They really do think Russia just randomly starts military conflicts.
Yes, they do. Unfortunately, most people I know believe in "one man history" as in one person can make all the decisions for something happening. The logical followup to this mindset is "Putin is personally to blame for everything happening in Ukraine and the war started literally because he is plainly evil"
My personal favourite lib take is that every death in the Syrian civil war was the personal responsibility of Assad. He alone caused the conflict because he was just such a bad dude, and now that he is gone everything will be good. Of course, this lib has not mentioned Syria once since Assad's removal from power, and stopped caring entirely after "bad dictator guy gone" disappeared from the head lines.
Putin is unhinged for starting a war in Ukraine for no reason
So he will invade Europe because he has no reason to do so
After nearly 4 years of open war
With an army that is suffering 2 million losses per day and is commanded by incompetent buffoons
-Actual positions held by people
For Libs, Peace=War, thats why they support all current wars but not past ones
What sort of conversation is this? The PRC for its entire existence has held that Taiwan is rightfully part of China, as Taiwan itself said for a long time and still upholds in its own constitution. They have also always said that they would use military force if necessary, but that they didn't expect military force to be necessary and are willing to wait many decades to reintegrate Taiwan without military force, which is clearly what they've been pursuing all this time (while still being prepared for the military option). I think the phrasing of "Xi says he wants to rule Taiwan" is absurd, but what even is the rest of this?
Edit: I think it'll be interesting to see if Taiwan demonstrates caving to a proto form of "socialist encirclement" once the US is beaten back
Can you please drop the quote and source it? Where Xi explicitly says that Taiwan will be annexed by military force
Xi never said Taiwan "will" be annexed by military force, and has expressed a lot of confidence in the prospect of resolving everything peacefully, just as the PRC has said for several decades now. Xi has merely said that military force will be used if necessary, which would evidently require circumstances that are not currently the case.
Obviously his comments are a little chopped up, but I don't think it's fundamentally inaccurate, it just looks scary to liberals because China Bad and they don't understand the situation at all. See the part about the "historical trend to peaceful reunification". He supports the traditional position of waiting as long as it takes if that can achieve their goal.
Edit: There are a lot of things to criticize about China and Xi and so on, and I think this site under-emphasizes that, but I feel compelled to mention that his stance here is completely the right one to take imo.
Edit: I think it'll be interesting to see if Taiwan demonstrates caving to a proto form of "socialist encirclement" once the US is beaten back
If it works on Taiwan it'll work internationally. Just have to achieve the same prerequisite conditions, it's a good testbed.
I suspect that Taiwan can last just as long as Cuba has lasted though. The best thing you could do is find a way to get their bourgeoisie on-board with unifying it.
I think it is reasonable to suspect that, but I disagree. I think Cuba has only managed to hold out for so long because the people really believe in the project of socialism on a practical level and don't want to return to a Batista-style state, which has only been reinforced by the history of shock therapy. The people of Taiwan are not in the same position, and the ruling class cannot simply dictate what people think in a way that forever prevents them from seeing what else is possible, especially as the capitalist system there decays and more and more people stop believing in the possibility of liberal social mobility.
It's totally possible that China will give Taiwan's bourgeoisie an undeniably better offer before it comes to that, though. I hope not, because I don't think it would exactly be beneficial to socialism as a movement, but it's honestly much more likely.
and the ruling class cannot simply dictate what people think in a way that forever prevents them from seeing what else is possible,
They can and will do so until revolution forces their hand, unless the incentives of transitioning outweigh the incentives of maintaining.
I think you can probably bargain capitalists to transition to socialism and give up their power, in much the same way royals gave up power without giving up their position/wealth. The deal they would be making is essentially to be wealthy capitalists, but to be the last ones. Prey upon them not giving a shit about the next generation and only caring about themselves and their immediate gains. Prey upon the next-quarter mindset of capitalism. This of course completely hinges upon putting a deal on the table that is better than the deal of keeping or maintaining capitalism though, so it has to be very large and the socialist side has to be very very powerful to pull it off.
They can and will do so until revolution forces their hand,
This is absolutely false, and there could be no revolution if it was true. They can exert a great deal of influence, but what people think is not merely theirs to dictate. What people think is basically a product of their material conditions, and a capitalist state is responsible for organizing their material conditions, so that's a huge impact, but the capitalist state has two limitations: a) It is not omnipotent, it is not using magic, it is constrained by its own circumstances, resources, and the laws of nature, and b) in order to pursue capitalism, there is a limit to what it can pursue even within what is mechanically possible.
Because of this, the state's ability to dictate ideology is always, at best, imperfect, and it will get weaker and weaker as capitalism decays, causing the options available to the state that maintain the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie to continuously narrow.
I agree that capitalists can be bought off, that's what I was trying to say before, I just think that kind of measure is a detriment to socialist consciousness and organizing because then that means there is relatively little class-consciousness among the Taiwanese people as they are re-integrated, when China could profoundly benefit from having the integrated population be one that is more radical than the PRC's status-quo. It's very unlikely, but I think the best outcome would be a socialist revolution in Taiwan that is able to negotiate independence from the PRC on the basis of constitutionally opposing Western imperialism and its running dogs (the main geopolitical reason that the PRC is understandably stubborn about this issue to begin with).
Xi said he wants to invade!
Xi actually said he will use military force to maintain the status quo (One China policy) while working towards advancing peaceful unification.
This means invade if you read between the lines!
So close and yet so far away
For posting all the anonymous reactionary bullshit that you can't post anywhere else.
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