🤔🤔🤔
Posted on 01/19/2023 4:42:04 AM PST by Callahan
Kg is metric, stone is English or Imperial.
According to Medev whatever, nuclear powers never lose wars in which their survival depends. This presumably works for non-Russia nuclear powers. So, if Medev ... is correct, it looks like nuclear war is inevitable. (I’ll return to nuclear war below.)
About “civilization ending”: The official state religion of Russia says that “civilization” passed from Rome (western Rome) to Constantinople (eastern Rome or Byzantium) to Kiev and then to Moscow. “Civilization” is, therefore, something like an Olympic Torch, being passed from one to another. This is the old way of thinking. That “nations” are ancient things, originating in some kind of miraculous event a long time ago, and continue to the present often through bloodlines.
The Americans introduced a new way of thinking: that the just powers of government derive from the consent of the governed (our Declaration of Independence). Lincoln put it this way in his Gettysburg Address, that ours is a “new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.”
Without going into the arguments for each view (and their are good arguments for both), historians tend to embrace the old view, while economists tend to embrace the new view.
I will now comment on nuclear war: We (the U.S.) could probably take out most if not all of Russia’s inter-continental nuclear strike force with conventional munitions; e.g., with stealth bombers. On the other hand, I doubt that we could do much about Russia’s mobile missile launchers (which have a shorter, but still long range). This would leave Europe exposed. Even with the Patriot missile defense system, the Europeans would be exposed because the Patriot isn’t 100 percent, and probably can’t do anything about hypersonic missiles. Still, to minimize destruction Europe should deploy the Patriot system, and do what can be done to strike Russia’s intermediate range missiles while they are still on the ground. If the limited war in Ukraine becomes war between Russia and the west, you can expect the west will quickly strike deep into Russia with conventional bombs to take out as much of Russia’s nuclear strike force as possible.
Independent of what I just said, it Russia attacks us or our allies with nuclear weapons, MAD (mutual assured destruction) becomes operational. Only, we must keep the destruction from being mutual. We, at least our European allies, would suffer enormously, and Russia would have to be turned into the world’s largest ice hockey rink.
Of course, we are democratic, and value our people’s lives (and all people’s lives) enormously. While the Russians are living under some kind of authoritarianism where human lives are expendable like so many Wagner Group soldiers.
The communists of former days were not like the present generation of Russians. The communists believed in the inevitable success of socialism. They turned out to be wrong about this. But, it was their belief. And, so, the communists would not risk their inevitable victory on a nuclear war. That’s why we were able to work with them.
Now we have to think what do the present leaders of Russia and the Russian people want (these can be two very different things). To avoid going down the road to war, could we offer an alternate scenario that would be mutually acceptable? Russia says give us the Sudetenland, I mean the Donbass, and we’ll be happy. Yet, the Donbass won’t make them happy and we know this from Putin’s own words about Ukraine, Belarus, Poland, Finland and the Baltic nations, and about what used to be eastern Europe. Putin wants to restore Imperial Russia, if not the Soviet Union. What Russia wants is not acceptable to us. The Donbass won’t buy peace in our time just as the Sudetenland didn’t buy Neville Chamberlain peace in his time.
But, could Russian leadership be interested in assured access to western markets, for the sale of Russia’s oil and natural gas? I don’t know. It’s a comparison of economic gain (and, reason) versus nationalism (emotion).
Poker. It is all bluffing.
Every time this guy gets I digestion he threatens nuclear war.
No one is scared yet.
🤔🤔🤔
Putin has higher aspirations. Since he has Biden and Obozo plus the Dem behind him, he shut down energy in the US and gave Putin exclusive supply rights to Putin to supply Europe with OIL. They financed Putin with 1 billion dollars per day oil revenue to pay for the Ukraine War. The USA is paying for the Ukraine War.
He knows Russia is demographically screwed.
Irony goes to Free Republic to die unnoticed.
Russian bombast used to be scary back in the 60s and 70s. Now its farce.
Exactly, all a big bluff.
NATO has been expanding eastward since the fall of the Soviet Union. The Ruskies want NATO out of eastern Europe, but I’m pretty sure that the Ukraine will be given membership into it as a way to escalate the situation.
The members of NATO after the fall of the Soviet Union promised that they would not expand the organization, but went on their word. How can the Ruskies trust the European powers and the US if they can’t abide by something like that?
sorry, Tom. You don’t own Poland or Estonia or any of those places. Neither does Putin. It doesn’t matter than Catherine the Great conquered them, and Lenin and Stalin re-conquered them. Those places or rather the people in those places determine their destiny. The time is coming when nobody will be anybody’s slave because somebody conquered somebody else in the past and when all relations among men will be based on free association. We weren’t there in 1956 when Russia invaded Hungary, nor in 1968 when Russia invaded Czechoslovakia, but we took a giant step to the future in 1991 when the Soviet Union fell apart. And the same principal the protects the Poles and the Estonians and all the other people of eastern Europe will protect the Russians provided Russia doesn’t start a nuclear war causing us to have to wipe them off the face of the earth.
The West is in desperation mode. They are throwing feces against the wall and hoping something sticks. Completely bereft of strategy. The decision to try to send U.K. and German tanks to Ukraine is the most recent indicator that London, Berlin and Washington are hitting the panic button.
Russian military forces, with the Wagner Group leading the charge, has breached the Bakhmut, Soledar, Siversk line of defense. While Ukrainian troops continue to occupy Bakhmut and Siversk, the Russians are grinding on and appear to have effected a tactical encirclement of Bakhmut. Taking Bakhmut and clearing settlements to the south of Ukrainian forces is a critical step in forging genuine security for Donetsk. When Bakhmut falls expect an uptick in the wailing and gnashing of teeth in London and Washington. They will be tempted to launch more desperate gambits.
Update on the conflict in Ukraine for January 18, 2023.
- Bakhmut faces encirclement by Russian forces;
- The Netherlands is considering sending Patriot missile systems after West blames Russia for residential building strike;
- Ukrainian presidential adviser Arestovich has resigned after suggesting the building was hit because of a failed Ukrainian interception of a Russian cruise missile;
- The building strike appears to be serving as a pretext for a planned escalation by the US and its allies;
- Ukraine also lost its interior minister to a helicopter crash;
- The Western media admits current aid to Ukraine is not sufficient, although suggested increases will unlikely turn the tide;
- The US and its allies are preparing for their monthly meeting discussing expanded military aid to Ukraine on January 20, 2023;
Dozens Of WikiLeaks Cables Show US Knew NATO Expansion Was Russia’s Bright Red Line
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/dozens-wikileaks-cables-show-us-knew-nato-expansion-was-russias-bright-red-line
Minsk deal was used to buy time – Ukraine’s Poroshenko
https://thepressunited.com/updates/minsk-deal-was-used-to-buy-time-ukraines-poroshenko/
Link to full remarks: http://shorturl.at/uwOT4
INTERVIEW: #Ukraine is throwing in troops to face certain death defending #Bakhmut
"INTERVIEW:#Kyiv installed three defensive lines but the Russians are gradually grinding through them, explains #GonzaloLira. #Soledar, which has fallen, was the penultimate town of the penultimate defence line
Look, if you think you own eastern Europe, what is the basis of your claim. Putin says he inherited Poland from Catherine the Great. Is that your claim?
Nope! What I am saying is that the West doesn’t need to say one thing and do the opposite. You can’t build trust if you constantly stab them in the back.
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