A Beginner’s Guide to Stalinism

Unanimous consent is intended to discourage countries from Brexit-ing over being a chronic minority member.

If anything, it’s worked against foreign influence in the long run, as EU member states have an incentive to spread the love equitably. If leadership was partisan, like in the US, you could easily have a “fuck all those Blue states for voting against me / Red states deserve what they get” situation, which very nearly broke up the ECB in the wake of the '08 financial crisis.

Putin only has to hijack one government

Putin has less pull in Hungary today precisely because Germany and France had to invest resources to win it back in the last election cycle.

If you had a rump Eastern Europe that Western states could piss off with impunity, they’d be awash in Nigel Farrage types by now.

Doesn’t help that Canadians have made a solemn vow to never build another house for less than $1M.

Meghan Markle would be popular with non-Whites.

Saying shit like this is what makes so many people disgusted with the Monarchy

Ukraine is not really application of the flypaper theory since Russia took the initiative in invading Ukraine.

Ukraine has been a playground for espionage and special operations since before the collapse of the USSR. The invasion came in the wake of a decade of civil strife following the Maidan Revolution. And that was, itself, following a decade of Russia influence on then-President Viktor Yanukovych. A man who was installed to roll back the 1996 constitutional reforms, which were imposed as part of the western Shock Doctrine model for post-Soviet state integration. And you can trace it back from there.

History didn’t begin in 2022.

The West did not draw Russia to invade.

The EU states were hoping to employ a combination of economic carrots and sticks to align Ukraine with its allies in Bulgaria, Romania, and Poland. The Russians - having had success in Crimea and Georgia with direct military intervention - decided to flip the chessboard and start throwing punches, after their friendly governments kept getting pushed out of power through West-friendly civil uprisings.

But the end-goal of EU interference in Ukraine was to advance the US-sponsored ring of anti-ballistic interceptor missiles inward towards Russia. And the presumption was that this would neuter Russian long-range artillery without provoking an all-out fight across the European member states. Ukraine (and Estonia and Latvia and Bulgaria) were always supposed to operate as a buffer zone to absorb any Russian ground attacks.

Ideally, it was never supposed to go this far. But to say Emmaneul Macron and Merkel / Sholtz / Merz want an air war west of Ukraine is absolute clown shoes.

Especially now that the Iranians have proved how porous and inefficient America’s anti-ballistic interceptor shield has become.

It is debatable whether the UK and France had the military capability to stop Hitler

You can debate absolutely anything, sure. But post-WW1 UK/France were squarely in a Trans-Atlantic economic depression in the 1930s. Even if you want to argue they could have mustered the physical capacity and projected it east of Germany, presumably by way of… where? Fascist Italy? there was zero domestic political interest in kicking off a second European land war.

What you’re totally forgetting is 1917 Russia, where the Tzarist government had collapsed on itself and imploded into a full communist government entirely on the back of Lenin’s anti-war movement and conscripted soldier’s revolt. Meanwhile, you had Spanish Republicans in a guerrilla war with Franco’s fascist officer corpse right next door in Spain happening at the same time as Hitler pushed on the open door of Czechoslovakia.

What Western Europeans and American Atlanticists feared more than anything was domestic communist uprising. If anything, Hitler moving east and squashing Soviet parties between Germany and Russia was seen as favorable to western interests.

You mistakenly thought I said use Ukraine as a fly paper. In response I said Europe would prefer that it be the fly paper.

I didn’t think you said that. I think Ukraine is the obvious fly paper in the analogy. Europe very clearly is not, nor does anyone outside of the continent wish that on themselves.

The UK and France thought that letting Hitler have the Sudetenland would appease him

That’s historical revisionism.

They had no capacity to keep Germans out of Europe. This wasn’t a choice they were making, it was an excuse for their impotency.

What I said was that Europe would prefer that Russia attack it rather than Ukraine.

That’s an insane thing to say, both on it’s face and based on the last four years of Europeans very strategically avoiding direct confrontation with Russia.

Then the combined forces of Europe would be able to defeat Russia.

Napoleon on line 1. Hitler on line 2. They are both eager to discuss what you have in mind.

The UK and France gave Hitler the Sudetenland

It wasn’t theirs to give. The Sudetenland is in Czechoslovakia, a country that didn’t even exist until 1918. It was full of Austro-Hungarians who were some of the first foreigners to explicitly align with Nazi Germany.

The UK and France weren’t in a position to stop him, any more than they were in a position to stop the proto-fascist war hero Gabriele Annunzio and a rogue force of Italian mutineers from seizing the Adriatic port city of Fiume in 1919.

Might as well claim Obama gave Putin Crimea. Or that Bush gave him South Ossetia and Abkhazia.

The Donbus had similar problems. It was populated by a large number of Russian nationals who were getting propaganda pumped into their brains from across the border. That was kicking off domestic insurgency, which Ukrainian nationalists were eager to squash.

Europeans had neither skin in the game nor influence in the region. All they were willing to do is send mercenaries and cheap military equipment over the border. And we know how that worked out.

Nobody wanted an all out war with Russia.

Modern journalism is just sixty part-time reporters standing around a photocopier.

The Battle of Dien Bien Phu used the flypaper theory in that the French attempted to draw the Viet Minh into attacking Dien Bien Phu where the French thought they could destroy them.

But they failed. And their defeat was so horrifying for the French public that the government lost its civilian support and was forced to withdraw from Indochina as a result.

If Ukraine is Europe’s Dien Bien Phu, that doesn’t look good for the Europeans.

War between Europe and Russia would be destructive but Europe has to decide a solution to Russia’s hybrid war against it.

I have no idea how Russia and the rest of Europe can reconcile after the last decade of relational decay. But I have to assume there’s some path back to peace that doesn’t run through a Ukraine-style missile exchange that stretches all the way to the Atlantic. There’s no world in which Moscow trading ballistics with Berlin, Paris, and London ends better for humanity than one without it.

Getting into Berghain with a doctor’s note.

https://www.kyivpost.com/post/7741

Per the language of the legislation itself

“Pornography is vulgar, candid, cynical, obscene depiction of sexual acts, pursuing no other goal, the explicit demonstration of genitals, unethical elements of the sexual act, sexual perversions, realistic sketches that do not meet moral criteria and offend honor and dignity of the human by inciting low instincts.”

So this appears to be a relic of the '00s culture war, spilling into Eastern Europe with the fall of the Soviet Union.

The Battle of Dien Bien Phu is a better example of the Flypaper Strategy

I don’t think that works, as the “Flypaper” in this analogy would be better defined as the WW1 Central Powers.

Ukraine/Russia has much more in common with the European theaters of the World Wars (or the Napoleonic Wars) than the anti-colonial rebellions in their aftermath.

Actually, it would be better to attract Russia to attack Europe where it could be destroyed by the combined European armies

People keep floating this conflict as A) inevitable and B) decisively favoring Europe. But I cannot imagine a world in which any of the central European countries emerge from the conflict without suffering enormously.

Nobody actually wins in this kind of exchange.

What are you? Some kind of Communist?

As long as Russia is fighting in Ukraine, it is difficult for it to turn its attention elsewhere.

That was the Flypaper Strategy pitched by GWB back during the Iraq War.

He’s the Thomas Jefferson of our generation.

Excited for random Internet bot-posts spamming “Release The Tate Files” in another twenty years, while his closest personal friends are running half of Europe.

You should rebut me with another one of your funny memes that makes light of millions of people dying to really undersell your point.

Removed by mod

Okay, now say it in the original Japanese

I doubt Ukrainian drones can even fly that high.

Drones aren’t the only tool in the kit. There’s no shortage of anti-air defenses that can hit commercial airliners, especially as they’re taking off or landing.

This is a kind warning to let people know that russian air defense is going to be so keyed up that they’ll likely shoot down civilian airliners.

If a civilian aircraft is shot down, the Ukrainians will almost certainly insist the Russians did it themselves. Idk how many people will believe them, after Zelensky basically painted a target on every Russian airport.