(Thread IKs:
fatherboxx)
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Any time you see "countries are going to make a new joint currency" you need to remember that having a sovereign currency is such a huge advantage, especially if you are a big country with a decent domestic market, that you need absolutely ridiculous economic incentives to give it up. For reference, the South American plan is a terrible one, the Euro isn't really that great for countries that aren't Germany, and anyone proposing something along these lines is usually an idiot.
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Apr 1, 2023 14:30
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| # ¿ May 21, 2024 06:36 |
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Getting back to assassin-chat, Christo Grozev has the fun detail that public cctv cameras were disabled around Prigozhin's restaurant where a prominent milblog was assassinated. https://twitter.com/ChrisO_wiki/status/1643551941715173376 Which makes it really sound like it was a friendly fire deal.
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Apr 5, 2023 15:05
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WarpedLichen posted:So is Macron's visit to China likely going to be another nothing burger on the conflict? Macron is still looking for the marvelous bit of one on one diplomacy that ends the war, that's really the story. He went to make a personal appeal to Xi and Xi gave him poo poo.
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Apr 7, 2023 00:58
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The issue with any peace negotiations is it assumes that we're talking about peace, not a ceasefire while Russia rebuilds for a renewed offensive. Russian political objectives in Ukraine haven't been achieved and Putin believes the country is stable enough that he can continue with the current sanctions while he re-arms.
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Apr 10, 2023 18:00
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HonorableTB posted:Deliberately targeting and downing a NATO plane with 30 NATO troops on it seems like a great on-ramp to escalation over a single pilot fighter where the pilot can eject. This isn't the first time a Russian missile has misfired when launched, correct? How bad is their quality control now?
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Apr 13, 2023 20:08
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Do the nukes even, like, work. Because one half of the start inspections is making sure that reported nuclear arsenals are actually extant.
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Apr 14, 2023 17:40
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There's also a huge meritocratic element to, y'know, fighting an actual war as opposed to a bureaucratic ladder system. Ukraine has been doing so since 2014, after a revolution, so a lot of chaff has been filtered out and a lot of gold nuggets found.
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Apr 18, 2023 00:20
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Also the best people go into fields with the most reward, so you have a lot of brilliant people working in finance and a lot of passionate people involved in immigration law. Meanwhile the army relies on career families for a big chunk of their officer corps. That dynamic all changes if there is some sort of existential threat.
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Apr 18, 2023 01:53
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I'm just playing devil's advocate, but there is an argument for strikes on Russian soil because it diverts resources away from the actual front. Every SAM covering an airport in Belgorod is a SAM not in Melitopol. There's an argument for occupying Russian soil too: Russia has next to no defenses on their actual border because all of their troops are concentrated in SE Ukraine. This territory can then be traded as part of a peace negotiation assuming we're not all dead in nuclear fire.
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Apr 24, 2023 18:01
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The fun math is to work out how long until Russia burns through the last mobilization wave.
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May 1, 2023 20:05
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Cpt_Obvious posted:Right but if half the deaths are Wagner then half the casualties should be wagner too. The assumption is there's normal WIA:KIA ratios. Wagner doesn't care about the convicts.
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May 1, 2023 23:33
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If you clean out the civilians, you also clear put partisans and observers reporting to the UA.
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May 5, 2023 18:18
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Nenonen posted:Oh okay, now Prigozhin is writing in a published letter to Shoigu to transfer the front responsibility in Bakhmut from Wagner to Kadyrovites before May 10th 00.00 hours. "I killed a man in hand to hand combat to retrieve this intel and he... just tweeted it out." This represents the end of Russian efforts to capture Bakhmut right, since it was Wagner's job and the army was assigned Vuhledar?
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May 6, 2023 21:30
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WarpedLichen posted:https://twitter.com/UAWeapons/status/1655284232720113665?cxt=HHwWgoCz2aqP4PgtAAAA Because a terrible tank is still a great IFV; you need a lot of optics and weapons systems for a tank, plus survivability. An IFV just needs some armor to resist small arms and some mobility.
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May 9, 2023 00:27
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By definition states like Belarus and Russia, where power is all concentrated in a circle of loyalty to one man, can't really have a designated successor publicly known. At that point people start developing their own loyalty to him and he becomes an independent power base. It's why dictators often have their sons take over because that's generally the one person who won't oppose you while you're alive.
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May 16, 2023 01:11
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Ynglaur posted:A couple people on Twitter are making vague hints that the offensive has started. We'll see. https://twitter.com/chefjoseandres/status/1665493174633000961 Jose Andres has a lot of charity work on the ground so maybe he is gonna hear something early.
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Jun 5, 2023 04:28
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quote:Even though there was still a huge amount of confusion about exact Russian deployment, the officials said the vast majority of Russian forces are now committed to positions on the line partly due to the sheer size of the line that has to be defended. That gave Russia little room for further manoeuvre to deploy reinforcements if a point in the line became vulnerable. This is probably the key bit. If Ukraine is able to reach some breaking point and expand the line, Russia would not be able to easily plug a gap. The other key element is that Ukraine is probably able to replace losses easier than Russia, since it has the Western MIC backing it, and that the main effect of casualties is just bad publicity.
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Jun 15, 2023 03:28
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A lot of really dangerous jobs in the army are very attractive because you can make a lot of money after discharge.
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Jun 16, 2023 21:37
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OperaMouse posted:There are some conspiracy rumors that Orban was promised that part of Ukraine in exchange for support / NATO "sabotage". This is hardly a conspiracy, Russia was pretty open about their planned partition in the early days of the war.
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Jun 20, 2023 20:01
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It still amazes me that "We put a gopro on a trench clearing team in a European war" is actually a thing. Anyway, they probably have better things to do than retain encyclopedic knowledge of Russian milbloggers so they can retrieve their bodies if they accidentally stumble across them.
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Jun 21, 2023 20:28
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Willo567 posted:Realistically, how likely is this coup to actually succeed if Wagner really is in Rostov? It will not. This is a hail mary pass before Priggy got removed. The question is how far he will get, in terms of actually fighting, before one of his lieutenants calls it a day and turns him over.
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Jun 24, 2023 03:21
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Armed rebellions run on dunkin': https://twitter.com/anneapplebaum/status/1672493492579303424 Actual content tweet, it appears there's some sluggish response in Russia because everyone was out drinking. https://twitter.com/ChrisO_wiki/status/1672500874113949696
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Jun 24, 2023 12:31
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Staluigi posted:Yeah we're gonna be needing a truly inspired new thread title asap Chef's Special Civil Operation? Chef's Special Rebellion?
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Jun 24, 2023 12:46
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Man Plan Canal posted:Russian institutions are essentially fictional so any answer is overdetermined, but one is that if Mishustin (is it still Mishustin) could be persuaded to go along and the coupists want basic continuity of government, then Prigozhin has Mishustin announce that the office of the presidency is vacant because the president is unable or unwilling to discharge his duties, and constitutionally Mishustin becomes acting president and that's the ballgame. He already fled to Petrograd.
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Jun 24, 2023 15:49
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I'm glad Priggy backed down, because it looked like he was going to get somewhere and ruin by early prediction that he doesn't have a chance.
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Jun 24, 2023 23:40
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All those videos of regiments appealing to Putin nicely for ammunition, medical care, competent leadership? Now they're going to be actual mutinies because it's been demonstrated that you can shake loose a few fruits from the tree with violence.
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Jun 25, 2023 00:40
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acidx posted:I saw it reported hours ago that nobody was killed as a result of those helicopters being shot down, but haven't seen anything else about it. Who knows if it was true then or is now. Either way, Russia is no stranger to quietly burying their dead soldiers in unmarked graves if a situation calls for it. Between 13-20 Russian airmen were killed when different aircraft were shot down.
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Jun 25, 2023 03:45
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Putin is haunted by what happened to his "colleagues". Gaddafi is the one that is cited the most, but Nazarbayav is another big influence. Kazakhstan's dictator tried to step down to a peaceful retirement, while still holding some power for security, and got outmaneuvered by his successor who ousted him and forced him to flee the country.
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Jun 25, 2023 03:50
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Someone asked about how China felt: here's a quick Twitter thread. Tl;dr is that it is very inconvenient and they're downplaying how significant it is. https://twitter.com/wentisung/status/1672882550271012864
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Jun 25, 2023 14:05
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The helicopters were likely shot down as a precaution by Wagner, it's much easier to engage with a pantsir against a circling attack craft than to shoot an actual person.WarpedLichen posted:This is like a baby tantrum that played out extremely publicly, it could've been solved behind close doors extremely easily if the figures at play understood their relative strengths and weaknesses. Basically, this is saying that Putin in backing the MOD, had no clue about how weak his grasp on the military is vs even a clown like Prigozhin. If he had any clue, he wouldn't have let this play out in public like it has. There's been a lot about Putin being in an information bubble the last few years and I think that's really obvious now. He doesn't have an accurate assessment of how secure he is or how loyal/capable different branches of his government are.
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Jun 25, 2023 16:36
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He's avoiding windows so it's very hard to get good service.
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Jun 25, 2023 18:13
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Wagner are not mercenaries in the highest bidder sense. The image that they're separate from the Russian state is just plausible deniability for their clandestine actions in Africa, where they very much work as an arm of the Russian government. They're filled with Russian nationalists and are usually (prisoners aside) highly motivated volunteers. You can't bribe them to just switch sides to Ukraine.
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Jun 27, 2023 14:42
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Putin really doesn't respond well to things he's not in control of. You get the idea that he's a decisive authority because usually he's the one stirring poo poo, but whenever he's in his own crisis mode he will usually procrastinate as much as possible. The early days of the war, really the whole war, are a Great example of that: the initial strategy didn't work and it took months to pivot away from the idea of a lightning assault on Kyiv. Even now he's really just procrastinating on the whole war when it's pretty clear that Russia will buckle before Ukraine does.
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Jun 27, 2023 20:00
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There's definitely going to be purges after anunsuccessful coup targeting people with ties to Wagner. https://twitter.com/maxseddon/status/1674328723330420736
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Jun 29, 2023 12:55
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The issue is also we've seen Putin's game plan for when it all comes crashing down: he and his close supporters take their private jets elsewhere. He only got as far as Petrograd, but a lot of oligarchs ended up taking sudden trips to Turkey or Dubai. That is not the behavior of a man or political elite willing to burn the world. It's a man with an exit strategy that involves a non-ICC country and an offshore bank account. The west can probably go as far as an actual shooting war without Russia launching (not that anyone wants to).
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Jun 29, 2023 18:38
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https://twitter.com/christogrozev/status/1674814603627307008 A big Prigozhin-affiliated media operation has been disbanded, so expect a lot of juicy media chaos.
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Jun 30, 2023 17:32
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Occam's razor was that Putin was on Putin's plane as it fled Moscow right as it seemed it was about to fall to an army of hardened mercenaries whom he had just declared traitors.
Morrow fucked around with this message at 21:30 on Jul 1, 2023 |
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Jul 1, 2023 21:25
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EasilyConfused posted:Did you mean' Occam's Razor? What does malice have to do with this? I confused the razors but you get my point.
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Jul 1, 2023 21:30
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Mearsheimer's arguments make sense if you remember he has made up the motivations of the key actors.
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Jul 2, 2023 15:38
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| # ¿ May 21, 2024 06:36 |
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Actually, let me circle back to something: the big flaw in Mearsheimer's arguments is that he regards Russia as a Great Power. If he actually adjusted his inputs for the facts on the ground where it's a vestigial empire coasting off Soviet arsenals, then his theoretical framework does a much better job.
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Jul 2, 2023 15:49
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