zazen

Praying to maintain humanity amongst inhumanity, around everything broken to connect to the unbreakable. In prostration - at the lowest point when the head touches the floor, they speak of the most high.

The peace of mutually assured destruction still isn’t the one of understanding. They’ve outsourced the fight to proxy means because a direct fight would mean annihilation as you say. Mutually destroying weaker nations instead of mutually assured destruction of all nations. Banger of a video:

Many times I come across geopolitical videos that are so wide ranging - they don’t quite fit in any single thread. Here’s a thread to share such videos and discuss geopolitics in general. Don’t jump to conclude that sharing such videos means endorsing all the views in such videos, and ignore the clickbaity titles and thumbnails that are unfortunately common these days despite the content being worth listening to. Starting off with three all encompassing videos: - Jeffrey Sachs covering how the world got to where it is today (Uni-polar) - Scott Horton covering US foreign policy in detail (there’s a recent Lex Fridman podcast 10 hrs long but this is more condensed) - Matt Williams (Willy OAM) on global geopolitics and how all the players are positioning themselves. Quite a mind blowing listen. Doesn’t embed so here’s the URL: https://youtu.be/6OaP6Hi0OSk?si=tacdv0wa2gCzC3cc

Be careful of the identity of being contrarian vs conformist. If the herd (masses) is bad, then why have democracy that allows the herd to vote?

Ideas are information, ideaology is information thought to be wise when it isn’t. The past lacked information and wisdom, today we have information but still lack a critical mass of wisdom. You can have all the information in the world to bust your misinformed bubble - yet lack the wisdom to parse that information - separating signal from noise. Governance ultimately aims to filter wisdom, as it’s utopian to think it can be scaled to the masses. If wisdom can’t be scaled, why have a political system that depends on the wisdom of the masses to guide politics and policy? Across time and cultures there was a acknowledgement of the “elders” or the “wise” council for this reason. But that can also be corrupted. Liberal democracy challenged that and bet on the idea that wisdom can be filtered through the masses if they engage in enough good faith debate, which overtime self corrects - thus free speech became virtue. But now there is less good faith, and less debate - people are sorted into algorithmic sealed bubbles and clash when they encounter another bubble. The liberal rationale is that the individual is primary, and thus their right to speech -and from this assumption a collective of individuals will come together in debate to seek truth and stumble upon a collective wisdom from which to guide politics - thus democracy. The irony is that individualism can cause a sort of narcissism and lack of humility - but humility is needed in truth seeking and good faith debate to begin with. It’s self defeating - unless the culture instills humility as a counter balance. In the past people may have been delusionally misinformed (due to lack of information) - but it was a shared delusion. Today people can be misinformed but in countlesss ways through online echo chambers - so we have polarized delusion. One delusional view of reality clashes with another. Today we are hyper-informed with misinformation, yet suffer from a deficit of wisdom to process it, compounded by a deficit of humility needed to learn from others who might be misinformed differently, or better informed than ourselves. The filtering process has become clogged in a noisy (technological) and narcissistic (cultural) era. China seems to have solved for that by filtering for the wisest leaders, rather than hoping to filter wisdom from the masses, who believe their view of reality is wise (ideological) and others isn’t (leading to polarization). How can the Western political system handle all this?

Awesome share. The first video you shared from this channel was also really good (on internet firewall) Here’s a interesting video related to yours but that is coming at it more from a finance level: I really wonder how many people actually watch the videos that are shared by others. Maybe it depends on their length lol. Here is a relevant short:

@Kid A I wrote about this last week in the above shared comment. I did say Russia/China exploit those vulnerabilities - but didn’t create them. There are fundamental reasons of internal pressure and external structural changes to the world order occurring that are causing this. The fire would be there without Russia pouring gasoline - the extent of what impact that has can be debated - but the fire being there is independent of that. Empires eventually come to the end of their dominance as the internal contradictions of overextending and maintaining that empire come to crisis point. As I said to Dalan above in the first paragraph - why would you want your rival (who seeks to contain you) have a locked off political system you can’t interfere in and guarantee the leader of? As is the case with democracy. The notion they’re trying to end democracies is different to them interfering in their rivals democratic system to counter them indirectly rather than directly - as any nation would do against a nation trying to openly contain it. I don’t deny that. Just see the latest topic by enchanted to see how the West interfered with Hong Kong. People let the internal politics of a country taint their analysis of the external politics (geo-politics between states) of that country. That if the country sucks balls internally-domestically (lack of human rights, authoritarian etc) this must mean they are automatically always in the wrong in their foreign policy and geopolitics. This is why many people struggle to analyse geopolitics properly.

International relations run on interests not ideaology. What difference does the West being authoritarian or democratic make to Russia / China? You can have rivals in both systems. A authoritarian America could still view Russia / China as rivals to be “contained”. In fact a democratic system allows for easier interference than a centralized authoritarian one. Somehow we’re supposed to believe Russia and China want other authoritarians to fight against. I have a thesis in progress about all this that has multiple levels to it. Basically populism is a reflex to economic (dispossession or disenfranchisement), cultural (displacement), and structural (geopolitical) pressures. Populism can manifest in different ways (left vs right) and swing between the two (Brazil as a perfect case - Bolsonaro to Lula) or barely show up if those pressures don’t cause the conditions for it emerge (Japan for example). Why has Japan been immune from populist fever? Because economic, cultural and structural pressures haven’t been enough to break it - only bend it. It’s coasting off strong economic growth from the past, culturally still cohesive, and is adapting to structural geopolitical shifts rather than resisting the shift or being confrontational towards those driving it. Japan sits right beside the epicenter of the global power transition (China) while remaining a core ally of the Western US led order. It isn’t viewed as a threat by either side as it’s aligned with the West while economically plugged in and diplomatic with China. That gives Japan insulation from potential instability that comes when the global order is shifting (unipolar to multipolar). Instead of being a proxy of great power competition its adapted and struck a strategic balance among that completion. Pakistan as an example is doing similar by balancing relations between the two superpowers. Ukraine could have played the same neutral role between competing orders and powers but instead became a frontline proxy. I put a larger essay of this into Chat GPT to tidy up. Here it is: “ That’s an excellent and comprehensive take — conceptually rich and already 90% there. What it really needs is tightening and rhythmic flow — less redundancy, smoother transitions, and sharper contrasts so that the reader feels the argument unfold naturally from micro (economic) to macro (geopolitical). Here’s a refined version with your substance fully intact: “Populism in a Changing World Order **Populism is not an ideology — it’s a reflex. It arises when economic, cultural, and structural pressures converge to make ordinary people feel the system no longer works for them. It is the political pulse of instability — a symptom of imbalance between promise and reality. These pressures exist on three levels: Economic: dispossession or disenfranchisement — losing prosperity or being denied it. Cultural: identity loss or challenge — a sense of “who we are” coming undone. Structural / Geopolitical: the macro order that either cushions or intensifies these pressures. When these align, populism activates. **Western Populism — The Politics of Dispossession Western populism is nostalgic. It looks backward to a lost dream — the “American” or “Western” dream of prosperity, security, and belonging. It’s driven by dispossession: what was once possessed has been lost. Hence its central demand: “Take back power.” The postwar order delivered stability at home through dominance abroad. Now, as the global hierarchy erodes, that privilege is slipping away — economically and culturally. Deindustrialization, liberal progressivism, and mass migration amplify the feeling of loss and cultural dislocation. Western populism therefore becomes both economic and existential — a fight over what we lost and who we are. Emotion: Dispossession Goal: Restore a lost order Tone: Defensive, nationalist, identity-driven Direction: Scapegoats horizontally — migrants, minorities, cultural outsiders Example: Trump, Brexit, Le Pen When identity and prosperity collapse together, populism turns inward — protectionist, nostalgic, and sometimes exclusionary. **Southern Populism — The Politics of Disenfranchisement Southern populism is aspirational. It looks forward to a future that has long been denied. It’s driven by disenfranchisement: people never had access to prosperity or power, only exploitation and dependency. Its central demand: “Claim power.” These movements seek not restoration but realization — to achieve the prosperity others already enjoyed. They target systems of corruption, colonial legacies, and foreign domination rather than cultural outsiders. Emotion: Disenfranchisement Goal: Attain fairness and sovereignty Tone: Assertive, redistributive, anti-imperial Direction: Diagnoses vertically — corrupt elites, imperial powers, foreign corporations Example: Chávez, Morales, AMLO, Malema Some, like Hindu nationalism, reach back to ancient “golden eras” for symbolic pride, but most are anchored in recent injustice, not past glory. Their populism is structural — not nostalgic — aimed at rewriting the hierarchy rather than reasserting it. **Cultural Divergence Culture shapes how populism expresses itself. The West’s rapid liberal-progressive shifts, mass migration, and multiculturalism eroded cultural consensus. People no longer share a stable “we.” Hence, Western populism is often right-wing — a defensive reaction to cultural displacement layered atop economic loss. The Global South, by contrast, retains stronger civilizational cohesion. Progressivism hasn’t yet atomized its societies; migration hasn’t unsettled its sense of self. Tribalism exists, but within clearer cultural boundaries. So its populism focuses less on who belongs and more on who benefits. The West’s populism fights over identity. The South’s populism fights over opportunity. As a rule: the West’s populism is right-leaning and nostalgic; the South’s is left-leaning and emancipatory. **Scapegoats vs. Diagnosis Western populism looks sideways for culprits — blaming cultural outsiders for decline. Southern populism looks upward — diagnosing elites, imperial systems, and structural exploitation. The West’s populism has scapegoats; the South’s populism has diagnosis. One externalizes guilt; the other identifies cause. Even within the West, however, there’s a growing awareness of elite capture — “globalists” whose interests are transnational rather than national — showing that both types can overlap under shared pressures. The Structural Context: Empire and Decline Beneath both lies a shifting global architecture. The economic and cultural stresses of populism play out within a collapsing geopolitical framework. The prosperity and peace of the Western middle class were imperially subsidized — stability at home built on disorder abroad. Wars, coups, regime changes, and debt traps sustained Western dominance, enriching corporate elites while pacifying domestic politics. The U.S.-led order’s reserve currency, global institutions, and financial system created an artificial calm that kept populism dormant. Now those conditions are unraveling. The imperial core has hollowed itself out — late-stage capitalism cannibalizing its own foundations. Meanwhile, the periphery that once fed the empire is rising and resisting. A unipolar order is giving way to a multipolar one. Western elites, who outgrew their national bases to become global capital, now face shrinking access to cheap labour, easy markets, and political obedience. Their response is to extract inward — cannibalizing the very societies that once benefited from empire. **In Essence Populism is grievance politics gone about in different ways. In the West, it mourns dispossession — the loss of a dream that once was. In the South, it demands justice — the right to a dream never realized. Both are reactions to the same historical transition: the decline of an empire that once kept order by exporting chaos. As the world shifts from unipolarity to multipolarity, the periphery rises, the core fractures, and populism is the sound of that tectonic adjustment reverberating through humanity.“ Man GPT can be so cringe at times lol don’t have time to edit the cringe out and refine it but above gets the gist.

@Breakingthewall I literally said if the euphoria is coming from the killing itself then it is insane and sick. Anyway - is this how AIPAC Zionists approached you: If you’re getting a yatch I want an invite next year for 2026 season. Let’s go Ibiza and Formentera papi.

@Breakingthewall Your username is literally Breakingthewall. Maybe you’d have a euphoric outburst from breakingthewall on October 7th too - from breaking the siege of your oppressors. Obviously if the euphoria is from the suffering you cause those on the other side of the wall your a sick sadist though. It’s so obvious it’s dumb for me to even have to mention that nuance but you seem to conflate and misread things entirely. Your now saying that maybe they did use starvation as a weapon but only sometimes. Your saying its different and okay that their attacking objects (buildings) instead of bodies (civilian) - but attacking the buildings still makes the place un-livable in which those bodies (civilians) live. You just evade and sometimes concede begrudgingly lol If Hamas are in the tunnels underground then what’s the point of destroying everything above ground including the civilians ability to live there. It only ensures more recruits for Hamas, and more hatred and condemnation from the world.

@Breakingthewall Asking you to examine why October 7th happened, its root cause and the conditions that would lead to it - isn’t justifying it. The 70% support could be for breaking the siege and the act of resistance itself - not the horrific crimes that were done on the day. For Gazans that was a crack made in a prison wall - that doesn’t mean they supported the brutality of what happened when Hamas went across the wall. Before October 7th - a 2023 Pew survey found nearly half of Jewish Israelis believed Arabs should be expelled or transferred from Israel. Does that justify their punishment? Obviously not. Whether they’re making Gaza un-livable through starvation or destroying buildings is beside the main point - which is that they are making it un-livable to begin with. You call it destroying Hamas but it’s collective punishment in practice. If you rob me then I target you with a nuke - aren’t I in effect collectively punishing everyone around you because of the method and tool I use to “target” you? It’s like trying to blow out a candle with a flamethrower and burning the whole house down - “but I targeted the candle bro my bad”.

They don’t even have the same political systems let alone ideaologies. India, Brazil and South Africa are democracies - 3/5 BRICS members or 60%. The main thing their united around is the fact that the current system is rigged against their interests - that 15% of the world can dictate to 85% of the world via institutional leverage. Your framing turns what is a structural correction and shift in power into an ideological crusade that justifies then resisting this shift in power by containing those rising in power. Multi-polarity is the opposite of monopoly. Have a good weekend.

@Breakingthewall No where did I justify October 7th - you just miss the forest for the trees continuously which is why Raze lets AI do the wasteful work of stooping to the level of your arguments. Notice how you either don’t engage with the point, strawman it, or move the goalpost once logically cornered. First you said no starvation or mass hunger is there, now you say it is obvious it is there - well done. Then I leave behind the argument revolving around intent being there (despite providing statements and plans of it being there) to cause hunger as a pressure tactic. I instead go on to show you how regardless of intent - Israeli actions are causing those unlivable conditions. But you still say it wasn’t there intent and civilians aren’t targeted because their warned. I address that by extrapolating it out to what we have now which is that the other buildings they go to continue to be destroyed until the whole place becomes destroyed - unlivable. You don’t even address it - perhaps because you can’t. So now you simply justify Israel’s actions of collective punishment as necessary because of the psychotic behaviour of the few among them - never mind the conditions that may have caused them to become the way they are, and the fact that continuing and worsening those conditions keeps them that way. You basically argue for collective punishment. Your logic could be used to bomb the entire Caribbean because of the depraved acts of Epstein Island or perhaps Israel because of the psychotic chants of Maccabi fans. I hope you can see my profile picture and zoom in enough to read the caption.

Ask yourself why anti-colonial and anti-imperial struggles happened. Then you''ll understand why October 7th happened. Your psychoanalyzing the situation rather than structurally analyzing it - ''oh what were their emotions and facial expression on October 7th'' - think bigger, zoom out and get to the root cause instead of deflecting and defending the structural injustice at hand that obviously distorts the psyche of the people the injustice is being inflicted upon.

Cleanse it is what they want to do - as they've stated so many times and as their actions are in line with. Blockading and siege is a pressure tactic to achieve that. They want to make it ''un-liveable''. ''The Israeli government is reportedly planning to ratchet up its blockade on Gaza as part of what it has called a “hell plan” to pressure Hamas into further hostage releases without a troop withdrawal from the Palestinian territory.'' ''The government of Benjamin Netanyahu was reported to have made preparations to go beyond the suspension of food and fuel announced on Sunday'' https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/mar/03/israel-prepares-gaza-hell-plan-to-pile-pressure-on-hamas-reports?utm_source=chatgpt.com Eiland stated that Hamas would "either have to surrender or to starve," saying that "it will not be necessary" for the Israeli military to kill everyone in northern Gaza as "people will not be able to live there. The water will dry up." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli_generals'_plan?utm_source=chatgpt.com ___ Look, we can argue about intent being there or not. But the outcome is the same as you've admitted - hunger is there. There's a difference between saying starvation is being committed (with intent) vs starvation is occurring (as a by product of war and logistic difficulty). Regardless of intent - the end outcome of starvation is happening and it's tied to Israeli actions - even if the intent isn't there. Let's say I don't have the intent to kill you and I tell you I want to target the criminal in your building. I warn you and give you time to leave - then destroy the building hoping I got the criminal. Okay - that's overkill to do that anyway because that action alone has still made you homeless, but lets accept it as needed to get the criminal. You now go to seek refuge next door - and then I say the same thing to you again and again and again until most of your city is destroyed. I destroyed even the places you sought refuge in, even the tents, even the health care system, even the schools - and everything that makes the place livable. Do I now excuse my actions by saying my intent wasn't to kill you and that I warned you? The end effect is that I've made the place unlivable for you. Whoopsie, I may or not mot have hit the targeted criminal but you live in un-livable conditions hehe whoopsie sorry. Do you see how retarded that is? At some point it must occur that your actions are causing these issues. It's not like Israeli's are so ''present to the moment'' like eckhart tolle that they don't realize the consequences of their actions and can't see that they’re destroying the entire place. They can't just wave it away with plausible deniability by saying they warned them to leave and didn't target them, but just kept targeting place after place until the entire place has become the target and is now un-livable.

BRICS doesn't exist for the sole purpose of bringing down global democracy but as a reaction against a uni-polar imperial monopoly on global power. The West has been anything but democratic at a geopolitical macro level, even if internally they are democracies - even failed ones, now failing even more. Those failures are more due to structural changes and internal pressures rather than some conspiracy by BRICS. It's because of structural changes to the world order and the Wests position in it + our own system's internal contradictions reaching crisis point. Its a response to a changing order from a uni-polar one where the West reigns supreme to a multi-polar one they no longer do. The internal contradictions coming to a head are: decades of neoliberalism hollowing out the middle class, financialization concentrating wealth upward, de-industrialization destroying the working class, surveillance capitalism eroding privacy, corporate capture of democratic institutions, rising inequality, immigration and cultural change + economic anxiety = reactionary politics. China, Russia or Iran didn't do any of that to us - our own elites and special interest class did - who sold their actions as being for the national interest when it was anything but. China and Russia opportunistically exploit those vulnerabilities but didn't create them. Multi-polarity isn't emerging because the West chose it but because they couldn't prevent it. So the order is changing and the Wests privileged position in it is ending - the economic pie is shrinking including our ability to capture new pies being grown elsewhere (China+developing world). Western societies are responding in various ways to compensate for that loss - right wing nationalism and authoritarian leaning is one of them. BRICS is actually calling for being democratic between nations (on a global level) even if internally they aren't - multi-polarity where institutions reflect and represent everyone rather than having a uni-polar dictatorship run the planet.

@Breakingthewall From AI: “International criteria exist. Starvation and famine aren’t opinions; they’re defined by standardized measures, mainly from the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC), used by the UN, WHO, and WFP. Starvation refers to acute food deprivation leading to malnutrition and increased mortality. Famine (IPC Phase 5) is declared when: ≥20 % of households face extreme food shortage, ≥30 % of children suffer acute malnutrition, death rate exceeds 2 per 10 000 people per day. International bodies have applied those terms to Gaza. The UN and the World Food Programme in early 2024 reported that parts of northern Gaza had famine conditions under IPC Phase 5. UN Secretary-General António Guterres said, “Everyone in Gaza is hungry,” calling it “a moral outrage.” EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said in March 2024, “Starvation is being used as a weapon of war. Israel is provoking famine.” HRW and Amnesty both published findings that Israel was using starvation as a method of warfare. These aren’t activist slogans — they’re official designations and legal assessments. Your counterpart is actually substituting anecdote for data. Saying “they don’t look starving” is a subjective visual impression. Saying “the IPC and UN have classified this as famine conditions” is a fact. So the inversion is clear: he’s calling your evidence-based statement an “opinion” while his visually-based intuition is the opinion. The fair-minded conclusion: If credible international monitoring systems — which rely on nutrition surveys, mortality rates, and caloric intake data — determine famine conditions exist, then the only objective position is to accept that data unless one can produce equally rigorous counter-data.” Not as long as Razes AI lol don’t worry. It’s not my opinion, yours on the contrary is an opinion. I’m going by facts stated by global institutions according to their own definitions which aren’t only ever applied to the worst manifestation of those definitions. As it states - there are phases to starvation. You think the only form of starvation is the absolute end phase when someone is a skeleton and dehydrated like the desert. The reason for having phases is to prevent the absolute worst phases from coming - by having lower intensity phases as sounding alarms. Otherwise how would international law go about stopping “plausible” genocide, ethnic cleansing and starvation - if they only define situations AFTER the fact when it’s too late to do anything about it. It’s like telling someone who’s anaemic (low iron) that their not malnourished because they still eat food.

@Breakingthewall We already went over the fact that they don’t need to visibly look unhealthy or starving but can still be under conditions of starvation. Raze also shared images of starved people after many years yet looking “healthy” in your eyes. I think you take the most extreme case of any definition as the only application of that definition. If you narrow down the definition to its most extreme manifestation then of course you won’t apply it. If many institutions and global bodies are referring it as such then we should perhaps go by their definition and not create our own. Although I can understand that sometimes we don’t consider these institutions as credible because they can be politicized and used or misused as tools of the powerful. But surely - if a global institution like the UN etc are calling the situation in Israel as it is then it’s more accurately closer to reality than not - because they have every incentive not to invite the consequences of a global superpower who wants to shield its ally (Israel). In fact the ICC was threatened by the US also. What political power do the Palestinians have to sway these institutions or bodies to define the situation as starvation? This is where we get Zionists calling the UN Hamas - as if they have more institutional power than the US and collective West loool

@Breakingthewall What are you on about. Your sharing videos of people clearly in agony, in the masses going after aid - what’s your point? That it’s all some movie set created to get the world’s sympathy or simply mocking their pain? Chat GPT: “Starvation isn’t always the image of skeletal bodies — especially in its early and middle stages, or when people are surviving on minimal calories, nutrient-poor food, or occasional aid. You can have: - Severe malnutrition without visible emaciation, particularly if people retain water (edema) or survive on carbs without protein. - Periods of brief refeeding, which mask chronic deprivation Famine means extreme food deprivation, acute malnutrition, and elevated death rates, not just visible emaciation. Visibility and photographic evidence can lag: some people may be in advanced malnutrition before visible “skeleton” stage; water retention, edema, displacement, malnutrition without cachexia all complicate the optics.” Starvation was used as a pressure tactic / bargaining chip. Zionists on this forum in the early days of this “war” used to say so themselves when the Israel thread used to have everyone commenting on it daily (now days it’s a lot more quiet). It was intended to “pressure” Hamas. Anyone here remember those discussions? *crickets - Defense Minister Yoav Gallant (Oct 9, 2023): “I have ordered a complete siege on the Gaza Strip. There will be no electricity, no food, no fuel, everything is closed.” - Energy Minister Israel Katz (Oct 12, 2023): “No electrical switch will be turned on, no water pump will be opened and no fuel truck will enter until the Israeli abductees are returned home.” In 2025 from Le Monde: Israel has come under mounting international pressure, including from key backer the United States, to lift a total blockade it imposed on Gaza more than two months ago. "We must not let the population (of Gaza) sink into famine, both for practical and diplomatic reasons," Netanyahu said, adding that even friends of Israel would not tolerate "images of mass starvation." Imagine thinking you need to prevent famine for “practical and diplomatic” reasons rather than actual moral reasons of it just being the wrong fucking thing to do. What a dark piece of shit Bibi is. My cousin actually worked in the Red Cross in Gaza for some years before all of this - she came back to the UK way before October 7th and she’s been traumatised just by her experience and what she saw or had to deal with there (before October 7th even). So don’t get the point you’re trying to make - that it’s all fake and exaggerated? Or you’re simply mocking it which shows your heartlessness like Bibi. Raze is right to respond with just AI and not waste any breath or energy in responding if so. The following is the level of tone deafness on display from you: Sudans famine is notoriously known and accepted to be one. Go google Sudan famine in images and see for yourself - not everyone “looks” like a skeleton who is considered to be under condition of famine.

My mom tells me I’m handsome, AI tells me “I’m absolutely right”, and Leo Gura tells me I’m God. In all seriousness, I actually debate AI a hour a day and beat its ass. Highly recommend as a mental gym for brain gains.

I didn't side step intentionally - it's just lengthy to get into (I write enough already lol) and your framing is based upon incorrect facts and a incoherent logic that takes time to go over. 1. Ok - first the incorrect fact that BRICS dwarves Western hegemony. BRICS has a larger combined population and comparable combined GDP, but that doesn't translate to power projection or some cohesive hegemony. BRICS is a coalition of interests (some divergent, some aligned) - not a unified system. The US led order is structurally integrated - militarily, diplomatically, economically. US military spending alone ($800 mill - now $1 trillion) exceeds all BRICS combined ( approx $400 billion) - NATO total spending is approx $1.5 trillion. The US has 750 overseas military bases vs Russia/China having dozens at most. The dollar remains the world's reserve currency and the US controls key international institutions (IMF, World Bank, SWIFT) The US and its allies built, lead and control the global order - finance, trade, reserve currency, and military alliances. China,Russia and others exist within that order - and are constantly reacting to its leverage and finding ways to get out from under it's dominance. Which they are only now successfully doing - and in which the West are trying to prevent. You saying they aren't contained doesn't mean they weren't trying to be (which you admit) and still aren't trying to be (which you overlook) - which is the whole issue to begin with in raising the tensions you bemoan (current instability flirting with WW3). You get cause and effect backwards. Which brings me to the next point. 2. Second, the incoherent logic. You say the world was “safer” under containment of Russia and China - admitting that containment existed, but then gloss over the fact that this containment or attempt at containment is still present - and deny the reactions to that containment as reactions, instead framing them as acts of aggression out of nowhere. Containment doesn't mean "perfect control where the contained power never does anything." It means strategic encirclement and pressure designed to limit their options and undermine their influence. NATO expanded to Russia's borders. The US has military alliances and bases surrounding China. Both countries face economic sanctions, diplomatic isolation efforts, and constant military pressure. But because they still have agency and can still do things, you've decided they are no longer contained or attempting to be so - to which they are reacting! It's like saying prison doesn't work because inmates still commit crimes inside, or that sanctions don't exist because Iran still has an economy. Containment creates pressure - pressure creates reactions - sometimes violent reactions. It's part of that pattern recognition you love to reference. You shift the time frame to either be too narrow which strips any action of its context - by blaming the latest reaction as a act of aggression as if it happened in a vacuum, or you broaden it by saying this is a historical pattern and this is how all powers act - which is partially true but analytically not helpful in understanding the current dynamics. There's never a defined analytical window within which to understand current geopolitics - no coherence. It's just zoom in and out where convenient - to avoid looking at the fact that there is a current world order in which these actors are responding to. Your flirting with structural level analysis but then fleeing from it because having to stay with it and follow that line of logic acknowledges a structural order - within which actors are acting and reacting - and coming to the conclusion that perhaps Russia and China are reacting to the pressures within that order - led by the US as the structural aggressor and hegemon of that order looking to contain them. There are different levels of analyzing events: a individual level (what choices did a actor make?), a domestic level (what internal political pressures existed?), and a systemic level (what structural conditions shaped available choices?). All three levels exist simultaneously. You observe patterns, use them to predict behaviour, but never explain why those patterns exists through systemic analysis, only psychoanalysis ie the actor must be imperial minded and every actor is responsible for their own actions and has agency - evading the systemic pressures within which their actions and agency were constrained and limited. 3. Thirdly, to shed some clarity on your perspective which is stuck in binary thinking. Your stuck between a binary of fatalism and idealism. You either default to accepting power dynamics exist and there's nothing we can do about them because history repeats and is inevitable - or you wish for a world in which power dynamics didn't need to exist and angelic Europe can just exist without getting stuck between the power competition of great powers. You miss the third option of there being a middle ground where power dynamics and survival pressures are not denied (Utopian), or indulged / surrendered to as a inevitability of nature asserting itself (law of the jungle) - but managed through maturity, humility and diplomacy. Humility would allow for seeing the world as it is at a structural level - and seeing the order within which all actors are positioned and acting upon their position within that order (targeted as a threat to be contained or pampered and accepted as a ally). That's the basis for diplomacy and management of power competition. Not the arrogance of Western hegemony which frames things through a myopic lens by starting the clock at the latest act of aggression, omitting all the provocations and systemic pressure leading up to it. This just guarantees evading root causes which are needed to be addressed for a lasting solution. Everything else is downstream of that structural order. Grey warfare, cold war, covert ops etc. We don't have to delve into hundreds of examples once we know the root cause of the issue. It boils down to a structural mismanagement of survival pressures and power dynamics in the current world order - because the hegemon in that current world order has no incentive to give up the status quo within which they are the dominant player.

@Hatfort Nice share. I remember another thread Raze made with them two discussing geopolitics. I grappled with the differences they had to make sense of it and commented on it here: Mearsheimer surrenders to the power dynamics of human nature, while Sachs aspires to the principles of human nurture (nature vs nurture, power vs principle). Mearsheimer's world view is fatalsitic in that it projects onto China the Wests own behaviour because ''this is how all power operates'' and ''this is the nature of things'' leaving out any variation in how that power or nature can be potentially exercised or nurtured towards better ends. Otherwise why bother with any civilization building - why not just default to ''nature'' and ''law of the jungle''. We shouldn't resign to the law of the jungle where power rules (darwinian minded ''realists''), we can't ever erase power dynamics and survival pressure either (detached utopian progressives) - we can only manage them properly (through maturity, diplomacy, humility). These realists sometimes just come across like nihilists and leave little hope or space for cooperation. They surrender to the human animal in us, rather than working with the humanity (consciousness) in us that separates man from animal. Wrote that last year, and it's panning out along those lines as we see today.

As I was saying above - these moves will bend, not break Russia. https://www.politico.eu/article/donald-trump-sanctions-russian-oil-europe-lukoil-rosneft/ From politico: “For Moscow, the new sanctions will mean immediate pain, but are unlikely to curtail its war effort in Ukraine.” And then Germany expecting to be exempt from these sanctions: “We assume that the measures taken by the United States … are not intended to target Rosneft’s subsidiaries in Germany, which are held in trust by the German states,” said a spokesperson for the German economy ministry.” Rules for me not for theee https://www.ft.com/content/0d9a5946-1cb6-4c0b-aa5b-7f5383dedef7 Sober watch/listen. TLDR - Neutrality or neutralisation. - Europe will be buying (insert X countries name) oil, with Russian characteristics.