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70 years ago, an Anglo-US coup condemned Iran to decades of oppression

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Re: 70 years ago, an Anglo-US coup condemned Iran to decades of oppression

#201

Post by jltsiren »

leereeves wrote: post #195
jltsiren wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The German Empire was a constitutional monarchy, like many European countries of the time. Even today, it's a common form of democratic government. Before the empire, most of the states that formed it were constitutional monarchies, while the free cities were republics. And while there were only three free cities left at the time, there used to be many more. In some cases, their republican form of government stretche…

Constitutional monarchy is a very broad term, covering everything from the present UK, where the monarch's power is purely theoretical or ceremonial, to Germany before 1918, where the monarch's power was almost unlimited. The Kaisar appointed the head of government, was the commander in chief, and could (and did) dissolve the parliament. The main limit on his power was his own incompetence. Yes, some of the small sta…

Presidents have had similar powers in many presidential republics. For example, Finland was like that until ~30 years ago. Ultimately it doesn't matter much if the head of state is a king or a president. It doesn't even matter that much what they could do in exceptional situations, or whether they inherited their position or were elected to it.

What matters is the tradition of running a normal democracy. If the elections are fair, if the ones who lose their power step down gracefully, if there is a peaceful transition of power, and so on. If you have a tradition of that, adapting a different form of democratic government is not that hard.

Re: 70 years ago, an Anglo-US coup condemned Iran to decades of oppression

#202

Post by leereeves »

jltsiren wrote: post #201
leereeves wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Constitutional monarchy is a very broad term, covering everything from the present UK, where the monarch's power is purely theoretical or ceremonial, to Germany before 1918, where the monarch's power was almost unlimited. The Kaisar appointed the head of government, was the commander in chief, and could (and did) dissolve the parliament. The main limit on his power was his own incompetence. Yes, some of the small sta…

Presidents have had similar powers in many presidential republics. For example, Finland was like that until ~30 years ago. Ultimately it doesn't matter much if the head of state is a king or a president. It doesn't even matter that much what they could do in exceptional situations, or whether they inherited their position or were elected to it. What matters is the tradition of running a normal democracy. If the elect…

> It doesn't even matter that much ... whether they inherited their position or were elected to it.

> What matters is the tradition of running a normal democracy

A country ruled by a hereditary leader with virtually unlimited power could hardly be called a normal democracy.

It does matter how much power the elected officials have.

Re: 70 years ago, an Anglo-US coup condemned Iran to decades of oppression

#203

Post by reissbaker »

leereeves wrote: post #187
Redoubts wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

South Korea and Taiwan were autocracies until relatively recently

Also the US didn't install the Taiwanese government.

OP said "installed or propped up" — the US propped up the Taiwanese government and continues to prop it up militarily.

Re: 70 years ago, an Anglo-US coup condemned Iran to decades of oppression

#204

Post by reissbaker »

Redoubts wrote: post #142
reissbaker wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Japan, Germany, South Korea, Taiwan, Ukraine. Technically Iraq as well, although I don't think the Iraqis were particularly happy about that.

South Korea and Taiwan were autocracies until relatively recently

Had the US not helped prop them up, and SK was conquered by North Korea and Taiwan conquered by China, I think they would have been doomed to remain autocracies indefinitely.

Re: 70 years ago, an Anglo-US coup condemned Iran to decades of oppression

#205

Post by leereeves »

reissbaker wrote: post #203
leereeves wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also the US didn't install the Taiwanese government.

OP said "installed or propped up" — the US propped up the Taiwanese government and continues to prop it up militarily.

I don't believe defending Taiwan from China counts as propping it up. That phrase should be limited to helping the government suppress internal resistance.

But if it counts, then the US propped up every country in NATO by defending them from the USSR and Russia.

Re: 70 years ago, an Anglo-US coup condemned Iran to decades of oppression

#206

Post by reissbaker »

leereeves wrote: post #205
reissbaker wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OP said "installed or propped up" — the US propped up the Taiwanese government and continues to prop it up militarily.

I don't believe defending Taiwan from China counts as propping it up. That phrase should be limited to helping the government suppress internal resistance. But if it counts, then the US propped up every country in NATO by defending them from the USSR and Russia.

Taiwan/China, for the first few decades of their respective existences, were considered internal resistance by both the PRC (China) and the ROC (Taiwan), with the US backing the ROC. While sentiments about that are obviously pretty different in Taiwan today (although not in China!), I also think that the US/Taiwan relationship is still meaningfully different from, say, the US/UK relationship, and I think it counts as "propping up" to a greater extent than simply being a NATO member.

Re: 70 years ago, an Anglo-US coup condemned Iran to decades of oppression

#207

Post by thephyber »

cpursley wrote: post #198
thephyber wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“Is never okay” is not a rational argument in any philosophical or legal framework. You are projecting theoretically pure ideas into the real world where they don’t exist in any pure form. Ukraine was Soviet Socialist for most of the 20th century, so any positive democratic movement is an improvement. In 2014, the people overturned a highly Russia-aligned and corrupt government (for which Russia invaded Crimea and fo…

> In 2014, the people overturned a highly Russia-aligned and corrupt government Adorable that you didn't use the word "coup" - especially considering how much money the US spent aiding it (info is in the public domain). A coup against a democratically elected leader (even a really really shitty one) is by it's very definition, undemocratic. As is canceling elections. Ukraine was never a democracy and the most corrupt…

Ukraine is not democratic and never has been. We are talking about a spectrum where one end is fully democratic (values). 1991 to 2004 to 2008 to 2014 to 2019 to 2022 have been moving towards the democratic end of the spectrum (except perhaps 2008 to 2014, but the country remains heavily corrupt (the same reason the EU and NATO were not serious about accepting UA).

The 2014 coup was followed by massive popular protests. The voters demanded president Viktor Yanukovych leave office and significant government + constitutional change and more independence from being under Russian influence and oligarch control. Popular protests don’t happen just because foreign money is thrown at the issue.

You pretend like the pre-2014 elections were “Democratic” in any sense of fair elections. You should go back and read about the 2004 UA Presidential Election and the findings of the UA Supreme Court, which overturned the election and forced a redo.

The UK cancelled elections in 1940 due to WW2. Is the UK a dictatorship?

Even the EU has set policy standards for what conditions merit dissolution of specific political parties[1]. And when UA dissolves those parties, the dissolutions were upheld by the court (so the UA was not far off of EU standards for the same action.

Again, UA took some pretty extreme anti-democratic measures towards domestic political allies of RU after they were invaded by RU and after those same political parties had been supporting the violent rebellion in the Donbas region since 2014. I don’t think your standards are reasonable.

[1] https://www.venice.coe.int/webforms/documents/default.aspx?p...

Re: 70 years ago, an Anglo-US coup condemned Iran to decades of oppression

#208

Post by thephyber »

psunavy03 wrote: post #155
thephyber wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Iraq is an artificial country created by western powers. Kurdistan (parts of Turkey, Syria, Iraq, Iran) should probably be a sovereign country, separate from Iraq. Sunnis and Shiites hated their swap of power roles after the 2003 invasion. Those who were elected to government post-2003 were too concerned with punishing the others rather than unifying the country. Also, people lose their minds when basic security is l…

> Sometimes I wonder if Iraq’s instability was caused by the US’s migration to high tech military, which reduces the need to have 5x the numbers of soldiers on the ground as happened in Japan and Germany. This is squarely the fault of Donald Rumsfeld, who was given plans pre-war by General Eric Shinseki and the rest of the Joint Chiefs that involved significantly more forces. Instead, Rumsfeld pitched a fit and made…

I’m not defending Rumsfeld, but this is entirely too simplistic.

Rumsfeld was hired by Bush. Colin Powell sold the invasion to the US public and the UN. The US Congress overwhelmingly supported use of force. Who knows exactly the extent of Cheney’s involvement. Rumsfeld only had authority because of the chain of events before that.

Re: 70 years ago, an Anglo-US coup condemned Iran to decades of oppression

#209

Post by leereeves »

reissbaker wrote: post #206
leereeves wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't believe defending Taiwan from China counts as propping it up. That phrase should be limited to helping the government suppress internal resistance. But if it counts, then the US propped up every country in NATO by defending them from the USSR and Russia.

Taiwan/China, for the first few decades of their respective existences, were considered internal resistance by both the PRC (China) and the ROC (Taiwan), with the US backing the ROC. While sentiments about that are obviously pretty different in Taiwan today (although not in China!), I also think that the US/Taiwan relationship is still meaningfully different from, say, the US/UK relationship, and I think it counts as…

The island of Taiwan/Formosa did have people on it before the RoC fled there, but they were not Chinese, they were aboriginal.

Or Japanese, because the island was a Japanese colony until 1945. Rule of that island was hardly a Chinese internal matter, as it was in fact decided in 1945 by the United States (part of the surrender of Japan).

And the U.S. State Department's official position in 1959 was that Formosa was not a part of China as a country.

In short, the RoC lost the civil war completely and fled to new territory. After that, there was just the threat of the CCP pursuing the RoC beyond what were (certainly as recently as 1945) the borders of China.

Re: 70 years ago, an Anglo-US coup condemned Iran to decades of oppression

#210

Post by reissbaker »

leereeves wrote: post #209
reissbaker wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Taiwan/China, for the first few decades of their respective existences, were considered internal resistance by both the PRC (China) and the ROC (Taiwan), with the US backing the ROC. While sentiments about that are obviously pretty different in Taiwan today (although not in China!), I also think that the US/Taiwan relationship is still meaningfully different from, say, the US/UK relationship, and I think it counts as…

The island of Taiwan/Formosa did have people on it before the RoC fled there, but they were not Chinese, they were aboriginal. Or Japanese, because the island was a Japanese colony until 1945. Rule of that island was hardly a Chinese internal matter, as it was in fact decided in 1945 by the United States (part of the surrender of Japan). And the U.S. State Department's official position in 1959 was that Formosa was n…

Neither China nor Taiwan agreed that they were separate countries — China still doesn't, and Taiwan only changed its position in 1991 — and both considered it internal affairs. I'm not sure what aboriginal Taiwanese people have to do with this, as

1. they had been citizens of imperial China for hundreds of years during the Qing dynasty, until Japan briefly and brutally colonized the island in 1895. And,

2. Han Chinese had been the majority on Taiwan since the 1600s — and parts of Taiwan (the Penghu islands) had in fact been originally Han Chinese, and had been ruled by China since the early days of the Yuan Dynasty (and semi-unofficially settled by China since the Song dynasty). It simply isn't true that "The island of Taiwan/Formosa did have people on it before the RoC fled there, but they were not Chinese." They were majority Chinese even on the main island, and had been for many centuries, long before the PRC vs RoC civil war.

Taiwan was not "new territory" for China. If you're going to quote the State Department on whether Taiwan was originally part of China, then have a gander at their 1943 statement: "all the territories that Japan has stolen from the Chinese, such as Formosa and The Pescadores, shall be restored to the Republic of China." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1943_Cairo_Declaration And while the U.S. claims that this was a statement of intent that was never fully implemented, it's still a statement of intent, and the RoC administered Taiwan post-WWII, and has never stopped.

The RoC didn't flee to new territory, they fled to the last remnants of the existing territory that they could defend in a civil war. And the U.S. propped them up, and continues to do so (in my opinion rightfully, but of course, I'm biased).

Also, this really isn't anything like the U.K. frankly.

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