Source https://lemmy.zip/post/72029200/29026430
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There are valid arguments to be made regarding the independence of states under the US military umbrella, but South Korea and Taiwain are pretty far down that list of what you could fairly call a true vassal state. I’d look to the Middle East for true examples of vassal states, states that exist largely due to cooperating with the US, who would otherwise simple be replaced by the CIA, with no popular or ideological base of support, weak sense of national identity, and a large (majority?) population of guest workers.
Saudi Arabia is an example. All those weapons they bought was mostly a bribe to the United States. Saudi Arabia doesn’t WANT to have a strong domestic military because they know they are unpopular and, looking to Egypt, recognize they would probably be toppled by an effective and unified military.
On the other hand, you have al Ansar, starved and penniless, beating Saudi forces becauses they actually believe in what they are fighting for, whereas nobody is willing to die for the corrupt House of Saud and no piece of expensive technology is going to change that fact.
South Korea and Taiwain are both legitimate governments with strong public support and national identity, BUT South Korea did do dumb shit like send troops to support American idiocy in Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq. But notably, South Korea, having had its military defenses stripped and sent to Israel, recently told Trump to fuck off with his troop requests; with the economic collapse of the US imminent and its military exposed as easily compromised, the era of the American vassal state is quickly coming to the end.
[Edit: On my path to correcting the following opinion: The argument for Ukraine, which I’ve heard from what are perhaps pro-Russian sources, is that it is basically a weapons platform for the West to attack Russia forever. Ukraine is basically devastasted as a nation, it’s industrial base destroyed, it’s people fleeing, it’s crops unplanted and unharvested, yet it continues to fight. Why? Because it’s not a country, it’s a weapons platform for the West. But that isn’t one I’m going to defend because I don’t know enough about the situation, but it is plausible (as the best propaganda is).]
As for Israel, a much stronger case can be made that the US is a vassal state of Israel. This business in the Gulf was explicitly, per Little Marco, at the request of Israel, and only benefits Israel at great expense to the US. The US is a wagged dog.
Hi, Ukrainian here. If we actually had the “weapon platform” these chucklefucks at .ml are imagining, Moscow would already be a neat round smoking crater. That is, if you need any further proof that it’s bullshit.
Tankies like to overlook the fact Russia treats Eastern Europe and Central Asia the way US treats Latin America.
Oh, they’re aware of it. They’re just cool with that.
“Independent economies? Not on my watch!”
Because it’s their country, if they can’t protect their country and fold in just a minor pressure, they can’t protect anything. They just had their independent fairly recently of course they gonna fight to their last breath to not rejoin the imperialist that they just escaped. What in Sheogorath is this argument, the mad god have more point than a russian tool.
Edit: you know why i know every tankie is a smooth brain? Apply the same argument to Hamas and Palestine and you will get a different argument from them.
Yes Ukraine the “weapons platform” that has to beg to be supplied ammunition. I will say that Western countries have used the Ukraine war as a testing field for modern weapon systems. However, I will laugh in your face if you tell me with any hint of seriousness you believe it’s a US pawn. Ukraine is a European wildcard that rembers and resents the Russian Empire and is only allied with Nato for ammo and logistical support. It’s not a secret that Nato is not friendly to Russia and wants to balkanize it, however Nato would never have had the balls to ever attack or threaten Russia. The reason Nato wants to balkanize Russia is that it keeps attacking neighbors and engaging in covert actions against western countries. If Russia had actually worked towards developing itself and it’s European connections in the 1990s and 2000s it would be in a far better place. Rember that the USSR didn’t collapse its states willingly dissolved it as soon as they had a chance to slip the collar of Moscow.
Russia rich in resources but destitute for leadership.
If you want I can steer you towards a very nice video essay series that goes over some of this with its sources cited that can help you branch off further
Most new weapons systems they use are developed in Ukraine not in West. West supplies traditional weapons all the new drone shit is domestic mostly.
The problem, from my perspective, is my “truth detector” is basically, “how much do they shit on the United States?” The more shitting there is, is the truthier the commenter. Throw in a few references like “hegemon” and “Epstein Class” and I’m a happy kitten.
I think what’s most important to me is to counter-program years of US indoctrination, and seeing the US as a malign actor on the world stage is really the main ticket of entry.
That said, I have not completely taken leave of my senses and, yeah, the defenses of invading Ukraine never sat right with me. because territorial sovereigty is a core value of mine, and Russia has quite the habit of doing so and the defenses seem pretty far fetched.
I guess the sad reality is that in this space that everyone is selling something.
So, yes, if you’d like to put me onto a good YouTube series on Ukraine, I’ll have a listen.
I think your lie detector is broken mate. I could arbitrarily pick a country to shit on and fill pages. It doesn’t make my rants accurate. Your truth detector should be based on verifiable facts and information… Anyways, open my profile and look at my most recent post.
There’s truth detector and there’s worldview that explains what is happening and can predict what will happen and can predict would happen if something novel occurred.
A collection of facts is really only interesting in if it supports or detracts from world view and what I’m looking for is an outlet that synthesizes facts and contextualizes it within a worldview, while at the same time, you know, prioritizing the truth value of claims over their ability to support their worldview/narrative.
I mean yeah. The worst part about being willing to listen and change you mind, is that people want you on their side. Even if you opinion is 80%, 95% of another person’s, if you are not on the same page idealogically, you are wrong.
That’s kinda how humans work though, not even in a sinister way. There is plenty of sinister people who know and try to exploit that shit. But people love team sports because we naturally love to form into teams. People will unknowingly create teams out of anything and then create methods to identify if you are in our out.
When you have an open mind enough to actually listen to these arguments and try to form an opinion, or approach a topic trying to have your mind changed, people on a team will treat you like you’re fucking stupid.
You seem like you are engaging in good faith which is the highest complement you can give a person on a text forum.
Kind of the fun of talking with people is finding out where you’re wrong. I’ll often say something I suspect is wrong in the hopes that someone will show me the light…
It got harder to do that on reddit, where if one toe was out of line, you were treated as a bad actor. And, partially, I get it. In large groups, there are more trolls and people’s patience is thinner. On the other hand, mob mentality is real…
To be fair saying something you think is wrong just in the hopes of being proven wrong is the text book definition of a bad actor.
Yeah, it would be, so I don’t say things I think are wrong, I say things that I SUSPECT are wrong. That is to say, I think they also might be right.
Please, name any attack on Russian soil performed by Nato, before Russia invaded Ukraine. I beg you. You can’t? Oh.
Can you please not uncritically spread Russian propaganda in this comm? It’s the kind of narratives that are normally ridiculed here.
Uncritically? I tagged it as likely pro-Russian propaganda and I doubt anyone would find it convincing after reading the replies.
Edit: Actually presenting an opinion and having users 99% dogpile it is a pretty good strategy for discrediting a position. Everyone reading reaffirms their group identity and dismisses the opinion as literal crazy talk. I think that’s how r/worldnews worked. They would allow one or two people to state an opinion without being banned, but only so it could be brutalized by their flying monkeys.
That’s an overall ML strategy. Dissenting opinion that gets dog piled is removed because it’s violates a rule, them all that’s left is the arguments against the original opinion. Only replies that lack context about the original argument are left by the non-tanky poster so you can continue to take them apart straw man style.
What you experienced was just pushback and conversation about 1 of your talking points. With a bunch of lucid discussion about why that opinion (which you noted as Russian centered propaganda) is wrong.
It also misunderstands the fundamental issue of Russia. The propaganda is that Russia is capable when they use hard power at all. They aren’t. Russia Pound 4 pound has the worst track record of all militaries in the world, and that’s being on the winning side half the time.
Russia is great at soft power, but absolutely utter shit at hard power. Ukraine has gotten a 100th of the support Israel is getting, because Israel is the weapon testing platform of the West. Israel is where we’re testing how to kill with new technology.
Ukraine has built their weapon systems almost entirely in house and is now actually selling both it’s tech and tactics to other nations, much like Iran has done in the east as well.
Russia is just really, really, really bad at war.
Well, before I was banned from r/worldnews, I was a frequent punching bag, with my comments left untouched, so that’s what was going on there.
I’m saying I don’t feel bad for softballing Russian propaganda here, because it’s effectively just pointing out how unpopular and stupid it is when it’s attacked like it’s been here. I’m not defending it, I’m just putting it out there with the implicit question being, “Is this bullshit? because it kinda sounds like bullshit.”
Kinda funny you bring up Russia’s military, because just yesterday there was a Russian talking about how awesome the Russian military was, but, reading between the lines, he was mostly saying Russians don’t mind killing their soldiers while Americans have, since Vietnam, built their entire strategy around tactics that don’t risk soldiers…
So it’s a fair criticism. I think the American Empire is only sustainable by violence that does not cost American lives (be it sanctions or bombing campaigns)… but whether Russia has a “great” military is another question entirely.
But that leads me to a question that has really been perplexing me, because on the one hand, maybe Russia will be looking to Poland next, but on the other hand, could it really fight the EU if it’s only winning Ukraine via years and years of attrition? The Russian channels so that no, Russia has no such intentions, but also say Russia has a great military and all the other militaries suck, while European sources say Russia is a mortal threat to Europe and that Russia is extremely capable militarily, but the facts on the ground seem to indicate that Russia is a huge country with population, industry, and oil wealth, just grinding their way to victory.
The larger question is where do I get news with a leftist worldview that isn’t explicitly biased? I don’t think it’s possible. And I think the real risk for people who fall off the American Capitalism Is The Best bandwagon is that they’ll be suckers for pro-Eastern propaganda if that’s the only place pushing anti-US narratives, and maybe that’s how we get tankies.
I’d love to read an essay comparing Ukraine and Israel in terms of diplomatic and military support. My opinion is that the US’s military is focused on developing expensive hardware as congressional pork and jobs programs; and I think Europe probably has adopted the same model. Whatever happens if Russia attacks Poland, I think Europe is going to be on a steep learning curve.
News in this time is rough. There is no true left wing news in America, news is fully captured. The only source of unvarnished left wing news is Zines in the House US, and they are extremely idealogical, because they have to be to operate in a news embargo. All information is accepted, all opinions are taken with a grain of salt, existing right now sucks.
We haven’t actually had a modern war yet. When you look at Russia v Ukraine, or US vs Iran, you see what the new war looks like.
Israel as a weapon testing platform does not involve actual conflict. There’s a small about of fighting from Hamas, but realistically on Israel they can just kill whoever they want however they want.
The US exist as a power in precision bombing, we are fucking allergic to soldiers dying as you noted. You saw what happened when a power can just take precision bombing, just soak it up like Iran. Russia exists as a power in sending waves after waves of people that they are willing to lose, they win through attrition. You’re seeing what happens when their opponent stops spending lives and starts killing you autonomously.
Europe is not one place, despite the fact that they have an EU, individually they are not terribly good at working together. You saw how bad Brexit fucked regional trade. In my opinion the entire EU is worried that Nato is bullshit and no wants Russia to try and prove it.
Right now the only untested super power is China. China can produce munitions at a rate that the entire world’s production combined can’t touch. China has an nearly unlimited number of people and have embraced drone tech. Mark my fucking words, the world is a series of paper tigers next to China. The big powers are rushing to prove it.
The Guardian is where I get most of my US news from, and they’re UK based, which just shows you the level of capture here. But for foreign policy news, anywhere in the world is willing to criticize the US.
As far as war goes, it looks like we can pound the shit out of each other with missile and drones, but this is just an extension of air supremacy doctrine, which, as you’ve pointed out, can continue indefinitely without victory.
Given the psychology of the US and Israel, I think one of us will be dropping nukes soon, and then it’s time to wait for the octopus archeologists to put the pieces together in a few millenia.
What’s your take on Russia’s threat to the EU and the EU’s capacity to address it?
And here’s the thing I notice about China which I’ll bring up in the context of someone probably watching a lot of Chinese-friendly media. They do seem to have a fundamentally different, and I’ll say morally better, approach to foreign policy than the US. You can make the road initiviative in Africa seem as sinister as you want, it’s still better than destabilizing governments by arming pedophile warlords that sow chaos.
China COULD play the proxy war game to destabilize its enemies, but, as far as I can tell, it does not, and that’s why I think China is probably going to be the only lead player people are willing to work with…
And that for as long as it takes them to fall to the power madness that all empires fall into.
There is no escaping the wheel.
I think Russia poses a threat to anyone no matter how deep a hole they are currently in, they are a nuclear power, and even though the most likely people on the planet to use a nuke are the US in Iran or Israel in Iran, the threat of a nuclear powered nation engaging in offensive war is terrifying.
No matter how well the EU would be able to defend, and I have very very little opinion there, my info is extremely low with EU matters, Russia testing Nato directly would show that the agreement effectively doesn’t exist. I think it’s just as likely that Nato/EU does as much about Russian aggression as they did with Ukraine, no matter where it happens.
I could be totally wrong there, I’m willing to be totally wrong there.
I think drones as a fundamental technology of war have changed the game in a way you wouldn’t call air supremacy. Air supremacy used to rely on incredibly expensive pieces of flight equipment, even the drones. Now the tech involves things that cost pennies in comparison (basically consumer drone tech with military grade explosives tapes to them) that can take out a piece of equipment which is nearly irreplaceable. War has changed right under the nose of the US and Russia. At least Russia is trying to catch up, the US is rejecting this tech and trying to put more pieces of 7-8 figure equipment in the air.