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Nix Panicus posted:Well yeah they failed to account for the perfidious west if they'd have just asked us we could have saved a lot of lives we would have told them to explode boris johnson and everyone would have had a good laugh and Ukraine would have calmed down and agreed to Russian demands
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Nov 27, 2023 13:26
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This could be a surprise to some, but the war Russian-Ukraine war isn't over yet, despite what it might look like with the news coverage.
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Nov 27, 2023 14:57
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Lostconfused posted:This could be a surprise to some, but the war Russian-Ukraine war isn't over yet, despite what it might look like with the news coverage. It's kinda been over since August Sorta like ww2 was kinda over late 1941, and Napoleonic France in late 1812. All that's left to do is some dying
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Nov 27, 2023 15:02
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You need a victory parade to mark the ending of the war.
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Nov 27, 2023 16:06
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it's not over until you see the end screen and the scoreboard
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Nov 27, 2023 16:16
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Nix Panicus posted:Ok, but it did almost work a second time though. Ukraine and Russia had worked out a cease fire and neutrality agreement in April 2022, with Russia withdrawing from Kyiv as a good faith assurance, and everything was go for Zelensky to sign and make it official until Boris Johnson promised unlimited support from the west for a total Ukrainian victory and conquest of seceded territories yeah this. i think it looks nuts in retrospect only because the uk and us blew up the deal. if you assume russia was trying to invade and occupy all of ukraine then they obviously didn’t have enough troops mobilized to do so, which doesn’t make a lot of sense
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Nov 27, 2023 16:40
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fart simpson posted:yeah this. i think it looks nuts in retrospect only because the uk and us blew up the deal. if you assume russia was trying to invade and occupy all of ukraine then they obviously didn’t have enough troops mobilized to do so, which doesn’t make a lot of sense The problem was also they didn't have a plan B, they basically only had the troops they sent in and almost no reserves beyond that, so once it became a real war they started to flail. Also to be honest, the US/UK blowing any peace deal was pretty predictable; it is just the Kremlin was out to lunch and put in a vulnerable position. To be honest, they should have also dealt with Navalny and his movement earlier as well.
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Nov 27, 2023 16:52
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Kremlin was counting on Germany and France, or at the very least Germany not comitting national suicide. Also like people joke about Bush doing 9/11 but I don't think it's normal to expect USA to commit a giant terror attack every decade.
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Nov 27, 2023 16:55
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That was the problem, they thought they were dealing with rational actors who aren't going to be extraordinarily aggressive, it is a common historical problem for Russia.
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Nov 27, 2023 17:21
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Lostconfused posted:Also like people joke about Bush doing 9/11 but I don't think it's normal to expect USA to commit a giant terror attack every decade.
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Nov 27, 2023 17:23
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Regarde Aduck posted:Ukraine would have calmed down and agreed to Russian demands And then what? Russia would have just sat on its hands and we would have lived rest of our lives in peace?
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Nov 27, 2023 20:29
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Of course not, USA would have certainly started some loving war somewhere.
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Nov 27, 2023 20:33
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Fish of hemp posted:And then what? Russia would have just sat on its hands and we would have lived rest of our lives in peace? The Russian empire expanding for 70 years and then contracting suddenly is like the beating of a heart. You've got to let it happen or else eastern Europe, the Balkans, the Caucasus, and Central Asia will not have anyone to struggle against and they'll lose their joie de vivre.
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Nov 27, 2023 22:51
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Lostconfused posted:Kremlin was counting on Germany and France, or at the very least Germany not comitting national suicide. Nah, we just have decadal invasions of Iraq.
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Nov 27, 2023 23:48
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There are many countries surrounding Russia. The US just pushed for the most gullible one. They can even mess with the pipeline without the Ukraine war. For example use radioactive poison on a Germany oil executive.
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Nov 27, 2023 23:54
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https://twitter.com/RCAA_AARC/status/1729194015663472787?t=Lnxw_TzX8elVbUL73aFapA&s=19
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Nov 28, 2023 01:32
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just erase the w and bottom of the E in few
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Nov 28, 2023 01:37
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Fish of hemp posted:And then what? Russia would have just sat on its hands and we would have lived rest of our lives in peace? depends if the racist dickheads of europe turn nazi again crepeface has issued a correction as of 07:36 on Nov 28, 2023 |
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Nov 28, 2023 07:22
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Centrist Committee posted:The same thing happened in Algeria, in Africa. They didn't have anything but a rifle. The French had all these highly mechanized instruments of warfare. But they put some guerilla action on. And a white man can't fight a guerilla warfare. Guerilla action takes heart, take nerve, and he doesn't have that. He's brave when he's got tanks. He's brave when he's got planes. He's brave when he's got bombs. He's brave when he's got a whole lot of company along with him. But you take that little man from Africa and Asia; turn him loose in the woods with a blade. A blade. That's all he needs. All he needs is a blade. And when the sun comes down – goes down and it's dark, it's even-Stephen. Malcolm throwing holy fire is always a solid listen
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Nov 28, 2023 07:27
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skooma512 posted:https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/43069/metallurgist-admits-to-falsifying-navy-submarine-steel-strength-test-results-for-36-years gbs: quote:Chinese steel or whatever else metal will have 40 000 stamps on 100 pages of documents showing it's up to spec and tested.
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Nov 28, 2023 07:36
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I think it's likely part of the chaos of the early Ukrainian invasion is that most Russian experts were right: the Russians weren't planning on actually invading. They planned on some aggressive dick waving to remind Ukrainians of what abandoning the treaty could mean and to seriously knock it off about NATO. All the US secret intel they kept screaming about in the msm was wishcasting. Then things happened and Putin lost his poo poo and that's why his initial invasion speech was particularly angry and confusing as he rambled on and on. I'm sure their mic grifters were promising a short, glorious shock and awe campaign would easily work with their new technowonder weapons. The bulk of the Russian military didn't seem to be ready at all to invade and not just in a 'lol drunk russians sold all their gas' manner but a 'seriously we're invading?' way.
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Nov 28, 2023 07:37
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Fish of hemp posted:And then what? Russia would have just sat on its hands and we would have lived rest of our lives in peace? Russia very clearly had no real plans to invade and threw together a force at the last minute. You can also look at Russia's relationship with the DPR/LPR to gauge the scope of Russian imperialism. Russia left those guys out to dry for eight years with minimal support beyond some surplus weapons. Ukraine kept up border skirmishes the entire time and Russia was content to look the other way and not raise a fuss because it wasnt looking to foment a war. You have to stop looking at things through the western lens of Russia just launching unprovoked invasions because theyre evil. There was a coup against a democratically elected president in 2014, and the areas that voted most heavily for the president who was couped decided Ukrainian democracy was dead and left Ukraine. Russia formally annexed Crimea because of its strategic value and intervened to protect the Donbas republics from a civil war with Ukraine. It wasnt a land grab. Nor was 2022 a land grab by the dreaded expansionist Russians. Zelensky flipped from being the peace and reconciliation president (the platform he won on with overwhelming support from eastern Ukraine, who wanted peace and reconciliation with Russia) to belligerence and Europeanism as his polling cratered. It was an attempt to buoy sinking popularity by courting the extremely pro-NATO western half of the country. Russia wasn't happy about the turn to belligerence and invaded over it. Forcing Ukrainian neutrality would have achieved Russia's security goals.
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Nov 28, 2023 08:59
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Ironically though, after the Ukraine war Russia will have an experienced veteran army adapted to modern combat and a functional industrial war machine, as well as a mountain of proof the west is decrepit and sanctions are not the superweapon they were hyped as. Interesting things might happen. Or, more likely, nothing will happen because Russia isn't the endlessly bloodthirsty USA
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Nov 28, 2023 09:04
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Vodka and pizza party will happen. And Russian vodka will gain the allure of expensive cuban cigars. Despite tasting the same as regular vodka because its all the same stuff.
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Nov 28, 2023 09:10
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Fish of hemp posted:And then what? Russia would have just sat on its hands and we would have lived rest of our lives in peace? Russia would definitely be happy to just sit on it's hands
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Nov 28, 2023 09:12
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crepeface posted:gbs: nobody wants to buy steel from china which is why they only produce over half of the steel in the goddamn world
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Nov 28, 2023 09:17
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I do believe there was a fundamental disconnect between Russian goals and how they were planning to go about them. The Georgian Army in 2008 was greatly outmatched (I think around 10,000 troops or less) and once the Georgians were pushed out of separatist territory, the war was pretty much over unless the Russians wanted to try to occupy Tbilisi (which wasn't going to accomplish anything). In Crimea, the few forces Ukraine had on the ground were overwhelmingly outnumbered and contained instantly by superior Russian forces that had the initiative. Russian troops were literally sitting outside their barracks before they could react. Syria was mostly about airpower, and Russian ground troops were mostly there to support air operations. Basically, they were all slamdunks where the opposition basically didn't have much of a shot. (Admittedly, you could say about Iraq 1 and 2). The problem was thinking a limited operation in Ukraine was going to be the same when in reality, the Ukrainian army in 2022 wasn't a joke even if they were a weaker force and couldn't just be pushed aside. Part of the motivation behind the Russian was the poor performance of the Ukrainian army in 2014, but I think the main issue was that Putin himself had become politically isolated (remember the COVID-era weirdly long tables?) and the fact that the military wasn't part of the decision-making (which I don't think they were there for in at least 2014). During Crimea, it didn't matter because Russian forces basically win without firing a shot, but it was a different matter trying to take on an actual military willing to fight. The Russians also squandered its window of opportunity; not only was their force too small to consolidate gains (I think a lot of it was also do to downsizing and professionalization), but their initial war campaign was quite a bit weaker than it needed to be and they clearly were not targeting the Ukrainian air forces and air defense like they needed to be. Arguably, they just wanted to "scare" the Ukrainians, but that is the problem with a "hybrid-operation" becoming a bloodbath of a war. Arguably, I think a lot of it was Putin had that he had finally modeled the Russian Army much more closely to something comparable to the US, which just didn't work with the way the Russians work. In addition, he clearly was growing too comfortable in his position with any real pushback including when he honestly did need someone to rein him in. I honestly don't think the current Prime Minister, Mishustin along with the rest of the professional bureaucracy, has much respect for him. Mishustin himself is interesting in just how uninteresting he is; career bureaucrat and the former head of the tax service, and isn't a "big personality" like so much of the rest of the Russian government. You really get a sense from his statements and how he operates that that there very much has always been a stable post-Soviet bureaucracy keeping the whole place running, and really Putin is just another loudmouth in a world which is full of them. Ardennes has issued a correction as of 09:30 on Nov 28, 2023 |
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Nov 28, 2023 09:21
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gradenko_2000 posted:https://twitter.com/RCAA_AARC/status/1729194015663472787?t=Lnxw_TzX8elVbUL73aFapA&s=19 No doxxing please.
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Nov 28, 2023 09:41
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Ardennes posted:I do believe there was a fundamental disconnect between Russian goals and how they were planning to go about them. Yeah, there are a lot of reasons why Russia jobbed on the first part, but the the reforms to the army were both fully intentional and a dumb rear end idea. Makes perfect sense if the thinking was that the Ukrainian army disintegrated on contact with the regular Russian army in 2014 and that was before the awesome reforms!
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Nov 28, 2023 09:44
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Underestimating your enemy is a trend that is never going out of style. Cerebral Bore posted:a typical education in neoliberal economics is like 5% actual theory and 95% constructing elaborate mental blindspots against the obvious nonsense in the theory, hth Neo classical liberalism is classical liberalism without the land reform idea you can find in eg Adam Smith.
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Nov 28, 2023 10:04
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A lot of what happened in 2014 can also be explained by Ukrainian local military forces not particularly wanting to fight a civil war. Crimea exchanged hands with 6 deaths, total, including a guy who had a heart attack at a protest. The Ukrainian military stationed there mostly just surrendered rather than fight their own. The front line territorial defense units in the Donbas also mostly refused to turn on their own people. Kyiv had to get units from elsewhere to deal with the secession, and by the time they got there Russian soldiers had already arrived and set up shop. It did reinforce to Kyiv that frontline units needed to be ideologically committed though, which is why six years later when Zelensky tried to tell the units still harassing the Donbas republics to knock it off they told the president to go gently caress himself, and that if he persisted then maybe Zelensky was the problem
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Nov 28, 2023 10:11
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Ardennes posted:Arguably, I think a lot of it was Putin had that he had finally modeled the Russian Army much more closely to something comparable to the US, which just didn't work with the way the Russians work. I would argue the American model hasn't really worked for the US either it just has had smaller scale opportunities to fail (kicking around dead countries like Iraq or Afghanistan doesn't prove anything much less evicting old American pet dictators like in Panama). So, it wasn't some cultural difference between America and Russia just Russia being saps for believing our bullshit. Also, being greatly outmatched doesn't mean you necessarily stop fighting. History abounds with forces absurdly outmatched who made their opponents slowly grind out their victory and occasionally even prevailed by making the victory more costly than their enemies could accept. I remember an article I read decades ago that changed some of how I viewed warfare that was rebutting a claim that the South lost the ACW completely because it had been outmatched economically, defeated militarily, and no longer had the ability to fight anymore at all. The article had a lengthy list of examples of forces just in other civil wars that fought to a much lower percentage of military age males and greater loss of productive capacity (I have long sense forgotten their specifics). Instead, it was a political collapse that destroyed the South as the escalating losses both on the battlefield and strategic havoc from Sherman sapped the political will to below where it was possible to continue fighting (you could just say 'morale' instead but I think that loses the more complicated political dimensions that keep people participating in the insanity of warfare). So even outmatched Georgia might've fought Russian forces to beyond what Russia would've considered acceptable, but there wasn't the political will to even give it much of a try (which isn't that surprising). Similarly, Ukraine today isn't really running out of warm bodies and equipment, but they are definitely running out of political will to continue fighting over which oligarchs control a particular broke rear end town. It makes finding those warm bodies harder and harder, and more effort has to be expended keeping their forces moving. An article a while back made it sound like the Ukrainians are nearly already facing a quiet mutiny in the manner of late France WW1 where troops agreed to continue defending their trenches but refused to participate in further disastrous attacks. While America might've been happy to fight Russia to the last Ukrainian obviously they aren't all so eager. Russia also doesn't have overflowing political will to continue a difficult fight, but that's why it has been important to Russia to find ways to fight cheaper.
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Nov 28, 2023 11:31
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I think there was blindness as well on the part of the Russian leadership in following the US' example; the US system of warfare worked (and so did a lower intensity form of warfare for the Russians as well) only when fighting an incapable enemy. The BTG concept clearly wasn't fully worked out. While Russia in the future may not need armored divisions for every conflict, it is clear that the Russian military wasn't evolving like it needed to fight a more serious conflict. In addition, while the Russians were modernizing, they were doing it on a relative shoestring, and it was clear that it was happening perhaps much more slowly than it needed, parts of the Russian military, especially its surface navy, needed more investment. Neoliberalism was the hot game in town; it is just Russia realized its goose would be the first one cooked if they went fully through with it. As for political will, that is perhaps the critical factor, but it depends on how you define it. The South had the political will to keep the war going far after it lost, but there was never the political will to actually create a centralized source of revenue to keep the entire endeavor going. They had the will to keep on killing their own men until they refused to fight, they needed have the will to actually force any real sacrifice from their elites. Ukraine has the political will to throw old men (and soon who knows) into trenches but there is little will to actually demand anything from the upper crust of its society. The Russians perhaps aren't much better but there was at least some element of centralization resources that occurred that allows them a clear edge not only over the Ukraine but the perhaps the West (remember, the Ukrainians, despite being the underdog still went through a huge amount of equipment.) In the end, the Russians perhaps would fight to the last Russian as well...but if they actually backed it but its slava with armaments, it would be quite a hell of a fight. Ardennes has issued a correction as of 12:07 on Nov 28, 2023 |
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Nov 28, 2023 12:02
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a few good guns
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Nov 28, 2023 12:24
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Slavvy posted:The scud truck is just such a fine looking vehicle, wanna put a huge oil drill on top of that bad boy and get it stuck in a marsh somewhere
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Nov 28, 2023 12:33
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Ardennes posted:I think there was blindness as well on the part of the Russian leadership in following the US' example; the US system of warfare worked (and so did a lower intensity form of warfare for the Russians as well) only when fighting an incapable enemy. The BTG concept clearly wasn't fully worked out. While Russia in the future may not need armored divisions for every conflict, it is clear that the Russian military wasn't evolving like it needed to fight a more serious conflict. This is true. I don't think any Western country or its allies or apparently even countries modeled after it are prepared to handle a serious conflict as their militaries have been optimized for something different. I'm curious if there was ever a conscious decision to focus their militaries on essentially bullying or if it was happenstance. If it ever was a choice they seem to have forgotten they made it considering what is going on in Ukraine and especially Israel. There is a certain amount of laughable shock that fighting competent forces with any degree of commitment is hard. I do think political will is more than a country's capacity to frog march disposable young men into combat. Reorganizing production and enduring reductions in the standard of living is something the entire society has to accept (or sufficient force to be bullied into it) even if it falls unequally across the classes and that requires significant political will. What the South needed to do to win the war would've required it to be changed too far from norms that was the cause of the whole sorry affair. So they were more committed to that delicate conception of a society than winning the war. Similarly, what neoliberal societies would require to win lengthy serious wars would also be their annihilation. They would need to change so severely they would emerge from the war something new. That's why I don't think any contemporary Western neoliberal society would or could actually fight a proper war. Once it became something that required significant commitment they would end the conflict as quickly as they could reframe any kind of peace as victory. I doubt any of them could even reorganize to the extent Russia has been forced by the Ukraine war to do so if even the sorriest peace was an option.
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Nov 28, 2023 13:45
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FuzzySlippers posted:This is true. I don't think any Western country or its allies or apparently even countries modeled after it are prepared to handle a serious conflict as their militaries have been optimized for something different. I'm curious if there was ever a conscious decision to focus their militaries on essentially bullying or if it was happenstance. If it ever was a choice they seem to have forgotten they made it considering what is going on in Ukraine and especially Israel. There is a certain amount of laughable shock that fighting competent forces with any degree of commitment is hard. I suggest reading the ww3 thread
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Nov 28, 2023 17:36
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Does anyone have any basic primers\interesting quotes about Iraqi performance in Gulf War 1? They were definitely outclassed, outnumbered and taken by surprise, but I would think that Iran-Iraq would have given them a decent amount of combat experience and helped work out organizational\doctrinal issues.
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Nov 28, 2023 18:33
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FuzzySlippers posted:Ukraine today isn't really running out of warm bodies Not sure how you're getting this, given what we're seeing in terms of conscript demographics
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Nov 28, 2023 18:35
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Zeppelin Insanity posted:Does anyone have any basic primers\interesting quotes about Iraqi performance in Gulf War 1? Their invasion of Kuwait was well ran, no?
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Nov 28, 2023 18:36
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