Lenins2ndCat

Just discovered the displayname feature.

  • 3 Posts
  • 52 Comments
Joined 5 years ago
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Cake day: January 29th, 2020

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  • The Russian economy is worse off

    What metric are you using to determine this?

    the war will end with Russia getting at most Crimea

    This would require the complete and total collapse of Russia and the formation of a new country. Crimea, Donetsk and Luhansk are legally Russia under Russian law. There is no mechanism via which they can be ceded. When everyone eventually sits down at the table they legally can not be put on it by the negotiators that form the Russian side.

    I personally think Russia will take everything south of the Dnipro river then hand over the parts that are not Donbass as a political means of showing that the west won against them in some way.

    Even if there were a mechanism by which these could be tabled I don’t see why they would. They are winning, the counteroffensive is achieving absolutely zero, support is very low across Europe and there is very little evidence that their gains will stop.

    What mechanism are you thinking of here? Serious question. How? The only way what you’re claiming will happen could possibly occur is via a massive pushback, but that’s clearly not happening. You’d need nato to deploy and to kick off ww3 properly.

    a coup in the US is completely unrealistic as of now.

    I know. But the factionalism and divisions make it more likely than in Russia at the present moment in time. That was the point, to highlight that is incredibly unrealistic to expect it to happen in Russia after we’ve just had a demonstration of failure with almost no division barring the tantrum that occurred.


  • I think we’re going to end up talking past each other as we disagree and there’s a few things we’d just end up repeating over and over so forgive me for skipping a chunk here. I will respond to this though:

    destroying the economy even further

    “Even further” is an odd choice here. The Russian economy is stronger now than before the war sanctions. The sanctions failed miserably, everything that Russia could no longer get from the west it simply gets from South East Asia (China/India mainly) and the Middle East now. Reddit thinks there was some great economic smashing of Russia but it really horribly failed.

    Winning the war is unrealistic at this time, would take a long time

    “Winning” here is more a question of when parties will get round a table to negotiate again. The war almost ended in April but Boris Johnson put a stop to the deal that would have done that. It could end quickly, it could also take a long time, dependent almost entirely on how long the west wants to drag it out as a proxy war for. There is also the question of whether the US and EU might pivot to a focus on China, which would also result in getting round a table to end the Ukraine war first as they simply do not have the means to focus on both at once.

    And about the USA, yeah that’s a bit of a whataboutism. There is a lot of division there and I think they are one bad president away from significantly worsening the situation. We will see about that too I guess.

    It’s not really whatabout. It’s just useful to have a comparative baseline for “division” to understand what is necessary to create and succeed in a coup. Do you think one would succeed in the US under the current conditions? What factions and groups would need to be involved? This thought experiment is useful for understanding the kind of divisions, alliances and coalitions necessary to making a coup succeed elsewhere. It helps ground your thoughts in a more material reality rather than the fantasies peddled in the media circuit.



  • People should pay attention to these incidents of corporate security-state forces performing these kinds of actions against individual targets. It is a matter of time before individual targetting expands to widespread activity. Such “intelligence services” in corporate organisations will expand in power in much the same way intelligence services expand in power in government organisations. They function the same way as the security state does.



  • I think any serious presidential competitor has yet to emerge - none of the Communist candidates, or Navalny, are credible IMO. 9 months is plenty of time to make a campaign happen though.

    I don’t think this is realistic. You’re asking for sweeping massive electoral pattern changes that won’t happen without a massive crisis functioning as a catalyst. I can’t see a source for such a crisis on the horizon though, the frontline isn’t going to change while the economic sanctions were resoundingly defeated and hurt we european residents significantly more than Russians.

    FWIW if you want examples of leadership changes during a war, how about Neville Chamberlain?

    Chamberlain was not changed by an election of the population of the UK, he was changed by Conservative party infighting leading to the 1922 committee demanding his resignation in a “do it or we’ll do it for you” ultimatum, as they have always done. Chamberlain resigned his position as leader of the Conservative party and Churchill took it.

    There was no election in the UK between the years of 1935 and 1945.

    Or the two revolutions in Russia itself in 1917?

    Generated by an unpopular war in a series of wars that the tsar repeatedly got people killed in for his vanity. This is not an unpopular war though and there is no anti-war movement, it is supported by every political faction of the country. Even the euro liberals don’t openly state their opposition and that’s not because they would disappear (they wouldn’t) but because it would be wildly unpopular and harm their political growth, they are forced into silence through the conditions that currently exist.

    that Putin will be simply “encouraged” behind the scenes to retire rather than run again

    This requires factional fighting, which is non-existent at this time. He has broad across the spectrum support both in his party and in opposition groups because they all see him as ushering in a multi-polar world, which is extremely beneficial to the interests of every faction that exists. I still do not see where you think the factionalism exists for this to happen. Who? Why? What faction is going to push him out and for what purpose? With everyone wanting to see the completion of this project there’s no faction internally to interrupt it.



  • You’re expecting the main opposition - the communist party - to beat him then? Zyuganov?

    If that fantasy happened it would split the communist party between the half that is controlled opposition who would see it as “the wrong time” for it to happen and the half who truly want socialist power again. The election would then be redone with a 3 way split between the two factions and Navalny’s fascist coalition supported by the euro liberals.

    I mean, I would want that outcome as it would result in a real left communist opposition emerging but I think it’s incredibly unrealistic. Not to mention that you’re expecting the population to boot a leader during the middle of a war? I am not sure how often that has happened, populations understand you keep the same leader during wartime. You would need the population to become against the war for that to occur and uhhh I hate to break it to you but absolutely the support the war and it would take a huge change in the frontline situation to change that - one that I do not think is coming judging by the failures of the counter offensive so far.


  • The Russian government’s internal security apparatus appears incompetent because it did not consider Wagner a threat, even though Prigozhin had been telegraphing his intentions for days (and probably planning it for months). The Russian military appears weak and overstretched, because it could not protect its operational HQ by force. Putin appears weak because he disappeared at the crucial moments, and large parts of Russia appeared sympathetic to Prigozhin even if they weren’t prepared to directly take part. The image of Putin being the supreme ruler in charge of everything looks pretty suspect at this point, and Russians know it because most of the events happened live on Russian state TV.

    This is all “appears” “appears” “appears”. You are hung up on appearances. You seem to think that if they just appear a certain way to people then that will magically change the balances of factional power in the country.

    Liberals have this bizarre idea about where power comes from. You all seem to believe that the population of the country has power, that if the government simply appears weak then it will magically result in the population doing… Something… And then the government will be overthrown and the war will be won!

    Power is derived by those in hierarchical positions in a country to command various things within their positions to occur. And when enough people all align alongside one another and command things to happen together, if the related organisations follow those commands, they hold power.

    I acknowledge in my other comments that this is embarrassing (which is quite a similar interpretation to you saying it hurts appearances). But the bottom line is how it affects power in the country. What factions exist and who those factions are aligning themselves behind.

    This attempt did not result in anything like a weakening of the state or Putin. It consolidated all the sources of power in the country behind Putin, into statements of support and actions that back it up.

    Putin has a long history of wriggling out of difficult situations, and he might still pull things out of the bag, but I think this is the beginning of the end for him.

    By what mechanism?