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Why Vladimir Putin and his entourage want war

economist.com

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Re: Why Vladimir Putin and his entourage want war

#211

Post by archagon »

AutumnCurtain wrote: post #72
stefan_ wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This seems to be a popular edgy opinion but I think it's useful to occasionally remember who has thousands of soldiers massed on the border.

HackerNews has a weirdly pro-Russia bent, at least in these comment sections. People talking about how NATO "shouldn't expand" (why not, if the nations involved want to join a voluntary pact?) and how Crimea is and has been Russian, even though the Russians invaded and conquered it in the past decade... Really odd. Not just making arguments against US involvement but flat out repeating false, pro-Russian propaganda.

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Re: Why Vladimir Putin and his entourage want war

#212

Post by sudosysgen »

ericb wrote: post #183
sudosysgen wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't overestimate the cost. If the units weren't there, they'd be doing large scale exercises and maneuvers, which can be even more costly. From the perspective of the Russian army, stationing a medium-sized force within their own borders is not going to be that expensive. Also, the corresponding increase in gas prices is going to counteract that perhaps even completely.

The average US town has 6k people, so this is like relocating the population of 25 US towns to new, temporary housing. Then you have to set up logistics to provide continual daily food and fuel to the new location for all those people. Then you have to relocate tanks which get about a mile per gallon of fuel, as well as people carriers, weapons, aircraft, missiles, ammo, field hospitals, blood and medical supplies, e…

Russia does multiple large scale exercises an maneuvers each year.

Russia also has a lot of basing nearby. For them, they're really only moving the units a few dozen kilometers from already established bases.

So for example, you mentioned a gallon per mile for a tank, which is indeed a realistic fuel consumption. The tanks are shipped by rail to nearby bases which is very shipped, and they then have maybe 200km to cover. 120 miles for 700 tanks is 84kGal of fuel, which is 420,000$ in fuel - that is, chump change.

Aircraft don't even need to be relocated. They're already there.

The rest, sure, but it's not as expensive as you'd think.

Re: Why Vladimir Putin and his entourage want war

#213

Post by sudosysgen »

shagmin wrote: post #161
sudosysgen wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't overestimate the cost. If the units weren't there, they'd be doing large scale exercises and maneuvers, which can be even more costly. From the perspective of the Russian army, stationing a medium-sized force within their own borders is not going to be that expensive. Also, the corresponding increase in gas prices is going to counteract that perhaps even completely.

Not sure I follow why they would necessarily be doing large scale exercises and maneuvers if they weren't deployed to the Ukrainian border. Also from what I understand a lot of these Russian troops are actually in Belarus as well.

You need to keep your troops occupied to keep readiness and to maintain training. You absolutely have to do large scale exercises and maneuvers multiple times a year. These deployments take the place of already-planned exercises, which actually were to take place in Belarus also.

Re: Why Vladimir Putin and his entourage want war

#214

Post by sudosysgen »

whythre wrote: post #163
sudosysgen wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If NATO was nothing but a self defense pact, I'd tend to agree, but then if that was the case no one in NATO would want to expand too much. NATO is not just a self defence organisation. It's an offensive tool. NATO has gone into more offensive missions (at least 3) than truly defensive missions (literally zero - I don't count the invasion and occupation of Afghanistan as a defensive act). For many members of NATO, th…

>The truth is, NATO expanding is a great way for the West to force it's enemies to increase their defense spending and to lower the cost of offensive military interventions. As a westerner, that does sound pretty great- especially in the face of hostility from a glorified KGB thug like Putin.

Sure. But when you're building up an offensive stance you can only expect hostility back. And it helps strongmen get into power, too.

Re: Why Vladimir Putin and his entourage want war

#215

Post by sudosysgen »

Koshkin wrote: post #207
sudosysgen wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If NATO was nothing but a self defense pact, I'd tend to agree, but then if that was the case no one in NATO would want to expand too much. NATO is not just a self defence organisation. It's an offensive tool. NATO has gone into more offensive missions (at least 3) than truly defensive missions (literally zero - I don't count the invasion and occupation of Afghanistan as a defensive act). For many members of NATO, th…

It is well-known that offense is the best form of defense.

No post body was provided.

Re: Why Vladimir Putin and his entourage want war

#217

Post by mchan »

nextstep wrote: post #178

53 points from 2 hours ago but already off the front page This piece is clearly war mongering propaganda, but the discussion in the comments here is somewhat decent. It’s too bad HN immediately kills any concrete discussion about world events like this.

The comments and discussion was actually what I was interested in reading when I posted this

Re: Why Vladimir Putin and his entourage want war

#218

Post by foogazi »

brabel wrote: post #195
AutumnCurtain wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HackerNews has a weirdly pro-Russia bent, at least in these comment sections. People talking about how NATO "shouldn't expand" (why not, if the nations involved want to join a voluntary pact?) and how Crimea is and has been Russian, even though the Russians invaded and conquered it in the past decade... Really odd. Not just making arguments against US involvement but flat out repeating false, pro-Russian propaganda.

> People talking about how NATO "shouldn't expand" (why not, if the nations involved want to join a voluntary pact?) Ok, I have no "pro-Russia" bent at all, I think they are to blame in this whole story as their concerns could've been addressed by diplomacy like most European leaders have been trying to say... but do you really not know why Russia doesn't want NATO to expand to Ukraine and how it might think war is a…

GP: >> People talking about how NATO "shouldn't expand" (why not, if the nations involved want to join a voluntary pact?)

You: > but do you really not know why Russia doesn't want NATO to expand to Ukraine

Why would Ukraine want to align with NATO instead of the country that just invaded it?

> While I may not agree with the Russians, I can absolutely understand why they think war is justifiable

Why?

> it might be prudent of NATO to avoid expanding or insinuating it might do so, to avoid making things even worse than they've already been

Sounds like appeasement to me

> when it all could've been avoided by a mostly symbolic back off as the Russians demand (symbolic because there was very little hope for Ukraine to actually join NATO in the near future, to my knowledge).

The why go to war over something symbolic?

Re: Why Vladimir Putin and his entourage want war

#219

Post by zozbot234 »

pbronez wrote: post #84
throw0101a wrote: post #13

See also Anne Applebaum: > Putin is preparing to invade Ukraine again—or pretending he will invade Ukraine again—for the same reason. He wants to destabilize Ukraine, frighten Ukraine. He wants Ukrainian democracy to fail. He wants the Ukrainian economy to collapse. He wants foreign investors to flee. He wants his neighbors—in Belarus, Kazakhstan, even Poland and Hungary—to doubt whether democracy will ever be viable…

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> Democracy forever. Human rights forever. Freedom of speech, commerce, association and religion forever.

Are you familiar with the Economist? They were saying this stuff in 1843, way before it became popular. They're the real deal!

Re: Why Vladimir Putin and his entourage want war

#220

Post by HWR_14 »

gfosco wrote: post #203
HWR_14 wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depending on what X and Y are, we condemn different actors. Agitating not really a word I would use for any pairing. "Keep me from taking your purse" and "shoot you" we condemn B as a mugger. "Leave me and meet someone new" and "shoot both of you" and we condemn B as a domestic abuser and potential murderer. "Return a library book late" and "charge you $0.10 a day as a fine" and we condemn A lightly. I would contend…

Let's make your examples actually match the structure I set up. You've created some weird analogies that don't relate. A: I want to take your purse. B: If you take my purse, I will kill you. If A continues to try and take the purse, A is obviously the agitator. A: I want to leave you. B: If you leave, I will kill you. We agree B is a monster here, and this is a police matter, not global politics. Maybe we can create…

You flipped my first example. I said A said "I don't want to give you my purse" B says "give me your purse or I will shoot you".

And I like how the only example you can think of where the word "agitator" flows well is when someone is trying to stop two consenting adults from having sex. Because clearly the person B on your last example is an asshole who is wrong, and you're using "agitator" to just mean "willing to ignore overt threats"

I think your own weak example highlights how you know you're wrong on this issue.

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