Image is of President Hakainde Hichilema and President Xi Jinping on September 15th, from this article.
Zambia is a country of 20 million people, located in southern Africa. Breaking free from British rule in the 1960s, the new government was a one party state ruled by the socialist UNIP party with its leader Kenneth Kaunda, who was a strong supporter of the Non-Aligned Movement (and was its chairman from 1970-73). Its economy has been and remains characterised by copper exports - it is the second-largest copper exporter in Africa - and the economy deeply struggled in the 1970s due to the price of copper plunging. After the fall of the USSR, and due to violent protests, Kaunda stepped down and instituted a multiparty democracy, which has been maintained without (successful) coups to this day, though there are warnings by the leader that some are plotting a coup, given the trend right now.AA
Earlier this year, in June, Zambia struck a deal to restructure the $6.3 billion in debt that they are burdened with, of which China is the single largest creditor.Reuters Though he has typically been more West-friendly, last week, President Hichilema traveled to China for two days, meeting with various companies, and Xi Jinping himself. They elevated their relationship to that of a comprehensive strategic cooperative partnership.Xinhua He and Xi have agreed to the increased use of local currencies in trade.BB
Hichilema said Zambia thanks China for supporting the African Union’s entry into the G20 and China’s positive role in resolving the Zambian debt issue. The Zambian side abides by the one-China principle, highly appreciates the guiding philosophy and principles of Chinese modernization, and hopes to learn from China’s development experience.
Hichilema has also said:AN
“We can do more, faster, because the needs are tremendous in Zambia. I heard some of the solutions are here. All we need to do is to combine the two together.”
Check out @[email protected]’s discussion of The Wretched of the Earth!
The Country of the Week is Singapore! Feel free to chime in with books, essays, longform articles, even stories and anecdotes or rants. More detail here.
Here is the map of the Ukraine conflict, courtesy of Wikipedia.
The news summary for last week is here!
Links and Stuff
The bulletins site is down.
Examples of Ukrainian Nazis and fascists
Examples of racism/euro-centrism during the Russia-Ukraine conflict
Add to the above list if you can.
Resources For Understanding The War
Defense Politics Asia’s youtube channel and their map. Their youtube channel has substantially diminished in quality but the map is still useful.
Moon of Alabama, which tends to have interesting analysis. Avoid the comment section.
Understanding War and the Saker: reactionary sources that have occasional insights on the war.
Alexander Mercouris, who does daily videos on the conflict. While he is a reactionary and surrounds himself with likeminded people, his daily update videos are relatively brainworm-free and good if you don’t want to follow Russian telegram channels to get news. He also co-hosts The Duran, which is more explicitly conservative, racist, sexist, transphobic, anti-communist, etc when guests are invited on, but is just about tolerable when it’s just the two of them if you want a little more analysis.
On the ground: Patrick Lancaster, an independent and very good journalist reporting in the warzone on the separatists’ side.
Unedited videos of Russian/Ukrainian press conferences and speeches.
Telegram Channels
Again, CW for anti-LGBT and racist, sexist, etc speech, as well as combat footage.
Pro-Russian
https://t.me/aleksandr_skif ~ DPR’s former Defense Minister and Colonel in the DPR’s forces. Russian language.
https://t.me/Slavyangrad ~ A few different pro-Russian people gather frequent content for this channel (~100 posts per day), some socialist, but all socially reactionary. If you can only tolerate using one Russian telegram channel, I would recommend this one.
https://t.me/s/levigodman ~ Does daily update posts.
https://t.me/patricklancasternewstoday ~ Patrick Lancaster’s telegram channel.
https://t.me/gonzowarr ~ A big Russian commentator.
https://t.me/rybar ~ One of, if not the, biggest Russian telegram channels focussing on the war out there. Actually quite balanced, maybe even pessimistic about Russia. Produces interesting and useful maps.
https://t.me/epoddubny ~ Russian language.
https://t.me/boris_rozhin ~ Russian language.
https://t.me/mod_russia_en ~ Russian Ministry of Defense. Does daily, if rather bland updates on the number of Ukrainians killed, etc. The figures appear to be approximately accurate; if you want, reduce all numbers by 25% as a ‘propaganda tax’, if you don’t believe them. Does not cover everything, for obvious reasons, and virtually never details Russian losses.
https://t.me/UkraineHumanRightsAbuses ~ Pro-Russian, documents abuses that Ukraine commits.
Pro-Ukraine
Almost every Western media outlet.
https://discord.gg/projectowl ~ Pro-Ukrainian OSINT Discord.
https://t.me/ice_inii ~ Alleged Ukrainian account with a rather cynical take on the entire thing.
Last week’s discussion post.
This isn’t a surprise. Azerbaijan has been blockading Nagorno-Karabahk for some time now after they won the 2020 war. Things were dire supply wise in Nagorno-Karabahk a week ago and then Azerbaijan attacks.
There’s three main questions in regards to Armenia’s response to this.
Whether Armenia intervenes militarily. So far this is a fight between Azerbaijan and the Artsakh Republic, the Armenian breakaway province of Nagorno-Karabahk which developed as the Soviet Union was collapsing and ethnic strife blossomed. In my opinion, this was a typical CIA stoke ethnic conflict job. If Armenia intervenes this can turn into a massive multiyear war much like the first Nagorno-Karabahk war. The conditions that started that war are the exact same as these as Azerbaijan invaded what was the Soviet Autonomous Oblast of Nagorno-Karabahk and Armenia intervened.
Whether Russia intervenes. Pashinyan which overthrew the mafia government led by Cheburashka in a color revolution has consistently distanced itself from Russia and has opened talks with the US and EU. So Russia does not trust Pashinyan, and is hesistent to provide aid that may later be used against itself. In my opinion, Russia kept its distance in the 2020 war until they were sure that Pashinyan had a black enough eye that the Armenians would overthrow him. This didn’t happen and Russian peacekeepers are still nominally involved.
Whether the West intervenes. So with Pashinyan dragging Armenia into the West’s orbit it will be interesting to see whether that has brought any fruit. I doubt it has, the West want to peel another country out of Russia’s orbit and they already have that. Why would they care about Armenia when they already got what they wanted. We can see how they treat a country that has their complete support and I doubt the average Hayastanci (Armenian Armenian not Lebanese/Iranian/American Armenian) wants to be like the Ukrainians. The weird thing is that this is supported by Turkey, everyone’s favorite NATO member, so NATO itself has it’s hands tied, but Turkish EU relations are low again and I don’t know what USA Turkish relations are at the moment.
There are some other questions too, but not massive. Iran has an interest in preserving it’s current border with Armenia while Azerbaijan wants to create a land bridge between the mainland and Nahkchivan. Iran has stated that this is a red line that they would intervene, which would spark a whole thing as there are more Azeris in Iran than Azerbaijan. If the Artsakhis decide to fight to the last man like it was the 1990s all over again. I see this as a possibility. Artsakhis are treated like dirt in Armenia, they are seen as wealthier, or at least were during the Soviet era and impoverished Hayastancis weren’t fond of aiding them. This is what I’ve learned from talking to refugees from the collapse. I haven’t talk to modern Artsakhis, so this attitude might have changed but I doubt it. What the Turkish role is in all of this. A major takeaway from the 2020 war is that NATO Turkey trained and I may be misremembering but took over some Azeri units
I just hope for peace, enough blood has been shed in the Caucasus. If Azerbaijan wins there will be massive ethnic cleansing. If Armenia wins there will most likely be massive ethnic cleansing. The status quo with less Azeri fuckery along the Lachin corridor will be nice.
Why did we welcome the fall of the Soviet Union ? In two days, Armenians would have been celebrating independence, but it has only brought us violence and poverty.
Iran will never dare get into a conflict with Turkey and Azerbaijan even if the Turks push the issue of the corridor through Syunik, because I doubt the US and Israel will miss the opportunity to start some shit with Iran if Iran chooses to get involved. I’m pretty confident that the current military operation against Artsakh is not solely to fully integrate it into Azerbaijan, that is more or less done at this point because all parties bar Armenia are fine with that outcome. The bigger aim will be forcefully opening that road through Syunik or creating such a situation (overthrow/blackmail Pashinyan) that Armenia has to agree to grant that road and obviously the only people that can be trusted by all parties to protect that road will be Russians.
Pashinyan has absolutely no leverage over anyone, the man is incompetent and thinks that organising military exercises with the US or talking to Macron (or the Pelosi visit lol) is gonna give him leverage over Russians or Turks. We definitely don’t want to turn into Ukraine and have Armenia proper be a battle ground, so the only option left unfortunately is to bite our tongue, get rid of Pashinyan and turn into Belarus.
I completely agree with your analysis.
I stopped following Armenian politics after 2020, is Kocharyan still the main opposition? I have no idea who would take over if Pashinyan is overthrown.
I think it will be Kocharyan or maybe Serj Sarksyan (less likely, too unpopular). At this point tho it hardly matters, they can just put a dog there and give him orders. The more pressing issue is how our society will act after yet another shock to it. Can we maintain what little social progress we have made since 2018? Or will the next government be as reactionary and corrupt as they were before (highly likely, the gays are coming for us) and drive emigration numbers up (plenty of anti-war Russians and maybe even western companies will seek an exit from Armenia and take their precious investments with them).
If Pashinyan is overthrown I have the feeling society will turn very reactionary. I hope fascism and revanchism don’t come to Armenia after this. In my little diaspora community I just see constant blame towards communists, like they’re still in power today. And from what I hear anti-LGBT reaction is still pretty strong in the country. This is disastrous.
Yes unfortunately that will be case I fear, but even in such a shit situation I can see our LGBT community coming together to make sure they survive and take care of one another as they’ve done before. For as long as there’s contradictions, there will be leftists and our time will come, so stay strong brother, It’s nice to see another Armenian here
Thanks
Strangely, I do kinda see why Pashinyan is doing what he is doing trying to court the west. Like yeah it sucks that he is doing that and he seems like a lib, but it’s not like in 2020 Russia did shit, why would you trust them? Like it’s suicide to court the west, but Armenia is backed into a corner.
This sucks
The problem is there is nothing to court, we can’t offer the west anything of value outside of MAYBE convincing them that if Armenia is compromised then the Turkish state gains a lot more power and within the current geopolitical configuration , you don’t want that. However, this is not a great idea because nobody in the region and especially Iran and Russia don’t want to see anything remotely western near them.
And the problem with that line of argument is that the only thing that really drives Turkiye and the US apart is diplomacy and politics. The turks have abysmal PR while their erstwhile opponents - the greeks, the armenians, sometimes the french - all have more purchase in Washington. At the end of the day american politicians may not like Turkiye and Erdogan, but the military brass more or less understands that Turkiye is almost like a natural marcher state for NATO in general and the US in particular. Hell, the americans make a point of always saying that the turks are merely ‘suspended’ from the F-35 programme. Meanwhile the turks go on to have spats against half of NATO and half of NATO’s enemies, while making deals with everybody at once because the country is bankrupt and Erdogan just rolls like that. Worse. The azeris didn’t just win the 2020 war, they actually have a decent lobby in DC.
Given all of that it’s hard to make the case that NATO should prevent the Lanchin Corridor from happening. Sure, states don’t want other states to gain more power, but NATO is fighting a war against Russia right now, gearing up to continue their trade war with China, and even Iran seems to be on the other side of the aisle when it comes to a pan-turkic caspian connection. Even as Turkiye refuses to become a loyal vassal of NATO, something at some point is gonna give. And that something might end up being Armenia’s territorial integrity. If the new ‘great game’ is to see who controls the landbridges across greater asia, wouldn’t NATO eventually prefer to see Turkiye at the end of that road rather than Russia or Iran? The only problem if you can even call it that is that Russia also doesn’t seem to mind Turkiye as a trade hub.
Azerbaijan has pull in DC, because they make it rain on US think tanks. The issue is that there is basically no Azerbaijani diaspora in the US, whereas Armenian Americans are the most well-organized and politically influential of any Armenian diaspora and can sway a number of elections in the LA, Boston, and NYC area. Plus, as stupid as it sounds, Kim Kardashian calling a US politician a genocide enabler would probably sway an election.