cross-posted from: https://lemmygrad.ml/post/4112192
Men that carried out terrorist attack on concert in Russia received funds from Ukraine.
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Putin is not a leftist.
Russia is not imperialist like The USA and NATO empire is though, and he is an ally of China and is helping Africa develop. That makes him hundreds of time better than Washington
And if the US empire were to collapse over night, Putin would step right in to fill the same exact role. It is not better, it is literally exactly the same. It is all just competing global power politics of different segments of the global ruling class.
Note if China were to become the world hegemon, that would be an improvement compared to the US because they actually have a political ideology other than hoarding wealth and power.
It wouldn’t be better but it wouldn’t be worse either. This is a unmaterialist take. Russia doesn’t have the global spanning military empire America took a literal century to build.
The unmaterialist take is to not realize that were russia to attain the hegemonic position in global geo-politics it wouldn’t build bases in exactly the same way.
Bourgeois Nation-states serve capitalism. Whichever one is globally the most powerful gets the funding from global corporations to protect their interests globally. They don’t care if that is the US or russia. They’ll use either one for that aim.
You understand that America built its huge expansive empire before the invention of the hypersonic missile correct? There is not going to be another empire in the way America did it literally ever. America may very well be the only nation in the history of humanity to have built its empire literally uncontested by any other nation on earth. Every other nation was blown to bits and the ones that weren’t blown to bits were abysmally poor, and even the ones that were abysmally poor were also blown to bits. Could Russia figure out a way to build something like America a different way? Maybe, but that’s pretty unlikely.
This is all hypothetical and speculative. What is actually happening right now? We can't just assume without evidence that it would be the same.
Being a materialist is when you subscribe to great man theory. How would the Russian Federation (because Putin is a 71 year old man and presumably wouldn't live to see a Pax Russiana) step right in to fill the same exact role? How would Russia take on the role of NATO or the IMF/WB, Western tools of imperialism that Russia isn't even a part of? At least people crying about so-called Chinese imperialism could gesture towards the BRI as the Chinese equivalent of the IMF. What the fuck does Russia have?
Tell that to the people of Latin America or the people of Africa or literally anywhere else in the world that is not Europe. There's a reason why people in AES support Russia and people in the other AES go around waving Russian flags as they tell the French to gtfo. The fact of the matter is Russia doesn't have the legacy of colonialism like the West has, and people have long memories.
In Africa, Russia has always played an anti-imperialist role, even going back to Tsarist Russia under Nicholas II (yes, that Nicholas) when they supported Ethiopia against Italian imperialism, ensuring that Ethiopia was the only African state (Liberia was a US proxy state, so they don't count) to be a free and sovereign African state during the scramble for Africa. And this was Russia under some shitty anti-Semitic tsar. I don't even need to go over what Russia as part of the Soviet Union did on behalf of the people of Africa. Westerners enslave Africans for more than 4 centuries and have the typical Western arrogance to think that Wagner Group killing African civilians or some Russian diplomat being anti-Black is somehow equivalent.
Again, radlibs getting mad at hypotheticals
It is the definition of reactionary to cheer on any enemy of your enemy no matter who they are.
I don’t cheer on nazis when they blow some government building up in the US, like in oklahoma city for example, just because i am against the policies of the US.
Segments of the global bourgeoisie fighting each other for global control through various bourgeois nation-states is not something that is beneficial for communists at all.
So was stabilizing Syria and destroying ISIS imperialist? Is the invasion of Ukraine to destroy NATO-backed fascist militants imperialist?
I've heard this shit from you westoids forever and you're always wrong. Anti-imperialism isn't "enemy of my enemy". It's being part of the actual global coalition that destroys the hegemony, alongside AES nations.
No you see materialism is when you make broad stroke assumptions and live by hard and fast rules instead of taking events on a case by case basis and see how they interact with each other and history.
I disagree, Russia’s foreign policy has been way better than the USA and they have not participated in the same predatory lending practices that the USA has with developing nations. If the USA were to collapse, Russia would most likely undergo a revolution since the U.S. fascists wouldn’t be able to back the struggling bourgeoisie like it has done in the past.
Also saying that Russia would take US place is very naive. Russia doesn’t have the same level of alliance the US has with Europe. A disappearing USA will just make the global south stronger
Edit: Also Russia is an ally of China and is helping Africa. Moreover, Russia is now killing Nazis. Therefore, supporting Russia against Nazis and NATO is the right move. Right now Russia is hundreds of times better than the USA. Once the USA disappears we’ll worry about what’s next
i think russia doesn't have the navy or globe-spanning military bases to do that?
They would if they got in a position to build them. (i.e. if the US stopped hegemonic control of the global order and allowed russia to do so)
And if grandma had a mustache she would be grandpa, you really sound exactly like a reddit lib now.
Ohhh noooooooooo. Don’t care.
🤷♂️
The only reason America was able to build an empire of its size is because it was in the radically fortunate position of being the only developed nation that wasn’t bombed to shit after world war 2. It was uncontested in its imperial efforts for pretty much the entire duration of it too. The odds of this same thing happening for Russia is 0. It might not ever happen again in human history.
I mean, it occurred in various historical conditions for countries including Portugal, Spain, The Netherlands, England, and the US.
I would not be super surprised if there another imperial empire after the US. Though that may not be for hundreds of years, as the turnover rate of empires seems to be slowing down. But who knows what geo-political impacts future technologies will have on global power relations.
Russia unlike the US doesn't have the corpse of the British Empire and 50% of the world's industrial capacity to piggyback off like the US did after WW2
Empires do not all have the same capacity, means, or internal structures that can guarantee a one-to-one replacement theory like you just asserted
The idea that the Ruble could ever become the equivalent of the US petrodollar is anti-historical and anti-materialist and if that won't happen how on earth would Russia dominate global capitalism the way the US currently does?
We aren’t dealing with hypotheticals. We’re dealing with material reality as it is right now.
China is probably Russia’s most important ally.