131–140 of 310 posts
This isn't anything new. That's always been Japan's position on the "Northern Territories" as it's commonly called here. From the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan: https://www.mofa.go.jp/region/europe/russia/territory/overvi...
China and Taiwan would be a lot more interesting Out of the three major nuclear powers, I’d say only Russia would ever get sanctions for invading and occupying land. When was the last time US got sanctions?
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The planet will not be unlivable in 50 years. Larger areas of it will be, but most of the landmass will still be hospitable. There may be significant collapse of agricultural production, but again, that will affect the poorer countries mainly. I suppose some massive and unpredictable ecological collapse could conceivably happen by then, which would I guess have the potential of severely damaging food production, but…
I can’t find the source right now, but nuclear winter is projected to drop temperatures by 20 to 40°C . Not a single country in the world has the infrastructure or reserves to deal with that.
With so much of their military tied up in the boondoggle on their western front I guess now would be the perfect time to pounce on disputed territory. Knowing your enemy distracted.
And get a nuke in response?
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This would require military action by Moldova/Georgia/Ukraine because the territories you mention are ethnically different and do not want to be part of those countries to start with. Abkhazia fought a war in the early 90s to split from Georgia. South Ossetia also fought several wars to become independent. So both those territories might strive to become fully independent but will absolutely refuse to be re-absorbed…
This is inaccurate information, Russia fought both wars in Georgia, currently Abkhazians and Ossetians are Russian citizens (they grabbed Russian passports as soon as they become available) so they will go back to their motherland Russia, Georgia will re-absorb it's own historical territory. Looks like you are spreading Russian propaganda in bad faith.
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I too have taken Russia's actions as both precedent and the distraction needed to make my own move. I declared the basement of my house (finished, furnished) complete with bathroom, sink and microwave, to be my own sovereign domain. The consequences for violating that territory will be such as none in my household have ever in their history experienced.
> I declared the basement of my house (finished, furnished) complete with bathroom, sink and microwave, to be my own sovereign domain. How far along your sewer pipes does your domain extend?
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Thankfully, Article 9 is still in Japan's constitution, so it's very unlikely that any action would happen. Just rolling back to pre-2018 status quo, before Japan was seemingly willing to resolve the dispute at last.
Article 9 doesn’t really mean what it says, at least in practice. If Japan is attacked the state won’t just roll over and die - it’ll try to defend itself (hence the JSDF). You can read it as forbidding offensive war, but if Japan has claimed that those islands are part of Japan for a while then there’s enough of an argument for it being defensive war that no one will much care.
In the case that Russia actually collapses as a state ... which is not likely, but cannot be ruled out if they lose this war badly (lost wars are an enormous stress test for authoritarian regimes where the ruler gets all the blame, just look at the collapse of Tsarist Russia in 1917) ... a lot of territory would be up to grabs. Kaliningrad could transform to a puppet state of the EU, removing a serious gap in its ter…
>Kaliningrad could transform to a puppet state of the EU, removing a serious gap in its territorial contiguity. EU is not a country and to my knowledge none of the neighbors wants to join that territory. It's quite a poor region with Russian population... Germans effectively left in the late 40s'
Konigsberg (Kaliningrad) being a great example with Germans fleeing/being expelled and replaced by ethnic Russians wholesale.
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This would require military action by Moldova/Georgia/Ukraine because the territories you mention are ethnically different and do not want to be part of those countries to start with. Abkhazia fought a war in the early 90s to split from Georgia. South Ossetia also fought several wars to become independent. So both those territories might strive to become fully independent but will absolutely refuse to be re-absorbed…
Independent countries are one way to go. A mostly independent region within a federalized republic could be another.
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I think that the probability of Russia losing this war is negligible. They are using just a tiny fraction of all their personal and power.
They are already using 100% of the forces they originally lined up on the Ukraine border. This appears to be something like 75% of their total operational power, with obvious, serious problems, like relying on civilian GPS, being evidently wholly unprepared for the mud, the fact that there's no comms chain back so they rely on Ukrainian comms networks staying up, the lack of a supply chain, the fact that the domestic…
So their _own_ GPS-system Glonass, not the US GPS.
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I didn't realise it was such a big thing until I visited a festival in Hokkaido a few years back and there was a very large and busy stall soliciting signatures for a petition over the Kurils and with lots of photographs and maps. It seemed slightly delusional (but mostly harmless) to me at the time, but now - who knows?
It's pretty delusional even in Japan, nobody seriously expects Russia to return them. Early in the post-Soviet era there were some serious-ish proposals about Russia handing them back in exchange for massive financial aid, but ever since Putin took the reins it's been obvious that this is just not going to happen. I don't think even the Japanese government wants them back at this point, Hokkaido (the nearest big isla…