Demon Of The Fall posted:

nah using Putin is dumb as gently caress lol

AnimeIsTrash posted:

lula sending glenn to the lulag

Truga posted:

dumb american fencesitter: why isn't maduro catering to me

Doktor Avalanche posted:

lol i'm glad he got slapped by that right winger

vyelkin posted:

think less idealistically about this. If you're a country like Venezuela, what is the benefit of cozying up to the United States compared to Russia and China? Accepting the premises of domestic institutionalism, one is institutionally a democracy and the others aren't. However, if you are Venezuela you care far more about how those countries' leaders affect Venezuela than how they deal with their own internal politics.

Let's say you were making a choice in 2015 about which country to side with. You side with the United States, build a relationship with Barack Obama, maybe he cancels a sanction or two or lets Americans go spend money in your country as tourists or signs a nuclear deal. The next year Trump comes to power and cancels all that and imposes new sanctions and maybe he sponsors a coup or two in your country for good measure. Your efforts cozying up to the US were fruitless, a waste of time and energy. Four years later you get Biden in power and he maybe liberalizes relations a little bit but it's a slow process just like it was with Obama (plus maybe he does a coup as well, you never know!), and who knows what 2024 will bring, maybe President DeSantis, and maybe he cancels everything once again and tries to have you killed to appease Florida voters. Looking on a local level, you could have gone through the same process with Brazil, for example: maybe you had good relations with Dilma but then Bolsonaro canceled everything and tried to destroy you and you have to rebuild the relationship with Lula.

If on the other hand you had sided with Russia and China, in 2023 they're run by the same leaders as they were in 2015 pursuing more or less the same policies and the same geopolitical priorities, and your relations with them will have been relatively consistent over the past eight years rather than running hot and cold depending on the whims of a bipolar electorate that knows nothing about your country except what they see on Fox News or MSNBC.

From the geopolitical point of view of a vulnerable country, being friendly with, as you put it, "countries without democracy" can actually be substantially more productive for building material long-term relationships because the current volatility of democracy in rich countries means there are no long-term guarantees. Rich countries can afford the luxury of tut-tutting over the internal affairs of their trade and security partners, but that doesn't mean everyone can.

genericnick posted:

That's a bit more charitable than I would put it. I can't really think of a single country that successfully moved off the US enemy list by cutting a deal since the USSR fell. Qaddafi was one of the War on Terror success stories when he gave up his failing WMD program. North Korea agreed to freeze its nuke program in exchange for help with civil nuclear energy. Iran with the nuclear deal. Cuba under Obama. All reverted to baseline hostility after one and a half administrations at most.

Plutonis posted:

Also Glenn is a jackhole does have a point that the Judiciary system (and the Supreme Court in particular) has way too much unchecked power, the difference is that this time they are focusing on Bolso rather when than Lula during the Lava Jato investigations, the problem is that he is too much of a contrarian rear end in a top hat about it and takes the worst possible conclusions.

vyelkin posted:

Yeah, that's exactly my point. If you're a country that doesn't want to submit to US hegemony, you can't build a materially positive long-term relationship with the US because even if you pull out all the stops to sign a deal with a presidential administration that's open to it for one reason or another, it means nothing to the next one or the one after that.

Epic High Five posted:

How long until Glenn is trying to climb the gates of Congress only to get shooed away by security like a racoon, Guadio-style

He's just a dumb as gently caress reactionary, it doesn't need to be more complicated than it obviously is. He's the Libertarian guy you knew in high school who'd get red faced and screaming whenever you tried to explain progressive taxation to him, but like the LEVEL 99 version from mobile game ads

Plutonis posted:

Like I'm playing a microscopic violin for Bolso and his ilk but Lula and any left person in this country should be aware that Alexandre De Moraes and Moro are the same and will likely do the same to the left if they get the chance.

lobster shirt posted:

Plutonis posted:

The Chimp from the Kremlin at this point can barely hold his country together right now, I wonder why even mention him in first place. It's better to focus on Latin American integration instead of trying to find a foreign patron.

dead gay comedy forums posted:

IMHO they already did, in a way. De Moraes is pure vanity at this point and Moro keeps proving himself a monumental idiot repeatedly, which makes them great pictures of representation of Brazilian "legalism". Both played a fundamental part in causing the shitstorm because of how peculiarly pro-active they were about finding what they wanted according to their interpretations

vyelkin posted:

think less idealistically about this. If you're a country like Venezuela, what is the benefit of cozying up to the United States compared to Russia and China? Accepting the premises of domestic institutionalism, one is institutionally a democracy and the others aren't. However, if you are Venezuela you care far more about how those countries' leaders affect Venezuela than how they deal with their own internal politics.

Let's say you were making a choice in 2015 about which country to side with. You side with the United States, build a relationship with Barack Obama, maybe he cancels a sanction or two or lets Americans go spend money in your country as tourists or signs a nuclear deal. The next year Trump comes to power and cancels all that and imposes new sanctions and maybe he sponsors a coup or two in your country for good measure. Your efforts cozying up to the US were fruitless, a waste of time and energy. Four years later you get Biden in power and he maybe liberalizes relations a little bit but it's a slow process just like it was with Obama (plus maybe he does a coup as well, you never know!), and who knows what 2024 will bring, maybe President DeSantis, and maybe he cancels everything once again and tries to have you killed to appease Florida voters. Looking on a local level, you could have gone through the same process with Brazil, for example: maybe you had good relations with Dilma but then Bolsonaro canceled everything and tried to destroy you and you have to rebuild the relationship with Lula.

If on the other hand you had sided with Russia and China, in 2023 they're run by the same leaders as they were in 2015 pursuing more or less the same policies and the same geopolitical priorities, and your relations with them will have been relatively consistent over the past eight years rather than running hot and cold depending on the whims of a bipolar electorate that knows nothing about your country except what they see on Fox News or MSNBC.

From the geopolitical point of view of a vulnerable country, being friendly with, as you put it, "countries without democracy" can actually be substantially more productive for building material long-term relationships because the current volatility of democracy in rich countries means there are no long-term guarantees. Rich countries can afford the luxury of tut-tutting over the internal affairs of their trade and security partners, but that doesn't mean everyone can.

Futanari Damacy posted:

Nobody outside the west (the enemies of this project) are even against Russia

But yeah it might goad the west into doing something evil like steal all their money or fail repeatedly to install a puppet regime

PhilippAchtel posted:

lol

Plutonis posted:

Plutonis posted:

Turtle Watch posted:

there’s a dang chimp in the kremlin

vyelkin posted:

One of the things that has been confusing for Western commentators over the past year is that much public opinion in the developing world sees little difference between Russia's invasion of Ukraine and the US's various invasions of countries like Afghanistan and Iraq, it's just great powers exploiting weak states for their own interests under different ideological veneers. When Maduro praises Putin's invocation of a "multipolar world" it's because living in a multipolar world until the late 80s gave weak states some degree of geopolitical latitude in the ability to pick a side or play great powers against one another for their own benefit. This was a dangerous game but there were success stories and most importantly there was more than one international network you could join. If the US cut you off from trade and finance, there was an alternative power structure to which you could appeal, which has not been true since 1991 and is why stuff like Belt and Road is so threatening to US interests. You don't have to like Putin or support the invasion of Ukraine to understand why Maduro wants a multipolar world or why Putin is the current flagbearer for multipolarity, and considering how hostile the US already is to Venezuela there's no reason for him not to speak his mind on that given that he's speaking to an audience that want a multipolar world and not to an audience of MSNBC liberals who want unipolarity with a friendly face.

Turtle Watch posted:

there’s a dang chimp in the kremlin

Turtle Watch posted:

there’s a dang chimp in the kremlin