The more USA is going to use this leaver, the likely they will make this leaver useless in the future. Like with China, when they overused chips leaver which stunted China for a while, but eventually gave them a way to establish their own chip industry. Now that leaver is becoming effectively useless. It will ends up same with EU.
The best China has is an internationally uncompetitive "7nm" fab and that's the best they'll have until they can manufacture EUV machines domestically.
So the EUV blockade has absolutely been effective and the fact that the PRC is paying so many shills to convince westerners otherwise just shows how behind they are.
I noticed that people love pointing how far AI field has advanced in a few years and extrapolate next few years. While at the same time being dismissive of Chinese semiconductor manufacturing process. In similar vein I also remember claims that TSMC Fab in Arizona can never work, and yet it does. So I don't know man, I wouldn't underestimate what a billion of enterprising people can do. Especially when paired with the system that has a pipeline of funneling smart people into elite schools.
I don't think the US is underestimating China... I do think that the US is preemptively shoring up a domestic posture against long term changes. It would be a pretty bad strategy to continue to outsource everything and continue to see a massive trade imbalance with the outside world for a prolonged period of time.
Okay? There's a lot of chips you can make that aren't the cutting edge. You don't need a 4090 to do AI, as evidenced by all the AI we did before the 4090. You definitely don't need a (random Intel chip) 14900HX to do general-purpose computing, as evidenced by all the general-purpose computing we did before the 14900HX.
For that matter, the 14900hx was already based on a refined 7nm production process, which China already has started using, though maybe not as effectively yet. As you mention, prior to the 4090's 3090 was on an 8nm node, already behind current China capabilities.
According to this video (Asionometry - guy from Taiwan, hardly a PRC shill) Chinese EUV are now tested in Huawei factories and should come into production in 2026.
> everyone else is trying but haven't really shown much promise
What was the incentive/funding for their attempts? In a non-national-security scenario it makes sense not to try too hard because you can just buy ASML's solution.
With China it's a bit different, if they decide it's a matter of national security and pour Manhattan-project-levels of money/resources into it, they could make faster progress.
Well yeah. No one is saying that China cannot do that. Just that the political calculus is that it's better for China to spend their resources on that, rather than building up troops and warships.
Force Chinas growth to be more expensive. It has nothing to do with not believing China can do it, it's about slowing them down in a task we believe that they can do.
If you ask PRC shills, it's just around the corner because this one Chinese lab demonstrated a very small part of the system.
And a surprising number of westerners fall for that crap.
My guess is that it's at least 10 years away, but that could obviously change depending on what resources they're willing to commit.
But even at that point they'll be 2 decades behind ASML's EUV tech so it probably won't be competitive.
GP must have been asking for the non-PRC shill opinion.
> My guess is that it's at least 10 years away,
That doesn't sound at all like a lot. China has a uniquely effective industrial espionage... industry, combined with a very thick geopolitical skin and disregard for international demands. This helps accelerate any process that others have already perfected.
We'll start to see the real deal if/when China eventually catches up to the leaders in every field and the only way to pull ahead is to be entirely self propelled (you can't take advantage of someone else's draft when you're in front of the pack).
There are things which needs time, even with all or almost all the information at hand, just like with atomic bomb. I’m not sure whether this case similar to that, but that ASML in front for so much time indicates that their moot is probably not just information.
Apart from gaming and llms, most of the chip applications including all of military and consumer electronics is more than happy with 7nm process, whatever that means (proper nanometers those ain't).
I know some people live in the IT bubble and measure whole reality by it, but that's not so much true for the world out there. They have ie roughly F-35 equivalent, minus some secret sauces (which may not be so secret at the end since it seems they stole all of it).
You are making a mistake of thinking of them as yet another russia, utterly corrupt, dysfunctional at every level and living off some 'glorious past', when reality is exactly the opposite.
It's directly analogous to China issuing export bans. They tried this with critical minerals. Critical minerals aren't actually all that uncommon. They just weren't being actively extracted in most places. Now many extraction projects are starting to roll around the globe because it has become clear China was willing to use access to them as leverage.
My guess is that China will be highly reluctant to restrict exports of manufactured goods going forward. Doing so would directly threaten their own power base, just as the Trump administration's actions are currently taking a sledge hammer to the U.S.'s power base.
Ultimately, this kind of power is illusory. If you ever use it, you lose it.
> ..... he calls on the EU to activate an existing blocking regulation (Regulation (EC) No 2271/96) for the International Criminal Court, which prevents third countries like the USA from enforcing sanctions in the EU. EU companies would then no longer be allowed to comply with US sanctions if they violate EU interests. Companies that violate this would then be liable for damages.
EU is in a very tough spot right now. They're getting squeezed on all sides economically by USA and China while simultaneously facing a Russian invasion on their eastern borders. The relationship with the American administration has deteriorated badly and any action seen as "retaliation", such as this policy blockade, would almost definitely result in USA withdrawing even more support for Ukraine in the war. I think, unfortunately, that will lead to a quick victory for Russia unless EU nations want to put boots on the ground.
It’s kind of hard to see how much more support the US could withdraw from Ukraine, judging by the last article I read that gave Ukraine until Thursday to accept the latest peace deal negotiated between USA and Russia.
If we are in the world you describe, EU might as well do as it wants - its downside has been capped.
Intelligence, targeting info and selling (no longer giving) weapons are all important support but sanctions is the really big one. The most recent round in particular has really bit into Russia's oil revenue.
Of course it would be absolutely disgraceful for the US to drop sanctions on Russia and have normal relations with it while it continued its invasion. But that's what the US voted for.
> Of course it would be absolutely disgraceful for the US to drop sanctions on Russia and have normal relations with it while it continued its invasion. But that's what the US voted for.
The reason US sanctions Russia is because the US has been pushing its oil insustry in Europe. For instance, EU tariff deals included buying a minimum amount of hydrocarbon products:
> As part of this effort, the European Union intends to procure US liquified natural gas, oil, and nuclear energy products with an expected offtake valued at $750 billion through 2028.
In that context, US sanctions on Russia serve a purpose which isn't solely helping Ukraine ; I don't see the US lifting these sanctions anytime soon.
I personally think Trump loves Russia and Putin and generally wants to do business with them. He has wanted a Trump Tower in Moscow for decades and probably still wants that to happen.
I'm very surprised the US doesn't seem to be taking the risk of Ukraine becoming a Nuclear Weapons state seriously. By now, they surely would have had time to develop get to the brink of weaponization as a backup plan - they've after all always had a nuclear industry. If they do so and offer cover to their neighbors who realize NATO may not be sufficient, we are in for interesting times.
I wonder where people get these ideas. The Budapest Memorandum is very short, it'll take five minutes to read if you want to know what was actually agreed. It seems like people just sort of imagine what they would have agreed to, and run with it.
Those were Soviet nukes, physically located in Ukraine but not controlled by it, same as any French/US nukes stationed in Germany would not make it a nuclear state.
The ones in Ukraine got moved into Russia, in exchange for Ukraine receiving money and security guarantees.
> Those were Soviet nukes, physically located in Ukraine but not controlled by it, same as any French/US nukes stationed in Germany would not make it a nuclear state.
This is not an accurate comparison.
It's not that Russia had nukes in Ukraine and withdrew them. Many of the Soviet soldiers manning them were Ukrainians and stayed behind. Much of the infrastructure for maintaining the Soviet arsenal was also in Ukraine and had to be rebuilt in Russia. The situation was more akin to if the US broke up and Louisiana (which has a lot of nuclear warheads stationed in it) is dealing with whether they are now a nuclear power, or if they need to hand them over to South Carolina or something.
> It's not that Russia had nukes in Ukraine and withdrew them.
Russia is the single legal successor of the USSR, so all Soviet nukes became Russian nukes, regardless where they were located. So after the USSR broke up, Russia did have nukes in Ukraine and withdrew them.
Legal succession is mostly irrelevant and more complicated than that. Russia had operational control because it had taken physical control of the ex-Soviet command and control systems which were in Russia, and hence had the launch codes, etc.
To be fair, Russia becoming the single successor of the USSR wasn't a foregone conclusion in the early 1990s. There wasn't relevant precedent of a country dissolving I think -- Yugoslavia was still battling it out, Austria-Hungary was too long ago.
> Those were Soviet nukes, physically located in Ukraine but not controlled by it, same as any French/US nukes stationed in Germany would not make it a nuclear state
It's not quite the same, since Ukraine was part of the USSR, and Ukrainian scientists, engineers, and tradesmen contributed to the effort. Germany, on the other hand, was never part of the American federation, and didn't contribute to American weapons development...since Wernher von Braun/Operation Paperclip.
Indeed. There was even a question of whether they could legally be considered Ukrainian or Russian weapons, regardless of where the command centre was. To solve that while the talks were ongoing they set up a ‘joint’ command centre in Moscow with ex-SSR countries theoretically sharing joint control over the weapons with Moscow.
Ukraine at one point wanted to formally claim ownership over the weapons, as after all breaking the permissive action locks wasn’t that difficult. The US talked them out of it, as a lead up to the Budapest Memorandum.
We all know how much the security guarantees of that agreement were worth.
> We all know how much the security guarantees of that agreement were worth.
They were worth 30 years of peace. It wasn't a treaty. Everyone knew it was a handshake agreement without consequences for breaking it. It prevented an immediate war in eastern Europe after the fall of the USSR. A war that could have been much worse involving nuclear weapons.
20 years, not 30, and not even that. There were other clashes plus massive Russian interference in Ukrainian affairs just a few years after Budapest.
For something as serious as giving up a nuclear arsenal it’s reasonable to expect to get more than 20 years of peace and for the co-signers to actual fulfil their parts of the agreement, whether legally binding or not.
The end result is that no country will soon trust a Russian non-aggression promise and none will trust an American promise of support.
Russia invaded and annexed Crimea and invaded eastern Ukraine in 2014. That’s 20 years later.
It is also widely believed to have had a hand in the poisoning of Viktor Yushchenko with dioxin in 2004, in order to give an edge to his pro-Russian opponent, Viktor Yanukovych.
But even if that’s not true there’s ample evidence of overt Russian influence campaigns to support Yanukovych in that election, which was just 10 years after the Budapest Memorandum.
There was also a promise of non-expansion by NATO and non-agression by the US, and that was broken very soon after by absorbing the former warsaw pact countries, and trying to get ukraine and georgia to join as well. If they went all in on NATO aggression, they shouldnt have backed out with the tail between their legs concerning ukraine and georgia, they should've went all in. By backing out, they not only lost their influence there, but they also sacrificed all their pawns (politicians) and gained nothing. But of course its not easy to sell the idea to american citizens that starting a direct war is beneficial, especially since there is no reason to start it beside "fuck russia".
There was no such promise. Everyone who was actually in the room during those talks, including Premier Gorbachev, has denied it.
Nor was Ukraine anywhere close to joining NATO. It’s application had effectively been frozen in 2008, and it was not even being offered a MAP which is about step 1 on a 20 step ladder of actions to take before joining.
It’s a red herring being used to justify Russia’s territorial and imperial ambitions.
1. Respect the signatory's independence and sovereignty in the existing borders (in accordance with the principles of the CSCE Final Act).[10]
2. Refrain from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of the signatories to the memorandum, and undertake that none of their weapons will ever be used against these countries, except in cases of self-defense or otherwise in accordance with the Charter of the United Nations.
(...)
The same article says the US itself claimed the Memorandum was not legally binding when it sanctioned Belarus. And the Analysis section starts with a clear:
The Budapest Memorandum is not a treaty, and it does not confer any new legal obligations for signatory states.
It also states that many Ukrainians at the time considered that keeping the nukes was an unrealistic option since all maintenance and equipment required to maintain them were located in Russia, Ukraine was under a financial crisis at the time and had no means to develop those things itself. I just can’t understand people now claiming it was a mistake to give up the nukes. Russia might have reasonably invaded Ukraine as soon as it was clear they intended to keep them as they knew they didn’t really have the ability to use them and no Western government would support them using them and starting a war that would likely contaminate half of Europe and cause terrible loss of life. It was absolutely the right thing to do for Ukraine. Even if that didn’t save them from future aggression, which I think was mostly the fault of the West for not being prepared to really sign a binding document and put the lives of their own soldiers on the line.
I think this guy paints a difference in thought that is not really there.
Putin sees Ukraine neutrality and impotence as vital to Russia's security. No, he probably does not want to actually annex Ukraine, that would be a ball ache he doesn't need, but he would like it to behave like Belarus.
I think the real difference lies in whether one believes Ukraine deserves to decide its own path, or if it's forever doomed to be a chess piece on the board between spheres of influence, which seems to be the mindset both Putin and Trump are stuck in.
Not really, went through the last post and its an utter pile of shit to be very polite. Basically russian propaganda, seen 1000 times.
It ignores that people should have their right to self-determination, don't want to live under russian oppression. As somebody whose family lives were ruined by exactly same oppression of exactly same russia (err soviet union but we all know who set the absolute tone of that 'union' and once possible everybody else run the fuck away as quickly as possible) I can fully understand anybody who wants to have basic freedom and some prospect of future for their children - russia takes that away, they subjugate, oppress, erase whole ethnicities, whoever sticks out and their close ones is dealt with brutally.
Not worth the electrical energy used to display that text. Unless you enjoy russian propaganda, then all is good.
The US did not agree to protect them. The signatures to the Budapest Memorandum agreed to respect Ukraine's sovereignty. Of the signatories, Russia is the only one that has violated the agreement.
> 3. The United States of America, the Russian Federation, and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, reaffirm their commitment to Ukraine, in accordance with the principles of the CSCE Final Act, to refrain from economic coercion designed to subordinate to their own interest the exercise by the Republic of Belarus of the rights inherent in its sovereignty and thus to secure advantages of any kind.
Are you sure about that? Wikipedia says the following: "
3. Refrain from economic coercion designed to subordinate to their own interest the exercise by Ukraine, the Republic of Belarus, and Kazakhstan of the rights inherent in its sovereignty and thus to secure advantages of any kind.
4. Seek immediate Security Council action to provide assistance to the signatory if they "should become a victim of an act of aggression or an object of a threat of aggression in which nuclear weapons are used".
Both seems to not happen as stipulated.
Edit: I didn't read properly, 4 obviously didn't happen, my bad.
The actual memorandum is shorter than the Wikipedia article about it. The English-language portion is literally only three pages of double spaced text.
I guess you could argue the US is kinda violating 3, since I think the Trump administration tried to ask for future financial reparations in exchange for support during the war. But 4? This isn't a nuclear conflict yet right?
The ideal scenario would have been if Ukraine had secretly retained 30-100 warheads. Everyone likes to prattle on about how they couldn't even have used them: those people are mentally retarded. A sophisticated government with nuclear and aerospace scientists could have easily dismantled interlocks and installed their own. Maybe not in a hurry, but they had 3 decades more or less. And if they didn't have the expertise, they might have outsourced it to Taiwan for the fee of a few nukes to keep.
Ukraine *desperately* needs to be a nuclear weapons state. Nothing else will suffice. They need more than one bomb, really more than three or four. Putin has to be terrified that no matter how many nuclear strikes he endures, another waits to follow. When he fears that, the war will end.
The war might end in Ukraine being flattened by Russian nuclear weapons if that happened. Putin would be backed into a corner. End the invasion after suffering a nuclear strike (or just the threat of one) and he'll risk being deposed and meet a gruesome end. Retaliate overwhelmingly and risk escalation from other nuclear powers. It's not clear to me that the second risk would be worse, and definitely not clear to me that Putin wouldn't see that as the better of two bad options.
As has been illustrated so well over the past few years, the power of nuclear weapons is a paradox. It allows you to make the ultimate threat. But that threat isn't credible unless people believe you'll use them. Because the consequences of using them are so severe, they're only credible if used in response to a correspondingly severe threat. Russia's arsenal hasn't allowed it to stop a constant flow of weapons to its enemy, an enemy which has invaded and still controls a small bit of Russian territory, and which frequently carries out aerial attacks on Russian territory. Ukraine faces much more of an existential threat (Ukraine has no prospect of conquering Russia, but the reverse is a serious possibility) so a nuclear threat from Ukraine would be more credible, but it could easily still not be enough. Certainly they're not an automatic "leave me alone" card.
I agree with most of what you said but there’s zero possibility Russia will take over all of Ukraine. Even Putin never claimed they would, this seems like a fantasy some people like to propagate to instigate fear in Europe or something. They spent three years on a gruesome fight to take less than a fifth of the territory and the rest is much harder as the further West you go, the more nationalist Ukrainians are. Check the maps of political opinion on Russia before the war started. Looks pretty close to the current frontline where the divide between pro and against Russia lies. Attacking a NATO country would mean the end for Russia and both sides know it perfectly well even if they may say otherwise publicly to either scare people into supporting their militarism or to gain political points.
I don't think it's likely, but I do think it's possible. If the US and EU get tired of helping Ukraine, they'll have a much harder time resisting Russian attacks. Once they do, why would Russia stop? Maybe they would. Maybe they'd pause, declare peace, and take the rest a year or three later. Maybe they'd just keep going. Putin saying he doesn't want it doesn't convince me in the slightest. He's a Soviet Union revanchist in terms of territory if not political system, and they owned the place before.
Not sure what the consequences of attacking NATO has to do with this.
He'd be backed into the door marked "exit". There is no corner to trap him here.
>End the invasion after suffering a nuclear strike
And why do you believe that Zelensky or whoever is in charge would nuke Moscow first? Do you think that, if they had say 30 nukes (plenty for a few relatively harmless demonstrations) that this would be the first target? Obviously they'd pick something that he could decide to de-escalate afterwards.
>they're only credible if used in response to a correspondingly severe threat.
You mean such as the severe threat that Ukraine has endured for a decade at this point? The war now threatens to make them functionally extinct. Many have fled and will never return, their population is reduced to something absurdly low, many of their children have been forcibly abducted to be indoctrinated or tormented/tortured.
That condition you impose was pre-satisfied.
>Certainly they're not an automatic "leave me alone" card.
Of course not. They'd have to be used intelligently (readers: "used" does not imply detonated). It's not entirely clear to me that this would be the case with Ukraine/Zelensky. But nothing less at this point will suffice. Even if the US promised to put 150,000 troops on the ground, this wouldn't end. It would only escalate. Perhaps to that nuclear war you seem to fear.
I don't think Putin would have an exit. Losing the war would result in a major risk to his continued rule, and thus to his person, from a collapse of domestic support. A Ukrainian nuclear strike would present him with a choice: risk internal revolt, or risk the consequences of nuclear retaliation. I'm not remotely confident he'd choose the first. And, to be very clear, the second would make Ukraine (and likely the rest of the world) a lot worse off than they are today.
I dunno if I agree with them being nuclear. It just ups the possibility of a thermonuclear war instead of a conventional war. Just as I’d prefer that IN or PK or both not having those weapons.
The only historical examples we have of nuclear war occurred when the capability was unilateral. MAD actually works. The fear you have of a thermonuclear war is a good thing, and that fear can exist in Putin as well... but only if Ukraine has the weapons to instill such fear.
> Just as I’d prefer that IN or PK or both not having those weapons.
The only reason we haven't seen a Ukraine-like invasion in that region is that they both have nukes. MAD works.
Mini nukes change the equation. If you get two crazy hot-heads making decisions where no-one can overrule their decisions; things could go in unexpected ways. MAD presumes rational actors. If Iraq and Iran would have had nukes in the mid 80s I’m not sure that they wouldn’t have used them.
Maybe the most impactful thing they could do would not be withdrawing support for Ukraine, but removing sanctions on Russia and thus boosting Russian economy.
> It’s kind of hard to see how much more support the US could withdraw from Ukraine
It would be a major blow to Ukraine if the US stops selling weapons to them via European buyers. There is a real threat of this if Trump feels the need to coerce Ukraine into supporting his peace plan.
While US weapons aid has basically been cut off, then somewhat restored through European purchases, US intel sharing has been relatively consistent and continuous throughout, and Ukraine is very dependent on it. When intel sharing was suspended for several weeks, Ukraine lost almost half the ground it had taken in Kursk. At a minimum, satellite intel is key to monitoring Russian dispositions, and Ukraine has no way to replace that.
In my eyes it's more so that we don't care in that sense. My friend group is mostly just keeping in mind that they might have to dip to another country/continent at some point, maybe, unlikely though.
I'm pretty sure everyone I know would rather get imprisoned than go die in the mud to protect property they don't own, on the orders of a government that doesn't care about the same things they care about.
When we talk about it, it always boils down to a discussion on how to best desert/escape at different stages.
If the relationship with America deteriorates, which countries do you think will accept European refugees? Your friends may have to stay and fight not out of patriotism, but necessity. In a total-war scenario, even prisoners will find themselves contributing to thr war effort.
Since europeans are quite wealthy, many will be happy to accept them (as long as they still have money and qualifications).
But leaving all moral questions aside, where to go?
South america might turn into a war zone as well. Africa partly is already. Asia similar.
New Zealand sounds good, but even Peter Thiel found out, that money will get you only so far in buying a safe haven.
So personally I would opt for fixing the problems in europe. And am on it within my abilities. But .. with limits. I do not trust my politicians either and I am multilingual and traveled the world a lot. So in the end I would also rather take my family and leave, then being ordered to go fight in a war with half working equipment, because corruption and proud incompetence prevented preparation. (Many in the german military for instance hold the opinion, that they don't need to learn from the incompetent ukrainians, because they are all fighting wrong)
Luckily for whole Europe russia is very incompetent at doing anything serious, and complex projects like war are as serious as it gets. They routinely fail at logistics even now, corruption and nepotism is how puttin' built his whole empire, you don't suddenly get competent people at key positions of power just because it would make sense.
So whatever happens (apart from nuclear holocaust everywhere around the world) will be so slow we will have time to react. Already biggest arming of whole european continent since WWII is happening, and any bad news is pushing more money and focus into building more and more.
I know it sounds gloomy, but only if you have your head too close to the screens daily. Worse had come and gone than incompetent russians.
"I know it sounds gloomy, but only if you have your head too close to the screens daily. Worse had come and gone than incompetent russians."
Depends where you live I suppose. The baltic states are rightfully worried and take it a bit more serious.
And yes, russia on its own is not that dangerous to whole Europe. But russia in combination with north korean soldiers and supported by china .. and some european states that switch sides (Hungary, Serbia, Bosnia, ..), that would be dangerous. Lot's of things can happen. Also the EU can transform into an evil empire if we don't watch out. So no, I am not too worried about immediate war, but the traction right now is bad.
We are not at war. No bombs are falling in our cities. Our children are not being drafted and coming back in coffins. No one is bombing our ships and railways, so we have plenty of food on the table. If you think we are at war you have no idea what you’re talking about.
So literally just like Cuba? The distance between US and Cuba is like 150km, if you're in Donetsk you can't even leave Donetsk Oblast if you travel 150km, and the shortest distance you can take from Ukraine<>Russia to closest EU/NATO member would be something like 600km if you don't take shortcuts via Belarus.
For all intents and purposes, Ukraine's border with Russia is way further away (like magnitude) from EU/NATO than US<>Russia (who are neighbors) or US<>Cuba (who are also neighbors).
Indeed, and how far would you wager it is between the border of Ukraine<>Romania and Ukraine<>Russia, at the shortest point? I'd wager around a lot longer than US<>Cuba.
I imagine the shortest path Russia->Ukraine->EU Members Romania/Hungary/Slovakia/Poland is far shorter than the shortest path Russia->Cuba->Any US State or territory.
Both Cuba and Russia are literal neighbors to the US, it doesn't get closer than that. Cuba is like 150km from the coast of Florida, and Russia is even closer than that to the US!
What argument did I even make? Are you saying it's absurd that Russia's border to Ukraine is further away to the closest EU/NATO member than Cuba is to the US? Because if so, I think you need to open up a world map.
>USA withdrawing even more support for Ukraine in the war
I thought the only way USA was supporting Ukraine was by no longer refusing to sell them extraordinarily expensive weapons. So, no longer [openly] hampering them.
By the way, most material support by the US is actually purchased by other NATO members. The US recycles the facade of support, there is very little actionable support.
It's a bad situation allright, but sucking up to Trump even more isn't going to make things better. Europe needs to grow a pair, help Ukraine way more, and be prepared to fight Russia sooner rather than later.
In France recently the army chief-of-staff declared that we must be prepared to "lose its children" in a war, if it wants to avoid it. Of course we should. The resulting outcry may be a sign we've already lost.
> unless EU nations want to put boots on the ground.
Is such a thing even possible in the EU? I understand that it's an economic and policy bloc. Does Brussels have the authority to raise an army from EU members?
Read again "EU nations" not the "EU", If some subset of the nations that are members of the EU decide to act cooperatively outside of economic policy that is with in their propagative, and wouldn't be too surprising outside of the sheer volume of politics involved.
No nor does it have logistical capability to deliver even half of the equipment currently being promised/discussed within a time-frame of less then 5-10year.
It's all dependent on the national government voluntarily following the advice of Brussels, and in most cases they don't really have the resources the EU wants them to commit to "The Ukrainian nationalist Cause".
I see it as a great opportunity, that we in the EU get our shit together, to not be dependant on the US anymore. Nor russia. Nor china.
So far we still can afford the luxory of moving the european parliament around once a month, because we cannot agree on one place. Lots of nationalistic idiotic things going on and yes, if those forces win, the EU will fall apart.
If russia graps most of Ukraine, this would be really bad(see the annexion of chzech republic 1938, that gave Hitler lots of weapons he did not had), but it is totally preventable without boots on the ground (russia struggles hard as well).
Just not if too many people fall for the russian fueled nationalistic propaganda.
That's the biggest question of the century. Imagine that EU and China make a deal, and they backstab US and Russia respectively. EU and China are physically so far away from each other that there's no way they'd actually run into direct conflict, meanwhile by backstabbing, both of them could easily get what they want. What I'm trying to say is that if you flipped the alliances and aligned EU with China and US with Russia, Russia would collapse within one battle maximum while EU's support would be just enough to push the 50/50 chance of Taiwan invasion towards decisive Chinese victory. Everyone happy - China becomes the world's #1 superpower, while EU remains undisputable #2 and US gets sent back to lick its wounds. Sure, EU might suffer from severing its ties with the US, but if the alternative scenario is US abandoning EU and the latter facing Russia alone, then this stops being such a crazy idea.
> China becomes the world's #1 superpower, while EU remains undisputable #2
How does EU even remotely benefit from this bizarre fantasy scenario where it flips alliances toward China? The fundamentals don't change. EU has no tech and doesn't produce anything. China would only exploit the partnership even more than they already do.
I would be curious if the volume of domestically produced goods exceeds the quantity of Chinese-produced goods in Europe. If one excludes food and automobiles, then I suspect very strongly that this is not the case at all, regardless of how you measure the quantity (euro value, volume, weight, etc).
It benefits by not sending its people to war in case of conflict with Russia. China can pretty much disable Russian army by banning exports of military and dual-use goods. Meanwhile US security guarantees are becoming weaker by the day, especially in the context of potential war US vs China.
Every nation "exploited" by China says their "exploitation" consists of building hospitals, schools and roads, while the "help" coming from the US is mostly lectures about fiscal responsibility. Which side would you rather be on?
GP is talking about the invasion of Ukraine, taking place just beyond the EU eastern border, and very much shaking up the European security situation, and the EU and its member states are visibly having to "deal with it", diplomatically, economically and in terms of their practical defense postures. That's what they meant with "at the border", and not a literal invasion of the EU.
(Edited for a less confrontational beginning of the first sentence.)
> As a European, who created this situation? Russia?
Russia. After the US completely rolled over for their demands not to provide NATO membership action plans to Georgia and Ukraine in 2008, because, as Russia claimed, that would be destabilizing. Which Russia followed immediately with an invasion of Georgia in 2008. Then, as soon as Ukraine threw off the Russian-aligned government that had taken power while that was going on, Ukraine in 2014, taking Crimea and invading parts of Eastern Ukraine with both Russian reular forces and Russia-paid mercenaries, which is what turned Ukraine back to seeking NATO membership.
> Problem is. As a European, who created this situation? Russia? Or the US?
I'm not going to argue with you about how Russia was forced to invade Ukraine and commit atrocities there or whatever you're hinting at, my dear fellow European.
Also, stop shifting the discussion and leave your apologetic narratives where they belong.
Imagine if Europe hadn't compromised itself with energy dependency on a dictator and was able to stand up against the 2014 invasion. The situation was created at home.
As poor of a state that is Europe's various armies, I'd be very surprised if EU couldn't take on Russia even without the US (who FWIW recently reiterated their commitment to the defense of Europe). Russia's advanced SAMs, radars, and Navy have seriously deteriorated. Their main capability left is submarines and mass Shahed drones whose range can't reach much of Europe.
If Russia's jets can't operate over Ukraine they won't do much in Europe except self-defense of their own homeland.
China on the other hand is a very very serious opponent...
Russia's advanced SAMs and radars are getting clapped by one of the poorest nations in Europe. We're at almost four years of full scale war and the worlds no. 2 military has not been able to get air superiority over a small airforce of cold war left overs. Just the airforces of the Nordic countries alone would run rings around the russian airforce and their air defence.
Invasion doesn't have to mean they plan to roll tanks all the way to Paris.
Have you realized Russian agents blew up a train in Poland this week, after some weeks prior flying planes and drones into NATO airspace and disrupting air travel in Denmark with drones started from shadow fleet tankers. The grounds for further action are being tested as we speak.
Invasion just means Russian soldiers enter Poland, Latvia, Estonia, Finnland. Countries parts of which Putin painted rightfully Russian territories in his speeches. I wouldn't bet a lot on that not happening, especially if the geopolitical situation deteriorates in favor of Putin.
Given the pained debate here by Western Europeans over the semantics of “Europe” and Ukraine’s relationship therewith, it’s very unlikely NATO would act and that’s precisely what the Russians would bet on.
Russia's best case scenario atm is they take more of eastern Ukraine and the west establishes a DMZ not far from the current frontlines. Pushing up anywhere close to Lviv/Polish border would be like winning the lottery given their current track record.
These sorts of wars are very rare in the modern era. They gambled entirely because they faced an army they were 10x the size and they got embarrassed. There's near zero strategic logic in trying again vs NATO after they lost most of their fancy gear.
What would Russia hope to gain? How does this compare to alternative naratives? Assuming we both lack real insider infirmatiin, whixh reasonably is more credible?
Reversal of what Russia sees as a great injustice. The 2021 ultimatum[1] issued on the eve of the war can be summed up as a return to the Europe of 1989 with everything that it entails.
It's fatally paranoid stupidity. Russia didn't even want to be in Ukraine at all; it could have accepted the breakaway regions that were Russian and wanted to be Russian, and didn't because it didn't want the responsibility. It was just the pressure of the Ukrainian supremacists threatening to kill the Russian-speaking population that forced Russia's hand. Russia doesn't even want Ukraine, it certainly doesn't care about Europe.
But now Russia is in a real bind. Not in the bind that the US expected, but one that is beneficial to the US anyway. They can't leave rump (i.e. historical) Ukraine alone, because EU elites and Ukrainian extremists are determined to continue to harass Russia from there, no matter what happens. Russia has to control all of Ukraine, at least for a moment, in order to have any safety; even if it leaves the non-Russian part to be basically independent, it will have to be completely demilitarized. That will take a decade. Ukraine will look like the smoking hole that Afghanistan is, and the Russian economy will be on its knees.
Even worse, Russian hardliners already see this coming and just want to escalate, instead of the slow, safe, low-casualty taking of territory that has been steadily grinding the Ukrainian forces into dust. The Ukrainians can always jut bail out of this fight, retreat, and do terrorism that wears down Russian will and Russian resources over the long term. If the hardliners win over Putin, the world is in danger now.
Ukrainians will not win, they will die. But the US may win; watching, and loaning the EU money that they can use to buy weapons from the US. You could say that the real loser would be Ukraine (becoming a desolate graveyard instead of the relatively peaceful country it still would have been if it hadn't been influenced to attempt to eliminate its Russian population), but the real target has become Europe, which the US will own after all this. And if Russia collapses, the US will own Russia, and Russian gas, too. Europe will simply be a vassal with no alternatives, a wall between it and China.
The deep desire of Europe to invade Russia is bizarre. It's as deeply embedded into the culture as antisemitism, and the two are often mixed.
> instead of the slow, safe, low-casualty taking of territory
I don't know what is considered "low-casualty" for Russia, but the last reports I saw they were approaching 250,000 dead soldiers in Ukraine since 2022. That is just an astronomical number.
USA only had 60,000 killed in Vietnam and that is considered a national catastrophe.
Then it should have chosen not to invade and occupy large parts of Ukraine in 2014. And then escalate with an even bigger invasion in 2022. Not launching a war of aggression is, like, the easiest thing in the world to do.
Have it crossed your mind that USA and EU shouldn't have organized a coup in Ukraine in 2014?
Have it crossed your mind, that Minsk agreements were on a table up until Feb 2022, and it was USA and EU that sabotaged its implementations and pumped Ukraine with weapons and training all those years? Just a reminder, that if Ukraine did what it signed in Minsk, Donetsk and Lughansk would've been returned under Kiev's control.
Given the demographics of Europe, what this means is that old people will vote for young people to be fed into a meat mincer just so they can keep collecting their pensions for a couple decades more. Let's call a spade a spade then. This guy is doing just that: https://www.lemonde.fr/en/france/article/2025/11/20/outcry-a...
I think you are misreading the article. The general is warning that if we do not show preparedness and willingness now, in the long run it will cost more.
That sounds to me like a bunch of individual countries deciding to independently put boots on the ground. At that point what are they voting on as a group? (Though maybe that’s just what you’re suggesting should be done and I’m missing it)
I also wonder what good any sort of military/defensive pact is if any country can unilaterally decide when or when not to participate. It means you can’t depend on it and you may as well not have it then right? To be clear I am not saying military pacts are a good thing, but they do currently exist and participating counties can’t (at least shouldn’t) just pretend they aren’t part of one when it’s inconvenient.
And the people who vote yes should have to actually go themselves and lead from the front, not pull a Putin and simply declare war (er, special operation) while hiding under a bunker.
Im going to go ahead and predict that the EU will not risk it.If it were China ? maybe they would pull the lever to activate this counter.
Previously when the US reneged on the JCPOA viz Iran , they had a similar law/faclity that theoreticall could have been used but never was.
As an addition the EU Commission is currently imposing pretty similar sanction on a Journalist [1] so yeah i dont see much movement on that law being used.Most likely they will try to wait it out.
The reluctance of the EU leadership to so anything materially significant about anything they claim to care about is kind of telling.
It's either that the leadership is so caught up in their own ivory tower bubble of pure rhetoric to realize they havent really put in the logistics to actually affect reality or that they somehow don't really want the consequences of actually changing things.
For this is pretty clear what they need to do to create any real digital sovereignty and yet the seem to not really be willing to take the obvious step of just banning the use of any technology that have any dependency of foreign owned/managed cloud services or closed source products, and ordering their technical staff to start making changes even if it makes stakeholders annoyed, and yet the keep letting companies like IBM/RedHat and Microsoft pretend they can and should be a part of the digital sovereignty transformation project.
We saw the same when safe harbour collapsed and with the cookie directive where rather then doing something effective they found some way to fix it by changing a few words in an mostly unenforced set of click wrap contracts/licenses. .
The discussions shifts across the board but it takes time to shift due to momentum. The EU has many nations and many more companies all making strategic purchasing decisions. US dependence skeptics belittled earlier have now concrete examples and more weight. The shift can already observed in weapons system purchasing but won‘t be limited to those. For better or worse the US has lost its position of trust and is sadly working on cementing distrust for the next decades.
The EU leadership are a very corrupt group who set themselves up to be open to the highest bidders from day one, and those are mostly US corporations and those of other countries when the US hasn't place sanctions on them.
The antitrust fines they impose on those American companies may simply be regarded as a cost of doing business.
When it comes to being indifferent to the welfare of the general populace, they are just as bad as anything else.
"All his accounts with US companies such as Amazon, Airbnb, or PayPal were immediately closed by the providers. Online bookings, such as through Expedia, are immediately canceled, even if they concern hotels in France."
A US company is free to cut off service to whatever foreigner it wants, just like a foreign country is free to ban whatever US firm it wants from operating in it.
> The US government is not free to use frivolous sanctions to indirectly make payment processors stop serving a foreigner.
You may regard them as such, but they are not in any sense frivolous. It is the law that if-x-then-y, it's not a discretionary item that one interprets. And to be clear, these are not "indirectly" making payment processors stop serving the person, it is very clearly direct and you do not, as a company, have a choice in the matter.
The US government is free to do whatever it wants until the US Supreme Court says otherwise. But, at the moment, they can't even decide if the President is allowed to unilaterally impose tariffs selectively on trading partners. Despite many US states suing about it.
Companies can voluntarily close accounts for almost any reason or no reason. The US government needs a legal justification for forcing companies to close an account.
This is a weapon that the US has been honing for a long time. Pretty much every modern company has some footprint in the US (for example, maybe trades on a US stock market) and is liable for even mild sanctions violations to the tune of millions at least.
And the EU apparently has the counter ready, which would make such companies liable for millions when they enact US sanctions in the EU.
I'm very curious what would happen then? Nothing presumable, as nothing ever happens, or it might be another step to separate the EU market from the US.
Good. We've been in the age of super national global corporations living playing fast and loose. Maybe this will keep them from gobbling up even more power.
No, it won't. And lashing out with random shots in the dark tends to advance corporate control, as we've seen with the results from the trumpist tantrum. As long as ownership (/controlling interest) of companies continues to be basically unregulated cross-border (because the class of people having it also have the ears (if not the necks) of politicians), then things like sanctions are merely speed bumps on commerce that increase large-scale market friction and thereby increase the domestic power of corpos.
> For example, accounts with non-US banks have also been partially closed. Transactions in US dollars or via dollar conversions are forbidden to him.
So people don't think this is a new thing; when I worked in retail banking in the (very) early '90s it was made clear to us that any transaction in US dollars is subject to US regulation. The hypothetical scenario was that an Ethiopian arms dealer buys Russian product from a German dealer in Switzerland if they do it in USD it is the purview of the US to prosecute that crime.
My memory is hazy, but I don't think that when I was being taught it that it was a new thing.
TLDR: he's a member of the ICC. Issues warrants against Israeli political leaders. Neither Israel nor the USA (nor China, Russia, India) are parties to the international conventions that formed the ICC.
He's being sanctioned as a result by the USA, which flowed down to US companies who must follow US law.
The article continues that he asks for the EU to activate an existing blocking regulation (Regulation (EC) No 2271/96), which prevents third countries like the USA from enforcing sanctions in the EU. Activating it would make American companies following US sanction in Europe liable for damages.
I think that is the most important point in the article.
And yet Palestine didn't arrest Yahya Sinwar with accordance to ICC arrest warrant for “extermination, murder, taking of hostages, rape and sexual assault in detention”. De jure and De facto are very different things.
It is not debatable. Palestine is a recognized member so according to the law they have jurisdiction. If these laws have any usefulness if no one will follow it is debatable though.
Since the territorial boundaries of the State of Palestine are, too say the least, disputed, the territorial boundaries of ICC jurisdiction derived from its jurisdiction over acts on the territory of a state party where the state party in question is the State of Palestine is actually a tricky question.
Of course they can. Good luck trying to serve and execute that warrant though.
And non ICC countries are squarely within their rights to retailiate. Most minor former colonies of the EU countries can't, but the US, China, Russia can.
If the sanctioned Israeli politicians and military commanders think those warrants are baseless, why don't they appear before the courts to defend themselves?
This isn't really about the ICC judges. It is about the failure of the major Western countries who are part of the ICC to come to the defence of the judges who they have appointed to make those decisions, and the control Israeli politicians exercise over the White House, ie the US President himself.
Americans don't seem to understand how the moral character of their politicians and their political system is relentlessly degraded by the so called Israel lobby, or they don't care, or have resigned themselves to it.
Sanctions of those kind or usually applied to corporate entities, state entitities or militant political groups aka "proscribed terrorist organizations". They are not intended to applied to individuals carrying out their legitimate duties in organizations approved or even created by America's own allies under principles America subscribes to, even if they are reluctant to submit themselves to those organizations.
And yet on account of Israel, the US applies these sanctions to judges carrying out the duties lawfully, and somehow they don't see how whimsical, capricious, petty and infantile such decisions are and the poor light they present the US in.
> Americans don't seem to understand how the moral character of their politicians and their political system is relentlessly degraded by the so called Israel lobby, or they don't care, or have resigned themselves to it.
I mean, it’s causing a small rift in the GOP. Time will tell if that escalates any though. I stand firm in my believe that nothing ever happens though.
It is also causing a rift between "Leftists" who distinguish themselves from "Liberals" i.e. Democrats. Apparently there are many who didn't vote for Harris because she did not sufficiently distance from Israel and condemn the genocide.
> If the sanctioned Israeli politicians and military commanders think those warrants are baseless, why don't they appear before the courts to defend themselves?
Because they aren't under their jurisdiction? Because they might believe the court is biased against them?
> Americans don't seem to understand how the moral character of their politicians and their political system is relentlessly degraded by the so called Israel lobby, or they don't care, or have resigned themselves to it.
> And yet on account of Israel, the US applies these sanctions to judges carrying out the duties lawfully, and somehow they don't see how whimsical, capricious, petty and infantile such decisions are and the poor light they present the US in.
You seems to be confused this is done not for Israel's sake but for USA - they don't want the precedent of non-ICC member's government being judged in ICC to protect themselves.
> Only the U.S. would actually sanction someone for trying to indict a war criminal.
The problem is that only the US has the power to material harm people to such a degree by doing so.
The amount of control that Big Tech has consolidated into a handful of US megacorporations is a massive danger to the entire world. The US devolving into an overt kleptocracy is a huge threat to freedom everywhere. Who can push back? Obviously not China or Russia, where the problems are even worse.
Of all the wealthy world, the EU basically stands alone as the only entity that has strong enough democratic institutions, capital, and expertise to plausibly develop some kind of alternative.
China, Russia are not members of the ICC for the same reason the US is not. They do not want extra territorial entities applying laws to their citizens and soldiers.
I don't think that's true. Lots of countries out there led by thugs. It used to be that the US stood out because it took the law seriously and believed in its ideals to do the right thing (not that it always succeeded, but it did its best). Looks like that time has passed.
> It used to be that the US stood out because it took the law seriously and believed in its ideals to do the right thing
I think it looked like that, because the US always been very effective at propaganda, and until the internet and the web made it very easy for people to communicate directly with each other without the arms of media conglomerates. It's now clearer than ever that US never really believed in its own ideals or took their own laws seriously, there are too many situations pointing at the opposite being true.
I’m an American and I can safely vouch that myself and most of the people I know deeply believe in the American ideals that have been presented as gospel for decades—fair play, hard work, rule of law, loving our neighbors (regardless of legal status), and to a one, believe that as soon as you swear your oath at the immigration court, you’re an American, regardless of the circumstances of your birth.
The situation we find ourselves in is that the American of today does not represent us well. I have hopes for the future, but time will tell.
> and I can safely vouch that myself and most of the people I know
That's great, too bad none of those people sit in positions of power or anywhere near your government, because from the outside for the last two decades or more, those ideals are not visible to us at all, neither when we look at the foreign policy nor internal.
I'm sure the tides will eventually turn, but we're talking decades more likely than years, since it's been turning this direction for decades already, and I don't see it tipping the balance in the other way even today or the near-future. GLHF at the very least, I do hope things get better for everyone.
Yeah, that is something I don't get. You can hear all around the Internet "we did not vote of this!" yet you don see any visible reaction to all these bad decisions lately - no protests in the streets, no real attempts to block these things, people resigning rather then implementing bad decisions.
I just don't get it - unless all those ideals were just a show from the start.
I'm not sure what the purpose is to go out on the streets for half a day, then everyone goes back inside and continue like nothing ever happen?
Go out, stay out until change is enacted. It's called striking, and if you had any sort of good unions, they'd be planning a general strike for a long time, and it should go on until you get change.
You know, like how other "modern" countries do it when the politicians forget who they actually work for.
I'm not sure if you're mixing things, or if I missed anything, but the "No Kings" things were protests, not a "strike" and very far from being a "general strike". Those practices are very different from just "protesting".
The "No Kings" protest had absolutely no subject or issue other than repeating Trump's name. What would it have meant for it to have been successful? What I mean by that is what could "X" be in the sentence: "If X policy had changed, the No Kings rallies would have accomplished one of their goals"?
It was just an astroturfed Democratic party rally that drummed up participation by mass text spam from Indian call centers. The turnout was positively geriatric.
Incidentally, the Democratic Party has started running into a severe issue with text spammers and fake orgs asking for donations and raking in millions, and the people doing it are people who are actually involved with the party.
Those Constant Texts Asking You to Donate to Democrats Are Scams
People in the US seems allergic to unions and any sort of solidarity movements, so now you have all these individuals believing them to be the strongest individual, not realizing you need friends and grass-root movements to actually have any sort of civil opposition.
There does seem to be some slight improvements of this situation as of late, video game companies and other obvious sectors getting more unions. But still, even on HN you see lots of FUD about unions, I'm guessing because of the shitty state of police unions and generally the history of unions in the US, but there really isn't any way out of the current situation without solidarity across the entire working class and middle class in the US, even if they're right, left, center or purple.
Look, we can all acknowledge that there were, and are, many Americans who wish for this to be true. But at no point in America's history did that "many" ever constitute a majority. Or even close to it.
Which is why, from its very inception, the US has employed mass genocide at home, invasions & regime changes in the America's, then post-slavery apartheid at home, with invasions & regime changes in the rest of the world.
That's not anti-American rhetoric. That's just historical fact.
So, commingled with those facts, where does "law, love & fair play" come in. If you're honest, THAT was the propaganda. And the above realities, that was the truth.
The America of today IS the America it has always been. Its just that the propaganda mask can't be reattached with more duct tape. America started by geniciding non-whites at home, and rounding up & dragging non-whites TO America, in chains.
Now it's genociding non-whites abroad (primarily the Middle East), and rounding up & dragging non-whites FROM America, in chains.
When you focus on the common threads throughout American history, and strip away the fluff, you realise ... that's the real America (which still has the largest slave labour force in the world, through indentured workforces via its prison system).
This is exactly the kind of bright eyed idealism that American propaganda produces. I say that as an American who grew up inside the system. The schools shape you into a patriotic silhouette, convinced your country is the shining exception of human history.
Then the internet arrived and cracked the smooth surface. Suddenly the world was not filtered through textbooks and morning announcements. You could see the contradictions, the omissions, the parts of the story no one wanted to say out loud. The myth began to thin out.
And the blindness is intense. Just look at the parent poster. He lists all the noble ideals he and “most people he knows” supposedly embody, as if declaring them makes them true in practice. It becomes a kind of self portrait disguised as a national portrait. The assumption is always that the country has drifted away from the people, never that the people have drifted away from their own claimed principles.
He says that the America of today does not represent him, but never considers that it might represent us all far more than the flattering story we prefer to tell ourselves. The gap is not between the country and its citizens. The gap is between reality and the myths individuals cling to in order to feel morally uncomplicated.
Because once the slogans fall away, nations are not noble and people are not consistent. We are collections of private contradictions, unfinished thoughts, and hidden struggles. We carry more inside than we ever admit.
And in the end, a human is just that. A quiet tangle of secrets pretending the world makes perfect sense.
The fallacy is believing the country has ever perfectly embodied the principals of its people. Unlike your and others dismissive talk of my 'bright eyed idealism' I and the people that I interact with fully understand the missteps and failures of our country.
That does not stop us from working towards making the nation a better place. I'm stubborn and loud and I talk to politicians and others when I see things that I don't think are right. Maybe (probably) I'm tilting at windmills. But I'm not giving up on what I think the United States should be.
As a seventh generation American, war veteran who has been in public service for 22 of my 25 working years and mixed race person, America has literally never organizationally been any of the things you describe.
We are a nation of selfish, narcissists that have no concept of consistent long lasting care based communities.
What little care we give each other is mediated through transactions or cult based social alignment.
Any nation made up of human beings is going to be flawed. The way forward is via incremental change and compromise. Forcing societal change does not, and never has, worked.
I'm skeptical things would have lasted this long if the "US never really believed in its own ideal or took their own laws seriously". I think you're letting your cynicism for this moment run away with you.
American involvement in the Nuremberg trials set the stage for the modern era of international law. It began with the United States, along with the allied nations, constructing a post-facto legal definition of crime against humanity that somehow included the Holocaust but excluded both the American campaign in Japan and various Russian war crimes on the Western Front. It’s not cynicism to point out the clear hypocrisy.
Not to mention Jim Crow was still in full effect in the US at the time, but somehow wasn't deemed "Crime against humanity". The winners truly do control the history.
Was Jim Crow a federally organized policy bent on extermination? It was state level discrimination that Nazi Germany copied in 1933-1938 to deal with their “Jewish problem”. By 1939 you had formal government-enforced ghettos with forced labor (no equivalent in America at the time) and by 1941 you had mass extinction.
Don’t get me wrong - Jim Crow was horrific. But it was state level after effects of the civil war and failure to establish absolute dominance over the southern states in reconstruction. Cultural problems we fought a civil war over and we’re still dealing with today. But one difference of the goal with slavery and Jim Crow is subjugation not extermination
Subjugation or extermination, if it wasn't for the addition of "as part of a war of aggression" to the "Crimes against Humanity", the US would have been considered as participating in crimes against humanity at the same time they were partcipating in the Nuremberg trials.
It's thanks to the US, that crimes against humanity is only considered when there is an active war of aggression, precisely because Jim Crow was a current thing at that time.
I don't think there are many Japanese alive today not aware of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. While it's true they didn't place Japanese in internment cam.. no wait, they did do that. While it's true they didn't straight up execute Japanese folks on the street, they did effectively erase two cities from the world map, how that isn't a "Crime against Humanity", I don't know why we even have the label.
So yeah, the US didn't spend years doing horrible stuff to humans like the Nazis did, the US wasn't exactly an angel in that conflict, by a long shot. But neither was pretty much any nation, I guess it kind comes with the whole "world war" thing.
> they did effectively erase two cities from the world map
They're still there last time I checked. Hiroshima has a population of ~1m. Nagasaki closer to 300k.
> how that isn't a "Crime against Humanity"
An invasion of Japan would have cost an order of magnitude more lives. It was the 4th year of an extremely bitter conflict that Japan started. There were no real good options on the table. Only "shit" and "extremely shit".
> They're still there last time I checked. Hiroshima has a population of ~1m. Nagasaki closer to 300k.
This is an argument by equivocation. There’s still a “World Trade Center” in NYC but it’s not the one that fell in 2001. Nor does saying it’s so restore the dead to life.
> An invasion of Japan would have cost an order of magnitude more lives. It was the 4th year of an extremely bitter conflict that Japan started. There were no real good options on the table. Only "shit" and "extremely shit".
This is a legal defense strategy that was never heard before an international tribunal because, notably, one was never held.
I don’t have the energy to skim through the Nuremberg transcripts right now, but I also believe “it was the best of bad options” was a legal defense attempted there, with mixed results.
EDIT: I’m being rate limited, so I can’t answer any more questions today. But suffice it to say that in Truman’s place I would have extended the relative protection that Kyoto received to every large Japanese city and contained the air force to bombing primarily military and industrial targets, with the understanding that precision bombing was not as advanced in 1940s as it is today.
> in Truman’s place I would have extended the relative protection that Kyoto received to every large Japanese city and contained the air force to bombing primarily military and industrial targets
Japan had dispersed industrial production widely by that point, including into workshops in people's homes. The Allies were already doing regular bombing.
Japan outright refused to surrender. They had a faction that tried a coup to prevent the surrender even after the nuclear bombings. Regular bombs would surely not have been enough. Strategic bombing doesn't work.[1]
What's your next idea?
I read the article you posted with alternatives. Delaying the second bomb - good idea, but it still means one was dropped. Allowing the Soviets to invade - it's hard to say having Japan divided for 40-odd years like Germany ended up would've been a better outcome, but idk perhaps.
I mean, you are the one arguing that they were erased from the map when clearly they were not. And either way, to say that millions of Americans should have died to invade a country that sided with the Nazis and killed bajillions of Chinese and Koreans unjustly is simply incorrect.
All out war is hell and pretending like civilians get a pass from the wave of destruction is naive.
However, one main difference people in this thread seem to forget is that America’s civilian kills were about dealing damage to an enemy country within enemy territory. It’s horrific but the main difference was that Germany mass executed and actively tortured civilians within its own territory. America never did that and as horrific and regrettable Japanese internment camps were, and full of racism and prejudice, and failing to even uphold the Constitution and just being abject failures in treating people humanely, comparing them to Nazi concentration camps indicates a complete and utter failure in understanding how different the situation was; America was not trying to actively exterminate Japanese citizens within its borders as a matter of policy.
The closest American came to Nazi Germany was the persecution of black people within its borders but even while Nazi germany was inspired by Jim Crow in terms of how to treat Jews, it’s a failure to recognize that Nazi Germany ran off with the idea when they started setting up death camps. The closest American came to that was lynchings which never reached the scale or official government sanction that concentration camps did.
The closest American could be said to have done that was the Trail of Tears and their treatment of Native Americans; American has always struggled to contain the racist instincts of a significant part of their population but it is not unique in this challenge.
> All out war is hell and pretending like civilians get a pass from the wave of destruction is naive.
Collateral damage is one thing, the deliberate targeting civilians en masse is another. I understand the US Armed Forces and IDF currently justify their excesses by blurring the two concepts together, but they are legally distinct concepts.
Of course this argument never uses the much more horrifying and abysmal firebombing of Tokyo, because it doesn't come from a place of historical knowledge, but rather trite lies.
Hell, the Allies told Japan (literally) "Surrender or face prompt and utter destruction", while Japan knew they were utterly cooked and already lost the war like a year ago, and they simply ignored it. Japan was not totally ignorant of the concept of a nuclear weapon either, as they had competent physicists and a low effort nuclear weapons program.
If you do not want your city turned to ash, do not START a war of aggression on your neighbors and the damn world because of imperial ambitions, and then do not continue such war long after it was clear you had already lost, including instructing and training your citizens to die en masse for the emperor.
The Japanese were actively trying to erase a billion people. Actions have consequences.
There was no end to Imperial Japan without just staggering death of japanese people. It doesn't matter whether that death came from Chinese soldiers or nuclear fire or Russian waves or American Marines.
If you don't want people to kill you, start by not becoming an absurd cartoon villain.
Imperial Japan was the exact horrific Fascism as the Nazis, and anything less than unconditional surrender was unacceptable.
Internment was fucking awful, and I think it's very telling we never interned German Americans even though we knew Germans DID sabotage US industries during WW1 but I guess Germans are too white for the racist Americans who thought Hitler was a cool guy to get uppity about.
> used to be that the US stood out because it took the law seriously
The US looked like it stood out but it has its own internal and external legal problems such as slavery, Native American repressions, the legacy of slavery, anti-Asian policies, coup-ing foreign countries, etc etc etc
We are a country made up of apes, just like all the others. Nothing is perfect, and us constantly fucking it up doesn't mean we didn't care about it, as a nation.
Not sure about that. Internally, maybe it was true at some point, cannot say, but if we look at the US as an international player, when exactly was it ready to sacrifice its own interests for any kind of justice or greater good? And if you are not ready to pay the price, then all this talk of a higher moral ground is just that, an empty talk.
I don't disagree, but I think there was a genuine perception by many people that the US were the good guys. The change is that its not even trying to pretend to be this anymore.
The US has always been led by Thugs. If you think they ever took international or humanitarian law seriously they would not be scared to join the ICC, and you've only been paying attention to propaganda, not what the US has actually been doing since the inception of those laws.
> It used to be that the US stood out because it took the law seriously and believed in its ideals to do the right thing
The "The Hague Invasion Act", where the US authorizes itself to invade an ally (the Netherlands) to break war criminal suspects out of prison, was signed in 2002. The US has always been a "rules for thee but not for me" type of place and the digital sanction discussed here fits in a long line of behaviors by the US government. Trump has changed the scale and intensity of it all but the basic direction has always been the same.
Well the fact that they made a law to enable this is a sign of at least some belief in the law. These days Trump would just do the invasion regardless of what the law says, and get away with it. Case example: ordering the navy to blow up Venezuela boats.
> It used to be that the US stood out because it took the law seriously
The US took everyone's gold under the bretton woods system, and then Nixon "temporarily" ended dollar gold convertibility when France asked for it's gold back.
The ICC somehow managed to create an institution even more useless than the UN. The very concept of an International Criminal Court, operating in some idealistic moral space above war and diplomacy, is completely divorced from the reality of realpolitik and total war. If everyone agreed to arbitrate world matters in the ICC, why even have militaries?
A leader is difficult to arrest and prosecute while they are in power. But it does have a political cost for them (both being branded as wanted by the ICC, and how complicated international travel becomes, including your host country burning political capital by not arresting you). But of course the real cost comes if you ever fall from power. The ICC means we don't have to invent laws on the spot like we did in the Nuremberg trials for the Nazis, we can use established laws, courts and processes
Yeah sounds great. But it’s hopelessly naive. As soon as someone disagrees, if they have more real power than the ICC, then its enforcement becomes ineffective. You can’t solve disagreements by agreeing to disagree.
International law is inherently more of a social contract than an actual law. That doesn't make it useless because it does have a real effect on how countries behave, but it does mean that enforcement looks more like getting ostracized than it looks like law enforcement.
Frequently is false. Netanyahu only visited one European country after the ICC arrest order - it was Hungary because Orban explicitly managed he wouldn't be arrested.
Also, if look at the exact plane movements of his visits, they specifically avoid the air space of countries that do take the ICC seriously.
Of course that's not true. Any country is capable of it, and any country would do it if it were in their interests. Generalizations generally degrade the conversation.
Chalk up one more to the very long list of why centralizing institutions is a horrible idea because it creates freedom-killing choke points that the flavor-of-the-day hegemon can use as it damn pleases.
In a decentralized world, the US could huff and puff as much as they please, no one would give two fucks.
But when the US have an actual say in every cent that moves from account A to account B in every country that still harbors the illusion of sovereignty ... well your sovereignty does not actually exist.
This is infuriating. The EU should block US sanctions violating EU interests. I'm also definitely moving my personal stuff out of US and into EU, starting with Gmail.
Exactly! Same here. But man it's going to be a painful move, so much is coupled to that. I already have a GrapheneOS phone, which ironically has to be a Pixel to run it.
Almost every bank in FATF white and gray list countries use the dollar in some way, so although your actions will help, in the end if you're sanctioned and you depend on traditional finance systems you are fucked.
There is a guy on here, weev (username rabite) who was soft sanctioned by the US and can't use banks that transact in the dollar. Last I read of his comments, he was in Ukraine or Transnistria, surviving off of crypto and direct rents from crypto purchased real estate.
Sure, but clearly that is not a requirement to be sanctioned nowadays, it just shows how f*d you are when you DO get sanctioned, and the bar for that is lowering by the day it seems.
The defense of the rights of alleged neo-nazis are a big reason why we have free-er speech in America. The ACLU defended them (see skokie nazis) and helped ensure more free speech in public forums. Dismissing the rights of alleged nazis is how rights get destroyed for everyone, although now in USA we use it for say allegedly "illegal" aliens or people that look foreign.
weev is not some dude with "not-nice" views. He's a sociopath who, among other things, threatened Kathy Sierra with rape and murder and published her address to his online fans to do the same. He would put her address on Craigslist and claim she was a sex worker.
Weev might be a real neo-nazi, but to be clear, right now an entire country (Ukraine) has also been claimed of being neo-nazis and life-altering state action taken against them without some due process to determine they are. Weev hasn't been convicted of anything serious (nor I think anything at all) that has stuck.
Are you unaware that the exact same justification was used to attack the Ukrainian people? Your position here is weev is an actual neo-nazi while the Ukrainian people are not. I concede you are likely correct, and it is frankly obvious I'm not making the case they are compared as both being neo-nazis. It is still relevant because the failure mode is still paralleled, an accusation of neo-nazi and then serious state action taken without objective due process to ensure it is true.
By dismissing and frankly belittling my statement, you are falling for the same trap that justified so many dead Ukrainians.
The difference is, when Russia and dumb US citizens say "Ukraine is a Nazis state" 1) they are outright lying and 2) Russians do not think of "Nazis" as meaning the same as what the rest of the world understands. Russians do not hate the Nazis for being genociding freaks, they hate them for being backstabbers.
Weev meanwhile is just a fucking Nazi. This exact thread is about a person who is not a Nazi facing persecution, and yet you go out of your way to use a literal and explicit Nazi as your example.
In fact, nearly every time I see people make this kind of "Oh it could happen to you, it happened to <X>" they seem to pick people who are damn Nazis.
Gee, I wonder why those are the cases they know about?
There are advantages to having your stuff within your own country's jurisdiction. Only one legal system, and one you already live with, controls this stuff. its easier to go to court. Citizens have more rights than non-citizens in most places.
the scale of destruction in Gaza is horrendous: Its dense cities reduced to rubble, as though after a nuclear strike. The death toll is not yet known. the lower bound - the number of bodies counted by the ministry of health - is at around 69,000, while the Lancet estimated over 186,000 (and that was over a year ago), or nearly 7.9% of the entire population of the Gaza strip. Around 90% of the deaths are civilians (though estimates vary on that point as well).
The US has been participating in this operation, with funding, provisions of services, equipment and most of the weapons platforms, armament and ordnance, diplomatic backing, and even military presence of aircraft carriers and other forces. US tech companies have sold Israel cloud services and various computing solutions; US military, auto and other industries are in on the action as well.
Now we see the US and some of its corporations flexing the imperial muscle to try and deter international institutions for holding Israel accountable.
The ICC has tried several political leaders before, and even convicted and jailed some, but - they were not important enough to US' strategic interests (or if you like, the interests of the donors and backers of the political elite), so the US did not have any such qualms.
Having said all this - it is interesting to note the article does not mention the judge's accounts with Google or Microsoft, e.g. for email or office app services. I wonder if he has any, and whether those have been excepted or whether it's a different story.
It's worth noting that the Gaza Health Ministry is a government agency and the de-facto government of Gaza is Hamas, and therefore the health ministry _is_ Hamas. Casualty numbers released by the ministry have already been statistically dubious, and seeing that Hamas would only benefit from inflating these numbers, it is likely they are not accurate numbers.
It's absolutely not worth noting that because it simply isn't true.
If anything, the MoH numbers are lower than the actual death toll. Even the IDF said internally the numbers were right and their own statistics state that 83% of casualties in Gaza have been civilians.
Why is the president of the United States protecting a blood soaked war criminal? It’s weird. I mean what even does he get in return for this extraordinary service for someone so undeserving? I can’t even see how it’s valuable for him. Can someone explain it?
My understanding is that Christian extremists, who are voting for Trump, have some belief that some territories needs to be occupied by Jews so that something happens (I don't remember what, but I guess something good to them), so they are happy with the genocide and Trump is happy to collaborate with Israeli government to make his electors happy.
> One main strand of evangelical theology holds that the return of Jews to the region starts the clock ticking on a seven-year armageddon, after which Jesus Christ will return.
> Hagee, despite having a long history of antisemitism – he has suggested Jews brought persecution upon themselves by upsetting God and called Hitler a “half-breed Jew” – founded Christians United for Israel in 2006.
They think that Jews must be in Israel to enable the return of Jesus and eventually the rapture. I'd love a rapture. Think of the improvement to traffic!
Because that president is also soaked in some of that blood. Just in terms of ordnance alone - Israel would have run out of bombs to drop on Gaza a long time ago in the US were not supplying it with them.
On the personal/political level - Trump's largest political backers in the 2024 campaign have been: Elon Musk, Timothy Mellon, and Miriam Adelson. Musk is an avowed Zionist, Mellon I don't know about, but it is Adelson's $108 Million that come attached with the string of staunch support for Israel and its policies of death destruction and oppression.
How is is defence relevant in this article? This is abusing of the private sector monopoly of alot of internet infrastructure. Nothing of this is military in nature.
If Europe weren't militarily dependent they'd be less subservient on this and other positions.
As the US becomes less ideologically predisposed to defend Europe, expect the US to take more advantage of the dependency, as the threat to walk away will become more real.
The EU's nuclear deterrent is weak. Is France committed to defend the rest of Europe with its nukes? And the UK (while a NATO member) is not a member of the EU anymore.
Don't confuse the "EU" with "Europe". One is a trade and law union, the other is a continent of countries. Europe isn't a unanimous entity either, its a big pile of countries with independent politics.
The nuclear deterrent is just as strong as it needs to be. If nuke strikes come, we're all dead regardless if we have 5 or 500 bombs to drop on Moscow.
And again, this is irrelevant to abusive authority on technology. If "Europe" wasn't "dependent on US defence" would they send a destroyer fleet to the US cost as a retaliation?
The US is using its tech companies to pressure foreign democratic allied countries over political issues. This is undermining the free trade that allowed these companies to exist in the fireplace.
Continued moves in this direction will just push nationalistic ideas in European nations to cut out US influence entirely.
It doesn't stop him from what? Living his private life? As the article explains, being digitally cut off from the US is pretty inconvenient in daily life.
The more USA is going to use this leaver, the likely they will make this leaver useless in the future. Like with China, when they overused chips leaver which stunted China for a while, but eventually gave them a way to establish their own chip industry. Now that leaver is becoming effectively useless. It will ends up same with EU.
The best China has is an internationally uncompetitive "7nm" fab and that's the best they'll have until they can manufacture EUV machines domestically.
So the EUV blockade has absolutely been effective and the fact that the PRC is paying so many shills to convince westerners otherwise just shows how behind they are.
I noticed that people love pointing how far AI field has advanced in a few years and extrapolate next few years. While at the same time being dismissive of Chinese semiconductor manufacturing process. In similar vein I also remember claims that TSMC Fab in Arizona can never work, and yet it does. So I don't know man, I wouldn't underestimate what a billion of enterprising people can do. Especially when paired with the system that has a pipeline of funneling smart people into elite schools.
Underestimating China seems like a really, really, really stupid thing to do.
I don't think the US is underestimating China... I do think that the US is preemptively shoring up a domestic posture against long term changes. It would be a pretty bad strategy to continue to outsource everything and continue to see a massive trade imbalance with the outside world for a prolonged period of time.
Yes, we are doing a bad job of updating our priors.
Perhaps the USA feels that it has a reputation to downhold?
Is that sarcastic? Isn’t underestimating by definition a bad thing?
Okay? There's a lot of chips you can make that aren't the cutting edge. You don't need a 4090 to do AI, as evidenced by all the AI we did before the 4090. You definitely don't need a (random Intel chip) 14900HX to do general-purpose computing, as evidenced by all the general-purpose computing we did before the 14900HX.
For that matter, the 14900hx was already based on a refined 7nm production process, which China already has started using, though maybe not as effectively yet. As you mention, prior to the 4090's 3090 was on an 8nm node, already behind current China capabilities.
> that's the best they'll have until they can manufacture EUV machines domestically.
And how far out is that?
According to this video (Asionometry - guy from Taiwan, hardly a PRC shill) Chinese EUV are now tested in Huawei factories and should come into production in 2026.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rIR3wfZ-EV0
> And how far out is that?
These guys have a 100% market share https://www.asml.com/en/products/euv-lithography-systems at the 'extreme' end and, obviously, everyone else is trying but haven't really shown much promise.
Here's a good background article on the topic: https://www.economist.com/science-and-technology/2025/03/12/...
> everyone else is trying but haven't really shown much promise
What was the incentive/funding for their attempts? In a non-national-security scenario it makes sense not to try too hard because you can just buy ASML's solution.
With China it's a bit different, if they decide it's a matter of national security and pour Manhattan-project-levels of money/resources into it, they could make faster progress.
Well yeah. No one is saying that China cannot do that. Just that the political calculus is that it's better for China to spend their resources on that, rather than building up troops and warships.
Force Chinas growth to be more expensive. It has nothing to do with not believing China can do it, it's about slowing them down in a task we believe that they can do.
Agree, especially given the track record of China outcompeting in other markets where they got blocked.
If you ask PRC shills, it's just around the corner because this one Chinese lab demonstrated a very small part of the system. And a surprising number of westerners fall for that crap.
My guess is that it's at least 10 years away, but that could obviously change depending on what resources they're willing to commit. But even at that point they'll be 2 decades behind ASML's EUV tech so it probably won't be competitive.
> If you ask PRC shills
GP must have been asking for the non-PRC shill opinion.
> My guess is that it's at least 10 years away,
That doesn't sound at all like a lot. China has a uniquely effective industrial espionage... industry, combined with a very thick geopolitical skin and disregard for international demands. This helps accelerate any process that others have already perfected.
We'll start to see the real deal if/when China eventually catches up to the leaders in every field and the only way to pull ahead is to be entirely self propelled (you can't take advantage of someone else's draft when you're in front of the pack).
I think you may underestimate the ability of China to abuse industrial espionage at scale.
There are things which needs time, even with all or almost all the information at hand, just like with atomic bomb. I’m not sure whether this case similar to that, but that ASML in front for so much time indicates that their moot is probably not just information.
You cannot lead if you only copy.
So far only one company in the world has successfully accomplished it, so the answer could be "a very very long time".
They can just throw power at it, you're delusional if you think it's going to hamper them even mid term.
Apart from gaming and llms, most of the chip applications including all of military and consumer electronics is more than happy with 7nm process, whatever that means (proper nanometers those ain't).
I know some people live in the IT bubble and measure whole reality by it, but that's not so much true for the world out there. They have ie roughly F-35 equivalent, minus some secret sauces (which may not be so secret at the end since it seems they stole all of it).
You are making a mistake of thinking of them as yet another russia, utterly corrupt, dysfunctional at every level and living off some 'glorious past', when reality is exactly the opposite.
It's directly analogous to China issuing export bans. They tried this with critical minerals. Critical minerals aren't actually all that uncommon. They just weren't being actively extracted in most places. Now many extraction projects are starting to roll around the globe because it has become clear China was willing to use access to them as leverage.
My guess is that China will be highly reluctant to restrict exports of manufactured goods going forward. Doing so would directly threaten their own power base, just as the Trump administration's actions are currently taking a sledge hammer to the U.S.'s power base.
Ultimately, this kind of power is illusory. If you ever use it, you lose it.
s/leaver/lever/g
(from context)
I apologize, English is not my first language, so sometimes I am freestyling it.
> ..... he calls on the EU to activate an existing blocking regulation (Regulation (EC) No 2271/96) for the International Criminal Court, which prevents third countries like the USA from enforcing sanctions in the EU. EU companies would then no longer be allowed to comply with US sanctions if they violate EU interests. Companies that violate this would then be liable for damages.
That is from that article..
EU is in a very tough spot right now. They're getting squeezed on all sides economically by USA and China while simultaneously facing a Russian invasion on their eastern borders. The relationship with the American administration has deteriorated badly and any action seen as "retaliation", such as this policy blockade, would almost definitely result in USA withdrawing even more support for Ukraine in the war. I think, unfortunately, that will lead to a quick victory for Russia unless EU nations want to put boots on the ground.
It's a bad situation.
It’s kind of hard to see how much more support the US could withdraw from Ukraine, judging by the last article I read that gave Ukraine until Thursday to accept the latest peace deal negotiated between USA and Russia.
If we are in the world you describe, EU might as well do as it wants - its downside has been capped.
Intelligence, targeting info and selling (no longer giving) weapons are all important support but sanctions is the really big one. The most recent round in particular has really bit into Russia's oil revenue.
Of course it would be absolutely disgraceful for the US to drop sanctions on Russia and have normal relations with it while it continued its invasion. But that's what the US voted for.
> Of course it would be absolutely disgraceful for the US to drop sanctions on Russia and have normal relations with it while it continued its invasion. But that's what the US voted for.
The reason US sanctions Russia is because the US has been pushing its oil insustry in Europe. For instance, EU tariff deals included buying a minimum amount of hydrocarbon products:
> As part of this effort, the European Union intends to procure US liquified natural gas, oil, and nuclear energy products with an expected offtake valued at $750 billion through 2028.
In that context, US sanctions on Russia serve a purpose which isn't solely helping Ukraine ; I don't see the US lifting these sanctions anytime soon.
I personally think Trump loves Russia and Putin and generally wants to do business with them. He has wanted a Trump Tower in Moscow for decades and probably still wants that to happen.
I'm very surprised the US doesn't seem to be taking the risk of Ukraine becoming a Nuclear Weapons state seriously. By now, they surely would have had time to develop get to the brink of weaponization as a backup plan - they've after all always had a nuclear industry. If they do so and offer cover to their neighbors who realize NATO may not be sufficient, we are in for interesting times.
Ukraine WAS a nuclear weapons state, until the US agreed to protect them from Russia with the US's nuclear weapons, if they gave up their own.
afaik Ukraine never got paid for nuclear disarmament as initially agreed - about $200 billions
I wonder where people get these ideas. The Budapest Memorandum is very short, it'll take five minutes to read if you want to know what was actually agreed. It seems like people just sort of imagine what they would have agreed to, and run with it.
What actually happened to the nukes the Ukrainians had? Were they transferred to the US? Destroyed?
Those were Soviet nukes, physically located in Ukraine but not controlled by it, same as any French/US nukes stationed in Germany would not make it a nuclear state.
The ones in Ukraine got moved into Russia, in exchange for Ukraine receiving money and security guarantees.
> Those were Soviet nukes, physically located in Ukraine but not controlled by it, same as any French/US nukes stationed in Germany would not make it a nuclear state.
This is not an accurate comparison.
It's not that Russia had nukes in Ukraine and withdrew them. Many of the Soviet soldiers manning them were Ukrainians and stayed behind. Much of the infrastructure for maintaining the Soviet arsenal was also in Ukraine and had to be rebuilt in Russia. The situation was more akin to if the US broke up and Louisiana (which has a lot of nuclear warheads stationed in it) is dealing with whether they are now a nuclear power, or if they need to hand them over to South Carolina or something.
Ukraine had multiple Long-Range Aviation bases in it, Louisiana only has one (Barksdale near Shreveport)
> It's not that Russia had nukes in Ukraine and withdrew them.
Russia is the single legal successor of the USSR, so all Soviet nukes became Russian nukes, regardless where they were located. So after the USSR broke up, Russia did have nukes in Ukraine and withdrew them.
Legal succession is mostly irrelevant and more complicated than that. Russia had operational control because it had taken physical control of the ex-Soviet command and control systems which were in Russia, and hence had the launch codes, etc.
To be fair, Russia becoming the single successor of the USSR wasn't a foregone conclusion in the early 1990s. There wasn't relevant precedent of a country dissolving I think -- Yugoslavia was still battling it out, Austria-Hungary was too long ago.
> Those were Soviet nukes, physically located in Ukraine but not controlled by it, same as any French/US nukes stationed in Germany would not make it a nuclear state
It's not quite the same, since Ukraine was part of the USSR, and Ukrainian scientists, engineers, and tradesmen contributed to the effort. Germany, on the other hand, was never part of the American federation, and didn't contribute to American weapons development...since Wernher von Braun/Operation Paperclip.
Indeed. There was even a question of whether they could legally be considered Ukrainian or Russian weapons, regardless of where the command centre was. To solve that while the talks were ongoing they set up a ‘joint’ command centre in Moscow with ex-SSR countries theoretically sharing joint control over the weapons with Moscow.
Ukraine at one point wanted to formally claim ownership over the weapons, as after all breaking the permissive action locks wasn’t that difficult. The US talked them out of it, as a lead up to the Budapest Memorandum.
We all know how much the security guarantees of that agreement were worth.
> We all know how much the security guarantees of that agreement were worth.
They were worth 30 years of peace. It wasn't a treaty. Everyone knew it was a handshake agreement without consequences for breaking it. It prevented an immediate war in eastern Europe after the fall of the USSR. A war that could have been much worse involving nuclear weapons.
Unfortunately the war came 30 years later.
20 years, not 30, and not even that. There were other clashes plus massive Russian interference in Ukrainian affairs just a few years after Budapest.
For something as serious as giving up a nuclear arsenal it’s reasonable to expect to get more than 20 years of peace and for the co-signers to actual fulfil their parts of the agreement, whether legally binding or not.
The end result is that no country will soon trust a Russian non-aggression promise and none will trust an American promise of support.
It was signed in 1994? That's 30 years. I guess you're counting Crimea? I was think just starting from the full Russian invasion.
Russia invaded and annexed Crimea and invaded eastern Ukraine in 2014. That’s 20 years later.
It is also widely believed to have had a hand in the poisoning of Viktor Yushchenko with dioxin in 2004, in order to give an edge to his pro-Russian opponent, Viktor Yanukovych.
But even if that’s not true there’s ample evidence of overt Russian influence campaigns to support Yanukovych in that election, which was just 10 years after the Budapest Memorandum.
There was also a promise of non-expansion by NATO and non-agression by the US, and that was broken very soon after by absorbing the former warsaw pact countries, and trying to get ukraine and georgia to join as well. If they went all in on NATO aggression, they shouldnt have backed out with the tail between their legs concerning ukraine and georgia, they should've went all in. By backing out, they not only lost their influence there, but they also sacrificed all their pawns (politicians) and gained nothing. But of course its not easy to sell the idea to american citizens that starting a direct war is beneficial, especially since there is no reason to start it beside "fuck russia".
There was no such promise. Everyone who was actually in the room during those talks, including Premier Gorbachev, has denied it.
Nor was Ukraine anywhere close to joining NATO. It’s application had effectively been frozen in 2008, and it was not even being offered a MAP which is about step 1 on a 20 step ladder of actions to take before joining.
It’s a red herring being used to justify Russia’s territorial and imperial ambitions.
https://www.brookings.edu/articles/did-nato-promise-not-to-e...
https://hls.harvard.edu/today/there-was-no-promise-not-to-en...
Even if Ukraine were about to join NATO, why would joining a mutual defense pact be threatening, unless, you know, you were planning to invade them?
Excellent point. Ukraine, like any sovereign country, can join whatever alliances it wants too.
There is no right in international law that allows its neighbours to invade if it picks one they don’t like.
Add to that that it’s a mutual defence pact and the argument becomes more absurd.
Thanks. Did that happen immediately after the USSR breakup, i.e., when Yeltsin was in charge, or more recently under Putin?
Still under Yeltsin, 1994 I think. If you've heard about the Budapest Memorandum, that's exactly what it was about.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budapest_Memorandum
Signed 5 December 1994
1. Respect the signatory's independence and sovereignty in the existing borders (in accordance with the principles of the CSCE Final Act).[10]
2. Refrain from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of the signatories to the memorandum, and undertake that none of their weapons will ever be used against these countries, except in cases of self-defense or otherwise in accordance with the Charter of the United Nations. (...)
The same article says the US itself claimed the Memorandum was not legally binding when it sanctioned Belarus. And the Analysis section starts with a clear:
The Budapest Memorandum is not a treaty, and it does not confer any new legal obligations for signatory states.
It also states that many Ukrainians at the time considered that keeping the nukes was an unrealistic option since all maintenance and equipment required to maintain them were located in Russia, Ukraine was under a financial crisis at the time and had no means to develop those things itself. I just can’t understand people now claiming it was a mistake to give up the nukes. Russia might have reasonably invaded Ukraine as soon as it was clear they intended to keep them as they knew they didn’t really have the ability to use them and no Western government would support them using them and starting a war that would likely contaminate half of Europe and cause terrible loss of life. It was absolutely the right thing to do for Ukraine. Even if that didn’t save them from future aggression, which I think was mostly the fault of the West for not being prepared to really sign a binding document and put the lives of their own soldiers on the line.
Mearsheimer was right in 1993 (nukes).
https://www.mearsheimer.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Mears...
He was right in 2014:
https://www.mearsheimer.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Why-t...
And he is still right:
https://mearsheimer.substack.com/p/who-caused-the-ukraine-wa...
I think this guy paints a difference in thought that is not really there. Putin sees Ukraine neutrality and impotence as vital to Russia's security. No, he probably does not want to actually annex Ukraine, that would be a ball ache he doesn't need, but he would like it to behave like Belarus.
I think the real difference lies in whether one believes Ukraine deserves to decide its own path, or if it's forever doomed to be a chess piece on the board between spheres of influence, which seems to be the mindset both Putin and Trump are stuck in.
Not really, went through the last post and its an utter pile of shit to be very polite. Basically russian propaganda, seen 1000 times.
It ignores that people should have their right to self-determination, don't want to live under russian oppression. As somebody whose family lives were ruined by exactly same oppression of exactly same russia (err soviet union but we all know who set the absolute tone of that 'union' and once possible everybody else run the fuck away as quickly as possible) I can fully understand anybody who wants to have basic freedom and some prospect of future for their children - russia takes that away, they subjugate, oppress, erase whole ethnicities, whoever sticks out and their close ones is dealt with brutally.
Not worth the electrical energy used to display that text. Unless you enjoy russian propaganda, then all is good.
The US did not agree to protect them. The signatures to the Budapest Memorandum agreed to respect Ukraine's sovereignty. Of the signatories, Russia is the only one that has violated the agreement.
the US trying to coerce Ukraine into surrendering territory, and then having to pay the US to do it is a violation of their sovereignty
What's the threat? "Do this or we'll stop helping you" is not a violation of sovereignty, distasteful though it may be in this case.
Article 3 of the Budapest memorandum[1]:
> 3. The United States of America, the Russian Federation, and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, reaffirm their commitment to Ukraine, in accordance with the principles of the CSCE Final Act, to refrain from economic coercion designed to subordinate to their own interest the exercise by the Republic of Belarus of the rights inherent in its sovereignty and thus to secure advantages of any kind.
the US regime is attempting to do this
[1]: https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Memorandum_on_Security_Assura...
That’s a hell of reply, and shame on the US.
I don’t know this. Thank you.
Minerals deal that US pushed for was already against this.
Are you sure about that? Wikipedia says the following: "
3. Refrain from economic coercion designed to subordinate to their own interest the exercise by Ukraine, the Republic of Belarus, and Kazakhstan of the rights inherent in its sovereignty and thus to secure advantages of any kind.
4. Seek immediate Security Council action to provide assistance to the signatory if they "should become a victim of an act of aggression or an object of a threat of aggression in which nuclear weapons are used".
Both seems to not happen as stipulated.
Edit: I didn't read properly, 4 obviously didn't happen, my bad.
The actual memorandum is shorter than the Wikipedia article about it. The English-language portion is literally only three pages of double spaced text.
https://treaties.un.org/doc/Publication/UNTS/Volume%203007/P...
But the quotes you seem to challenge are also part of the original document you just linked.
I didn't challenge anything. Just posting a link to the actual source documentation.
I guess you could argue the US is kinda violating 3, since I think the Trump administration tried to ask for future financial reparations in exchange for support during the war. But 4? This isn't a nuclear conflict yet right?
Gladly not this condition: "in which nuclear weapons are used"
I don't think 3 has happened. 4 definitely has not happened. Did you miss the last 4 words you quoted?
>Of the signatories, Russia is the only one that has violated the agreement.
That's not true. USA organized two regime changes in Ukraine, first in 2004, second in 2014.
The ideal scenario would have been if Ukraine had secretly retained 30-100 warheads. Everyone likes to prattle on about how they couldn't even have used them: those people are mentally retarded. A sophisticated government with nuclear and aerospace scientists could have easily dismantled interlocks and installed their own. Maybe not in a hurry, but they had 3 decades more or less. And if they didn't have the expertise, they might have outsourced it to Taiwan for the fee of a few nukes to keep.
Ukraine *desperately* needs to be a nuclear weapons state. Nothing else will suffice. They need more than one bomb, really more than three or four. Putin has to be terrified that no matter how many nuclear strikes he endures, another waits to follow. When he fears that, the war will end.
The war might end in Ukraine being flattened by Russian nuclear weapons if that happened. Putin would be backed into a corner. End the invasion after suffering a nuclear strike (or just the threat of one) and he'll risk being deposed and meet a gruesome end. Retaliate overwhelmingly and risk escalation from other nuclear powers. It's not clear to me that the second risk would be worse, and definitely not clear to me that Putin wouldn't see that as the better of two bad options.
As has been illustrated so well over the past few years, the power of nuclear weapons is a paradox. It allows you to make the ultimate threat. But that threat isn't credible unless people believe you'll use them. Because the consequences of using them are so severe, they're only credible if used in response to a correspondingly severe threat. Russia's arsenal hasn't allowed it to stop a constant flow of weapons to its enemy, an enemy which has invaded and still controls a small bit of Russian territory, and which frequently carries out aerial attacks on Russian territory. Ukraine faces much more of an existential threat (Ukraine has no prospect of conquering Russia, but the reverse is a serious possibility) so a nuclear threat from Ukraine would be more credible, but it could easily still not be enough. Certainly they're not an automatic "leave me alone" card.
I agree with most of what you said but there’s zero possibility Russia will take over all of Ukraine. Even Putin never claimed they would, this seems like a fantasy some people like to propagate to instigate fear in Europe or something. They spent three years on a gruesome fight to take less than a fifth of the territory and the rest is much harder as the further West you go, the more nationalist Ukrainians are. Check the maps of political opinion on Russia before the war started. Looks pretty close to the current frontline where the divide between pro and against Russia lies. Attacking a NATO country would mean the end for Russia and both sides know it perfectly well even if they may say otherwise publicly to either scare people into supporting their militarism or to gain political points.
I don't think it's likely, but I do think it's possible. If the US and EU get tired of helping Ukraine, they'll have a much harder time resisting Russian attacks. Once they do, why would Russia stop? Maybe they would. Maybe they'd pause, declare peace, and take the rest a year or three later. Maybe they'd just keep going. Putin saying he doesn't want it doesn't convince me in the slightest. He's a Soviet Union revanchist in terms of territory if not political system, and they owned the place before.
Not sure what the consequences of attacking NATO has to do with this.
>Putin would be backed into a corner.
He'd be backed into the door marked "exit". There is no corner to trap him here.
>End the invasion after suffering a nuclear strike
And why do you believe that Zelensky or whoever is in charge would nuke Moscow first? Do you think that, if they had say 30 nukes (plenty for a few relatively harmless demonstrations) that this would be the first target? Obviously they'd pick something that he could decide to de-escalate afterwards.
>they're only credible if used in response to a correspondingly severe threat.
You mean such as the severe threat that Ukraine has endured for a decade at this point? The war now threatens to make them functionally extinct. Many have fled and will never return, their population is reduced to something absurdly low, many of their children have been forcibly abducted to be indoctrinated or tormented/tortured.
That condition you impose was pre-satisfied.
>Certainly they're not an automatic "leave me alone" card.
Of course not. They'd have to be used intelligently (readers: "used" does not imply detonated). It's not entirely clear to me that this would be the case with Ukraine/Zelensky. But nothing less at this point will suffice. Even if the US promised to put 150,000 troops on the ground, this wouldn't end. It would only escalate. Perhaps to that nuclear war you seem to fear.
I don't think Putin would have an exit. Losing the war would result in a major risk to his continued rule, and thus to his person, from a collapse of domestic support. A Ukrainian nuclear strike would present him with a choice: risk internal revolt, or risk the consequences of nuclear retaliation. I'm not remotely confident he'd choose the first. And, to be very clear, the second would make Ukraine (and likely the rest of the world) a lot worse off than they are today.
I dunno if I agree with them being nuclear. It just ups the possibility of a thermonuclear war instead of a conventional war. Just as I’d prefer that IN or PK or both not having those weapons.
The only historical examples we have of nuclear war occurred when the capability was unilateral. MAD actually works. The fear you have of a thermonuclear war is a good thing, and that fear can exist in Putin as well... but only if Ukraine has the weapons to instill such fear.
> Just as I’d prefer that IN or PK or both not having those weapons.
The only reason we haven't seen a Ukraine-like invasion in that region is that they both have nukes. MAD works.
Mini nukes change the equation. If you get two crazy hot-heads making decisions where no-one can overrule their decisions; things could go in unexpected ways. MAD presumes rational actors. If Iraq and Iran would have had nukes in the mid 80s I’m not sure that they wouldn’t have used them.
Maybe the most impactful thing they could do would not be withdrawing support for Ukraine, but removing sanctions on Russia and thus boosting Russian economy.
> It’s kind of hard to see how much more support the US could withdraw from Ukraine
It would be a major blow to Ukraine if the US stops selling weapons to them via European buyers. There is a real threat of this if Trump feels the need to coerce Ukraine into supporting his peace plan.
I believe this is what is implied by the Thursday deadline. Article certainly implies this.
While US weapons aid has basically been cut off, then somewhat restored through European purchases, US intel sharing has been relatively consistent and continuous throughout, and Ukraine is very dependent on it. When intel sharing was suspended for several weeks, Ukraine lost almost half the ground it had taken in Kursk. At a minimum, satellite intel is key to monitoring Russian dispositions, and Ukraine has no way to replace that.
US also authorized the use of their own ballistic missiles in Russia proper this past week which was a big deal.
They also have another $1B budgeted in defense spending for Ukraine next year https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-senate-committee-backs-m...
Perhaps Ukraine could spare a few troops for a quick invasion of the West Bank?
I've been to Kyiv five times to deliver aid via help99.co, and I've spent many, many hours with Europeans driving trucks from Tallinn to Kyiv.
The people volunteering and driving know Europe is at war. They all say nobody else where they live realizes this.
It's frustrating.
In my eyes it's more so that we don't care in that sense. My friend group is mostly just keeping in mind that they might have to dip to another country/continent at some point, maybe, unlikely though.
I'm pretty sure everyone I know would rather get imprisoned than go die in the mud to protect property they don't own, on the orders of a government that doesn't care about the same things they care about.
When we talk about it, it always boils down to a discussion on how to best desert/escape at different stages.
If the relationship with America deteriorates, which countries do you think will accept European refugees? Your friends may have to stay and fight not out of patriotism, but necessity. In a total-war scenario, even prisoners will find themselves contributing to thr war effort.
Since europeans are quite wealthy, many will be happy to accept them (as long as they still have money and qualifications).
But leaving all moral questions aside, where to go?
South america might turn into a war zone as well. Africa partly is already. Asia similar.
New Zealand sounds good, but even Peter Thiel found out, that money will get you only so far in buying a safe haven.
So personally I would opt for fixing the problems in europe. And am on it within my abilities. But .. with limits. I do not trust my politicians either and I am multilingual and traveled the world a lot. So in the end I would also rather take my family and leave, then being ordered to go fight in a war with half working equipment, because corruption and proud incompetence prevented preparation. (Many in the german military for instance hold the opinion, that they don't need to learn from the incompetent ukrainians, because they are all fighting wrong)
Luckily for whole Europe russia is very incompetent at doing anything serious, and complex projects like war are as serious as it gets. They routinely fail at logistics even now, corruption and nepotism is how puttin' built his whole empire, you don't suddenly get competent people at key positions of power just because it would make sense.
So whatever happens (apart from nuclear holocaust everywhere around the world) will be so slow we will have time to react. Already biggest arming of whole european continent since WWII is happening, and any bad news is pushing more money and focus into building more and more.
I know it sounds gloomy, but only if you have your head too close to the screens daily. Worse had come and gone than incompetent russians.
"I know it sounds gloomy, but only if you have your head too close to the screens daily. Worse had come and gone than incompetent russians."
Depends where you live I suppose. The baltic states are rightfully worried and take it a bit more serious.
And yes, russia on its own is not that dangerous to whole Europe. But russia in combination with north korean soldiers and supported by china .. and some european states that switch sides (Hungary, Serbia, Bosnia, ..), that would be dangerous. Lot's of things can happen. Also the EU can transform into an evil empire if we don't watch out. So no, I am not too worried about immediate war, but the traction right now is bad.
We are not at war. No bombs are falling in our cities. Our children are not being drafted and coming back in coffins. No one is bombing our ships and railways, so we have plenty of food on the table. If you think we are at war you have no idea what you’re talking about.
That is not the only kind of war. Russia has totally pwned the USA in the realm of information.
EU got itself a Cuba
too bad that Cuba is right on its own border :)
So literally just like Cuba? The distance between US and Cuba is like 150km, if you're in Donetsk you can't even leave Donetsk Oblast if you travel 150km, and the shortest distance you can take from Ukraine<>Russia to closest EU/NATO member would be something like 600km if you don't take shortcuts via Belarus.
For all intents and purposes, Ukraine's border with Russia is way further away (like magnitude) from EU/NATO than US<>Russia (who are neighbors) or US<>Cuba (who are also neighbors).
Romania shares a border with Ukraine and is a member of both NATO and the EU.
Indeed, and how far would you wager it is between the border of Ukraine<>Romania and Ukraine<>Russia, at the shortest point? I'd wager around a lot longer than US<>Cuba.
I imagine the shortest path Russia->Ukraine->EU Members Romania/Hungary/Slovakia/Poland is far shorter than the shortest path Russia->Cuba->Any US State or territory.
Both Cuba and Russia are literal neighbors to the US, it doesn't get closer than that. Cuba is like 150km from the coast of Florida, and Russia is even closer than that to the US!
What an absurd argument. If Ukraine falls, the Russians will marshal Ukrainian manpower and resources against the EU.
> What an absurd argument
What argument did I even make? Are you saying it's absurd that Russia's border to Ukraine is further away to the closest EU/NATO member than Cuba is to the US? Because if so, I think you need to open up a world map.
>USA withdrawing even more support for Ukraine in the war
I thought the only way USA was supporting Ukraine was by no longer refusing to sell them extraordinarily expensive weapons. So, no longer [openly] hampering them.
By the way, most material support by the US is actually purchased by other NATO members. The US recycles the facade of support, there is very little actionable support.
This is quite a romantic way to describe EU shooting itself in the foot with corrupt politicians and myopic policies.
Ukraine is not and was never part of EU, FWIW
Ukrainians voted to align themselves more closely with the EU and are now effectively a march. Ukraine is very much within the sphere of EU concern.
It's a bad situation allright, but sucking up to Trump even more isn't going to make things better. Europe needs to grow a pair, help Ukraine way more, and be prepared to fight Russia sooner rather than later.
In France recently the army chief-of-staff declared that we must be prepared to "lose its children" in a war, if it wants to avoid it. Of course we should. The resulting outcry may be a sign we've already lost.
Both USA and China are having much worse systemic economical issues than EU.
> USA withdrawing even more support for Ukraine in the war
USA all but openly support Russia by now.
> unless EU nations want to put boots on the ground.
Is such a thing even possible in the EU? I understand that it's an economic and policy bloc. Does Brussels have the authority to raise an army from EU members?
Read again "EU nations" not the "EU", If some subset of the nations that are members of the EU decide to act cooperatively outside of economic policy that is with in their propagative, and wouldn't be too surprising outside of the sheer volume of politics involved.
No nor does it have logistical capability to deliver even half of the equipment currently being promised/discussed within a time-frame of less then 5-10year.
It's all dependent on the national government voluntarily following the advice of Brussels, and in most cases they don't really have the resources the EU wants them to commit to "The Ukrainian nationalist Cause".
Depends on the point of view.
I see it as a great opportunity, that we in the EU get our shit together, to not be dependant on the US anymore. Nor russia. Nor china.
So far we still can afford the luxory of moving the european parliament around once a month, because we cannot agree on one place. Lots of nationalistic idiotic things going on and yes, if those forces win, the EU will fall apart.
If russia graps most of Ukraine, this would be really bad(see the annexion of chzech republic 1938, that gave Hitler lots of weapons he did not had), but it is totally preventable without boots on the ground (russia struggles hard as well). Just not if too many people fall for the russian fueled nationalistic propaganda.
>and China
That's the biggest question of the century. Imagine that EU and China make a deal, and they backstab US and Russia respectively. EU and China are physically so far away from each other that there's no way they'd actually run into direct conflict, meanwhile by backstabbing, both of them could easily get what they want. What I'm trying to say is that if you flipped the alliances and aligned EU with China and US with Russia, Russia would collapse within one battle maximum while EU's support would be just enough to push the 50/50 chance of Taiwan invasion towards decisive Chinese victory. Everyone happy - China becomes the world's #1 superpower, while EU remains undisputable #2 and US gets sent back to lick its wounds. Sure, EU might suffer from severing its ties with the US, but if the alternative scenario is US abandoning EU and the latter facing Russia alone, then this stops being such a crazy idea.
> China becomes the world's #1 superpower, while EU remains undisputable #2
How does EU even remotely benefit from this bizarre fantasy scenario where it flips alliances toward China? The fundamentals don't change. EU has no tech and doesn't produce anything. China would only exploit the partnership even more than they already do.
> EU has no tech and doesn't produce anything.
What a poor attempt at trolling!
Yes it was an exaggeration. Withdrawn.
But the point is still that the economic fundamentals don't change by shifting alliances. EU would still be under the same pressure.
I would be curious if the volume of domestically produced goods exceeds the quantity of Chinese-produced goods in Europe. If one excludes food and automobiles, then I suspect very strongly that this is not the case at all, regardless of how you measure the quantity (euro value, volume, weight, etc).
I dont think its trolling.
Ive heard the same sentiment locally and at some conventions with low/no European representation.
Its also a corrolary to "china steals tech"... Except for all the tech they're innovating and creating.
Europe has higher industrial output than the US, its either trolling or misinformed beyond belief.
It benefits by not sending its people to war in case of conflict with Russia. China can pretty much disable Russian army by banning exports of military and dual-use goods. Meanwhile US security guarantees are becoming weaker by the day, especially in the context of potential war US vs China.
Every nation "exploited" by China says their "exploitation" consists of building hospitals, schools and roads, while the "help" coming from the US is mostly lectures about fiscal responsibility. Which side would you rather be on?
As a European I can agree with the US and China stuff. But a Russian Invasion? Seriously?
GP is talking about the invasion of Ukraine, taking place just beyond the EU eastern border, and very much shaking up the European security situation, and the EU and its member states are visibly having to "deal with it", diplomatically, economically and in terms of their practical defense postures. That's what they meant with "at the border", and not a literal invasion of the EU.
(Edited for a less confrontational beginning of the first sentence.)
Problem is. As a European, who created this situation? Russia? Or the US?
> As a European, who created this situation? Russia?
Russia. After the US completely rolled over for their demands not to provide NATO membership action plans to Georgia and Ukraine in 2008, because, as Russia claimed, that would be destabilizing. Which Russia followed immediately with an invasion of Georgia in 2008. Then, as soon as Ukraine threw off the Russian-aligned government that had taken power while that was going on, Ukraine in 2014, taking Crimea and invading parts of Eastern Ukraine with both Russian reular forces and Russia-paid mercenaries, which is what turned Ukraine back to seeking NATO membership.
> Problem is. As a European, who created this situation? Russia? Or the US?
I'm not going to argue with you about how Russia was forced to invade Ukraine and commit atrocities there or whatever you're hinting at, my dear fellow European.
Also, stop shifting the discussion and leave your apologetic narratives where they belong.
Russia.
Imagine if Europe hadn't compromised itself with energy dependency on a dictator and was able to stand up against the 2014 invasion. The situation was created at home.
Russia failed to create a convincing casus belli to the rest of the world and seen as the indisputable aggressor pretty much everywhere.
Reversal: The US created it by not nuking Russia off the face of the planet decades ago.
As poor of a state that is Europe's various armies, I'd be very surprised if EU couldn't take on Russia even without the US (who FWIW recently reiterated their commitment to the defense of Europe). Russia's advanced SAMs, radars, and Navy have seriously deteriorated. Their main capability left is submarines and mass Shahed drones whose range can't reach much of Europe.
If Russia's jets can't operate over Ukraine they won't do much in Europe except self-defense of their own homeland.
China on the other hand is a very very serious opponent...
Russia's advanced SAMs and radars are getting clapped by one of the poorest nations in Europe. We're at almost four years of full scale war and the worlds no. 2 military has not been able to get air superiority over a small airforce of cold war left overs. Just the airforces of the Nordic countries alone would run rings around the russian airforce and their air defence.
As another European: Yes?
Invasion doesn't have to mean they plan to roll tanks all the way to Paris.
Have you realized Russian agents blew up a train in Poland this week, after some weeks prior flying planes and drones into NATO airspace and disrupting air travel in Denmark with drones started from shadow fleet tankers. The grounds for further action are being tested as we speak.
Invasion just means Russian soldiers enter Poland, Latvia, Estonia, Finnland. Countries parts of which Putin painted rightfully Russian territories in his speeches. I wouldn't bet a lot on that not happening, especially if the geopolitical situation deteriorates in favor of Putin.
> Invasion just means Russian soldiers enter Poland, Latvia, Estonia, Finnland.
So invasion means a full war with NATO?
Given the pained debate here by Western Europeans over the semantics of “Europe” and Ukraine’s relationship therewith, it’s very unlikely NATO would act and that’s precisely what the Russians would bet on.
Russia's best case scenario atm is they take more of eastern Ukraine and the west establishes a DMZ not far from the current frontlines. Pushing up anywhere close to Lviv/Polish border would be like winning the lottery given their current track record.
These sorts of wars are very rare in the modern era. They gambled entirely because they faced an army they were 10x the size and they got embarrassed. There's near zero strategic logic in trying again vs NATO after they lost most of their fancy gear.
What would Russia hope to gain? How does this compare to alternative naratives? Assuming we both lack real insider infirmatiin, whixh reasonably is more credible?
> What would Russia hope to gain?
Reversal of what Russia sees as a great injustice. The 2021 ultimatum[1] issued on the eve of the war can be summed up as a return to the Europe of 1989 with everything that it entails.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_ultimatum_to_NATO
It's fatally paranoid stupidity. Russia didn't even want to be in Ukraine at all; it could have accepted the breakaway regions that were Russian and wanted to be Russian, and didn't because it didn't want the responsibility. It was just the pressure of the Ukrainian supremacists threatening to kill the Russian-speaking population that forced Russia's hand. Russia doesn't even want Ukraine, it certainly doesn't care about Europe.
But now Russia is in a real bind. Not in the bind that the US expected, but one that is beneficial to the US anyway. They can't leave rump (i.e. historical) Ukraine alone, because EU elites and Ukrainian extremists are determined to continue to harass Russia from there, no matter what happens. Russia has to control all of Ukraine, at least for a moment, in order to have any safety; even if it leaves the non-Russian part to be basically independent, it will have to be completely demilitarized. That will take a decade. Ukraine will look like the smoking hole that Afghanistan is, and the Russian economy will be on its knees.
Even worse, Russian hardliners already see this coming and just want to escalate, instead of the slow, safe, low-casualty taking of territory that has been steadily grinding the Ukrainian forces into dust. The Ukrainians can always jut bail out of this fight, retreat, and do terrorism that wears down Russian will and Russian resources over the long term. If the hardliners win over Putin, the world is in danger now.
Ukrainians will not win, they will die. But the US may win; watching, and loaning the EU money that they can use to buy weapons from the US. You could say that the real loser would be Ukraine (becoming a desolate graveyard instead of the relatively peaceful country it still would have been if it hadn't been influenced to attempt to eliminate its Russian population), but the real target has become Europe, which the US will own after all this. And if Russia collapses, the US will own Russia, and Russian gas, too. Europe will simply be a vassal with no alternatives, a wall between it and China.
The deep desire of Europe to invade Russia is bizarre. It's as deeply embedded into the culture as antisemitism, and the two are often mixed.
> instead of the slow, safe, low-casualty taking of territory
I don't know what is considered "low-casualty" for Russia, but the last reports I saw they were approaching 250,000 dead soldiers in Ukraine since 2022. That is just an astronomical number.
USA only had 60,000 killed in Vietnam and that is considered a national catastrophe.
> Russia didn't even want to be in Ukraine at all
Then it should have chosen not to invade and occupy large parts of Ukraine in 2014. And then escalate with an even bigger invasion in 2022. Not launching a war of aggression is, like, the easiest thing in the world to do.
Have it crossed your mind that USA and EU shouldn't have organized a coup in Ukraine in 2014?
Have it crossed your mind, that Minsk agreements were on a table up until Feb 2022, and it was USA and EU that sabotaged its implementations and pumped Ukraine with weapons and training all those years? Just a reminder, that if Ukraine did what it signed in Minsk, Donetsk and Lughansk would've been returned under Kiev's control.
It crossed my mind that Morocco and Algeria shouldn't have organized a coup in New York City in 2025. Fortunately, none of these things happened.
> The Ukrainians can always jut bail out of this fight
Putin can end the war immediately whenever he wants.
A referendum about whether the EU should "put boots on the ground" seems like a good idea to me as long as only those who vote yes get deployed.
> A referendum about whether the EU should "put boots on the ground" seems like a good idea to me as long as only those who vote yes get deployed.
Politics (almost) never works like this. In a secret vote, you don't even know who voted yes or no or at all.
Given the demographics of Europe, what this means is that old people will vote for young people to be fed into a meat mincer just so they can keep collecting their pensions for a couple decades more. Let's call a spade a spade then. This guy is doing just that: https://www.lemonde.fr/en/france/article/2025/11/20/outcry-a...
I think you are misreading the article. The general is warning that if we do not show preparedness and willingness now, in the long run it will cost more.
Si vis pacem para bellum
And all those who vote no get sold into slavery to Russia.
That sounds to me like a bunch of individual countries deciding to independently put boots on the ground. At that point what are they voting on as a group? (Though maybe that’s just what you’re suggesting should be done and I’m missing it)
I also wonder what good any sort of military/defensive pact is if any country can unilaterally decide when or when not to participate. It means you can’t depend on it and you may as well not have it then right? To be clear I am not saying military pacts are a good thing, but they do currently exist and participating counties can’t (at least shouldn’t) just pretend they aren’t part of one when it’s inconvenient.
And the people who vote yes should have to actually go themselves and lead from the front, not pull a Putin and simply declare war (er, special operation) while hiding under a bunker.
I don't understand the point you are trying to make. Could you please explain it?
Im going to go ahead and predict that the EU will not risk it.If it were China ? maybe they would pull the lever to activate this counter.
Previously when the US reneged on the JCPOA viz Iran , they had a similar law/faclity that theoreticall could have been used but never was.
As an addition the EU Commission is currently imposing pretty similar sanction on a Journalist [1] so yeah i dont see much movement on that law being used.Most likely they will try to wait it out.
[1] https://www.public.news/p/eu-travel-ban-on-three-journalists
The underlying article in Le Monde: https://www.lemonde.fr/international/article/2025/11/19/nico...
Archive link: https://archive.is/TleMk
The reluctance of the EU leadership to so anything materially significant about anything they claim to care about is kind of telling.
It's either that the leadership is so caught up in their own ivory tower bubble of pure rhetoric to realize they havent really put in the logistics to actually affect reality or that they somehow don't really want the consequences of actually changing things.
For this is pretty clear what they need to do to create any real digital sovereignty and yet the seem to not really be willing to take the obvious step of just banning the use of any technology that have any dependency of foreign owned/managed cloud services or closed source products, and ordering their technical staff to start making changes even if it makes stakeholders annoyed, and yet the keep letting companies like IBM/RedHat and Microsoft pretend they can and should be a part of the digital sovereignty transformation project.
We saw the same when safe harbour collapsed and with the cookie directive where rather then doing something effective they found some way to fix it by changing a few words in an mostly unenforced set of click wrap contracts/licenses. .
The discussions shifts across the board but it takes time to shift due to momentum. The EU has many nations and many more companies all making strategic purchasing decisions. US dependence skeptics belittled earlier have now concrete examples and more weight. The shift can already observed in weapons system purchasing but won‘t be limited to those. For better or worse the US has lost its position of trust and is sadly working on cementing distrust for the next decades.
The EU leadership are a very corrupt group who set themselves up to be open to the highest bidders from day one, and those are mostly US corporations and those of other countries when the US hasn't place sanctions on them.
The antitrust fines they impose on those American companies may simply be regarded as a cost of doing business.
When it comes to being indifferent to the welfare of the general populace, they are just as bad as anything else.
> The antitrust fines they impose on those American companies may simply be regarded as a cost of doing business.
You nailed it right on the head. Those fines are peanuts for big corporations.
But even then they are big enough for these corporations to run and complain to Trump that that big bad EU is punishing them.
"All his accounts with US companies such as Amazon, Airbnb, or PayPal were immediately closed by the providers. Online bookings, such as through Expedia, are immediately canceled, even if they concern hotels in France."
How is this legal / OK?
A US company is free to cut off service to whatever foreigner it wants, just like a foreign country is free to ban whatever US firm it wants from operating in it.
Please look up what happened to Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras or Costa Rica when they tried banning whatever US firm they wanted.
The EU has more weight than Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, Costa Rica, Cuba, or Grenada.
The US government is not free to use frivolous sanctions to indirectly make payment processors stop serving a foreigner.
> The US government is not free to use frivolous sanctions to indirectly make payment processors stop serving a foreigner.
You may regard them as such, but they are not in any sense frivolous. It is the law that if-x-then-y, it's not a discretionary item that one interprets. And to be clear, these are not "indirectly" making payment processors stop serving the person, it is very clearly direct and you do not, as a company, have a choice in the matter.
The US government is free to do whatever it wants until the US Supreme Court says otherwise. But, at the moment, they can't even decide if the President is allowed to unilaterally impose tariffs selectively on trading partners. Despite many US states suing about it.
It definitely is.
Pretty much all companies only offer accounts without any guarantees, that can be realistically closed on a whim without any mandatory notice period.
The only exceptions are the high end enterprise accounts.
Companies can voluntarily close accounts for almost any reason or no reason. The US government needs a legal justification for forcing companies to close an account.
How is this relevant to my comment?
I didn’t claim any company received a binding order to do this or that?
This is a weapon that the US has been honing for a long time. Pretty much every modern company has some footprint in the US (for example, maybe trades on a US stock market) and is liable for even mild sanctions violations to the tune of millions at least.
And the EU apparently has the counter ready, which would make such companies liable for millions when they enact US sanctions in the EU.
I'm very curious what would happen then? Nothing presumable, as nothing ever happens, or it might be another step to separate the EU market from the US.
Good. We've been in the age of super national global corporations living playing fast and loose. Maybe this will keep them from gobbling up even more power.
No, it won't. And lashing out with random shots in the dark tends to advance corporate control, as we've seen with the results from the trumpist tantrum. As long as ownership (/controlling interest) of companies continues to be basically unregulated cross-border (because the class of people having it also have the ears (if not the necks) of politicians), then things like sanctions are merely speed bumps on commerce that increase large-scale market friction and thereby increase the domestic power of corpos.
Must suck to be subjected to extraterritorial jurisdiction from a body you have never acknowledged the authority of.
The ICC in this case is investigating crimes committed in a party to the Rome treaty, that's not extraterritorial jurisdiction
Even ignoring that one of these cases involves death and destruction and the other doesn't
Your comment can be interpreted in two ways:
1) It must suck for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant to be subject to a rogue French judge.
2) It must suck for the judge to face consequences from the US.
I think the ambiguity was deliberate.
> 1) It must suck for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant to be subject to a rogue French judge.
How is the french judge "rogue"?
How is a ICC warrant "extra territorial"? It only calls for the arrest of the individual inside ICC member countries.
Yes, but have you considered US politicians don't like the ICC?
What's a bit of truth in the face of that
Yeah. GDPR is annoying as fuck.
> For example, accounts with non-US banks have also been partially closed. Transactions in US dollars or via dollar conversions are forbidden to him.
So people don't think this is a new thing; when I worked in retail banking in the (very) early '90s it was made clear to us that any transaction in US dollars is subject to US regulation. The hypothetical scenario was that an Ethiopian arms dealer buys Russian product from a German dealer in Switzerland if they do it in USD it is the purview of the US to prosecute that crime.
My memory is hazy, but I don't think that when I was being taught it that it was a new thing.
A markedly different tone in this thread to the ones discussing Ofcom's attempt to fine 4chan.
TLDR: he's a member of the ICC. Issues warrants against Israeli political leaders. Neither Israel nor the USA (nor China, Russia, India) are parties to the international conventions that formed the ICC.
He's being sanctioned as a result by the USA, which flowed down to US companies who must follow US law.
The article continues that he asks for the EU to activate an existing blocking regulation (Regulation (EC) No 2271/96), which prevents third countries like the USA from enforcing sanctions in the EU. Activating it would make American companies following US sanction in Europe liable for damages.
I think that is the most important point in the article.
Palestine is party to it and Gaza is part of Palestine
And yet Palestine didn't arrest Yahya Sinwar with accordance to ICC arrest warrant for “extermination, murder, taking of hostages, rape and sexual assault in detention”. De jure and De facto are very different things.
The ICC could be considered to have jurisdiction over Gaza though. Although obviously that is debatable.
It is not debatable. Palestine is a recognized member so according to the law they have jurisdiction. If these laws have any usefulness if no one will follow it is debatable though.
Since the territorial boundaries of the State of Palestine are, too say the least, disputed, the territorial boundaries of ICC jurisdiction derived from its jurisdiction over acts on the territory of a state party where the state party in question is the State of Palestine is actually a tricky question.
Being confident doesn't equal being right.
I'm aghast as to what people seem to think they have authority on simply because they're using the internet.
There is a real world out there and it is quite different from online echo chambers, to say the least.
> He's being sanctioned as a result by the USA
As a result of what ? What’s the trigger cause of the US sanctions ?
ICC can’t issue warrants against non ICC countries?
Retribution for acting out of line with those who have this sanction power.
Of course they can. Good luck trying to serve and execute that warrant though.
And non ICC countries are squarely within their rights to retailiate. Most minor former colonies of the EU countries can't, but the US, China, Russia can.
If the sanctioned Israeli politicians and military commanders think those warrants are baseless, why don't they appear before the courts to defend themselves?
This isn't really about the ICC judges. It is about the failure of the major Western countries who are part of the ICC to come to the defence of the judges who they have appointed to make those decisions, and the control Israeli politicians exercise over the White House, ie the US President himself.
Americans don't seem to understand how the moral character of their politicians and their political system is relentlessly degraded by the so called Israel lobby, or they don't care, or have resigned themselves to it.
Sanctions of those kind or usually applied to corporate entities, state entitities or militant political groups aka "proscribed terrorist organizations". They are not intended to applied to individuals carrying out their legitimate duties in organizations approved or even created by America's own allies under principles America subscribes to, even if they are reluctant to submit themselves to those organizations.
And yet on account of Israel, the US applies these sanctions to judges carrying out the duties lawfully, and somehow they don't see how whimsical, capricious, petty and infantile such decisions are and the poor light they present the US in.
> Americans don't seem to understand how the moral character of their politicians and their political system is relentlessly degraded by the so called Israel lobby, or they don't care, or have resigned themselves to it.
I mean, it’s causing a small rift in the GOP. Time will tell if that escalates any though. I stand firm in my believe that nothing ever happens though.
It is also causing a rift between "Leftists" who distinguish themselves from "Liberals" i.e. Democrats. Apparently there are many who didn't vote for Harris because she did not sufficiently distance from Israel and condemn the genocide.
> If the sanctioned Israeli politicians and military commanders think those warrants are baseless, why don't they appear before the courts to defend themselves?
Because they aren't under their jurisdiction? Because they might believe the court is biased against them?
> Americans don't seem to understand how the moral character of their politicians and their political system is relentlessly degraded by the so called Israel lobby, or they don't care, or have resigned themselves to it.
> And yet on account of Israel, the US applies these sanctions to judges carrying out the duties lawfully, and somehow they don't see how whimsical, capricious, petty and infantile such decisions are and the poor light they present the US in.
You seems to be confused this is done not for Israel's sake but for USA - they don't want the precedent of non-ICC member's government being judged in ICC to protect themselves.
Only the U.S. would actually sanction someone for trying to indict a war criminal.
> Only the U.S. would actually sanction someone for trying to indict a war criminal.
The problem is that only the US has the power to material harm people to such a degree by doing so.
The amount of control that Big Tech has consolidated into a handful of US megacorporations is a massive danger to the entire world. The US devolving into an overt kleptocracy is a huge threat to freedom everywhere. Who can push back? Obviously not China or Russia, where the problems are even worse.
Of all the wealthy world, the EU basically stands alone as the only entity that has strong enough democratic institutions, capital, and expertise to plausibly develop some kind of alternative.
> Who can push back? Obviously not China or Russia, where the problems are even worse.
Why not China or Russia or any other country with the capability? Competition is good even if some or all of the players are bad individually.
China, Russia are not members of the ICC for the same reason the US is not. They do not want extra territorial entities applying laws to their citizens and soldiers.
I don't think that's true. Lots of countries out there led by thugs. It used to be that the US stood out because it took the law seriously and believed in its ideals to do the right thing (not that it always succeeded, but it did its best). Looks like that time has passed.
> It used to be that the US stood out because it took the law seriously and believed in its ideals to do the right thing
I think it looked like that, because the US always been very effective at propaganda, and until the internet and the web made it very easy for people to communicate directly with each other without the arms of media conglomerates. It's now clearer than ever that US never really believed in its own ideals or took their own laws seriously, there are too many situations pointing at the opposite being true.
I’m an American and I can safely vouch that myself and most of the people I know deeply believe in the American ideals that have been presented as gospel for decades—fair play, hard work, rule of law, loving our neighbors (regardless of legal status), and to a one, believe that as soon as you swear your oath at the immigration court, you’re an American, regardless of the circumstances of your birth.
The situation we find ourselves in is that the American of today does not represent us well. I have hopes for the future, but time will tell.
> and I can safely vouch that myself and most of the people I know
That's great, too bad none of those people sit in positions of power or anywhere near your government, because from the outside for the last two decades or more, those ideals are not visible to us at all, neither when we look at the foreign policy nor internal.
I'm sure the tides will eventually turn, but we're talking decades more likely than years, since it's been turning this direction for decades already, and I don't see it tipping the balance in the other way even today or the near-future. GLHF at the very least, I do hope things get better for everyone.
Yeah, that is something I don't get. You can hear all around the Internet "we did not vote of this!" yet you don see any visible reaction to all these bad decisions lately - no protests in the streets, no real attempts to block these things, people resigning rather then implementing bad decisions.
I just don't get it - unless all those ideals were just a show from the start.
> no protests in the streets
The No Kings protest was estimated at 7 million people.
I'm not sure what the purpose is to go out on the streets for half a day, then everyone goes back inside and continue like nothing ever happen?
Go out, stay out until change is enacted. It's called striking, and if you had any sort of good unions, they'd be planning a general strike for a long time, and it should go on until you get change.
You know, like how other "modern" countries do it when the politicians forget who they actually work for.
General strikes weren't particularly common in the 60's in the US and those protests were considered widespread and effective.
The No Kings “general strikes” consist almost entirely of retired people. I’m sure I saw anyone under 60 in those protests.
I'm not sure if you're mixing things, or if I missed anything, but the "No Kings" things were protests, not a "strike" and very far from being a "general strike". Those practices are very different from just "protesting".
This is strictly false. Plenty of working age people went, and many brought their children.
The "No Kings" protest had absolutely no subject or issue other than repeating Trump's name. What would it have meant for it to have been successful? What I mean by that is what could "X" be in the sentence: "If X policy had changed, the No Kings rallies would have accomplished one of their goals"?
It was just an astroturfed Democratic party rally that drummed up participation by mass text spam from Indian call centers. The turnout was positively geriatric.
Incidentally, the Democratic Party has started running into a severe issue with text spammers and fake orgs asking for donations and raking in millions, and the people doing it are people who are actually involved with the party.
Those Constant Texts Asking You to Donate to Democrats Are Scams
https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/mothership-strate...
The Mothership Vortex: An Investigation Into the Firm at the Heart of the Democratic Spam Machine
https://data4democracy.substack.com/p/the-mothership-vortex-...
People in the US seems allergic to unions and any sort of solidarity movements, so now you have all these individuals believing them to be the strongest individual, not realizing you need friends and grass-root movements to actually have any sort of civil opposition.
There does seem to be some slight improvements of this situation as of late, video game companies and other obvious sectors getting more unions. But still, even on HN you see lots of FUD about unions, I'm guessing because of the shitty state of police unions and generally the history of unions in the US, but there really isn't any way out of the current situation without solidarity across the entire working class and middle class in the US, even if they're right, left, center or purple.
If only the US would apply those values to their foreign policy, unfortunately the US voters don't care enough about that.
This is a great satire. I laughed out very strongly.
https://youtube.com/shorts/I-2r-qJcxKc
Look, we can all acknowledge that there were, and are, many Americans who wish for this to be true. But at no point in America's history did that "many" ever constitute a majority. Or even close to it.
Which is why, from its very inception, the US has employed mass genocide at home, invasions & regime changes in the America's, then post-slavery apartheid at home, with invasions & regime changes in the rest of the world.
That's not anti-American rhetoric. That's just historical fact.
So, commingled with those facts, where does "law, love & fair play" come in. If you're honest, THAT was the propaganda. And the above realities, that was the truth.
The America of today IS the America it has always been. Its just that the propaganda mask can't be reattached with more duct tape. America started by geniciding non-whites at home, and rounding up & dragging non-whites TO America, in chains.
Now it's genociding non-whites abroad (primarily the Middle East), and rounding up & dragging non-whites FROM America, in chains.
When you focus on the common threads throughout American history, and strip away the fluff, you realise ... that's the real America (which still has the largest slave labour force in the world, through indentured workforces via its prison system).
This is exactly the kind of bright eyed idealism that American propaganda produces. I say that as an American who grew up inside the system. The schools shape you into a patriotic silhouette, convinced your country is the shining exception of human history.
Then the internet arrived and cracked the smooth surface. Suddenly the world was not filtered through textbooks and morning announcements. You could see the contradictions, the omissions, the parts of the story no one wanted to say out loud. The myth began to thin out.
And the blindness is intense. Just look at the parent poster. He lists all the noble ideals he and “most people he knows” supposedly embody, as if declaring them makes them true in practice. It becomes a kind of self portrait disguised as a national portrait. The assumption is always that the country has drifted away from the people, never that the people have drifted away from their own claimed principles.
He says that the America of today does not represent him, but never considers that it might represent us all far more than the flattering story we prefer to tell ourselves. The gap is not between the country and its citizens. The gap is between reality and the myths individuals cling to in order to feel morally uncomplicated.
Because once the slogans fall away, nations are not noble and people are not consistent. We are collections of private contradictions, unfinished thoughts, and hidden struggles. We carry more inside than we ever admit.
And in the end, a human is just that. A quiet tangle of secrets pretending the world makes perfect sense.
The fallacy is believing the country has ever perfectly embodied the principals of its people. Unlike your and others dismissive talk of my 'bright eyed idealism' I and the people that I interact with fully understand the missteps and failures of our country.
That does not stop us from working towards making the nation a better place. I'm stubborn and loud and I talk to politicians and others when I see things that I don't think are right. Maybe (probably) I'm tilting at windmills. But I'm not giving up on what I think the United States should be.
As a seventh generation American, war veteran who has been in public service for 22 of my 25 working years and mixed race person, America has literally never organizationally been any of the things you describe.
We are a nation of selfish, narcissists that have no concept of consistent long lasting care based communities.
What little care we give each other is mediated through transactions or cult based social alignment.
Any nation made up of human beings is going to be flawed. The way forward is via incremental change and compromise. Forcing societal change does not, and never has, worked.
The only thing that consistently “works” is the collective scientific process of hypothesis testing
Everything else is fantasy coping mechanisms to maintain in/out group distance so that people feel temporal “safety”
US Plans for China Blockade Continue Taking Shape
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xqi_cPYiT9c
>rule of law, loving our neighbors (regardless of legal status)
>The situation we find ourselves in is that the American of today does not represent us well.
The system can't represent a contradictory set of ideals.
I'm skeptical things would have lasted this long if the "US never really believed in its own ideal or took their own laws seriously". I think you're letting your cynicism for this moment run away with you.
American involvement in the Nuremberg trials set the stage for the modern era of international law. It began with the United States, along with the allied nations, constructing a post-facto legal definition of crime against humanity that somehow included the Holocaust but excluded both the American campaign in Japan and various Russian war crimes on the Western Front. It’s not cynicism to point out the clear hypocrisy.
Not to mention Jim Crow was still in full effect in the US at the time, but somehow wasn't deemed "Crime against humanity". The winners truly do control the history.
Was Jim Crow a federally organized policy bent on extermination? It was state level discrimination that Nazi Germany copied in 1933-1938 to deal with their “Jewish problem”. By 1939 you had formal government-enforced ghettos with forced labor (no equivalent in America at the time) and by 1941 you had mass extinction.
Don’t get me wrong - Jim Crow was horrific. But it was state level after effects of the civil war and failure to establish absolute dominance over the southern states in reconstruction. Cultural problems we fought a civil war over and we’re still dealing with today. But one difference of the goal with slavery and Jim Crow is subjugation not extermination
Subjugation or extermination, if it wasn't for the addition of "as part of a war of aggression" to the "Crimes against Humanity", the US would have been considered as participating in crimes against humanity at the same time they were partcipating in the Nuremberg trials.
It's thanks to the US, that crimes against humanity is only considered when there is an active war of aggression, precisely because Jim Crow was a current thing at that time.
I was unaware that the US did anything similar to the Holocaust in Japan.
As are the Japanese.
I don't think there are many Japanese alive today not aware of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. While it's true they didn't place Japanese in internment cam.. no wait, they did do that. While it's true they didn't straight up execute Japanese folks on the street, they did effectively erase two cities from the world map, how that isn't a "Crime against Humanity", I don't know why we even have the label.
So yeah, the US didn't spend years doing horrible stuff to humans like the Nazis did, the US wasn't exactly an angel in that conflict, by a long shot. But neither was pretty much any nation, I guess it kind comes with the whole "world war" thing.
> they did effectively erase two cities from the world map
They're still there last time I checked. Hiroshima has a population of ~1m. Nagasaki closer to 300k.
> how that isn't a "Crime against Humanity"
An invasion of Japan would have cost an order of magnitude more lives. It was the 4th year of an extremely bitter conflict that Japan started. There were no real good options on the table. Only "shit" and "extremely shit".
> They're still there last time I checked. Hiroshima has a population of ~1m. Nagasaki closer to 300k.
This is an argument by equivocation. There’s still a “World Trade Center” in NYC but it’s not the one that fell in 2001. Nor does saying it’s so restore the dead to life.
> An invasion of Japan would have cost an order of magnitude more lives. It was the 4th year of an extremely bitter conflict that Japan started. There were no real good options on the table. Only "shit" and "extremely shit".
This is a legal defense strategy that was never heard before an international tribunal because, notably, one was never held.
I don’t have the energy to skim through the Nuremberg transcripts right now, but I also believe “it was the best of bad options” was a legal defense attempted there, with mixed results.
EDIT: I’m being rate limited, so I can’t answer any more questions today. But suffice it to say that in Truman’s place I would have extended the relative protection that Kyoto received to every large Japanese city and contained the air force to bombing primarily military and industrial targets, with the understanding that precision bombing was not as advanced in 1940s as it is today.
Here is a more in depth analysis of options other than nuclear bombardment (though it only discusses nukes, which is not the primary locus of my criticism). https://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/2015/08/03/were-there-altern...
Also I did not say they were “erased from the map,” that was a different commenter.
> in Truman’s place I would have extended the relative protection that Kyoto received to every large Japanese city and contained the air force to bombing primarily military and industrial targets
Japan had dispersed industrial production widely by that point, including into workshops in people's homes. The Allies were already doing regular bombing.
Japan outright refused to surrender. They had a faction that tried a coup to prevent the surrender even after the nuclear bombings. Regular bombs would surely not have been enough. Strategic bombing doesn't work.[1]
What's your next idea?
I read the article you posted with alternatives. Delaying the second bomb - good idea, but it still means one was dropped. Allowing the Soviets to invade - it's hard to say having Japan divided for 40-odd years like Germany ended up would've been a better outcome, but idk perhaps.
1. https://acoup.blog/2022/10/21/collections-strategic-airpower...
If you were Harry Truman in April 1945, what would you have done? Honest, direct answer, no hemming and hawing.
I mean, you are the one arguing that they were erased from the map when clearly they were not. And either way, to say that millions of Americans should have died to invade a country that sided with the Nazis and killed bajillions of Chinese and Koreans unjustly is simply incorrect.
The firebombing of Tokyo and civilian residential districts in many other cities was what I had in mind, actually.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Tokyo
100k dead, 1M homeless, mostly civilian.
All out war is hell and pretending like civilians get a pass from the wave of destruction is naive.
However, one main difference people in this thread seem to forget is that America’s civilian kills were about dealing damage to an enemy country within enemy territory. It’s horrific but the main difference was that Germany mass executed and actively tortured civilians within its own territory. America never did that and as horrific and regrettable Japanese internment camps were, and full of racism and prejudice, and failing to even uphold the Constitution and just being abject failures in treating people humanely, comparing them to Nazi concentration camps indicates a complete and utter failure in understanding how different the situation was; America was not trying to actively exterminate Japanese citizens within its borders as a matter of policy.
The closest American came to Nazi Germany was the persecution of black people within its borders but even while Nazi germany was inspired by Jim Crow in terms of how to treat Jews, it’s a failure to recognize that Nazi Germany ran off with the idea when they started setting up death camps. The closest American came to that was lynchings which never reached the scale or official government sanction that concentration camps did.
The closest American could be said to have done that was the Trail of Tears and their treatment of Native Americans; American has always struggled to contain the racist instincts of a significant part of their population but it is not unique in this challenge.
> All out war is hell and pretending like civilians get a pass from the wave of destruction is naive.
Collateral damage is one thing, the deliberate targeting civilians en masse is another. I understand the US Armed Forces and IDF currently justify their excesses by blurring the two concepts together, but they are legally distinct concepts.
>aware of Hiroshima and Nagasaki
Of course this argument never uses the much more horrifying and abysmal firebombing of Tokyo, because it doesn't come from a place of historical knowledge, but rather trite lies.
Hell, the Allies told Japan (literally) "Surrender or face prompt and utter destruction", while Japan knew they were utterly cooked and already lost the war like a year ago, and they simply ignored it. Japan was not totally ignorant of the concept of a nuclear weapon either, as they had competent physicists and a low effort nuclear weapons program.
If you do not want your city turned to ash, do not START a war of aggression on your neighbors and the damn world because of imperial ambitions, and then do not continue such war long after it was clear you had already lost, including instructing and training your citizens to die en masse for the emperor.
The Japanese were actively trying to erase a billion people. Actions have consequences.
There was no end to Imperial Japan without just staggering death of japanese people. It doesn't matter whether that death came from Chinese soldiers or nuclear fire or Russian waves or American Marines.
If you don't want people to kill you, start by not becoming an absurd cartoon villain.
Imperial Japan was the exact horrific Fascism as the Nazis, and anything less than unconditional surrender was unacceptable.
Internment was fucking awful, and I think it's very telling we never interned German Americans even though we knew Germans DID sabotage US industries during WW1 but I guess Germans are too white for the racist Americans who thought Hitler was a cool guy to get uppity about.
At the same quantitative scale, no. But qualitatively, large-scale violence against civilian populations with the stated intent of extermination? Yes.
I don't think it took the web to understand that. Trump just made it more obvious.
> used to be that the US stood out because it took the law seriously
The US looked like it stood out but it has its own internal and external legal problems such as slavery, Native American repressions, the legacy of slavery, anti-Asian policies, coup-ing foreign countries, etc etc etc
We are a country made up of apes, just like all the others. Nothing is perfect, and us constantly fucking it up doesn't mean we didn't care about it, as a nation.
You are conflating morality with legal jurisprudence.
The US obeyed its own (highly immoral) laws on slavery, genocide of Native Americans, etc.
I'll give you the point about promoting coups in foreign countries (couping is actually the verb).
Not sure about that. Internally, maybe it was true at some point, cannot say, but if we look at the US as an international player, when exactly was it ready to sacrifice its own interests for any kind of justice or greater good? And if you are not ready to pay the price, then all this talk of a higher moral ground is just that, an empty talk.
I don't disagree, but I think there was a genuine perception by many people that the US were the good guys. The change is that its not even trying to pretend to be this anymore.
The US has always been led by Thugs. If you think they ever took international or humanitarian law seriously they would not be scared to join the ICC, and you've only been paying attention to propaganda, not what the US has actually been doing since the inception of those laws.
I'm pretty sure no one outside of the US thought of the USA in that way, ever.
> It used to be that the US stood out because it took the law seriously and believed in its ideals to do the right thing
The "The Hague Invasion Act", where the US authorizes itself to invade an ally (the Netherlands) to break war criminal suspects out of prison, was signed in 2002. The US has always been a "rules for thee but not for me" type of place and the digital sanction discussed here fits in a long line of behaviors by the US government. Trump has changed the scale and intensity of it all but the basic direction has always been the same.
The US never ratified any law claiming the ICC has jurisdiction over Americans.
And they basically put it into writing, they're not the only country that would do something if an active duty military officer was arrested.
Here's a map. [1]
[1] https://d3i6fh83elv35t.cloudfront.net/static/2024/05/ICC-Mem...
Well the fact that they made a law to enable this is a sign of at least some belief in the law. These days Trump would just do the invasion regardless of what the law says, and get away with it. Case example: ordering the navy to blow up Venezuela boats.
Good point! From that perspective the comment I replied to does indeed check out.
Remember all the thuggery and whatever we are seeing now was happening back then.
What has changed is we know about it.
> It used to be that the US stood out because it took the law seriously
The US took everyone's gold under the bretton woods system, and then Nixon "temporarily" ended dollar gold convertibility when France asked for it's gold back.
> believed in its ideals to do the right thing
Do the right thing to serve their own interests.
> It used to be that the US stood out because it took the law seriously and believed in its ideals to do the right thing
You're in a bubble.
The ICC somehow managed to create an institution even more useless than the UN. The very concept of an International Criminal Court, operating in some idealistic moral space above war and diplomacy, is completely divorced from the reality of realpolitik and total war. If everyone agreed to arbitrate world matters in the ICC, why even have militaries?
If it's so useless, why bother to sanction it?
A leader is difficult to arrest and prosecute while they are in power. But it does have a political cost for them (both being branded as wanted by the ICC, and how complicated international travel becomes, including your host country burning political capital by not arresting you). But of course the real cost comes if you ever fall from power. The ICC means we don't have to invent laws on the spot like we did in the Nuremberg trials for the Nazis, we can use established laws, courts and processes
> If everyone agreed to arbitrate world matters in the ICC, why even have militaries?
That's… kind of the point? To not have to kill and destroy each other to settle disputes.
Yeah sounds great. But it’s hopelessly naive. As soon as someone disagrees, if they have more real power than the ICC, then its enforcement becomes ineffective. You can’t solve disagreements by agreeing to disagree.
International law is inherently more of a social contract than an actual law. That doesn't make it useless because it does have a real effect on how countries behave, but it does mean that enforcement looks more like getting ostracized than it looks like law enforcement.
Why have municipal laws? Everyone can just carry around an AK-47 and decide what's right and wrong for them
"The ICC somehow managed to create an institution even more useless than the UN."
Yet two of the most powerful thugs: Putin and Netanyahu won't go near an ICC signatory state.
Netanyahu frequently visits various European states. Putin went to Mongolia and back. All of these are signatories.
Frequently is false. Netanyahu only visited one European country after the ICC arrest order - it was Hungary because Orban explicitly managed he wouldn't be arrested.
Also, if look at the exact plane movements of his visits, they specifically avoid the air space of countries that do take the ICC seriously.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_international_prime_mi...
[1] https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/netanyahus-jet-largely-avoid...
Hmm, I remembered various countries declaring Netanyahu was still welcome, and assumed that he was going to visit. I stand corrected, thanks!
Of course that's not true. Any country is capable of it, and any country would do it if it were in their interests. Generalizations generally degrade the conversation.
I hate to break it to you, but plenty of countries would do this.
One country's war criminal is another country's military hero. Same as it ever was.
Chalk up one more to the very long list of why centralizing institutions is a horrible idea because it creates freedom-killing choke points that the flavor-of-the-day hegemon can use as it damn pleases.
In a decentralized world, the US could huff and puff as much as they please, no one would give two fucks.
But when the US have an actual say in every cent that moves from account A to account B in every country that still harbors the illusion of sovereignty ... well your sovereignty does not actually exist.
This is infuriating. The EU should block US sanctions violating EU interests. I'm also definitely moving my personal stuff out of US and into EU, starting with Gmail.
Exactly! Same here. But man it's going to be a painful move, so much is coupled to that. I already have a GrapheneOS phone, which ironically has to be a Pixel to run it.
Almost every bank in FATF white and gray list countries use the dollar in some way, so although your actions will help, in the end if you're sanctioned and you depend on traditional finance systems you are fucked.
There is a guy on here, weev (username rabite) who was soft sanctioned by the US and can't use banks that transact in the dollar. Last I read of his comments, he was in Ukraine or Transnistria, surviving off of crypto and direct rents from crypto purchased real estate.
all of the above is true, but just to be clear about who we're discussing, weev is a genuine neo-nazi
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weev#Alt-right_affiliations
Sure, but clearly that is not a requirement to be sanctioned nowadays, it just shows how f*d you are when you DO get sanctioned, and the bar for that is lowering by the day it seems.
not arguing with the primary issue at hand, I just don't think we should be using a neo-nazi as the example
The defense of the rights of alleged neo-nazis are a big reason why we have free-er speech in America. The ACLU defended them (see skokie nazis) and helped ensure more free speech in public forums. Dismissing the rights of alleged nazis is how rights get destroyed for everyone, although now in USA we use it for say allegedly "illegal" aliens or people that look foreign.
I assert, they are a perfect example.
He is nasty, but the problem is that the US can do it to anyone they please - as this case shows.
They have previously sanctioned other people within the ICC - the prosecutor and deputy prosecutor.
"It is a fair summary of history to say that the safeguards of liberty have frequently been forged in controversies involving not-very nice people."
weev is not some dude with "not-nice" views. He's a sociopath who, among other things, threatened Kathy Sierra with rape and murder and published her address to his online fans to do the same. He would put her address on Craigslist and claim she was a sex worker.
He definitely deserves what he got.
Weev might be a real neo-nazi, but to be clear, right now an entire country (Ukraine) has also been claimed of being neo-nazis and life-altering state action taken against them without some due process to determine they are. Weev hasn't been convicted of anything serious (nor I think anything at all) that has stuck.
I'm not editorializing here. here's one of many examples:
"Please, Donald Trump, kill the Jews, down to the last woman and child. Leave nothing left of the Jewish menace..."
re: ukraine, I'm not sure how that's remotely relevant here and frankly I think you're doing ukrainians a profound disservice by comparing the two
if you look at my background, you'll see I understand this better than most
Are you unaware that the exact same justification was used to attack the Ukrainian people? Your position here is weev is an actual neo-nazi while the Ukrainian people are not. I concede you are likely correct, and it is frankly obvious I'm not making the case they are compared as both being neo-nazis. It is still relevant because the failure mode is still paralleled, an accusation of neo-nazi and then serious state action taken without objective due process to ensure it is true.
By dismissing and frankly belittling my statement, you are falling for the same trap that justified so many dead Ukrainians.
The difference is, when Russia and dumb US citizens say "Ukraine is a Nazis state" 1) they are outright lying and 2) Russians do not think of "Nazis" as meaning the same as what the rest of the world understands. Russians do not hate the Nazis for being genociding freaks, they hate them for being backstabbers.
Weev meanwhile is just a fucking Nazi. This exact thread is about a person who is not a Nazi facing persecution, and yet you go out of your way to use a literal and explicit Nazi as your example.
In fact, nearly every time I see people make this kind of "Oh it could happen to you, it happened to <X>" they seem to pick people who are damn Nazis.
Gee, I wonder why those are the cases they know about?
Weev absolutely deserved to be unbanked, and he put himself in that position. He's not some freedom fighter.
Eh it’s not like the EU is some moral paragon either. Trade one overlord for another. I’ll stick with the overlord that’s most convenient.
There are advantages to having your stuff within your own country's jurisdiction. Only one legal system, and one you already live with, controls this stuff. its easier to go to court. Citizens have more rights than non-citizens in most places.
Let us remember what this is about:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VFUkfmnCR7U
the scale of destruction in Gaza is horrendous: Its dense cities reduced to rubble, as though after a nuclear strike. The death toll is not yet known. the lower bound - the number of bodies counted by the ministry of health - is at around 69,000, while the Lancet estimated over 186,000 (and that was over a year ago), or nearly 7.9% of the entire population of the Gaza strip. Around 90% of the deaths are civilians (though estimates vary on that point as well).
The US has been participating in this operation, with funding, provisions of services, equipment and most of the weapons platforms, armament and ordnance, diplomatic backing, and even military presence of aircraft carriers and other forces. US tech companies have sold Israel cloud services and various computing solutions; US military, auto and other industries are in on the action as well.
Now we see the US and some of its corporations flexing the imperial muscle to try and deter international institutions for holding Israel accountable.
The ICC has tried several political leaders before, and even convicted and jailed some, but - they were not important enough to US' strategic interests (or if you like, the interests of the donors and backers of the political elite), so the US did not have any such qualms.
Having said all this - it is interesting to note the article does not mention the judge's accounts with Google or Microsoft, e.g. for email or office app services. I wonder if he has any, and whether those have been excepted or whether it's a different story.
It's worth noting that the Gaza Health Ministry is a government agency and the de-facto government of Gaza is Hamas, and therefore the health ministry _is_ Hamas. Casualty numbers released by the ministry have already been statistically dubious, and seeing that Hamas would only benefit from inflating these numbers, it is likely they are not accurate numbers.
https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/how-gaza-he...
It's absolutely not worth noting that because it simply isn't true.
If anything, the MoH numbers are lower than the actual death toll. Even the IDF said internally the numbers were right and their own statistics state that 83% of casualties in Gaza have been civilians.
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...
https://www.theguardian.com/world/ng-interactive/2025/aug/21...
https://www.vice.com/en/article/israeli-intelligence-health-...
Additionally, it's crucial to recognize how Hamas's health ministry numbers never distinguish between combatant and civilian deaths
And The Lancet?
Why is the president of the United States protecting a blood soaked war criminal? It’s weird. I mean what even does he get in return for this extraordinary service for someone so undeserving? I can’t even see how it’s valuable for him. Can someone explain it?
My understanding is that Christian extremists, who are voting for Trump, have some belief that some territories needs to be occupied by Jews so that something happens (I don't remember what, but I guess something good to them), so they are happy with the genocide and Trump is happy to collaborate with Israeli government to make his electors happy.
Yeah, some Christian evangelicals want Jewish people to go to Israel, build the new temple, and then get wiped out in the apocalypse.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/oct/30/us-evangelical...
> One main strand of evangelical theology holds that the return of Jews to the region starts the clock ticking on a seven-year armageddon, after which Jesus Christ will return.
> Hagee, despite having a long history of antisemitism – he has suggested Jews brought persecution upon themselves by upsetting God and called Hitler a “half-breed Jew” – founded Christians United for Israel in 2006.
They think that Jews must be in Israel to enable the return of Jesus and eventually the rapture. I'd love a rapture. Think of the improvement to traffic!
Zionist Jews wield a lot of political power in the US. It’s difficult/impossible to get elected at the federal level if you don’t support Israel.
Supporting Israel is valuable to Trump because many of his donors are these Zionist Jews.
Because that president is also soaked in some of that blood. Just in terms of ordnance alone - Israel would have run out of bombs to drop on Gaza a long time ago in the US were not supplying it with them.
On the personal/political level - Trump's largest political backers in the 2024 campaign have been: Elon Musk, Timothy Mellon, and Miriam Adelson. Musk is an avowed Zionist, Mellon I don't know about, but it is Adelson's $108 Million that come attached with the string of staunch support for Israel and its policies of death destruction and oppression.
Ultimately this sources back to Europe being dependent on the US for defense.
How is is defence relevant in this article? This is abusing of the private sector monopoly of alot of internet infrastructure. Nothing of this is military in nature.
If Europe weren't militarily dependent they'd be less subservient on this and other positions.
As the US becomes less ideologically predisposed to defend Europe, expect the US to take more advantage of the dependency, as the threat to walk away will become more real.
Why does the EU need the US military? China and Ukraine mostly?
The EU's nuclear deterrent is weak. Is France committed to defend the rest of Europe with its nukes? And the UK (while a NATO member) is not a member of the EU anymore.
Don't confuse the "EU" with "Europe". One is a trade and law union, the other is a continent of countries. Europe isn't a unanimous entity either, its a big pile of countries with independent politics.
The nuclear deterrent is just as strong as it needs to be. If nuke strikes come, we're all dead regardless if we have 5 or 500 bombs to drop on Moscow.
And again, this is irrelevant to abusive authority on technology. If "Europe" wasn't "dependent on US defence" would they send a destroyer fleet to the US cost as a retaliation?
The US is using its tech companies to pressure foreign democratic allied countries over political issues. This is undermining the free trade that allowed these companies to exist in the fireplace.
Continued moves in this direction will just push nationalistic ideas in European nations to cut out US influence entirely.
Same is happening to Francesca Albanese, UN rapporteur on Palestinian Territories, Italian citizen.
The US is pure mafia.
> Same is happening to Francesca Albanese
And nothing of value was lost.
This reminds me of the old gangster trick of having their "ho hold the strap" because they're a prohibited person who can't have guns.
It doesn't stop him, merely means anything requiring an actual identity is likely done by proxy of his wife/mistress/cousin.
It doesn't stop him from what? Living his private life? As the article explains, being digitally cut off from the US is pretty inconvenient in daily life.
I'm going to take the kindest interpretation and deduce you've read basically nothing of what I've said beyond those four words.