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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   33055 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 24, 2023

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I got through two pages of your post history with every single post (on here, reddit is dead) being a post defending US foreign policy. I have a life man, I can't be expected to spend all of it reading effort posts, and if you want to be seen as not a neocon you really should maybe try and not do everything in your power to appear as a neocon? Sometimes it can be hard to square the image we project to the public with our interior views of ourselves I guess. What label do you prefer? US imperialist? Atlanticist? Someone Russia touched in a no-no spot?

Bemused at you, mostly.

The last two pages of my posting history are this subject of Sudan, a series of exchanges regarding the Seymour Hersh accusation that the US sabotaged Nord Stream, and a pittance of comments on China. They also go out only two months.

If you consider three conversations across two months enough, okay, but that's being silly, not an argument about being a neocon.

I mean someone in the small scale question thread asks if Sudan is a proxy war, something that could be answered by a simple, "There is a lot of incentive foreign powers could be involved but we can't for sure say this it is or isn't." Instead you write up a 5 page rebuttal on how there is no way the US could possibly be involved in another proxy war after it's history of endless proxy wars, when there are actors involved that are already in proxy wars by info dumping a Wikipedia article on recent Sudanese history.

This is an example of you missing the point, and the argument.

The problem with this sort of argument and a problem that persists with motte style arguments, is that the information that is most valuable in international relations, is also the information you are least likely to have. Long ass effort post write ups summarizing easily available facts are almost always worthless and the endless gaslighting by the "experts" to trust the bare facts and ignore your "conspiratorial" instincts is obnoxious. Which is why it's terribly misleading to just rattle off a bunch of known facts about recent Sudanese history without pointing out the very obvious incentives foreign actors would have to be involved. Are foreign countries perfectly capable of fucking themselves? Yeah. Do foreign actors often give them a push when it's in their interests? Yeah. In the interconnectedness of the modern world and the power certain states have within it, it's almost impossible for any war to not have at least some hint of proxy war to it. That isn't chauvinism, that's just how power works.

No, this is the cultural chauvinism I refer to. Dismissing history that many people don't actually know to propagate a framing that isn't supported by facts on the ground that inflates the importance of external actors certainly makes the Americans seem important to the situation, and their opponents important by contrast for standing up to the mighty foe, but it doesn't, in fact, make the Americans important to the situation.

Also, how is Obama letting the middle east handle (offshoring) it's proxy wars not just some inception tier proxy warring?

Agency, and who controls conflicts for what purpose. If you indirectly force or empower someone to wage a conflict they could not, or would not, do without your support, that's a proxy war. If someone wages a conflict they they would want to as long as you were not outright stopping them, that is not a proxy war- that is their own war.

By that definition there has never been and can never be a proxy war, as no one has zero agency, all groups the US has employed in its proxy wars had a choice to say no. Convenient for someone that is such a US foreign policy apologist.

Hm.

Agency, and who controls conflicts for what purpose. If you indirectly force or empower someone to wage a conflict they could not, or would not, do without your support, that's a proxy war. If someone wages a conflict they they would want to as long as you were not outright stopping them, that is not a proxy war- that is their own war.

It's almost like what was written didn't base it's distinction on zero agency, and you made up a strawman to dismiss instead of addressing arguments actually made about the agency of others to focus on the Americans instead. Imagine that.

As for apologist, yawn. Clearly you've never paid attention to my opinions on various American ventures. Do better.

Because what was written doesn't make sense

If you indirectly force or empower someone to wage a conflict they could not, or would not, do without your support, that's a proxy war.

Let's pick out parts of this by excluding some of the not relevant or's.

If you empower someone to wage a conflict they could not do (wage) without your support, that's a proxy war.

If someone wages a conflict that they would want to as long as you were not outright stopping them, that is not a proxy war.

These statements contradict, the second is too broad. If you're enabling them or encouraging them but they want to do it anyways it's both not a proxy war and a proxy war.

Reduces to basically any conflict in which a powerful foreign country influences the conflict, while w/e party within the state they're enabling wants to wage a conflict, not being a proxy war. So nothing can be a proxy war as long as you can find some faction within a country that doesn't like current leadership.

Because what was written doesn't make sense

Because you don't think it makes sense that countries that are allied with the US can have agency and act outside of being a proxy of the United States. This is a common American-centric myopia, particularly those who buy into oppressor/oppressed frameworks of the western left that the Americans culturally dominate, but it is still a myopia.

If you empower someone to wage a conflict they could not do (wage) without your support, that's a proxy war.

If someone wages a conflict that they would want to as long as you were not outright stopping them, that is not a proxy war.

These statements contradict, the second is too broad. If you're enabling them or encouraging them but they want to do it anyways it's both not a proxy war and a proxy war.

There is no contradiction, you simply ignored the identified category which you cut off- that the party being supported in the war they would already be doing is waging their own war.

That's all it needs to be- the party who would wage war for their own interests can be the responsible agent, and not demoted to the proxy of those that back them. They do not become subordinate merely because they are supported, even if it serves the interest of those supporting them to support them. The contradiction only comes if you demand people who are supported be framed in subordinate terms to those who support them.

This is not only a false requirement, but support-without-proxy is a common state in international relations, where partners / allies will provide various levels of support to eachother simply because the relationship entails an expectation of mutual support as long as the other partner's interests do not conflict with your own. Germany will support France in various European trade disputes regarding French interests not because Germany is using France to wage proxy economic war against the other side, but because maintaining the relationship is itself a beneficial arrangement and they have an expectation of the favor being returned in the future. The Arabs will frequently vote as a block in the UN in favor of not just collective interests, but in solidarity of a fellow member, unless there are specific interest differences. The archetypical cold war alliance was that someone with a UN veto will veto the resolutions condemning their partner, and in return the partner would support the patron's UN priorities to a general extent.

The same dynamics can, and do, apply to military aid and support. Some people struggle to make sense of a difference between vassals and partners, but it does exist, and those who can't make sense of it will forever struggle as long as they default to pejoratives as 'proxy' or 'manipulation' to describe relationships in ways that not only dismiss the agency, but even the leadership, that supported parties can have in even unequal relationships.

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