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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   31233 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 9, 2023

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The Iran deal, the US expanding right into Eastern Europe after Russia pulled back and the long list of self proclaimed US exceptionalism gives the rest of the world strong reasons not to trust the US.

Fact check. All those people just wanted to get rich and we never invaded any of those countries.

https://noahpinion.substack.com/p/the-polandmalaysia-model

Honestly thought about doing a top-level posts. Polands economical miracle sums up this entire war. Russia offered their colonial possessions nothing and once every 50 years a famine. The West offered wealth. Maybe if Russia didn’t want colonies and offered economic development all these Slovak countries would want to be friends with them.

Mershemere meet Poland. Maybe he could study their economy and realize why no one wants to be friends with Russia.

I'm trying and I can't understand what you're all arguing about? There are three actors in this game. It is true that Poland joined NATO, as the prospect of access to the closed EU market and subsidies from Germany, France and the UK is very tasty. It is true that the US is interested in expanding its sphere of influence. And it is true that for Russia, the expansion of NATO and the EU is a loss of market access and unacceptable security threats.

That is, Poland has reasons to join NATO/EU, the US has reasons to increase its influence, Russia has reasons to perceive expansion as aggression.

All of these things can be true at the same time. Right?

Ukraine was never a military threat to a nuclear armed country so security is false but loss of culture/economic control is true.

And there is the fourth actor Ukraine whose opinions should matter the most.

There seems to be discussed the expansion of NATO in general. In the case of Ukraine, I would replace Poland with Ukraine and not much would change. (Although the armed coup and the right of the population to self-determination make this case more difficult).

And the threat to Russia is not Ukraine, it is the United States and NATO, of course.

NATO is not militarily invading a nuclear armed power. Not worth it. Russia would be ignored like N Korea.

How do you have such confidence, and how do you have confidence that at some time the US will not invade North Korea?

Anything is possible of course. But why would we want every major city in the world vaporized?

I wrote about it in the thread above.

An invasion either requires an improved missile defense system to reliably intercept intercontinental missiles, or can be carried out using a proxy.

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