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I was thinking about the same thing a few days ago. One of the most interesting takeaways from this war is how soft power is very underrated, and lack of any soft power whatsoever is one of the reasons behind Russia's problems.
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racist much?
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I think the trajectories from there are nowhere as good as Baikonur
Baikonur is 45.62° N, 63.31° E Vostochny Cosmodrome, (Tsiolkovsky, Amur Oblast) is 51.85° N, 128.35° E. 550 miles west of Sakhalin Island and the Sea of Japan.
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I'm not saying you are wrong but why stop here? Why are the ruling guys stupid? Why do stupid guys get to rule? I also am not sure stupidity is binary or all encompassing. I think they must be doing something right to be rulers to a country. Why do russian citizen take it? Maybe that's where stupid is the final answer, but maybe not. As for international relations, I am more and more coming to the conclusion that eve…
This seems to be a weakspot of alot of ideological groups in the west(left/right) but also in the east(ccp), the assumption that one can just "sing" a version of reality into beeing by loudness. What is usually archieved is a placation act, by which the lower status parties involved pretends to kotau, but then gets on with its own life in its own style, with the calmed priesthood. Its a very strange state of affairs.…
A few weeks ago, millions of Americans believed their government was at war with alien spacecraft, or an invasion of Chinese balloons. That was reality. Now that reality has been flipped off like a light switch, and a new reality turned on. As Karl Rove once said "We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality — judiciously, as you will — we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too."
People don't experience objective, measurable scientific reality, they experience a subjective hyperreality as the sum of signals from corporate media, pop culture and disinformation agents (including their own media and government.) This is what the whole "post truth" theory is about - not that objective reality can be manufactured, but that power comes from manipulating the perception of reality.
And eventually, many people will believe it. Humans are not rational beings that consider truth by the most mathematically precise and logically sound methods available, we are emotional beings driven by the need to square the circles of our lives by any means necessary. That's how propaganda and great lies work. It's how innocent people can enter an interrogation and come out convinced of the narrative of their guilt, to the point of having fabricated memories of it.
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I'm not saying you are wrong but why stop here? Why are the ruling guys stupid? Why do stupid guys get to rule? I also am not sure stupidity is binary or all encompassing. I think they must be doing something right to be rulers to a country. Why do russian citizen take it? Maybe that's where stupid is the final answer, but maybe not. As for international relations, I am more and more coming to the conclusion that eve…
It's not projecting to postulate that maybe, just maybe, Russians (in aggregate, individual exceptions likely exist) are just okay with that.
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> Russian folk are the slaves to their rulers with a long history and indoctrinated brains racist much?
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Russia isn't currently in a position to invade another country. In the medium-long term, *stans might want to balance the relations between Russia and China (and a bit with the West) which might make further Russian invasions unlikely.
Yeah to me (admittedly a complete outsider) they seem to just barely have the capability to remain in the fight in Ukraine, it's almost unthinkable that they'd try to open another front. I've also been wondering recently if Georgia might see this war as an opportune moment to retake South Ossetia and Abkhazia, or if Moldova might attempt to reestablish control of Transnistria. With Russia underresourced and distracte…
Much of the populace seems extremely unhappy about this, but it's an unstable situation in the wrong way that would lead to military action in that way.
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Russia isn't currently in a position to invade another country. In the medium-long term, *stans might want to balance the relations between Russia and China (and a bit with the West) which might make further Russian invasions unlikely.
It makes sense; Kazakhstan is a huge country, can't be easily subdued by force, so diplomacy is the name of the game, and it pays to be "an expensive bride" to multiple suitors. Especially when accounting for Kazakh natural resources.
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Very nice. I guess Russia's lease on Baikonur is until 2050. I wonder what happens if it's not renewed...
I do not believe russians will want or need to get into space until 2050, because the economy of this country is screwed and electronics tech-stack is dependent on global market to deliver required chips... Needless to say the window of opportunity to receive the electronic components is closing. They can't run a space program on gray market deliveries.
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I was thinking about the same thing a few days ago. One of the most interesting takeaways from this war is how soft power is very underrated, and lack of any soft power whatsoever is one of the reasons behind Russia's problems.
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More likely the result of the resource curse.
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> turning away from it seems like an economic suicide On the other hand, not turning away from it might be literal suicide.
Nah, we in NATO don’t blame landlocked countries with small economies for having, well, ambiguous relations with nearby Russia. It’s the places that have a choice, like Serbia, India, and Hungary, that are at risk of moving themselves onto our list of geopolitical rivals.
Serbia: 63.08 billion USD (2021)
Kazakhstan: 197.1 billion USD (2021)
Hungary: 181.8 billion USD (2021)
Per google, sources include World Bank.