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Inner Light posted:Have you learned nothing from 2020? How predictable were events in 2020? I do disagree with that assessment, yes. We've had much closer calls in the decades since the Cuban Missile Crisis. 2020 was a crazy, unpredictable year, but nothing that occurred in it brought us significantly closer to nuclear armageddon that wasn't already going on.
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Feb 20, 2022 04:58
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Majorian posted:I do disagree with that assessment, yes. We've had much closer calls in the decades since the Cuban Missile Crisis. 2020 was a crazy, unpredictable year, but nothing that occurred in it brought us significantly closer to nuclear armageddon that wasn't already going on. Yeah I definitely disagree with you still. I mean wow I very much disagree with you. For one I think Donald Trump being anywhere near the Briefcase significantly raised the risk of nuclear armageddon MrYenko posted:No pressure, team Finland. Underrated comment.
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Feb 20, 2022 05:00
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Inner Light posted:Yeah I definitely disagree with you still. Trump wasn't exactly a function of 2020 - he had already been president for some time before that. Do you have any other reasons for why you think we were closer to nuclear armageddon than at any time since the Cuban Missile Crisis? I feel like the example I provided, the 1983 Petrov incident, had us a lot closer to annihilation than what we're seeing right now. The U.S. isn't going to go to nuclear war with Russia over Ukraine; it's not going to go to even limited conventional war with Russia over Ukraine.
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Feb 20, 2022 05:03
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Ok fine at least the riskiest moment since the Petrov incident. I guess the root of my disagreement is, an autocratic nation state armed with modern nuclear weapons beginning a real land war with another nation state is more concerning than many other circumstances I can think of. That's before you even begin to consider NATO and what NATO entails.
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Feb 20, 2022 05:08
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Inner Light posted:Have you learned nothing from 2020? How predictable were events in 2020? At this point Syria was a bigger 'what if' for nuclear war than anything involving Ukraine has the potential to be, since the US and Russia were (and still are) operating at cross purposes in the country, to the point where the US killed a shitload of Wagner mercs who decided to test the limits of what was possible. I'm very thankful that aside from that incident and a couple instances of road rage neither side seemed too interested in upsetting the status quo too heavily once one or the other was entrenched in part of the country, so we never got to any level of serious risk (to the disappointment of some hawks who really wanted to push them aside), but even that wariness has nothing on the US flat out saying there will be no military response to a Russian invasion of Ukraine.
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Feb 20, 2022 05:09
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Majorian posted:Of course I do. The last one happened over 80 years ago and there wasn't a buffer state in between the two countries. Good point Poland wasnt invaded for '80" years because Russia wasnt going to invade a vassel state.
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Feb 20, 2022 05:12
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Despera posted:Good point Poland wasnt invaded for '80" years because Russia wasnt going to invade a vassel state. Tell it to Czechoslovakia and Hungary. The Soviets did decide not to intervene even if Solidarity took control in Poland in the early 80's though.
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Feb 20, 2022 05:15
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Sinteres posted:Tell it to Czechoslovakia and Hungary. The Soviets did decide not to intervene even if Solidarity took control in Poland in the early 80's though. El oh loving el (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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Feb 20, 2022 05:17
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Despera posted:El oh loving el If that was an expression of interest in learning more, here's a starter: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_reaction_to_the_Polish_crisis_of_1980%E2%80%931981#Final_decision
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Feb 20, 2022 05:20
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Sinteres posted:If that was an expression of interest in learning more, here's a starter: Nothings going to convince me that poland wasnt a soviet vassel state
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Feb 20, 2022 05:22
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Despera posted:Nothings going to convince me that poland wasnt a soviet vassel state You don't seem to have understood my post, because I never said they weren't. Of course they were, as were two countries the Soviets did invade earlier in the Cold War to maintain their control over those countries, but the Soviets weren't going to invade to maintain that vassalage in Poland by the 80's, and obviously didn't fight to keep it anywhere in the Warsaw Pact later in the decade.
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Feb 20, 2022 05:24
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Sinteres posted:the US flat out saying there will be no military response to a Russian invasion of Ukraine. Why do you believe this statement by the military? Do you believe Putin has gotten this close to threatening the West with nuclear weapon deployment, beyond the posted incident upthread? He has nearly literally said if any NATO country gets involved they would be drawn into a nuclear war.
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Feb 20, 2022 05:28
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Inner Light posted:Why do you believe this statement by the military? Where and when did he say that?
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Feb 20, 2022 05:30
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Inner Light posted:Why do you believe this statement by the military? No NATO country is going to get drawn in, so it doesn't matter what Putin said about that circumstance. And it wasn't a statement by the military, it was Biden dismissing the possibility because Americans and Russians shooting at each other would be World War 3.
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Feb 20, 2022 05:31
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Sinteres posted:I really don't think Russia has the manpower these days to take on Eastern Europe even if the US went home. Like yeah the Baltics would be in trouble, but assuming nuclear blackmail would be off the table (the UK and France would still exist), I wouldn't bet against Poland.
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Feb 20, 2022 05:36
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Cugel the Clever posted:Agreed. The point was to counter the suggestion that Putin doesn't aspire to reimpose some semblance of dominion over his neighbors. We've seen time and time again over the course of his rule that he will take whatever kinetic action he thinks he can get away with in, while in parallel actively undermining the cohesion of Western states in order to broaden the options available to him. I mean, NATO and Russia are rival empires. It kind of feels to me like you're describing imperial geopolitics and jostling over smaller states in between their spheres of influence. Putin may or may not have those aspirations in his mind, but A, he's nothing if not a realist about his country's capabilities, and B, if it were someone else in power, I honestly don't think Russia would be behaving all that differently from how it currently is. The incentives for Russia to behave like an empire would still remain. e: After all, Medvedev was in power in 2008, when the war with Georgia happened. Obviously, Putin was still in the government as PM, and still exerted a lot of influence, but Medvedev also wasn't the complete cipher that a lot of folks assumed at the time. But Russia still behaved in line with the more "muscular" foreign policy that has characterized Putin's time in office, largely because Russia and the U.S. were still playing the same game of empire that they had been for a long time, and still are. Majorian fucked around with this message at 05:53 on Feb 20, 2022 |
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Feb 20, 2022 05:45
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Inner Light posted:Why do you believe this statement by the military? Basically everything American has been withdrawn from the country. First military instructors (FL National Guard which were training Ukrainian Army in Western Ukraine) then US OSCE observers at the front line in Donbass. Now they moved the embassy to Western Ukraine as well. If US would be running away any quicker Putin would die from orgasming too hard.
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Feb 20, 2022 05:45
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Majorian posted:I mean, NATO and Russia are rival empires. It kind of feels to me like you're describing imperial geopolitics and jostling over smaller states in between their spheres of influence. Putin may or may not have those aspirations in his mind, but A, he's nothing if not a realist about his country's capabilities, and B, if it were someone else in power, I honestly don't think Russia would be behaving all that differently from how it currently is. The incentives for Russia to behave like an empire would still remain. I think the biggest example of Medvedev behaving differently from Putin is when he allowed the UN resolution against Libya to go through (openly rebuking Putin for calling it a Western crusade), and then the US immediately used it as a pretext for outright regime change instead of the no fly zone Medvedev reasonably understood it to be. I'm pretty sure that's been referenced as the moment when Putin lost any faith in Medvedev as an independent leader, and it was pretty much the last straw for any sort of real cooperation between NATO and Russia as it massively vindicated Putin's suspicions about Western intentions. It's pretty insane to look back at Libya and realize how many different catastrophic consequences that war had.
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Feb 20, 2022 06:04
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What would happen if there was a nuclear war anyway? I imagine the world would be like Threads: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Srqyd8B9gE Or maybe this movie was hyperbole.
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Feb 20, 2022 06:08
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punk rebel ecks posted:What would happen if there was a nuclear war anyway? Total destruction in most urban centers, nuclear winter, disease ridden population, hunger everywhere That's assuming they'd nuke civilian targets, which they definitely would I wonder what % of the population would die Of course there's a wiki for it https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_holocaust orange sky fucked around with this message at 06:16 on Feb 20, 2022 |
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Feb 20, 2022 06:13
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Majorian posted:Where and when did he say that? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RJXwLzII278
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Feb 20, 2022 06:27
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orange sky posted:Total destruction in most urban centers, nuclear winter, disease ridden population, hunger everywhere These threads based on getting increasingly worked up over hypothetical conflicts always seem to end up chicken little-ing harder and harder until they descend into just psychotic doomsaying and once again, here we are
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Feb 20, 2022 06:27
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Ukraine hasn't joined, and certainly isn't going to join in the next few weeks as we see how this crisis unfolds, so don't worry about it.
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Feb 20, 2022 06:29
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I think describing NATO as an empire is stretching the definition a bit. As France/UK/Germany I don't think can be adequately described even in vassal/protectorate terms; they have their own slices of the imperial pie; it isn't like a Holy Roman Empire or Austria-Hungary situation. The US is very clearly First-Among-Equals and certainly likes to style itself "Leader of the Free World" but key members of NATO aren't puppets. The closest analogy is how when the Romans split their Empire among Co-Emperors and subordinate Caesar's during the 3rd Century Crisis in that they are broadly together in the same cultural and military-economic bloc but there's still severe splits in policy and interests between the constituent parts; and sometimes a part will do things another part wholly doesn't like or care for.
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Feb 20, 2022 06:29
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Majorian posted:I mean, NATO and Russia are rival empires. An instrument of an amorphous and often discordant power block? Sure. But NATO is no empire. e: Raenir Salazar posted:I think describing NATO as an empire is stretching the definition a bit.  beat me by two minutesUnrelated, the folks who are fearing imminent nuclear war may want to switch to a less paranoia-inducing strain of weed. Cugel the Clever fucked around with this message at 06:34 on Feb 20, 2022 |
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Feb 20, 2022 06:31
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A better analogy would be that NATO is the rebel alliance and Russia is voldemort.
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Feb 20, 2022 06:33
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NATO itself isn't an empire, but the US has characteristics of an empire, and NATO is an instrument of that empire. It's not super clear that the US as a collective whole actually benefits tangibly from this arrangement, but numerous business and political interests do, and that dichotomy has been true for other empires as well.
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Feb 20, 2022 06:35
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some plague rats posted:These threads based on getting increasingly worked up over hypothetical conflicts always seem to end up chicken little-ing harder and harder until they descend into just psychotic doomsaying and once again, here we are Hey just answering a question, to be perfectly clear I think there's no way we ever get into a nuclear war, absolutely no way
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Feb 20, 2022 06:41
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Conspiratiorist posted:A better analogy would be that NATO is the rebel alliance and Russia is voldemort. #NotMyPrincess
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Feb 20, 2022 06:44
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Cugel the Clever posted:NATO isn't an empire by any commonly accepted definition of the term (barring the purely pejorative) and casting it as such draws a false equivalence between Russian belligerence and European solidarity. NATO is a voluntary association of sovereign member states banding together for their collective defense. It does not extract resources from its members for the benefit of any single member state and several of its members are notorious for shirking their voluntarily pledged contributions to the organization's maintenance. NATO itself isn't the empire, it's the mechanism for the expansion of the US empire and for the maintenance of its sphere of influence e: oh my god please stop
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Feb 20, 2022 06:46
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some plague rats posted:These threads based on getting increasingly worked up over hypothetical conflicts always seem to end up chicken little-ing harder and harder until they descend into just psychotic doomsaying and once again, here we are Conspiratiorist posted:A better analogy would be that NATO is the rebel alliance and Russia is voldemort. less shitposting please
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Feb 20, 2022 06:48
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Fritz the Horse posted:less shitposting please
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Feb 20, 2022 06:51
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That's a long way from what you claimed he said, though: Inner Light posted:He has nearly literally said if any NATO country gets involved they would be drawn into a nuclear war. Ukrainian accession to NATO is not on the table anytime in the foreseeable future, since France and Germany will veto it. And even if Putin had said what you claimed, there was no chance the U.S. would get directly involved in Ukraine anyway. Raenir Salazar posted:I think describing NATO as an empire is stretching the definition a bit. As France/UK/Germany I don't think can be adequately described even in vassal/protectorate terms; they have their own slices of the imperial pie; it isn't like a Holy Roman Empire or Austria-Hungary situation. The US is very clearly First-Among-Equals and certainly likes to style itself "Leader of the Free World" but key members of NATO aren't puppets. The U.S. showed itself only too willing to interfere in the internal politics of its NATO allies during the Cold War to keep their governments in line - sometimes quite violently. I'd strongly advise you to read up on Operation Gladio and similar projects aimed at ensuring that these governments followed Washington's anti-communist marching orders. While "puppets" may be too strong a word for what many European NATO leaders were during the Cold War, it was clear that the U.S. was the hegemon, much in the same manner as Athens in the Delian League and Macedon in the League of Corinth. Those were empires, no matter what egalitarian principles they were supposedly founded upon, and so is NATO. e: actually, "instrument of empire," with the U.S. being the empire, is the better way of looking at it, as others have pointed out. I'll go with that. Majorian fucked around with this message at 07:08 on Feb 20, 2022 |
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Feb 20, 2022 06:58
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Local mobile network operator has warned that mobile networks and internet might go down in Luhansk at some point. https://twitter.com/rianru/status/1495269323757297667
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Feb 20, 2022 07:16
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Ukraine reports 2 soldiers killed, 5 wounded. Russian media reporting Ukrainian attacks on LPR positions struck residential areas, leading to civilian casualties.
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Feb 20, 2022 07:17
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Russia lost the hockey match, by the way. 
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Feb 20, 2022 07:22
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https://twitter.com/noahbarkin/status/1494999291802312708 As much as the CCP supports Russia whenever it is useful for them, they aren't close friends. The relationship between the autocrats is much more about benefits, and Beijing doesn't see a way that they personally would benefit from a big war.
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Feb 20, 2022 07:30
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BoldFace posted:Russia lost the hockey match, by the way. Ukraine to send a protest note to Finland
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Feb 20, 2022 07:33
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golden bubble posted:https://twitter.com/noahbarkin/status/1494999291802312708 I don't think that's real opposition so much as China not wanting their reputation harmed by appearing to sign on. I'm sure we've all seen calls for sanctions on China for not stopping Russia, and while I don't think that's a real threat, it seems like China doesn't want to take any chances regardless. Russia's definitely the subordinate power in that relationship, largely because of how little it has to offer the rest of the world in comparison (so the West can more easily afford to cut off relations (even with pipeline politics, China's gotten some cut rate deals out of being a trading partner Russia can depend on), so China can afford to be stingy with their support, while Russia has to more openly sign on in support of Beijing's foreign policy initiatives. Plus China tries to stick to a pretty consistent line about non-interference with state sovereignty, since they can whack the US over that pretty regularly while saying their human rights issues are none of anybody else's business, and isn't willing to throw the principle in the trash just for Russia's benefit.
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Feb 20, 2022 07:38
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Majorian posted:I mean, NATO and Russia are rival empires. It kind of feels to me like you're describing imperial geopolitics and jostling over smaller states in between their spheres of influence. Putin may or may not have those aspirations in his mind, but A, he's nothing if not a realist about his country's capabilities, and B, if it were someone else in power, I honestly don't think Russia would be behaving all that differently from how it currently is. The incentives for Russia to behave like an empire would still remain. What are the incentives for Russia to have an imperial sphere of influence, if it were not for it's autocratic regime that needs to shield itself from the danger of democracy?
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Feb 20, 2022 08:05
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