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Nowhere is safe

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Re: Nowhere is safe

#121

Post by carlosjobim »

maxglute wrote: post #86
carlosjobim wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And making drones and drone parts for massive assaults on stationary targets in the US is not an insane course of action? For proxy wars, super powers won't bomb each other. But if one of them is attacked by weapons from another, then they will. > You don't need very specialized parts to do this. So making drones and drone parts do not require any highly advanced technology or manufacturing processes? Then why weren'…

> is not an insane course of action? No? Flat out arming proxies is literally the point of overt proxy warfare. Sometimes one tries to to be deniable and source other weapons, but other times it's just, enjoy quagmire, cry about it. It's like suggesting PRC going to start blowing up Lockheed plants if they ever lose anything to US munitions.

Yes, if mainland China is successfully invaded by a country being supplied with American military equipment and having their fixed infrastructure destroyed - like described in the article - you can be dead sure that they will try to destroy American military plants.

None of the super power countries will ever accept defeat in their homeland and being conquered without using all means possible to hinder it. That's why the USA has strong opinions on how the Ukraine uses long range weapons in the war with Russia.

Re: Nowhere is safe

#122

Post by jandrewrogers »

krisoft wrote: post #83

> what if the Army could cut and cover 100 meters of precast tunnel segments in a day If you have the precast tunnel segments to do that why wouldn’t you just plop them down on the ground? What benefit does cutting and covering provide? Also how would you protect your construction crew and construction supply chain as they are slowly plodding along 100m a day? Once built, could this cut and cover tunnel be disabled b…

That cover dirt materially adds to the resistance of the structure.

This is why even above-ground bunkers are almost always buried underneath a giant mound of dirt instead of being bare concrete. It is a cheap structural multiplier that greatly increases the amount of explosive required to damage the insides. It is also very cheap. A bunker buster is a very heavy and specialized munition which limits its scope of practicality.

There are entire civil engineering textbooks that focus exclusively on the types of scenario you are alluding to. It is a very mature discipline and almost all of it has been tested empirically.

I used to have a civil engineering textbook that was solely about the design of structures to resist the myriad effects of nuclear weapons. It was actually pretty damn interesting. Civil engineers have contemplated at length just about every structural scenario you can imagine.

Re: Nowhere is safe

#123

Post by YZF »

megous wrote: post #84
YZF wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

West bank and Gaza were never under full Palestinian control since 1967 both were under brutal occupation or blockade + contant Israeli meddling into internal affairs.

[flagged]

Re: Nowhere is safe

#124

Post by empath75 »

jmward01 wrote: post #110

"The U.S. needs a coherent protection and survivability strategy across the DoW and all sectors of our economy. This conversation needs to be not only about how we do it, but how we organize to do it, how we budget and pay for it and how we rapidly deploy it." This is all predicated on creating thousands of drones which is a state actor level threat. The first line of defense at this level should be diplomacy. Diggin…

> This is all predicated on creating thousands of drones which is a state actor level threat.

You can do a tremendous amount of damage with off the shelf consumer drones, and a minimal budget. Ukraine did an billions of dollars of damage to Russia's airfleet with a couple million dollars of drones hidden in trucks. Well in the range of cartels and terrorist groups.

> The first line of defense at this level should be diplomacy.

You are very much correct that the way to not get into this situation is to not start a war.

Re: Nowhere is safe

#125

Post by ctippett »

cladopa wrote: post #120
brianjlogan wrote: post #15

Hmm... Interestingly one does not look at the solutions to de-escalate conflict. Despite the proxy wars we've had a relatively peaceful world since WW1/WW2. Please humor me here, I'm not saying the world is horror free. The emphasis I would hope would also be for improved negotiation tactics, better resource sharing and goal alignment between groups of people. Why is it that we can dream up more conflict but not peac…

Are you American? Because if you are from the country that dominated the world since WWII it feels different than being from the rest of the world. Bretton Woods gave the Americans an "exorbitant privilege" that basically meant the US could live extracting wealth continuously from the rest of the world. Then later the petrodollar system was established. People needed oil, the US would protect the Arabs with its immen…

Except America went to war with Saddam Hussein a full decade before the move to the Euro and was largely a reaction to the invasion of Kuwait.

Re: Nowhere is safe

#127

Post by voidmain »

TheGRS wrote: post #71
brianjlogan wrote: post #15

Hmm... Interestingly one does not look at the solutions to de-escalate conflict. Despite the proxy wars we've had a relatively peaceful world since WW1/WW2. Please humor me here, I'm not saying the world is horror free. The emphasis I would hope would also be for improved negotiation tactics, better resource sharing and goal alignment between groups of people. Why is it that we can dream up more conflict but not peac…

Globalization offered the model for this. When the economy is globally linked there is more pressure for stability than conflict. I think that theory still holds. The fallout of the last 10 years is that the distribution of the wealth created in that system has not been even at all, and we are seeing huge wealth gaps. Jobs were redistributed to poorer nations and lost in a lot of wealthier markets. If nations can sol…

“Wilt thou call again thy peoples, wilt thou craze anew thy Kings? “Lo! my lightnings pass before thee, and their whistling servant brings, “Ere the drowsy street hath stirred— “Every masked and midnight word, “And the nations break their fast upon these things.

“So I make a jest of Wonder, and a mock of Time and Space. “The roofless Seas an hostel, and the Earth a market-place, “Where the anxious traders know “Each is surety for his foe, “And none may thrive without his fellows’ grace.

“Now this is all my subtlety and this is all my wit, “God give thee good enlightenment, My Master in the Pit. “But behold all Earth is laid “In the Peace which I have made, “And behold I wait on thee to trouble it!”

The Peace of Dives Kipling, 1903

https://www.kiplingsociety.co.uk/poem/poems_dives.htm

(As you know, there have been no major wars since then)

Re: Nowhere is safe

#128

Post by XorNot »

gmueckl wrote: post #58
gmuslera wrote: post #25

There is a layer over this that should be noticed. Nowhere is safe, because international order is a joke. You can conduct invasions for land, to exterminate population, to whatever Trump is doing, every instrument of international law was just useless, or even cooperative with the stronger offender. Which will be the ones taking advantage of this situation? China, Brazil? Everything is forgotten or accepted with the…

The same line of reasoning leads to constitutions and laws being jokes, too. The simple fact is that rules matter if and only if they are enforced effectively by a community. And power is the ability to direct and control that enforcement. The international order has declined in the past one or two decades because the UN security council was hamstrung by the enormously powerful veto rights held by Russia, China and t…

There has never been any ability for the UN to work the way people seem to think it should work.

Because who exactly, outside of those major powers, is going to enforce anything?

Re: Nowhere is safe

#129

Post by michaelt »

Centigonal wrote: post #73
TheGRS wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Globalization offered the model for this. When the economy is globally linked there is more pressure for stability than conflict. I think that theory still holds. The fallout of the last 10 years is that the distribution of the wealth created in that system has not been even at all, and we are seeing huge wealth gaps. Jobs were redistributed to poorer nations and lost in a lot of wealthier markets. If nations can sol…

I'll add to this by saying that globalization works as well as it does because the average person would suffer dramatically from a major war and the resulting breakdown of global supply chains. People who are wealthy enough to move anywhere in the world (including to a military-grade bunker somewhere remote like New Zealand) if their current domicile is negatively affected don't have as strong of an incentive to main…

> People who are wealthy enough to move anywhere in the world (including to a military-grade bunker somewhere remote like New Zealand) if their current domicile is negatively affected don't have as strong of an incentive to maintain peace.

Eh, if you’re a billionaire factory owner and landlord, the kind of war that would send you to a military grade bunker in New Zealand will be bad for your factories, properties, workers and tenants.

Also, a man can only go to the opera if the singers and orchestra aren’t busy scavenging for food or fighting mutant wolves. And the same is true of most other entertainment, fine dining, fashion and suchlike.

Sane wealthy people gain nothing from a world scale war, and in fact would face a big loss in quality of life.

Re: Nowhere is safe

#130

Post by zoklet-enjoyer »

throw310822 wrote: post #116
zoklet-enjoyer wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

@esseph I meant US vs Israel, not USA/Israel vs anyone else

Why in 2006?

Israel bombed an apartment building in Beirut and killed a kid from a message board I posted on at the time. Haven't liked Israel since. I was young and didn't really have an opinion on Israel until then.
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