I thought the red line was protecting NATO territory and we shouldn't militarily intervene to protect Ukraine? This again seems like letting Putin dictate the terms of everything.
Use of a tactical nuke even in Ukrainian territory would be a threat to NATO countries given that they are right next door and fallout wouldn’t necessarily stay in Ukraine.
Roughly, if I remember the arguments... Putin's nuke threat is to keep NATO out. He's not going to use it. But... Putin could use a tactical nuke if he's extremely desperate (Russia has 2000 tactical nukes vs 200 for NATO). If he does use it, the thought is, if NATO intervenes - he got 2000 of them and will continue to use them - NATO would have to use its own tactical nuke - the chance of all-out nuke causing 100M death within hours went up 10000% Thus, the rational thing to do is to NOT intervene
I mean, I want to believe. Dude does not have much in the way of military expertise. He's a well-trained political scientist, and I thought his name sounded familiar. Sure enough, I'd recently heard a historian making fun of the dude's 1992 book predicting the end of all armed confllict: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_End_of_History_and_the_Last_Man So... huge grain of salt, unfortunately.
I agree with Romney on this. Seems to me Ukraine knows what they need to fight the war they are fighting more than the US would. It's one thing to say "we're not getting involved but we'll get you what you need." It's another to say "we're not getting involved, and we were totally wrong about how long you could survive and how well you'd do, but we're also going to tell you what you need and don't need".
Russia bombed a mosque with Muslims sheltering inside. You know what that means? J-I-H-A-D, B-I-T-C-H-E-S ! ! !
What I find amusing (not at all amusing) is the public exchange of what weapons are needed in a proxy war. What kind of crap is that? It might well be on the way there in secret (should have been a secret from the start). Some stuff I expect remains quiet until it's done or well after, if ever. I would not be surprised, for example, if new weapons capabilities have already been or is planned to be delivered.
Agree with this. We shouldn't know any of the details. The MiGs have just been a very public clusterf*ck. Ukraine actually sent pilots to Poland in week 1 to pick them up and then get rejected (for unknown reasons). Then there's been so much public back and forth. Poland really, really wants to get those MiGs to Ukraine and Ukraine really, really wants them. The fact that it can't happen and no one seems clear on why is just crazy.
This doesn't help. It'll just be used as an example of western propanganda and not only by the Russians.
Yes it would lead to a dangerous escalation which is why the hope is we wouldn’t get there that Putin used a nuke. There are a lot of things that we hoped would never happen that have but as I’ve said before, war might be inevitable but I don’t think we should do anything to hasten it.
Yes and use of “precision” munitions is meant to cut down on civilian deaths yet we’ve seen a lot of civilians killed in recent bombings from precision munitions. there is good reason why no country had used tactical nuclear weapons even though we contemplated using them in caves in Afghanistan.
Wow. "A-level" certainly describes it. Heck, better than A-level. There is some seriously talented devs in Ukraine.
