Русский корабль - иди нахуй

[NorthLoop 14519]

2 minutes ago, AeroHorn said:

 

Many other invasions and ethnic cleansings have happened without us jumping in to help.

I mean I'll say one part of this that others might not want to say. A lot of this is because they look like us. 

[tx 3 putt 78736]

8 minutes ago, Gatorubet said:

Shit! There’s a hurricane coming too?

 

one night below 0 Celsius !!!

[Gatorubet 30783]

But can he fly a drone? Kid may have skills. 

[atomheartbevo 90670]

58 minutes ago, cactusflinthead said:

Not sure if ahb or Miller had this earlier

 

It's pretty wild - Putin is being Paranoid Putin and is starting to purge folks right in the middle, and you can't tell if he's doing it because they were incompetent, or they lied to him, or because he fears them.  

And because of the system that Putin/Russia has in place in terms how their military/government works, you don't know if this guy was on the up-and-up and going off of bad information he was fed by Yes Men who were underneath him, or if he was being a Yes Man and telling Putin what he wanted to hear.

And the people he will be bringing in will probably be even more paranoid, and they will be even more ignorant of what's going on in Ukraine, and they will be dealing with a lot of replacement officers/NCOs.

[atomheartbevo 90670]

52 minutes ago, Thatguy said:

  I don't think Putin is going to back down. He is running the Hitler playbook to the letter. Stick your toe over the line and check for the global response. If none push forward. Rinse and repeat. He is also sprinkling in some of the Russian playbook of escalate to deescalate.

I don't know that he can back down.  This war maybe popular with many in Russia, but hell, Vietnam was popular among plenty of folks in the US.  But just like the American public, eventually people in Russia will start seeing stuff that they can't ignore, even if they are buying into what Putin is selling.  And even with Putin's attempts to covering up the war in Russia, too many people have the means in their pocket to eventually find out how bad it is.  The Russian public won't need a Walter Cronkite to tell them the war is unwindable when they've got soldiers on TikTok and twitter showing or telling them it's not, and I'd argue they've suffered through the equivalent of a Tet Offensive or two already - for reference, there were about half as many Americans killed during the 9 or so weeks of the main/first Tet Offensive vs the number of Russians killed in 3 weeks in Ukraine.

And it will divide Russia, and I don't think Russia recovers easily.  Hell, Vietnam divided the US, but within 10 years of the end of the war, many of those that served and many of those that protested or avoided it were trying to reconcile, Vietnam played out in 1980s pop culture showing viewpoints of both those who served and those who opposed it, and within 20 years we had elected somebody who had avoided/dodged the draft (and would elect another one later on). In 1993, Vietnam had changed their visa requirements so that foreigners, including Americans (a shit ton of American vets) were visiting in larger and larger numbers, and the Vietnamese people are very welcoming of Americans.  Hell, my uncle has been over there so many times now, he better be banging some old Vietnamese gal.

But there's no way this ends like Vietnam.  With Vietnam, a huge chunk of American society did not have Vietnamese parents or grandparents, and it wasn't the country next door. The Russians who oppose the invasion of Ukraine and the people who are against it or who have Ukrainian relatives that they care deeply about are not going to be reconciling within 10 years. Russian pop culture is not going to be using it as a foundation in the 2030s for TV shows/films to try and make sense of it or even present those who are serving in a positive light.  And unlike Vietnam in 1993 throwing the doors open to American tourists/vets, I don't see Ukraine welcoming Russian soldiers with open arms in 2040.

And unlike Vietnam where we got to elect politicians claiming they could get us out (and both major parties were pushing that as a major part of their platform), there's nobody running against Putin with that platform, and Putin is having people rounded up who oppose the war or him.

I have no fucking clue where or when this ends, but I do think Putin will not be in power when the dust settles. If Putin backs down and pulls out, he's admitting he is wrong and showing weakness in not only himself, but in the system he's built up around himself. But if he continues down this path, he risks having his military driven out of parts of Ukraine in a humiliating fashion, which is another failure.

But he won't use fucking nukes, I know that much.

[atomheartbevo 90670]

2 hours ago, Sbbruin said:

The uninformed me thinks both the Ukranian successes and Russian defeats may both be a bit exaggerated. 

There's a lot to the idea that Russia is basically who they (and the Soviet Union) always were, and it's continued up to this day.  

 

They can make some outstanding weapons systems, such as their air defense systems, but then being the typical Russians with the typical Soviet mindset, they end up with too many types of systems that are very specialized, and they can't support them on their budget and/or they simply can't maintain that many different systems in the field (away from their internal rail network/etc.).

Because the Soviet mindset still continues to this day, they suffer for it in situations like Ukraine (although Syria should have exposed it).  Hell, they spend $10 billion less than India on their military (they are spending something around $62 billion a year), and a lot of folks mention that the Russian Air Force (new aircraft/aircraft modernization) as well as their export programs received an outsized-portion of that.

Hell, looking at the websites that track destroyed Russian equipment, it's insane how many variants of just tanks they field, let alone the various APCs.  It seems like there's a dozen types of T-72, and then there's the T-80, which is based on the T-64 from the 1960s, but with T-72 features.

Reminds me of the Mig-25 Foxbat when I was  a kid in the 1980s - some friends and I were obsessed with aircraft, and the Mig-25 was kind of the King of the Hill because of its performance, but at the same time, it was a shit aircraft that sucked up a lot of maintenance, and just couldn't be flown very much because it wore out parts (I think the engines were rated to like 150 hours or something stupid).   Sure, it could get to altitude fast, could fly at a high-altitude, but the aircraft it was designed to intercept (B-70) was canceled 3 years before the Mig-25 went into production, and missiles were coming online that were fast as hell with good intercept capabilities and could be fired from aircraft with much lower speeds/service ceiling.  Soviets still built almost 1,200 of them.  Would you rather have 1,200 hard-to-maintain aircraft with short engine lives and very narrow missions, or have 1,200 F-15s that would be using missiles that could do the very things the Mig-25s were designed to do, but that could also be used for a variety of roles and didn't need new engines after 150 hours?

It feels like the Russians are deploying such a large variety of equipment in Ukraine, it's like how the hell do they maintain the logistics for all of them?  

 

[Deej 77864]

Me and my dog are ready for the apocalypse. 

 

[FartingDreamer 138]

4 hours ago, pops said:

Sella ward talk not going away

Are you gay? 

[Deej 77864]

1 minute ago, atomheartbevo said:

it's like how the hell do they maintain the logistics for all of them?  

Narrator: "They don't. "

[atomheartbevo 90670]

I mentioned the Russian's don't need a Walter Cronkite (a UT-Austin grad for you younger folks) because there are plenty of soldiers on Tiktok/twitter/etc. saying the war is unwindable, but Cronkite had something to say when he came back from Vietnam in early 1968 after the start of the Tet Offensive, that shocked millions of Americans, and that feels like it could apply to Russia in Ukraine.  And he brings up the debates around negotiation and how peace could happen. And yes, he mentions the US using nukes.

Spoiler

We have been too often disappointed by the optimism of the American leaders, both in Vietnam and Washington, to have faith any longer in the silver linings they find in the darkest clouds. They may be right, that Hanoi's winter-spring offensive has been forced by the Communist realization that they could not win the longer war of attrition, and that the Communists hope that any success in the offensive will improve their position for eventual negotiations. It would improve their position, and it would also require our realization, that we should have had all along, that any negotiations must be that – negotiations, not the dictation of peace terms. For it seems now more certain than ever that the bloody experience of Vietnam is to end in a stalemate. This summer's almost certain standoff will either end in real give-and-take negotiations or terrible escalation; and for every means we have to escalate, the enemy can match us, and that applies to invasion of the North, the use of nuclear weapons, or the mere commitment of one hundred, or two hundred, or three hundred thousand more American troops to the battle. And with each escalation, the world comes closer to the brink of cosmic disaster. To say that we are closer to victory today is to believe, in the face of the evidence, the optimists who have been wrong in the past. To suggest we are on the edge of defeat is to yield to unreasonable pessimism. To say that we are mired in stalemate seems the only realistic, yet unsatisfactory, conclusion. On the off chance that military and political analysts are right, in the next few months we must test the enemy's intentions, in case this is indeed his last big gasp before negotiations. But it is increasingly clear to this reporter that the only rational way out then will be to negotiate, not as victors, but as an honorable people who lived up to their pledge to defend democracy, and did the best they could.

And keep in mind he said that after we had been in Vietnam for over 5 years, and this was just after a few thousand Americans had died in the first phase of the Tet Offensive.

Russians have died in much larger numbers in just 3 weeks, and it's a much higher proportion of their force than the Americans who died in '68.

 

Edited March 18, 2022 by atomheartbevo

[atomheartbevo 90670]

We know this but nice to see the Brits confirm it publicly

 

[Eastwood 4394]

23 minutes ago, AeroHorn said:

This is nice and all, but we are not in a community of nations; we have superpowers, fading powers, regional powers and the rest with each driven by national, not universal interests. Our forays in every corner of the globe should tell you that we don't see "sovereign nations have the right to control their own destiny", we see our interests above others. Didn't Kissinger say, "Oil is much too important a commodity to be left in the hands of the Arabs."?

Our support to Ukraine is primarily driven by our interests and secondarily by Ukraine's. Many other invasions and ethnic cleansings have happened without us jumping in to help.

Given this reality, Mearscheimer's comments are that Ukraine should have realized that they are being played and should have to played it more diplomatically.

Russia should have realized that they should treat their former satellites better, lest they run to a better opportunity. Of course it is advantageous to us for Ukraine to be EU/NATO. We offered a better deal. It was Russia's job to offer an even better one. They didn't. Same with North Korea. The Chinese offers the dictatorship what they want, so they stay under Chinese influence. It is a different story with Taiwan. The US offers the better deal. That's foreign policy in a nutshell. Convince other countries that they are better off dealing with you than the other superpowers. And what this whole ordeal has shown that Russia is a superpower in nuclear arsenal only. They are an economic, diplomatic, and militaristic midget. The world has seen it and even if Ukraine eventually falls, no one, absolutely no one, outside of dictators that we don't tolerate will think that they will get the better deal between Russia and the US.

[ShaggyBevo RIP 3873]

1 hour ago, Auto Driller said:

Any “analyst” suggesting that Ukraine brought this upon themselves is completely full of shit. Fuck that guy, whatever his name is.

It was blaming the West for expanding NATO too close to RU and not blaming Ukraine.

[BamaATL 16593]

2 minutes ago, ShaggyBevo RIP said:

It was blaming the West for expanding NATO too close to RU and not blaming Ukraine.

I disagree with his argument, but that was it.  

[FartingDreamer 138]

4 hours ago, dimyh said:

Really hope that there is an Andrei Dufresnevich working to escape Putin's bunker and leaving a special parting gift. Like his big red button no longer activates his nukes but permanetly seals his bunker shut and turns on a never ending broadcast loop of Zelensky playing piano with his dong.

Dammit, I picked the wrong time to run out of positive rep.   

[KYHorn 17635]

More info about the American who was killed: 

Tldr: According to his sister Cheryl Hill Gordon's Facebook post, her brother was waiting in a bread line in Chernihiv when he was killed by Russian forces.

https://www.businessinsider.com/us-citizen-killed-in-ukraine-identified-as-jim-hill-2022-3

[staboner 5098]

4 hours ago, dimyh said:

Really hope that there is an Andrei Dufresnevich working to escape Putin's bunker and leaving a special parting gift. Like his big red button no longer activates his nukes but permanetly seals his bunker shut and turns on a never ending broadcast loop of Zelensky playing piano with his dong.

[TexasEd 8268]

1 hour ago, BamaATL said:

I saw a political cartoon to this effect earlier in this whole conflict, but it was essentially Putin to Ukraine "Marry me or I will kill you."  Seems to ring home.  

 

58 minutes ago, immamac said:

I mean they sent in a shitload of their arsenal to Ukraine and have done pretty fucking terribly. Are you talking about nukes? You think Russia is going to destroy earth because they can't have Ukraine? Are you smoking shit?

If I can’t have her no one can. 

[BamaATL 16593]

1 minute ago, TexasEd said:

 

If I can’t have her no one can. 

Yep, that story always works out well...

[MillerEP 30907]

 

[Genco 3058]

40 minutes ago, atomheartbevo said:

The Russian public won't need a Walter Cronkite to tell them the war is unwindable

 

34 minutes ago, atomheartbevo said:

there are plenty of soldiers on Tiktok/twitter/etc. saying the war is unwindable

[BachelorTrek 3326]

4 hours ago, 27-25 said:

South Ossetia and maybe Abkhazia with fewer Russian troops now?  Georgia be like:

I do hope if we get a whiff of Georgia looking to take advantage of the current situation we can talk them back, at least I think so.

Russia is surrounded by enemies that could easily take advantage of their historic weakness, especially if Putin gets deposed and there's confusion for any amount of time of who's running the country.

Who knows? Maybe some of those enemies would attack in a "war of russian-contraction" to take back what they lost, plus some!

The list of enemies is long with some overtly who want their occupied territory back:

Japan (North territories/Kuril Islands & southern half of Sakhalin Island), Finland (Karelia), Ukraine, Georgia, China, Chechnya, Kazakhstan, the Tuvan Republic

Plus there's Kaliningrad that Germany (known as Königsberg when it was part of Germany), now that Merkel's gone, could show interest back in again like they did in 2001.

[immamac 44414]

10 minutes ago, BachelorTrek said:

Russia is surrounded by enemies that could easily take advantage of their historic weakness, especially if Putin gets deposed and there's confusion for any amount of time of who's running the country.

Who knows? Maybe some of those enemies would attack in a "war of russian-contraction" to take back what they lost, plus some!

The list of enemies is long with some overtly who want their occupied territory back:

Japan (North territories/Kuril Islands & southern half of Sakhalin Island), Finland (Karelia), Ukraine, Georgia, China, Chechnya, Kazakhstan, the Tuvan Republic

Plus there's Kaliningrad that Germany (known as Königsberg when it was part of Germany), now that Merkel's gone, could show interest back in again like they did in 2001.

If you invade russia and don't have nukes you are getting nuked. this is stupid. 

[BachelorTrek 3326]

1 minute ago, immamac said:

If you invade russia and don't have nukes you are getting nuked. this is stupid. 

They won't use nukes if they're leaderless.

[pops 7152]

1 hour ago, FartingDreamer said:

Are you gay? 

Your mom doesn't think so 🤷‍♂️

[AeroHorn 793]

1 hour ago, Eastwood said:

Russia should have realized that they should treat their former satellites better, lest they run to a better opportunity. Of course it is advantageous to us for Ukraine to be EU/NATO. We offered a better deal. It was Russia's job to offer an even better one. They didn't. Same with North Korea. The Chinese offers the dictatorship what they want, so they stay under Chinese influence. It is a different story with Taiwan. The US offers the better deal. That's foreign policy in a nutshell. Convince other countries that they are better off dealing with you than the other superpowers. And what this whole ordeal has shown that Russia is a superpower in nuclear arsenal only. They are an economic, diplomatic, and militaristic midget. The world has seen it and even if Ukraine eventually falls, no one, absolutely no one, outside of dictators that we don't tolerate will think that they will get the better deal between Russia and the US.

True, being part of US/EU is lot better than with Russia, but Ukranians are paying a price for it, however we may rationalize it away. That's all the video was leading to, that Ukraine will unfortunately get wrecked.

Same unfortunate stuff happened during Arab spring. The people rose up by peacefully protesting and paid the price. It's a choice, and from afar, we are probably not in the best position to say which one is right for them.

[BamaATL 16593]

2 minutes ago, immamac said:

If you invade russia and don't have nukes you are getting nuked. this is stupid. 

It's an interesting take, several posters keep saying that its unthinkable that Russia will launch nukes, but then an argument against counter aggression by aggrieved nations or states is that it would be met with immediate nuclear deterrence.  The truth is no one knows.  Militarily, the Russians have proven themselves a paper tiger against western weaponry, but their saving grace is their nuclear deterrence.  I suspect that they will show willingness sometime in the next week or so to deploy these weapons, but in a way such as not to trigger an article 5.  In a sense, to deter acts of aggression by aggrieved parties, but also out of vengeance for their military failure in Ukraine.  I think we are without a doubt the closest we've been to a nuclear exchange since the Cuban missile crisis, and in fact we may well be closer.  I believe it will be a tactical deployment, but I do believe it will happen.  

Basically, you can't have it both ways.  If you think it's impossible that the Russians will actually launch offensive nukes, you can't argue the point that they will use them for defense.  It's either they have the will to use them or they don't.  I highly suspect that Putin has the will to use them in either case.  

I've been wrong before, hopefully I will have the opportunity to be wrong again.  

[BamaATL 16593]

14 minutes ago, BachelorTrek said:

They won't use nukes if they're leaderless.

Dead Man's Hand, its a real possibility.  

[dimyh 1890]

Pretty gnarly clip of another Zed getting blown to hell. Literally bodies in trees if there were any trees nearby.

 

[BachelorTrek 3326]

3 minutes ago, BamaATL said:

Dead Man's Hand, its a real possibility.  

Analysis by many say that IF this Dead-Hand/Perimeter still works (unlike much of the ruskie shit), that it measures for signs of a nuke attack. There won't be a nuke attack, so how is it going to be triggered?

Countries taking their land back won't use nukes..... they'll just take the land back that the ruskies stole from them since the ruskie military is shit, and the dithering, leaderless ruskies won't be able to do shit about it as their command & control is in disarray from not having a leader. 

In a leaderless scenario, that means Moscow will be silent while the power-struggle ensues. And their military never does anything if Moscow is silent.

If the Star Trek "Doomsday Machine" aka "the horn of plenty death" comes for us, we're all fucked anyway.  Lulz.

[BamaATL 16593]

9 minutes ago, BachelorTrek said:

Analysis by many say that IF this Dead-Hand/Perimeter still works (unlike much of the ruskie shit), that it measures for signs of a nuke attack. There won't be a nuke attack, so how is it going to be triggered?

Countries taking their land back won't use nukes..... they'll just take the land back that the ruskies stole from them since the ruskie military is shit, and the dithering, leaderless ruskies won't be able to do shit about it as their command & control is in disarray from not having a leader. 

In a leaderless scenario, that means Moscow will be silent while the power-struggle ensues. And their military never does anything if Moscow is silent.

If the Star Trek "Doomsday Machine" aka "the horn of plenty death" comes for us, we're all fucked anyway.  Lulz.

That's not how it is designed to work.

https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/37569/putin-reveals-existence-of-new-nuclear-command-bunker-and-says-its-almost-complete

It's designed to work presuming that it can no longer reach missile command.  Meaning that if all of a sudden if the system can't verify their version of the nuclear football, it will respond.  Stupid engineering as it is, we can't discount this as a possibility.  I imagine our intelligence community has an idea as to the veracity of this system, which I would trust far more than our speculation, but to dismiss this outright would be a bit nutty.  

[atomheartbevo 90670]

1 hour ago, Genco said:

 

Fucking automobilecorrection 

[atomheartbevo 90670]

1 hour ago, TexasEd said:

If I can’t have her no one can. 

Finland’s ambassador to the US has thoughts on that

And where it’s headed as far as Russia’s future relations

 

[atomheartbevo 90670]

And NATO

 

[BachelorTrek 3326]

6 minutes ago, BamaATL said:

That's not how it is designed to work.

https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/37569/putin-reveals-existence-of-new-nuclear-command-bunker-and-says-its-almost-complete

It's designed to work presuming that it can no longer reach missile command.  Meaning that if all of a sudden if the system can't verify their version of the nuclear football, it will respond.  Stupid engineering as it is, we can't discount this as a possibility.  I imagine our intelligence community has an idea as to the veracity of this system, which I would trust far more than our speculation, but to dismiss this outright would be a bit nutty.  

According to this source:

Its main control system was, at least "briefly" situated in "a deep hardened underground bunker in the shape of a sphere, very deep and very hardened, probably the most secure place of all time in the Cold War," a David Hoffman, a longtime journalist and author of the 2009 book Dead Hand: The Untold Story of the Cold War Arms Race and Its Dangerous Legacy, explained in a podcast in 2015. Duty officers at their posts inside this structure would wait out their shifts watching for three lights to come on. 

One would come on when they had received their "predelegation" of authority. The next would confirm a complete "decapitation" of senior Soviet leadership. The last one would become illuminated after confirmation of an incoming nuclear strike. If all three became lit, they would begin initiating the ICBM launches via a secure communications network that included ballistic missile-like rockets carrying transmitters to broadcast launch codes remotely to personnel in silo complexes down below. An actual fully-automated doomsday system was reportedly also considered, but ultimately rejected.

 

---------------------------------------------------------------

The first 2 lights would never come on in a leaderless scenario.

In a coup, Putin's command would be cut off first before he knows. Why bother otherwise? No "predelegation" occurs.  No Light #1

Also in a coup, their won't be a "decapitation" of senior ruskie leadership, because 1) there will be no nuke strike to "decapitate" them and 2) the senior ruskie leadership will be in on/conducting the coup.  No Light #2

Plus, No incoming ICBMs.  No Light #3

[BamaATL 16593]

2 minutes ago, atomheartbevo said:

And NATO

 

Nice thought ambassador, but no it doesn't come close to fulfilling NATO standards when it comes to military investment and capability.  If for no other reason Finland hasn't made an investment to NATO for 70 years, so while you may have made an internal military investment, you've made none towards NATO, and your internal investment doesn't mean shit to us now, when it's become clear that you couldn't stand alone.   This is bad used car salesmanship.  So you ducked the cost for 70 years and now you want in.  Sure I want Finland on our side, but this is a hugely bullshit argument.  Their dodge on this for 70 years disqualifies them from automatic membership in my opinion.  You want in, pay a fair share, not from now when you need it, but retroactively.  

[NorthLoop 14519]

I think you're missing the point. 

[BamaATL 16593]

2 minutes ago, BachelorTrek said:

According to this source:

Its main control system was, at least "briefly" situated in "a deep hardened underground bunker in the shape of a sphere, very deep and very hardened, probably the most secure place of all time in the Cold War," a David Hoffman, a longtime journalist and author of the 2009 book Dead Hand: The Untold Story of the Cold War Arms Race and Its Dangerous Legacy, explained in a podcast in 2015. Duty officers at their posts inside this structure would wait out their shifts watching for three lights to come on. 

One would come on when they had received their "predelegation" of authority. The next would confirm a complete "decapitation" of senior Soviet leadership. The last one would become illuminated after confirmation of an incoming nuclear strike. If all three became lit, they would begin initiating the ICBM launches via a secure communications network that included ballistic missile-like rockets carrying transmitters to broadcast launch codes remotely to personnel in silo complexes down below. An actual fully-automated doomsday system was reportedly also considered, but ultimately rejected.

 

---------------------------------------------------------------

The first 2 lights would never come on in a leaderless scenario.

In a coup, Putin's command would be cut off first before he knows. Why bother otherwise? No "predelegation" occurs.  No Light #1

Also in a coup, their won't be a "decapitation" of senior ruskie leadership, because 1) there will be no nuke strike to "decapitate" them and 2) the senior ruskie leadership will be in on/conducting the coup.  No Light #2

Plus, No incoming ICBMs.  No Light #3

Do you honestly believe that this system hasn't be modified to serve Putin's Russia?  You are talking about Soviet shit.  

[BachelorTrek 3326]

Just now, BamaATL said:

Do you honestly believe that this system hasn't be modified to serve Putin's Russia?  You are talking about Soviet shit.  

I've lived with the Cold War soviet and ruskie Bullshit so long that I don't fear them, and never looked for boogeymen underneath the bed, neither.

[BamaATL 16593]

3 minutes ago, NorthLoop said:

I think you're missing the point. 

Respectfully, I disagree.  Sweden and Finland have both decided not to join NATO, they've had ample opportunity to do so. Now that they see the danger, and want to join 70 years after the fact, why should we let them?  They've had us absorb the cost for 70 years, and now all of a sudden they want in.  Nope, pay the freight, its why they had relative utopias, they weren't paying their way into to security, just reliant on us to do it for them.  I see no reason to give them a pass for this.

[BachelorTrek 3326]

11 minutes ago, BamaATL said:

Do you honestly believe that this system hasn't be modified to serve Putin's Russia?  You are talking about Soviet shit.  

Also, that's the article you posted with the old soviet shit in it. Where's the article with the new shit in it?

[atomheartbevo 90670]

51 minutes ago, BamaATL said:

It's an interesting take, several posters keep saying that its unthinkable that Russia will launch nukes, but then an argument against counter aggression by aggrieved nations or states is that it would be met with immediate nuclear deterrence.  The truth is no one knows.  Militarily, the Russians have proven themselves a paper tiger against western weaponry, but their saving grace is their nuclear deterrence.  I suspect that they will show willingness sometime in the next week or so to deploy these weapons, but in a way such as not to trigger an article 5.  In a sense, to deter acts of aggression by aggrieved parties, but also out of vengeance for their military failure in Ukraine.  I think we are without a doubt the closest we've been to a nuclear exchange since the Cuban missile crisis, and in fact we may well be closer.  I believe it will be a tactical deployment, but I do believe it will happen.  

Basically, you can't have it both ways.  If you think it's impossible that the Russians will actually launch offensive nukes, you can't argue the point that they will use them for defense.  It's either they have the will to use them or they don't.  I highly suspect that Putin has the will to use them in either case.  

Putin is so scared of COVID or assassination attempts that he sits at ridiculously long tables away from his military deputies and his oligarch buddies or spreads them out in massive rooms, and he makes sure Russia makes her loan payments even though his economy is about to run on fumes, and you think he’s willing to risk the West directly attacking him, or risk being cut off by China economically?

Because China will bail on his ass in a heartbeat.  They have a long game planned out that definitely does not involved Russia dropping nukes on its neighbor because it’s losing a three-day war that Putin ginned up.  China knows she slides into isolation territory with Russia if she props up Russia after Putin orders a nuke attack, and Putin is already taking Russia into North Korea territory   

Somebody made the comparison of using nukes and taking hostages.  Both work as long as the other side(s) don’t think you’ll use them or that you won’t start killing hostages.  Start using nukes or killing hostages, and the other side is done negotiating and their intent is to end you as quickly as possible.  

[BachelorTrek 3326]

15 minutes ago, BamaATL said:

Respectfully, I disagree.  Sweden and Finland have both decided not to join NATO, they've had ample opportunity to do so. Now that they see the danger, and want to join 70 years after the fact, why should we let them?  They've had us absorb the cost for 70 years, and now all of a sudden they want in.  Nope, pay the freight, its why they had relative utopias, they weren't paying their way into to security, just reliant on us to do it for them.  I see no reason to give them a pass for this.

Yep, they both do need to pay, and what better way to pay The USA than USA-sovereign-territory military bases?  We choose the land, too. 

The USA used to do this all the time, and it's high time we carry on the tradition.

We can put them in the most strategic places we want, and ruskie-boy can choke on it if he doesn't like it!  Fuck ruskie-land!  Lulz.

[atomheartbevo 90670]

 

[956 Worldwide 35601]

1 hour ago, BamaATL said:

Nice thought ambassador, but no it doesn't come close to fulfilling NATO standards when it comes to military investment and capability.  If for no other reason Finland hasn't made an investment to NATO for 70 years, so while you may have made an internal military investment, you've made none towards NATO, and your internal investment doesn't mean shit to us now, when it's become clear that you couldn't stand alone.   This is bad used car salesmanship.  So you ducked the cost for 70 years and now you want in.  Sure I want Finland on our side, but this is a hugely bullshit argument.  Their dodge on this for 70 years disqualifies them from automatic membership in my opinion.  You want in, pay a fair share, not from now when you need it, but retroactively.  

Sure Finland does. Finland spends over 2 percent of GDP on defense and has one of the most capable militaries in Europe. They spend on NATO interoperable equipment and train with us. That’s better than most existing members.  It’s not like there’s NATO dues that they’re not paying. 

[956 Worldwide 35601]

I have to say I’m still thinking it’s more likely that Finland and Sweden stay nominally non-aligned although the math to joints closer than ever. That said, both of these countries would be fantastic additions.  First, as I mentioned the Finnish military is first rate.  They can mobilize 280,000 troops within 30 days and their artillery and armor are among the best in Europe. They’ve just signed a contract for 64 F-35s. Bringing them in militarily would be near seamless. The Swedes have not been spending as much but they still have some pretty amazing capabilities, especially in the naval realm. 
 

Politically, both are model democracies and members of the EU.  Not a lot of friction or concerns working with them, and it would help the Alliance continue to digest countries like Montenegro and North Macedonia. Geopolitically, the high north is going to be a zone of competition in coming decades and making more of its waters and coastline indisputably in our camp is a win.  Adding either/or would be addition by addition to the Alliance. 

[956 Worldwide 35601]

Upthread I mentioned Mariupol as a place to watch for a potential Russia WMD attack. The Russians could claim that they were targeting the Nazis (Azov is in reality highly present in the city) and would claim that the city had been evacuated by the Russians and their humanitarian corridors. Another option would be to use some sort of WMD and blame Azov for it.  I think that either of these scenarios are more likely than we want to feel comfortable with, even if still not over fifty percent. Putin has gone far beyond what most experts would have predicted just last year.  Russia has already freely used chemical and biological weapons.  If Putin has an awful tool, he will want to use it— that’s his way of thinking. It’s already worth pointing out that his nuclear saber rattling is “using” nukes in a way no one outside of Pyongyang has done in decades, even semi-rogue bad actors like Pakistan restrain their language when talking about them.  
 

Anyway, back to the scenario and messaging.  The Russian Embassy in Slovakia put this out:

“Almost all the residents of the blockaded city of Mariupol refused to leave to areas under Kyiv’s control and chose evacuation routes to Russia. After many long days while Ukrainian authorities refused to cooperate with the Russian side on evacuations, approximately 33 thousand people have left Mariupol”

“Azov is simply hiding behind us”- Refugees fleeing Mariupol.

👀👀

 

[Nicole44 22326]

I thought the Arnold message was pretty cool. 

[Bevo 13923]

8 hours ago, immamac said:

I mean they sent in a shitload of their arsenal to Ukraine and have done pretty fucking terribly. Are you talking about nukes? You think Russia is going to destroy earth because they can't have Ukraine? Are you smoking shit?

Besides ICBMs, there are tactical nukes, chemical weapons, and biological weapons. Biological weapons don't make any sense from a strategic standpoint. Chemical weapons make the most sense from a military standpoint, but tactical nukes create the most terror and have the biggest impact strategically from an escalate to deescalate standpoint.

As for the likelihood that Putin will take this route.... This is the closest in my lifetime of the possibility. Russia felt like it was backed into a corner with the West's joint training of Ukraine and Ukraine moving closer and closer into the West's sphere. It may not have wanted to control Ukraine but wanted a bit of a buffer between the West and Russia. I think Russia and Putin would have been fine with a neutral Ukraine.

Putin miscalculated and thought Ukraine would be at least partially receptive to Russia and would be run over pretty quickly: He not only miscalculated Ukraine's defense of its country but the capabilities of his own forces.

So where does Putin go from here? Is he rational? Is he willing to accept total defeat and the loss of his country? Is he willing to accept the end of his life? I can't answer that. I don't think he is totally rational at this point. I think we are planning how to proceed with an escalation by Putin. I think he is sending people to Novosibirsk - I've been there in January and even though it is early March, I don't think it is much of a vacation spot this time of year. Putin needs an out. Maybe let him keep Crimea. Maybe make a pact to keep Ukraine neutral - No NATO for 20 years but no disarmament and no joint military training with Western countries.

[twosheds 379]

Correct. If you want to discuss what we did wrong and how Russia is in the right here please take it to CR

What if a stray tactical nuke accidentally hits the CR?