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My Imaginary GF posted:hey majorian if you are so unthreatened by russia why don't you go live there for a while? What are you, coward? Russia can't do pizza worth poo poo. Also my wife and I like Santa Barbara and not living in an authoritarian system. 
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Mar 9, 2015 05:54
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Ardennes posted:Ultimately, though there is a imperative on the part of the West to still support NATO's borders so the only workable Russian expansion is within the former Soviet Union. One thing is that Poland can actually defend itself so Russian dreams have to meet reality at a point even if the West completely rolled over. Europe is the least interested party in sparking a conflict because they're at ground zero if it happens. Ultimately anything that happens beyond Poland isn't NATO- isn't just American dickwaving- I think there exists the serious schism when people complain about the modern relevance of NATO, in a sense that it was a tool of American political actions during the Cold War . NATO and, in particular, the defense of Europe, is at least conscious enough to know there's no point in falling on their swords over Ukraine if both sides still acknowledge Poland as the buffer proper. For this reason, I think a lot of people are misinterpreting what Germany is actually trying to do, which is what Western Germany during the Cold War was trying to do: not become a fixed target.
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Mar 9, 2015 05:55
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Majorian posted:Russia can't do pizza worth poo poo. Also my wife and I like Santa Barbara and not living in an authoritarian system. You ever think that folks just like yourself throughout eastern europe feel the exact same way, and that's why they wanna be part of NATO?
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Mar 9, 2015 05:55
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Majorian posted:E: misread your post. Buffer zones don't make you not encircled.
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Mar 9, 2015 05:56
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Nintendo Kid posted:Buffer zones don't make you not encircled. If you have trouble convincing yourself of this Fishmech, answer this: How long would it take a fully armed invasion of US/NATO forces to get to Moscow and where would they start? You can't understand Russian foreign policy psyche if you can't understand Barbarossa.
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Mar 9, 2015 05:58
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Majorian posted:Ah yes, because such a bid from a pre-deStalinization USSR that is still ideologically committed to destroying the U.S. is exactly the same thing as a post-Cold War, pro-Western Russian regime wanting to join. I think that's presuming that nobody in the USSR thought before Gorbachev that they would be better off if they could back down from the massive military of the Cold War and work on matching the West's industrial power. Because while we can view it from the perspective that their attempts to dial down the militarization of Europe between the death of Stalin and the Warsaw Pact were intended to open the door to a sudden invasion, we can also look at it from the perspective that they sincerely believed that they could return to the original plan of destroying capitalism by outdoing it, especially given the Sino-Soviet split after Destalinization largely emerged from debates over whether peaceful coexistence was possible with the capitalist West. The rejection of these attempts to reenter the global community thus validated a hard-line approach and the necessity of tightly controlling Eastern Europe as a bulwark against the capitalists.
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Mar 9, 2015 05:58
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Job Truniht posted:If you have trouble convincing yourself of this Fishmech, answer this: How long would it take a fully armed invasion of US/NATO forces to get to Moscow and where would they start? You can't understand Russian foreign policy psyche if you can't understand Barbarossa. From space. If we wanted in Moscow, we're getting in Moscow, any drat way we please.
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Mar 9, 2015 05:59
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Nintendo Kid posted:Buffer zones don't make you not encircled. No, but the Warsaw Pact certainly made the Russians feel less encircled during the Cold War.
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Mar 9, 2015 05:59
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My Imaginary GF posted:From space. If we wanted in Moscow, we're getting in Moscow, any drat way we please. Even things in outer space take time to get to places. Part of the reason the Pershing IIs in Germany were such a big deal with the Russians is that it gave them less than 8 minutes to respond.
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Mar 9, 2015 06:03
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My Imaginary GF posted:You ever think that folks just like yourself throughout eastern europe feel the exact same way, and that's why they wanna be part of NATO? I do! And I don't blame them. The U.S. and NATO are awesome! In a perfect world I'd say let them in. But I think the whole world would be much worse off if we did let them in.
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Mar 9, 2015 06:03
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My Imaginary GF posted:You ever think that folks just like yourself throughout eastern europe feel the exact same way, and that's why they wanna be part of NATO? They ought not to be. NATO should be about the defense of Europe and defense of Europe only. The baltic states can form their own arms pact agreements with themselves and the US, but they should gently caress right off otherwise. e: Would anyone seriously be whining about Putin if it was Georgia we were talking about and not Ukraine? This is equivalent to complaining about aggression from North Vietnam. Top defending lovely/failed states. Job Truniht fucked around with this message at 06:07 on Mar 9, 2015 |
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Mar 9, 2015 06:05
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Job Truniht posted:If you have trouble convincing yourself of this Fishmech, answer this: How long would it take a fully armed invasion of US/NATO forces to get to Moscow and where would they start? You can't understand Russian foreign policy psyche if you can't understand Barbarossa. War with Russia is conducted with ICBMs, not land invasions. Sorry you still think it's 1949. Nobody was ever really expecting to keep such a war conventional, poo poo would absolutely be nuked (including starting with vaporizing Germany).
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Mar 9, 2015 06:07
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Nintendo Kid posted:War with Russia is conducted with ICBMs, not land invasions. Sorry you still think it's 1949. Nobody, not even the highest upper echelons in NATO, believe this. If nukes are used, they would be alongside ground forces deployed in conventional warfare. Have you not seen why Russia retrofits a whole bunch of their troop transports with overpressure systems/chemical/radioactive protection?
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Mar 9, 2015 06:09
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Job Truniht posted:They ought not to be. NATO should be about the defense of Europe and defense of Europe only. The baltic states can form their own arms pact agreements with themselves and the US, but they should gently caress right off otherwise. It is too late for that, the West is responsible (one way or another) to defend the Finnish-Baltic-Polish-Romanian frontier. Maybe it was taking on to much but whatever. ------- Also, I am will be in Moscow on Wednesday so if you want the "first hand perspective" just ask. Russian micro-brews are improving.
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Mar 9, 2015 06:10
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Job Truniht posted:Nobody, not even the highest upper echelons in NATO, believe this. If nukes are used, they would be alongside ground forces deployed in conventional warfare. Have you not seen why Russia retrofits a whole bunch of their troop transports with overpressure systems/chemical/radioactive protection? Uh, actually, they do. They're certainly not going to conquer Russia by scraping together the 300,000 troops available to the eastern tier of countries for a land invasion across a 1800 mile front - the Germans couldn't handle that with 4 million. Christ you're stupid. Seriously there's no NATO plans around for gathering the millions upon millions of troops needed for an actual invasion that doesn't also involve a nuclear exchange first. Nintendo Kid fucked around with this message at 06:15 on Mar 9, 2015 |
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Mar 9, 2015 06:12
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Nintendo Kid posted:Uh, actually, they do. They're certainly not going to conquer Russia by scraping together the 300,000 troops available to the eastern tier of countries for a land invasion across a 1800 mile front - the Germans couldn't handle that with 4 million. It's like there's this massive organization that exists out there that is designed to deal with the logistical problems of defending countries from invasion and invading other countries that pools together, collectively, the armed forces of several other countries- including one or two very powerful ones. Just because NATO does its darnedest to avoid conventional warfare doesn't mean they can avoid it- especially with the tunnel vision they're currently having. The only way your argument works is if it implies that buffer states, historically, have no meaning and that what happened at Hiroshima/Nagasaki has more precedent than the rest of WW2. NATO was built on the Truman Doctrine, jesus christ.
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Mar 9, 2015 06:16
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Job Truniht posted:It's like there's this massive organization that exists out there that is designed to deal with the logistical problems of defending countries from invasion and invading other countries that pools together, collectively, the armed forces of several other countries- including one or two very powerful ones. Just because NATO does its darnedest to avoid conventional warfare doesn't mean they can avoid it- especially with the tunnel vision they're currently having. And that plan involves "if we have to go to war with actual Soviet Union/Russia, nukes will be used". How stupid are you that you don't get this? And actual invasions of Russia would have to involve truly massive armies that can not be fielded unless all involved nations bring up not just their reserves, but train a ton more people and hold even more in reserve to cover casualties. Buffer states have in fact had no meaning since ICBMs and supersonic aircraft was invented. They "mattered" back when half of your army had to move on horseback and your planes topped out at 400 miles an hour. Only a fool seriously thinks the Soviets controlled eastern europe to have a buffer rather than because full political and economic control of countries is pretty drat useful in and of itself. I get you seem to be trying to do some weird thing where you pretend NATO doctrine of like 1949 still stands, from before technology improved drastically, but it doesn't. Plans have changed hugely since then because the rules of the game changed massively once ICBMs were a thing. Nintendo Kid fucked around with this message at 06:22 on Mar 9, 2015 |
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Mar 9, 2015 06:19
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Would you seriously like to talk about the minute differences between Germany foreign policy from the 1980s-present? Because everyone here would really like to loving know what you have to say about that. The fact Germany did what it did in wake of Crimea is pretty telling.
Job Truniht fucked around with this message at 06:27 on Mar 9, 2015 |
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Mar 9, 2015 06:25
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Job Truniht posted:Would you seriously like to talk about the minuit differences between Germany foreign policy from the 1980s-present? Because everyone here would really like to loving know what you have to say about that. The fact Germany did what it did in wake of Crimea is pretty telling. The fact that Germany did nothing tells us what, exactly, about NATO's plans regarding physically invading Russia, the only scenario where "buffer states" are even marginally relevant?
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Mar 9, 2015 06:27
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Nintendo Kid posted:The fact that Germany did nothing tells us what, exactly, about NATO's plans regarding physically invading Russia, the only scenario where "buffer states" are even marginally relevant? As I said before, this is at best is a misinterpretation. Shuffling around ICBMs, all 420 of them for the US, from silo to silo does to hold a candle to TOPOL-M and other MRBM variants, all of which are exclusively built around a range of 800-1000 miles from places that aren't silos. The only correct narrative is that nuclear weapons would be used in addition to conventional ground forces, especially as a means of cover, over just launching everything and inexplicably calling it quits. Even if we were to adopt your previous, extremely narrow, argument's implication that the US would simply beat out Russia and not get hit by any nukes ever does not mean that's true for Europe. That's where European countries start filling in the blanks on how to react to this- the same way they've reacted to it for decades. I don't know how you could adopt this framework of 1955 encirclement because of NATO and also construct the idea that NATO sort of rewrote the books at some point, especially considering that many countries view NATO as a dinosaur because of its fairly rigid stance in regards to this.
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Mar 9, 2015 06:37
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Job Truniht posted:
That is not the meaning child, the meaning is that in case of anything that neccessitates actually invading Russia in the forseeable future, nuclear exchange will happen, both sides will be majorly hosed from that, and then you'd have to scrape together a suitable invasion force for the resulting desolation. Really don't get how stupid you must be to think any of this implies the US has no damage, ICBMs means its impossible for the US to avoid damage. It was only in the 40s, when the Russians had either 0 or 2 bombs depending on year, and no one had long range missiles or supersonic bombers. that America could expect to get away with 0 damage due to the "buffer zone" caused by honking huge oceans, and when Russia would receive minimal dmage because you'd have to actually work through a decent chunk of eastern blocland to get to striking distance. Job Truniht posted:I don't know how you could adopt this framework of 1955 encirclement because of NATO and also construct the idea that NATO sort of rewrote the books at some point, especially considering that many countries view NATO as a dinosaur because of its fairly rigid stance in regards to this. 1955 is when the nail went in the coffin, with West Germany and thus the Kiel Canal and related canals coming over complete actual NATO control, thus sealing off the European Russian Navy. This made the Russians as encircled as they could ever be, unless you choose to count the culmination of Mao saying "gently caress you Soviet Union" indpendently in the 60s as making it more so.
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Mar 9, 2015 06:44
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Nintendo Kid posted:1955 is when the nail went in the coffin, with West Germany and thus the Kiel Canal and related canals coming over complete actual NATO control, thus sealing off the European Russian Navy. This made the Russians as encircled as they could ever be You're stretching the definition of "encirclement" into an unrecognizable shape here, fishmech. e: Also, "sealing off the European Russian Navy"? I think the Northern and Black Sea fleets would be surprised to hear that. Majorian fucked around with this message at 08:09 on Mar 9, 2015 |
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Mar 9, 2015 08:04
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My Imaginary GF posted:You ever think that folks just like yourself throughout eastern europe feel the exact same way, and that's why they wanna be part of NATO? Everybody wants things. But why should they get them?
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Mar 9, 2015 08:06
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Majorian posted:Black Sea fleet
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Mar 9, 2015 08:12
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Rent-A-Cop posted:Ah yes, the fleet Russia kept around just in case they ever wanted to do a reverse Gallipoli. And yet their submarines somehow kept managing to slip our sonar nets. A remarkable feat, for such an inadequate fleet! 
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Mar 9, 2015 08:21
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Majorian posted:And yet their submarines somehow kept managing to slip our sonar nets. A remarkable feat, for such an inadequate fleet! Also the surface portions didn't seem exactly ineffective versus Georgia or in taking Crimea itself, although it was mostly a support role. Hell, if anything it is been one of the more active fleets. Ardennes fucked around with this message at 09:12 on Mar 9, 2015 |
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Mar 9, 2015 09:00
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Majorian posted:And yet their submarines somehow kept managing to slip our sonar nets. A remarkable feat, for such an inadequate fleet! Ardennes posted:Also the surface portions didn't seem exactly ineffective versus Georgia or in taking Crimea itself. Hell, if anything it is been more of the more active fleets. Rent-A-Cop fucked around with this message at 09:06 on Mar 9, 2015 |
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Mar 9, 2015 09:02
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Rent-A-Cop posted:TBF Georgia doesn't even have a navy. It doesn't have one now.
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Mar 9, 2015 09:07
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Ardennes posted:It doesn't have one now. I guess they have a Coast Guard now. Won't need it much longer though as I'm sure their beachfront property is just teaming with oppressed ethnic Russians yearning to breathe free. Edit: Ukraine has an old Soviet frigate but frigates are ships in the same way a Smart Fortwo is a car. Rent-A-Cop fucked around with this message at 09:16 on Mar 9, 2015 |
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Mar 9, 2015 09:10
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Rent-A-Cop posted:Georgia has never actually had any ships. They had a boat once, but the Russians blew it up. They had more than one boat, but yes the Russians did blow them up/scuttle them. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coast_Guard_of_Georgia quote:he Georgian Navy consisted of 19 ships and boats. Until 19 August 2008, when it was destroyed by Russian forces, the most powerful combat unit was the missile boat Dioskuria. The other surface combat vessel, the missile boat Tbilisi, was found on fire in the Georgian naval base of Poti. The Navy suffered extensive losses in the Russo-Georgian War. Ardennes fucked around with this message at 09:16 on Mar 9, 2015 |
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Mar 9, 2015 09:13
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McDowell posted:The Russians know they are way behind in space technology, they fear the realization of SDI which would allow NATO to obliterate them with impunity. Ah so that's why they are desperately trying to conquer Lugansk, it's the only place from where they can launch satellite killers.
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Mar 9, 2015 10:50
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Majorian posted:W-ow - now THAT'S a post! Thanks for taking the time to write it, Gorau - this is exactly the type of discussion that I want to be having. Did you ever respond to this? clusterfuck fucked around with this message at 12:13 on Mar 9, 2015 |
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Mar 9, 2015 11:27
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Ardennes posted:They had more than one boat, but yes the Russians did blow them up/scuttle them. The russian navy ensuring live fire experience for their seamen.
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Mar 9, 2015 12:00
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I'd like to address some minor Cold War military points that kinda open up into broader issues of strategy and the potentially dangerous of 'nuclear warfighting'.Job Truniht posted:Nobody, not even the highest upper echelons in NATO, believe this. If nukes are used, they would be alongside ground forces deployed in conventional warfare. Have you not seen why Russia retrofits a whole bunch of their troop transports with overpressure systems/chemical/radioactive protection? But Nuclear, Biological, Chemical (NBC) protection has been a bog-standard feature in combat vehicle design for more than half a decade now. It was the bottom-up (individual systems) counterpart to trying to prepare entire military formations from the top down for fighting under nuclear conditions. The latter has been widely discredited since the mid-1960s as impossible though, and consequently helped in leading both NATO and the USSR to stop believing in being able to pursue classic military objectives under nuclear conditions. I don't think you should try to extract much meaning from armies fielding legacy (no retrofitting required really) systems that include a minor hedge against WMD use, plus their much greater, added, benefit of "nice airconditioning". Job Truniht posted:There have been many cases of encirclement since then- most notably Reagan putting Pershing IIs in Germany and well within range of Moscow or the deployment of medium range ballistic missiles in Turkey prior to the Cuban Missile Crisis. Job Truniht posted:Part of the reason the Pershing IIs in Germany were such a big deal with the Russians is that it gave them less than 8 minutes to respond. As you said, Thor in the late 50s and also Polaris from the 60s onwards had the same first-strike implications, so in the response time-sense Pershing II wasn't new or revolutionary at all. Draw a 2100km/1300mi radius around Moscow and you get the range of Thor in Turkey, Polaris in the Norwegian Sea, and Pershing II in the Palatinate. The latters' particular danger, for Soviet leadership and certain Western sensibilities at least, stemmed from it being a very accurate and all-round advanced weapon. Meaning that NATO could have been tempted into doing a decapitation strike on Moscow during the a transition from conventional to nuclear conflict. Or something, who knows what the Hawks were upto in their 1980s plans really. Anyway, big problem - you don't have anyone left to negotiate with, and it potentially greatly destabilizes USSR head honchos' thinking during times of crisis. Nuclear warfighting is poo poo. Job Truniht posted:As I said before, this is at best is a misinterpretation. Shuffling around ICBMs, all 420 of them for the US, from silo to silo does to hold a candle to TOPOL-M and other MRBM variants, all of which are exclusively built around a range of 800-1000 miles from places that aren't silos. The only correct narrative is that nuclear weapons would be used in addition to conventional ground forces, especially as a means of cover, over just launching everything and inexplicably calling it quits. So far the only 'correct' narrative for mobile strategic nuclear weapons (so road-, sub-, and maybe train-based) has been that they provide you with an assured second strike capability, which put them decidedly in the realm of not wanting to contemplate (or have your enemy contemplate) first-strike opportunities or actually 'winning' a nuclear war. Thor and Pershing II (and the Cuban missiles for that matter) were nasty, destabilizing weapons, or could at least be perceived that way. Early (effective) submarine launched missiles turned out to be relatively stabilizing hedges against the idea of the enemy winning by launching a first strike - assured destruction - but the US' initial monopoly on them was destabilizing. Space-based systems are nasty because who even knows what goes up. Missile defense is nasty because it introduces ambiguity. Abrogating treaties is stupid. The US, NATO as a whole, the USSR, and Russia have been guilty of doing stupid things with a number or all of the above stated issues.
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Mar 9, 2015 12:24
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Sure did - right here.
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Mar 9, 2015 15:57
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Majorian posted:You're stretching the definition of "encirclement" into an unrecognizable shape here, fishmech. No, you're the one doing that by pretending only adding some tiny baltic states constituted encirclement. They have been allowed to maneuver because we've never formally been at war with them. In case of an actual war the European ports would be rendered useless due to all being behind NATO-controlled chokepoints.
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Mar 9, 2015 16:58
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Yeah I never got the russian obsession with european ports. How is the russian navy supposed to cross the Oresund or the Dardanelles? NATO wouldn't even need to invest it's vastly superior navy, they could take them all out with ground based artillery/aircraft.
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Mar 9, 2015 17:23
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Nintendo Kid posted:No, you're the one doing that by pretending only adding some tiny baltic states constituted encirclement. Actually, it's me and a lot of scholars and veteran international security experts who are saying that. People who know what they're talking about, you see. Unlike you. e: Indeed, it would seem that even the Bush-era ambassador, William J. Burns, was very conscious of the destabilizing nature of NATO expansion: quote:NATO enlargement, particularly to Ukraine, remains ‘an emotional and neuralgic’ issue for Russia, but strategic policy considerations also underlie strong opposition to NATO membership for Ukraine and Georgia. In Ukraine, these include fears that the issue could potentially split the country in two, leading to violence or even, some claim, civil war, which would force Russia to decide whether to intervene. quote:They have been allowed to maneuver because we've never formally been at war with them. In case of an actual war the European ports would be rendered useless due to all being behind NATO-controlled chokepoints. Ridiculous. The Russian submarine fleet was perfectly able to slip through NATO-controlled checkpoints without us having a clue, and besides, the Russian ports in Murmansk made these unnecessary for power projection anyway. Majorian fucked around with this message at 17:46 on Mar 9, 2015 |
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Mar 9, 2015 17:30
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Majorian posted:
In times of peace only. There's never been a time at war with them. There's a reason it wasn't the "Hot War".
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Mar 9, 2015 18:01
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Nintendo Kid posted:In times of peace only. There's never been a time at war with them. There's a reason it wasn't the "Hot War". Irrelevant - even if it were a hot war and NATO managed to somehow close off the Baltic and Black Sea choke points and prevent Russian submarines from getting through, they couldn't close off Murmansk or keep the Red Banner Northern Fleet from projecting its power into the Atlantic.
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Mar 9, 2015 18:02
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