site banner
PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   1730 thread views

Transnational Thursday for March 20, 2025

Transnational Thursday is a thread for people to discuss international news, foreign policy or international relations history. Feel free as well to drop in with coverage of countries you’re interested in, talk about ongoing dynamics like the wars in Israel or Ukraine, or even just whatever you’re reading.

1
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Putin has zero incentive to agree to any kind of real ceasefire, because he’s about to win the war.

Let's assume that your rosy picture of Russian armed forces is accurate.

Just stay the course, few more months of grind to flatten the Ukraine and it is done. Ukraine army is broken, Zelensky dead or in Florida, Russian flags fly over Kiev and Odessa. It is over.

Now what? The sactions last, new Russian territory is not recognized by the "international community", frontier states are frantically rearming, including nuclear weapons. Hundreds of billions of Russian funds are never going back. Russia won ... patch of devastated land where anyone who could fled and only the elderly pensioners are left.

Putin can present it in TV to Z audience as glorious victory, but that's all.

new Russian territory is not recognized by the "international community"

Israel's settlements aren't recognized by the international community, yet they persist and expand. This war is about facts on the ground, not words on a page. Sanctions are a perfect example: Russian oil just goes via India off to Europe. The demand for luxury European cars has risen enormously in Azerbaijan...

Besides Ukraine, Europe is also a clear loser, even if they're brave enough to seize Russian assets. Apparently the war already cost Europe some 700 billion Euros by mid-2023:

if you include the support that the European governments have had to pay in order to help their families and firms to face the high prices of electricity, of food, the subsidies to our people in order to face the consequences of the war is €700 billion – ten times more than the support for Ukraine.

https://www.eeas.europa.eu/eeas/singapore-speech-hrvp-borrell-shangri-la-dialogue_en

Israel's settlements aren't recognized by the international community, yet they persist and expand.

Because Israel has the demographics to get make settler colonialism work. Russia uh… doesn’t.

Seriously when your core demographic has a tfr of like 5(and zionists/likud supporters have a higher fertility rate than already high Israeli general fertility) you can do things to conquered territory that would make no sense if your core demographic(and ethnic Russians have a lower fertility than Russia in general) has an Eastern European fertility rate and your population density is already one of the lowest in the world.

Israel’s fertility is terrible with the exception of the Haredim, who refuse to hold productive jobs or serve in the military.

That is not true. Secular Israeli Jews have a fertility rate of 2, and that’s the lowest Israeli Jewish fertility gets.

And if their adversary and neighbor was North Korea that would be pretty good. But they have the misfortune of being in conflict with one of the few remaining fertile groups on the planet.

This isn’t 2005. Islamic fertility isn’t sub-Saharan Africa level. Israel’s TFR is generally higher than it’s neighbors.

Israel’s TFR is generally higher than it’s neighbors.

It is not, thoughbeit. The fertility rate of the Palestinian territories is 3.44. Gaza is 3.88. While that’s down from a whopping 7 in 1990 that’s still almost double of Israel’s. Egypt is 2.88. Syria, despite being in the middle of a horrific civil war, is 2.70. Iraq is 3.88. The only country Israel is keeping up with is Lebanon. Unfortunately it seems western culture has a more deleterious effect on fertility rates than several million smart bombs do.

A quick google says Israel's overall TFR is 2.89 and the Israeli overall Jewish TFR is 3.03. Both of those are higher than any neighbors except Palestine and Iraq(which is stretching the definition of 'neighbor').

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats