Image is of one of Ireland’s only manned navy ships, the Samuel Beckett. Image sourced from this BBC article.
Putler has been HUMILIATED by the Kursk offensive and this proves that Russia’s army is in tatters and unable even to defend its own territory. However, it is simultaneously true that Russia poses an existential threat to countries thousands of miles away, as this recent Politico article demonstrates. Ireland - a country that immediately springs to mind as one surrounded by enemies - is being bullied due to its lack of military.
Despite bearing responsibility for 16 percent of the EU’s territorial waters, and the fact that 75 percent of transatlantic undersea cables pass through or near Irish waters, Ireland is totally defenseless. And I mean completely unable to protect critical infrastructure, or even pretend to secure its own borders. […] Ireland’s “navy” of six patrol vessels is currently operating with one operational ship due to chronic staff shortages. […] Ireland simply has no undersea capabilities. How could it, when it barely spends 0.2 percent of GDP on security and defense? And it has, in effect, abdicated responsibility for protecting the Europe’s northwestern borders.
For all we know, the dreaded sea-people from the Bronze Age Collapse could soon emerge from the North Atlantic.
Unfortunately, things are even worse up in the skies. Ireland has no combat jets, and it’s the only country in Europe that can’t monitor its own airspace due to the lack of primary radar systems. Instead, the country has outsourced its security to Britain in a technically secret agreement between Dublin and London, which effectively cedes control over Irish air space to the Royal Air Force. This must be the luck of the Irish — smile and get someone else to protect you for free.
While this is very silly, rearmament has long been a part of US imperial strategy on an economic level. Desai, discussing the US imperial strategy in the WW2 period:
By 1947 […] the domestic postwar consumer boom was nearing its end. While financing exports became more urgent, the 1946 elections returned a Congress unlikely to approve further loans. Now the Truman Administration concocted the ‘red menace’ to ‘scare the hell out of the country’, enunciated the Truman Doctrine of US support for armed resistance to ‘subjugation’ which launched the cold war, and Congress granted $400 million to prevent left-wing triumphs in Greece and Turkey in 1947.
One reading of history states that the US was so intimidated by the USSR that this forced a policy of massive arms production even outside of official wartime. Why this arms production is not occurring today can be puzzling, and (very reasonably) explained by neoliberals exporting industrial production overseas. However, a different historical reading can explain both the first Cold War, and the ongoing situation in which American weaponry is being almost purposefully given in insufficient numbers to give Ukraine a chance of victory and thus only prolonging their suffering (while generating massive profit for the military-industrial complex):
In this sense the Cold War was not the cause of US imperial policy but its effect. It combined financing exports with fighting combined development by national capitalisms as well as communism. When such ‘totalitarian regimes’ threatened ‘free peoples’, ‘America’s world economic responsibilities’ included aid to countries battling them.
By selling massively expensive weapons to Europe, America could simultaneously guarantee export markets for its industries, trap Europe into reliance on American industries at the expense of their own, and divert European funds away from constructing factories which could compete with American ones. Providing a way to defend against Soviet communism (and now Russian “imperialism”) is merely a happy side-effect, and so the lack of effectiveness of American weaponry is causing no great panic among the military-industrial complex, nor an urgent plan to quintuple artillery shell production or Patriot missile production - the deals for F-35s and such are still there, and they are what matter.
The COTW (Country of the Week) label is designed to spur discussion and debate about a specific country every week in order to help the community gain greater understanding of the domestic situation of often-understudied nations. If you’ve wanted to talk about the country or share your experiences, but have never found a relevant place to do so, now is your chance! However, don’t worry - this is still a general news megathread where you can post about ongoing events from any country.
The Country of the Week is Ireland! Feel free to chime in with books, essays, longform articles, even stories and anecdotes or rants. More detail here.
Please check out the HexAtlas!
The bulletins site is here!
The RSS feed is here.
Last week’s thread is here.
Israel-Palestine Conflict
Sources on the fighting in Palestine against Israel. In general, CW for footage of battles, explosions, dead people, and so on:
UNRWA daily-ish reports on Israel’s destruction and siege of Gaza and the West Bank.
English-language Palestinian Marxist-Leninist twitter account. Alt here.
English-language twitter account that collates news (and has automated posting when the person running it goes to sleep).
Arab-language twitter account with videos and images of fighting.
English-language (with some Arab retweets) Twitter account based in Lebanon. - Telegram is @IbnRiad.
English-language Palestinian Twitter account which reports on news from the Resistance Axis. - Telegram is @EyesOnSouth.
English-language Twitter account in the same group as the previous two. - Telegram here.
English-language PalestineResist telegram channel.
More telegram channels here for those interested.
Various sources that are covering the Ukraine conflict are also covering the one in Palestine, like Rybar.
Russia-Ukraine Conflict
Examples of Ukrainian Nazis and fascists
Examples of racism/euro-centrism during the Russia-Ukraine conflict
Sources:
Defense Politics Asia’s youtube channel and their map. Their youtube channel has substantially diminished in quality but the map is still useful.
Moon of Alabama, which tends to have interesting analysis. Avoid the comment section.
Understanding War and the Saker: reactionary sources that have occasional insights on the war.
Alexander Mercouris, who does daily videos on the conflict. While he is a reactionary and surrounds himself with likeminded people, his daily update videos are relatively brainworm-free and good if you don’t want to follow Russian telegram channels to get news. He also co-hosts The Duran, which is more explicitly conservative, racist, sexist, transphobic, anti-communist, etc when guests are invited on, but is just about tolerable when it’s just the two of them if you want a little more analysis.
On the ground: Patrick Lancaster, an independent and very good journalist reporting in the warzone on the separatists’ side.
Unedited videos of Russian/Ukrainian press conferences and speeches.
Pro-Russian Telegram Channels:
Again, CW for anti-LGBT and racist, sexist, etc speech, as well as combat footage.
https://t.me/aleksandr_skif ~ DPR’s former Defense Minister and Colonel in the DPR’s forces. Russian language.
https://t.me/Slavyangrad ~ A few different pro-Russian people gather frequent content for this channel (~100 posts per day), some socialist, but all socially reactionary. If you can only tolerate using one Russian telegram channel, I would recommend this one.
https://t.me/s/levigodman ~ Does daily update posts.
https://t.me/patricklancasternewstoday ~ Patrick Lancaster’s telegram channel.
https://t.me/gonzowarr ~ A big Russian commentator.
https://t.me/rybar ~ One of, if not the, biggest Russian telegram channels focussing on the war out there. Actually quite balanced, maybe even pessimistic about Russia. Produces interesting and useful maps.
https://t.me/epoddubny ~ Russian language.
https://t.me/boris_rozhin ~ Russian language.
https://t.me/mod_russia_en ~ Russian Ministry of Defense. Does daily, if rather bland updates on the number of Ukrainians killed, etc. The figures appear to be approximately accurate; if you want, reduce all numbers by 25% as a ‘propaganda tax’, if you don’t believe them. Does not cover everything, for obvious reasons, and virtually never details Russian losses.
https://t.me/UkraineHumanRightsAbuses ~ Pro-Russian, documents abuses that Ukraine commits.
Pro-Ukraine Telegram Channels:
Almost every Western media outlet.
https://discord.gg/projectowl ~ Pro-Ukrainian OSINT Discord.
https://t.me/ice_inii ~ Alleged Ukrainian account with a rather cynical take on the entire thing.
So this might end up being cope, but I’m starting to think we are seeing a modern version of the Battle of the Bulge happen in Kursk.
At first, it seems like a major L for Putin as the thinly guarded Russian border is overwhelmed by what looks like another PR stunt by Ukraine. But after a couple of days it becomes obvious that this is actually a major offensive by Ukraine. As Ukraine pours in thousands of troops from the Donbass front into Kursk. We are now getting reports that Ukraine planned to go much further into Kursk than they did and possibly wanted to capture the nuclear plant in Kurchatov to do some kind of nuclear blackmail to force Russia to make major concessions.
This obviously isn’t working as their incursion been halted/severely slowed down. Sure it’s another propaganda W, but they are taking massive casualties, while simultaneously weakening the Donbass front and failing to force the withdrawal of substantial Russian forces from Donbass. Even Ukraine NAFO cheerleaders aren’t happy about this one.
So Ukraine now has to choices: Option A is to double down and pray they can hold out and make some gains and remove some Russian troops from the Donbass. Or option B which is to cut their losses and take the L (Ironically what Hitler did several decades ago during the Battle of Kursk).
Either way is would be some kind of poetic irony if the modern Kursk battle ended up being the nail in the coffin for the Kiev regime just like the 1943 battle of Kursk was described as the “last gasp of Nazi aggression” for Germany.
There is no need for russia to remove troops from the donbas. They have compulsory service troops that are not allowed to be deployed in the SMO that they can use to defend Kusk if the have to.
I’m 80% sure this offensive was a trap set by Russia. They made the border look poorly defended at a point with a juicy target a few Km away. Ukraine looked at the area and convinced itself that it would be worth committing thousands of men and the appropriate equipment and vehicles to make this push. Clearly the area was not as poorly defended as ukraine thought. ukraine has been fighting this war longer than Russia has. They should know better than anyone how much power they need for this sort of operation.
Russia lured them in with the thought of a bazinga tom clancy 007 plan and has now destroyed a significant force of men and machines easier than if they had to hunt them in ukrainian cities where they have defences.
As you said in your first point as well, bringing some of the fighting into Russia allows the Russians to utilize national guards, counter-terrorist units, conscripts and rear guard that would otherwise be doing nothing. Thus the Donbas gets emptied out and the battles there accelerate.
It also sharply increases nationalism in Russia. Very calculated in a cold way if this was intentional, but I’m not convinced it was. Probably just Russia figuring Ukraine wouldn’t be stupid enough to do something as risky as this because they had played that out and seen how it went.
evil genius putin instead of cartoon villain putin
I recall one of my hearts of iron strats that I only do if I’m confident is weaken my lines a bunch (not enough to allow for trivial movement, but will just let a proper offensive through), waiting for them to disperse and then pinch the salient off. You need lots of reserves over your opponent to do it, and a lot of space, but it can severely deplete a losing enemy force if they take the bait. You can’t brag about it though, and presumably life will suck for any civilians in the salient zone though
That is the idea behind defense in depth I believe, which is fact what the Red Army did in Kursk
this “embarrassment” language is such obvious propaganda. reminds me of when they use their own made up terms like “liberal world order”.
I was thinking the same shit. The Bulge had like a 99% chance of failure but the alternative is sitting in a bunker in Berlin and waiting for some commies to put you down, so fuck it, gamble.
Same shit here. The Ukrainian general staff know that their position is slowly worsening and Russia has very little desire to negotiate. The only thing they have to lose is even more lives, and when have the powers that be ever given a shit about that?
Ukraine sacrificing it’s own people for a PR stunt is nothing new
I don’t think Ukraine would take a NPP hostage since it’s a good way to get nuked and be the one that gets blamed for it.