Comment by dylan604

14 days ago

Russia and these NATO countries being probed are like the two siblings in the back seat. Mom, he's touching me. Stop touching your brother. Mom, he's holding his finger right next to me. Dad eventually says, don't make me pull this car over and start a global thermonuclear war

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dylan604

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exceptione  14 days ago

Not quite. Be careful, Russia invests a lot in disinformation campaigns and spreading (conflicting, but that is part of their doctrine) narratives. Bothsidisms and False Equivalency are some of the common tools in muddying the information sphere.

NATO and Europe did quite a lot to normalize relations with Russia. Russia was invited and became participant of the NATO program Partnership For Peace [0].

   The program contains 6 areas of cooperation, which aims to build relationships with partners through military-to-military cooperation on training, exercises, disaster planning and response, science and environmental issues, professionalization, policy planning, and relations with civilian government

Very nice, but the secret services that took over the empire did and does not fancy a rule-based, harmonious order based on mutual relations, human rights, freedom of press etc. As any autocracy or kleptocracy understands, that is very much a threat to their power, beacuse

  - Population will demand political influence.
  
  - Mindset. A criminal thinks in terms of I win, you lose. Might makes right. Complete opposite of what makes up the dna of the free world.

The imperative is on us to understand that message really well. It goes slowly unfortunately. It is hard for us to grok.

Notice how on our part, helped via tech oligarchs, there is an incessant bombardment to undermine support for those values. Kremlin troll factories are a thing, but the Chinese are speading up rapidly in the information sphere too. Especially youngsters are targeted.

The war has already begun, but we don´t want to see it. And that is dangerous.

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0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Partnership_for_Peace

  • mistermann  14 days ago

    > Be careful, Russia invests a lot in disinformation campaigns and spreading (conflicting, but that is part of their doctrine) narratives.

    You may also want to be careful (or not):

    - all countries engage in these things

    - how things are seem like how they seem, but this is very often not the case...and rather than consciousness raising warnings for such situations, it very often does the opposite

    As always, I recommend a meta-perspective on geopolitical stories, it is much more fun than being a Normative, poorly constrained imagination actor like the vast majority of people.

    • exceptione  14 days ago

      I certainly welcome critical thinking. How GOP got of the rails with the adventures of Bush Jr (War on Terror) is worthy of deep analysis. Backed by Russia, which might give you a pause.

      Geopolitical affairs are indeed difficult to follow. It requires deep internal domain(s!) knowledge, which does not fit your average corporate media business model. The niche outlets that do have a capable editorial board are threatened by takeovers [1, 2] from the likes of Axel Springer [3]. 1 Billion USD for Politico. An idiotic sum for a buyer that small, Wikipedia might pique your interest [3]. That is not to say that Politico is useless now, but you can count on journalistic degradation over time.

      But sweeping statements are not of help to get a sharper picture. Instead they risk promoting false equivalence and may turn participants(!) of democracies into passive nihilists. Which is precisely the aim of the foreign influence we are talking about.

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      1. https://foreignpolicy.com/2022/01/06/axel-springer-politico-...

      2. https://countercurrents.org/2021/09/a-right-wing-german-news...

      3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axel_Springer_SE#Criticism

      1 reply →

    • ImPostingOnHN  13 days ago

      > all countries engage in these things

      The post you're responding to, already predicted and addressed this claim:

      > Bothsidisms and False Equivalency are some of the common tools in muddying the information sphere.

      6 replies →

  • trehnert  14 days ago

    These anti disinformation posts are quite peculiar. I'd advise anyone who wants to dig deeper to listen to West Point graduate Mearsheimer:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JrMiSQAGOS4

    It takes one hour to listen. Take notes and verify the facts afterwards. No disinformation there, much less Russian.

wbl  14 days ago

Except its always Russia instigating. We never sent someone to look at the spire of Saint Basil (the pathetic excuse offered for explaining the presence of GRU officers in Salisbury carrying out chemical warfare), or really struck at their weak points.

  • dylan604  14 days ago

    Are you actually saying the US has never engaged in propaganda within another country or attempted to influence the outcomes of their elections or influence their populace to rise up against their leaders?

    You cannot be serious with that kind of belief