Zompist Bboard Again

Raphael wrote: ↑Sun Feb 27, 2022 8:24 am

rotting bones wrote: ↑Sat Feb 26, 2022 7:44 am These analyses are too values-oriented for my liking.

You don't like values-oriented analyses? From a lot of your posts over the years, I've got the impression that you believe fairly strongly that oppression is bad and should be fought against. What is that attitude, if not a value?

keenir wrote: ↑Sun Feb 27, 2022 8:30 am
I think its Rotting Bones' belief.

Raphael wrote: ↑Sun Feb 27, 2022 8:16 am And now Putin has put his nuclear weapons on alert. Oh, I'm sure that if he destroys the world, it'll be because mean other people forced him to do so.

zompist wrote: ↑Sun Feb 27, 2022 4:10 pm * Someone noted that Putin managed to do what no US president could do for twenty years: get Germany to spend over 2% of its GNP on defense

zompist wrote: ↑Sun Feb 27, 2022 4:10 pm * Surrendered troops in Kharkiv said they were lied to: they were told they were on a "training exercise", not an invasion.

Now, things look grim— at least one report said that Kyiv was now surrounded. But it seems that Putin expected a walkover, and he sure as hell isn't getting it. I'm skeptical of any hot takes that Putin is or was playing 5-dimensional chess. The thing is, dictators create their own bubble of stupidity around them— he shut down any voices he didn't like, and evidently thought he could not only lie to the world, but to his own armed forces. Unfortunately he's in a position where stupidity can still cause enormous suffering.

Moose-tache wrote: ↑Thu Feb 24, 2022 6:05 pmSaddam didn't have the luxury of admitting he didn't have nukes, and Stalin didn't have the luxury of admitting he hadn't orchestrated the Great Purge*.

* This fact was only revealed in the west after the opening of Russian archives in the early nineties. One of my mentors in college made a career out of demonstrating all the things we thought Stalin did, when in fact he was just like that dog in the burning house saying this is fine.

Moose-tache wrote: ↑Fri Feb 25, 2022 7:31 pm For the record, I still think the invasion is a last-ditch effort to destabilize Ukraine to keep it out of NATO, not a conquest. I doubt Putin will try to keep a universally hated pro-Russian leader in Kyiv. More likely he will force Zelenskyy to retire and be replaced by a rapid series of nameless, faceless moderates, and Putin then will withdraw troops to Dobas/Luhansk, to keep the skirmishes lively. Basically turning back the clock to 2015 is his best remaining option, since having a proper puppet satellite in Ukraine isn't really possible anymore. If he's lucky, Ukrainian politics will be fractured, aggressive, and incompetent, thus never being acceptible as a NATO member.

rotting bones wrote: ↑Sat Feb 26, 2022 7:44 am It's wrong to mistake Putin for his moronic supporters and ideologists. He's a cynical politician, and I really doubt he cares about his place in history. In fact, all the benefits of occupying Ukraine are absurdly long term: Russia's natural borders with Europe are in west Ukraine, Ukraine's arable land might make it a breadbasket for Russia, and so on.

rotting bones wrote: ↑Sat Feb 26, 2022 7:44 am These analyses are too values-oriented for my liking. Russia has an authoritarian state because many of its Asian cities are not self-sufficient, and the state needs to subsidize grain transport to prevent famine.

I think Putin is invading Ukraine for the same reason American presidents attack the Middle East: All his plans to fix the economy have failed, and he's in full ass-covering mode. He thinks a just war will boost his popularity at home. The (fully justified) hysteria comes from Europeans relearning how it feels to have a war break out in your neighborhood after a long time.

zompist wrote: ↑Fri Feb 25, 2022 10:10 pmEdit: Bret Devereaux has some thoughts on the situation. If I could baldly summarize, Putin is probably making a big mistake, but isn't going to realize it for some time. And he's left himself no exit, so he's going to keep bludgeoning on, at enormous human cost.

MacAnDàil wrote: ↑Mon Feb 28, 2022 8:28 am But the Russian troops are coming from the North-East than the South-East, so he's not really concerned about Donbas or Luhansk. He's going after Kiev.

MacAnDàil wrote: ↑Mon Feb 28, 2022 8:38 am

rotting bones wrote: ↑Sat Feb 26, 2022 7:44 am These analyses are too values-oriented for my liking. Russia has an authoritarian state because many of its Asian cities are not self-sufficient, and the state needs to subsidize grain transport to prevent famine.

I think Putin is invading Ukraine for the same reason American presidents attack the Middle East: All his plans to fix the economy have failed, and he's in full ass-covering mode. He thinks a just war will boost his popularity at home. The (fully justified) hysteria comes from Europeans relearning how it feels to have a war break out in your neighborhood after a long time.

If it was really about grain to feed the population, he would have focussed on the south coast and done it as soon as there was an economic crisis. Same goes for the US: the Iraq invasion preceded an economic crisis, it didn't follow one.

Travis B. wrote: ↑Tue Mar 01, 2022 10:38 am Economically at least, as well as diplomatically, this war is an own goal for the Putin regime even if they ultimately win militarily in the end. The economic impact is already apparent and will only get more so, and they have managed to unite much of the rest of the world against themselves in a way that few other things could have.

Linguoboy wrote: ↑Tue Mar 01, 2022 10:45 am

Travis B. wrote: ↑Tue Mar 01, 2022 10:38 am Economically at least, as well as diplomatically, this war is an own goal for the Putin regime even if they ultimately win militarily in the end. The economic impact is already apparent and will only get more so, and they have managed to unite much of the rest of the world against themselves in a way that few other things could have.

I've been reading about all the measures Putin's regime has taken over the years to isolate itself from the world economy in order to blunt the impact of the kinds of sanctions which have recently been announced and now I'm wondering what its growth rate would have looked like if that weren't the case. That is, has Putin made the decision to hamstring economic growth in order to have more of a free hand to meddle where he likes?

Moose-tache wrote: ↑Thu Mar 03, 2022 7:09 am An entire Bernie Sanders subreddit is now just a pro-Kremlin message board.

Richard W wrote: ↑Mon Feb 28, 2022 4:51 pm

MacAnDàil wrote: ↑Mon Feb 28, 2022 8:28 am But the Russian troops are coming from the North-East than the South-East, so he's not really concerned about Donbas or Luhansk. He's going after Kiev.

The Russians are making progress in making the Sea of Azov a Russian lake. Indeed, their invasion is threatening to deny the Ukraine any coastline. And the coastal areas have a significant Russian-speaking population, if he wants to play things that way.

hwhatting wrote: ↑Tue Mar 01, 2022 9:38 am

MacAnDàil wrote: ↑Mon Feb 28, 2022 8:38 am

rotting bones wrote: ↑Sat Feb 26, 2022 7:44 am These analyses are too values-oriented for my liking. Russia has an authoritarian state because many of its Asian cities are not self-sufficient, and the state needs to subsidize grain transport to prevent famine.

I think Putin is invading Ukraine for the same reason American presidents attack the Middle East: All his plans to fix the economy have failed, and he's in full ass-covering mode. He thinks a just war will boost his popularity at home. The (fully justified) hysteria comes from Europeans relearning how it feels to have a war break out in your neighborhood after a long time.

If it was really about grain to feed the population, he would have focussed on the south coast and done it as soon as there was an economic crisis. Same goes for the US: the Iraq invasion preceded an economic crisis, it didn't follow one.

Russia is currently a wheat exporter, it doesn't need Ukraine's wheat to feed its people. Its economy is dependent on the export of oil, gas, and raw materials, but that was going nicely until Putin started the war. The war is not in the short-or medium term economic interest of Russia and not about the annexation of economically interesting areas; it's all about strategic interests (as Putin and his circle see them), the threat a non-authoritarian Ukraine poses to Russia's authoritarian model, and IMO, to repeat myself, about Putin's role in the history book.

Moose-tache wrote: ↑Thu Mar 03, 2022 7:09 am Oh, hey look, she won't shut up.

I've been scouring the news the last week, and one thing that I've found most fascinating is the pro-Putin crowd. Most of it seems to be repurposed anti-Biden sentiment in the US and repurposed anti-US sentiment in South Asia and the Middle East. An entire Bernie Sanders subreddit is now just a pro-Kremlin message board.

A lot of people are pushing back against the anti-Putin culture campaign because of grievences that are perfectly true, just not sufficient reasons to support an unprovoked invasion, like "The West didn't care this much about Syrians/Yemenis/Libyans/etc.!" or "The West and NATO has taken an aggressive stance against Russia!" Apparently the Indian Twittersphere is full of people saying India should support Russia because Russia supported India's claim to Kashmir. I'm not sure that sends quite the intended message about India's presence in Kashmir, but I guess I see the logic. And you'll all be relieved to know that the US president's insistence on helping Ukraine has opened all the old time capsules marked "Hunter Biden Conspiracies." It's like the late Teens all over again: useless old white man in the White House, Putin taking over stuff that's not his, Bernie Sanders fans delivering inarticulate rants to no one. All the hits.