Europe deciding to depend on Russia for their energy and not focusing on defense spending is the unbelievable part to me, but they've been doing this for quite some time now. They walked right into it. Russia is doing what they've always done and always will do.
The strategy of economic integration as a way to reduce military tension has worked very well in many other instances. It doesn't seem like an obviously insane thing to have tried.
It mostly worked because in recent history the Germans were an occupied state [0] followed up by a very polite situation that wasn't an occupation but looked a lot like one by the numbers [1]. The US has a number of troops in Germany comparable to the German army. Note from the article that up to 2006 the US had more troops in Germany than the Germans did.
Economic integration wasn't what kept the peace, it was probably the military integration.
Russia is a gigantic country with vast resources that isn’t bordered by Europe, and more than once it was a superpower and it was a superpower against another gigantic country. On the other hand, Europe consists of small countries trying to fit in with their neighbors.
It’s like thinking the scooter kids are gonna be hanging with the skater kids. It’s not that they are inherently that different, but they have such different mindsets that it means they see their positions in the world differently.
>Russia is a gigantic country with vast resources that isn’t bordered by Europe
Maybe you should look at the map before writing such nonsense.
1. Russia does have borders both with EU and NATO. Norway, Finland, Baltic states, Poland.
2. Russia is geographically in Europe too. Most of its population and the capital are in Europe.
Among European countries it does have the largest territory, population and nuclear arsenal, but it is not even the biggest economy. Ex-superpower is not a now-superpower. Mindset-wise it has a lot in common with other EU members.
Obviously Russia borders Europe. How do you do a land invasion of Europe without bordering Europe?
But Russia isn’t Germany whose borders are completely dominated by Europe.
Putin obviously thinks Russia should still be a superpower. People get that mentality when they see the past and think they deserve it again. Holy shit people love the “glory days.”
There are conflicts that have been going on for millennia like in the Middle East and they fight today because their ancestors fought.
People have a hard on for the past.
You’ll teach someone command line Git starting out and they love it and they will never bother with a GUI because they value their experience more than practicality.
Russia is a still a superpower in many ways, certainly in nukes. It's a shame though they feel the need to grab territory which seems a bit nineteenth century. I put it down to Putin reading too many old history books instead of Pinker and Gladwell. The US manages to be a superpower without feeling the need to invade Canada because they have a similar culture and try to have democracy there rather than being ruled from Washington.
The US just carries out its wars overseas - not on its next-door neighbors. Whenever the stock price of the Big-3 War Companies drop, the senators and congressmen are encouraged to find an excuse for bombings.
This is what Putin is always trying to convince the world about, but when you look closer, it is no longer true - but it was once. Now the USA is not only not starting any wars, but is also getting out of old conflicts, such as Iraq and Afghanistan. They realized these were stupid wars, in the case of Iraq started on false premises, impossible to win, even without a feasible strategy for wining and a definition of victory. These two wars should have never happened and most people in the West were against them. It is mostly Bush and Blair to blame for them and for their consequences, including the atrocities of ISIS.
Apart for these, which Bush considered a retaliation for 9/11, the USA is very careful not to start any conflicts and not to get involved - see Syria for example.
For the case of Syria, it is damned if you do and damned if you don't. Red lines were crossed (chemical weapons) and it was only when ISIS emerged that there were boots on the ground.
Plus they're trying to unseat Assad because he is blocking the development of the Qatar turkey pipeline project that would see Europe able to route around Russia for natural gas.
Now due to Russia's actions Germany has signed on with Qatar on a million dollar deal to get the pipeline done. I am sure this will result in more pressure on Syria.
Very convenient forgetting the invasion and destruction of Libya - a state that had free education & healthcare along with free household electricity. This was carried out under Obama, btw. You should personally ask native Libyan's what they think of the invasion - not the U.S. state department.
I suppose you will say the U.S became the "good guys" only under the Trump administration ? I suppose all the targeting and intelligence advice and weapons given to the Saudi's for bombing Yemen weddings were for "freedom" and thus completely justified ?
My positions/opinions are not based from Putin - but from middle-east citizens who have faced the brunt of American warfare. But the general tendency of war-loving American neocons/neo-liberals who wish to deliver "freedom" by War is to always blame Putin Propaganda when a citizen not of the NATO sphere holds a position opposed to their own. The U.S. are the real masters of propaganda- the Russians are a laughable footnote.
In every country ruled by some dictator there are beneficiaries who will complain afterwards that the bloodshed was caused by some foreign intervention. They feed from his hands, receive generous giveaways while others suffer. Did you talk to those people to get your opinion?
Yes, I have I talked to more than a dozen Libyans from the lower middle class. I am reasonably certain you haven't talked to any if you hold those opinions.
The some beneficiaries is a joke. You check your own sources - under Gaddafi, per capita income in the country rose to more than US$11,000 - the 5th highest in Africa. Universal free healthcare did exist and was not limited to "some beneficiaries" as you claim. Now, most Libyans suffer extreme poverty and deprivation. A nation that was utterly decimated - all thanks to NATO under the Obama administration.
The funny thing is that Gadaffi was willing to step down from power and hold elections under international observers. The U.S. rejected that. That would mean not having a war and hawks like Victoria Nuland wanted the Libyan government destroyed - not merely brought under democratic leadership. They were aware that if real elections were held and monitored with observers - Gadaffi would likely win and NATO legitimacy for the War would be lost.
The EU is at least as much a consequence of economic integration as it is a driver of it. The Marshall Plan wasn't just handshake deals to play nicely from now on.
Indeed. There's a common saying that sort of derives from Frédéric Bastiat that "where goods cross borders, armies don't." Trade and economic dependence is the best deterrent of war that there is. That doesn't necessarily mean that it stops all war, but it definitely raises the cost of war and costs matter.
It's also IMHO the most productive and ethical way to reduce/prevent war. Maybe they shouldn't have allowed something so fundamental as energy to become a dependence, but generally speaking the principles are sound.
> Indeed. There's a common saying that sort of derives from Frédéric Bastiat that "where goods cross borders, armies don't." Trade and economic dependence is the best deterrent of war that there is.
It's a saying whose truth has been greatly exaggerated, and the people who foolishly believe it have a tendency to make themselves vulnerable.
> That doesn't necessarily mean that it stops all war, but it definitely raises the cost of war and costs matter.
GP has a point. While economic integration didn't work this time, it has in the past. Been a while since you last saw Germany invading Poland for example. Or France.
Costs obviously do matter, but no-one is saying it's a fool-proof means of control.
Also I think part of the problem in this case is that Europe failed to make Russia sufficiently financially dependent on Europe. Instead Europe made itself dependent on Russia for energy, which means that the pacifying forces of trade are leveraged more towards Europe than towards Russia.
Geopolitics are complicated and messy. The more I think about them the more my head hurts.
Completely agree. It's complicated and messy, and no one factor is every fool proof or even sufficient.
I agree I think the main problem here is that Russia isn't nearly as dependent on Europe as Europe is on Russia.
But that said, it's also very early to conclude that Russia has plans on Europe. Especially given how Ukraine went, even if the Russian leadership fully wants to invade Europe, they surely know how that would go the moment they touch NATO. Their military will be crushed and they'll be assassinated or executed if they don't end up in prison. Europe has time to correct this imbalance. Awareness of the issue seems to be one of the hardest steps however, and coming up with solutions after that is of course quite a challenge as well. It's messy and I'm glad I don't have to be responsible for it :-)
> GP has a point. While economic integration didn't work this time, it has in the past. Been a while since you last saw Germany invading Poland for example. Or France.
Is that because of economic integration, or other reasons? Since WWII, Germany and France sat on the same side of a military alliance for more than a generation against a formidable foe (which would obviously change some attitudes), and there have been other ideological developments in those countries at well (e.g. the degree that Germans are pacifists as a reaction to Naziism).
> Is that because of economic integration, or other reasons?
Probably both. In any case, in spite of political tensions there haven't been any armed conflicts between EU members so far, and the attitudes of people are very friendly.
Economic integration was the main difference between the end of WWI and WWII, and we know how those turned out. One resulted in a horribly burdened and depressed German people. When a charismatic figure who could and would speak to the people emerged (Hitler) preaching nationalistic righteous anger, he rose to power to horrific results for both Germany and the rest of the world. It could have happened to any country in the same boat.
After WWII, the allies learned from their mistakes and instead of saddling the German people with mountains of debt and economic punishment, they sought to rebuild, quickly established trade and economic integration. It went substantially better the second time, and to this day seems to be working.
Also when it comes to economics and warfare, there are no silver bullets. Just very good guides. WWI broke out mainly because of entangling alliances mixed with a culture of honor (i.e. you don't break your agreements/word).
But look at how WWI ended with Germany getting heaps of crippling debt placed upon them and economic devastation. That totally paved the way for Hitler and WWII. Contrast with the end of WWII where Germany was rebuilt and economically integrated, and today it would be ludicrous to consider Germany invading Europe with designs on the world! The genetics of the people didn't magically change in a couple generations. Their economic situation did, and economic-related needs are at the base of everybody's hierarchy of needs.
Germany and Japan also faced extensive campaigns of cultural reprogramming. Campaigns that already had the foundations of success because both countries were urbanized and covered in mass media. In Afghanistan this was fundamentally impossible because much of the country follows ancient, tribal ways of life that the occupying forces never fully understood or appreciated. This isn’t to say it was easy to rebuild and pacify Germany and Japan—Japan in particular required a very sensitive balance that was probably Douglas MacArthur’s crowning achievement—but urbanized populations that have already been brainwashed by mass media to follow one ideology can easily be reprogrammed by the same mass media to follow a different ideology.
It probably also helped that both countries were so thoroughly devastated that their own “might makes right” ideologies had been clearly discredited by events. You can’t really claim to have racial or spiritual supremacy over your enemies when your enemies have reduced your cities to rubble, driven your people before their armies in vast refugee columns, and occupied your cities with soldiers. Obviously if you take this too far you run the risk of revanchism, so there’s another balance to be struck between domination and mercy.
Another big difference is that both Germany and Japan were accustomed to authoritarianism. Germans and Japanese were very governable peoples, and still are to some extent. The people of rural Afghanistan were ungovernable to begin with, more ungovernable than the people of any developed country. For example, I’m going to guess that your way of life does not involve grabbing your rifle and joining in this year’s season of warfare without any consistent ideological commitment to which side you want to fight for. But this is how many tribal Afghans have lived for centuries. There’s a core of devoted fanatics within the Taliban, but most of the actual fighters literally showed up and treated the war like a pickup basketball game. That’s why we seemed to win so quickly and easily in the beginning—nobody wants to be on the losing side. But as time went on and American commitment diminished, the dynamic shifted before ultimately and dramatically reversing.
> In Afghanistan this was fundamentally impossible
That's an odd idea. The people in Afghanistan aren't magically different -- instead, they're being oppressed by a comparatively small group of violent uneducated men (the Talibans).
You’re showing me pictures of people in cities. I’m not talking about the cities. I’m talking about the tribal populations in the countryside. And honestly, the tribal peoples aren’t the “magically different” ones. They’re closer to normal baseline human. We’re the WEIRD ones.
Yes, it's a pain to read through essays and all the details of various circumstances. But the nuance is helpful sometimes... And seems to be important to elaborate in this case.
People don't need to agree or disagree with previous posts. Simply stating more facts and going into details (especially on complex matters of history and culture) is good and helpful.
One of the many failures of nation-building has to do with property disputes. In a WEIRD society like our own (or Germany, or Japan) there’s an office in the city that has survey records and the question of who owns a piece of land is decided by paperwork. If there’s a dispute or a transaction or an agreement that changes someone’s property rights in some way—perhaps you have an easement or you agreed to move the property line-those changes are also duly recorded in the paperwork in the office in the city.
This is not how human cultures work by default. In fact, the process of writing down everyone’s property deeds for the first time is a massive undertaking that is hard to do well and easy to fuck up. The Ottoman Empire made a hash of this when they did it in Palestine and recorded property rights at such a high level of granularity that a single land deed with a single owner might cover a massive expanse of land that spanned multiple villages. Which made no difference to any of the people in Palestine until those “owners” ended up selling that land to Zionists.
Afghanistan, likewise, had lots of land records, many of which dated back to before the Soviet war. Of course, in the intervening decades, a lot of the tribal peoples had property disputes and settled them in a perfectly normal pre-modern way, involving verbal agreements and codes of honor between extended kin groups. And as long as nobody tried anything like governing them from Kabul based on those written land records, it worked for them. Everyone remembered and respected the traditional agreements. Of course, when the US installed a government in Kabul and backed it up with American troops, eventually everyone who had been on the losing side of a property dispute and realized they could get more or better land based on some dusty old paperwork decided to sic the US-backed Kabul government on their neighbors, completely upsetting the balance of life.
Simply put, a human culture that has been urbanized, governable, and legible to a paperwork-based central authority for centuries is an extremely sophisticated thing that takes a ton of effort to invent. If you grow up in that kind of society centuries after the initial work was done, those institutions are almost invisible to you. How else would society function?
You probably mean "to prevent military tension"? When tension already becomes war, it's sort of pointless to continue economic integration in the hope that it can stop war.
Well, it works OK as long as the countries involved don’t get taken over by a demagogue, dictator, or whatever the Brexit movement was. In other words, rationality and cooperation go out the window. Which turns out to be a pretty common failure mode according to 21st century evidence.
Indeed, and it's a serious problem. There are really only two ways out of this mess and one is not at all like the other and both are roughly equally likely by my reckoning.
I believe the problem is that the premise is false. It works OK for a part of the population that feels comfortable with it. When you look closer at the root causes they are not immaterial and often boil down to people not wanting immigrants around them. If you are progressive you can just dismiss their outdated attitude - and this is what center- and left-wing politicians were doing for decades. Ignoring and ridiculing these folks caused the radical right to grow stronger in several European countries. Putin knows that and that's why he is sending more and more of them to Belarussian borders.
Not true. The Soviet threat existed already before the WW2. It was actually the main reason why Nazi Germany was able to become that powerful - Britain and France hoped that Germany will balance that Soviet threat out. Eventually it did, but not without huge damages to Britain and France and without substantially aiding Russia. If your claim was true we should have seen huge increase in tensions between France and Germany after the collapse of Soviet Union, but rather the opposite is true.
Russia didn't disappear after the collapse. Germany was utterly defeated in the WW2, occupied by western allies and the soviet union and is demilitarized compared to France. Americans still have military bases there. Its whole existence after WW2 was reshaped by the victors to not be a threat again.
Germany was defeated and was rebuilt and the tools to reshape the European political landscape from within was first ECSC and later European Union. Yes, US military presence works as some stabilizing mechanism but it wouldn't have been enough without European mutual political framework.
EU leaders mistakenly thought that they can have the same success with Russia but they didn't take into account the fact that Russian new president had completely misaligned interests.
This. Amartya Sen has claimed that two actual democracies have never been at war between each other. At least I find hard to find significant counterexamples in history. (Not sure about the Falkland war. And I think Finland was technically at war with UK in the second world war)
I think the democratic and developed countries need to change their game plan pretty soon. The countries that are willing to join the club should be offered actual help to develop. By actual help I mean trade treaties that are designed to benefit those countries, not developed countries. Includes IP vaiwers, duties that protect local industries etc.
The countries that do not want to join, (including China and Orban's Hungary) then again, should be punished in all ways possible. Massive duties to commodities and other products imported from those countries, as a starter.
Open democracies do not need to be nice guys if they are threatened. Must not be, to be more precise. See Popper and paradox of tolerance.
Do you mean the war between Argentina and England?
Argentina was not only under a military dictatorship then, but the war was definitely triggered by the military junta.
> This. Amartya Sen has claimed that two actual democracies have never been at war between each other. At least I find hard to find significant counterexamples in history.
Off the top of my head -- a war of 1812 between Great Britain and United States. Both countries were democracies at that time.
> […] a war of 1812 between Great Britain and United States. Both countries were democracies at that time.
By what definition the British Empire, a constitutional monarchy, had been a democracy in 1812 if all (and not just the fourty-shilling freeholders) men aged 21+ with some women aged 30+ only became allowed to vote in 1918, 106 years later, and all women aged 21+ were finally allowed to vote in 1928?
In 1812, both Britain and the US lacked universal suffrage - not only were all women excluded from voting, but in both countries, so were many men - so if lack of universal suffrage made 1812 Britain not a democracy, the United States wasn’t one either.
But, historically, democracy was not considered to require universal suffrage. Athens is often cited as one of the world’s first democracies - and it is from Ancient Greece that we get the word - yet in ancient Athens, most adults couldn’t vote (either due to being female, due to being slaves, or due to being non-citizen resident aliens)
In 1812, Britain was a constitutional monarchy with a parliamentary system dominated by landed aristocracy and gentry – 3% circa of the population, and it was exclusively males.
Members of Parliament (MP's) were often elected in rotten and pocket boroughs where a single patron could (and unashamedly did) buy up the votes in one or multiple boroughs and essentially dictate the outcome of elections. Charles Howard, 11th Duke of Norfolk controlled 11 boroughs, as an example.
The rotten boroughs were only disenfranchised by Reform Act 1832 which granted seats in the House of Commons to large cities instead.
In the pocket boroughs, the landowner could evict electors who did not vote for the two men he wanted, the practice that did not cease to exist until secret ballots were introduced in 1872.
There were also «open boroughs» where the vote was more competitive but still limited to male property owners only.
Since «demos» in «democracy» stand for «people», calling Britain a democracy in 1812 is not even a stretch.
And in 2024, it still is a constitutional monarchy - how is that relevant to the question of whether it is or was a democracy?
> Since «demos» in «democracy» stand for «people»,
The meaning of words isn’t determined by sum of parts like that. The people who coined the word “democracy” used it to refer to systems in which only a small percentage of “the people” counted. Herodotus used the word in the 5th century BCE, whereas universal adult suffrage didn’t exist in most places until the 20th century, well over 2000 years later. If you want to argue that everyone was using a word incorrectly for over 2000 years, well, you can define words however you like, but other people aren’t obliged to accept your novel definition
I am not following it. On the one hand, valid points have been made that I have a wholehearted agreement with, yet the next moment there seems to be the gish galloping going on. Or that is how I perceive it, anyway.
> In 1812, Britain was a constitutional monarchy […]
[…] a parliamentary system dominated by landed aristocracy and gentry – 3% circa of the population […]
That was the key point that was conveniently or otherwise omitted. 3% of the entire population being landed aristocracy and gentry is not the rule of people by any measurable account, and, no, it does not constitute the British Empire a democracy in 1812. There was also a reason why I originally emphasied «Empire» – empires do not place a focal point on the power of people as there are no people in an empire, there is only the empire.
> The meaning of words isn’t determined by sum of parts like that.
Yes, the modern defintion of «democracy» is multifaceted and elastic, it has evolved to mean much more since its inception, including universal suffrage as a fundamental property of a functional democracy today. Yet, democracy in Ancient Greece is not what most would call a democracy today. I am accutely aware of that.
> […] other people aren’t obliged to accept your novel definition
This is a hard one since the guy managed to do his trick once Hungary already joined all clubs. On the other hand, there's little hope anybody can manage to overthrow him anytime soon, and in any case restoring democracy in Hungary will take decades.
It worked when both sides wanted it to work. When one side's fundamental strategy includes fomenting tension as an integral component, no amount of concessions and friendly gestures from the other side would be enough to reduce it.
The EU. France and Germany used to be deadly enemies. No one sane is expecting a war between them any time soon.
Same with US states. Texas etc keep muttering about secession, but the economic complications make it an insane idea.
It's not inherently a bad strategy, but it tends to fail when you're dealing with huge would-be hegemons - which certainly applies to China and Russia.
Ukraine was under Russian dominion like almost forever, but that didn't make it a part of Russia. If it had been then Russians would not distinguish between 'Russians' and 'little Russians' and other (far worse) terms.
But they don't see the other half of Germany as untermenschen. Which is roughly how the Russians view the denizens of all of the conquered land in their empire that isn't Russia proper.
I'm pretty sure that Parisiens saw all other kinds of frenchmen as untermenschen and actively eradricated their languages until, like, late XX century. Since they held absolute political powers nobody was even there to question it.
Compared to that, Russians have super great attitude towards southwestern Russian variety. They do recognize the existence of Ukrainian language (dialect continuum) and that some people might want to speak it unharmed, for starters.
Ukrainian state rewrites history like there was no yesterday, but you could definitely study Ukrainian in any UkrSSR school from 1960s to 1991. I wonder if you could find a school that will teach any Languedoc, anywhere in Languedoc.
I'm also pretty sure that Germans from different parts of Germany aren't big fans of each other as a group.
> I'm pretty sure that Parisiens saw all other kinds of frenchmen as untermenschen and actively eradricated their languages until, like, late XX century.
That has nothing to do with Russia vs Russian conquered territories, besides, France has Occitan, there is the German based dialects, Catalan, some Basque and a whole raft of others.
> Since they held absolute political powers nobody was even there to question it.
Except that that didn't quite happen in the way you suggest. You could make a similar statement about Fries in NL or maybe Limburgs or Diets. And it would be just as much wrong.
> Compared to that, Russians have super great attitude towards southwestern Russian variety. They do recognize the existence of Ukrainian language (dialect continuum) and that some people might want to speak it unharmed, for starters.
Sorry, are we on different planets or something? You mean: those very same Russians that are currently bombing the shit out of anything Ukrainian and who wish to eradicate the Ukrainian nation and culture?
> I'm also pretty sure that Germans from different parts of Germany aren't big fans of each other as a group.
They are as alike as the Dutch and the Belgians, we joke about each other but at the end of the day there is no hate and zero chance of a war.
> Occitan native speakers: Estimates range from 100,000 to 800,000 total speakers (2007–2012)
No assimilation and cultural genocide policy in any form. It has just dwindled to these numbers on its own. Also has no relation to the topic that we discuss. Don't forget to call whataboutism.
I gather that reflection is not a strong side of Western Europeans.
> those very same Russians that are currently bombing the shit out of anything Ukrainian
That's called "a civil war", and that's how it viewed by many Russians and some Ukrainians. Indeed that's not a great condition to be in.
> who wish to eradicate the Ukrainian nation and culture
Again, this accusation is coming from a proud member of a nation who eradicated a couple of cultures very recently. "While I had already been born" recently.
People of Donbass were fed up with Ukrainization to the extent that these two Republics do not have Ukrainian as co-official. But Crimea, and the "new territories" of Kherson oblast and Zaparozh'ye (whatever left of them, arguably) have Ukrainian as co-official. Crimea also has Crimean Tatar as co-official. If anybody wants they can study their language and their culture, including in schools. That's what was not permitted to Russians in many, many ex-USSR countries.
It is un-civil-ized genocidal war, by calling it civil war you are denying the existence of Ukraine as a state it's the same as saying you support this war and atrocities Ruzzian Federation commits and occupation of Ukrainian territories. Go and preach this on runet instead.
Ukrainian isn’t a dialect continuum with Russian. That’s a myth commonly pushed by Russia and Russian nationalists. It’s a separate language with roots diverging from a rather early point with different history. It actually shares more similarity with Polish or Bulgarian than it does with Russian. Here’s a good video on the languages https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CQLM62r5nLI
(Note: It was published before the war so the statistics of where what languages are commonly used have changed dramatically.)
Surzhik spoken everywhere east of Dnieper, in Kiev and and Odessa certainly is a dialect continuum with Russian. Most often it's simply Russian with a Swadesh list of 100 words replaced by their Ukrainian counterpairs, whenever possible. The rest being left as is.
Nobody really cares what these far western ukrainians are up to. Russians don't really want them. Maybe with the exception for one dude from Vinnitsa.
Eneida by Ivan Kotliarevsky [1] (1798) is first literary work published wholly in the modern Ukrainian language. Ivan Kotliarevsky lived in Poltava, East Ukraine [2].
Valuev Circular [3] (1863), Ems Ukaz [4] (1876) banned the use of the Ukrainian language in print. Religious books on Ukrainian were banned century before [5].
Census [6] (1897) maps Ukrainian language majority far beyond Ukraine current borders. Annexed by RSFSR, Russified by force. Continuum of ethnocide by Moscow.
Еней був парубок моторний
І хлопець хоть куди козак,
На лихо здався він проворний,
Завзятіший од всіх бурлак.
So you are saying this is not a dialect of Russian? Any Russian can understand 50% of this text right off bat, 80% after a day of effort and 95% after a week.
Nationalists like to draw fantasy maps. Want to see mine?
Roma, Romania, do you claim Italian is "Romanian dialect"? Muscovy was Rus colony, grew under Golden Horde, renamed in 1721. Rus Grand Prince Володимѣръ Свѧтославичъ — Ukrainian name Володимир (Volodymyr) not Moscow Владимир (Vladimir). Language of Kyiv can't be dialect of its former colonies language.
Slav languages are mutually intelligible. I've checked spoken Slovak, Polish, Croatian, Bulgarian. Do you claim these are "dialects" of Moscow language?
Eneida translated to Polish:
Eneasz rzutkim był młodzianem,
Podobnym całkiem do Kozaków,
Radzącym z każdym złem spotkanym,
Zawziętszym nawet od burłaków.
Russian (Russish) language is recent development. First song in Russian language was publicly performed by Fedor Shaliapin as demonstration that Russian language can be used instead of French language in culture: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aMCFALhS90c
Okay, okay, so? The point is, there's a hell of a lot of songs, books, science articles, movies, video games and other kinds of content in Russian now. It's standardized, everybody can read, speak and write it. Things are going around Russian language. It's an UN and UNESCO language. A lot of goodies.
So it makes sense that everyone who is fluent in both Ukrainian and Russian will be consuming Russian content 90% of time. Hence people no longer use Surzhik anywhere east of Kharkov (or Khabarovsk), even if some of their ancestors actually spoke it. It just don't make sense to do that anymore.
It does not help that literature Ukrainian has a lot of borrowings from Polish, Romanian and Hungarian and is not really accessible to people who did not visit Ukrainian state schools. However, Russian is very accessible to basically everybody in Ukraine and the rest of ex-USSR.
Regarding folk songs, people actually did a lot of digging in this area starting with late Soviet times, and now there's huge revival of folk music in Russia. Many contemporary pop or rock bands use Russian (Slavic, maybe even Ukrainian) folk motives in their songs, which are usually in Russian. By doing so, they enrich Russian culture, which I've started this comment from.
Ukrainian language with 1000+ years of history, is not a dialect of Russian (Russish) language, which is a very recent development, with so high number of words borrowed from Turk languages, that it makes hard for Russians to understand other Slavic languages, except Bulgarians, which are also have some Tatar origin.
Use of Russian language shrunk by 2x in last 30 years, while Ukrainian language increased by 2x in last 30 years. At some point, it will flip.
Regarding folk songs, just name one Russian folk song in Russian language, for which I will not be able to found author by 5 minutes of googling.
I'm not sure why I will be doing all that. A great Ukrainian folk song Zhuravel' was rediscovered by Chstyakov I believe, and is now fertilizing the Russian culture.
No, it's other way around. Russian (Russish) language was based on Russian Church-Slavonic language, which is based on Old South-Slavonic language. Ru with many words borrowed from Ukrainian (Russian) language.
For example, Ukraine holds word record by number of folk songs, while I was able to found none of folk songs in Russian (Russish) language after years of searching. Folk songs exists in Russia Federation, but they are not in Russian (Russish) language. Cuban Cossack Choir - folk songs are in Ukrainian language, Ural Cossack Choir - Ukrainian, for example.
You're mixing written versus spoken language. Russian people largely cannot understand any Ukrainian when spoken. Polish people on the other hand can make out bits of Ukrainian.
So you are saying that similar repressive policies were not implemented in present-day Russia and Kazakhstan? Is there any research into comparative severity of policies?
As far as I know, Russian peasantry was absolutely not spared in the collectivization, making for the bulk of immediate casualties. And why would Stalin care about them? Was he Russian?
I merely question your claim about Russians having a positive attitude towards Ukrainians and their language. Having subjugated them by famine and other forms of mass-scale terror and murder, Russians allowed Ukrainians to use their language... how magnanimous.
No, there is no comparative study of the effects of repressive policies, because starving millions of people to death and not allowing outside help in (read "The Russian Job" by Douglas Smith) is not practiced on such scale anymore, even by Russia. The Wikipedia page on Holdomor quotes orders to subjugate Ukraine regardless of cost. That in itself negates any notion of Russians having a "super positive attitude" towards Ukraine. Do you know why "(...) you could definitely study Ukrainian in any UkrSSR school from 1960s to 1991."? Because it was not possible while Stalin was alive. It was not possible, because it was Stalin who gave orders to subjugate Ukraine at any cost.
Why would USSR have this famine in Russia and Kazakhstan if the goal was "to subjugate Ukraine"? Indeed why would it even suddenly need subjugating if it was part of Russian state for at least two centuries.
If you have any complaints about Stalin, you can mail them to Georgia, and indeed I'm the first one to do the same.
In terms of vocabulary, the Ukrainian language is the closest to Belarusian (16% of difference), and the Russian language to Bulgarian (27% of difference).
After Belarusian, Ukrainian is also closer to Slovak, Polish, and Czech than to Russian – 38% of Ukrainian vocabulary is different from Russian.
Germans distinguish between prussians and bavarians? What are you talking about. Yes there are distinctions by state and where you're from. But the distingtion (apart from the occasional joking Fischkopf or Pazi) is nonexistent. Much less than states in the US.
I don't personally think is economic liberalization that succeeded.
It's the US won't stand for anymore wars like that. And for 50 years after WWII they could enforce that. You can note the general absence of large wars in North and South America as evidence of that.
That's putting the cart before the horse; countries only join the EU after they're already politically aligned with the current membership. Turkey, for instance, has been kept out of the European Union precisely because of these types of concerns; a strategy of economic integration would have entailed allowing Turkey to join the EU in hopes that the EU would be a positive influence on the country.
Edit: I'm being throttled so I'll respond to similar comments here. TheOtherHobbes similarly notes:
> The EU. France and Germany used to be deadly enemies. No one sane is expecting a war between them any time soon.
In particular, France and Germany weren't peacefully reconciled through economic integration. There was a war, and the victors of that war installed democratic governments in both France and West Germany and inducted both countries into a broader alliance.
> Same with US states. Texas etc keep muttering about secession, but the economic complications make it an insane idea.
It took about two decades after Texas was admitted to the union for the states to fight a civil war against each other.
genman says:
> Remember WW1? WW2?
Not personally (I'm not that old) but those were not instances of economic integration easing military tensions; they were instances of extremely bloody world wars. And the First World War in particular was already deemed impossible because of the degree to which European economies were already economically integrated. That theory did not pan out.
wolverine876:
> The EU (in its early forms) was formed by the countries that just fought each other in WWI and WWII, and for centuries before that. The EU was specifically intended to prevent another war.
Again reversing cause and effect. The Allies won the Second World War and installed friendly governments across western Europe (and also in Greece); following this, those friendly governments formed the EU.
> countries only join the EU after they're already politically aligned with the current membership.
The EU (in its early forms) was formed by the countries that just fought each other in WWI and WWII, and for centuries before that. The EU was specifically intended to prevent another war.
> The EU (in its early forms) was formed by the countries that just fought each other in WWI and WWII, and for centuries before that.
Not quite, the Western Union (predecessor to the EU by way of the was formed by the BeNeLux countries, the UK and France. Some of those were at war in preceding centuries but they were on the same side during WWI and WWII. It didn't have a lot of clout because very rapidly afterwards other more powerful institutions were formed and it was superceded. But it was more of a continuation of some of the collaboration that stemmed from being allies/liberators in the war than that they were on opposing sides. Later institutions included Germany and Italy as well.
In Europe there have undoubtedly been international institutions going back a long way. Is what you're talking about really a blood ancestor of the EU, or is it a predecessor - another group that happened to have some of the same members.
As I recall, Churchill was a strong proponent of the EU's [edit: I can't believe I used the wrong word:] ancestor (the European Communities? Some oil and coal community?), as a way to prevent further wars. Churchill blamed nationalism specifically.
I would say it was because there is a reasonably direct line of succession in terms of both members and responsibilities. The steel and coal union is also in that line. What happened is that the unification was seen as beneficial but that a larger body with a more future proof organization was what really was required.
> What happened is that the unification was seen as beneficial but that a larger body with a more future proof organization was what really was required.
You're saying the EU wasn't required? That seems like a bold statement, but probably too much to sort out in HN comments.
I'm a bit confused by "but" in that sentence. I'm not sure if a 'not' or another word is missing there. Certainly many saw unification as beneficial - again, it was the key to many. Many still do.
Unification was underway prior to the EU, the EU is the eventual larger body but it took some steps to get to the point where it could be properly established, mostly on account of the various countries still reeling from WWII and being very busy with reconstruction efforts (and piss poor to boot, the first years after WWII were almost as bad as the last years of the war and in some places even worse besides the reduced immediate risk to life). Doubly so for those countries that ended up on the far side of the Iron Curtain, but then again, they weren't part of the EU for many years to come. But for many of them the only thing that changed is that German uniforms became Russian uniforms and usually that wasn't accompanied by a higher degree of civility by the occupiers.
Nonetheless, all of this was not the cause of peace being restored in Europe after WWII; it was the consequence of it. You could argue that the EU kept the peace, but I think that overlooks the role of NATO and of the hundreds of thousands of American troops who never actually left western Europe after 1945. For instance, do you really think there's a serious risk of war breaking out between the UK and France since the UK left the EU? Of course not.
> all of this was not the cause of peace being restored in Europe after WWII; it was the consequence of it
How do you establish the arrow of causality (and of course, to some degree, it points both ways)? Objectively, we know that a major intent and design of the EU (and its earlier iterations) was to prevent another war.
The one thing we know about the arrow of causality is that it doesn’t point backwards in time. The founding members of the EU all had friendly relations with each other prior to the founding of the EU. That’s why they formed the EU!
Yes, but rather than engaging Nazi Germany with trade agreements and hoping that would somehow transform it into a peaceful democracy, Churchill and others fought WWII and attempted to conquer Germany with massive armies. The EU was a strategy for how to rebuild the ruins afterwards, it wasn’t a strategy for how to resolve the differences between Britain and Germany. So this isn’t a very good analogy for the current situation between NATO and Russia, or between the US-led allies and China.
The US imports more goods from Mexico than China, but we do import a lot of stuff from China. It is clear from both sides that is problematic. They've been exporting less AND we have been moving supply chains to import less from them.
It is quite problematic as it appears the US and China are slow crawling to a direct confrontation.
Yes and I'm dead set against it. When that blows up in our face we deserve it for allowing it to happen. The best we can hope for is China ruins their own economy rendering them impotent.
Don't hope too much for that. Authoritarian regimes with collapsing economies often find war a useful distraction for their populations. China could do an awful lot of damage on the way down.
Almost all of Europe’s fossil fuels came from Russia whereas China is not even the largest trade partner of the US. Also energy dependence is much harder to get off of than production dependence.
After the Fukushima disaster in 2011, Germany quickly moved away from nuclear power, with the last plant closing down in late 2023. Germany leads in renewable energy, but this swift change has left them with a big gap in energy security that might last until 2038.
Where can I get more information on this? Wasn't fukushima total disaster in that it was badly maintained and in a bad location? These two pre-conditions don't seem to apply to the plants germany had.
"Russia is doing what they've always done and always will do."
Do you think those stereotypes are really helpful in understanding geopolitics? Traditionally what russia has always done(after it conquered its east), was being invaded, loosing lots of land, let the invader bleed out in the winter and then push back and win new territories.
Then russia as a monarchy was quite different to the sowjet union, the result of a marxist revolution with marxist agenda. And russia after the sowjet union was first weak and now they try to find strength in the traditional empire values again, religion and tsar. But it is not a given, that they will keep that, only if it works out for them. I hope it doesn't.
> Do you think those stereotypes are really helpful in understanding geopolitics?
In some kind of way, yes. Cultures differ, sometimes drastically so. It is important to evaluate stereotypes based on history and their merits.
You said it yourself. Historically, Russia has faced many cyclic periods of expansion and reduction. They are currently being reigned by a patriotic figure with a record of dwelling on Russia‘s great past. Given enough time or an effective military response, chances are high that their next leader will be more favorable of peace.
instability in the middle east was and still is the plan. As long as we keep the middle east from united under some new ottoman empire, the US is happy.
If we wanted to 'win', it would require taking over afghan which no one wanted to do.
It was reasonable not to see Russia as enemy. It was well integrated into European trade and some political structures (PACE, NATO-Russia council etc) and there were even talks about visa-free travel between Russia and EU. What went wrong was the glacial speed of integration, letting the nationalist sentiment and disappointment in West grow. Post-WWII Europe was pacified through a political union between Germany and France, post-Cold War Europe should have done it too. Putin could be another Orban in the worst case.
That's naive. Russia allowed Germany to unify, but not Romania. It was very clear to eastern Europeans that they needed to join NATO before Russia can attack them again.
Ever since the 1500s Russia has always sought to expand under the excuse of being encircled. Listen to any Russian propagandist now and they sound no different to ones from hundreds of years ago. They say Russia needs natural bothers. Well, there are no borders until the Carpathian mountains.
If they do conquer the Carpathians, they'll just move the goal posts, just like they didn't stop at the Ural mountains.
It's naive to not see Russia as the enemy because it has always been so.
Fundamentally what actually went the worst was the absolutely awful way that capitalist market systems were, on the whole, rolled out in the eastern bloc in the 90s.
Poverty, corruption, and massive wealth disparity were the results.
And into the chaos, strongmen came in, and promised and gave some stability.
Modern Russia is far better at political subversion than it is at outright conquest. Every country in Europe has captive politicians and far-right parties being funded and enabled by Moscow.
Like Germany's AfD which - as a matter of record - has been cultivated, promoted, and steered in a pro-Russian direction.
Scholz is clearly playing the same game, obstructing aid to Ukraine in every possible way.
Geert Wilders in NL makes anti-Russian noises in public while threatening to cut support to Ukraine.
Portugal has Chega, France has National Rally and Le Pen, the UK had Brexit and Boris Johnson - who installed the son of a top KGB operative to the House of Lords.
The US has Trump and Maga.
And so on.
Every single one of these has proven Russian links.
Ukraine is just a distraction. The real war has been happening elsewhere. Many leaders - and most voters - still haven't realised what's happening.
And should Le Pen win in France and Trump in the US, that would leave the UK's one active nuclear submarine as Europe's sole protection against Russian nuclear threats.
If you want to bash german politicians for current situation, 100% guilt falls on Angela Merkel. Making
1) Germany ultra weak militarily, you really can't let intellectuals drive whole nations since they have 0 clue about realpolitik, warfare and all those ugly aspects of it, and currently bundeswehr is a pathetic underfunded joke with rotting helmets that even current russian army would roll over without breaking a sweat.
2) a massive push for critical fuel dependency on russia
3) never standing up to that murderer in any way, even as he was killing and invading Georgia and Ukraine
He played her and similar to her very efficiently. Of course its nothing compared to masterclass he pulled/will yet pull on Trump.
As somebody coming from cca eastern Europe, being enslaved by russian troops after their bloody invasion, western Europe is... to keep things ultra polite - ultra pussies. You simply don't grok how depraved and hardened to cruelty russian mind is, things like fair game are an insult. Also their incredible durability to withstand absolutely horrible treatment, just buckle up and continue. Western sanctions my ass, just make sure any good chips don't work for them somehow because they don't care for the rest.
This is the case when you are dealing with mobsters who kill and know only rule of stronger, and you come with your polite smile and handshakes and expect things like keeping their word or contracts. I don't even have such a problem with EU dumb naivety in the past, but what is shocking that they didn't wake up right after invasion and starting putting 10% of GDP into army, to see some effects in 5 years just in time when real stuff starts happening. Every single post-soviet country keeps issuing very strong warnings due to previous horrible expereiences with russian terror, but these are completely ignored on EU level. This is a major long term weakness that will not get unpunished.
Yeah, when SHTF its very easy to be ashamed to be from Europe, for quite a few generations.
100% agreement, it's a complete mess. I think the big mistake is that this was all built on hope and hope is a fantastic way of getting to disappointment. But now what? That's the hard question. It looks like a whole bunch of politicians in the West are in Putin's pocket or at least useful idiots, the populace doesn't give two shits as long as they can watch TV and there is bread and meanwhile the fuse is burning.
It's pretty sad that the EU now has to look to Lithuania for their moral compass because they seem to have lost their own.
Despite a massive investigation there have never been any proven links between Trump and Russia. What’s more, Trump maintained sanctions against Russia and provided military aid to Ukraine.
I can’t speak as much to the situation in Europe aside from the obvious conflicts of interest for former chancellor Gerhard Schroeder. Aside from him, I don’t know where to attribute Germany’s fecklessness: it could just as easily be the same weak-kneed pacifism that led Germany to disarm themselves. (Also, I’d point out that, contra your narrative, both Scholtz and Schroeder are members of the center-left SPD and not any far right party.)
> Despite a massive investigation there have never been any proven links between Trump and Russia.
I suppose there is some narrow definition of links for which that is true.
> What’s more, Trump maintained sanctions against Russia
He signalled plans to weaken them, and then Congress, by massively veto-proof majorities in both Houses (419-3 House, 98-2 Senate), passed a bill limiting his ability to lift existing sanctions while also adding new sanctions on top.
> and provided military aid to Ukraine.
He held up Congressionally-mandated aid to try to force a quid pro quo from the Ukrainian government for propaganda to support Trump’s personal political efforts, releasing it only after he became aware that someone had blown the whistle on it.
> He held up Congressionally-mandated aid to try to force a quid pro quo from the Ukrainian government for propaganda to support Trump’s personal political efforts
That’s certainly one possible interpretation of events.
Absolutely each and every one of those is far right, borderline fascist and getting more so by the day. There is plenty of evidence of Russian funds bankrolling these (and others), no need to suggest this is a conspiracy. What you believe doesn't really matter.
You're hilarious. Geert Wilders is a populist, not a politician. The party objectives are Geert Wilders' dog whistles and promises to the gullible, it isn't a serious political party even though it has attracted the largest voting bloc simply because there is no governance structure in place, the party is Geert Wilders, the rest is just window dressing. The idea that 'even in the west[sic] you can fell[sic] victim to propoganda[sic]' is true but it has nothing to do with my view of Wilders, the PVV or the general Dutch political situation. And as for state media, guess what GW wants to get rid of?
I mean in France, you've got Marine LePen. In the Netherlands you've got Geert Wilders. Robert Fico wanted to take Slovakia back to a past when oligarchs dominated the state. PiS wanted to turn poland into the arsenal of the EU and got a really good start on it, etc.
Nationalism is having a renaissance since Trump won in 2020, but it turns out overall to be a terrible way to run a country.
PiS was close, Slovakia is maybe getting there, but Orban is the longest serving prime minister of Hungary. He actually did it and he stays in power. LePen, Wilders etc did not do a single thing from Orban’s list. They didn’t even form a government which could do it.
Things like a strong and independent media, legal system, parliament and police force are crucial to democracy. It can be justifiable to argue that someone is anti-democratic if they advocate a narrative that erodes trust in any of these.
That's an interesting idea. Covers both political parties, with the left undermining trust in the police, and Supreme Court. The right in the FBI and journalism.
It's context-dependent, but that's the basic idea. In the UK for example, we currently have quite a right-wing government in power, which is:
* Undermining our Supreme Court by trying to force through a migrant deportation scheme which the court has ruled unlawful
* Eroding the Police Force's independence by claiming they are biased in their approach to protests
* Trying to defund and delegitimise the BBC
It might be because I'm fairly left wing myself, but I think you have go pretty far into authoritarian-left territory (think Stalinism) before you start becoming seriously anti-democratic. Before that point most leftists are pretty keen on giving power and choice to ordinary people and communities.
Even though that is troublesome I think the absolute biggest issue was the West “helping” liberalize the Russian economy. I.e. giving away huge amounts of the Russian states resources to corrupt oligarchs with great help from London banks. It really set the stage for Putin in a big way.
Not deciding, but being told to do so by Germany who is infiltrated by Russians at every level of government, industry, and media. Allowing Germany to unify and giving the keys to the future of Europe to Germany was the biggest mistake the USA and Britain made after 1989.
The same move could have had a completely different outcome so it is hard to lay the blame with the USA and Britain. A unified Germany unlocked Poland and the Baltics as well as the Balkans, Romania and even Bulgaria. It did not work out quite as planned because Putin went mad but it could have worked if Russia focused on creation rather than destruction for a while. But with people that power hungry ratio goes right out the window.
Nothing will go "as planned" in that part of the world for as long as individual states like Germany will be signing agreements with Russia without consultation or participation of the Eastern European states. The problem of Western Europe is that they look at Eastern European countries as "lesser", former dependencies and haven't accepted them as equal partners.
Yes, that's a very valid point, the Western countries in the EU do not properly value the input from their Eastern colleagues on these matters. It's a very annoying thing. I have spent a good chunk of my life East of Berlin both before and after the wall came down and I have zero illusions about the situation at the moment. The question is how long it will take the rest of Europe to wake up to the new reality and it is incredible how lax the response has been so far. You'd think that they would get the message by now but all we get is half-assed measures.
It will be difficult. Germany is a state with a massive parasitic infiltration by Russian agents and "useful idiots" at all levels of the government, the industry, and the media. Watching German response to war in Ukraine has been embarrassing and a good argument for the countries of Eastern Europe to arm themselves to the teeth and not wait for the Western Allies to come to their support.
Agreed on all counts. This is a turning point in history and I'm really wondering if we aren't about to lose 80 years of progress in Europe, for Ukraine, on a shorter timescale, that is already a reality. And all because we keep making the same dumb mistakes.
I think it makes a lot more sense if you separate a country from their elite.
It seems quite clear that the German elite class had been wholly corrupted by Russia who offered them enrichment at the cost of Ukrainians and ultimately long term German security.
It makes a lot more sense when you look at how America's own elites sold out America to China.
All of this (charitably assuming good faith) was founded on the idea of inevitability. People thought peace was an inevitable result of trade, liberalization was an inevitable result of prosperity, and democratization an inevitable result of capitalism.
