• Security incident: ISF was recently accessed by intruders. Please change your password, and change it anywhere else you used it. Read more

The Russian Invasion of the Ukraine.

Status
Not open for further replies.
And again the plan can't be "Well if things get bad enough for the irrational people they'll start acting rationally."

Putin will be more dangerous, not less, the worst thing get for Russia.
 
JoeMorgue said:
We watched 4 years of the Trumpers lives getting worse and worse and Putin taught Trump that game.
Click to expand...

They didn't have all their savings wiped out in one go or start being unable to afford a loaf of bread though, did we? As bad as it got for middle Americans, they were not operating in a state with a failed economy.
 
Meadmaker said:
The only thing I can see that might be a bright spot, the rainbow that might appear after the hurricane, is that it is at least possible that the Russians will fail, and fail so badly that Putin is dragged out of office (and to a lamppost for all I care), and not replaced by someone as bad or worse. It could happen, but if I were a betting man, I wouldn't be putting my money down on that outcome.
Click to expand...

Even if the Putin-Replacement is just as bad as Putin (which wouldn't surprise me a bit), he'll still have to play nice for a while to clean up the current mess. The whole point of replacing Putin is that they'll be able to use him as a scapegoat - "Yes, invasion was terrible mistake by very bad man who is now gone. Of course Russia will withdraw. Now that he is gone, we are nice country so sanctions are no longer needed, yes?"
 
MarkCorrigan said:
They didn't have all their savings wiped out in one go or start being unable to afford a loaf of bread though, did we? As bad as it got for middle Americans, they were not operating in a state with a failed economy.
Click to expand...

I'm saying Americans will turn on Biden for gas over 4 dollars before Russian will turn on Putin.
 
JoeMorgue said:
I'm saying Americans will turn on Biden for gas over 4 dollars before Russian will turn on Putin.
Click to expand...

I'm saying you're wrong.

Again, you are trying to compare people in a stable economy who are struggling to people in a failed economy. It doesn't matter how good the propaganda machine is or how irrational the people, when you start needing a wheelbarrow to carry the money to buy your weeks shopping people start to notice.
 
MarkCorrigan said:
We nuke him back. Pretty sure even if the Russian stockpile IS all operational, which it won't be, and does have adequate launch capabilities, which I doubt, Russia will lose it's capability pretty ******* quickly.

No one can win in a nuclear war, but Russia will lose worse.
Click to expand...

Problem is, we have to rely on one single guy acting rationally and actually caring about that. OR the people down command chains refusing to carry out orders. We as NATO allies will have to decide do we fight and risk that or not. But, I'm pretty confident Poland could easily defeat Russia in a conventional war anyways without any help at all from the rest of NATO.
 
Since I don't want to be all doom and gloom. (And again, taking this time to yet again say I hope I'm wrong.)

I do agree, and said so previously, that Putin has made a major error in launching such a major attack only to have the whole world watch his "mighty superpower Russia army" struggle with someone would you couldn't even honestly call a regional power and as I said there is absolutely no way the US, NATO, EU, the major regional powers in Europe and many others are failing to notice this.
 
MarkCorrigan said:
Unlikely. He can at least claim that there is a significant population of ethnic Russians in Ukraine crying out for liberation, but Poland? Estonia? Not a chance.
Click to expand...

Estonia does have a relatively high population of ethnic russians, 25% at a quick check. Better than the 17% in the Ukraine.
 
Oh absolutely. At this point I'm pretty sure that Luxembourg could beat Russia in a straight fight.

The longer this drags on for the less chance Russia has of using nukes because the less chance there is of the people down the command chain listening to the raving madman crippling their country over nothing. The longer this goes on the more chance there is of the military deciding you know what? Let's not invade a country that could actually curb stomp us, and even if they did thinking it would be a good idea to wipe out the world afterwards.
 
ponderingturtle said:
Estonia does have a relatively high population of ethnic russians, 25% at a quick check. Better than the 17% in the Ukraine.
Click to expand...
Ah, but in the regions Putin is moving into it's much higher. Plus a lot of them speak Russian.

Even if he could make a case for Estonia, it's in NATO and the EU. "Let's attack the huge military alliance and economic alliance" is a much bigger ask than "let's attack the middling power with no close friends".
 
Ivor the Engineer said:
So all the people who would have to follow his orders to start a nuclear war wouldn't be crazy to follow them?
Click to expand...
The US just had a crazy guy as president for four years, who literally wanted to try nuking a hurricane to halt its invasion of the coast. Every so often there would be a news special interviewing someone in the nuke chain, and the journalist would ask, very intently, "let's say Trump orders you to nuke McDonald's because it stops serving breakfast at 11am. You wouldn't actually do it? You can refuse a crazy order, right?" and whoever was being interviewed would very carefully describe the process of following a lawful order whether or not it made sense to them at the time.

We can hope that there's a cooler head somewhere in the chain of command willing to mutiny, but the way it's set up in the US, Trump could have woken up yelling "we need to nuke the Russians" and missiles would have been flying before anyone managed to work out he just wanted his blini microwaved.
 
JoeMorgue said:
Okay so how do stop Russia from just taking Ukraine just because it wants it... in a way that in anyway makes Russia (or China or anyone else) think twice about doing it the next time.

There seems to be no "found out" to Russia's "**** around."
Click to expand...

Short answer: There are no guarantees. If there was some magical 100% clear method being the most effective, we would use it every time and wouldn't even be in this situation. If good always triumphs over evil, there wouldn't be any evil.

Longer Answer:
People jump straight into "Nuclear War" but there are several steps that need to happen before this is a thing.

1) The bad guys need to have nukes
2) Said nukes need to be effective and functioning
3) Bad guy has to actually be willing to use these nukes
4) Bad guy will need to have the order passed through the chain of command and every single person in the chain of command need to be willing to pass the command to fire - or in case he isn't then he needs to be dealt with and replaced.
5) No outside (to the chain of command) interference prevents the actual button from being pressed.


We're all operating the assumption that #1 is true and that's fine.

#2 - frankly considering the existing situation of their military, I'm starting to wonder about this one as well. If their tanks are so badly maintained, why do we assume their nukes are properly maintained?

#3 - Let's assume he is indeed mad enough to want to use them.

#4 &5 - is where I think the current course of action is.
The idea is that Putin himself might be a mad man willing to blow up the whole world is a given. But are we absolutely certain that all of his subordinates are?

If he loses control over his people, he loses control over his weapons as well.

The whole point of sanctions is to get the message to his people of what is really going on and point out who is the bad guy.
As someone else said in this thread, telling them they won't be able to see the new Batman movie sounds pointless, but it does send them a message.

The current plan is essentially to make things so bad over there that the people would either revolt or at least let them think twice if it's worth destroying the human race over his megalomania.

Not to mention, most people would follow his orders knowing that if they don't - they die. But if a nuclear war starts they are likely to die anyway - they might start to think twice that perhaps following his orders are the least likely chance to survive.
 
MarkCorrigan said:
Ah, but in the regions Putin is moving into it's much higher. Plus a lot of them speak Russian.
Click to expand...

I would not assume there are not regions of estonia that would also hold up on. But in any case he does not seem to be launching such a limited attack. I figured at most he would go for the rebellious provinces and maybe a bit more not a full press for the whole country, but that is what he did.
 
psionl0 said:
Since when did anybody call Google a state and when is preventing people from going there (denying them access) trying not to lead users there?
Click to expand...

I thought the whole conversation started about Google blocking RT and culminated in a criticism of "nanny-state".

What Google did doesn't block people from going to RT, it just blocks people from using Google's search results to find their way there.
 
Beelzebuddy said:
The US just had a crazy guy as president for four years, who literally wanted to try nuking a hurricane to halt its invasion of the coast. Every so often there would be a news special interviewing someone in the nuke chain, and the journalist would ask, very intently, "let's say Trump orders you to nuke McDonald's because it stops serving breakfast at 11am. You wouldn't actually do it? You can refuse a crazy order, right?" and whoever was being interviewed would very carefully describe the process of following a lawful order whether or not it made sense to them at the time.

We can hope that there's a cooler head somewhere in the chain of command willing to mutiny, but the way it's set up in the US, Trump could have woken up yelling "we need to nuke the Russians" and missiles would have been flying before anyone managed to work out he just wanted his blini microwaved.
Click to expand...

Isn't a nuclear first strike automatically unlawful?
 
lobosrul5 said:
Problem is, we have to rely on one single guy acting rationally and actually caring about that. OR the people down command chains refusing to carry out orders. We as NATO allies will have to decide do we fight and risk that or not. But, I'm pretty confident Poland could easily defeat Russia in a conventional war anyways without any help at all from the rest of NATO.
Click to expand...

If there's one thing we know about the Putin regime is that it is corrupt from head to toe. There is no honour amongst thieves. None of them would be willing to go down for Putin. Once enough of them start to suffer he will be replaced and the Russian army leave Ukraine. Lots of people will die in the meantime.

Assuming the sanctions continue to ramp up, I think Putin will be gone in less than 2 weeks.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Share this page

ISF - Join now!

Every member here is approved by hand. No bots, no spam, just people who care about evidence and honest debate.

Membership is free!

Create your free account

Back
Top Bottom