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Francis Fukuyama: Preparing for Defeat

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Re: Francis Fukuyama: Preparing for Defeat

#71

Post by rayiner »

ogogmad wrote: post #69
pphysch wrote: post #28

I read the title and assumed Fukuyama would be humbly accepting the "defeat" of his "end of history" vision for a unipolar world... > 1. Russia is heading for an outright defeat in Ukraine. LOL

How do we know that this is not another Afghanistan/Chechen-1 for Russia? They lost both of those, and I don't think those got off to the same troubled start (for Russia) as this one did. Think flight from the country, brain drain, economic meltdown, loss of 3 generals in one fortnight , Ukraine being flooded with weapons, equipment loss, major logistical failures, the loss of the information war... An outright defea…

The difference is that afghans and Chechnyans won’t surrender even if you turn their country into rubble around their feet. They’re accustomed to a brutally hard existence. I’m not sure Ukrainians are in the same situation.

Re: Francis Fukuyama: Preparing for Defeat

#72

Post by shusaku »

yodon wrote: post #67
FiberBundle wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you actually read "The end of History"?

>Have you actually read "The end of History"? The Hacker News guidelines page[0] is a pretty incredible document. One of the smallest but most central insights in it is "Please don't comment on whether someone read an article. 'Did you even read the article? It mentions that' can be shortened to "The article mentions that." Unlike most sites, HN is very intentional about optimizing everything in the site for quality…

Except “the end of history” isn’t the article linked. Maybe you’d know that if you read it.

Re: Francis Fukuyama: Preparing for Defeat

#73

Post by throwaway_1928 »

jonahbenton wrote: post #20
c-smile wrote: post #14

The Great Delusion (2020) by prof. John Mearsheimer: https://youtu.be/nZVIaXFN2lU That if someone really wants to understand where we are with all those Libya, Syria, Iraq, ... Ukraine. And how and when this one really started: https://youtu.be/ppD_bhWODDc As of Francis Fukuyama predictions... I am Ukrainian by myself. With family spread over West Ukraine and Russia East. Note: Russia is the second country after Ukra…

[flagged]

Mearsheimer is deeply informed, objective and honest. Dangerous traits to have when your opinions don't mirror those of any given establishment.

Re: Francis Fukuyama: Preparing for Defeat

#74

Post by rayiner »

jonahbenton wrote: post #53
pphysch wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dismissing Mearsheimer as a "right wing thinker" that is "blinded by ideology". Oh the irony. Mearsheimer may be blinded by silly IR theories, but he is a realist (i.e. not ideologue) through and through.

Sorry, have to disagree. His repeated "Putin is a brilliant strategist" is right out of right wing orthodoxy. Putin is a nascissist and a ruthless bully. His will to power is generally worshipped on the right, and mistaken for strategic brilliance, but it is not. For instance the endemic corruption in the regime is virtually absent from Mearsheimer analyses, but is critically important from a realist assessment. Puti…

> Sorry, have to disagree. His repeated "Putin is a brilliant strategist" is right out of right wing orthodoxy. Putin is a nascissist and a ruthless bully.

It’s not a right wing versus left wing thing. It’s an idealist versus realist thing. Idealists tend to analyze international affairs in terms of ideology or the personality of individual leaders, rather than concrete facts on the ground, is precisely what has led to so much disaster in US foreign policy. E.g. Saddam, the War on Terror, etc.

Historically, the idealists were mostly on the right—Reagan, Bush, etc. Back during the Iraq War, Mearsheimer’s views would be comfortably on the left. (And outside the US they still are, which is why my Carter-loving Bangladeshi immigrant dad is posting Mearsheimer links on FB which all my aunties are liking.)

Re: Francis Fukuyama: Preparing for Defeat

#75

Post by CyanBird »

chongli wrote: post #59
srvmshr wrote: post #6

Another counterview has emerged from Meduza, the press group which was 'blocked' in Russia as part of their silencing drive. https://meduza.io/en/feature/2022/03/12/has-russia-s-invasio... Apparently, according to Meduza we are only seeing the bright side of things - the news we want to hear. The battlefront has several other shock surprises if you look at the Ukrainian losses. It seems bleeding heavily on both sides…

Everything I’m hearing about Mariupol is the opposite of what I want to hear. It’s an absolute disaster that’s ratcheting up day-by-day. The Russian army is using modern artillery to conduct medieval siege warfare. They’re deliberately starving the whole population to death and the city (like most cities today) had zero preparations to deal with a siege. We’ve got to find some way to get these people supplies!

No post body was provided.

Re: Francis Fukuyama: Preparing for Defeat

#76

Post by geuis »

yardie wrote: post #70

Surprisingly, I had managed to avoid any sort of layoff, firing for most of my career except that whole dotbomb era. Then COVID came and I had my first RIF, ever. I was told weeks in advance so I could prepare my documentation and handoff. Even though I really liked that job promotions were limited and I was getting restless.

Wrong post.

Re: Francis Fukuyama: Preparing for Defeat

#77

Post by pphysch »

hkpack wrote: post #50
pphysch wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On 2, the diplomatic option has been on the table since the civil war started in 2014 (Minsk agreements). However, it is critical to understand that it is not merely "the Ukrainians" (i.e. the current Zelensky-Klitschko-Pinchuk oligarchy) that are opposed to it, it is also Washington. After all, the latter spent billions of dollars and decades of effort tearing down the Budapest Memo, and they weren't going to easily…

There never was a civil war in Ukraine. In 2014 - that was still Russian forces both in Crimea and in eastern part of Ukraine. Russia got sanctioned since 2014 exactly for that.

Wow. 14,000 Ukrainians have been killed by Ukrainians since 2014 in the Donbass region. Heavy weaponry involved. If that is not a civil war, what is it?

Re: Francis Fukuyama: Preparing for Defeat

#78

Post by civilized »

slim wrote: post #13

this guy is a fortune teller. the nerve he has is incredible. still predicting the future from a future he predicted would never exist in his book "the end of history"

Sounds like this pop view of Fukuyama is inaccurate https://www.thepullrequest.com/p/history-restarts?s=r

Most people have a meme-level understanding of him and no idea what he has really said. This is relevant today as the pile-on of negative comments on his credibility are based on this meme-level understanding.

Re: Francis Fukuyama: Preparing for Defeat

#79

Post by yodon »

shusaku wrote: post #72
yodon wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Have you actually read "The end of History"? The Hacker News guidelines page[0] is a pretty incredible document. One of the smallest but most central insights in it is "Please don't comment on whether someone read an article. 'Did you even read the article? It mentions that' can be shortened to "The article mentions that." Unlike most sites, HN is very intentional about optimizing everything in the site for quality…

Except “the end of history” isn’t the article linked. Maybe you’d know that if you read it.

>Except “the end of history” isn’t the article linked. Maybe you’d know that if you read it.

Again, following the advice in the HN guidelines I will "assume the best interpretation" of your comment and say yes, I and others are quite comfortable generalizing from a specific quote that happens to mention how to respond to comments about a post to understand how that recommendation would apply to comments about other articles and topics without needing that to be explicitly spelled out, and yes I've read quite a number of works by Fukuyama though in my opinion "The end of history" is far from his best work. I've personally found "The origins of political order" to be much more thought provoking.

Re: Francis Fukuyama: Preparing for Defeat

#80

Post by HideousKojima »

>The United Nations Security Council has proven once again to be useless.

This line makes me significantly question the author's competence (as if knowing he was the author of The End of History before going into it didn't already negatively color my expectations). Russia has a permanent veto on the security council, of course it's going to be useless. Anything that goes against the interests of one of the veto members will always get vetoed and he's acting like this is some kind of surprising disappointment.

Also MiGs somehow wouldn't help stop artillery and rockets? Has the man never heard of bombs? Mind you I don't think NATO should get involved, but supplying more jets and missiles to bomb Russian artillery positions would absolutely help.

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