Posted on 09/26/2022 6:55:16 AM PDT by Red Badger
We are bizarrely one-tracked in our historical memory. Anything we dislike is compared to the Nazis. So, when Vladimir Putin actually invaded a neighbor, he was inevitably likened to Adolf Hitler.
But we don’t have to look far to find an apter parallel.
In September 1939, Stalin seized the eastern half of Poland. Unlike his Nazi allies, who simply absorbed the territory they wanted, Stalin made the conquered population vote in sham elections. Two congresses were established in eastern Poland — one supposedly representing ethnic Belarusians, the other ethnic Ukrainians. These two assemblies immediately petitioned to join, respectively, the Belarusian and Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republics. Stalin graciously consented, and the sham congresses promptly dissolved themselves.
Putin is following Stalin’s playbook, right down to the hammer-and-sickle flags being hoisted in the towns his troops occupy. Four Ukrainian regions are now being made to vote on integration with Russia. There is, however, an important difference. Six months into the war, Stalin was starting to turn things around. Putin, in contrast, is losing badly.
Just before the invasion, the impassive tyrant released a video in which he humiliated the head of his foreign intelligence service, Sergei Naryshkin. When the terrified spy chief was asked whether Russia should recognize the breakaway Donetsk and Luhansk republics, he stammered that they might be admitted into the Russian Federation, only for Putin to snap: “We’re not talking about that.”
Well, he’s certainly talking about it now. The formal annexation of four Ukrainian regions will allow Putin to claim that Russian territory is being attacked, justifying both the deployment of conscripts and, conceivably, a nuclear response.
Neither option would serve any military purpose. The draft has pushed thousands more Russians into protest or emigration, but it is of no practical value. Russia already does not have enough weapons for its regulars. What is it going to give 300,000 reluctant conscripts? World War Two-era T-34s? And what will be the economic impact of diverting so many young men from productive work?
The nuclear option (how extraordinary to use that phrase literally after all these decades) is even harder to justify militarily. On Wednesday, Putin sent one of his propagandists, former MP Sergei Markov, onto the BBC to threaten a nuclear strike “against Great Britain.” Russia, Markov said, would not use battlefield nuclear weapons but would go straight to ICBMs: “Ukrainians are our brothers, but Ukraine is occupied by Western countries who make a proxy army from Ukrainians. It’s Western countries fighting against the Russian army using Ukrainian soldiers as their slaves.”
It is far from clear how attacking the West would stop Ukraine from fighting and, indeed, winning. Even if the strike failed — we presumably have spies and double-agents, cyberdefenses, interdiction mechanisms, space-based shields — it would mean the end of Putin. The international community would stop at nothing to convict a man who attempts global annihilation. Putin’s name would displace Hitler’s as shorthand for evil.
Even during the depths of the Cold War, there was a well-understood no-first-strike convention. Until last week, Russia was clear that nuclear weapons were a final resort, to be used only in the face of an existential threat.
True, Putin expressed that doctrine with unsettling glee. “If someone decides to annihilate Russia, we have the legal right to retaliate,” he told an interviewer in 2018. “Yes, it will be a catastrophe for humanity and for the world, but we will ascend to heaven as martyrs, while they will just croak before they know what hit them.” On another occasion, he asked, “What use to us is a world without Russia?”
But no one outside the fantasies of some pro-Kremlin TV presenters thinks that the West is threatening Russia with destruction. NATO troops have meticulously stayed away from Ukraine. Hence Putin’s deliberate widening of the nuclear doctrine. Russia, he says, will go nuclear to preserve its territorial integrity. In theory, that means he might retaliate against the West if Ukraine recovers any of its lost lands.
It is possible, I suppose, that Putin has lost his wits and will pull the world down rather than face defeat. It is even conceivable that he might get away with it — that is to say, that there is no posse of sane Russians ready to stop him from pressing the button, that his nuclear rockets system will work better than any of his conventional weapons, and that the West’s defenses will fail.
But does it not seem more plausible that we are dealing with a tawdry, frightened dictator who realizes that he has made a terrible blunder, can see no way out of it, and is playing for time as defeat closes in?
“Yep and we knew enough to KEEP CLEAR of the Soviets during the Cold War, and so never had to deal with nuclear scenarios.”
You forgot the Cuban Missile Crisis; Vietnam (where we shot down Russian Migs piloted by Russian “volunteers;” Afghanistan (where we armed the Afghanis and gave them a AA weapons that went a long way toward defeating the Soviets.
Thousands of Russian served in Vietnam
“Starting in 1964, North Vietnamese fighter pilots and anti-aircraft gunners were being trained in the Soviet Union, with Soviet advisors also being stationed in North Vietnam. Early on, when the North Vietnamese troops were still unfamiliar with the new Soviet anti-aircraft batteries, Soviet crews manned the guns themselves and these crews did, in fact, shoot down US planes. One such Soviet battery reportedly downed six US planes.”
“Soviet involvement was not confined to anti-aircraft crews. There were also widespread reports (though these were never confirmed) that Soviet snipers had embedded with NVA units and infiltrated South Vietnam to test their new SVD Dragunov sniper rifles. Witnesses described these snipers as white men with blue eyes.
Beyond South Vietnam proper, but still within the unofficial theater of the war, Soviet GRU Spetsnaz special forces took part in at least one, and likely more, ground combat operation. In 1968, a team of ten Spetsnaz attacked a covert US base on the Cambodian-Vietnamese border, destroying three of the then-new US Cobra attack helicopters and actually stealing another. This operation was confirmed only after the fall of the Soviet Union, and if there was one Soviet special forces mission, there were almost certainly more.”
“From 1968 on, the Soviet Union provided the vast majority of the military and economic aid that North Vietnam received. They supplied their communist allies with food, petroleum, transport vehicles, iron, steel, fertilizer, arms, and ammunition. Most critically, the Soviets supplied all of this as aid rather than loans (as the Chinese had done early in the war). This eased the economic strain on North Vietnam and further advanced their war effort.”
Korean United Nations war.
“Despites its denials at the time, the Soviet Union was intimately involved in the Korean War. The contribution made by the Soviets was vital. They provided diplomatic support, strategic and grand tactical planning, including the planning of the invasion of South Korea, and essential logistical support. They supplied and trained the air forces of China and North Korea. Soviet pilots flew aircraft with Chinese or North Korean markings and after the war claimed to have shot down over 400 UN aircraft.”
I think I bought it in some airport bookstore. Had to finish it when I got home.
LOL. I was actually thinking nuking London would be an improvement and move tens of thousands of would be jihadis off the playing field.
What I find interesting is that the Barbara Streisand’s of the world were scared that Reagan would start a war. They were scared again when GW invaded Iraq. So why with all their anti-war creds are they wanting a war with Russia now?
No one wants a war with Russia, just making stuff up is useless.
I’m not denying that the Soviets were fighting us all over the place during the Cold War (why, by the way, ended 31 years ago).
“And we have a history of beating the crap out of countries that NEVER threatened us...but, again, Russia didn’t see a need to challenge that.”
Sure looks like an effort to deny to me, and of course, Trump had to kill a lot of them.
Good grief! That is scary.
“The person who overthrew the elected Ukrainian government”
So there is only one neocon, then?
“So there is only one neocon, then?”
Look it up...
“So why with all their anti-war creds are they wanting a war with Russia now?”
Because a war with Russia is THEIR WAR, and if it goes nuclear, oh well...sorry...
(at least as they see it)
I’m familiar with the Soviet Union. What does their policies have to do with Russia’s policies today?
They would deserve it with their meddling in Ukraine.
“I know you’re young now. The Korean War had to have been before your time, as was the Vietnam War. Russia also challenged the Grenada invasion; the Panama invasion; Gulf War II.”
I guess you’re still stuck in the Cold War. THANK YOU for explaining your issue.
Russia is Russia and they cause trouble all over the world.
The USSR was Russia, that is why Russia holds the USSR seat at the UN and why you guys keep counting the USSR and Russia as the same in treaty discussions going back to when they called themselves the USSR.
Currently, they have invaded Ukraine and threatened America and Europe with nuclear war.
“I guess you’re still stuck in the Cold War. THANK YOU for explaining your issue.”
Nice try, Sparky. I was refuting your absurd comment, to wit:
9/26/2022, 11:06:03 AM · 52 of 77
BobL to ought-six
And we have a history of beating the crap out of countries that NEVER threatened us...but, again, Russia didn’t see a need to challenge that.
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I proved you wrong with this comment: “I know you’re young now. The Korean War had to have been before your time, as was the Vietnam War. Russia also challenged the Grenada invasion; the Panama invasion; Gulf War II.”
Give it up. You can’t argue well or honestly (typical), so you resort to absurdities as a distraction from your failures. Sad, really.
“I’m familiar with the Soviet Union.”
No, you’re not. Had you been so you’d have known of its involvement in the Korean War and the Vietnam War, instead of making the utterly absurd comment that it never challenged the US.
“Russia is Russia and they cause trouble all over the world.”
Other than their backyard, where, exactly?
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