Bulletins and News Discussion from March 10th to March 16th, 2025 - The New World Struggles To Be Born; Now Is The Time Of Proxy Wars - COTW: Myanmar

Image is from Wikipedia's article on the war..

I've wanted to cover Myanmar for a while now but haven't had the needed knowledge to write much more than "This situation really sucks." After doing a little reading on the situation, I feel even more confused. A decent analogy is the Syrian Civil War, at least while Assad was in power (though it's still pretty true today) - many different opposition groups, some co-operating with the United States, others not. The main government supported partially by an anti-American superpower, but who could live with that government collapsing if there are deals to be made with the group coming into power. A conflict kept going and exploited at least partially by the United States and other imperial core powers, though with plenty of genuine domestic animosity and desires for political independence.

Recently, the Myanmar government - the mainstream media uses "junta", which is probably accurate despite the connotations - has promised elections at the end of 2025. This doesn't seem likely to happen, and even if it did, how this would work in a country as war-torn as Myanmar is unclear. The government is losing territory and soldiers at a quick pace; they now hold only 21% of the country, though that 21% does at least comprise many of the cities. It's difficult to get a handle on the number of people affected because civil wars and insurgencies have been ongoing in some shape or form for decades, but we're talking at least millions displaced and thousands of civilians killed.

Here's a comment by @TheGenderWitch@hexbear.net from fairly recently that covers the situation in Myanmar:

Last week's thread is here.
The Imperialism Reading Group is here.

Please check out the HexAtlas!

The bulletins site is here. Currently not used.
The RSS feed is here. Also currently not used.

You're viewing part of a thread.

Show Context

1K comments

Seems idealistic to think this. His interests haven't changed, but how he can/if he can materially gain benefits in those interests has changed. And I shouldn't even focus on him, this is about the ruling class of Russia. Just because the relationship between the current situation and their material interests has shifted doesn't mean that those interests have. His "snapping" was due to a realization that those interests were no longer in line with actions in line with Western Empire. That can still shift quickly and easily if the US really chooses to change those conditions. Using the word 'snapping' and making this claim insinuates some discontinuity which I just see no evidence for.
- you have no explanation then for why he started the war against the west
  
  I absolutely do, though I don't think he "started the war against the west" in those terms. I resent being accused of such for a claim I'm not convinced you even understand.
  Putin and Russia have interests in security on their borders and national security in general, because that stability is in the ruling class interests. For a long while, the assumed greater stability in these interests was to be found in going along with the west instead of confronting them. Due to the west's continued antagonism, due to Ukraine's position geographically, politically, and economically relative to Russia, and due to a growing possibility to find stability outside of the unipolar Western Empire (e.g. with China), the greater stability was clearly to be found in negotiating a more advantageous position for Russia through war against the party being used against those interests. The fact that the interests eventually pointed in direct opposition to the Western Empire is not due to any discontinuity in these material interests, but in a slow shift in the effects and future effects of the policies of the west on those material interests.
  This is clearly no fundamental shift, and it doesn't make him some ideological hero (or hero in any real sense), just the representative of a set of interests which became aligned against the west. The US could today guarantee, with material backing (I can't imagine how at the moment, but I need no example for something that has happened so often in the past) that the interests of the ruling class will be brought in line by a policy shift of the west. And with that guarantee, I'm entirely unconvinced that Putin and the Russian ruling class will maintain your "war against the west".
  I'm no pessimist about this, I think that the US is unlikely to do this and that the interests of the two ruling classes are too fundamentally, in the bases, opposed. The West would have to do some Cold-War level concession-giving, which is too forward thinking than the West is used to at the moment. But that is very different than thinking Putin himself had some fundamental shift.
  
  Material interests material interest material interests. Materialism isn't just saying material interests over and over again, you are reverse engineering your 'materialism' to contort and fit into what you want to believe already (which of course is anti-Russia doomerism because you are a Westerner, and all Westerners have to have this worldview for some reason). This has no predictive power. You just lay out a timeline of what happened then say "A was because of Material Interest then B was because of Material Interest, and A and B seem contradictory but material interests changed" doesn't add anything to analysis. You can't predict anything. You failed to predict the war. You failed to predict the outcome of the war. You will continue to fail to predict anything using this lazy tailism of history.
  
  I named 2 material interests and left the economic one, too obvious to need naming, of profitable (for the ruling class) trade unnamed but clearly implied. I then shifted to speaking, generally, about the phenomenon without reference to any specific interests, because the analysis can work in any case replacing the interests with any other set that still fits the dynamics (what if Russia cared about the land question instead of national security? Same analysis, new basic material interest). I'm not proving something will happen here, I'm arguing that no discontinuity is needed to understand what happened. I'm limiting the conversation to only 'interests' to make a specific point. I don't think you understand this difference.
  I also have the same prediction as you, with the stated caveat that the US absolutely has the possibility to change it (likely won't because of its own ineptitude despite it likely being a good scenario for US interests). You clearly cannot see past your hero-worship of Putin to see the current shift of alliances as malleable at all. It's naive idealism, with the result that you won't see the blindsiding of a betrayal coming, even if that one isn't happening now
  
  it's not "hero worship" to recognize that a leader has experience of being betrayed by a party and won't trust them ever again. Hezbollah and Yemen had "material interest" in recognizing Israel and making peace and staying out of the Gaza conflict, but they instead acted in an opposite way because of the experiences dealing with the perfidy of the zionists and the west and strongly held personal ideological convictions.
  Once you have been betrayed by the west so many times, it will never happen again until new leadership is chosen. The economic advantages promised by the "rational" route of self interest actually would be self-destructive. This isn't "hero worship" this is basic pattern recognition.
  
  How many betrayals does it take? Was Chechnya not obvious enough for him? Was the pillaging of Russia in the 90's not enough? Was the sanctions and antagonism despite participating in Iraq not enough? Georgia how many times before the current conflict?
  Ansarallah and Hezbollah are parties designed with this fight in mind, with support specifically because of this position. Putin came to power for national interests and is in power for his defense of those national interests. If the US offers a tempting (and seeming concrete) concession and support in line with those national interests which are greater than this path offers, Putin will shift alliances or lose his support structure. You assume that this shift is impossible: that (your words, I say Ruling Class interests) "self interests" are "self destructive" without any sense that this can change
  
  This is just a repeat of the danger of supporting a national bourgeoisie in a struggle of national liberation. It's why successful national liberation struggles were led by a Communist party with the support of their national bourgeoisie, not the other way around. Otherwise the buying-off by the imperialists is more mutually beneficial than the imperialists seeing communists win.
  I support Russia in this effort, but I'm constantly aware that their interests aren't communist or even Anti-West fundamentally, just aligned with communists and anti-imperialism in this case.

1003 comments