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Murgos posted:Exactly, that's very good example! The point is that things like My Lai are not directly ordered by the U.S. military establishment. They instead follow as the result of various policies and command structures. My Lai gained significance because it was symbolic of wider US policy, and of tendencies the public were already to some degree aware of. From a policy viewpoint it also demonstrated a failure of the hearts and minds policy. You are demanding way too much to ask for an individual incident to lead to immediate political change. Modern wars are much too big for individual My Lai style incidents to be shocking. Unless they are part of systematic policy they can be easily dismissed by regime supporters as some bad apples. Even in democracies that takes time to percolate into the awareness of the public. And it could be years before the arrival of elections that give people an opportunity to have their say. And when that election happens, that is going to be one of many many factors that decide things. You need an unreachable combination of factors. A small war whose stakes are not survival. But which becomes the signature policy of a government. Atrocities that are deliberate government policy and well known in the mass media, but without any propaganda apparatus to justify it. A state that is engaging in this sort of stuff, and yet is insecure enough to be toppled by popular action. A lack of international intervention to make that the cause of the capitulation. And so on.
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Sep 9, 2015 20:58
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StashAugustine posted:Arguably Vietnam and some of the other colonial wars? I've long thought that domestic protests have been way, way overstated in their role ending the war. Large scale protests really fell off after 1970 or so as the draft went away and Kent State/My Lai faded into the background, and while the US was in full scale "Vietnamization" there wasn't any serious movement towards peace for a couple of years after that. The real factors that drove the peace in my mind are the economic downturn of the early 70s coupled with the change in relationship with China.
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Sep 9, 2015 21:05
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Or to quote Vyacheslav Plehve, Russian interior minister at the outbreak of the Russo-Japanese war: "To avert a revolution, we need a small victorious war."
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Sep 9, 2015 21:09
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If a single individual incident were sufficient to turn public opinion and lead the war to a shameful end, Abu Ghraib would have killed the invasion of Iraq the year it began. Instead, most of the soldiers involved received minor punishment (like reduction in rank and docking of pay) and the ones who actually got prison time mostly got released within a year or less. The war dragged on for 8 years, long after public opinion had turned against it.
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Sep 9, 2015 21:44
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Murgos posted:Has there been a case where a government exercised a military act that was so politically unfavorable it caused the capitulation of said government and/or the end of the war? Not an unfavorable war or a major lost battle, history is rife with political maneuvering around those, but one act. The Invasion of Italy during World War 2 was the last straw for Italy as an Axis power? bewbies posted:I've long thought that domestic protests have been way, way overstated in their role ending the war. Large scale protests really fell off after 1970 or so as the draft went away and Kent State/My Lai faded into the background, and while the US was in full scale "Vietnamization" there wasn't any serious movement towards peace for a couple of years after that. The real factors that drove the peace in my mind are the economic downturn of the early 70s coupled with the change in relationship with China. This is my read of it too. I've always had a interest in the era (hence the avatar) and Nixon managed his domestic situation to outflank the peace protesters. A consequence of being checked by Nixon saw the protest movement taken over by ideologues and extremists who didn't have the broad appeal the movement formerly had. I know Nixon saw himself like Charles De Gaulle in Algeria. The war was a loser, clearly, so some way had to be found for France to withdraw without it looking like it was withdrawing.
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Sep 9, 2015 22:41
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Murgos posted:I haven't fully formed the thought yet but it seems like it says something about the politics of war if politically motivated atrocities (unrestricted submarine warfare in WWI for example) or even actions with no political goal (My Lai) aren't held too strongly against the government prosecuting the war by it's populace. I feel like the problem with the line of thought you're going down is that politics, unlike war, is usually not an all-or-nothing affair. You're asking for an example of a single military act that bought down a government, but on the other hand, how many single political acts can you think of that led directly to a revolution? Or, hell, how many single acts, period, caused major changes of government? What you're commenting on seems less a comment on the nature of war than it is on the nature of politics.
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Sep 10, 2015 00:13
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Nebakenezzer posted:
It's not really often you can say that Matt Groening low balls the scuminess of a real life person in his animated shows, but holy poo poo did Futurama undersell Nixon. 
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Sep 10, 2015 02:31
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Nixon was a really interesting person. He did some good things, but he just couldn't cover up his mistakes nearly as well as other presidents. Also he just couldn't handle the media, and it probably broke him inside. He tried to solve Vietnam with brute force, but when that didn't work, he at least had the sense to see that what he was doing wasn't working and to step back from it all.
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Sep 10, 2015 04:57
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So, who's a bigger sociopath, LBJ or Nixon?
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Sep 10, 2015 05:00
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Sep 10, 2015 05:02
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JcDent posted:So, who's a bigger sociopath, LBJ or Nixon? Nixon was no sociopath; clinically paranoid, yes. Often when people opposed his policies he assumed that really they opposed them because they opposed Nixon. Like personally resented and hated him because [blank]. Under no circumstances would LBJ have gone for a slightly drunken visit to a bunch of random war protesters after the Kent State shooting. I forget if this was the same night, but another night Nixon got kinda drunk and wandered over to the senate, where he met the two Latin cleaning ladies there. Got one of them to address the empty senate; she gave a speech about how she was proud to be an American, which was met by applause from Nixon. Don't tell Donald Trump this
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Sep 10, 2015 05:16
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Nebakenezzer posted:I forget if this was the same night, but another night Nixon got kinda drunk and wandered over to the senate, where he met the two Latin cleaning ladies there. Got one of them to address the empty senate; she gave a speech about how she was proud to be an American, which was met by applause from Nixon. so what your saying if that if it wasnt for his policies nixon would own?
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Sep 10, 2015 05:27
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SlothfulCobra posted:Nixon was a really interesting person. He did some good things, but he just couldn't cover up his mistakes nearly as well as other presidents. Also he just couldn't handle the media, and it probably broke him inside. Other than the trampling on Constitutional rights and directly authorizing illegal activities by the FBI and CIA, and the subversion of democracy by sabotaging the of Ed Muskie campaign to help him win reelection, he's just a poor, misunderstood guy.
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Sep 10, 2015 05:45
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Deteriorata posted:Other than the trampling on Constitutional rights and directly authorizing illegal activities by the FBI and CIA, and the subversion of democracy by sabotaging the of Ed Muskie campaign to help him win reelection, he's just a poor, misunderstood guy. Don't forget sabotaging the peace negotiations with North Vietnam in '68 by saying he could get them a better deal.
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Sep 10, 2015 05:56
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Deteriorata posted:Other than the trampling on Constitutional rights and directly authorizing illegal activities by the FBI and CIA, and the subversion of democracy by sabotaging the of Ed Muskie campaign to help him win reelection, he's just a poor, misunderstood guy. Don't forget sabotaging the Paris talks. E: Beaten like the ARVN.
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Sep 10, 2015 05:59
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Just read that Soveremnyisomething class destroyers of the Russian Navy carry eight anti-ship missiles, as "primary surface combatant" of the RN. Is it expected for engagements not to last that long to need, for ships not last long enough to need more, or what? I don't really now much about naval combat, only that I didn't understand how to play Artic Circle, and that Wargame battles can quickly devolve into WWI gun duels.
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Sep 10, 2015 09:15
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JcDent posted:Just read that Soveremnyisomething class destroyers of the Russian Navy carry eight anti-ship missiles, as "primary surface combatant" of the RN. Is it expected for engagements not to last that long to need, for ships not last long enough to need more, or what? A little of both. A single hit from one of those monsters is going to wreck the combat capability of any surface combatant short of a CVN, and if you're shooting missiles at the other guy the nukes are already probably in the air.
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Sep 10, 2015 09:22
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Tomn posted:I feel like the problem with the line of thought you're going down is that politics, unlike war, is usually not an all-or-nothing affair. You're asking for an example of a single military act that bought down a government, but on the other hand, how many single political acts can you think of that led directly to a revolution? Or, hell, how many single acts, period, caused major changes of government? What you're commenting on seems less a comment on the nature of war than it is on the nature of politics. Maybe not quite along the same lines but I immediately thought of Mossadegh's attempts to nationalize Iran's oil resources.
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Sep 10, 2015 10:09
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The Suez Crisis directly resulted in Anthony Eden getting shitcanned as Prime Minister, although that was due to the fact that they invaded Egypt and the US intervened rather than the outcome, since the French, British and Israelis won on the ground.JcDent posted:Just read that Soveremnyisomething class destroyers of the Russian Navy carry eight anti-ship missiles, as "primary surface combatant" of the RN. Is it expected for engagements not to last that long to need, for ships not last long enough to need more, or what? The main idea with modern naval combat is that as soon as you detect an enemy warship you fire your full complement of missiles to ensure you sink the enemy ship. You need to fire a bunch since modern warships have various methods of defence against anti-ship missiles, mostly air-to-air missiles and short range AA guns, so you want to overwhelm the defences. You don't hold anything back because the likely outcome if you do is a bunch of enemy missiles appear over the horizon and sink your ship, so you may as well shoot your entire load at once. Ideally detection is done by helicopter or some other similar means so that the enemy can't use your detection radar to fire a return salvo. MikeCrotch fucked around with this message at 10:34 on Sep 10, 2015 |
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Sep 10, 2015 10:28
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Deteriorata posted:Other than the trampling on Constitutional rights and directly authorizing illegal activities by the FBI and CIA, and the subversion of democracy by sabotaging the of Ed Muskie campaign to help him win reelection, he's just a poor, misunderstood guy. Nixon did a lot of very important things. Setting up the EPA, negotiating the Sino-American pact, SALT I and the ABM treaty, getting off the Gold Standard.ending racial segregation of schools... If it wasn't overshadowed by his attacks on democratic freedoms, more would recognise that Nixon's policies probably saved many millions of lives and assured the US's current economic prosperity.
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Sep 10, 2015 12:19
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Fangz posted:Nixon did a lot of very important things. Setting up the EPA, negotiating the Sino-American pact, SALT I and the ABM treaty, getting off the Gold Standard.ending racial segregation of schools... If it wasn't overshadowed by his attacks on democratic freedoms, more would recognise that Nixon's policies probably saved many millions of lives and assured the US's current economic prosperity. The EPA was forced on him by Congress, and the Bretton Woods collapse was forced on him by the economy. Racial desegregation was led by the courts. I'll certainly agree that only Nixon could go to China, as Spock once said, but "saved millions of lives" is probably a little hyperbolic.
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Sep 10, 2015 13:28
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Being British the major thing I know about Nixon is his character on Futurama, so that is always how I will imagine him acting in real life.
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Sep 10, 2015 13:47
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quote:Saudi Arabia and other majority sunni states. Here's an interesting article on how ridiculously easy it would be to kick the poo poo out of the U.S. Navy in the Persian Gulf. What's bullshit and what's not about this exercise?
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Sep 10, 2015 14:41
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Klaus88 posted:What's bullshit and what's not about this exercise? Instantaneous communications via motorcycle messenger, amongst other things, such as actually loading the ordnance on said tiny torpedo boats, iirc. That exercise seems to be a recurring topic here every few months.
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Sep 10, 2015 15:17
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Klaus88 posted:What's bullshit and what's not about this exercise? This smacks of the previous wargame when Team Red won a major upset victory over Team Blue by using things like motorbike couriers, with people like The War Nerd crowing over how the stupid big dumb babies in the Army couldn't run a war. Only to find out that the Team Red guy was just blatantly cheating like crazy and hadn't come up with a viable counter at all. In particular i'm curious how the Team Red guy was controlling all of those civilian planes and boats and getting such perfect coordination between them. I would have thought if one person was giving orders to that many ships in the open they would be found out by SIGINT and get an airstrike up their arse pretty sharpish. There's a lot of 'B-b-b-but carriers are so vulnerable to everything!' without going into specifics. Also this guy is pulling a lot of assumptions out of thin air, like how he says the Navy just shelved the results of the wargame under 'lessons learned' but hasn't actually changed. Probably because the US Navy is not in the habit of openly telling people the changes to their tactical deployment doctrine after a wargame  Also jesus christ this guy has a hateboner for supercarriers. e:f,b
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Sep 10, 2015 15:22
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Klaus88 posted:What's bullshit and what's not about this exercise? It's a wargame and not reality? At some level it's all BS BUT they do go through a lot of effort to somewhat correlate them to reality. They have some really good simulation stuff for determining outcomes of things like attacks between specific forces but that's not really what wargames are about. A lot of what wargames are about is just getting people together from different backgrounds and have them throw ideas around and gain knowledge of each others capabilities. The asymmetric force capability stuff Van Riper used (some would say abused) really comes down to some judge allowing it or not. It's stuff that didn't really happen so it's the equivalent of the DM asking your to roll a weighted d20 against your INT for success. The real fallout of that wargame is that it's been so publicly commented on that everyone in the military is aware of it.
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Sep 10, 2015 15:24
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When you decide your team has light-speed motorcycle couriers and rafts that somehow bear the load of anti-ship weaponry then the rules committee ought to call a mulligan unless the measurement of time renders that communication latency moot. There's a reason the field radio revolutionized warfare, despite the prior existence of semaphore and fast couriers.
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Sep 10, 2015 15:37
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FAUXTON posted:When you decide your team has light-speed motorcycle couriers and rafts that somehow bear the load of anti-ship weaponry then the rules committee ought to call a mulligan unless the measurement of time renders that communication latency moot. There's a reason the field radio revolutionized warfare, despite the prior existence of semaphore and fast couriers. That and the tiny boats with missiles on them close in size to their total displacement being classed as civilian in a wargame where civilian traffic was expressly not tracked, allowing them to suddenly appear from the luminiferous ether. Because when i think able to go wherever they want without raising eyebrows I think a Boston Whaler with a sunburn on top. Pretty sure there were also zombie units. It does show a severe weakness of the US military's ability to run a wargame that's resistant to the best effort of the Marines to gently caress everything up, yet another place where the US military has a capability gap against its primary future threat.
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Sep 10, 2015 15:57
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JcDent posted:So, who's a bigger sociopath, LBJ or Nixon? LBJ doesn't even belong in the same category as nixon. He's a really interesting president in that his foreign policy was a loving disastrous quagmire, but his domestic policy was probably the most influential between now and the Depression. The fact that he declined to run for office after he got through the bulk of his Great Society legislation is also interesting. It's an amazing mix of the biggest foreign policy fuckup in US history with some of the most important progressive domestic politics.
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Sep 10, 2015 16:08
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xthetenth posted:It does show a severe weakness of the US military's ability to run a wargame that's resistant to the best effort of the Marines to gently caress everything up, yet another place where the US military has a capability gap against its primary future threat. Eh, you want people in your wargames to be thinking 'out of the box', particularly OpFor it's the job of the judges and the administrators to make sure that the game doesn't get out of hand. As a Marine during our internal wargames we were expressly asked to try and break the system, it was up to the judges to say no. Which they did, a lot. Culture clash is a good thing, particularly so in war gaming and is seen as one of the main benefits of having inter-service wargames. e: Getting senior personnel from the different services in the same room thinking about operations doesn't happen as often as it should. This has been a huge problem previously as during planning one service will hand-wave/not-understand/under-utilize the capabilities of the other and then proceed on false pretenses. e: VVV No doubt Murgos fucked around with this message at 16:40 on Sep 10, 2015 |
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Sep 10, 2015 16:13
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The guy was captain Kirking that poo poo way too much though.
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Sep 10, 2015 16:21
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Replace "lightspeed motorcycle couriers" with "cell phones and facebook" and it seems less silly. The anti-shipping rafts are a stretch no matter how you slice it.
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Sep 10, 2015 16:40
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But phones are instant communication. What's stopping every armed force under the sun using Mobile Phones? I recall a headline a few years ago saying the Taliban was doing it and they'd somehow encrypted it and the allied forces couldn't do anything about it.
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Sep 10, 2015 17:08
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I think there was also some kind of problem with him no-selling some other attacks; the Navy "destroyed" a couple of his SAM batteries or something, but then he reactivated them as though nothing had happened. There's a difference between out-of-the-box thinking, and flagrant cheating, and Gen. Van Riper's performance seems to come down on the latter side.
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Sep 10, 2015 17:18
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Hazzard posted:But phones are instant communication. What's stopping every armed force under the sun using Mobile Phones? I recall a headline a few years ago saying the Taliban was doing it and they'd somehow encrypted it and the allied forces couldn't do anything about it. Presumably mobile towers can be turned off or taken out pretty easily.
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Sep 10, 2015 17:21
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sullat posted:The EPA was forced on him by Congress, and the Bretton Woods collapse was forced on him by the economy. Racial desegregation was led by the courts. I'll certainly agree that only Nixon could go to China, as Spock once said, but "saved millions of lives" is probably a little hyperbolic. Cyrano4747 posted:LBJ doesn't even belong in the same category as nixon. He's a really interesting president in that his foreign policy was a loving disastrous quagmire, but his domestic policy was probably the most influential between now and the Depression. The fact that he declined to run for office after he got through the bulk of his Great Society legislation is also interesting. Foreign policy seems to be the one thing that the president has most control over. All the domestic policy decisions are the culmination of lots of different people working together/against each other to get things done, but over the US border, generally whatever the president says, goes. That's why I pay a lot more attention to foreign policy when voting. I imagine if MacArthur had gotten himself elected, none of us would be here today.
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Sep 10, 2015 17:29
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Arquinsiel posted:Replace "lightspeed motorcycle couriers" with "cell phones and facebook" and it seems less silly. Cell phones have the same weakness as traditional radio, which is that they are susceptible to traffic analysis. Even if you can't decipher the content of a communication, you can draw inferences from where the communications are coming from and how frequent they are. So for example, a large amount of cellular activity over a short time probably indicates something is about to happen, while a large number of unique addresses in one place probably points to the main effort. Cell phones are useful, but they aren't a substitute for the instant and completely silent communications that Van Riper was trying to pull.
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Sep 10, 2015 17:37
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Endman posted:Presumably mobile towers can be turned off or taken out pretty easily. And then you have problems with that with a naval scenario - like GSM cells have a limited range (35 km and normal cell sites probably aren't situated right by the coastline either), and any mobile devices can be detected and thus targetted. And if they got too close to Arabian peninsula, think of the killer roaming fees!
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Sep 10, 2015 17:48
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https://www.flickr.com/photos/98015679@N04/albums/with/72157634570914570 Here's hundreds of pictures or arms and armour and stuff from various museums around the world that some lad has put together
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Sep 10, 2015 17:48
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JcDent posted:Just read that Soveremnyisomething class destroyers of the Russian Navy carry eight anti-ship missiles, as "primary surface combatant" of the RN. Is it expected for engagements not to last that long to need, for ships not last long enough to need more, or what? The only reason it carries only 8 missiles is that 9 wouldn't fit. The Moskit it carries is massive, each one is more than 4 metric tons, you could carry 5 Harpoon missiles for each Moskit. When you add those plus the heavy gun armement (Most ships that size have one main gun these days, it carries 4), it's the ship with the heaviest ship to ship armament currently in service. The thing is the Sovremennyy are an exception, most ships today are not expected to be the primary means of sinking other ships. That job is best left to aircraft, as they can patrol a vastly larger aera, can strike much faster, engage from greater range (Since the missiles get a large boost from the altitude and the speed of the carrying aircraft), and you 'only' risk planes with one or two people in it, not a ship with 300+ people on it. This is one of the main reasons why carriers are such a big deal, another being that they can 'own' a very large chunk of sea, thanks to patrol aircraft, while a surface combatant can't really see over the horizon.
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Sep 10, 2015 17:58
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