Posted on 09/01/2008 3:51:41 PM PDT by WesternCulture
There’s a huge gulf between having a few nuclear weapons (North Korea?) and being a creditable nuclear power. I don’t doubt that Sweden has the resources or know-how, but it’s not an overnight process. The U.S. and Russia have three generations of extensive testing and production that cannot be duplicated overnight.
I do doubt that Sweden has the resolve to dedicate about 10% of its GDP for several decades to a development program.
In the 1980’s Saddam Hussein had about 100,000 people working full time on a nuclear weapons program for ten years and he did not succeed in even making a rudimentary device. He had many advantages over the U.S. 1940’s effort, including a known working design and help from Western countries like France in acquiring key components.
Uh, you mean besides logistics?
Sweden is nowhere near the total technological capacity of the US.
Still, there are certain areas where Sweden is ahead.
Two examples:
- Telecommunication
http://www.ericsson.com/technology/technologies_az.shtml
- Naval stealth technology
(see above)
But Russia?
If Sweden would have been given two years of preparation and would have been given full support by the nations sharing the same devotion to democracy which we do, this is what would’ve happened;
- Russia’s airforce would have been wiped out
- Russia’s Baltic navy would have been sunk
Once this is accomplished, there won’t be anyone in the Kreml fingering on firing buttons, because Moscow will
be abandonded and Russia west of Ural will be flooded by Swedish tanks.
Unlike the Nazis, we don’t fancy the idea of invading the largest country on Earth on horseback.
Russians are great individuals, but never allow them to form into a powerful nation.
In re: Invading Russia on horseback.
The German Army that invaded Russia had 600,000 horses and 3,400 tanks, though anyone brought up on Hollywood History would think those numbers were reversed. Their tanks were distinctly inferior to the Russian T-34, which came as a nasty surprise to the Germans. (The t-34 was built on an American Studebaker truck chassis. The Russians were the best tank designers and builders of the War.)
The German weren’t mounted, rather they used the horses as draft animals to pull wagons. (Union Army General Sherman calculated that a team of horses could travel 100 miles (160 km) on a wagon hay, meaning a unit supplied by horses had a radius of operation of 50 miles.) The horse teams had to be supplied from Germany via rail. The horses were used for local distribution.
The roads and infrastructure of Russia in 1940 were probably best suited for invasion by “horseback”. Albert Speer in his memoirs points out that when he was in Russia the unit he was with was temporially cut off by a Russian counter attack. Although the Russian counter attack was quickly beaten back, they had briefly seized a key railroad bridge. Had the Russians destroyed that bridge they would have cut off the key and indispensible German supply and communication line and ended the war years earlier.
I forget the exact Russian superiority in armor in artillery versus NATO but the numbers were like 10:1. If the Russians had attacked in 1988, all they would have had to do was line their artillery up wheel to wheel and blast their way through to Spain. The only thing that could have stopped them was nuclear weapons. NATO attacks on Poland (communications, POL and tranportation centers) would have been answered by Soviet attacks on Germany. Things would quickly have escalated.
Gulf War I - Saddam fired Ballistic Missiles (Scuds) at Israel.
Recent Israel/Lebanon War - Hezbollah fired short range artillery rockets at Israel.
Maybe the world isn’t that crazy, maybe it isn’t. And really it’s not about the world, it’s about 1 or 2 world leaders, one nutty premier or general and WHOOPS 6 billion people dead.
Which is why we don’t go into direct conflict with serious nuclear powers. It’s just too risky. We never have and we never will.
You know what happens if you take out Russia’s air force and navy? They launch nukes. Why do you think they built those missiles, they’re the last line of defense. If it looks like they’re going to loose a conventional war on their homeland they WILL go nuclear, they’d have NO OTHER CHOICE. Nobody that’s spent that much money building nukes will allow themselves to be conquered, not by conventional means.
Man, give up playing strategic games. Russians will hesitate no single minute to use its nukes against any invader they can't stop with the conventional weapons. There can be a conventional war between Russia and the West - but only if the Russians are victorious, and only till the moment they realize that they are losing it.
I believe Russia is crossing the Rubicon on the proxy war MAD principal. They are helping Iran go Nuclear. Therefore, Iran could obliterate European city-states and Russia involvement will be deniable (we Russians had no idea those crazy Iranians would launch them). The Russian counter I believe is that they claim the US helped Pakistan go nuclear, but I have yet to see any solid evidence presented of that.
Gulf War I is a good counter example although Saddam made a shrewd calculation that if Israel retaliated it would undermine support for the collation among Arabs. He didn’t see he had much to lose since he already faced overwhelming force, it was a desparation gamble and Israel didn’t bite. (Actually, he had a free shot a Israel.)
Hezbollah is not a soveriegn state, but a cat’s paw for Iran.
Let’s modify that to no attack on an acknowledged nuclear power.
Very true. Putin/Medevev are even stoking the fires of racial superiority by claiming that ethnic Russians living anywhere on the planet are going to be protected by Mother Russia. IOW - Ethnicity trumps Nationality (Hitler-Like)
True, but if Saddam's plan was to get Israel to nuke Iraq to get the Arabs behind him, it would not have done Saddam much good.
No, he was hoping for any response short of a nuclear one from Israel. In the event, Israel refused to accomodate him.
AFAIK Medvedev talked about Russian citizens, not ethnic Russians. For example, from 80 to 90 per cent of the South Ossetians had obtained the Russian citizenship in the 90's and that made a convenient pretext for the Russians to invade Georgia.
So the principal that nuclear weapons will prevent a nation from receiving attacks by ballistic missiles, failed.
I doubt they’d give Iran nukes. It’s not like the Iranian government and people actually like them, sure they don’t hate them as much as they hate us, but Putin has to know that eventually some whacky Iranian will launch one at Moscow.
More ethnic Ossetians live in Georgia proper then live in South Ossetia. I guess we will have to call them Free Ossetians now. They do not want to be a part of Russia. So I guess we agree that this was not about Ossetians. It was about a Russian geographic foothold through the Caucasus. Population-wise, what Putin and Medevev are really after are the millions of ethnic Russians living in the Ukraine. The populations of the small autonomous regions are irrelevant to the geographic gains. That is why they have ethnically cleansed Georgians from the two autonomous regions in Greater Georgia.
My Northern European history is a little fuzzy. Has Sweden fought a war in the last 200 years?
Our politicians don’t have the Balerna to deal with Iran. No way will they militarily confront Russia.
Unless, of course, Russia sent several of their family members to hell.
My guess is what the Russians are doing is building an infrastructure within Iran that they will be assuming control of in the future. Much like the German military did when they eventually defended their ally Italy from invasion. So the Iranians will be getting rolled and the Russians are not actually expecting to get paid for the infrastructure that they are building. They will just assume control due to forced default. There is too much oil in the Middle East for the Oil Barron's currently running Russia to write off. They want all the Spice. It controls transportation and will be vital when Global Cooling accelerates (last month sol had its weakest solar activity levels in about 100 years).
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