Posted on 08/29/2014 9:38:35 PM PDT by Zhang Fei
Over and over again — throughout the entirety of my adult life, or so it feels — I have been shown Polish photographs from the beautiful summer of 1939: The children playing in the sunshine, the fashionable women on Krakow streets. I have even seen a picture of a family wedding that took place in June 1939, in the garden of a Polish country house I now own. All of these pictures convey a sense of doom, for we know what happened next. September 1939 brought invasion from both east and west, occupation, chaos, destruction, genocide. Most of the people who attended that June wedding were soon dead or in exile. None of them ever returned to the house.
In retrospect, all of them now look naive. Instead of celebrating weddings, they should have dropped everything, mobilized, prepared for total war while it was still possible. And now I have to ask: Should Ukrainians, in the summer of 2014, do the same? Should central Europeans join them?
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Anne Applebaum knows not what she asks for.
Not like it hasn't happened before.
War in Europe
is happening right now
Good point.
I don’t remember there ever not being a war in Europe.
Like Seinfeld and car reservations, Democrats are great about starting wars.
They just have trouble ending them.
Then they lose interest, go wobbly and look for Republicans to blame.
Western Europe will do nothing if Russia invades it’s former client states, nothing but talk.
It is rare that Europe goes 100 years without a war...(have they ever?)
and Russia is usually involved too
Not just Europe - the world. The outsized influence of the Soviets and the US, followed by the US alone kept a lid on any outsized engagements, simply because any aggressors understood that by simply backing their opponent with money and weaponry, the superpower(s) of the day could make their aggression expensive and painful, to the point of possibly reversing their territorial gains. Putin has calculated that as usual, the EU expects the US to foot the bill, but Obama wants no part of it, and will not get involved in equipping Ukraine until the EU makes the first move. Bottom line is that the US is no longer the first country in the fray, even when it comes to supplying arms. Our motto is now "After you"...
“Like Seinfeld and car reservations, Democrats are great about starting wars.
They just have trouble ending them.”
ending wars, that’s really the most important part of war. anyone can just start wars.
Yoo-hoo, Anne, this is not the same world as 60 years ago. Russia is a nuclear power. The chances of there being grand tank battles on the plains between two or more major powers is nil. We will continue to see proxy wars between smaller countries and groups that are backed by the major powers, but nobody is going to risk nuclear war over these conflicts. That would be quite insane. (paging the nutball in N. Korea)
I'd say there's no chance of a nuclear war between two powers with at least 100 nukes and a good early warning system, but a significant chance of a conventional clash between two nuclear powers. All it takes is for one nuclear power to make the rational assumption that its opposite number will not risk nuclear annihilation merely over the loss of territory. A leader that initiates a first strike against a conventional attack by a nuclear-armed adversary is guaranteeing his personal demise and the demise of everyone he knows. In other words, it's a throwback to the ancient system of exchanging crown princes as collateral for a peace agreement, with the wrinkle that the king and his entire entourage are also hostages. Nukes will deter conventional warfare in the same way anti-lock brakes deter speeding - not at all.
That depends on how far the war extends. If a country thinks they are losing everything, then nukes could be their last resort. I don’t think anyone wants to risk it. The only reason nobody has taken out the lunatic in N. Korea is because he has nukes. It is also why other countries have nukes. Other countries leave them alone, except for the proxy wars in other countries that I mentioned in my previous comment.
Countries don't make decisions. Rulers do. And rulers are remarkably concerned about self-preservation. Even the Gallic chieftain Vercingetorix, a man's man by all accounts, surrendered to Caesar rather than fight to the death. No country is ever going to lose everything except through genocide (including the nuclear variety). Military conquest is not the end. Afghanistan outlasted the Russians despite having a tiny of fraction of Russia's combat power. It's completely irrational to bring down nuclear retaliation on yourself by using a first strike to counter a conventional attack.
The possession, by N. Korea, of a few ungainly, experimental, unreliable, low-yield nuclear devices that are as yet too large to mount on ballistic missiles is not the reason that no one has "taken out" the lunatic ruling that country.
Regards,
It is because he has the full backing of China and/or Russia - usually just one at a time...
There were few wars of any size in Europe throughout the Cold War. Surely you don’t mean there were.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.