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Hannibal Rex posted:https://twitter.com/R__Politik/status/1580542926177726465?s=20&t=FQokRDzzJ8Gvmn5XCLRzIA The only person who said Putin should use tactical nuclear weapons is Kadyrov though. I feel like the author is also overly alarmist about this stuff, judging from the title of this article she wrote https://twitter.com/CarnegieRussia/status/1578445443846971393 Willo567 fucked around with this message at 21:32 on Oct 13, 2022 |
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Oct 13, 2022 21:25
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Russians disagree a lot even amongst themselves, but if there’s one thing they mostly agree on it’s that Kadyrov is a complete psychopath who shouldn’t be involved anywhere in government.
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Oct 13, 2022 21:38
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In the other thread I saw someone asking about possible retaliatory targets for the US/West If Russia nukes Ukraine, and how they had no good targets (since you can't nuke Russia, and a tactical nuke on Russian forces in Ukraine still nukes Ukraine). But is it possible they would consider nuking a Russian 3rd part ally without nukes, such as Syria?
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Oct 14, 2022 04:52
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What would the point of that be? NATO is strong enough -- and in particular, the US is strong enough -- that, with Russia both weakened and revealed as a paper tiger, a conventional response is more than enough. Hell, even just air strikes might be more than enough. Russia is already steadily losing against Ukraine just with Ukraine given supplies, intelligence, and a relative handful of Western vehicles. NATO air strikes launched from air bases and carriers would basically annihilate any known Russian positions inside the country. Can't kill all the infantry that way, obviously, but you can get command centers, supply depots, and plenty of vehicles. Not sure if they'd target anything in Russia itself though. Maybe some forward/staging bases, but you'd want the message to be, "get the gently caress out of Ukraine", not "we're going to destroy your entire country".
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Oct 14, 2022 04:58
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Cicero posted:What would the point of that be? In practice it would be just an extention of MAD theory, which is prevention. The US, speaking through backdoor channels, making clear to Russia if they escalate to nukes here there will be a proportional response elsewhere. Though I can't imagine Russia would actually care significantly if one of their allies got nuked.
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Oct 14, 2022 05:05
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Pleasant Friend posted:In practice it would be just an extention of MAD theory, which is prevention. The US, speaking through backdoor channels, making clear to Russia if they escalate to nukes here there will be a proportional response elsewhere. Your second line seems to explain why even you don't actually think it works this way, but where did you learn MAD? Even Nixon, while posing as a crazy person (or was he  ) bombed Cambodia because the generals felt that had some military value. And that was conventional war!
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Oct 14, 2022 05:08
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The US and allies are capable of a proportional response to a tactical nuke, in terms of destructive power, without resorting to nukes themselves. Besides, the US does actually try to avoid civilian casualties (most of the time), so using nukes that would create fallout would be stupid when we have plenty of conventional guided munitions.
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Oct 14, 2022 05:10
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Cicero posted:The US and allies are capable of a proportional response to a tactical nuke, in terms of destructive power, without resorting to nukes themselves. The concern isn't so much a nuclear-for-nuclear escalation, but rather that even with conventional weapons, a proportional response could (and arguably should) be of a scale that still qualifies as an existential risk from the PoV of a lot of Russian stakeholders. The weapons used for retaliation being nuclear or not has little to no bearing on the fact that modern deterrence doctrine requires escalation, lest it loses all credibility.
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Oct 14, 2022 15:09
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Aramis posted:The concern isn't so much a nuclear-for-nuclear escalation, but rather that even with conventional weapons, a proportional response could (and arguably should) be of a scale that still qualifies as an existential risk from the PoV of a lot of Russian stakeholders. Along those lines, a War on the Rocks article from a few days ago https://warontherocks.com/2022/10/the-end-of-the-world-is-nigh/
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Oct 14, 2022 20:33
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IMO, if I were in charge of NATO or the US, I’d privately let the Russians know that if they set off a nuclear weapon in Ukraine, that the most immediate response would be for NATO forces to completely wipe out all Russian forces within Ukraine using conventional weapons. As justification, they could point to the fact that nuclear fallout would drift over NATO countries as a result of such a strike on Ukraine, and this would be an act of war. Let them know that they could not possibly defeat Ukraine by using nukes against it; if they did the immediate response from NATO would be to intervene and secure all of Ukraine’s territory with their own air force and troops, and then decide if there’s going to be any response beyond that. If Putin knows for sure that setting off a nuke in Ukraine won’t win him anything there, then he won’t consider it. Sucrose fucked around with this message at 22:57 on Oct 15, 2022 |
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Oct 15, 2022 22:53
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Sucrose posted:If Putin knows for sure that setting off a nuke in Ukraine won’t win him anything there, then he won’t consider it. I mean, maybe? Historians haven't been able to pin-point exactly when Hitler figured he couldn't win the war, but some credible guesses put it as early as '43. At any rate, by January '45 he knew he was just playing for time before his suicide. Setting aside that we can't really figure out who is more loony-toons between Adi and Vova, Putin set out on this crazy quest of his (among other things) to cement his legacy and postmortem image. If any peace deal will look to him like he'd lose out on his grasp on power, and potentially get him placed behind bars or defenestrated, he might as well just go all out. Of course this brings us back to how the Russian nuclear chain of command actually works, and whether this would just get Putin defenestrated anyway, since he hasn't set his palace of cronies up quite as well as Hitler did, but still.
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Oct 15, 2022 23:11
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If I were in charge of NATO and Putin used a nuke I'd put a paper bag of dog poop on his doorstep and set fire to it. This doesn't seem like a big deal but when he stomps the fire out he'll get dog poop on his shoes! Then again maybe that's a little much, I wouldn't want to leap straight to a disproportionate response. Politics is really hard guys.
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Oct 15, 2022 23:11
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I feel like one of the reasons the west is even defending Ukraine is the assumption that Putin won’t stop there and that Ukraine is just a stepping stone to eventually conquering the Baltic states and Eastern Europe, which are NATO. Putin succeeding in his conquest of Ukraine ultimately still leads to nuclear conflict with NATO because of this, so a military stalemate followed by some kind of negotiations is ideal for avoiding nuclear war entirely, but the use of actual nukes in Ukraine to beat them into submission changes the numbers a bit. In that event, the response from the west that probably has the least likelihood of resulting nuclear conflict begins to look like a conventional attack by NATO, perhaps not enough to completely humiliate Russia, but enough to end Putin’s ambitions in Ukraine. Ironically it also gives Putin an out, because they didn’t fail to conquer Ukraine because their military is a shambles, they failed because the west intervened.
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Oct 16, 2022 01:56
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qhat posted:I feel like one of the reasons the west is even defending Ukraine is the assumption that Putin won’t stop there and that Ukraine is just a stepping stone to eventually conquering the Baltic states and Eastern Europe, which are NATO. Putin succeeding in his conquest of Ukraine ultimately still leads to nuclear conflict with NATO because of this, so a military stalemate followed by some kind of negotiations is ideal for avoiding nuclear war entirely, but the use of actual nukes in Ukraine to beat them into submission changes the numbers a bit. In that event, the response from the west that probably has the least likelihood of resulting nuclear conflict begins to look like a conventional attack by NATO, perhaps not enough to completely humiliate Russia, but enough to end Putin’s ambitions in Ukraine. Ironically it also gives Putin an out, because they didn’t fail to conquer Ukraine because their military is a shambles, they failed because the west intervened. You're not wrong - but what's funny about this statement is that Russia is showing that it can't even conquer Ukraine, and sure as poo poo can't conquer anyone else beyond that. Maybe Belarus, if only because they may welcome it.
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Oct 16, 2022 02:35
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Shooting Blanks posted:You're not wrong - but what's funny about this statement is that Russia is showing that it can't even conquer Ukraine, and sure as poo poo can't conquer anyone else beyond that. Maybe Belarus, if only because they may welcome it.
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Oct 16, 2022 05:10
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A Buttery Pastry posted:Weren't Belarusian forces resisting joining in on the invasion? I'm not sure they'd welcome it, even if Belarus is likely far more vulnerable to invasion than Ukraine. There were rumours of that, but it’s also very much not proven than Lukashenko himself is interested in a war with Ukraine. I can’t personally think of any, and if I were him I’d likely consider calling a bluff on a theoretical threat from Putin to cut Belarus off its bank account.
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Oct 16, 2022 13:47
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cinci zoo sniper posted:There were rumours of that, but it’s also very much not proven than Lukashenko himself is interested in a war with Ukraine. I can’t personally think of any, and if I were him I’d likely consider calling a bluff on a theoretical threat from Putin to cut Belarus off its bank account.
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Oct 16, 2022 15:35
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A Buttery Pastry posted:True, though I am not sure that really changes things, unless he was somehow holding the rest of Belarus back from joining the war - which seems unlikely. I’m confused by this insinuation – if the army and the government are not joining the war, what remaining power centres of Belarus would have leeway to join it independently, in your view? cinci zoo sniper fucked around with this message at 16:09 on Oct 16, 2022 |
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Oct 16, 2022 15:44
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cinci zoo sniper posted:I’m confused by this insinuation - if the army and the government are not joining the way, what remaining power centres of Belarus would have leeway to join it independently, in your view?
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Oct 16, 2022 16:02
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A Buttery Pastry posted:My point is that it's pretty unlikely that the army could be stopped from going to war if only Lukashenko opposed it, thus even in the best case scenario for Putin, the armed forces - or some portion of them at least - would be opposed to Russia gobbling Belarus up. I see, even though I remain deeply confused, as this feels like discussing the problem from the opposite end – the order of operation is that president orders X and the army goes and does that. The expectation that the army could have wanted to fight in Ukraine, but Lukashenko held them off, is very weird to me, and goes contrary to the sum of the discourse around this. The way it was talked about in February was that the army was lukewarm about joining the war, and the opinions split on whether if Lukashenko wanted Belarus to join it explicitly. I think in reality literally no one there wants it, and Lukashenko's administration just let some rumours, or perhaps “rumours”, to proliferate before he did his saviour of the galaxy shtick and deployed some dude to watch out for a NATO carrier sailing through the rivers of southern Lithuania.
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Oct 16, 2022 16:17
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The impression I got was Luka wanted to help Russia and invade but the army straight up said gently caress you so he didn't order anything lest he defenstrate himself out of a living position.
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Oct 16, 2022 16:54
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We also have some evidence that a military coup of some kind had to be put down when it was still uncertain if Belarus was going to be involved. It seems very likely that the military really, really, really does not want to fight in Ukraine and won't obey commands to do so.
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Oct 16, 2022 18:23
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Rigel posted:We also have some evidence that a military coup of some kind had to be put down when it was still uncertain if Belarus was going to be involved. It seems very likely that the military really, really, really does not want to fight in Ukraine and won't obey commands to do so. Isn't the Belarusian army like 100k strong? I don't even see how it contribute.
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Oct 17, 2022 01:03
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FishBulbia posted:Isn't the Belarusian army like 100k strong? I don't even see how it contribute. It’s 50k including conscripts, and the sum of their combat experience is Kazakhstan protests this January and sending advisors to Gaddafi 10 years ago.
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Oct 17, 2022 01:10
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Sucrose posted:IMO, if I were in charge of NATO or the US, I’d privately let the Russians know that if they set off a nuclear weapon in Ukraine, that the most immediate response would be for NATO forces to completely wipe out all Russian forces within Ukraine using conventional weapons. As justification, they could point to the fact that nuclear fallout would drift over NATO countries as a result of such a strike on Ukraine, and this would be an act of war. Putin: loses most of the territory in the Ukraine, only a token force of conscripts remain in a rearguard action NATO: You better not nuke them Putin: nukes kyiv NATO: We warned you buddy, that's it for the predominantly ethnic minority Russian soldiers who are still in the country! Putin: Oh no, the evil West has done the ethnic cleansing for me! So much for the tolerant left!
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Oct 17, 2022 09:11
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Does anyone have any favorite conspiracy theories about the war? Is Putin secretly a lizard person who is helping the coming New World Order organize a mass destruction event to harvest spiritual energy?
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Oct 19, 2022 03:24
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oliveoil posted:Does anyone have any favorite conspiracy theories about the war? Is Putin secretly a lizard person who is helping the coming New World Order organize a mass destruction event to harvest spiritual energy? Putin is pro-Ukraine and trying to root out the Nazi rot and bring the country back into the welcoming arms of mother Russia.
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Oct 19, 2022 03:29
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Volmarias posted:Putin: loses most of the territory in the Ukraine, only a token force of conscripts remain in a rearguard action I'd guess if that happens Russia is basically never going to sell its oil ever again, its companies will never export anything ever again, and Russian citizenship will be about as good as being stateless
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Oct 19, 2022 04:39
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oliveoil posted:Does anyone have any favorite conspiracy theories about the war? Is Putin secretly a lizard person who is helping the coming New World Order organize a mass destruction event to harvest spiritual energy? In May we had a contractor come to my work to repair some machines. He said something like "Say what you will about Putin, but at least he destroyed the pedophile dens in the Ukraine that Hunter Biden and Nancy Pelosi's son like to frequent." Despite living in a red county, I normally don't come in personal contact with that level of blatant stupidity for any amount of time.
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Oct 19, 2022 06:05
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oliveoil posted:Does anyone have any favorite conspiracy theories about the war? Is Putin secretly a lizard person who is helping the coming New World Order organize a mass destruction event to harvest spiritual energy? My current game of Terra Invictus currently has strong opinions about the ongoing conflict, vis a vis shadow wars.
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Oct 19, 2022 08:09
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Antifa Spacemarine posted:I'd guess if that happens Russia is basically never going to sell its oil ever again, its companies will never export anything ever again, and Russian citizenship will be about as good as being stateless
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Oct 19, 2022 09:51
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Ubersandwich posted:In May we had a contractor come to my work to repair some machines. He said something like "Say what you will about Putin, but at least he destroyed the pedophile dens in the Ukraine that Hunter Biden and Nancy Pelosi's son like to frequent." The ever present worry that all it would take is one more concussion and I'll turn into one of these idiots.
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Oct 19, 2022 17:59
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Ubersandwich posted:In May we had a contractor come to my work to repair some machines. He said something like "Say what you will about Putin, but at least he destroyed the pedophile dens in the Ukraine that Hunter Biden and Nancy Pelosi's son like to frequent." It's stuff like this that drives me to believe it is now a moral imperative to physically unplug Fox news from TV and the internet.
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Oct 19, 2022 18:10
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Outrail posted:The ever present worry that all it would take is one more concussion and I'll turn into one of these idiots. The good and terrifying news is a majority of people who believe stuff like that are cognitively normal.
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Oct 19, 2022 19:15
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There's some odd things going on with Ukraine's new offensive to take the city of Kherson: - Russia seems to be trying to evacuate all the civilians from the area. I can't remember a time when they've done that before but I'm sure they have. - The UK defense minister made a trip to Washington DC to meet with the US secretary of defense on very short notice. - The UK is flying spy aircraft very close to the area over the black sea. Some are speculating that Russia might use chemical weapons on the Ukrainian forces when they advance into the city. The theory being that chemical weapons might not have the guaranteed western response that nuclear weapons would have. See this video from the Times Radio to get a more expert opinion on it: https://youtu.be/afyzi8NNfQA
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Oct 19, 2022 22:58
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I'll believe them evacuating 100k+ civilians when I see it.
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Oct 19, 2022 23:45
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Cocaine Bear posted:I'll believe them evacuating 100k+ civilians when I see it. Do we have any goons on the ground? Going to an active warzone seems like something a goon would do. (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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Oct 19, 2022 23:50
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Cocaine Bear posted:I'll believe them evacuating 100k+ civilians when I see it. Well if they are actually evacuating civilians I don't get it. Because Russia obviously doesn't give a drat about civilian lives. Especially Ukrainian civilians. But if they are lying about it I don't get that either, since it's either telegraphing that they are about to lose the city which I don't know if they would publicly admit that? Or they are telegraphing they are going to do something dreadful, like use a WMD. In which case again, they don't give a drat about civilians so why even lie about evacuating them.
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Oct 20, 2022 00:34
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Charliegrs posted:Well if they are actually evacuating civilians I don't get it. Because Russia obviously doesn't give a drat about civilian lives. Especially Ukrainian civilians. But if they are lying about it I don't get that either, since it's either telegraphing that they are about to lose the city which I don't know if they would publicly admit that? Or they are telegraphing they are going to do something dreadful, like use a WMD. In which case again, they don't give a drat about civilians so why even lie about evacuating them. What they’ve declare as looking to evacuate is 50-60k “volunteer evacuees” from some of the counties between Kherson city and the bridgehead frontlines. The claimed goal evacuation pace is 10k per day. https://www.fontanka.ru/2022/10/19/71749121/
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Oct 20, 2022 00:42
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Charliegrs posted:Some are speculating that Russia might use chemical weapons on the Ukrainian forces when they advance into the city. The theory being that chemical weapons might not have the guaranteed western response that nuclear weapons would have. See this video from the Times Radio to get a more expert opinion on it: Problem with that is chemical weapons, while great at slaughtering (unprepared) civilians, don't do so hot against armies anymore; Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry has a good discussion here. Also, given Russian supply problems, I have to assume they might quite probably be less prepared for the use of NBC weapons than the Ukrainians; no sense using something that would hurt you worse than your adversaries. And really, while maybe they wouldn't provoke a nuclear response (a big maybe, since I think US official doctrine for WMDs is to treat all of them the same i.e. mass gas or disease attacks we've declared are possible grounds for responding with nukes also), I can't see a massive death event from any source not getting a serious escalation. There'd be a strong argument to go blow up any future source of attack of that nature because it's just too much to let any nation go there even if it's "just" gas.
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Oct 20, 2022 02:36
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