arymandias

joined 1 year ago
[–] arymandias@feddit.de 37 points 5 months ago (2 children)

Up next: PayPal introducing new AI that purchases random shit for you.

[–] arymandias@feddit.de 10 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

It already was after Iraq, but now they dragged it upstairs to throw it out of the window again, just to make sure it’s really dead.

[–] arymandias@feddit.de 3 points 5 months ago

100% agree, no longer being oil dependent would make the middle east a saver place (as well as having many other advantages).

But even the green revolution needs cheap labor, recourses, and rare-earth metals. Countries that do not want to play game and want to nationalize key industries for instance, will be coerced financially or militarily by greater powers (be it the West, China, or Russia).

So the idea of one country being worse than the other is not really relevant and moreover a known strategy for getting war support. I am happy that I don’t live in Iran or Saudi Arabia, but escalating conflict with either of them will not improve anybody’s life. Look at Syria or Libya.

[–] arymandias@feddit.de 45 points 5 months ago (14 children)

Remember kids: Iran is the bad Middle East autocracy and Saudi Arabia is the good Middle East autocracy.

US foreign policy has always been and will always be interest based rather than value based, but they will use moral arguments and threat inflation to drum up support for their misadventures abroad.

[–] arymandias@feddit.de 19 points 5 months ago (2 children)

I’m starting to get the feeling that “X is playing chess while Y is playing checkers” is an indicator species for a terrible take.

[–] arymandias@feddit.de 30 points 5 months ago

They invented the progress piechart.

[–] arymandias@feddit.de -5 points 6 months ago (1 children)

But they are not gonna leave, and we can’t make them without risking worse (for Ukraine and the world at large).

And of course we can’t force Ukraine to stop resisting (nor should we, it is their right), but I have the impression the west does not want this to end (regardless of the cost of Ukrainian lives), and sees this as an opportunity to weaken Russia.

[–] arymandias@feddit.de -4 points 6 months ago (1 children)

The world of geopolitics is a world without police, so I agree that the invasion is a war crime, but in practice there is not much we can do that doesn’t make the situation worse.

In my opinion the best we can hope for is peace by means of a balance of power.

The lack of credible enforcement of international law is made very clear by the Iraq war, a war of aggression where the perpetrators were never held to account because the US was powerful enough to prevent that.

I don’t think it’s morally bad to be pragmatic in that sense, if trying to punish Russia leads to nuclear annihilation.

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