521–530 of 1001 posts
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I would treat threats of nuclear weapons as bluffs. He doesn’t want to perish in an inferno and a first strike is hard to justify over a mere military humiliation on foreign soil. Rather more likely are cyber attacks on infrastructure here in the US and attacks on US bases in Europe or abroad.
And if he is not bluffing? :)
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I think that's a good point but I also think it's important to remember that war suuucks . A citizen in Ukraine right now is not having a good day, there have been arbitrary arrests and some fighting in the streets... but if other military powers got involved they'd be having an even worse day with mass destruction of property and loss of life. Escalating a conflict to using deadly force can be a necessary step to pr…
> it often has very steep short term costs to everyone innocent stuck in the middle Are there any examples where waiting and intervening at a later point in time turned out better?
I'm genuinely curious at what point a bully threatening you with MAD can be stopped if you value the existence of your own civilization? Say Russian conquers all of Ukraine and moves troops to the Polish border and parks some tanks a bit inside. What then? Strongly worded essays? If Russia isn't raining hell on Poland, then NATO is forced to .. apply sanctions, make threats, but take no action since the escalation an…
I think MAD is only half the equation. Even if Putin didn't possess a single nuke, (EDIT:) Nato might very well have stood by watching today, as the conventional force deployed by Putin is pretty significant in itself. Similarly, had NATO deployed 500k soldiers fully armed with modern weaponry in Poland, Lithuania and Rumania as Putin was building up his forces, and added a warning that Ukraine would be granted insta…
Europe used to be full of empires waging destructive wars all over the world. After two world wars, people had had enough. The predecessors of the EU were created to tame the former empires. To make them mutually dependent and act like ordinary countries. It worked, and Western Europe has enjoyed a lifetime of peace, which is unprecedented.
We Europeans are shitty people. If you tell us that it's ok to start acting like empires again and to send troops to fight wars far away from home, the world will have more than one Putin to worry about.
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>. What specific promises are you referring to? The Budapest Memorandum. 1994 wasn't that long ago...
Still not very specific. Or correct, as far as I can see. Here is the text of the memorandum: https://web.archive.org/web/20170312052208/http://www.cfr.or... Can you point us to the provision that you claim the U.S./Europe have violated? It is only about 1-2 pages long, so I don't think this is too much to ask.
This could of course be blamed in Ukraine for not rejecting it at the time.
The Russian forces seem to be trying to encircle or assault Kyiv. I think they've taken the nuclear plant because it is a defensible point along their shortest line of advance. They wouldn't want to move past it without controlling the site.
I'm genuinely curious at what point a bully threatening you with MAD can be stopped if you value the existence of your own civilization? Say Russian conquers all of Ukraine and moves troops to the Polish border and parks some tanks a bit inside. What then? Strongly worded essays? If Russia isn't raining hell on Poland, then NATO is forced to .. apply sanctions, make threats, but take no action since the escalation an…
Limiting Russia's ambitions doesn't make this kind of thing less of a crime. Our commitment to self-determination and anti-colonialism that we inherited from those who fought WWII shouldn't waiver. However, we should be cautious to discuss everything in the existentialist terms of WWII. America's last 70 years of war making should teach us that if anything. There is no shortcut to moral clarity in foreign affairs. Unfortunately you can't achieve justification of violence without letting the belligerents show themselves prove its necessity.
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It's not clear whether every financial weapon will be used. For example, > The foreign ministers of the Baltic states called for Russia to be cut off from SWIFT, the global intermediary for banks' financial transactions. However, other EU member states were reluctant, both because European lenders held most of the nearly $30 billion in foreign bank's exposure to Russia and because China has developed an alternative t…
This is where diplomacy should shine. It's clear that Russia has been hardening against western sanctions for years now, and CIPS is a big piece of that. If NATO can convince China to also shut them out of CIPS at the same time we turn off SWIFT the Russian Oligarchs will start applying pressure to Putin.
I'm genuinely curious at what point a bully threatening you with MAD can be stopped if you value the existence of your own civilization? Say Russian conquers all of Ukraine and moves troops to the Polish border and parks some tanks a bit inside. What then? Strongly worded essays? If Russia isn't raining hell on Poland, then NATO is forced to .. apply sanctions, make threats, but take no action since the escalation an…
If NATO does not respond with force, or escalate and withdraws because of MAD, then it loses all credibility.
The question is: Can belligerent nuclear armed nations really hold the rest of the world hostage? At some point, it's unacceptable, and we would all pay the consequences.
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Just post the transcript of the full speech, it was not hard to find it: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-02-24/full-tran... Here's the relevant part (interpret this as you will): "I would now like to say something very important for those who may be tempted to interfere in these developments from the outside. No matter who tries to stand in our way or all the more so create threats for our country and ou…
Please highlight the word nuclear in that transcript.
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I think MAD is only half the equation. Even if Putin didn't possess a single nuke, (EDIT:) Nato might very well have stood by watching today, as the conventional force deployed by Putin is pretty significant in itself. Similarly, had NATO deployed 500k soldiers fully armed with modern weaponry in Poland, Lithuania and Rumania as Putin was building up his forces, and added a warning that Ukraine would be granted insta…
I think the combined might of Europe is actually quite significant. The problem is getting them to actually DO something.
And while the Russian forces are actively trained as one force, European armies would have significant difficulties operating together and would lack shared leadership. Also, while some of the European forces are highly proficient, others are more at the level of militias, really only useful for defending their homelands, if that.
Without heavy US involvement, I would expect Russia to dominate a confrontation with EU forces in the early stages, by focusing on the forces of one country at a time. This is particularily true if the confrontation happens in terrain such as that of the Ukraine or Poland, where the flat land gives attacking armored forces an advantage.
With moderate US involvement, this changes a bit. Lets say the US sent an expeditionary force of 100k people, maybe half of which were fighting forces, then NATO would _perhaps_ be a match for Russia, but would probably not be superior, espeically in terms of infantry, armor and artillery.
Realistically, a defence of Nato with current forces needs to be done in depth, forcing Russia to attack into central Germany and/or the Carpathian mountains. Eventually, Russia would lose such a conflict due to massive economic inferiority, but this kind of conflict is not something European countries are willing to go into over just the Ukraine.