Tocky on 9/12/2022 at 02:47
Quote Posted by demagogue
It's helped me understand a lot of what the Post Cold War period that we're in right now even means. Imperial thinking is still around, by Russia, by Germany, by the US, and bewilderment about what's happening in Ukraine is one of its calling cards. One gets a good dose of unlearning our own prejudices beyond understanding this part of the world in a deep way.
Can you explain what is meant by "imperial thinking"? By my reckoning it means empire building and to do so one needs to take over and keep countries to do ones bidding. Of the three countries you mention only one is expansionist and became so again with the coming to power of Putin. He hasn't even made a secret of it. He has proclaimed to be an expansionist. Whereas Germany has learned it's lesson and has made no attempt at taking territory or forcing other countries to do it's bidding (other than pay their debts). The US has taken territory only temporarily in the interest of stopping expansion of totalitarian theocracies which are a detriment to their own people and, if left unchecked, the world. And despite claims of oil grabs it has lost far more monetarily than it could ever gain. The oil it was supposedly grabbing was sold to Europe instead.
The only reason the cold war still exists is because it was revived by Putin and the oligarchs who put him in power. The US would have been perfectly happy had Russia got it's shit together and became like a less authoritarian China with an actual or at least approximation of democracy. Putin chose expansion. Putin chose empire.
What the US has done since the end of WWII is to stop empire builders or at least to check them best they can. It learned from WWI and WWII that it could not be isolationist so it became the checker, the world police, or whatever more derogatory term one wishes to use. The only empire it builds is one of trade to keep it's country humming along at top production. Does it weasel and strangle the best deals on that front that it can exploiting every resource of it's own and other nations to grease the wheels of capitalistic progress and sate the insatiable greed of it's own wealthy? You know it does. Has it taken a bite out of other nations? Not since manifest destiny and one could argue that was taking from those who took only recently from the indigenous themselves and in any event the US of those days is nothing like the one today.
So explain this new meaning of imperialism. I understand it when it refers to English and French colonialism but not to those nations it has been shoehorned on today.
demagogue on 9/12/2022 at 03:04
Quote Posted by baeuchlein
I have watched that last episode of Snyder's lectures now, but I'm afraid I'm not convinced by him very much. This may or may not stem from not having watched the previous 22 lectures, but I think there's more I'm not buying here.
In the big picture, yeah, probably the least value in a history class you're gonna get is the last lecture trying to give an impossible overview of 2000 years of history.
The value is knowing that: the ancient Greeks looked at Europe south to north, and it took a good 3/4 of a millennium before it started working north to south and west to east; that Kyivian Rus was created by the Viking trade route to Byzantium (that England & the Anglosphere, North Continental Europe, Russia and Ukraine all have similar Scandinavian DNA); that the politics of religion was tied up with the slave trade; that the Muskovites were a military tributary state to the Mongols that basically kept the same form after they stopped paying tribute at some point; that the Donbas and Crimea over which this war is being fought not only was never Russian in its history; it wasn't Ukrainian either; it was an Islamic khanate until it was ethnically cleansed by the Soviets; that the creation of Poland-Lithuania was driven by the encroachment of the Teutonic Knights, and it was the Commonwealth's encroachment into Ukraine that made it essentially European whereas Muscovite Rus remained arguably essentially an Asian encroachment into Europe; that the history of the Jews in Ukraine were connected with the Polish landlords; why the Hapsbergs were so improbably central for so long and how much of Ukrainian national identity was forged from within Poland; what Ukraine meant to Russia's imperial project from the 18th Century and how Muskovites took so much of their religious culture and exceptionalism from Ukraine's Eastern Catholicism as part of that movement, i.e., their current arguments that there's only one Rus and it's the Muskovite variety, Ukraine doesn't really exist as such, originally comes from the arguments made by Kyivian churchmen repackaged (Rus is "completed" by Ukraine), but at the same time, a great amount of Russia by area and population is Turkic; Ukrainian nationalism in the Russian Revolution and how fast it flipped to the Polish side; why the Holodomor (genocidal famine) of the 1930s was perfectly logical to Marxist ideology (the peasant class needed to die off one way or another); why WWII from Hitler's point of view was centrally about Ukraine (the original lebensraum), and the western front had nothing to do with his plans except he only needed the UK, France, and US off his back, and why it's easy for the West to forget the Eastern front and that most of the Holocaust happened in Poland and Ukraine; the role of Ukraine under Stalin, Khrushchev, and Brezhnev; why one of the most important reasons for the largely peaceful collapse of the USSR was Poland's decision to support Ukrainian nationalism and keep its eastern border as is (which made it easier for Germany to decide to freeze its eastern border with Poland); and the essential debate between Europe vs. Russia that led Ukraine to the Maidan and color revolution in 2014 where it pretty decisively sided with Europe, setting fire to Putin's mystical apocalyptic delusions about Ukraine completing Rus and the occupation of Crimea and eventually this war.
As you say, don't put too much stock into interpretations. First you should get a feel for what happened and why it happened. This course is a good primer for each step along the way, so when you read other sources, you get a sense of where you are in the big picture. Anyway, yes, if you had to watch one lecture, the last one isn't the one to watch to get much value. It's the substantive classes on each period of history that give it the most value. But it works really well as a closer to the full set.
---
On what you said though:
- There are lots of videos on YT of Russians talking about the war where the dominant opinion is people don't want to talk about it and the environment is hyper-apolitical. That's "the deal" with Putin. Vlad Vexler has a great series videos talking about exactly this. Synder may have been going too far to say "none", but I think the gist of his point is consistent with what Russian commentators are also saying. Also this is already starting to change daily with the mobilization and as Russia is losing the war and Putin is upping the stakes and costs to the population, breaking "the deal" and politicizing both the critics and supporters.
- The part about the European integration project... He's really glossing over a lot. Really broadly speaking, European integration is about promoting open trade as the route to peace. The way my EU professor used to put it was that war would be impossible if the economies were tied up together. Snyder's main point wasn't really about that part anyway. His point was the UK, France, Portugal, etc., didn't really care about peace when it came to the colonies, only within Europe. I could add more to what he said too especially about German's role in the project from what I recall from my class/es. (NB, I won't say I'm any expert either; I remember things from that EU class where the prof was famous for the topic. But I won't even say he was infallible either, or my memory or takeaway from it.) His summary wasn't as good as what I got from my EU class, but this wasn't a class on the EU either. It was on Ukraine, and this was just an aside to the bigger point of the class, which was about empire and periphery. It's not the level for exact details vulnerable to nitpicking but getting the broad themes that give you the world map view to make sense of where things are broadly, although it doesn't work in the details.
- I think to some extent you're losing the forest for the trees, which I think is what you yourself are even arguing, and some of that I'd even agree is Snyder's fault, but I think also a lot of it is just the fault that he doesn't have enough time to develop his ideas like they need to be. You can see him constantly looking at his watch, like he understands it. And part of that too is, I think he thought it was the job of the students to reconstruct the forest from the tidbits he was giving in the context of the whole class they have just been through, because that's all he has the capacity to do within the time restraints he has. So he did his best. I think even a lot of your nitpicking is valid, but I think it's still valuable to pick up on a lot of his broad themes on imperialism and preconceptions for their own sake, getting the broad forest right while being unfair to some of the trees.
lowenz on 9/12/2022 at 11:15
Quote Posted by Tocky
The only reason the cold war still exists is because it was revived by Putin and the oligarchs who put him in power.
It's the contrary, Putin "got by himself" the power according to russian "non written" tradition so he can use the so-called "oligarchs" (not real oligarchs, now he can literally kill any of them, with the exception of Prigozhin) as wellness/power showing agents along other agents of other agencies (military and not).
There's no "party" or "lobby" behind Putin, it's only Putin because it's how "russian power" works (and why destroying Communism was an act of pure foolishness by the West, the party can hold in check
in fieri tyrants ideologically pretending to be dictators "for the good of the people" ). And it's why he've gained so much admiration from the conservative far right movements thinking about him as a messiah against the "evil corrupted west" (by the jews, the banks, the MIC/NATO etc. etc etc.), just like they love to think about Hitler: a "spiritual reformator".
baeuchlein on 11/12/2022 at 20:20
Quote Posted by demagogue
In the big picture, yeah, probably the least value in a history class you're gonna get is the last lecture trying to give an impossible overview of 2000 years of history.
Partially my fault, I see now. I had completely forgotten that this was a course describing how present-day Ukraine was formed during history. Somehow, I thought it was about explanations about the current war/crisis, which of course is just a small part of what the course's real aim was.
Quote Posted by demagogue
- The part about the European integration project... He's really glossing over a lot. Really broadly speaking, European integration is about promoting open trade as the route to peace. The way my EU professor used to put it was that war would be impossible if the economies were tied up together.
Yes, that's what my parents' generation also thought and still thinks. I remember their howlings when Great Britain left the European Union - they were expecting war emerging from that, but I can't see that. There's more which would lead to war or away from it.
Quote Posted by demagogue
- I think to some extent you're losing the forest for the trees, which I think is what you yourself are even arguing, and some of that I'd even agree is Snyder's fault, but I think also a lot of it is just the fault that he doesn't have enough time to develop his ideas like they need to be. You can see him constantly looking at his watch, like he understands it. And part of that too is, I think he thought it was the job of the students to reconstruct the forest from the tidbits he was giving in the context of the whole class they have just been through, because that's all he has the capacity to do within the time restraints he has. So he did his best.
Yes, I also think I lost the forest for the trees. I think that tends to happen a bit more to me than the average people, whatever the reason may be. And I also noted Snyder repeatedly checking his watch. Whether he is successful in enabling his students to get the whole picture I cannot say. However, during my last courses at an university I have seen several lecturers lose the battle against the clock because demands were put in them to feed too much stuff to the students in a limited amount of time. I would not be surprised if Snyder also was a victim of this tendency to give people too much to do for the time being allocated for that by
others. Our profit-driven economy seems to go more and more into that direction.
Cipheron on 17/12/2022 at 22:49
Quote Posted by baeuchlein
Yes, that's what my parents' generation also thought and still thinks. I remember their howlings when Great Britain left the European Union - they were expecting war emerging from that, but I can't see that. There's more which would lead to war or away from it.
Well, Brexit is hurting the UK that's for sure, the extent of which isn't really in the scope of this thread, but I'm sure you'd agree it's really only one strand of the many connections between the UK and the EU. The issue is that they over-emphasized the percentage of the connections which were directly expressed in EU membership.
They're still in NATO, which is the big one. Brexit being such an abject failure in fact strengthens the argument that the strands that connect the UK and Europe are important. Pulling that one strand out hurt like hell. Open hostilities would collapse a lot more links than the EU/Brexit one, so there is probably truth in the idea that the *many* bonds prevent incidents such as war.
baeuchlein on 19/12/2022 at 16:11
I also think that the Europeans are a bit more careful about wars in their own countries, as there are some people who still remember how Europe looked after WW II.
Well, at least CETA is still being pursued, so maybe Canada will not wage war against the EU now.:cheeky:
lowenz on 23/12/2022 at 11:20
[video=youtube;hBmvN9BLgEc]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hBmvN9BLgEc&ab_channel=DWNews[/video]
baeuchlein on 25/12/2022 at 14:09
Yes, not so funny, that.
monk on 26/12/2022 at 15:14
"Ukraine Is the Latest Neocon Disaster"
(
https://www.jeffsachs.org/newspaper-articles/m6rb2a5tskpcxzesjk8hhzf96zh7w7)
Quote:
The war in Ukraine is the culmination of a 30-year project of the American neoconservative movement. The Biden Administration is packed with the same neocons who championed the US wars of choice in Serbia (1999), Afghanistan (2001), Iraq (2003), Syria (2011), Libya (2011), and who did so much to provoke Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The neocon track record is one of unmitigated disaster, yet Biden has staffed his team with neocons. As a result, Biden is steering Ukraine, the US, and the European Union towards yet another geopolitical debacle. If Europe has any insight, it will separate itself from these US foreign policy debacles.
The neocon movement emerged in the 1970s around a group of public intellectuals, several of whom were influenced by University of Chicago political scientist Leo Strauss and Yale University classicist Donald Kagan. Neocon leaders included Norman Podhoretz, Irving Kristol, Paul Wolfowitz, Robert Kagan (son of Donald), Frederick Kagan (son of Donald), Victoria Nuland (wife of Robert), Elliott Abrams, and Kimberley Allen Kagan (wife of Frederick).
