Silent Lonesome Man

India and Vietnam are being seen as the potential bulwarks against Chinese aggression, largely because of their common hatred against China. However, their political development shows that disliking against China doesn't mean they will join the same fight against Russia, a country that shares similar political structure and authoritarian tendency like China. If anything that teaches us about such an absurd case, then in some parts of the world, Russia is still being viewed as a saviour rather than an imperialist state, which is painfully true to India and Vietnam's case. This has been observed by the recent Russian invasion of Ukraine. Despite the Russian invasion stalled and faltered due to successful Ukrainian resistance, despite Russian troops' excessive display of barbarism against Ukrainian civilians, still a large portion of Vietnamese and Indians cheer the Russian invaders who are massacring civilians and supporting, loving a dictator that is threatening a nuclear wa...

When the advisor to the Ukrainian government, Mikhaylo Podolyak, made his statement worrying about Russia's intention to scale back from original invasion, he had also mentioned that the Russian MP from Moscow requested Russia to "denazify" other countries like Poland, Moldova and the Baltics on his tweet. While how far real it is is much for debate, Podolyak's tweet actually struck to our mind: Putin is planning for a greater war, and for more destruction, probably all of Europe. But while the rest of Europe is worrying about being embroiled to war, another sign that China is planning for a future war has been ongoing. Like Russia, China is led by a powerful dictator, Xi Jinping, who has accumulated power similar to that of Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping, and maybe even more powerful than those two because he inherited a country, whose economy is standing 2nd in the world and deeply integrated globally, with a military far more powerful than that of Russia. Ever since...

In 1997, a book was published with the support within the Russian Ministry of Defence. This book was written by Alexander Dugin, a neo-fascist and ultranationalist Russian, whose worldview has been skewed and one-sided at best. But his book has become one of the best sellers within Russia and it has become the powerful tool of Russian military and political education that would go on to dominate the Russian government for next decades. That book? Foundations of Geopolitics. The book, written by Dugin, underlined one thing: alliances and annexation. In Dugin's argument, Russia's future has to be dictated in the hand of strongman, and to rout out every kind of American and British influence. He also called for Europe to be settled under Russian term, meaning Finlandisation, while encouraged, at least, the regimes of Turkey, Iran and China to be freed of doing actions as long as they don't antagonise Russia. To make the explanation short: Dugin encouraged Russia to take firmer...

When Ukraine's Active Group released their survey about how do Russians view their country's invasion of its neighbour Ukraine, the result was a massive shock: 86.6% of Russians tolerate and support the potential assault on the territory of the European Union. In addition, the other results as followed could also examine this: 75.5% of Russians approve the idea of a military invasion in the next country. Moreover, according to the survey, 75% of respondents tolerate to a varied extent the use of nuclear weapons by their government. Only 13.4% of Russians have a negative attitude to the military invasion in other countries, 46% of respondents are absolutely sure that the Russian government should attack the EU, and 40.6% assume a permissible expansion of hostilities. In the same survey, three countries that according to the poll will be targeted by Russia are: Poland (75.5%), the Baltic countries, among which Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia (41%), Bulgaria, the Czech Repu...

5 March 2022 would probably be an interesting day for me. In the embassy of Ukraine in Hanoi, Vietnam, the embassy organised a charity event aiming to support Ukraine amidst the ongoing Russian invasion of the country. At the same time, it coincided with a series of football matches in Europe's top leagues - Spain, France, Italy, England and Germany - these leagues have called for the end of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and fans have been showing solidarity. But that was not something I cared of. I cared about these issues, because Vietnamese state media did not censor these messages , even when they did not declare to do so. When I visited the Ukrainian embassy, the police force didn't prevent me from entering - the gate was open, and Russian war crimes had been displayed by the embassy, open for Vietnamese visitors to raise eyebrows about the reality of Russia - a country that has a special relationship with Vietnam for a long time. It was not the only thing I read. In G...

Putin's inhuman invasion of Ukraine on 23 February, already reinforced by an ultranationalist, denialist speech of Ukraine's existence, which shocked the world. This, in turn, has led to widespread public comparison of Putin to the Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler, and Putin's invasion of Ukraine is much similar to Hitler's war on Poland, a war which the Soviets would join and foment the aggression that inflamed WWII. The comparison is not wrong, because Putin is a mad megalomaniac tyrant who is obsessed with neo-imperialist agenda. But Putin being compared to Hitler would make it so incredibly flawed. For all the crimes the Russian dictator did to Ukrainians, as well as Chechens, Georgians and Syrians, it is Putin's pre-war tactics that may draw us more to concern about. In this phase, it will take us to think a different figure that may qualify to Putin: the Japanese fascist leader Hideki Tojo . Hideki Tojo, who was he? Born near the New Year's Eve 1885 (30 December...

When Putin waged a brutal, inhuman invasion of Ukraine on 23 February 2022, it has already reached the boiling temper, as the invasion proved to be far more difficult than expected. Putin's Russian army has suffered consistent tactical and strategical failures to maintain, while troops suffer from low morale due to being deceived and have to fight a war they did not know they would take part. In megalomania and isolation, Putin, the all-time dictator and new Tsar of autocratic Russia, had called for a massive redeployment of nuclear deterrent force on high alert , calling the West " empire of lies " and warned to use nuclear weapons as if it could mean the complete annihilation of a nation - something Putin is not afraid to do given his notorious ruthlessness in Chechnya, Georgia and Syria. For a dictator that is so embedded with projecting neo-imperialist and fascist-like empire, as well as his eagerness to suffer hardship for long-term imperialist gains, Putin's act...

On 1 July 1931, tensions occurred over irrigation dam ditched between Korean and Chinese farmers in the village of Wanpaoshan near the border of Korea. At that time, Korea was part of Japan, therefore the Korean farmers were seen as subjects of Tokyo, so the Japanese dispatched its police alongside the Chinese counterparts. However, before the dispute could be solved, Chinese farmers had rebelled and drove the Koreans away, only to be dispersed by Japanese police. The Japanese took advantage of the dispute and sensationalised the problem into a massive nationalist discourse days later. This led to widespread anti-Chinese unrest across Japanese Korea and it was believed that the Japanese tacitly relaxing its hand for the Korean rioters so they could kill Chinese in there. The worst occurred in Pyongyang - the future capital of utopian North Korea - where more than a thousand casualties, both killed and injured. In response, massive unrest broke out in Manchuria against ethnic Koreans, ...