Image is of one of Ireland’s only manned navy ships, the Samuel Beckett. Image sourced from this BBC article.
Putler has been HUMILIATED by the Kursk offensive and this proves that Russia’s army is in tatters and unable even to defend its own territory. However, it is simultaneously true that Russia poses an existential threat to countries thousands of miles away, as this recent Politico article demonstrates. Ireland - a country that immediately springs to mind as one surrounded by enemies - is being bullied due to its lack of military.
Despite bearing responsibility for 16 percent of the EU’s territorial waters, and the fact that 75 percent of transatlantic undersea cables pass through or near Irish waters, Ireland is totally defenseless. And I mean completely unable to protect critical infrastructure, or even pretend to secure its own borders. […] Ireland’s “navy” of six patrol vessels is currently operating with one operational ship due to chronic staff shortages. […] Ireland simply has no undersea capabilities. How could it, when it barely spends 0.2 percent of GDP on security and defense? And it has, in effect, abdicated responsibility for protecting the Europe’s northwestern borders.
For all we know, the dreaded sea-people from the Bronze Age Collapse could soon emerge from the North Atlantic.
Unfortunately, things are even worse up in the skies. Ireland has no combat jets, and it’s the only country in Europe that can’t monitor its own airspace due to the lack of primary radar systems. Instead, the country has outsourced its security to Britain in a technically secret agreement between Dublin and London, which effectively cedes control over Irish air space to the Royal Air Force. This must be the luck of the Irish — smile and get someone else to protect you for free.
While this is very silly, rearmament has long been a part of US imperial strategy on an economic level. Desai, discussing the US imperial strategy in the WW2 period:
By 1947 […] the domestic postwar consumer boom was nearing its end. While financing exports became more urgent, the 1946 elections returned a Congress unlikely to approve further loans. Now the Truman Administration concocted the ‘red menace’ to ‘scare the hell out of the country’, enunciated the Truman Doctrine of US support for armed resistance to ‘subjugation’ which launched the cold war, and Congress granted $400 million to prevent left-wing triumphs in Greece and Turkey in 1947.
One reading of history states that the US was so intimidated by the USSR that this forced a policy of massive arms production even outside of official wartime. Why this arms production is not occurring today can be puzzling, and (very reasonably) explained by neoliberals exporting industrial production overseas. However, a different historical reading can explain both the first Cold War, and the ongoing situation in which American weaponry is being almost purposefully given in insufficient numbers to give Ukraine a chance of victory and thus only prolonging their suffering (while generating massive profit for the military-industrial complex):
In this sense the Cold War was not the cause of US imperial policy but its effect. It combined financing exports with fighting combined development by national capitalisms as well as communism. When such ‘totalitarian regimes’ threatened ‘free peoples’, ‘America’s world economic responsibilities’ included aid to countries battling them.
By selling massively expensive weapons to Europe, America could simultaneously guarantee export markets for its industries, trap Europe into reliance on American industries at the expense of their own, and divert European funds away from constructing factories which could compete with American ones. Providing a way to defend against Soviet communism (and now Russian “imperialism”) is merely a happy side-effect, and so the lack of effectiveness of American weaponry is causing no great panic among the military-industrial complex, nor an urgent plan to quintuple artillery shell production or Patriot missile production - the deals for F-35s and such are still there, and they are what matter.
The COTW (Country of the Week) label is designed to spur discussion and debate about a specific country every week in order to help the community gain greater understanding of the domestic situation of often-understudied nations. If you’ve wanted to talk about the country or share your experiences, but have never found a relevant place to do so, now is your chance! However, don’t worry - this is still a general news megathread where you can post about ongoing events from any country.
The Country of the Week is Ireland! Feel free to chime in with books, essays, longform articles, even stories and anecdotes or rants. More detail here.
Please check out the HexAtlas!
The bulletins site is here!
The RSS feed is here.
Last week’s thread is here.
Israel-Palestine Conflict
Sources on the fighting in Palestine against Israel. In general, CW for footage of battles, explosions, dead people, and so on:
UNRWA daily-ish reports on Israel’s destruction and siege of Gaza and the West Bank.
English-language Palestinian Marxist-Leninist twitter account. Alt here.
English-language twitter account that collates news (and has automated posting when the person running it goes to sleep).
Arab-language twitter account with videos and images of fighting.
English-language (with some Arab retweets) Twitter account based in Lebanon. - Telegram is @IbnRiad.
English-language Palestinian Twitter account which reports on news from the Resistance Axis. - Telegram is @EyesOnSouth.
English-language Twitter account in the same group as the previous two. - Telegram here.
English-language PalestineResist telegram channel.
More telegram channels here for those interested.
Various sources that are covering the Ukraine conflict are also covering the one in Palestine, like Rybar.
Russia-Ukraine Conflict
Examples of Ukrainian Nazis and fascists
Examples of racism/euro-centrism during the Russia-Ukraine conflict
Sources:
Defense Politics Asia’s youtube channel and their map. Their youtube channel has substantially diminished in quality but the map is still useful.
Moon of Alabama, which tends to have interesting analysis. Avoid the comment section.
Understanding War and the Saker: reactionary sources that have occasional insights on the war.
Alexander Mercouris, who does daily videos on the conflict. While he is a reactionary and surrounds himself with likeminded people, his daily update videos are relatively brainworm-free and good if you don’t want to follow Russian telegram channels to get news. He also co-hosts The Duran, which is more explicitly conservative, racist, sexist, transphobic, anti-communist, etc when guests are invited on, but is just about tolerable when it’s just the two of them if you want a little more analysis.
On the ground: Patrick Lancaster, an independent and very good journalist reporting in the warzone on the separatists’ side.
Unedited videos of Russian/Ukrainian press conferences and speeches.
Pro-Russian Telegram Channels:
Again, CW for anti-LGBT and racist, sexist, etc speech, as well as combat footage.
https://t.me/aleksandr_skif ~ DPR’s former Defense Minister and Colonel in the DPR’s forces. Russian language.
https://t.me/Slavyangrad ~ A few different pro-Russian people gather frequent content for this channel (~100 posts per day), some socialist, but all socially reactionary. If you can only tolerate using one Russian telegram channel, I would recommend this one.
https://t.me/s/levigodman ~ Does daily update posts.
https://t.me/patricklancasternewstoday ~ Patrick Lancaster’s telegram channel.
https://t.me/gonzowarr ~ A big Russian commentator.
https://t.me/rybar ~ One of, if not the, biggest Russian telegram channels focussing on the war out there. Actually quite balanced, maybe even pessimistic about Russia. Produces interesting and useful maps.
https://t.me/epoddubny ~ Russian language.
https://t.me/boris_rozhin ~ Russian language.
https://t.me/mod_russia_en ~ Russian Ministry of Defense. Does daily, if rather bland updates on the number of Ukrainians killed, etc. The figures appear to be approximately accurate; if you want, reduce all numbers by 25% as a ‘propaganda tax’, if you don’t believe them. Does not cover everything, for obvious reasons, and virtually never details Russian losses.
https://t.me/UkraineHumanRightsAbuses ~ Pro-Russian, documents abuses that Ukraine commits.
Pro-Ukraine Telegram Channels:
Almost every Western media outlet.
https://discord.gg/projectowl ~ Pro-Ukrainian OSINT Discord.
https://t.me/ice_inii ~ Alleged Ukrainian account with a rather cynical take on the entire thing.
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It’s surprising to me that the Chinese government doesn’t somehow make an institutional settlements bank that would anonymize transactions within BRICS.
Or, failing that, why can’t Russia or China establish a special purpose settlements bank just for trade between those nations?
This seems like it should be an easy enough problem to solve given the two countries share a land border and don’t have to share any information with the US.
The US would just sanctions that new bank. The only way to really get around these sanctions without doing anything “offensive” would be for the Chinese to create a parallel economy that basically never has to interact with the US financial system.
Or just completely disregard all unilateral US sanctions as illegal and call their bluff, force them to sanction 50% of the world economy all at once. Basically, use the financial nuke.
China is too cowardly to do it
To clarify, this is the reason why I tried to call out “offensive” actions. What you are describing is essentially starting a trade war (I’m being descriptive here, not proscriptive). China seems to generally want to avoid that, since halting trade between the US and China is basically economic nuclear war a this point in time. Both countries economies would take pretty big hits. Other offensive options would be things like starting to demand more trade settlements or trade settlements in strategic industries to be made in the renminbi, which is something that many people of this community believe China should start doing.
It’s defensive though, not offensive. It is the US on the offense by placing the sanctions. China just eating it on the chin instead of defending itself is a form of weakness. China nulling all US sanctions would be a defensive act and well within their rights.
It would escalate the ongoing trade war, but the alternative is rolling over and surrendering
I think you are talking about strategy and I am talking about tactics.
China can’t really just “disregard” US sanctions, because the US controls access to it’s financial system. China can’t just “hack the dollar” (which would be cool). The difference between complying with US sanctions and doing nothing is like the difference between China using a shield to stop the US’ sword strike and just standing there and doing nothing while they swing. The former is defensive and the latter is just more attempting to call their bluff. The issue is that we already know the US isn’t bluffing, because they have already sanctioned China/Chinese banks for “supporting Russia”. They also aren’t even sincere about being motivated by “Chinese support for Russia” given that research out of Ukraine has identitied around 2/3rds of critical components in Russian weapons coming from US companies.
Why don’t they just start demanding the US repay their debts? China owns a lot of debt from the US.
Or would it be smarter to sell US debt to other countries, maybe Russia?
The debt would need to be puttable, meaning that the debtholder has the right to force the issuer/borrower to repay the debt early. Treasury debt is usually neither puttable nor callable (the issuer/borrower can repay early).
So China is boned then? Why don’t they just stop exporting to the US then? It seems like that’s the only way forward if they want to protect themselves from US monetary warfare, but of course it’s going to hurt China too.
They aren’t boned. There’s plenty of stuff they could do to respond to sanctions outside of just complying, but I haven’t seen a ton of indication that they wish to do so right now. I’m also not sure to what extent the CPC has direct influence/control over these smaller regional banks vs larger national banks like HSBC.
Other than that not being a thing, the Fed’s computer will have no issue increasing the numbers in the appropriate accounts when necessary.
Yeah but like a bank that exists for the special purpose of trade between Russia and China.
Let them sanction it.
Like how after 2008 there were those “bad loans” banks. Make a bank to hold the sanctions but it’s invincible because it doesn’t do anything except Sino-Russia settlements.
The way sanctions works, businesses have to show they aren’t doing business with the sanctioned entity, which is why I am saying just creating a new bank won’t really work. The Chinese businesses that touch the US financial system will still have to prove they aren’t doing business with that new bank.
Yeah but they can lie?
Or if manufacturer of X doesn’t want to take that risk, then middleman Y would be happy to take the risk in exchange for a markup.
All the US has is a paper trail and if china doesn’t share that with the US then the US has nothing.
It seems banks are a particular weak point because of the paper trail that is inherent to banking, which is why it seems odd that this weak point hasn’t been addressed. If there is a specific bank that does business with Russia and only Russia, then the middlemen can use that. The other banks stay clean and the manufacturers have plausible deniability.
Like, Kyrgyzstan is importing an unusual amount of German machine tools right now for example.
If Treasury Department isn’t satisfied with the reporting dating that these companies give to them, they will just add them to the sanctions list. It’s how sanctions are enforced. And they want to add Chinese banks to the sanctions list. They aren’t doing this out of some sense of bureaucratic justice or something, it’s economic warfare. Yes, you can beat them, at least in the short term, especially if you are small enough or unimportant enough, but its tougher when you are public enemy #1 for the US government.
How does this explain gas exports from Russia-neighbouring countries shooting up after sanctions on Russia itself
The US Treasury has its own constraints. They aren’t going to catch everything at first. Sanctions enforcement and evasion is definitely kind of like a game of whack-a-mole. There is a procress through which they review if the sanctions are actually effective and adjust or add new ones. That is what they are doing now with these smaller regional Chinese banks that weren’t targeted in earlier sanctions. However, it’s still a political exercise, and they will let certain actors get away with stuff if enforcing sanctions on them would hurt whatever the US’s broader political aims are.
they already have their own SWIFT system and are trading with each other’s currencies already. not sure why you haven’t heard about this. i’d suggest following pepe escobar on telegram. he’s good with the macro stuff. also I think even CIA-controlled media have covered it as well.