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Belarus referendum approves proposal to renounce non-nuclear status

reuters.com

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Re: Belarus referendum approves proposal to renounce non-nuclear status

#141

Post by usrusr »

88840-8855 wrote: post #22
hef19898 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wasn't there a post HN some time ago about how Netflix is helping to create a new, European TV culture by making shows from, e.g. Finland or Spain available in local language versions to everyone? Also I'm pretty sure European states do actually have their own militaries. Sure, they have US hardware. But then the US is using European hardware as well. So ehats yoyr point?

I'm talking about the countless US airforce bases, CIA facilities. I lived near to 2 of those here in Germany. Not because i wanted, but because they are everywhere.

Were you forced you to live there, or would you been been free to relocate to somewhere more to your liking, perhaps east of the Ural mountains?

Re: Belarus referendum approves proposal to renounce non-nuclear status

#142

Post by rad_gruchalski »

dncornholio wrote: post #128
rad_gruchalski wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Vladimir Putin: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/23/us/politics/putin-ukraine... > Mr. Putin’s arguments occupied a third of his speech to the Russian people on Monday, when he made a series of bizarre charges that “Ukraine intends to create its own nuclear weapons, and this is not just bragging.” And if you don't trust NYT, just listen to his speech...

Anything Putin says is worthless

Duh, really… The person asked for a source…

Re: Belarus referendum approves proposal to renounce non-nuclear status

#143

Post by 07d046 »

dncornholio wrote: post #128
rad_gruchalski wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Vladimir Putin: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/23/us/politics/putin-ukraine... > Mr. Putin’s arguments occupied a third of his speech to the Russian people on Monday, when he made a series of bizarre charges that “Ukraine intends to create its own nuclear weapons, and this is not just bragging.” And if you don't trust NYT, just listen to his speech...

Anything Putin says is worthless

True, but that's why I said "stated reason". Here's the full speech: https://theprint.in/world/modern-ukraine-entirely-created-by...

Re: Belarus referendum approves proposal to renounce non-nuclear status

#144

Post by yummypaint »

hdivider wrote: post #99

One positive side effect: this result, in the context of an ongoing land war in Europe will finally help to rattle us Europeans out of our traditional resistance to defense and military investment. (I'm both British and German.) Stronger Europe -> stronger NATO -> more options for the Alliance, and for the US to prevent conflict in and out of Europe, since Europeans will shoulder more of the local deterrence burden.…

Technology that can get Europe off of natural gas would be tremendously helpful, and we already needed to be working on that yesterday because of climate change. Perhaps this war will provide a psychological incentive to do what needs to be done. This research could be carried out anywhere and there would be no need to classify it unlike military R&D so it can immediately be put into practice.

My hope in the US is that there will be motivation to direct some of our bloated military budget to renewables research. The long term impacts of dismantling Russia's leverage over europe through alternative energy sources will be larger than merely inventing a better gun.

Re: Belarus referendum approves proposal to renounce non-nuclear status

#145

Post by pinephoneguy »

hdivider wrote: post #99

One positive side effect: this result, in the context of an ongoing land war in Europe will finally help to rattle us Europeans out of our traditional resistance to defense and military investment. (I'm both British and German.) Stronger Europe -> stronger NATO -> more options for the Alliance, and for the US to prevent conflict in and out of Europe, since Europeans will shoulder more of the local deterrence burden.…

From what I've seen the British haven't hesitated to spend money on defense. The Germans were told not to buy the British to try and crush the Prussian military tradition and prevent future land wars, a powerful Russia being one of the consequences.

Re: Belarus referendum approves proposal to renounce non-nuclear status

#146

Post by SideburnsOfDoom »

robertlagrant wrote: post #38
jansen555 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pollonium and thermobaric bombs easily come to my mind. Funding terrorism on steroid making Iranian look like absolute kindergartener are something I immediately think of after the previous 2 options. I can probably write a master thesis in an afternoon for possible options Putin can take. Imagine people doing this kind of think tank on daily basis for Putin. Remember when Soviet were dirt poor then they can match US…

> Remember when Soviet were dirt poor then they can match USA militarily, Russia now is sig ificantly richer with more sophisticated weapons They were poor, it's true. Tragically, because they were a centrally planned economy, the USSR could starve its citizens to funnel wealth to its war machine. Russia is richer (about as rich as the state of Florida) but less centrally controlled, so it will find it harder to conc…

> the USSR could starve its citizens to funnel wealth to its war machine.

That would a stronger point, if one could not also unfavourably compare the size of the USA's military and social welfare budgets. And also the ease of expanding the former, vs. the difficultly in expanding the latter.

Re: Belarus referendum approves proposal to renounce non-nuclear status

#147

Post by pjc50 »

hunterb123 wrote: post #83
pjc50 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The initial paratroopers at the airports plus fast armor columns all indicated a blitz approach. Those have already been destroyed. It's no longer on the original plan, and the West is interfering. The longer it takes the more weapons we can ship them, and everyone's running around looking for new types of economic sanctions which can be applied against Russia.

Russia is no stranger to sanctions, it doesn't mean much. Ukraine can barely get people out much less weapons in. The main point was he knew there would be no military response from the West so surrounding, cutting off the capitol, and slowly taking it through attrition is possible. Paratroopers/fast armor columns and sieges aren't mutually exclusive, they can be used to probe weaknesses in a siege.

> Ukraine can barely get people out much less weapons in

There's a traffic jam of refugees at the border, but the roads, railways and airports are still there and in Ukranian control? I don't see what obstacle there is.

Re: Belarus referendum approves proposal to renounce non-nuclear status

#148

Post by dane-pgp »

hef19898 wrote: post #93
dane-pgp wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> their "right to remain silent" There are limits to this right (as to all rights), but it would be wrong to suggest that a "right to remain silent" does not exist in English law. As Wikipedia states (admittedly without citation): > In England and Wales, the right of suspects to refuse to answer questions during their actual trial (the "right to silence", or the right to remain silent as it is now known) was well est…

Since OP mentioned military police, I'm not sure soldiers on active duty actually have that right, generally speaking.

If OP meant "they have neither, in the context of being questioned by military police", then I don't think that's a difference between English law and American law, it's a difference between the laws that apply to civilians and the laws that (additionally) apply to members of the armed forces.

Re: Belarus referendum approves proposal to renounce non-nuclear status

#149

Post by robertlagrant »

SideburnsOfDoom wrote: post #146
robertlagrant wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Remember when Soviet were dirt poor then they can match USA militarily, Russia now is sig ificantly richer with more sophisticated weapons They were poor, it's true. Tragically, because they were a centrally planned economy, the USSR could starve its citizens to funnel wealth to its war machine. Russia is richer (about as rich as the state of Florida) but less centrally controlled, so it will find it harder to conc…

> the USSR could starve its citizens to funnel wealth to its war machine. That would a stronger point, if one could not also unfavourably compare the size of the USA's military and social welfare budgets. And also the ease of expanding the former, vs. the difficultly in expanding the latter.

You aren't talking about the same types of thing:

1. The US also has loads of value which is not mediated by the state. A shop can decide what to sell, and you can decide to buy it, without any central planning or money spent by the state. All of this value could be (and was) decided by the state in the USSR.

2. "social welfare budgets" are not in the same league as what happened with central planning. From Wikipedia:

> In 1928, Stalin introduced the first five-year plan for building a socialist economy. In place of the internationalism expressed by Lenin throughout the Revolution, it aimed to build Socialism in One Country. In industry, the state assumed control over all existing enterprises and undertook an intensive program of industrialization. In agriculture, rather than adhering to the "lead by example" policy advocated by Lenin,[31] forced collectivization of farms was implemented all over the country.

> Famines ensued as a result, causing deaths estimated at three to seven million; surviving kulaks were persecuted, and many were sent to Gulags to do forced labor.

We know that it rarely makes sense for other people to even plan software timelines for teams of 4 developers, and the team members are the best people to estimate timelines, pick tools, and solve problems. How much more does that scale up for a whole country's economy? How much more damage can someone do if they are choosing centrally to deprioritise wealth creation over the latest thing the state wishes to accomplish?

Re: Belarus referendum approves proposal to renounce non-nuclear status

#150

Post by HeadsUpHigh »

nine_k wrote: post #19

Belarus regime being what it is, I'd not think that the referendum actually reflects people's opinion, and the result was not predetermined. OTOH I suspect that after the events of 2014 and 2022, Ukraine will remain the last country in history to willingly give up nuclear weapons. Many more countries will think about developing an deploying their own nukes, or at least staying one step away from actually producing th…

Naive to assume they gave up all of them. If I was them I'd have a nice little dirty bomb stashed in some major Russian city right now.
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