The beginning of a century of repairing the relationship. Beautiful to see it starting

Very light on details that I am very curious about: what does it mean that the aircraft lost its defensive protection? What was it targeted with? It almost sounds like it was a signals attack and not a kinetic one.

US, UK, France. Italy, Germany, Finland… Who else is emerging fascist over there right now? I have to assume Belgium is not far behind. Spain? Portugal? Switzerland? Netherlands? Can we get a map going?

What a strange analysis. You think that the determinant of whether or not the USA is a world power is who is elected to a 4-year term? The USA still has 600+ military bases in 80+ countries, still has the world reserve currency, still has the influence over OPEC that requires it to trade oil in USD, still has ever world leader seriously considering their every word and deed through the lens of American hegemony.

What exactly about this election suddenly made America not a world power?

One country, two systems

I wonder if this could be a path to Korean unification. If Russia and China both have trade relations with both Korea and occupied Korea, maybe there’s a path to peaceful reunification

Well yeah, in that case I would imagine Japan realigning with China, which then encircles Korea. I doubt the DPRK wants to fight a civil war given how much suffering has already befallen the Korean people, it would be very difficult to justify even more suffering. More than likely SK will get pressured to push the last vestiges of the US military out in order to participate fully in regional cooperation, and that’s the condition DPRK is looking for to begin pursuing peaceful reunification.

I don’t think you know what a nation is. The Korean people are a nation - from the Latin root natus, they all share a common birth. However, there are two states, North Korea and South Korea. Both of them are internationally recognized states, meaning we currently have one nation (Korea) split between two states. The split between these states is entirely a construction of imperialism. The people in DPRK and the people in the occupied South do not constitute different nations nor is the 38th parallel a historical division within and among the Korean people that would constitute a meaningful boundary for their self-determination.

The Americans had no business being there at all nor demanding a partition of a nation of people. They did so as part of maintaining colonial occupation for the purpose of anti-conmunism both against the USSR and also against the emerging PLA in China. The US destroyed everything north of the 38th parallel to punish the portion of the Koreans who decided they would not allow their country to continue to be a colony. The USA bombed the countryside until pilots literally went on bombing runs and came back with full payloads because there were no more targets left to bomb. The USA used so much napalm that Koreans needed to live in caves.

The southern portion of the country (land) that was inhabited by the nation of Korea (people) was turned into a new state (South Korea) by the USA and purged of all people who would oppose them and their ideology. South Korea is ONLY separate because of an international legal fiction perpetrated by the US against the Korean people (the nation of Korea).

The leadership culture of the South was built entirely on subjugation to the US war machine. Leaders survived or failed or died based on their allegiance to the US military occupation. The transition from full occupation to what exists today is one of loosening the leash on a captive one inch at a time to confirm that the punishing dominance has had the desired effect - that effect being complete subjugation to the interests of the dominator.

You think the Korean people want US nukes on submarines in its waters? You think the Korean people want to have half of their homeland completely inaccessible to them? You think the Korean people want half of their people to be completely isolated from them? You think they like having the DMZ as an eternal reminder of the constant threat of readied lethal force directed at their own countrypersons?

One day, there will be one nation-state of Korea, and the division created by the imperialists will dissolve and the trauma of this period can begin to be integrated and healed by the Korean people, but it will not happen until the US loses its violent dominance over the Pacific region.

I feel like that would put the north in a hot conflict with the US pretty fast and China would not signal to the north that they would support.

That just means more US management though

You know I have been waiting for the eventual Japanese realignment with China and that I am always eager to see the latest developments. I cannot say the same for SK. What is the path for SK to shed the yoke of US occupation? Does it have to lose a civil war with the north before it can shed the yoke or does it have to shed the yoke before reunification is possible?

No. Korea, the nation, was occupied by Japan. It existed as an occupied nation. The USA, after nuking Japan, took over the Japanese colony on the Korean peninsula. The Korean people resisted the occupiers when they were Japanese, and again when they were American. The Russians supported the Korean people in their resistance of the occupying forces of the Americans. The Americans found all of the Koreans that were allied with their oppressors as their mode of survival and supported them in their reactionary defense against liberation. On doing so, the USA negotiated a partitioning of Korea with the USSR to avoid direct conflict between America and the USSR. That partitioning allowed the foreign occupation of Korea to continue.

South Korea is not a nation, it’s a colonial state. They do not have sufficient sovereignty to voluntarily host their occupiers. The Korean people in South Korea are the result of separating out the Koreans who sought liberation and killing them in the north of the country - the people left were dominated or complicit. There’s nothing voluntary about that.

The southern portion of the Korean peninsula would still exist as Korea with or without the USA. The difference would not be that it would or would not “exist at all” but rather whether it would exist as an occupied colony or as an independent nation-state.

Wow. Just wow. Calling it now, we’re gonna see this talking point spread.

Russia was literally invaded three times and lost millions upon millions of lives because the border with Ukraine is indefensible. That’s why Napoleon invaded Russia through it. It’s why the Third Reich invaded Russia through it. And it’s why Russia’s national security requires Ukraine to be a neutral country that NATO is not operational in. What NATO was doing in Ukraine absolutely justifies Russia’s actions. NATO simulated an invasion of Kaliningrad with Ukraine. It flew B-52s in exercises in Ukraine. It was literally building and exercising it’s logistics chain to establish nuclear first-strike capabilities. That’s been clear since the early 90s when Clinton duplicitously told Russia Ukraine would remain neutral while asking his own generals to draft a plan to include Ukraine in NATO. This is literally the definition of Russian national security. Ukraine needed to remain neutral and establishing a nuclear transnational military presence unaccountable to any sovereign nation or any nation’s people with an ambition of nuclear first strike capabilities lead by the USA that explicitly and publicly reserves the right for a nuclear first strike is exactly the opposite of remaining neutral.

This is why we need understand imperialism in the Leninists sense and not in the liberal sense.

The US transfered almost the same amount of material as the entire Russian military budget each year of the conflict.

The point was correct but poorly stated. It’s not the problem of NATO at its border. It’s the problem of NATO at the border with Ukraine specifically. That is the border Russia has been invaded over 3 times. Napoleon invaded Russia through that border and that’s considered one of the bloodiest campaigns ever. The Third Reich also invaded Russia through that border. So Russia, appropriately, does not want a transnational nuclear military, a military without any democratic accountability, a military originally staffed with former Nazi officers by the USA, a military that trained specifically to counter and invaded Russia, a military that ran Operation Gladio… Russia appropriately doesn’t want that military to be developing its logistics, recon, fortifications, and nuclear capabilities on the border that Russia cannot effectively defend without massive and constant mobilization.

But the USA believes Russia is just going to have to deal with being under constant threat of invasion and nuclear strikes. That’s why Clinton said, all the way back in the early 90s, that Ukraine would remain neutral - in public. And then immediately after in private asked his generals to draft plans for getting Ukraine into NATO.

Consider this. The USA dropped two nuclear bombs on Japan while negotiating with them, in particular negotiating with them through the USSR. The USA made it very clear that it’s mission was to “contain the spread of communism” which meant creating lethal threat to the USSR and particularly Russia. It took over the imperial colony of Korea from Japan and then proceeded to destroy fully half the country by creating completely artificial pretense.

It built NATO which sponsored and trained neo-nazi groups all over Europe through operation Gladio, it protectes Nazi officers and even gave them high command of NATO. It deployed nukes throughout Europe specifically targeting Russia and it pursued an end of MAD so that it could establish some path way to nuking Russia without retaliation.

Then the USSR was dismantled and the USA oversaw the complete destruction of the old economy and economic shock therapy that killed millions of Russians. But the conflict didn’t end despite communism ending. The US kept building up its nuclear capabilities through NATO. And it turned NATO offensive. The destruction of Yugoslavia was as much symbolic as physical, with Yugoslavia the last of the communist programs in the region.

Russia attempted to join the imperialist club. It wanted to split the world with the imperialists and make a lot of money doing it, but the USA said no. And then proceeded to demonstrate that it would stop at nothing less than full subjugation of Russia. The USA was on the ground during the EuroMaidan event, mere months after the first ever NATO exercise in Ukraine. After EuroMaidan, the number of military exercises with NATO and Ukraine increased tremendously, and included nuclear capabilities and even included a simulated invasion of Kaliningrad. They were flying b-52 bombers in Ukraine to show their readiness to deploy nukes.

Russia, through many many negotiations and even treaties, has been trying to get the other side to the negotiating table for decades now. Russia does not want to be full subjugated by the West but every single piece of evidence we have is that the USA wants Russia subjugated and it has not stopped pushing for those conditions.

Russia has been escalating incredibly judiciously, incredibly explicitly, without any real attempt at hiding the fact that it cannot afford to lose the neutrality of Eastern Ukraine as a buffer against invasion - invasion that happened once under Napoleon, once after WW1, and once again by the Third Reich. This is not a hypothetical issue. Every invasion of Russia took that route and killed millions.

So yes, it is wild that invading a neighbor is the only way that the USA can be brought to the negotiating table, and even at that it took years of death before the USA would even entertain it. But that’s the bloodlust we have to deal with.

No the original goal, as stated by Putin, was to disrupt NATO activities on the Eastern border that were indistinguishable from deploying nuclear capabilities that allowed the USA to continue pursuing its dream of a nuclear first strike.

Rogue nations? You mean the ones that flagrantly violate international law when they bomb the shit out of countries and then bring in their corporate elite to rebuild it for profit?