Since this is an international community of free thinkers and geeks, who prefer u unified world full of love and respect, can we please refrain from political attacks. Thx.
No, one couldn’t.
The Monroe Doctrine, ironically, was precipitated by negotiations with Russia[1] and is almost identical in its aims for the Western Hemisphere as Putin's nominal arguments against NATO expansion eastward, namely the assertion that the Western Hemisphere was closed to European colonization and settlement.
Is this Putin talking about NATO expansion? 'Finally, you have broader considerations that might follow what you would call the "falling domino" principle. You have a row of dominoes set up, you knock over the first one, and what will happen to the last one is the certainty that it will go over very quickly. So you could have a beginning of a disintegration that would have the most profound influences.' No, it's Dwight Eisenhower talking about communism in Indochina in 1954. The maxims "Principiis obsta" and "Finem respice" apply universally.
The Monroe Doctrine and Domino Theory were both framed as defensive policies that were then used for protectionist and geopolitical justifications for foreign wars of aggression against neighbors and neutral independent countries. Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya didn't even have the protection of these broader geopolitical aims, just naked warmongering and profiteering (Osama Bin Laden was Saudi).
The necessity for narratives of moral exceptionalism to maintain a permanently jingoist state is to be expected, but it'd be healthier for the intelligentsia to privately admit that fact rather than hiding behind moral exceptionalism even in their personal lives. The West wants to permanently de-fang and colonize Russia for obvious reasons--geopoltical hegemony and market intrusion. These reasons create a perennial playbook everyone else has played by for thousands of years. And I'm sure when NATO does inevitably fail to a novel power, the remnants will play by the same rules Monroe and Putin played by, sed Carthago delenda est.[3]
[1] https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/monroe-doctrine
The West wants to permanently de-fang and colonize Russia for obvious reasons -- geopolitical hegemony and market intrusion.
Which in your view is the basic reason we have the war in Ukraine right now, is what I'm hearing.
Libya was in 2011. Iraq was in 2003. Afghanistan in 2001. I can go backwards to 1823, solely for the United States (and accordingly NATO).
>Which is what you reason to be the basic reason we have the war in Ukraine right now, is what I'm hearing.
The basic reason are fundamental realities of IR, which you somehow take to be a unique aspect of Western-Russian relations.
As it happens, I haven't intentionally read anything on Twitter for well over a decade. But if it is helpful for you to simply assume that, should anyone care to question your deep, penetrating analysis of recent human history and its impact on current events today; and even worse, fail to appreciate your enthusiasm for run-on paragraphs full of ungrounded abstractions and broken analogies, peppered with fancy latin idioms (for style I guess); and all in the service of watering down, and therewith attempting to "explain" actual, real and incredibly blatant neocolonial aggression happening today -- why gosh, it must be because they're an analphabetic, Twitter-addled idiot, that's all -- then I suppose that this is a "valid" strategy for you.
I honestly don't think you understand the thesis or have the historical understanding to do so. This accusation of using Latin for rhetorical purposes is an admission of this. You could've asked yourself "Do I understand the significance of Carthago delenda est in this context? Could I ask for clarification?" No, you just made a sophistic jibe, twice.
There's no substance to the rest of your rant, so I'll kindly request for you to read and use Paul Graham's How to Disagree[1].
And if you prefer to believe that if people don't buy into your hand-wavy, faux-erudite arguments, then it must be because they're simply too dumb to understand the intended import of Carthago delenda est -- then that may provide you with an additional layer of comfort.
I honestly don't think you understand the thesis or have the historical understanding to do so.
The precious irony here is that this very sentence is an overt instance of the second class on Paul's list of argument styles to avoid, in the very article you cite (and attempt to chide others for not having read) -- the venerable ad hominem attack.
Speaking of fancy latin phrases.
Sure, I'd be happy to clarify! In the ancient Mediterranean, Rome and Carthage were the two dominant powers. The phrase Carthago delenda est, meaning "Carthage must be destroyed," was used by Roman statesman Cato the Elder to stress the need for Carthage’s complete elimination in the leadup to the Third (and final) Punic War, even though Carthage wasn’t an active threat at that point. Rome imposed strict limits on Carthage’s military actions, and despite Carthage adhering to these treaties, Rome still found a pretext to accuse them of aggression after a conflict with a neighboring kingdom. Ultimately, Rome used this as justification to invade, destroy the city, and remove Carthage as a competitor entirely.
In invoking this reference, I’m suggesting that geopolitical dynamics often follow a similar logic—where powerful nations might frame another power as a threat, even if that threat is not imminent, in order to justify aggressive actions. I’m not apologizing for Russian actions, but pointing out that the motivations behind international conflicts often follow the same patterns throughout history: framing one power as an existential threat to justify intervention or destruction, whether or not the threat is real.
When we start framing the people of entire nations as irredeemable enemies even in our own private thoughts, it becomes easier to rationalize extreme actions that we would otherwise question (such as flippantly fracturing the global FOSS community). My point isn’t to excuse Russia’s actions but to highlight how these narratives can be manipulated, often leading to outcomes that are far more destructive than if people kept things in perspective.
Hope that helps. :)
The West wants to permanently de-fang and colonize Russia for obvious reasons -- geopolitical hegemony and market intrusion.
That you've achosen to adopt, on the basis of sweet, pure faith it seems.
The goals are obvious, open, and benign. Everyone wants a Russia that is stable, economically entwined with limited influence on their neighbors beyond economic ties. No tendrils of malevolent influence or proxies.
The only way this devolves into actual force is Russia making war on its neighbors which gives others permission and reason to wage proxy war with Russia and reason to cut its economic ties.
Only Russia could possibly have destabilized this situation. Only Russia could have been stupid enough to believe this would be a profitable adventure and only Russia can solve this by fucking off to their own country after which they can negotiate a return to stability.
Once this misadventure is over once again nobody will invade Russia because nobody wants to initiate nuclear Armageddon. The only real risk to this return to stability is again Russia. It's possible that should it continue long enough its impoverishment, diminishment of internal perception of strength and military power, and anger at at the regime responsible for sending so many Russians to die should cause internal splintering.
If you want to talk about "Domino theory" let us imagine a three foot tall domino surrounded by normal size dominos with Putin standing next to it kicking the giant domino for no reason. Russia was always safe from everyone but Russia.
For historical examples, you can look at Carthage under the Romans prior to the Third Punic War, the Saxons under the Normans after Hastings, or the Native Americans under the United States. There are others.
For contemporary examples, you can look at the Palestinians under the Israelis (or the Israelis not-quite-under the Arab world) or even the Ukrainians themselves under the Russians!
In each of these struggles, the dominant hegemon and its allies want a dominated rival that is "stable, economically entwined with limited influence on their neighbors beyond economic ties. No tendrils of malevolent influence or proxies." Which is to say, totally compliant with their controller and inert as a geopolitical force as they are salami sliced at will.
Russia's response to NATO's expansion is a contemporary example of this. Much like other weaker states in history facing incremental encroachment, Russia is blamed for destabilizing the region, while the more powerful actors continue policies that provoke and escalate the situation. The expectation that the weaker side alone should de-escalate or withdraw ignores the external pressures that limit their autonomy and drive their actions.
These narratives are almost always self-serving and oversimplify the situation by placing full responsibility on the weaker party, masking the larger power dynamics at play. Throughout history, dominant states have used this framing to justify the gradual weakening and containment of their adversaries, presenting their own expansionist or aggressive strategies as benign or defensive while shifting the blame onto those they are dismantling.
All I'm saying is these narratives of "I'm purely defensively containing you so I can eliminate you" are ubiquitous throughout history, but the best of those in the dominant position still understood that it was an ignoble lie even as they struggled against and were dragged along by them. The world would likely be healthier if we emulated them rather than those that always claim that their enemies are historically unlrecedented and uniquely Very Bad Persons[3].
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_salami_slicing_strateg...
[2] https://dangerousintersection.org/2020/06/25/recognizing-and...
> Russia's response to NATO's expansion is a contemporary example of this
So this is what you got backwards. Just consider latest members, Finland and Sweden. Neither had any immediate plans to join before the war, but the bitter truth is that no neighbour of Russia is safe without an alliance providing a decisive military superiority.
John Bolton, in 1994, said about the UN:
“There is no such thing as the United Nations. There is an international community that occasionally can be led by the only real power left in the world and that is the United States when it suits our interest and we can get others to go along.'[1]
I think you could replace the UN with NATO and wouldn't lose much nuance. John Bolton, like Victoria Nuland and her husband Robert Kagan, have been determining foreign policy in American administrations for the last thirty years, from the collapse of the USSR to its resurgence as Putin's revanchist state. The published attitudes of Nuland, Kagan, and Bolton (not including hot mic moments like Nuland's "fuck the EU" tape) towards the EU, the UN, and NATO are almost, if not categorically hostile when it comes at the expense of American hegemony. It's also why the ICC has no real power in the West.
As far as Sweden and Finland go, yes, their flight into NATO's arms was catalyzed by Russia's invasion of Ukraine, yes, but this is also perfectly suited to the longterm geopolitical aims of the United States, whether it happened immediately, as it did, or if they were included in a future wave of NATO members. That's the nature of salami slicing tactics. You don't need to move fast, as your opponent doesn't have the capacity to ever stop you.
>Neither had any immediate plans to join before the war, but the bitter truth is that no neighbour of Russia is safe without an alliance providing a decisive military superiority.
I agree entirely! That bitter truth has been known to conservatives in the United States since 1945 and has been routinely mocked by unaligned Europeans and urbane liberals in the United States for decades, culminating in the peak irony in 2012 of Barack Obama making fun of Mitt Romney's claim that Russia was the biggest geopolitical threat to America's interest.[2]
It may sound like a minor difference, but that plays to the Russian narrative of US violating their sphere of influence. In this imperialistic worldview smaller countries have no agency and are just pawns of larger powers. This is at the core of the current war too -- Russia desperately trying to prevent Ukraine from following the path of westward alignment that it has independently chosen.
How would one differentiate between "Russian neighbours seeking an alliance" and "Russian neighbours seeking an alliance because they were promised something in return"?
And even in this case: why would Russia care about the reasons? From russian point of view there was a promise: NATO won't grow any further east. The promise was broken.
Had NATO refused adding new members to its ranks - there would be no problem.
.... and China.
Junk away.
If that would be the case no russian would have reached the maintainer status to anything related to the kernel.
And even with Linux, it's not Linus' personal project anymore, hasn't been for decades - it's a global project with developers from many countries with their own views and biases. Being BDFL doesn't mean that your geopolitical agenda becomes the whole project's. Or at least, it wasn't so blatantly put on display previously that that was the case.
A high profile project like Linux doing this will have long term repercussions for how open source operates globally.
Open source is fostering collaborative environments, while russia as a state is destroying them deliberately. How does that fit together?
It sucks for the good-faith programmers in Russia but what would you have the rest of the world do? The Russian state must be sanctioned for its blatant disregard for international norms.
Please don’t just respond with whataboutism. The whataboutism in these threads involves different people in different times. This is happening now.
Norms are established through precedents. There are considerable precedents in the 21st century that military invasions DO NOT lead to international sanctions. So this isn't a valid argument, and it's true that that decision was emotional and politically motivated.
The idea that you turn a conversation about fairness for victims into a conversation about fairness for bullies means you don’t actually care about victims.
In other words, there are no norms or standards for handling these situations. It's purely political.
This whataboutism is a circular argument where any brazen invasion can be justified by some previous perceived slight. Because someone somewhere got away with something, now anything is permissible.
is a weird way to see it. I rather doubt your average peer human sees it that way.
The UN's "deplores in the strongest terms the aggression by Russia" vote was 141 yes 5 no, the 5 nos being Russia and allied dictatorships.
It doesn't fit your narrative.
It's clear from the last decade or so that there is much to gain from portraying oneself as a victim, to appeal to supposed liberal values, all to mask what is really a commitment to naked Realism and Tribalism, the true principle that consistently binds the "global south" together. They do not care for colonialism, oppression or "bullying", it's only wrong that it should happen to them. Otherwise they're quite glad to brutally suppress their own internal separatist movements or opposition. That is what the "average" person thinks.
You can convince a few useful idiots in universities to act against their own interests, but people elsewhere aren't stupid to see what one's intentions really are.
Not sure where you are going with Bahrain.
As far as Yemen the official government of Yemen is a democracy and its opponents believe in eternal theocratic autocracy blessed by God.
Otherwise it's a mighty coincidence that the West only "intervenes" in places that are simultaneously relevant to Western geopolitical-economic interests and just happen to have a "murderous autocrat" begging to be toppled.
So convenient that the bloc which dominates the global media landscape is always narratively-justified in its murder campaigns. Nothing fishy there!
This is so, so ridiculous take of the war that I refuse to believe there are any significant number of people outside of Russia believing this. NATO/US is forcing Russia to destroy Ukraine, really now? They really are forced to wage an expansionist, genocidal war against a small neighbour?
We can't have it both ways. Either Russia is a functioning democracy (which I don't personally believe exists anywhere but that is another topic), or perhaps the average person does not actually have very much say in such events.
Sanctions are meant to harm innocent people as much as possible, on purpose, with the idea being that it will cause so much unrest that the government either caves to the pressure or the people revolt. While I find that very sick in and of itself, I would at least appreciate it if we were honest about that rather than making contradictory moral statements.
That said, worse yet, almost hilariously, I cannot think of a single time sanctions have ever truly worked in a situation even remotely similar to that of Russia. Just think about countries like North Korea, Iran, Cuba, Syria, etc -- like it or not, these countries have not toppled as a result of the sanctions. Do they hurt? Yes, of course, but they evidently do not destroy nations the way we believed they would.
Instead, the innocent are hurt, as was the intention, yet the goal never gets achieved. North Korea still has nuclear weapons, and all we've done is force Iran to develop its own industry, such that, ironically, it is now capable of sending weapons to aid Russia.
We didn't think of the poor Germans when we burned them alive as part of the effort to stop the Nazis and few argue that the Germans aren't collectively complicit save only for those who actively resisted.
I'm fully willing to hold blameless those who burned weapons and recruitment centers, spoke out publicly against the war within or after fleeing Russia, shot their commander, or surrendered to avoid an unjust fight.
I'm aware those are all extremely risky. I know exactly why someone would want to keep their heads down and I none the less blame them no less than I blame all the good Nazis who didn't believe in the ideology but kept their heads down while Jews burned in ovens and their neighbors rotted in battlefields and economic consequences are the least of what is just and fair.
A million people are dead including many of their own they are complicit.
That’s an insane take. The vast majority of their citizens are just regular people like you or me.
All decisions are discrimination, and discrimination in general is fine. There are narrow, specific kinds of discrimination that are suspect and need additional justification. OTOH, a perfectly valid reason was offered: legal advice based on international sanctions imposed on Russian entities in response to Russia’s war of aggression in Ukraine. Now, certainly, there was not public information sufficient to assess the correctness of that decision, and I would not prejudge any claim from any party adversely impacted that chose to challenge it.
But I’d also note that where there is not a contractual relationship or some other binding commitment to way against the potential consequences of sanctions violations, legal advice will likely be “better safe than sorry” in that it is better to cut off relations where there is no commitment more broadly than sanctions might require rather than to err on the other side, too. Acting in such advice mag still be a reasonable and prudent decision.
Now it's frequently used as a defense for hypocrisy.
> I'm Finnish. ... Apparently it's not just lack of real news, it's lack of history knowledge too.
If we're suddenly taking history as a criterion, half of the world should ban British developers from touching their projects in any way, for their repeated aggressions and ruinous colonialism. This sort of behaviour is slowly building a soft Great Firewall around the West, and making it seem like China had the right idea all along.