is dumb, the British didn't just show up one day and declare war on all of India, their take-over was slow and used local rulers for most of the control. Also, India had fallen a bit behind times when the Europeans started throwing their weight around, it's not like a large alliance of people was quietly supplying Indians with training, ammunition and equipment. Also again, a lot of the Indish nobility was all in on the British Empire. Only the poor people felt the oppression at first, and nobody cared. Britain took advantage of a weakening Mughal Empire to get in, and then the Afghans and the financial weakness of the military systems of the Marathas and Mysore allowed the British to move more quickly. In addition, France's position was too weak to counterbalance England. Maintaining an internal state system really did make it easier for the British to manage the Raj.
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Dec 18, 2022 14:23
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Libluini posted:This is dumb, the British didn't just show up one day and declare war on all of India, their take-over was slow and used local rulers for most of the control. Also, India had fallen a bit behind times when the Europeans started throwing their weight around, it's not like a large alliance of people was quietly supplying Indians with training, ammunition and equipment. Also again, a lot of the Indish nobility was all in on the British Empire. Only the poor people felt the oppression at first, and nobody cared. So then it's contextual, depending on how quickly the colonisation happens and how many local strongmen can be brought onboard with the project, and who might be funding and supplying a counter -insurgency. Seems like that "1 in 15" figure is totally meaningless in that case
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Dec 18, 2022 14:26
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quote:These ratios appear to be based on Quinlivan’s work. He emphasized, though This is irrelevant though because Russia did not plan to subjugate the native Ukrainian population, but rather to genocide it
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Dec 18, 2022 14:36
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:This is irrelevant though because Russia did not plan to subjugate the native Ukrainian population, but rather to genocide it Agreed, it doesn't matter, it's clear how Putin views the Ukrainian "cousins" and what their fate would have been if they capitulated
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Dec 18, 2022 14:53
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Quixzlizx posted:So do the realists just write off the EU as permanent American stooges with no agency? Because I feel like the transatlantic relationship also has to be taken into account, especially after Trump spent four years making GBS threads all over it and giving Europeans ideas that maybe they should be investing more chips in China's stable geniuses. Two things to consider - first the EU isn't a unified conglomerate. It remains more of an economic and administrative body rather than a country that has a unified military. Brexit has already shown it is not immune to fracture. France maintains its own foreign policy objects distinct from nominal EU interests. The second and more salient point is that the EU itself is not capable of acting independently in any effective way when it comes to security matters. And security matters are what everything else is layered on top of and when Ukraine started up again this year, who did everyone turn to? US and NATO, not say the Germans and the Italians. For all the talk about it being the most powerful alliance in the world, NATO is an American institution. There is no NATO without the United States which supplies the significant majority of the military might of this "alliance". If push came to shove, the US could act independently but NATO sans the US would be a toothless organization. So within this framework, the transatlantic relationship is being taken into account by these writers as it always has. But it views it in the light that no country in Europe (UK and EU) has the willpower to once again spend the money and lives required to be a player in the Great Power game again and the despite all the grumblings, Europe will continue to look across the Atlantic. After all, what are the alternatives? You are going to seek security guarantees from Moscow? Beijing is half a world away and is ruled by a single-party authoritarian regime that looks more and more like a total dictatorship every day that passes. You laugh at Trump supposedly making GBS threads on Europe for 4 years but let's face it when the Russians move in this year who did everyone call? Biden. What organization did Finland and the Swedes apply membership to? NATO. Which country does Ukraine *truly* rely on to continue its fight against Russia and would likely have to immediately sue for peace should this country decide its money should be better spent elsewhere? The United States of America. The US provides around half of all the dollars going into Ukraine and most of the military equipment that matters on the ground. That is the fundamental truth and this thread knows it. There is a very good reason why this thread frets from time to time about the GOP isolationist folks taking over Congress and putting a stop to the gravy train. So by all means, pivot to China for security guarantees. Oh wait, the Chinese are standing awkwardly with their hands in their pocket handing out bundles of money to the Russians as the Ukrainians are being butchered because they need to keep Moscow onside for their own geopolitical ambitions. China could finish Russia in a day if it chooses to end its role in helping Russia avoid sanctions and buying its discounted energy. Oh well, maybe Poland and the Baltics will have better luck if they leave NATO and talk to China. It isn't that the EU has no agency. It is that the EU has no realistic alternatives without its member states choosing to spend the money in the amounts needed to truly support an independent policy that is free from American influence. The Russian invasion of Ukraine has put all of that into stark perspective.
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Dec 18, 2022 15:11
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:This is irrelevant though because Russia did not plan to subjugate the native Ukrainian population, but rather to genocide it Genocide is a form of subjugation and doesn't mean just literally killing off the population, though. As we have seen from Kherson, Russia wanted to russify the population and brainwash especially children to grow a Russian identity. Ukrainian language and culture (which in Putin's mind don't exist, just like Belarusians are just confused Russians) would have been banned and activists arrested.
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Dec 18, 2022 15:39
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Nenonen posted:Genocide is a form of subjugation and doesn't mean just literally killing off the population, though. As we have seen from Kherson, Russia wanted to russify the population and brainwash especially children to grow a Russian identity. Ukrainian language and culture (which in Putin's mind don't exist, just like Belarusians are just confused Russians) would have been banned and activists arrested. In this instance, what the plan appears to have been, based on what was done in conquered territories and their track record in Crimea, was to kill anyone who had ever served in the Ukrainian military or government (which is a very large fraction of the adult population given Ukraine's mobilization policies since 2014), install puppet rulers, deport most of the remaining population to far flung corners of the Russian state, and move in new populations. In other words, genocide; the plan was for there to not be a significant local population left capable of pursuing a local insurgency. Ask the Tatars how many of them are living in Crimea right now.
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Dec 18, 2022 15:59
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🇷🇺 Russians aren’t evil. Ukrainians commit war crimes too. That’s my argument.
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Dec 18, 2022 16:43
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MikeC posted:Two things to consider - first the EU isn't a unified conglomerate. It remains more of an economic and administrative body rather than a country that has a unified military. Brexit has already shown it is not immune to fracture. France maintains its own foreign policy objects distinct from nominal EU interests. The second and more salient point is that the EU itself is not capable of acting independently in any effective way when it comes to security matters. And security matters are what everything else is layered on top of and when Ukraine started up again this year, who did everyone turn to? US and NATO, not say the Germans and the Italians. For all the talk about it being the most powerful alliance in the world, NATO is an American institution. There is no NATO without the United States which supplies the significant majority of the military might of this "alliance". If push came to shove, the US could act independently but NATO sans the US would be a toothless organization. I think part of the issue is that the EU (or at least major players in it) started to believe that they had established the required economic links with Russia for there to be no longer a need for "security guarantees" from a superpower patron. And paradoxically, while this invasion has proven that Putin's Russia will always be hostile, aggressive, and irrational from the perspective of liberal democracies, it has also proven that Russia doesn't have the "Great Power" capability to roll over Europe militarily. But I think that America's resolve here mattered. Would Finland and Sweden have been so eager to apply to NATO if the US had just shrugged and told Europe that Ukraine was their problem? Especially if Trump had won reelection and was the one who was saying it? What would NATO's credibility be then? Does the EU have to worry about a Chinese invasion? (no) Australia has military ties with the US but stronger economic ties with China. Not that Europe is in the same position, but that kind of relationship can theoretically exist. The realists may be right that America and Europe will remain tied together by default, but I do think it matters whether or not that relationship is defined by apathy, distrust, and cynicism.
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Dec 18, 2022 17:07
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Quixzlizx posted:I think part of the issue is that the EU (or at least major players in it) started to believe that they had established the required economic links with Russia for there to be no longer a need for "security guarantees" from a superpower patron. That's part of why the "NATO encirclement forced this" is somehow an even weaker argument than Iraq WMDs ever were. Last year the Trump years and Brexit left both NATO and the EU in the weakest positions with the most uncertain futures they'd had in years, and all Russia had to do to encourage both was keep quiet and be a good trading partner. But the dream of a restored empire was just too sweet.
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Dec 18, 2022 17:40
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:Dude, they can't manage to take Bakhmut. They literally abandoned Kherson and thinned out the lines elsewhere to free up forces to attack Bakhmut. And it wasn't enough to take one relatively small city. I'm sure aspirationally Putin is planning the glorious assault on Kiev but I'm not even sure how they would get the forces for that this winter. Probably involves withdrawal from most of the rest of Ukraine. More likely it's scheduled for some hopeful far future where they somehow mobilize back into existence their 2021 army.
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Dec 18, 2022 17:55
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saratoga posted:They literally abandoned Kherson and thinned out the lines elsewhere to free up forces to attack Bakhmut. And it wasn't enough to take one relatively small city. Not only that but they are rapidly running out of material. Every tank, BMP, artillery piece they lose is one they can not replace and they have lost an incredible amount of them. That isn’t counting those that are effectively lost due to just wear and tear. The barrels need to be replaced on a lot of that stuff after a certain amount of use which they do not have the spare stocks of. An assault on Kiev would be even more disastrous than the first. The Ukrainians are a much different force than a year ago with more experience and even more weaponry. It would be effectively a slaughter. I can’t imagine any rational commander would allow it. That is not even considering the after effects of such an assault as it would likely come out of Belarus which would likely open Luka up to retaliation which he wants no part of. Russia is going to have to attempt to try one more desperate attempt at making a real break through. They do not have any good options though. Personally I would probably pull back my troops to try and make a line to hold Crimea or at least make it costly enough that Ukraine would have to seriously consider making the push. It is their best chance at holding any territory.
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Dec 18, 2022 18:07
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Killer robot posted:That's part of why the "NATO encirclement forced this" is somehow an even weaker argument than Iraq WMDs ever were. Last year the Trump years and Brexit left both NATO and the EU in the weakest positions with the most uncertain futures they'd had in years, and all Russia had to do to encourage both was keep quiet and be a good trading partner. But the dream of a restored empire was just too sweet. I think this conflict has made it pretty clear they do not fear attack from NATO or the US. They were very confident here that NATO was not entering the war - not in Ukraine and certainly not by attacking Russia. They stripped basically everything standing between NATO and Moscow to make this happen. Not to mention the whole bit that annexing Ukraine would have extended the border they shared with NATO. Encircling themselves I suppose?
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Dec 18, 2022 19:03
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Panzeh posted:Britain took advantage of a weakening Mughal Empire to get in, and then the Afghans and the financial weakness of the military systems of the Marathas and Mysore allowed the British to move more quickly. In addition, France's position was too weak to counterbalance England. Not to mention the financial systems institutions that did exist in India, most notably powerful banking dynasties in Gujarat and Bengal, went all in on supporting and financing the EIC, because of some early relations overtures and a gradual buildup of trust that in the credit of the EIC which encouraged increased and sustained lending to support EIC efforts in India, particularly military campaigns. One of the primary effects of this was that the EIC could pay their sepoys relatively well and on-time whereas their French and local Indian compettitors, couldn't match this and often had great difficulties even paying out the inferior salaries they offered, you'll often encounter accounts of the pay of Indian rulers' armies being months in arrears for instance.
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Dec 18, 2022 19:59
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Didn't the British position themselves as the arbiters between Muslims and Hindus? Basic divide-and-conquer?
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Dec 18, 2022 22:01
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The X-man cometh posted:Didn't the British position themselves as the arbiters between Muslims and Hindus? Basic divide-and-conquer? I mean in a sense, you'll see that with almost all forms of imperial or colonial government. Remember of course that India is a big place, and especially at that time wasn't even close to some unified country. In the last decades of British rule in India they did often bring up the status of the Muslim minority and their obligation to protect their rights against the Hindu majority though. But really, British rule in India lasted a long time, went through several phases, perhaps most notably demarcated by the Mutiny of 1857 which brought about the end of the EIC (though you can sub-divide it even further) and the exact nature and character of that rule also varied from region to region, especially as so much of that rule was indirect through local Indian rulers, of various religions and lineages, with different laws internally and treaties under which they were subservient to the British. The British rule in India also adopted alot of local customs* and kind of grafted itself into the local power structure, essentially of the late Mughal Empire, becoming part of that hierarchy. This was especially so during the era of Company rule, where many of the officials in India (who often should be separated from the major owners/stockholders back in London) married local women, often members of the Mughal aristocracy and partook in Muslim or Hindu religious practice, in the often syncretic Mughal fashion, and had their children raised as Muslims. *Perhaps the most infamous being the particular method of execution of "blowing from a gun" which was traditionally reserved for deserters and traitors, and which was extensively employed by the British when they put down the 1857 mutiny. The scale of it in 1857 was notable, but I feel like often when this method of execution is brought up it's implied to be particular to the British in India. edit: For some more typical divide and rule example, the most obvious one would be the whole "martial races" thing which really came into full force after 1857, where sepoys of the British Raj (as the post-1857 government is typically known) should preferentially only be recruited from certain peoples/tribes/regions notable for their martial qualities, though really this was a list of those whom the British authorities regarded to be sufficiently loyal or ethnically/religiously or geopraphically isolated or distinct from much of the rest of the India. So yeah, classic case. Sikhs being employed as policemen all across the British Raj, far outside the areas where they were present in significant numbers is another very similar case. Randarkman fucked around with this message at 22:41 on Dec 18, 2022 |
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Dec 18, 2022 22:17
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Failed Imagineer posted:What about the century of the British Raj? I guess you'll say that was unsuccessful because it eventually collapsed, but that was still a century of brutal rule and material extraction Look up the Princely States, huge swaths of the sub-continent were ruled through local nobility/royalty who pledged fealty essentially to the Brits. Very feudal when you get down to it.
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Dec 18, 2022 23:11
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https://twitter.com/TheCaptainFordo/status/1604297410909310976/photo/1 So young. Glad to see the Gen-Z-ers aren't all Zs.
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Dec 18, 2022 23:47
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While I find Indian history quite fascinating, that's a bit too far out there for this thread.
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Dec 19, 2022 01:01
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Vulture posted:🇷🇺 Russians aren’t evil. Ukrainians commit war crimes too. That’s my argument. While I don't think you're posting this with an intent to derail the thread, I'd like you to make sure your posts either reply to some other posts, or are reasonably self-explanatory in why you're posting them.
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Dec 19, 2022 01:04
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https://twitter.com/Osinttechnical/status/1604529200827731970 For the next week, things should start freezing up properly in select areas. https://twitter.com/DefMon3/status/1604521044210946048 https://twitter.com/DefMon3/status/1604521064653934593 https://twitter.com/DefMon3/status/1604521080541966336 https://twitter.com/DefMon3/status/1604521131968380928 If I had to guess, we might have Svatove-Kreminna (P66 highway) breakthrough before the end of the year.
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Dec 19, 2022 01:16
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A lot of doubt has been expressed regarding the poor state of the Russian mobilized troops, which some posters have loudly dismissed as Ukrainian propaganda, especially in light of reports of the continuous onslaught in Bakhmut. The British military reporting site Wavell Room has put together a piece, together with journalist Yuri Butusov that explains how it is possible to reconcile this supposed weaknesses of the troops with the pressure on Bakhmut. Basically, Wagner commanders use drones and radio to monitor and direct recruits to their targets, like RTS waypoint commands. They're not quite human wave/zerg rush attacks, but not far from it either: Wavell Room posted:Lack of consideration over casualties incurred means Wagner will typically attack the same point repeatedly in the hope of achieving some yardage. ‘The attacks actually have the character of constant reconnaissance by fighting [with] small groups of infantry.’ Ukrainian defensive fire inevitably exposes the firing points to drones. As a consequence ‘the shelling of our positions after a repulsed attack is carried out more massively than artillery preparation. And then a new attack…is prepared.’  WARNING! LINK CONTAINS SOME DRONE IMAGES OF LIKELY DEAD BODIES!https://wavellroom.com/2022/12/15/the-battle-for-bakhmut/
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Dec 19, 2022 09:49
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We can only hope https://twitter.com/wartranslated/status/1604425636671627271
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Dec 19, 2022 09:50
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Here's an interesting piece about saving the government data to the cloud. The principle to store your sovereign data on your soil goes out the window when your sovereignty is at risk and involves putting SSDs into trucks https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2022-12-15/amazon-ukraine-war-cloud-data quote:Since Februrary, Amazon has been playing Santa Claus to Ukraine, delivering planeloads of goods, including blankets, hygiene kits, diapers, food and toys, for the war-torn nation and refugees in Poland and other parts of Europe.
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Dec 19, 2022 12:25
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