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Young Freud posted:Now would be the time to put missile defense as a top priority. It would neutralize the Russians' perennial threats of nuclear annihilation whenever someone considers countering something like Crimea takeover or using regular military in Donbass. Let the Russians spend to try to modernize their ballistic weapons to penetrate an upgraded missile defense network, it'll pull more money from their conventional military and bankrupt them faster. Imagine what would happen to their foreign policy if the Russians didn't have their nuclear weapons, we wouldn't be sitting on our hands with letting them bomb rebels and prop up Assad in Syria. I don't like that Russia can pull this off and nobody can do anything about it, but alternatives like this have the potential to be immeasurably worse. You can't really do much militarily against a nuclear state. e: Not that I think that going out there to fight a big conventional war against Russia is a good solution, even if it was plausible. Elukka fucked around with this message at 16:18 on Feb 28, 2016 |
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Feb 28, 2016 12:18
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Murgos posted:Stupid americans! Can't even penetrate the front armor 45 year old knock off tanks! Especially when it comes to something like the TOW, there's a shitload of variants from a period covering decades and I'm willing to bet there's both TOWs that can't reliably penetrate a T-90 and TOWs that can, and who knows which their particular opponents are using.
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Mar 9, 2016 09:40
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Yeah, my point is more that it's very difficult to actually tell how good/bad some tank is based on how that one time it reportedly took fifteen ATGMs or that YouTube video were it was killed by one old TOW because there's so many variables. Everything is classified as all hell and trying to make accurate comparisons is the road to long and spergy discussions citing various fragmentary and anecdotal test data or analyst opinions. (Which I'm sorry to contribute to  )
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Mar 9, 2016 14:06
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The EU is made of up a large number of different cultures, languages and countries that want to remain independent. It's not like it's a collection of US-like states that for some silly reason just lack a federal government. It's more like, I dunno, if you decided to mash up the US, Canada, Mexico, maybe throw in Brazil and some smaller states, all into one big country. Coercing countries together isn't really something you could expect to go well. Besides its total lack of feasibility (for now - who knows what might happen in the far future), I really don't see a big problem with keeping it as a union of independent countries. Basically I think they're close enough for peaceful coexistence and cooperation but not nearly close enough for federalization.
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Mar 12, 2016 09:30
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A Typical Goon posted:A nuclear deterrent is pretty useless when you're going up against a country that has their own very large nuclear deterrent. Russia would wipe the floor with Europe in a conventional war, no one is going to nuke anyone. The most important aspect to Europe's security is NATO and American hegemony. A Typical Goon posted:Nuking Russian troops would lead to a full nuclear response from Russia, hence it wouldn't happen. Nobody is gonna drop nukes on another nation that can retaliate in kind. e: There's a nice quote on Wikipedia quote:In his book La paix nucléaire (1975), French Navy Admiral Marc de Joybert explained deterrence as: Elukka fucked around with this message at 15:13 on Mar 12, 2016 |
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Mar 12, 2016 15:08
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Hmm yes the Russian government that keeps going DO NOT LISTEN TO THIS GUY THERE IS ABSOLUTELY NOTHING TO IT repeatedly through the media and now direct from government ministries will probably not care at all. The internet is a thing. Bellingcat might be difficult to stumble onto for the average person... except the government keeps talking about it.
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Mar 13, 2016 19:59
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ESA member states have their own national space agencies that that work with ESA.
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Mar 14, 2016 13:13
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I'm a couple pages late but the spin that the Panama Papers are an attack on Putin is bizarre. Everyone knows and expects Putin is corrupt in various ways. Revealing that he's possibly using tax havens will have zero effect on his political career because Putin doing that sort of thing is already well accepted by everyone, no doubt including many supporters. In the West it could have much more of an effect, though sadly I imagine it won't be as big as one would hope. Still, it's certainly more of an issue for involved Western leaders than it is for Putin.
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Apr 8, 2016 11:33
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Man I have no idea whether Poland's military spending is reasonable or not so I'm gonna offer no opinion on that but arguing that armies are for a type of conflict that simply doesn't occur anymore seems a little silly in light of, you know, Ukraine.
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Apr 13, 2016 22:35
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The way the US handled it was to say they did nothing wrong, and what happened was not at all their responsibility, but they're so goddamn nice they're paying anyway. If there was enough of an uproar that Russia wanted to pay something they'd probably say something similar, though I'd wager Russia simply won't care about any uproar.
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May 21, 2016 12:17
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Gaj posted:I just had a friend come back from teaching in Brazil and the domestic opinions there are frighteningly similar with regards to Oliver Stone and the other skeptics. Brown Moses posted:Don't forget Google Earth was funded by the CIA, and we all know who uses Google Earth a lot in their work. Elukka fucked around with this message at 17:21 on Jun 22, 2016 |
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Jun 22, 2016 16:42
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Putin really is NATO's best advocate for expansion. When he was recently visiting Finland a reporter asked him about how some Finns feel like Russia is driving Finland towards NATO, pointing out that support for NATO here has been pretty low but now it's a relevant question again. Putin brushes it off with a I DON'T UNDERSTAND WHAT YOU'RE WORRIED ABOUT and makes some vague threats of consequences if Finland were to seek NATO membership. Boom, a few more people are convinced NATO is the right way to go.
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Jul 11, 2016 10:17
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Well apparently they were meaning to do that but then Syria came up and they simply can't pass the opportunity to play around with their toy and bomb some people. So they're gonna do it later.
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Nov 21, 2016 12:10
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I'm no expert on naval ships but I don't know any other ones that look like a volcanic eruption from space.
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Nov 21, 2016 12:27
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Young Freud posted:Actually, I was discussing this with some other milnerd friends and supposedly the Chinese carrier is better maintained. It's all Russia's fault that it's falling apart.  e: Apparently, neither did the Kuznetsov back in 1991: 
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Jan 3, 2017 15:41
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China is using theirs as a means to figure out How To Carrier, which I imagine is a bit easier when you have a functional (if not good) carrier to work with. Liaoning is even classed as a training ship. I imagine India is doing something similar since they're also building their own carriers.
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Jan 3, 2017 18:35
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spacetoaster posted:Do you think the people in Crimea didn't want to be with Russia back when it happened? Grouchio posted:They voted almost unanimously in favor of joining Russia in a referendum right before forces moved in, so I don't know why this 'violated international borders and sovereignty' thing was such a big deal when a province wanted to leave the Ukraine to join Russia. I don't get it. I wish I had the source, if it still exists. It may have been in Russian so it's difficult to find for me. e: The Presidential Council for Civil Society and Human Rights, I'm pretty sure. Anyone able to find it? e2: Found it! http://old.president-sovet.ru/structure/gruppa_po_migratsionnoy_politike/materialy/problemy_zhiteley_kryma.php I believe the domain is legitimate since the Kremlin's website links to president-sovet.ru for the human rights council. All I can get from this is a Google translation, though. "Referendum: According to almost all respondents experts and citizens: - the vast majority of the inhabitants of Sevastopol voted in a referendum for annexation to Russia (50-80% turnout), in the Crimea, according to various sources for Russia's accession to 50-60% of the electorate voted for a total turnout of 30 -50 %; - Inhabitants of Crimea voted not so much for joining Russia, but for the termination, in their words, "corruption and lawlessness thieves dominance Donetsk henchmen." Residents of Sevastopol vote for joining Russia. Fears illegal armed groups in Sevastopol were higher than in other regions of the Crimea." Any Russian speakers around to interpret that and the context to see if it actually means what I think it means? Elukka fucked around with this message at 14:24 on Feb 15, 2017 |
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Feb 15, 2017 14:16
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If it's a legitimate conspiracy theory, BM's head has ways of shutting that down.
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Feb 21, 2017 09:55
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And NATO has a nuclear deterrent, Eastern European countries on their own would not. Whether you believe the threat 100% or not, "attack Estonia (or whatever) and the world burns" is gonna make anyone think twice.
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Feb 26, 2017 14:39
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On one hand I understand why Russia doesn't want a bunch of NATO-aligned countries on their doorstep but on the other the reason NATO and western influence trump Russian influence is because Russia is perceived as a threat. Russian propaganda tries to paint it as some conspiracy to expand NATO but really even if NATO wants to expand towards Russia, Russia is the only reason they're able to do so. Why would any Eastern European country want to join NATO if Russia was not seen as a military threat? Which makes me wonder if Russia has ever considered being, I dunno, a good, constructive neighbor instead of a military threat?
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Feb 27, 2017 18:53
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How meaningful is that? By a quick googling Article 7 seems to require an unanimous decision by the European Council (i.e. all heads of state) for anything to happen, and that seems to me unlikely to ever happen.
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Jul 26, 2017 11:50
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SaltyJesus posted:The commies really had the right idea with suppressing religion in the Balkans, it's just a shame they didn't manage to finish the job and so we have this whiplash where people are not only returning to previously existing practices but are literally inventing "rites" out of whole cloth to one up each other in displays of religiosity. This poo poo should've been stamped out.
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Sep 9, 2017 13:56
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No, if that exists it's a further component of a nuclear deterrent. It's there to say "look, in a nuclear war some of our weapons would get through and you couldn't win".
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Jan 22, 2018 08:16
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Grouchio posted:Putin's new ICBM is primarily for dickwaving I take it? I think it's both dickwaving and a response to worries about US missile defense, which seems currently considered with small-scale threats like NK, but they haven't really made it clear that they would restrict it to this and there's no guarantee they won't expand it. This will force other nuclear powers to improve and expand their arsenal, or develop defenses of their own, or they risk a situation in the future where their opponent can win a nuclear war. Weapons are also a sort of safe way to rattle some sabers since weapons (unlike defenses) don't actually change the status quo or force any sort of reponse from others, since the status quo is MAD, and you don't get bonus points for destroying your enemy 110% while they destroy you 100%. Weapons still sound scarier though so they're superior for dickwaving purposes.
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Mar 30, 2018 14:30
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Goon shitposts directly to the Russian government. It's an interesting timeline.
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Jun 11, 2018 17:53
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I'd rather blame the US withdrawal from the anti-ballistic missile treaty back in 2002. I think Russia is worried that the US could at some point invest in enough defenses to endanger its deterrent. Once you cut through the bluster, I think anyone would do the same. Nuclear strategy is remarkably similar regardless of nation or ideology. If someone builds defenses, or even scares you with the prospect that they might, you're going to build weapons to try and get through these defenses (and maybe your own defenses for parity) because otherwise the threat of your deterrent is eroded, and in the extreme you may face an opponent that could win a nuclear war. (Which informs things even if it never comes to that.) If treaties could be made to limit defenses and new weapons we could skip all this nonsense and not have another arms race.
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Dec 27, 2018 13:02
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Everything about the incident seems confused as gently caress, from the media not knowing the difference between a rocket and a jet to bad translations to possibly deliberately misleading information. I can't even tell if it was a nuclear rocket, a nuclear jet, a regular non-nuclear rocket that blew up and damaged something nuclear, or what.Plastic_Gargoyle posted:The fact that it was shelved by the US at the height of the cold war, ye time of the AIR-2 Genie and the Davy Crockett, would suggest the US even then realized that it was a bugfuck insane idea.
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Aug 11, 2019 13:33
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forkboy84 posted:It's a good & striking symbol. It's easy to draw even for people with less than no artistic talent such as myself. Personally I've not really attachment to it but it is far more widely recognised than the black & red ancom flag for example. Plus it's just more BANG than a flag with 1 or 2 colours on it. What's the alternatives? There's either a red or gold star, or the variants on the hammer & sickle with an AK47 or cogwheels or whatever but there's really not much left-wing iconography that hasn't been used by some sort of democratic centralist Leninist/Bolshevik influenced state. Are you uncomfortable with the iconography or with the fact that as neoliberalism has failed millions the left is on the rise in several parts of the west, especially among a youth who either don't remember the fall of communism or only barely remember it? I'm from Finland and while we were building our socdem welfare state the Soviet Union was the menace next door that we had to appease at every turn just to make sure they never got mad enough to invade.
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Dec 4, 2019 23:05
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Paladinus posted:Lest we forget the fallen in the Finno-Korean Hyperwar! 
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May 15, 2020 03:37
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Why does Russia use the least deniable methods possible to assassinate people? Polonium and Novichok pretty heavily point towards Russia, and they must know that. Is it a case of wanting to deny it officially, but to communicate "yes, it was us" unofficially?
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Sep 6, 2020 16:59
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I'm seeing nothing about this on Finnish media, which is weird because this seems like it would be big news. The article claims it was reported by "Finnish station Radio Liberty", but as best I can tell this is a US government funded station operating in Russia. The source seems to be the guy himself, which I suppose does make it possible that the investigation has so far been kept under wraps and this is the first we hear of it.
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Sep 11, 2020 20:05
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