#first world - western bloc

[szczekaczz]

i'm glad i decided to take this class on masculinity in ruslit because 1) i never perceived masculinity in any positive light nor thought about it deeply in general and being open to new concepts is the most important thing in life 2) the professor talks about the theory of literature in a really interesting way + i'm always hyped for comparing things from the "first" and the "second" world

[pietroleopoldo]

One of my biggest pet peeves is the fact that the term "first/third world" seems to have completely lost its original meaning. "The US are actually a third world country" I assure you that if there's a country on this planet that cannot be a third world country it's the US

[txttletale]

i'm genuinely curious about your stance on the russia/ukraine conflict in its entirety, if you'd be willing to talk about it? your viewpoint sounds interesting based on the posts you just made but idk how to really ask about the complexities of it in particular

the russia/ukraine war is an interimperialist war between russia & the NATO bloc using ukraine as a proxy (hence why i compared it to the similarly inter-imperialist world war i). obviously first and foremost it is a horrendous tragedy for all the working-class people involved who have been killed, tortured, & displaced. on this blog i am more critical of the horrific neoliberal economic reforms, open state embrace (sometimes literally!) of neonazi paramilitary groups, intensification of ukrainian state repression, and blatant bloodthirsty militarism of ukraine's imperial sponsors than i am of russia's imperialism & war crimes because i am blogging on a majority-western website to a majority-western audience who are already being exposed to relentless media coverage about the russian atrocity de jour to manufacture consent for the constant escalation of military conflict (i talked about this a while ago).

ultimately it is best understood (like any war, or any foreign policy event in the history of humanity) as states on all sides amorally pursuing their own interests--in this case, as all states involved are bourgeois states, the interests of their national bourgeoise--which only rarely and tangentially align with the elementary well-being, let alone the interests, of any of the human lives at stake. a ceasefire and peace negotiations should be arrived at as soon as possible, and anti-imperialists and communists in both russia & the NATO bloc should be doing everything in their power to bring that moment closer by eroding consent and support for the war and obstructing the industries and insitutions that are allowing it to continue

[aristotels]

the thing that annoys me about 'the fourth world' theory is the same thing that annoys me about any thirdworldism discussions on here - and that's that people dont know what thirdworldism or third world even mean. words have their meanings. third world, or the non-aligned movement, was a political alliance that developed the theory of global north vs south and didnt want to side with neither the first (western) nor the second (USSR and eastern) world.

its not only about economic disparities, but it was about shared political interests and yes, ideology. this framework is still relevant, and one of the reasons why communists of my own country look to cooperation with latin america rather than the ex-eastern-bloc.

third world does not mean simply 'impoverished nations'. africa wasnt in its entirety the third world during the creation of the non-aligned movement and neither was latin america. similiarly, european yugoslavia was a part of it, despite being in the global north.

that term and thirdworldism are actual ideologies and sometimes you cant just throw words around the way you like them, or invent new words based on misinterpreted ideas of what they mean. proposed 'fourth world' has no unified interests nor political stance and it literally cant even be described with everyone agreeing on what it actually is, and as such cannot exist within political theory of three worlds. no, i dont think that the question of marginalized groups within imperial cores is bad or useless or shouldnt be taken seriously, i just think that if you are talking about a political theory you need to take in the count, well.....the original meaning and framework of. that political theory or then it isnt that political theory anymore innit

editeeed

[bolshevikitherat]

I think one of the most overlooked disasters of the historical socialist projects is that they've absolutely wrecked how marxists view states. While supporting the Soviet Union as an anti US counterbalancing force made some sense even as they were deteriorating, that logic cannot be applied to most anti US forces in the modern day. of course at home imperialism is the obstacle western socialists must tackle first, we have to understand that all capitalist states have imperial aspirations. there are no anti imperialist states, except for those governed by the working class. This is why any supposed anti imperialist bloc between anti-American capitalist states is illusionary, because in reality this would just represent a new imperialist rival. this kind of "multipolarity" is a false anti imperialism, it doesn't actually reject the world capitalist system that produces imperialism.

[zvaigzdelasas]

Finland's economy minister, Vilhelm Junnila, has resigned his post after sustained allegations of ties to right-wing extremists as well as a series of distasteful Nazi jokes. Junnila is a member of the anti-immigrant Finns Party, which is part of Finland's new four-party center-right ruling coalition. Though he survived a vote of no-confidence called by opposition politicians in Finland's Parliament on June 28, Junnila announced he was stepping down Friday, saying, "For the continuation of the government and the reputation of Finland, I see that it is impossible for me to continue as a minister in a satisfactory way." Junnila had come under fire for, among other things, a public speech that he had given in 2019 related to a far-right memorial in the western Finnish town of Turku. He was also criticized for repeated Nazi jokes.

The populist apparently joked with a fellow Finns Party politician in a campaign speech on March 10, calling his candidate number — 88 — a good omen. "First of all, congratulations for the excellent candidate number. I know it's a winning card. Obviously, this '88' refers to two H letters which we won't say more about."[...]

The bloc, which holds 108 of parliament's 200 seats, took power on June 20. Though it seems likely Junnila will quickly be replaced, some observers have raised questions as to the coalition's viability. Junnila's resignation makes him the shortest-serving minister in Finnish politics. That distinction had previously been held by Karl Lennart Oesch, a military general who served as Finland's interior minister for 12 days in 1932.

30 Jun 23

The Finns Party said in a statement that Wille Rydman, 37, was chosen “unanimously” for the post. [...]

In early January, however, Rydman joined the nationalist Finns Party after he was ousted from the NCP last year because of allegations of harassment and improper relationships with young women and teenage girls. The case led to a police investigation, and he was later cleared of suspicion of misconduct.[...]

President Sauli Niinistö will formally appoint Rydman on Thursday.[...] Orpo’s four-party coalition government, described by political analysts as Finland’s most conservative Cabinet since World War II, was sworn in on June 20.

5 Jul 23

[itstimewehavesomesoliddick]

what do u think about the theories that israel actually knew about the attacks but pretended they don't, just so they can justify attacking with everything they have and killing as much civilians as possible? death to israel anyway xx

I don't think it was because

A) like most westernized nations Israel depends a lot on its image and the one it can project, while right now the damage to their image is too great and irreversible (their well maintained myth of IDF invincibility and being the best in the world was shattered into a thousand pieces, they're already talking about writing off the hostages as collateral damage (which is particularly hard to sell after previously exchanging over a thousand prisoners in exchange for a single captured IDF soldier), and it's also hard to sell a genocide when your foundation myth is based on one)

B) if they did they would have kept the attacks contained, just enough to have a justification but not enough to cause any actual hard damage (they wouldn't have let that many hostages get taken/soldiers killed/entire military bases captured), meanwhile right now Merkavas are burning, IDF helicopters are being shot down and bodybags are stacking up in the biggest Palestinian attack on Israel since 1948

C) they would have had a media campaign ready for it, while here we've seen a delayed and reduced response while they scrambled to put out articles, same with the international response, the prepared media campaign is always the tell

This whole thing also caught the US by surprise as they're talking about pausing aid to Ukraine in favor of Israel, which would be a death sentence for Ukraine despite all the billions they've already poured into it, since Israel, much like Ukraine, cannot sustain a war without US help (much like in 1973, where mothballed tanks, pallets of shells and F-4 parts had to be constantly shipped), this is also happening right after the US gutted Israeli shell warehouses for 300K shells to send to Ukraine, and it's unknown whether or not those have been replenished in the 6 months since

I know we like to pretend that the Mossad is omniscient and omnipresent, but it's possible that they'd gotten complacent while also being distracted with domestic matters (namely the civil strife caused by those judicial reforms) and ones abroad (like a certain war in Eastern Europe involving a certain military bloc)

Either they grew complacent and got surprised, or they grew too overconfident and bit off more than they could chew, either way they vastly, vastly underestimated the capabilities of Palestinian groups, and Netanyahu's talk of TOTALER KRIEG on Gaza is only digging them into a deeper hole that they'll have a lot of trouble climbing out of (if at all), as invading Gaza implicates Hezbollah, which would turn this war into a very different one as they're a far more capable, far more dangerous force, they're currently mobilizing in the North, UNIFIL troops are either returning to their bases or abandoning their positions, meanwhile two Egyptian armies are on high alert in case anything happens

Speaking of, it wouldn't be the first time Israel's overconfidence would come back to bite them, they were certain that the Egyptians were incapable of crossing the Suez canal in any meaningful capacity and guess what happened in 1973

Make no mistake though, this is a big one, this is one of those weeks where decades happen, history is being made as we speak, we'll see how it develops

Death to all Satans

[warningsine]

Georgian lawmakers on Tuesday voted down a presidential veto of the controversial "foreign agents" legislation, clearing the way for the bill to come into force. 

The law, which has led to weeks of mass protests, would require media outlets and NGOs that receive more than 20% of their funding from abroad to register as "pursuing the interests of a foreign power."

Lawmakers voted 84 to 4 to override a veto by President Salome Zourabichvili and pass the bill. Most opposition MPs walked out of the chamber ahead of the vote.

The legislation was put forward by the ruling Georgian Dream party in April and approved by the parliament earlier this month.

The bill has been widely criticized by the EU, UN, NATO and the US. Washington has announced travel sanctions over the measure.

The EU said that it "deeply regrets" the law's adoption. EU foreign affairs chief Josep Borrell said the bloc was "considering all options to react to these developments."

Why did the president veto the bill?

President Zourabichvili, a fierce critic of the governing party, vetoed the bill on May 18.

In an interview with DW ahead of the veto, she accused Georgian Dream of jeopardizing the country's future and said the law had become a "symbol of a number of laws and measures and rhetoric that is taking Georgia away from its European path."

"What I think is important is that the country continues on its path towards Europe," she said. 

The government has defended the legislation, saying it is needed to ensure transparency and to keep a lid on harmful foreign actors seeking to detabilize the South Caucasus country.

Meanwhile, opponents have labeled the bill "the Russian law" because it is similar to measures pushed through by Moscow to crack down on independent media and dissent. Critics also say the bill aims to appease the Kremlin and restrict media freedoms in the leadup to Georgia's parliamentaly elections in October.

Protests again erupt in Tbilisi

Large crowds gathered outside parliament throughout the day on Tuesday, with a rally planned for the evening. 

There have been repeated clashes between demonstrators and police since the law was first proposed several weeks ago. 

Speaking from Tbilisi, DW correspondent Maria Katamadze described the situation as "very fragile, very volatile."

"This comes after the unprecedented domestic backlash from the streets of Tbilisi where mainly youth, Gen Z and grassroot movements have been protesting for over a month now," she said. "They say this is a national resistance to the government's actions that many critics say is going to damage the reputation of Georgia across the world and damage the relationship with the West."

[disco-cola]

im german and really mad and disgusted about germanys extreme pro-israel (turned pro-genocide) stance but what some of you might not know is that this is actually something thats not always been this way. when germany was divided into east and west and the GDR/east germany was its own entity after 1949 (stayed a soviet satellite state though in contrast to the western part of germany which was under control of the usa/britain/france aka the kings of colonialism), the government of east germany actually described itself as "anti-zionist" because the GDR considered itself an "antifascist state" and viewed israel as a "fascist state" (so no, the politics there have not only just been racist and discriminating under netanjahu, its been a problem since its inception) that would have to be fought (never officially though). east germany existed as its own country between 1949-1990 and never recognized israel, however did recognize palestine and was an ally of the PLO, actively arming them to "fight" against the occupation and oppression. it was only when the wall came down and germany was re-unified as one country in 1990 and the rest of the eastern bloc fell apart in 1991 shortly after and the capitalistic west took over control and influence that the stance of germany as one shifted, and palestine is not recognized anymore ever since. i wrote a few days ago that there used to be the official UN-resolution 3379, declaring zionism as a form of racism and racial discrimination. it was voted for through a big majority in 1975, the countries who actively voted against it were mostly located in north america and the european west plus australia (dont forget about australias history though, it explains this), whereas most of the rest of the eastern and southern part of the globe actively voted for it. you have to understand that in the entire soviet union and its satellite states (like east germany) anti-zionism was widely spread because zionism as a political ideology in real life practice went so much against communist values that they considered israel fascist and imperialistic, also due to its connection with the united states in particular. so just after the ussr and its satellite states fell apart, literally in december 1991 the same month the ussr officially ceased to be, the usa under (first) bush republican presidency came forward to pressure the UN to revoke resolution 3379. the statement by bush literally reads like gaslighting, completely twisting and re-making what zionism means in practice, and especially what it meant and continues to mean in reality for palestinians until this day, in fact he never adressed them at all. it was only then that a lot of countries did a complete 180 (minus most arabic countries) and after 16 years the resolution was revoked. not even 3 full years later, in 1994, israel began building a bigger barrier around gaza which then turned into the whole ass barb-wired-super-surveillance wall we still see today. so yeah. dont tell me all this is not connected to western imperialism and capitalism. like most evil in the world, that is its entire basis.

[kendrixtermina]

Palestine and the Crisis of Democracy

While right now the main attention should rightfully be on the immediate victims of this ongoing catastrophe, this incident has also exposed how much the power of lobbying groups & corporate interests has eroded western democracies.

At this point they’re not meaningfully different from China or Russia aside from being wealthier. What have China or Russia done that the USA isn’t allowing its client state to do right now?

We’re supposed to have free speech? Where is our free speech now, if being anti war can cost you your job & the media is owned by the corporations.

At this point ppl in the global south are 100% justified to distrust the western bloc as much as we distrust China or Russia.

We’re approaching a 1984-ish situation of 3 identical superpowers ravaging contested territories in endless proxy wars.

That said, it’s tempting to go ranting about „the evil west“ or „the whites“ or curse all israelis – and don’t get me wrong, the west as an institution has proven its moral bankrupcy and IDF as an organization with a culture of fomenting this needs to be dismantled & abolished even more badly then ICE or the USA police.

But when you look at the people on the ground, not politicians or media, but at the individual human people, that’s not really the case: We’re seeing record protest turnouts everywhere.

Politicians are being swarmed with protest mails. (I just sent some myself)

Even in the USA, two thirds of the population want a ceasefire. Heck, even in israel, 62% want a ceasefire.

And there’s no telling how much of the rest genuinely want this vs. Being misled or confused by propaganda. Don’t get me wrong: Those people making mocking tiktoks are evil and I’d love to see them roasted on a skewer, but they are NOT the majority and acting like they are is bad tactics.

So what does this mismatch tell us?

We don’t have functioning democracies right now.

Maybe some South Americans do, maybe Belgium and Spain and Ireland, but the rest of us?

Not so much.

We gotta fix that, not just for our sake, but for what it does to the rest of the world.

Whoever’s in charge isn’t us, and its a dreadful mixture of incompetence and evil.

It’s not that all people, not even all western people, are terrible and evil. It’s that right now, in both the USA and even Germany with it’s 6 mainstream parties, there’s no viable candidate you can vote for that will not support this madness.

Nobody really benefits from this, or wants this, but a small coalition of fascists, the military industrial complex, a few crooked politicians, and a bunch of opportunistic hatecrimers of antisemitic, islamophobic and/or arabophobic persuasions.

This is what happens when problems that are pointed out time & time again don’t get fixed: Like the longstanding human rights abuses in Israel (that were known aout for SO LONG!), the existence of veto powers deadlocking the UN, legalized bribery & first-past-the-post system in the USA, USA hegemonic control of europe…

It was a perfect storm of every long-standing flaw in the system coming together to create a perfect storm of horror.

- but the first ones to sin are usually the last ones to bleed and the ones who pay the bulk of the price are, as ever so often, those who were already the most oppressed.

So what do we do?

Vote small party, maybe, for europeans. Vote in primaries to get the bought-out mainstream candidates out, if youre in the US.

Protest, complaining and combatting misinformation is gonna be an important tool while our democracies are compromised, we can’t rely on voting alone.

If us talking didn’t help they wouldn’t try to shut us up.

Messaging wise, on this issue, we might stress being anti-war. They’re trying a different smear because mocking anti-war ppl as bleeding-heart hippys doesn’t work anymore.

They can’t say being anti-war is antisemitic.

It’s important, of course, that (unlike the hippys) we don’t slip into wishy-washyness here or peace at any price that just basically the oppressed shutting up. Just peace or no peace. Lasting Peace of no Peace.

But peace has an appeal to most people, even those inclined to be wishy-washy or apolitical.

I think selling them on Lasting Peace and Just Peace might work better than shaming them for not being hardliner enough.

It’s super cynical and fucked up that we’re even having to THINK about „marketing“ when people are dying, but we need to convince people, especially since the usefulness of our votes is currently compromised.

Even a king must yield if there’s a mob with pitchforks outside the door.

[mariacallous]

Vladimir Putin must be enjoying this moment.

Not only did the Russian president manage to snuff-troll the Munich Security Conference with news of the death of his main political rival, Alexei Navalny (“slowly murdered” by his jailers in Siberia, according to the European Union’s top diplomat Josep Borrell); he also scored a well-timed battlefield success when, over the weekend, his troops finally took the town of Avdiivka in eastern Ukraine following a tactical retreat by ammunition-starved Ukrainian troops who had defended the town since 2014.

According to one participant in Munich, the mood at the gathering of Western security and diplomatic elites — typically a chance to project unity and resolve between exclusive cocktail receptions — was grim. “There is a sense of urgency, without a sense of action,” said Jan Techau, Germany director for the Eurasia Group, a think tank. “It’s a very strange state of affairs.”

Indeed, two years after Putin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the situation has never looked more perilous for Kyiv — and for its neighbors along Russia’s western frontier — since the dark days of February 2022, when U.S. President Joe Biden offered his Ukrainian counterpart, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, a one-way ticket out of Ukraine (declined), and much of the world assumed (wrongly) that Russia would overrun the country. 

U.S. Republicans, following orders from ex-President Donald Trump, are blocking arms deliveries to Ukraine, subjecting troops to “ammo starvation” with immediate, deleterious effects on the battlefield. After taking Bakhmut and Avdiivka, Russian troops are now trying to press their advantage in the directions of Marinka, Robotyne and Kreminna, according to battlefield observers. European leaders, despite having become Ukraine’s chief material backers, are failing to fill the gap in military supplies left by the U.S. and, thanks to France, insisting on “Buy European” provisions despite a lack of manufacturing capacity and refusing to shop outside the bloc for shells.

Meanwhile Putin, who’s still very much in power despite efforts to sanction his regime into submission, is ramping up his campaign of intimidation against the West. In his interview with ex-Fox News host Tucker Carlson, the Russian leader mentioned Poland more than a dozen times, placing the NATO member squarely within his vision for Grand Russia, and his deputy prime minister has started to make threatening noises toward the Norwegian leadership of the island of Svalbard, in the Arctic Ocean, of all places.

With a deepening sense of gloom and resignation, leaders in countries most exposed to Russia’s flank are preparing for scenarios that would have been laughed off, in Berlin and Washington, as the fever dreams of Cold War nostalgics just 25 months ago. A top Swedish defense official told his countrymen in January to “prepare mentally” for war, and the defense ministers of Denmark and Estonia warned earlier this month that Russia was likely to start testing NATO’s Article 5 commitment to collective security within the next five years — i.e. attack the world’s most powerful military alliance just for a chance to “find out.”

It’s a parabolic slide down from the burst of “can-doism” that delivered weapons, sanctions and Germany’s “Zeitenwende” (epochal shift) during the first months of the war. A NATO official speaking to POLITICO said the prevailing view within the alliance is that Ukraine is “not about to collapse” and that the “gloom is overdone.” Some battlefield observers aren’t so sure. “What we’re hearing from the front is increasingly worrying,” a senior European government official said in January. “The risk of a breakthrough [by the Russians] is real. We’re not taking it seriously enough.”

It may be too early to say the West will lose the war in Ukraine — but it’s becoming increasingly clear that it could. As Kyiv and its allies contemplate a gruesome menu of possibilities for the coming year — including an all-fronts push by Russia’s allies, Iran and China, to trigger World War III — it’s worthwhile to pause for a moment and ask: How did we get here? How did the West, with its aircraft carriers and combined economic footprint approaching €60 trillion (dwarfing China, Iran and Russia combined) cede the initiative to a shrinking, post-Soviet country with the GDP of Spain, and end up in a defensive crouch flinching at the next affront from Putin? And if repelling Putin’s invasion of Ukraine isn’t the West’s real objective — what is?

Drip-drip deterrence

According to diplomats, security officials and experts on both sides of the Atlantic who spoke to POLITICO for this article, the answer to the first question lies partly in the fact that the West’s response to Russia has been, at least in part, dictated by fear of nuclear confrontation rather than a proactive strategy to help Ukraine repel its invaders.

“It all started in the beginning of the war when [German Chancellor Olaf] Scholz and the [U.S. President Joe] Biden administration agreed on this gradual approach towards arming Ukraine and sanctioning Russia,” said one senior EU diplomat on condition of anonymity. “Some governments were arguing, ‘We need to use the full force of our dissuasive capacity against Russia. But the argument we heard in return was, ‘No, we don’t want to.’”

“There was fear in Biden’s administration and Scholz’s entourage about the possibility of a nuclear confrontation,” the diplomat continued. “This fear was very strong in the beginning. It shaped the world’s response.”

According to Techau and Edward Hunter Christie, a senior research fellow at the Finnish Institute of International Affairs, the likelihood that the Russian leader formulated some sort of nuclear threat directly to both Biden and Scholz early on in the conflict, scaring the bejesus out of them, is high. “We know that Putin told [former British Prime Minister] Boris Johnson that he could strike his country within five minutes,” said Hunter Christie. “If he did that to Johnson, it’s perfectly possible that he did the same thing to Biden.” Techau added: “There has been fairly well-informed speculation about a direct [nuclear] threat to Scholz, warning him that such a strike could happen.”

Public discussion of a Russian nuclear strike died down after the first few months of the war, replaced by conventional wisdom that Putin would gain little from a first-use strike. But there is evidence to suggest that, far from fading as a consideration for Biden, Scholz and their aides, fear has, in fact, shaped every aspect of their approach to Ukraine, particularly as regards deliveries of weapon systems. 

“There is an obvious pattern here,” said Hunter Christie. “We saw it with tanks. We saw it with aircraft. We saw it with caveats on how the HIMARS [a rocket artillery system] could be used. There is an obsessive attention to detail, to caveats on how these weapons can be used, even though some of the considerations are militarily absurd. What this obsession is covering up for is a fear of triggering some escalatory response. That’s understandable — nobody wants nuclear war — but that’s what it is.”

A case in point: the topsy-turvy debate, starting in late 2022, about the danger of sending Western-made tanks, namely the German Leopard II and the American Abrams tank, to Ukraine. In October of that year, Wolfgang Schmidt, one of Scholz’s closest advisers and a fellow traveler dating back to his time as mayor of Hamburg, came out with a bewildering array of reasons not to send the tanks, including that a) Ukraine couldn’t possibly maintain them and b) that the Iron Cross painted on them would somehow be used to suggest Germany had joined the war, or something. 

As it turned out, Berlin or Kyiv discovered the existence of paint, fears were overcome, and the tanks were delivered. But a pattern had been established whereby the West agonizingly debates the wisdom of sending a weapons system for months, until some trigger pushes Scholz and Biden over the line. 

More than a year later, Berlin and Washington are still following the same playbook, except now the debate centers on long-range missiles that would help Ukraine disrupt Russian supply lines, namely the U.S.-made ATACMS and German Taurus cruise missiles and the possibility of using Russia’s frozen assets — some €300 billion is held in Western countries — to help Ukraine. Until Navalny supposedly died while taking a walk in his Siberian prison, Scholz was pushing back on sending Taurus missiles which, according to German officials, shoot too far and too precisely and therefore raised the risk of direct attacks on Russian soil that could, in turn, prompt retaliation from Moscow against Germany. 

Navalny’s untimely death — he was 47, and healthy-looking — seems to have changed the calculus. Media in Germany and the U.S. are now reporting that Biden and Scholz are getting ready to hand over Taurus and ATACMS missiles to Ukraine. Similar debates are under way regarding the use of Russian frozen assets to help Ukraine — currently held up due to opposition from Germany and Belgium, among other EU countries — and on purchasing ammunition for Ukraine from outside the bloc, opposed by France, Greece and Cyprus.

In each case, complex arguments are set up to establish the danger, complexity or impossibility of a particular option, only to be swept away and forgotten when a fresh provocation from Russia “justifies” the additional step. “This has been the pattern since day one,” said a second EU diplomat. “It’s no, then no but, and then yes once the pressure has become too great. Not much has changed.”

“Some people live under the illusion that limited support for Ukraine is enough to keep Russia at bay and that the situation doesn’t pose any real danger to the EU,” said Virginijus Sinkevičius, a European commissioner from Lithuania. “But I think this is wrong absolutely. The war itself, both as a humanitarian disaster and a security problem, is highly problematic for the EU.”

Not so dynamic duo

Beyond fear, diplomats and experts pointed to the dynamic between Scholz and Biden as a driving force behind the West’s overriding strategy of incrementalism and escalation management, rather than a focus on strategic outcomes, in dealing with Ukraine. Despite a 16-year age difference, both men came of age politically during the Cold War and its widespread fears of nuclear armageddon. Both are deeply wedded to the U.S.-led international order and NATO protections for Europe. Both are men of the left who are instinctively suspicious of armed intervention and, temperamentally speaking, risk-averse and uncomfortable with geopolitical gamesmanship, experts and diplomats argued.

“Biden, we know, has always been ideologically opposed to the idea of intervention and war — see his chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan,” said the first diplomat. “In this case, he is doing everything possible not to have a confrontation with Russia. America used to be strong on strategic ambiguity. But Biden has gone out of his way to telegraph moves in advance throughout this conflict. In this sense, he has found commonality with Chancellor Scholz, who is also cautious by nature.”

A former far-left activist who traveled to Moscow in his youth and rose through the ranks of a German Social Democratic Party known for its historic sympathy toward Russia, Scholz wasn’t naturally configured to be a Russia hawk. “He has come a huge distance, but nobody knows to what extent that legacy [of deference toward Russia] is still with him.”

Experts also pointed to the key role of advisers, namely U.S. national security adviser Jake Sullivan and Scholz’s advisers Schmidt and Jens Plötner, a foreign policy adviser, in shaping their bosses’ approach. Diplomats and experts consulted for this article described Sullivan as being “highly intelligent,” “not deeply experienced on national security,” “ultimately career-driven” and “a bit short on emotional intelligence.” Schmidt gets “inseparable from Scholz,” “very cautious,” “basically terrified of Russia,” “not as big a foreign policy expert as he thinks he is.” Plötner, in turn, is described as “a super close confidante,” “Russia-friendly,” “unconvinced by the narrative that an attack on Ukraine is an attack on all of us.”

“Together these two [Sullivan and Schmidt] engineered the idea that Russia would eventually get ground down and be discouraged,” said Hunter Christie. “That may have avoided nuclear war, but it has trapped us between two suboptimal outcomes: a bigger war with Russia or the collapse of Ukraine, which would be a shock and a humiliation and a demonstration of Western weakness.”

The role of other leaders in shaping Western policy is not to be under-estimated. Ukrainian sources tend to identify the United Kingdom, under both ex-Prime Minister Boris Johnson and current PM Rishi Sunak, as a staunch ally that helped to break Western reticence on delivering certain weapons. They credit acting Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte with having broken a taboo on the delivery of Western fighter jets, as the Netherlands is currently preparing to deliver 24 F-16s to Ukraine at some point later this year, according to the Dutch Defense Ministry. Nordic, Baltic, Central and Eastern European states, namely Poland, win high marks from Ukrainian officials for the depth of their commitment to Ukraine’s victory — exemplified by Denmark’s recent decision to send all of its artillery to Kyiv.

French President Emmanuel Macron, who recently signed a defense agreement with Ukraine, comes in for more mixed reviews. While he is praised for having abandoned his insistence on dialogue with Putin and sending long-range SCALP missiles, his current insistence on “Buy European” has opened him to charges of leading a “cynical” policy more focused on rebuilding Europe’s defense industry than on helping Ukraine in the battlefield.

Yet in the broadest sense, interviewees agreed it was Scholz and Biden and their aides who set the overall pace. Their caution, incrementalism and fear of nuclear escalation has defined a Western strategy primarily focused on defensive measures, escalation management and avoidance of nuclear confrontation, with Ukraine’s battlefield success against Russia being a secondary consideration. Except that not everyone agrees that this amounts to a “strategy.” 

“There is no strategy,” said a third European diplomat. “Things are just happening. Later on, it’s easy to say there was a strategy, this was all part of a plan. But that has never been the case.” A fourth diplomat concurred. “There are slogans — ‘As long as it takes,’ ‘Russia cannot win,’ this kind of thing. But what does any of this really mean? They are things that people say. What matters is what they do.”

‘The long term’

Having squandered an opportunity to equip Ukraine’s forces with air power during the early months of 2023 — a key factor in the failure of a much-touted counteroffensive — Western leaders now see their hands increasingly tied by politics: The U.S. presidential election and Donald Trump on one side; the European Parliament election and the rise of right-wing forces led by Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán on the other. Critics warn that the window of opportunity for the West to help Ukraine turn the tide is, if not already closed, closing.

The anti-Ukraine MAGA caucus led by Trump, with U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson as chief whip and Republican Senator J. D. Vance as its top ambassador (who couldn’t find time to meet with Zelenskyy while in Munich), looks unlikely to greenlight the next package of Ukraine funding anytime soon. Europe’s right-wing forces  — from Marine Le Pen’s National Rally party in France to Italy’s Matteo Salvini to Dutch populist Geert Wilders and Hungary’s Orbán  — are expected to bolster their influence after the election in June, with further sanctions and aid packages for Ukraine a possible casualty.

Yet there is still time and the basket of options is far from empty. As the reports on ATACMS and Taurus suggest, Western leaders are still able to deliver game-changing weapons to Ukraine if the incentive is strong enough (in this case, officials say deliveries could be justified by sending Putin a “Navalny signal” following the opposition leader’s death). But the deliveries aren’t a done deal, and other possibilities — including confiscating Russian assets, taxing Western companies that continue to operate in Russia, or stepping up sanctions against Putin’s regime — remain on the table, visible to all, yet undeployed. Even after Navalny’s killing, there has been no “Mario Draghi moment” signaling resolve to do “whatever it takes” to help Ukraine prevail, added Techau.

“We see that the sanctions we have agreed — [on Feb. 21] we adopted another round — don’t bite enough,” added Sinkevičius. “So we need to fix our approach, globally.”

The restraint suggests that, behind the bold speeches on helping Ukraine “as long as it takes,” another unspoken agenda may well be dictating Western actions. When asked to describe the optimal outcome for Ukraine in the coming year, several European diplomats talked about a “stabilization” of the conflict. Pressed on what this would entail, the diplomats said it would mean nudging Kyiv to open negotiations with Putin to freeze the conflict and lock in current territorial gains, in exchange for Western “security guarantees” (such as those recently signed with France, the Netherlands and the U.K.) and a path to membership of the EU. 

Acting Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte, who’s seen as a likely pick to become the next secretary-general of NATO, hinted at this “day after” vision during remarks at the Munich Security Conference. While saying that only Kyiv can trigger peace negotiations with Moscow, he added: “But when that happens, we will also have to sit down with the US, within NATO, [and] collectively with the Russians to talk about future security arrangements between us and the Russians.”

Diplomats acknowledge that such negotiations have failed in the past, and might buy Putin time to prepare for his next offensive. Yet the alternative — a surge in Western financial and military aid during 2024 that would let Ukraine deliver a decisive punch against the Russian invader — is greeted with even greater skepticism in European embassies.

Another, unspoken aspect of the Western approach is that some factions hope to return to business as usual with Russia soon after a hypothetical freezing of the war. This might explain the profound reticence, namely in Germany, to confiscate Russia’s frozen assets and face the risk that Moscow could hit back by repossessing the hundreds of billions of euros worth of assets still held by European firms in Russia. It also chimes with a report in Germany’s Welt newspaper (like POLITICO, a member of Axel Springer) asserting that Scholz opposed naming European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen as NATO’s next secretary-general because she is “too critical toward Moscow, which could become a disadvantage in the long term.”

In a speech at the Munich conference, Scholz gave a hint of how the West is quietly redefining its war aims in Ukraine. Rather than say “Ukraine will win,” or “Russia must leave Ukraine,” the German Chancellor argued that Putin should not be allowed to dictate the terms of peace in Ukraine. “There will be no dictated peace. Ukraine will not accept this, and neither will we,” Reuters quoted Scholz as having said. 

“This is certainly softer than ‘Ukraine cannot lose,’” said Techau. “And essentially [it] means to cement the status quo.”

The West hasn’t given up on Ukraine. But its overriding focus on risk management reveals a desire to wind down the conflict and make a deal with Putin, if possible sooner rather than later. The question looming over the conflict is whether that approach will stave off disaster — or invite something worse to come.

[machiavellianwaffles-blog]

Map of the Occcident [Paranoika]

This world building project, called the Paranoika, is an exercise in portraying the nuances of cold war geopolitics and storytelling under fictional contexts. Much of the worldbuilding done draws from the real world, including city and nation names, geography, and the general progress of history.

The Occident is a diverse and historically rich continent located entirely in the north-western hemisphere. |The Occident is home to over 1.5 billion people across 34 nations, some of which are the largest and wealthiest in the world. The continent has played a crucial role in shaping world history, from the birth of ancient civilizations in Vitrogny and Graad, the formation of the Sacrosanct religion, and the industrial revolution. These forces would propel Occidental civilization into becoming a dominant presence on the world stage. Influencing the world, first through an era of expansive colonialism, and now through the cold war of the contemporary age. 

The Occident today is locked into a period of geopolitical tension colloquially known as the Paranoika. fought between the secular, leftist nations of the Communauté and liberal democracies of the Solantic League. The roots of the Paranoika can be traced back to the diplomatic tensions preceding the Volhynian Deluge of 1328, a conflict that saw the sole surviving colonial empire in the Occident collapse into civil war. The signing of the Centennial Armistice Treaty in 1300 saw the formal end to over 20 years of revolution and war throughout the Occident. Leading to disagreements from the victorious nations as to the future of the Occident. In the immediate aftermath of the Volhynian Deluge, the debate for the future of the Occident became central as the former Volhynian empire was carved up. The first major confrontation came a year later, in 1229, when the Communauté attempted to restrict access to the Voz canal, the sole link between the Solantic Sea and the world at large. This marked a turning point, shifting the Paranoika from diplomatic tensions to the brink of armed conflict. By 1330, the Paranoika was firmly in place as the conflict spread around the world. Chiefly on the continent of Sintripoli, where communard and solantic aligned militants would struggle for dominance in the cocaine trade, sparking the first of many Magenta wars.

Elsewhere in the Occident, other powers would rise in spite of the Paranoika. In 1333, the nation of Hielkant would be partitioned after a war with Vitrogny turned disastrous. Hielaknt was divided between the communard backed Socialst Republic of Hielkant and the solantic aligned Hielian Democratic Union. The HDU would break away from solantic influence in 1339 under the direction of Dirigisme or statism, which emphasized state-run market economies. The HDU would prosper in spite of the numerous recessions of the 1340’s, culminating in the establishment of the Western Occidental Treaty Organization during the decade: which saw much of the Kanter and Walder speaking nations unify into a powerful military and economic bloc, contesting both communard and solantic power in the west. 

Years after the Volhynian Deluge, what remained of the Volhynian state stabilized under a federal democracy. Wary of future conflict, the new Volhynia would seek alliances from other surrounding nations directly in the path of solantic or communard expansion. This alliance would formalize in 1335 as the paradoxically named États Sans Alliés, or states without allies. The ESA today consists of three core members; the aforementioned Volhynina Republic, the autocratic Veszél, and the minarchist Veduvor. Numerous other nations around the world align with the ESA, with the alliance representing the interests of the global non-aligned movement.

[aristotels]

am i stupid or am i too tired or what am i, but i dont understand what four-world is? what is it used for??? wikipedia offers couple of definitions but like, the third-world movement was not about poverty vs imperial core, it was a block/alliance of independent countries that did not fit into the first (western) and second (eastern bloc) worlds, thus third-world movement, which included yugoslavia, multiple african countries, latin america, etc. the meaning of it is political, not sociological. of course the definitions change but i genuinely think we could have more serious and less racist discussions if we sometimes used it in its original meaning.

i mean i might be too tired because im feeling dejavu rn and i had too much coke (it makes me tired af) but i am very positive ive NEVER heard fourth world term before but it does NOT make sense to me

[so-much-for-subtlety]

From @homocommunist: Post-Soviet bovs from "The Russians Are Coming" (1993), the first book and exhibition by queer East German photographer Andreas Fux, whose birthday was yesterday.

Andreas travelled to Moscow shortly after the dissolution of the USSR to capture these images of young men in very little clothing. As a record of a gay East German turning his gaze onto (post-) Soviet boys of unspecified sexuality, they document queer desire across two sides of the socialist bloc, which saw a variety of attitudes towards queers.

On one end was Andreas' home country, consistently a global leader in gay and trans rights, and on the other was the USSR, which, despite pioneering legal reforms in the wake of the Russian Revolution, was less queer friendly in comparison. Soviet attitudes towards homosexuality were beginning to liberalise in the 1980s, but, soon after, the tanks would be rolled out to violently dismantle the USSR and neoliberal "shock therapy" created an unprecedented rise in poverty and installed right-wing leadership in Russia and other post-socialist states, amplifying reactionary sentiment and homophobia.

"The faces in the photos do not say, "I know you want me!" The bodies are not yet posed with the smug perfection of Western models. Not yet," Jürgen Lemke writes ambiguously in the forward of the book. "At long last, a generation with access to passports good 'for the whole world! The Russians will be coming.”

[diocletianscabbagefarm]

Dominique De Villepin, former Prime Minister of France (who also led France's opposition to the Iraq war and advocated for the Palestinians in 2014) who's had a significant diplomatic career gave a pretty good interview (source for translation) that touches on many of the reasons why the Palestine-Israel conflict is so insoluble and how the use of force is a cyclical dead end. Interview beneath the cut

"Hamas has set a trap for us, and this trap is one of maximum horror, of maximum cruelty. And so there's a risk of an escalation in militarism, of more military interventions, as if we could with armies solve a problem as serious as the Palestinian question.

There's also a second major trap, which is that of Occidentalism. We find ourselves trapped, with Israel, in this western bloc which today is being challenged by most of the international community.

[Presenter: What is Occidentalism?]

Occidentalism is the idea that the West, which for 5 centuries managed the world's affairs, will be able to quietly continue to do so. And we can clearly see, even in the debates of the French political class, that there is the idea that, faced with what is currently happening in the Middle East, we must continue the fight even more, towards what might resemble a religious or a civilizational war. That is to say, to isolate ourselves even more on the international stage.

This is not the way, especially since there's a third trap, which is that of moralism. And here we have in a way the proof, through what is happening in Ukraine and what is happening in the Middle East, of this double standard that is denounced everywhere in the world, including in recent weeks when I travel to Africa, the Middle East, or Latin America. The criticism is always the same: look at how civilian populations are treated in Gaza, you denounce what happened in Ukraine, and you are very timid in the face of the tragedy unfolding in Gaza.

Consider international law, the second criticism that is made by the global south. We sanction Russia when it aggresses Ukraine, we sanction Russia when it doesn't respect the resolutions of the United Nations, and it's been 70 years that the resolutions of the United Nations have been voted in vain and that Israel doesn't respect them.

[Presenter: Do you believe that the Westerners are currently guilty of hubris?]

Westerners must open their eyes to the extent of the historical drama unfolding before us to find the right answers.

[Presenter: What is the historical drama? I mean, we're talking about the tragedy of October 7th first and foremost, right?]

Of course, there are these horrors happening, but the way to respond to them is crucial. Are we going to kill the future by finding the wrong answers…

[Presenter: Kill the future?]

Kill the future, yes! Why?

[Presenter: But who is killing whom?]

You are in a game of causes and effects. Faced with the tragedy of history, one cannot take this 'chain of causality' analytical grid, simply because if you do you can't escape from it. Once we understand that there is a trap, once we realize that behind this trap there has also been a change in the Middle East regarding the Palestinian issue… The situation today is profoundly different [from what it was in the past]. The Palestinian cause was a political and secular cause. Today we are faced with an Islamist cause, led by Hamas. Obviously, this kind of cause is absolute and allows no form of negotiation. On the Israeli side, there has also been a development. Zionism was secular and political, championed by Theodor Herzl in the late 19th century. It has largely become messianic, biblical today. This means that they too do not want to compromise, and everything that the far-right Israeli government does, continuing to encourage colonization, obviously makes things worse, including since October 7th. So in this context, understand that we are already in this region facing a problem that seems profoundly insoluble.

Added to this is the hardening of states. Diplomatically, look at the statements of the King of Jordan, they are not the same as six months ago. Look at the statements of Erdogan in Turkey.

[Presenter: Precisely, these are extremely harsh statements…]

Extremely worrying. Why? Because if the Palestinian cause, the Palestinian issue, hasn't been brought to the forefront, hasn't been put on stage [for a while], and if most of the youth today in Europe have often never even heard of it, it remains for the Arab peoples the mother of all battles. All the progress made towards an attempt to stabilize the Middle East, where one could believe…

[Presenter: Yes, but whose fault is it? I have a hard time following you, is it Hamas's fault?]

But Ms. Malherbe, I am trained as a diplomat. The question of fault will be addressed by historians and philosophers.

[Presenter: But you can't remain neutral, it's difficult, it's complicated, isn't it?]

I am not neutral, I am in action. I am simply telling you that every day that passes, we can ensure that this horrific cycle stops… that's why I speak of a trap and that's why it's so important to know what response we are going to give. We stand alone before history today. And we do not treat this new world the way we currently do, knowing that today we are no longer in a position of strength, we are not able to manage on our own, as the world's policemen.

[Presenter: So what do we do?]

Exactly, what should we do? This is where it is essential not to cut off anyone on the international stage.

[Presenter: Including the Russians?]

Everyone.

[Presenter: Everyone? Should we ask the Russians for help?]

I'm not saying we should ask the Russians for help. I'm saying: if the Russians can contribute by calming some factions in this region, then it will be a step in the right direction.

[Presenter: How can we proportionally respond to barbarism? It's no longer army against army.]

But listen, Appolline de Malherbe, the civilian populations that are dying in Gaza, don't they exist? So because horror was committed on one side, horror must be committed on the other?

[Presenter: Do we indeed need to equate the two?]

No, it's you who are doing that. I'm not saying I equate the faults. I try to take into account what a large part of humanity thinks. There is certainly a realistic objective to pursue, which is to eradicate the Hamas leaders who committed this horror. And not to confuse the Palestinians with Hamas, that's a realistic goal.

The second thing is a targeted response. Let's define realistic political objectives. And the third thing is a combined response. Because there is no effective use of force without a political strategy. We are not in 1973 or in 1967. There are things no army in the world knows how to do, which is to win in an asymmetrical battle against terrorists. The war on terror has never been won anywhere. And it instead triggers extremely dramatic misdeeds, cycles, and escalations. If America lost in Afghanistan, if America lost in Iraq, if we lost in the Sahel, it's because it's a battle that can't be won simply, it's not like you have a hammer that strikes a nail and the problem is solved. So we need to mobilize the international community, get out of this Western entrapment in which we are.

[Presenter: But when Emmanuel Macron talks about an international coalition…]

Yes, and what was the response?

[Presenter: None.]

Exactly. We need a political perspective, and this is challenging because the two-state solution has been removed from the Israeli political and diplomatic program. Israel needs to understand that for a country with a territory of 20,000 square kilometers, a population of 9 million inhabitants, facing 1.5 billion people… Peoples have never forgotten that the Palestinian cause and the injustice done to the Palestinians was a significant source of mobilization. We must consider this situation, and I believe it is essential to help Israel, to guide… some say impose, but I think it's better to convince, to move in this direction. The challenge is that there is no interlocutor today, neither on the Israeli side nor the Palestinian side. We need to bring out interlocutors.

[Presenter: It's not for us to choose who will be the leaders of Palestine.]

The Israeli policy over recent years did not necessarily want to cultivate a Palestinian leadership… Many are in prison, and Israel's interest - because I repeat: it was not in their program or in Israel's interest at the time, or so they thought - was instead to divide the Palestinians and ensure that the Palestinian question fades. This Palestinian question will not fade. And so we must address it and find an answer. This is where we need courage. The use of force is a dead end. The moral condemnation of what Hamas did - and there's no "but" in my words regarding the moral condemnation of this horror - must not prevent us from moving forward politically and diplomatically in an enlightened manner. The law of retaliation is a never-ending cycle.

[Presenter: The "eye for an eye, tooth for tooth".]

Yes. That's why the political response must be defended by us. Israel has a right to self-defense, but this right cannot be indiscriminate vengeance. And there cannot be collective responsibility of the Palestinian people for the actions of a terrorist minority from Hamas.

When you get into this cycle of finding faults, one side's memories clash with the other's. Some will juxtapose Israel's memories with the memories of the Nakba, the 1948 catastrophe, which is a disaster that the Palestinians still experience every day. So you can't break these cycles. We must have the strength, of course, to understand and denounce what happened, and from this standpoint, there's no doubt about our position. But we must also have the courage, and that's what diplomacy is… diplomacy is about being able to believe that there is light at the end of the tunnel. And that's the cunning of history; when you're at the bottom, something can happen that gives hope. After the 1973 war, who would have thought that before the end of the decade, Egypt would sign a peace treaty with Israel?

The debate shouldn't be about rhetoric or word choice. The debate today is about action; we must act. And when you think about action, there are two options. Either it's war, war, war. Or it's about trying to move towards peace, and I'll say it again, it's in Israel's interest. It's in Israel's interest!"

[prince-of-elsinore]

@luminescent-chorus tagged me to respond to the following. Thanks friend! I know it's not Wednesday, but hey, we need our Wincest fix between Wednesdays too, right? :)

Happy Wincest Wednesday! I have a few questions for people to answer. Feel free to answer them all or just one (or none at all) even if you’re not tagged!

what song describes samdean the most?

if spn was set in europe, what country would the Winchesters be from? What language/languages would they speak?

This is such an interesting question to think about! The possibilities that first come to mind are: Ireland, Scotland, Germany, Poland. On a superficial level, this is probably because Sam and Dean look Anglo-Saxon, and these countries have climes and landscapes not too dissimilar from damp Vancouver, where the series is filmed. But there are some cultural reasons, too.

First, Ireland/Scotland: (ignoring for now that supposedly the BMOL made hunting in the British Isles obsolete) There's a ruggedness to parts of the countryside and, stereotypically, to its working class inhabitants, that I think fits John and Dean quite well. It's easy to imagine young Dean being (or rather, posturing as) one of those mad lads at the pub, you know what I mean? While Sam went off to Dublin or even, God forbid, London, for school. I could maybe even see them being from Wales or Northern England--I could imagine Dean with a Mancunian accent. And when he picks up Sam from school, Sam's developed this posher, southern accent that starts slipping the longer he's on the road with Dean. This AU opens up a whole rabbit hole to explore: is Dean a bit of a chav? Or is he, in his anachronistic way, more of a skinhead (in the original British, not neo-Nazi sense)? Is he more into punk than classic rock? Aesthetically, it could make sense, but did John listen to that? And what does it mean for Sam to consciously distance himself from that?--etc.

Germany/Poland: the blue-collar aesthetic is intrinsic to spn, and it's interesting to me to think of that in an Eastern Bloc context. If they were German, they'd be from the East. Their childhood was spent behind the Iron Curtain, and part of escaping that life, for Sam, would be going west, maybe to Munich or even (*gasp*) Paris. Dean's romanticization of the past would be tied up with Ostalgie. Maybe they drive a Trabi, or a Polski Fiat 126p (lol). Would we get gopnik/dresiarz tracksuit-wearing Dean (bigger lol)? Or maybe he idolizes and emulates icons of Western pop culture (a precious commodity for him growing up) just as much as in canon. Maybe he loves "Eastern/Red Westerns" and Bruce Springsteen. As far as languages go, I imagine hunting would take them across borders all the time, so they'd both have a working knowledge of several Central European and Slavic languages. Dean's English would be learned entirely from pop culture and would reflect that, while Sam's would be much more academic. Sam would speak much better French than Dean (and than canon Sam *cough*) and probably Italian, Spanish, and Greek as well.

if they didn’t have the impala, what car would they drive?

is there a project you’re working on currently? Do you have a line or sketch from it to share?

I am currently working on a multi-chapter post-15x19 thriller! He's an excerpt:

What it comes down to is that he’s Dean fucking Winchester, and he should’ve known that would catch up with him sooner than later. Not because of the enemies he’s made, but because he wasn’t built for good things. He’d let himself forget that. Because he and Sam beat God and saved the world, and for a moment it’d felt like they had a new lease on life, and they got a dog for Christ’s sake because the worst was supposed to be behind them and they were finally free—what a joke. Freedom doesn’t mean the good life. Freedom is just a nice sounding way of saying that the rug can be pulled out from under you at any moment and you’ll never find a satisfactory answer why, because there are no rules, no guiding principles, no divine design behind your suffering.

what’s the first fanfic for supernatural you’ve written? Did you publish it? Or if you don't write: what's the first fanfic you remember reading?

is there another codependent/enmeshed duo from a different fandom you enjoy? Are there parallels to Sam and Dean?

Dennis and Dee Reynolds from It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, and Rick and Morty. Both of these duos have a considerably less healthy dynamic than Sam and Dean, but I think disentangling themselves from each other would be just as unthinkable as for the Winchesters. They also all have an element of "this person knows me better than anyone else, and we've shared experiences no one else could possibly understand."

what type of wincest dynamic do you currently enjoy most? (sexual, platonic, dark, fluffy, early seasons, etc.)

Mostly sexual (especially developing feelings), usually somewhere between dark and fluffy (bittersweet, melancholy, or hard-earned happiness), and often pre-canon or post-15x19.

These were fun! I tag @flownwrong, @mannequin3thereckoning, @thegoodthebadandtheart, @zmediaoutlet, @flashbulb-memory, and @nigeltde-fic, if you feel like it :)