acrashb

Fair point, like I said it was one major pressure but also not the only major pressure. I do wonder if the USSR could not have reinvented itself much in the same way communist China did?  It was a flawed system however clearly when allowed to evolve somewhat can, and does work in a sense.  Of course the heart of the thing is current hemorrhaging all over Ukraine so the odds of enlightened evolution look to be slim in hindsight.
I do think the other military contribution to the USSRs defeat was containment.  Like Nazi Germany the USSR only theoretically “worked” if it was able to continually expand, pulling in more and more resources to feed the corrupt bloated monster.  Expansion was key to its survival and that was blunted and compressed a lot by western military affairs in concert with other elements of power.   
Looking forward, after this war, we are going to have a very sore Russia with less to lose - assuming it survives the landing.  China continues to rise while running out of soft/smart/sharp power runway to fuel its expansion, while it also deals with internal frictions and sore spots.  There will likely be an acceleration of the Outsiders club in pulling away from the West and pulling in more members.  This will not be a repeat of the Cold War but instead be something far more insidious and vicious I suspect.  Hard choices are in front of us, this war in Ukraine was the first real one and I am heartened to see we appear to have passed the test, at least so far.

Those  bombs weren't dumb. They were retarded.
 
My bad upbringing made me do this.

Point taken.
It figures the post that I put the least thought into, with the position that I was least committed to, based on youtube videos I saw years ago, would be the one to get the most replies (recently). I should be more careful going forward.

Well we know that we were not going to invade but I am not sure they did.  If the west was irrelevant then the USSR likely would not have worked so hard or spent so much on threat based capability development.  The Cold War within militaries is a narratives of continual, and very expensive, one-upmanship.  Just take a look at tank development.  If the USSR really did not see western military capability as a threat and was largely a propaganda device, why spend billions on development arcs in the T-72, T-80 and T-90 series?  A whole bunch of cheap T-62s could keep the locals in line and a bazillion of them would make the average insular population convinced they were safe.  This was a template applied across military forces, from aircraft to ships, to nuclear deterrence.
The R&D and development efforts were not going through the motions on either side, they were highly competitive and drove everything from doctrine to intelligence priorities.  I am allergic to the “Soviets sucked and would have collapsed if we did nothing” argument because it is not supported by the facts.  The Soviet empire was a pretty powerful but flawed beast.  The Cold War was not an easy day in history, it took a lot of effort and sacrifice to win.  A lesson we should definitely keep in mind for whatever this is in front of us.

I wanted to stay out of this, but here we go.
On the first part:
Numerous studies (no, I can't produce them, but someone better than me with google / waybackmachine may find the first one I am aware of done by the Pew Research Center) show proportional and related systems to have materially more waste and corruption.  The "why" seems to be that fringe parties - which proliferate in proportional systems - swing the balance of power and leverage this.  Also, in proportional one need not have "big tent" parties, so fringe and lunatic fringe and single-issue parties end up with representation.  And no, the 11% of people who believe Elvis is still alive don't deserve independent representation.
Also, first-past-the-post systems have greater longevity of the polity (fewer revolutions) and less overall political violence.  
For more: https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/why-first-past-the-post-isnt-to-be-abandoned-lightly
If the US extirpates gerrymandering (which encourages extreme candidates) and somehow manages to reduce the grotesque amount of money in elections without impairing freedom of expression, it will have better results.
 
On the second, it will never happen.  People have a natural tendency to band together to protect their shared interests (e.g., trade unions), and there's nothing inherently wrong with that.

Most likely I'll go back to lurking and enjoying the interesting discussions popping up as the Ukrainian counter-offensive warms up.

I wanted to stay out of this, but here we go.
On the first part:
Numerous studies (no, I can't produce them, but someone better than me with google / waybackmachine may find the first one I am aware of done by the Pew Research Center) show proportional and related systems to have materially more waste and corruption.  The "why" seems to be that fringe parties - which proliferate in proportional systems - swing the balance of power and leverage this.  Also, in proportional one need not have "big tent" parties, so fringe and lunatic fringe and single-issue parties end up with representation.  And no, the 11% of people who believe Elvis is still alive don't deserve independent representation.
Also, first-past-the-post systems have greater longevity of the polity (fewer revolutions) and less overall political violence.  
For more: https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/why-first-past-the-post-isnt-to-be-abandoned-lightly
If the US extirpates gerrymandering (which encourages extreme candidates) and somehow manages to reduce the grotesque amount of money in elections without impairing freedom of expression, it will have better results.
 
On the second, it will never happen.  People have a natural tendency to band together to protect their shared interests (e.g., trade unions), and there's nothing inherently wrong with that.

Most likely I'll go back to lurking and enjoying the interesting discussions popping up as the Ukrainian counter-offensive warms up.

To which I would add “…any Russian government based information”

I wanted to stay out of this, but here we go.
On the first part:
Numerous studies (no, I can't produce them, but someone better than me with google / waybackmachine may find the first one I am aware of done by the Pew Research Center) show proportional and related systems to have materially more waste and corruption.  The "why" seems to be that fringe parties - which proliferate in proportional systems - swing the balance of power and leverage this.  Also, in proportional one need not have "big tent" parties, so fringe and lunatic fringe and single-issue parties end up with representation.  And no, the 11% of people who believe Elvis is still alive don't deserve independent representation.
Also, first-past-the-post systems have greater longevity of the polity (fewer revolutions) and less overall political violence.  
For more: https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/why-first-past-the-post-isnt-to-be-abandoned-lightly
If the US extirpates gerrymandering (which encourages extreme candidates) and somehow manages to reduce the grotesque amount of money in elections without impairing freedom of expression, it will have better results.
 
On the second, it will never happen.  People have a natural tendency to band together to protect their shared interests (e.g., trade unions), and there's nothing inherently wrong with that.

Most likely I'll go back to lurking and enjoying the interesting discussions popping up as the Ukrainian counter-offensive warms up.

I wanted to stay out of this, but here we go.
On the first part:
Numerous studies (no, I can't produce them, but someone better than me with google / waybackmachine may find the first one I am aware of done by the Pew Research Center) show proportional and related systems to have materially more waste and corruption.  The "why" seems to be that fringe parties - which proliferate in proportional systems - swing the balance of power and leverage this.  Also, in proportional one need not have "big tent" parties, so fringe and lunatic fringe and single-issue parties end up with representation.  And no, the 11% of people who believe Elvis is still alive don't deserve independent representation.
Also, first-past-the-post systems have greater longevity of the polity (fewer revolutions) and less overall political violence.  
For more: https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/why-first-past-the-post-isnt-to-be-abandoned-lightly
If the US extirpates gerrymandering (which encourages extreme candidates) and somehow manages to reduce the grotesque amount of money in elections without impairing freedom of expression, it will have better results.
 
On the second, it will never happen.  People have a natural tendency to band together to protect their shared interests (e.g., trade unions), and there's nothing inherently wrong with that.

Most likely I'll go back to lurking and enjoying the interesting discussions popping up as the Ukrainian counter-offensive warms up.

correlation vs causation.

A recursive acronym. like GNU (GNU's Not Unix).

This is the kind of mission that was attempted in 2003 Iraq, and which led to some A-10s being severely damaged before they were forbidden from low-level missions. They became missile trucks restricted to high altitude, and that's a mission damn near any airframe can perform.

They were ordered to stay at high altitude. It was the same in 2003 after some got absolutely shredded by Iraqi air defenses early on in the invasion attempting the low-level missions they were designed to perform.
It's widely acknowledged that the Kosovo aerial campaign abjectly failed to degrade Serb forces in Kosovo, with only a few dozen armoured vehicles damaged or destroyed.

nah it is just Russians having a smoke after getting fk'd in Belgorod.

Well that's definitely not true. Just taking this thread as a case in point, the best posts here are the longest ones.

Benjamin Franklin once said: "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."
It is also a good thing that most western nations are not true democracies. They are republics that guarantee the rights of their citizens.
"A democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what's for dinner. Liberty is a well armed lamb contesting the vote."

😅 NOOOOOOOOOOoooooooo
 

Im tired (night shift) but did you just call me a right wing looney????
 

An irrational and highly unstable geopolitical partner they have to invest more in to prevent from completely falling apart or dragging them into a major war than they can ever expect to get out of?  Or how about a completely fractured former superpower with 6000 loose nukes at their back door?  
Oh goody, it was getting quiet in here…US bashing day.  Yes, please tell us again how this was all the US’s fault for allowing former eastern bloc countries entry into a free and transparent collective defence treaty?  And after those independent and sovereign nations had, of their own free will, decided it was in their best interest to join said collective defence organization. Or why they would want to join said organization in the first place?
Or perhaps a thesis on how the world would be a much better place if we have left them in the cold and trusted Putin to not do this exact same thing in Estonia, Latvia etc?  I mean the guy looks pretty trustworthy based on his performance in this war, right?  Oh that’s right, like a good domestic abuser argument we made him do this.  And if we had only shrank back and stayed out of it the power hungry dictator would have surely been a ok.  
Here is a counter thesis and question - how many Ukrainians would be alive today if we had pulled them into NATO in 2013?  “Oh but look at how unstable and corrupt they were?”…Turkey.  “Oh but it would have made Russia mad and our gas prices go up”…whoops. 

Merry Xmas to everyone.  And my thoughts to all Ukrainians and Ukrainian Armed Force personnel everywhere.
May all you CM players get kissed under the mistletoe and not get kissed by a Tow missile this holiday season.   😆

Prince Heinrich XIII is 71 years old.
Who else is 71 years old?
Putin.
Coincidence? I think not.
 
And what about this number 13, the unlucky number?
How many letters in "Vladimir Putin"?

Rotterdam 1940. Madrid underground terrorist bombing 2004. And, obviously, Hiroshima & Nagasaki 1945

Definitely plays into confirmation bias for me as it upholds my belief that RU is going to have serious issues in the field this winter.  Given how badly RU has treated its troops, especially mobiks, I am having trouble seeing how they can hold a continuous line against UKR pressure when many of the sectors will be frozen, sick, malnurished men.  So very happy to see this report that says RU clothing & boots is inadequate via bad design.

On another note:
Russian military gear insufficient for harsh winters, leads to soldiers dying from hypothermia | Fox News
Cold-related deaths already.  Winter is Ukraine's friend.
Oh, and "caution, non-liberal site, enter at your own risk".
 

Now that is an excellent example of the consequences of impacting one’s own environment in creating evolutionary pressure.  However, we seem somewhat unique, or at least in a smaller club, in our ability to create an artificial environment to drive our own evolution.  While at the same time impacting the natural environment around us - can’t wait to see the carbon footprint of this war.