Population size doesn’t matter much if your goal is to live as a small, comfy, unambitious Switzerland or Singapore. But a large population, along with a sufficiently high IQ, remains of sine qua non of being a Great Power or superpower.
France went from having 20% of Europe’s population during the reign of the Sun King, when it was Europe’s preeminent Great Power with its largest armies, to being dwarfed by Germany (40mn to 67mn, and the Germans had twice as many young men) by the outbreak of WW1. Consequently, the French only managed to scrape out a Pyrrhic victory thanks to American intervention. And they would have been crushed in 1914 had Britain decided not to uphold its treaty obligations.
In the modern world, a large population also vital for fostering a strong, self-sustaining national IT industry. Since unit costs in software are minimal, countries such as US and China with large, unified markets have an advantage in this sphere well beyond the usual benefits of economies of scale. Furthermore, Switzerland and Singapore are never going to colonize space, or be able to embark on many other grand world-historical projects. The US, China, maybe even India might, with their populations in the 100 millions and GDPs in the tens of trillions. Russia or Japan, with their populations in the tens of millions and GDPs in the mere trillions – probably not.
Increasing fertility towards the upper bounds of what was historically observed in the industrialized world – e.g., TFR=4 in the US during the late 1950s – is basically a cheat code for massively augmenting your national power over the course of just a couple of generations.
Online simulation that you can play with: https://www.ined.fr/en/everything_about_population/population-games/tomorrow-population/
For instance, assume the Poles decided to become really stronk, and raised their TFR to 4 children per woman with immediate effect. They’d approach Russia’s current population by 2100. Poland’s historical security problems with respect to their western and eastern neighbors would be definitively solved.
Meanwhile, if Russia were to do that, it would have half the population of China by 2100. This would be perfectly okay since North Eurasia can support at least 1-2 billion people, and an order of magnitude more with radical global warming.
The only developed country that is doing something along these lines is Israel. Steve Sailer recently wrote about increasing fertility there, which is driven exclusively by the Jews and now stands at 3.1 children per woman. If it just maintains this pace throughout this century – and it may even increase further, since the Haredim continue skyrocketing as a share of the population – then there may be close to 30 million Israelis by the end of the century. Israel will go from being outnumbered 1:10 by Iran to just a bit more than 1:2.
How to activate this cheat code?
- Highly fertile religious minorities: Haredim, Amish, Mormons, etc. But they come with well-known problems, their rate of “defections” into the general population decreases as those of their progeny who find their lifestyle non-congenial “boil off,” and in any case Israel is the only country where they constitute a high enough percentage of the population to have a discernible demographic effect.
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Recreating the 1950s: I.e., hardcore social conservatism + 5% annual GDP growth rates. Too intractable a task, but it doesn’t hurt to try. Just don’t go overboard with overly coercive measures because then young people will hate you, overthrow your regime, and undo everything anyway (see Romania).
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Just wait a couple of centuries for breeders to literally outbreed the rearers.
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Technology, again.
Obviously quantity isn’t everything. Average IQ plays an even bigger role. Switzerland generates approximately two orders of magnitude more elite scientific research than all of (non-RSA) Black Africa. Countries that start large-scale radical IQ augmentation programs through gene editing will enjoy a massive advantage, even if the gap is only a few years.
But why not both? Randall Parker suggests mature gene editing technologies will be highly pro-natal for a couple of reasons. First, gene selection for IQ and positive personality traits means no more disappointing children, which was always likely for high IQ parents due to regression to the mean. Second, since parents want grandchildren, many will choose genes that make their children have a stronger instinctive desire to have kids. So basically compressing #3 to within a single generation.
It’s nice to see that you’ve given up on your ‘triune’ project Anatoly. In one full swoop Russia could increase its population by some 50 – 60 million citizens (with white intelligent slavs too!). But alas, old Putin has really screwed up that possibility.
How does this factor in the Sailors “most important graph in the world”? Africa is not a single state and Africans are generally inferior as a race, but if the population numbers soar as predicated then they will rule the world. By rule the world I mean their sheer numbers means that all the other so called superpowers will be overwhelmed. Just like white flight, there will be a global flight from black, but where is there to go, even China and India will succumb to the gigantic black demographic numbers, any superpower will eventually be swamped by black people.
As for those that will dismiss this, by saying starvation will set in or aid to Africa will eventually cease long before those huge population growth numbers are reached, this will not happen as long as there are leftists that will do everything in their power to support Africa, even if their own lands have already turned majority black they will continue to do so, and they might not even have the choice to stop even if they wanted to.
Shouldn’t you support Putin for this, since you hate Russians why would you want more of them?
You’re missing the obvious and easiest solution: make real estate cheap. Guaranteed to raise fertility and costs next to nothing for the state.
(Of course that would ruin “muh GDP”, so we’re never going to get replacement fertility. Committing racial suicide because you wanted a high score on a meaningless rating must be the stupidest ethnic cleansing in human history.)
It’s a shame the Imperial Federation project of Britain + Canada + Australia + SA + NZ never happened.
I’m trying to elicit a response from Karlin on this one, who clearly is a supporter of the ‘triune’ theory and yet still seems to nominally support Putin. He’s a difficult one to get to open up about his ideas here. But he should, for Russian population growth and the ‘triune’ theory are very closely related topics.
I wonder if direct government policy would work. If they can enforce a one child policy, then maybe they can enforce a three child policy? Breed, or else.
You’ve got me pegged wrong, Neutral. Not appreciating current(or even outworn chauvinistic ideas) Russian political trends does not make me a Russophobe. Some of the nicer members of my closer clan are Russians. I greatly enjoy Russian culture including its music and literature. Pelemeni are equally good as verenyki! 🙂
Serious question, how do we know that the bloggers at unz.com are not Russian shills, or that the posters here are not bribed to post by the Russians, like Chinese 50 cent posters, how do we know that the bloggers and posters here are not astroturfing or being influenced to post pro Russian or at least neutral to Russian posts, or being paid by the Russians? Bexcause it happened a lot with the Chinese or other lobbying groups or the Hasbara? How do we know that Unz.com bloggers and posters are not a Russian version of the Hasbara?
OT
This Polish-Israeli spat over the theological fine print of the dogmas of Holocaustianity is amusing. Apparently according to the Israeli high priests it’s heretical to think that any people (other than the Innocent Victim People) could be innocent. Each people sinned, each has to atone for it. Only the Innocent Victim People is the one who has never done anything wrong. They have always been Innocent, and also Victims, regardless of the context.
They could simply say that party membership is restricted to married people with 2+ kids.
Since that is still an important ticket to social advancement, in China, it would have an effect.
Oh, yeah. Then how come my paycheck is late, Tovarishch?
Britain’s GCHQ is known to play that game as well. More interesting would be an example of a country whose intelligence agencies don’t do this. So you just have to use your braind and judge arguments on their merits.
Actually, my pay does ultimately come from the Russian government, but they’d probably be pretty damned annoyed if they knew how much time I waste commenting on websites instead of doing what I’m actually payed to be doing!
This wasn’t much of a possibility. Ukraine’s own demographics situation (much higher fertility rate in the West vs. the East) would have inevitably pushed Ukraine westward. What Putin managed to do was turn Ukraine from a large potential friend in the Western sphere (say, another Bulgaria), to another Poland.
In 2013, while almost all western Ukrainians wanted to join the EU, 65% of them still had positive feelings towards Russia.
He supports Zhirinovsky more than he does Putin.
Who cares what they are? Lets say you are right and everyone here is working in from a secret commenting room that lies under the Kremlin, if you cannot show what they say is not true, then the problem lies with you and not them.
When Muhammed Ali refused to serve in the US army and was sent to jail he said “No yellow man called me a nigger”, the same applies today to whites and Russia, “Putin never called me a cracker”. The Democrat party is virulently anti white, why should I hate those that spied on them more than those that openly hate me and actively and openly work against whites? The same applies to the anti white regimes in France, Germany or Britain, they hate whites and openly work against them, why now should I support their Russia hatred? This is something so basic that no amount of concocted propaganda can cover up this reality.
The real astroturfing are the people that design terms like “fake news” and then expect everyone else to accept this new narrative without question, when it clearly is a joke.
https://www.namibian.com.na/index.php?id=120242&page=archive-read
HARARE – Russian leader Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping have reportedly praised Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe for his “astute leadership in spearheading Africa’s fight for self-determination”.
According to The Herald, the two leaders said this in their separate con- gratulatory messages to Mugabe who turned 90 on Friday.
In a message delivered on his behalf by Russia’s Ambassador to Zimbabwe, Sergey Bakharev, Putin said Mugabe enjoyed great respect the world over, the report said. China and Russia were major supporters of Zimbabwe’s liberation struggle of the 1960s and 1970s. They also remain Zimbabwe’s “important economic partners”.
https://www.news24.com/Africa/Zimbabwe/champion-of-land-redistribution-mugabe-hounoured-by-african-youths-in-russia-report-20171019
‘Champion of land redistribution’ Mugabe honoured by youths in Russia – report
Sochi – Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe, 93, is reportedly set to be honoured by African youths and students attending the 19th youth festival held in Sochi, Russia for “championing the fight against imperialism”.
According to the state-owned Herald newspaper, African youths at the festival had set aside a day to celebrate Mugabe “for his determined stand against imperialism”.
The event, said the report, would run under the theme: “President Robert Mugabe: The champion of land redistribution and total restoration of natural resources from imperialists to the African masses”.
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Russia is neither anti nor pro white, it is pro Russian State and will support whoever helps the Russian State. So if USA is disrupted by BLM, for example – Russia gives cover to BLM concerns. Russia Today had sympathetic coverage of the Ferguson riots and of BLM concerns. Russia was also funding this stuff on social media:
http://dailycaller.com/2017/09/28/america-is-obsessed-with-identity-politics-so-russia-exploited-it/
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In the extremely unlikely event of some sort of ethnic civil war in the USA, Russia would likely be helping one of the sides, and not necessarily the white side.
Mr. Karlin’s blogs are largely appeals to reason rather than emotion, and far too subtle for government work which tends to be extremely clumsy, due to the usual bureaucratic spiral as well as the soft expectation of “patriotism” such that anything negative cannot be posted. There’s also, strangely enough, a preponderance of weirdly tone-deaf “fluff” that comes up in propaganda, which resembles human-interest stories done through committee.
For an example of actual Russian propaganda, for example, look up Sputnik. Note the focus on design, graphics and emotional appeal; notice the absolute lack of anything critical of Russia and even silly fluff. For a Chinese example, Global Times.
This applies even to liberal astroturfing efforts against 4chan, which focused significantly on posting images of gay sex, etc and pretending to be hopeless Trump supporters. Because organized efforts use a playbook of some sort, they end up being quite repetitive.
Government is bureaucracy and bureaucracy has certain trademarks. The inability to do art well seems to be one of them, and trolling is indeed an art.
Finally, Mr. Karlin talks too much about video games when he could be serving the Greater Cause of Putin. He might not even play the Russian Civ in Civ 6 when Rise and Fall comes out. Very unpatriotic 😛
Yes, very much this. The Japanese adore children, their society offers lots of help and appreciation to moms and babies (see this article by a Russian woman in Japan) – but damn, these tiny apartments…
http://letters.komarovskiy.net/schastlivoe-yaponskoe-detstvo.html
The Russian amounts of living space per family are tragic. My cousin lives in a 2-bedroom flat with her parents, brother, husband and 2 kids. Of course she’s not having more than 2. And if the brother doesn’t marry some rich heiress, it will become a problem for him to find a place to reproduce.
Just check out the recent articles here, when I say Democrats are virulently anti white I am not just talking about their foot soldiers, their highest ranking members such as Pelosi talk about the dangers of having an America that is too white, or Bill Clinton that talk about how wonderful it will be when whites are a minority.
The diplomatic words between Zimbabwe and Russia or China are meaningless, meaningless as in they achieve nothing. When Rhodesia was approaching its demise, the USSR got some cheap and easy propaganda talking points through, but it was the US and UK that decided to abandon Rhodesia and thus decided its fate. The same for BLM, RT is a bit daft at times with its propaganda (because leftists hate Russia and no amount of pro leftist talking points from RT is going to change that ), but they just talk about BLM, on the other hand you had the Democrat party inviting BLM to its election conferences.
Russia has become the universal scapegoat to try and deflect away the real issues, and the most important issue is the relentless campaign to replace whites with non whites. Russia is not responsible for this, no amount of “look over there its Russians” is a valid excuse to try not blame those that really are the problem.
You are literally incapable of organizing even a remotely functional society. Just like black countries regressed after the white masters went away, so did you when the Russians left.
Why would the Russians corrupt their gene pool with third quality Russians a.k.a. Ukrainians? The ones who are worth something already consider themselves Russian and/or live in Russia.
Russia has also provided a lot of aid to Zimbabwe, and vetoes sanctions against Zimbabwe for its persecutions. Russia has been a faithful ally of Zimbabwe:
http://www.mikecampbellfoundation.com/page/russia-zim-cold-war-front
USSR provided arms and training to the African rebels.
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My point, again, is that the Russian State follows its own interests and can be either ally or enemy, whichever serves its purposes better, and on of those purposes is to weaken its Western rivals.
Putin didn’t push Kiev regime controlled Ukraine away from Russia.
There’re other well thought out constructively critical pro-Russian sources as well.
One of many examples of what makes Russia great:
https://www.insidethegames.biz/articles/1060816/speed-skater-graf-becomes-first-russian-to-turn-down-pyeongchang-2018-invitation
The heroine in question is an ethnic German from Siberia.
Victim of Russian mythology thinks Ukraine is not “remotely functional.”
Not remotely functional Lviv in 2016:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iw-Ly-aCz1g
Just like Africa, in the minds of Russian nationalists.
Zimbabwe is totally irrelevant nowadays regarding the collective interests of whites (few whites remain there now, most have left). Rhodesians were sold out 50 years ago by their own “kith and kin” in Britain, and their country was never more than a colonial outpost with shallow roots anyway. The real issue today is whites being swamped by mass immigration and subjected to a deliberate programme of replacement in their own historic nations (which in Western Europe were strikingly homogenous within living memory). And frankly, the US with its “values” which it busily spreads throughout the entire Western world has been a billion times more harmful in this regard than even the old Soviet Union ever was, let alone Putin’s Russia.
Putin’s actions led to dramatic growth in anti-Russian sentiment in Ukraine, turning it from a country with a friendly attitude towards Russia (even if, preferring a EU trajectory) into one with a Polish or Baltic attitude towards Russia; this will last at least a generation.
On balance it may or may not have been worth it, but his actions did have this effect.
What is curious to me is that China now has a two-child policy. With the fertility rate still in collapse, it doesn’t make sense to discourage people from having three or four or even five kids. Unless, it is thought this will be massively dysgenic, but I doubt it would be in China’s case.
I was simply using Zimbabwe as an example that the Russian State is more than willing to pursue policies that are bad for European peoples if it deems such policies to be in the interests of the Russian State. The Russian State has no loyalty towards European peoples, its attitude is neutral towards them. Insomuch as getting swamped by Muslims harms the West, Russia doesn’t have a problem with this.
I remember coming across this site a little while ago. They take into consideration population (available manpower) when figuring our how countries rank on their index.
https://www.globalfirepower.com/countries-listing.asp
Some surprise showings, but when you consider that manpower is a key factor, it makes more sense.
Peace.
That’s still better than actively working for the dispossession of Europeans which is what Western elites are doing nowadays.
More accurately put, “Putin” (Russia at large) and the pro-Russian element in the former Ukrainian SSR, understandably became perturbed with the increased brazen anti-Russian manner, that was an influential part of the group which overthrew Ukraine’s democratically elected president.
FYI, in the months leading up to Yanukovych’s overthrow, public opinion in the former Ukrainian SSR was close (always within a 10% range of each other to near identical) on whether to pursue the EU or Eurasian Customs Union.
Another hindrance was the zero sum game pursued by the EU on how to best develop matter Ukraine. Russia reasonably supported three way talks on that score. A related matterconcerns the violation (by the Euromaidan side) of the internationally brokered power sharing arrangement and the anti-Russian actions that happened thereafter.
Manpower doesn’t much matter for military power these days, but it is critical for GDP, while GDP is critical for military power.
Putin’s actions led to dramatic growth in anti-Russian sentiment in Ukraine,
Are you referring to his actions pre-coup, or post-coup? If the former, could you please be more specific?
Hey Mr. Karlin,
To a certain degree I get what you are saying and to a certain degree manpower (men with rifles) helps a lot. Try taking the sprawling mega-city of Sao Paulo or Mexico City with a modern army and you’ll know what I’m talking about. Maybe you could drop a few nukes on them to render them uninhabitable, but I simply can’t see that being a cake walk for even the most advanced countries.
Peace.
Some of us might even between Russia shills and Hasbara shills at the same time. 🙂
Either you find the comments interesting and entertaining or not. If it does not entertain you, you don’t read them. Same goes for this website – 90% of the content is low quality in my view, but there are sometime very interesting articles written, like these series about demographics.
The problem is the lure of the big cities. Big cities are where the fancy stuff is and the high paying jobs (especially so for university graduates!), so people strive to live in them, which automatically increases real estate prices there. Real estate in rural areas in most of the West is dirt cheap, but people don’t even breed there as needed.
It’s interesting to look at 19th century demographics.
For example, population of the United Kingdom was only 16.8 million in 1851. But it almost doubled to 30.5 million by 1901.
There was definitely trade-off between the population growth and standards of living (which partly why the old Malthusian influenced view saw high-population growth rates as a bad thing).
In context of these population growth rates, you can understand the Dickens world – and the kind of world that Marx is writing about – in which there are amounts of poor people even as the country’s economic growth is at ‘take off’ stage (shown below the economic ‘take-off’ in the UK).
https://i.imgur.com/Q0fr9mB.jpg
What can it do outside its borders in the first place?
Does it have economic (cultural) or military (carriers) heft to (((influence))) countries to be less suicidal.
Does it have billions laying around to throw on pet projects like a sexual revolution in the villages of Afghanistan?
No,
So stop crying.
It’s interesting to note that Mormon fertility has dropped a bit in the last years, in line with the rest of the US. The state of Utah is becoming less Mormon over time (due to immigration of Hispanica and other non-Mormons mostly). Salt Lake City itself is said to lose its Mormon majority soon. Utah county, located south of Salt Lake City however is defying the trend and is 88% Mormon. Utah County also serves as the intellectual heart of Mormonism, hosting Brigham Young University.
Before the crisis, they were solidly at 3 children per woman. In the late 1970s they were even able to mirror the baby boom once more. Now they are hovering around 2.7.
https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4741/28212162049_cba8eb2e58_o.png
Gene editing can’t be done right in the fallopian tubes, and large-scale in vitro fertilization doesn’t look realistic. It costs tens of thousands of dollars per try, usually requires more than one try, and there’s a cost on mother’s health (injecting tons of hormones to make several eggs mature at once can’t be good for you). Then, there’s the whole “human experiment that can go horribly wrong… on your future baby” thing. What normal people will sign up for that? Gene editing would probably be used to cure Down Syndrome and the like, but it’s too unsafe to use it to fix what’s not broken. Extremely high IQ alone isn’t even a very desirable trait for parents to take risks for.
“We pretend to work, and they pretend to pay.” (Sarcastic comment from Soviet times.)
I appreciate your reponses, however, I was trying to get Karlin himself to more fully explain how and why he subscribes to the outdated ‘triune’ theory. I’ve been following his blog for about a year now, and although it’s clear that he is a triun-ist, he’s never actually explained how and why he’s a believer? Perhaps, he’s reassesed his position, or has other reasons to continue holding the torch? It’s difficult for me to believe that somebody like him can so cavalierly dismiss 200 – 300 years of Ukrainian history? He lived in California for 10 years too, so he can’t be one of those dinosaur sovok types that hides somewhere in the basement of the Liubyanka?…
How else can I stay supplied with vodka?
A popular revolt by half the country is not a “coup.”
Actions leading up to, but mostly after, the overthrow of Yanukovich. While feelings towards Russia declined slightly during the uprising, even in Ukraine’s West the animosity was directed much more towards Yanukovich and his power base, not towards Russia. At that time, Putin or Russia weren’t seen as doing anything wrong – Yanukovich and the Donbas oligarchs were. But the seizure of Crimea and support for Donbas rebels made Ukrainians really dislike the Russian state.
Sure, because at the moment actively destroying the West isn’t in Russia’s best interests. My point was that the idealization of Russia as some sort of savior is silly.
Of course, but who’s doing that here? I certainly don’t believe that Putin and his circle have any altruistic interest in “saving” us, of course their main interest is in preserving and enhancing the power of the Russian state. But there’s nothing to indicate imo that Russian subversion, let alone direct military aggression is a serious or even existential threat to EU countries right now (which is unrelated to the whole Ukraine issue, I certainly don’t approve of everything Russia has done there). Playing up some supposed Russian threat for Europe imo is a deliberate diversion from other issues which actually are an existential threat to Europe’s native populations, but which you aren’t supposed to talk about.
It wouldn’t ruin GDP. Quite the opposite. A land value tax would lower real estate prices and boost GDP dramatically. With real estate prices low, aggregate demand would increase significantly. It would hurt the wealthy relative to everyone else; that’s why land value taxation is avoided.
It’s actually extraordinarily easy to tell who is real and fake, or to put it better extraordinarily hard to create a fake troll that looks real and has any complexity. For instance most sufficiently competent native English speakers can tell almost everyone who is not a native English speaker really accurately without much training or practice at all. It’s common enough to be able to tell if a writer is actually American or British/Australian or whatever even if all native speakers; the amount of clues in spelling, idiom usage etc would take a lot of very specialized AI/nlp work to mask that essentially nobody does. The only people capable of doing such things are small in number wouldn’t bother.
Disguising one’s language to be invisible to n-gram style analysis at a personal level is super hard, and of course there’s no substitute for content; simply having a few correct or specific views on a few things will of course out someone as being 1/100 million humans on Earth.
It’s the usual 4D chess doesn’t exist meme, people are what they appear to be on the surface in these contexts.
Obviously anonymous short comments are irrelevant or anyone can create an extremely primitive troll anywhere on the Internet with something like “Durka durr deaths to jews” or pwn all of sjwism Sokal-style, but again it’s hard to impersonate anything more sophisticated.
All that said the right (and the alt-right are as bad as stupid creationists etc too) is usually really, really terrible at understanding or impersonating the left, far worse than the other way around, but it’s extremely rare that a leftist would accurately troll libertarians/neo-Nazis whatever anyway.
Know the rest of this might annoy some people but the neo-Nazi racists are exactly what they seem, the Zionists exactly what the seem, the Asian racists exactly what they seem. Often individual people really do have bizarre “triggers” that really do set them off as well, which is relevant not to mass botting/shilling or something but sockpuppeting and more localized community issues and the like. For the local ecosystem TinyDuck is not a Woke African American or whatever he’s supposed to be but a right wing troll larping at his profile. EducationRealist is a batshit cat lady/Dolores Umbridge type. ArtDeco is actually interesting, in that if he was a troll he’d be one of the most sophisticated ones I’ve ever seen, but he’s really just authentic. He manages to opine on every subject as if you surveyed every single lawyer/lobbyist in the Washington DC/VA/MD area and combined them together; maybe you take the median to get the most establishment opinion possible. Of course he’s just a moron who legitimately holds those opinions, whatever his personal/professional life is.
One problem is that while you may usually deal with the high iq members of a certain movement; the heft of it is pseudo retarded with dumb memes about how the world works.
Merely a consequence of mass media being monopolized.
Also comments on your most recent posts esp the open thread are broken.
I have doubts the Indian economy can grow large enough.
2.4 trillion dollars in 2017
1.2 trillion dollars in 2008
If India maintains its current pace of growth it will not even reach the current size of the Chinese economy in 2050 (after adjusting for dollar inflation). India over the long term will actually slow down from its current pace as it falls into the middle income trap.
The primary factors for low fertility rates:
Materialism, contraceptives/condoms, feminism, easily accessible pornography, traitor elites, and so on. (Heck maybe something in the water lol or vaccines play a role, remember the Rockefellers are eugenics types).
Today the Muslim Arabs have the same fertility rates as the Americans and Europeans did during the mid 20th century. Where the huge fertility rates really are is: SSAfrica (there are some exceptions like Egypt, Iraq, Palestine).
Technically the Russians have tons of room. They could double their population and have more room. Poland could use more children too. (Ukraine, Serbia, Bulgaria, Romania, all have similar problems).
But look even conservative countries are struggling. Poland is the most conservative and one of the lowest fertility rates. This effects all the West, all of Europe, all of East Asia. Even Latin America is leveling off. Germany, Italy, Spain, Serbia, Greece, etc. Even the Russians who made some gains are struggling at 1.75 or thereabouts.
Completely agree that having a higher population is one of the more important factors.
Perhaps why they dream of an EU. Dont know.
The Chinese will be a complete superpower imo by around 2035.
The Indians by 2075-85 (maybe).
Japan will eventually become similar to Germany (Japs will remain homogenous, but population fall and their economy rank will fall).
Russia could lose influence or stay around the same (rank wise). Depends on population, status of nukes, and they make sure to keep close in technology.
Indonesia and Brazil have some potential but their leadership is struggling.
Egypt is another candidate to join the powers.
Mexico maybe. These last countries I mentioned have lower iq, but numbers and tech will play role.
Also wondering about Vietnam.
Also wonder what percentage of Russian land mass is not livable due to pure cold, lack of access.
There was such a project long ago, but several groups overtook those ambitions.
In the late 19th century Rhodes wanted Anglo-American unity
even suggesting UK could join the US.
This was supported by the Round Table. You may think of it as the CFR and its British version (forget the name).
But certain insiders, and money men knew about these intentions and basically stopped
the Anglophile racialist and some racist qualities.
Today these groups are forced to be Angophile (any race) rather than Angloracial.
Some of these groups who stopped the original Anglo racial plan for unity?
Fabian Socialists, Rothschild Zionists, and others.
Russia is certainly to blame in the Ukraine.
But so are countries like the US.
Samuel Huntington (one of the higher people in power) basically said Ukraine belongs to the Russian sphere of influence due to Orthodox culture. I think it was Clash of Civilizations.
When the West became angered by Putins quasi nationalism, and actions elsewhere, they pushed to help the Maiden people.
Essentially the West played in the dark, the Russians went into Crimea and Donbass,
and then the nearby coountries went into panic mode.
They wanted another Afghanistan. But got only a part of it.
They succeeded into turning the countries like Poland, Baltics, Romania into more pro NATO and antiRussian.
The divide and conquer game of the West (actually Anglo nations) is very efficient. The Situation in Syria was another example. Send in foreign jihadists, send in blackwater types, then when the goverment acts in sd the MSM came in and started barking how evil Assad is.
“India might” AK need to inform himself more about the ground reality of India. Indians youth, according to their own education survey, is dumber than a bag of rocks. This survey focus on 14-18 years old rural youths.
https://scroll.in/article/865593/why-more-and-more-parents-are-going-for-private-schools-director-of-influential-education-survey
http://www.livemint.com/Education/sLNNNO5Lvl7dcdVJRH5osN/Indias-learning-deficit-is-worsening-ASER-study.html
Highlight:
1) 40% of the students between the ages of 14 and 18 surveyed in rural schools across 24 states could not tell the time from the image of a clock.
2) 57% of 14-18 CANNOT do simple Division.
3) 24% cannot count money correctly
For Indian city kids, PISA 2009 should print you a picture that worth a thousand words.
That’s why the advanced countries have invented mini-nukes with dial a yield capabilities , with some settings causing limited radiation fallout which only lasts a few weeks. So anytime they encounter too tough resistance, they just retreat and drop a few mini-nukes on the problem.
Then they walk in a few weeks later to a very pacified situation. That’s how things are done these days. So a few can easily control many, no matter how determined the many are. Apparently, mini-nukes were used in Iraq.
Think about it, the last nukes officially used militarily was in the 1940’s. How much more advances have been made with nukes since then, its been over 70 years of advances. Both the US and Israel have discontinued the production of their heavy tanks, because they know that an easy solution to any sticky, high intensity, high casualty situation is just to drop mini-nukes on the problem. But it only works if the other side doesn’t have nukes, those with nukes will just respond with their nukes.
Other than religious/ethnic fanaticism, how do you convince
modern women to have 4 kids? ( I’m writing this from the
American perspective). If you ever dated a divorced woman
with kids who is in her 30s or 40s, you’ll quickly realize what
at least one of the major issues is – having children often ruins
women’s bodies. Stretch marks, varicose veins, obesity, saggy
breasts, cavernous vaginas, etc And they know they are
competing with women who are, to use Heartiste’s phrase,
“younger, hotter, tighter, and juicier.” It’s not gonna happen!
As attested by the multibillion beauty industry, modern
women, unlike even 50 years ago, want to stay beautiful as
long as possible, and that implies delaying kid(s) until
their early-to-mid 30s and hence having only 1 or 2.
The U.S. TFR is in free fall (as is marriage rate). It dropped
to 1.77 last year so for whites it’s even lower.
I think the environmental degradation (affecting sperm
counts in the West) is growing exponentially anyway, so
the global population needs to be reduced to 2-3 billion
to avert an environmental catastrophe. Hence the best that
Russia or Europe can hope for is homeostasis which wouldn’t
be so bad. Anatoly, like many Russians, is still thinking in
late 19th century terms – empires and wars – not surprising
considering that that’s when Russia was at the height of its
power (at the expense of its neighbors).
I’d say forget about colonization of space (at least for awhile).
Think instead in terms of preventing epidemics, stopping the extinction
of the species, and commencing environmental cleanup. Let’s fix the
Earth first before exporting our problems elsewhere.
But they were already pro-NATO and anti-Russian.
Does it really matter whether they NATO-style hard anti-Russian or EU-style soft anti-Russian?
Russia’s demographics are catastrophic if you look into them. First of it has both the 3rd highest amount of immigrants of any country and the 3rd highest amount of emigrants of any country and a birth rate below replacement level and the population that is supposed to be reproducing right now those 20-30 years old are part of the dead zone of the 90’s when the demographic collapse originally began. The emigrants are mostly Russians while the migrants are central Asians. The birth rate increases are entirely concentrated in ethno- republics or Major urban centers that take in migrants. So the ethnic Russian population is actually being eradicated at a much greater rate than any population in the West going through similar problems.
Since Russia is pretty much a modern neo-liberal capitalist state it suffers from all of the same problems the west has when it comes to the population growth namely alienation, feminism, careerism etc but it’s also a considerably poorer crony capitalist state with considerably less opportunities considerably more corruption and low institutional trust and lack of institutions in general so the problems are quadrupled in Russia when compared to the West and this is reflected in the abortion rate the alcoholism tobacco consumption and drug abuse. And due to the nature of Russia’s crony capitalist system it doesn’t really have any options to deal with this because crony capitalist systems generally are unable and unwilling to tackle these problems. The state of Egypt for example has little to no effect on Egyptian demographics except in the case of Egypt the population is growing too fast for the government to cope and creating massive problems in the case of Russia the reverse is true the population is dying out in a rapid pace creating massive problems.
Ppp is better for India because it’s massively devalued its currency in the past 20 years. 3-4rs made 1 usd in 1993 & it’s around 70 today.
10-15k Ppp is all it needs to cleanse crislam + keep china at bay.
Japan is sponsoring a lot of infrastructure/cultural projects & providing jobs to the best tech graduates।।
It’s probably true but so many of these stats are made by missionary ngos who invite syrians & walk into temples praying for an earthquake that you just go w/e
Punjabis & other NW Indians like Rajputs are gonna fight like lions so w/e else gonna happen gonna happen।।
Nibba, if we’re in trouble all we gotta do is yell across the Himalaya Parbat।।
Spicy Vodka will remove kebab।।
Don’t. Use. Nominal. GDP. (In most contexts.)
Indian PPP is many times larger (just like Russia’s atm). Also, nominal GDP is all about exchange rates, so predicting long-term nominal GDP is largely pointless. Russia’s recent devaluation is a good example, or the fact that the Chinese economy actually used to grow by close to 20% a year in nominal terms, instead of the real GDP growth of 10%, because CNY strengthened by around 10% vs. the USD annually. (It’s amazing how many “experts” didn’t realize that.)
However, it’s true that India’s human capital seems to be quite low (Karlin has actually written about that), so it’s questionable whether they’ll ever be able to fully challenge China or the US.
A far from a complete picture and one of distortion. Crimea’s reunification with Russia came as a result of what transpired in Kiev against Yanukovych, in conjunction with the examples of Kosovo and northern Cyprus. A somewhat similar situation developed in Donbass.
As excerpted from here:
https://www.globalresearch.ca/twisted-history-against-russia-and-serbia/5390154
Yanukovych’s ouster saw the following developments become either implemented, or enhanced from what they’d been:
disproportionate Rada ministerial appointments by the then acting Turchynov-Yatsenyuk regime in Kiev, to people associated with the pro-Bandera/anti-Russian leaning nationalist Svoboda organization
scrapping of a law safeguarding Russian and other minority language rights, only to be later put in a pending kind of limbo status
violent manner of the nationalist anti-Russian slanted Svoboda and Right Sector movements – some examples are clearly available on tape
a situation in Kiev and some other parts of Ukraine that became unfairly challenging to individuals with views running counter to the Turchynov-Yatsenyuk regime, in the lead up to the May 25 Ukrainian presidential election
replacing the pro-Russian utilized St. George’s ribbon, honoring the May 9th Victory Day, with an emblem having the black and red colors of the pro-Bandera movement
Svoboda advocated removal of a monument honoring Napoleonic era Russian General Mikhail Kutuzov.
It’s silly to hype Russia as a major problem regarding disputed former Soviet territories. Likewise with the faulty belief that it has actively sought to destabilize Western democracies.
Russia serves the constructive purpose of challenging misguided neocon/neolib perceptions – never minding the heavy handed anti-Russian propaganda out there.
Of course, Russia isn’t without fault. No nation is perfect.
[And they would have been crushed in 1914 had Britain decided not to uphold its treaty obligations.]
Wut? Britain had no treaty obligations to France, and those to Belgium were very much open to interpretation. In any case, France would have survived the 1914 campaign without Britain (but not, of course, without Russia).
Russia is at fault in Ukraine, in the sense of not always doing the best advocacy for its position. During the so-called Orange Revolution, Russia appeared to not have a well thought out strategy in place. Meantime, Western funded activists looked more organized.
In more recent times, Russia’s position looks awkward. Why formally recognize the Kiev regime if one believes its political rise to be illegitimate?
Despite the screw ups,note how quickly Yushchenko fizzled with Yanukovych making a comeback. Since Yanukovych’s ouster, the Euromaidan side shows no popular leader to look up to.
[Steve Sailer recently wrote about increasing fertility there, which is driven exclusively by the Jews and now stands at 3.1 children per woman.]
I suspect that our Semitic “friends” have been lying a bit about the distribution of fertility by ethnoreligious group. The overall birthrate has remained suspiciously constant.
As a follow-up to my last set of comments, one wonders just how threatened the Balts and Poles feel about what has transpired in Crimea and Donbass? Is it more anti-Russian posturing with a hyped excuse that has flaws?
The Poles show some understanding of the violent nationalist wave evident within the Euromaidan side. The Balts and Poles should be historicated enough to understand the Russo-Ukrainian intricacies that doesn’t involve those who don’t feel so related to the Rus period and thereafter:
http://www.eurasiareview.com/09052016-ongoing-russian-ukrainian-intricacies-analysis/
When a dispute with Russia develops, one can expect the usual cast of characters to take the anti-Russian side – no matter how faulty that position is.
He was wrong about Ukraine because he failed to account for the fact that Ukraine, unique among Orthodox countries, spent centuries as part of the West.
Russia was separated from the West by the Mongols, and was then independent with a generally aversive relationship with its Western neighbors, the Orthodox peoples of the Balkans were separated from the West by the Ottomans.
Ukraine, in contrast, spent centuries as part of Lithuania and Poland-Lithuania, plus (in the case of Galicia) Austria. Thus, the ethnic Ukrainian heartland in the Center and the West consistently pursues a Western course. It gets a little trickier in Ukraine’s south and east. These territories were settled later, by a combination of Ukrainians moving south from the heartland and Russians moving from Russia. While they do not yearn for unification with Russia (as Russian nationalists falsely claim or hope) they are certainly mixed in their attitude. Putin has made many of them opposed to the Russian state.
Here is a map of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/b5/Polish-Lithuanian_Commonwealth_ru_%281619%29.PNG/609px-Polish-Lithuanian_Commonwealth_ru_%281619%29.PNG
Here is a map of Ukraine’s 2010 election results (all elections showed the same pattern):
https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-TmGACgT-YWA/Vr8RN6reBsI/AAAAAAAAC_8/TMRtX81iGtA/s400/Ukraine%2Belections.jpg
The similarity is not a coincidence.
Why do you think this must be binary? You think it makes zero difference if these places are like the Baltics or Poland, rather than like Hungary?
These events explain why Crimeans and some Donbas people turned against the Ukrainian state but do not contradict the reasons for many of the rest of the people in Ukraine turning against Russia.
An anecdotal example that matches population data from opinion polls: at a social events I met a middle-aged couple and their 20-something daughter from Dnipropetrovsk, in fall 2015, and spent some time talking with them. To paraphrase the parents: “We voted for Yanukovich, we were against Maidan. But it happened, what could we do? And when it happened the Russians, whom we thought were our brothers, stabbed us in the back and took Crimea. They are sending bullets to Donbas that are killing our boys.” The wife had a relative (first cousin, IIRC) in living in Russia whom she had stopped talking with over this. This sort of thing has been rather common.
Mike Averko? Really? I was tempted t0 bring his name up within the discussion of Karlin’s recent jaunt into the strange world of ‘Russia experts’ that never bothered to learn to communicate in Russian, https://www.unz.com/akarlin/russia-expert-michael-mcfaul-dont-need-no-russian-language/, but decided to let sleeping dogs lie. My problem with this self professed ‘Independent Foreign Policy’ and Russia analyst isn’t even his inability to learn to write in Russian, but his dismal and obtuse command of the English language. It often takes me two or three reads of his brilliant analysis in order to possibly uncover the nugget of information he’s trying to pass along as valuable information. In case you think that I’m being to hard on this career oriented ‘analyst’, you can read what others think about him here: https://larussophobe.wordpress.com/2006/05/19/mike-averko-a-legend-in-his-own-neo-soviet-mind/ 🙂
Careful, don’t forget to include Bukovyna and Zakarpattya as Ukrainian provinces that experienced Hapsburg rule too, each with its own unique but interrelated fate.
Yes, I agree that if one has no moral compunctions and the other side has no retaliatory options, nuclear weapons basically render population advantages null.
Peace.
There’s Afrotriumph that Karlin very occasionally explores, but until Ethopia conquers the rest of Africa, its unlikely. The smart fraction of Africa is very small.
Some suckas just insist on wonder whoring when you build 18 axemen and end the game.
/geek
Silly trick question. You find women who want to have 4x children. Ancedotally, I’ve found that women from large families tend to have larger families which likely has both genetic and environmental causes.
More realistically, having been around the world, its really money that’s the single largest impediment to large families as well as expectations; I think its safe to say that historically we associated adulthood with familialism such that bachelorhood and spinsterhood were seen as unnatural. A flip side of this then was that achivement and accomplishment was thought possible even post-children.
You don’t have that now, of course, where having children is often associated with career-ending for women and career-impairing for men. The double income no kids strategy is highly rewarding, financially, which leads to delaying marriage and childbirth: both increase infertility eventually in both male and females(though much more so in the latter). But then money is high status, freedom from responsibilities is high status, career stardom is high status, and facebook likes are high status, and perpetually delaying marriage increases the mental window for more appealing partners…
…Humpty Dumpty had a great fall, as they might say. Modernity, as a whole, is toxic to family formation.
I believe that they can thrive gloriously and co-prosperously in a great sphere centered around Asia, or so I’ve heard.
No, he wrote of Ukraine as a “cleft country”, that is a country torn between two different civilizations, the Orthodox world and the once Latin Christian West (iirc another example for that he mentioned was Turkey, with its Westernized elites, though there the historical background was different and the tensions have been resolved in favour of renewed Islamic identity). He wouldn’t have been surprised by what has happened since 2014.
Correct. However he placed the “cleft” at the Galician border, separating Greek Catholic Galicians from Orthodox Kievans. The reality was – and events have conformed this – that Kiev’s centuries-long existence within the West places the cleft much further east than Huntington envisioned.
Do you get your name from basically copy and pasting the same ramble on every post? Don’t you have some sodomy that you urgently need to get to instead?
Most of Russia’s immigrants are temporary workers who eventually go back home.
Not as a percentage of the population.
TFR in the 7 Muslim-majority republics has been falling, and is below replacement in every one except Chechnya. And Central Asian migrant workers don’t do much to raise the Russian fertility rate, as they are about 2/3rds male, and usually wait until they return home to have children. TFR in the more than 90% Slav regions rose from about 1.1 in 2000 to about 1.65 in 2016 (it probably fell back to about 1.5 in 2017, and it remains to be seen if the upward trend will resume now that the economy is growing again).
No. According to population projections by Pew, over the next three decades the Muslim % of the population will rise faster in Europe than in Russia. Last year, Pew projected that by 2050, Europe’s Muslim population would increase from 5% to at least 11% (or 14% in a high-migration scenario). Whereas in 2010, Pew projected that Russia’s Muslim % would increase from 11% to 14% by 2030 (so probably around 17% in 2050).
I know ethnic Ukrainians who take a different slant, in line with polling that indicates that the majority of Ukraine’s Crimeans support Crimea’s reunification with Russia.
In her more intelligent of moments, Nadiya Savchenko has acknowledged fault on the Kiev regime side concerning Donbass. Know my share of ethnic Ukrainians with family in Donbass who see the Kev regime side as the overwhelming negative heavy.
I think some Poles overreact to the threat of Russia. Others dont care. Others hate Ukraine (because of Bandera).
Personally I find nothing to be concerned about. (I just dislike Slavics dying)
Its nice to boost military in Poland, although I dont like foreign troops coming to Poland.
All of Europe should be lucky that this was done fairly calmy in Crimea and contained to Donbass (I feel sorry for the people there who lose homes and lives).
Orange Revolution was supported by Brzezinski and his son(?). They are more American than Polish minded. I mean working for Rockefeller and helping Carter.
The only thing I am okay with ZBig is his criticism of Israel.
I understand that that my Russian isn’t noticeably worse than that of Alexander Mercouris, David Johnson and a host of others.
I know my knowledge of what I comment on pertaining to Russian history, foreign policy, sports and English language mass media of coverage Russia, is far superior to your trolling drivel.
Positively referencing La Russophobe (an anonymous blog censoring oaf) in the way that you did highlights your carrying on like a stupid schmuck. On a related note:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/worldhaveyoursay/2007/08/a_new_cold_war.html
http://accidentalrussophile.blogspot.com/2007/08/should-we-be-afraid-of-russia-have-your.html
Cowards make negatively inaccurate comments under anonymity. That’s not what I do. Let’s see you stick on topic and successfully refute my fact based commentary that you apparently don’t agree with.
Thanks for the clarification. There are clearly divides in Ukraine.
I see West part influencied by Poland but more by Germanic influence mentally.
The Kiev parts as Ukrainian.
And the Southeast as Russian influence.
Most Ukrainians want to keep all. But Dmowski predicted this would create problems in the future.
I dont know what the solution is, sometimes I thought of seperating parts, but Ukrainians no want this.
There are also the Kiev Patriach, Moscow connected part, and Catholic parts.
(ironically I prefer the first two, yes I dont like Bandera and his support seems most in Western part).
You forgot reduced child mortality. People don’t feel pressure to have as many kids as possible because half of them may die from smallpox or dysentery. A somewhat extreme example: the mother of 19th century Russian writer Elizaveta Vodovozova had 16 kids (not counting stillborns). 8 died during a cholera epidemic, 4 of various diseases, 1 got burned to death in a fireplace accident, so she was left with 3.
By the way, I disagree that the old times had lower materialism. All those opulent palaces and portraits of noblemen covered in bling like Christmas trees say otherwise.
Among anti-Russian elements, I believe that Russia (in overall terms) is disliked more than feared.
I’ve run into a share of pro-Russian Poles and Russians seeking better ties with Russia. Not that these two groups will agree on everything. Of possible interest:
http://www.eurasiareview.com/08042016-fuzzy-history-how-poland-saved-the-world-from-russia-analysis/
Concerning Radek Sikorski:
https://www.globalresearch.ca/russias-role-in-the-world-gauging-moscows-active-foreign-policy/5361015
We aren’t talking about Crimea but about Ukrainians in the rest of Ukraine.
Attitudes of Ukrainians towards Russia:
http://www.kiis.com.ua/materials/pr/20171007_ukr-rus/1ukr.jpg
Modest drop during Euromaidan, and big drop between February 2014 and May 2014.
I was actually refering to today rather than old time.
Today there is less deadly disease for children.
The West (including Americas, Europe, Japan) are more materialistic.
in Japan are huge portion of young adults have no girlfriend or wife.
What I can tell you,
around 25 percent of Poles like Russia.
another 25-30 are neutral or dgaf.
the majority of remaining dislike or hate.
Now when it comes to the Russian state.
Most Poles do not trust it. My guess only around 5-15 percent only have anything good to say about Putin.
You know the current government in Poland and Russia are quite similar.
Socially conservative, national conservatives. Just they hate each other lol!
I think that has more to do with American influence than Catholic Church influence
(see the Austrian and Italian governments who prefer to trade with Russia).
As for the Bolshevik war. It saved Poland perhaps. And perhaps Germany because the Leninists wanted to join the revolutionary guys in Germany. (it was international).
If Russia just let 2014 play out Ukrainian would have again been largely pro-Russian by 2018. Ukraine wouldn’t have gotten any benefits from the EU no foreign aid just a cheap association agreement and nothing would have happened it would have taken 4 years for them to get sick of the new government and get rid of it just like in the last Orange Revolution
“Muh religion” “Muh nation” “Muh moral values” All these pathetic moral appeals to browbeat people to have children would be as succesful as the Soviet attempts to make people work by moral persuasion.
If you only pretend to pay people, if work does not pay, workers will only pretend to work and laught at all the propaganda bleating about “work is glorious” “heroic workers” “onwards to work, comrades” “work is its own reward” etc…
Look at the European countries with highest birth rate in 19th century – England and Russia.
You cannot find more dissimilar countries. One capitalist, one feudal. One secular, one fanatically religious, but population in both exploded. Why? Because having children was profitable.
In Russia, majority of people were peasants who owned the land as village community, not personally. The land was regularly, every 20 years, divided among the peasant families equally. The more children you had, the more land will your family get.
In England, majority of people were laborers who owned nothing, only shirts on their backs, with nothing to inherit and nothing to bequeath. The more children you had and the earlier you sent to work, the more money will they earn for you.
For contrast, look at 19th century France, country of slowest demographic growth in Europe (despite massive immigration from Italy, Spain and places as far as Poland). Why? Because of Napoleon. Not his wars, but his law. Napoleonic Code instituted equal division of property among children. If family had more than one or two children, it would end in poverty, and, regardless of the strong faith of French peasants, they responded to incentives.
The lesson is clear – if you want population growth in modern countries, you have to find way to make bearing children pay in modern condition. “Moral values” and dollar buy you cup of coffee at McDonald’s.
If Russia didn’t have a declining, aging population of actual native Russians, it would be reasonable to expect them to pose a direct conventional threat to neighbors in both central/Eastern Europe and in Central Asia.
But Russia has such a serious demographic problem. How could they muster enough youngish men/troops to hold newly occupied territory of any real size? At least, beyond the places whose populations are a large plurality ethnic Russians (I can think of three, from smallest to largest: Latvia, E/SE Ukraine, and northern Kazakhstan).
It’s Russia’s pronounced demographic weakness that leads me to discount Russia as a serious offensive conventional threat to all but the smallest countries, not any naive trust in Russians or their governments.
The phrase “stabbed us in the back” comes up a lot (when listening to a lot of Ukrainian songs, etc.).
“We” refers to you.
Regardless, “Putin” (Russia at large) isn’t primarily responsible for instigating the conflict in question as previously described in detail.
I’m in basic agreement with you.
Poland saved itself from Bolshevism in 1920. Ho0ever, its decision to not form an earlier proposed alliance with the Whites was an arguably decisive decision, which paved the way for a Bolshe victory that eventually came back to bite Poland.
Not to be completely ruled out for the distant future. At present, there’re no really popular Ukrainian leaders.
If Russia hadn’t acted like it did in Crimea, there might very well have been a humanitarian catastrophe there. That thought concerns the pro-ethnic cleansing stance (against Russians) of Mustafa Dzhemilev, meshed with the Ukrainian nationalist element that’s anti-Russian.
http://www.eurasiareview.com/03032014-humanitarian-intervention-undertaken-in-crimea-analysis/
As has been statistically noted, Russia’s demographic situation sn’t as bad as some continue to maintain.
Russia has plenty of land of its own, in conjunction with some domestic issues. In short, Russia isn’t the one seeking an unnecessarily adventurist foreign policy. At the same time, Russia understandably sees some instances where power is required.
In 1999, the neocons and neolibs reminded Russia of how might essentially makes right.
The ethnic Russians in those countries are irrelevant. Even the events in Eastern Ukraine showed that. (in fact, a large number of Russian speakers there stood up to defend Ukraine – a big surprise to some of the Russian officers). Ethnic Russians, esp. in the Baltic countries, stand to lose everything in the case of Russian incursion. They know that. So they don’t matter here. What matters is how many special forces soldiers and then additional troops Russia is willing to send in. They have hundreds of thousands to spare.
What about using nominal in this context? Aggregate GDP and national power.
That without Russian actions Ukraine would be more moderate, that’s true. But it seems that something bigger has happened. Ukraine has turned. An internal Westernization must have happened.
Space has a tremendous draw across the political spectrum because the fact that it is soft eugenics. Space won’t have earth’s problems because it will have left them (mostly) on earth.
The obvious solution is for Ukraine to embrace both its Ukrainian and Russian heritages and become a link between Europe and Asia. This will take some time, however, for first the nationalists will have to get radicalized to the point where their idea of Ukraine is intolerably exclusive, and we’re not quite there yet.
Sorry to disappoint you Daniel, but I don’t happen to share in your proclivity for perverted sex acts. Perhaps, Mikhail might accommodate your needs, he always seems to be looking for new playmates. 🙂
I have always thought of similar for Poland.
A bridge between West Europe and Russia. The “best” of both worlds and being a neutral place.
Apparently though Austria and Hungary are doing a better job at that.
As for the Avoz Battaloin types and “Svoboda” (actually National Socialists) in Ukraine. it will take a while to change their attitude. In Poland law was made against their types.
Why even the need for such a bridge? Regretfully, Poland and Russia have differences, making it difficult for Poland to serve as a bridge between Russia and the West.
Austria and to a greater extent Hungary are getting some flack for favoring better ties with Russia. In any event, it’s best for countries to directly deal with each other.
Mickey – is it truly you? I really had no idea it was really Mike Averko with whom I was corresponding here! Actually, I shouldn’t be too surprised, as I notice that things are rather slow over at your own blog. By my count, I see that you’re averaging less than 1 comment per ‘analysis’ over the last ten entries, and the one commenter is a fellow named ‘Walter DuBlinica’ (this couldn’t really be you sending yourself a comment now could it Mickey?)? 🙂
As for not appreciating Ms. Zigfield’s adorable little article about your dubious importance, how about Mr. Karlin’s assesment of your character? Would you find his opinion more to your satifaction? You do realize that you’re now commenting at his blog, don’t you Mickey?
Scowspi:
https://www.unz.com/akarlin/a-short-guide-to-the-top-10-russia-blogs/
More empty calories from you.
I’ve been on the BBC twice and have been source referenced in academic works, including Richard Sakwa’s fine book on Ukraine. Needless to say (but said anyway), this far exceeds your trolling drivel.
Walter Dublanica is a legit other person, who doesn’t hide behind a moniker making negatively inaccurate comments about others – your M.O. A Russian based venue and countless others greatly appreciate my input. I’m not too interested in the negatively inaccurate troll comments against me.
Leave it to you to omit that La Russophobe punked out of a live one hour panel on the BBC unlike yours truly.
Hence, you can shove it.
At times, it can be challenging to refrain from feeding such a dim bolt of a troll as Hack. BTW, I gave him that name which he took.
Have the satisfaction of knowing that he has made himself look like a big time @$$hole.
Only ‘Walter Dublinica’, a far as anybody can see. You are able to comprehend what others, including Karlin, think of you?…Why so few comments at your blog if you’re truly such an interesting and important blogger?
Folks like Roman Serbyn and “Mr. Hack” don’t get free reign at these threads:
https://www.eurasiareview.com/23032017-reexamining-russias-past-analysis/#comments
https://www.eurasiareview.com/07032017-obsessing-over-russia-comparing-diplomats-and-historical-narratives-analysis/#comments
http://www.eurasiareview.com/29022016-eurovision-crimean-tatars-and-some-digressions-analysis/#comment-574068
The low commenting turnout at these threads partly has to do with the way the comments at ER are positioned. Regardless, the BBC, US-Russia.org and numerous others have for good reason found my input to be quite worthy for feature.
This matter is further indicated by my input here when compared to the putrid presence of “Mr. Hack”.
Central and western Ukraine were always internally Western, as evidenced by election results since independence. The country was evenly divided but the West was having many more children than the East, so overall the country was inevitably drifting more towards the West.
Putin’s actions:
Turned Russia-friendly Ukrainian who were pro-Western, into people hostile towards Russia.
Removed the most pro-Russia parts that had served as anchors, slowing Ukraine’s progress towards the West.
Poster formerly known as Latvian woman here.
Ok, this is too much. A Pole and a Swede are going to talk about how Ukraine should be “seperated” and what Ukraine should do with itself. You guys are funny.
polskijoe – I’d advise you to refrain from talking about “seperating” Ukraine. Someone talking that way deserves the “l” word and I don’t want to use it against any Polish national. And let Stepan rest in peace — what they do in their country is their business.
Swedish dude – re: “Bridge between Europe and Asia”. I’ve been hearing about this mysterious “bridge” for 27 years now. Have you seen it? How does this bridge work in practice? Is it related to that other unicorn – the “Lisbon to Vladivostok” land? Oh, and above all, who is going to pay for this bridge? You’re welcome to elaborate because I’m curious. Why should Ukraine or the Baltics serve as that “bridge”? Why not Sweden? Or Germany? Don’t we all have internet these days? Go ahead, learn Russian and “bridge” all you want.
But Ukraine will do what they must.
AK: Why don’t you comment as Latvian women instead of informing us you used to be Latvian women in every new comment? Seems simpler to me.
The lesson is clear – if you want population growth in modern countries, you have to find way to make bearing children pay in modern condition. “Moral values” and dollar buy you cup of coffee at McDonald’s.
Give all the good jobs to men. That will do the trick.
This website (Eurasian Review) and the access to comment there is as accessible as any other. I suspect that the low level of commenting at your blog reflects your dull and listless writing style. As far as your ‘quite worthy’ input at BBC, after googling the topic ‘BBC Mike Averko’ the only thing that I could locate was this less than laudatory and deprecating remark about your input there:
People avoid you like the plague Mickey – ‘A blogger we approached said they wouldn’t ‘demean’ themselves to participate in a programme with him’
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/worldhaveyoursay/2007/08/a_new_cold_war.html
Central Ukraine (Kiev, Poltava, et al) had a mixed bag dynamic. Following WW II, an increased number of folks from Galicia-Volhynia migrated to that area, thereby making it more Western. At present, the pro-Russian elements there have to be a bit guarded given the kind of arrests and beatings which have occurred.
Once again, “Putin’s actions” (Russia’s) isn’t primarily responsible for the heightened tensions in Ukraine. One can also question what’s meant by “Russia friendly Ukrainian”. As is, there’re pro-Russian Ukrainians, who I’ve had the pleasure of frequently running into.
2009 wasn’t that long ago. back then, a poll had Putin winning the Ukrainian presidency against any of he then candidates, as well as any other hypothetical world leader. We see how unpopular the potential current crop of Ukrainian presidential candidates is. things can change.
Not at all troll. Paul Goble doesn’t seem to have any commenters at his blog, despite regular RFE/RL and JRL proppings of him. For all I know, Eurasia Review might at times be lax in having comments posted. I recall having to follow-up to get some of my comments thru there. In point of fact, the ER comments section isn’t well featured which partly explains the low posting content.
The number of posted comments doesn’t always gauge the actual value of a piece. Consider a thread with a high number of idiot comments in the form of what you spew.
In any event, there’s much more to judging a person’s value. Fill me in on what venues have published your formally written commentary, as well as where you’ve been academically referenced, on top of having major media appearances.
The dullness lies with your sorry ass contributions at this and other threads. To date, you’ve yet to successfully refute anything that I’ve said.
You disingenuously link a page that I had earlier posted at this thread, which shows how your chump troll La Russophobe, punked out of a live BBC exchange with yours truly. Gutless wonders like yourself deceive from a safe anonymous distance. In contrast, yours truly did well in a stacked one hour BBC panel featuring Bukovsky, Khrushcheva and Zagorski. I’d do even better if given more frequent appearance time – something that you haven’t come close to gaining.
In other instances, I’ve matter of fact looked far more academic than such paper credentialed folks as Mark Galeotti.
BTW, I assisted the BBC producer of that show in getting one of the panelists. This is in line with my regular discussions with major media and academic folks. Not everyone posts comments. Some very intelligent and interesting people prefer private interaction. I suspect that might’ve to do with avoiding sleazeballs like yourself.
Kiev is the capital and attracts people from everywhere. There has not been significant migration to other central Ukrainian areas from western Ukraine.
On the one hand, there is your repeated assertion. On the other hand, there is the drop in support for Russia, right around the time when Crimea was taken and the Donbas war began, with support reaching the low point round the time of the Debaltsevo battle.
Coincidence?
IIRC there was some sort of poll indicating Ukrainians would want a Putin of their own, not that they wanted to be ruled by Putin.
Good luck with your dreams.
Poster formerly known as Latvian woman here.
Have you looked at the people? I’d say that’s even more important. This looks bigger than the Orange revolution.
My “dreams” are arguably more realistic than the notion of Ukraine becoming a full fledged EU and NATO member.
My point about Kiev is matter of fact true. If I correctly recall, Subtelny made the very same observation in his book, as have some Ukrainians I know. It makes perfect sense. Prior to WW II, the area known as western Ukraine wasn’t part of the Ukrainian SSR. Following WW II, it stands to reason that the Kiev area would get a greater number of people from western Ukraine, as compared with the pre-WW II period. As you note, Kiev has an attraction aspect.
What happened in Crimea isn’t the fault of “Putin” (Russia) for the previously detailed reasons. The reunification which took place has a humanitarian intervention dynamic as previously noted further up this thread.
As academics Serhiy Kudelia and Paul Robinson have noted, the Donbass rebels aren’t an outside of Ukraine clandestine Russian project. In addition, Russia and a good portion of Donbass have some reason to be wary of a potential Krajina like situation developing there.
https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2018/01/06/croatian-scenario-shortcomings-for-ending-donbass-conflict.html
As a follow-up, back in early 2005, I was on record for saying that it’s wrong to surmise that Yanukovych was politically done – something that proved true. Not that I think he has much of a political future in Ukraine, since his ouster.
Please elaborate.
Latvian woman here.
Last year I spoke to the poster AP here and made a lot of mistaken assumptions while talking to him. One thing I said was that the Ukrainian politics was like a “pendulum” that swings from West to East. That was a very superficial observation, a big mistake I should never have made. The Huntington theory is wrong when it comes to Ukraine. Ukraine has become a political nation. Ukraine is now where it should’ve been in 1918. In fact, when you look deeper, it is uncanny how similar it looks to our own, Baltic Singing Revolution from the late 1980s.
Since last year I watched a ton of videos and learned some Ukrainian — a lot of these videos prove how many Russian speakers (or rather bilingual Ukrainians — they can switch from Russian to Ukrainian amazingly fast and speak both languages without accent) are on Ukraine’s side. These are probably grandkids of former Ukrainian speakers. There were bilingual Ukrainians that defended Mariupol and who are still there, at the front. Look at the territory that was carved out – the linia prekosnovenya – it is hardly all of Donbass. This is because there simply wasn’t enough internal support for the insurgency and because there were so many local volunteer fighters. Of course, I’ve also spoken to some Ukrainians who are not pro-Maidan, but while they didn’t support the government, they never even imagined that Ukraine should be partitioned. They just wanted bilingual Ukraine with a neutral orientation. I’m not saying there are no divisions, and I’m not saying the idea of NATO or the EU should have been pushed on the Donbass residents, but the truth remains that the consolidation of Ukraine was amazing. Right now, Ukraine would probably be harder for Russia to invade and occupy than the Baltic states (NATO members).
So Huntington was wrong.
http://euromaidanpress.com/2016/09/25/huntington-profoundly-wrong-about-ukraine-kyiv-historian-says/
And for Russian officers, this is a scenario that they probably trained for for many years, but apparently it’s hard to detect these internal processes before the X hour.
That Euromaidan Press link you gave is vintage CIUS like propaganda. The Greek Catholic Church was favored by Poland as a means of suppressing those who were Orthodox Christian and seen as loyal to Russia. That in turn created a backlash. So, it’s not a simple matter of innocent Greek Catholics getting bullied by the evil Russian Orthodox Church. There’s also the matter of pro-Bandera sentiment among a good number of Ukrainian Greek Catholics.
For the record, I haven’t actively advocated Ukraine getting partitioned unlike some others including Alexander Mercouris and Ethan Burger. Russia’s position doesn’t favor Donbass’ complete independence or it joining Russia. Crimea is another matter that includes the majority of that area’s Ukrainians supporting Crimea’s reunification with Russia.
Not so long ago, Mark Adomanis referenced a poll showing that eastern parts of Kiev regime controlled Ukraine wouldn’t actively oppose an armed pro-Russian encroachment on that territory.
I do agree that Ukraine can get simplistically covered in an inaccurate way. I’m reminded of something that the late Robert Parry had repetitiously stated:
https://consortiumnews.com/2017/09/15/the-nyts-yellow-journalism-on-russia/
Excerpt –
“However, ethnic Russians in Crimea and eastern Ukraine, which represented Yanukovych’s electoral base, resisted the coup and turned to Russia for protection.”
As previously noted –
There’re Russian speaking Ukrainians and Russians who support the Kiev regime side – a reality which has been propagandistically used to suggest a multi-cultural dynamic – never minding the anti-Russian influenced violence and discrimination evident in Kiev regime controlled territory.
Polling indicates the majority of ethnic Ukrainians in Crimea support a reunification with Russia. Available census indicates that there’re more ethnic Ukrainians in the Donbass than ethnic Russians.
It can be a fine line in determining ethnic Ukrainian versus ethnic Russian, with it often appearing to be a matter of personal preference. There’s also the matter of many having both backgrounds. Regardless, the ethnic Russian and ethnic Ukrainian designations don’t automatically indicate a given preference of being pro or counter Euromaidan.
BTW, judging from his surname and place of birth, Alexander Zakharchenko qualifies as an ethnic Ukrainian – as is true with numerous other Donbass rebels. Yet, he has used the MaloRossiya term which predates the popular use of Ukraine/Ukrainians. Zakharchenko is typically seen wearing the pre-Soviet Russian Empire St. George’s Cross.
Like it or not, the clear majority of the Donbass rebels have roots on the territory of the former Ukrainian SSR.
I obviously meant, “How do you convince (millions of) modern women to
have 4 kids?” You need millions to raise the national TFR significantly,
which is what Anatoly was writing about.
In the U.S. the TFR is at 1.77 and continues to fall. In Germany the ethnic
German population is falling by 200,000 -250,000 a year.
Comparing yourself to Paul Goble is like comparing Itzhak Perlman with Tiny Tim in the world of music, Mickey. Let’s take a look at Dr. Goble’s bi-line and compare it with your own unimpressive puffed up tripe:
Now, your own:
What school and degree did you finish? What peer reviewed articles have you had published? Everyone knows that 99% of the ‘source referenced’ commentary that you allude to is nothing more than comments made at blogs and newspaper editorial comments. And what exactly has kept you from learning the Russian language (other than sheer stupidity and laziness) after about 30 years of wearing the self professed fantastical moniker of being a ‘Russia Expert’???
Correction – Mr. Goble has not matriculated any PhD program, however, has finished a Master’s degree at the University of Chicago. An impressive career for a genuine ‘expert in Russian’ affairs. Although not expressly stated, I think that this ‘Russia Expert’ has a genuine command of the Russian language.
As previously noted, I understand that my Russian isn’t inferior to that of David Johnson, Alexander Mercouris, John Mearsheimer and a host of others. My analytical input on Russia related historical, foreign policy, sports and media coverage issues far exceeds your trolling drivel. The most fluent of Russian speakers have queried me on such matters.
The qualitative difference between yourself and yours truly is far greater than that of Goble and myself. What degrees on the subjects at hand do you have? What major media outlets have featured you under your real name? You’re an anonymous coward, who positively references the BS of another coward La Russophobe, who acknowledged not being fluent in Russian. You continue to exhibit an inability to successfully refute comments that you obviously don’t like.
Quality input is by no means confirmed by academic degrees, of which I’ve one that’s related to Russian studies. Goble hasn’t successfully refuted any of my comments concerning him. Comments which are spot on:
http://www.eurasiareview.com/17122010-russia-ukraine-whataboutism/
https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2016/04/15/settling-nagorno-karabakh-and-reviewing-the-peripheral-talking-points.html
https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2016/02/07/propaganda-eyes-beholder.html
I brought up Goble to debunk your faulty suggestion that the number of posted comments is an absolute measurement of worth from a writer. Goble’s blog and his Eurasia Review space don’t get many posted comments. In any event, I successfully refuted him on the issues at hand – something much different from your sleazy antics.
No. At most, equally unrealistic, as there is zero chance of Kievans and Galicians becoming pro-Russian and seeking integration with Russia, and at least some chance of eventual EU or NATO membership, in many years.
The rest of what you have written is a semi-coherent restatement of some things I have said, and avoidance of other things I have said.
I didn’t claim it was. Rather, Russia contributed heavily to this project,* the people of Ukraine have noticed, and the people of Ukraine have turned against Russia accordingly.
*About 10% of fighters are volunteers from Russia, trained by Russia, armed by Russia.
It’s a case of social awkwardness rather than materialism. Materialistic men have sex with the most beautiful girls they can get, Japanese guys just don’t have sex.
Galicia and Wolhynia doesn’t makeup the majority of Kiev regime controlled Ukraine. Overall, Kiev isn’t quite like the aforementioned two – never minding some other parts of Kiev regime controlled Ukraine which can change to a more pro-Russian outlook, while already having such traces. Practically, it’ll be quite difficult for Kiev regime controlled Ukraine to make a substantively near complete or complete economic break with Russia.
Debatable about the 10% figure you give. Regardless, many in that grouping have roots in the former Ukrainian SSR. “The people of Ukraine” that you refer to have a low regard for the otherwise understandable concern that the pro-Russian element in the former Ukrainian SSR has with the way the Euromaidan was conducted. That dynamic is a main contributing factor for the conflict.
Talk about “avoidance”.
Correct. For a lot if not most, of Ukraine’s urban Russian speakers (particularly in places such as Russian-speaking Kiev), Ukrainian is not some sort of a foreign language but the language of their grandparents or of their cousins in the village.
Correct again. The front line in Donbas roughly corresponds to the area where self-declared native language is Ukrainian vs. Russian (probably most of the Ukrainian-native-language speakers in Donbas speak Russian in their day to day lives, but this is a good proxy of national identity). The line goes through Russian-native-language territory but north of it – people who declare Ukrainian as their native language.
The bottom map juxtaposes the frontline with declared native language :
https://pollotenchegg.livejournal.com/201646.html
There were two types of “Blue” (pro-Yanukovich) voters. The first type were those who supported the Party of Regions platform: independent Ukrainian state, but with Russian as a second language and with economic cooperation with Russia. These could be analogous to Canadian patriots who support NAFTA and NATO and love America. Much of southern and eastern Ukraine were these types. The second type of “Blue” voters were those (often, ethnic Russians) who wanted to join Russia and for whom Yanukovich was a lesser evil, or acceptable alternative. Crimea was full of this type, and there were some in Donbas as well.
Many Russian nationalists optimistically assumed that most Blue voters were the latter type, and hoped that with any instability Russia could easily grab half of Ukraine. Their opportunity in 2014 yielded only Crimea and parts of Donbas. And many of the first type of Blue voter have turned against Russia (just as, if America had grabbed Alberta or some Canadian region, any previously pro-American Canadians would have become enemies of the American state).
Certainly, but that’s not saying much -0 the Baltic republics are very small. Ukraine has around 40 million people, 200,000 or so trained troops many with combat experience, a similar number of demobilized troops with training and experience, hundreds of working tanks, etc. Obviously Ukraine could not win a war with Russia, but such a war would not be a cakewalk.
Not certainly at all on the last point. The Balts have the benefit of NATO membership. There’s also the poll that Adomanis noted about how the eastern parts of Kiev regime controlled Ukraine wouldn’t oppose a pro-Russian military encroachment on that territory – meaning they aren’t asking for it, but wouldn’t actively oppose it – something relative to the sorry state of Kiev regime controlled Ukraine, as evidenced by the lack of a popular head of state – current and potential to date.
Not that Russia is looking to militarily takeover Ukraine, which is a mess, in conjunction with Russia having other concerns.
Thanks for staying on topic (how did this turn into хохлосрач?) There are obviously no simple “how tos”, but Practical Conservative has outlined what must be done. She has many kids herself and knows some big family subcultures in America. I’ll quote in full:
“Natalism in the common parlance usually refers to government policies designed to make people want to have children. Practically speaking, that puts the cart before the horse. I favor natalism that starts with social norms and then is reflected in government policies.
Sustainable natalism is arranging society so that children are acceptable parts of the public sphere at all child ages. It’s making sure women aren’t broken and worn down by the stresses and strains of bearing and caring for little ones so that they have energy to pop out more than a couple and raise them to adulthood afterwards. It’s also about granting higher social status to married mothers and fathers, so that marriage is once again considered the correct place to bear and raise children in.
Sustainable natalism is people setting things up so that women feel that they can handle 3-6 kids, so that men can marry before age 30 because they have a good shot of being able to support three or four kids and a wife, and helping parents by being the real village, full of loving friendships and support. It’s discouraging atomic living and moving every couple of years for a job, it’s encouraging social norms that have extended family nearby. It’s remembering the value of cousins and siblings and aunts and uncles. It’s restoring healthy relations between single childless adults and children. It’s creating a social milieu that leads to grandkids and great-grandkids as a norm.
Tax credits are neat and stuff, but they won’t do the job. Society has to be oriented strongly towards children as a good in themselves, living the idea that they are a blessing, because modernity shows us that once any ethnicity or culture gets rich and bloated with cheap consumption, they get very uninterested in having children. Children are hard, even easy ones are hard. Without lots and lots of explicit support and status accorded to motherhood and fatherhood, people simply don’t bother.”
https://thepracticalconservative.wordpress.com/2014/10/27/practical-definitions-sustainable-natalism/
Latvian woman posting here.
No, it’s a valid and interesting opinion from a guy in Ukraine (btw, there’s nothing wrong with propaganda – sometimes, as in the case of the Euromaidan site, there are valuable bits of info in it). Huntington’s theory is faulty when it comes to Ukraine and, because it is so old, has not taken into account the last 25 years. Here’s the original article:
https://nv.ua/opinion/grytsak/linija-razryva-227437.html
Второй, и более свежий антихантингтонский аргумент,— крах “русской весны” в Украине в 2014 году. Эксперты, знающие Путина, полагают, что он взял тезис о столкновении цивилизаций за основу своего плана по Украине. Расчет был простым: как только российские войска войдут в страну, она расколется по линии Хантингтона, и восточная православная Украина добровольно присоединится к Москве. Но этого не случилось. И сегодня цивилизационная линия Хантингтона проходит не по Збручу, а совпадает с линией фронта.
So you’re a supporter of the “salami slicing” method. That’s even worse.
Here, this is your mistake. And it was my miscalculation, too (see the above quote from article). It has nothing to do with propaganda, it’s a rude awakening. This is something we didn’t know for 25 years because nothing this awful had happened since. If you had actually watched Russian talk shows for the last few years, you would’ve noticed, in the sea of lament and curses that they send out to Ukraine, recurring statements about how “they say these things in pure Russian!”. The Russian officers admitted this (it must have been a real “wow” moment when they saw this first hand). The Russians have admitted this, you alone don’t want to admit this. The Russian language doesn’t belong to Russia alone. There is a political and not simply “ethnic” nation in Ukraine. By the way, as AP already noted, many nationalist leaders are originally Russian speakers. The people in the avant-gard are mostly Russian speaking (the only thing distinguishing their Ukrainianness would be the soft letter “t” and “g/h”). I don’t want to name any names here, in order to not bring unnecessary attention to them, but the “White leader” from Kharkiv speaks Russian (prob. as his first language) and switches very quickly to Ukrainian (very different from Russian, btw). Others speak Russian 80% of the time. And the “Russian spring” flopped despite all the help from Russia and despite the fact that Yanukovich neglected the armed forces and had apparently removed the Ukrainian troops from Donbass.
Not denying that, they don’t like the EU (I understand their position very well). But they’ve received a lot of help from the “сусід”.
Latvian woman here.
Thanks for your posts, AP, I’ve been reading them with great interest. I remember our posts last year and since then have learned a lot more (I was wrong and ignorant about a few things, sorry). The Ukrainian language is very beautiful – in fact, what really surprised me was there are phonetic similarities with Latvian (and even some word similarities that I hadn’t realized were there just by knowing Russian but discovered them through Ukrainian). I wanted to ask you – are you a Lemko by any chance (I think I saw you posted something related to Lemki)?
I agree. I’m certainly no expert on military (I only read veteran’s forums occasionally), but what I’ve seen in Ukraine lately has really impressed me. The variety of self-produced weapons, organizational skills, etc. Ukraine could potentially develop a strong military and even tell others to go take a hike. It’s just so sad that in those critical moments of 2014 Ukraine was alone…
Yes it does have a propaganda component for the reason I detailed. Feel free to refer back to it and provide a direct reply.
“Salami slicing” is a colorful diversion for why Crimea reunified with Russia. The rest of what you say doesn’t successfully refute my comments on the subject. If anything, there seems to be some agreement.
Latvian woman here.
The propaganda component, if you wish to call it so, doesn’t take away from the truth in this case. If I have the time, I’ll find the 2014 interview with a Russian officer who was involved in Ukraine who said exactly the same thing as this Catholic guy from Lviv just with slightly different words (smth like “these last 25 years a whole generation of Russian speaking Ukrainians has grown up who do not want to side with us”, or smth along those lines — but it’s possible that these folks were always there, unrussified Ukrainians). Then you’re free to not call that “propaganda”.
Crimea is a bit of an outlier, what “salami slicing” refers to is Transnistria, Abkhazia, Donbas, we could add other names if we’re creative. There’s definitely a policy paper about it somewhere out there (Rogozin is the dude in charge of it all) – what you and other Western Eurasianists deny is that it is a real state policy, a doctrine very much akin to the Karaganov doctrine. Russia in the post USSR space is a smart, calculating actor – not helpless and reactive. I’m tempted to say that the “salami slicing” stops in Donbass.
Thank you.
One of my grandparents is from a village in central Ukraine, lived in Kharkiv in the 1930s, and moved to Lviv in 1939. Soviets sent Ukrainian-speakers to Lviv for propaganda purposes and it backfired – Galician Ukrainians didn’t learn to love Soviet liberators, but the Ukrainians they sent became nationalists. I visited my cousins from this side of the family in Kiev and in the village this summer.
Another is from a village in eastern Galicia, the other two grandparents are from Lviv. The ones from Lviv mostly have Lemko roots (they owned a village in what is now Poland) but their families had moved to Lviv in the 19th century. Ironically, some of them were prominent and hardcore Russophile activists.
Ukriane had no functional military in 2014. Troops were untrained an in small numbers (about 50,000 or so), and none of the tanks worked (typical situation: tank stopped, operators had to abandon it and flee).
The first step was to fix that; this has been achieved. Ukraine has about 200,000 decently trained soldiers, and their equipment – hundreds of tanks, other vehicles, planes – are in more or less working order. Next step is to modernize this military, resume weapon development, etc.
Ukrainian missile or rocket development appears to be particularly impressive. These things will probably be mass produced in 2019:
http://defence-blog.com/news/ukraine-successfully-tests-new-300mm-correctable-rockets.html
More long-term projects are also moving forward:
http://defence-blog.com/news/ukraine-unveils-new-tactical-missile-system.html
http://defence-blog.com/missiles/ukraine-conducts-successful-flight-test-neptun-cruise-missile.html
Russians have noticed.
http://www.mk.ru/politics/2018/01/30/ukraine-obzavelas-sobstvennoy-krylatoy-raketoy-stoit-li-rossii-boyatsya.html
Speaking about the threat of the Russian naval grouping in the Black Sea, Barabanov suggested that the creation of Neptune in reality would be a slow issue, and most likely the path to the series would take about 10 years.
According to Ruslan Pukhov, a member of the Public Council under the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation, in general, Ukrainian missile projects (Neptune and Grom-2) pose a very serious threat to the national security of the Russian Federation.
“There is a threat of deploying in a few years very serious and relatively high-precision weapon systems of the hostile state in close proximity to important and densely populated regions of Russia, including Moscow,” the expert said. “From the military point of view, this threat will require strengthening air defense and missile defense in Moscow and the entire Central region, but in any case, these systems will complicate the military and political situation, and for the leadership of Ukraine will become a powerful political and propaganda argument about alleged” intimidation of Moscow. ” On the good side, it would be desirable for Russia to prevent the deployment or creation of such systems in Ukraine at all. ”
:::::::::::::::::
For these reasons, I doubt Ukraine will engage in provocative military adventures in 2018 (of course, one never knows, stupidity is always possible). Its military is still heavily in rebuilding phase.
That’s: Galicia and Wolhynia don’t….
It does have the propaganda dynamic for the reason I detailed and that you’ve yet to direct reply.
As for your other point, IM’ reminded of the view seeing pro-Russian Ukrainians as misguided unlike the opposite. Meantime, there’s plenty of the reverse.
If Russia is so bad, explain why the respective majority in Pridnestrovie (AKA Transnistria and closely related spellings), South Ossetia, Abkhazia and Crimea prefer Russia over the entities claiming them? FYI, Russia hasn’t supported a completely independent Donbass or making it part of Russia.
Following Molotov-Ribbentrop, the heavy handed Soviet policy in western Ukraine had a negative influence on the west Ukrainian population. Things might’ve worked out a bit differently. Then again, the Stalin era USSR had a certain nature of the beast dynamic to it. Subtelny notes that the initial west Ukrainian reaction to the Soviet takeover from Poland wasn’t so hostile. There were Soviet Ukrainians complicit in implementing the Soviet policy in western Ukraine.
Latvian woman here.
The Lemko identity is very unique, when I first stumbled across them I couldn’t believe anyone would call these people Eastern Slavs when they are so clearly Western (or Central European). By the way, the beautiful and heart-wrenching song Plyve Kacha comes from the Lemko heritage.
They’re not stupid. As one Ukrainian veteran said, they’ll do it the Ukrainian way – “тишком-нишком, потихеньку” (they’ll creep).
Thanks for the links, that’s exactly what I was talking about. The potential is certainly there.
Latvian woman here.
What you call “entities” are real states with internationally recognized borders. The word “entity” should in fact be used exactly towards places such as the above mentioned. To answer your question – because they are the fifth column. By the way, Ukraine’s border is also internationally recognized (and will stay that way). If Russia is so good, then why don’t they recognize the Donbass entities? Time to read up on those policy papers. Btw, if you don’t like the term “salami slicing”, I have a truly colorful Russian word for you – оттяпать.
Why don’t you go back to using your handle? It’s annoying to find so many anonymous comments, some of which belong to this or that anon (you are not the only one).
An entity doesn’t necessarily mean the opposite of a country. The bottom line is the territories in question which you call a “fifth column” prefer Russia over the entities claiming them.
Keeping in mind the Kosovo and northern Cyprus examples.
Which population outperforms in tech, in a per capita way? I’m guessing Sweden. Maybe Switzerland and Israel are near the top too.
I apologize if I caused any inconvenience (in no way did I ever think I was “the only one”), I can’t use my handle for technical reasons (there’s another user under the same IP posting on a different section of the site and I don’t have time to go look for a different IP to post from – I’m a busy mom).
In any event, I don’t intend to post much. Just wanted to say Hi to AP.
Hence the “might.”
I am aware of all that and have written about it in the past. India can still make major gains for Flynn (genotypic ceiling IQ is probably around 95), and it appears to have a powerful smart fraction.
As Jon0815 points out, virtually all of this is misinformed nonsense.
They were also predominantly the product of the late 1980s and 1990s, and a large percentage of them were minorities (Jews and Germans).
Incorrect. The gap between Russian and non-Russian TFR has been shrinking for the past few decades.
All of which have been plummeting since the end of the USSR, and the early 2000s, respectively.
http://www.unz.com/akarlin/russian-demographics-in-2018/
This was true in the 1990s and early 2000s, it was no longer true from the late 2000s. Even most journalists had noticed by 2015.
Maybe it will be true again someday, but that is speculation. In the meantime, the East European countries that do qualify as dying out: Romania, Bulgaria, Moldova, the Ukraine, to a lesser extent Hungary.
Yes, exactly – Britain honored its obligations to Belgium. Functionally that meant siding with France against Germany, so why nitpick?
And all the histories I’ve read indicate 1914 was a close run thing, and only failed because a whole bunch of events turned out not in Germany’s favor – amongst which the quick dislocation of crack British troops to Belgium was one of the main ones.
I would not have been as anti-Russian as it is today, but it would still be firmly orientated towards the West; Russia would have likely been kicked out of Crimea, or in the final process of being so, after mass arrests and reprisal against the separatists there; pro-Russian parties would still be electorally non-viable (2010 was the unlikely confluence of a massive economic crisis coupled with the near complete discreditation of the Orange forces).
Oh, and yes, Putin’s approval ratings would have been well below 50% (humiliated in Ukraine; economy in recession anyway due to collapsed oil prices, and no way of blaming that on sanctions), and the Kremlin could well have been facing a color revolution scenario as of this time in the alternate history where Shoigu (who allegedly cautioned against Crimea) triumphed over Glazyev (who was the main hawk in 2014).
You misunderstood, I remember you well; I meant you are not the only one to post in such a manner (there was for example an “Anon from TN” recently), so my comment wasn’t really meant to you, but to all posters regularly posting here without a handle.
I now understand why you need to do that. (Maybe Ron could accept it if you explained to him..? Anyway, if you don’t post too often, I agree it’s not so important.)
Mostly agree. But:
Non-viable in terms of securing the presidency, yes: the pro-Russian electorate was about 45% of the country (as you correctly note, 2010 was a “perfect storm” for them, a fluke), and losing the demographic struggle to the more-fertile Westerners in Ukraine. But they would have controlled nearly half the parliament which would have slowed down the process of integration with the West.
Also, NATO would have basically zero chance of passing any referendum.
So Ukraine would have been linked to the EU, but most likely not a part of NATO, and would have been friendly towards Russia.
OT: Reiner, did you see the article in today’s The American Conservative about the urban/rural cultural divide in Hungary, including a discussion of several of the novels of Magda Szabó? It’s by an expat living in Eger and seems quite plausible to me, but I would be interested in your reaction.
http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/hungarys-acela-corridor/
I would think my argument is obvious enough. Some countries’ geography is such that they sit right inbetween two powerful civilizations. This geography often makes them naturally multicultural, but it also makes them natural trading partners and, sadly, natural battle grounds for their powerful neighbors. The prudent thing to do for such countries is to practice inclusivity internally, to avoid unrest and sectarianism, and to promote trade and neutrality externally, to turn their multicultural identity into an asset.
Now, you may argue that Latvia went against these precepts in the past and is doing just fine. True, but (1) Latvia was monocultural and monolingual not so long ago and therefore had a national identity to build on, (2) it was in effect a city state, which meant that it could easily transfer its economy to EU-based corporations and get by without trading with Russia, and (3) however much Kremlin grumbled at the time, Latvia joining NATO and the EU wasn’t then seen as a mortal threat to Russia. I would also add that the true cost of Latvia’s hostility toward Russia would have to include the opportunity cost (the potential benefits forgone by a course of action), so its present fortunes cannot be viewed in isolation.
It’s very odd that people should live in such small apartments. Russia isn’t short of space.
And hopefully they haven’t got into the situation that the UK, Canadian and Australian governments are in – that bringing property prices down to a sane level (like a 60% decline) would wipe out the moneylenders, and that therefore property prices won’t come down.
While the Russian GDP PPP is okay (and could probably be higher up to Japans).
Their “national wealth” is poor for such a nation.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_wealth (figures on the right side)
Im not an economic expert but maybe that plays a role?
Perhaps relating to the state of buildings and homes?
This sounds good. It sounds almost like something that Lars Ohly would say. 🙂 Or even Anders Aslund who peddles his neoliberal theories in Eastern European countries but who would be boo’d out immediately in his own native Sweden.
I suppose, multi-culturalism can at times be an asset, but, as countries such as Sweden might eventually find out, it can also be a liability. Inclusivity and all that is nice, but at whose expense? And then at one point, you start to think why invest in this country / society when there are a ton of other multi-cultural countries out there, right? What’s the difference? Unless there is already traditionally peace between different cultures, and unless there is some eventual benefit to it, as you seem to imply, why should one culture pay for the other culture to thrive? It’s not the job of any country to pay to maintain another country’s culture. It’s good to build a pleasant environment for everyone. It attracts good people. But it can also be the other way around.
But the reason I asked about these “bridges” (and I didn’t mean to be passive aggressive, I’m genuinely interested if there is something out there that these Western Eurasianists know about that I don’t), was because in today’s world of ICBM’s, hacking, email, easy visas, etc., geography, while still a factor, has become a little relative. If an Anglo guy feels in his heart the call of the steppe, nothing is keeping him from moving to Asia and investing in one of the cultures there to facilitate Eurasianism and live happily. What bridge does one need? Just find friends! If you’re talking about business, then establish your channels, hire some local partners, and the rest is just work and trial and error – there is no mystical bridge that’ll solve all your trust issues, etc., like a goose that will lay you golden eggs forever. It’s all trial and error anyway. These days it’s all about access and competitiveness, not some mystical “bridges”. The Baltic countries are trying to work with Kazakhstan now, it looks somewhat promising. Would be great to work more with Japan, but in Japan you can only sell a very finely crafted, specialized product (we’ve had some limited success). China is a separate question (they tried to steal one of our brands or some other crazy stuff like that — that’s Eurasia for you!). As to your definition of a “natural trading partner”, yes, Russia definitely is one (lots of potential). But then I’d say, any potential trading partner who wants what you offer is a “natural trading partner”.
But Russia will do what they want, regardless who you are. I can share a funny story: some time in 2005, around the time when the power consolidation in Russia started taking real shape, I was with a group that had dinner with a Statoil executive in Norway, who was trying to win a bid to drill in the Shtokman field (they were competing with a French company). The guy was wondering who in the industry he should be talking to win the contract. There was a Russian from Latvia in our group who was very straightforward and said “This kind of a thing will be decided only by the Kremlin”. The dude was a bit startled (“You mean I should go straight to Moscow?”). In the end, the Kremlin decided to deny contracts to all of the foreign companies. “Fig im”, as Vladimir Vladimirovich would say, meaning “you won’t be getting anything” (I don’t blame him, it’s a strategic sector). Namely, whatever “bridge” one builds, their own interests will always come first and the unpredictability factor remains (embargo or not).
I wouldn’t call wanting to not be finlandized hostility. You’re right that there could be an opportunity cost, but there is also a cost for being finlandized. The Russian gas or more access to their market wouldn’t be cheaper for us either way because there would be an added cost of the political demands that we’d have to fulfill – even if there was no Nato, etc – (in the case of my people, unlike in the case of the Finnish people in the 1950s and onwards, that cost could at some point become existential). Even if we distance ourselves from the ethnic and political, the sheer time and energy it would take to, let’s say, teach every new generation the Russian language – would add to the costs. That means a Latvian parent would have to now teach their kid not only English (because you can’t live without it), but also Russian – a very beautiful, valuable, but tough language. That would take away from learning other important things. You couldn’t make it optional because in a multi-cultural and bilingual society it eventually becomes a necessity (people in the Baltics mostly live together, not separately like the Waloons and Flemmish). You’re basically saying our kids must be raised bilingual in their own native country, just because there are some Russian kids, too, but, hey, they’ll be a little richer (while still subjecting our businesses to the whims of the Kremlin and a fluctuating political environment — which we, btw, don’t have nearly as much control over as you seem to imply). For some to learn it would make sense (business, esp. hospitality, military, academics, etc), but not massively. In any event, we do trade with Russia quite a bit. Exports in general have grown (last year was a very healthy year). Interestingly, direct investment from Russia continues to grow. And, frankly, in the long term it’s easier to work with those who are somewhat predictable and don’t demand access to your political system, be it Qatar, Denmark or Estonia — because political costs accumulate, too, and, as I said, geography no longer matters as much.
It’s a product of history. The Soviet Union built lots of small apartments (which were an upgrade on the communal apartments of before the war). So today the majority of the ‘housing stock’ are apartments and they were constructed in high density, for cities in which most people did not yet have automobiles.
In addition, I believe there is a cultural element – that people prefer living in apartments (ultimately apartments are cheaper and easier to maintain than houses, and easier if you feel lazy about maintenance issues). So most new construction is also for apartments.
This also has to do with why Russia is a ‘cat loving country’, while America is a ‘dog loving country’. Cats are more apartment animals, while dogs – it’s usually better to have a house.
Idk, China sent mercenaries after the Hindu states in Tarim Basin & later islamized Java Malaya to counter the Majapahit।।
Furthermore, now it supports Islamic Terroristan & christian Naxal Maoists who were originally cow protection rebels।। LOL
From Dharmic perspective, China is an abrahamic garrison state who burnt almost all of its temples during cultural revolution।।
The destruction of the white christian man starts with our own states which must be reformed।।
Both Secular Apartheid India & Genocidal Communist China।।
ਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂਜੀਕਾਖਾਲਸਾ।।ਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂਜੀਕੀਫਤਿਹ।।
I don’t really have anything against white Christian men. Some of my best friends are white Christian men and I owe my life in many ways to white Christian men. I also like reading works by white Christian men.
Remove vindaloo.
When the French ambassador was begging in London for Britain to enter the war, he said little or nothing about the phony pretext of Belgian neutrality, and much about the covert arrangements which his counterparts in the Foreign Office and army had undertaken without informing parliament, the cabinet, or even (with any specificity) the prime minister himself.
Hello LatW, and thanks for the long reply!
Yes, but there is more to it than that. My implicit assumption — which I didn’t spell out, sorry — was that geographical proximity also leads to cultural know-how and the growth of bilingual speakers, both of which are very important in business dealings. Trade is not only about wants and haves.
I can believe it. 🙂 But this proves my point above wonderfully.
You may well be right, although I would argue that you could tone down the war rhetoric a little with no loss to your autonomy.
Language questions are delicate and must be resolved by looking at the specific context at hand. Latvia’s draconian language and citizenship laws are defensible, I think, on historical and existential grounds. Your language and culture face very real dangers of dying out in a free market exchange, so it makes sense for the state to intervene. More than that, your cultural heritage is fully ethnically Latvian, or something like it, so protecting your language and culture also preserves historical continuity. The situation in Ukraine is not nearly as straightforward, but we can have that discussion some other time.
By the way, some friends of mine told me that nearly all Latvian employers demand that their workers speak fluent Russian. Is that really so?
When the French ambassador was begging in London for Britain to enter the war, he said little or nothing about the phony pretext of Belgian neutrality,
And the sacred respect in which the British viewed neutrality had been unequivocally demonstrated in the “Battle of Copenhagen” in 1807, when the British navy entered Copenhagen harbor (Denmark being a neutral country), bombarded the city and seized the Danish fleet.
And, of course, in the Second World War Churchill had no scruples about invading neutral Norway; the German invasion (for which Admiral Raeder was sentenced to life imprisonment at Nuremberg) was undertaken as a preemptive measure.
They have 2 paths
white Christian
Son of Evropa
Stand beside Moses who sacrifices the golden calf
Bow to Mother Evropa who rides the white bull
With the Aryas whom Prithvi Ma loves & blesses
Or
The melechas who are cursed to wander through desert।।
You can be a BhoomiPutra (son of soil)
Or
A bastard।।
Whether that bastard is born through a Roman soldier or through conversion
Is irrelevant।।
Relevant:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=im7Ts17CPjA
There were big plans for Crimea. I still remember just one day after the regime-replacement, Yats “our men” going to NATO headquarters “to discuss the Crimea issue” (their own words). Anyway, at that time-point, the Russia reconquering operation was going on. Putin should have thought “Since Ukraine is lost forever, let’s take our lands, our people and the Black Sea fleet base back”.
Don’t really expect any better from you।।
It’s okay to like whites. 🙂
I was trying to make a callback to “Some of my best friends are black” but that sentence usually slips into “I’ve dated black women” and I realized that keeping it straightly verbatim would be…not what I wanted to say. 🙂
My goal here wasn’t to read you dissect Latvia or Ukraine, but to find genuine answers to what “Lisbon to Vladivostok” means in practice. Oh well.
As to the “war rhetoric” – most of it is coming from the Anglo media. In 2016 it got so bad at one point, that even the former Estonian president had to ask them to calm down. Btw, there was a graph floating around here recently that showed that Sweden is more Russophobic than the Baltic states.
“Nearly all” is a big exaggeration. Many do, but not all (there are countless jobs where you don’t need either Russian or English), and out of those that do, it’s not mostly work in Russian (those jobs would technically require Russian as a desired skill but it would be used only occasionally). But, yea, it can be a problem I alluded to above. The people of Russian extraction mostly understand Latvian and they have no problem shopping (they do it every day). The Russians from Moscow that visit for the Orthodox Christmas seem to be doing fine, too. As I already mentioned, in some areas it is useful (certain types of business, communicating with our friends, etc).
Btw, I know that there are counsellors in Sweden who talk to the new immigrants, I was wondering what language they spoke and if they’d soon have to learn Arabic.
When I was a boy, the old black & white movies on Saturday afternoons were a real treat. Charlie Chan was one of my favorites. 🙂
Perhaps I should have made that clearer.
When companies move into foreign lands, they normally prefer it that their new venture is not too distant from their present infrastructure. It makes life easier for everyone (fewer hours on the road for managers, more options in case of hiccups, etc.). This goes doubly for outsourcing, where companies are sometimes even reluctant to look for options outside their regional borders. Companies also prefer it that the business climate, in the very broad sense, is as similar as possible to what they are used to (as I’m sure your Statoil executive would agree).
What I mean by Latvia, say, being a bridge to Asia (well, Vladivostok) is that it can serve to lower these two hurdles. By first establishing themselves in Latvia, companies get the twin benefits of geographical proximity to Russia and cultural know-how, both of which smooth the way for possible later ventures into Russia.
In other words Patriarchy is one of the keys of becoming a superpower:
http://foreignpolicy.com/2009/10/20/the-return-of-patriarchy/
I am amazed at the number of Russians who keep large dogs in small apartments. Dachas are part of this equation. A small flat in Frunzenskaya for the winter but a big dacha by the Volga for Summer. It is not so easy to compare Russian housing with the UK or USA.