Bulletins and News Discussion from May 6th to May 12th, 2024 - The Nagorno-Karabakh Nosedive - COTW: Armenia
Image is of Stepanakert, essentially the capital of Nagorno-Karabakh. It is now a ghost city, and Azerbaijan has recently torn down the parliament building and various other important places. Sourced from this article.
A quick look at Armenia's geographical position reveals the folly of trying to create some kind of Western outpost. With a hostile Azerbaijan to their east, a very unfriendly (albeit NATO member) Turkiye to their west, an ascendant Iran to their south, and Russia not far from the action, there is little hope of doing much more than causing a little chaos in the hopes it'll momentarily distract Russia while it makes inroads most everywhere else on the planet. The political situation appears miserable for Pashinyan, but there isn't really a popular alternative to take the reins. A truly cursed situation.
The COTW (Country of the Week) label is designed to spur discussion and debate about a specific country every week in order to help the community gain greater understanding of the domestic situation of often-understudied nations. If you've wanted to talk about the country or share your experiences, but have never found a relevant place to do so, now is your chance! However, don't worry - this is still a general news megathread where you can post about ongoing events from any country.
The Country of the Week is Armenia! Feel free to chime in with books, essays, longform articles, even stories and anecdotes or rants. More detail here.
Defense Politics Asia's youtube channel and their map. Their youtube channel has substantially diminished in quality but the map is still useful.
Moon of Alabama, which tends to have interesting analysis. Avoid the comment section. Understanding War and the Saker: reactionary sources that have occasional insights on the war. Alexander Mercouris, who does daily videos on the conflict. While he is a reactionary and surrounds himself with likeminded people, his daily update videos are relatively brainworm-free and good if you don't want to follow Russian telegram channels to get news. He also co-hosts The Duran, which is more explicitly conservative, racist, sexist, transphobic, anti-communist, etc when guests are invited on, but is just about tolerable when it's just the two of them if you want a little more analysis.
On the ground: Patrick Lancaster, an independent and very good journalist reporting in the warzone on the separatists' side.
Unedited videos of Russian/Ukrainian press conferences and speeches.
Pro-Russian Telegram Channels:
Again, CW for anti-LGBT and racist, sexist, etc speech, as well as combat footage.
https://t.me/aleksandr_skif ~ DPR's former Defense Minister and Colonel in the DPR's forces. Russian language. https://t.me/Slavyangrad ~ A few different pro-Russian people gather frequent content for this channel (~100 posts per day), some socialist, but all socially reactionary. If you can only tolerate using one Russian telegram channel, I would recommend this one. https://t.me/s/levigodman ~ Does daily update posts. https://t.me/patricklancasternewstoday ~ Patrick Lancaster's telegram channel. https://t.me/gonzowarr ~ A big Russian commentator. https://t.me/rybar ~ One of, if not the, biggest Russian telegram channels focussing on the war out there. Actually quite balanced, maybe even pessimistic about Russia. Produces interesting and useful maps. https://t.me/epoddubny ~ Russian language. https://t.me/boris_rozhin ~ Russian language. https://t.me/mod_russia_en ~ Russian Ministry of Defense. Does daily, if rather bland updates on the number of Ukrainians killed, etc. The figures appear to be approximately accurate; if you want, reduce all numbers by 25% as a 'propaganda tax', if you don't believe them. Does not cover everything, for obvious reasons, and virtually never details Russian losses. https://t.me/UkraineHumanRightsAbuses ~ Pro-Russian, documents abuses that Ukraine commits.
Listening to Mearsheimer is so weird. It’s pure historical materialism that walks straight up to the point of being Marxism, but then he takes a turn and says “…and this is why we must focus on containing China to maintain the US empire, because that’s what it is it’s an empire.”
I didn’t say he was a Marxist. I said his realism is strikingly similar to historical materialism insofar as it views and understands the world but differs wildly from Marxism in terms of what how it believes we should respond to that material reality.
Can you explain how is Mearsheimer’s analysis Marxist? It’s more great power struggle geopolitics than flow of capital and class analysis.
If anything, I am starting to come around to the idea that the whole “realist” school of conservatism as fundamentally unrealistic. The idea that the US can somehow “ally” with Russia and taking on China while leaving Europe unperturbed on the side is just naive. Maybe in the late 1980s when the USSR was in decline and the EU didn’t even exist yet. But post-2009 US is financially weakened to the point that it certainly does not have the capacity to take on China like this. Like, what do you think the EU and Russia are going to do while you are locked into a power struggle with China?
Biden’s neocon strategy is far more utilitarian when it comes to preserving US imperial interests, by taking care of Europe as a challenger and consolidating the European financial capital into its own, keeping Russia busy and at the same time raising chaos everywhere across the world to unleash the destructive force of finance imperialism and consequently forcing countries to yield to its demands. For example, the Fed raising rates by a few % was enough to send two dozens of African countries to the brink of economic default, subjecting them to further subjugation of the dollar since no alternative to the dollar has been made available to the Global South.
All these work to brutally enforce the free market and the flow of global capital, and I cannot find this sort of analysis in Mearsheimer’s realist school of geopolitical analysis.
I said that his geopolitical realism often sounds so similar to historical materialism in terms of assessing the current state of affairs even though it differs wildly from Marxism in terms of what it suggests should be done in response to the current state of affairs
As for realism being unrealistic, that’s true but only because the dominant western ideology is neoliberalism and not his realism, but I don’t think that makes his policy preferences ungrounded in reality since his policy preferences would mean dropping neocon imperialism in favor of his realist imperialism.
So yeah an alliance between Russia and the US is impossible under the dominant neocon ideology, but when he suggests making that alliance he’s also suggesting dropping the neocon mentality in favor of his realism mentality.
Now, that’s unlikely to happen for sure, and so you could say that detaches him from materialism and makes him an idealist but we are socialists and the USA isn’t going socialist anytime soon but I don’t think that means historical materialism is therefore idealism.
It means we’re depressed about the material reality, not out of touch with it.
To be doubly clear I don’t at all think he’s a Marxist, not at all. But his realism is strikingly similar to historical materialism. If you studied historical materialism and eschewed all the Marxism, you basically end up with realism.
Both historical materialism and realism look at today’s world and say the USA is an empire oppressing other states. Marxists then say “and so we should work to make the empire fall and build a better world” whereas a realist says “empires are a fact of life, so better to be the big boy in town rather than his slave.” That’s the difference.
Realists really sound like “fence sitting I’m smarter than anyone else because i know game theory lingo and taking a position is not realist”. And when major events happens they say “i told you so” even when they never had a clear position.
Kissinger was really good at this, people tend to recount his most notable political decisions and he mystified himself by playing up his cold and calculated maniac personality
There are a ton really but I think maybe these are some decent ones I recall that would appeal to chuds or pro-establishment types due to the type of forum