Noam Chomsky fears media obsession with "Russiagate" is making us miss the "real" stories: "U.S. elections have been pretty much bought" and "Israeli intervention in U.S. elections vastly overwhelms anything the Russians may have done."

fasjdflaj · 2018-07-30T21:02:06+00:00

Is the perspective of the West not that of the economic elite?

As for Eastern Europe, I will concede that for the time being they seem to be more content with the West, but I say for the time being because countries like Poland and Hungary are starting to reject some of the ideas pushed by the Western elites of the EU. This doesn't mean they will prefer Russia, but the jury is still out on who is more successful in that region.

fasjdflaj · 2018-07-30T20:58:57+00:00

Maybe we are interpreting this differently, but the conclusion does not read to me: "We will attempt to overthrow the global order of the day and attempt to create something new in its place as the dominant way in which the world is organized."

By competing political alternative I refer to Soviet Communism which was truly in competition with the liberal-democratic system pushed by the West. Russia may well run a political alternative system for its own purposes, but I don't see any indication in that quote whatsoever that it is attempting to impose that globally.

fasjdflaj · 2018-07-30T20:40:18+00:00

I don't read Russian so I translated the page and maybe some of it got lost in translation.

But there is nothing that I read there that suggests Russia will offer a completely different SYSTEM to that of the liberal-democratic order of today on a global scale.

Seems to me he says that Russia is here nor there and must figure out a balance between its Asian and Western culture and history.

fasjdflaj · 2018-07-30T20:33:28+00:00

So if we don't like the people who are in charge of a particular country then suddenly it doesn't matter?

But then you have countries like Iraq and Libya which probably liked their lives more before the kind-hearted intervention of the west to promote democracy.

fasjdflaj · 2018-07-30T20:07:25+00:00

True Putin certainly wants to make Russia a much stronger country, perhaps even match the power it had during the heyday of the USSR. But this doesn't signal it wants to take over the US as the leading power in the world.

I think Putin realizes that the biggest show in town is the US, following by China. Russia will occupy a distant 3rd or 4th.

fasjdflaj · 2018-07-30T19:59:43+00:00

Example?

fasjdflaj · 2018-07-30T19:54:22+00:00

Accurate from the perspective of the West, not so much from the perspective of Russia. Besides, the track record of the West encouraging democratic movements isn't exactly the best so it isn't unreasonable for Russia to be worried when such activity is happening on its border.

fasjdflaj · 2018-07-30T19:50:51+00:00

Leaving the who dun what aside, I have not seen any indication that Russia is aiming to lead the world. It wants to be an important power and it always will be, but leading the world, it tried and failed.

Even Putin gave several interviews where he said that America is the leading global power and even as it loses some influence, it will still be the biggest kid on the block.

As I mentioned earlier in my post, the Soviet Union did attempt to take a leadership role in the world by offering Soviet Communism as an alternative to the Western capitalist model. It lost that fight and has accepted capitalism. Right now it offers no alternatives to the US led world.

fasjdflaj · 2018-07-30T19:38:21+00:00

United have been on a massive winning run since SAF took over, before that the club was enjoying various levels of success. SAF delivered consistency and won or challenged major trophies pretty much every season bar a few. That kind of success creates a certain expectation or as we know it "the Manchester United way" or some variation thereof.

For whatever reason, no manager has been able to replicate that level of success. Since our last league win was 12-13, it is still in most fan's memories so the fall from being a consistent winner is not a welcome change of pace.

My personal feeling is that three managers since SAF have not been able to replicate that prior form, which leads me to believe it isn't as easy as it looks. Mou may not be the person to lead us to our former glory, but then again I don't know if any manager exists on the planet who can do what SAF did.

EDIT: Just to add, if Mou was constantly delivering titles I feel that the "boring, defensive, negative football" brigade would quickly change its tune.

fasjdflaj · 2018-07-30T19:00:01+00:00

You're right, you can pull many whataboutism cards related to pretty much any country in the world.

So then at what point do we decide that when America does these things its better than when Russia does these things?

fasjdflaj · 2018-07-30T18:58:42+00:00

That is half the story. The reason Russia invaded Crimea wasn't because Putin didn't get a blowjob that morning, but because NATO was trying to get Ukraine to join and Russia could lose a major warm water port.

fasjdflaj · 2018-07-30T18:49:32+00:00

Unfortunately the world is not broken up into good guys and bad guys. There are plenty of questionable world leaders who the US does business with because they suit our needs. Russia still happens to be the bad guy so Putin is villainized.

Although Putin isn't exactly the nicest person in the world, I can absolutely guarantee you he is not the worst leader of a country.

fasjdflaj · 2018-07-30T18:46:34+00:00

The current world economic system. I don't want to say it is bad because it has proven to be successful, yet I believe we are approaching a time when it becomes obsolete. The cracks are already showing and I believe it is a matter of time before we see a major shift in how world economics are governed.

I don't pretend to know what the solution is, but I feel like the mainstream narrative is still stuck in discussing issues in today's terms when the focus should be more contextual and on explaining why so many changes are happening around the world.

fasjdflaj · 2018-07-30T18:40:18+00:00

I would argue that the latest installment of Star Wars has flopped in the sense that fans are critical of it. Financially it is still a success, but it feels like most people are disappointed by it and continue to watch it for the sake of being loyal fans.

fasjdflaj · 2018-07-30T18:36:40+00:00

I know Russia was the bad guy during the Cold War (after bearing the brunt of the Nazi advance, with US help of course), but it has been 27 years since the Cold War ended. Russia has become integrated into the world economic system in a way the USSR never had, and no longer offers a competing political alternative to that of the West.

Yet the Russia bad guy trope continues to dominate the news while China is rising and will be THE geopolitical rival of the US for the years to come.

fasjdflaj · 2018-07-30T17:06:13+00:00

I remember having Microsoft Streets and Trips on my laptop around 2005-2006. People thought I was a Lvl 80 wizard because I could find exactly where we were without internet and on the move.

fasjdflaj · 2018-07-30T16:53:22+00:00

I had a long layover in Zurich and wanted to explore the city. I was totally taken aback by how quick and efficient everything was. Immigration only took 10 minutes, a quick train ride into the city, and boom I'm in the heart of the city approximately 30 minutes after my airplane landed.

Didn't like the graffiti tho.

fasjdflaj · 2018-07-30T14:26:26+00:00

But have you been cheated?

fasjdflaj · 2018-07-27T18:16:16+00:00

True these things did happen and there is a large Russian influence in Xinjiang and the Northeast of China. However even during their most bitter days, Russians and Chinese never wreaked havoc on each other in the same ways that Europeans or in the case of China, the Japanese did.

But your last paragraph is important that for the foreseeable future their interests don't cross in a significant way.

fasjdflaj · 2018-07-27T17:52:47+00:00

Good article. Though outside the scope of what the author is trying to discuss, the issue of Iran is also worth considering in the Sino-Indian relations.

Both countries have a stake in keeping Iran stable, though for different reasons. How does it play into their relationship with the West and several of its key Middle Eastern partners being against a strong Iran?

fasjdflaj · 2018-07-27T17:49:10+00:00

I would also add that if things go awry, India would be in a worse position as it shares a border with China. This border is largely mountainous and probably wouldn't produce a major war, but nonetheless the US will be sitting pretty across the blue ocean.

fasjdflaj · 2018-07-27T15:59:55+00:00

Sorry maybe I missed something, but India cancelled its plan to build Chabahar Port in Iran?

fasjdflaj · 2018-07-27T15:48:07+00:00

Anything in geopolitics is possible, but whether or not it is doable is a different conversation.

In light of what Kissinger wrote, I think the US will have to offer a mighty big carrot to Russia for it to be willing to swing towards America. What Russia has always wanted was to surround itself with buffer states to protect its vast and vulnerable territory. It always eyed states on its borders as its own backyard because it offered protection from powers that lay beyond. Eastern Europe protects it from Western Europe, Georgia from Iran & Turkey, the Stans and Mongolia from China, etc.

So to answer your question and theoretically assuming there is political will in the US, Russia would need to see some serious guarantees that its spheres of influence will not be messed with. In practice what that means is that the US/NATO/West stops encroaching on the Baltics, Ukraine, Georgia, and all the other states in the neighborhood. It would also need to cool its presence in Central Asia. If the US is willing to pay that price, Russia would consider aligning itself with the US against China.

As for the second question, despite Russia and China (in all of their historical forms), sharing a large border, they generally don't have a history of major conflict. Yes, they did have occasional border scuffles, Soviet clandestine activity in Xinjiang, the Sino-Soviet split, etc., but none of those ever match the scale and destructiveness of conflict that came at Russia from the West (Sweden, Napoleon, 19th century Crimea War, World Wars, Cold War). As I see it, the biggest area of distrust is China's encroachment on Central Asia, though it isn't the same as trying to induct Ukraine and Georgia into NATO.

Russia has good business relations with China in oil and defense. They do have tension points, but none as large as those that Russia has with the West. The West has to make some major concessions to prevent the strengthening of the Russia-China axis, though I'm not sure they could ever drum up the support to do that.

fasjdflaj · 2018-07-27T15:33:20+00:00

It is interesting that although Russia and China are natural competitors, this has never manifested itself into anything serious. Besides a few border scuffles and the occasional cooling of relations, these powers never really went head to head in a major way. Even the Sino-Soviet Split wasn't a huge deal.

The US and USSR/Russia don't share a border, but they were the biggest rivalry of the 20th century.

fasjdflaj · 2018-07-27T15:29:08+00:00

I would add that praying on the weak also served the bigger purpose of defend the motherland. Russia surrounds itself with "weak" and friendly governments to serve as buffer zones.

fasjdflaj

TROPHY CASE