Showing posts with label realpolitik. Show all posts
Showing posts with label realpolitik. Show all posts

Tuesday, July 9, 2024

Overthrow

Why does a strong nation strike against a weaker one? Usually because it seeks to impose its ideology, increase its power, or gain control of valuable resources. Shifting combinations of these three factors motivated the United States as it extended its global reach over the past century and more. This book examines the most direct form of American intervention, the overthrow of foreign governments. --Overthrow by Stephen Kinzer
Introduction gives a good enough idea. [pdf / gbooks] Kinzer is a very productive author, tons of interesting books.

American annexation of Hawaii should be compared with the Boer Wars, almost same time, and same reasons. see also bayonet constitution and Newlands Resolution. крымнаш в общем 😁

следующая глава - про американо-испанскую войну и оккупацию Кубы, очень саркастичная. к ней хорошее дополнение - статья в Wiki American propaganda of the Spanish–American War. и про Филиппины познавательно.

- Nicaragua: "Oh, Mr. President. Do not let so great an achievement suffer from any taint of legality,"

- Honduras: President Taft personally ordered the charges against Bonilla dropped. also read about Zemurray.

- Iran: [British] appealed unsuccessfully to the United Nations Security Council

- к главе про Чили интересное дополнение ITT’s spectacular rise and fall

Thursday, June 20, 2024

power positions

Power positions do not yield to arguments, however rationally and morally valid, but only to superior power.

--Hans Morgenthau

приводит на память “Do not quote laws to men with swords.”

неплохие заметки про Morgenthau в Weimar Germany: Promise and Tragedy, в 10-й главе

Politics Among Nations и Система международных отношений. Нации в борьбе за власть - перевод

интересно, что это вовсе не Генри Моргентау, который сформулировал пресловутый План. как говорится, даже не однофамилец 🤡

Monday, June 17, 2024

legitimate attempt

There was never an executive order or memo ordering or even suggesting a coup go forward. The American position was couched in terms of "not stopping a legitimate attempt" to change the government of South Vietnam. --The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Vietnam War
а тут все наоборот: The Best and the Brightest by David Halberstam
Among those dazzled by the Administration team was Vice-President Lyndon Johnson. After attending his first Cabinet meeting he went back to his mentor Sam Rayburn and told him with great enthusiasm how extraordinary they were, each brighter than the next, and that the smartest of them all was that fellow with the Stacomb on his hair from the Ford Motor Company, McNamara. “Well, Lyndon,” Mister Sam answered, “you may be right and they may be every bit as intelligent as you say, but I’d feel a whole lot better about them if just one of them had run for sheriff once.” It is my favorite story in the book, for it underlines the weakness of the Kennedy team, the difference between intelligence and wisdom, between the abstract quickness and verbal fluency which the team exuded, and the true wisdom, which is the product of hard-won, often bitter experience. Wisdom for a few of them came after Vietnam.
убедительно пишет Halberstam. ох не любил он восточную элиту. что протестантскую, что католическую. да и западную тоже. но в Кеннеди он положительно влюблен.
"The Best and the Brightest" is ostensibly about how shining intellectuals -- primarily McGeorge Bundy, Robert , and Dean Rusk -- of the Kennedy White House trapped America in Vietnam. ... In fact, I came away from the book with the keen sense that these "intellectuals" were just arrogant and shallow, self-serving and power-hungry individuals.
this is from amazon review A Major Disappointment

в 9-й главе он интересно рассказывает про Walt Rostow. вспоминается афоризм про Россию, где за год меняется все, а за 100 лет - ничего. к США это тоже относится.

Sunday, February 25, 2024

NYT расчехлилась

The Spy War: How the C.I.A. Secretly Helps Ukraine Fight Putin: For more than a decade, the United States has nurtured a secret intelligence partnership with Ukraine that is now critical for both countries in countering Russia.

как-то они неосторожно. или это специально, подогревают супчик?

об этом только ленивый сегодня не написал, вот David Sacks, к примеру:

Official Narrative update: the idea that the CIA has been deeply involved in Ukraine for over a decade waging a secret war against Russia is no longer a conspiracy theory.

Tuesday, October 31, 2023

заметки френолога

слова russia & ukraine conspicuouisly absent on the front page of NYT

Tuesday, July 25, 2023

Case by Case

Biden Takes His Battle for Democracy Case by Case - с похвальной прямотой NYT разъясняет, что “Consistency is a challenge for most administrations when it comes to democracy and human rights concerns around the world, and this administration is no exception,” это они цитируют одного David J. Kramer, который служил в администрации under President George W. Bush, чтобы так уж не накидывались на Байдена, у республиканцев тоже были проблемы с демократией и правами человека.

годная статья:

Even some senior officials around Mr. Biden privately feel uncomfortable with the duality of his black-and-white approach, noting that some of America’s friends have rule of law without being particularly free (Singapore leaps to mind) while others are even less committed to Western notions of human rights but still are helpful allies (the United Arab Emirates, for example).
вот уж realpolitic во весь рост.

Thursday, June 29, 2023

Japanese resistance ... was already negligible

Apologists for the Yalta concessions maintain that Japan in February 1945 presented the aspect of a formidable, unbeaten enemy. Therefore, so the argument runs, Roosevelt was justified in paying a price for Soviet intervention, in the interest of ending the war quickly and saving American lives.

But Japanese resistance to American air and naval attacks on its own coasts was already negligible. American warships were able to cruise along the shores of Japan, bombarding at will. According to an account later published by Arthur Krock, of the New York Times, an Air Force general presented a report at Yalta pointing to the complete undermining of the Japanese capacity to resist. --America's Second Crusade, pg 218

все-таки привожу еще один отрывок, для сравнения с оправданиями атомных бомбардировок, которые в свете этого - бесстыдное вранье.

еще забавно на стр. 227: Eisenhower was profoundly innocent in high politics. - он хотел сказать ignorant, наверное.

The manipulation of public opinion at home and abroad in time of war is a necessary but delicate task. It should be entrusted only to individuals of proved patriotism.
вторая половина книги посвящена провалам администрации Рузвельта (и правительства Черчилля) в отношениях с кровавым сталиным. а надо было: угрожать сепаратным миром с Германией, прекращением поставок по ленд-лизу, и тому подобным, тогда сталин бы испугался и уступил Польшу и прочее, вот как. опять же много рыданий по поводу communist sympathizers в рузвельтовской администрации, ну и шпионы конечно.
Stalin questioned the expediency of the “ unconditional surrender” formula at the Teheran Conference. He felt that it merely served to unite the German people. The announcement of specific terms, however harsh, in Stalin's opinion would hasten the German capitulation.

But Roosevelt clung to his pet phrase with an obstinacy worthy of a better cause. His vanity and prestige were deeply involved.

Черчилль тоже: The principle of Unconditional Surrender will be adhered to so far as Nazi Germany and Japan are concerned
It is certainly arguable that if the statesmen in Paris in 1919 had been as reasonable and cool-headed as their predecessors in Vienna a century earlier and worked out a peace of moderation, the Hitlerite madness would never have possessed the German people.

...
It is sometimes suggested that the Morgenthau Plan has been exaggerated or misrepresented. There is no excuse for misunderstanding, however, because Morgenthau himself has published the full text of the plan in a book which contains elaborate suggestions about why and how it should be put into effect. pg 304

и дальше там он объясняет почему Черчилль согласился на план Моргентау. познавательно.

Sunday, June 25, 2023

America's Second Crusade

Neutrality legislation, passed by overwhelming majorities in both houses of Congress and adopted in finally revised form on May 1, 1937, completely repudiated Wilson’s position.

The Act in its final form provided that “whenever the President shall find that there exists a state of war between or among two or more foreign states”, certain measures should automatically come into effect.

There was to be an embargo on the sale of arms, munitions, and implements of war to all belligerents. American citizens were forbidden to travel on belligerent ships and to buy or sell securities of warring powers. Such products as cotton, scrap iron, and oil could be sold to belligerents, but could not be transported in American ships. This was the so-called cash-and-carry arrangement.

начало тут. познавательная книга, цитировать можно без конца.

I give you my deep and unalterable conviction, based on years of experience as a worker in the field of international peace, that by the repeal of the embargo the United States will more probably remain at peace than if the law remains as it stands today.
more probably... highly likely...
That American sympathy is ninety-eight per cent with the Finns in their effort to stave off invasion of their own soil is by now axiomatic.
это почему же ninety-eight разрешите спросить
A president who cannot entrust the people with the truth betrays a certain lack of faith in the basic tenets of democracy. But because the masses are notoriously shortsighted and generally cannot see danger until it is at their throats our statesmen are forced to deceive them into an awareness of their own long run interests.
вот, собственно, и все, что нужно знать о демократии.

Stalin, who loved to practice the old maxim, Divide and Rule, could have wished nothing better. - интересно, где он этому научился? у хулиганов во дворе? ну и невозможно не процитировать

Churchill tried to reach a satisfactory separate agreement with Stalin. As is shown in another chapter, Churchill took the initiative in the dismemberment of Poland at Teheran. In an attempt to “ compensate" Poland for the territory which he wished to hand over to Stalin, the British Prime Minister threw the weight of his influence behind the idea of expelling millions of Germans from the eastern part of that country.
там дальше цитата из старины Черчилля как раз об этом.

на стр. 189 он пишет про разговор Хопкинса со Сталиным о Польше, упрекая Сталина во лжи. на самом деле нагло врет сам автор, Chamberlin. и по поводу второго фронта - скверное вранье и передергивание. ну не любит Chamberlin русских и Сталина, но передергивать-то зачем?

The Morgenthau Plan, which Roosevelt and Churchill had approved at Quebec, recommended “forced German labor outside Germany” as a form of reparations.

еще

Sunday, June 18, 2023

waiting for some "overt act"

The German leaders, however, did not anticipate the good fortune that was awaiting them in the East. They decided to stake everything on the submarine card. Wilson promptly broke off diplomatic relations. Then there was a pause, a period of waiting for some “overt act” . Sir Cecil Spring Rice, the British Ambassador in Washington, was praying for “the destruction of an American ship with American passengers.” --America's Second Crusade by William Henry Chamberlin
познавательная книжка, в первой главе про Allied propagandists, German “atrocities” etc и многое другое. еще там чуть дальше про treaty of alliance with Mexico и о том, что Zimmerman’s proposal is indistinguishable from the territorial bribes with which the Allies induced Italy and Rumania. - очень смешно.
The greatest failure of all was in “ making the world safe, for democracy.” Communism and fascism, not democracy, were the authentic political offspring of World War I.

...
Fifteen years ago came the Armistice and we all thought it was to be a new world. It is! But a lot worse than it was before.

Вильсона уместно сравнить с мистером Смитом из Комедиантов. не имел ли его в виду Грин? прошло-то всего полвека. впрочем, персонаж типический...
Many of the German demands would have been reasonable if they had not been made by a paranoid dictator and would-be conqueror like Hitler.
ох не все считали его paranoid dictator в 1936-м, мне кажется. особенно в Британии.

еще

на amazon 4.9 rating.

Thursday, June 15, 2023

Everything You Know ... Is Wrong

Why Everything You Know About World War II Is Wrong - это Unz, заголовок можно сократить, выкинуть About World War II

там много всякого, в частности я не знал про Operation Pike, ну и про многое другое. заодно наткнулся на Соглашение Сайкса — Пико. комментировать нет смысла. в общем этот текст - хороший справочник, упоминаются интересные книги, например America's Second Crusade. прочесть не прочту, но хоть надкушу.

еще упоминают Other Losses by James Bacque, книга вызвала жуткий скандал в 90-х, когда она вышла. вот для справки статья в Independent Book review / The massacre of truth, там больше, правда, про другую его книгу, Crimes and Mercies: The Fate of German Civilians Under Allied Occupation, 1944-1950. я, конечно, сказать ничего не могу, на эту тему немало книг вышло за последнее время, вот еще одна: After the Reich: The Brutal History of the Allied Occupation, взял в библиотеке.

Tuesday, May 9, 2023

Шольц сдается

Germany's Scholz calls for reformed EU in 'multipolar' world

я думал только злой путен употребляет некрасивое слово 'multipolar'. ну разве что китайцы еще.

не я один обратил внимание: One News Page / Times of Oman

гнутся шведы

Tuesday, April 25, 2023

Dr. Daniele Ganser

Dr. Daniele Ganser auf Russisch: Путч на Украине 2014 года - длинная лекция на youtube, почти два часа, май 2015, но звучит очень современно. прослушал от начала до конца, несмотря на мой short attention span.

этот Dr. Daniele Ganser присутствует на youtube и вообще в сети, профессиональный историк.

лекция очень содержательная, упоминает Ray McGovern, George Friedman, Иван Качановский ну и много кого еще.

он швейцарец, и швейцарское правительство не слишком им довольно: Историк Даниэле Ганзер и его бизнес на сомнении

вот, кстати, Дядя Сэм против Дон Кихота - практически на ту же тему 130 лет назад...

Monday, March 20, 2023

with a straight face

20 Years On, a Question Lingers About Iraq: Why Did the U.S. Invade? - это NYT. на голубом глазу. вот это хуцпа. учитесь, Киса.

see also Was Iraq a Worse Disaster for America Than Vietnam?

Tuesday, February 21, 2023

отмашка дана

вот приер из NYT: The Problem With Russia Is Russia

это по результатам Разрешения Байдену ехать в Киев. собственно, отмашка дана уже несколько недель назад. лень примеры перечислять - они везде.

Russia ready to resume nuclear tests on Novaya Zemlya - это уже две недели назад в Правде вывешено, и сегодня Начальник повторил, но свободная пресса решила не заметить. похоже, не хотят обывателя пугать - теперь такая установка, видимо.

Sunday, January 1, 2023

Guaido out

Venezuela opposition removes interim President Guaido / Chevron sending two oil tankers to Venezuela under U.S. approval / Venezuela and Colombia fully reopen shared border - так совпало кстати вот это вот Chevron sending чисто случайно не имеет отношения к потолку цен на нефть хочем знать

ну и вишенка на торте: Time magazine roasted for article suggesting exercise has racist origins

Thursday, December 22, 2022

The Amorality of Power Politics

There has always been some demagoguery in Nasser, of course (as there has been in every national leader, Eastern or Western, of any importance), but something other than demagoguery accounts for the way he has consistently won his game with almost all players, certainly with the United States and the Soviets if not with the Israelis.

--The Game of Nations: The Amorality of Power Politics by Miles Copeland

там много подобных откровений.
At the same time, Mr. Kennan argued convincingly that if Europe was to be divided the blame should be placed on the Russians and not on ourselves. Winston Churchill, in a speech delivered at Fulton, Missouri, referred to the “Iron Curtain,” and the presence of President Truman at his side implied official U.S. Government endorsement of such an attitude. Apart from this one lapse, however, official policy was still to pretend that the “spirit of Yalta” guided our actions and that the United Nations, with understanding and cooperation between the great “peace-loving” powers, would maintain order throughout the world by thrashing things out between themselves in a civilized manner. Internal Government communications, written or oral, that indicated otherwise were marked TOP SECRET.
следует отметить использование кавычек и заглавных букв.

про выборы в Сирии стр. 46-47 замечательно смешно, следует читать весь длинный абзац со слов To say that the elections did not come up to our expectations would be an understatement. это все, по-моему, вполне можно отнести и к американскому вмешательству во Вьетнаме.

там же на стр 47 чудесная формулировка “coordinator of unconventional political activity” ну там все подряд надо читать, там полно таких фраз: Keeley loved the Syrians, and he persisted in a belief that they were “naturally democratic.”

Hinton has since grown up, but in those days he was a devout Goo-Goo—one who believes that even in a country like Syria, Good Government is not only desirable but possible. ... The first Hinton knew of the actual coup was on the day it happened. As he, Meade and I were making a reconnaissance tour of Damascus that morning, he fulminated at length on the theme: “I want to go on record as saying that this is the stupidest, most irresponsible action a diplomatic mission like ours could get itself involved in, and that we’ve started a series of these things that will never end.” He subsequently wrote a dispatch on the subject and sent it by slow boat to the Department, where it now gathers dust in the archives. Things have, of course, come out as he predicted. - pg 52

ex libris

Tuesday, October 25, 2022

ах какая драма

U.S. Officials Had a Secret Oil Deal With the Saudis. Or So They Thought.: After Saudi leaders pushed to slash oil production despite a visit by President Biden, administration officials have been left fuming that they were duped.

помните NATO expansion, бляди?

жж

Saturday, May 21, 2022

так устроен «реальный мир»

Ведущий попросил Макфола прокомментировать тот факт, что в 2021 году американские дипломаты пытались изо всех сил убедить Киев в том, что страна сможет присоединиться к НАТО и неоднократно повторяли это утверждение. «Так, неужели дипломаты врали?» — задал он вопрос экс-послу. Макфол ответил утвердительно и с улыбкой добавил, что так устроен «реальный мир». - Экс-посол США признал обман американскими дипломатами Украины
ответил с улыбкой, ну-ну

full clip @21stCenturyWire / жж / жж

McFail / McFool / McFault / McAwful

«И тут с осла упали его модные иностранные брюки, и все увидели обыкновенный ослиный хвост», — заявила Захарова

и эта толстомордая блядина продолжает пиздеть как ни в чем не бывало pardon my french

еще про realpolitik:

- US official: Biden mulls Cuba invitation for Americas summit
- Maduro glimpses political lifeline as US rethinks Venezuela policy

японская поговорка: Нужда припрет - последние семена съешь.

Tuesday, April 12, 2022

in a single word

I have long said America is a nation that can be defined in a single word: Possibilities. - это дедушка Байден вчера. а сегодня Marina Do пишет в комментариях к посту про Гаагу:
Мой вариант - ... in a single word - hypocrisy.