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PaperclipPerfector  14d ago (text post)   1443 thread views

Transnational Thursday for May 8, 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.

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My roundup for last week:

  • India and Pakistan have agreed to a ceasefire, and despite initial breaches, it now seems to be holding.
  • The Trump administration and China agreed to reduce tariffs for 90 days while talks continue. Markets rejoiced.
  • The Trump administration continues to look into ending due process for immigrants to be deported and is making arrangements to deport undocumented immigrants to many countries around the world.
  • Israel is set to start a major operation in Gaza soon.
  • The nonprofit OpenAI will retain control of the for-profit arm after restructuring.

The PKK, the Kurdish Worker's party which spent the last decades fighting the Turks who occupy much of Kurdistan, has dissolved.

Source, in German, which provides no details: https://www.tagesschau.de/eilmeldung/eilmeldung-8610.html

Some recent diplomatic news from Ukraine: a bunch of EU country leaders have endorsed Zelensky's offer of an unconditional 30-day ceasefire and are trying to convince Putin to agree by painting him as a warmonger and threatening him with additional sanctions.

The counteroffer from Putin is that he's willing to start direct peace talks instead. It's easy to see why he's reluctant to agree to an unconditional ceasefire: he hasn't secured any strategic objectives since the land bridge to Crimea and his current approach is to keep pummeling Ukraine until it runs out of men first and the front buckles. An unconditional ceasefire clearly benefits the defender: Ukraine gets a month to rotate its troops, resupply the frontline, build additional defensive lines.

Now, there are several ways in which the situation could evolve. I think a lot depends on the outcome of Xi-Putin talks. If Xi endorses Putin's direct peace talks offer, this will be a major signal to Trump that he also has to support Putin and not Starmer/Macron/Merz.

I don't know in what world Xi would not endorse his ally's peace talks offer. Also why trump would be swung by Xi's endorsement in putin's favour.

An offer to talk is worth zilch, as the tariff talks clownshow has demonstrated. I like kasparov’s take of calling the americans chicken, Ukraine's best hope is that Trump throws a fit at Putin's refusal. Someone tell him heavily subventioned arms exports lead to trade surplus, it's like chinese EVs.

I don't know in what world Xi would not endorse his ally's peace talks offer.

In the world where he thinks Russia is firmly in China's orbit no matter what the outcome of the war is.

Also why trump would be swung by Xi's endorsement in putin's favour.

Because peeling Russia away from China to further isolate the latter is one of Trump's goals.

  1. In that scenario, Xi doesn’t care enough to even pay lip service to his ally, and to the idea of peace? For what, trying to humiliate Putin for his domestic audience (“have you even said thank you once?”)?

  2. That’s a stupid idea that will never work, so it would be a normal day at the golf course for TRUMP. But it would be one more reason why Xi wouldn't snub Putin in the first place. Personally I think the americans would be better off (re)-peeling peaceful China away from global nuclear threat Russia. They're like Pakistan, they threaten to destroy the world every time things don't go their way ("what's the use of a world without Russia?" - Vlad P., Moscow).

Sharp escalation in the India Pakistan conflict over the last hour. Ballistic missiles seem to have been fired, and confirmed reports of explosions in Islamabad and Rawalpindi.

UPDATE: Pakistan acknowledges that three military bases were attacked, preparing response

UDATE: the situation is deteriorating rapidly. I’m hearing absolutely wild rumors about the targets that are being hit. Supposedly a massive cyberattack has just taken out 70 percent of India’s power grid.

UPDATE: The Pakistani Prime Minister has convened a meeting of the National Command Authority. It’s probably just saber-rattling, but this is the group that would give authorization for the use of nuclear weapons.

Looks like I was clearly wrong with an earlier 'this will probably blow over' Thursday post.

Still, did a cyberattack really take down the grid? India says it's fake news while 'Mashriq news' says it did but wouldn't we be able to see it from space? My Brave AI bot says it was real but I don't think these browserbots are up for wars and the absolute explosion of fake news that comes with it. The beginning of the war in Ukraine was like this too, lots of fantasy.

For those who have twitter accounts, see the discourse on the Chinese PL-15 - it fell out of the sky, it shot down Rafales, it's too short to be a real PL-15, China gave Pakistan the real version not the shitty export version, no they didn't... and the chaos is automated too with convincing and effective Deepseek instances too, I spotted at least one batting for China with a non-trivial follower count.

https://x.com/search?q=PL-15&src=trend_click&vertical=trends

80 percent of the Indian flag posters on 4Chan seemed to suddenly disappear so I think it was legit.

A new pope has been chosen. Exactly who remains to be seen.

Hoping for Pizzaballa, has the most "papal vibes" of the papabili that I'm familiar with.

E: Cardinal Robert Prevost has been chosen. The New Leo XIV is the first man born in America to become Pope. Was not expecting him, although he ranked quite highly on PopePredictor for whatever that's worth.

ranked quite highly on PopePredictor

Do you have a link?

May 7th, the day the Conclave started (no number given but ranked 3rd)

May 5th (-0.176; fell due to bad press after SA coverup accusations

April 1st, the favorite at -1.796

Thanks!

So, does this somewhat surprising choice of an American pope count as another instance of successful meme magic?

Cardinal Prevost, the first American. Pope Leo XIV.

It’s not exactly the RETVRN we’d been prepared to expect from this election, so I don’t know what this means. I don’t think hydro spent a lot of time discussing him.

I am surprised by this, mostly because his record on dealing with abuse cases can be charitably(not a typo) described as atrocious.

He has liberal friends, but a knack for being the most moderate in the room. He’s a registered Republican, for what it’s worth(probably not much), but also tweeted lots of criticisms of trump on immigration(also probably not worth very much). He has a reputation as a company man and was criticized by pope Francis’s more progressive Allies for keeping the old bishop selection process rather than putting a political thumb on the scale. His early acts will probably set a conservative tone but he’ll ultimately settle near the center.

Prediction markets didn't see itn coming, which I thought was interesting.

I posted updates on the culture war thread with regards to the conflict in India due to terrorist attacks in Kashmir, in case someone wants an opinion from someone living in India close the unfortunate striking zone. Most information from all media outlets is muddy and heavily biased, Indian, Pakistani or "neutral".

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