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naraburns  nihil supernum  6mo ago (text post)   29920 thread views

Israel-Gaza Megathread #2

This is a refreshed megathread for any posts on the conflict between (so far, and so far as I know) Hamas and the Israeli government, as well as related geopolitics. Culture War thread rules apply.

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Curtis Yarvin wrote about this clusterfuck: Gaza and the nomos of the earth. It makes some humorous connections between American foreign policy and dog fighting pits, and visualizes a world where America stops trying to meddle and just lets "might makes right" rule:

But this is how might makes right. Now, picture this victory—the victory of force and order over turmoil and chaos—worldwide, cleaning up all the world’s open sores. You are picturing the fall of the American empire—and realizing that, like the USSR (if much better), the GAE can actually fall upward. Almost all the problems it supposedly exists to solve will rapidly solve themselves as soon as it is gone.

Curiously, he's arguing for the US cutting Israel loose, militarily and diplomatically, but that this would lead to Israel finally sorting out the Palestinian problem, through force. I say curious, because I'm not sure if Israel is actually strong enough to stand on its own without the US supplying weapons, but if they are, well, I say Israel is illegitimate, but so be it: I don't believe in wandering into a barbaric hinterland to impose one's sense of justice or civilization, which is a big point of agreement between me and Yarvin.

Definitely felt called out hard by this line:

Are you addicted to Anglo-American missionary imperialism? Test yourself with two easy checks. Do you genuinely, emotionally, care about the plight of the Palestinians? Do you know where Stepanakert is? If your answers are “yes” and “no,” you need help.

I need help I guess, except I don't believe in militarily intervening in favor of the Palestinians.

I wonder what is the proper relation of a civilization to the barbarians. Yarvin says:

The basic way for a country to be neutral in a war is, as Hamilton observes, to trade freely with both sides, but not sell weapons (“contraband of war”) to either.

And yet, so much of the world is barbaric. Kinda makes you hope Better Angels of our Nature is true.

FTA

Actually, less than a month ago as I write, in a “type 1 conflict” in which America had no dog, two hundred thousand Armenians were ethnically cleansed.

Sorry, what? Can I have a link? I can't even find a Wikipedia article.

This is a reference to the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, in which Azerbaijan recently (despite the presence of Russian CSTO peacekeepers) took control of the area militarily, followed by a large-scale emigration of ethnic Armenians from the area. Beyond that, it's complicated: I'm told the area's Azeri population faced a similar expulsion the 1990s, and there are various entangling foreign alliances (Armenia nominally with Russia, Azerbaijan with Turkey).

Huh. The world's kind of scary when the US doesn't care about your conflict.

In some ways it's even scarier when it does.

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