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Maersk ship hit by missile in the Red Sea

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Re: Maersk ship hit by missile in the Red Sea

#451

Post by pvaldes »

pydry wrote: post #210
Aeolun wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You mean, them fighting a country 3 times the size, with about 10 times the manpower to a standstill is to be considered a loss?

We were promised a victory many times thanks to the overwhelming power and sophistication western weapons repeatedly. Not "hold off Russia for 2-3 years, not fight to a standstill". Victory and a return to 1991 borders after first severing the land bridge to Crimea. It was a very specific prediction. To say that they havent lived up to their promise is an understatement given how abysmally they performed in the summe…

> Not "hold off Russia for 2-3 years

This things take time. If Churchill would have been rushed to "have a victory in two years in WWII or we'll quit", everybody in Europe would be a nazi today.

Re: Maersk ship hit by missile in the Red Sea

#452

Post by pydry »

tga_d wrote: post #359
pydry wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In this case the Houthis have been the ones not reacting for many years: https://www.hrw.org/news/2020/09/21/us-war-crimes-yemen-stop...

"Not reacting" how? There's been an ongoing war for almost a decade now.

When was the last time they attacked US shipping?

Re: Maersk ship hit by missile in the Red Sea

#453

Post by HDThoreaun »

pophenat wrote: post #440
petesergeant wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the Saudis do not participate In fact: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saudi-led_intervention_in_the_...

The parent comment is about the current operation in the Red Sea, which the Saudi do not participate in. The relevant link is: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Houthi_involvement_in_the_Is...

Those are the same conflict though. The saudis are fighting the Houthi’s in the Yemeni civil war. The same group that’s attacking the ships in the Red Sea.

Re: Maersk ship hit by missile in the Red Sea

#454

Post by keefle »

snird wrote: post #256
flandish wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> needed They need to leave Gaza alone and not blockade. At. All. How’s that boot taste?

What blockade? They have a border with Egypt. Why won't Egypt let them leave? There was never a blockade because Israel never surrounded Gaza.

Just a reminder that Gaza faces the Mediterranean Sea too, but Israel does not allow any ship to go there. It doesn't allow them to create a port. Israel is effectively controlling what gets in and out of Gaza. Israel does surround Gaza, and for the part it doesn't "surround it" (Egypt), it has agreements with the Egyptian government on what goes in and out.

Re: Maersk ship hit by missile in the Red Sea

#455

Post by pvaldes »

genman wrote: post #421
wolverine876 wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I read a lot of professional international relations material (but I'm not an expert in any way). IME what may differ the most between 'popular' takes on IR and professional ones is the response to incidents. Arguably the #1 priority of professional IR is to prevent wars (with occasional exceptions, such as Russia or Hamas recently, but even they want to control when, where, and how). Wars can and do happen whether y…

> Another mechanism that causes warfare is a lack of flexibility, a lack of options. That is very true but my conclusion is the opposite. US diplomacy did everything to not create options for Russia. Everything the US did deepened the impression that the invasion would be a walk in the part for Russia and US will do nothing. Russia had just one option left - to attack. If US had rapidly moved a division into Ukraine…

You look weak so my only option is to kill you, even when I don't want it?

Sorry, but trying to blame other for the Russian invasion is total bullshit

Re: Maersk ship hit by missile in the Red Sea

#456

Post by pvaldes »

throwaway290 wrote: post #209
pydry wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

This is like WWII. Hitler also seemed winning at first. He even took the capital. Eventually thanks to allies though Hitler was defeated. In the end USSR lost twice as many millions of its people so in terms of human cost the win was dubious. The difference is that right now Putler already lost 2x+ as many people as Zelensky, and could not manage to capture the capital. Which was promised how many times? I vaguely re…

More than 2x. The people that quit Russia should be included in this count. They are unavailable as soldiers, and having seen the video carnage from the other side and the meat wave tactics will not return voluntarily. For army purposes they are not much different than wounded soldiers lying in an hospital.

Ukraine lost millions of people also, but some of the people that quit Ukraine returned later to fight. At some point both countries will just pivot to start recruiting volunteers overseas.

Re: Maersk ship hit by missile in the Red Sea

#457

Post by baybal2 »

echelon wrote: post #105
jmyeet wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ukraine is a cautionary tale in that as much as military technology can change, that conflict is being decided by trenches, minefields, artillery, fixed fortifications, the inability of either side to cross a river and manpower attrition. At this point, it's basically a World War One conflict, mainly because neither side has air superiority. Russia's strategy now seems to be to wait out the Western will to provide ma…

The tactics are an artifact of the players attempting to avoid a broader-scale conflict. Moreover, direct conflict between two nuclear-armed states isn't something we've ever done before. Nobody wants to go down that road. If the US and/or NATO were directly involved, it wouldn't look anything like trench warfare, and we wouldn't be using 30+ year old military tech. We really want to avoid this, though.

[dead]

Re: Maersk ship hit by missile in the Red Sea

#458

Post by genman »

pvaldes wrote: post #455
genman wrote: post #421

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Another mechanism that causes warfare is a lack of flexibility, a lack of options. That is very true but my conclusion is the opposite. US diplomacy did everything to not create options for Russia. Everything the US did deepened the impression that the invasion would be a walk in the part for Russia and US will do nothing. Russia had just one option left - to attack. If US had rapidly moved a division into Ukraine…

You look weak so my only option is to kill you, even when I don't want it? Sorry, but trying to blame other for the Russian invasion is total bullshit

Victim blaming??? Why should I do that?

Look, the situation was not like don't go down this alley, it's dangerous, it was like you are surrounded by Russian crooks who want to kill you, only a miracle could save you.

It was clear in December 2021 that Russia WILL attack Ukraine - multiple countries started preparations based on this. Preparations that ended up being crucial for Ukrainian survival but US (or NATO) decisive action could have averted the war as it was also clear that Russia is not willing to fight with US or NATO - this could have been the saving miracle.

The Russian plan was a Blitzkrieg to overtake Ukraine in weeks and then threaten US and NATO with nuclear war when they plan to react.

This plan would have fallen apart when they should have attacked US or NATO forces to begin with.

Like I told, Russia had only one option left at the end of 2021 - attack Ukraine. There was no go home option on the table because they had talked themselves out of it. Now if option to attack Ukraine would have switched to attack US and NATO then most likely they would have reconsidered the go home option more seriously and chosen that instead.

Re: Maersk ship hit by missile in the Red Sea

#459

Post by Perceval »

pclmulqdq wrote: post #52
nomilk wrote: post #4

Something I'm unsure about is what does and doesn't trigger wars. Russian jets downed a US drone over the black sea in March 2023, I thought for sure there'd be a commensurate US military response. But there didn't appear to be one. Was it because no human was aboard the drone (so no response was justified), from fear or escalation, or something else? In any case, if a large cargo ship were sunk, would the US or othe…

It's time to read some Clausewitz. That book outlines the philosophy of how most western states think about war. The short version I would say is that war is a tool of politics, so if there is no political goal, there will be no war, regardless of how bad the supposed Causus Belli is. Shooting down a drone usually doesn't do it partly because of the political implications: it would be deeply unpopular to put "boots o…

If you spend time with officers in the U.S. military, fewer than you might expect have been assigned Clausewitz in their professional military education or read it on their own (even just the first chapter). Many just know the soundbite, "war is an extension of politics with other means."

> if there is no political goal, there will be no war

In Clausewitz, this is more of a normative statement than a rule about war in reality. One of the things he's trying to caution against is the escalatory dynamic that he views as inherent to purely military logic – that war (in a vacuum, so to speak) will always increase in intensity. But in reality, certain factors can and should ameliorate this inexorable escalation – political goals, "friction," and the "fog of war" are examples. War without the control of a political goal will be ceaselessly increasing destruction to the point of purposelessness. This is one reason why we insist on civilian control of the military, because we do not wish for an independent general staff to be prosecuting a war according solely to war's inner logic.

Re: Maersk ship hit by missile in the Red Sea

#460

Post by Perceval »

drewcoo wrote: post #175
pclmulqdq wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's time to read some Clausewitz. That book outlines the philosophy of how most western states think about war. The short version I would say is that war is a tool of politics, so if there is no political goal, there will be no war, regardless of how bad the supposed Causus Belli is. Shooting down a drone usually doesn't do it partly because of the political implications: it would be deeply unpopular to put "boots o…

The exact thing I was thinking in response to the GP. Worth noting is that Clausewitz lived in a world where wars were events that were declared between states. Today a major difference is insurgency/counterinsurgency. And our state likes to wage wars without formal declaration. Not to mention its wars against abstract concepts instead of foreign states.

> Clausewitz lived in a world where wars were events that were declared between states

Sort of. Born 1780, died 1831, the main wars in his life were the Napoleonic Wars.

But he would not have been unfamiliar with the Wars of Religion that convulsed Europe for 150 years following Luther's Protestant Reformation and culminated in the Peace of Westphalia. These we not regular state-on-state wars, but were a series of internationalized civil wars, caused by Protestant and Catholic low-level violence, coups, usurpations, overthrows, assassinations, and other civil conflicts. These low-level conflicts caused by non-state actors who were part of a transnational religious/ideological movement were not unlike the religious/ideological insurgencies we see today.

Clausewitz would also have seen wars of colonization/imperialism and decolonization in the New World. These were also wars of states against irregular non-state combatants. Especially after the Napoleonic Wars, when the Concert of Europe was keeping stability in Europe, the main form of warfare Clausewitz would have been observing would have been wars of colonization/decolonization.

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