Thread image created by yours truly, depicting Iran and Pakistan very impolitely not asking whether America, on the other side of the planet, is okay with them transporting gas around.
The Iran-Pakistan gas pipeline has long been obstructed by American involvement in the region. Iran completed its section of the pipeline quite quickly, but Pakistan has been unable to finish its construction for a decade due to the fear of falling afoul of American sanctions on Iran. The United States has repeatedly tried to pressure Pakistan to give up the project and obtain gas from other countries instead. Recent articles on the state of the pipeline are contradictory, with some stating that Iran or Pakistan have given up on the pipeline while American sanctions persist. Pakistani officials reject this framing, saying that they are still working with Iran to try and get the project completed somehow. Nonetheless, Iran is becoming increasingly frustrated and is threatening a legal battle and a demand for reparations.
Meanwhile, back in Niger, the $13 billion under-construction pipeline connecting Nigeria and other West African countries to Spain and Italy will likely face delays due to the sanctions applied by the West and ECOWAS on Niger. Those following the European gas fiasco will be aware that while Spain and Italy have been impacted by the energy crisis, they have been very busy making deals with African countries to replace their Russian gas, and thus stand a better chance than Germany of making it through the crisis with their industries somewhat intact. The coup has thrown a wrench into their plans, though they can still obtain some gas from northern African countries.
And, last but not least, America tried for years to stop the construction of the Nord Stream pipelines between Germany and Russia, which culminated in them deciding to blow them up late last year.
All in all - the United States really does not like it when countries build up energy infrastructure and gain some independence from them.
Here is the map of the Ukraine conflict, courtesy of Wikipedia.
This week's first update is here in the comments.
This week's second update is here in the comments.
This week's third update is here in the comments.
Links and Stuff
The bulletins site is down.
Examples of Ukrainian Nazis and fascists
Examples of racism/euro-centrism during the Russia-Ukraine conflict
Add to the above list if you can.
Resources For Understanding The War
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.
Telegram Channels
Again, CW for anti-LGBT and racist, sexist, etc speech, as well as combat footage.
Pro-Russian
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
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.
Last week's discussion post.
We got ourselves an interesting substack, which addresses the crisis in Niger within the terms of local politics rather than just geopolitical jockeying that a lot of people including us tend to limit ourselves to. Some of the highlights are:
Nigeria is a geopolitical force in it's own right, with control over a number of multilateral organizations and wether intervention happens or not is really down the internal politics of Nigeria.
Nigeria is going through the motions to build up international legitimacy for an ECOWAS intervention, but it is recalcitrant due to mounting opposition within itself.
Unlike what some tend to believe, this opposition has nothing to do with pan african or anti imperialist solidarity. Rather the danger of further crisis and displacement right at the border. Not to mention how the president of Nigeria relies on a voting base from the north of the country, which is related to the people of southern Niger.
Unlike some have reported Algeria has not said that they'll intervene to save the Nigerien junta. They also just think that intervention will worsen the situation. So they are opposed to both the coup and invasion.
Understandably, the gut reaction of people in the region about military coups comes from the fact that nobody is holding out for a second Thomas Sankara. Everyone sees a military junta as a new kleptocracy in the making.
When people talk about Nigerien Uranium or Gold, they are oversimplifying the situation. Niger is a resource colony in the era of financial capitalism. Yes, there are french companies that exploit the shit out of Niger's markets. But the larger point is the unravelling of the Francophonie as a whole, on which so much of french finance relies on. France won't be without fuel for it's nuclear plants because they can just buy from Kazakhstan or Canada.
Incidentally the US doesn't really give a shit about France. It's all about the perceived geopolitical win of Russia's. A perception that is driven by protestors with Russian flags and false videos of Wagner planes touching Niamey. And even so, the Americans can't just tell Nigeria to intervene. If Nigeria was a puppet state it would have already moved in. The Nigerians will ultimately move in according to their own core national interests, and if conditions are ready for it.
That said, Nigeria's last ECOWAS intervention was in Gambia, and it seemed like it wasn't gonna happen until it suddenly did and the country more or less folded because of how illegitimate the government had become.
I will accept the following criticism (though I don't think any of us would have proclaimed to have been experts or even particularly knowledgeable on Niger or Nigeria, we are typically not the kind of people who go and look at wikipedia articles for 30 minutes and then come back as X Country Understanders) and this is an incredibly useful article that I am always in desperate need of. There's a tendency within myself, which I am always at work to purge, to come up with explanations that sound very nice and explanatory and all the pieces fit together quite nicely, but without actually going ahead and verifying whether any of it actually true.
That being said, and I fucking hate being the guy to say this because it's always so cliche, but I think the truth might lie somewhere in the middle between the broad geopolitical (which we tend to focus on in our ignorance of on-the-ground conditions much of the time) and the narrow local (which this article very helpfully provides). Both domains govern and shape the other. I think it's perfectly plausible to fit this into the jigsaw of the Second Cold War, you just have to be careful you aren't forcing the jigsaw piece in where it doesn't actually fit. And as the article says, fitting the coup into the "This is an act by America against France to cut them off from uranium and force them to take American gas" place doesn't work for a number of reasons as they explain. Fitting the coup into the "This is Russia being based and being anti-colonial" place also doesn't work. It's got something to do with the origins of jihadist groups in West Africa, something to do with Western exploitation, something to do with the jostling for allies and resources by big powers - but also something to do with local ethnicities (e.g. as Bazoum is), something to do with the governments of West African countries, and something to do with the recent histories of these countries and how their independences came to be, and a whole number of other factors. Really it's an entire 1000-page book to have a decent description.
It's important to remember - for myself and others - that these countries and their people do have agency. Liberals and conservatives tend to assume that they don't, from a perspective of racism, explicitly or implicitly, and it's easy to do something similar by assuming that these countries are mere pawns by other great powers in a great geopolitical game (and perhaps handwaving that there's probably other things going on and then not bothering to learn what those other things are), and while that's a little closer to the truth than racistly assuming that they're incapable of having independent ideas, it's still not correct. I must keep purging my liberalism every single day.
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I think a good rule of thumb is to always remember that governments take action in order to preserve themselves in power. That's always the short term goal. Even before we are enlightened as to the weight, interests and institutinal power of a government like Nigeria's, we have to ask ourselves wether the current government would survive intervening, and wether it would survive not doing anything. This is what leads on to the right questions.
It reminds me of all the people online being surprised at the RAND study that pointed out how Japan probably wouldn't outright join a hot war with China over Taiwan. And why would they? 'The West' 'losing Taiwan' would not collapse the current japanese government. But having the home islands effectively blockaded from international trade during the war, while ruining future relations with China probably would. This puts international pressure and internal politics in their given places, without disregarding one or the other.
I want to live there, probably an amazing place to work