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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

#191

Post by mhog_hn »

golergka wrote: post #136
photonbeam wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ukraine is a really cautionary tale to always have nuclear weapons and never give them up. Russia would never have tried this if Ukraine still had the capability to demolish a city with a button press Look at how cautious the rest of the world is in helping Ukraine.

Ukraine had some parts of the nuclear weapon system, but it didn’t have the system as a whole. There’s all kinds of very specialised plants and tech the country has to develop and maintain, and USSR made a point to distribute all industries (not only nuclear or even military) and supply chains among the republics. To be able to demolish a city in 2023, Ukraine would have not only not given the weapons away, but also…

North Korea managed.

Re: Maersk ship hit by missile in the Red Sea

#192

Post by ffgjgf1 »

wolverine876 wrote: post #152
Cupertino95014 wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with most of that, except for: > it's hard to see how war could have been averted by that point when you read the day-by-day activity leading up to the war, you see plenty of missed opportunities. Czar Nicholas, especially, could have NOT mobilized. Wilhelm could have told Austria NOT to declare on Serbia. And Wilhelm could have said to his generals, "You know what? We're not attacking Belgium" in which case…

> Of course they were weak people who'd allowed themselves to be put in that position, so in that sense they perceived no choices. What is the basis for saying it's weakness? The point is, it might have been politically impossible for them to do otherwise. As an extreme example, after Pearl Harbor could FDR have said, 'we're going to let Japan get away with it'? No, he'd be impeached and removed from office, and some…

Except nobody attacked or even threatened Russia and Germany so it’s not really comparable to Pearl Harbor at all.

There was really nothing or almost nothing to gain and everything to lose for all the aides involved in WW1. So I’d say it was stupidity rather than weakness. Relatively to its scale it was probably the most pointless war in human history.

The things it achieved, end of monarchy in Central/Eastern Europe and the eventual collapse of global European empires are not something the people who started it ever wanted.

Re: Maersk ship hit by missile in the Red Sea

#193

Post by ffgjgf1 »

bruce511 wrote: post #156
wolverine876 wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Of course they were weak people who'd allowed themselves to be put in that position, so in that sense they perceived no choices. What is the basis for saying it's weakness? The point is, it might have been politically impossible for them to do otherwise. As an extreme example, after Pearl Harbor could FDR have said, 'we're going to let Japan get away with it'? No, he'd be impeached and removed from office, and some…

Yes, j guess that's my point. Certainly individuals "could" have said or done anything. But politically, either personally or nationally, the outcomes were going in one direction. Russia has an alliance with Serbia. Not mobilising would have had significant international repercussions. Perhaps Germany could have removed the blank-cheque support for Austria. That may have de-escalated things, but may have left Germany…

> Russia has an alliance with Serbia. Not mobilising would have had significant international repercussions

Russia was in no state to fight a war. They lost a war to a second tier global power and not so long and barely survived a major revolution (which was hardly over). Negotiating with Austria/Germany and forcing Serbia to give up the people responsible for the assassination would’ve been the only reasonable choice.

Instead the tsar being the incompetent idiot (understatement that man was truly special…) that he was decided to sacrifice his entire family and million of Russians (not that he cared) and destroy the Russian state itself.

Same might be said about the kaiser Wilhelm, but: 1. Germany actually stood a chance 2. Wasn’t on the brink of a complete political/social collapse like Russia at the time

Re: Maersk ship hit by missile in the Red Sea

#194

Post by ffgjgf1 »

postsantum wrote: post #51
ianburrell wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The military response would look like air strikes either from carrier or Gulf bases. No commmandos required, drones have replaced them.

Yemen is backed by Iran and has some tech capable of striking US ships. US is probably eager to start another proxy war but not right now

The proxy was in Yemen has been going on for almost 10 years. US just doesn’t want to be a direct part of that mess and the Saudis don’t want to damage their rapprochement with Iran.

I’m not sure though if a Saudi-Iran-Russia axis would be in anyone’s interest. So maybe bombing the Houthis and trying to drag SA back into the war wouldn’t be the worst idea ever (if everyone just ignores the civilian suffering which is generally quite easy).

Re: Maersk ship hit by missile in the Red Sea

#195

Post by vidarh »

smegsicle wrote: post #150
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…

meme contraexample of course being the gulf of tonkin incident where us warning fire on vietnamese vessels in vietnamese waters being responded to with actual fire was taken as grounds for war, because war was desired

It's worse than that: The US intentionally provoked the incident with sabotage and hit and runs, and then "faked" the second incident (they had bad data, fired on nothing, and then used skewed intelligence reports to back up a false claim of an attack) which was used as the final excuse (the latter was long suspected, but admitted to by McNamara in 2003, and by NSA records declassified in 2005).

Re: Maersk ship hit by missile in the Red Sea

#196

Post by keefle »

I'm really confused as to why no where in the article do they mention the intent of attacking the ships. As if the houthis in yemen are attacking ships because they like it or just because they "hate developed societies".

Their declared reason is to put pressure on Israel to allow humanitarian aid to Gaza at once. They target ships that have Israeli links or heading to Israeli ports. It can be seen as a form of treating Israel the way it's treating Gaza (as in Gaza is blockaded, so the houthis are trying to create a sea blockade from their region of control)

Re: Maersk ship hit by missile in the Red Sea

#197

Post by keefle »

userbinator wrote: post #110

I wonder what cargo it was carrying, that got destroyed in the attack. It sounds like the ship itself is still intact, which is not too surprising given how absolutely huge they are.

It might be less about it carrying anything specific and more about who owns it or where its headed. This is part of an effort by the houthis to put pressure on Israel to allow humanitarian aid in (their declared reason at least)).

Most of the ships they target are either own fully or partially by Israeli companies, or are headed to Israeli ports

Re: Maersk ship hit by missile in the Red Sea

#198

Post by ffgjgf1 »

kube-system wrote: post #117
elromulous wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any country with the ability to completely erase entire countries (i.e. has an enormous stockpile of nuclear weapons) is a superpower.

There are many other powers that a nation might have other than nuclear ability, and having nukes does not actually grant any of those other powers. North Korea, for example, may have nuclear weapons, but they have little diplomatic power, little economic power, little ability to project power, etc. The word "superpower" is typically used to describe a country that dominates many different types of these powers.

As far as we know North Korea doesn’t have the capability to hit any target in the world (like US, UK, France and Russia) or enough nukes to blow up half of the world. So hardly comparable

Re: Maersk ship hit by missile in the Red Sea

#199

Post by ffgjgf1 »

mkii wrote: post #176
empath75 wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yes, that's why they remain a superpower. If you have the ability to make life on earth extremely unpleasant for all of humanity, that's super power status. Even just having nuclear weapons isn't enough for that- you need large numbers of fusion bombs -- which Russia has, and the US has, and no one else does.

I'm sorry, what? Do Russians not live on Earth or something?

They seems to have some highly suicidal tendencies and really don’t mind massive casualties these days (e.g. 5x more Russian died in Ukraine in just 2 years than during the entire 10 year long Soviet war in Afghanistan).

So one has to double whether they live in the same reality as most people in the west which makes them pretty scary and unpredictable

Re: Maersk ship hit by missile in the Red Sea

#200

Post by tommiegannert »

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…

I don't know war, but IIUC the game-theoretical response favored by biology is tit-for-tat: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tit_for_tat

So I'd expect militaries to asymptotically end up with something similar: we prefer cooperation, but will retaliate individual incidents.

... unless there's a political agenda for war, in which case all reason goes on vacation.

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