Historic principles of geopolitics and power.
Posted 04-29-2023 at 05:04 AM by Redshadowz
[QUOTE=erasure;65187928]I don't believe that it's exactly the case[/quote]
Here, read this.
[url]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westphalian_system[/url]
[QUOTE=erasure;65187928]Putin sees "territorial integrity of Russia" differently now, comparably to 30 years ago, and it became a pressuring matter to him. Because he realized that the borders, the way they were outlined 30 years ago, benefits specifically the "Western" block and not Russia.[/quote]
The United States is the biggest beneficiary of breaking apart empires. If Russia and China came apart ethnically, the United States would cease to have geopolitical rivals. This explains why America's position on territorial integrity is so hypocritical. America wanted to break up Yugoslavia and Serbia(Kosovo) because Serbia was allied with Russia. But we opposed breaking up Ukraine because the people who want independence are Russians.
In fact, while we screech about the need for territorial integrity in Ukraine, we take the opposite position for China/Taiwan, because it is all about power. Which the United States has because of its size, geography, natural resources, and location. All of which were taken from someone else and ethnically-cleansed. Fear of foreign influence is why the United States tries so hard to integrate/assimilate its ethnic groups. But we call it equality, racial justice, civil rights, the melting pot, etc, instead of genocide.
[QUOTE=erasure;65187928]When it comes to the colonization of the Latin America by the Spaniards, these were not the people that moved the industrial revolution so the results of their colonization was very different from, say, colonization by the Britons.[/quote]
What I meant was, it was the Atlantic powers who were in a favorable geographic location to colonize the new world and to establish trade routes to Asia. When Christopher Columbus came to America he followed the trade winds off the coast of Africa. It was the position of Portugal and Spain that gave it an early advantage over its European rivals.
If I could be honest with you, the main failure of the Spanish Empire was that it occupied lands full of natives but didn't completely wipe them out. Spain's colonial strategy was to have a Spanish ruling-class over vast numbers of natives and slaves, but once Spanish rule was broken during the Napoleonic Wars, it was impossible to reestablish.
Had Spain genocided everyone, Latin-America would be to Spain what Canada and Australia are to Britain.
Also, Britain had a distinct advantage over the rest of Europe because it is a large island. Had Britain been attached to continental Europe, Napoleon would have invaded Britain instead of Russia. But as an island, Britain could pump every dime into building a Navy and then harass its neighbors in relative safety.
[QUOTE=erasure;65187928]European industry is not something "unified."[/quote]
What I mean is, European colonies had ZERO industry. The purpose of the colonies was to provide raw materials/commodities/markets for European merchants/manufacturers. The colonies operated as economic and military dependencies whose foreign policy was dictated by their master country.
Early colonialism focused mostly on the exploitation and monopolization of valuable commodities. Such as the spice trade in the East Indies, as well as the literal mountain of silver, the Aztec gold, etc. Monopoly capitalism later turned into plantations of slaves for sugar, tobacco, and cotton.
[youtube]zPIhMJGWiM8[/youtube]
[url]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zPIhMJGWiM8[/url]
Europe had manufacturing and factories long before the industrial revolution. The industrial revolution just increased their size and efficiency 100-fold. When the colonists came to America they brought with them guns and tools and other goods manufactured in Europe. Americans were dependent on European manufactured goods for decades after independence(our largest city in 1776 only had a population of 40k).
The profits from colonialism fall into two categories, direct exploitation and value-added. Direct exploitation requires direct control and is inherently unstable because the elites from the colonies would prefer to keep the profits for themselves(and would lead rebellions or ally with foreign powers to gain independence). Value-added is basically where Russia sells natural gas and iron ore to Europe for $5,000, then Europe turns around and sells Russia a car for $25,000, pocketing the difference. The entire western world depends on buying commodities from the developing-world and selling them back as finished goods for profit, using the difference(profit) to buy more commodities for domestic consumption and to make investments.
The American colonies were established to export commodities to Britain in exchange for British manufactured goods(with the crown taking its cut). The value-added profits from exported manufactured goods gave Britain the resources to invest in greater production and to massively grow its population to provide the labor for its manufacturing/industry. Moreover, the profits gave Britain money to influence other countries and buy friends/alliances(as well as for direct investments/loans for other countries).
While it is true "European industry" wasn't a monolith, most European countries attempted to industrialize using the same means for the same ends. Russia was slower to industrialize than Western Europe in large part because its geography wasn't conducive to establishing profitable colonies for international trade and because the territory it conquered in the East was sparsely-populated wastelands where moving anything by land was almost impossible.
Without an economic incentive to industrialize, Russia remained in essentially feudal conditions until the late-1800's. It wasn't until they lost the Crimean War that the Tsar pushed for radical social reforms and investments in modernization/industry. Which was made difficult by a diverse and adversarial Russian nobility who weren't eager to give up their privileges.
Furthermore, Russia's geography made it difficult to become a Naval power. When Russia fought the Japanese in 1904/1905, it took months for its Baltic fleet to reach Japan to try to alleviate the Siege of Port Arthur. Which got obliterated by the Japanese fleet before it even got there. Imagine if Russian geography didn't require the Russian fleet to travel 18,000 nautical miles to reach the other side of its territory.
Without a strong Navy to project power, Russia became a land power whose trade was largely limited to neighboring countries, and whose international trade often depended on foreign ships/merchants(who kept a hefty share of the profits).
In short, I tend to consider geography as the principle determinant for the last 400+ years of European history. I think "The West"(and especially Britain) pats itself in the back far more than it deserves.
[QUOTE=erasure;65187928]You will need to elaborate on it a bit.[/quote]
As I told you before, I'm opposed to what I call "fake countries". In my view, fake countries are held together by force alone. In fact, I think all countries exist only by force, but the amount of force required is proportionate to their fakeness.
While empires existed in the past, they were extremely difficult to hold together because they were comprised of a multitude of peoples/tribes who had little to no loyalty to their rulers, and who would ally with foreigners against them(in exchange for greater autonomy or other privileges).
You can think of the past as a game of "shifting alliances", where the lords/barons/nobility were constantly conspiring with one another and foreign powers against each other. This system of shifting alliances made it difficult for kings/monarchs to centralize power because any attempt at centralizing power meant their traitorous barons siding with foreign powers against them(who offered them privileges in exchange for their allegiance).
Once you establish a principle that borders are inviolable, not only do you enable the complete centralization of power in the state, but you allow fake countries to become ever more fake because they no longer fear being torn apart. Which incentivizes them to defend the system that guarantees their fake borders.
[QUOTE=erasure;65187928]The problem is - if peasants were not stripped of their freedom during Soviet times, if they were left up to their own devices to do what they were pleased to do, the whole country wouldn't have been able to industrialize by the time of WWII and would have been wiped out.[/quote]
And therein lies the dilemma. Did you ever read the Mikhail Bakunin essay I linked you? He lays out the problem in universal terms...
[INDENT][i]"The existence of one sovereign, exclusionary State necessarily supposes the existence and, if need be, provokes the formation of other such States, since it is quite natural that individuals who find themselves outside it and are threatened by it in their existence and in their liberty, should, in their turn, associate themselves against it. We thus have humanity divided into an indefinite number of foreign states, all hostile and threatened by each other. There is no common right, no social contract of any kind between them; otherwise they would cease to be independent states and become the federated members of one great state. But unless this great state were to embrace all of humanity, it would be confronted with other great states, each federated within, each maintaining the same posture of inevitable hostility. War would still remain the supreme law, an unavoidable condition of human survival.
Every state, federated or not, would therefore seek to become the most powerful. It must devour lest it be devoured, conquer lest it be conquered, enslave lest it be enslaved"[/i][/INDENT]
[QUOTE=erasure;65187928]There is no such thing as "unanimous West."[/quote]
You are always so caught up in the specifics. I was only trying to establish a generalizable principle. To summarize; Endogamy = collectivism. Exogamy = individualism. Collectivism = tribalism. Individualism = globalism. Capitalism = individualism. Capitalism = globalism. Etc.
[QUOTE=erasure;65187928]If it were not for the upper echelon of the Soviet officials (ethnic Russians first of all,) that allowed all this to happen, the Jews wouldn't have had any chance to do what they did.[/quote]
The Jews exploited the divisions within the Russian elite and the hatred of the Russian people to seize power. This was made easier by the diversity and intense inequality within Russia, as well as the collapse of the Russian economy after their failure in WWI. The Bolsheviks not only exploited this resentment in the initial revolution, they used it to mobilize a Red Army of the common people against the Western-back White Army because they hated the prerevolutionary government.
After the revolution, much like George Orwell explained, the principles of the revolution were largely abandoned, the Bolsheviks centralized power, wiped out their opposition, and turned the Soviet Union into a veritable slave-slate. The same happened after the French Revolution, and even the American Revolution.
Lenin explained pretty clearly that his entire strategy centered around encouraging the poor to murder the rich(which is somewhat my strategy as well).
[youtube]6TK9c-caEcw[/youtube]
[url]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6TK9c-caEcw[/url]
Here, read this.
[url]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westphalian_system[/url]
[QUOTE=erasure;65187928]Putin sees "territorial integrity of Russia" differently now, comparably to 30 years ago, and it became a pressuring matter to him. Because he realized that the borders, the way they were outlined 30 years ago, benefits specifically the "Western" block and not Russia.[/quote]
The United States is the biggest beneficiary of breaking apart empires. If Russia and China came apart ethnically, the United States would cease to have geopolitical rivals. This explains why America's position on territorial integrity is so hypocritical. America wanted to break up Yugoslavia and Serbia(Kosovo) because Serbia was allied with Russia. But we opposed breaking up Ukraine because the people who want independence are Russians.
In fact, while we screech about the need for territorial integrity in Ukraine, we take the opposite position for China/Taiwan, because it is all about power. Which the United States has because of its size, geography, natural resources, and location. All of which were taken from someone else and ethnically-cleansed. Fear of foreign influence is why the United States tries so hard to integrate/assimilate its ethnic groups. But we call it equality, racial justice, civil rights, the melting pot, etc, instead of genocide.
[QUOTE=erasure;65187928]When it comes to the colonization of the Latin America by the Spaniards, these were not the people that moved the industrial revolution so the results of their colonization was very different from, say, colonization by the Britons.[/quote]
What I meant was, it was the Atlantic powers who were in a favorable geographic location to colonize the new world and to establish trade routes to Asia. When Christopher Columbus came to America he followed the trade winds off the coast of Africa. It was the position of Portugal and Spain that gave it an early advantage over its European rivals.
If I could be honest with you, the main failure of the Spanish Empire was that it occupied lands full of natives but didn't completely wipe them out. Spain's colonial strategy was to have a Spanish ruling-class over vast numbers of natives and slaves, but once Spanish rule was broken during the Napoleonic Wars, it was impossible to reestablish.
Had Spain genocided everyone, Latin-America would be to Spain what Canada and Australia are to Britain.
Also, Britain had a distinct advantage over the rest of Europe because it is a large island. Had Britain been attached to continental Europe, Napoleon would have invaded Britain instead of Russia. But as an island, Britain could pump every dime into building a Navy and then harass its neighbors in relative safety.
[QUOTE=erasure;65187928]European industry is not something "unified."[/quote]
What I mean is, European colonies had ZERO industry. The purpose of the colonies was to provide raw materials/commodities/markets for European merchants/manufacturers. The colonies operated as economic and military dependencies whose foreign policy was dictated by their master country.
Early colonialism focused mostly on the exploitation and monopolization of valuable commodities. Such as the spice trade in the East Indies, as well as the literal mountain of silver, the Aztec gold, etc. Monopoly capitalism later turned into plantations of slaves for sugar, tobacco, and cotton.
[youtube]zPIhMJGWiM8[/youtube]
[url]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zPIhMJGWiM8[/url]
Europe had manufacturing and factories long before the industrial revolution. The industrial revolution just increased their size and efficiency 100-fold. When the colonists came to America they brought with them guns and tools and other goods manufactured in Europe. Americans were dependent on European manufactured goods for decades after independence(our largest city in 1776 only had a population of 40k).
The profits from colonialism fall into two categories, direct exploitation and value-added. Direct exploitation requires direct control and is inherently unstable because the elites from the colonies would prefer to keep the profits for themselves(and would lead rebellions or ally with foreign powers to gain independence). Value-added is basically where Russia sells natural gas and iron ore to Europe for $5,000, then Europe turns around and sells Russia a car for $25,000, pocketing the difference. The entire western world depends on buying commodities from the developing-world and selling them back as finished goods for profit, using the difference(profit) to buy more commodities for domestic consumption and to make investments.
The American colonies were established to export commodities to Britain in exchange for British manufactured goods(with the crown taking its cut). The value-added profits from exported manufactured goods gave Britain the resources to invest in greater production and to massively grow its population to provide the labor for its manufacturing/industry. Moreover, the profits gave Britain money to influence other countries and buy friends/alliances(as well as for direct investments/loans for other countries).
While it is true "European industry" wasn't a monolith, most European countries attempted to industrialize using the same means for the same ends. Russia was slower to industrialize than Western Europe in large part because its geography wasn't conducive to establishing profitable colonies for international trade and because the territory it conquered in the East was sparsely-populated wastelands where moving anything by land was almost impossible.
Without an economic incentive to industrialize, Russia remained in essentially feudal conditions until the late-1800's. It wasn't until they lost the Crimean War that the Tsar pushed for radical social reforms and investments in modernization/industry. Which was made difficult by a diverse and adversarial Russian nobility who weren't eager to give up their privileges.
Furthermore, Russia's geography made it difficult to become a Naval power. When Russia fought the Japanese in 1904/1905, it took months for its Baltic fleet to reach Japan to try to alleviate the Siege of Port Arthur. Which got obliterated by the Japanese fleet before it even got there. Imagine if Russian geography didn't require the Russian fleet to travel 18,000 nautical miles to reach the other side of its territory.
Without a strong Navy to project power, Russia became a land power whose trade was largely limited to neighboring countries, and whose international trade often depended on foreign ships/merchants(who kept a hefty share of the profits).
In short, I tend to consider geography as the principle determinant for the last 400+ years of European history. I think "The West"(and especially Britain) pats itself in the back far more than it deserves.
[QUOTE=erasure;65187928]You will need to elaborate on it a bit.[/quote]
As I told you before, I'm opposed to what I call "fake countries". In my view, fake countries are held together by force alone. In fact, I think all countries exist only by force, but the amount of force required is proportionate to their fakeness.
While empires existed in the past, they were extremely difficult to hold together because they were comprised of a multitude of peoples/tribes who had little to no loyalty to their rulers, and who would ally with foreigners against them(in exchange for greater autonomy or other privileges).
You can think of the past as a game of "shifting alliances", where the lords/barons/nobility were constantly conspiring with one another and foreign powers against each other. This system of shifting alliances made it difficult for kings/monarchs to centralize power because any attempt at centralizing power meant their traitorous barons siding with foreign powers against them(who offered them privileges in exchange for their allegiance).
Once you establish a principle that borders are inviolable, not only do you enable the complete centralization of power in the state, but you allow fake countries to become ever more fake because they no longer fear being torn apart. Which incentivizes them to defend the system that guarantees their fake borders.
[QUOTE=erasure;65187928]The problem is - if peasants were not stripped of their freedom during Soviet times, if they were left up to their own devices to do what they were pleased to do, the whole country wouldn't have been able to industrialize by the time of WWII and would have been wiped out.[/quote]
And therein lies the dilemma. Did you ever read the Mikhail Bakunin essay I linked you? He lays out the problem in universal terms...
[INDENT][i]"The existence of one sovereign, exclusionary State necessarily supposes the existence and, if need be, provokes the formation of other such States, since it is quite natural that individuals who find themselves outside it and are threatened by it in their existence and in their liberty, should, in their turn, associate themselves against it. We thus have humanity divided into an indefinite number of foreign states, all hostile and threatened by each other. There is no common right, no social contract of any kind between them; otherwise they would cease to be independent states and become the federated members of one great state. But unless this great state were to embrace all of humanity, it would be confronted with other great states, each federated within, each maintaining the same posture of inevitable hostility. War would still remain the supreme law, an unavoidable condition of human survival.
Every state, federated or not, would therefore seek to become the most powerful. It must devour lest it be devoured, conquer lest it be conquered, enslave lest it be enslaved"[/i][/INDENT]
[QUOTE=erasure;65187928]There is no such thing as "unanimous West."[/quote]
You are always so caught up in the specifics. I was only trying to establish a generalizable principle. To summarize; Endogamy = collectivism. Exogamy = individualism. Collectivism = tribalism. Individualism = globalism. Capitalism = individualism. Capitalism = globalism. Etc.
[QUOTE=erasure;65187928]If it were not for the upper echelon of the Soviet officials (ethnic Russians first of all,) that allowed all this to happen, the Jews wouldn't have had any chance to do what they did.[/quote]
The Jews exploited the divisions within the Russian elite and the hatred of the Russian people to seize power. This was made easier by the diversity and intense inequality within Russia, as well as the collapse of the Russian economy after their failure in WWI. The Bolsheviks not only exploited this resentment in the initial revolution, they used it to mobilize a Red Army of the common people against the Western-back White Army because they hated the prerevolutionary government.
After the revolution, much like George Orwell explained, the principles of the revolution were largely abandoned, the Bolsheviks centralized power, wiped out their opposition, and turned the Soviet Union into a veritable slave-slate. The same happened after the French Revolution, and even the American Revolution.
Lenin explained pretty clearly that his entire strategy centered around encouraging the poor to murder the rich(which is somewhat my strategy as well).
[youtube]6TK9c-caEcw[/youtube]
[url]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6TK9c-caEcw[/url]
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