I'm not convinced the equivalence you mention - "aggression from both sides" - is really there. The current Taiwanese government's only stated goal is to defend itself; there is no serious surviving political will in Taiwan to attack China.
China could attack Taiwan (particularly Matsu and Kinmen), but an attack on the mainland also appears less likely these days, given the very real chance of humiliation a la Russia in Ukraine.
Even if Russia manages to level a few more cities, it's hard to see the past three months as anything but a humiliation of Russia's military might. The damage to Russian military international respect (fear, even) has already been done.
According to whom? Western journalists with degrees in subjects like humanities? US television news? Subreddits?
Russia invaded with the inverse of the ratio recommended by the US Military for attackers versus defenders (3:1) [which is why they had such significant losses in the first several weeks of personnel and equipment]. They have used probably less than 20% of their personnel and equipment.
Despite the assumption that the West has the best gear, at this point in time Russia has not only the best ballistics (hypersonic, etc) but also the best layered air defense systems. The best electronic warfare systems hands down. More diverse longer range artillery systems and more numerous than anything the West can throw at them.
Can you name a single significant counter offensive that the Ukrainian army, the second largest and well-armed in all of Europe with piles of Soviet equipment, their own military industrial complex as well as NATO intelligence and training (other than the sinking of the Moscow, which was pretty impressive).
Regarding tactics, google up "Maskirovka" and military feints. And please read Manufacturing Consent.
The massive English language Ukrainian social media effort does not win wars. We need to be realistic and honest about what is going on instead of projecting what we wish were happening.
Russian here. I condemn this war but let's be realistic. The extremely poor performance of Russian military at the start of the war is due to the following factors:
- extreme underestimation of Ukrainian people and government will to resist the occupation
- extremely poor planning and overstretching the communication lines
- frontlines in the beginning of the campaign were vastly undermanned for a conventional war (ww2 fronts in the same are had 5-15 times more soldiers per km)
- many troops in the initial wave were unwilling to fight this particular opponent. Brother nation and all that.
Now, many of these factors are no longer the same. Fronts are shrinked. RAF military better understands the capabilities of the UAF, and is countering their tactics more efficiently. Soldiers are better equipped with night vision equipment, drones, and they use artillery without hesitation. And most of all, new troops coming to front are no longer the kind of people who were brought in for a military exercise and found themselves invading Ukraine: they consciously signed up a (lucrative for provincial russians) military contract and know exactly what their objective is.
The humiliation is such thing. Yes, you are humiliated, so what? USSR was humiliated in the Winter war, yet, people often forget that it actually won it, taking 20% of Finland ( * ). Currently, Putin holds 20% of Ukraine, and I assess he can get a further 10% at this rate by the year end.
(Russia does have the resources to fight it till the end of the year, meanwhile the western public is clearly oversatiated with this war - last week I haven't seen a single Ukraine related topic trending on Twitter)
* - one can argue that Soviet poor performance in Winter war has led Hitler to attack USSR, but 1) I believe Hitler would have attacked regardless, high on confidence after having beaten France and 2) there are nobody now to attack Russia but possibly China, who wouldn't risk it while it is still in one piece. After it desintegrates as a result of Putin's genius rule, probably, I'll take some far East provinces, but not now. Also, unsuccessful wars are the best reality check if you manage to survive them, so if anything, Ukraine war experience will highly improve the real capabilities of Russian military. Equipment can be replaced far more easily than capable soldiers with war experience.
Not Russian but B1 level Russian speaker with lots of experience in that country and armchair general of the 404th chairborn division.
On your 2nd and 3rd points, you might be right. But have you considered the Russian war technique of Maskirovka and military feints?
Maybe (somewhat) surrounding the capital city was pure incompetence or was actually part of the plan, either way, it sufficiency tied up and discombobulated Ukrainian forces and allowed Russia to advance in the Donboss.
It's interesting to read comments from other Westerners who are so totally sure of Russias objectives but have never read Putin's invasion speech (which lays out the stated objectives) or any other Russian officials comments. Because that would be below them; all Russians are alcoholic, corrupt barbarians, don't you know?
> But have you considered the Russian war technique of Maskirovka and military feints?
From what information I was able to absorb about the start of the campaign, I think that Putin indeed was planning to take Kiev and Kharkiv in less than a week, and then suppress the riots there using riot police - as evidenced by him bringing in riot police troops equipped to disperse unarmed mobs, not to fight am army.
Regarding Putin's objectives, they were (I think, intentionally) very vague - 'denazify Ukraine' and 'secure Donbass'. So, for example, you can bomb a kindergarten and call it a day: Ukraine is now 'sufficiently denazified', Donbass is secure, and we can safely go home. With such goals, Putin can stop the war at any day and his propaganda corps will present any state of affairs as 'the greatest victory since WW2'.
Possibly; it could have been a type of feint/maskirovka or simply an attempt to scare the Zelenski administration into an early agreement. Either way, it was never enough forces to actual subdue a city the size of Kiev. But it certainly distracted a lot of Ukrainian forces away from the main front.
I sure hope that it stops at Donbass (and that this nightmare ends asap). But if western weapons keep pouring into Ukraine (which were never going to be enough to defeat the Russian military), then Russia might think that it needs to take the entire country to put an end to the hostilities (hope not).
Once again, you're reading way too much Sputnik - those fantasies about "20%" choice is a direct quote from Russian propaganda. The reality is, Russia has invested everything they had in this war - and so far lost twice. The quickest way to end hostilities is to provide Ukraine with more weapons - because Russia needs to be bled out.
For me, the humiliation comes to Russian society/governance in general. It’s pretty clear that Putin just wants to be another Czar. And the prevailing “well, what are you going to do” fatalism in Russian society means it’s just going to go on. Post 1990, as a child of the Cold War, I naively believed that “change was afoot.” That there was a desire amongst eastern countries to move beyond mideval behavior. It took a few years, but we’re right back to “I wanna be the boss forever”. People malign Putin for this. I have lost faith in the general Russian system at large that just keeps making one Stalin, kruschev, Putin after another. That the Russian system cannot move beyond this, is to me the real humiliation.
Nope, a few missteps in the first 90 days of the war will hardly matter a decade from now.
The West really needs to update their news cycle. While everyone was laughing at the problems Russia had early in the war, they went into full artillery mode.
Change of passport. The current government is also pushing to get the day-to-day name Taiwan more prominent. For example, they are putting the Taiwan name on the passport now, even though their constitutional name is Republic of China (I am wondering when they will change that).
Depending on which side you are, you may consider these are declaration of independence and a change of status quo.
> China could attack Taiwan (particularly Matsu and Kinmen), but an attack on the mainland also appears less likely these days, given the very real chance of humiliation a la Russia in Ukraine.
I think you may misunderstand the CCP. Even the perception of losing Taiwan will cause them to lose control in the mainland. What matters most to CCP? And imagine what they will do.
It's remarkable that anyone would classify something like a change of passport or a color on a map as "aggression" toward China! Especially when the Chinese aggression discussed here is airstrikes and missile barrage, followed by a naval invasion.
Everyone understands that Taiwan will not invade China. To classify Taiwan as the aggressor is wildly disingenuous.
What I meant is to start a conflict (intentional or unintentionally) to get US military involved. Just watch the local news commentors there. It is definitely been constantly discussed.
I understand your point. But ambiguity has deterred a formal Taiwan president from declaring independence. "Aggression" may not be the right choice of word, but this is what I meant, "the leash is gone" in the original post.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/2003/12/11/t...
Well they already are independent. They have their own laws, taxes, government, population, and borders. And this has been the case for 70 years.
The only "difference" here is that they aren't officially saying that they are independent. Even though yes, they are obviously already an independent country.
If a Xinjiang “education camp”, where regular people are jailed and tortured, reminds you of Guantanamo, imagine how much more brutal the likes of Chinese Guantanamo would be, places where dissidents, falling political rivals of the current leadership or those deemed the state’s enemies are imprisoned.
Completely different scale, they are a government perpetrating genocide on their own citizens, could go on and on how they aren't the same.
But the top photo of prisoner with hood and handcuffs and brutish looking military/security look very similar to some of the gross photos we saw of abuse at gitmo.
Might be me putting too much emotion onto it but the guard with the bat looks like a smirk, like how the criminals at gitmo enjoyed abusing and taking those photos.
Ugh. The pictures in that article are horrendous. The "patriots" will say (and in fact do say -- see the linked article about Lyndie England) that the real crime is not the acts committed but making them public. The same is true of course in China with Tiananmen Square or in Russia with the current military operation.
It's funny how self-declared patriots seem to specialize in making the rest of the world hate and revile their country.
I am you're right ;( Sad that you can confuse those.
the photos from gitmo aren't nearly as bad, probably because there aren't many. Most I've seen are just those through the fence photos, again looks too similar to China's concentration camps.
The torture seems similar, but the scale is completely different. In Xinjiang, it’s been at least 1.2 million people making up a sizable portion of all Uighur Muslims. That’s compared to around 800 people in Guantanamo Bay (and only about 40 remaining there).
Guantanamo Bay is completely horrible and should never have happened, but it wasn’t genocide.
Can you point me to the documents describing systemic (EDIT: Systemic, as opposed to a crime committed by a rogue prison guard) torture in those “camps”?
Guantanamo is indeed different, because it was only used for people to extract information from - vast majority of “war against terrorism” victims have been simply killed instead.
1. I'm confused. Your original request was, "Can you point me to the documents describing systemic torture in those 'camps'?" Clearly the BBC article outlines fairly substantial evidence of systemic torture in Chinese-run prison camps in Xinjiang. Would you not agree?
2. It's possible for one to criticize the human rights abuses in American prisons--which absolutely exist, I agree--while simultaneously criticizing the human rights abuses in Chinese prisons. If we must make a comparison of scale, the Chinese ones seem far, far worse, of course. But I don't think we need make a comparison; this thread was about Chinese prison camps, and you asked for evidence of systemic torture (which I provided); that you then choose to bring up "similar" behavior in western countries is...strange.
It's almost like you are trying to change the subject, repeatedly and unsuccessfully.
Ugh, the question is about systemic torture. Your counterpoints are not. As terrible as the condition in US prisons can be, those prisoners are convicted. The only crimes the millions of Uyghurs committed are being of a certain race and practicing a certain religion.
Your profile says, “Hates when people get killed, especially for religion and oil”, yet you seem to be completely contradictory in that regards throughout this thread.
My counterpoint is about demonstrating that while the sources document mass detention, they don’t show that the cases of other abuse are systemic - to me it seems they are not mandated by the system, rather, they are individual crimes committed by the guards, and the US prison system is an example of how this problem also exists elsewhere and might be unavoidable at this scale.
>The only crimes the millions of Uyghurs committed are being of a certain race and practicing a certain religion.
And the vast majority of them are fine. It’s not like Iraquis killed by US troops simply for “being a certain race and practicing a certain religion”.
>systemic (EDIT: Systemic, as opposed to a crime committed by a rogue prison guard) torture
having systemically rogue prison guards (say because they never really get punished and everybody aware about it, and frequently even with tacit approval) is a form of systemic torture. Have been this way in USSR/Russia for example.
It's pretty widely accepted by now that the premise for Iraq 2.0 was manufactured by the GWB administration.
Regarding 9/11:
I think Cheney was pulling the shots and knowingly and cynically ignored all of those glaring warnings, thinking they'd get maybe a small attack somewhere with a smaller number of US deaths, which would sort of be the cost of doing business in the middle east, and that this could be politically expedient in the context of his larger vision on how to deal with "the Iraq/Saddam problem", and in the larger picture morally "fine".
Btw: Dick Cheney is actually still around. How he and GWB never were indicted is beyond me. Don't get me started on the GWB PR rehabilitation campaign that has been ongoing during the the past ~6 years.
> How he and GWB never were indicted is beyond me.
Same reason nothing will ever happen to Trump for January 6th (and many other things). Same reason Nixon was pardoned. Same reason Clinton got away with lying to Congress, nothing happened to Reagan or Bush Sr. over Iran Contra, and so on...
Once you reach a certain level, laws no longer apply.
This is a more likely explanation than more complex conspiracy theories for Saudi and Pakistani ISI involvement with the 9/11 hijackers. These people were never brought to justice because they are powerful, rich, or "valuable" in some other way. They're not subject to the law.
More like US Law is a tool and not a useful one, in leveraging political influence. In US Politics, the political presentation of events/behavior of individuals, are a sort of ammunition for both other individuals and associated groups. Nobody wants to go to war with a political opponent who can weaponize information effectively, so you never chase them down legally. Especially with no guarantee that legal recourse will do anything but drain coffers and political favors.
> I think Cheney was pulling the shots and knowingly and cynically ignored all of those glaring warnings, thinking they'd get maybe a small attack somewhere with a smaller number of US deaths
Did he have so much control that he could suppress intelligence about an attack? I know he was pretty powerful for a vice president, but it sounds weird to me that one guy who isn't even in command could do that.
Note I'm not American and don't know that much about that period.
"Harry Whittington, the Republican lawyer shot by Dick Cheney in a hunting accident in Texas last weekend, emerged from hospital yesterday and apologised to the vice-president for all the trouble the shooting had caused."
> Whittington told the paper that although many media outlets had described Cheney and him as "good friends", the pair had only met one another three times in 30 years, and had never been hunting before. The Washington Post article also said that Cheney had violated "two basic rules of hunting safety": he failed to ensure that he had a clear shot before firing, and fired without being able to see blue sky beneath his target. The paper also reported that Cheney has still neither publicly nor privately apologized to Whittington for the shooting.
He was a very unusual vice president. Often described as the most powerful american VP ever. It's not clear that GWB was in control of these aspects during his presidency.
You should watch Vice (2018).
That movie really made a shitload of sense to me after following politics closely since a bit before the Bush/Gore election in 2000.
Cheney and the well-aligned group he was part of clearly had extensive control, clearly demonstrated by how well he executed the policy in 2001-2005. It is helpful not to think of the current VP (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kamala_Harris) as a comparison as her background [while worthy] was mostly local (SF) and state (CA) -- Cheney on the other hand decades of DC+White House experience (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dick_Cheney) with a strong and almost singular view on Foreign Policy.
W/r/t control beyond the whitehouse, he was publicly part of multiple groups with other key players (e.g., PNAC https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_for_the_New_American_C...) as well as part of non-public "groups" -- Neoconservative. He was clearly effective because his cohorts (Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Elliott Abrams, Richard Perle and Paul Bremer) were also part of the same circles, well placed in the DC foreign policy / defense apparatus, also shared the same singular focus of hawkish Foreign Policy.
It also helped that half the media landscape unashamedly supported the Cheney stance. Parts of other media (NY Times) reduced their critical thinking for several years until the disaster of the Bush administration became clear.
This is also why Comedy Central and the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Daily_Show took off during that time -- because they (along with PBS News Hour and NPR) were one of the few consistently thoughtful sources of news during that time. Consider how much easier it is for Cheney to execute policy when the media check-and-balance has disappeared.
> Did he have so much control that he could suppress intelligence about an attack?
Not sure about suppressing intelligence - but he sure was powerful enough to generate fake intelligence about "Sadam having weapons of mass destruction" - overriding the skepticism of multiple established intelligence services in the process[1]. Cheney basically set up a parallel intelligence service out of his office to push the "weapons of mass destruction" angle with no factual/ground-intelligence basis.
Let's not forget about the nuclear bomb factories on rails. That story sounded fake from the get-go, and since it wasn't true, they just dropped it and let it slip out of the public's memory.
Back then I was fond of saying that if George W Bush were president during Pearl Harbor we would have declared "War on Aerial Bombing" and invaded Korea.
I have never seen a coherent explanation of what was going through anyone's mind regarding the Iraq war. The nearest I've heard is that Iraq was Bush's idee fixe going into office. (My personal theory was that Bush realized Afghanistan was not going to get him re-elected to a second term.)
It's not really a complex mystery. GWB's admin was heavily stacked with people from a particular ideological clique, the Project for a New American Century folks. Cheney, Wolfowitz, etc. These folks had done the essay and speech circuit for well over a decade before 9/11 happened, and were very clear about their perspective and aims. I'd summarize those as:
~"American hegemony is net good for the world, therefor the US should not hesitate to use military power, unilaterally, to reshape the world towards US interests, without apology."
These are people that rejected any concept of a collaborative or consensus based world order among peer powers, consent of those governed but subjects of a weaker state, etc, vs the US becoming a benevolent in their imagination unipolar power. They'd spent most of the 90s writing essays about why the US should just straight up depose Saddam and allow US private interests to take over all Iraqi oil infrastructure.
These people had an extremely hawkish take on US foreign policy and it's undeniable that 9/11 dropped a giant present right in their lap. They did exactly what they'd already told the world they wanted to do as a response just using 9/11 as a new justification. The only real surprise is they failed to convince everyone on taking over Iran too.
As for GWB himself, it's not clear what his personal views were other than he stacked his admin full of these people and clearly trusted them. The argument that he had a personal grudge vs Saddam due to his father makes perfect sense and would be an easy way to persuade him personally.
I think a lot of the Bush folks thought of Saddam as a kind of rogue asset. They'd funded him to attack the Iranians, and then he went off reservation when he invaded Kuwait, and later tried to assassinate HW Bush. They knew he had chemical weapons (because they had sold them to him), and tricked themselves into believing he was developing nukes. 9/11 ramped up the paranoia and gave the Bush administration license to lie their way into war.
Prior to the Iraq war Saddam was pressing the UN to lift a bunch of sanctions and courting Russian and European oil companies to come in and run their oil operations. By the time of the invasion Iraq's oil infrastructure had been gutted due to sanctions.
This was a complete anathema to the PNAC psychos' vision of the Middle East [0]. They basically wanted to exact control over the majority share of OPEC producers for power over economic rivals (as they saw them).
The PNAC [1] had been pushing for war in the Middle East from their founding in the 90s. They got a lot of buy-in from all the Nixonites in GWB's administration. Rumsfeld set up the Office of Special Plans [2] that stovepiped unvetted intelligence from a bunch of Iraqi expats and exiles to push PNAC narratives to GWB.
The most credible theory in my eyes as to why they needed to invade Iraq, was that Saddam intended to boycott the US dollar, and rather sell Iraq's oil in Euros.
There's a de facto global tacit agreement to sell oil in US dollars - on pain of unilateral sanctions by the US or military intervention by the US military. All countries who deviate from this agreement are in fact deemed enemies of the US. This includes, Iran, Venezuela, Russia and China, and (formely) Iraq and Libya. When they don't, that means that the US can't simply print dollars as they please and force other countries (who purchases that oil) to purchase US debt as well. Pricing oil in currencies other than the worlds reserve currency (the US dollar) affects the dollar value greatly. The US printed about 10 trillion dollars in two years. The rest of the oil-dependent world pays the price.
> There's a de facto global tacit agreement to sell oil in US dollars - on pain of unilateral sanctions by the US or military intervention by the US military.
That is 100% how the US has managed to maintain as a "stable" global currency.
Not really. Cheney was under the influence of Ahmad Chalabi, who was a deep Iranian asset. Chalabi's job was to get the US to invade Iraq and dispose of Saddam. He succeeded admirably, and was given an award by Iran.
Embrace for more aggression from both sides to challenge the status quo.