What is to say that the anti-imperialist Russian Federation will not simply take the place of the United States upon its defeat?

Historical and material reality.

The US didn’t appear as a magician on the scene out of nowhere. It invaded western Europe not to defeat Nazis but to ensure the survival of western European capital, under new management of course. With US troops and guns at their backs they were spared their people being liberated by socialism, in exchange fealty was given to the US.

Quite honestly the US is a product of and beneficiary of CENTURIES of European colonialism. Russia cannot reproduce that in a day or a decade.

The wealth, power, geopolitical control, cultural dominance and propaganda hegemony the US enjoys was built off those European empires, their looted wealth, and their influence. Was built off cooperation with the British who in the post-colonial moment of WW2 still had deep penetration of many societies, governments, etc.

Even assuming the US suffers a huge fall in a few years the lingering tendrils of its cultural influence and dominance will be fighting it out with Russian and Chinese influence for many years if not decades to come.

In other words Rome was not built in a day, the US did not morph magically into an omni-power empire in a year or a decade out of nowhere. And Russia cannot do the same.

Western Europe did not resist US imposition as it came as a rescue, they will likely resist joining with or being dominated by Russia to form a new bloc to subjugate the world.

One strong, all-powerful enemy or a bunch of enemies in disarray with shifting alliances, backstabbing, and various weaknesses and uncertainty. In the latter situation one can even bargain with imperial powers scrambling for influence a socialist in some cases because of their weakened state being but one of many smaller fish.

Saying the Iranians put themself in this position is ridiculous though.

I mean they didn’t put themselves in this position alone but they teased the monster by enriching uranium beyond their needs.

They don’t need 60% enrichment, not at the quantities they were making. Not for medical research or other bullshit I’m pretty sure. It was done as a middle finger to the west to kind of taunt them to get them back to the table and to get something like the JCPOA back. It was a negotiating tactic and an attempt to punish the west by saying “see, you break your deal, we’ll enrich far beyond our needs, now that we’re here at this mark you need to give us more concessions compared to when we were at that lower mark”. It was a bunch of “bad stuff” they could in theory trade to a west that doesn’t exist, the west that maybe existed in the minds of Iranian liberals in exchange for things they wanted.

That was a tease, it was insincere and a negotiating tactic most likely and a taunt against the zionists and the US who have been hounding them about getting nukes. It was silly to go half-way thinking they could negotiate with the west and it was a bluff clearly as they didn’t go the rest of the way.

And we can see from other Iranian actions they do other gestures like firing their oldest and most easily intercepted rockets at the Americans, warning them ahead of time as a “response” to US aggression and bombing them that they intone highly of “retribution” and god and blah blah blah but when the time comes they duck the war or striking back. They avoid doing anything that would seriously escalate the situation and alter the status quo they’ve had in tit for tats with the zionists for decades. They chose the off-ramp.

Fact is Iran blinked. It was probably the right move under the circumstances for their own situation (maybe not the world, probably not Palestine but who knows). They threatened the US not to get involved, the US punched them in the face and they did this purely propagandistic gesture of spitting at their feet and stomping off while declaring victory (while the US does the same).

So yes, in conclusion they put themselves in this position to be doubted as anything but a paper tiger with their moves as mentioned AND by not getting that nuke.

I have no doubt if the US starts a full on invasion of Iran they’ll respond but the US knows this and is content to manage it and knows what lines it can step up to and how to salami-slice. The zionists got Iran to stop firing missiles at them after all. Palestinians got nothing. Iran got a propaganda victory that’s transparent and empty.

To be fair the Iranians put themselves in this position by enriching uranium beyond their needs and teasing getting a nuclear weapon without ever getting one or intending to get one likely entirely as part of positioning themselves better for bargaining after losing JCPOA. So it wouldn’t be a first and this is why you shouldn’t act that way.

Happy birthday!

The US? They’re the ones who do nuclear “sharing” under NATO.

This is 100% for their planned war of aggression.

It’s not just kayfabe, it’s not just money for land mine manufacturers. It’s to provide a defense against a Russian counter-thrust after they drive NATO forces deep into Russia via a hole in this. That way they figure they can shape things via controlling where troops end up. Russia should 100% lay their own mine-fields in response because it’s impossible to know exactly where NATO forces are going to dismantle their own minefields in future to thrust through some armored columns. They should wait until after NATO does it of course so they look worse but make the mines now, get out the plans for razor wire deployments and signage to attempt to block off the mine-fields from wandering people.

Westoids are completely deranged about losing hegemony to China and multipolarity and are preparing a suicide-rush on Russia. That or they want to dissuade Russia from helping China when they commit 80% of their forces along with the US to attacking and containing China (and possibly attacking Russian shipping in the process thus giving them valid reason to respond).

I tend to agree with this. If Washington is able to do regime change in Iran (and I do believe they can kill Khamenei and many other top officials within the next few weeks/months) and able to thus destabilize them as a power or cement a puppet government they will establish complete control of the cross-roads of Eur-Asia, of the strategic triangle of control region long identified (The Grand Chessboard) as a spot to control to prevent the uniting of Asian, Russian, European, and African land powers that locks the US out.

This is for all the cards. Much more important than Ukraine which is strategically irrelevant really. If they can do this they will have a wall against China, a wall against Russia, a knife against Russia’s belly, a way to pour Islamist extremists like ISIS who are their pawns into nearby regions like Russia to destabilize them and sap resources. But more importantly for their war with China it will give them complete control of most global oil, it will give them the ability to gut-punch China economically by cutting off gasoline and petrochemicals, it will give them the ability to block Chinese trade both over land and via strategic straits via the ocean. It will be the final piece in their locking puzzle to encircle, blockade, sanction, and turn up the pressure on China.

It will also give them more freedom to brew up more ISIS types who they will pour into China specifically into Xinjiang to cause trouble though that will be the least of China’s problems if they do this and lock them out of selling to or buying from Africa, west Asia, Europe, etc and force them into a tiny trading bloc with Russia, DPRK, Vietnam and a few other regional countries who risk US anger.

Iran must not be allowed to fall. Russia or someone needs to give them air defenses that work as right now they can throw them into chaos by killing their leadership and operating with impunity in their skies and throwing missiles into the zionist entity while well deserved doesn’t really matter if ultimately Iran collapses as the US still has the strength of its Arab vassal nations and could rebuild the zionist entity or continue its plans without it if Iran is removed from the chessboard.

Sadly the US is an old master at front companies and re-routing logistics. They bought all that titanium from the USSR for their SR-71 and other advanced warplane projects through an elaborate network of front companies. So it will mildly increase costs but not stop the US from getting what it wants if any significant amount at all is made available to western companies.

Drugs are bad. Don’t use anything addictive or too mind-altering. I think even regular (daily) consumption of coffee is bad but it’s one of those things that under capitalism I suppose I understand as a kind of necessary evil.

Mind-control MKUltra drugs which encourage frivolous hedonism, individualism, magical/irrational thinking are of course a weapon of the enemy and often directly fund them and their proxies as well. Escapism would not be a needed thing under socialism as well, they are at most a crutch and I am very suspicious of those who advocate their use. This person you speak of is not a Marxist and may well be a fed.

Their hope is to do another Libya and Syria: Unleash proxy forces they fund and arm together with the Gulf “Arab shield” puppet regimes and NATO-Erdogan and turn it into a spiral of death and chaos, a concocted “civil war” where Iranians are paid and armed by the CIA and Mossad to kill Iranians.

The MEK and other such proxy forces have already been trained and prepared and are ready to be activated. They will begin with car bombings and terrorist attacks mass killing civilians. “ISIS” will reappear again and do its typical job for their CIA-Mossad masters.

This was precisely my thinking. Well not the stages bit but I was thinking they’re not going to try and prosecute this as a ground war themselves, they’ll do air stuff if they can maintain superiority to do so, terrorize them, beat up their military, decapitate it as much as possible (as they did successfully with Hezbollah it must be remembered), leave it in chaos then use their sunni extremist proxies like ISIS to pour across the border and destabilize the situation, to drown them in a civil war and a sectarian war and throw whoever they can into the fire including any nearby kurds or really any ethnic group they can propagandize or pay into joining.

I am more than a little afraid they’ll succeed. A theocracy that does unpopular things with women’s rights is not a stable or strong form of government, it would not be that hard to overthrow them compared to China or Russia where the governments have much more faith from the people. Frankly the only reason Iran still stands as it is I think is from decades of American and zionist attacks which allow the theocratic leadership to invoke patriotism and rally the people against the idea of another Shah but even that will only have so much purchase, many young people there never knew the shah and the problems of that era but do know the current era’s problems and may be swayed into rebellion.

Frankly I think looking at this from the larger geopolitical picture they want to take out Iran for two reasons:

1. with it they lock down via gulf monarchy vassals control of much of the world’s oil supply and a large amount of the gas and

2. MORE IMPORTANTLY because they intend to isolate, sanction, blockade, cut-off, and destroy the China-Russia block as part of the new cold war and the project to protect white Euro-American capitalist hegemony. To do that they need to block China from partners through west Asia, to block their access over land to Europe, Africa, etc. This is part of isolating China before they slam down the blockade and sanctions and isolation.

They already have China encircled from the east, from the sea with vassals, they have successfully forced Europe to decouple from Russia and not only that but prepare for war against Russia. They have things like Diego Garcia to enforce a naval blockade on Chinese commerce to Africa at sea. India as run by religious fascists is a natural enemy of China and will not side with them but pull on more of the false idea of neutrality they pulled in the first cold war while secretly aiding the west and being a huge help in de-risking and moving means of production out of China to another cheap labor market.

They will not stage their final showdown with China over Taiwan. They plan to mine the waters around Taiwan, to bleed China retaking it with tons of weaponry and to analyze carefully secret Chinese weapons and devise countermeasures. They plan to use Taiwan declaring independence or something else unacceptable to force China to act. To use their action to force Europe to decouple and probably the US as well in a harsh way to “stand up for democracy” with punishing sanctions on China. They use that also for a propaganda push. But they actually plan to confront them on the high-ground for NATO which is on the high seas in a broader world war and broader theater. They’ll interdict Chinese shipping, force China to send warships abroad, play hit and run, divide China’s forces and use their superior land base numbers and air force as well as significant combined navies to take down China’s navy and inflict a humiliation on them. Of course this isn’t required. They’d be happy if China refused to confront and use force against them and just accepted the imposed isolation and inability to trade.

Anyways by doing this, by locking China/Russia in a trade block and barring the rest of the world via dollar hegemony, swift, unilateral US-EU sanctions, and military enforcement they hope to carve up and destroy the rising multipolar world. To subjugate Africa anew, to subjugate Latin America. And possibly to do something even more barbaric involving mass murder and climate fortresses in the coming climate change hell-world we will be entering in the mid-late part of this century.

In other words these events should not be seen as disconnected but as part of a potentially dramatic, sweeping, intelligent, crafty master-plan they have in the works. Their chances are much better than I’d like.

Critical support to him in exposing the empire’s lies. At a time like this I think his role in providing an anti-empire view is far more important than his problems.

Yes, he is problematic to put it mildly as he has patronized prostitutes in Germany and bragged about it. Being proud of r*pe is not a good look but I’d certainly rather he be popular and young people flock to him and his views than any other mainstream view on offer in the US. He is unambiguously a net good at present despite his problematic attitude towards sexual exploitation of women, his ambiguous views towards China, the fact he’s not an ML, etc.

So now is not the time I think to attack him as he’s on the right side of these issues at least usually.

The problem is the zionists also have access to the production capacity of Europe and the US. As well as other vassals like occupied Korea. Combined these are substantial amounts of production.

The war against Iran will be economic, by sea, and by air not by land. So having working anti-air, being able to intercept enemy stealth bombers (including US) before they can deliver big payloads to take out industry or nuclear sites is important.

The big worry is the zionist entity resorting to using nuclear bunker busters on Iran’s nuclear sites, likely with US approval and help and with Europe rushing to justify it as being absolutely necessary and/or cast doubt on the bombs being nuclear and call it Iranian propaganda. At that point Iran’s nuclear program is moot and in the past and the west and the zionists can afford to settle with Iran in exchange for some sanctions relief and an end to direct hostilities. I expect if that approval goes through, the US and the zionists will burn another cyber-weapon and/or electronic warfare to bring down Iran’s air defense long enough to deliver the nuclear weapons.

This will buy the zionists breathing room to complete the genocide and cement hegemony over the middle east/west Asia so sadly I think its very likely they do it especially once this conventional war escalates to stopping shipping and taking out oil refineries and infrastructure (we’re basically there already) they have little to lose at that point. As it is Hezbollah is out of the picture for the time being, Yemen and Iran are the only ones standing aside from the resistance in Palestine which is well only able to do so much and really on the back-foot at this point.

Russia cannot help Iran given its own war with Ukraine and its need to apply its entire arsenal there. Another reason why the west might be okay with the zionists using nuclear bunker busters is their own resources are stretched thin by Ukraine and short of abandoning it and just dropping it right this moment to shift all production to supporting the zionists they can’t do both so may see this as their option to continue Ukraine while also allowing their zionist proxy to win its battles.

I really hope they don’t dare do that but they seem so deranged and probably feel so close to victory and yet also collapse at the same time that they may be pushed to do it.

If the US and Europe get dragged into an extended war here or have to empty their reserves to support the zionists it’ll push back conflict with China by years more. Then again the plan could be all along to do everything to cement hegemony in as many places as possible before confronting China in order to ensure they have few friends, no trade routes, and limited partners.

The US is doing everything in its power to undermine MAD and nuclear deterrence in general. This doesn’t surprise me given how many more nuclear weapons the US has to China that they think they can and should use some in a conventional war. The logic being they afford to, it kills enemies that would weaken their conventional forces, and enemy use of the same would undermine their limited stockpile while US use wouldn’t matter to their deterrent. Still deeply alarming.

The mainland can obviously send far more missiles back and destroy their strike capacity. Russia does this in Ukraine all the time.

These are not rational actors. Neither is Ukraine. Both are and would be in this scenario run by liberal fanatics/fascist fanatics willing to burn their nation to a cinder for the US. Ukraine is illustrative of this point not really mattering per se.

Meanwhile, if the island is under blockade then the US trying to fly things in will be an act of war.

And targeting Russia’s nuclear triad and hitting their bombers with obvious help from NATO intelligence isn’t? The point is the west thinks rules don’t apply to them and given Russia hasn’t hit MI:6 with an oreshnik yet they seem to be right. In that they can do whatever they want and if you hit them back directly as long as they have a cover THEY themselves believe in no matter how flimsy for their actions they will fly off the handle into a genocidal self-righteous indignant rage. Russia seems to know this, China probably does as well.

I’m not saying the US wouldn’t do that, but at that point it’s a direct war with China for them.

Only if China chooses to and given Russia keeps blinking they may think China will as well and that they can unilaterally escalate while their foes will avoid it, giving them the advantage.

Also, the whole US strategy is predicated on China doing a ground invasion. Every naval battle the US simulated against China, they lost horribly.

Is it? I saw a story of the head of JSOC talking of naval drones and basically mining the whole straits, turning into a zone China cannot cross and using that time to do whatever they want including landing forces. I don’t think the US plans to send in their carrier battlegroups and fight on China’s front door. They are not that stupid and even if they were good strategy would call for assuming they’re smarter than that as one should never underestimate one’s enemy. They have island chains and have been building naval drones in secret for some time now so they can do over the horizon type fighting. Their point like with Ukraine is to bleed China, not to triumphantly plant the US flag but to bleed them, to hurt them, to study them and learn their secrets, to demoralize them, to force it to take longer and be costlier and to make it a big spectacle they can use to rally the western world against China around as this big travesty and atrocity.

I maintain given the US advantage, given island chains not just around China but those policing west Asia, Africa, etc and NATO’s combined naval sizes plus all the land bases and air assets they have that most likely they want to bleed China in the SCS, use it to justify decoupling, sanctions and an embargo and blockade and carry out that blockade off the coast of Africa, Diego Garcia, in the various straits using the zionist entity in west Asia, etc, etc. To draw China out, to spread them out, to hit them with combined naval and air assets and use the superior logistics and amounts of bases NATO has. By doing this they cross out the major advantage China has in the SCS with land-based missiles and rocketry and fight from the high-ground.

Just look at how the trade war is destroying the US economy right now. Imagine what happens if China explicitly cuts off exports to the US.

Which is why they’re so desperate to decouple. The bribes didn’t work and were pocketed, Trump is very clumsily trying tariffs. But when it comes down to it they might think they can force decoupling with a conflict when all else has failed. Sure the consumer economy would implode but I’m not sure capitalists and empire planners wouldn’t consider that and forcing the proles to a much lower quality of life as they work to re-shore an acceptable if painful cost of survival and maintaining hegemony.

A coup is not that unlikely either, some retired military people in Taiwan have openly talked about it already.

I really hope that happens but I wouldn’t count on it. I’m sure the island is filled with US spies and trained dogs and any coup would face a counter-coup of ferocious proportions with support from US assets in Japan and possibly those US special forces already on the ground.

I just worry most about the nukes flying. I hope this conflict doesn’t start until China has a chance to massively expand their arsenal and proof it against Aegis and ground and orbital interceptors.

I suppose the issue is the puppet regime there would likely respond to a blockade with military force. Not day one, maybe not even week one but eventually.

They have thousands of rockets trained on the mainland which they’d fire and rain down on the military and civilians alike in China to push the issue. Yes they’d eventually run out but the problem is the US would try to fly more in. Ships you can ram and get in the way of and blockades are therefore effective without needing to blow up a carrier, planes you have to shoot down and at that point it becomes a question of whether China would shoot down a US military transport plane and put itself in drawing first blood type of thing at which point you get American chuds hooting and baying for blood in response and liberals declaring we also must respond to “stand with Taiwan”.

Make no mistake the US does not intend to let the Taiwan card be only half played. They won’t let China quietly strangle it into submission with a blockade or sanctions, they will force the government to attack China and start a war no matter how doomed a position it puts them in because it lets them paint China as militarily aggressive and rally Europe and the anglo-sphere and their loyal Asian vassals to decouple from and sanction China in response with a purported cause they can blast to their populations.

Let’s also not forget the US has reserve currency status. They can spend as much as they like. Let’s recall the Berlin airlift where the Soviets cut off truck and land shipments into divided Berlin post-war and the US just responded by using its immense wealth and military and industrial and logistics might to just fly supplies in.

Frankly short of a coup by rational military generals in Taiwan who order the stand-down to save their lives and those of their countrymen I just don’t see a situation where the US doesn’t use Taiwan in a Ukraine style play. They won’t last as long but they really only need to hold out for a week of breathless western propaganda coverage and crying about evil China to get things done. After that it doesn’t really matter if they crumple and China doesn’t need to do a massive invasion because they’ll have drawn the blood they wanted and cast China as the villain and victimized Taiwan to do it.

NATO war-mongering monsters are gearing up for a war of aggression again.

Whether it’s actually with Russia or just a faint and the plans are to use it all against China is the debate to be had I suppose. They’re totally deranged and totally in the thrall of the US, any sense of independence that people felt they were edging towards has been rightly relegated to the trash-bin as they remain committed to white, western supremacy at the expense of all else.

Now is the time for European comrades to agitate against the austerity being imposed to support funding all of this. Anything that even slows this program delays what may be a nuclear war.

News of a big restoration of Lenin’s tomb has come out in the past week or so. More generally reverence for figures like Lenin or Stalin in capitalist Russia divorced from what they stood for.

I don’t think it’s fair to blame them.

The west colonized the area, the west gave it to these jewish fascists, the west looked the other way or encouraged the genocide as it began, the west papered over it by using the holocaust card as if the Palestinians bore any blame, the west turned it into an outpost, the west armed it, the west defended it, the west kept up the charade of “peace” talks and talks for two states for decades to deceive everyone into thinking there was a way out and blocked international intervention at the UN and elsewhere for 3/4ths of a century. The blood is not on China’s hands, it’s not their fault they were born into a world of western capitalist imperialist hegemony and it’s not their fault that the only way to get ahead was to keep their heads down. And they do not have the strength and power to bring down all the evils of the NATO/US empire.

I mean not really. You can only ship so much via a single rail line and it doesn’t reach markets in Africa or allow African ore or products to be brought back to China, it doesn’t reach most of west Asia/middle east, it doesn’t reach LatAm, etc. The amount you can ship on a train vs a cargo ship is pretty substantial too. Train loading points become bottlenecks compared to sea ports.

Having looked at the belt and road while it’s definitely a contingency lifeline it’s hardly insurmountable and is meant more to tie other nations closer to China economically to make them less useful to the west but that will take years to really unfold. The west is great at introducing insurgencies and they need only do so in a few key countries with CIA assets repeatedly blowing up rail lines and bridges to bring this route to a crawl. I assure you they’ve thought of this and have plans in the wings.

India alone would have more than enough motive and reason to agree to help the US in disrupting the B&R west of India via clandestine operations given their desires to take Chinese manufacturing and make it Indian manufacturing.

They’ve been telegraphing it for a while now. Originally they wanted to go in 2026 most likely but with stockpile depletion from Ukraine even if that wraps up I think they want to wait for European NATO vassals to bring new arms production capabilities (spurred by the Ukraine situation) online so they can be in a stand-up fight with China for longer without running out of weaponry. Given that, 2028-2030 definitely seems more realistic but it’s hard to say what their plan is. They talk of things like sea-borne drones that act as autonomous self-propelled sea-mines and dispersing those in the straits, they have this idea of turning it into a “porcupine” that’s too painful to invade but that counts on either China not enacting a sea blockade or being unable to due to say those kinds of mining activities and/or naval warfare keeping supply lines open.

Of course they could end up chickening out and just using all this to boost defense industry profits.

They could also swerve and instead of openly attacking China they could push Taiwan to declare independence, support them a little, ensure they fall in the end (after inflicting some damage and weakening to the PLA and learning about their tactics and secret weapons), wail about “democracy” to force Europe to decouple from China with Russia-level+++ sanctions and then go on to start attacking and undermining the multi-polar order. This would be done through proxy conflict, through attacking AES in Africa, through destabilizing partner states with insurgencies and “moderate rebels”, through open military invasion of those that resist the usual color revolutions and moderate rebels to topple them. Basically cold war 1.0 playbook all over again to isolate, hem in and prevent growth of the enemy.

At that point the west’s massive amount of bases on land on various islands that allows interception of Chinese shipping to Africa closer to Africa become very valuable, they try and interdict and throw up a blockade on Chinese shipping worldwide, they attempt to force China to fight a far and wide war away from its own shores where it holds the advantage to give themselves the advantage of their strength and neo-colonial holdings OR to submit to isolation and blockade and being locked into being a regional power with Russia, DPRK, Vietnam and a few other friendly SEA nations with Africa, Latin America, central Asia, west Asia, etc all locked out to them as markets and partners (and all locked in with the US-led hegemony).

Because say what you want about the greed of the west and problems with weapons contractors over-promising and under-delivering to suck up more money, the western war planners are not ignorant. I feel there is a very good chance they don’t want a conflict confined to the SCS where China has land-based missile power and can fight them effectively. I feel there is a very good chance that Taiwan is only the opening salvo, the rationale and causus belli for what follows in attempting to draw China into a wider world war further afield where the US has multiple advantages and feels it can more easily win with its much.