Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The impact of the ‘long peace’ on modern military capabilities

acoup.blog

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

221–230 of 339 posts

Re: The impact of the ‘long peace’ on modern military capabilities

#221

Post by marianatom »

cyberax wrote: post #142
marianatom wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are so many wrongs with your statements that I don't know where to start. I'll just tackle one of them. "build a high speed rail network", implying that US is failing there. China is suffering from a $1 TRILLION debt for its rails https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Markets/China-debt-crunch/C... , while ridership collapses https://japan-forward.com/weak-demand-for-chinas-high-speed-... . Cities in China are suffe…

The thing is, debts are just numbers on paper at the end of the day. You can erase them, but the infrastructure will remain. Erasing debts wipes out (most) savings and hurts rich people. So it's not something that can be done lightly, but it is an option. Also, Chinese HSR ridership is back up after COVID restrictions were lifted.

> You can erase them

that's not how economics works. if that's the case, you would not see the Chinese governments (federal and local) doing desperate things to collect more revenues like:

- China considers measures to encourage re-employment of retirees https://hrmasia.com/china-considers-measures-to-encourage-re...

- issuing massive traffic/parking tickets a year after, to the tune of tens of thousands of dollars, to commercial and normal drivers

- banks preventing normal withdrawals of money. often, deceased's children can't withdraw their parents savings, even with all the official documentations

- government entities delaying several months of owed salaries to its employees https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2023/5/11/chinas-cash-stra...

Re: The impact of the ‘long peace’ on modern military capabilities

#222

Post by anonymouskimmer »

pydry wrote: post #213
dotnet00 wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 Offensive alliance. Libya. Serbia. Afghanistan - all offensive operations.

The major government organization in Afghanistan was actively providing security, aid and comfort to those who organized the attack on the US.

Libya was in order to implement United Nations Security Council Resolution 1973, which Russia or China could have vetoed had they wished.

Yugoslavia (Serbia) stands.

Re: The impact of the ‘long peace’ on modern military capabilities

#223

Post by dralley »

pydry wrote: post #217
ProjectArcturis wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here he is in February 2022 again saying they won't invade: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Nbj1AR_aAcE&t=4731s At a certain point it sure looks like Russian apologism.

"That would probably involve the invasion of the eastern part of the country" - direct quote from your YouTube video. Mearshimer's claim to fame stems from accurately predicting this invasion would happen. He did also say that Putin wouldnt try to occupy Ukraine (presumably beyond the eastern part/crimea) but would instead aim to wreck it. That part seems to be coming true as we speak. The only way to "disprove" Mear…

He tried to invade and occupy the whole fucking country. Not just "the eastern part". He went for Kherson, he went for Odesa, he went for Kyiv. The fact that he failed doesn't diminish the fact that he tried.

JM was just wrong. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FVmmASrAL-Q&t=27m27s

Putin gave his speech about wanting to be Peter the Great, how Ukrainians are just Russians who've been convinced otherwise by the evil West, and Russian state media went around praising Putin for "solving the Ukrainian question" (yikes, and yes that's a quote).

None of that fits into JM's worldview.

No geopolitical doctrine should take for granted that all geopolitical actors are rational, especially dictators. This ought to have been obvious after WWII.

Re: The impact of the ‘long peace’ on modern military capabilities

#224

Post by llamaLord »

epicureanideal wrote: post #111
bradrn wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

[flagged]

For context for anyone reading this, Mearsheimer is one of the most hardcore anti-nato theorist's in the International Relationship world.

He IS credible, don't get me wrong. But he does also represent the extreme end of the "Realist" school of thought so definitely isn't what you'd call "balanced".

Just make sure you balance his theories out with some other options, don't take him as gospel.

Re: The impact of the ‘long peace’ on modern military capabilities

#225

Post by Benjammer »

epicureanideal wrote: post #123
Benjammer wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"If you would just do what I told you, you wouldn't get hit!" Big yikes here...

That's not at all what I said. What do you think about the video I linked? Also, analogies to dysfunctional interpersonal relationships don't represent the dynamics of many-party international competition very well.

"We must respond to defensive fortifications that put missile batteries up outside our sovereign borders with extremely violent, extremely aggressive, expansionary excursions to conquer territory and move our border CLOSER to said missiles"

The logic makes zero sense, I'm sorry. It's still a "well, I wouldn't have to do X if you didn't do Y" mentality that completely and utterly shirks any sense of responsibility for one's or one's country's own actions. It's hogwash doublespeak used by BOTH abusers in messy interpersonal relationships, AND by international politicians playing realpolitik.

Re: The impact of the ‘long peace’ on modern military capabilities

#226

Post by pydry »

anonymouskimmer wrote: post #222
pydry wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>defensive alliance Offensive alliance. Libya. Serbia. Afghanistan - all offensive operations.

The major government organization in Afghanistan was actively providing security, aid and comfort to those who organized the attack on the US. Libya was in order to implement United Nations Security Council Resolution 1973, which Russia or China could have vetoed had they wished. Yugoslavia (Serbia) stands.

The Taliban offered to hand over bin Laden if the US offered evidence of his culpability. It was never a threat to NATO. NATO was not defending itself from Afghanistan.

Libya was supposed to be a UN sanctioned humanitarian op. It got silently upgraded to regime change, which is why Putin publicly expressed regret at not vetoing it.

Libya was never a threat to NATO. NATO was not defending itself from Libya.

Serbia was never a threat to NATO. NATO was not defending itself from... well, not to put too fine a point on it but... Russia's closest ally in Europe.

It is not a purely defensive alliance in any sense of the word except an Orwellian one. All of its military operations have been exclusively offensive in nature.

Re: The impact of the ‘long peace’ on modern military capabilities

#227

Post by dotnet00 »

eropple wrote: post #183
dotnet00 wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only ones pretending that it isn't a defensive alliance are the ones who have some territorial claim they're hoping to take military action against. For whom it is very inconvenient that there's this group of countries who would very much rather they didn't. Everyone else sees very clearly that an alliance which only invokes when attacked and requires the resolution of territorial disputes prior to gaining member…

This is a Good Post, and honestly your last point includes one of the things that I (as an American, and generally critical of our own foreign adventurism) am most astonished by. We have culturally never expected much of NATO to stand up to Russia; the saber-rattling felt like it was frequently working against Europe. That Russia could push too far and stiffen European resolve so sharply seemed off the table. The cyn…

I don't really think you're being cynical for thinking that. The entire "war has returned to Europe" narrative from the start of the war kind of confirms that as part of the reason for the response.

I disagree that it was due to racism though (in the sense that they're explicitly thinking that "brown people's lives are less valuable"), it's simply that Europe naturally cares more about problems closer to home and the US has the context of its relationship with Russia.

On top of that, both of them have a lot of historical "trauma" from the part of WW2 which was fought by big powers in Europe. I think there would be a similar reaction from Japan, South Korea, and America in response to an invasion of Taiwan by China due to their own history on that front.

Re: The impact of the ‘long peace’ on modern military capabilities

#228

Post by llamaLord »

epicureanideal wrote: post #150
dotnet00 wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Correlation does not imply causation. Of course countries that are already involved in a joint-forces defensive military alliance are going to be more likely to enter into other external wars together. That doesn't mean the defensive alliance is somehow a contributing factor to that external war.

Countries in an existing defensive alliance are likely using similar gear, have similar doctrine, have similar values, and have alignment strategic interests.

The defensive alliance exists as an outcome of these alignments, as does the cooperation on the external war. The alliance doesn't cause the external war.

Australia is not part of NATO, yet it's followed America into basically every war it's had in the last 60 years because of these preexisting alignments, not because of NATO.

Re: The impact of the ‘long peace’ on modern military capabilities

#229

Post by jacobr1 »

tomxor wrote: post #87
munificent wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or, in software engineering terms, it's impossible to optimize code that you can't profile.

I think "can't profile" is probably the most accurate in summary. Although you can kinda benchmark, i.e training exercises, that allow you to test people physically and technically, but it's a really poor analogy, because it's not feasible to test people emotionally and mentally to the stresses of a real life scenario without having a real life scenario - its possible to simulate, but not ethical, it would be far too…

The thing about benchmarking and profiling is that you need a target scenario. Even if you can simulate a generic representation of a given workload, you might have different workload, or your specific environment might differ from the norm. One could imagine an armed force that actually was well attuned to fight a near-peer power in a border conflict, but wasn't well setup to fight battle a continent away against guerrilla forces. This is a peril all benchmarking has, even when correct, it is still limited to its own assumptions and context.

Re: The impact of the ‘long peace’ on modern military capabilities

#230

Post by dralley »

adzm wrote: post #201
alejohausner wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the point that Robert Kennedy Jr has been making, very eloquently. Regardless of how heinous Putin may be, how nasty the Russian invasion has been, it was not unprovoked. The USA put missiles in Turkey in 1961, and the Soviets responded by puting missiles in Cuba. The Soviets felt threatened by missiles that could hit Moscow in 30 minutes, and they responded in kind. What did the USA do? They blockaded Cuba,…

> Their young men are being sacrificed to an American plan to wear down the Russian army. Their young men are being sacrificed to evict a foreign army that has invaded their soil. This has the side effect of wearing down the Russian army, so of course others are going to help who want that effect, too. But that is not why they are sacrificing their lives.

Even "being sacrificed" is a bs characterization.
Post reply on HN