NamEndedAllen
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Posts posted by NamEndedAllen
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3 hours ago, dan/california said:
Smallpox, measles, and tuberculosis conquered the Americas, the fighting was barely a rounding error by comparison. Also a demonstration that disease resistance is probably the single biggest evolutionary driver in the short to medium term. The black plague in Europe in the 1200s is the other truly well known example. But epidemics also probably had more to do with the fall of theRoman Empire than anything else.
Excellent point. These population catastrophes have huge impacts on reproductive selection! They affect the entire population group, sometimes creating what termed a genetic “bottleneck”. The gene frequencies that remain in the survivors are the only inheritances passed down to succeeding generations. That is an immediate, hard and fast causal impact on evolution.
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5 hours ago, Battlefront.com said:
Not directly related to the war, but another example of Russia's continued importance to the far right movements around the world. In this case German police busted a domestic far right terrorist organization, intent on toppling the German government, that was actively trying to get support from Russia. One Russian was arrested along with two dozen others.
This should be a reminder to the West of why it is so important to knock Russia out completely. The amount of trouble it causes, large and small, is cumulatively an enormous threat to the stability of democratic countries around the world. Russia is as much of an exporter of misery as the Soviet Union was. It would be very nice if that tradition came to an end.
Steve
Another verse in the epic song, “Rust Never Sleeps”.
However creaky and weird Russia’s “governance” and actions may be, it does do many things at the same time. The various GRU and other entities’ ongoing, years’ long work to undermine European and USA democracies is one of the more strongly determined projects.
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7 hours ago, The_Capt said:
I don’t know where they pulled their data from but I have no doubt there are accuracy issues, especially the further back you get. In reality this graphic is probably conservative as a I do not see the conquest of the Americas or Africa, which resulted in massive loss of life. The Holocaust is lowballed at about 4.4 million, depending on where one sticks the circle.
The point of course is not any one conflict but the reality that we have been doing war everywhere-all the time throughout history.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_by_death_toll
A lot of stuff here:
https://slides.ourworldindata.org/war-and-violence/#/title-slide
This from the Pinker school of decreasing violence over time, which could be the flip side argument that we are evolving away from war but I am not entirely sold as it relies a lot on deaths per capita, which is slippery. Are we really more peaceful or has our population base accelerated faster than we can kill each other? It also really only focuses on post-WW2 which is too short a period to determine if we are indeed becoming more peaceful or just pausing.
As to “why do we count everything?”, well it is an attempt to understand our environment better through math I would guess. I mean democracy is founded on counting things in order to understand collective will better. We count deaths to try and avoid them in the future (e.g. COVID)- a human thing I suppose.
With respect, I think you are going down one of many trails - a quite interesting one indeed, but just one of a great many. The modern term “war” has suddenly been expanded to cover all human conflict and migration since the beginning of time. But that does not distinguish from any and all forms of life on earth, including the flora (which is pretty violent, even if in very slow motion)! The idea of “war” defined thus way as a singular shaper if Homo sapiens is vague and generalized such that it can describe any competition within an environment or a migration to a new one, by any and all species. The members of all species fight over scarce resources, unless they are in a symbiotic relation, or a time of niche equilibrium with well-established non competing species. The human population groups experience is not generally different than most other species on the planet. And that is where DNA evolution takes place.
Everything being discussed is Cultural Anthropology and Archeology. And cultural “evolution” is what some specialists in the field call their various theories addressing the more general subject area of Culture Change. There is no general agreement on one theory of how cultures change, or whether there can be such a theory, and whether and how “evolution” might apply to it. The field is notoriously replete with new theories of the day, and the book you referenced and its related conference here at the University of Oregon is one of them. I am *not* dismissing the interest in it. Rather what may be too quick an uncritical seizing upon one idea, one branch on a very complex, fuzzy tree of theories in this field. Understandable, because it focuses on one’s own profession? Regardless, there is a lot of speculation here. Agreed that that chart is questionable and a data set of unknown provenance. At first glance it lacks face validity - already pointed out by another post here. But really it looks like an attempt to suggest that a putative shaky history is causal, biologically.
I have to say the terms “fictional environment” and “artificial environment” specifically are problematic. Fictional environment as used sounds like story, or when viewed from a different culture, mythology. There isn’t any DNA evolution specific to Russia’s story about Ukraine and Russian history - any more than in say, “Manifest Destiny” in the USA history. *All* cultures create stories that prop up their core beliefs and justifications. An example:
All those Old Testament chapters recounting the generations of kings is a “fictional environment” established after the two Hebrew Canaan kingdoms of Israel in the low lands and Judah were nearly wiped out by the Neo Assyrian Empire. Only the hill located kingdom, Judah, remained, although as a subject of that empire. Revolts led to Judah’s destruction and the famous exile. After the fall of the successor Babylonian Empire, the remaining Judah members filtered back to their original Canaan territory, sparsely inhabited. But to establish legitimacy as the single head of a new kingdom, the leadership created a tale of familial succession stretching back to the founding of the kingdoms. This became the founding myth of the new kingdom, Israel. Stories - myths - bind people together. This can certainly help maintain a population group’s identity, and its rules about sex and reproduction
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10 hours ago, The_Capt said:
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/culture/article/mongolia-genghis-khan-dna
And now I am wondering about the role disease plays. War as an environmental construct affects more than men. Entire populations are impacted through secondary effects such as disease and famine.Further if trauma can be passed on epigenetically - https://www.psycom.net/trauma/epigenetics-trauma
And there is a link between epigenetic and mutation -https://www.nature.com/scitable/topicpage/epigenetic-influences-and-disease-895/
Then the overall effect of war on humanity is potentially much broader and deeper than one would expect from normal evolutionary processes. This also establishes a potential link between cultural evolution and physical evolution.Which apparently is being debated in the anthropological community -
Yes! Exciting area of research. The caveat is that the effect fades after several generations because the methylation doesn’t change the DNA, only the expression of existing segments on the chromosome. For a while. Separately, have you read Jared Diamond’s “Guns, Germs, and Steel”? If not, I think it was written for you, so don’t delay. It is a great example of how asking one simple question can lead to enormous implications.
War as we define it (anthropologically) is a modern invention. Certainly true in its planetary population wide impact on any genetic level evolution, but could affect some features in the future. The widespread impact of resulting pollution, from the vast industrial wastes to the destruction and spread of contaminants to the aftermath spread of diseases…and ultimately and absolutely critical aspect of reproduction (without which, no evolution!) does affect the health of most if not all species involved.
I certainly would agree that *some* selection is likely to occur during war time, in various ways. I just haven’t seen any significant (genetic, evolutionary) evidence in the journal literature. That’s apart from the eternal elimination of one population group by an encroaching one. Thus is happening since time eternal. And lest anyone have any illusions about ANY “purity” of populations (and thus “races”), ALL of the population groups since before humans separated from cousin ancestral groups have intermixed by conquering groups mating with captured, surviving females. The evidence from both present and prehistoric DNA is unequivocal. For instance, we all carry varying small DNA sequences from Neandertals. AND several other hominid, but non-Homo sapiens. No “pure” race exists, anywhere.
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24 minutes ago, danfrodo said:
DUDE! That was a GREAT book! And the college down the street from me has mascot of beaver. Benny Beaver to be precise. so I clearly an expert on this subject.
I do know that this is a big sideshow on what should be UKR war thread, but I had to respond.
(and now the forum will pounce to tell me how it's actually not a great book. But it's still a great book
. And so is Three Body Problem)
Then you are living on the turf of the Cursed Beavers! Conquerors of The Ducks in the Civil War! But seriously, the shaping of the earth by beavers in our country was a revelation to me. Who knew?
Ruhroh…we have run off the road here.
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8 hours ago, The_Capt said:
our ability to create an artificial environment
I am interested in what you are pointing towards, but need clarity on specifically what you mean by artificial environment…as something different in evolution. I don’t quite get your term, “artificial”. What are you distinguishing from many other species who craft their environments, altering it and over time, themselves? Or are you using the term as a synonym for tool use, language - culture?? For an example of the former, and for whatever reason, beavers’ impact on the North American continent has been getting attention the past few years. Turns out as the keystone species, they shaped much of the North American continent for themselves and other species. Only recognized as such as they were largely wiped out and much of the wet lands dried up.
“To acknowledge that beaver create environments that store water and help sustain other creatures is insufficient. Beaver are nothing less than continent-scale forces of nature and in part responsible for sculpting the land upon which Americans built their communities.”
- Ben Goldfarb in Eager: The Surprising Secret Life of Beaver, 2018On a far less visible extent, what I think you refer to happens in our soil, now far more understood as research into the mycelium web that links all trees in forests, altering and creating their entire environment into a single integrated, signaling and nutrient network.
Safly, I guess we are straying from the forum topic, although the evolution of war, of weapons (tools, more generally speaking) is certainly in the pocket here.
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18 minutes ago, The_Capt said:
No, I think it may be more fundamental than that. Couple points:
Genetic evolution is pretty damned slow. However it is not a static rate and for humans has accelerated greatly in the last 80k years - https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.0707650104. (To be honest this is not my field but the summary seems clear - they link it to population growth, which of course also creates stress).
Human cognitive evolution has not been a static rate either. Because our brains are pliable, we are capable of programming them differently and it is argued that environmental pressures could be the culprit to evolving how we think. This article proposes it went deeper than that to a genetic level as well: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/how-did-climate-change-affect-ancient-humans-180979908/ Environmental stress may be the culprit in how we evolved towards more complex thinking and speech. This was before broad scope warfare but the link is theoretically possible.
Finally we have pushed ourselves to the point that we can essentially engineer our own evolution. We have been discussing bioengineering people for years now and a lot of that discussion has been around its uses in warfare. War has driven us forward along with other environmental pressures but it is one of the few we constructed artificially. It has propelled technology contributing to the point that we may very well take a direct hand in our own evolution.
Cultural evolution, definitely but I argue it may go much deeper than that.
All good stuff! Thanks for taking this seriously. However in the scheme of population genetics, war is far too small to be *the* driver of genetic evolution on the chromosomal level. The only way it could rise to the top is if men who fought in wars AND reproduced AND had some inheritable difference from those who didn’t reproduce that was related to surviving in war AND had more surviving offspring than all other men on earth combined. AND, to be sure, those offspring in turn reproduced more total children than the rest of their generation.
EDIT : Most men do not fight in wars, and wars are extremely recent in evolutionary terms. Otherwise, conflict among groups is a common trait in many (if not most) species. War as we know it is a fraction of Homo sapiens existence, let alone ancestral humans and their interrelated cousins. But you know much more about the specifics of war in historical times than I do!interesting article. But afaik the established evidence linking any general inheritable factors to any thinking - intelligence is at best controversial. And that is the paper that suggested that centuries of European Jews were selected for a kind of intelligence because of family traditions for business:
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/a-jewish-gene-for-intelligence/
People would like every group to be exactly the same,” Cochran says, “but they’re not.” The study claims that intelligence evolved in this genetically isolated population because, historically, Ashkenazim had cognitively demanding occupations such as financiers and merchants. Prowess in these fields provided prosperity and, so the theory goes, more success in reproduction. Thus, the “IQ gene” passed down through generations.
(Originally published in Journal of Biological Science)
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On 12/2/2022 at 8:22 AM, JoMac said:
If worse comes to worse, you can always go on FleaBay or Amazon and get CD's of BO, BB, or AK for dirt cheap.
On Good Old Games/GOG, they are all 5.99 but often on sale for less. I think on Amazon it is a fortune for some reason, $100. Same on eBay when I just checked. 99.99
But $5.99 here https://www.gog.com/en/game/combat_mission_afrika_korps
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1 hour ago, kevinkin said:
That is 3000 generations which is a reasonable amount of time for selection pressures to weed out the weak so deadly genes to the individual slowly fade away.
Good, interesting post! A quibble about this statement. That isn’t how genetics and evolutionary biology work. Adaptations are fed by mutations and genetic drift. Those happen more or less by clockwork, whether they may be beneficial or damaging to reproduction.The adaptation occurs when any pressure in any environment makes it more likely for an organism to survive and reproduce. It may seem trivial, but can be anything that makes a male or female attractive to the opposite sex. Definitely NOT limited only to stronger vs weaker. Famous class example is the male peacock’s enormous and heavy fan of feathers it drags around. Slowly. Deadly. But not mathematically on average deadly soon enough to prevent the female of the species getting all hot and bothered enough to choose the bigger tail feather display and get, um, impregnated. Later, the guy gets eaten. But hey, he reproduced first! Deadly feathers! Bad outcome from his individual perspective.
We carry lots of recessive and deadly genes that get passed along and do not get weeded out. When only one parent has an inherited chromosomal disorder, the offspring are ok. But when both have one of the many genetic recessive diseases, the offspring has a strong likelihood of a very bad life and often early death. Cystic Fibrosis. Tay Sachs. Sickle Cell. Lots more. Complex subject, but fascinating.
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59 minutes ago, The_Capt said:
True but I think we may be the only species capable of creating an entirely artificial environment that then creates pressures. War is very much an environment, and it is very much human-made. Not sure any other animals do it to this scale - ants maybe. We create our own pressures to the point we could extinct ourselves. I can’t tell if this is a natural filter to scrub out dangerous higher life forms or a way to propel a species to become more dangerous higher life forms - see Three Body Problem series.
Interesting speculations indeed. I tend to agree with you about the tendency towards humans rendering the environment increasingly unfit. But that is far more a case of cultural evolution than biological. Which you may be implying? CULTURAL evolution takes place by far at a more visibly rapid pace. I would place your sadly legitimate concern there, where you are seeing before your eyes the selection pressure on weapons systems that destroy other weapons and artificial structures. And unfortunately the collateral damage to human cultural centers: the cities, towns and villages where must people live. Much of the content here in the forum is speculation on the evolution of counter weaponry and human strategies in this war, and in tine frames of weeks and months. Of course all war is taking place destructively within natural environments, whether on land, at sea or in the air.
Conversely, biological evolution - genetically speaking - is apparent over longer time spans due at least in large part to the long human pregnancy and then the time to reach sexual maturity. The selective pressures on humankind take place on all humans, now 8 billion and growing, everywhere on earth. The research I see in the journal literature is on long term adaptations. For instance, such the Tibetans’ adaptation favoring a mutation for greater oxygenation, a reproductive advantage at altitude. There is a tremendous amount going on, but I think the speed of war time cultural evolution combined with the already changing environment is the context for your darker concerns.
PS Good name check on “Three Body Problem” book and series by Liu Cixin! Soon to be a movie
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8 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:
And I'll stop there, as it is going too much towards off-topic.
Oops! Sorry Steve. Posted before I saw your reply.
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16 minutes ago, Billy Ringo said:
What? Can you please point me in the direction of a significant contingent of "far right figures" who "openly state" this?
Sure! Well reported in the USA. Too many to even scratch the surface. Have you actually not been aware of this before?
White supremacist and alt right leader Richard Spencer called Russia “the sole white power in the world.”
https://www.adl.org/blog/white-supremacists-other-extremists-respond-to-russian-invasion-of-ukraine
Can we get a round of applause for Russia?” asked Nick Fuentes, on stage last week at a white nationalist event. Amid a roar of applause for the Russian president, just days after he invaded Ukraine, many attendees responded by shouting: “Putin! Putin!”
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/mar/05/putin-ukraine-invasion-white-nationalists-far-right
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23 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:
I think so. The calls by the right to focus on China seem to have come after focus was put on Russia after 2014. I also don't recall there being much call to punish China for the crackdowns in Hong Kong.
That said, there's two other reasons. One is that China REALLY IS a threat to the US. That they focus only on Communist threats (Cuba and Venezuela for example) goes right to the roots of far right ideology.
The second one is pure racism. Far right figures, here and abroad, openly state that Russians are white and Christian standing against homosexuality, Islamic terrorists, and other claptrap. Russians are all about traditional family values! You don't hear anything like that about the Chinese, despite the fact that they are also huge proponents of traditional family values and are therefore against homosexuality and Islam. So yeah, kinda hard to not see racism being a part of their position.
Steve
Excellent points, Steve. And I agree. Do note though that the best propaganda/misinformation has *enough* just enough truth to make it seem plausible. As despicable as it is, your point about racism lines up with Russia’s leading position as largest white supremacy nation. Extremist groups here and abroad link up with organizations there. Which cannot be a good thing.
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3 hours ago, MikeyD said:
One can imagine the US telling Ukraine 'We can't provide you with deep strike weapons for geo-political reasons but if you happened to build your own with some discrete assistance... (wink-nod)'
I believe the Pentagon or WH Advisor announced and confirmed this long ago. Said something like Ukraine has the right to strike at sources of attacks on its territory. Rankles that the USA would not assist in this via equipment transfers, but a) perhaps back channel threats by Putin/minions forced activating Operation Trouser Replacement, and b) at least they didn’t have the gall to try and tell Ukraine what it couldn’t do on its own, in defense of its nation!
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5 hours ago, Huba said:
US position is still way more privileged than basically any global/ regional power's at the moment, including Australia. Thinking about the terrorist threat - yes, the possibilities are endless, but it affects other countries similarly, while US at least is distanced from the potential state-actor enemies. One could very much imagine the XXIst century equivalent of Cuban Missile Crisis being about Chinese drones in Venezuela or something along these lines...
There is nothing comforting in any of this!
And generally speaking, I’m sure many of us here grew up reading the SF stories and novels exploring how this all plays out. Spoiler: Not pretty. -
9 hours ago, The_Capt said:
if war is an evolutionary process,
Technically speaking, *any* pressure on species within an environmental niche causes selection, an evolutionary process. *We* as a species are still evolving genetically - not just culturally - as evidenced by a great amount of research over the past decades describing the differential frequency of gene frequencies, various alleles among population groups across the planet. (Another chapter in the metaphorical book, “Rust Never Sleeps”!)
If any interest:
https://www.science.org/content/article/team-uncovers-new-evidence-recent-human-evolution
https://sciencing.com/humans-are-still-evolving-heres-the-evidence-13719181.html
https://geneticliteracyproject.org/2017/10/12/humans-still-evolving-evidence-age-survives/ -
17 hours ago, Battlefront.com said:
people like Macgregor bang on and on and on and on about how arming Ukraine means we're vulnerable to China.
Steve, it is also possible that he and/or people like him are using China as a plausible but straw man argument in support of their mission to prop up Russia and its fortunes. Not all of them are without some brain power, and do understand that the required weapon systems are not the same for Pacific/European conflicts. And that expertise gained in assessing USA, European and Russian weapons systems and their employment is valuable. The depth of right wing embracing and allying with Russia and its political (criminal?) system ought not to be underestimated. As bizarre as that truly is.
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6 hours ago, danfrodo said:
Lavrov said Ukrainian electrical grid was a legitimate military target, he was also making RU grid a legitimate target. I sure hope we see much of RU getting power knocked out.
Wise heads here criticized my question, what line the Russians must cross within Ukraine, that would convince The Allies to give Ukraine longer range weapons to offer Russian cities equal treatment (!), choke off the invaders’ GLOCS, and starve/freeze them out. But I remain unconvinced that Russia cares about the provenance of weapons striking them, or has a magic hidden reserve force to do anything worse than the hideous crimes against humanity they already perpetrate - daily. They are not nuking anyone, and are not likely to. Whether they lose sooner or later. (Yes, Russia’s leaders DO have much more to lose, much to preserve - apart from Ukraine) Or do we think that if Ukraine EVER wins and forces Russia to retreat behind their international borders, that then they will start nuking? No? Then how soon is *too* soon to win?
And yes, more effective, and longer range weapons DO make a difference in this war. Consider impacts of St. Javelin, of St. HIMARS. Stretching Russian GLOCS to the breaking point. Smashing more HQs, supply dumps. Push that long awaited Russian military collapse over the edge.
How much more suffering do we in the West decide that the women, the children, the elderly, the troops must endure? How many more *millions*? Are there no boundaries for Russia, in Ukraine?Apologies, but the immense suffering of the people of this democratic nation is overwhelming. And Christmas is coming.
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19 hours ago, Huba said:
The problem is that Ukraine, even if provided with ATACMS and whatnot, hardly has a chance to seriously affect the RU missile campaign.
Thanks for your extensive and informative comments! Much appreciate your elimination of countering missile attacks. But that’s why I included artillery/ missiles (should have specified GLSDB and all)and GLOCS as well. . I am pretty sure Ukrainians, even while suffering cold this winter would be heartened to know that the Russian invaders were being cut off, starving, and freezing. Now. Right now. Or yesterday.
19 hours ago, Huba said:No way Ukraine could launch a campaign significant enough to physically destroy RU warfighting capability. And anything less than that will just rally public support for the war in the RU civilian population, as proven by multiple historical analogies.
Respectfully, I am not sure this is entirely accurate. Destroying the Russian invaders’ supplies within and their GLOCS sooner than later is a good start. And I am definitely not convinced that turning Russian lights and heat off will unite them in love for their government.
21 hours ago, Huba said:what's happening is Russia getting the slowly boiled frog treatment, which by definition takes time, but surely leads to the amphibian's demise.
True. Except we not trying to live and fight in Ukraine, in our homes and workplaces are also getting slowly cooked - even if our resolve isn’t weakened. Our sons and daughters, mothers and fathers are being killed, raped, stolen, “filtered”. Our cities ruined. My question remains, is there NOTHING that Russia can do to Ukraine that will trigger the Allies to deliver the modern Leopards, Abrams, F-16s, much longer range artillery/missiles that are being withheld?
16 hours ago, Battlefront.com said:erode Russian support for this war when Ukraine blows up their electrical and gas infrastructure. How they carry out such attacks is a tricky question, but I believe they can do some damage to major Russian population centers.
Why do I think this might work to lessen Russian resolve when I do NOT think similar attacks will lessen Ukrainian resolve? Because Ukrainians know this is about their survival and so they have to prevail. I do not think the average Russian has the same belief. I could be wrong, but hey... even if I am, at least I'd feel better having a few million Russians freezing their butts off this winter
This! And in the context of, “isn’t there *anything* that the Russians will do to Ukraine that will convince the Allies to open the weapons bag for a closer to NATO level capability?” Personally, Russia crossed that line several times, but decisively with the missile barrages against the civilian population. This should not stand!
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2 hours ago, billbindc said:
It seems like the decision to provide Ukraine with more long range precision fires has already been made:
https://www.thedefensepost.com/2022/11/29/ukraine-first-operator-precision-bomb/
Well, maybe…sometime in 2023. But no ATACMS
We talk about slowly boiling the Russian frog…while the Ukrainian civilians freeze all winter. Not to mention the grind and lives on the line of the Ukrainian military. The misery is unconscionable. Yes, it is Russia’s fault. But honestly, if Ukraine reaches out and touches Russia - as if it hasn’t already for months - does the West really need to fear Russian starting a war with NATO that Russia already knows it would be over almost before it started?
“The US is reportedly considering sending the long-range precision bomb to Kyiv to help counter Russian offensives.
The GLSDB would allow Ukrainian troops to strike far behind Russian lines, reducing the possibility of being counterattacked.
It would also enable defending soldiers to hit valuable Russian military targets previously out of reach.
The US has repeatedly rejected requests to send the 300-kilometer (186-mile) Army Tactical Missile System to Kyiv over fears of provoking a wider war with Russia.”
Instead, Washington is considering the smaller-range GLSDB to address Ukraine’s request for long-range weapons.
The long-range missile could be delivered to the war-torn nation by 2023, according to documents obtained by Reuters.
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3 hours ago, acrashb said:
Don't know if "GENERALL SVR" is credible, but if so, bad day for Putin:
I thought "GENERALL SVR" is that promising new woman at CIA?
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39 minutes ago, kevinkin said:
Attack a NATO member intentionally.
No, Russian WMD would escalate the situation and, depending on the details, elicit a severe response on Russian soil.
Least we forget: the number one grand strategic goal of the US and the West is to prevent the use of WMD. Even if the odds are very long, very few people living comfortably want to risk it. If you held a referendum after a 4 month trillion dollar add campaign, honestly weighing the benefits and risks associated with directly attacking Russia, the public would vote no 99 -1%. One or both of the two items above would have to have happened first. Then you would have a closer race. Those is the deep state would vote 98-2%. And they are the ones in the know. There is a reason NATO has not flattened Russia, it would be so easy if those dang WMD were not part of the calculas
Thanks, Kevinkin-
I probably wasn’t clear enough on that point #1 - you refer to attack another country, not Ukraine. I am asking whether there is ANYTHING at all Russia can do to *Ukraine* that will convince the USA and European Allies to provide longer range weaponry to Ukraine.
Your second point I think relates to NATO attacking inside Russia, but that isn’t my question. It is bout supplying the long hoped for extended range weapons that would finally squeeze supply and support sources, including both air and ground launched missiles/Arty, or GLOC. Thus forcing invading Russian units within Ukraine to collapse or withdraw to Russia.
So, “No, Russia can do anything it wishes WITHIN Ukraine (no matter how heinous)”? Or are you implying Russia using WMD on Ukrainian soil would be the only trigger for changing the longer range weaponry ban?
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6 hours ago, Bulletpoint said:
War has always been expensive, but it's also always been very profitable - at least for the winners. The USA has spent incredible amounts of money to remain the world's only superpower. So far, one could argue that it's paid off quite well for you.
I don't think the Russians are really getting much return on the countless billions they invested in their army though.
Thus demonstrating that in war as in politics, it isn’t always *just * the money that counts.
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7 hours ago, The_Capt said:
If they had ATACMS or the new even longer range missiles en masse they would extend that ersatz AirPower to strategic depths.
I will ask again, in this context, are there *any* further crimes against humanity, any lines to cross that Russia can do that will finally decide the USA and European Allies to provide this and other range-extending weapons? Anything? If not, do you agree that Russia can (and will) do anything at all to Ukraine’s population, cities, infrastructure, with no significant response/change in Allied support for Ukraine?
How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?
in Combat Mission Black Sea
Posted
Respectfully, you are reducing everything to a vague use of “war”. The impact of disease spread by contact of population groups happens regardless of whether there is ANY or none at all conflict. This hypothesis has become a bridge too far!