Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
that is exactly correct

you should never kick your enemy when they're down unless you plan on finishing the job salting the earth style, which obv wasn't an option

You might have hoped people had learned from Germany 1919, but apparently not.
 

DannyL

Wild Horses
he should also thank Lawrence Summers et al for midwifing the brutal shock adjustment to a market economy + allowing Putin to swoop in as a savior reining in the chaos

Is there a good or recommended account of this? I've read a bit about current day Russia but not so much about the collapse of communism and what followed. Will be checking out the Oliver Bullough book Droid mentioned.
 

droid

Well-known member
Putin is a monster there is no doubt there, 1/4 - 1/3 of the population were killed in the Chechnyan wars and even a glance at the details there is utterly devastating, its on par with Vietnam except on a much smaller scale, but that said.

Syria is a case in point - the conflict says in bold terms, fuck legitimacy, power and a monopoly on violence is all that matters, and the conflict shows a continual weakening of any international attempts to mitigate this violence

This is essentially the story of US foreign policy since the Monroe doctrine.
 

droid

Well-known member
Is there a good or recommended account of this? I've read a bit about current day Russia but not so much about the collapse of communism and what followed. Will be checking out the Oliver Bullough book Droid mentioned.

Two books which give contradictory accounts, Klein's shock doctrine and Kotkin's Armageddon Averted, both worth a read.

There's also some fantastic writing on the various post soviet conflicts Azerbaijan, Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh, South Ossetia and Abkhazia, Chechnya & the various Georgian conflicts. My old mucker Naphta did an entire album of sample collage based on Russian foreign policy in the 90's and bombarded me with stuff at the time. I can second most of his recommendations here:

http://www.d1.ie/democracynow/?page_id=460
 

DannyL

Wild Horses
Two books which give contradictory accounts, Klein's shock doctrine and Kotkin's Armageddon Averted, both worth a read.

There's also some fantastic writing on the various post soviet conflicts Azerbaijan, Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh, South Ossetia and Abkhazia, Chechnya & the various Georgian conflicts. My old mucker Naphta did an entire album of sample collage based on Russian foreign policy in the 90's and bombarded me with stuff at the time. I can second most of his recommendations here:

http://www.d1.ie/democracynow/?page_id=460

Thanks - I've read Shock Doctrine but have managed to forget most of it. Going to delve into the recommendations now.
 

droid

Well-known member
IIRC correctly, the Bullogh was really good, the Thomas Glotz was funny and very readable (would also reccomend his Azerbaijan Diary and Gerogia Diary), the Vanora Bennett and Sebastian Smith were both great, the Ilyas Akhmadov and Miriam Lanskoy was very dense, the Tony Budd was brilliant, Vassily Grossman is background info but everyone should read him.
 

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
This is essentially the story of US foreign policy since the Monroe doctrine
it's been the policy of every empire ever, and will probably continue to be the policy of every empire to come

still think it's an important distinction that the U.S. is significantly more a nation of laws than Russia

granted there are vast oceans of hypocrisy but probably the world is slightly better off if rulers feel the need to at least pay lip service to rule of law

not pretending the U.S./its allies adhere to their own rules but still there's a pretense, which you don't get at all w/Putin's Russia

obv irony in talking abt election meddling but Russian elections are so rubber stamp it would be absurd to try meddling in them
 

DannyL

Wild Horses
Has the US, in recent years, carried out or or enabled a client state to carry out, anything close to the level of unrestrained violence Russia is carrying out in Syria? It's a honest question - you guys are better informed on the inequities of US foreign policy than I am. Fallujah maybe? In Syria there's been systematic targeting of hospitals, bakeries, schools and other civilian infrastructure, the use of white phosphorous, napalm, sarin, chlorine gas etc. against civilians, as well as the enabling of a regime which has 100'000 in prison amid charges of widespread torture and mass executions of captives. There seems some uniquely horrible in current terms about the Syrian war but like I said this may be a product of my naivety.

I'm aware that the US has carried out a lot of bombing raids in Syria and surrounding nations, and this has accelerated under Trump, but Russia (alongside Iran and Assad) remains the principle driver of the violence.
 
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Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
Has the US, in recent years, carried out or or enabled a client state to carry out, anything close to the level of unrestrained violence Russia is carrying out in Syria? It's a honest question - you guys are better informed on the inequities of US foreign policy than I am. Fallujah maybe? In Syria there's been systematic targeting of hospitals, bakeries, schools and other civilian infrastructure, the use of white phosphorous, napalm, sarin, chlorine gas etc. against civilians, as well as the enabling of a regime which has 100'000 in prison amid charges of widespread torture and mass executions of captives. There seems some uniquely horrible in current terms about the Syrian war but like I said this may be a product of my naivety.

I'm aware that the US has carried out a lot of bombing raids in Syria and surrounding nations, and this has accelerated under Trump, but Russia (alongside Iran and Assad) remains the principle driver of the violence.

I think there is also a moral distinction between bombing a country to remove a genocidal dictator - however cackhandedly it was carried out, and with whatever ulterior motives - and bombing a country to keep a genocidal dictator in power.
 

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
anything close to the level of unrestrained violence

Guatemala + El Salvador civil wars are probably the closest direct comparisons - death squads, massacres, torture, targeting of civilians. idk how exactly they compare to Syria. Vietnam ofc featured napalm, free fire zones, Agent Orange, Phoenix, etc. we supported Saddam during the Iran-Iraq War + he gassed the Kurds, tho that support wasn't on the level of Russia/Assad.

otoh I think Russia cares significantly less about directly causing civilian casualties than the U.S., esp post-Vietnam. i.e. we wouldn't have done Chechnya, + I don't think we'd do Syria in the same way even the political will to intervene was there.

for me the answer to your question is basically no, but also kinda yes, albeit in a different way/not to quite the same degree
 

DannyL

Wild Horses
I'm unaware of Russia carrying out anything like drone warfare targeted assassinations as the US does. If they really were targeting terrorists in Syria and wanted to avoid civilian casualties this might "make more sense" obscene as that sounds. But they aren't and they don't so it's a moot point really.
 

droid

Well-known member
Yeah, the US doesnt really do all out war these days, even in South America in the 80's it was kept mostly at arms length w/ local agents, death squads etc. and there's the drip feed of drone attacks, ongoing atrocity in Gaza, generally sticking to the general principles of low intensity conflict.

Iraq and Afghanistan have had their moments, Fallujah being the obvious example (including the bombing of hospitals, use of WP and experimental weapons), but of course you still end up with a million plus dead, a country in ruins and a destabilised region. Libya is an example of how even a limited intervention can spiral out of control causing untold disruption beyond the theatre. Post-war, Vietnam has yet to be equalled in terms of scale, cynicism, devastation and viscousness. 5+million dead, torture, chemical weapons, over 3 times the amount of bombs dropped than the entirety of WWII, brutal bombing campaigns and then coups in Laos and Cambodia leading ultimately to genocide.

There's also your run of the mill support for dictatorships of course, Yemen I think has the potential to spiral wildly out of control if the Saudi blockade continues and famine hits. Death tolls are currently wildly underestimated and there's over a million people at risk of starvation.
 

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
Vietnam has yet to be equalled...and then coups in Laos and Cambodia leading ultimately to genocide
those are true facts but there's also the question of whether intent matters at all - and it may not, there's definitely a case that only results matter.

the cynicism in Vietnam really begins w/Nixon + Kissinger. up to 68 the U.S. stumbled into that war in the most stupid, herky-jerky, piecemeal fashion possible.

like the whole "we had to bomb the village to save it" is such an American notion - in the U.S.S.R. it would immediately have been understood to be nonsense doublespeak, whereas American earnestness runs/ran so deep that weirdly, the doublespeak was deeper ingrained into the psyche - people believed it. what I mean really is the Soviet hall of mirrors allowed for a kind of unspoken truth - the opposite of what was said and/or everything left unsaid - while in the U.S. people actually believed this idiotic garbage. maybe that viewpoint is too retroactively colored by reading the Exile for years but it seems like a basic truth - in Russia people by + large except corruption, some level of brutality, etc as a basic fact and act accordingly. Americans somehow still, even 15+ years after all the post-9/11 why do they hate us handwringing, are just shocked - shocked! - by similar things.

to say the Russian model would be worse for the world than the U.S. model isn't to call the U.S. model good or fair for most of the world.

kinda far afield, just some blazed ruminations on things
 

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
anyway what I meant say is can you assign the same level of blame for the Khmer Rouge to the U.S. that you can to Russia for Chechnya Pt II?

+ maybe you can, but it's not clearcut

that's not to say that stupid, massively destabilizing interventions are a good or desirable thing

people never learn the hard historical lessons. don't kick a downed enemy unless you're gonna finish him, don't invade Afghanistan, don't deregulate the fucking banks...
 

droid

Well-known member
I think you probably can. The the CIA coup against Sihanouk, the installation of Lon Nol & the civil war that followed, including a devastating bombing campaign that drove the population into cities and threatened the food supply. Estimates vary wildly, but 100-150,00 direct deaths from bombing, with some claims of up to 700,000 deaths in total in the wake of the attacks. US policy showed no regard to anything other than its strategic aim of weakening the North Vietnamese, regardless of the consequences.

the cynicism in Vietnam really begins w/Nixon + Kissinger. up to 68 the U.S. stumbled into that war in the most stupid, herky-jerky, piecemeal fashion possible.

Oh, I think the cynicism started much earlier. Lansdale, Eisenhower, the installation of Diem & the deliberate repudiation of the 54 Geneva accords followed by a refusal to hold the elections in 56. They knew exactly what they were doing and clearly preferred the Korean option to free elections that everyone knew would result in communist rule.
 

DannyL

Wild Horses
I thought this was interesting from someone very much on the recieving end of Russian aggression: https://foreignpolicy.com/2017/03/2...l&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_campaign=buffer

Volodymyr Horbulin:An important lesson we have learned from hybrid war in Ukraine is that such wars begin long before the first shots are fired. It is difficult to recognize and understand the signs of it at the first stage: When freedom of speech turns into aggressive propaganda, when protests in the country are inspired by external forces, when the aggressor uses absolutely democratic tools to interfere in the internal affairs of a sovereign state to block the activities of international organizations aimed at preventing or resolving conflicts, and so on.
 

firefinga

Well-known member
not to condone putin's action but this is a really interesting vid on how russia has become progressively encircled

it's no surprise that he seems paranoid in the light of this

Yeah, his paranoia is "understandable" in so far that he is career KGB, was an eye-witness to Honecker's downfall and the end of the GDR, and has been surrounded by the soviet/then russian military industrial complex most of his adult life. Those people's main business is being paranoid.

However I think the paranoia regarding Russia of people in Poland or the Baltics is also "understandable", yet way more justified
.
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
However I think the paranoia regarding Russia of people in Poland or the Baltics is also "understandable", yet way more justified

All of which raises the age-old question: are you 'paranoid', as such, if they really are out to get you?
 

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
Oh, I think the cynicism started much earlier. Lansdale, Eisenhower, the installation of Diem
you're conflating 2 different kinds of cynicism

Eisenhower era is typical Cold War, overriding concern is holding the line against communism so we'll do whatever it takes. that's further intensified in JFK era, combined with a shockingly naive idealism, + a can-do attitude/belief in efficiency. the ends always justify the means, so if needs be roll your sleeves up and get your hands dirty. "We had to bomb the village to save it" v much comes out of that milieu. Nixon/Kissinger otoh is sheer cynical realpolitik. no one cares about the saving the village, only what marginal geopolitical gains destroying it can bring. Kissinger has no ideals to betray.

whether one is worse than the other is the question. I tend to think Kissinger style is worse, but the U.S. has certainly paved many roads to hell w/good intentions, so who knows.
 
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