121–130 of 139 posts
The list includes Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland (!), Ukraine (!), (east) Germany (!!!), and so forth. To state that this 1956 target list "probably doesn't look dramatically different [from today's]" is one of the most moronic things I've read in a long time.
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Are you even aware that Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union were essentially allies at the start of WW2 who planned to divide Poland among themselves until Hitler turned around and broke the Molotov-Ribbentrop-Pact?
It was a non aggression pact. They had one with Poland long before that. And another with Estonia and Latvia. Germany annexed Austria and both Germany and Italy marched into other places before Germany signed the non aggression pact with the Soviets and amassed troops at the polish border before anything happened. I don't really understand why the German/Soviet agreement was considered the start of world war II and n…
...which included an (at the time) secret protocol which divided Poland into German and Soviet 'spheres of influence' [1], and the Soviet Union promptly invaded Poland two weeks after Germany did (on the 17th September 1939) annexing the Eastern territories of Poland.
In Europe at least, the start of WW2 is usually placed at the 1st of September 1939, when Germany invaded Poland (this was also taught in East German schools btw, so it's not a 'Western" point of view - the secret protocol of the Molotov-Ribbentrop-Pact was conveniently left out of course).
Germany and the Soviet Union also had pretty close economic ties right up until the German invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941 [2].
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_invasion_of_Poland
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German%E2%80%93Soviet_Commerci...
>Because you invaded a country for no reason (like we did to Iraq), (except the one you invaded is at your borders and we put our guy at its head a couple years ago, and the one we invaded is half a planet from us), we will bring forth the apocalypse. Humans are crazy, seeing how we're speaking about a nuclear war now vs how people spoke about it in the 60s, it's like a mass psychosis, we don't care anymore, or maybe…
> except the one you invaded is at your borders and we put our guy at its head a couple years ago, and the one we invaded is half a planet from us I know neoconservatism went out of fashion after Iraq, but the US-dominated system thrives on making everyone freer and the world more open, and it's a good thing. Coup or no coup, expansion of the US sphere of influence is good, and expansion of the Russian influence is b…
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A large part of the peace movement in e.g. West Germany in the 1980s was "anti-American" but not "pro-Soviet-Union". Not everything is a binary choice, and it gets tiresome to prefix every Internet comment with a whole paragraph of disclaimers. The "anti-war" crowd questions the Western provocations and meddling since the orange revolutions by Nuland etc. It questions the erasure of history since at least 1995. Mears…
> The "anti-war" crowd questions the Western provocations and meddling since the orange revolutions by Nuland etc. It questions the erasure of history since at least 1995. People who repeat false Kremlin war justification propaganda are being tacitly pro-war. It's double speak to call this behavior anti-war. These are the people I was talking about. Nuland discussing in a leaked call who should replace Yanukovych and…
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>Why was it a mistake? It’s unclear what “mistake” means. Tbh killing a million civilians for oil isn't a mistake, a mistake is like when you make spelling mistakes or trip and fall because you miscalculated, killing a million civilians for oil is just a warcrime, then the US might go on and on about Japan not apologizing for Nanjing for example, or just do business with Saudi Arabia who stone (aka THROW STONES ON WO…
I really disagreed with the Iraq war at the time: it was obvious that it was Bush's revenge and Cheney's wallet that was the motivation, not concerns about WMDs or revenge for 9/11. (If 9/11 is the motivation, invade Saudi or Pakistan. If WMD proliferation is the concern, invade Iran or North Korea before they can develop nuclear weapons!) However, Saddam Hussein was a genocidal dictator. He openly persecuted ethnic…
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So nuclear wasn’t mentioned. Got it.
How is nuclear not in the set of "all the forces and means at our disposal"?
Lavrov won't literally say "if the USA sends one more weapons shipment to Ukraine, we will drop a nuke on every Ukranian troop concentration we can find", because then they would look weak when it turns out they won't do it after all.
This is why all Russia's nuclear threats are veiled and implied. But make no mistake, they are there, and the message one can read between the lines is put there intentionally. It might be an empty threat or it isn't, but a threat it certainly is.
There are certainly concrete and non-ambiguous threats made behind the scenes, making explicit what actions each party is willing to commit to, but those don't end up in the media.
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It was a non aggression pact. They had one with Poland long before that. And another with Estonia and Latvia. Germany annexed Austria and both Germany and Italy marched into other places before Germany signed the non aggression pact with the Soviets and amassed troops at the polish border before anything happened. I don't really understand why the German/Soviet agreement was considered the start of world war II and n…
> It was a non aggression pact. ...which included an (at the time) secret protocol which divided Poland into German and Soviet 'spheres of influence' [1], and the Soviet Union promptly invaded Poland two weeks after Germany did (on the 17th September 1939) annexing the Eastern territories of Poland. In Europe at least, the start of WW2 is usually placed at the 1st of September 1939, when Germany invaded Poland (this…
>Germany and the Soviet Union also had pretty close economic ties right up until the German invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941
Point being: no-one comes out of WWII with an unblemished record.
>Because you invaded a country for no reason (like we did to Iraq), (except the one you invaded is at your borders and we put our guy at its head a couple years ago, and the one we invaded is half a planet from us), we will bring forth the apocalypse. Humans are crazy, seeing how we're speaking about a nuclear war now vs how people spoke about it in the 60s, it's like a mass psychosis, we don't care anymore, or maybe…
I too believe there is some sort of mass psychosis going on. It started before Covid, but seems to have been massively compounded by it. It has its roots in a struggle for power, both national and individual. I think that people feel that their personal power has been taken away and that they have been oppressed through inequality and subjugation to authoritarian political policies. This has had the dual effect of creating a sense of hopelessness for their futures and the idea that there isn’t a future to live for.
I think that for many individuals, the war against Russia is a proxy for their own struggles for personal power. They want to see authoritarianism lose because of their own struggle against it. If it doesn’t, what is there for them to live for? They’re willing to sacrifice all for it.
Tsk! Tsk! USA! --94 nukes targetted on brave little Ukraine. And yet you love them so much!
Ukraine was a part of Russia then. Just as a Pole I am not surprised a bunch of nukes was targetting my home country - we were a vassal state to Russia back then, so that was to be expected. The real problem was that Russia’s military plans didn’t exclude nuking Poland if it came to it. At least that’s what Kuklinski - our general from the period said.
(but further back, Ukraine was part of Russia for a longish period up until 1917)
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I really disagreed with the Iraq war at the time: it was obvious that it was Bush's revenge and Cheney's wallet that was the motivation, not concerns about WMDs or revenge for 9/11. (If 9/11 is the motivation, invade Saudi or Pakistan. If WMD proliferation is the concern, invade Iran or North Korea before they can develop nuclear weapons!) However, Saddam Hussein was a genocidal dictator. He openly persecuted ethnic…
Hussein was a contained threat. He was a mad dictator, but we knew what to expect and mitigate him. He kept the middle East in check. Once we deposed him, all hell broke loose in the Middle East (ISIS, et al). Sometimes the enemy you know is better than the enemy you don’t know.