As I write this, NBC is reporting the US has just launched a volley of Tomahawk missiles against Syria, aimed at a single airfield. Things are developing quickly. Here’s an open thread to discuss.
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We Hunted The MammothBucking the Backlash
@betrayer
Looks like its saying the other way around – that Putin told trump bombing the base would be a act of war. And apperently syria consider it a act of war now.
https://russian.rt.com/world/article/375999-ssha-udar-tomagavk-siriya
http://www.interfax.ru/world/557286
http://www.bbc.com/russian/news-39523750
I…
Okay, this is not what I wanted to wake up to. Fuck I need a drink.
He’ll have done this on a whim. Like everything else he does. As has been pointed out by analysts throughout the night, militarily, it accomplishes nothing. He’ll have also been advised by those in his inner circle, that ramping up tensions with Russia, may take some of the attention off his actual ties to the country.
Really, we got lucky. This time. If the intelligence had been wrong, and a single Russian had been grazed, the situation would be a damn sight worse. Should the attacks continue? Trump risks starting WW3. On a whim.
The Chinese have just issued a statement saying ‘this needs to be de-escalated quickly’ (or words to that effect).
Somebody get de-escalating then, please.
Let me pick up on this, if I may.
The reason why there is currently enormous amounts of violence in the Middle East is because we, the rest of the world, have chosen to make it so. It’s the place in which we’ve elected to fight our proxy wars, and to smash up whenever our leaders want to look tough. This is arbitrary: we could have chosen Southeast Asia, or Central America, or any number of places in Africa.
Seen in this light, we can understand that Trump is going to kill Arabs in a boorish, bullying way, because that’s the sort of person that he is. Obama killed Arabs in a competent, technophiliac way, because that’s the sort of person that he was. We may prefer the second way to the first, but it doesn’t make those Arabs less dead.
Can there be peace? It depends what we mean by “peace.” The situation that western soldiers are currently trying to restore is entirely artificial, with borders determined by the colonial era, warlords installed by outside powers, and some nations kept strong and others kept weak. To expect it to persist indefinitely without strife is absurd. However, there have been many attempts by the people of the region to change the situation to one which is less artificial. If we’re willing to accept that our interests are entirely irrelevant compared to the interests of the people who live there, then I can see a peaceful order emerging. How much violence there is during the transition to that new order is, I don’t know.
Also i don’t know who said it but there has been deathes
http://www.interfax.ru/world/557314
https://m.news.rambler.ru/incidents/36552081-pri-atake-na-bazu-v-sirii-pogibli-chetvero-voennyh/
@ej
It is just syria’s turn to be the battle ground?
I feel a bit like you are oversimplified or maybe it is just Us perspective. I mean i agree that US uses forien wars to show theyre dominant. This is their habit. But it overlooks the long history that causes the conflict and also the other reasons why counties like France, UK and russia are involved.
It is hard to say that the conflict in syria shares the same basic operating system as other middle eastern conflicts.
Also there is a habit to connect middle east conflict with islam. Not saying that you are but that is another way to oversimplified the situation. After all Чечня could be argured to be more about islam than many middle east conflicts.
Maybe i went off topic there at the end though…
@EJ : I think the best thing that could happen to the middle east (and to Africa) is to be left alone. A big part of the problem is that a lot of the dictators don’t actually need to be at least tolerated by the inhabitant of their country.
Won’t gonna happen with Russia and China, of course. Thoses two might be less toxic to thoses country than America and Europa right now, but I guess they would rise to the opportunity.
@Valentine:
Agreed. Many states, not just the US, have intervened one way or another for the sake of their national interest. In the specific case of Syria, I’d point at Iran, Turkey and Israel as being complicit too. For them as well as for the more distant powers, the lives of actual Syrians are less important than their own (often ill-defined and mercurial) national interest.
It may be that I’m coming at it from a South African perspective, but to me it feels like colonialism (the academic definition, not the economic or political one.) The periphery gets defined in terms of the prevailing needs and biases of the metropole, rather than on its own terms.
@Ohlmann:
Completely agree.
@JS
Part of the problem is that a bunch of the aforementioned statesmen caused those problems in the first place when they cut up the remains of the ottoman empire after WW1 and deliberately manufactured a load of unstable colonial states. If that wasn’t enough, they then waded in and screwed up all the local politics again and again and again over the intervening decades. Its like they just can’t fucking stop. It isn’t even like any of these places sell us oil, or we’re trying to oppose some hallucination of international communism anymore.
That there’s fighting going on there is someone else’s fault, even though most of the proximate causes are our fault. But the fact that we keep wading in with bombs and shells and rockets and not only do we accomplish nothing but we make the world worse. Every. Single. Time.
I suspect the only sensible thing that trump ever said was about getting out of the middle east and staying out, and he couldn’t even stick to that.
So the speed at which this was accomplished following the chemical attack pretty much says that zero diplomacy was attempted.
There are a couple of different ways to interpret the desirability of diplomacy in this type of situation, but the fact that none was attempted doesn’t bode well for the future. This was a shoot-first-ask-questions-never action. Also, Shinra didn’t spend very long deliberating about what to do before deciding that bombing something was the correct course.
Remember when Shinra was baffled as to why we can’t use our nuclear arsenal? Yeah, that’s making me really nervous right now.
@EJ
Forgive me, i write and read english quite well, not speak so well, not like that matters on the internet.
But i don’t understand some of what you said – ‘The periphery gets defined in terms of the prevailing needs and biases of the metropole, rather than on its own terms.’ < this whole sentance not at all!
@Valentines : I read this as “former western colonies are seen by their old masters only as sources of goods and providers of services, and not as independant countries with their own needs and desires”
Sinkable John:
I recommend you head to your local ahwa* to drink tea with cardamom and lots of sugar, served in a tiny glass cup, in solidarity.
(Or whatever they call it in Syria; the culture exists across the former ottoman empire, but the name of the shop differs. Ahwa is Egyptian, from qahwa, from which we get our coffee/café — but Egyptians have turned to tea instead, and they don’t pronounce the ‘q’.)
as many here have opined…
Oh, fuck
@ohlmann
Thanks for clarification! I had no idea what perifery and metropole meant in this case
@Valentine:
(Warning: TLDR)
The world can be thought of as being divided between the “metropole” or “metropolitan” part, and the “periphery.” When a person in the metropole looks at the periphery, they tend to see it in terms of what it can give the metropolis or how it can be reshaped to further the metropolis’s culture. Because the metropolis is more powerful, this view can be imposed upon the periphery regardless of their own desires or needs.
This leads to an imposition of policy which:
– is simplistic.
– is often based on out of date, distorted or incorrect information.
– is privileged, and therefore often blind.
– changes quickly and unpredictably.
An example of this is the mining industry in my own country. The wealthier countries want several things: they want an end to distressing images of suffering mineworkers, and for South Africa to pay the interest on its debts in a timely manner, and for mining to not cause environmental degradation, and for us to keep all the photogenic aspects of traditional culture, and for us to lose all the aspects of traditional culture which are problematic. They want us to do all of this while providing them with large amounts of cheap metals from our mining industry. This is of course contradictory. The problem is that the wealthier world has the power to impose this contradictory agenda upon us whether we like it or not, and whether they understand it or not. Mines must be made safer but metals must remain cheap and government spending must remain low.
At any point, any part of this agenda may suddenly be emphasised above the others. This usually happens as a result of cultural shifts within the wealthier world, and so happens regardless of internal factors in South Africa, or the long-term effects of it.
In this example, we see that the wealthier world is the metropole, which is able to enforce its worldview regardless of its lack of understanding; and South Africa is the periphery, which needs to comply regardless of its own needs.
Now that I live in the United Kingdom, I have the ability to ignore this if I choose to, and settle into a metropolitan existence. I try not to.
In the case of colonialism, “periphery” is the periphery of the empire, “metropole” is the center of power.
The metropole typically is also the center of population, but not necessarily — India had more people than the UK, but was the periphery of the British empire.
I disagree with Ohlmann’s version. You don’t necessarily have resources getting sucked from the periphery to the metropole. EJ is simply saying that what the periphery is “about” is whatever the metropole wants it to be about.
So, for example, Nunavut, on the periphery of the Canadian empire, is seen in Canada and internationally as being about atoning for “our” (meaning white Canadians’) sins in dealing with the Inuit, and it’s about staking a territorial claim on the Canadian Arctic Archipelago, and it’s about military defence, and it’s to a much lesser extent about mining — though the mining doesn’t get anywhere near to paying for the cost of governing this territory.
All those are defined in terms of what the center of power in Canada (distributed among a handful of major metropolitan areas) wants. What Nunavummiut want doesn’t really enter into the picture.
[EDIT: ninja’d by EJ]
Thanks, numerobis, that’s a better explanation than I gave.
Here’s a picture of Aleppo, as seen from atop the Citadel.
I took this pic when I was 11.
http://i.imgur.com/2LVsrK1.jpg
@Sinkable John
-low whistle-
Thanks for the explanation guys. But then in this case Siriya is a perfifery of where? France? Or the UK? Or just is a victim of western empire building?
@sinkable
Are you from aleppo?
@numerobis : the idea I tried to convey is that the colony provides things. They can provide an easy way to show your strength, for example, which isn’t a resource.
A relatively tame example is how the main thing Corsica provide in the mind of most french is a vacation spot, which isn’t a physical ressource. Corsican aren’t sucked dry by Paris by any mean, but they are seen as providers, not as an independant region with its own desires.
A less tame example, and les straightforward, is how formerly french colony serve mostly as a “proof” of the “greatness” of “France”. At the very least, it’s half the reason for which France regulary install and change dictators in thoses countries, the other half being good old corruption.
@Valentine:
At the moment, I’d argue that Syria is providing several different metropoles with the chance for their leaders to look like tough guys on TV.
So also, same can be said for Krim? It is considered perifery of russia and now russian government wants to ‘take it back’ from Ukrainians. It has resources, people go their for holiday, access to black sea, Sevastopol for navy base. And the people have no say, russain government decide they want the people to want to be russian so they hold a referendum with 123% turnout and make it so. And the poeple of krim have to leave to somewhere else in ukraine or become russians.