Bulletins and News Discussion from August 12th to August 18th, 2024 - Marshall Plan: Now As Farce - COTW: Ireland
Image is of one of Ireland's only manned navy ships, the Samuel Beckett. Image sourced from this BBC article.
Putler has been HUMILIATED by the Kursk offensive and this proves that Russia's army is in tatters and unable even to defend its own territory. However, it is simultaneously true that Russia poses an existential threat to countries thousands of miles away, as this recent Politico article demonstrates. Ireland - a country that immediately springs to mind as one surrounded by enemies - is being bullied due to its lack of military.
Despite bearing responsibility for 16 percent of the EU’s territorial waters, and the fact that 75 percent of transatlantic undersea cables pass through or near Irish waters, Ireland is totally defenseless. And I mean completely unable to protect critical infrastructure, or even pretend to secure its own borders. [...] Ireland’s “navy” of six patrol vessels is currently operating with one operational ship due to chronic staff shortages. [...] Ireland simply has no undersea capabilities. How could it, when it barely spends 0.2 percent of GDP on security and defense? And it has, in effect, abdicated responsibility for protecting the Europe’s northwestern borders.
For all we know, the dreaded sea-people from the Bronze Age Collapse could soon emerge from the North Atlantic.
Unfortunately, things are even worse up in the skies. Ireland has no combat jets, and it’s the only country in Europe that can’t monitor its own airspace due to the lack of primary radar systems. Instead, the country has outsourced its security to Britain in a technically secret agreement between Dublin and London, which effectively cedes control over Irish air space to the Royal Air Force. This must be the luck of the Irish — smile and get someone else to protect you for free.
While this is very silly, rearmament has long been a part of US imperial strategy on an economic level. Desai, discussing the US imperial strategy in the WW2 period:
By 1947 [...] the domestic postwar consumer boom was nearing its end. While financing exports became more urgent, the 1946 elections returned a Congress unlikely to approve further loans. Now the Truman Administration concocted the ‘red menace’ to ‘scare the hell out of the country’, enunciated the Truman Doctrine of US support for armed resistance to ‘subjugation’ which launched the cold war, and Congress granted $400 million to prevent left-wing triumphs in Greece and Turkey in 1947.
One reading of history states that the US was so intimidated by the USSR that this forced a policy of massive arms production even outside of official wartime. Why this arms production is not occurring today can be puzzling, and (very reasonably) explained by neoliberals exporting industrial production overseas. However, a different historical reading can explain both the first Cold War, and the ongoing situation in which American weaponry is being almost purposefully given in insufficient numbers to give Ukraine a chance of victory and thus only prolonging their suffering (while generating massive profit for the military-industrial complex):
In this sense the Cold War was not the cause of US imperial policy but its effect. It combined financing exports with fighting combined development by national capitalisms as well as communism. When such ‘totalitarian regimes’ threatened ‘free peoples’, ‘America’s world economic responsibilities’ included aid to countries battling them.
By selling massively expensive weapons to Europe, America could simultaneously guarantee export markets for its industries, trap Europe into reliance on American industries at the expense of their own, and divert European funds away from constructing factories which could compete with American ones. Providing a way to defend against Soviet communism (and now Russian "imperialism") is merely a happy side-effect, and so the lack of effectiveness of American weaponry is causing no great panic among the military-industrial complex, nor an urgent plan to quintuple artillery shell production or Patriot missile production - the deals for F-35s and such are still there, and they are what matter.
The COTW (Country of the Week) label is designed to spur discussion and debate about a specific country every week in order to help the community gain greater understanding of the domestic situation of often-understudied nations. If you've wanted to talk about the country or share your experiences, but have never found a relevant place to do so, now is your chance! However, don't worry - this is still a general news megathread where you can post about ongoing events from any country.
The Country of the Week is Ireland! Feel free to chime in with books, essays, longform articles, even stories and anecdotes or rants. More detail here.
Defense Politics Asia's youtube channel and their map. Their youtube channel has substantially diminished in quality but the map is still useful.
Moon of Alabama, which tends to have interesting analysis. Avoid the comment section. Understanding War and the Saker: reactionary sources that have occasional insights on the war. Alexander Mercouris, who does daily videos on the conflict. While he is a reactionary and surrounds himself with likeminded people, his daily update videos are relatively brainworm-free and good if you don't want to follow Russian telegram channels to get news. He also co-hosts The Duran, which is more explicitly conservative, racist, sexist, transphobic, anti-communist, etc when guests are invited on, but is just about tolerable when it's just the two of them if you want a little more analysis.
On the ground: Patrick Lancaster, an independent and very good journalist reporting in the warzone on the separatists' side.
Unedited videos of Russian/Ukrainian press conferences and speeches.
Pro-Russian Telegram Channels:
Again, CW for anti-LGBT and racist, sexist, etc speech, as well as combat footage.
https://t.me/aleksandr_skif ~ DPR's former Defense Minister and Colonel in the DPR's forces. Russian language. https://t.me/Slavyangrad ~ A few different pro-Russian people gather frequent content for this channel (~100 posts per day), some socialist, but all socially reactionary. If you can only tolerate using one Russian telegram channel, I would recommend this one. https://t.me/s/levigodman ~ Does daily update posts. https://t.me/patricklancasternewstoday ~ Patrick Lancaster's telegram channel. https://t.me/gonzowarr ~ A big Russian commentator. https://t.me/rybar ~ One of, if not the, biggest Russian telegram channels focussing on the war out there. Actually quite balanced, maybe even pessimistic about Russia. Produces interesting and useful maps. https://t.me/epoddubny ~ Russian language. https://t.me/boris_rozhin ~ Russian language. https://t.me/mod_russia_en ~ Russian Ministry of Defense. Does daily, if rather bland updates on the number of Ukrainians killed, etc. The figures appear to be approximately accurate; if you want, reduce all numbers by 25% as a 'propaganda tax', if you don't believe them. Does not cover everything, for obvious reasons, and virtually never details Russian losses. https://t.me/UkraineHumanRightsAbuses ~ Pro-Russian, documents abuses that Ukraine commits.
The Kursk Army got all the US aid and western "advisors", so no they are actually the best-in-shape section of the westoid military force. But yeah everytime the geographical region today christend with the name of ukraine was not under russian control, it was used to butcher and invade russia. Thats why ukrainian independence as was always short lived. Either the mongols, poles, lithuanians, tatars or other slavs were the rulers of that land.
The west has invaded Russia with colonial, imperial and/or genocidal intent 6 times in the last ~200 years. It has always been through Ukraine and Belarus.
France in 1812
Incursions in WW1 in 1914-1917
The Seven Nation Army in 1917-1922
The Poles in 1918
The Nazis in 1941
NATO in 2014-2024
This is simple historical fact and not controversial. Controlling the territory of Ukraine and Belarus in their sphere of influence is essential for Russian security interests based on historical precedents and avenues of attack. Ukraine will never be allowed to be NATO.
In addition, Ukraine is a recent historical invention of a nation. The Ukraine was the nomenclature for the area of Russia that was "the borderlands". It doesn't "need" to exist in any sense, Ukrainian nationalism has been extremely reactionary and anti-communist for the better part of a century. Lenin supported a Ukrainian SSR, a worker's state within a union of socialist states. He did not support this bourgeois Liberal-Fascist nationalist freakshow so stop using his name to justify nationalism with "but Lenin gave Ukraine such and such".
the USSR was not 'Russia', and it had no doubts about the legitimacy of Belarussian or Ukrainian identity. the republics as colonies under the thumb of a Great Russian State was the west's line against the USSR. Ukraine was a real place and it was one that supported the Union through the great patriotic war, recent developments cannot sweep this away
we can litigate how ridiculous your other premises are too but Ukraine Denialism is inadmissable if you support the USSR so square that and get back to me
I support a Ukrainian SSR and autonomous republic within a socialist union, I don’t support a Ukrainian “nation”. Ukrainian nationalism a reactionary project just like Kosovo, Taiwan or Occupied Korea. None of these places have a right to nationhood.
you support a region with autonomy but no reason for that autonomy to exist? the republics were a function of and acknowledgement of the existence of nations!
You are conflating the real world systems of bourgeois nation states with the more abstract concept of nationhood of an entire people. Every “people” deserve autonomy. Nobody is entitled to a bourgeois nation state
cute edit to your op to seem more salient there, i just noticed
"real world systems of bourgeois nation states" are related to the abstract concept of nationhood. the USSR fostered the known elements of bourgeois nations within its constituent republics, a national language, culture, and borders. it was expected that solidarity and socialism could hold these nations together despite that, and it probably would have if the Union at large had not faltered.
gasp i edited something to clarify my meaning? How shocking
the USSR fostered the known elements of bourgeois nations within its constituent republics, a national language, culture, and borders
The USSR was composed of bourgeois nation states? You sure about that one? Pretty sure they were worker republics and more like provinces or administrative regions within a greater socialist union. You want to revise your error here?
The concept of "nations" in the vague sense of "peoples" has existed for thousands of years. It is not the same as making a Modern Liberal State which was created in the Modern Era. Stop conflating things. The USSR was not a Modern Liberal State nor was it composed of them.
where is my error? the formation of bourgeois nation states was predicated on the establishment of discrete borders, a national cultural programme, and a national language. the "french" were 20 dialects within a smattering of medieval bordergore before the national project establishing one language on the parisian dialect to be taught in obligatory schools, governmental centralization, and a sponsorship of a national culture that dominated their minorities.
in the west we called this 'modernization' and the soviet union emulated it to a much more merciful degree creating many autonomous carve-outs. but they still followed the rubric because that's what 'nations' are understood to be. by no means was the national question handled perfectly, look at central asia, but we're talking in different languages if we cannot agree on what nationalism actually means. which in the soviet union meant the republics speaking different languages lol
The argument for an explicit political union between the two countries is not based on nostalgia but on shared interests. To be sure, due to four centuries of common history within the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, much of today’s Ukraine (and Belarus) shares far more of its past with Poland than it does with Russia, notwithstanding claims of Russian propagandists to the contrary and notwithstanding the fact that the relationship was oftentimes highly complicated, as illustrated by events of the 17th-century Deluge—most prominently by the Khmelnytsky uprising and its conflicting interpretations by Poles and Ukrainians.
Fast-forward to the present and to the near future, however. Both countries are facing a threat from Russia. Today, Poland is a member in good standing of the EU and NATO, while Ukraine is keen to join both organizations—not unlike the Grand Duchy of yesteryear, eager to become part of mainstream, Christianized Europe. Even if Ukraine’s war against Russia ends with a decisive Ukrainian victory, driving degraded Russian forces out of the country, Kyiv faces a potentially decades long struggle to join the EU, not to speak of obtaining credible security guarantees from the United States. The poorly governed, unstable countries of the Western Balkans, prone to Russian and Chinese interference, provide a warning about where prolonged “candidate status” and European indecision might lead. A militarized Ukrainian nation, embittered at the EU because of its inaction, and perhaps aggrieved by an unsatisfactory conclusion of the war with Russia, could easily become a liability for the West.
By Dalibor Rohac, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute
do they though? or just weirdos and yankkkee running dogs? in any case all claims about historical enmity can be dismissed in the modern era after present disputes are resolved, pearl-clutching about polish-lithuanian offensives in the 1600s is nullified by later russian aggression & more to the point fucking irrelevant. the Russians and Ukrainians got on fine for most of the 20th century!
The same people here writing absurd and shitty narratives about "Ukrainian" shared identity with Poland 400 years ago are also the same people that treat the mere 8 years of the Donbass war as irrelevant Russian propaganda. They have the power to manufacture consent and should be taken seriously, not because they say real or meaningful shit, but because what they say and write is almost assured to become the narrative or is already a reflection of the narrative.
When NATO decides to invade Ukraine years from now we'll be hearing all about the great "unity" between Polish and Ukrainian people too etc.
Anglo-French powers have been trying to bring back the PLC since it collapses, because they plan to use poles as canon fodder. Yes, the PLC was an enemy of russia, but I was more alluding to the germans and austrians of WW1/2 and the interwar/cold war periods.