191–200 of 339 posts
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Why not just play videos of previous demos as if it's news.
Because, just like the moon landings, people will deny they exist at some point.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why not just play videos of previous demos as if it's news.
Because, just like the moon landings, people will deny they exist at some point.
(Vad and Kujat in Germany, Milley in USA).
Who want's to fight? It doesn't seem to be the military.
> because it no longer makes economic sense to do so. The value of the oil and other resources would be less than the cost of maintaining control of the country That's always been the case. People used to just murder or enslave the populations they conquered. While you can get away with mass genocide and slavery internally, it has gotten far riskier to attempt such a thing against a neighboring state. It'll also dest…
> That's always been the case. People used to just murder or enslave the populations they conquered. I don't understand. Murdering or enslaving the population of the conquered country is a lot cheaper as a way to maintain control of it. So the fact that it's a lot harder politically to do those things now, than it was in the past, greatly increases the cost of maintaining control of a country. As the article says.
Depends on what you need the country for.
Nazis crushed the Czechoslovak state and executed any guerrillas caught fighting them, but they didn't mess with ordinary Czech workers, who were needed to keep the factories running. Mistreating qualified workers would decrease total industrial output and harm the German war effort.
> What is – quietly, because they haven’t tried to launch a major invasion recently – most militaries are probably similarly incapable of the basic tasks of industrial warfare? I once read an article that argued in the absence of war, it's impossible to tell if a doctrine or commander is good or not . Maybe you've got five officers up for promotion. One officer wants to give soldiers high-tech equipment, a heads-up d…
You can wargame and simulate. It's not perfect, but it can give very useful pointers, especially at the strategic level. The US Navy did extensive wargaming at the Naval War College in the inter-war years, from after WW1 to about 1933. The results were extraordinarily valuable in the Pacific when WW2 came about. The strategic issues the Japanese had can be seen as the consequence of not gaming full campaigns (as oppo…
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Deveraux explicitly endorses (1) in the article: > If anything, I think cultural values have lagged, resulting in countries launching counter-productive wars out of cultural inertia (because it’s ‘the doing thing’ or valued in the culture) long after such wars became maladaptive. Indeed, I’d argue that’s exactly what Russia is doing right now.
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Russia should have just not invaded Ukraine. I find it incredible that people try to justify that action on increasingly flimsy grounds.
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You posted a lecture in which Mearsheimer says Russia will never try to conquer Ukraine, because "Putin is much too smart for that" -- and ask us to accept him as an expert?
Mearsheimer saw it coming and got it basically right. He predicted "Putin will wreck Ukraine" and this is happening now.
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You can wargame and simulate. It's not perfect, but it can give very useful pointers, especially at the strategic level. The US Navy did extensive wargaming at the Naval War College in the inter-war years, from after WW1 to about 1933. The results were extraordinarily valuable in the Pacific when WW2 came about. The strategic issues the Japanese had can be seen as the consequence of not gaming full campaigns (as oppo…
The Youtube channel Drachinifel covers those war games, and the lessons the US learned (and didn't learn) from them in pretty extensive detail here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLMK9a-vDE5zEmzgruoWAy...
Fascinating free book that motivated these comments:
https://www.history.navy.mil/research/publications/publicati...
"Between 1919 and 1941, the U.S. Navy transformed itself from a powerful if unsophisticated force into the fleet that won a two-ocean war. The great puzzle of U.S. naval history is how that was accomplished. This book argues that war gaming at the U.S. Naval War College made an enormous, and perhaps decisive, contribution."
A whole string of vital lessons were learned during the gaming, which I can go into if you like (or you can read the book.)
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I wonder what it says about a country's intentions if they feel threatened enough to kill tens of thousands of innocent people over them shifting towards joining a defensive alliance.
> defensive alliance I almost spit out my coffee I laughed so hard. That's how the alliance markets itself, but that's not how everyone in the world, especially their potential adversaries, perceives it. And its potential adversaries have been saying so, publicly, for decades. As I'm sure you understand, all military alliances, even if they start out defensive in nature, can easily become offensive in nature. > if th…
Ukraine was no threat to Russia. By invading, Russia just proved to everyone else in the world that Russia is the threat.
Which interestingly leads to even more "Russophobia" because apparently having enough Russian speakers in your area is justification enough for Russia to come in and invade.
It's all ridiculous and shameful behavior on Russia's part. I feel bad for all those having to live under their current regime.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You posted a lecture in which Mearsheimer says Russia will never try to conquer Ukraine, because "Putin is much too smart for that" -- and ask us to accept him as an expert?
Not that I agree with the content of the lecture, but you have to read between the lines for that. "Putin is much too smart for that" is a stand in for "it would be very stupid for Putin to do this please don't" that looks like a compliment at surface level.
At a certain point it sure looks like Russian apologism.