Russia and these NATO countries being probed are like the two siblings in the back seat. Mom, he's touching me. Stop touching your brother. Mom, he's holding his finger right next to me. Dad eventually says, don't make me pull this car over and start a global thermonuclear war
Not quite. Be careful, Russia invests a lot in disinformation campaigns and spreading (conflicting, but that is part of their doctrine) narratives. Bothsidisms and False Equivalency are some of the common tools in muddying the information sphere.
NATO and Europe did quite a lot to normalize relations with Russia. Russia was invited and became participant of the NATO program Partnership For Peace [0].
The program contains 6 areas of cooperation, which aims to build relationships with partners through military-to-military cooperation on training, exercises, disaster planning and response, science and environmental issues, professionalization, policy planning, and relations with civilian government
Very nice, but the secret services that took over the empire did and does not fancy a rule-based, harmonious order based on mutual relations, human rights, freedom of press etc. As any autocracy or kleptocracy understands, that is very much a threat to their power, beacuse
- Population will demand political influence.
- Mindset. A criminal thinks in terms of I win, you lose. Might makes right. Complete opposite of what makes up the dna of the free world.
The imperative is on us to understand that message really well. It goes slowly unfortunately. It is hard for us to grok.
Notice how on our part, helped via tech oligarchs, there is an incessant bombardment to undermine support for those values. Kremlin troll factories are a thing, but the Chinese are speading up rapidly in the information sphere too. Especially youngsters are targeted.
The war has already begun, but we don´t want to see it. And that is dangerous.
> Be careful, Russia invests a lot in disinformation campaigns and spreading (conflicting, but that is part of their doctrine) narratives.
You may also want to be careful (or not):
- all countries engage in these things
- how things are seem like how they seem, but this is very often not the case...and rather than consciousness raising warnings for such situations, it very often does the opposite
As always, I recommend a meta-perspective on geopolitical stories, it is much more fun than being a Normative, poorly constrained imagination actor like the vast majority of people.
I certainly welcome critical thinking. How GOP got of the rails with the adventures of Bush Jr (War on Terror) is worthy of deep analysis. Backed by Russia, which might give you a pause.
Geopolitical affairs are indeed difficult to follow. It requires deep internal domain(s!) knowledge, which does not fit your average corporate media business model. The niche outlets that do have a capable editorial board are threatened by takeovers [1, 2] from the likes of Axel Springer [3]. 1 Billion USD for Politico. An idiotic sum for a buyer that small, Wikipedia might pique your interest [3]. That is not to say that Politico is useless now, but you can count on journalistic degradation over time.
But sweeping statements are not of help to get a sharper picture. Instead they risk promoting false equivalence and may turn participants(!) of democracies into passive nihilists. Which is precisely the aim of the foreign influence we are talking about.
Do you ever wonder why mainstream school curriculum doesn't include the discipline most suitable for navigating these waters: philosophy?
And if you do now: do you wonder if this is 100% coincidence, or oversight? How often do you hear the idea even discussed, as compared to, say, how often we hear about "misinformation", and the need for more "critical thinking"?
I am glad this situation has a substantial humorous aspect to it, otherwise I'd probably get stressed out about it.
Right, but that quote is kind of dumb. It implies that disagreements or criticism of the US are coming from russian disinformation agents. You can see how that framing (even if true sometimes!) isn't productive to any kind of actual discussion right?
Yes obviously. it doesn't take much in the way of literacy to understand the point being made by putting those statements next to eachother. The point is to invalidate whatever criticism is being made of the imperium
Isn't it amazing how effective repetitive, rhetorical propaganda can be though? These techniques are hard-coded in literally millions of minds, and once an idea takes root it is very difficult to remove.
One might think skill in logic would prevent such things, but I'd expect most of the HN crowd is well above average in logic, yet few can't avoid having their cognition controlled by these sorts of simple memes.
The point is to invalidate whatever criticism is being made of the imperium
Then you read something which has never been stated. The point is that in a democracy people need to be well informed to keep their "imperium" to account, but that precisely this point is the weak point because it is overrun by commercial interests and adversaries that are KNOWN to be poisoning the well even more. To the point that we see here some special takes that are boosted or crafted, just to get people like YOU and ME to repeat that.
To craft such a take you don't even have to lie, you can take a (half) truth and meme your way to hide what should not be discussed.
This just works and is far more effective than fighter jets pro ruble spend.
The worrying things in the US should certainly be discussed, this is rather an understated point. In other comments I mentioned the war on terror for instance.
For that, you are not served by simplistic sound bytes.
Mearsheimer has been debunked many a times and his theory just doesn´t hold up with reality. I am not going to debunk it, because I will repeat what other really respectable people have said about the subject.
Just one rebuttal, but there are many more to be found on the internet.
Except its always Russia instigating. We never sent someone to look at the spire of Saint Basil (the pathetic excuse offered for explaining the presence of GRU officers in Salisbury carrying out chemical warfare), or really struck at their weak points.
Are you actually saying the US has never engaged in propaganda within another country or attempted to influence the outcomes of their elections or influence their populace to rise up against their leaders?
Not really sure what you're referring. The US has most definitely sprayed poison all over the place in South America with cocoa plant eradication efforts. Or Agent Orange in South East Asia.
If you mean poison as in disinformation, then you'd be wrong there as well. We literally "bombed" Iraq with pamphlets from airplanes encouraging them to rise up against Suddam and we'd be there to support them; we didn't.
