Re: <nettime> Stormy weather?

[Menno Grootveld <rabotnik@xs4all.nl>]

I'm really sorry, Felix, but I have to disagree here. In a sense this 
war is not even a proxy war, but a testcase-scenario for an even bigger 
war with China about Taiwan. It is a bloody shame that loads and loads 
of people have to be killed (on both sides) and have to be mutilated, 
tortured and so on (mainly by the Russians) because 'we' have decided 
that Putin is some kind of second Hitler and has to be stopped in his 
tracks before it's too late. To my mind this smacks far too much of a 
bad replay of 'München' and all of that. Let's not fall into that trap.

Yes, the Russian invasion of Ukraine is an international crime and all 
reasonable measures should be taken to counter that. But we should also 
bear in mind that most of these 'special military operations' fail 
sooner or later, not so much because of foreign military help, but 
mainly because of gross incompetence of the inveding/occupying forces 
and succesful resistance at a guerrilla-level by the inhabitants 
(Vietnam, Afghanistan). So yes, we have to give Ukraine all the help we 
can muster, short of military help.


Op 13-02-2023 om 17:39 schreef Felix Stalder:

> On 12.02.23 20:50, Brian Holmes wrote:
> > -- There's a war on in Europe, which is a proxy war that pits NATO 
> > against Russia, via the fighting force of Ukraine. Definitely check 
> > out the list of equipment which the US alone has sent: 
> > https://newleftreview.org/sidecar/posts/sleepwalking-elites 
> > <https://newleftreview.org/sidecar/posts/sleepwalking-elites> (list 
> > begins in paragraph 3)
>
>
> I know this is not your point here, but to see this only as a proxy
> war really reductive and reeks of a "great powers" analysis in which
> some countries/people are just have to accept the fact that they are 
> subordinate.
>
> The author of the NLR article comes right out with this world view:
>
> > Ten years ago, nobody could have imagined that Europe would risk
> > such a catastrophe for the sake of the Donbass – a region that few of
> > us would have been able to locate on a map.
>
> I'm sure most Ukrainians knew already 10 years ago where the Donbas was,
> but why bother with their view. Also, the war in the Donbas started
> 2008, so not to know where the Donbas was in 2012 is really an act
> of metropolitan ignorance. It happens, nothing to be proud of.
>
> So, this war is primarily one of Ukrainian survival. I'm sure that many
> in the US security apparatus see it also as a proxy-war, but I think
> also Biden's theme of democracy-vs-authoritarianism plays a role. I
> don't think it's a given that a republican administration under Trump
> would have done the same (even if some in the military would still have
> liked to fight a proxy war).
>
>
> On 13.02.23 08:45, Stefan Heidenreich wrote:
>
> > - the defeat of NATO could lead to a "decolonization" of Western
> > Europe (not that this by itself leads to positive results. Repressive
> > "liberal" fascism remains as likely an outcome as some sort of
> > independence.)
>
> Oh my, what this is supposed to mean, only chatGPT can explain.
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