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| Acmlm's Board - I3 Archive - World Affairs/Debate - North Korea's got Nukes.....and I care, why? |
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Arwon Bazu                   Since: 11-18-05 From: Randwick, Sydney, NSW, Australia Last post: 6280 days Last view: 6280 days |
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| Probably about as bad as we'd feel if we were invaded by aliens or something. | |||
Koryo Keese  Since: 10-17-06 From: Michigan, USA Last post: 6289 days Last view: 6289 days |
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| Don't get me started. I'm a scifi fan and could give a completely frank discussion about alien invasions. :p | |||
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blackhole89 Moronic Thread Bodycount: 17 (since 2006-08-21 09:50 EST) F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 Since: 12-31-69 From: Dresden/SN/DE Last post: 6281 days Last view: 6279 days |
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Originally posted by Koryo Political situations change. You couldn't exactly give an evaluation of France's external politics judging by the decisions of Louis XIV either. Also, you may go ahead and tell me what exactly was socialist about Stalin beyond the label. I eagerly await your statement on that. That doesn't change a thing about how the US administration supported fascist militia movements all across Middle and South America starting with the 1950s though, mostly to fight against perfectly democratically elected governments that showed a bit too much of an affinity towards a non-free market system. Take Chile as an example. |
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Arwon Bazu Since: 11-18-05 From: Randwick, Sydney, NSW, Australia Last post: 6280 days Last view: 6280 days |
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| Your definition of "fascist" is way too broad. Authoritarian corporatist military juntas ain't fascist. | |||
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Koryo Keese Since: 10-17-06 From: Michigan, USA Last post: 6289 days Last view: 6289 days |
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| King Louis XIV was king 300 years ago, while WW2 was only 60 years ago. There's a bit of a difference there.
As Arwon said, (though I hate to be agreeing with him) few countries in the history of the world have actually been worthy of the fascist label. It is a fairly new political system, and equally as rare. You might say that the US has supported some "dictators", but then, communist dictators are just as dictatorial as fascist dictators. A few pages back, PSA seemed unwilling to accept my claim that modern day Russia was backsliding away from democracy. Now you claim that Stalin wasn't at all a socialist (Socialism, unlike fascism, is a broad term). I wonder why it is that people single out Russia (or the USSR) as the country that they think I know nothing about. :p |
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Ziff B2BB BACKTOBASICSBITCHES Since: 11-18-05 From: A room Last post: 6279 days Last view: 6279 days |
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| Because your knowledge is probably ridiculously skewed? I mean, you didn't provide one bloody example to my question and completely dodged it.
Mind you, I've finally found a quote to encapsulate your ideas right off the go "(though I hate to be agreeing with him)", |
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Arwon Bazu Since: 11-18-05 From: Randwick, Sydney, NSW, Australia Last post: 6280 days Last view: 6280 days |
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| Oddly enough, it's Russia that's the country most likely to be lurching towards fascism right now.
I should also point out to blackhole that Pinochet didn't really become a gung-ho free-marketeer and turn the country into a laboratory for Chicago-school economists until a bit after the coup (nothing like a reactionary military junta to get those pesky unions and civil society groups out of the way of your abstract economic experiments). At the time, the main concern of American foreign policy was averting a (democratically elected) socialist Chile, a second Cuba in the Americas. The nature of Pinchet's and ideology, inasmuch as there was one, was very very secondary. Economic ideology and market systems and stuff didn't have a whole lot to do with the events of 73 (especially when you consider that at this time, the US wasn't even embarking on any sort of brave new Friedmanesque/Thatcherite experiments... it even had price and income controls at one point around 1973), it was all basic realpolitik, according to the false logic of the Cold War and especially the idea that anything that vaguely smelled of leftiness must be being directed from Moscow. (edited by Arwon on 12-28-06 12:29 AM) |
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Ziff B2BB BACKTOBASICSBITCHES Since: 11-18-05 From: A room Last post: 6279 days Last view: 6279 days |
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Originally posted by Arwon Russia is indeed wacky beyond all belief. It is just that he has yet to substantiate anything. Not that it would do any use. I like to use the old idiom of My Democracy != Your Democracy. By all means, Russia is democratic. Elected state, elected head of state, yaddiyaddiyaya. But of course it isn't a really health democracy. I think we all know that this is due to forcing neolib reforms too quickly on a state in transition from a completely centrally planned economy to...you know. No more central planning. |
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Arwon Bazu Since: 11-18-05 From: Randwick, Sydney, NSW, Australia Last post: 6280 days Last view: 6280 days |
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| Well, it can be said to be heading in that direction. Aside from the obvious closing of political space, the tendency for regime opponents to disappear and so forth, it exhibits a few of the classic features, there are definite parallels with inter-war Germany. Deep socioeconomic problems that are easily blamed on external sources. Resurgent nationalism tied to this recent decline and nostalgia for a glorious past, the "stab in the back" in the form of the collapse of the 80s and 90s, a strong sense of paranoia and xenophobia and racism and willingness to exploit ethnic tensions between Russians and other nationalities within Russia, swaggering self-confidence and arrogance on the international stage coupled with paranoia and intolerance. Putin's not gonna lead the country into fascism unless some massive crisis propels it in that direction, but the danger is a successor could easily inherit and exacerbate these trends.
The danger is easily overstated however. A politically odious Russia is mainly a danger to its own people and immediate neighbours... its wide array of cataclysmic social problems kinda hobble it, but even so, it's worrying and depressing. (edited by Arwon on 12-28-06 12:39 AM) |
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Koryo Keese Since: 10-17-06 From: Michigan, USA Last post: 6289 days Last view: 6289 days |
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Originally posted by Plus Sign Abomination I didn't dodge the question because I couldn't provide an answer, but because it was a completely ridiculous question. When I call China and North Korea dictatorships, you don't question that. But when I mention Putin's attempts to reverse many of the democratic institutions that Russia does have, you have no idea what I'm talking about. I'm not sure you really understand Russia. Even after Arwon has gone into the details twice, your responses don't seem to follow. Russia is... "wacky beyond all belief"? I don't think so. Russia isn't the most authoritarian country in the world right now, and it's a far cry from what the USSR was during the days of Stalin, but Russia is no democracy like Great Britain, Canada, the US, etc. I could give you a list of the anti democratic things Putin has been doing recently, but that is unnecessary. Information on Russia is readily available on the internet and in print, especially to a student of biology such as yourself. Originally posted by PSA Technically, that was in reference to Arwon, not you. |
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Alkis Since: 12-28-06 From: Arletpolis < FA < Arletland Last post: 6304 days Last view: 6302 days |
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| I don't see why you're all talking about Russian power in the world stage. The USSR is over, Russia has very little money. Mexico surpasses Russia in nominal GDP. All Russia has now is nukes and old weapons from the Soviet days, and even if they're still good, they can't resupply properly in a war, and they wouldn't last long in an invasion. The only things that protect them are nukes the thing that always has, the Russian winter, and even both can be surpassed. (edited by beneficii on 12-28-06 03:59 AM) |
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Koryo Keese Since: 10-17-06 From: Michigan, USA Last post: 6289 days Last view: 6289 days |
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| Indeed, Russia is not the world power it once was. I never claimed it was. I'm only taking issue with PSA's questioning Russia's political state. You're right, Russia isn't a global power or a true rival to the US like it was during the cold war. It does still have the world's second largest nuclear arsenal, though. Even though many of those weapons are rapidly aging, Russia still has more usable nuclear missiles than most other countries in the world (especially considering there are only 9 nuclear countries total). I seriously doubt Russia is willing to engage in nuclear war (or any war, for that mater) over any geopolitical issues anymore. Russia is now a former world power that has accepted its lack of power. None the less, it is still a major world player. Recent activity (assassinations) have proven that elements of the USSR's old intelligence organizations are still active. Russia is also becoming a significant oil exporter, which will give them a nice supply of cash. Still, I'm not suggesting that Russia is a major threat to world peace. I think China is a bigger threat at the moment, as is Islamic extremism. Russia deciding to sell (or just dump) a few of its nuclear weapons is probably a bigger threat than the small chance that Russia will even use them aggressively. But feel free to send PSA a private message and explain to him all about Russia. His inquiring mind needs to know.
Cheers Alkis. Edit: I am curious about your avatar. What does it represent? (edited by Koryo on 12-28-06 02:38 AM) |
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Alkis Since: 12-28-06 From: Arletpolis < FA < Arletland Last post: 6304 days Last view: 6302 days |
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| Nowadays the world situation is becoming more Asia and EU centered than US centered.
More and more American products are being made in China, chemical industries are all going to India. The US is outsourcing everything, it is becoming a consumer-only country. The dollar continues to fall in value against the Euro (€), which is already approximately worth USD$1.60 and rising. The obsoleteism of the US armed forces is being proved loud and high in the current war in Iraq. The Cold-war ideals of massive tank battles, dogfights, and nuclear strategy are useless. A $3 million dollar tank can be blown up with an IED (improvised explosive device) or RPG launcher, which costs about $200, each RPG about $20. High-energy lasers can easily shoot down a plane or incoming nuclear missiles. China and USA can't go to war easily. There is a very small chance it will ever happen. The US economy depends on Chinese manufacture and China depends on US money. Of course, the Chinese army is twice as big, just as advanced, the Chinese Air Force, even if the majority of it's planes are outdated, it has many, many modern planes such as the J-10, the massive production capabilities, and massive resources. The Chinese Air Force outnumbers the USAF 10 to 1. The Chinese are producing 10 diesel attack submarines a week. While the US increases production on each factory, China just makes more factories to keep up with demand. The US builds one power plant every year on average. China builds one power plant a week. I could go on and on and on, but I think that's enough to prove my point. China is the most powerful country in the world. It only has to dig deeper into international politics, and voilà, it becomes a world superpower. Tomorrow I shall post about the growing power of the EU. Pseu Koryo. P.S. My avatar is a flag I invented for myself. The four-legged figure on the top-left was something I found on a mosaic flooring which had rectangular bars, and the four-legged figure appeared in the middle, I liked it and I decided to put it in my flag. I give it the meaning of perfection (quadriple symmetry), simplicity (four rectangles facing away) and harmony (it makes me feel relaxed). The cross in the middle is symmetry once more. The black and red are for visibility and decoration. Black means night, because I like night. Red means fire, because I also like fire. (edited by beneficii on 12-28-06 04:28 AM) |
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blackhole89 Moronic Thread Bodycount: 17 (since 2006-08-21 09:50 EST) F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 Since: 12-31-69 From: Dresden/SN/DE Last post: 6281 days Last view: 6279 days |
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Okay, maybe I went too far with flagging them "fascist"... I basically took the term to mean every government that seeks to control their people not only on a hard-facts, physical but also on a psychological level. On second sight, that would allow for it being applied on almost every modern government and make "fascism" pretty much a fundamentatal principle of politics. 
>> You might say that the US has supported some "dictators", but then, communist dictators are just as dictatorial as fascist dictators. First off, none of those "communist dictators" you speak off were even remotely "communist" in any possible sense of the word. Unless you would have no problems calling Nazi Germany "Communist Germany" if Hitler at some point said it is, but otherwise didn't change anything about his politics. Secondly, you go ahead and tell me how the democratically elected government of Allende, to stay with the Chile example, was a dictature and/or had such tendencies. >> I should also point out to blackhole that Pinochet didn't really become a gung-ho free-marketeer and turn the country into a laboratory for Chicago-school economists until a bit after the coup (nothing like a reactionary military junta to get those pesky unions and civil society groups out of the way of your abstract economic experiments). Never claimed that. He was supported by the USA to remove the "a bit too leftist" Allende administration, not to primarily establish an investor paradise. Speaking of Russia, I also dare say it isn't considerably less democratic of a country right now than the USA are. The power Putin currently holds as its president is well comparable to the power Bush holds as a president of the USA, and Putin could only dream of the power that Bush and the multibillion industry lobby (the two of them mostly speak in a political unison) hold together. Cases of wide-reaching questionable political practice are known from both countries, and it would be naive to say no political pressure against journalists critical of the government occurs in the USA. Being a Russian citizen myself, I could conclude that while Russia with a functioning US-style and -scale supervision apparatus of FBI, NSA and what-not would indeed be a tad more oppressive, it is practically the most liberal and "freedom-infested" country I have been to due to the plain fact of those not functioning at all. |
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Arwon Bazu Since: 11-18-05 From: Randwick, Sydney, NSW, Australia Last post: 6280 days Last view: 6280 days |
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Originally posted by Alkis Russia is huge, importantly located next to the EU, has a lot of oil, and straddles an extremely unstable and backwards southern frontier and is thus a cause celebre to Islamic extremism and a kalidescope of related nationalist movements. The fact that it's not a global superpower and has no hope of being a serious conventional military threat to anyone further away than Chechnya doesn't make it not worth talking about. But then, I'm happy to discuss lots of things that aren't of vital global interest, whereas most people seem to mainly want to talk about GRAVE THREATS to our VERY WAY OF LIFE and see anything else as of very secondary interest, as mere sideshows. Which probably explains why there's been no threads about, say, the Thai coup and its consequences for ASEAN, or the situation in the Horn of Africa. It's unfortunate, because obsession with the DIRE THREAT of the day tends to crowd out interest and attention to anything else. You see this tendency with the massive crazy over-stating of the Islamic fundamentalist threat (liek omg they're gonna take over Europe), and especially with China. People want to see big scary threats and in a world without obvious security dilemmas such as existed in the Cold War, they have to invent them (otherwise there's no villains for new Bond movies). The subsiding of the brief unipolar moment of unquestioned American hegemony is passing, and naturally that too makes people used to the idea of America as head of the global order kind of uncomfortable too (which explains why there's even uneasy talk of an increasingly assertive and powerful Europe in certain circles)... the result is that the second biggest kid on the block is the natural target of fear, especially since it's an ancient and often confusing civilisation with a very different government that makes a wonderfully otherly "other". Also, China isn't *that* powerful. It doesn't really see itself as a major superpower or even close... according to its own reckonings of comprehensive national power, incorporating not just hardware but economics and cultural and diplomatic "soft power" as well, it sees itself as well below not just the US, but many western countries such as Germany as well. I'm not buying all the anti-China paranoia that's been flying around pundit circles for the last few years. I think people, Americans especially, are just way too accustomed to thinking of and describing the world in apocalyptic tones, of universalised threats and conflicts, and I think seeing the world in such terms of Manichean struggles tends to mask and obscure much subtler situations. (edited by Arwon on 12-28-06 09:34 AM) |
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Alkis Since: 12-28-06 From: Arletpolis < FA < Arletland Last post: 6304 days Last view: 6302 days |
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| Americans like to walk around accusing the rest of the world of being primitive third-world hellholes and bragging as if they were the only ones with freedoms. | |||
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Koryo Keese Since: 10-17-06 From: Michigan, USA Last post: 6289 days Last view: 6289 days |
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| There are a lot of false statements here.
1: China is not the most powerful country in the world. The Chinese military has less of the most state of the art pieces of equipment than the US does. The Chinese air force is also inferior to the US airforce. Just because the US military is failing to win the "hearts and minds" in Iraq doesn't in any way suggest that the US military is weak. We're holding back. We could carpet bomb vast city blocks every time there is a terrorist attack. We might kill 100 civilians for every 1 terrorist, but we would kill the terrorists. I'm not suggesting or even considering that option, but it is physically possible, and it is what a less benevolent empire (such as the Nazis) would do in our position. Ultimately, though, our nuclear arsenal is larger than Chinas. We could end the Iraq war right now by turning every square inch of Iraqi soil into an irradiated wasteland. We could do the same to China. I can see you getting all indignant, puffing up your chest, and spitting at your monitor, but don't say anything rash. I'm not suggesting we nuke Iraq, or China. I'm just saying that it's possible. If the US appears weaker, its because we hold back. We don't use every military option available to us as a true evil empire would. China may eclipse us within some decades, but they haven't yet. 2: Russia is less democratic than the US. Global power has nothing to do with democracy vs dictatorship. Just because Bush is more powerful on a world scale than Putin doesn't make him less democratic. It's power within your own country that matters. Bush will be held in place with very little power over the next two years because of a democratic congress. Putin, on the other hand, is replacing elected Russian offices with appointed offices, stuffing corporate headquarters full of his own loyalists, and possibly even assassinating his opposition. If the people decided they wanted Putin out of office tomorrow, would it happen? Of course not. I doubt Putin will be the next Hitler, or even the next Castro. I'm sure he will be out of office within 10 years, but he is none the less far less democratic than the US. 3: I don't see anything wrong with people paying more attention to the largest, most important political developments than to the small ones. The coup in Thailand may indeed be interesting (and don't get me wrong, it is), but which even is more likely to affect me directly, or to affect the largest number of people in the world: a coup in Thailand, or Chinese imperialism? |
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Arwon Bazu Since: 11-18-05 From: Randwick, Sydney, NSW, Australia Last post: 6280 days Last view: 6280 days |
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| Why does it have to affect you directly to be worth attention? | |||
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Alkis Since: 12-28-06 From: Arletpolis < FA < Arletland Last post: 6304 days Last view: 6302 days |
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| China still has more production capacity.
Let's put it simple: What if there was one guy with a gatling gun against 5000 guys with knives? The guy with the gatling gun can shoot all he wants, he'll have to stop and reload, and by the time he does that, the guys with knives kill him. Same situation with China. Every USAF plane would need 10 missiles, and they only carry 4. The Chinese have 4 missiles on each plane, which is enough. China can replace any lost planes with a minimal amount of money in a short period of time. USAF would need to play millions of dollars for each plane, and take weeks to make. China can complete one J-10 in two days. The J-10 is a Chinese-designed plane that is just a bit below the ability of the F-22. |
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Koryo Keese Since: 10-17-06 From: Michigan, USA Last post: 6289 days Last view: 6289 days |
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| Arwon, don't be silly. Everyone notices the things that affect them more directly. I don't think the other things are unimportant, they just aren't on my mind as often. If you want to start a thread about Thailand, or East Timor, or the average income of a coffee bean farmer in Columbia, then by all means, do it.
Alkis: you're arguing a point that has already been discussed in this thread. Please read the previous 4 pages before posting. You're also completely ignoring the US' nuclear supremacy. Analogies of men with knives is just wasting words and webspace. I think we all freely acknowledge that China will eventually surpass the US, but that hasn't happened yet. |
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| Acmlm's Board - I3 Archive - World Affairs/Debate - North Korea's got Nukes.....and I care, why? |
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