Tag: Ukraine

Friendship in a time of evil

The shooting of this family in Ukraine is all over the front pages. Many Americans bemoan the humanitarian disaster. Russian restaurants are being boycotted in the US (many of the staff and owners are Ukrainian!).

Below is a photo of a starving Yemeni child:

A bit under 100,000 children have starved in Yemen in the last 4 years due to a civil war, fueled in part by tacit American backing of the Saudi regime, which has been exacerbating and intervening in the conflict.

Why do we pay attention in one case and not the other?

  1. Nuclear war risks
  2. The Russian invasion of Ukraine violates longheld post-World War 2 norms
  3. Ukraine is in Europe, and the West cares about the West (or the aspirant West)

This is all fine. I’m very scared of #1 and horrified by the existential risks and economic havoc that Putin’s choice to actually invade has wrought on the world. But I find the arguments of a sui generis or exceptional humanitarian situation in Ukraine implausible. People don’t want to admit that their feelings are shaped by cultural or racial affinity, or that it is pure self-interest in relation to nuclear war or maintenance of world order. So they make this the “next Holocaust.”

A lot of non-Europeans are skeptical of this posturing. At my other blog, I put up a post about why Bangladeshis have a soft spot for Russia, which might explain their reluctance to condemn the invasion of Ukraine. The same obviously applies to India to a great extent.

Russian Invasion of Ukraine, part 1

 

Another Browncast is up. You can listen on Libsyn, Apple, Spotify, and Stitcher (and a variety of other platforms). Probably the easiest way to keep up the podcast since we don’t have a regular schedule is to subscribe to one of the links above!

In this episode Amey, Conrad and I (Omar Ali) talk to Karol Karpinski about the  crisis, and particularly about the Eastern European perspective on it. This is sort of the counterpoint to our earlier recording with Major Amin (where he presented the hard Russian Nationalist viewpoint on the crisis). As usual, add your comments.. We hope to record another episode dedicated specifically to the question of sanctions; what is being done, how effective are they, and so on.

Browncast: Major Amin on the Ukraine Crisis

Major Amin – Brown Pundits

Another Browncast is up. You can listen on Libsyn, Apple, Spotify, and Stitcher (and a variety of other platforms). Probably the easiest way to keep up the podcast since we don’t have a regular schedule is to subscribe to one of the links above!

In this episode we talk to our regular guest, Major Amin. Major Amin is a military historian with long experience of working in Afghanistan and Russia. As a fan of military history he is also a huge fan of the Russian Army, the entity that executed such historic operations as Uranus and Bagration. This bias shows in the podcast today and many listeners will find things they vigorously disagree with, but his views probably reflect a lot of Putin’s (or Russian nationalist’s) own thinking in this affair. In any case, as always he is brutally frank and frequently provocative. Enjoy, and add your comments..

Reason for Russia-Ukraine War: Why did Russia attack Ukraine? Timeline of events that led to Russia Ukraine Invasion

Auto generated Transcript: (unedited, full of errors, but those in a hurry may get the drift) Continue reading Browncast: Major Amin on the Ukraine Crisis

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