Panto_Villan

Brexit wasn't actually a very good idea, was it?

Realistically Finland and Sweden already have much of the protection of being in NATO because they're part of the EU, and they're long-established democracies that already collaborate regularly with NATO. I don't think there'd be much hand-wringing about the rest of the West getting involved if Russia went for either of those countries (nor would they be easy targets). That said I'd be very surprised if Turkey actually did block the entry of those two countries into NATO. As others have said, he's after something.

I think you're thinking about it the wrong way. There's generally way more accountability for failure in a democratic (and thus meritocratic) state than in an authoritarian one - if there's a major disaster, heads tend to roll at the highest level. This usually fixes both the immediate problem and the system responsible for it. That's not really how it worked with the Soviets. Take Chernobyl as an example again. The guy in charge of the power plant made some mistakes which directly enabled the disaster, and he was sent off the to gulag. But the fundamental problem was that of reactor design, bad oversight and general cost-cutting, and there was no accountability for that. Punishing power plant managers might make them take safety protocols more seriously but ultimately they're still going to be working with dodgy reactors. Contrast the US reaction to the less serious reactor accident at Three Mile Island. The same applied to the Soviet military. Before WW2 Stalin purged the officer corps because he thought they posed a political threat (nothing to do with their competence), which weakened the Red Army. Then, like Hitler, he continued to interfere and randomly micromanage the military campaign. I was reading today he insisted on endless frontal attacks on German positions near Kharkiv / Izyum that got 170,000 Russian soldiers killed for no reason. You can ruthlessly punish the generals for their failure but it doesn't address the real systemic problems so it'll only get you so far. EDIT - if you've not watched Chernobyl, I'd really recommend it. It's genuinely excellent TV and it's as much about why the Soviet political system was rotten as the disaster / aftermath itself. Only six episodes too.

You're making a whole bunch of assumptions there that suggest you grew up in a capitalist system though - the main one being that the defence staff have their jobs because of competence at defence matters, and the most likely reason for losing them would be incompetence at defence matters. In reality you'll find a lot of key staff in the Soviet hierarchy (and this also applies to dictatorships / autocracies everywhere) is that many top officials have their job because they're loyal to the party (or specifically the person in charge of the party) rather than because they are competent. The army is often a tool of internal prestige and repression as much as something designed to fight external enemies. The US loves their military and has the most powerful one in the world but they don't feel the need to do a massive parade of all their gear every year, whereas Russia, China and North Korea sure do. This problem is nowhere near as bad in functioning democracies. In the light of the recent events in Ukraine a lot of analysts have been repeating the mantra that an army can only be as good as the society that creates it. As mentioned by another poster above, you can see another example of this in Chernobyl. The priority was initially to try to hush up the accident so it didn't damage Soviet prestige, and anyone that wants to deal with (or learn from) the problem has to actively fight the system to do so.

Anyone seriously expecting a 1997 style landslide needed their heads checked out. Labour could run the best candidate in the world and still wouldn’t get it now the SNP have Scotland locked up. If Starmer is leading the next government in any form, he’ll have done an excellent job.

Indeed, that's what I was saying (or trying to say). It's not like they had loads of vulnerable councillors they were defending because they'd previously had a good year. They'd already lost all them last time. They've taken heavy losses in areas you wouldn't expect them to because people are apparently waking up to how much of a shitshow this government has been. And that's great. The Tories are going to win power again at some point in the future so hopefully they'll draw the conclusion that flouting the law and the sort of right-wing populism Boris is peddling is a vote loser, as well as being bad for the country.

These are remarkably bad results given that that the Tories had already lost a bunch of the marginal councillors at the previous round of local elections. They've now got less than half as many seats as Labour, and the Lib Dems aren't *that* far behind them. It very much seems the public doesn't find Boris funny any more.

Apologies for not replying to your previous post, I've been very busy recently. So I was talking about the M777 specifically here as the CEASAR transfers hadn't been announced at the time. Turns out I was just looking at the specs for the M107 ammo, which was the older type of ammo for that gun. That only has a range of 15 miles, which is less than all the comparable Russian systems. However the new standard ammo for the M777 is the M795 which is rocket assisted and can fire 23 miles, which outranges the Russian howitzers. If we're making the assumption that the US is sending the good stuff rather than using up their older stocks, then yeah the NATO stuff is longer ranged than the comparable Russian howitzer systems. Nonetheless the image above is a bit misleading because they've included only the short-range Russian rocket artillery (TOS-1) while leaving off the longer-ranged rocket artillery like the Grad or the Uragan which does still outrange the M777 even with the best ammo. Not saying the howitzer is not the superior option militarily, just that graph is deliberately cherry-picking data.

Fair enough, will check it out when I get a moment.

There doesn’t seem to be that much evidence of widespread casualties from Chernobyl from what I can see. It’s a shame in a way because it causes a lot of knee-jerk reactions about the safety of modern nuclear power plants, which are potentially a good source of low-emissions energy as we transition to renewables. I think less than 50 people died as a direct result of Chernobyl, and many of those died in the explosion or physical firefighting rather than anything related to radiation. The assumption of high casualties was people estimating the amount of radiation locals were exposed to and statistically extrapolating how much cancer would shorten their lives. I’m not sure there’s much evidence that it actually had much of an effect in the end, and even if it did it’d be people losing a few years at the end of their lives rather than dropping dead immediately.

So one thing I noticed which was weird was that the US-provided artillery doesn’t actually outrange the Russian stuff, despite the pro-Ukrainian OSINT claiming it does. Seeing so many of the people who apparently know what they’re talking about repeating the same incorrect fact is a little concerning imo, unless I’m somehow missing something. (I’m guessing the ammo provided will be better and the counter-battery radars will make it more effective overall, but still)

I’m not sure what we should be doing involves pitchforks and flaming torches, actually. The whole purpose of voting is to ensure nobody gets to do the pitchfork thing, because it’s generally better for society to appoint people based on who has the most votes as opposed to the most pitchforks (or is best at using them). There’s always groups that don’t feel represented by the current political system.

I don’t think there’s been even one Labour politician in history who has never told a lie. That seems an impossible standard to hold him to. If your view is that Starmer isn’t left enough and you’d rather continue with the Tories in power than see him elected then just say that.

I think anyone who holds that much power for that long starts to lose their grip on reality after a while, particularly as they get older. I do think there’s an element of irrationality about Putin these days that didn’t seem to be there (from my limited observations at least) 10 years back.

I’m not convinced that the Ukrainians won’t be able to roll back the Russians in the long term. The Ukrainian soldiers seem much superior to the Russian ones, and I think even in a mass-mobilisation situation (which is still somewhat unlikely) then Russia is still going to run out of hardware sooner rather than later. They can’t build new tanks or precision munitions thanks to the sanctions and they have limited numbers of both remaining. I think the aid to Ukraine is a mixed bag so far. The anti tank and anti air missiles and some of the recent drones I think are / were genuine game changers. Much less so the tanks / artillery / aircraft, or lack thereof. Aside from a catastrophic defeat in the coming weeks, I think the main danger facing Ukraine is how they transition to Western stuff. They can’t easily replace the Soviet tech they’re using when destroyed/ consumed in combat and the West can’t resupply them long-term either. Hopefully the US is working with Ukraine to slowly phase in Western tech so we can keep them supplied with artillery and long-range anti-air etc on an ongoing basis. The fact it’ll be more capable than what they currently have is a bonus too. If we do that I can’t see Russia winning a war unless China starts supplying them military gear or the microchips they need to build it.

It’s worth drawing a distinction between humiliation on the battlefield and humiliation in a peace treaty. Germany’s humiliation after WW1 contributed to WW2. Germany being humiliated in WW1 led to the Kaiser being overthrown and Germany (briefly) becoming a democracy. The humiliation worked fine in that regard, and this is what needs to happen in Russia - the outcome of the war needs to be enough of a humiliation that Putin is swept away, because there’s no chance of long term peace with him remaining in charge. If that happens the sanctions can be steadily lifted provided Russia recognises it committed war crimes, etc. It doesn’t need to be permanent neutered provided it moves away from the current political setup. Surely WW1 also provides a cautionary tale that if a strong and expansionistic defeated country wants to remain expansionistic, it shouldn’t be allowed to remain strong?

Yeah, the terms of the surrender in WW1 certainly contributed to the outbreak of WW2. It’s still debated whether the Treaty of Versailles went too far or not far enough (there’s a whole section on that in Wikipedia by way of illustration). The average German was told that they had been ruined by the Treaty by German nationalists. To what degree that was actually true was another matter. It’s been a while since I studied it but it’s not as clear cut as it’s made out. Reparations were about a third of Germany’s post war deficit, and it’s true the French insisted payments continue even in the midst of hyperinflation (a terrible idea for obvious reason). But Germany had also taken out massive loans to fund the war on the assumption it could repay them from the spoils of war, and their industrial capacity survived the war intact while France (where the war was fought) was devastated. There’s probably a world where Germany demilitarised and the treaty was bearable. Anyway, I think any time there’s regime change and / or a realisation that launching the war was a really bad idea there’s a chance for the country to start over - although it’s clearly not guaranteed to succeed. Neither of those conditions currently applies in Russia right now though. I feel like any off-ramp solution would just let Putin reconstruct his military (properly this time) and try again in a few years.

One thing that’s worth considering on this topic is that Germany and Japan probably represent the best case scenarios for enemies defeated in a terrible war subsequently rejoining the world order and devoting themselves to peace rather than war (possibly to a fault). Both those countries were utterly humiliated in WW2. They were subject to occupation by the victors and their wartime leaders were put on trial and forced to answer for their crimes, which led to the populations as a whole coming to terms with what their country had done. Occupation of Russia is sadly not going to happen but the more Russia is humiliated on the battlefield the more chance Russia as a whole learns that it’d be far better for the average Russian to exist inside the Western system like Ukraine wants to. If the war ended today with the current losses and territorial borders, I think most Russians would consider it a success (at least partially because they have a distorted view of what’s actually happening due to the propaganda). I bet the average Russian doesn’t believe their army has committed war crimes. I really doubt any peace where that continues will hold for any length of time.

The irony is that even if you assume 50% of the Ukrainian tank losses haven't been recorded, according to the figures Ukraine has captured so many tanks from the Russians they actually now have more than they started with.

I'm not sure about this. Obviously the US was expecting to be bleeding Moscow via an insurgency but that's because Ukraine was expected to fall quickly; I expect they're absolutely delighted with this turn of events and would absolutely love to see the Russian army get defeated in a conventional war. Why would they rather see the Russian military slowly bled when they can see it getting stabbed right through the chest instead? Biden is clearly incredibly risk-averse when it comes to the lives of US servicemen. He kept to Trump's ridiculous schedule for pulling out of Afghanistan when he took power, despite the obvious risks, and his refusal to put boots on the ground here is just a continuation of that imo. It'd be very interesting to see what "support" the US is willing to offer Poland if they decide to go in. Maybe drone strikes and cruise missiles? That said I'm surprised they're willing to entertain the idea of NATO countries sending troops in at all. If a no-fly zone is an unacceptable escalation then Polish troops on the ground would be an even greater escalation. And also there's a real risk of getting dragged in by proxy - if the US moved 50,000 troops over the border I'm pretty sure the Russians would be routed in relatively short order, but if the Polish did it? They don't have the same level of training and combat experience as the first-rate military powers within NATO. You'd hope they could push the Russians back too (or just cause them to immediately back off and seek peace) but ultimately there's no guarantee they wouldn't run into significant problems of their own, and require further assistance.

So much is based on the exact circumstances of how Russia used its nukes that this is all conjecture upon conjecture so I won't say you're wrong, but I do see personally it differently. I don't think it would be a war crime to drop a nuke on a base in Belarus being used by Russian forces actively involved in the war (as opposed to just wiping Belarus off the map), and if we're talking about nuclear escalation that could potentially devastate most of the world the long-term prospects of Belarus joining the EU probably wouldn't be that much of a consideration. The main thing would be sending a message to Putin saying "we're also perfectly willing to use nukes so you'd better stop using them right now" while also trying to break the cycle of tit-for-tat escalation. And hitting Belarusian soil with a nuke would be less of a provocation than Russian soil while still sending the same message. Yes, it'd likely be a US plane and a US missile. But you'd have to imagine this would be a collective decision made by the leading powers within NATO, with a statement accompanying it (and the lines start to become a bit blurred anyway if it's a US nuke currently housed in Italy / Belgium / etc being fired from a US plane that launched from a German / Polish airbase).

It's extremely unlikely to happen, of course, but that's only because Putin is extremely unlikely to use a tactical nuke on NATO forces. If he did do so I think it would be very much on the table (which is what my post said). I also think it's potentially on the table if Putin starts dropping tactical nukes on Ukraine given the pressure within NATO to act against Putin would become almost unstoppable at that point, at least in my opinion, and hitting Belarus (speficially the military bases the Russians are using there) sends the desired message while being less likely to provoke all-out nuclear war than hitting Russia directly.

Yeah, NATO wargamed how to respond to a Russian tactical nuke against NATO forces. The first group of commanders ignored it and carried on using conventional weapons, but the second decided to nuke Belarus (who weren’t even involved in the fictional conflict). It’s therefore a possibility that’s on the table, but I wouldn’t go as far as to say it was the most likely response or the best one. It’s basically a war crime, after all - although if it successfully broke the cycle of nuclear escalation then I imagine most people would consider it justified.

Re: the Belarus thing, I was reading an article yesterday talking about the threat of nuclear escalation in a conflict with Russia and it was talking about how NATO had wargamed the scenario of NATO being in armed conflict with Russia and how to respond to Russia using a single relatively small tactical nuke on a military base in Germany as a warning. They ran it several times with different personnel to see how they would react. The first team decided that they would just ignore the nuclear attack and continue with the war against Russia using only conventional weapons in order to prevent further escalation, the logic being that tactical nukes aren't actually substantially more powerful than the most powerful conventional weapons. Which is fair enough. The second team to run the exercise decided it would be more appropriate to respond with a more significant nuclear strike to illustrate to Russia the dangers of further escalation (which is also fair enough). What made me laugh is that they decided to make that point to fictional Putin by nuking Belarus, who weren't even involved in the fictional conflict. It does make a weird kinda sense though, given Belarus doesn't have its own nukes. So as @magnkarl said above we might see NATO make an example of Belarus if things end up escalating.

That's a huge straw man, right? Sure, there's a debate to be had about how overused the terms "woke" / "political correctness gone mad" / etc are and the answer maps very closely to what your political views are, but they're obviously a real thing to at least *some* degree. Sure, misplaced altruism is better than xenophobia, but it's perfectly possible and much preferable to do neither of those things. It's not a binary choice. And clearly not every example of errant wokeness is misplaced altrusim either - e.g. Jussie Smollet, etc. It's perfectly possible to weaponise woke culture for personal gain and accepting that and calling it out when it occurs doesn't have to undermine your support of the movement as a whole, although right-wing nutjobs will tell you it should. I'll be interested to see what happens in the next few years regarding say the activism at large tech companies about how they shouldn't be working with the Pentagon because the military is bad. I know Google pulled out of a big contract with the Pentagon after employee protests and there were similar protests at Microsoft and Amazon too. One of my friends is part of the LBTQ community and has very progressive views, and during the BLM protests a couple of years ago we pointed out her views on how society should change would leave the West unable to defend itself or compete economically with the rest of the world, and she said she was fine with that and felt the West deserved to fall because of its historical crimes. She very much seemed to mean it at the time, although one would hope she might have changed her mind now there's been such a horrifying demonstration of why fighting for your country / values can sometimes be neccessary (especially given the countries most likely to fill the power vaccuum caused by the fall of the West aren't exactly known for their tolerance of the LBTQ community).