Geopolitics

[neverdie]

i think it depends on the demographics of each country. russia has an aging population. in the middle east countries usually have young populations. more than two thirds of Iran's population are under 30 for example. not massively dissimilar to the US which is one of the reasons fox news the most watched cable network news show, because it attracts the conservative and usually older demographic.

 

[Carolina Red]

In this context, it really isn't.

And in this context it really is. It’s almost like I know what I posted and why…

Wrong.

Where do most people in dictatorships get their news?

Internet is still the number one source of news. Pick any Arabic country (most of them are not democracies)

https://www.scientificamerican.com/arabic/articles/news/the-internet-main-source-of-news-for-arabs/

The article is in arabic, but it states that about 78% of the people in arabic countries use the internet as the first source of news.

That’s not quite an answer to what I’ve asked. Russia, for example, has most of its population (60%+) accessing their news via TV.

 

[Carolina Red]

i think it depends on the demographics of each country. russia has an aging population. in the middle east countries usually have young populations. more than two thirds of Iran's population are under 30 for example. not massively dissimilar to the US which is one of the reasons fox news the most watched cable network news show, because it attracts the conservative and usually older demographic.

Now this is a solid answer to what I asked.

 

[shamans]

i think it depends on the demographics of each country. russia has an aging population. in the middle east countries usually have young populations. more than two thirds of Iran's population are under 30 for example. not massively dissimilar to the US which is one of the reasons fox news the most watched cable network news show, because it attracts the conservative and usually older demographic.

I think you're saying older folks watch TV while younger ones stick to the internet? Point is though, in the middle east state run TV like Russia is not so widely consumed as it probably is in Russia. So even older folks who understand English have CNN, BBC etc on their TV.

Freedom of the press is very different than censorship of western media.

 

[shamans]

I'm not totally sure that they do to be honest and, even if they do, they think that should be parked aside for this current conflict.

The reality is that a lot of posters on here consider the Ukraine war to be almost unique in terms of modern conflicts. To some extent, if you're European I can get that but the reality is of course that it isn't even slightly unique to most people around the world. It doesn't mean that they necessarily support Russia but for them, this conflict isn't different from ant of the number of conflicts still ongoing now or any of the number of conflicts that the USA and western countries have waged on other countries within living memory. We're not talking about the distant past, we're talking about conflicts where we still have living stories from people.

Putin's Russia is imperial as well and I've already articulated my personal view that as much as I can criticise, if I had to live in a world with a hegemon, I would prefer to live in a world with the USA/west as hegemon as opposed to one with Russia/China. It rather misses the point though that people are not going to react the same way towards people who have (and still do) exploit them vs someone who could potentially exploit them. If someone beat me up in the street and still trips me up when I see them, I'm not going to react to them in the same way as someone who has tripped other people up in the past.

A lot of countries in the old Soviet or even non-aligned blocks look with fond memories back to the money the Soviet Union gave them, as well the free university education they provided some of their citizens too.

So, its all a very western centric viewpoint, as to how the world is and should react. Its all very patronising (those poor people in dictatorships. If only they properly understood, then they'd realise how they should think and think exactly like us on this conflict').

As for the other topic which has been ongoing for the past few days (the impact of the war on prices and the willingness of people to stomach it). Firstly, there are people around the world already feeling it. That of course is 100% Putin's fault. Secondly, it is disingenuous to suggest that for people in the West, it is only 'annoying' and not also potentially plunging people into poverty. At the moment, money is flowing from Europe and the USA. That's great. I think the point though, and I know this is anathema at the moment, is that at some point, especially for populations which look like they're about to enter into a recession soon, the political cost of unrestricted support will eventually become too high.

I hope that point comes after Ukraine is able to push Russia back to its original borders. But it may not. That is not some traitorous conversation to have. If the war rumbles on at a relative stalemate like this for years, peoples' willingness to help out may not be as great as it is now.

That's a more coherent way to put out some of my own personal thoughts on all of this. The bold part especially. What's worse, and very demeaning, is trying to have any discussion over this drowned into a label of "whataboutism".

And in this context it really is. It’s almost like I know what I posted and why…

I read it again and it still feels like you were equating Russia and the Middle east since either are examples of authoritarian rule and can be used interchangeably but if you're saying you didn't say that, I'll take your word for it. I probably misinterpreted.

In reply to what matters, and sort of in line with the post above I find it quite annoying when western audiences point at the lack of "free" international media being the reason why the Russians, Chinese etc are so deluded. In times of war it is always a them vs us sort of mentality that takes over. People don't want western media as they don't trust it. The average person will trust their own state TV. It would be better if the cause of this mistrust was studied instead.

Many Chinese see the west as power hungry and someone they can't trust. It's a cultural thing. You can present the most fair and balances news outlet to them but if its from the west they'll try and look for the "hidden" message there. Of course, it doesn't help when you have CNN, FOX and BBC that have shown disgusting bias in the past. How can you trust news outlets like that?

It's not to say China are the good guys or that CNN is anything like the state run media outlets but downplaying societies as mindless drones just sounds silly to me.

That's why I don't think it matters where people get their news source from. Rather, unless you are in North Korea, where you get your source from is secondary. You will get it from wherever you want in this day and age.

 

[tomaldinho1]

I disagree with ceding of territories. Very least there can be an acceptance of crimea belonging to Russia and Ukraine retaining it's Donbas reagions which was the defacto state anyway pre invasion.

This gives something for Putin to go home with without truly changing anything. It ends the war for Ukraine and it helps give another chance for Europe to not make stupid mistakes on Russian reliance.

Putin will not and cannot punish anyone. Lessons were learned from this war and Putin reached his limits.

In time Putin is tried and/or disposed and the rest goes on

I would have also thought that until Putin made it abundantly clear Donbas was part of Russia - he can hardly now withdraw - particularly with so many troop losses. That seems like a pipedream.
I have no idea why you think the bolded, it's guaranteed.

 

[Raoul]

That's a more coherent way to put out some of my own personal thoughts on all of this. The bold part especially. What's worse, and very demeaning, is trying to have any discussion over this drowned into a label of "whataboutism".




I read it again and it still feels like you were equating Russia and the Middle east since either are examples of authoritarian rule and can be used interchangeably but if you're saying you didn't say that, I'll take your word for it. I probably misinterpreted.

In reply to what matters, and sort of in line with the post above I find it quite annoying when western audiences point at the lack of "free" international media being the reason why the Russians, Chinese etc are so deluded. In times of war it is always a them vs us sort of mentality that takes over. People don't want western media as they don't trust it. The average person will trust their own state TV. It would be better if the cause of this mistrust was studied instead.

Many Chinese see the west as power hungry and someone they can't trust. It's a cultural thing. You can present the most fair and balances news outlet to them but if its from the west they'll try and look for the "hidden" message there. Of course, it doesn't help when you have CNN, FOX and BBC that have shown disgusting bias in the past. How can you trust news outlets like that?

It's not to say China are the good guys or that CNN is anything like the state run media outlets but downplaying societies as mindless drones just sounds silly to me.

That's why I don't think it matters where people get their news source from. Rather, unless you are in North Korea, where you get your source from is secondary. You will get it from wherever you want in this day and age.

Its not that they don't want it. Its because of the stiflingly propagandist nature of Russian disinformation on TV has an incessant and cumulative brainwashing effect on those with no other option but to watch it for news. It literally reframes reality into Putin's desired narrative. If you were to offer ordinary Russian language, non-pro Russian options, they would be watched. Unfortunately, there aren't really any CNN/BBC type companies that operate with any degree of scale in the Russian sphere, to where they would be viewed as viable alternatives. I've sat in cafes and bars in Odesa and most of the TVs were Russian channels, which tends to have a compounding effect over time. Introduce viable alternatives, and they would do the same.

 

[Carolina Red]

I read it again and it still feels like you were equating Russia and the Middle east

Alrighty, well I am not here to argue your feelings and I can only tell you what I said.

 

[shamans]

I would have also thought that until Putin made it abundantly clear Donbas was part of Russia - he can hardly now withdraw - particularly with so many troop losses. That seems like a pipedream.
I have no idea why you think the bolded, it's guaranteed.

Because I think for Putin getting into Ukraine, particularly Kiev, was seen as low hanging fruit.That failed really bad. I don't think this whole operation was something that will be seen as a platform to build on. It has bcome somewhat of a mess and it's all about what they can salvage at this point. The strong media statements are all for saving face.

Its not that they don't want it. Its because of the stiflingly propagandist nature of Russian disinformation on TV has an incessant and cumulative brainwashing effect on those with no other option but to watch it for news. It literally reframes reality into Putin's desired narrative. If you were to offer ordinary Russian language, non-pro Russian options, they would be watched. Unfortunately, there aren't really any CNN/BBC type companies that operate with any degree of scale in the Russian sphere, to where they would be viewed as viable alternatives. I've sat in cafes and bars in Odesa and most of the TVs were Russian channels, which tends to have a compounding effect over time. Introduce viable alternatives, and they would do the same.

I just don't think your average Russian is going to trust any form of reporting from CNN or BBC. No matter who fair the report is. There will always be outliers.

Alrighty, well I am not here to argue your feelings and I can only tell you what I said.

Was just telling you what I perceived as is common in conversations.

 

[Raoul]

I just don't think your average Russian is going to trust any form of reporting from CNN or BBC. No matter who fair the report is. There will always be outliers.

I'm not talking about these channels in English as most of the west know them as now. I'm talking about full on Russian language versions based in the region (perhaps in Ukraine and the Baltics), that speak to daily issues of concern among Russian speakers across the former Soviet sphere.

 

[Carolina Red]

Was just telling you what I perceived as is common in conversations.

Well, you perceived incorrectly, but feel you didn’t, so we seem to be at an impasse.

 

[Cheimoon]

I'm not totally sure that they do to be honest and, even if they do, they think that should be parked aside for this current conflict.

The reality is that a lot of posters on here consider the Ukraine war to be almost unique in terms of modern conflicts. To some extent, if you're European I can get that but the reality is of course that it isn't even slightly unique to most people around the world. It doesn't mean that they necessarily support Russia but for them, this conflict isn't different from ant of the number of conflicts still ongoing now or any of the number of conflicts that the USA and western countries have waged on other countries within living memory. We're not talking about the distant past, we're talking about conflicts where we still have living stories from people.

Putin's Russia is imperial as well and I've already articulated my personal view that as much as I can criticise, if I had to live in a world with a hegemon, I would prefer to live in a world with the USA/west as hegemon as opposed to one with Russia/China. It rather misses the point though that people are not going to react the same way towards people who have (and still do) exploit them vs someone who could potentially exploit them. If someone beat me up in the street and still trips me up when I see them, I'm not going to react to them in the same way as someone who has tripped other people up in the past.

A lot of countries in the old Soviet or even non-aligned blocks look with fond memories back to the money the Soviet Union gave them, as well the free university education they provided some of their citizens too.

So, its all a very western centric viewpoint, as to how the world is and should react. Its all very patronising (those poor people in dictatorships. If only they properly understood, then they'd realise how they should think and think exactly like us on this conflict').

As for the other topic which has been ongoing for the past few days (the impact of the war on prices and the willingness of people to stomach it). Firstly, there are people around the world already feeling it. That of course is 100% Putin's fault. Secondly, it is disingenuous to suggest that for people in the West, it is only 'annoying' and not also potentially plunging people into poverty. At the moment, money is flowing from Europe and the USA. That's great. I think the point though, and I know this is anathema at the moment, is that at some point, especially for populations which look like they're about to enter into a recession soon, the political cost of unrestricted support will eventually become too high.

I hope that point comes after Ukraine is able to push Russia back to its original borders. But it may not. That is not some traitorous conversation to have. If the war rumbles on at a relative stalemate like this for years, peoples' willingness to help out may not be as great as it is now.

That's an awesome post. (As usual!)

I don't really have anything else to add - except that I think that, with the way inflation is going and being attritbuted to the war, it might not be long until people in EU/NATO countries that aren't close to Russia will start prioritizing themselves over Ukraine.

 

[VidaRed]

Its not that they don't want it. Its because of the stiflingly propagandist nature of Russian disinformation on TV has an incessant and cumulative brainwashing effect on those with no other option but to watch it for news. It literally reframes reality into Putin's desired narrative. If you were to offer ordinary Russian language, non-pro Russian options, they would be watched. Unfortunately, there aren't really any CNN/BBC type companies that operate with any degree of scale in the Russian sphere, to where they would be viewed as viable alternatives. I've sat in cafes and bars in Odesa and most of the TVs were Russian channels, which tends to have a compounding effect over time. Introduce viable alternatives, and they would do the same.

What makes you think the non-western world doesn't see CNN and BBC as propaganda outlets for their respective govts ?

To be fair all countries use media as propaganda outlets with varying degrees including the west.

 

[maniak]

I would just like to say I haven't a clue what the rules are anymore. I engaged in a discussion about the consequences of the war in ukraine, how russia and the west were acting in ukraine and what the consequences might be and it all got moved here. What's the logic?

 

[Raoul]

What makes you think the non-western world doesn't see CNN and BBC as propaganda outlets for their respective govts ?

To be fair all countries use media as propaganda outlets with varying degrees including the west.

Because there’s an objective difference between a free press grounded in truth and the banana republic propagandist outlets in non democratic systems.

 

[VidaRed]

Because there’s an objective difference between a free press grounded in truth and the banana republic propagandist outlets in non democratic systems.

The other is always the propagandist, that's how propaganda works.

Its best to take everything with a pinch of salt whether its rt news, fox, cnn or bbc. Yes you'd take two pinches of salt with the former two but that doesn't mean the latter are squeaky clean, i'd take a pinch of salt with the latter two.

 

[Raoul]

The other is always the propagandist, that's how propaganda works.

Its best to take everything with a pinch of salt whether its rt news, fox, cnn or bbc. Yes you'd take two pinches of salt with the former two but that doesn't mean the latter are squeaky clean, i'd take a pinch of salt with the latter two.

Its not, and if you believe this, then you’re buying into the authoritarian propaganda narrative that seeks to obscure objective truth by suggesting everything is subjective, and thus nothing should be believed. That’s literally an old Soviet trick that was used to control their public. There is an objective, shared reality that is the foundation for a free press, which is radically different from authoritarian propaganda.

 

[RedTiger]

I'm not totally sure that they do to be honest and, even if they do, they think that should be parked aside for this current conflict.

The reality is that a lot of posters on here consider the Ukraine war to be almost unique in terms of modern conflicts. To some extent, if you're European I can get that but the reality is of course that it isn't even slightly unique to most people around the world. It doesn't mean that they necessarily support Russia but for them, this conflict isn't different from ant of the number of conflicts still ongoing now or any of the number of conflicts that the USA and western countries have waged on other countries within living memory. We're not talking about the distant past, we're talking about conflicts where we still have living stories from people.

Putin's Russia is imperial as well and I've already articulated my personal view that as much as I can criticise, if I had to live in a world with a hegemon, I would prefer to live in a world with the USA/west as hegemon as opposed to one with Russia/China. It rather misses the point though that people are not going to react the same way towards people who have (and still do) exploit them vs someone who could potentially exploit them. If someone beat me up in the street and still trips me up when I see them, I'm not going to react to them in the same way as someone who has tripped other people up in the past.

A lot of countries in the old Soviet or even non-aligned blocks look with fond memories back to the money the Soviet Union gave them, as well the free university education they provided some of their citizens too.

So, its all a very western centric viewpoint, as to how the world is and should react. Its all very patronising (those poor people in dictatorships. If only they properly understood, then they'd realise how they should think and think exactly like us on this conflict').

As for the other topic which has been ongoing for the past few days (the impact of the war on prices and the willingness of people to stomach it). Firstly, there are people around the world already feeling it. That of course is 100% Putin's fault. Secondly, it is disingenuous to suggest that for people in the West, it is only 'annoying' and not also potentially plunging people into poverty. At the moment, money is flowing from Europe and the USA. That's great. I think the point though, and I know this is anathema at the moment, is that at some point, especially for populations which look like they're about to enter into a recession soon, the political cost of unrestricted support will eventually become too high.

I hope that point comes after Ukraine is able to push Russia back to its original borders. But it may not. That is not some traitorous conversation to have. If the war rumbles on at a relative stalemate like this for years, peoples' willingness to help out may not be as great as it is now.

Great post.

 

[VidaRed]

Why Do People Hate Realism So Much?
The school of thought doesn’t explain everything—but its proponents foresaw the potential for conflict over Ukraine long before it erupted.
By Stephen M. Walt, a columnist at Foreign Policy and the Robert and Renée Belfer professor of international relations at Harvard University.

JUNE 13, 2022, 11:40 AM
The political scientist Robert Gilpin once wrote that “no one loves a political realist.” His lament seems especially apt today, as the ongoing tragedy in Ukraine has spawned an uptick of realism-bashing. A small sample: Anne Applebaum and Tom Nichols of the Atlantic, Columbia University professor and fellow FP columnist Adam Tooze in the New Statesman, University of Toronto professor Seva Gunitsky, and Michael Mazarr of Rand Corp. Even Edward Luce of the Financial Times, who is consistently one of the most insightful observers on U.S. and global policy, recently opined that “the ‘realist’ school of foreign policy … has had a terrible press recently, most of it richly deserved.”

Much of this ire has been directed at my colleague and occasional co-author John J. Mearsheimer, based in part on the bizarre claim that his views on the West’s role in helping to cause the Russia-Ukraine crisis somehow make him “pro-Putin” and in part on some serious misreadings of his theory of offensive realism.

Another obvious target is former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, whose recent comments urging peace talks with Moscow, a territorial compromise in Ukraine, and the need to avoid a permanent rupture with Russia were seen as a revealing demonstration of realism’s moral bankruptcy. As I explain below, Kissinger is an outlier within the realist tradition, but he’s still a convenient foil for its critics.

The irony here is hard to miss. Realists of various stripes repeatedly warned that Western policy toward Russia and Ukraine would lead to serious trouble, warnings that were blithely ignored by those who claimed that NATO’s open-door policy would lead to lasting peace in Europe. Now that war has broken out, lives are being lost, and Ukraine is being destroyed, you would think proponents of open-ended NATO enlargement would have set aside their idealistic illusions and think about these issues in a hard-nosed, realist fashion. Yet the opposite has occurred: The people who got it right are singled out for attack, while those who believed that enlarging NATO would create a vast zone of peace in Europe are insisting that the war continue until Russia is totally defeated and greatly weakened.

This phenomenon isn’t all that surprising, insofar as realism has never been popular in the United States. It is recognized as an important tradition in the study of international relations, but it is also the object of considerable animosity. In 2010, for example, University of California, San Diego professor David Lake’s presidential address to the International Studies Association criticized realism and other paradigms as “sects” and “pathologies” that divert attention from “studying things that matter.” Back in the 1990s, when many believed liberal values were spreading around the world, the political scientist John Vasquez published a lengthy article in American Political Science Review claiming that realism was a “degenerative” research program that ought to be discarded.

So why do so many people dislike realism so intensely? I might not be the most objective judge on this issue, but here’s what I think is going on.

Realism is a rather gloomy perspective on politics, even in its more benign versions. It assumes that people are irredeemably flawed and that there is no way to eliminate all conflicts of interest among individuals or the social groups they form. Moreover, all versions of realism highlight the insecurity resulting from the absence of an overarching global authority that can enforce agreements and prevent states from attacking one another. When violence is a possibility, human groups of all sorts—be they tribes, city-states, street gangs, militias, nations, states, etc.—will look for ways to make themselves more secure, which means they will be strongly inclined to compete for power.
Contrary to what some critics maintain, realists do not see these features as iron laws that determine every move a state might make. Nor do they believe that cooperation is impossible or that international institutions are of no value, and they certainly don’t think that humans lack agency or the ability to make different choices as they strive to protect their interests. Realists simply maintain that international anarchy (i.e., the absence of an overarching central authority) creates powerful incentives for rivalry and competition among states—incentives that are difficult to manage or overcome.

It’s not hard to understand why many people are reluctant to embrace such a pessimistic view of the human condition, especially when it appears to offer no clear escape from it. But the real question is this: Is this is an accurate view of international politics? When you consider the conflict and strife that have occurred throughout human history and continue to this day, and the tendency for states to worry about their security, the prima facie case for realism is strong.

Second, realism’s emphasis on power politics leads many people to assume its proponents as overly fixated on military power and inclined to favor hawkish solutions. But this view is simply false: Apart from Kissinger (who was a hawk during the Vietnam War and backed the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003), the most prominent realists have generally leaned dovish. George F. Kennan, Reinhold Niebuhr, Walter Lippmann, Hans J. Morgenthau, and Kenneth Waltz were all early critics of U.S. involvement in Vietnam, and their scholarly successors were among the more prominent voices opposing the Bush administration’s march to war against Iraq in 2003.

Third, realism is also seen as indifferent or even hostile to ethical or moral considerations. There is a grain of truth in this charge, insofar as realism’s theoretical framework does not incorporate values or ideals in any explicit way. As the name implies, realism tries to engage with the world “as it really is,” not as we might like it to be. Yet as Michael Desch and others have pointed out, most realists are also guided by profound moral commitments, and they are conscious of both the tragic nature of international politics and the importance of trying to act morally despite the pressures to act otherwise. For realists, noble aims and good intentions are not enough if the resulting choices lead to greater insecurity or human suffering.

Fourth, realism is unpopular in the United States because it runs counter to the widespread belief in American exceptionalism—the idea that the United States is uniquely moral and always acts for the greater good of humanity. For realists, the need to remain secure and independent in a world lacking a central authority often leads states with very different characteristics to act in strikingly similar ways. The United States and the former Soviet Union could not have been more different in terms of their domestic orders, political ideologies, and economic systems, for example, but the pressures of competition during the Cold War led each to form and lead large alliances, promote their respective ideologies wherever they could, build tens of thousands of nuclear weapons, intervene in many other countries, fight destructive proxy wars, and assassinate foreign leaders. Locked in competition, these two very different countries produced rather similar foreign policies.

To be sure, realists recognize that domestic politics are not irrelevant and that there are important differences between, say, Nazi Germany on the one hand and Edwardian Britain on the other. But where idealists are quick to divide the world into “good” and “bad” states—and to blame the world’s problems almost entirely on the latter—realism recognizes that even well-established democracies will do horrible things to others when they believe their vital interests are at stake.

Back in the 1960s, for example, the Johnson administration was so worried that South Vietnam would become part of the communist world that it sent nearly half a million troops across the Pacific to fight there; 58,000 of those soldiers didn’t return. The U.S. military used napalm and Agent Orange and dropped some 8 million tons of ordnance on the country. When that didn’t work, the Nixon administration invaded Cambodia, undermining its fragile government and unwittingly helping the genocidal Khmer Rouge regime to gain power. Vietnam was a weak country and more than 8,000 miles from the continental United States, yet its leaders managed to convince themselves these actions were necessary for U.S. national security.

In July 1979—less than a decade later—the Carter administration became alarmed when a popular uprising in Nicaragua toppled pro-American dictator Anastasio Somoza, much as the Maidan uprising in Ukraine toppled pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych in February 2014. When it came to power in January 1981, the Reagan administration responded by organizing and arming a rebel army—the Contras—much as Russia has backed separatist militias in Ukraine. Nicaragua was a poor country with a population of barely 4 million people, yet U.S. officials saw it as a serious threat. Some 30,000 Nicaraguans died in the Contra War—equivalent to losing approximately 2.5 million Americans as a percentage of the country’s population.

These examples of past U.S. misconduct do not justify what Russia is doing today in the slightest. If we are consistent, all these actions (to include the invasion of Iraq) should be roundly condemned on both strategic and moral grounds. Nonetheless, they are a reminder that governments of all types will do brutal things when they feel threatened, even if their fears are sometimes illusory. But in a country like the United States, which sees itself as uniquely virtuous and where top officials rarely admit mistakes or accept responsibility for them, reminding people that U.S. leaders have sometimes acted much as Russian President Vladimir Putin is acting today is probably not be the best way to win them over.

This phenomenon is especially powerful in wartime, when the understandable desire to rally popular support encourages governments to describe their own cause as wholly just and to portray their opponents as the embodiment of evil. To suggest that prior U.S. actions might have had something to do with the tragedy in Ukraine does not excuse Putin’s decision to invade or the conduct of the Russian armed forces, but it is bound to trigger a harsh reaction from those seeking to frame the conflict as a simple morality play between a brutal aggressor and an innocent victim and the latter’s well-intentioned and equally innocent friends.

Realists recognize that evil acts occur and that some states behave worse than others, but they also understand that all states compete for security in an imperfect world and that no country’s conduct is beyond reproach. For this reason, realists see diplomacy and compromise as critical tools for managing disagreements and resolving differences without the use of military force. By contrast, if evil leaders or regimes bear sole responsibility for all the trouble in the world—as liberals, neoconservatives, and other idealists maintain—the only solution is to eliminate the evildoers once and for all. The problem, alas, is that trying to get rid of governments you deem evil tends to get a lot of people killed. And in some circumstances—like the current war in Ukraine—it could lead to a wider and more dangerous conflict.

Finally, realism tends to be unpopular because its proponents have an annoying tendency to be right. Not all the time, of course, because foreign policy is a complicated activity in which uncertainty is pervasive and the various theories that can help guide policymakers are crude instruments at best. For example, most realists—myself included—were surprised that NATO survived and expanded beyond the Cold War.

But realists were right about NATO enlargement, dual containment in the Persian Gulf, the war in Iraq, Ukraine’s ill-fated decision to give up its nuclear arsenal, the implications of China’s rise, and the folly of nation-building in Afghanistan, to note just a few examples.

That’s not a bad record, especially when compared to realism’s many critics. But I doubt it will make realism more popular, even if most states continue to act more or less as realism depicts.

https://foreignpolicy.com/2022/06/13/why-do-people-hate-realism-so-much/

@Mciahel Goodman

 

[Gehrman]

Why Do People Hate Realism So Much?
The school of thought doesn’t explain everything—but its proponents foresaw the potential for conflict over Ukraine long before it erupted.
By Stephen M. Walt, a columnist at Foreign Policy and the Robert and Renée Belfer professor of international relations at Harvard University.

JUNE 13, 2022, 11:40 AM
The political scientist Robert Gilpin once wrote that “no one loves a political realist.” His lament seems especially apt today, as the ongoing tragedy in Ukraine has spawned an uptick of realism-bashing. A small sample: Anne Applebaum and Tom Nichols of the Atlantic, Columbia University professor and fellow FP columnist Adam Tooze in the New Statesman, University of Toronto professor Seva Gunitsky, and Michael Mazarr of Rand Corp. Even Edward Luce of the Financial Times, who is consistently one of the most insightful observers on U.S. and global policy, recently opined that “the ‘realist’ school of foreign policy … has had a terrible press recently, most of it richly deserved.”

Much of this ire has been directed at my colleague and occasional co-author John J. Mearsheimer, based in part on the bizarre claim that his views on the West’s role in helping to cause the Russia-Ukraine crisis somehow make him “pro-Putin” and in part on some serious misreadings of his theory of offensive realism.

Another obvious target is former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, whose recent comments urging peace talks with Moscow, a territorial compromise in Ukraine, and the need to avoid a permanent rupture with Russia were seen as a revealing demonstration of realism’s moral bankruptcy. As I explain below, Kissinger is an outlier within the realist tradition, but he’s still a convenient foil for its critics.

The irony here is hard to miss. Realists of various stripes repeatedly warned that Western policy toward Russia and Ukraine would lead to serious trouble, warnings that were blithely ignored by those who claimed that NATO’s open-door policy would lead to lasting peace in Europe. Now that war has broken out, lives are being lost, and Ukraine is being destroyed, you would think proponents of open-ended NATO enlargement would have set aside their idealistic illusions and think about these issues in a hard-nosed, realist fashion. Yet the opposite has occurred: The people who got it right are singled out for attack, while those who believed that enlarging NATO would create a vast zone of peace in Europe are insisting that the war continue until Russia is totally defeated and greatly weakened.

This phenomenon isn’t all that surprising, insofar as realism has never been popular in the United States. It is recognized as an important tradition in the study of international relations, but it is also the object of considerable animosity. In 2010, for example, University of California, San Diego professor David Lake’s presidential address to the International Studies Association criticized realism and other paradigms as “sects” and “pathologies” that divert attention from “studying things that matter.” Back in the 1990s, when many believed liberal values were spreading around the world, the political scientist John Vasquez published a lengthy article in American Political Science Review claiming that realism was a “degenerative” research program that ought to be discarded.

So why do so many people dislike realism so intensely? I might not be the most objective judge on this issue, but here’s what I think is going on.

Realism is a rather gloomy perspective on politics, even in its more benign versions. It assumes that people are irredeemably flawed and that there is no way to eliminate all conflicts of interest among individuals or the social groups they form. Moreover, all versions of realism highlight the insecurity resulting from the absence of an overarching global authority that can enforce agreements and prevent states from attacking one another. When violence is a possibility, human groups of all sorts—be they tribes, city-states, street gangs, militias, nations, states, etc.—will look for ways to make themselves more secure, which means they will be strongly inclined to compete for power.
Contrary to what some critics maintain, realists do not see these features as iron laws that determine every move a state might make. Nor do they believe that cooperation is impossible or that international institutions are of no value, and they certainly don’t think that humans lack agency or the ability to make different choices as they strive to protect their interests. Realists simply maintain that international anarchy (i.e., the absence of an overarching central authority) creates powerful incentives for rivalry and competition among states—incentives that are difficult to manage or overcome.

It’s not hard to understand why many people are reluctant to embrace such a pessimistic view of the human condition, especially when it appears to offer no clear escape from it. But the real question is this: Is this is an accurate view of international politics? When you consider the conflict and strife that have occurred throughout human history and continue to this day, and the tendency for states to worry about their security, the prima facie case for realism is strong.

Second, realism’s emphasis on power politics leads many people to assume its proponents as overly fixated on military power and inclined to favor hawkish solutions. But this view is simply false: Apart from Kissinger (who was a hawk during the Vietnam War and backed the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003), the most prominent realists have generally leaned dovish. George F. Kennan, Reinhold Niebuhr, Walter Lippmann, Hans J. Morgenthau, and Kenneth Waltz were all early critics of U.S. involvement in Vietnam, and their scholarly successors were among the more prominent voices opposing the Bush administration’s march to war against Iraq in 2003.

Third, realism is also seen as indifferent or even hostile to ethical or moral considerations. There is a grain of truth in this charge, insofar as realism’s theoretical framework does not incorporate values or ideals in any explicit way. As the name implies, realism tries to engage with the world “as it really is,” not as we might like it to be. Yet as Michael Desch and others have pointed out, most realists are also guided by profound moral commitments, and they are conscious of both the tragic nature of international politics and the importance of trying to act morally despite the pressures to act otherwise. For realists, noble aims and good intentions are not enough if the resulting choices lead to greater insecurity or human suffering.

Fourth, realism is unpopular in the United States because it runs counter to the widespread belief in American exceptionalism—the idea that the United States is uniquely moral and always acts for the greater good of humanity. For realists, the need to remain secure and independent in a world lacking a central authority often leads states with very different characteristics to act in strikingly similar ways. The United States and the former Soviet Union could not have been more different in terms of their domestic orders, political ideologies, and economic systems, for example, but the pressures of competition during the Cold War led each to form and lead large alliances, promote their respective ideologies wherever they could, build tens of thousands of nuclear weapons, intervene in many other countries, fight destructive proxy wars, and assassinate foreign leaders. Locked in competition, these two very different countries produced rather similar foreign policies.

To be sure, realists recognize that domestic politics are not irrelevant and that there are important differences between, say, Nazi Germany on the one hand and Edwardian Britain on the other. But where idealists are quick to divide the world into “good” and “bad” states—and to blame the world’s problems almost entirely on the latter—realism recognizes that even well-established democracies will do horrible things to others when they believe their vital interests are at stake.

Back in the 1960s, for example, the Johnson administration was so worried that South Vietnam would become part of the communist world that it sent nearly half a million troops across the Pacific to fight there; 58,000 of those soldiers didn’t return. The U.S. military used napalm and Agent Orange and dropped some 8 million tons of ordnance on the country. When that didn’t work, the Nixon administration invaded Cambodia, undermining its fragile government and unwittingly helping the genocidal Khmer Rouge regime to gain power. Vietnam was a weak country and more than 8,000 miles from the continental United States, yet its leaders managed to convince themselves these actions were necessary for U.S. national security.

In July 1979—less than a decade later—the Carter administration became alarmed when a popular uprising in Nicaragua toppled pro-American dictator Anastasio Somoza, much as the Maidan uprising in Ukraine toppled pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych in February 2014. When it came to power in January 1981, the Reagan administration responded by organizing and arming a rebel army—the Contras—much as Russia has backed separatist militias in Ukraine. Nicaragua was a poor country with a population of barely 4 million people, yet U.S. officials saw it as a serious threat. Some 30,000 Nicaraguans died in the Contra War—equivalent to losing approximately 2.5 million Americans as a percentage of the country’s population.

These examples of past U.S. misconduct do not justify what Russia is doing today in the slightest. If we are consistent, all these actions (to include the invasion of Iraq) should be roundly condemned on both strategic and moral grounds. Nonetheless, they are a reminder that governments of all types will do brutal things when they feel threatened, even if their fears are sometimes illusory. But in a country like the United States, which sees itself as uniquely virtuous and where top officials rarely admit mistakes or accept responsibility for them, reminding people that U.S. leaders have sometimes acted much as Russian President Vladimir Putin is acting today is probably not be the best way to win them over.

This phenomenon is especially powerful in wartime, when the understandable desire to rally popular support encourages governments to describe their own cause as wholly just and to portray their opponents as the embodiment of evil. To suggest that prior U.S. actions might have had something to do with the tragedy in Ukraine does not excuse Putin’s decision to invade or the conduct of the Russian armed forces, but it is bound to trigger a harsh reaction from those seeking to frame the conflict as a simple morality play between a brutal aggressor and an innocent victim and the latter’s well-intentioned and equally innocent friends.

Realists recognize that evil acts occur and that some states behave worse than others, but they also understand that all states compete for security in an imperfect world and that no country’s conduct is beyond reproach. For this reason, realists see diplomacy and compromise as critical tools for managing disagreements and resolving differences without the use of military force. By contrast, if evil leaders or regimes bear sole responsibility for all the trouble in the world—as liberals, neoconservatives, and other idealists maintain—the only solution is to eliminate the evildoers once and for all. The problem, alas, is that trying to get rid of governments you deem evil tends to get a lot of people killed. And in some circumstances—like the current war in Ukraine—it could lead to a wider and more dangerous conflict.

Finally, realism tends to be unpopular because its proponents have an annoying tendency to be right. Not all the time, of course, because foreign policy is a complicated activity in which uncertainty is pervasive and the various theories that can help guide policymakers are crude instruments at best. For example, most realists—myself included—were surprised that NATO survived and expanded beyond the Cold War.

But realists were right about NATO enlargement, dual containment in the Persian Gulf, the war in Iraq, Ukraine’s ill-fated decision to give up its nuclear arsenal, the implications of China’s rise, and the folly of nation-building in Afghanistan, to note just a few examples.

That’s not a bad record, especially when compared to realism’s many critics. But I doubt it will make realism more popular, even if most states continue to act more or less as realism depicts.

https://foreignpolicy.com/2022/06/13/why-do-people-hate-realism-so-much/

@Mciahel Goodman

Very good article. Thanks!

 

[shamans]

I would just like to say I haven't a clue what the rules are anymore. I engaged in a discussion about the consequences of the war in ukraine, how russia and the west were acting in ukraine and what the consequences might be and it all got moved here. What's the logic?

No logic really. You can't talk about a big geopolitical event without talking geopolitics so the Ukraine/Russia thread is literally just tweets relating to Ukraine and Russia. I mean a potential solution to to the war got dragged here. A weird way to segregate things

 

[shamans]

Its not, and if you believe this, then you’re buying into the authoritarian propaganda narrative that seeks to obscure objective truth by suggesting everything is subjective, and thus nothing should be believed. That’s literally an old Soviet trick that was used to control their public. There is an objective, shared reality that is the foundation for a free press, which is radically different from authoritarian propaganda.

Except all this breaks down miserably when you have two outlets in the US - Fox new and CNN - talking about the same issues from totally different angles. Not to mention owners of news channel being billionaires with a vested interest. I think @VidaRed is from India which has a free press but wait till you consume the roller coaster of Indian news (and subcontinent news in general, that is free).

Come on, I know you're not naive enough to believe there are subjective news channels out there. In my life of of watching news BBC is the most "neutral' I've seen and even they are full of bias (for right or wrong)

 

[Raoul]

Except all this breaks down miserably when you have two outlets in the US - Fox new and CNN - talking about the same issues from totally different angles. Not to mention owners of news channel being billionaires with a vested interest. I think @VidaRed is from India which has a free press but wait till you consume the roller coaster of Indian news (and subcontinent news in general, that is free).

Come on, I know you're not naive enough to believe there are subjective news channels out there. In my life of of watching news BBC is the most "neutral' I've seen and even they are full of bias (for right or wrong)

We're not talking about right v left bias. We're talking about free media that is allowed to operate in free, pluralistic societies vs state run propaganda in dictatorships.

 

[shamans]

We're not talking about right v left bias. We're talking about free media that is allowed to operate in free, pluralistic societies vs state run propaganda in dictatorships.

I find it two separate issues. We have freedom of press but that freedom can and is abused for vested interests as well. I think our powers are more with the fact we are free on a local level as well where we can openly tweet, chat and discuss crap about our government. Big news outlets aren't a good example

 

[Raoul]

I find it two separate issues. We have freedom of press but that freedom can and is abused for vested interests as well. I think our powers are more with the fact we are free on a local level as well where we can openly tweet, chat and discuss crap about our government. Big news outlets aren't a good example

That would be true if a vast majority of people got their news from local yokel news stations, when in fact they get it from multiple national and internet sources.

Right wingers for instance, are generally attached to Fox News and talk radio (which is national), and their own echo chamber social media feeds. The evening local news is basically a dinosaur in the age of mammals at this point.

 

[Gehrman]

We're not talking about right v left bias. We're talking about free media that is allowed to operate in free, pluralistic societies vs state run propaganda in dictatorships.

I think what he is alluding to is that the free press obviously isn't free of bias, I'd say that almost no media outlet is, but obivously there are higher journalistic standards in some outlets than others. We get to choose though. In dictatorships you just get state propaganda that's the difference, which I tried to explain to my mother in law who considers herself a chinese communist(who tbh seems to very obvlious to the wrongdoings of the CCP for that reason.) I'd still say that the BBC and DR(Denmarks Radio) are far more objective news outlets than corporate ones but almost any newspaper or Media outlet has a political leaning which is most often official like the Guardian being left wing and The Spectator being conservative.

 

[Raoul]

I think what he is alluding to is that the free press obviously isn't free of bias, I'd say that almost no media outlet is, but obivously there are higher journalistic standards in some outlets than others. We get to choose though. In dictatorships you just get state propaganda that's the difference, which I tried to explain to my mother in law who considers herself a chinese communist(who tbh seems to very obvlious to the wrongdoings of the CCP for that reason.) I'd still say that the BBC and DR(Denmarks Radio) are far more objective news outlets than corporate ones but almost any newspaper or Media outlet has a political leaning which is most often official like the Guardian being left wing and The Spectator being conservative.

Yes I get that bit. My point was that people in free societies still have access to truthful information, whereas people in totalitarian dictatorships are generally suffocated by state sponsored lies and propaganda designed and intended specifically to keep the population in line to keep the regime from falling. They don't have the same access to objective facts and eventually get conditioned by the propaganda to believe the reality the state wants them to accept as fact.

 

[Gehrman]

Yes I get that bit. My point was that people in free societies still have access to truthful information, whereas in people in totalitarian dictatorships are generally suffocated by state sponsored lies and propaganda designed to keep the regime from falling.

Okay no disagreement there

 

[oneniltothearsenal]

Pacifism is the wrong response to the war in Ukraine
Slavoj Žižek


"We now know what the call to allow Putin to “save his face” means. It means accepting not a minor territorial compromise in Donbas but Putin’s imperial ambition. The reason this ambition should be unconditionally rejected is that in today’s global world in which we are all haunted by the same catastrophes we are all in-between, in an intermediate state, neither a sovereign country nor a conquered one: to insist on full sovereignty in the face of global warming is sheer madness since our very survival hinges on tight global cooperation.

But Russia doesn’t simply ignore global warming – why was it so mad at the Scandinavian countries when they expressed their intention to join Nato? With global warming, what is at stake is the control of the Arctic passage. (That’s why Trump wanted to buy Greenland from Denmark.) Due to the explosive development of China, Japan and South Korea, the main transport route will run north of Russia and Scandinavia. Russia’s strategic plan is to profit from global warming: control the world’s main transport route, plus develop Siberia and control Ukraine. In this way, Russia will dominate so much food production that it will be able to blackmail the whole world. This is the ultimate economic reality beneath Putin’s imperial dream.

Those who advocate less support for Ukraine and more pressure on it to negotiate, inclusive of accepting painful territorial renunciations, like to repeat that Ukraine simply cannot win the war against Russia. True, but I see exactly in this the greatness of Ukrainian resistance: they risked the impossible, defying pragmatic calculations, and the least we owe them is full support, and to do this, we need a stronger Nato – but not as a prolongation of the US politics.

The US strategy to counteract through Europe is far from self-evident: not just Ukraine, Europe itself is becoming the place of the proxy war between US and Russia, which may well end up by a compromise between the two at Europe’s expense. There are only two ways for Europe to step out of this place: to play the game of neutrality – a short-cut to catastrophe – or to become an autonomous agent. (Just think how the situation may change if Trump wins the next US elections.)

While some leftists claim that the ongoing war is in the interest of the Nato industrial-military complex, which uses the need for new arms to avoid crisis and gain new profits, their true message to Ukraine is: OK, you are victims of a brutal aggression, but do not rely on our arms because in this way you play in the hands of the industrial-military complex …

The disorientation caused by the Ukrainian war is producing strange bedfellows like Henry Kissinger and Noam Chomsky who “come from opposing ends of the political spectrum – Kissinger serving as secretary of state under Republican presidents and Chomsky one of the leading leftwing intellectuals in the United States – and have frequently clashed. But when it comes to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, both recently advocated for Ukraine to consider a settlement that could see it dropping claim to some land to achieve a quicker peace deal.”

In short, the two stand for the same version of “pacifism” which only works if we neglect the key fact that the war is not about Ukraine but a moment of the brutal attempt to change our entire geopolitical situation. The true target of the war is the dismantlement of the European unity advocated not only by the US conservatives and Russia but also by the European extreme right and left – at this point, in France, Melenchon meets Le Pen."


Full article is worth reading:
https://www.theguardian.com/comment...m-is-the-wrong-response-to-the-war-in-ukraine

 

[neverdie]

Those who advocate less support for Ukraine and more pressure on it to negotiate, inclusive of accepting painful territorial renunciations, like to repeat that Ukraine simply cannot win the war against Russia. True, but I see exactly in this the greatness of Ukrainian resistance: they risked the impossible, defying pragmatic calculations, and the least we owe them is full support, and to do this, we need a stronger Nato – but not as a prolongation of the US politics.

his entire point undermined. the greatness of the resistance is that they're fighting a war he and everyone else knows they can't win?

There are only two ways for Europe to step out of this place: to play the game of neutrality – a short-cut to catastrophe – or to become an autonomous agent.

the only way to do that is outside NATO as NATO currently exists.

zizek has always been a provocateur. his opinions move about like the wind. he makes some good points but his career has been defined by playing devil's advocate on everything and never really being substantive on anything, even within his primary field. the settlement proposed by Kissinger is the kind of settlement that will be accepted sooner or later. Russia will keep parts of the Donbas and Crimea won't be on the table. kissinger isn't a pacifist either. if he thought Ukraine could win or there was strategic value in funding the Ukrainians without limit, he'd be arguing for that. the man is responsible for millions of dead people in indo-china. but he knows how this will end and that pushing russia and china into a partnership for decades is not a good idea.

 

[Gehrman]

his entire point undermined. the greatness of the resistance is that they're fighting a war he and everyone else knows they can't win?

the only way to do that is outside NATO as NATO currently exists.

zizek has always been a provocateur. his opinions move about like the wind. he makes some good points but his career has been defined by playing devil's advocate on everything and never really being substantive on anything, even within his primary field. the settlement proposed by Kissinger is the kind of settlement that will be accepted sooner or later. Russia will keep parts of the Donbas and Crimea won't be on the table. kissinger isn't a pacifist either. if he thought Ukraine could win or there was strategic value in funding the Ukrainians without limit, he'd be arguing for that. the man is responsible for millions of dead people in indo-china. but he knows how this will end and that pushing russia and china into a partnership for decades is not a good idea.

Haven't Russia and China had a partnership for quite a while now?

 

[neverdie]

Haven't Russia and China had a partnership for quite a while now?

yeah but even the most hawkish people in the states and the uk will tell you that their partnership is unnatural because of many areas where they don't line up. it would take something like mutual hostility with the US and NATO to force them together. russia with ukraine and china with taiwan and the south china sea.

 

[Gehrman]

yeah but even the most hawkish people in the states and the uk will tell you that their partnership is unnatural because of many areas where they don't line up. it would take something like mutual hostility with the US and NATO to force them together. russia with ukraine and china with taiwan and the south china sea.

I'd say it's bound to happen anyway. They both believe its their fate to rule the world(or at least the CCP does).. China will while Russia will simply become even weaker now.

 

[neverdie]

I'd say it's bound to happen anyway. They both believe its their fate to rule the world(or at least the CCP does).. China will while Russia will simply become even weaker now.

as of now i'd say you're right as there doesn't seem like any chance of a return to normality which means the two will work together with the bri initiative and focus much more on asia, africa, and south america. i don't think China sees itself running the world though. not like the US has done anyway. it's a much more multipolar world taking shape and other bric countries and bric+ countries are rising alongside china too. chinese unipolarity most likely won't happen within the lifetime of anyone currently living. probably more accurate to say that china and russia view themselves as great powers among a few great powers and want to redefine the world order to reflect their estimations. that's attractive to most countries beyond north america and europe.

 

[oneniltothearsenal]

his entire point undermined. the greatness of the resistance is that they're fighting a war he and everyone else knows they can't win?

the only way to do that is outside NATO as NATO currently exists.

zizek has always been a provocateur. his opinions move about like the wind. he makes some good points but his career has been defined by playing devil's advocate on everything and never really being substantive on anything, even within his primary field. the settlement proposed by Kissinger is the kind of settlement that will be accepted sooner or later. Russia will keep parts of the Donbas and Crimea won't be on the table. kissinger isn't a pacifist either. if he thought Ukraine could win or there was strategic value in funding the Ukrainians without limit, he'd be arguing for that. the man is responsible for millions of dead people in indo-china. but he knows how this will end and that pushing russia and china into a partnership for decades is not a good idea.

It only doesn't make sense if you decide the options are a binary equation. They can't win in the sense of push Russia back to some exact pre-invasion situation but they can certainly not allow Putin to realize his imperialist ambitions. I also think it 's highly relevant as far as far as the long-term economic repercussions and Putin's strategy are concerned which is something a lot of analysis neglects to its own detriment.

 

[neverdie]

They can't win in the sense of push Russia back to some exact pre-invasion situation but they can certainly not allow Putin to realize his imperialist ambitions. I also think it 's highly relevant as far as the long-term economic repercussions and Putin's strategy are concerned which is something a lot of analysis neglects to its own detriment.

yeah that's a fair point.

 

[Beans]

I assume were all reading my boy Peter Zeihan...

 

[Beans]

Here's the longest lecture on YouTube, a presentation to US Armed Forces, from this year:

 

[shamans]

The wheat crises I hear is getting pretty bad and third world countries are also facing an energy crises with securing LNG deals because Europe is bidding on it instead raising the prices. Wonder how @Zehner will justify this now. All the war is is an extra euro or two for my trip to Lidl! Third world countries aren't human anyway so lets fight on.

 

[Carolina Red]

The wheat crises I hear is getting pretty bad and third world countries are also facing an energy crises with securing LNG deals because Europe is bidding on it instead raising the prices. Wonder how @Zehner will justify this now. All the war is is an extra euro or two for my trip to Lidl! Third world countries aren't human anyway so lets fight on.

What part of "it's up to the Ukrainian government to continue fighting" do you not understand?