>>24473775 (OP)
literally who

I think the way these “realists” use realism as a cover to do retard analysis and make apology for either delusional libertarianism or third worldist BRICS cope/propaganda. The “liberal hegemony” neocons that they criticize so much are ironically more realistic than they are.

>>24473818
John Mearsheimer, one of the only geopolitical theorists who isn't a fucking retard since 1990. Has a very basic, sensible theory (offensive realism) for why states act the way they act in their mutual strategic balancing efforts. Also wrote THE book on the Israel lobby, highly controversial, back before it was easy to do so.

It's shocking how such a simply theory even has to be stated explicitly by a scholar, but when you read Mearsheimer and then read everybody else, you realize that he's like a deceptively plain-spoken 150 IQ man in a sea of much louder 90-110 IQ people who somehow wield much more power. For example when he says "Britain didn't want Germany getting too powerful on the continent because it jeopardized its ability to balance continental powers against one another" and the entire foreign policy establishment screeches "NOOOOO IT WAS BECAUSE HITLER WAS EVIL AND CHURCHILL WAS LIKE THE AVENGERS LUKE SKYWALKER" it doesn't give you the impression that Mearsheimer is a controversial genius among other geniuses, but a relatively normal perceptive guy in a room full of retards.

>>24473845
Which ones, the evangelicals who say Israel is the Chosen People or the Jewish neocons Colin Powell called "fucking crazies" in the 80s and who are now burning up all the US' materiel in Ukraine (and soon Iran) while China is much more of a threat and is laughing?

>>24473775 (OP)
If the theory that says "we are just chimpanzees with machine guns" is the best explanation for this world, what is the point of reading literature?

>>24473775 (OP)
Are you aware we’re potentially hours away from America launching another imperial war effort that will decisively reduce our standing in global power? You think acknowledging such a reality is “wrong?”

>>24473775 (OP)
thanks for being white, cultured, 30+ and having an iq over 100
>>24473847
he assigns agency to the west while analyzing russia like some wild animal. double standards and all that.
this faggot is audience captured. or compromised. maybe just a grifter.

>>24473999
>white, cultured, 30+ and having an iq over 100
Warmongering Jews who captured our country's leadership are high IQ yes but they most certainly are not white

>>24473999
>he assigns agency to the west while analyzing russia like some wild animal
how is that different from the current theory of mind as practiced by most Western political theorists

>>24473775 (OP)
But he was right about everything, look at the latest corpse exchange.

>>24474209
i actually wasn't aware. suppose that is the case-- what are you suggesting? an inherent flaw w/ this sort of analysis, or a tragic lack of consistent standards?

>>24473999
>>24474227
>analyzing russia like some wild animal
>look at the latest corpse exchange.
If one were to criticize the true or imagined indifference of Ukrainians to their dead, it would be more convincing if those six thousand dead were still lying in Rostov or whatever morgue, undisturbed and unmolested. And here it looked like the abuse of dead bodies was the real goal of the Russian side. There was no destination point, the bodies were loaded into the car for the sole purpose of having a necrophiliac general pose against their background and people in overalls open the doors - 'look, look, dead bodies, they aren't taking them'.
If it was trolling, they succeeded

>>24473775 (OP)
go away

>>24473775 (OP)
Not true, his book The Israel Lobby is very enlightening and informative.
His other books focusing on geopolitics are slop doe

>>24473977
Qrd? I don't follow the news

>>24473847
How does he stack up in arguments with liberal
theorists like G John Ikenberry?

>>24473999
most "rational agents" act like wild animals when you corner them, anon. have you forgotten that humanity is a rational animal?

>>24474614
the framework can (and should be) applied both ways. this is my entire point. NATO has it's interests it needs to exert under his framework. mearsheimer tends to ignore the smaller countries as pawns rather than sovereign states who seek their own solutions. and it's still a double standard despite this

that's not all-- though i'm forgetting, what was the threat to russia? the loss of the buffer zone? or something more? because their actions contradict this either way

>>24474479
Also there is no verification of the bodies, it's likely a large portion of them are just decomposed Russians that the russian MOD marked as "MIA" so they don't need to pay their families

>>24474646
Mearsheimer is saying that NATO has taken enough. There's a point where it's no longer strategic self-interest and just plain greed and provocation.

>>24473775 (OP)
Trust. The. Plan.

>>24474568
>slop doe
Kill yourself.

>>24473847
How is that different from what Kissinger wrote in Diplomacy?

>>24474872
he said that though?

>>24475141
>America destroys Iranian nuclear plants
>Ayatollah assassinated, Iranians happy about it, America and Israel slow down the attacks and let the regime collapse by funding internal dissident segments
>New Iranian state is created from the already existing democratic institutions and liberalism of the urban population
>Arab states happy that Iran is no longer a threat
>America and Israel use this leverage to force Arabs to take in the surviving Gazan Palestinians, Israel effectively ends the conflict after annexing West Bank
>Arabs can't say shit about it and all the Muslim countries just move ahead with Abraham Accords
>Russia now left without yet another anti-West ally in Iran, Trump softens on Zelensky and supports him more
>Ukraine successfully fends off Russia
>Democrats win in 2028 after people tire of tumultuous Trump years
>Boomers start to die out including the elderly Trump himself, allowing the progressive liberalism of the younger generations to be restored
>Despite millions of seething Muslims and conservatives, the Middle East is more peaceful and Liberalism is back to ending history.
The script is already written. You should have listened to him.

>>24475419
Do you actually believe in stuff like this?

>>24475429
Yes. Why shouldn’t I? Do you see anyone doing anything for Gaza? Do you see anyone defecting to Russia? Do you see anyone weeping that Iran might collapse? No. Because we all implicitly want liberalism to succeed and will embrace it at any cost. Let this conservative moment fizzle out and everyone will admit that again.

>>24475419
we will be greeted as liberators.


wait, ive seen this one before

>>24475572
nta, but if trump crosses that line and goes to war for israel maga will implode. You will see liberals, libertarians, nationalists, communists, marching hand in hand against the war

oh and may i suggest looking at a topographical map of iran, its nothing but mountains, have fun fighting that insurgency.

>>24475591
It won’t be a full blown war. Only strikes which precipitate an organic regime change from within.

>>24475601
Yeah that's what will happen if you topple the multiethnic theocracy

Bump

I really wonder who pays him and jeffrey sachs. They do all those weird talks about geopolitics with weirds guests. With both of them just shitting on the US for an hour straight.
Still Mearsheimer doesn't seem quite as retarded as Sachs

>>24474479
> And here it looked like the abuse of dead bodies was the real goal of the Russian side.
It forces Ukraine to pay out to their families once they are identified, which Ukraine can barely do, its also the morally correct thing to do.

>>24474646
> what was the threat to russia? the loss of the buffer zone? or something more?
The threats were many:

1) That the USA or other NATO countries would put both first-strike nuclear missiles in Ukraine along with anti-missile radar and anti-missile systems designed to give NATO an edge in any nuclear exchange.

2) That NATO would take over the critical Russian naval base in Crimea and use that as a base of operations close to Russia for anti-Russian naval operations like blockades etc.

3) That Ukraine would be used as a staging area for a physical invasion of Russia carrier out in leu of the assumption that Mutually-Assured Destruction would prevent Russia from responding with Nuclear means

4) Lastly, like how China sees itself as the protector of ethnic Chinese, Russia sees itself as the protector of ethnic Russians who were stranded in the millions outside of Russia due to the Soviet Union not caring about the ethnicity of areas and their democratic will when drawing borders. An attack on Russian populations by repressing them, banning their political parties, arresting their activists, banning their language in education, media, business etc is an attack on the people that the Russian State exists to protect.

How does any system of analysis besides realism even begin to make sense for international relations?

>>24476791
Just because it brands itself as "political realism" doesn't mean that other frameworks are antirealist or something stupid like that.

>>24476789
That's total bullshit and you know it. First nuclear warheads can be launched from Estonia (and now Finland). Second, Black Sea is nothing without Turkey's consent. The same with land invasion.

The only real reason of the invasion of Ukraine is Putin's regime stability, to sell Russians "Kiev in 3 days" (then) or stolen Ukrainian lands (now). NATO could destroy Russia hundreds times with this incompetence of Putin's regime, but it's not interested in it at all.

>>24476737
Chinese intelligence likely

>>24477503
> That's total bullshit and you know it. >First nuclear warheads can be launched from Estonia (and now Finland).
Thats a non-sequitur, simply because they can be launched from Estonia doesnt mean its not a threat if they could be launched from Ukraine

>Second, Black Sea is nothing without Turkey's consent.
Closing off the strait entirely is legally an act of war

> The only real reason is (cope)
dont make me laugh

>>24473845
I think his supporters misinterpret him. You sounds like your idea of realism and his arguments comes from Putinists on twitter

He's ultimately on the side of neocons, just pessimistic about their current endeavours and wants to pivot back to containment of China.

In his ideal world Ukraine would never have given up their nukes

>>24477735
lmao

>>24477735
>doesnt mean its not a threat
So, you you decided not to deal with the original threat in the first place and just invade a country which wanted to join the EU. You are either stupid or hypocrite.

>Closing off the strait entirely is legally an act of war
Why are you so stupid, mate? If NATO is going to invade Russia, nobody cares about another act of war.

>dont make me laugh
Fuck off, Ivan.

>>24476789
>Lastly, like how China sees itself as the protector of ethnic Chinese
Ethnic Chinese in Siberia and Russian Far East? It would be funny if China annexes Siberia as result of this political adventure of the stupid KGB idiot.

>>24476789
>Russia sees itself as the protector of ethnic Russians
Kek, even lmao. There were almost zero Russians, who died in Ukraine because of ethnic conflicts in the period from 1991 till the beggining of the invasion in 2014. And there were tons of Russians who died in Russia at the hands of Chechens and other minorities in the same period. Vlad doesn't give a fuck about Russians, because they are just cattle.

>>24478411
To be fair you make a good point regarding the Baltic countries, but you're also being disingenuous by implying that Putin was in a position to do anything in the early 2000s, or that there is anything he could do now.

The Russian state had only recently begun to recover from the collapse of the Soviet Union, and the Baltic states joined the NATO and EU in one fell swoop (seriously, within a month of each organization, and they joined NATO first). What are you supposed to do about that? There's not much you can do once it happens except something that would immediately invoke Article 5.

You make a good point about NATO already being in a position to checkmate Putin in terms of first-strike nuclear capabilities, I think, but then again, I don't see why Putin wouldn't want to give himself more breathing room. Having one weak flank is better than being forced into a pincer from the north and south, no?

But I don't really understand the specifics of nuclear strategy here. I'm just pointing out that you have a point but you're also being misrepresentative in certain ways.

>>24478720
>state had only recently begun to recover
Kek. Russia is a third-world failed petrostate with Soviet legacy, which was saved by good will of the West on the 1990s and high oil prices in the 2000s. It only recovers from brains and general welfare in the vein of North Korea and Iran. If NATO wanted it, it could have already disintegrated Russia by imposing a total embargo, even without any military measures. So this bullshit about nuclear strikes is just bullshit for brainlets, Ivan. The only real and logical reason for the war is Putin's regime stability and his today's endgame is to sell Russians 5 stolen Ukrainian regions as a great victory, which legitimates his 25+ years in power.

>>24478720
Mate, do you remember in the famous interview Putin said that it began with NATO or with Ruryk? Why are you talking about NATO or first strikes if Putin is concerned mainly about Ruryk. Maybe you should read some regional historians instead of Messerschmidt or whatever this guy's name is.

>>24478411
> So, you you decided not to deal with the original threat in the first place
Because it had already joined NATO, by entering the Ukraine, Putin prevented a much larger landmass closer to Russias central regions being uses for that stuff.

>>24478635
> Ethnic Chinese in Siberia and Russian Far East?
They are not under any threat that would cause China to seek to annex those regions, unlike the real threats Russian speakers faced in Ukraine

>>24478701
> There were almost zero Russians, who died in Ukraine because of ethnic conflicts in the period from 1991 till the beggining of the invasion in 2014
Since the coup in 2014, the Ukrainian government and military have killed more Russian speaking civilians in Ukraine than the number of victims of 9/11

>>24478748
> If NATO wanted it, it could have already disintegrated Russia by imposing a total embargo
Are you retarded? Russia’s economy does not depend on trade with NATO countries at all

>>24478960
That's China to decide.

>>24478963
After the annexation of Crimea and Girkin/Russian military invasion in the spring of 2014. Yes, it happens that hostages die during rescue missions, but nobody would have died if there were no terrorists in the first place.

>>24478965
Yeah, petroeuros just fall down from the sky. And have been falling all these decades because NATO wanted to destroy Ruzzia.

>>24478748
> Russia is a third-world failed petrostate with Soviet legacy,
Its economic growth is better than the entire G7 and EU, its the 4th country in world in terms of GDP per PPP, above Germany and Japan, and it has a large, developed self-sufficient economy. The percent of the federal budget that is due to energy sales is half of what many petrostates have. Germanys economy is more dependent on export-earnings than the Russian economy is. Russia has also shown that it can mobilize its economy to produce vital goods like ammunition way more efficiently than the West can, as several too western military and political leaders have noted that Russia is making more artillery shells annually than all of the NATO countries combined. This is the opposite of a “failed stated”.

>>24478999
>Ivan actually believes in it
Fucking kek. I can insert "Zimbabwe" instead of Russia and it will make the same amount of sense.

>>24478995
> That's China to decide.
It is China’s choice, but its retarded NAFOid cope for losing the war in the Ukraine to think that China would invade its informal ally whom it would depend upon for energy in the event of any western naval blockade of oil shipments overseas to China in the event of a conflict. If China had any attention to invade Russia it would not be setting up multiple oil and gas pipelines from Russia, but they have been.

> Yes, it happens that hostages die during rescue missions, but
Wrong retard, AFU has been periodically shooting artillery shells and missiles at civilian areas in Donbass City and thereby killing random civilians as acts of terrorism for over a decade by now.

>yeah, petroeuros just fall down from the sky
This chart shows how insignificant EU purchase of Russian energy products are. In 3 out of 5 categories, EU is only around 5%-10% of sales, in 2 categories the EU is only around 50%. The EU could stop energy purchases totally from Russia (which they would never do) and the Russians would just redirect those sales to Asian countries without any significant problems. Russia and China are working on opening a 2nd LNG pipeline as we speak.

>>24478999
>Russia is making more artillery shells annually than all of the NATO countries combined.
How so? I though NATO is planning to invade Russia.

>>24479007
Everything in that post is an easily verifiable fact. After being debunked now you are just coping with empty rhetoric. Sad!

>>24479020
> How so? I though NATO is planning to invade Russia.
Because while NATO elites have designs on Russia they are completely incompetent at industrial planning especially as relates to military means.

>>24479017

>to think that China would invade its informal ally
Yeah, Ukrainians also thought that Russia didn't invade their country and also had all these memorandums and treaties. But maybe Xi thinks that he will be able to raise his popularity by annexing Siberia instead of Taiwan.

>AFU has been
Ivan, you are bad at causality as I see. Without Girkin and other shit there would have been no ATO, etc.

>after EU bans
You are just retarded. If the West imposed a total embargo in the beginning of 2022, Russia would economically collapsed by now and NATO would annex any Russian territories they wanted if they wanted them. But they still give Russia petroeuros, the US still wants normalization abandoning Ukraine, etc. They still give your ffucking country a chance. Or you are retarded, Ivan, or it is just another stupid self-victimization tactics.

>>24479027
>we invade other countries because we fear a NATO invasion
>but we believe that NATO is incompetent to carry out any invasion
Yeah, I see some logic here.

>>24479021
>fucking Ivan even doesn't know anything about Russian National Wealth Fund which sponsors his war and economy and which was created with Western petromoney and Western good will.
Sad.

>>24475419
>America destroys Iraqi WMDs
>Saddam assassinated, Iraqis happy about it, America and Britain slow down the occupation and let the regime collapse by funding internal dissident segments
>New Iraqi state is created from the already existing democratic institutions and liberalism of the urban population
>Arab states happy that Iraq is no longer a threat
>America and Israel use this leverage to force Arabs to take in the Palestinian refugees, Israel effectively ends the conflict after annexing West Bank
>Arabs can't say shit about it and all the Muslim countries just move ahead with the Roadmap for Peace
>Russia now left without yet another anti-West ally in Iraq, Bush supports Georgia more
>Georgia successfully fends off Russian influence
>Democrats win in 2008 after people tire of tumultuous Bush years
>The Silent Generation start to die out including the elderly Bush himself, allowing the progressive liberalism of the younger generations to be restored
>Despite millions of seething Muslims and conservatives, the Middle East is more peaceful and Liberalism is back to ending history.
>The script was already written. You should have listened to him.

>>24479094
Putin could just have not stolen state property and money to make his friends billionaires from the beginning of his presidency so he would have been able to peacefully leave politics in 2008 and that's all, we would live in another world.

>>24479056
> But maybe Xi thinks that he will be able to raise his popularity by annexing Siberia instead of Taiwan.
Faced with the unbearable reality of Russia cruising towards total victory in the Ukraine, the pathetic NAFOid can only result to hypothetical “what-ifs” and imagined fantasies with no basis.

> Without Girkin and other shit there would have been no ATO, etc.
It does’t matter the reason, a country conducting itself that way is a casus belli either way

> If the West imposed a total embargo in the beginning of 2022, Russia would economically collapsed by now
utterly delusional

>>24479066
NATO still has nukes and ABM systems that present a threat and which legitimize removing the threat presented by the Ukraine, even absent a physical ground invasion, the latter is just another layer of potential threat and not the main reason.
>>24479111
>that's all, we would live in another world.
The other too Russian officials are even more hardline than Putin and would have carried out the war in the Ukraine without taking extreme care to avoid civilian loss and humanitarian catastrophe like Putin has.

>>24479152
>total victory in the Ukraine
Two more weeks?

If Mearsheimer is so stupid then who can I read for good geopolitical analysis?

>>24479181
>good geopolitical analysis
That's oversimplified shit in most cases. Just read regional history books, as general so dedicated to a concrete regime, and make your own conclusions.

>>24479172
>Two more weeks
The trendline of the war is obvious, undeniable and irreversible

In 2024 and the first half of 2025 Russia captured 4,168 square km of land and 1,935 square km, respectively. In total, around 6,000 square km, or around twenty-three (23!) times more territory than Ukraine’s disastrous failed 2023 counter-offensive captured (253 square km) that was supposed to turn the war in Ukraine’s failure, and which will live forever in infamy in history books as a colossal and ruinous failure.

In 2024 and 2025 the Russians also:

>captured fortress cities like Avdiivka, Toretsk and Vuhledar
>rolled up the entire AFU defense line in SE-Donbass
>Kicked the Ukrainians out of Kursk while inflicting massive casualties the whole
time by having drone control of the only roads in/out Kursk
>Established a massive bridgehead over the river north of Kupyansk and connected it by road to Russia
>Broke through the AFU defenses in between Pokrovsk and Kostantynovka and are pushing deep into Ukrainian rear areas.
>Right now the Russians are conducting an unstoppable advance towards Sumy that the AFU has been helpless in the face of, Sumy itself being a short drive from Kiev

Meanwhile:

>USA has ended all aid, Europe has no cheap energy to make more shells and weapons
>The AFU is facing increasing resistance to its forced recruitment and there is a rise in attacks on and bombing of mobilizers
>The AFU is catastrophically short of men and is outnumbered by 10 to 1 on some areas of the front
>China is cutting off drone supply to Ukraine but not Russia, reducing Ukraine’s drones

Ukraine and the AFU is a walking corpse right now, just waiting for the final blow that leads to a collapse and puts it out of misery. When is the last time they even recaptured a village due to a counterattack? At the beginning of the year?

>>24473775 (OP)
I thought it was funny he gave a lecture before the Ukraine war that Russia wouldn't invade because it's be retarded and bad for Russia.

>>24475591
I don't think there's going to be any ground invasion. It's also remarkable how weak the anti-war movement is despite the high level of anti-war sentiment that exists. I don't have a good explanation for it.

>>24479424
>t.

>>24473845
Neocons are complete fucking retards who destroyed US hegemony. They're gonna do it again too unless reality forces them to enter it.

>>24479094
This would've happened in non-retards were president

>>24473775 (OP)
Qrd, isn't this the #1 political scientist of this planet? Iirc he was spot on with a prediction, but that may have been like 20 years ago.
He started to post pretty much on yt since corona, didn't he?

>>24473847
>Britain didn't want Germany getting too powerful on the continent because it jeopardized its ability to balance continental powers against one another
This is still a fiction though. What does it even mean? Why did "Britain" want to "balance continental powers against one another"? What are the actual spiritual bases for "Britain's" desire here, residing in the hearts of the individuals making such actions?

The only geopolitical theory that makes sense to me is the left wing one. The left would say not "Britain", but the British upper classes, had an economic interest in the war, and as they control the government they decided to go to war. I'm not saying that's correct - but that's the only theory that doesn't rely on fictionalised language and just-so explanations. Everyone can understand what it means for the rich in Britain to want to increase and maintain their riches, but the idea that "Britain" wants to "balance power" is to me even more meaningless than the idea that they did it for moral reasons.

>>24479424
Who would've thought before 2022 that Russians would have failed to topple the Ukrainian government or achieve any of their objectives after 3 years of brutal fighting while bragging on social media that they're "winning". Yes, obviously you're winning, you've got 5x the population of Ukraine and much more equipment and arms. The embarrassment is in how slowly you're doing it and at what cost. This is something Russia has faced throughout its history - against Finland, against Japan, against Germany. You win wars because you've got an endless supply of slavscum meat that you overwhelm your adversaries with. But you always take massive losses in the process. That's why we call you Orcs, among other reasons.

>>24480079
>But you always take massive losses in the proces-ACK

In modern wars artillery still kills the most troops, now followed by drones. Russia has way more artillery tubes, artillery shells and drones than Ukraine does.

Because of largely this fact, there has been at least a 5:1 K/D ratio in favor of Russia (5 dead hohols for every dead Russian) for most of the conflict, at times and in certain areas its been even higher.

Pic related is a chart of dead AFU bodies exchanged by Russia vs dead Russian bodies exchanged by Ukraine. As you can see, Russia has a near endless supply of dead AFU to exchange while in some weeks Ukraine has so little dead Russian bodies the exchange is one-sided with Ukraine returning zero bodies because they have none.

>>24480079
You lost NAFOtroon

>>24473775 (OP)
In 89 he would've said that USSR is never going away, same as Kissinger said, he's either very narrow minded or gets paid to be an idiot

>>24480142
I have no idea who's lost more soldiers. You might be right that Ukraine has lost more but like I said you're fighting a country with 5x less population while having the second best-funded military in the world, and you're having a very tough go of it.

>In modern wars artillery still kills the most troops, now followed by drones.
How do you know artillery kills more than drones? Where are you getting this information from? I would assume that drones kill more.
>Russia has way more artillery tubes, artillery shells and drones than Ukraine does.
How do you know Russia has more drones?
>Pic related is a chart of dead AFU bodies exchanged by Russia vs dead Russian bodies exchanged by Ukraine.
Russia is advancing, so they will have more bodies naturally. If two sides fight a battle and side A loses 10k soldiers and side B loses 15k, but side B ends up winning the battle and conquering the territory, side B will take control of all the dead bodies, both their own and those of side A. Side B lost more, but they'd have more bodies to exchange.

Anyway, about 140,000 Ukrainian soldiers have died. This is from the UALosses project, which tracks soldier deaths verified by name. 76,000 soldiers have died (verified by name) and 64,000 are missing (so I assumed they were dead to get the figure 140k).

Mediazona tracks Russian dead (also verified by name), and says 111,387 are confirmed dead (not including those who are missing) and estimates that 165,000 are dead.

So it's not 5:1 according to the best estimates, it's more like 50:50, with arguably less Ukrainians dead by a small factor.

There was also other evidence such as the Oryx project which showed Ukraine destroying much more Russian vehicles but that's outdated now I believe.

>>24480248
> How do you know artillery kills more than drones? Where are you getting this information from? I would assume that drones kill more.
>Russia has way more artillery tubes, artillery shells and drones than Ukraine does.
>How do you know Russia has more drones
As someone who has followed the conflict closely, I have seen both confirmed by multiple interviews with officers and/or frontline troops from both sides. Only recently has drone kills starting to get close to artillery kills, and when you add in all the other long-range strike systems which Russia has in abundance and which Ukraine does not have to any meaningful degree (i.e. FABs, TOS-1/TOS-2 etc), the Russian long range weapons including artillery still kill more. A single FAB of the right size can kill dozens of men in a tightly packed bunker or building. In the recent fight for Yunakivka in Sumy, Russia dropped 40+ FABs on that one town alone.

With regard to drones, not only has Ukraine’s shortage been confirmed by troop interviews, but its also the natural and logical outcome of the fact that Ukraine has to rely on dispersed artisanal home production because any large factory making drones gets destroyed or rendered unusable by Russian Missiles, while Russia has set up multiple large factories making drones that Ukraine is unable to take off-line. Also, Ukraine “making” drones is just strapping explosives to drones shipped from China, and China has stopped or heavily curtailed drone supplies to Ukraine recently which even MSM has covered.

>>24480299
OK fair enough but this is all theoretical.

Pic related (I filmed it because I thought the website was cool) is the Mediazona presentation of the name-verified Russian dead, counted at 111,000. Now obviously Mediazona is biased against the war but here it presents names, faces (if available), and the links to the Russian local news articles/sources proving that the soldier is dead. The information is also quite easily verifiable. One could easily write a Python script to pull the data and see if there are any duplicate sources, and you could even automatically verify the source (eg with AI or simpler methods). The website is: https://200.zona.media/

UALosses is a similar project on the Ukrainian side. They count around 150,000 dead (78,000 confirmed dead and 68,000 missing), with names and published sources. Website: https://ualosses.org/en/soldiers/

The Mediazona estimate is that 165,000 Russians are dead, since the 111,000 figure doesn't count missing soldiers like the Ukrainian figure does.

These numbers are closer to 50:50. Now obviously the figure on both sides is likely to be slightly different than reported because not every death or missing soldier will be sourcable online, and also not every missing soldier would be dead, but it's safe to assume most of them would be (or at least there won't be much of a discrepancy between the two sides on this matter).

My opinion therefore is that it's 50:50, with perhaps a slight edge in favour of the Ukrainians, although it could just as easily be a slight edge in favour of the Russians.

>>24480299
>>24480400
Also I want to say that my original point wasn't necessarily that Russia has lost more soldiers than Ukraine, but that they fell short of everyone's expectations like they have a history of doing. Russia won WWII basically because they outnumbered the Germans (and had powerful allies); on the battlefield pound-for-pound they were inferior. They got rekt by Finland and Japan. They consistently underperform militarily. And the reason I despise the Russian historical attitude is because of how willing they are to just send millions of their men to die in these savage imperial wars. They treat their people as a worthless resource to be exploited. And unlike America in Vietnam there's very little Russian public resistance to any of this.
(2/2)

>>24480431
>They treat their people as a worthless resource to be exploited.
There is zero evidence to support that view based on the current conflict. That is a much more accurate description of the ruling Maidan government, who has wasted countless Ukrainian lives on offensives and smaller attacks that were purely for PR reasons and which had zero strategic or tactical value. Russia has not been conducting offensives based on PR goals the entire war.

Examples:

The Kursk offensive, which had zero strategic upside and was just based on the PR goals of embarrassing Russia. Maybe they were aiming for the Kursk nuclear plant but once that failed it had zero purpose and Zelensky continued to pour crack AFU troops include paratroopers and mechanized brigades into a firebag in Kursk where they were surrounded by Russians on all sides, simply for PR.

Or, when Russia captured Toretsk the Ukrainians sent troops on a pointless attack to temporarily occupy some outer districts, just so they could context claims of Russian capture in the news.

Or during the recent Russian offensive in Sumy, Ukraine sent wave after wave of troops trying to capture Totkino right across the border, for 2 or 3 weeks continuously after the initial assault failed, simply because they wanted to claim the PR goal of occupying pre-war Russia, this greatly weakened the AFU defense against the Russian Sumy offensive.

Or, most egregiously, during the 2024 Krynky amphibious operation, the Ukrainians tried to conduct an amphibious assault by Kherson and then move on Crimea from there, it was stopped by the Russians and the AFU could could only a few square kilometers on the other side. Did the Ukrainians abandon their operation when it immediately failed? No, they continued to send Ukrainian marines to their death for the next 8-9 months, sending them across the river in small boats being constantly bombed by drones, only to land in a tiny killbox on the other side, from which there was little chance of safe evacuation. Thousands of elite AFU troops were sent to completely pointless deaths, simply because it would have been embarrassing and bad PR to admit the operation failed, and the operation was cancelled eventually anyways after nearly a year of pointless slaughter.

>Elsewhere, Ukrainska Pravda documented vital supplies and life jackets being airdropped by hexacopter to heavily wounded Ukrainian marines. Other injured commandos were forced to float back to Ukrainian territory using “car tires” due to a lack of available boats, “drinking water directly from the Dnieper due to a lack of logistics.” Some even resorted to “committing suicide because there was no evacuation”.

https://thegrayzone.com/2025/04/23/uk-intel-ukraines-krynky-invasion/

There are no examples of the above on the Russian side. There is only one side that has shown a callous disregard for its troops lives, and that is Ukraine.

>>24480580
I'm sure you're right about the particular details you bring up, but in the grand scheme of things: was it worth sacrificing 111k-
165k young Russian men to "demilitarise and denazify" Ukraine? The fact that most Russians answer "yes" to this is what I mean about you not valuing your own people. Where are the protests and social unrest like in Vietnam?

>>24475141
This the most obvious case of midwits shitting on someone without understanding even their fundamental premise. Fukuyama won't get rebuffed until an alternative to liberal democracy and market capitalism is found and it gains enough traction to dethrone it globally, everything else is just fluff while the system keeps on propagating itself. And given that China and Russia are both just putting a spin on the aforementioned systems and wanting control of it without presenting a real alternative it seems like Fukuyama was right for the next century at least.
China could take the US's place 1:1 and he would still be right.

>>24480580
>There are no examples of the above on the Russian side.
Vatnik says shit like that when their troops are storming minefields on motorbikes without artillery because on the map it says russia owns the territory(when in reality it doesn't) so they can't bomb their own area, hilarious

>>24481220
In all fairness the Russian military is sending literal murderers, rapists, and pedophiles to the front line for that stuff. They've been drafting prisoners and using them almost as extensively as they did with Gulag inmates in the Stalin era.
It's inhumane sure, but that's a very big reason the Russian public isn't shedding tears for these guys and demanding they be brought back home. They're Storm-Z/former Wagner guys who are menaces to the Russian public as much as they are to the Ukrainian.
>>24481219
>he thinks liberal democracy is real
Dumb fucking retard lmao

>>24481252
>Russian military is sending literal murderers, rapists, and pedophiles to the front
Most of them were killed or disabled in 2023-2024. Now it's just regular guys from countryside under contract.

>>24481252
>Drafting
russia isn't drafting anyone, even the prisoners(extinct now like the LPR and DPR fodder) had a choice and had to sign the contract, all ziggers are volunteers, all russians are pedophiles and rapists by default, they will shed tears even for such subhumans since they are their sons, Putin will have millions of casualties and not a single zigger will revolt since the whole war effort is volunteer army, you died, your fault, you signed the contract

>>24480142
>In modern wars artillery still kills the most troops, now followed by drones. Russia has way more artillery tubes, artillery shells
this is a silly question, but why dont we ever get footage of these artillery batteries wrecking mayhem à la ww1 artillery barrages?
Where are the drone footages of artillery units being targeted? Artillery are the most ghost units in this war, yet the shells are mentioned all the time.

>>24481882
>this is a silly question, but why dont we ever get footage of these artillery batteries wrecking mayhem à la ww1 artillery barrages?
>Where are the drone footages of artillery units being targeted?
There are countless videos of both that can be found on twitter, telegram and various video sharing sites. Are you just not looking?

>>24481422
>all ziggers are volunteers
NAFOids denied this for years because it was embarrassing in comparison to Ukraines forced mobilization, even on /k/ they still deny this despite abundant proof that its true.

>>24481090
> but in the grand scheme of things: was it worth sacrificing 111k-
165k young Russian men to "demilitarise and denazify" Ukraine?
Yes, absolutely.

In winning this war, Russia will reclaim its historical territories with trillions of dollars worth of natural resources, it will acquire a large new stretch of coastline, it will acquire millions of new Russian speaking slavic citizens (many more than the amount of men it lost in the war), it will permanently solve the “Ukrainian question” and ensure that a hostile government never takes place in Ukraine, it will also prevent the forced erasure of the Russian language in Ukraine. It will also restrict the area where NATO can place missiles systems to a small stretch along Russia’s NW borders instead of NATO placing them all along eastern Ukraine which is much closer to central Russia. A few hundred thousand men is a tiny price to pay for this, that’s how many people die every 1-2 years in the USA just from opiod overdose btw.

Lastly, many of them are not even ethnically Russian. Minority groups from less wealthy regions sign up at a higher rate.

>>24473999
>he assigns agency to the west while analyzing russia like some wild animal. double standards and all that.
What do you even mean by this? Russia acts in its interest with the options it has.

>>24474646
Where is the double standard here? NATO can and does act in its interests too, constantly expanding NATO is extremely good for the military industrial complex, which is the chief interest behind NATO.

It's possible to condemn the latter and not the former from a rational point of view.

>>24476789
2 and 3 are the only real points here

the simple fact of the matter is Russia was always going to invade Ukraine following the collapse of the USSR, this was clear in the fucking 90s

https://www.newsweek.com/end-empire-203338

at the time Yeltsin even said borders would have to be redrawn before the USSR could release federated states, there was a huge international chimpout here and the west pressured him into letting it go

there were even referendums in the 90s for huge chunks of Ukraine to return to Russia that were violently suppressed (no surprise) by the Ukrainian government, Crimea in particular voted over 90% in favor of returning to Russia

the irony here is that the votes to leave the USSR by the likes of Ukraine were honored and allowed a peaceful transition, but they themselves refused grant the same courtesy even to Crimea which only became a part of Ukraine 40 years earlier through typical Soviet era cronyism

>>24482059
How is 4 not legitimate? Yeltsin was talking exactly about Russian minorities.
https://www.nytimes.com/1991/08/27/world/soviet-turmoil-yeltsin-warns-seceding-republics-about-ethnic-russian-minorities.html#:~:text=A%20Yeltsin%20spokesman%2C%20Pavel%20Voshchanov,Mr.

>>24482062
because he doesn't give a shit about Russians he just wanted Russia to retain a critically important warm water port, this is just a pretext

>>24481219
>this clearly collapsing system that only borrows more and more time from the future to forestall the ever more agonizing correction from occurring is clearly the best system possible
>the proof is it hasn't collapsed yet

>>24480231
>he would have
let me guess anon, it was real in your mind?

Mearsheimer must be on some kind of Israeli IDF shill list as a priority target, the amount of idiocy and seething in this thread is astronomical, you dumb fags are literally making shit up just to say how stupid it would be if it was real which it isn't

>>24481944
Yeah. This is why we call you orcs. In the West if politicians dared to say something like "were going to sacrifice 100k of you for money" there would be a revolution in the streets.

>>24481915
How is it embarrassing Ukraine is defending against a country with 5x the population and a much more powerful military. Besides Russia did conscript just not nearly as much as Ukraine.

>>24482195
Its not just about money but mainly about Russia’s long-term strategic position and dealing with immediate-to-short term security threats to Russia and ethnic Russians (i.e. an impending major AFU attack on LPR and DPR in 2022 that Russia pre-empted), the financial perks is just an added benefit.

The Russian public understands these wider reasons and is largely on board with the SMO in part because of this. Ignoring all of the threats and doing nothing about them would have been a criminal act of negligence.

>>24482216
This is "Iraq had WMDs" tier cult shit. Difference is in the US a popular resistance to the forever wars is active, whereas in Russia nobody questions it, and the ones who do get raped in the ass by police batons.

>>24482227
> This is "Iraq had WMDs" tier cult shit.
No it’s not. Many different polling agencies have found Russian largely support the SMO and in fact expect victory. The broader reasons including threats to Russians in donbass republics and longer-term strategic reasons are not arcane secrets but they have been discussed endlessly on Russian radio and television and people are widely aware of them.
>Difference is in the US a popular resistance to the forever wars
The protests in the US to those wars stemmed from the fact that there was no legitimate US interest being accomplished and that it was pointless, this is the complete opposite of the SMO.

>>24482235
According to this poll about half of Russians favoured peace since 2022. Maybe you're not as cult-like as I thought, but if this poll is true, why aren't more rising up? Scared of getting ass raped like that one guy?
>No it’s not.
Yeah it is. LPR and DPR were propped up by Russian military and intelligence. In the Donbas outside of the rebel territories polls were conducted before the war which found that only 30% of the population favoured union with Russia (a substantial amount but nothing like the 95+% results in the referenda). The NATO stuff was a smokescreen, otherwise why not issue an ultimatum? Plus Finland joined NATO and it's painfully obvious that NATO is terrified of nuclear conflict with Russia to the point they wouldn't even let Ukraine use their weapons against Russian territory.

>>24482267
> half of Russians favoured peace since 2022.
They dont view “negotiations” as being mutually exclusive with Russia achieving its war aims. “Negotiations” to many of those people means “Russia achieving most of its war aims through negotiations instead of through the forced capitulation of Kiev”. If the poll was “do you favor Russia continuing or Russia stopping and not achieving its war aims” the poll would be overwhelmingly in favor of continuing.

> In the Donbas outside of the rebel territories polls were conducted before the war which found that only 30% of the population favoured union with Russia
I highly doubt that, and if it was conducted by phone then most people would likely not answer honestly for fear of SBU torture dungeons.

> The NATO stuff was a smokescreen, otherwise why not issue an ultimatum?
They did you dummy, a few months before the invasion in 2022 Russia put out an implicit ultimatum demanding to re-negotiate NATO expansion and ABM placement in order to address security concerns and said failure to comply could result in Russia taking certain “military-technical measures”, NATO and the Biden administration dismissed it out of hand and the rest is history.

>>24482216
I think these reasons are mostly post-facto rationales or justifications for Russians who feel like they've been treated badly by the West. I honestly don't think Russians care that much about Russians in their own country let alone Russians in other countries, but believe the more fundamental reason is that Russians (and particularly Russian elites) feel that Russia should be treated as a major power, and they've been treated unfairly, so they're going to force the West to recognize them as a serious power and not some has-been failed empire.

Like the Iraq WMD shit, for most Americans who supported the war, it wasn't about WMDs but revenge and overcoming a feeling of humiliation created by the 9/11 attacks.

>>24482289
Why would they want revenge against Iraq when 9/11 was orchestrated and carried out by Saudis (at least according to the official story)?

>>24482299
>Why would they want revenge against Iraq when 9/11 was orchestrated and carried out by Saudis (at least according to the official story)?
Americans don't know geography. They just know towelheads hit em so they got to hit the towelheads back.

>>24482289
> I honestly don't think Russians care that much about Russians in their own country let alone Russians in other countries,
Then you are simply clueless or engaging in baseless armchair psychology, there was widespread outrage in Russia for years over atrocities committed by Ukraine and the AFU including the murder of the protesters occupying the Odessa Trade Union building in 2014 as well as the artillery and missile strikes on civilian areas of DPR and LPR in the years since when the AFU was openly shooting artillery etc at crowded civilian markets, schools, apartment buildings etc far from the frontline. Many Russian right-wingers and nationalists had open or barely-concealed contempt for Putin for not forcibly intervening earlier over stuff like that.

>>24482333
Give me a fucking break. You caused the separatism and your war has killed more civilians in 3 years than the Ukrainians killed in 8 fighting against the separatist forces you supported.

>>24473775 (OP)
ITT: Burger-people don't like it when they are told that they are wrong and they're not the greatest country in the world.
And when told about it by one of their own, they label him as a [their favourite 'enemy'] puppet.
I think Mearsheimer is arguing about the ways, but not the goals of the US empire. And he has a point.
So I'm glad that guys like him are not welcome in the US. The sooner the fall, the better for the rest of the world.
https://youtu.be/JrMiSQAGOS4?si=ism5kqtJGFuhQnG_

>>24482364
> You caused the separatism
Wrong, the Maidan regime caused it by immediately placing restrictions on the rights of the Russian speakers, pro-Russian political activity, Russian media, Russian use in public spheres etc when they came to power, which only increased with time.
>and your war has killed more civilians in 3 years than the Ukrainians killed in 8 fighting against the separatist forces you supported.
That’s irrelevant, and many more civilians would probably have been killed if the AFU invasion of DPR and LPR would have been allowed to take place in 2022 unopposed

>>24481422
>russia isn't drafting anyone
Are you seriously saying this, they used almost exclusively newfag draftees in Kursk and got their ass handed to them there until they brought in Norks

>>24482383
Can't argue with a cultist. The rest of Europe has moved on and is looking towards unity, trade, and peace and Russia is a century behind as always.

>>24482396
>unity
The EU is a squabbling loose coalition torn apart by different factions, with unelected incompetent bureaucrats like von der Leyen trying to forcibly implement policies opposed by some EU members
>trade
The EU has increasingly little to offer the rest of the world in trade, it has no energy to sell, its manufacturing has already been dwarfed by China, and Asia is increasingly catching up in complex technology to the point that they will soon be able to make on their own whatever they would desire. Most of the worlds computer chips come from Taiwan and not Europe, but China has already started making its own advanced chips. EU weapons have performed poorly in Ukraine, nobody is rushing to buy European weapons currently.
>peace
The lax attitude to criminal law enforcement especially against migrant petty crime in many western european countries means that many Russian cities are safer than their Europeans counterparts.

>>24473847
>a relatively normal perceptive guy in a room full of retards
Sounds right

europe is slowly regressing to the backwater it's always been. trump was elected to decouple america from the rest of the world. suffer

>>24482422
Sure. All the Russian elites live in the west, nobody wants to live in Russia. But there's no point arguing with a cultist.

>>24482445
Somebody who is dumb enough to think that a few dual-citizen billionaires are the true ‘elite’ of a country isnt worth talking to anyway.

>>24479289
>That's oversimplified shit in most cases. Just read regional history books, as general so dedicated to a concrete regime, and make your own conclusions.
in other words
>the people who study this stuff full time for decades are no good
>just spend a few free hours reading a teeny tiny portion of what they have read, then make up your own conclusion about complex issues you have next to no knowledge of

>europe is slowly regressing to the backwater it's always been. trump was elected to decouple america from the rest of the world. suffer

>>24482486
>Russo-Ukrainian war?
>Blame NATO
>Potential Chinese-Taiwanese conflict
>Blame Asiatic NATO
>Israeli-Iranian war?
>Blame Middle Eastern NATO

You needn't decades of studies to generate such shit

>>24481252
Liberal democracy is real insofar that people believe in it. No different from Christianity in the past. It doesn’t need its doctrines to be observably correct, it needs faith and it has it.

>>24475419
Ironically this is what most Republicans are envisioning too. The whole liberal-conservative divide is almost entirely cultural. When it comes to administering the liberal empire they're the same. Not even Trump is able to break away from the Fukuyaman consensus with how much Zionists and neocons whisper in his ear

>>24480041
Midwit post.

>>24480248
>How do you know artillery kills more than drones? Where are you getting this information from? I would assume that drones kill more.
I too like to assume that comforting facts are true.
>How do you know Russia has more drones?
Because Russia having a documented advantage in all weapon categories *except* drones is not a rational position. There is no reason for drones to be any different other than wishful thinking.
>Anyway, about 140,000 Ukrainian soldiers have died.
Ukrainian losses solely in terms of KIA are over a MILLION, the source for this is common sense: they have a large army and are fighting a multi-year war of attrition at a significant firepower disadvantage. Right now they are currently kidnapping men off the street and debating mobilizing the 18-24 bracket. Use your fucking head.

>>24483518
It’s not quite right, because that post supposes the liberal order wants a quick & peaceful resolution to the question of Iranian regime change when in reality they actually want the country to be permanently destabilized and chaotic on account of it being convenient for Israel. That’s exactly why Israel is pushing for regime change in the first place. They know the country is never going to be this secular pro-Western outpost that gives them free oil even if the government falls. Liberals want a constant orgy of blood. If it wasn’t for ISIS bombing cities in the West they wouldn’t have gave a fuck about them beheading Yazidis and Muslims.

>>24480580
>There is zero evidence to support that view based on the current conflict.
lol, lmao even, lmfao potentially
https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2025/03/07/united-russia-criticized-for-gifting-meat-grinders-to-fallen-soldiers-mothers-a88281
russians are orcs

>>24473775 (OP)
>the USSR is here to stay
>if the USSR does break, so does NATO
>then Germany will go ballistic again
>"we will miss the cold war" right before two decades of greatest post-ww2 relative peace
>we should give land from the croats and bosniaks to the serbs
>north korea getting nukes makes Asia stabler
>syria will be more chaotic without Assad

>World Bank/IMF strips Russian state assets and privatize them on the international market for Wall Street to make bank on and for Russian oligarchs to form over
>enables the rise of the chauvinist Putin along the way
>Almost verbatim follow Zbig Brezenski's Grand Chessboard and Neocon policies by:
>Expanding NATO borders despite the super sophomoric level understanding to know this would antagonize Russia (see book and articles below on this)
>Unilaterally leave ABM treaty
>Continue to refuse to pledge no-first use nuclear weapons doctrine
>Derail re-negotiation of Biological Weapons Convention (which still has a budget less than 2 million/year and zero oversight and inspection capabilities)
>Place US forces in center of Central Asia (Afghanistan, support bases in Uzbekistan/Kyrgyzstan)
>Totally lie about need to invade and wage huge war in Iraq for strict geopolitical hard power purposes
>Openly state in own policy documents and books this is all to maintain global American hegemony for the entire 21st century
>Consolidated American corporate press lies through its teeth to brainwash the American public into making them think that all the other major powers actions are unprovoked acts of revisionist aggression

American imperialism has jeopardized the greatest potential moment to create world peace by enabling the rise of despots like Putin and giving him and others national leaders ample reasons to suspect that the US was going to try to murder them eventually and destroy their nations. Our current era is either going to end in a nuclear holocaust, a global totalitarian state, or a multi-polar order formed after the hanging of American elites Nuremberg style.

https://www.nytimes.com/1997/02/05/opinion/a-fateful-error.html
https://www.cato.org/commentary/many-predicted-nato-expansion-would-lead-war-those-warnings-were-ignored

>>24479181
mearsheimer isn't stupid but is representative of a branch of the overall realism branch of international relations theory. if you want to actually form your own opinion getting acquainted with each realism branch and all the other wider schools of theory (liberal, critical/Marxist/constructivist) and their subsequent branches, even if its a lot of work. just go use ChatGPT's deep search function to get a full load-down and reading resource recommendations. theory from here gives the analytical framework to assess both history and current affairs from different predictive perspectives.

people who dont like mearsheimer dont like him because they've built their camp up in their respective theory school and branch or are normative deadweights who hate it when people point out that US policy is so aggressive that it spurs on aggressive counter actions (much as the NATO expansion debate demonstrates when people accuse mearsheimer of being a putin agent/useful idiot).

>>24482267
> Plus Finland joined NATO and it's painfully obvious that NATO is terrified of nuclear conflict with Russia to the point they wouldn't even let Ukraine use their weapons against Russian territory.

NATO doesn’t work like that. They work like how it went in Libya where they continue agitating and supporting rebels in the enemy state and then when the gov is overthrown send in troops from neighboring countries. Libya and more recently Syria are examples of NATO tactics.

>>24482986
>Liberal democracy is real insofar that people believe in it
Holy kek

>>24483828
Refute what I said. Everyone knows at this point that liberal democracy is barely a real thing in practice, it’s a doctrine followed by great powers who murder, conquer and expand just like every other great power in history has.

>>24473849
Go away Ivan. Its all backstock that'd cost more to scrap or tests for a hot war

>>24479159
>without taking extreme care to avoid civilian loss and humanitarian catastrophe like Putin has.
funniest zigger cope by far

>>24473847
Something i notice. Carl Schmitt seems to have the same mentality that the Americans his fanboys view as detractors have with the whole Star Wars analogy except in the reverse but you're not allowed to point that out unless you want to get verbally abused for it. I like Schmitt and am in no way a liberal internationalist but it's so glaringly obvious.

>>24480041
>What does it even mean? Why did "Britain" want to "balance continental powers against one another"? What are the actual spiritual bases for "Britain's" desire here, residing in the hearts of the individuals making such actions?
banks

>>24483884
>Refute what I said
Liberal Democracy's influence and power has precipitously collapsed since it reached it's territorial high tide during the Arab Spring, as well as it's moral/cultural peak in 1989. Every region in the world has seen a slide towards more traditional authoritarian republics including in the classical liberal heartlands of the U.S and Northern Europe.

>>24482396
>a cultist
I saw all his arguments earlier in previous threads, all those numbers and pictures with graphics. That's just a bot.

>>24483551
Read this post (>>24480400). The best sources put the relative death rate at 50:50. That is, approximately 1 Russian is killed for every Ukrainian killed. In absolute terms, about 165,000 Russians have died and 150,000 Ukrainians have died.

The number of deaths may be higher as these are only the deaths that are confirmed (including missing soldiers) but to me it seems unlikely that the actual number would be much higher. Plus even if the numbers were higher, the relative rate would remain the same, as there is no reason to believe that there would be discrepancies in reporting deaths between the two sides (this is because the sources are mostly local news sources, facebook posts of the funeral, etc).

Numbers such as 1 million are propaganda from both sides I believe because both Ukraine and Russia have never had much more than 1 million active personnel involved in the war at any 1 time. If it were true it would mean Ukraine's entire army was wiped out.

>>24483778
>US policy is so aggressive that it spurs on aggressive counter actions (much as the NATO expansion debate demonstrates when people accuse mearsheimer of being a putin agent/useful idiot).
Yes, very aggressive.

>>24483826
>NATO doesn’t work like that. They work like how it went in Libya where they continue agitating and supporting rebels in the enemy state and then when the gov is overthrown send in troops from neighboring countries. Libya and more recently Syria are examples of NATO tactics.
You're right. That's why Our Great Leader Putin must kill all of his political opponents.

>>24484181
>Numbers such as 1 million are propaganda from both sides I believe because both Ukraine and Russia have never had much more than 1 million active personnel involved in the war at any 1 time.
Why would they need to? The war's been going on for over 11 years.

>>24484208
2014-2022 was a limited war between Ukraine and Russian-backed separatists. The deaths on both sides were in the low thousands over that 8 year period. The Russian attack was a major escalation and now we're talking about over 150,000 deaths on both sides in 3 years.

>>24484204
>>24483826
>Ziggers and NAFOids arguing about le morality
I really do wonder when midwit normalfags will grow up and realize nothing actually matters in geopolitics other than ambition and realpolitik. People like Mearsheimer are unironically above average just for realizing this reality even if everything else they say is retarded.

>>24484374
You didn't understand my post. I was saying that the idea of NATO 'colour revolutions' is used by the Russian government to suppress political dissent. They can call any dissenters 'Western agents' (just like in the USA Trump was accused of being a Russian agent) and that gives them the justification to kill or imprison them, like they did to Navalny. It's a useful propaganda tool for them and gives them the justification for political autocracy and war.

Anyway, Mearsheimer isn't the cold objective calculator that you think he is. Why does he openly celebrate the decline of the USA? Why are his "cold calculations" always aligned with the interests of the oriental powers like Russia and China? Why is he always painting them as the victims, and the West as the aggressors? There's a deep third-worldism to his thoughts.

>>24484425
>They can call any dissenters 'Western agents' (just like in the USA Trump was accused of being a Russian agent) and that gives them the justification to kill or imprison them, like they did to Navalny.
>It's a useful propaganda tool for them and gives them the justification for political autocracy and war.
The U.S and nearly every Western cunt has had similar laws on the books since at least WWI and in many European cunts well before that.
And furthermore the issue is complicated by the fact that Western intelligence agencies do 100% influence and mold opposition, seperatist, and radical politics in those places (just like Russia and China do the same here, albeit more covertly).
>Mearsheimer isn't the cold objective calculator that you think he is.
I don't like Mearsheimer much outside of his takes on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and I think his takes on Russia and China are 100% delusion from the Nixon era. I was just saying that his refusal to view geopolitics through morality automatically makes him more intelligent than the vast majority of political scientists working now.

>>24483991
Could you restate that again because I keep getting a headache trying to read your post.

No snarkiness intended. It sounded like you were going to add an interesting twist on Schmitt but it's garbled, and I want to understand it fully.

>>24484448
Messerschmidt's theories merely pander to American sense of self-importance and self-blaming, that's all. He doesn't understand local politics, nuances, relations and history of regions which he comments about.

>>24484499
Extreme projection by another idealist.

>>24484181
>The best sources put the relative death rate at 50:50. That is, approximately 1 Russian is killed for every Ukrainian killed.
Unequal firepower won't produce equal casualties so your sources are clearly garbage.
>Plus even if the numbers were higher, the relative rate would remain the same, as there is no reason to believe that there would be discrepancies in reporting deaths between the two sides (this is because the sources are mostly local news sources, facebook posts of the funeral, etc).
The method you describe if done properly might produce a decent lower bound, but there's no reason to assume anyone is doing it properly since what we're talking about is a war that extends into the information sphere.
>I believe because both Ukraine and Russia have never had much more than 1 million active personnel involved in the war at any 1 time.
You're welcome to google it.
>If it were true it would mean Ukraine's entire army was wiped out.
That is pretty much what happened.

>>24484525
>>24484525
>Unequal firepower won't produce equal casualties
Sorry, ivan, but a random place on a field doesn't count as a Ukrainian casuality.

satellite_images_russian_artillery_fields.jpg

>>24484525
I gave you real sources with names, faces, and links to each dead soldier. It showed 165k dead Russians and 150k dead Ukrainians, about 50:50. You gave me your personal opinion on firepower quantity which you don't even know or have access to plus you're not a military genius who is able to draw the conclusions you're drawing from this information.

>>24484082
>more traditional authoritarian republics
Means nothing. They’re still liberal democracies and everything they do is in the name of liberalism. People like Trump just don’t put up the facade as much, which is all that liberalism is

>>24473775 (OP)
He's a retard and falls into the mental trap of idealism. Israeli lobbying doesn't have much of a tangible effect on American interests in the middle east other than preserving its own status as America's colony in the middle east, which would be a necessity regardless of Israel's existence.

>>24473847
>"NOOOOO IT WAS BECAUSE HITLER WAS EVIL AND CHURCHILL WAS LIKE THE AVENGERS LUKE SKYWALKER"
fucking kek

>>24484499
Who is Messerschmidt and why does he sound like based Nazi airplanes? Is it a coincidence?

>>24485175
Except serious historians don't say this. You're comparing an academic to pop history people.

>>24484189
Bad faith, please consult >>24483732 you ahistorical nigger

>>24485207
Analysis ignores that all those countries voluntarily begged to join NATO because of the history of Russian aggression in the region. Curiously NATO didn't have to invade any of those countries to get them to join. Ignores Russia's imperialistic history, Chechen wars, etc. Ignores that Putin and Russian TV often talk about Ukraine being a fake country with no nationhood or language, and therefore it's likely they didn't want them to join NATO so they could invade them, not the opposite. Makes Russia seem like a peaceful victim always backed into a corner.

>>24482986
"Liberal democracy" is literal zeitgeist window dressing to disguise the fact that the west is controlled by an international plutocracy.

finnish intelligence colonel explaining the culture of the russian government
it is a must watch

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kF9KretXqJw

>>24485161
>everything they do is in the name of liberalism
No they don't lol, unless you consider the various strains of Marxism to be "liberalism". Trump is unironically more of a liberal in the calssical sense than any other Western government with the exception of Milei.
>liberalism is a facade
It is, but it also isn't.

>>24485171
>Israeli lobbying doesn't have much of a tangible effect on American interests in the middle east
lmao

>>24481219
>Fukuyama won't get rebuffed until an alternative to liberal democracy and market capitalism is found and it gains enough traction to dethrone it globally
>
i swear to god, it's as if people are burying their heads in the sand because reality doesn't line up with their beliefs

>>24480299
>Also, Ukraine “making” drones is just strapping explosives to drones shipped from China
that is quickly changing and the ukrainians are now starting to build their own drones with 100% local parts

https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidhambling/2025/04/08/ukraine-is-making-fpv-drones-without-chinese-parts-and-at-lower-cost/

https://uawire.org/ukraine-achieves-tech-milestone-with-100-locally-produced-fpv-drones-breaking-dependency-on-china

>>24485306
These people are delusional idealists that still think this is the 90s or 00s, your picrel was ltierally third world and irrelevant until "liberal democracies" handed them total industrialization on a silver platter with no strings attached

>>24485254
Realist analysis dictates that under international anarchy and uncertainty, when teamed with the plethora of other aggressive and imperialistic American actions listed that you *totally* ignore, gives strong incentives for all other nations to take counter-actions to secure their positions against the US/West, which for Russia involved trying to take Ukraine to secure its western flank for the next century and beyond. George Kennan captured this very simple logic that even peaceful NATO expansion is inherently antagonistic, and he said so before Putin even fully rose to power and NATO fully started expanding under the Bush admin to the side of its open campaign of secure a new American century of global hegemony. You are also choosing to ignore that I directly start with the fact that US/Western economic re-adjustments created the Russia we have today in the first place; it's because of the IMF/World Bank that Russia became a kleptocracy with a neo-czarist chauvinist at the top. With such a chauvinist leader against the imperialist west, war over Ukraine was nearly inevitable.

I also forgot to mention that NATO totally reduced Libya to a failed state in 2011 and fueled the nasty civil war in Syria for the entirety of its duration, with much debate about how much support was given to Jihadi terrorist groups along the way.

>>24485328
Ukraine is also slated to be fielding fully autonomous kill-drones by end of this year:

https://spectrum.ieee.org/ukraine-killer-drones

>>24485254
Actually read Kennan retard:

https://ius.bg.ac.rs/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/2.-New-York-Times-George-Kennan.pdf

>Such a decision may be expected to inflame the nationalistic, anti-Western and militaristic tendencies in Russian opinion; to have an adverse effect on the
development of Russian democracy; to restore the atmosphere of the cold war to East-West relations, and to impel Russian foreign policy in directions decidedly not to our liking. And, last but not least, it might make it much more difficult, if not impossible, to secure the Russian Duma's ratification of the Start II agreement and to achieve further reductions of nuclear weaponry.

>It is, of course, unfortunate that Russia should be confronted with such a challenge at a time when its executive power is in a state of high uncertainty and near paralysis. And it is doubly unfortunate considering the total lack of any necessity for this move. Why, with all the hopeful possibilities engendered by the end of the cold war, should East-West relations become centered on the question of who would be allied with whom and, by implication, against whom in some fanciful, totally unforeseeable and most improbable future military conflict?

>>24485254
Actually read Kennan retard:

https://ius.bg.ac.rs/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/2.-New-York-Times-George-Kennan.pdf

>Such a decision may be expected to inflame the nationalistic, anti-Western and militaristic tendencies in Russian opinion; to have an adverse effect on the development of Russian democracy; to restore the atmosphere of the cold war to East-West relations, and to impel Russian foreign policy in directions decidedly not to our liking. And, last but not least, it might make it much more difficult, if not impossible, to secure the Russian Duma's ratification of the Start II agreement and to achieve further reductions of nuclear weaponry.

>It is, of course, unfortunate that Russia should be confronted with such a challenge at a time when its executive power is in a state of high uncertainty and near paralysis. And it is doubly unfortunate considering the total lack of any necessity for this move. Why, with all the hopeful possibilities engendered by the end of the cold war, should East-West relations become centered on the question of who would be allied with whom and, by implication, against whom in some fanciful, totally unforeseeable and most improbable future military conflict?

>>24473847
Churchill literally advocated for a United States of Europe. Britain enabled Germany up until he came around.

Look at the other PMs. Lloyd was pro-German rearment, batting for Hitler, calling him the Washington of Germany. Baldwin was pushing British disarment in 1933. Chamberlain let Germany go apeshit with landgrabs up until it got to Poland.

The notion Britain at the onset of WWII meant to break up Europe is assbackwards. Up until then it was soft on the German threat to Europe for over most of two decades until it rallied behind someone pro-Europe.

>>24485349
>>24485410
The Russian Empire and the Soviet Union existed without NATO. Russia didn't need NATO to use as an excuse to invade and occupy its neighbours throughout its history. Your analysis is interesting but it rests on unknowns. You assume that without NATO expansion Russia would have never gone on the imperial, jingoistic path it is now on. You assume that without NATO expansion Russia would integrate with Europe and reject the sentiments of the cold war. But you have no way of knowing this. You're arguing for what would've happened in history if an alternate path had been taken, something which is unfalsifiable. Isn't it more likely that in the absence of NATO expansion Russia would see the weak Baltic states, a weak Eastern Europe and would pounce?

>>24485480
The point is that without encroachment by NATO, there would be no rush to "annex" anything. After all, why bother? Russia seemed to have wanted to keep to itself, have some breathing room, trade industrial products. and sell fossil fuels while it licked its wounds from the collapse of the USSR. Russia was able to enjoy favorable economic relations without having to actually administer, occupy, maintain, etc., its former Soviet satellites. And if nobody is trying to occupy those regions with a hostile military posture towards Russia, then why even invade them?

You speak about counterfactuals. Let's stick to the facts. In THIS timeline, there was no attempts at expansion by Russia until well after NATO began encroaching on its borders. In THIS timeline, there was no aggression against Ukraine until its government was toppled in a coup and replaced by a faction hostile towards Russia. You can argue about counterfactuals all you want, but the facts of this timeline insist that Russia wasn't aggressive until it was provoked by the aforementioned expansion by NATO into its backyard. If you want to argue that Russia is inherently expansive, then you have to argue why Russia didn't take any opportunities to expand until at least 2008.

>>24485480
>>24485480
The fact you continue to leave out all the other historical context/evidence I've listed undermines my own interest in continuing this conversation. From the West restructuring Russia into a chauvinist kleptocracy in the first place, to open and public policy documents and books calling for sustained global hegemony, and the multiple wars of aggression to go with it amongst everything else, you continue to ignore it all. The route we went on was not inevitable and much of its initial impetuses were planted and watered by the US/west down even to the structuring of Russias own political-economy.

>>24485531
After the dissolution of the USSR, Russia:

1. supported ethnic separatism in Georgia in 1991,
2. fought with "Transnistria" against Moldova in 1992 (the Moldova/Besserabia region is rightfully Romania's; Russian trickery and imperialism created Moldova and Transnistria)
3. Fought (and lost) the First Chechen War in 1994, after getting into all sorts of trickery supporting anti-secessionist militias in Chechnya.
4. Fought a second war in Chechnya in 1999 and occupied it again.

But yeah, they were totally innocent little lambs

>>24485531
That's total misundertanding of Russian internal and external politics. We have the manlet who should leave politics in 2008, but is still in power, because he made all his friend billionaires, so he can't leave peacefully. We have the protests of 2011-2013, which scared the manlet. We have the economic stagnation and reduced average income in Russia since 2012. And we have "a splendid little war" phenomenon, which was used by the manlet succesfully in 2000, 2008 and 2014 to boost his popularity among the Russian cattle. This explains everything.

Russia has nuclear weapon; on the other hand a couple of kilometers of stolen Ukrainian lands won't make any difference in nuclear strikes or during any NATOs land invasion. That's totally pointless from the point of view of security, but totally fine from the point of view of regime stability.

>>24485531
>until its government was toppled in a coup and replaced by a faction hostile towards Russia.
Kek. Maybe Ivans don't know it, but Yanukovych promised to join the EU already during his election campaing in 2010. So if joining the EU was an act of hostility towards Russia, maybe they should put Yanukovych in prison.

>then you have to argue why Russia didn't take any opportunities to expand until at least 2008.
Because Russia was poor (and Putin dealt with internal enemies during his first terms). When Russia got free Western petrodollars, it started to be arrogant. It should be eternally poor (in the state of 1991) to be friendly with the world.

>>24484500
>Messerschmidt knows nothing about Russian internal politics, but that's definitely about America (me, me, I, I, I'm so fucking important)
>Putin said that Ukrainains and Russians are brothers and that's about Ruryk, but that's definitely about first nuclear strikes and NATO invasion.
You and Messerschmidt are useful idiots.

>>24485345
the outsourcing of western industry to china isn't the sole reason why china was uplifted out of poverty, it merely accelerated the uplifting - i advise you to read works by the top officials in the CCP or the military intelligentsia and you'll find that not only are half of them autistic savants, but they didn't just luck into success; you don't uplift the most populous country in the world out of poverty and into modernity just because you've got some new industry
their success has been owed to meticulous planning, forward thinking, pragmatism and intertwining every aspect of society to achieve one joint vision

https://militarnyi.com/en/articles/u-s-army-report-how-china-fights-in-large-scale-combat-operations/

>>24485364
good read, thanks for the link anon

>>24485653
Who gives a shit about Abkhazia and Transnistria? And Chechnya is wholly landlocked within hundreds of miles of unquestionably Russian territory. That's an internal affair as I'm concerned.
>>24485692
I'll give you that war is always a good weapon to temporarily boost popularity. But you would be uncharitable to not recognize the economic growth that Russia experienced under Putin's regime. Say what you want about him, but he stabilized Russia. And that whole "aggression" problem nullifies the popularity he would have gained from economic growth because sanctions reduce that extensively. And if he's a dictator, then why does he even need to care about popularity anyway? He can just rig the election. Explain that.
>>24485927
Who is this Messerschmidt guy and why does he sound so based? Even his name sounds based. Whoa.

>>24486117
>>24486117
>But you would be uncharitable to not recognize the economic growth that Russia experienced under Putin's regime.
A wagie who earn 200 dollars a month is considered as a middle class in Russia. That's Putin's words, not mine. 2400 dollars a years, yeah, the greatest economic growth on the background of the Putin's palaces.


>Say what you want about him, but he stabilized Russia
High oil prices stabilized Russia. You could put a monkey in the presidential chair and effect would be the same, or even better because a monkey has no need to steal state money.

>>24486117
>And if he's a dictator, then why does he even need to care about popularity anyway? He can just rig the election. Explain that.
Mare, just read fucking history books because you know nothing about it. You can start with a book about Nicolae Ceaușescu, for example.

>>24486117
Uh you sounded pretty intelligent at first but now you sound like a campaigner for Putin lmao, talking about "Did you know that the economy increased under the reign of our glorious leader?", do you have a pamphlet to give out too? And unironically saying he's not a dictator - he openly assassinates his political rivals and then "denies" it performatively on TV. Everyone knows he's lying about killing Prigozhin and Navalny but it's like a Russian national trait to just expect the powerful to lie so nobody cares. Anyway you might not care about Georgia or Transnistria (tell that to Romania, to whom Moldova rightfully would helon if not for Russian imperialism) or Chechnya but you don't know that they would've stopped there. You just assume they wouldve been peaceful and democratic when nothing in their history or national character indicates this. By the way Putin's initial warplan on Ukraine that was leaked was to capture Transnistria and ultimately Moldova too. If NATO stayed out of East Europe it's possible Russia would've invaded Ukraine long ago.

>>24486273
>Putin lmao, talking about "Did you know that the economy increased under the reign of our glorious leader?"
Did it not? From what I understand, Russia was in economic freefall in the 90s. Then shit turned around in the 00s. Maybe oil played a great role, but was it all oil-based growth? I doubt it.
>And unironically saying he's not a dictator
I never said he wasn't a dictator. I'm just pointing out that too many shills have it so that they can make every contradiction work out in a way where Russia is bad no matter what. Putin needs to stay popular and actually win elections. But he is also a dictator who rigs all his elections anyway. Which one is it? Can't have it both ways.

I really do not care if Putin is a dictator. He could be Pinochet. I do not give a shit. It's literally not my problem. If his motivation is to mind his own business unless provoked externally, then I couldn't care less about what he does.

The Moldovan problem is more complicated than you make it out to be btw. There's also autonomous Turkic elements in Moldova who do not want to be integrated into Romania either. And is it even a good deal for Romania to have to redevelop Moldova at this point? It's like the burden that West Germany has in reintegrating East Germany.

And are you joking about Chechnya? It's literally landlocked by hundreds of miles of Russian land. What kind of retard thinks that that would be a legitimate and self-sustaining country and wouldn't be better off as some kind of autonomous territory within Russia? You might as well start arguing for political independence of Native American reservations.

>>24484496
Basic friend/enemy in Schmitt's eyes is the inverse of Star Wars ideology. Basically, Schmitt says "Darth Vader good, Luke Skywalker bad"

>>24486345
... that's it? That's the take?

>>24486117
>Who gives a shit about Abkhazia and Transnistria?
People around those territories, probably. Big reason why Romania wanted to join NATO, for example.

>>24486368
Dude I was busy yesterday. I didn't feel like writing a giant essay.

>>24486315
>From what I understand, Russia was in economic freefall in the 90s.
All post-commie states were. "The worst thing about Communism is what comes after". And all post-commie states recovered till or during the 2000s by natural economic processes and completing a commie-capitalism transformation, and not by "the strong hand of the great leader". To be the first president in Ukraine, Belarus or Russia was a nightmare, to be the second president was a blessing. Lukashenko was able to seize power because during his first term Belarusian GDP demostrated an increase by 9-12 % a year (but nobody calls Lukashenko an economic genius).

>>24486315
>but was it all oil-based growth? I doubt it.
A guy, who worked in Russian government during Putin's first terms, told that in those years Putin didn't interfere in work of the government and could sign almost any technical governmental decree because it seemed he didn't understand how it worked.It gave an opportunity for his liberal prime-minister Mikhail Kasyanov to carry out some reforms (taxes, customs, etc), which work till this day and were able to attract Western investments in those years.

Still Putin did understand some things, so a couple of his friends (who were meely judo traniers, like the Rotenbergs) became billionaires already in his first term.

>>24486315
>It's literally landlocked by hundreds of miles of Russian land.
Chechnya has a common border with Georgia, mate.

>>24486315
Putin inherited an economy in the gutter of course it was going to improve. The question isn't did he improve the economy it's whether the economy would've improved even more under better leadership. The Baltic states which have no resources are richer in gdp per capita than Russia, same with Romania (which does have resources but not as much as Russia). Russia's GDP is roughly equivalent to Spain's.

Chechnya isn't landlocked within Russia it borders Georgia. Russia forced them to stay within the country even though they were an independent people with a different religion and ethnic group. They supported anti secession militias and after losing the first war did a fake terrorist attack to justify another invasion.

Remember your thesis is that Russia were good boys who dindu nuffin in the period after 1991 that would justify NATO expansion. You believe that Western aggression caused Russia to be jingoistic, and in its absence there is no chance they would've invaded their neighbours. Your analysis is true in a sense but it also ignores that these Eastern European countries had a genuine worry about Russian aggression which they expressed by seeking NATO membership. And almost universally the countries aligned with the west are better off than the ones aligned with Russia.

>>24487008
And we should not forget that Ukraine was the only country, which continued to stay relaxed, continued to disarm and remain in neutral military status. And what it got was the annexation and invasion.

>>24486826
>>24486926
>>24486966
>>24487003
>>24487008
shills out in full force.
>bro Russia's economy was bad, of course it would get better!
it could have easily stagnated or have gotten worse. can't you hand the man a W when he's earned it?
>Putin didn't personally design and implement policies that lead to Russian economic growth, instead he trusted experts who knew better to do it for him
... isn't that just good leadership? like goddamn you guys activate the natural contrarian in me because nothing is ever AS BAD as you make it to be.
>>24487023
This is just a completely dishonest take that ignores Euromaidan.

>>24473847
>and the entire foreign policy establishment screeches "NOOOOO IT WAS BECAUSE HITLER WAS EVIL AND CHURCHILL WAS LIKE THE AVENGERS LUKE SKYWALKER"
I have not heard this but I'm sure you wouldn't lie.

>>24487052
>ignores Euromaidan.
That was Euromaidan, not NATOmaidan, you stupid fuck.

>>24487052
>Euromaidan
1) Make you country a complete shithole
2) Invade other countries, which don't want to joint your shitty customs union of authoritarian shitholes
....
PROFIT

>>24487059
Malding

>>24487059
They go hand in hand, retard. Look at the wave of almost simultaneous EU and NATO admissions in the early 2000s. You are extremely dishonest to think that there is no relationship between the two, especially in the context of NATO vs. Russia.
>>24487066
Russia was in a much better situation than Ukraine, and economically and culturally-speaking, is not a good fit for the European Union. It would have been a total drain on its resources, only useful for cheap labor and of course military encroachment on Russia's borders.

Again, Russia never bothered to invade when it could trust that the Ukrainian government would stay neutral to NATO and receptive to Russia. Then there was a coup and suddenly all of Russia's regional interests (e.g. Sevastopol) were in jeopardy. What would you do? Let it all slip away and get even further boxed in geographically?

>>24487052
Why are the Baltic states richer than Russia if Putin is an economic genius

>>24487023
>>24487052
Ukraine should never have given up their nuclear weapons. They trusted Russia and this is what they got.

>>24487072
>They go hand in hand, retard.
They don't. Look at Finland and Sweden, which joined the EU in 1995, and would have not joined NATO if not this agression.

>Russia was in a much better situation than Ukraine and economically and culturally-speaking, is not a good fit for the European Union.
Maybe Ukrainians knew better, retard.

>What would you do?
I wouldn't make my country a comlete unattractive shithole without any soft power in the first place. The rest is your retarded projections.

>>24487072
>Look at the wave of almost simultaneous EU and NATO admissions in the early 2000s.
And if NATO wanted, it could have already accepted Ukraine in the span of 1998-2010, especially during the Yushchenko term. Why didn't it do it?

>>24473775 (OP)
even though he has a better approach with his real politics he is still a (classic) liberal and thus his model of the world is flawed. all types like him just turned into third worldists and multi polar shills since the ukri war. and why is this in lit?

>>24487052
>... isn't that just good leadership?
No, it's just due to incompetence and adaptation during his first years in power. When he made his grip on the Russian economy stronger, it turned into shit despite of tons of free petrdollars poured into the economy on constant basis.

>>24487103
>all types like him just turned into third worldists and multi polar shills since the ukri war.
True. He's supposed to be a cold, objective analyst who doesn't care about moral or ideological considerations and only thinks from a Machiavellian perspective of power. Yet all of his positions end up being justifications of the interests of Russia and China against the US and anybody else that's aligned with the West.

it always makes me laugh when pro-russia shills go quiet whenever you ask them why almost every eastern european country immediately voluntarily fled to the west after the USSR fell

>>24487072
>Again, Russia never bothered to invade
I have bad new for you.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2003_Tuzla_Island_conflict

>>24487127
*news, but anyway

>>24487123
Russia has always been a backwards shithole compared to the West and they've long had a deep inferiority complex over this. Peter the Great literally built a new capital St. Petersburg just to make Russia seem more Western. Their greatest novelists are always grappling with the conflict between Western orientation and Slavophilia. Everyone deep down knows the West is the best but Russia instead of embracing Western culture and institutions wants to hang onto this idea of Slavic exceptionalism which is really just a sad wewuz cope. That's why the only thing they've got now is talking about how they're more Christian and traditional than us.

I just watched this nigger say a few days ago Trump won't let the US get dragged into the war with Iran. Now they're bombing them.

>>24487142
>how they're more Christian and traditional than us.
It always makes me laugh, because nowadays Russian conservatism is something totally unaesthetical and unintellectual, like prison/alco/gopnik culture of the former proletariat, with a pinch of the KGB church. It is sad even to compare with such conservative monsters like Tolkien, for example.

Russophobic NAFOtroons just couldn't resist crawling out of the woodwork when they saw a geopolitics thread on the catalog.

>>24485171
This didn't age well

>>24487197
I think that Trump is just bandwagoning after Israeli strikes on June 13, because he wants some personal victory.

>>24476789
>Russia is a protector of the Russian people
Damn is Putin like really bad at this? Why didn't he protect the Russian people? Why is gayrope better at this? Is being gay like better at protecting your people? Then why isn't Putin like gay?

>>24487206
You don't know anything then. Iranian uranium enrichment sites are buried underground and only the US has the 30,000 pound bunker buster bombs and B-2 fighter aircraft to carry them. The Israeli strike made no sense unless they knew they could count on US support. Otherwise it would be a strategic blunder. Also, the war is not going to be a quickie. Now the Iranians have every reason to develop a nuke, so the only logical way forward for the US now is regime change.

>>24487142
>Russia has always been a backwards shithole compared to the West and they've long had a deep inferiority complex over this ... That's why the only thing they've got now is talking about how they're more Christian and traditional than us.
Communism was also used to wall off Russia from the West even though Marxism was originally a Western import. Makes you think. I think one of the differences between Chinese communism and Russian communism is also that the Chinese don't have an inferiority complex (quite the opposite, they think they're superior to everybody else).

Also they're talking about being more Christian and traditional but the trad aspects are a result of poverty and backwardness more than anything else, and I expect this to have less attraction as the West continues cleaning up the excesses of what people call woke culture.

>>24473775 (OP)
It's not particularly insightful though. He's big on the China shit.

There's a letter from John Adams (I think it was to JQ) where he talks about the jealousy of old/vs young lawyers/doctors towards new hot shots, predicting English naval encroachment and the outcome. It's basically the same insight from 300 years ago.

>>24482422
>The EU has increasingly little to offer
Anyone with even a basic understanding of international relations understands that the history of the 21st century will be the history of the EUs orphaning by its American stepfather.

All your points are correct.
You missed however, the massive extent to which the US carries the EU.

You also missed the biggest thing, which is that the EU is heavily reliant on Pharma - the industry most susceptible to AI sea change.

>>24480041
A leftist would call you a pretentious and annoying pedant for insisting on that.

>>24487123
>voluntarily

>>24475419
Step 1 completed... let's see how the rest pans out

>>24487744
>EUs orphaning by its American stepfather.
Which will lead to the creation of a European Empire with an EU Army and an independent federation. Can't wait. 0/

>>24485480
Disbanding NATO entirely is obviously a Russian shill talking point but opposing NATO intervention where it is not needed (ahem Serbia and Libya) where it makes things worse has merit. Ukraine should not seek to enter NATO. Ukraine never should’ve sought to enter NATO and just as well the blood of the 14,000 dead in 2015 proves that the military gov in Kiev shouldn’t rely on us as they want to drag us all to our doom.

>>24473775 (OP)
Mearsheimer has been basically the only theorist who is NOT consistently wrong. Has liberalism not been a disaster wherever America has tried to implement it? He has been consistently correct about Ukraine, the Israel Lobby, and what is going in Gaza and the wider Middle East too. This is why he is not more well-known, because he says inconvenient truths for the American establishment, which is filled with liberals and Zionist Evangelical warmongers and Jews.

He has very sensibly said that the relationship with Israel is not in the American national interest, and that if we attack Iran (as we have), then it would be a disaster for America, and that we should have been pivoting to contain China. Mearsheimer will be vindicated.

>>24488104
>Ukraine should not seek to enter NATO.
Mate, you can't into causality. Ukraine wanted to join the EU and got the annexation and invasion. Yeah, there were Ukrainian political statements about joining NATO in the 2000s. But there were also Putin's political statements about joining NATO by Russia. Nobody accepted Ukraine into NATO in 2000-2010 (and Putin didn't even object to it in 2004 or 2005), so why should anybody have accepted Ukraine into NATO in 2014 even if Russia didn't invade then, if Ukraine wanted to join the EU and didn't want to join NATO?

>they want to drag us all to our doom.
Ah, you are one of those staunch right wing pussies, like Joe Rogan.

Reminder that Russophobic rhetoric is being stirred up by elites to distract you and direct your anger away from them.
When you call Russians "orcs" you are engaging in the Two Minute Hate like a prole from 1984.

>>24488176
Orwell reader with a shit take. I am unsurprised. Sounds like a (You) problem if you don‘t have hate enough to go around.

>>24488189
t. prole

>>24488104
>NATO intervention where it is not needed (ahem Serbia and Libya)
I agree
>Ukraine should not seek to enter NATO
Why? If they don't enter NATO now after the war ends then it is 100% likely that Russia will build up their army and go again.

>>24488231
>If they don't enter NATO now after the war ends then it is 100% likely that Russia will build up their army and go again.
I hope there will be any sustainable kind of green transition to reduce income of petrostates in the future.

>>24476789
1 & 2 get answered by Yankukovich signing a 30 year lease on the base to the russians which would also conviniently make Ukraine ineligable for entry into NATO (until it expired) plus the general blasé attitude euros and americans had for NATO before this war made them realise why it exists (and are still resistant on letting Ukraine in) which is kinda made irrelevant when what the Ukrainians actually wanted was entry into the EU for money reasons

3 lmfao

4 this divide was straight up exacterbated by themselves 99% of the time

The real™ realist analysis of this war is that Russians wanted to invade mostly because they believe it belongs to them and the westoids were to bitch made to meaningfully put their foot down to stop it and so the war rages on

>>24483732
>or a multi-polar order formed after the hanging of American elites Nuremberg style.

they're just gonna be one of the poles, did any soviets get hanged nuremberg style when that thing fell ?

>>24480041
>The only geopolitical theory that makes sense to me is the left wing one. The left would say not "Britain", but the British upper classes, had an economic interest in the war, and as they control the government they decided to go to war. I'm not saying that's correct - but that's the only theory that doesn't rely on fictionalised language and just-so explanations.
But this is itself conjecture and a just-so rationalization for the war. You act as if the upper classes are purely rational actors with the knowledge, ability, and unanimity in this specific geopolitical act for a specific outcome of which you cannot be certain of. It is definitionally a just-so rationalization.

>>24473775 (OP)
Is this guy actually paid by Russia or just a complete dupe? Your thread prompted me to watch his 2022 debate against Carl Bildt, former prime minister of Sweden. In it he argues that we ought to appease Russia, that Russia's invasion is our fault, that Putin has no territorial ambitions (LOL!), that it was a mistake for Finland and Sweden to join NATO, and a bunch of other shit that could've come straight from the desk of Sergay Lavrov.

>>24487693
>the West continues cleaning up the excesses of what people call woke culture
kek 2 more weeks bro

>>24488365
>Mearsheimer tells the ex-PM of Sweden to take sensible positions vis-a-vis Russia, not provoking them by encroaching on their sphere of influence like any old-school realpolitik politician would have done
>"He mUsT bE On rUssIa'S pAyRoLL"
Why are westoids like this?

>>24488499
Sweden and Finland joined NATO after Russia waged an aggressive war against their non-NATO member. This is completely rational behaviour because anyone can see that they could be next if they didn't have NATO protection... Then some American (presumably a traitor paid by Russians?) "intellectual" is wagging his finger and telling them that's a bad idea. How? Just how does that make sense?

>>24488505
Against their non nato neighbour*

>>24488499
>take sensible positions vis-a-vis Russia
what's the unironic argument for why this is sensible when Russia clearly has no intention of stopping it's devouring of small countries ? the west let Russia take over Chechnya (twice), Georgia, arguably Syria(although that panned out... differently) and Ukraine (also twice) and they have only gotten bolder

>>24488592
Georgia is independent and Chechnya arguably never succeeded legally, they broke away via violent revolution and returned via violence.

A question as whether Russia might want to invade the baltics. I doubt it. Ukraine was it's this largest export partner. Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania don't have the same proportion of russian speakers, have a much more defined culture. What does Russia gain from their annexation? Nothing, really. What does Russia gain from Ukraine? The bread basket of Europe. The territory that prevented every European power from winning a land war against them

>>24488592
>Syria
Syria has been a Russian ally since Hafez took over and it became an honorary Eastern Bloc regime. After that the Cold War legacy continued due to the base and Assad's isolation, and even now Syria's new regime is desperate to keep Russia there because they're worried about Israel and Turkey having too much influence.

>>24488666
>>24488649
none of these are particularly stimulating asnwers as to why the WEST should be allowing them to move like this and why Russia would be interested in stopping any time soon if it won

>>24475229
It isn't but Kissinger is dead and his successors are retarded

>>24488774
I'm not pro-Russia at all and hate them immensely, I'm just shooting down the meme pushed by Nafoids that Russia got ran out on a rail in Syria like the U.S did in Afghanistan when it's very obvious that Syria is still a Russian ally despite the change of government.

>>24488867
im not talking about wether they were succesful or not, im referring to the tacit approval at them even if only at the begrudging level, because the reality was that they never likedit and even postured against it, but i don't believe that at any point anybody in the west really sat down and realised they would one day have to actually fight and defeat Russia directly and they are still waffling

International relations is a high culture intellectual pursuit and plebs always drag in mud with their nasty, binded piglet feet, as this thread demonstrates and all related twitter discussions.

>>24488499
>encroaching on their sphere of influence
How did Sweden encroach on Russia's sphere of influence?

>>24488906
>i don't believe that at any point anybody in the west really sat down and realised they would one day have to actually fight and defeat Russia directly and they are still waffling
The thing is that the West is literally not capable of waging conventional war like it could in the 20th century. The West moved all of it's industrial production overseas (particularly to the famously friendly, democratic, and liberal China) and fundamentally re-organized their military equipment manufacturing and procurement over a period of 31 years to just-in-time production of expensive, high-quality, high-cost, high-maintenance equipment meant for picking off goat herders; rather than creating and maintining robust stockpiles of munitions and equipment that are far lower maintenance and manufactured domestically or within NATO.
Notwithstanding the immense task of remilitarizing a West that is deeply mentally ill and suffering countless domestic political, identity, and economic crises, the West now has to not only go back to, but exceed Cold War-era production of weapons and munitions and shift 30 years of a neoliberal market-driven peace dividend into war mode, which I just don't see being possible.
It's why we can't decisively win a war against a laughably corrupt and incompetent post-Soviet tinpot dictator, and how his regime is able to militarily outproduce our entire alliance that controls more than half of the world's military spending, because all we have is fake money and nothing else to throw at him.
And now with Israel tying us permanently into the Middle East, it really looks like we're just fucked.

>>24489411
eeh im not as deterministic as you on that, but the ability to counter Russia is also varied depending on who's actually *in it to win it*, (chiefly the Americans) but peacemealing it out the way they are doing, really doesn't help their odds, im guessing only a direct attack on a NATO country will actually make them realise this is serious; but given how countries unacustomed to war don't don't really know when to realise, until it's a bit too late, there's always the (probable) chance they'll just pull a "who wants a nuclear holocaust over Lithuania" and just abandon them outright, hoping to buy more time (to do nothing) by (you guessed it) feeding small countries to Russia again.

>>24489740
What I think is more likely is after Ukraine, Russia will probably take out Georgia and Armenia next given they're easy pickings nobody gives a shit about and only really consider the Baltics or Finland if something really serious or bizarre happens to NATO. They'll keep doing stuff in Africa, but mostly just keep giving resources, intel, and weapons to NK/China after they finally clean up the Caucasus.

Mearsheimer right as usual about the war. US knows it can't do anything without full regional escalation, Israel has no concrete war aims and knows regime change is a 1% chance and the only way they can damage Iran meaningfully or increase change of regime change is by bombing Iranian oil fields or committing mass civilian atrocities and becoming a pariah state. Neither the US or Israel can do anything, and Iran knows this, and Iran knows that the US knows that they know (etc.), so the only open question on each side is "Are any actors in this fight retarded or insane enough to do something that makes deescalation impossible?"

Iran knows that wars aren't fought tactically but strategically. The fact that everyone still says "Lebanon 2006" (and will now say "Lebanon 2025") whenever anyone says "The IDF would fuck Hezbollah up!!," the fact that decapitation strikes like Nasrallah's had no appreciable effect, all this means that three, five, ten, or twenty years ago, Israeli intelligence will think twice about more quagmire pseudo-invasions of Lebanon. Now the same is true of Iran.

What are the concrete results of this? Iran keeps its HEU, the US almost certainly deliberately pulled punches by only firing surface missiles at Natanz and Isfahan and giving the maximum delay before scratching Fordow so Iran could evacuate. The only wildcare here was always Israel, or rather elements of Israel, who clearly DO want a maximalist regional war. But even Israel is badly divided internally over this, with the real military and intelligence men seeing it as pointless.

From Israel's perspective, Iran surviving as a sovereign state for another ten or even five years, let alone a sovereign state with a 2006 Lebanon invasion equivalent of its own under its belt, is utterly disastrous. Iron Dome is now revealed PUBLICALLY as the joke people always knew it was. Just like Oct 7, what Netanyahu and the settler coalition wanted more than anything was exactly for Iran to pummel Israel so hard that the US is forced to join on a permanent war footing. Israel doesn't care that this will mean the end of the US empire and escalate to truly serious levels. The alternative for them, as they've known since the 90s, is encirclement, normalization, and regional multipolarity, with Israel getting weaker relative to its neighbors every year.

Boring, but that's how early 21st century wars will be fought until some big rupture with the End of History happens.

This also tidily explains why no Hezbollah or Houthi join-in. Iran was certainly telling them from the start "nah it'll be symbolically deescalated." Again the only real risk is Trump/Israel being COMPLETELY retarded and doing some Huckabee-tier tactical nuke or killing Khamenei.

Israel status: Economy weakened, still a pariah, still mired in Gaza indefinitely, still encircled by asymmetric actors, now even more vulnerable, Netanyahu's coalition further discredited, capital and elite flight, still no Haredi draft.

>>24490513
Also all regional actors will now realign in different ways. Iron Dome is a joke as long under saturation or if you have hypersonics. Israel is unreliable and insane and maximalist while Iran understands restraint and ultimately wants normalization.

What is the solution to Israel's demographic problems and the Haredi draft? Absolutely none. The secular Ashkenazi leadership class is almost exhausted and dead, and the financial/tech elites are the most able to leave Israel and the most sensitive to it becoming a settler-zionist "third world shithole" state not worth living in.

What did Israel gain from this? This is textbook Primat der Innenpolitik. It was all for Netanyahu to save himself, and he's still living in the '80s-90s in his head. Letting someone with adult memories of '67 and '73 run your country during the era of the Ukraine proxy war is fucking insane. Allowed Oct 7 to happen, would be gleeful if Iran hit every desalination plant and the US empire killed itself to flatten Iran and the region went up in flames, because the alternative is Israel becoming a struggling/failed liberal economy with horrifying demographic and ideological contradictions and slow-dying over 20 years.

>>24490513
This makes 0 sense. After the strike there is every reason for Iran to now start pursuing a nuclear weapon. If the war stops now that's almost certainly what they'll do - and even if they don't, the Israelis and Americans will be scared of that possibility, which amounts to the same thing. There is only 1 outcome to this war for both the US and Israel and that's regime change. There is no path to deescalation or new negotiations now.

>>24490538
The US desperately does not want war in the Middle East. It wants to pivot all resources to INDOPACOM. The Middle East is already secure enough, sans Israel, to be stable. The one wild card is Israel. You will never have another Iran/Iraq war in the region, ever, except when it involves Israel trying to permanently destabilize everybody so they can have an airstrike sandbox to play in and galvanize domestic morale for a generation or two (and ultimately "integrate" the Haredi). Like I said it's pure Primat der Innenpolitik. Netanyahu knows he has to leave behind a state that is at least on the way toward a more robust and integral Israeli nationalism when he dies, and this state has to preside over a shattered region. He wants Israel to be to the region what USA is to the world, post-Cold War.

It didn't work and it isn't going to work. The USA doesn't give a fuck if Iran has a civilian enrichment program and nuclear latency. At all. It will never reach the US or Europe so nobody cares. The US wants to weaken and contain China in a generational struggle so that Iran being a regional mini-power doesn't even mean anything, Iran will just be another Pakistan or Turkey to be managed, not a real threat.

The JCPOA acknowledged this and was a real source of friction with the Israelis and their lobby, which is why Obama annoyed Israel and went behind their backs to do it, and why Netanyahu yanked Trump's leash and told him to drop it. This war was just stage 2 of that larger plan, or really, Oct 7 was stage 2 and this is stage 3.

Nobody gives a fuck if Iran has a nuke. They don't want one anyway. They want nuclear latency and low-level regional multipolarity.

The US does not want regime change because it doesn't want regional instability. My guess is that the absolutely farcical Shah stuff was a deliberate sabotage of regime change efforts. It just shows how misaligned and out of touch Israel is that elements of their foreign policy establishment were taking this seriously. You were never going to get regime change in Iran without the US fighting Iraq War 2.0 and times ten.

This is such a hilarious defeat of Israel at the strategic level I am surprised. I was expecting much worse, I was expecting the retarded insane elements in Israel to force the US' hand much more effectively by doing the decapitations themselves but apparently they're too fucking incompetent to do even that. That's the icing on the cake, even on top of being strategically defeated they were tactically humiliated as well, and lost tons of money and prestige doing so. Turns out you can't do much to a country of 90 million people with $200,000,000 bombing runs where you're totally reliant on foreign AWACS and jamming and refueling and resupply but also unwilling to strike anything meaningful (oil fields) or commit civilian atrocities because it will jeopardize the very aid you need to penetrate the enemy airspace lmao. Israel has no winning moves left on the table.

>>24490326
I was thinking Kazakhstan.

>>24490602
Trump is already talking about regime change. Idk how you can say nobody cares about Iran having a nuke, that's just silly. Yes Iran didn't want a nuke before but what's the point of having nuclear latency if you're not willing to actually follow through and obtain one. Now that US and Israel are attacking them the most logical thing for them to do is get a nuke. And the US wont allow that to happen. There'll be an escalation to the war and a regime change imo. The strikes on Fordow that Trump was bragging about seem not to have done much from aerial photographs.

>>24490633
this nothingburger is already over after this useless iranian response

>>24490513
>Israel has no concrete war aims and knows regime change is a 1% chance
You're right that it's remote but Israel will take messing up Iran's nuclear program and military installations if it damages Iran's capabilities. To think like an Israeli, don't think of warfare as things necessarily going wrong and that the war is a means to return to peace and stability, but as a means to shape the conditions for another war 10-15 years in the future. War is not the abnormal state of affairs. They have essentially been in some state of military conflict their entire existence.

>the fact that decapitation strikes like Nasrallah's had no appreciable effect
That's incorrect. But more fundamentally is the damage to Hezbollah's political position in Lebanon and the loss of an important link to Iran via Syria (a knock-on effect). Hezbollah has been a sort of state-within-a-state and has depended on the rest of Lebanon being too weak and divided to stand up to them. Nasrallah's fatal mistake was also committing to entering the war on the same side as Hamas (because Hezbollah's resistance ideology demands it for legitimization) but not fully committing, because the rest of Lebanon didn't want it, which allowed Israel to throw Hamas on the defensive and then turn their full force on his organization.

>But even Israel is badly divided internally over this, with the real military and intelligence men seeing it as pointless.
I don't think you understand Israelis.

>Israel getting weaker relative to its neighbors every year.
No, it's getting stronger. This isn't what I expected but it's actually happening. This war with Iran will probably keep going. It's the beginning of a new continuous process. Think of the Middle East as a perpetually unstable ecosystem. A small change in one location can end up destabilizing the whole region in unpredictable ways. You have to at least understand that to operate in it.

>>24490653
I understand Israelis all too well: reliant on US toys to do anything (so reliant in fact that they can't even use the toys themselves but need their dad supervising and running interference WHILE they use them, then they need their dad to give them a party to celebrate their big achievement, and replace the toys, totally worthless and incompetent army that is barely even effective as a garrison force, overpriced MBTs that have no effective counter to current antitank tech available to non-state actors, and overreliance on mechanized infantry but inept at mechanized warfare. Israel's war doctrine is "drop five billion dollars on them, then send the Americans the bill, then simultaneously cry about it and mock dead kids.

Don't agree? That's fine. But most of the world does, except boomers and insane American evangelicals. The last element of the Israeli mystique not undermined was the Iron Dome and it's a joke now.

Israel doesn't give a shit about Iran's (non-existent and even near-future possible) nuclear program or a few military installations they can replace within the year. Israel NEEDS regime collapse in Iran to survive. That was the aim of this war: drag the US in, decapitate, shock and awe, regime collapse. Nothing short of that is a strategic victory.

The Haredim will NEVER be drafted and the settlers are 90 IQ awful successors to the Mileikowsky types who have living memory of '48-'73. It's over. See also the leaked ADL call talking about how the youth universally despises Israel. Every year that goes by is another dead veteran of '73, another fifty fag parades in Tel Aviv, another few percentages of Haredi demographic dead weight, another few fractions of a percent of capital and elite flight.

Every country in the region knows this and has known it for years. Asymmetric warfare was never aimed at "destroying" Israel but at eroding it. Everybody knows that meme actions like getting a nuke or pointlessly striking Dimona is counterproductive. Iran would rather see Israel's credit rating lowered again than see a flattened hospital, although I'm sure they enjoyed https://files.catbox.moe/g9josv.mp4 while deliberately limiting it and abiding by rules of war.

How will Israel get stronger? More useless MBTs? More exhausted IDF reservists or Haredim welfare queens? More Iron Dome missiles that are now confirmed useless against saturation strikes (and Hezbollah didn't even join)? More credit degradations, more capital flight? Is it that the retarded boomers will go on Channel 12 and say "We need to nuke Tehran!!!" again? Another year, or two, or five in Gaza? How's Netanyahu's popularity doing?

I don't even care about Iran. I just want Israel weakened. I would gladly have accepted Iran going out fighting if it meant doing even half the damage to Israel's reputation and prestige that it did. This war has been the ultimate gift. I get to keep Iran and Israel gets the already terrible status quo ante.

>>24490743
Why are you so confident the US wont regime change iran

>>24490943
America's strike against Iran didn't destroy their nuclear program at all and Iran's response was literally just a way to tell America "we're not going to war." This war is now Israel's and America has no intention for regime change much to the dismay of most U.S. politicians who really did want it. The paranoia of this past week is already obsolete.

>>24490982
The Americans wanted a stronger response for an excuse to go in further but they can just create another casus belli. Also why won't Iran create nukes now?

>>24490538
>>24490987
The Iranians will be empowered to make a nuke after this but that's the consequence the West is accepting because it's slowly going to be obvious to everyone that this was Israel's fuckup. They started a war during negotiations, they begged America to end it, now America and Iran coordinated a de-escalation without really doing anything. It doesn't have to make sense in your equation because your equation is wrong. The correct equation is that Israel is a rogue state trying to drag the West into war and this particular attempt didn't work out as intended.

>>24491007
So it's not a concern for you that Trump has publicly entertained regime change and the whole US Congress is controlled by Israel and they've all including Trump said even just Iran having enrichment -- never mind a nuke -- is a red line?

>>24491018
You might want to check the news right now -- frankly not even Mearsheimer could predict such a shitshow as is unfolding currently. I don't even know what's happening.

>>24473775 (OP)
Israel is in full damage control, huh?

>>24490538
update on this anon????

>>24491159
I guess we'll see. I don't trust anything Trump says (TACO and so on) but if I'm wrong in the short term and this war ends quickly I still think Iran will now try to build nukes in the long term. I don't see how the Americans can be so confident they destroyed all the enrichment sites.

>>24490513
>>24490529
>>24490602
This anon knows his shit. Predicted everything perfectly.

>>24475419
He has such an obvious blind spot for Israel

>>24491193
It's really pathetic. There's no bigger threat to the legitimacy of liberalism than Israel and everything it does being sanctioned by liberals, but Fukuyama and his ilk have almost nothing to say about it, just constant seething about Putin

>>24480041
>Why did "Britain" want to "balance continental powers against one another"?
Historylet take
The UK and France's whole external politics since the Congress of Vienna was to keep continental powers in check.
They knew they could get outclassed by another european rising power, just like they outclassed Spain, Portugal and Italian city-states before, so they manage a tight balance between the european regional powers, so no one can grow too much, and avoid another situation like the Napoleonic Wars.

The creation of the German Empire was the tipping point that led to WW1 decades later, and the establishment of Nazi Germany was a revival of this same rearrangement of the status quo. The UK couldn't let this go foward.

>>24490602
>its da jooz
.
>if we attack Iran (as we have), then it would be a disaster for America
No, it is definitely in America's interest to enact regime change in Iran. The Iranian regime has, since 1979, been killing Americans either directly or through various proxies.
If Iran's only goal is to destroy Israel, then why are they developing intercontinental ballistic missiles? Keyword "intercontinental". You don't need those to nuke Israel, but to reach the USA you do.
>we should have been pivoting to contain China
There is no 'pivoting' required here, opposing Iran and China are not mutually exclusive. If the US shows some strength and then says Taiwan is a red line then that invasion simply won't happen. Unfortunately we have isolationists in the US government so expect the world to become a more dangerous and brutal place.

>>24475419
You left out the part after step 2 where the Radical Islamic terrorists pillage the country and launch a new wave of international terrorism abroad or did you learn nothing from Iraq, Libya, or Syria?

>>24491278
You already gave up on the war you started Cohen there's really no reason to still be pushing all this regime change bullshit

>>24490618
>Kazakhstan
Central Asia is too big and too isolated from the West for Russia to care about. All those countries are CID/CSTO members and also have close ties to China, so much like Mongolia Russia is fine keeping them where they are.
The Caucasus is a much more urgent threat for obvious reasons.

>>24490529
>>24490602
>>24490513
Great analysis. Dead on that the deranged lunatics that lead Israel wants a US-Iran war to destroy its regional adversary while snapping the back of the Great Empire, leaving nothing to restrain it from securing regional hegemony.

>>24491219
Israel is liberalism's red-headed stepdaughter with a history of sacrificing children to moloch and Ba'al while pretending otherwise.

>>24480041
>what is balance of power theory
get good scrub

>>24491219
>There's no bigger threat to the legitimacy of liberalism than Israel and everything it does being sanctioned by liberals, but Fukuyama and his ilk have almost nothing to say about it
It's because all postwar liberals HAVE to defend Israel because Israel is the keystone of the WWII foundation myth of the post-1945 world. Criticism of Israel is a grave affront to these types because it opens the door to criticism of the postwar order, which is seen as heresy by those guardians of the faith that forces a trauma response to the memory of the World Wars.

Basically, Hannah Arendt saw all of this coming fucking decades ago.

>>24491186
The war will heat up again quite soon. This truce is political for Trump PR, just like the ceasefire with Hamas, which just bought a bit of hype and time and then collapsed. It makes absolutely 0 sense for the war to end now. Too many open questions. I don't think they can be certain they destroyed Iran's nuclear latency. Screencap this.

>>24490743
>Don't agree? That's fine. But most of the world does, except boomers and insane American evangelicals.
It doesn't matter what most of the world thinks. Neither Israel nor the U.S. lives or dies based on what people in other countries think or feel. What really matters is endogenous strength.

>The last element of the Israeli mystique
I don't share any mystique about it. It's just a country with some particular characteristics, and its strength has been growing relative to its neighbors who are in various states of crisis if not outright collapse like Syria. You're also just wrong about some basic things. The attack on Iran was overwhelmingly popular in Israel. Bibi is widely disliked but it's not so bipolar like America that people won't support fighting (or won't fight) because they don't like the prime minister and they're in the other party. The technological gap between Israel and its adversaries has also grown, not diminished. All that Iran really has are ballistic missiles, terrorism, and a potential nuclear program. The last one has been blown up, and while it still has ballistic missiles, it doesn't have an air force. I'd go with the air force.

>Asymmetric warfare was never aimed at "destroying" Israel but at eroding it.
Yeah I understand that. I'm not actually convinced that trying to destroy Israel in a war-like fashion will work though. If it worked, it would've worked. But it hasn't worked. There are various reasons why, but one of them is this kind of characteristically extreme hubris among Israel's enemies that cause them to miscalculate time and time again.

>More Iron Dome missiles that are now confirmed useless against saturation strikes (and Hezbollah didn't even join)?
Hezbollah is in no position to join and most Lebanese don't support it. Most of their leadership has been killed. Iron Dome also isn't what they use on the ballistic missiles, they have a different system called Arrow. Most of the missiles don't get through, and the ones that do pack a wallop but a couple dozen dead Israelis doesn't fundamentally change anything, what Iran threw at them is like 2% of what the Bongs went through during the Blitz.

>>24482422
>means that many Russian cities are safer than their Europeans counterparts
not even gonna attempt to refute this because the thicc skull that produced such a masterpiece of thought would be impossible to penetrate, so I'm just gonna say this: KEK

>>24490513
Highest IQ post ITT.

>LIVE: Trump warns Israel not to attack Iran, says both sides broke truce
>24 Jun 2025
>US President Donald Trump says Israel and Iran have both violated the ceasefire, but that he was “really unhappy” with Israel. He called on Israel to stop dropping bombs and to “bring your pilots home, now!”
>Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz says he has ordered “intense strikes” on Tehran, accusing Iran of violating the truce brokered by the US and Qatar.
Iran denies the claim, and its top security body warns its forces stand ready to respond decisively to any Israeli violations.
It's already heating back up, you guys want to apologise?

>>24492597
Trump ordering Bibi to stop while the planes were already penetrating Iranian airspace was so fucking funny, what a humiliation. I could not have asked for a better war with Israel than this. Not only did Trump have an unscripted outburst about Israel live on TV, Bibi had to cuck and obey it anyway. I'm sure that'll play really well domestically when just a few hours earlier he's talking about negotiating a ceasefire with Hamas which doesn't exist.

>>24492674
I think Trump is actually braindead though, you don't start a war like this and not finish it. Shouldn't have started it in the first place of course but this is just another one of his chaotic strategy-less moments. Genuinely worrying, 2 brain damaged presidents in a row.

>>24492686
If Trump had a brain he would have told Israel that if they attack Iran he will cut all resupply and pull all US assets from the region, except the minimum necessary to prevent Iran from attacking Abraham Accords signatories and oil market assets

Anyone who supports Israel is a retard, they are dead weight, traitorous, and a rogue state

>>24492692
Agreed, but like with everything Trump wants to have it both ways.

>>24492692
Agreed. I oppose Trump's Israel policy and think it's likely that this outburst is performative to reduce the MIGA criticism, but I also don't think it's strictly retardation. Trump is old and stuck in the propagandized boomer view of Israel and the Middle East without properly understanding what Israel actually is. If his outburst isn't performative, this is Trump finding out for the first time that Israel isn't this bastion of freedom in the M.E., but a belligerent rogue state.
I still think that the most likely possibility is that Trump is just distancing himself from Israel to make it look less like they're colluding behind the scenes, but his Israel policy will remain conducive to their ends.

>>24474872
>Mearsheimer is saying that NATO has taken enough.

And he's a vatnik shill for doing so

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FVmmASrAL-Q

>>24492692
Trump

>>24480041
>not "Britain", but the British upper classes,
Stopped reading there, I know precisely what the rest of your post looks like in my mind.

>>24492719
>video
Nafo neolib globe twitter types are as pathetic as Ziggers. What are you going to do next, post a Lazerpig video about how cultural marxism isn't real and doesn't impact the decline of Western influence at all, you chud?

>>24483529
>>24484000
>>24487808
>>24488354
>>24491234
>>24491761
>>24492916
You guys are making fun of me but I still think my concern is justified. Like why did "Britain" care about "containing the continental powers"? Is it so they wouldn't get invaded and occupied? Ok, but why do they care about that? It's not like if Germany ruled England they would genocide the population or something. So whose interest is war in, the average person or the elite's?

>>24492991
>Is it so they wouldn't get invaded and occupied?
Obviously.
>Ok, but why do they care about that?
Assuming you are American, why would you care if China invaded and took over the country?

>>24477508
He keep saying US should pivot to China though

>>24492398
>All that Iran really has are ballistic missiles, terrorism
Kys, Jew. Israel, KSA, and USA are the number 1 sponsors of terrorism.
Iran and Russia were the ones fighting ISIS and spread of Wahhabism. The ones doing the raping in Europe are Sunni radicals. Iran protected Christians in Syria and other groups like Mandaeans and Yazidis.
Israel, America, and Saudi Arabia have been financing and arming Sunni radicals. Ever since Assad was ousted it's gotten worse. It's thanks to America, Israel, and Saudi Arabia Islamism spread into Europe.
*Most* Iranians are not interested in spreading Islam into Europe because they understand Europe has its own rich culture to preserve.
If Iran were to collapse, it would create a massive shit storm. In fact, there's already a massive shit storm ever since that Jihadi got power when Assad got ousted. Pic related happened yesterday from Sunni radicals.

>>24491990
>Basically, Hannah Arendt saw all of this coming fucking decades ago.
more on this?

>>24492352
Yeah there's no doubt about this. This was an incredibly bizarre and mysterious ceasefire for a war that didn't achieve any of its strategic aims. It isn't done yet at all, Trump just might have told Israel to chill out and rebuild for a bit.

>>24493486
>more on this?
Hannah Arendt was a German Jewish classical liberal political theorist from the 20th century, particularly famous for her concept of the "banality of evil", or the idea that it's really easy for governments or ideologies to get normalfags to do awful shit and rationalize it based on her coverage of the Eichmann trial because of how susprised she was by how eerily average the guy was.
But what's most interesting about her to me at least, is her coverage of the Zionist project and early years of Israel. She was always a Zionist and supported Jewish migration to Israel, but she was deeply critical of the sectarian and supremacist ideas rooted in the movement, which especially rose to prominence after Jews from Eastern Europe and the Middle East started swamping Israel in the 40s and 50s, which completely altered the demographic and cultural character of the area and the Zionist movement as a whole as revisionist ideas became more popular. She believed that the revanchist, supremacist, and uncompromising attitude that grew dominant in the postwar Zionist movement would be it's long-term downfall because it would be the ultimate betrayal of the liberal world order Israel was (at least in her mind) founded upon, while also making Israel too overly dependent on the guilt of Western powers, which would grow more and more limited the more atrocities and wars Israel would inevitably commit against Arabs following this new form of Zionism that deliberately ignored or sidelined the Arabs and their reasonable disagreements and objections.
Basically, this essay by her explains it all in detail if you're curious, she's one of the VERY few women theorists/philosophers whose opinions actually matter
https://tripleampersand.org/zionism-reconsidered/

>>24492940
No, just a pic (you)

>>24493565
>If you don't blindly support every Western foreign policy decision of the last 35 years you're a ZIGGER!
People like you have done more damage to the Ukrainian cuase more than any amount of Vatnigger propaganda.

>>24493588
True

>>24493536
Thank you

>>24473775 (OP)
He predicted Trump wouldn't attack Iran lmao

>>24493134
>Assuming you are American, why would you care if China invaded and took over the country?
they'd probably do a better job than the government we have

>>24494297
He also predicted that Putin wouldn't attack or occupy Ukraine -- something which Putin shills are now telling us was "inevitable" and "necessary" and "everyone could see it coming".