351–360 of 382 posts
How much useful combat skills can be taught in only a week? It seems like an extremely low estimate on the training needed to play a useful role in the military.
Who to obey and simple instructions.
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I personally can downplay them as a joke because it is a joke. The mostly likely path forward for anything like that would instead a certain oil rich province voting themselves independent and then asking the US for aid or to join. And, if it wasn't a joke, then that's even more of a reason to consider meeting your 2% NATO agreement instead of just phoning it in.
They were not joke and no one laughed at them either. They were posturing and trying to be threatening. They were coupled with start of actual trade war and intentional attempts to weaken Canada. Calling them jokes is just a lie, retroactively trying to make it better.
"We find that at present the human race is divided politically into one wise man, nine knaves, and ninety fools out of every hundred. That is, by an optimistic observer. The nine knaves assemble themselves under the banner of the most knavish among them, and become "politicians". The wise man stands out because he knows himself to be hopelessly outnumbered, and devotes himself to poetry, mathematics, or phylosophy; w…
24 000 reserves out of a population of 40 million seems like a rather small number. Norway has 40 000 in the Home Guard (Heimevernet) rapid reaction force of volunteer part time soldiers and a further 20 000 reserves. All from a population of about 5.5 million.
Canada, like Europe, has had an easy time of it by letting the US taxpayer pay for most of its defence.
TIL The US pays for the defence of Russia and Belarus and Serbia.
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A nuclear weapon does not do very much to a tank unless it is extremely close. You are better off with a guided munition.
A tank doesn't do much without a significant amount of combat support and logistics backing it up. It wouldn't be clear of the fallout before it ran out of fuel.
Or all the bursts in the territory earmarked for invasion were air bursts while some of NATO's air bases outside the invasion area get hit with ground bursts (to maximize destruction of the runways).
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Hilariously wrong take - first, Canada does not have a chance if the US wanted to take it. Second, the US does not want to own Canada for a bunch of reasons, starting with the demographic and economic mess that Canada finds itself in.
Then why did Trump threaten to annex Canada over and over again while declaring a trade war?
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I mean.... enough to make shots on target at about 300-400 yards with a sling, and enough to make shots on target at about 50 yards while standing up. I do competitive bullseye rifle, and I've done some basic marksmanship coaching. That's about what I'd expect for maybe 6-12 hours of total training on a rifle for someone with zero prior experience with guns. The basics of rifles is very, very simple. In competition w…
Shooting from comfortable sitting position at a range != modern combat.
If we're nitpicking, I'm talking about lying in the dirt in a big empty field, not sitting at a bench.
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Your definition of choice is not really what I'm talking about then. I'm discussing natural obligations that have make society work. Of course you always have a choice to not fulfill your obligation and society always has a choice to cast you out, like when you don't feed your 2 year old.
There are no natural obligations. Societies don't require them to function. Sum of correct choices people take for themselves is always a stronger foundation for society than any "natural" obligations. Obligations are narrative fiction. Choices, laws and enforcement is what's real.
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They were not joke and no one laughed at them either. They were posturing and trying to be threatening. They were coupled with start of actual trade war and intentional attempts to weaken Canada. Calling them jokes is just a lie, retroactively trying to make it better.
You really can't weaken Canada much more than it is.
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All that is assuming a limited nuclear exchange is possible, without further nuclear escalation. I find that pretty unbelievable. > One Soviet war plan that was made available to Western scholars in the 1990s anticipated this invasion of Northern Europe (with conventional forces) starting immediately after the Soviets make a large nuclear strike on Western Europe. Note that tanks crew are basically immune to nuclear…
The USSR would evacuate its cities right before the attack. The officers who drafted this war plan would have estimated a large probability that NATO would attack the USSR with nukes -- probably thousands of nukes. Then after waiting for the fallout to subside (e.g., waiting 3 weeks) the people leave their fallout shelters in the countryside and start rebuilding the cities. (Locations a few miles in diameter that wer…
That sounds like a dumb plan on its face, because the evacuations could not possibly be hidden and would totally give the whole "we're about to launch a first strike" plan away.
> Then after waiting for the fallout to subside (e.g., waiting 3 weeks) the people leave their fallout shelters in the countryside and start rebuilding the cities.
And this was a plan for the USSR to come out ahead? Their now-homeless population rebuilding their wrecked cities and the wrecked cities of Eastern and Western Europe?
Did they build enough fallout shelters in the countryside to accommodate their entire urban population for this plan? If they did, I'd like to see the proof.