Here's the thing with NATO (and why Russia doesn't want it around): It's sole reason to exist is to keep it's members safe from aggression by non-members. The most prominent Aggressor for most of NATO's members is Russia since it keeps trying to reassert it's sphere of influence whether it's neighbors want that or not.
It would stand to reason then, that if Russia doesn't want to worry about NATO it should stop threatening everyone and respect the independence of it's neighbors.
Yes, it would be ideal if the Russian government abandoned its imperial ambitions. Be nice if they had some elections and worked on their human rights record etc too
Doesn't really have any bearing on where we are now and what the best way forward is.
Yes, its wrong for Russia to do it. If its part of their conditions for leaving Ukraine alone its certainly worth negotiating over and wildly preferable to a shooting war.
It's already a shooting war in Donbas.
Also, here's the latest estimate on Russian forces on the border:
Which I don't think you need to be a military man to be able to see that Russia is threatening at the very least eliminating the Donbas "salient" by cutting Kyiv off from eastern Ukraine via the Belarus forces while crossing the eastern and southern borders, not to mention Dongs' LSTs in the Black Sea.
This isn't a typical negotiation. Russia's already commiting aggression and in an excellent position to take a bite out of Ukraine by force.
Bullshit. It's never been acceptable for a strong nation to bully weaker nations by dictating what alliances they can or cannot form. We rightly castigate US foreign policy for garbage like this all the time.
Yes, its wrong for Russia to do it. If its part of their conditions for leaving Ukraine alone its certainly worth negotiating over and wildly preferable to a shooting war.
In a facile way its definitely worth negotiating over. In that we say no. And that is the end of that.
Though i suppose i could come up with a counter proposal. Ukraine will be barred from joining NATO after such a time as Russia removes all military assets from Crimea and returns all lands to their 1997 borders. If at any time Russia renegs on this then Ukraines ability to join NATO will be reinstated in perpetuity regardless of whether or not Russia is currently threatening or occupying Ukrainian or any other land.
But i have a feeling that Russia would not be amenable to those conditions.
Here's the thing with NATO (and why Russia doesn't want it around): It's sole reason to exist is to keep it's members safe from aggression by non-members. The most prominent Aggressor for most of NATO's members is Russia since it keeps trying to reassert it's sphere of influence whether it's neighbors want that or not.
It would stand to reason then, that if Russia doesn't want to worry about NATO it should stop threatening everyone and respect the independence of it's neighbors.
Yes, it would be ideal if the Russian government abandoned its imperial ambitions. Be nice if they had some elections and worked on their human rights record etc too
Doesn't really have any bearing on where we are now and what the best way forward is.
The best way forward is for them to withdraw from eastern Ukraine and respect it's sovereignty.
Let them keep Crimea since it's just gone at this point, but pull all of their troops out of Donbass and accept that they're not going to get anything out of it, since even if they invade and slap around the regular army, he long tail of this will fuck up both their forces due to partisan resistance and economically due to the truckload of sanctions that will further cripple their economy.
Letting nuclear empires spread just puts you in motion toward the next cold war when they finally bump into another nuclear power because they've eaten up all the bordering states and are, like all empires, still hungry.
Russia having so much influence is wild given how small their economy is
Ultimately I think that's why they probably won't invade, or if they did, they'd have a limited, short term achievable objective - wars are incredibly expensive with modern military equipment
Unless they literally just don't care about casualties and want to send in the endless waves of old soviet tanks and planes they have
Nukes permanently put you at the top of the list. Russia could be three cats and a sentient cactus and we'd still have to listen to the cactus as long as it had the launch codes.
Yes, and what's been happening to Ukraine shows why no nation going forward will ever voluntarily disarm.
I am extremely far from being an expert but I've repeatedly read people who are experts in the field say that Ukraine was not capable of using the nukes that it had when it had them, and disarmament was their only real option.
Cheryl Rofer at Lawyers, Guns and Money had a recent post on this that was pretty helpful
Ukraine had nuclear missiles in its territory after the fall of the USSR, but never meaningfully controlled them. They didn't have the launch codes, which were always kept in Moscow. They also didn't have the schematics and/or engineering experts that understood their design. They couldn't use them and they couldn't maintain them (a nuclear missile requires ongoing maintenance, and the person maintaining it has to understand the design). What they could have maybe tried to do was dismantle and reengineer them into a form they could use, but doing so would be both expensive and dangerous, as trying to learn the design of a nuclear weapon by trial and error tinkering is a recipe for accidents. So not surprising that they traded them away, given that they only ever had them in the physical sense, and never in the operational sense.
Well since nobody is selling ready made nuclear weapons programs, trying to learn to design of nuclear weapons by anything but trial and error tinkering is the only way. If anything being able to backwards engineer would have required less accidents. The US nuclear program is a complete shitshow of accidents, deaths, and areas that are effectively permanently uninhabitable.
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That_GuyI don't wanna be that guyRegistered Userregular
OMG Russia doesn't give a good god damn about selling oil to Germany. If war breaks out they're going to be using all of it for themselves. This is all feeling more and more like Neville Chamberlain trying to appease a world leader in the leadup to a certain world war. Wagging your finger at the strongman isn't going to change a goddamned thing.
It's not just nukes (although yes, primarily that). Its also being a permanent member of the UN Security Council which means a veto of any attempt at international intervention. That means a veto of any IMF action, joint resolutions, or basically anything but EU / NATO harshly worded letters.
All of those institutions are just shells for US/EU influences. Any action that the US wants will have an ex post facto approval of the UN, no matter what the other permanent members want. Even a united front opposing it, will have only temporary effect. see Invasion of Iraq. As for sanctions, the World Bank and the IMF, the US has such a dominant position in the global economy(being the worlds reserve currency will do that), that their decisions are the only decisions that matter on the subject.
The UN isn't how the World controls the US, The UN is how the US controls the World.
I generally try to not comment in things i have no understanding of. I suggest the same for those that clearly have no idea what the UN is. (Google permanent members UN security council).
Opinions are one thing, facts quite another.
Smrtnik on
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AegeriTiny wee bacteriumsPlateau of LengRegistered Userregular
OMG Russia doesn't give a good god damn about selling oil to Germany. If war breaks out they're going to be using all of it for themselves. This is all feeling more and more like Neville Chamberlain trying to appease a world leader in the leadup to a certain world war. Wagging your finger at the strongman isn't going to change a goddamned thing.
Sadly if Europe has taught us anything, it's that they love repeating history as much as possible.
OMG Russia doesn't give a good god damn about selling oil to Germany. If war breaks out they're going to be using all of it for themselves. This is all feeling more and more like Neville Chamberlain trying to appease a world leader in the leadup to a certain world war. Wagging your finger at the strongman isn't going to change a goddamned thing.
It's not wagging your finger to threaten to cut the lifelines of Russia's economy. Russia is highly dependent on selling oil and not being able to export it to the EU would be a large concern for years past however long this conflict lasts.
Russia having so much influence is wild given how small their economy is
Ultimately I think that's why they probably won't invade, or if they did, they'd have a limited, short term achievable objective - wars are incredibly expensive with modern military equipment
Unless they literally just don't care about casualties and want to send in the endless waves of old soviet tanks and planes they have
Nukes permanently put you at the top of the list. Russia could be three cats and a sentient cactus and we'd still have to listen to the cactus as long as it had the launch codes.
Yes, and what's been happening to Ukraine shows why no nation going forward will ever voluntarily disarm.
I'm honestly going to be surprised if we don't see Germany, Japan and Poland don't end up with warheads in the next 5 years, depending on how this plays out. The invasion, or not invasion is going to make the world a more dangerous place.
Japan getting nukes would be a geopolitical nightmare for the region too
“Hey guys the country with the right wing government that frequently has trouble with acknowledging its 20th century imperial war crimes were war crimes, or even happened, and keeps toying with the idea of full remilitarization, now wants the bomb.”
Like fuckin’ playing with sparklers in the powder chamber bad
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MrMisterJesus dying on the cross in pain? Morally better than us. One has to go "all in".Registered Userregular
Russia having so much influence is wild given how small their economy is
Ultimately I think that's why they probably won't invade, or if they did, they'd have a limited, short term achievable objective - wars are incredibly expensive with modern military equipment
Unless they literally just don't care about casualties and want to send in the endless waves of old soviet tanks and planes they have
Nukes permanently put you at the top of the list. Russia could be three cats and a sentient cactus and we'd still have to listen to the cactus as long as it had the launch codes.
Yes, and what's been happening to Ukraine shows why no nation going forward will ever voluntarily disarm.
I am extremely far from being an expert but I've repeatedly read people who are experts in the field say that Ukraine was not capable of using the nukes that it had when it had them, and disarmament was their only real option.
Cheryl Rofer at Lawyers, Guns and Money had a recent post on this that was pretty helpful
Ukraine had nuclear missiles in its territory after the fall of the USSR, but never meaningfully controlled them. They didn't have the launch codes, which were always kept in Moscow. They also didn't have the schematics and/or engineering experts that understood their design. They couldn't use them and they couldn't maintain them (a nuclear missile requires ongoing maintenance, and the person maintaining it has to understand the design). What they could have maybe tried to do was dismantle and reengineer them into a form they could use, but doing so would be both expensive and dangerous, as trying to learn the design of a nuclear weapon by trial and error tinkering is a recipe for accidents. So not surprising that they traded them away, given that they only ever had them in the physical sense, and never in the operational sense.
Well since nobody is selling ready made nuclear weapons programs, trying to learn to design of nuclear weapons by anything but trial and error tinkering is the only way. If anything being able to backwards engineer would have required less accidents. The US nuclear program is a complete shitshow of accidents, deaths, and areas that are effectively permanently uninhabitable.
What are you basing this on?
Cheryl Rofer is a scientist who oversaw the disassembly and decommission of nuclear weapons, so I feel like I trust her when she says "Removing the warheads and physically taking them apart to repurpose them would be dangerous, and Ukraine did not have the facilities for doing that" and "I would not try to disassemble a nuclear warhead that I hadn't designed."
Here's the thing with NATO (and why Russia doesn't want it around): It's sole reason to exist is to keep it's members safe from aggression by non-members. The most prominent Aggressor for most of NATO's members is Russia since it keeps trying to reassert it's sphere of influence whether it's neighbors want that or not.
It would stand to reason then, that if Russia doesn't want to worry about NATO it should stop threatening everyone and respect the independence of it's neighbors.
Yes, it would be ideal if the Russian government abandoned its imperial ambitions. Be nice if they had some elections and worked on their human rights record etc too
Doesn't really have any bearing on where we are now and what the best way forward is.
The best way forward is for them to withdraw from eastern Ukraine and respect it's sovereignty.
Let them keep Crimea since it's just gone at this point, but pull all of their troops out of Donbass and accept that they're not going to get anything out of it, since even if they invade and slap around the regular army, he long tail of this will fuck up both their forces due to partisan resistance and economically due to the truckload of sanctions that will further cripple their economy.
Here’s something I was wonderinf: Is there any viability/desire for a fully independent Crimea as its own nation-state, given its being part of Ukraine was a mid-20th century act of colonial imperialism on the USSR’s/Kruschev’s part? (Short version: autonomous in 1917, downgraded to a Russian province in the Second World War, given to Ukraine by Kruschev in 1954)
But people in a country desperate for a nuclear arsenal MIGHT.
it's an open question whether trying to reverse engineer or starting from scratch is more dangerous. I'd bet the former, especially as a good chunk of the US's accidents were from people dicking around after the war and were entirely avoidable.
But people in a country desperate for a nuclear arsenal MIGHT.
it's an open question whether trying to reverse engineer or starting from scratch is more dangerous. I'd bet the former, especially as a good chunk of the US's accidents were from people dicking around after the war and were entirely avoidable.
But people in a country desperate for a nuclear arsenal MIGHT.
it's an open question whether trying to reverse engineer or starting from scratch is more dangerous. I'd bet the former, especially as a good chunk of the US's accidents were from people dicking around after the war and were entirely avoidable.
Posts
Yes, it would be ideal if the Russian government abandoned its imperial ambitions. Be nice if they had some elections and worked on their human rights record etc too
Doesn't really have any bearing on where we are now and what the best way forward is.
It's already a shooting war in Donbas.
Also, here's the latest estimate on Russian forces on the border:
Which I don't think you need to be a military man to be able to see that Russia is threatening at the very least eliminating the Donbas "salient" by cutting Kyiv off from eastern Ukraine via the Belarus forces while crossing the eastern and southern borders, not to mention Dongs' LSTs in the Black Sea.
This isn't a typical negotiation. Russia's already commiting aggression and in an excellent position to take a bite out of Ukraine by force.
In a facile way its definitely worth negotiating over. In that we say no. And that is the end of that.
Though i suppose i could come up with a counter proposal. Ukraine will be barred from joining NATO after such a time as Russia removes all military assets from Crimea and returns all lands to their 1997 borders. If at any time Russia renegs on this then Ukraines ability to join NATO will be reinstated in perpetuity regardless of whether or not Russia is currently threatening or occupying Ukrainian or any other land.
But i have a feeling that Russia would not be amenable to those conditions.
The best way forward is for them to withdraw from eastern Ukraine and respect it's sovereignty.
Let them keep Crimea since it's just gone at this point, but pull all of their troops out of Donbass and accept that they're not going to get anything out of it, since even if they invade and slap around the regular army, he long tail of this will fuck up both their forces due to partisan resistance and economically due to the truckload of sanctions that will further cripple their economy.
Well since nobody is selling ready made nuclear weapons programs, trying to learn to design of nuclear weapons by anything but trial and error tinkering is the only way. If anything being able to backwards engineer would have required less accidents. The US nuclear program is a complete shitshow of accidents, deaths, and areas that are effectively permanently uninhabitable.
OMG Russia doesn't give a good god damn about selling oil to Germany. If war breaks out they're going to be using all of it for themselves. This is all feeling more and more like Neville Chamberlain trying to appease a world leader in the leadup to a certain world war. Wagging your finger at the strongman isn't going to change a goddamned thing.
I generally try to not comment in things i have no understanding of. I suggest the same for those that clearly have no idea what the UN is. (Google permanent members UN security council).
Opinions are one thing, facts quite another.
Sadly if Europe has taught us anything, it's that they love repeating history as much as possible.
It's not wagging your finger to threaten to cut the lifelines of Russia's economy. Russia is highly dependent on selling oil and not being able to export it to the EU would be a large concern for years past however long this conflict lasts.
https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/243514/post-soviet-states-4-just-like-old-times/p1?new=1
Japan getting nukes would be a geopolitical nightmare for the region too
“Hey guys the country with the right wing government that frequently has trouble with acknowledging its 20th century imperial war crimes were war crimes, or even happened, and keeps toying with the idea of full remilitarization, now wants the bomb.”
Like fuckin’ playing with sparklers in the powder chamber bad
What are you basing this on?
Cheryl Rofer is a scientist who oversaw the disassembly and decommission of nuclear weapons, so I feel like I trust her when she says "Removing the warheads and physically taking them apart to repurpose them would be dangerous, and Ukraine did not have the facilities for doing that" and "I would not try to disassemble a nuclear warhead that I hadn't designed."
Here’s something I was wonderinf: Is there any viability/desire for a fully independent Crimea as its own nation-state, given its being part of Ukraine was a mid-20th century act of colonial imperialism on the USSR’s/Kruschev’s part? (Short version: autonomous in 1917, downgraded to a Russian province in the Second World War, given to Ukraine by Kruschev in 1954)
it's an open question whether trying to reverse engineer or starting from scratch is more dangerous. I'd bet the former, especially as a good chunk of the US's accidents were from people dicking around after the war and were entirely avoidable.
We’re counting Demon core in this right?
Yup.