cfgaussian

With all that has happened this year, this is still the most shocking news to me. Putin for once not being an incurable liberal Europhile? Inconceivable!

The EU discourse about "digital sovereignty" is a joke. We are the most dependent in the entire world on US digital services. For the EU it's not about digital sovereignty at all, it's about digital control and surveillance. The EU countries are satrapies of the US empire. When Brussels speaks of "sovereignty" it means the exact opposite, it means depriving individual countries of their sovereignty.

That's true. And with much more limited resources than China. Although to be fair it's under very unique conditions that don't exist for other countries, but nonetheless it shows that even for small nations it is possible to establish digital sovereignty. It's not easy but it can be done, and it is essential if you want to safeguard against color revolution plots.

Utterly bizarre article written almost entirely in the abstract as if discussing an idealized world model rather than the actual material and geopolitical reality that exists today. Not a single time was any country mentioned by name. This may seem like a trivial point but it is in fact the key point in this whole discussion. Because there are only two states today with real digital and "AI" sovereignty: China and the US. And yes, of course sovereignty is tied into nationalism and state power, that's the whole point of it. That's not the deep insight this article thinks it is.

But this article talks as if there exists this large number of independent, sovereign states that are all implementing digital sovereignty policies, when in reality the digital infrastructure which the vast majority of these countries (particularly in Europe) that are talking so much about "digital sovereignty" initiatives use is specifically US infrastructure, and very much under the control of and embedded/merged with the US state apparatus. It completely obfuscates what each country's digital infrastructure actually looks like in practice by talking in these abstract generalities.

And yes, there are one or two "gray zone" countries like Russia and India which are making efforts to try and develop some domestic alternatives, but they are still in very early stages, still dependent on US digital products, and is not clear they will succeed in breaking that dependence. But the EU certainly has no real competitors to US digital services and infrastructure and, for structural geopolitical reasons, will not and cannot have them. Neither does most of the global south. So why are we still talking in the abstract about this topic? Let's instead compare and contrast the only two real independent models of digital development that exist today: China and the US.

The US model cannot be emulated because it is inherently hegemonic and geared toward creating dependence, toward digital rent-seeking and maintaining imperial control - it is fundamentally at odds with sovereignty for anyone except the US. China's model is the opposite: it is one that by its very nature is not designed to be exported but is specific to the national conditions of China. It is a model that requires serious domestic political and economic investment, but has the power to break hegemonic dependence and create real sovereignty. These are the realistically the only options that countries have. There is no third option.

Agreed. There is nothing to be gained from acting like we know better than Iran's own officials. It's just self-gratification for your own ego, trying to feel smug and superior, but you are only helping the enemy when you act this way. It's a very simple rule during wartime: don't help the enemy's propaganda!

And also, it is very likely that this was a translation issue. There are already credible reports that the US suffered hundreds of casualties which does not just mean killed, it means killed and injured which is most likely what the minister was referring to.

Now that Iran has bloodied the US, people see that the monster can be made to bleed. And framing it in terms of expelling the empire is the best approach the Iran could take here in my opinion.

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and last year the US and Israel proved to have seemingly foolproof ways to neutralize Iranian anti-air defenses and fly unimpeded over Iranian territory, right?

Wrong. They did no such thing and certainly they have proven no capability to achieve that this time either.

What's keeping them from just establishing air superiority now, suppressing defenses and just dropping bombs 24/7 on Tehran?

The fact that they can't. If they could they would have.

And where are they going to launch those planes from when every base in reasonable range has been hit by an Iranian missile or drone? They are doing standoff strikes because it's the only thing they can do safely.

There's no shortage of American assets in the region, as we've seen by following the month-long buildup.

There is in fact a shortage of American assets in the region. They haven't built up anywhere close to the amount they had when they invaded Iraq. And Iraq was a pushover compared with today's Iran, with an infinitely less defensible geography.

The fact is they don't have the capability anymore to mass those kinds of forces. Not without leaving themselves exposed everywhere else around the world. They are already over-extended. Stockpiles severely depleted by attrition in Ukraine and constantly having to supply the Zionist regime's unending warmongering.

And even if they did scrape literally everything they have together, it would take far longer than just a few months to assemble. They went into this ridiculously underprepared with entirely erroneous expectations. It is clear that they have blundered into an unsustainable clusterfuck.

Second question...

I wouldn't worry about the French. France's military is a nothing burger. They could nuke Britain or Germany, but they don't have the capability to deliver a nuclear payload anywhere that matters. They were even recently kicked out of Africa.

There's undeniably an argument to he had that if the MEK, at the time, was the faction that won out then things would be better in Iran. However, Khomeini out organized them, and by siding with Iraq in the imperialist backed war basically signed a death sentence on the Iranian socialist movement until even his day.

Very important point that a lot of (ultra-)leftists miss: if you side with imperialist (proxy) aggression against your own country, it doesn't matter what kind of justification you think you have, or how bad you think your government is, you are dooming your entire cause for generations to be forever associated with treason to your own people in a moment of existential national crisis.

This is why it is so essential for communists to understand primary and secondary contradictions. Would the CPC ever have won the trust of the Chinese people if they had sided with the Japanese against the KMT? After all, the KMT was undeniably tyrannical and had just massacred tens of thousands of communists. Where would China be today if the CPC had taken the wrong line on that?

Look at what the MEK has become now: just another western proxy terrorist group killing their own people in service of imperialist interests. The consequences of making an incorrect geopolitical choice are dire.

Indeed. It would not be an over-statement to say that Serbia's current government is pathetically cucked. As someone from that region and very sympathetic to the Serbian people (probably the closest culturally to my own country) it makes me very sad. Hopefully better times are ahead for Serbia once the EU/NATO start to disintegrate.

The China-Afghanistan border is tiny and very easily guarded/surveilled, it's essentially a single mountain pass corridor. I would worry more about Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. That region has not been exactly stable in recent years, there have been conflicts and infiltrations of terrorists in both countries. But again here the geography is very favorable. The mountains are virtually impassable save for a few border crossings. The most geographically open border China has in Central Asia is with Kazakhstan, but i have not heard so far of Kazakhstan being a big hub for jihadist transit.

In any case, China has a lot of experience guarding its borders from infiltrations by CIA trained terrorist separatists in remote, mountainous regions. They dealt with a lot of that in Tibet.

And Xinjiang has a lot of security so without local collaborators it is impossible to hide there. But with the recent economic prosperity boom it will be very hard to find locals willing to take the risk of harboring terrorists.

I find it very amusing how they want China to intervene on their behalf. Like kids who go to another kid's mom to complain. Except China isn't Iran's mom. Iran is going to do what Iran does. China can't and won't pressure them into stopping something that Iran feels they need to do to protect their existential national interests.

Yes that personality probably plays a role. We shouldn't assume that just because the more sophisticated planners at the Pentagon have worked something out that is viable those recommendations will be followed by the people making the decisions, who consider themselves smarter than everyone else and whose egos are enormous and fragile.

Lol at how Lithuania is so insignificant most people don't even know the name of their capital.

Not really comparable. The Soviet Afghanistan conflict was very different. The causes of the dissolution of the USSR were complex. Afghanistan played a very minor role by comparison to other factors.

From a military perspective, temporary retreat can sometimes be the correct approach. If you constantly worry about how much you invested into establishing positions you allow yourself to be drawn into the trap of defending the indefensible. Look at Ukraine. Their refusal to ever tactically retreat even from cauldrons has been letting Russia achieve insanely efficient kill ratios.

That being said, you are right about the political repercussions. This is not purely military. Whichever way you look at it, this was a huge blunder from the US. They gambled on Iran being a house of cards whose door they could kick in and it would immediately collapse. Very Nazi coded if you know history. Not a coincidence because they think exactly like Nazis.

There is 0% chance they make it into China. China has insanely good control over its borders. Much more likely that they continue to cause chaos either in the Middle East or Central Asia.

Casualties includes dead and injured. It is entirely plausible for there to be that many injured.

For me a lot of what you wrote here doesn't hold up to scrutiny.

First, about Venezuela. If it was about getting Venezuelan oil there was a much simpler way they could have gotten it: make a deal with Maduro. Maduro had openly stated that he would be open to negotiating a deal with the US if the sanctions were lifted. The primary concern of the Venezuelan government was and is the wellbeing of the Venezuelan people, and in that calculus it is worth making a deal with the US in exchange for relieving some of the pressure. It was never the Venezuelan government standing in the way of Venezuela exporting oil to the US, it was the US's own sanctions preventing it. If anything i think that the aggression against Venezuela has made the Venezuelan government and people more hostile to the US.

Also, i think it is highly unrealistic to think that Venezuela would have ever intervened militarily against oil production/shipping in the Caribbean. Come on, do you really believe they would have invaded Guyana? If there was one thing that Maduro constantly repeated in his speeches is that Venezuela wants peace. The last thing they would want to do is draw the ire of the US on them by taking aggressive actions. Their geographic location puts them in much too difficult a position for that to ever be a realistic option. And it's not that Russia was too distracted with Ukraine to help, it's that they are too far away and do not have those kinds of projection capabilities. Like China, their military is set up for defensive and regional conflicts.

Russia and Iran both delivered military aid to Venezuela, but they can't do much more than that when Venezuela itself chooses to not put up a fight (which as i said is understandable given their strategic position - Venezuela is not Iran; it would have played right into the US's hands propaganda-wise to give them a casus belli by attacking their assets).

Secondly, Russia did and does aid Iran. Just as China has and continues to do. We know they helped them with their air defense systems, with their electronic warfare countering Starlink, almost certainly with intelligence, and more. I think it is naive to assume that if Russia weren't fighting in Ukraine they would send their military to directly intervene on behalf of Iran. For one thing, Iran would never ask for that. Even in Syria Russia could only do what the Syrian government allowed them to do. I think the mistake you are making is looking at Russia, China, Iran, Venezuela, etc. as if they are a mirror image of NATO. They are not and they cannot be, because these are sovereign nations and not hegemon + vassals. They co-operate and help each other but ultimately they have to stand on their own two feet.

Finally, on the question of depleting/weakening Iran in order to get to China: I think here too you are looking at it backwards. If the US made a deal with Iran and then started a conflict with China, there is little to no chance that Iran would choose to start something in the Middle East that would complicate US plans against China. Iran, like Venezuela, is also primarily interested in ensuring their own safety and economic wellbeing. If they could get that by making a deal with the US they would not jeopardize it for the sake of China, which is more than capable of holding its own against the US. If the US wanted to deny Iranian oil to China they could find other, much easier ways to do it than starting a war with Iran, such as a blockade of the Straits of Malacca.

It's not China or China's potential to defend itself that is being depleted right now. It is the US's potential to attack China. Just like has been happening in Ukraine, only now it is an order of magnitude worse because all their Arab puppet despots are extremely dependent on the US and a huge drain on their resources. The longer this goes on the less materiel the US will have for a conflict against China. Because it is the US that is the industrially weaker power. Already they are struggling to produce enough to sustain all the conflicts they have embroiled themselves in. I continue to believe that Ukraine is more of a quagmire for the US than it is for Russia. The Iran war has the potential to become an even bigger and far more devastating quagmire.

This equation might be different if this was still the late 80s, early 90s, but this is a very different US today, a much more de-industrialized US that can no longer produce on the scale it once did. In many cases the US just cannot replace its losses. It has too many committments and none of its vassals can realistically pick up the slack. Most of them are are more liability than asset. Europe's energy situation for example is only going to get worse - great for US fossil fuel industry profits, catastrophic for NATO's military industrial potential.

Granted you may be entirely right that how you described it is how the imperial planners are looking at all of these conflicts. I'm sure that to some extent they did indeed think that each of these was some kind of brilliant chess move. But the reality is that every single one has backfired. Even out of Venezuela they got nothing substantial, and although in their arrogance and hubris they may not see this and may think they came out of it looking "tough", but that episode has severely negatively impacted their image on the world stage. So has the Gaza genocide. So has the unprovoked attack on Iran. With each rogue action, they lose credibility and cause more and more global south countries to start hedging bets and looking for alternatives.

For me there is a simpler explanation to the actions we are observing: desperation and hubris. On the one hand the imperial planners can feel that the world is slipping out of their grasp. They have to take more and more reckless and risky actions to try and regain control somehow. That they are abandoning the soft-power/economic hegemony strategy in favor of aggressive military interventionism is not a sign of strength, it's a sign that they feel weak. The old strategy of controlling the world is no longer working. They feel they have to lash out and re-establish dominance like a humiliated bully.

At the same time they are still mentally stuck in the unipolar moment. They fail to appreciate how much their power has declined relative to the rest of the world. They overestimate their capabilities and underestimate their enemies. This causes them to have to double down and double down again when their gamble fails because they cannot conceive of admitting even partial defeat. This makes them dangerous but it also makes them predictable. It means they can be drawn into traps, like what has happened with Ukraine and Iran. They thought they could get regime change in Russia by collapsing their economy. They thought they could get regime change in Iran by decapitation. They will make a similar blunder with China.

Iran has said it is sunk

This is not true. That is not what they said. Please be more careful with claims like this.

Hopefully the Kurds are finally waking up. We should always give people a second chance who show a real willingness to recognize their past mistakes and take up arms against the empire.