Wars and rumors of wars is eternal.
Too true. As a boy growing up in the 50's, WW2 was massive in my universe of movies, TV and comic books. It deeply affected - for the worse - the lives of my father and uncles. As a highschooler and college student, Vietnam loomed huge on campus and in my personal destiny. Several of my best friends did not survive, either physically or mentally. 9/11/01 I will recall with a shudder to my dying day. As I was mounting my motorcycle in the morning darkness to ride to work at Boeing, I happened to look up, and saw the crescent Moon opposed to a star. I involuntarily shuddered at the Islamic symbolism. When I arrived at work, I saw the 1st tower hit on my desk computer screen. I used to think of war as a normal, responsible and healthy thing to do for the world's greatest nation. Now I'm not so sure as I used to be.
The world is still comprised of barbaric primitive people, the only advancement that we've really made is in technology, but humans continue to have endless wars, destruction, disease, poverty, starvation, torture, slavery, and a hierarchy which leaves just a few people controlling the lives of billions. There are certain countries in the world which have never been involved in a war as they are civilized, peaceful people who respect others and are not concerned and dominating anybody.
Russia needs to learn from their experience in Ukraine and realize they don't have the horsepower to do that. For awhile it seemed that Russia was demonstrating how very inept they were and some little country like Ecuador could take them on.
Yes, in our own ways, many of us are slow learners. My military expertise doesn't extend much past Age of Empires II and the American History Channel, so I will mainly try to pay attention and learn. Here is (apparently) the latest thinking in Europe, albeit not accounting for propaganda and wishful thinking:
Problem with that is if they didn't have to scare you by saying how bad the other person is and didn't have unfulfilled promises they can throw around, there wouldn't be a reason to elect them anymore. It's basic politics: promise something but give just enough to keep people satisfied so they have to vote for you again in hopes of getting the rest of that promise fulfilled.
Perfect assessment.
There is a saying in the military that, if you substitute the word "recruiter" and replace it with "politician" remains perfectly true.
The amount of lying and corruption in most governments around the world is very depressing. There really isn't much hope for humanity with leaders that we have in place. All you have to do is look at the evening news for confirmation of that.
To be fair, we definitely deal with corruption but it is nothing like the corruption in some nations. For example Nicaragua over the last couple of years has shifted from a social democracy and one of the safest countries in Central America to being an authoritarian regime. Ecuador went from a homicide rate of 5 per 100K to 46 per 100K dealing with their ongoing war on drugs. Then of course we have Russia and its delusions of grandeur trying to revive the Soviet Union. That's not to say the same couldn't happen in the US or Canada or Europe, but at least for the time being there is enough transparency that we know what we are dealing with and have the ability to intervene to some extent. As a whole corruption in the world has significantly decreased as people are able to document every waking moment with phones and share it to the entire world in seconds, but because there is so much coverage of it, it seems like it's more rampant when in reality we just know about it now.
That assumes there was a plan in the first place. All Macron said was that sending troops to Ukraine shouldn't be ruled out. That's not the same thing as actually planning to send troops.
It seems to me like that would certainly lead to nuclear weapons, so that would be a very bad idea. Also what makes you think that it would be “quick” wars are never as quick as you think they would be.
That's pretty much the argument against, but I'm not 100% convinced Russia would resort to nukes, knowing that they would be annihilated as well, especially if the troops were strictly ordered to stay in Ukraine and absolutely not to cross into Russia proper.
You don't seem to understand how dire the situation is. Read this article by Newsweek:
That would be easier to take at face value except for two things:
Funny how the headline uses the word "collapse ", but the article says that Russian gains have been "incremental." Yes, Russia captured Adiivika, but they lost 50,000 troops in four weeks doing it, which is equivalent to how many they lost in Afghanistan in ten years, and nearly equal to US losses over 20 years in Vietnam. They exploit Ukrainian weaknesses by using mass human wave meat assaults.
Since, as we now know, Ukraine is in very deep trouble, it is obviously necessary for NATO to come to the rescue. That much you have right. If we do not, and Ukraine goes down, our credibility is worthless, shot forever.
No, the West is not going to risk the world over Ukraine, there is no political support for that. The west's strategy was never for Ukraine to win, it was to put as much pain on Russia as possible and degrade its military. There are two possible outcomes:
There is credible information that says Russia's nuclear force is a shell of what it once was and that a good portion of their inventory is non-functioning or not functioning properly. It takes a lot of effort and money to maintain a fully capable and functioning nuclear force. Of course that doesn't negate the fact that it only takes "one good one" to start the exchange. But it would tip their hand on the possibility of future uses. I'm confident western countries wouldn't engage that risk by putting troops on the ground without a lot of forethought.
One thought to consider is the US political machine does not want Russia or Ukraine to "win". Clearly for different reasons but a prolonged conflict is beneficial to western geopolitical interest. In very basic terms it comes down to military support. By supporting Ukraine, the west gets to defeat Russia without firing a shot or putting troops in harm's way. When Ukraine struggles to win, it provides an opportunity to renew the military industrial complex for a good cause. We've already seen where US politicians have said; "Come on man, that Ukraine funding will be spent right in your state" (that's a paraphrase). It's an interesting thought exercise for sure.
Not really. It comes down to money. The US economy is roughly 40% bigger than the next country in line (China) and it's bigger than all of Europe combined. It takes a lot of years to overcome that math. Even in the event of a catastrophic global meltdown, the US has the infrastructure to withstand most issues. Sullied credibility only last until the next handout, certainly not "forever".
However comforting for some, I for one cannot conceive of your outcome #1 being even a remote possibility, given Russia's long-stated aims of their "SMO", these being demilitarization, denazification and the perpetual neutrality of Ukraine. In the best case, they could lose their military and their ardent nationalists, but how could the remainder of Ukraine be reliably guaranteed to remain permanently neutral, other than it be entirely removed from the map?
I was actually going to say that, it makes sense to me, they haven’t had anyone checking on them since the USSR collapsed. I bet 50% would fall somewhere. but 50% of the world’s largest arsenal is still game over for us.
Yep, tritium for H-bombs is expensive and has a half-life of only 12 years, so it needs to be refreshed every so often. It wouldn't surprise me if most of Russia's bombs were nonfunctional. Still, it also wouldn't surprise me if at least a few dozen to a few hundred of their bombs have actually been properly maintained.
