this post was submitted on 29 Aug 2023
147 points (100.0% liked)
the_dunk_tank
15915 readers
1 users here now
It's the dunk tank.
This is where you come to post big-brained hot takes by chuds, libs, or even fellow leftists, and tear them to itty-bitty pieces with precision dunkstrikes.
Rule 1: All posts must include links to the subject matter, and no identifying information should be redacted.
Rule 2: If your source is a reactionary website, please use archive.is instead of linking directly.
Rule 3: No sectarianism.
Rule 4: TERF/SWERFs Not Welcome
Rule 5: No ableism of any kind (that includes stuff like libt*rd)
Rule 6: Do not post fellow hexbears.
Rule 7: Do not individually target other instances' admins or moderators.
Rule 8: The subject of a post cannot be low hanging fruit, that is comments/posts made by a private person that have low amount of upvotes/likes/views. Comments/Posts made on other instances that are accessible from hexbear are an exception to this.
Posts that do not meet this requirement can be posted to [email protected]
Rule 9: if you post ironic rage bait im going to make a personal visit to your house to make sure you never make this mistake again
founded 4 years ago
MODERATORS
I am not disputing that, Trump resumed arming the Azov during his presidency. His hands are far from clean. The war in Ukraine was going to happen one way or another.
However, it is also true that Zelensky’s aggressive rhetoric came after his meeting with the newly elected Biden in early 2021, which set off the alarm for the Russians to begin with - also why you saw Russia scrambling for diplomatic talks all of 2021 that culminated in the failed US-Russia Summit in June 2021.
Zelensky was elected as the peace president to bridge the divide between Russia and Ukraine. We don’t know what Biden said to him, but it is clear that the Biden administration took on a much more aggressive stance re: Ukraine compared to Trump’s.
And I am not disputing that Trump is hawkish. I am saying that Biden is much more willing to escalate against near-peer nuclear-armed powers like Russia and China.
I can see Biden taking a different stance in Ukraine, but I can also see his meeting with Zelensky as being the natural development of the situation. I definitely see Biden's rhetoric towards China as a continuation of Trump's, which was a lot more hostile than Obama's (although that progression I'm guessing was also determined largely by the evolving situation/long-term interests in the area).
That’s my point. Our criticism of Biden is not that he is better or worse than Trump, it is that he had crossed a line and set a precedent that will define the US foreign policy forward.
If before US presidents were still more averse to provoking nuclear armed states and performing economic terrorism on their own allies, now all bets are off. Without punishment, every future presidential candidate is going to be defined by how ghoulish they can get. This process is irreversible.
That’s why Biden’s tech sanction is so much more worse than Trump’s trade wars, because it has no proportional responses. To understand how China views Biden’s tech sanctions, you need to read the Chinese sci fi novel Three Body Problem. This is how many people in China are looking at it.
With Trump’s petty trade wars, reconciliation was still possible. There is no more reconciliation between the two powers after the tech sanction, which only drives the world closer to the brink of a nuclear war. This is what is at stake here.
Provoking nuclear powers was standard operating procedure for the U.S. until detente. After a short break it again became central U.S. policy with our funding of anti-Soviet terrorists in Afghanistan. In the 90s we openly meddled in Soviet/Russian internal politics and poked the Taiwan bear.
This is bad, but hardly new.
Could you elaborate a little? I read the plot summary on Wikipedia and am not really getting the connection, but maybe it’s something you can only understand from actually reading.