War in Ukraine CE: The Golf War

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BabyFur Denny: Mar 18, 2003

of course nobody expected Finland to deny Sweden's accession, it was just a fun procedural question.

# ¿ Apr 2, 2023 08:51

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# ¿ May 21, 2024 08:22

BabyFur Denny: Mar 18, 2003

Saint Celestine posted:

Are there any good reading/books out yet about this?

Jeez, she just fell out of the window yesterday, give it some time.

# ¿ Apr 18, 2023 07:47

BabyFur Denny: Mar 18, 2003

spankmeister posted:

Well, NSA isn't the only game in town, by far. The US "Intelligence Community" is comprised of a massive number of different organizations and personnel. There are 18 or so "main" agencies and numerous smaller military, counter-terrorism, homeland security, etc. agencies.

And the recent leak suggests that the US disseminates highly classified and very sensitive intelligence reports very broadly. Hard to keep a tight ship if there's 2 million eyeballs on your top secret reports.
(It's hard to say how many people with TS clearance also actually have access to those kinds of reports, but it would seem to be many.)

And none of those two million eyeballs was able to find secret documents swirling around on the internet for over a year.
I think it's less about stopping leaks but more about noticing and finding leaks in time..

# ¿ Apr 22, 2023 09:45

BabyFur Denny: Mar 18, 2003

WaltherFeng posted:

There's not many countries in this world that can say "We destroyed the entire russian active military at least once in the entire war"

Probably only the Nazis huh

# ¿ Apr 28, 2023 15:11

BabyFur Denny: Mar 18, 2003

Cantide posted:

Say about Putin what you want at least he's not active on loving social media. Not long ago the Idea that statespeople including clowns like Trump would willingly debase themselves in front of the world by poo poo-posting like little children on twitter would have been absolutely unthinkable. I can't put into words how much I despise this public "discourse" of unidirectional poo poo slinging between factions of chimpanzees for retweets and internet points as if lives weren't at stake. I console myself with the fact that maybe it serves as an emotional outlet for immature small minded imbeciles that would otherwise directly resort to open war
Yeah yeah, source your qoutes, ok boomer, etc. Sorry for venting

Eh politicians of the past just wrote letters instead.

# ¿ May 31, 2023 11:43

BabyFur Denny: Mar 18, 2003

Antigravitas posted:

Why do foreign papers call the IfW the "Kiel Institute", by the way? Kiel has a few dozen institutes, the Institut of World Economy being just one of them…

Well it might surprise you but I am pretty sure Den Hague has more than one court, too

# ¿ Jun 1, 2023 11:31

BabyFur Denny: Mar 18, 2003

Failed Imagineer posted:

Metonyms, how do they work?

Btw it's either Den Haag or The Hague

https://twitter.com/kielinstitute
Everyone calls it the Kiel Institute because they call themselves the Kiel Institute?

# ¿ Jun 1, 2023 11:34

BabyFur Denny: Mar 18, 2003

Qtotonibudinibudet posted:

woo poo poo about GMOs aside, are we sure Reade is in Russia?

as someone with enduring interest in the country and appreciation for some of the things it produces, NOBODY should be lauding the food

I mean, she did live in the US before, every country is a step up from that (food wise)

# ¿ Jun 4, 2023 17:08

BabyFur Denny: Mar 18, 2003

aphid_licker posted:

It's absolutely wild to me that Wagner the dudes is so far following Prig on this. This is absolutely batshit and seems to solely benefit him personally since his power base was crumbling. Or his dudes really are mad at Shoigu. Guess the next test is seeing if they still follow him against a srs attempt by the military to take back control.

I guess if Prig gets purged the other Wagner dudes are not in for a good time too, and they know that. At best they get pressed into the regular Russian army and sent to the front. And not sure if they issues they have are legitimate, like undersupplied by the MoD and all that.
Plus, a lot of them are in suicide squads that were supposed to be sent to the front to die. Rolling into Moscow might be quite safe in comparison. How much actual army is left there?

# ¿ Jun 24, 2023 04:19

BabyFur Denny: Mar 18, 2003

WaltherFeng posted:

I dont know specifics but Im suprised if Putin's personal security isn't armed with MBTs just in case the army decides to switch sides.

if they had a bunch of MBTs in Moscow, they would have shown them off at the parade

# ¿ Jun 24, 2023 11:07

BabyFur Denny: Mar 18, 2003

Fascists tend to prefer sharp angles and straight lines, there's bound to be a lot of accidental overlap.

# ¿ Jul 4, 2023 08:36

BabyFur Denny: Mar 18, 2003

OperaMouse posted:

And Chinese tires on trucks, which had been standing in storage for years.

Yeah lol everyone knows those Chinamen cannot make tires

e: what I'm trying to say is: using "Chinese" as synonym for "questionable" or "low quality" is racist as gently caress

BabyFur Denny fucked around with this message at 13:40 on Jul 13, 2023

# ¿ Jul 13, 2023 13:35

BabyFur Denny: Mar 18, 2003

Grip it and rip it posted:

Counterpoint - no it isn't, particularly when you are discussing military equipment. China hosts absolutely massive knock off product markets that that are constructed of low quality materials and without effective quality control. They regularly discuss their "leapfrog" technological movement which consists of "skipping" a generation of production development technologies amd the types of practices that go along with them.

This isn't to say that Chinese products are necessarily inferior, but their reputation is a product of both state policy and private performance. They have a reputation that reflects these practices. China is known as a market friendly state where companies will produce products cheaply.

yes and I am saying, using "Chinese" as synonym for "low quality" is racist.

# ¿ Jul 13, 2023 16:13

BabyFur Denny: Mar 18, 2003

Ynglaur posted:

They'll be north of 10% of GDP for a long time, I think. In the US we joke about some suburbs being school districts with roads. Ukraine is going to be a military with a country for several years.

For what it's worth, if we in democratic countries are serious about deterring China, and for that matter Russia after it rebuilds (and it will rebuild), I think NATO, the US, Japan, South Korea, Australia, and Taiwan need to get defense spending to around 4% of GDP. And not in the way the UK is doing, which is to spend a bunch of money on things that don't actually result in a functioning military. (Seriously: does anyone think the UK could deploy a full combat division in Europe, as they're supposed to be able to do?) These countries don't necessarily need larger militaries--or at least, not much larger--but we need far more mechanized infantry (most of it is light infantry right now), and far, far more ammunition.

Nah, we don't need to spend more. Our refurbished old stuff is good enough to keep the second largest military in the world at bay. What actual threat is Slovenia facing that it needs to spend 4% of GDP on military? There's more important stuff to spend money on, like social security, affordable housing, and health care.

# ¿ Jul 20, 2023 14:03

BabyFur Denny: Mar 18, 2003

Raenir Salazar posted:

This seems like a tragedy of the Commons situation where if everyone does this no one can fend off Russia. Slovenia doesn't need to field a combat division with 4% but it can still contribute potentially a lot, like expert army engineers and the like. All of those social welfare systems will mean nothing if it's bombed to rubble. Maybe they can spend the money on dual use systems and capabilities that are useful in peace time but can be used to quickly spool up capabilities in war time.

Nobody else needs to fend off Russia after this.

They are in the process of burning through 50 years of military build done by a far larger empire. They will not be a threat to anybody else for a very very long time.

# ¿ Jul 20, 2023 14:21

BabyFur Denny: Mar 18, 2003

Fork of Unknown Origins posted:

Germany sustained significant damage during WWI and was actively demilitarized for a while and was obviously still able to ramp up quickly for WWII. Russia is going to walk out of this with less old equipment and a bunch of dead soldiers but otherwise intact. It’s short sighted to think this will be the end.

Building 21st century equipment requires vastly more complex supply chains that an internationally isolated Russia is never going to be able to achieve on its own. Even at the current level of below 2% GDP the Western democracies are vastly outspending Russia. There's simply no need to bump this up to 4%. Especially as long as the US is willing to sacrifice its own population on the altar of the MIC and do the job for us.

# ¿ Jul 20, 2023 14:39

BabyFur Denny: Mar 18, 2003

Ynglaur posted:

Is this ironic-posting or serious-posting? Based on your subsequent post I believe it's the latter. Do you truly believe Russia will remain in a weakened state indefinitely? History suggests this is not the case. Militaries cannot rebuild overnight, but they can rebuild frighteningly quickly. Even in the current war, while Russia cannot "defeat" Ukraine, it has caused untold misery and suffering for millions of people. Is this not worth defending against?

Ah, there it is then. "So long as someone else is willing to sacrifice for my comfort, I owe nothing." Basically: "gently caress you, got mine." That's rather morally bankrupt, and I hope you don't truly feel that way.

In other news, Thomas Theiner posted a good analysis of the most recent US defense spending for Ukraine.
https://twitter.com/noclador/status/1682004944625324038?s=20

The current level of military spending produced enough surplus hand-me-down equipment to keep Russia with its entire Soviet ERA equipment at bay.

Rather than building more tanks, we need to create even tighter alliance networks and make sure that the population of our democracies are secure enough in terms of housing, health and income, so that they all can stomach any potential economic isolation from China, Russia or other adversaries.

# ¿ Jul 20, 2023 15:00

BabyFur Denny: Mar 18, 2003

Dirt5o8 posted:

I think the biggest issue with alliance networks is if you are depending on one country too much when their political leadership shits itself. See the U.S. under Trump when he talked about leaving NATO. So yeah, build a strong alliance but make sure it can survive if a keystone country, providing a large percentage of the collective defense, drops the ball.

Exactly. We need to put the money towards making peoples lives better, not tanks and planes, in order to prevent further drift towards fascism. We need healthy and secure democracies that are resistant to subversion, and confident in weathering the economic fallout of prolonged economic sanctions. We can't have more Hungarys in our alliances, especially not in an actual core country like UK, France or Germany. That is not something that can be fixed by having more bombs.

# ¿ Jul 20, 2023 15:58

BabyFur Denny: Mar 18, 2003

thekeeshman posted:

Si vis pacem para bellum

Your attitude is the exact reason that Putin felt he could invade Ukraine in the first place, and if he had succeeded the would have emboldened a lot of other countries to start poo poo. Global peace is reliant on the liberal democracies of the world having credible militaries and the ability to supply significant amounts of hardware to allies. Many european countries have been doing exactly what you suggest since the end of the cold war and the result was they were militarily weak and had no ability to stand up to Putin.

No, it is the exact opposite. Putin never questioned the Western military capabilities to defeat Russia. He believed the western democracies would not be united enough against him, and sit out in inaction while he takes Ukraine. He was wrong about that, as he found out. And right now his hope is not on being able to militarily outlast the equipment that the west can provide to Ukraine. His hope is for political turnarounds in key countries, and leadership changes towards a less favorable attitude regarding support for Ukraine.

NATO had, has and always will have the military capabilities to defeat any other country on this planet. Its potential weakness is a population impoverished by off the rails capitalism that will not support even more economic pressure and turn to fascism in times of turmoil.

We don't want the price of war with Russia/China be fascist and other right wing fringe parties taking control of Germany, UK or France. Because then we cannot win anything.

# ¿ Jul 20, 2023 16:23

BabyFur Denny: Mar 18, 2003

Raenir Salazar posted:

If you go from spending 4% to 1% that's a massive loss of capability, of skilled and trained personnel, and facilities. It's silly to argue we don't need military spending now that Russia has been humbled because by the time they do recover it will take even longer for the liberal democracies to gear up to resume containment. And we'll be back to where we started where most of NATO is struggling to equip Ukraine.

I am not arguing for reducing military spending. I am arguing against increasing it to something ridiculous as 4% for every single country. I never said we don't need military spending. I say we don't need to spend more on military than we already are. Keep our current capabilities. It's more than enough. China and Russia know they can't defeat the United Western military at its current strength. But they think they can drive the west apart and make enough countries hesitant to join a military conflict.

# ¿ Jul 20, 2023 16:55

BabyFur Denny: Mar 18, 2003

OddObserver posted:

Those look like German transliterations of Ukrainian names, not German names.

No, they're the (partially original) German names.
Karlsbad was part of the HRE when it was founded, mostly by German settlers.

# ¿ Aug 7, 2023 04:53

BabyFur Denny: Mar 18, 2003

Absurd Alhazred posted:

The "German" names madeintaipei was complaining about - Henitschesk, Dschankoj, and Nowooleksijiwka - are literally German transliterations, not German names for these places, or indeed, names that make sense in German, as far as I can tell.

German just had a different way of translating Cyrillic to Latin. Kyiv, Ukraine, Henichesk etc are all just English transliterations then?

# ¿ Aug 7, 2023 05:09

BabyFur Denny: Mar 18, 2003

Absurd Alhazred posted:

Yeah, pretty much?

An "observation" that's misleading, though. There's nothing "imperialistic" about using your own language's orthography to express words in foreign languages.

I think it is actually way less imperialistic than making fun of how words sound and look like in another language. Looking at the OP here.

# ¿ Aug 7, 2023 05:15

BabyFur Denny: Mar 18, 2003

spankmeister posted:

I suppose if you're not exposed to foreign languages much you might not realize that transliterations differ between target languages.

What makes it really loving funny is thinking this is colonialism somehow.

Using English to criticize the vocabulary of other languages as colonial is just the cherry on top here.

# ¿ Aug 7, 2023 07:26

BabyFur Denny: Mar 18, 2003

Rust Martialis posted:

I have some serious SERIOUS issues with using innocent civilians to carry out suicide attacks unwittingly. I can't argue against military value of the strike and so on, and the two people in the adjacent car were regrettable, unintended victims, but wow you had to know the driver of the truck was going to be atomized.

Ugh.

Anyone that enters Crimea from the Kerch bridge is at least collaborating to some degree with the Russian regime and supporting the occupation of Ukrainian territory, so they're a valid target.

# ¿ Aug 19, 2023 12:54

BabyFur Denny: Mar 18, 2003

Nah gently caress them. They know they're on illegally occupied territory in the middle of a war. Their presence is actively supporting the invasion. They're just as valid a target as some poor Russian mobik that was drafted against his will and forced to the front.

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# ¿ Aug 19, 2023 13:16

BabyFur Denny: Mar 18, 2003

spankmeister posted:

Again, no.

it's an illegal border crossing by a foreign supporter of a hostile regime trying to enter a military objective. Any country would be justified in resorting to lethal ways of stopping that threat.

# ¿ Aug 19, 2023 13:44

BabyFur Denny: Mar 18, 2003

Tomn posted:

Illegal by whose law? Does the law come with the death penalty attached? Did a court sit in judgement of this dude?

If you want to enter another country, you usually do so via official border checkpoints. You don't sneak in through unauthorised access points. Hence, illegal.
If you are trying to sneak into a country that your country is at war with then yes, you should not be surprised if you get shot at or killed via other means.

# ¿ Aug 19, 2023 14:50

BabyFur Denny: Mar 18, 2003

Scratch Monkey posted:

I wonder how far Switzerland will go to enforce that. Check serial numbers?

I believe they are all quite easy to identify. Just look how quickly the experts come up with the entire history of a tank whenever we see a Russian tank wrecked.

# ¿ Sep 26, 2023 14:19

BabyFur Denny: Mar 18, 2003

Deltasquid posted:

I understand the senate as a principle. From the perspective of an EU citizen, it would be pretty hosed up if the French, German and Italian members of the EP could just ram everything through due to the populations of their member states while the Baltics, Benelux and Malta get told "sucks to be you, maybe your populations shouldn't have been so small". It would not make joining a union a very appealing prospect for those smaller states. (I am making total abstraction of the fact that the EU Commission has the power of initiative in the EU, not the EP, but you get my point. Even the EU Commission has one commissioner per Member State; France, Germany and Italy don't get half of them on account of their populations).

Whether the US senate's raison d'être is still as relevant in 2023 as it was in 1800 is debatable. But Americans are weirdly touchy about changing their constitution so I guess you're stuck with a political compromise that dates literal centuries.

I think the population spread in the EU is more drastic than the US though (the smallest EU country by population is smaller than the smallest US state, and the largest country , Germany, has over twice as many people as the largest US State)

# ¿ Sep 27, 2023 09:10

BabyFur Denny: Mar 18, 2003

KillHour posted:

Literally "our cutting edge anti-air systems destroyed the enemy missiles _{^{_{by virtue of being the target they hit}}}"

Blocking the punches with your face!

# ¿ Oct 27, 2023 06:38

BabyFur Denny: Mar 18, 2003

nimby posted:

Populists who worry about Ukrainian refugees' impact on housing and job markets should take into consideration that if Russia gets to keep what they annexed, many of those refugees will have no home to return to. Anyone who lived near a frontline will likely not have a functional house, but there's a difference between returning to a ruin you can rebuild in a familiar (if dramatically changed) community, and your home town/city now being under a Russian authority that will not be welcoming you back.

Either way they are probably better off not living in a minefield, those areas are gonna be very dangerous to be living in for the next decades.

# ¿ Nov 6, 2023 12:26

BabyFur Denny: Mar 18, 2003

Charliegrs posted:

Is it true that whoever was in charge of the military in Mariupol basically sold out the city and that's why it fell so fast? I remember hearing something to that effect.

Mariupol didn't fall fast? Wth are you talking about. Or did you mean Kherson which is a completely different city in a completely different part of the country?

# ¿ Nov 29, 2023 05:44

BabyFur Denny: Mar 18, 2003

Collapsing Farts posted:

I think the general thought was that the Russians just sucked at offense since they took such devastating losses... but as it turns out, it was just as hard for Ukraine. It's nearly impossible to do an offensive when neither side has air superiority, the entire front is filled with mines, an entire platoon can get wiped out in an instant by cluster munitions and a tank can get destroyed by a spicy 400 dollar drone.

I don't see how either side will make any significant gains while this holds true. One side has to run out of equipment or manpower first

It's WWI all over again

# ¿ Dec 19, 2023 02:23

BabyFur Denny: Mar 18, 2003

Gucci Loafers posted:

If the US stopped supporting Ukraine, would Europe be able to do it alone? I am under the strong impression this isn't possible or at least in the short term because European nations simply don't have their military as a priority because they'd rather spend their tax dollars on things actually useful.

It would give political leaders in Europe an excuse to drop support as well, plus with le pen in France and the AfD in Germany you have powerful right-wing movements in the two biggest countries that have ties to Russia and both stand to gain in the next elections.

# ¿ Feb 8, 2024 08:34

BabyFur Denny: Mar 18, 2003

Kikas posted:

Jesus Christ, people, stop calling it a proxy war. The only word that should be appended to this war is "genocide". Admittedly, it has lost some impact due to Israels speedrun of the category in Gaza, but Putins goal still is and always has been the erasure of Ukraine, from land through people to language and culture.

Proxy and genocide is not mutually exclusive.

# ¿ Feb 14, 2024 10:36

BabyFur Denny: Mar 18, 2003

Morrow posted:

Annexing Transnistria was absolutely Step Two of the invasion, it's just they never got past Odessa. But the separatist government is a Russian proxy and Moldova is perhaps the smallest and weakest country in Europe.

Hi, short geography lesson, Moldova is (by far) not the smallest country in Europe

# ¿ Feb 23, 2024 05:17

BabyFur Denny: Mar 18, 2003

Budzilla posted:

If for some reason that Putin decided to cross Russia's army into NATO territory and there was a Article 5 response it will definitely be problems mobilizing and moving out NATO armies to combat and political problems of sending out all these people to the fight. However there has been a war going on for 2 years in Ukraine which has probably has had a major effect on planning and tolerance for troop deployment that works in NATO's favour. Also as pointed out a lot of Russian military equipment and pre-war personnel has been attrited even if they have learned lessons the hard way and doing some things right eg, drone warfare.

It's been 21 years since GWB stood in front of the banner that read "Mission Accomplished" and declared an "end to major combat operations". For the US destroying an already hollowed out Iraqi army that had been sanctioned for a decade previously was the easy part, the insurgency was the difficult part. Russia can't do the easy part for the war well (even though it is a bordering country). NATO, if it has to fight will be sided with a very co-operative populace unless they decide to cross into Russia for some reason. This is after Russia has spent 2 years destroying its army and economy in the dumbest way possible. Or to be more succinct

Yeah, NATO/EU doesn't have anything to fear from Russia, it will take many decades for Russia to build up before becoming a credible threat again. The biggest danger is not in running out of artillery shells or tanks or planes for the West. it is the likes of Le Pen/Trump/AfD gaining power and bailing out of the alliance, leaving e.g. the Baltics to fend for themselves. And that issue cannot be solved by building more tank factories and churning out more artillery shells.

# ¿ Mar 3, 2024 04:15

BabyFur Denny: Mar 18, 2003

Mr. Apollo posted:

The Czech Republic has "found" and purchased 800,000 artillery shells from around the world. It's also located another 700,000 shells. Total cost is about €3.3 billion.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBixox2YDAQ

Isn't it supposed to be Czechia now, instead of Czech Republic?

# ¿ Mar 21, 2024 05:28

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# ¿ May 21, 2024 08:22

BabyFur Denny: Mar 18, 2003

Nenonen posted:

Yes, it's a crime to use the other name now. Stay vigilant!

I don't think it's a crime? Just that Czechia made their preference clear?

# ¿ Mar 21, 2024 06:30

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > War in Ukraine CE: The Golf War

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