To a large extent, the concept of an “election” as a driver of people’s wills is a Western construct. In China, for example, people’s wills are directly expressed my complaining to the government. For example, we saw that the government tore down it’s COVID-19 restrictions following mass protests and that they shut down the tutoring economy following a huge number of complaints. Meanwhile, the US is notorious for claiming things during elections and turning around to deliver nothing with no system of recourse for voters.
This isn’t to say that China has a free and liberal democracy, but it is to say that a free election does not make a free democracy and that the ability to impact government policy does not require elections to be free.
Of course, none of this is relevant because Russia’s government doesn’t listen to their citizens lol.
Do people just magically assume the world is some diverse candy land? The boers are probably one of the only people Russia can bring in without expending any political capital. It’s that simple.
In 1939, Britain spent 9% of its GDP on defence; this rose drastically after the start of World War II to around 40%.
EDIT: I'd also add a couple of caveats:
Given that this is in rubles, some is probably inflation, if the news source isn't adjusting for that, as the ruble has fallen in value relative to last year:
Relative to the dollar, it'd need to rise by 70% to hold constant since a year ago, so a 70% ruble increase may not be so exciting. I don't know what periods of time the numbers take effect at (like, in this situstion, where in the year the rubles are from may matter a lot).
What we have for this is Russia's word; it could very well be spot-on, but we don't know yet.
We don't know what the breakdown in spending is. So, for example, I believe that there may be benefits that need to be paid family of solldiers who were killed or injured and suchlike. At least in the US, I'm pretty sure that that'd be counted as military budget.
"All members of the families of military personnel who died during the special military operation in Ukraine (Putin's term for the war in Ukraine – ed.) will be allocated insurance coverage and one-time assistance in the amount of 7,421,000 roubles. Monthly monetary compensations will also be paid to each family member of fallen [soldiers]".
Details: Putin also stated that he considers it necessary to set up an additional payment of 5 million roubles for the families of dead soldiers.
In addition, he promises that the wounded receive a one-time payment of approximately 3 million roubles. And if a soldier becomes disabled during the war with Ukraine, he will be provided with monthly payments.
So it probably doesn't translate to something like "Russia has 70% increased capacity relative to last year."
I expect that Perun will put something up about it if he hasn't already, as this is his field.
Not to mention, even if Russia was fully trustworthy, they did help Armenia before, what Armenia needs from it is military power and power projection. And with pathethic how Russia's military looks right now this is not a given. They are too distracted and don't seem to have ressources to fight their own war, let alone help Armenia. So, there is really no value in them for Armenia's purposes.
Because the idea that people in Russia will not be dying for their country but instead be dying for the fantasy of the president is either completely universal for all countries, and therefore not notable, or it’s an attempt to demonstrate how this situation is notably different than in other contexts.
That’s a false dichotomy, but honestly even if you granted it I don’t think it affects the validity of the original statement. People dying for one thing when they think they’re dying for another is sad, even if it happens everywhere all the time. I also don’t really get the contention, that saying “a particular aspect of Russian nationalism is bad” is not notable, when this is literally a post about a particular aspect of Russian nationalism?
You don’t see the problem with an article picking a universal experience, accentuating it by writing an article about it, omitting any mention of other examples of it in any other country, and doing it in the context of war mongering, war profiteering, proxy warfare, distribution of weapons to neo-Nazi groups that were supported as part of a multi-decade pro-Nazi leave-behind system (Operation Gladio), as part of th expansion of the world’s only transnational nuclear military that is unaccountable to any citizens of any country that has launched multiple wars of aggression and occupation?
You don’t see how an article like that contributes to a narrative of othering and dehumanization by it’s silent ommission and lack of acknowledgement? You don’t see how that narrative of othering and dehumanization leads to mass murder, ecocide, and escalation towards nuclear conflict?
You think everything is just a spherical frictionless ball in a world without air resistance that has no interactions with anything else and isn’t informed by nor informs other major trends?
I mean I straight-up didn’t say any of that, nor is it reasonable to infer that I take those positions from what I did say. I’m not even talking about the article; I’m talking about your initial critique of OPs comment. Now if you think that their comment is wrong or misleading then ok, sure, but that’s not what you said (or at least it didn’t seem to be).
This seems like it would be better suited as a top-level response to the post rather than as a response to something that I never said. There are enough libs on the internet that excuse or ignore fascism/imperialism such that you don’t need to invent new ones to argue with.
I'm not from the US, and have no real interest in defending their history on military matters, but your talking about their entertainment industry not their education system. The article is about how Russia is going to use its education system to get their kids to be good soldiers in the future, not about how they're going to make more action films
Fair point. I’ll counter with that there’s very little useful difference because the DoD produces those movies and has full script control over scores of movies every year, while simultaneously the head of education in the USA was very recently the sister of Erik Prince, the founder of the Blackwater mercenary army. Education has been manipulated for propagandizing children in the West since forever, and in the USA we have groups like the Daughters of the Confederacy writing curriculum.
Further, the USA has been glorifying soldiers in schools for decades with high school recruitment, ROTC, letter writing, fund raising, special events featuring soldiers and veterans.
It’s just not that hard to see that whatever the West accuses other countries of doing it’s something that the West has been doing and doing far worse.
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