dagenleg

I think you make a good point about collective responsibility, and it's really quite crazy to see suggestions that a good answer to ethnic cleansing is more ethnic cleansing. This is quite literally how the whole conflict started in the first place. One would hope some lessons had been learnt since the 40ies.

However, I would advise caution in regards to historical parallels you bring up. At the end of the WW2, millions of Japanese colonists have forcibly expelled and the same happened to millions of German civilians, where at times they were displaced from the regions where they've been living for hundreds of years. Then of course you're familiar with has been happening to white population in many African countries following the decolonisation. After the fall of the USSR, Baltic countries have been doing their best to push out their Russian minorities. The unfortunate reality is that "population exchanges" and "repatriations" have been common methods of righting the historical wrongs in the modern era.

Some multinationals have their R&D offices in Israel, there's a lot of pretty good research coming out. Russia would probably be worse in terms of trust and they are openly hostile to the West unlike Israel.

I answered your question, no need to move the goalposts. Countries usually don't like having their land occupied. As far as I know the Turkish occupation zone in Syria has been dissolved.

Well, Syria and Lebanon both hold some pretty serious resentment over the recent landgrabs. With the whole "acquiring buffer zone for the buffer zone" business in former and the population expulsions in the latter.

Historically, happiness of ones subjects has very-very rarely been a marker of status, more so because it's hard to measure.

At the same time number of slaves and size of the concubine pool are pretty straightforward and intuitive metrics.

This is kind of supported by what Sarah Wynn-Williams wrote in her book.

There's no need to bring US nuclear forces into this discussion, we're talking about Russian authorities and their competence here.

Sure, it's possible that this one specific force is more professional than the rest, but the bar is low. Soviet Union is the state that gave us Chernobyl after all. For more recent evidence, do check out the recent Russian track record with space technologies - the 2018 ISS air leak incident is particularly telling. Or, you know, the whole war thing that's been going on.

You're claiming that everything is fine because Russians have procedures in place. Russians. You're appealing for calm based on the trust in Russian competence, after referencing Sverdlovsk incident. It's just too funny.

By this logic Biden's administration was far left.

Ukraine did notably send its army into Iraq, as one of its overtures towards NATO. There have been plenty of attempts from Ukraine to get closer and participate in the collective security arrangement.

Frankly unfair for a German to judge Ukraine for not being part of the western alliance, when it was largely Germany in the first place that was preventing it from joining.

How is USSR, a direct continuation of the Russian Empire, not an empire?

I think the parent is referring to heavy financialisation of the economy in the West. As we've recently seen, such economy can grow quite unconstrained by the material concerns such as factories, energy or workers.

Taiwan is liberal democratic china. It's doing quite okay.

It's not just large corporations, it's arguably most jobs, and it's getting worse. Wageslaves don't get to keep those proceeds either, not enough bargaining power.

The UX is horrendous, density of information is a fraction of what it was and the infinite scroll sucks