The real problem lbis face isn’t Russia though but the collapsing economy in Europe which is getting worse by the day. My prediction is that we’ll start seeing more and more nationalist governments come to power, and they will start normalizing relations with Russia on case by case basis. If EU stands in the way of that, I think there’s a high likelihood countries will exit in favor of joining BRICS.

The act of Trump calling Putin directly is the important event here. Regardless of how this plays out going forward, Europeans have been told in plain terms that their interests will not be represented in the negotiations. The whole nature of the relationship between US and Europe will be very different going forward.

There are two ways this can play out now. Either Trump agrees to Russian terms, which seems to be the way things are currently headed, or he just pulls funding from the project and walks away. Both scenarios mean that the war is going to be over quickly and on Russian terms.

I strongly suspect it will be the former because I think that the US will want to restore relations with Russia in an attempt to arrest the alternate economic bloc forming around BRICS from gaining further momentum. I expect that Trump will try to bring Russia back into the SWIFT system and convince them to trade in dollars. I expect that Russia won’t shut the door on that entirely. Trump is also frantically trying to improve relations with India getting them to buy F35s, and demanding that the US become their main energy supplier. It seems like Trump admin sees BRICS as the biggest threat, which is a correct view from US perspective incidentally.

The meltdowns are absolutely incredible to watch, and it’s just the start. Their whole world is collapsing in front of their eyes.

I found the whole thing kind of hilarious to be honest because it’s just so utterly detached from reality. Seems like they still don’t understand that it’s Europe that will be forced to make concessions to both US and Russia. They still labour under the delusion that the US is their ally and will somehow consider their interests in the end.

🤣

Europe’s decades-long gamble on American patronage has finally come due, and the bill is a staggering $3.1 trillion. While the US and Russia make a backroom deal, Europe is left holding the check, scrambling to fund a war it can’t win and a peace it didn’t negotiate. European elites now face the humiliating reality of their miscalculation of relying on the US for security.

Meanwhile, Trump wields Europe’s dependence on NATO as leverage to strong-arm trade concessions, proving once again that being America’s ally is a sucker’s bet. The transatlantic partnership was always just a protection racket and Europe just got the invoice. Kissinger’s warning that it’s dangerous to be America’s enemy, but fatal to be its friend echoes louder than ever. Europe, having bet its future on Uncle Sam’s hollow promises, is now reaping the rewards of its own naivety. It finds itself bankrupt, divided, and utterly expendable.

Nobody with a functioning brain, but turns out that excludes all of the EU political class.

I can’t imagine that Saudis would let anything happen to Putin. And realistically speaking, an attack on Putin would basically be WW3, so I don’t see that happening.

oh yeah misread that

What the whole thing illustrated to me was just how much latent racism there is in the west just waiting to be tapped. People here will readily believe the most insane shit about China or DPRK because they’re already predisposed to see people there as subhuman savages.

Same, and it does seem like retrenchment might be the policy based on what’s been happening in the past month.

Also, even if Trump was removed then the direction of travel wouldn’t change as we clearly saw under Biden. Nor is Trump himself unique, a different opportunist would immediately come along and pick up exactly where he left off. Understanding that Trump is a result of the underlying problems as opposed to being a unique source of them is what liberals are incapable of doing.

exactly, living in a fantasy world is a prerequisite for being a liberal

I think that the liberal failure to engage in material analysis stems from their allegiance to idealist philosophy, which argues that ideas, values, and perceptions, rather than material conditions, are the primary drivers of reality. Liberals see abstract concepts such as freedom and democracy as having primacy over tangible systems like production, resource distribution, or class relations. Idealism leads to a delusion that societal change can be willed into existence through moral rhetoric or policy symbolism.

Hence why liberal solutions often collapse under material constraints. For example, advocating for green energy transition without addressing the global supply chains for rare-earth minerals or the fossil fuel dependence of industrial agriculture is idealism in action. Similarly, calls for universal healthcare in the US generally ignore the profit-driven structure of the pharmaceutical and insurance industries. Liberals focus on the symptoms while ignoring the underlying problem of capitalist commodification of health. This sort of performative and individualistic analysis is pervasive in the west.

Idealism’s fatal flaw lies in its detachment from the base-superstructure dialectic. Liberals refuse to accept the truth that the material conditions shape our ideas, and not the reverse. They invert this relationship, fixating on cultural narratives while dismissing the infrastructure of power. The result is a politics of aspirational gestures such as diversity quotas, carbon offsets, and so on, that leave material hierarchies intact.

please get yourself checked for brain worms asap

we’ll see if the abuse from US will be enough for EU to overcome their racism

thanks that’s very useful context

@PolandIsAStateOfMind@lemmygrad.ml how significant is this?

Resisting economic integration with the east is a losing bet in the long run. Back when the US was the dominant global economy, this situation could work. Today, BRICS is already a bigger bloc and the disparity will only grow. Countries that choose to ignore this will only see their situation get worse relative to those that take advantage of it.

I agree with all that, although worth noting that the resources the state diverts to the military industry come at the expense of funding socially useful things. So, the power to do that has limits in practice as it affects the standard of living. In my opinion, the elephant in the room is that the only country that could realistically invade Germany would be Russia, and there’s no possibility for Germany to catch up with Russia militarily. So, the focus should obviously be on diplomacy instead of ramping up the military.