Man, I'm broadly in agreement with you on many subjects but you have such an irrational confidence in your own point of view it makes me cringe. Sounds like we should skip a step and go straight to nuclear retaliation in that case. That's what you're saying, right? Listening for what the "that" referred to in the "Ukrainians are doing that right now." I don't doubt it has something to do with degrading the Russian military capability, but it seems like the video is selectively edited. "We spent $800 billion a year on defense most of my lifetime, to prevent Russia from [/snip/] exploiting that. We're having Ukrainians do that right now in a sense for us." We've been preventing Russia from exploiting what? I'm suspicious of that edit. I don't know if Fox News made that edit or Michael Tracey did, but neither of them have any credibility to trade on.
What's a more justified war since ww2 than the one we're currently helping ? We will never get the ROI that we're currently getting by helping ukraine.. Can you help me and tell me what's been a more important conflict?
We (the US) will absolutely get the ROI for this war. Watch these to truly understand the true root of the war:
Russia's nuclear posture I believe is the reason why their leadership doesn't care about losing literally millions of soldiers in their day to day conventional warfare. Yeah... they have to tighten down the autocratic measures to stifle dissent, but they just simply don't care about that either. I do believe that Putin thinks he could get what he wants from the West by simply launching a nuke, and threatening to launch another. What keeps him in line is his own safety. He loves himself, and staying alive too much. A big reason why Putin hasn't launched a tactical nuke on Kyiv is the fact that he knows the radiation would likely blow back into Moscow, and he knows that he'd probably lose support from China which ultimately is his Iron Bank (Game of Thrones reference). But yeah I do believe that Putin wouldn't hesitate to use a nuclear weapon to achieve his ends even if it meant NATO wiping out 95% of his infantry in a traditional response. He simply doesn't care because I think he believes that NATO would bow down to him if they knew he was about to launch another & he thinks he can always just pull more bodies off the streets, and make more ships and tanks. People put too much stock in the losses that Russia takes in the body count. Putin and any traditional Soviet Relic Dictator like him that comes after will continue to not give a crap about that.
What you’re laying out here is the possibility of a huge misunderstanding between Putin and NATO that could lead to a nuclear escalation. I don’t think anyone knows for sure what could happen if a nuke is used. Putin could miscalculate that the West would back off if a nuke was used. The US and NATO could miscalculate that the PRC could restrain Russia or that conventional force could prevent further escalation.
Bravado is one thing but the truth is very few people alive have actually experienced what it is like to be nuked. The Japanese were fanatical in their devotion and willing to sacrifice soldiers, civilians, even women and children in the defense of Japanese territory. After two A Bombs that were small by todays standards they surrendered unconditionally. The possible horror visited on Ukraine by a Russian battlefield nuke is also small considering what escalation could come from its use.
Make no mistake, it would change the world. I am only saying it is an Eastern European bravado thing. They like to play up that they are very tough.
I’m not willing to go this far in 2023. With social media the world is a lot smaller and even Russians are used to creature comforts their parents and grandparents did not have. If millions are killed in a war, the young people in Russia will not just take it and Putin doesn’t want to test it.
Oh yeah. Miscalculation is the biggest thread absolutely. That’s why we need more than anything a very effective intelligence network with inside sources. Our top brass needs to know more than anything what Putin, Kim Jong, Xi, etc. are saying and doing at all times. There needs to be communication at different levels all the time. A breakdown in these channels is detrimental to the threat of miscalculation. Otherwise it’s just as useful and you or I theorizing what Putin will or won’t do based on what we can see as an outsider.
I don’t disagree at all, but I’ve seen little evidence that from Putin’s perspective that this is something he feels he couldn’t handle (cracking down on dissidents and running a North Korea style totalitarian government). Will he do that (send millions to their deaths in a conventional war for incremental gains)?? Probably not, but I definitely think he’s capable of it. This is a pretty arrogant narcissist. Even if he’s a bit more calculating as a former KGB spy, he’s still a self serving narcissist in the end surrounded by self serving criminal yes men. Putin and his cronies will let every last Russian die rather than sacrifice one meal without Cavier and the finest vodka money can buy. In the end the calculation on our end is would this move be good for Putin’s lavish lifestyle or not. If in theory it’s a yes, we probably need to assume he’s put it on the table with little critical thinking and strategy mapped out. Much less regard for human life and dignity beyond his own. Invading Ukraine is the prime example. It’s all high level theoretical gains for Putin with little executable strategy. Hence why it was such a blunder in the first year.
The question is “will he or won’t he use a nuke?” The answer is always “he will if he feels it serves his interest, and if he feels it preserves his power and lavish lifestyle, etc.” However using nukes rarely equals maintaining power and lavish lifestyle. In reality it means Russia almost certainly is a radiation filled wasteland if used anywhere in the Eastern Europe and some of the corrupt elitist economy that funds his lifestyle goes away. It’s all a calculation of how sane and rational Putin is. The decisions to go to war with Ukraine and how he executed the strategy doesn’t give me great vibes but there’s got to be some hope that he’s not that insane and stupid.
The NYT is reporting that it might have been rogue Ukrainians that sabotaged the Nordstream pipeline. I’m on my phone so here are a few excerpts: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/07/us/politics/nord-stream-pipeline-sabotage-ukraine.html Intelligence Suggests Pro-Ukrainian Group Sabotaged Pipelines, U.S. Officials Say New intelligence reporting amounts to the first significant known lead about who was responsible for the attack on the Nord Stream pipelines that carried natural gas from Russia to Europe. WASHINGTON — New intelligence reviewed by U.S. officials suggests that a pro-Ukrainian group carried out the attack on the Nord Stream pipelines last year, a step toward determining responsibility for an act of sabotage that has confounded investigators on both sides of the Atlantic for months. U.S. officials said that they had no evidence President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine or his top lieutenants were involved in the operation, or that the perpetrators were acting at the direction of any Ukrainian government officials. … U.S. officials declined to disclose the nature of the intelligence, how it was obtained or any details of the strength of the evidence it contains. They have said that there are no firm conclusions about it, leaving open the possibility that the operation might have been conducted off the books by a proxy force with connections to the Ukrainian government or its security services. … Officials who have reviewed the intelligence said they believed the saboteurs were most likely Ukrainian or Russian nationals, or some combination of the two. U.S. officials said no American or British nationals were involved. … Any suggestion of Ukrainian involvement, whether direct or indirect, could upset the delicate relationship between Ukraine and Germany, souring support among a German public that has swallowed high energy prices in the name of solidarity. … Despite Ukraine’s deep dependence on the United States for military, intelligence and diplomatic support, Ukrainian officials are not always transparent with their American counterparts about their military operations, especially those against Russian targets behind enemy lines. Those operations have frustrated U.S. officials, who believe that they have not measurably improved Ukraine’s position on the battlefield, but have risked alienating European allies and widening the war. The operations that have unnerved the United States included a strike in early August on Russia’s Saki Air Base on the western coast of Crimea, a truck bombing in October that destroyed part of the Kerch Strait Bridge, which links Russia to Crimea, and drone strikes in December aimed at Russian military bases in Ryazan and Engels, about 300 miles beyond the Ukrainian border. But there have been other acts of sabotage and violence of more ambiguous provenance that U.S. intelligence agencies have had a harder time attributing to Ukrainian security services. One of those was a car bomb near Moscow in August that killed Daria Dugina, the daughter of a prominent Russian nationalist.
Almost every country engages in this kind of bravado. I’ve seen PRC propaganda that says that in a war with the West the Chinese people will win because they are willing to “eat bitterness” put up worth more hardship than the US and others.
I was really talking about the self-assuredness with which you assert all your opinions. Doesn't matter if you're right or not. As for "justified" wars, I'd humbly suggest that the First Iraq War has many of the same ingredients as the Ukraine War. A pro-Western country that is an important trade partner of ours is unilaterally invaded by a Russia-aligned country, so we fought to pull it back into our own orbit. Honestly, I'm not going to believe anyone on the perpetration of the Nord Stream sabotage and none of it matters to me anyway. Propaganda is especially rife in wartime and every party in the conflict has a stake in shaping the narrative. I trust US officials to be serving American interests, but that service includes lying to all of us about Nord Stream if it serves that interest. That makes their fact-finding completely untrustworthy. I don't think I'll have any confidence in any answer on this question until some time after this whole conflict is over.
