WHEN EMPIRES DIE...

Adults discussing geopolitics.

by Duns Scotus 

Countries that are good at war are good at peace. Unfortunately America has been adept at neither, and its fleeting elevation to global hegemon status was mainly due to unusually good luck and the fact that its main rivals all cancelled each other out for a convenient period.

VOX DAY, ANDREW ANGLIN, AND THE MISUNDERSTANDING OF NAZIISM

by Colin Liddell

The recent debate between Vox Day and Andrew Anglin (now deleted by those anti-free-speech bigots YouTube) was an odd sort of mismatch. I don’t mean that in the sense that one of the parties was far superior to the other. In fact there was a rough equality — while Vox was clearly smarter and better educated, Anglin had more cunning. No, the mismatch I am referring to was that between two creatures that inhabit different realms and can’t really get to grips with each other in any meaningful way. On social media, I likened it to a battle between a gadfly and a tadpole.

THE BOUNDLESS INSANITY OF NEO-RUSSIAN IMPERIALISM

by Duns Scotus

"...trousers wide as the Black Sea..." - Nikolai Gogol 

Russia is an imperialist entity. By its very nature it is forced to be. By the way, an empire, in case anyone has forgotten, is a state that does not recognize boundaries. All the great empires have had this in common, an obliviousness of boundaries, especially when their "vital interests" are concerned. They will continue to grow until they became overstretched or face opposing forces, whereupon some attempt to establish "defensible boundaries" will be made.

The Roman Empire, for example, after being taught a lesson in manners by the fierce German tribes, fixed on the two greatest rivers of Europe as its boundaries. But behind those two front lines, which endured for hundreds of years, lay hundreds of other boundaries that had been trampled underfoot and forgotten. Yes, there are boundaries and boundaries, and, as with anything else, not all of them are created equal.

But back to Russia, a country that has never been able to sit quietly within a given skin. Where does this constant cracking and stretching of its husk come from? The most obvious cause is its geography. It has few if any natural boundaries. Its mountains are in the wrong positions and almost all its rivers flow in the inappropriate direction, being better suited for facilitating transport – and therefore invasion or expansion – than serving as useful limits between states.