Russia has famously poisoned or otherwise assassinated countless dissidents and political opponents. But as far as I can tell, they have never openly killed a NATO citizen in a NATO country. That would be a substantial bridge to cross, and I expect there would need to be retribution for such an act.
Two Czechs were killed when the Russians blew up a Czech ammunition depot in 2014. That's about as open as this is.
You could maybe argue it was incidental rather than intended, like the woman killed in the botched Salisbury poisoning, but it's a natural outcome of these kinds of plots.
Back when they were the USSR, their thinly-veiled proxies (such as [1]) murdered and blew things up in the West into the 1980s. The radical left and radical right were equal-opportunity puppets.
I have a pet conjecture that they might have actually murdered FDR too, though he was so frail that it probably only took a 'pat on the back' in Yalta [4] (unlike their first try on Navalny [2] and Yushchenko [3].) Unlucky for them, Truman ended up being a much tougher rival than FDR would have been, IMO.
Dawn Sturgess was a british civilian killed by russian nerve agent on british soil in a botched attempt to kill Sergei Skripal a russian/british dual national (spy/double agent).
Alexander Litvinenko was a russian/british citiizen and killed with polonium poisoning on british soil (journalist).
At the core of the Russia-Ukraine war there is something that we should all be somewhat concerned about.
It is clear that USA remains an economic, cultural, moral and even spiritual powerhouse as other civilizations go through all sort of turbulence. By virtue of this, other "western" value nations like EU nations, Japan, Australia, South Korea etc. are doing well and likely to do well and benefit. Together we beat covid, invented magic pills for obesity, moved towards cheaper and better energy sources and kept our institutions strong. Even the Islamic and north african immigrants did not cause any collapse that our enemies planned for us.
People around the world continue to line up to immigrate to west legally or illegally. It is a huge success for us.
Now, we have AI. With few more gains this can transform our economy and way of life like nothing else.
I see Russia, China, India and Arab world feel depressed about this that there is nothing they can do about this. They will not be able to catch up with us ever. They take pride in being "thousand year old civilization" but they are being outfoxxed by bunch of cowboys and LGBTQ folks at every step
Russia-Ukraine war or Chinese war on Taiwan is not just a local war but rather an act of desperation from these states due to the realization that their culture and society is a loser culture and society.
I expect this sort of assassination attempts to be on rise now.
- Together we beat covid, invented magic pills for obesity, moved towards cheaper and better energy sources and kept our institutions strong.
Covid is beaten by our immune system. Since covid we have also rising overall mortality and total distrust in science, media and governments.
Obesity in wealthy countries, while millions starving in developing countries, treated by magic pills?
Energy prices are much more expensive than ever, many times more then in states with totalitarian regimes.
Institutions monetise everything they possibly could.
- People around the world continue to line up to immigrate to west legally or illegally. It is a huge success for us.
Have you been in UK, France on Germany recently?
-I see Russia, China, India and Arab world feel depressed about this that there is nothing they can do about this. They will not be able to catch up with us ever. They take pride in being "thousand year old civilization" but they are being outfoxxed by bunch of cowboys and LGBTQ folks at every step
Depression in youth in wealthy countries rise since social media consumption started. We have highest suicide attempts than ever.
Also, EU fertility rate per woman is 1.4, in US 1.6. You don't need to be skilled in math to know that wealthy west is dying.
West throughout last 200 years or so has been better than rest of the world and yet deeply unhappy about it self. So my claim is not that it is Utopia but it is vastly better than rest of the world and continues to get better with the gap widening.
At this point, other than China, non western countries have nothing meaningful to offer to the world other than natural resources and basic labor. Even the best parts of the other parts such as Yoga, Vedanta of India is better in west in the land where it originated.
I generally agree with your analysis. You describe the tall order for the Russians or Chinese to take on the Western-led world order and economic might and prevail. I would like to add:
- The Russians and Chinese are not natural allies (historically quite the contrary.)
- The only belligerence the Chinese have shown is on Taiwan and the South China Sea. On a pound-for-pound basis, they've been throwing their weight around a lot less than, say, older Western powers like France and the UK.
- By contrast, the Russians are on a world-domination war path, acting like Ivan the Terrible is still alive and the middle ages never ended.
The only way the Russians can hope to win is by locking the Chinese into their camp. This in turn requires the Chinese to completely turn their economy inward. There's just not enough BRICS to buy their current exports. It also means a massive drop of GDP.
The key here is that the Russians cannot lock in the Chinese without our help. So every time you hear someone bashing China in the West, keep in mind that driving a wedge between the West and China only really helps Russia.
I'm no fan of the CCP, but we've been allies with way worse governments, such as Saudi Arabia.
The problem with China is that its internal processes are aligned to be self destructive. I am from India and I understand Indian politicians and ruling class which has deep fetish for Russia and CCP. But Indian public likes American phones and youtube. So despite all the political moves, India remains mostly west aligned.
CCP is immune from such things. It does not have to give much damn about its people or even national interests as long as it can stay in power. Stephen Kotkin on Hoover institution explains this better than I would.
> CCP is immune from such things. It does not have to give much damn about its people or even national interests as long as it can stay in power.
Absolutely. Democracy is ideal against tyranny, corruption and mismanagement. As you said, it has kept the Indian government relatively in check, in spite of India's history of Soviet alignment.
Russia has long sought to exploit democracy's structural weaknesses by corrupting foreign politicians and journalists. Their attempt to incite a race war in the US, for instance, dates back to the early 20th century. One can argue it never ceased.
This century, the efforts became massively more effective with their new cyber capabilities. Even when they can't get an outright puppet elected, they can still put their finger on the scale. At a minimum, they're the new kingmakers.
The CCP is insulated from this. Almost paradoxically, this means it can listen to any deals we propose without worrying about blowback from Putin's local political proxies.
Unfortunately, Putin's proxies here are the reason we're not proposing any such deals.
The only way the Russians can hope to win is by locking the Chinese into their camp. This in turn requires the Chinese to completely turn their economy inward.
I'm not following this point. They don't need the Chinese to completely align with Russia. They just need the Chinese to provide enough of a way around sanctions that they can continue the war.
The Chinese seem content to engage in the usual economic jockeying with the US, while antagonizing the US in a variety of ways (supporting Russia, menacing Taiwan, trolling, hacking, etc.) The wedge is there, and I don't an alliance with China is happening any time soon. Certainly not in time to help Ukraine.
We can position ourselves better for a less-awful world order if Ukraine can survive long enough that Russians get fed up with Putinism. I can't see the US and China as allies, but I can see us as less acrimonious rivals.
Unless the US decides to go all in with its isolationism, which seems entirely possible. In which case all bets are off.
> They just need the Chinese to provide enough of a way around sanctions that they can continue the war.
I agree with most everything you wrote. You closely describe the situation in 2024, while my argument is longer-term and presumes that the Russian goal is world domination in the Roman Empire sense. That's what Sweden and Finland smelled when they joined NATO.
At that scale, our squabbles with China seem petty and minor, and therefore entirely Russian-serving. Chinese hacking is mostly tech espionage and one millionth of the Russian amount. The Taiwan crisis is also intrinsically petty. China basically wants to take it over because the drunken bar fight with Chiang Kai-shek was never really settled. It's a bit like the geopolitical version of "but her emails," like the Turkish/Armenian animus without the genocide event.
> We can position ourselves better for a less-awful world order if Ukraine can survive long enough that Russians get fed up with Putinism.
The Russians have updated the dictatorial model for the 21st century, making uprisings a thing of the past. There's no group or category left whose getting fed up makes a difference. In extreme cases, the experience in Syria and Venezuela is that beating down hard on the population improves the dictatorial position (like in WW2) instead of weakening it (like in Britain's American colonies.) Plotting a coup is hard to impossible too. It just requires so many cogwheels that it gets caught by surveillance before it hatches.
Putin has also updated what it means to take over a country. His first preference was a vassalized Ukraine with Yanukovich, i.e. conquest by any other name. Countries like Hungary are one Big Lie-like claim away from having their elections Rwanda-ized. The Ukraine treatment is a last resort for countries who just plain refuse vassalization.
Eventually Putin will die. I have absolutely no idea what follows. Dictators tend to leave a succession crisis, though I doubt there's some real democracy impending. Russian culture genuinely seems to want a strongman in charge.
It's just so damn aggravating because it's making their country poor. China and the US are pushing each other economically. It's kinda ugly but it's not killing anyone, and a lot of people are getting employed out of it.
Russia could play that same game, and they've got the resources and brain power to get rich. Instead they are trying to win by dragging everyone else down.
And I really hate that China knows it gets a leg up on the US by egging them on. Not that the US is any great shakes on the moral high road but that part is genuinely killing people.
> Eventually Putin will die. I have absolutely no idea what follows.
Crystal ball says a guy with a full head of hair. [1]
> Russian culture genuinely seems to want a strongman in charge. It's just so damn aggravating because it's making their country poor.
The ambition that selects dictators has no bounds. Once they conquer everything at home, abroad is all that's left. It's never enough. Caesar visited Alexander's tomb and lamented taking 20 years longer to conquer the world. [2]
Maybe Russians are so used to it that they yield the home base ASAP and let the rest of the planet take the brunt. Kind of an inside-out, downhill version of the supply line stretch tactic against Napoleon and Hitler.
> And I really hate that China knows it gets a leg up on the US by egging them on.
I think it's the other way around, Russia is egging us on against China. A certain Russophile started a tariff war, which I promise you the Chinese are not crazy about. About 15 minutes after Covid hit, Putin's proxies were flooding Twitter trying to get the "China flu" nickname to stick.
Globalization is basically a gravity well with "everyone playing nice" at the bottom. This was the theory behind granting China MFN status in the 90s. What people seem to miss is that it largely worked. Russia restructured its economy for war. China is restructuring its economy for... clean energy.
They never got to Western-style democracy, true. But aside from policy speeches, we didn't really push for it much. They have a mechanism for selecting leaders. We could have lobbied for a tweak here, an allowing of dissent there. Over a decade or two they could have surpassed every shitty Gulf kingdom. They still could.
I agree with your second and third paragraphs, but I encourage you to realize that AI does not exist--not in the form you're implying by predicting transformative technology. AI has not made a meaningful impact in nearly anyone's lives, let alone a transformative impact; instead, it's just the latest VC money sink, hype train, bubble, or whatever you want to call it. The West is a great place to live not because of AI but because of consistency of experience (e.g., first-world infrastructure for the most part) and higher quality of life, "AI" or no AI.
This is total nonsense. Putin does not care about AI, by all accounts he doesn't even use technology much personally, he cares about being remembered as a Peter the Great figure who restored Russia to their rightful place as a superpower. It's just bog-standard nationalism of a kind we've seen dozens of times before.
China does not need to attack India or Taiwan right now to prove that its a superpower because it already is. It is consulted on all major issues and the world engaged with them with respect because they have earned it. China hopes that it will be more powerful in future and hence they are measured in their approach.
Russia is lost. There is nothing else Putin could do to make Russia more relevant on world stage. Russia is staring at slow decline of its human capital which will settle in west. Its former colonies like Ukraine or Poland would love to be part of EU/NATO etc.
This is why Putin needs a war to appear great. At its core it is about western world's victory on the world state.
After war he will assassinate your innovators and business leaders.
But that would provoke Russia and would lead to WW3. (Tongue in Cheek).
My reading is that German elites are deeply compromised and probably on take from Russians. Either through money or through blackmail or through sheer fear.
When taking a stand against Russia vs caving into Russian demands, I think Germany will fold and cave in to Russian demands.
Merkel was famously soft on Putin. She was definitely an apologist and perhaps a pocket ally. [1] While she was in power the AfD (the Russians' populist proxy party) was curiously held at bay at the polls. She's tied for second longest-serving chancellor after Bismarck.
The new chancellor Scholz is much less Russian-friendly. Perhaps unsurprisingly, his favorability numbers are in the gutter and the AfD is surging.
There is a layer of abstraction between warring nation states. In the case of Ukraine you can argue it's a proxy-war, a seconf layer of abstraction. There is an unthinkable future in the possibility of nation states directly targeting the Corporations that fuel war.
They did not. There was all sorts of speculation and enough circumstantial evidence to implicate either Russia or Ukraine or the US depending on what your threshold is.
> They did not. There was all sorts of speculation and enough circumstantial evidence to implicate either Russia or (...) depending on what your threshold is.
There was circunstancial evidence implicating Russia, and there is Russia's firehose of falsehood spewing industrial levels of propaganda accusing everyone else ranging from Mickey Mouse to moon nazis.
In the meantime, Russian ships were found to have been involved in suspicious movements in the area in the days and months leading up to the blasts. Russia itself started blaming the US and the UK before pointing the firehose of falsehood at Ukraine.
Just take a look at how Russia handled its latest bombing of Ukraine's children's hospital. First it was Ukraine, them they admitted they themselves bombed the hospital but it was a military hospital, then it was a children's hospital again but it was a US missile, then it was all propaganda...
I'm very supportive of Ukraine's position in defending themselves and aware of the Kremlin's repeated bullshit claims.
However, if I had to bet, I don't think Nordstream 2 was Russia. Sweden and Denmark just concluded their investigations after almost 2 years and if Russia had done it there would've been some implicating evidence. Instead, the reports ended with no conclusion other than it was "complex." I don't believe Seymour Hersh's report to be accurate, but there's a good chance it was US or Ukraine, only for us to find out years later the justification. Time will tell.
> However, if I had to bet, I don't think Nordstream 2 was Russia. Sweden and Denmark just concluded their investigations after almost 2 years and if Russia had done it there would've been some implicating evidence.
You should read the reports. Sweden was quite clear on how their investigation was closed because they determined that nothing indicated Sweden or Swedish citizens were involved in the attack, and that Sweden's jurisdiction did not applied anyway.
Denmark closed their investigation stating that even though they determined it was an act of sabotage, "there are not sufficient grounds to pursue a criminal case in Denmark".
No, there is only russian propaganda. They started to try to pin the blame on the US and UK, clearly to try to drive a wedge in NATO between continental allies and them, and only afterwards did they came with a bullshit theory involving Ukrainians on a yacht, this time to try to cool down support of Ukraine by EU members in a time when Ukraine needed them the most.
In the meantime, we are expected to believe that a theory pieced together involving a couple of Ukrainians in a yacht is plausible while multiple Russian ships loitering over the exact place where the explosions took place we're nothing substantial, particularly when said terrorist somehow kept intact Russia's only working gas pipeline feeding into Europe.
CNN has this trademark way of saying what they want to say while maintaining plausible deniability precisely so that people can write the above comment. Politico seems to have the same editor.
Usually it goes like this: axis of evil horrible rouge state X has done bad things in the past and we all know how they are bad. There is some evidence to suggest they are at it again. Totally compromised person you shouldn't trust (and did we mention their horrible fashion sense?) suggested it may not have been rouge country X. There is no consensus.
If you'd like to hold CNN accountable for saying false things, then you should also want people to hold you accountable for saying false things. CNN never claimed knowing it was Russia, feel free to source that claim. Therefore, every time you post something related to the media online, people should pop in to say jasonvorhe was wrong about what CNN said and isn't neutral, right?
Personally, I understand that serious media orgs may get things wrong sometimes, but are generally criticized and held accountable for their errors, while any criticizer and alternative media can spew falsehood after falsehood and no one bats an eye on their future claims.
>“We’re seeing sabotage, we’re seeing assassination plots, we’re seeing arson. We’re seeing things that have a cost in human lives,” a senior NATO official told reporters on Tuesday. “I believe very much that we’re seeing a campaign of covert sabotage activities from Russia that have strategic consequences.”
Uh, yeah, they are literally at war.
Is this the next stage of trying to rope NATO into this?
Yes, they are at war, they are all-in, while we are not. Maybe it’s time to consider we are at war too? How long are we going to let them wage information war, sabotage, political interference and corruption against us? They talk on state sponsored TV about nuking London, invading Europe, while we carefully consider whether Ukraine should be allowed to retaliate against Russian air bases that target civilians in purpose?
Not to mention they are about to get a Russian asset elected POTUS.
The quote is regarding operations taking place in Europe, not Ukraine.
This kind of thing has been happening for a long time actually. Russia blew up Czech ammunition depots in 2014 (killing two Czechs), tried to poison Bulgarian execs with nerve agents in 2015, etc. But it's getting much bolder and much harder to ignore, as much as Western politicians would like to ignore it.
