(Note: I haven't listened to this yet personally)
Included a map of hypothetical Russian operational plans drawn up on the eve of it starting by this guy who correctly called the leadup to war months in advance. The Crimea axis of advance in particular right now looks particularly accurate.
It's particularly noticeable how it strengthens the institutions we generally oppose while at the same time an awful lot of the Western left keeps digging. The shallowness of leftist international takes, particularly online, is damn near at the level of fandom rather than actual analysis.
As each hour passes since the invasion began the takes get work worse (Reddit militia thread here, don't get me started on Twitter shit)
I've brought it up several times half jokingly (including this thread) and I'm going to continue to do so because it's very much time to do some self-crit and figure out how the "analysis" of the online left, and myself had such a huge blind spot. If people want to jump right back in with serving geopolitical takes without self-reflecting then I'm not too interested in being a part of such a community.
Fortunately, it seems that a majority of us on here who were caught off guard recognize that it's time to humble ourselves and re-evaluate.
I feel you on the self crit, because I had the same mistaken belief about this that I did about the US invading Iraq: that it was too stupid and self-defeating to actually happen, and therefore there was just sabre rattling to force concessions.
I really need to work on that - feels like I'm big braining myself into homo internationalus theory (as opposed to homo economicus).