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Declassified US nuclear targets – interactive map

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Re: Declassified US nuclear targets – interactive map

#131

Post by areyousure »

cpursley wrote: post #77
_visgean wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who are you quoting? > we put our guy at its head a couple years ago https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_Ukrainian_presidential_el... this is denying that ukraine has agency of its own. Nobody put a guy anywhere. He was elected. > we will bring forth the apocalypse. The only country that is threating 1st strike is Russia.

I'll send you (or anyone) a $1,000 in Bitcoin if you can provide a source where Putin threatened a 1st nuclear strike. Drive-by MSN headlines don't count.

In case anyone is curious, the following are translated quotations that people have interpreted as nuclear threats:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-02-24/full-tran...

> 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 our people, they must know that Russia will respond immediately, and the consequences will be such as you have never seen in your entire history. No matter how the events unfold, we are ready. All the necessary decisions in this regard have been taken. I hope that my words will be heard.

http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/69390

> They have even resorted to the nuclear blackmail. I am referring not only to the Western-encouraged shelling of the Zaporozhye Nuclear Power Plant, which poses a threat of a nuclear disaster, but also to the statements made by some high-ranking representatives of the leading NATO countries on the possibility and admissibility of using weapons of mass destruction – nuclear weapons – against Russia.

> I would like to remind those who make such statements regarding Russia that our country has different types of weapons as well, and some of them are more modern than the weapons NATO countries have. In the event of a threat to the territorial integrity of our country and to defend Russia and our people, we will certainly make use of all weapon systems available to us. This is not a bluff.

http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/transcripts/69465

> The United States is the only country in the world that has used nuclear weapons twice, destroying the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan. And they created a precedent.

Re: Declassified US nuclear targets – interactive map

#132

Post by egberts1 »

marvin wrote: post #126
meowfly wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is nuclear not in the set of "all the forces and means at our disposal"?

This discussion, in all forums everywhere, is dominated by people who fail to understand that ambiguity and plausible deniability is a cornerstone of high-stakes negotiations. 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 w…

And we all do plenty of behind-the-scene Sabre-Rattling as well as High-Diplomacy.

Such as “escorting” warplanes away from borders or being caught spying on sensitive military installations/procedures.

No nuke, so far.

Re: Declassified US nuclear targets – interactive map

#135

Post by cpursley »

_visgean wrote: post #92
cpursley wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He's basically suggesting the Minsk agreements are followed and what a lot of other Western geopolitical experts are saying. What is your suggestion on how to handle the millions of ethnic Russians in eastern Ukranine? Ethnically cleanse them all?

My suggestion? Let them live where they are.

Under which conditions?

Re: Declassified US nuclear targets – interactive map

#136

Post by foverzar »

s1k3 wrote: post #114
einpoklum wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So a dictator can invade any country he wants Let me guess: You live in the US. For most people in the world, the situation is that the US, and possibly some neighboring regional power, can invade whenever they want; and at best we can offer limited initial resistance and guerilla/terrorist attack once they've occupied. But "with food comes appetite": The US government has normalized, among its citizens, the presum…

Let me attack your position by attacking you personally. That was a weak argument but would have been considerably stronger had you just avoided the attack on the poster.

What part of it did you identify as a personal attack?

Calling out the US-centered infobubble perception is not a personal attack, just a reminder your perspective might not be a universal one.

Re: Declassified US nuclear targets – interactive map

#137

Post by foverzar »

risyachka wrote: post #100
throwaway0x7E6 wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the lie that the US was heavily involved in the coup?

There was no coup my friend. You weren't there and don't know how it all went but you feel free to call it a coup lol. I was there, my college friends were. And we all went because there of the shit that was going on. But it is too simple for conspirators so let's add some ruski propaganda and through in some coups and western puppeteers.

People call it a "revolution" though, don't they?

Is there really a substantial semantical difference, or is it purely a rhetorical way of using nicer words?

Re: Declassified US nuclear targets – interactive map

#138

Post by darthrupert »

hackerlight wrote: post #25
darthrupert wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

... completely valid?

It's not a great analogy. At the level of states, you have anarchy. This is the key insight of realism. There is no authority that places guardrails on how each state treats each other. So each state needs to arm themselves. At the level of people, you do not have anarchy. You have police which acts as the hegemon.

I mean... on an individual level it's obviously true: if there's a determined active shooter, there's probably not much more you can do than try to shoot them first.

On society level it's indeed a bit more complicated matter. Every additional gun in the society is potentially one more gun in the hands of a bad person.

Re: Declassified US nuclear targets – interactive map

#139

Post by notthatmccarthy »

stareatgoats wrote: post #68
notthatmccarthy wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is the eternal paradox of being anti-war: if you are advocating peace in a polarized situation you are essentially aiding and abetting the enemy. There is no such paradox. True patriots simply do not want their beloved countries to bloody their hands with the murder of foreign people. Not to mention with the total annihilation of the entire human race. Of course those who are opposed to the war should protest.…

Good thing you added that thing about snark to your previous comment because the irony was not altogether evident. I totally agree, people should protest. But they don't, exactly because of the age-old paradox mentioned, that you so emphatically deny. You underestimate the societal, psychological mechanisms in place, you underestimate the power of propaganda given to the military, even in democratic countries when "n…

I think I am. If you see what's happening in Iran right now, it's clear that people don't always coldly calculate their chances to win and there is a threshold beyond which common decency and ambient morality will boil over to rage that overwhelms the instinct of self-preservation.

In the case of nuclear weapons on the other hand, it is about self-preservation because the blood-thirstiness and the willingness to take risks of the people who control nuclear weapons can doom us all to non-existence. Or, even worse, to a nightmare existence were we are worse than beasts in a world destroyed and incapable of sustaining life.

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