百年人生， 瞬间光华
In a hundred years of life, there are only a few moments which can demonstrate true glory. Putin’s decision to launch the special military invasion of Ukraine on February 24 is surely his most brilliant such moment. I have been trying to think of a good analogy to this war. The closest I have found has been the Vietnam War. North Vietnam lost one million men in its quest to reunify with the South. It won, and, after a few decades, sanctions were lifted. Ukraine, however, is substantially weaker than South Vietnam, and Russia is substantially stronger than North Vietnam. Thus this war will take weeks, not years, and sanctions most likely will be lifted sooner than those against Vietnam.
Many people have claimed that I’m wrong that Putin’s incursion into Ukraine will result in a growing sense the organization is obsolete, rather than a revitalization of its purpose. As if NATO was not expanding like a fungus for the past thirty years. As if there was any important anti-NATO movement in the West in the past thirty years. Is Moldova more likely to become a NATO member now? Is Georgia? Is Bosnia? Somehow, I doubt all these. It is true that the forces of fascism have come out of the woodwork in Japan, Germany, Sweden, Finland, Russia should not appease fascism by surrender, but, rather, concentrating its forces on the Finnish border and credibly threatening an invasion. Luckily, this is not the world of the 1940s, where economic power was concentrated among a few countries. The two most populous countries on Earth are no longer prostrate, but are rapidly increasing in GDP, and, just as importantly, now have large reserves of human capital.
The Russian intervention of Ukraine has sharpened the most important geopolitical divide of the twenty-first century: not the “clash of civilizations” or even (though far more relevant) the divide between democracy and dictatorship, but the divide between the rich and the poor. Recall 香港 and 台湾 are both part of the same civilization as mainland China, but it is only the former which are rich. Luckily for Russia, the share of global GDP held by the poor is on the upswing. As a result, the BBC, for the first time in years, has turned against the Modi regime. Turkey, remarkably, has refrained from sanctions. And, needless to say, Turkey is most likely poorer than any EU country.
新疆 policies reactions map as of 2020
The West’s turn against Russia has resulted in many fortuitous happenstances for it. Russian academics have become third-class citizens in the imperialist countries. finally forcing Russia to develop a truly self-sufficient academic sector. Disney has stopped showing its filth in Russia. The people of the imperialist countries have, on their own, ceased attempting to corrupt Russia, thus preventing it from becoming another Argentina for at least the next few decades.
The common claim going around the media is that “Ukraine has won the information war.” I have to ask people saying this, on what fucking planet? It’s not Ukraine that’s won the information war. It’s the U.S., which has managed to achieve 98% domestic opposition to the Russian intervention due to a relentless stream of propaganda. Russia, on the other hand, has managed to achieve 68% domestic support for the operation while barely engaging in any domestic information warfare at all. The majority of the citizenry in many of the world’s countries, from Serbia to China, support the intervention. It’s just very few of these countries are rich. Ukraine does not control the course of events in the rich countries. The elites in Washington and Manhattan do.
It is true that both Russia’s military intervention and economic response have been somewhat incompetent. Russia has adopted a number of Argentinian-style measures in an attempt to prop up the ruble, which will surely result in more economic damage than the sanctions themselves. The wiser move would have just been to raise taxes and bail out the central bank. The military operation’s failures have been well-documented: massive losses of equipment, curious battle tactics, apparent failure to use encrypted communications, etc. Needless to say, most of these will be remedied over the coming weeks. The Ukrainians, despite being supported by all the world’s rich countries (with a few exceptions, such as the Emirates) have no chance. The Russian people might not necessarily be committed to winning this war regardless of the cost -but, more importantly, the Russian leadership is.
The fact that Russia has now become a captive market for China (and, to a lesser extent, India) opens vast new opportunities for China (and, to a lesser extent, India) to expand into sectors previously dominated only by the rich countries. If there is anything the first few years of the 2020s have so far shown us, it is that the twenty-first century will be a Chinese century -and, more broadly, an Asian century.
lol you're out of your mind if you think there are still "forces of fascism" active in the world. And how is Russia not an imperialist country?