[thanixravindran]

Originally Posted by amit_snk

In order to make myself more clear and answer your points, we need to look at the evolution of democracy as a form of governance. French revolution laid the foundations of modern Democracies in 1789, but USA started propagating this system to the rest of the world only after WW2, when they were challenged by another ideology (Communism) from the east.

During 1960s and 70s, Europe after the war was in ruins, USA was deeply involved in cold war with a formidable USSR, when you are faced with a formidable enemy, in order to keep unity in your own flank, you tend to ignore little delinquents on your side, that's the reason for tolerating dictatorships in Spain and Portugal, this was the same reason USA tried to wean China away from USSR.

Soviets lost, America won the cold war and also the political ideology war in 1990s, Europe achieved historic economic development in this period (HDI of most of EU countries was highest in the world), so confidence, or i should say overconfidence, on Democratic ideology was very high in western world. First challenge they faced after the cold war was Islamic terrorism in the late 1990s onwards, and they try to smash it by Bludgeoning Afghanistan and then Iraq, destroying these nations in the process, but very quickly realised the limits to there power and made the hasty retreat from Iraq and lately from Afghanistan, (Remember, they only provided intelligence and air support in Syrian war and in war against ISIS, no boots on the ground).

Thanks for the response. I have read about democratic ideals, need and origins. One interesting point is both Democracy as well Communism started off to eliminate monarchy but become divergent with Capitalism and class struggle. If I am not wrong, your post calls the overlooking strategy as "Pragmatism" to take on the bigger enemy while for people like me it is just "Duplicity" after seeing this repeatedly only with different actors.

Is there any reason why Middle East people are left out to enjoy the fruits of democracy and Monarchy is 'protected' in exchange for Petro dollars? Is it to avoid energy shocks to the global middle class?

Any reason Why communism was not rooted out in PRC when the 'embrace' happened?

Our Western neighbor has a history of slipping into authoritative rule often but was strongly supported against our democratic nation (except for that two years)?

If one can see the difference between Portugal and Spain in my original post, Portugal was treated with kids gloves than Spain. Why is it?

The real answer is 'Capitalism' in the disguise of Democracy. If any of the above did not indulged or aligned with Capitalist intentions, they would have joined the long list of countries to be 'democratized' through revolutions or branded as 'evils'.

Finally, I know we have very different views on how we 'perceive' things and let there be 'peace' at least here. Thank you!

[AltoLXI]

Begs the question(s)

1. What is disinformation in true sense?
2. How will the West punish itself for disseminating disinformation?

The European Union’s executive plans to propose a new rules to allow them to punish disinformation around the world, citing Russian state-owned television network Russia Today.

Jodep Borrell, the EU’s foreign policy chief, said they should be able to freeze assets and ban travel to the region to punish the spread of misleading information.

“I will propose a new mechanism that will allow us to sanction those malign disinformation actors,” he said.

Borrell said that Moscow’s use of fake news and disinformation in Russia is tantamount to “bombing their minds”.

[amit_snk]

Originally Posted by Samurai

You forget that we Indians actually live in a democratic country (in fact the largest) and we don't need lessons on democracy from others. What west practices is liberal hegemony under the guise of spreading democracy.

Yes, we do live in a largest Democracy and looking at current world order we should be grateful we are born here, but Democracy is not something which is absolute, it's not that you either have it or you don't, countries have it in varying degrees, there are indexes to measure it and India doesn't do too well in the ranking and of late, we have been sliding even further and most the top rankers are EU countries, so 'liberal hegemony', I think is a loaded word, you can say that to some extent for USA, but not the whole Western world

[Whitebear]

Came across this headline today

https://www.businessinsider.com/elon...-russia-2022-3

People really are going overboard.

Imagine if Tesla deactivates cars in Russia,
Stock price will take a good hit, everyone will become wary of buying Teslas.
Will slow down EV Adoption.

[dragracer567]

Originally Posted by RiverRanger

In 1971, US and China ganged up against India and what came to be known as Bangladesh- so it was natural of the Soviet Union to support us and they did it, to their credit.

In the 1962 India-China war, the Soviet Union stayed neutral, saying "we will not interfere between a brother (China- due to communism. Later they fell out) and a friend (India).

So point is- countries do things when they are in their self-interest. Right now our self-interest is to keep quiet and we are doing that. However, we are not at all happy with the way Russia and the West have faced off. We know it won't end up to our advantage in any way. China, on the other hand, is rubbing its hands with glee!

+1

This is the point many Indians fail to understand while blindly supporting Russia. In 1971, the Russians supported India only because having a democratic India on their side was advantageous for them while they wanted to undermine the West who made a huge mistake by supporting Pakistan instead of a democratic India. I've heard stories of how the Russians mistreated Indians back in the day when they went to Russia for training. Even recently, the Russian shipyard tried to extort us during the INS Vikramaditya acquisition before the then Russian President Medvedev intervened. This is while all our recent western weapons system purchases have been delivered on time and on budget.

I would also recommend everyone to read the "international reactions" section of the "2020 India-China Skirmish". While the Russians stayed neutral and kept saying 'both sides' when the attack was clearly initiated by China, it was the US, UK, France, Japan and Australia who strongly voiced their support for India (the Germans and Italians floundered). Russia offcourse tried to sell more weapons but that was more opportunistic than anything else.

I am not trying to discount Russia as one of India's key allies but many of the replies in this thread seem to indicate that Russia has always supported India without reservation while the west are some evil bunch trying to recreate the British Raj. Things are more complicated and nuanced than that, please stop living in 1947 and/or 1971.

[Samurai]

Originally Posted by amit_snk

so 'liberal hegemony', I think is a loaded word, you can say that to some extent for USA, but not the whole Western world

So you think John Mearsheimer is wrong about it? I figured since he is one of the top ten political scientist in the world, we could take his word.

Even Macron (the French President) talked about western hegemony back in 2019.

https://thestandard.org.nz/macron-sp...tern-hegemony/

Now for the first time, here is a video from John Mearsheimer after the Ukraine invasion started. Keep in mind he is an American, a West point graduate, and he spent 10 years in US military (army followed by Airforce). He is also considered the top 10 most influential political scientists today.

Jump to 5:50 position, and he will tell you who is to be blamed for this war. The first 4 minutes, the audio is bad, avoid that part.

https://youtu.be/ppD_bhWODDc?t=350

[haria]

I read a totally different perspective of Russia's invasion in Ukraine in one of my feeds in Quora ... Not NATO, Oil, etc or the regularly talked about points/reasons - But world's most important resource - fresh Water.

I don't know about the accuracy of this, but this answer seems to be well researched one with a lot of useful links in the footnotes.

See the original link of the Quroa answer : https://qr.ae/pGd6Ze


And incidentally, one of the first things Russia did after their invasion was to destroy the temporary dam built by Ukraine to block water to Crimeia.

See the news link :
https://www.reuters.com/world/europe...ia-2022-02-26/

[AltoLXI]

Originally Posted by haria

But world's most important resource - fresh Water.

What is mentioned is true to a large extent. Indeed the Arctic regions are the future for Russia. With immense land mass and fresh water, I would bet on Russia to be the future food basket of the world. In fact Russia would be immensely benefited due to global warming !!

And no country may be better positioned to capitalize on climate change than Russia. Russia has the largest land mass by far of any northern nation. It is positioned farther north than all of its South Asian neighbors, which collectively are home to the largest global population fending off displacement from rising seas, drought and an overheating climate. Like Canada, Russia is rich in resources and land, with room to grow. Its crop production is expected to be boosted by warming temperatures over the coming decades even as farm yields in the United States, Europe and India are all forecast to decrease. And whether by accident or cunning strategy or, most likely, some combination of the two, the steps its leaders have steadily taken — planting flags in the Arctic and propping up domestic grain production among them — have increasingly positioned Russia to regain its superpower mantle in a warmer world.

Link

Another source

[vishnurp99]

Originally Posted by amit_snk

Yes, we do live in a largest Democracy and looking at current world order we should be grateful we are born here, but Democracy is not something which is absolute, it's not that you either have it or you don't, countries have it in varying degrees, there are indexes to measure it and India doesn't do too well in the ranking and of late, we have been sliding even further and most the top rankers are EU countries, so 'liberal hegemony', I think is a loaded word, you can say that to some extent for USA, but not the whole Western world

Well, Here is one such study that is quite reputed. Please go thru it and see the relative rankings. It's in slide 20 if you don't want to go thru the entire study. I had shared it earlier but re-sharing it since this indirect critique of India's democracy may not be accurate.
The study is around the trust that people have in their government, media & leaders.
https://www.edelman.com/sites/g/file...INAL_Jan25.pdf

Originally Posted by Poitive

What I do think we need is people to be able to build a sense of what to trust more, and what to trust less. Some parts are fairly obvious (eg random sensational forward on WhatsApp which has little/no cost to the originator of the message), whereas some are not.

I really like the way you have put it here. I have come around to the view that no media source should be fully trusted. Everybody has an agenda. The best thing to do is to get information from multiple sources and use your reasoning and common sense to build what the truth is.
When companies from one country control all elements of information flow like search engines, browsers, operating systems etc. then getting information from multiple sources become difficult in a conflict situation. if you can control all information flow and censor views, then there is no reason to even put dissidents in jail .

[dragracer567]

This video more or less sums up the NATO expansion argument: "You can’t start wars over a verbal agreement, made before most of your soldiers were even born."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gg0OWPjdLzU

[deetee]

Disclaimer - this is loosely speculated but not entirely baseless. Consider this a conspiracy theory if you may, but is not an impossibility.

I have a feeling this Ukraine war is beginning of great mean reversion in world at large. Actually, I think 2020 was the beginning of this phenomena, with the covid attacking every corner of the world. The past 70 years or so have been relatively peaceful, prosperous and quite progressive. Man made great progress in technology and civilization. Consequently we overutilised natural resources pushing everything to the limits. That is like a large swing from the mean ( a balanced world ).
Similar is the case with currencies, geopolitical balance etc. Over these years the balance has swung heavily to one side (details were already in this thread in several well informed posts by members). Now, the momentum of that swing is exhausting and overall balance (geopolitical, natural resources, human civilisation) will return towards the mean and may also swing a bit or more to otherside (not going to be pretty).
So, in the coming years, we may see a lot less peaceful world, more natural calamities, lots of reversion into older ways of living etc.,. That's not something any of us want but at a larger level it is something that is going to come upon the entire world.

Edit: we may think advent of electrical cars is a progress over ICE vehicles, but that seems to be a spike before things come back to old ways. As energy costs rises, even the electricity cost increases, materials required to make huge amounts of batteries may exhaust - ultimately people may rely on animal powered / human powered transport for local conveyance while ICE vehicles (with expensive fuel) may still be used for unavoidable purposes and public transport.

[condor]

So after almost 3 weeks of conflict, and the US/NATO involvement level, the destructions, and the impact across the world - are we now going to see a de-escalation of the situation ?




https://www.1lurer.am/en/2022/03/08/...elensky/677302


Which ever way things unfold from here, Ukraine's had it. I had mentioned earlier about the convicts who were released, and other mercenaries etc coming in into Ukraine. Its going to be a tough path ahead. Economy, Law and order, psychological scars ...

Russia will walk away with relatively minor damages. US/NATO lose some even by just being where they are - on the side-lines.

Was it the German Chancellor who had said it openly a few days back that there is no plans to get Ukraine into NATO ?

[SnS_12]

Originally Posted by condor

So after almost 3 weeks of conflict, and the US/NATO involvement level, the destructions, and the impact across the world - are we now going to see a de-escalation of the d sad situation?

Sanctions are being intensified on Russia by the West but what is the effects of it on Russia? They just get more aggressive with words and actions.

And who is waving the white flag now?

Yesterday it was German Chancellor Olaf Scholz

And today Zelensky

Wonder who will join them next...

[Samurai]

Originally Posted by Samurai

Jump to 5:50 position, and he will tell you who is to be blamed for this war. The first 4 minutes, the audio is bad, avoid that part.

Wow... when I posted this link I had only watched like 15 minutes. But it is a 100 minutes video with some of the top experts in International relations, CIA veterans, US state department veterans... All in all, I think the collectives knowledge of US-Russia geopolitics of these people is slightly higher than we folks in the thread.

The guy who translated the messages between JFK & Khrushchev during Cuban Missile crisis is also one of the speakers.

Most of us are doing speculations, but these guys are giving definitive answers on how things will proceed based on their extensive knowledge...

Couple of things mentioned there:
1) Sanctions don't deter nations. Cuba and Iran have withstood sanctions for decades and they haven't caved. Russia is much more powerful compared to them.
2) Nationalism trumps liberalism. When a country is attacked, citizens rally around the leader, any leader they have at the moment. We see it happening in Ukraine. If West tries to sanction and isolate Russia, then Russians will rally around Putin. In fact, John Mearsheimer confirmed that he is getting 100s of emails from regular Russians that they put country first. His old videos have become very popular in Russia once the invasion started.

PS: In the comments section there are plenty of Russians and Ukrainians agreeing with the analysis of these experts.

[NiInJa]

https://www.thehindu.com/news/intern...?homepage=true

Is this the beginning of the end?

I find Zelenskyy's statement: “I have cooled down regarding this question a long time ago after we understood that ... NATO is not prepared to accept Ukraine,” little intriguing. He is the leader of the country and should have known this much before February 24.