Some current discussions about the war in Gaza/Israel and Ukraine/Russia draw on the fundamental context of today's world order, which is still largely influenced by WW 2 sometimes even WW 1, reasons which led to war, the warring parties, war guilt, post-war order, founding of the United Nations (UN), UN's Security Council, its five veto powers US, UK, FR, SU (RU), CH. This also includes comparative considerations of today's conflicts with conflicts back then that led to WW 2 in the 1930s.

The purpose of this thread is to avoid such a drift in the discussion from topic Ukraine resp. Gaza and to relocate this fringe discussion here.

First thought is the tyranny of drawing lines across the map divvying up trade and resources whilst ignoring the natural lines of groups of like minded people...


So how to untangle the politics?

Keep searchin',
Martin

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"bluestar" wrote in the "... stop pandering Israels government" thread:

Perpetrators?
Here I do not agree with you, but also that I do not want to derail the discussion either.

I refered to the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact and its secret protocol where Nazi Germany and USSR divided Europe into two spheres of influence and agreed on a common approach. After Germany started the war against Poland, USSR followed few months later, occupied eastern parts of Poland, as well as the Baltic states, Moldovan district of Romania, ... , murdered or deported the elites of the occupied states (e.g. massacre of Katyn), and oppressed these states like a colonial Empire until 1989...91. Not to forget USSR's Winter War against Finland in 1939/40.

Here the Holocaust killed a million of Jews when still living at different places, except what happened was only suspected by a few.

I insist on correct numbers: Yad Vashem in Jerusalem has over four million victims on file, whose names are known and verified. In total, various sources estimate that 5.6 to 6.3 million were murdered, only Jewish victims. Many further injured, surviving and displaced people would still have to be counted as: affected by Holocaust.

All except one death camp was lying on now territory which now should be Russia, except rather Poland instead.

Death camps spread throughout German occupied territory of former Polish Republic (Auschwitz-Birkenau, Chelmno, Treblinka, Sobibor, Majdanek, Belzec), from 1942 on also in occupied Belarus/USSR (Bronnaja Gora, Maly Trostinez).

Of course I know it was the Soviet Union that time, and therefore that Germany and Soviet became enemies for only different Ideologies.

Germany and USSR became enemies long before because Russian Empire was one of the Entente powers of WW1 confronting Central powers. After October Revolution in Russian Empire, Bolsheviks came to power whose communist ideology made it instantly an (then weak) enemy of German Empire, later German Republic (Weimar rep.). Nazi Germany cooperated with and deceived USSR until German invasion in 1941.

Please do not confuse any Communism for only Nazism taking place for occupying, because it was Soviet that was attacked.

That's the eternal story USSR's propaganda tells since 1945 and which Putin's propaganda tells today. It's the primary source for understanding history in Russia, shown in small 'war museums' (think of shabby baracks) in each impoverished russian town. It's the source of self-image, of Russian patriotism, of its uniqueness and superiority. They don't have anything else. USSR agreed and used the German aggression in 1939 to attack, conquer and annex several states (named above). The German attack on USSR only occured in 1941 (intended by Hitler long before). For Russia, WW2 lasted from 1941-1945, it started NOT in 1939. You could read it on every war monument, every memorial stone in USSR, now in Russia. USSR's responsibility and guilt during WW2 has always been denied.

First thought is the tyranny of drawing lines across the map divvying up trade and resources whilst ignoring the natural lines of groups of like minded people...

The true tyranny is drawing lines across maps in order to then drive the population out of their ancestral lands. There has always been a redrawing of borders on the map after peace treaties. In the past they were used to redistribute land (wealth). Any land was only valuable with the population in villages and towns, farmers, craftsmen, manufacturers, functioning businesses paying taxes. Displacing this population is a more recent phenomenon of the 20th century, when the nation-state (one country, one people) became the political goal.

So how to untangle the politics?

It appears to be an inextricable knot.

There were concentration camps inside Germany, Bergen-Belsen pops up in my family's history, as my uncle was in the unit that entered the camp in April 1945.
There are about 37,000 Jews buried there, along with about 12,000, made up of, political prisoners, Gypsies, criminals, Jehovah's Witnesses, and gay men.

Alexander the Great used 'ethnic cleansing' after the Battle of Thebes to punish them for their rebellion.

But yes, it is mainly a more modern problem.

There were concentration camps inside Germany, Bergen-Belsen pops up in my family's history, as my uncle was in the unit that entered the camp in April 1945.
There are about 37,000 Jews buried there, along with about 12,000, made up of, political prisoners, Gypsies, criminals, Jehovah's Witnesses, and gay men.

bluestar wrote 'death camps'. I only listed them. Of course there are many more concentration camps everywhere in Germany, Austria and German occupied parts of Europe. I visited Bergen-Belsen camp in 1998, a memorial today, during my military service. A large military training area is nearby. It was an organized visit by the entire company. The purpose of the camps was to collect people in a few well-connected places (roads, railways) and to intern them there. Many communists, you named others, opponents of Nazis were persecuted there. Many stayed there for years. Jews were quickly transferred east to the extermination camps in German-occupied Poland as soon as they started operating. You are right, even in the other camps in Germany, Austria, former Czechoslovakia, [long list] thousands were murdered during the years, simply starved, or died of simple infectious diseases, also thousands of Jews in transit. The brutality in the camps led to further murders as a daily normality. But Industrial mass murder, leading to millions death, took place in the death resp. extermination camps only.

My intention here is to comment on historical references in the current discussions on wars in Ukraine and Israel, if they seem imprecise or incorrect. Please don't feel offended, I don't intend to give a historical presentation.

bluestar wrote in the 'stop pandering Israeli government' thread:

I do not completely agree with you on Russia, ML1, because I think Putin has rational senses left.

The sad thing is that he lost senses on Ukraine, and here it becomes completely wrong.

It depends on the definition of 'rational senses'. He, Russia is in a dead end. A rational decision would be to stop the war, negotiate peace, as he can't achieve the goals this war was started for. But peace negotiations would force Russia to give up all occupied territories. His rational senses tell him that. So he continues the war. Many say, giving up Donbas and Crimea would end Putin's rule. It's even impossible for any of his cronies to replace him then. Then todays Russian Empire is questioned as a whole; its current internal political structure and power relations. We from the outside can only guess, if this means 1917 or 1991. Anyway, Putin's 2023 is Hitler's 1944. A dead end with no way back.

The first Russian-Chechen war was started by Russia's president Boris Yeltsin when the Chechen autonomous republic separated as the Republic of Ichkeria from Russia. Its first president Dzhokhar Dudayev was a thoughtful, modest, educated man, a former Soviet Air Force General. During Russia's brutal war of annihilation he gave a long TV interview (English subtitles). At that time, in 1995, he already understood the essence of Ruscism, Russia's brutal striving for power, for expansion, for conquest and oppression of all neighboring peoples. He ended his talk with:

The path to a forced union of all Slavic peoples under Russian rule will never work because its main component, the Ukrainians, would never accept their russification and ruscism.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgy_Zhukov

If having the name correct, this was an outstanding man who knew what freedom is, and here he liberated northern Europe.

Unfortunately, I have to disagree. Zhukov was a brutal, ruthless military leader, like most others. No Soviet officer of WW2 ever knew what freedom meant. How should they? They were immature tools of their Tsar, subject to his will. An act displeasing the Tsar, a careless word and they command a military base in Siberia. Before WW2 Stalin had hundreds of his generals arrested, tortured to confess treason, a dozen liquidated, others thrown into gulags. Freedom and Soviet officer is the maximum contrast. Zhukov, like the other Soviet generals, send thousands of his subordinates into idiotic meat waves, badly guided artillery killed many of them in order to achieve a tactical objective a day earlier, because the plan said so. He burned thousands to gain a small advantage over his fellow generals on the neighboring front sectors.

I contrast this with a pointed statement by General George S. Patton:
[...] the Russian have no regard for human life and is an all out son of b****, barbarian, and chronic drunk.

Northern Europe, that is Norway and Denmark weren't 'liberated'. German Wehrmacht surrendered to British forces only days before or after the war, except on Danish Bornholm Island, conquered and occupied by USSR.

... Anyway, Putin's 2023 is Hitler's 1944. A dead end with no way back...

The deadly play of the "Greek Tragedy" plays on.

In both cases, are those doomed leaders clinging on in the hope that 'something' 'different' will give them their escape?...

Were there, are there, any positive alternatives?


Stay safe folks!
Martin

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as he can't achieve the goals this war was started for

Have you considered the possibility that what he stated as the goals are not in fact the actual goals?

Democracies are always the winner for not anything wrong.

as he can't achieve the goals this war was started for

Have you considered the possibility that what he stated as the goals are not in fact the actual goals?

Hmmm, isn't it the same goals always, as in Germany 1920s/30s, in Argentina 1970s, in Russia today?

Democracy fails somewhere, gets replaced by autocratic leaders who don't have the wisdom of former kings and princes, who did not learn from their ancestors to use their absolute power carefully and thoughtfully, who want to impose their superior ideas to battle the deficits of the former rule. After years people expect that the dictator will offer them a better life than under former failed rule. At some point people realize that this is a dead end and challenge the leader. He spends more money to maintain overcome state structures because he lacks the ability and trust to implement fundamental reforms, that is gradually distribute his power. At some point he will resort to propaganda and repression, later to resources in neighboring countries; maybe peoples wars in the interior, eventually aggression will become the sole war goal because it distracts people from the decline at home.

Russia's path is somewhere in there, I would assume. One can probably theorize that revolutions that fail to establish a balance of power will themselves fail again, becoming autocratic regimes and, if large enough, deteriorate into totalitarian ones. Nazi Germany, USSR, Russia, ... Iran? (I renounce China, there's still hope). No need for war goals. They are invented, shouted loudly by propagandists, hammered into the minds of the people, and then eternal war starts (resp. until total defeat or collapse). I have my copy of '1984' in the bookshelf.

... Anyway, Putin's 2023 is Hitler's 1944. A dead end with no way back...

Were there, are there, any positive alternatives?

It's to late for positive alternatives in 1944, maybe a Stauffenberg still hides near Putin waiting for the right moment to end his reign. But Putin is much more conscious of such fate than Hitler was.

A positive alternative might have been possible through free, liberal, truthful media, press, television from abroad influencing the majority of Russians. This worked excellently in the Cold War behind the Iron Curtain in Central and Eastern Europe, and I experienced it myself growing up in the East. But an alternative that begins in Putin's 1925, in 1944 it is too late for that. The west, the winner of Cold War thought that the 'end of history' will automaticely transform societies in the East. The West didn't pushed for it, in order to not insult the defeated 'enemy' which he saw prematurely as a future partner.

In the 1990s, the comitees of Russian soldier mothers were powerful opponents of the Kremlin. But Putin learned from that, and suppressed such associations.

Hmm, I don't know any realistic positive alternative today.

... Hmm, I don't know any realistic positive alternative today.

Me neither.

All my workable ideas involve replacing the deadly leaders/dictators before we can enjoy a cooperatively more healthy direction: Regime Change.

Followed up swiftly with some very good education and good media to undo the propaganda rabid hate that has circulated for too long.


Or...

Can communication, trade, and tourism still work to ensure peace?


Keep searchin'...
Martin

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See new freedom: Mageia Linux
Take a look for yourself: Linux Format
The Future is what We all make IT (GPLv3)