441–450 of 530 posts
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Somewhere between 0 and None, which is a good thing for literally everyone. Unless we’re now cheering for ethnostates and a full blown Turkish invasion. Even the Syrian Kurds don’t want independence, rather just autonomy as part of a multiethnic Northern region.
Why should every other group get autonomy but the Kurds? Turkey’s habit of ethnic cleansing isn’t a reason to deny the Kurds such a right.
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It is a sign that propaganda is getting to you if you find yourself seriously considering their talking points. Is it better if a million people die "in the name of stability" quietly being tortured to death in jails behind closed doors over a span of a decade all while further tens of millions live in misery or half that number die in a let's say 3 year war, but we see it all on TV and there is real chance of freedo…
Democracies have also done irreversible errors. Hitler after all was elected. So was Trump. Twice. Democracy is very fragile, it requires that the players respect the rules of the game. But in reality, some players use democratic processes to undermine democracy itself and establish their own regime with a democratic shell.
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I recall seeing western nations corroborate the evidence. Trains out of North Korea into Russia follow one path and are easy to monitor.
I don't doubt it is true, but "western nations corroborate the evidence" also happened in "Saddam has nukes" and lots of other situations in history.
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Love the "first derivative" view! One can take a snapshot of a good day, but if russia really was producing more weapons than USA + NATO for a prolonged time, having also more people, Ukraine would fall a long time ago. It didn't. As we say in Poland "paper will accept everything". And russia is known for shameless propaganda.
So far, Russia is still making gains on the battlefield though, not Ukraine. At some point, that momentum would have to reverse. Also, I don't think it's an "until" about China stepping in, they seem to be squarely on Russia's side, just presenting themselves slightly more moderate in public to appear suitable as a mediator. (Maybe sort of like the US does with Israel) Finally, there is BRICS and some massive shifts…
This is again first derivative. Russia annexed Crimea, sent unofficial troops to Donbas, in 2022 moved rapidly and captured a lot of territory... But later was pushed back severely. And after that, it was gaining terrain in a truly snail pace.
BTW India and China are in an ongoing border conflict, the hostilities don't end there, with India banning many Chinese apps for example. They're nowhere near as united as EU or NATO, it's more like the Visegrád Group.
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Russia's military is about 4-5x the size in men and 10x the budget, and 10x compounded over years, and years, and years. What's a GDP? :)
GDP is a measure of economic output. If your economy doesn't produce much then it is very hard to sustain a high intensity war.
GDP was a good war metric for an industrial economy, and fucking terrible for a services based one. There's never one metric that describes all. You know it, Goodhart knew it, anyone was worked with metrics ever knows it. This is rather important and frankly I don't get the glibness. Russia's not an unstoppable force but it's not a joke either.
It is a bit surreal to read people cheering for islamist head choppers who overthrew a secular government. Remember this 10 years from now when these same head choppers blow something up in NYC. The fundamental invariant of governance stands undefeated: religious head choppers, whether they are on "our side" or not, are always worse in the long run than the secular governments. See the "freedom fighter" Osama Bin Lad…
If choice is between dying from head chopping or a chemical attack I choose head chopping.
More than anything this shows how terrible a shape Russia and Iran are in. A 15 year long proxy war ended with a whimper.
Your logic posits that the good guys lost i.e Russia & Iran, supposedly fighting terrorists in Syria.
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That could only be strange for him if he doesn't understand the structure of the war or he hasn't been following current events. Assad was only able to take back Syria with air support from Russia, ground support from Hezbollah and re-enforcement by Iran and other Iranian aligned groups in Syria. Russia is busy and drained of resources because of its misadventure in Ukraine, Hezbollah is reeling from it's shocking lo…
For me, Taleb is the Levante expert, I simply don't know anyone else. His view that the interference of all possible powers has only brought disaster seems plausible to me. He has criticized the export of fanaticism from Saudi Arabia in particular for a while. The downfall of a regime is perhaps simply difficult to predict. I experienced this in the case of the GDR. Suddenly it was gone, everyone was astonished.
For me, he has become obsessed with being an anti-establishment contrarian that he is too biased to trust.
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> * how will Turkey negotiate with this facing the pkk and Kurdish nationalism? Hopefully Turkey does the honorable thing, recognizes an independent Kurdish state and apologizes for decades of oppression, murder and state-sanction terror? Unlikely though.
It's surprising to me that many here in HN see Turkey as the state terrorists over the Kurds, when the main party of Kurdish independence from Turkey is a literal terrorist group who committed a terrorist attack killing innocent civilians in Turkey just over one month ago! It feels to me that when HNers agree that a people should be sovereign (the Kurds), they ignore the terrorism. When they don't agree (the Palestin…
Some guys doing bad stuff, say other guys doing bad stuff are really bad - trust us - and thus have them added to the definitive naughty list. In case you're in any doubt, there are lots of bad people and folks out there, but believing there's one definitive list is pretty much Western chauvinism writ large.
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I don't doubt it is true, but "western nations corroborate the evidence" also happened in "Saddam has nukes" and lots of other situations in history.
I was too young at the time, but the perspective here in Tennessee at least is that the wmd allegations were seen as an American and british boondoggle. Were France, Germany, Spain all aboard that train? I thought "the west" had a half hearted push back against the idiocy. Would love to be informed before my Google searches if anyone has their 2¢.