And if you think that doesn't matter, look at the Monroe Doctrine [1].
Taken further, the so-called Cuban Missile Crisis should really be called the Turkey Missile Crisis. The US (through NATO) placed Jupiter nuclear MRBMs in Turkey, only hunddreds of miles from Moscow. The USSR responded by doing the exact same thing, by placing nuclear weapons in Cuba. And the US almost started World War 3 over it.
It was the USSR who stepped back from the brink and, as a result of a secret agreement, the Jupiter MRBMs were quietly removed from Turkey [2].
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monroe_Doctrine
[2]: https://www.wilsoncenter.org/blog-post/jupiter-missiles-and-...
I haven’t heard about the disarming stuff. I don’t think that part happened.
Comparing this with Ukraine wanting to join NATO or the EU for the defense of their right to self-determination and to live free of an authoritarian police state is laughable. But such a comment can only come from ignorance of the differences between systems of government with human rights and those with none, or else be sheet wicked propaganda paid for by an authoritarian regime.
The equivocation here is in your comment - one must wonder what your actual motive is.
No one has the heavens mandate to any land. We are only human. Not gods. You don’t get to do whatever you want on the land of your nation state just because of blood and soil arguments like you and your blood is from there.
Western and liberal democracy is not about human rights.
If China never had claims to Taiwan…then the KMT never should’ve gone there either according to your logic. And don’t have rights to that land now unless settler logic is used.
> one must wonder what your actual motive is.
I am an anti-imperialist and [pan-]nationalist. I don’t hide that. That is in contrast to most westerners or Europeans who go based off enlightened centrist and liberal vibes along with western, white, settler, and European chauvinism and supremacy.
Yet you get to invade your sovereign, self-governing and peaceful neighbors if you're Russia or China, and have such grand imperialist adventures all while claiming to be anti-imperialist? How convenient. And oh, Russia's annexation of Crimea isn't about blood and soil? That was sure the pitch made to its own population.
You say you're a pan-nationalist, but then what's wrong with Ukraine choosing to ally with Europe? Is pan-nationalism only valid when the alliance is under Kremlin despotism? Whatever Putinism is, it certainly isn't about human rights either. [Perhaps you meant you are pan-Slavic? In that case, Kiev may as well be your capital]. And if you're so cynical as to believe that no system is any better than any other system when it comes to human rights, who are you or the despots and tyrants you side with to declare who should do what? What system are you offering the citizens of Taiwan or Ukraine that they would want? Your entire argument seems to boil down to a circle of hypocrisy: The people of some country have no inherent right to be there, so even if a larger belligerent power has no right either, there's nothing wrong with annihilating whatever freedom the local people have.
By your statements, you are actually justifying settler-colonialism. Should the Han take over Tibet and dispose of Tibetans? Sure, in your opinion, since no one has claim to land. (Strange how the new settlers lay claim to the land though, isn't it?) What right do native American people have to their land? None, according to you. So then what's this imperialism of America you're yapping about? It would be easier to say: It's not as if America has done anything China or Russia isn't currently doing. But that would be playing into your trap of equivocation. As a Tibetan freedom fighter friend of mine once said, when I suggested that America was sliding toward authoritarianism: never ever compare America to how much worse things are in a dictatorship like China. To do so is an insult to everyone fighting for their freedom from these thugs around the world.
If Ukraine had wanted to join Putin's Russia, they had ample opportunity. If Taiwan wanted to join China, they could do so tomorrow by a majority vote. And if your only argument is that the West is no better and just as hypocritical - apart from the fact that I believe you to be arguing in bad faith - then what difference is it to you which sphere of influence they end up in?
> So then what's this imperialism of America you're yapping about?
Same here. You saw me say a general principle and then assumed a bunch of logic. As if what I said isn’t a basic general philosophy that many societies and cultures have had (none that you like ofc).
—
I think the political knowledge gap between us is too wide so it will just keep resulting in the same issues of you projecting your [white and liberal] supremacist ego on to others.
Like thinking pan nationalism can mean the global north too. A bananas thing to say while accusing others of being bad faith or hypocritical.
Those are all closely related topics in geopolitics.
...so we can freely do as we please. Of course we've been preying on our neighbors. We've been invading and deposing all across the Americas to force alignment with our interests for well over a century now. We even have terrorist training camps hosted on our soil: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_Hemisphere_Institute_f...
What, do you think that our invading Grenada, or Panama, is somehow in their interests? It's a flagrant violation of international law and sovereignty. To imagine that this is somehow an abnormal deviation from our "protection" of our neighbors is... well, I honestly didn't realize anyone thought that way anymore.
Furthermore, we didn't enforce this doctrine when France invaded (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capture_of_Saint_Pierre_and_Mi...), nor in the Falklands war.
Look I can understand not thinking america is "evil" or entirely machiavellian, but it seems just as absurd to take any noble intentions we claim to have at face value. The monroe doctrine is as good an example of this as any.
92% of Panamans supported the invasion to despose Noreiga and actually would have preferred the US do it earlier back during his second coup.
Truth be speaking, I would where you are getting your history, if not just from skewed leftist internet Podcasters. Not mentioning the larger context of the Cold War and the opinions of the people on the ground does look more like lying by omission.
That's not an opinion that most will agree with, certainly from the USSR and the USA's own perspectives. I do wonder the kind of grades one would get if they wrote that down in a history class in any nation. And the more you understand history, both US and the USSR's actions do make perfect sense given their local contexts that most would be making the same decisions in the same position.
>I want someone to invade and liberate us doesn't mean it's not a violation of international law and sovereignty.
I tend to think more about what is the best course of action that benefits the people on the ground and the long term. The idea of sancrosanctity of "sovereignity" is better understood as a social construct to justify oppressive power structures, as it's reflection in reality is highly contentious. The same with International Law, you are taking a literalist position when International Law is better understood as gentlemen's agreements, which is irrelevant in the context of the ontological conflict between two sides that supercedes the notion of law in the first place.
Fascism was popular in the US. Henry Ford shared his thoughts by publishing The International Jew [1]. Hitler was a fan. Ford was mentioned by name in Mein Kampf. We had the Business Plot [2] in 1933. There was a Nazi rally at Madison Square Garden in 1939. The German American Bund was present until 1941.
On the other side of the Atlantic, Stalin had initially sought an anti-German alliance with Britain and France but was rebuffed, leading to the deal with Hitler.
The US had ~400,000 casulaties in the European campaign and none really until D-Day in 1944. The USSR lost somewhere between 26 and 30 million people in WW2, something only really revealed by a 1959 census. Had Germany defeated the USSR and taken MOscow in 1941-1942, we would live in a very different world.
The result of World War 2 was that Hitler lost but the fascists won. Under the guise of fighting Communism (eg the Truamn Doctrine, leading to the Korean and Vietnam wars). NATO was an imperial project. Charles De Gaulle (in the 1960s) went so far as to say Western Europe was in danger of becoming a US protectorate.
We all know about Operation Paper Clip (I hope) but less known is how Nazis found their way into NATO. Adolf Heusinger went from Hitler's Chief of the German High Command to Chairman of the NATO Military Committee. And he wasn't the only one [3].
So when that commenter called the Cold War "retarded", I suspect they're referring to how the US took up Nazi Germany's fight against Communism.
The whole Red Scare was terrible for average American citizens. It was used to dismantle the labor movement and unions and ultimately led to Nixon, Reagan and Clinton and the destruction of real wages and living conditions.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_International_Jew
[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_Plot
[3]: https://www.historynet.com/these-nato-generals-had-unusual-b...
Starting at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monroe_Doctrine#Roosevelt_Coro... and further.
Well, that's a matter of perspective isn't it? Cuba, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Colombia, Panama, Puerto Rico, Chile, El Salvador, Venezuela, the list goes on. There's a Wikipedia page dedicated to all the US backed coups since 1945 [1] it happens so often.
We've had a post-WW2 history of deposing democratically elected countries (in the Americas and elsewhere) to suit the interests of Western corporations. Who exactly are we protecting?
> ... it was a policy aimed at keeping wars between European colonial powers away from the newly independent countries in the Americas
Where is Moscow?
> ... people in the Americas shouldn't have to die in wars just because one European king insulted another.
Ok, but what about American belligerence? Pinochet and Noriega spring to mind.
Aso, I reject the contention that colonial wars were the product of European kings insulting one another. The interests were and always have been material. Even the Crusades (which were sold on Christian conflict with Islam) were fundamentally materialist in origin.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in_r...
It's more that Cuba requested nukes first, the USSR opportunistically took, then they to resolve the crisis they took that opportunity to remove Turkish missiles. It wasn't really a tit for tat on part of the USSR's intentions, Cuba was the primary agent here.
Not that it really mattered later on once ICBMs are developed.
> Your missiles are located in Britain, are located in Italy, and are aimed against us. Your missiles are located in Turkey.
> You are disturbed over Cuba. You say that this disturbs you because it is 90 miles by sea from the coast of the United States of America. But Turkey adjoins us; our sentries patrol back and forth and see each other. Do you consider, then, that you have the right to demand security for your own country and the removal of the weapons you call offensive, but do not accord the same right to us? You have placed destructive missile weapons, which you call offensive, in Turkey, literally next to us. How then can recognition of our equal military capacities be reconciled with such unequal relations between our great states? This is irreconcilable.
According to General Boris Surikov [2]:
> 'Khrushchev and his Defence Minister, Rodion Malinovsky, were at Khrushchev's estate on the Black Sea. They went for a walk and Malinovsky pointed in the direction of Turkey and said: 'That's where the American rockets are pointing at us. They need only 10 minutes to reach our cities, but our rockets need 25 minutes to reach America.' Khrushchev thought for a while and then said: 'Why don't we instal our rockets in Cuba and point them at the Americans? Then we'll need only 10 minutes, too.'
This article goes on to quote the Soviet Ambassador to Cuba, Alexander Alexeyev, who was a direct witness and a go-between between Khrushchev and Castro:
> 'On 14 May 1962 I was called to a meeting of the Defence Council at the Kremlin. Khrushchev said, in effect: 'Comrades, I think it would be a good idea to instal rockets in Cuba. Do it clandestinely. I don't want it known in the US until November (after the mid-term Congressional elections). Alexander Alexeyev, how will Fidel react when we present him with our decision?'
[1]: https://microsites.jfklibrary.org/cmc/oct27/doc4.html
[2]: https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/the-cuban-missile-crisi...
That dosen't refute anything from his own words as a justification as opposed to his primary goal to provide Cuba with defence here to deter a US invasion. As others have pointed out, the USSR was annoyed by these placements in Italy and Turkey earlier, but they did not declare war or start a crisis over it beforehand. It's more that Turkey was a bargaining chip here.
>>Our aim has been and is to help Cuba, and no one can dispute the humanity of our motives, which are oriented toward enabling Cuba to live peacefully and develop in the way its people desire.
You need to place here in context that the Jupiter missiles in Turkey were already obselete but the US had the overwhelming advantage in a nuclear strike with their Atlas ICBMs in USA at the time, relying more on a fleet of intercontinental bombers that could targeted by NORAD.
Removing nukes for Turkey did little to change the strategic calculus, but it did heavily deprive the USSR of an opportunity to change that calculus with Cuban nukes at the time, which was a major factor in Kruschev's later removal from power.
This paints it as tit for tat, but to advert invasion the Cubans asked for the missiles over a year later than the missiles were placed in Turkey. The resolution combined these separate issues.
Due to the scale of their population collapse, the influx of immigrants would have to be massive. Which country does that? It would completely overtake its native ethnic population... which unlike a country built on immigration like the US, is surprisingly homogeneous.
I'm no expert, I encourage you to read on the matter. It apparently truly is something that cannot be stopped now. It surprised me as much as it (apparently) does you.
By the way, countries that are better off, like the US, are largely helped by immigration indeed. Which is why anti-immigration policies would be like shooting themselves in the foot.
But it's going to cease to exist as it is anyway. One way or another. And the people that remain will not be staring at a wall waiting for it to end. Also, young people seem to have a radically different mindset there, which is what tends to happen when they see their parents screwing everything up.
Maybe the culture isn't there yet but it will be. Having said that, I would never be happy to live in a country with strict moral codes like Japan or South Korea. But I'm sure many people would be. In particular conservatives tend to love these societies, you often hear comments like "this is what we should do here in the US".
I'm a raging pro-lgbt polyamorous kinky progressive so for me it would be the wrong place. But there are lots of people that would love this kind of thing.
But reality shows it is happening, it is accelerating, and young people are part of the problem.
It's a real thing, and the consensus seems to be it's irreversible, however bizarre it may seem to us.
Will it disappear as we know it? Yes. But that is true everywhere. The America as you knew it in 2010 is also gone forever (and not for the better, unfortunately with its current politics). Same in Europe where the nazis are trying to take over. Change is a constant.
The South Korean population time bomb is a completely different thing to America in the 2010 changing.
Have you read what people who study demographics currently believe about South Korea. An informed opinion is really needed to discuss this, this is not about "feelings".
Doesn’t the fact that the people in said culture have decided it’s no longer worth reproducing, en masse, because of how their life is, imply that a lot of people wouldn’t actually like that kind of thing?
Because it's not a problem yet. What's going to stop them from doing it when the birth rate becomes a problem? Almost nothing.
> Due to the scale of their population collapse, the influx of immigrants would have to be massive.
Not really. You are mistakenly extrapolating the situation in the Western world, where purposefully brought in almost only criminals and freeloaders, to Korea. If you organize immigration of labor, then not so many immigrants will be needed
> What's going to stop them from doing it when the birth rate becomes a problem? Almost nothing
Their birth rate is already a massive problem. The South Korean government already acknowledges this is a crisis, it's just that the measures that are politically/socially viable just don't cut it, and Koreans seem unwilling to consider more drastic measures. But the problem is already here, and acknowledged, and already impacting the population of South Korea (there's apparently a "loneliness epidemic" going on already).
Because of the shape the population pyramid takes (more old people than young people) once it reaches the tipping point, which in South Korea it already has, there's no going back. No matter how they try, they simply don't have enough young people to revert it anymore.
> If you organize immigration of labor, then not so many immigrants will be needed
This is not (just) about labor, it's about population decline. Even if Koreans dedicated themselves to having more children, it wouldn't be enough anymore. They are beyond the tipping point. They would need massive immigration to live there and have children there and effectively become "the new Koreans"... and this is obviously unpalatable to many.
I encourage you to read on this. Do not debate me: I'm not the expert here!
These are not experts, they are deep state propagandists.
I mean, fortunately (or unfortunately), such processes have been going on for decades, and these experts have been in business for decades. So, nothing prevents us from analyzing their early models, explanations, projections, and forecasts, and comparing them with reality in order to form an opinion about the level of their expertise
> Their birth rate is already a massive problem.
Not exactly. Low birth rate itself is not a problem. What is a problem is the future consequences of low birth rate . And these consequences generally have not yet occurred, i.e. there is no problem yet.
> Koreans seem unwilling to consider more drastic measures
Yes, because there is no problem yet
> once it reaches the tipping point
Then it will become a problem and nothing will stop them from bringing in some foreign labor to fix it.
> They would need massive immigration to live there
Not that massive. Your ideas about the required amount of immigration to fix the labor shortage problem are probably formed by extrapolating Western immigration processes. But the point is that you can’t extrapolate like that. There are no obstacles to carrying out immigration tens of times more effectively than the West does.
Just to understand how irrelevant this issue is for Korea at the moment: the twentieth century was quite a turbulent time for Koreans, and now quite a lot of ethnic Koreans live outside of Korea. Many of them know the Korean language, want to move to Korea, but even with repatriation programs, this is not such an easy process. Korea has so many Koreans inside the country that they are quite reluctant to grant residence permits even to other Koreans with foreign citizenships.
Deep state? I feel like I've stepped into a conspiracy theory. What does the deep state have to do with anything? Deep state from which country? The US? Korea?
> Not exactly. Low birth rate itself is not a problem. What is a problem is the future consequences of low birth rate . And these consequences generally have not yet occurred, i.e. there is no problem yet.
Why "not exactly"? It's understood by everyone that low birth rate is a problem because of its rippling effects, which are not immediate. When I say "a massive problem" I mean "already in the near future".
But apparently it's causing problems for young people today, already.
> And these consequences generally have not yet occurred, i.e. there is no problem yet.
South Korean society is already quite unhealthy, and apparently for younger generations even more so.
To be clear: the numbers alone don't tell the full story. Population density is not the important metric here, but population aging is. There could be lots of Koreans today, but if the distribution is top-heavy, it cannot help them.
Let's do something else: link me a serious (non-conspiracy) study that there is no population decline crisis in South Korea, and I'll read it with an open mind. Be forewarned though, if it's a conspiracy article I'll ignore it.
The lack of serious offramps to reunification, along with not as huge a delta in quality of life between north and south for a long time (aid from other countries sure helps!), allowed the DPRK to establish itself as its own nation.
Now there is the surveillance state apparatus allowing the DPRK to exist in its current form in perpetuity. And even if tomorrow they showed up and said "let's unify Korea", South Korea (even ignoring all the ideological reasons it might not want to) would likely be unwilling to absorb an extremely poor country and pay for it (see the painful experience of Germany's unification).
There is probably no off ramp that exists unless people are willing to let the elite walk away clean from the situation in one way or another, and it seems hard to imagine such a future.
And if you are a north korean elite and you are allowed to travel to northern china, you will see a place where things are running more smoothly, but you're still going to see places with massive amounts of internal controls and restrictions. So who's offering the upside to some regime change here?
I had thought that Germans from both sides were overwhelmingly supportive of re-unification, even if it would cause short-term pain??
I believe the AfD political party in Germany won significant support in those areas of Germany that were once behind the Iron Curtain.
People vote far right because they're fed up with the status quo, and perceive the far right can't be that much worse when everything is already so bad. Politicians who are not far right would do well to take this into account in their politics. Sadly, they don't, and history repeats.
And on top of that at the end of the day Germany now has this bloc that votes "the wrong way" in all of its elections. Glib analysis though.
The German split was resolved 35 years ago and is still visible. How much time would a reunified Korea take to equalize itself? If you're a person who cares only about the economics of it all, how long do you think it would take for the payoff of unification to occur? Just seems quite long.
Basically people are willing to put up with a lot if their lives are getting better (economic growth). Problem with that is what kind of system of control an authoritarian government can setup in that period of growth.
Then those underdogs take over. They become paranoid about the possibility of being killed themselves, so they repeat the massacres they fought against. A lot of people who supported the new regime think it's just a few remaining enemies being taken out. It won't happen to them. Then the government starts laying out methods to solidify their control. The list of things seen as traitorous and against national interests grows. It becomes a frog in a boiling pot situation. By the time people realize they might be a target, the system is too complicated and widespread to take down alone, and a new generation of youths have been raised knowing only the current system. And to those youths, things are stable. The most terrifying thing to people raised in stability is the idea of losing that stability. So keeping your head down and following the law is much better than absolutely anything else.
And with the absolute control of information that NK has, a significant portion of people really don't even know a better world exists out there. And they're terrified of anyone that even talks about shaking things up.
The realpolitic of international relations very often follows the words of the British prime minister, Lord Palmerston: "We have no eternal allies, and we have no perpetual enemies. Our interests are eternal and perpetual, and those interests it is our duty to follow."
This claim doesn't appear to be true: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1k6yi1z/comm...
And by the time you managed it the falsehood already netted a few dozens/hundreds/thousands more victims in the best case scenario where the rebuttal actually managed to attach itself right next to the falsehood.
Regular folks just can't compete with professional disinformation spreaders and their horde of victims.
after all chinese is the first one that has official military cyber unit (first in the world)
north korean following suit for monetary reason and have as far as Property (Hotel etc) on china mainland to run the operation from there
as for china??? they basically have an "laundry" business that can take dollar from korea in trade of supplies