How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?

[kevinkin]

1 hour ago, FancyCat said:

I don't disagree....but I kinda do? Fact is the West just does not have a ton of equipment to give to Ukraine to fight the war of attrition Ukraine is fighting. NATO would have just smashed the hell out of Russia with airpower, making a war of attrition irrelevant. Add in the concerns of escalation and we are here now.

That's the point. Why donate equipment to Ukraine at levels just enough to sustain a war whereby they succumb to a slow death?  It's like keeping a body on life support. Cruel. Either Ukraine is going to be part of the western world or not. Who really is afraid of nuclear escalation anyway? I am not. The world could have gone that road many times before. I would kill the cornered rat Russian while the time is actually perfect. Not even China would care if Putin and his unpredictable gangsters went bye bye.  

[The_Capt]

5 minutes ago, NamEndedAllen said:

Ahhh…you said it better than I did! Just too early to be drawing too many conclusions about this level of command?

This actually proves my point better.  It wasn’t just “competence and training” at Kasserine or Cusader.  It was learning.  Much like this war the theories that militaries went into WW2 with did not survive contact with reality.  Almost every military thought in terms of WW1 doctrine going into WW2.  So even the best trained and experienced staffs and line commanders were experienced and trained on the wrong doctrines going in.  We saw the same before WW1.

My point being that it is less about “training” because who trains for the war unfolding in front of us?  It is not about sharing experience because no one in the west has fought a war like this in over 60 years.  We can hold onto the basics but the level of shift in warfare can even impact those basics.  More plainly, we could stick a US or other NATO nation in the exact situation the UA is in, with the same constraints and limitations and I do not think we would perform any better.  In fact we would likely perform worse as we have become far to dependent on all those things the UA is working without.  The next question is “which of these constrains and limitations are unique to this war and which are now universal”.

So, no, I do not believe that it is a case of both the RA and UA lacking “training” because there is no training for this. Experience can only be earned over time but the UA currently has the market on contemporary conventional warfare experience, not us.  Hell the RA has more experience than the US in high intensity conventional warfare right now - despite their baffling inability to learn from it.  Combined arms in this context is off the freaking map and I strongly suspect as this war progresses that aspects of it may be off that map to stay. 

[Kinophile]

8 hours ago, kevinkin said:

What the heck going on now? 

Not war.

[Kinophile]

8 hours ago, billbindc said:

That says everything about who won and who lost the chevauchée.

Girkin was FSB, right? Same with the DNR guy. 

 

[Butschi]

2 hours ago, kevinkin said:

the west's proxy

This whole narrative is getting out of hand here. Now don't get me wrong. I mean, sure, in principle this is kind of a proxy war. But IMHO you are inverting responsibilities and this is really where "Ukraine fights this war on our behalf/for us" (mind the discussion here some pages back about what the exact wording should be) breaks down. Let's not forget that it was Russia attacking Ukraine. Not Russia attacking NATO/the West or NATO/the West attacking Russia and of course not NATO/the West attacking Ukraine. The point? It is because Russia or Putin's regime decided to invade that Ukrainians are fighting and Ukrainians are dying. Not because we somehow made them fight or they were caught in the middle or something. Yes, in reality we quite likely sent Russia the signal that we wouldn't care enough to get involved and therefore indirectly encouraged Putin. But at the end of the day it was Putin & cronies who gave the order to invade, not any Western leader.

Now we did get involved, we do support Ukraine and we could possibly do more but we are not at war and since, see above, we are not responsible for Russian soldiers being in Ukraine, IMHO we are not obliged to enter this war. That doesn't mean we can't but since NATO wasn't attacked this is a decision every country has to make for itself. International law absolutely gives every country the right to support the defender of a war of aggression, also by military means. So if you feel your country should get involved more directly, call up your representative in congress or whatever and tell him/her. Nothing wrong with that. But we are democracies and other people have different opinions. Our leaders are not dictators and as long as there is no majority in favour of going to war it is not spineless or whatever for a leader or a government as a whole to not do so.

Note to everyone here: Maybe my perception here is a bit skewed but it seems to me we are seeing increasingly heated fights between... I don't know Hawks and Doves here? I really shouldn't presume to play the Upholder of Moral Standards here but I feel we should have a bit less "holier than thou" and "he that is not with me is against me" and stuff like that.

[kevinkin]

5 minutes ago, Kinophile said:

Not war.

OK you win, it's mud wrestling. Silly us.  

[Kinophile]

18 minutes ago, kevinkin said:

OK you win, it's mud wrestling. Silly us.  

Not interested in online wins. Your original suggestion was unrealistic to the political realities of NATO as a coalition. It doesn't operate as a single organism, more like a distractable swarm.

For NATO to attack Russia (and with Naval warfare, things can escalate extremely quickly, so no such thing as a little attack in this context) would require an act so overtly aggressive that responding would be an easy sell to the home. It's not complicated - NATO is a defensive alliance, not offensive.

There would have to be clearly necessary reason that NATO should attack St. Petersburg, for a NATO force to actually attack St. Petersburg. Extraordinary situations requiring extraordinary solutions, etc.

For all that you're suggesting Ukraine is being bled dry to serve some Western Illumanti agenda, the simple fact stands - NATO is not at war with Russia. Ukraine is. Until we see a deliberate Russian attack across the NATO-RUSSIA border then we are still at peace, because there sure as heck will not be a NATO first strike, and we are not at war.

Edited July 22, 2023 by Kinophile

[kevinkin]

59 minutes ago, Kinophile said:

NATO

Dude, get a grip. I never mentioned NATO, I mentioned the west. They are not the same. The US can do what is in it's interest outside of NATO just like all the other members. The west is at war with Russia damn it. Stop squirreling the words all over the place. 

PS: Don't let anyone know. Please. Please Please. A US munition just killed and or wounded a dozen Russians and they are crying for the mothers as we speak. 

Edited July 22, 2023 by kevinkin

[Twisk]

Reading the Kaufman stuff what I'm getting from it is that Ukraine is doing a poor job of using their entire force to enable an attack. Now I might be off base but to me this sounds like the most generous position to take on their take.

So like Ukraine is sending forward a company to make an attack and that company is being supported by organic fires (maybe assigned higher level fires too). But what Ukraine isn't doing is making multiple company scale attacks across the near-front that are designed to support each other, with consideration for how they could all fit into a larger scale followup, with an operational fire/ISR plan designed to deny Russia the ability to react effectively to the attacks in that area of the near-front.

 

 

----

 

As an aside can we please stop this argument over actual NATO involvement in the war.

1. ITS NOT GOING TO HAPPEN

2. This whole argument started because someone was talking about a NATO naval attack. This is fan fiction.

There is some genuinely interesting new information coming out that we should be discussing. What we don't need is the thread polluted by fan fiction arguments about an imaginary NATO intervention. We can talk about it when that happens but until it does please keep any comments about it in your personal journal. This isn't a creative writing thread.

 

[MSBoxer]

10 minutes ago, Twisk said:

2. This whole argument started because someone was talking about a NATO naval attack. This is fan fiction.

What about an intervention by our new space lobster overlords?  Are we still good on that?

[Kinophile]

50 minutes ago, kevinkin said:

Dude, get a grip. I never mentioned NATO, I mentioned the west. They are not the same. The US can do what is in it's interest outside of NATO just like all the other members. The west is at war with Russia damn it. Stop squirreling the words all over the place. 

PS: Don't let anyone know. Please. Please Please. A US munition just killed and or wounded a dozen Russians and they are crying for the mothers as we speak. 

Maybe we need to clarify "At War". I would consider the current state between "The West" and Russia as a contest, not military conflict. For Ukraine it's very much a military conflict, obviously. But for NATO and US, its a contest. We don't have direct skin in the game other than the hypothetical system of how we run things might twist away from us. But that's a far cry from our families under direct fire and bombs destroying our shipping. 

Ukraine is at war with Russia. The West is resisting Russia but it has not been materially attacked.

If NATO isn't the ones to do the mining of a Russian port city, then who? Ze Germans? Yer 'avin a larf, guvnor.

[Battlefront.com]

9 hours ago, The_Capt said:

Operational “combined arms” is really “joint” and about integration of domains/dimensions.  Even operational land warfare is about joint integration.  Combined arms is a land domain term that essentially integration of land effects into a framework that offsets weaknesses of each arm and maximizes strength.  Problem is that I think that what that used to mean has changed for a number of reasons.

Yup, that's my point.  When these guys say "combined arms" in this context, they seem to be talking more about the operational level.

9 hours ago, The_Capt said:

As to why the UA may be nibbling vice chomping, this likely goes back to “what is happening with mass?”  Obviously concentration of forces without air superiority is dangerous for both sides. The RA learned this the hard way, which we have seen many, many, examples.  I suspect the UA has too.  With “63,000” US trained troops, even with the frontages we are seeing, should allow for something larger than a battalion or company raid, somewhere.  So the UA is likely not doing this for a very good reason - concentration of mass without setting conditions is suicidal.  The “learning” is determining what those “conditions” actually are for any given scenario.

Ah, but the flipside of a section of front only having a couple of pinprick attacks at a given time means defenses can be concentrated on those attacks.  Which means you can have a situation where you're not attacking with mass, but you are being countered by mass.  Military thinking going back to Sun Tzu would likely argue this isn't optimal for the attacker.

So, what I am seeing in the criticism from Koftman et all is that there's not enough coordination of company sized attacks.  As I characterized it above, Ukraine is mustering a fairly small force, allocating resources to it, attacks according to a plan, then waits to see if it worked.  What they do not seem to be doing is coordinating multiple company sized attacks within the sector of front, but far enough apart from each other to stress out Russian responses.  This is not mass in the traditional NATO thinking because it is not concentrated, it is dispersed.

Putting some numbers to it, Ukraine might only have one company sized attack within a 1km width area within a 20km front at one time.  NATO doctrine would say it should be a somewhat wider sector with maybe a full battalion active at once.  As we have discussed for more than a year, it appears this sort of mass doesn't seem to work because it is too easily disrupted. 

But what if the same force attacks separately, but concurrently, in 1km wide frontages with 10km between them?  This would no doubt stress out Russia's artillery and air, making it less likely they could clobber any one of them like they could if it was the only attack.  To make things even more challenging, what if after the first wave goes into action a second wave a few hours later hits in between where the previous ones hit?  Now you have two battalion sized forces engaged in combat, but no more than 1 company in one place at one time.

This is an over simplification, but I think you get my point.  Dispersed mass may yield results superior to concentrated mass and whatever we want to call the small scale nibblings.

As you and others pointed out, this is the sort of operational art that is difficult to pull off for a force with little tradition of it.  People tend to vastly underestimate how difficult it is to coordinate actions like I just described.  I think the US military could do it, but it probably wouldn't even try unless it had (more than once) had its nose bloodied doing concentrated mass.

Steve

[kevinkin]

7 minutes ago, Kinophile said:

Ukraine is at war with Russia. The West is resisting Russia but it has not been materially attacked.

By defending Ukraine our material is being sent to their defense and sending Russians to their graves. All afraid of nuclear war raise your hands. That is really what this comes down to. If you are afraid, you just threw Ukraine under the bus. But don't forget Ukrainian men are no choir boys. Not that dissimilar to the the Russians they fight. It's a gangster war. Plain and simple. It's just we have a little more pull on and favor for Ukraine. Don't get me started. I am friends of Russians, Ukrainians and those from Belarus. All of them just want to live in Peace and the rigid NATO/West/Ukraine stance is getting in the way. All want to sell what had in Ukraine and move to America. Go figure. Someone in this thread envisioned a wheel in Kiev. What a symbolic target that would be. Meanwhile the bread basket for much of the world will be combat zone for years. BTW does anyone have confidence  in the US Joints Chiefs of Staff? They seem so rigid in thought hiding behind FM - xyz or FM - what ever serves your purpose other than winning. 

[Kinophile]

12 minutes ago, kevinkin said:

By defending Ukraine our material is being sent to their defense and sending Russians to their graves. All afraid of nuclear war raise your hands. That is really what this comes down to. If you are afraid, you just threw Ukraine under the bus. But don't forget Ukrainian men are no choir boys. Not that dissimilar to the the Russians they fight. It's a gangster war. Plain and simple. It's just we have a little more pull on and favor for Ukraine. Don't get me started. I am friends of Russians, Ukrainians and those from Belarus. All of them just want to live in Peace and the rigid NATO/West/Ukraine stance is getting in the way. All want to sell what had in Ukraine and move to America. Go figure. Someone in this thread envisioned a wheel in Kiev. What a symbolic target that would be. Meanwhile the bread basket for much of the world will be combat zone for years. BTW does anyone have confidence  in the US Joints Chiefs of Staff? They seem so rigid in thought hiding behind FM - xyz or FM - what ever serves your purpose other than winning. 

I'm very unclear on your point here...

[Kinophile]

45 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:

Yup, that's my point.  When these guys say "combined arms" in this context, they seem to be talking more about the operational level.

Ah, but the flipside of a section of front only having a couple of pinprick attacks at a given time means defenses can be concentrated on those attacks.  Which means you can have a situation where you're not attacking with mass, but you are being countered by mass.  Military thinking going back to Sun Tzu would likely argue this isn't optimal for the attacker.

So, what I am seeing in the criticism from Koftman et all is that there's not enough coordination of company sized attacks.  As I characterized it above, Ukraine is mustering a fairly small force, allocating resources to it, attacks according to a plan, then waits to see if it worked.  What they do not seem to be doing is coordinating multiple company sized attacks within the sector of front, but far enough apart from each other to stress out Russian responses.  This is not mass in the traditional NATO thinking because it is not concentrated, it is dispersed.

Putting some numbers to it, Ukraine might only have one company sized attack within a 1km width area within a 20km front at one time.  NATO doctrine would say it should be a somewhat wider sector with maybe a full battalion active at once.  As we have discussed for more than a year, it appears this sort of mass doesn't seem to work because it is too easily disrupted. 

But what if the same force attacks separately, but concurrently, in 1km wide frontages with 10km between them?  This would no doubt stress out Russia's artillery and air, making it less likely they could clobber any one of them like they could if it was the only attack.  To make things even more challenging, what if after the first wave goes into action a second wave a few hours later hits in between where the previous ones hit?  Now you have two battalion sized forces engaged in combat, but no more than 1 company in one place at one time.

This is an over simplification, but I think you get my point.  Dispersed mass may yield results superior to concentrated mass and whatever we want to call the small scale nibblings.

As you and others pointed out, this is the sort of operational art that is difficult to pull off for a force with little tradition of it.  People tend to vastly underestimate how difficult it is to coordinate actions like I just described.  I think the US military could do it, but it probably wouldn't even try unless it had (more than once) had its nose bloodied doing concentrated mass.

Steve

I wonder if theres a dead zone between company size assaults and above? Is there a level, eg full divisional assault where the mass is there to take the hits and keep moving. Fires are so accurate these days that precision beats mass but adoes precision beat very large smart mass, that can concentrate and attack faster than your ISR loop?

[JonS]

1 hour ago, Battlefront.com said:

Ah, but the flipside of a section of front only having a couple of pinprick attacks at a given time means defenses can be concentrated on those attacks.  Which means you can have a situation where you're not attacking with mass, but you are being countered by mass.  Military thinking going back to Sun Tzu would likely argue this isn't optimal for the attacker.

Mmm, that depends. If I could get a Russian company - or an artillery battalion - to respond in the open to a raid or a probe by a platoon, and I could be assured of destroying said company or battalion with my ISR-and-fires, then I'd be attacking (or "attacking") at 1:3 odds all over the damn place, and be very happy about it.

Edited July 22, 2023 by JonS

[MikeyD]

I recall, when doing research for CM Cold War, I stumbled on a US Pentagon estimate that they expected to lose some 30% of their ground attack aircraft within the first two weeks of a 'hot' war. What would follow those losses I assume would have likely resembled current aircraft use over Ukraine today. Look back to reports on this thread of the staggering losses of Russian aircraft and crews over Ukraine the first third of the war. Each lost SU-27 cost approx $30 million USD. Overflying enemy airspace is an expensive proposition. And that was before Patriot showed up. I'm reminded of horrific US helicopter losses over Vietnam in the 1960s. After your 5,000th helicopter got shot down you might want to rethink your 'combined arms' theories.

[Seedorf81]

5 hours ago, kevinkin said:

By defending Ukraine our material is being sent to their defense and sending Russians to their graves. 

 

All afraid of nuclear war raise your hands. That is really what this comes down to. If you are afraid, you just threw Ukraine under the bus.

 

But don't forget Ukrainian men are no choir boys. Not that dissimilar to the the Russians they fight. It's a gangster war. Plain and simple. It's just we have a little more pull on and favor for Ukraine. Don't get me started. I am friends of Russians, Ukrainians and those from Belarus. All of them just want to live in Peace and the rigid NATO/West/Ukraine stance is getting in the way. All want to sell what had in Ukraine and move to America. Go figure. Someone in this thread envisioned a wheel in Kiev. What a symbolic target that would be. Meanwhile the bread basket for much of the world will be combat zone for years. BTW does anyone have confidence  in the US Joints Chiefs of Staff? They seem so rigid in thought hiding behind FM - xyz or FM - what ever serves your purpose other than winning. 

KevinK,

The next sentences are from a few recent reactions you posted:

 

- "We can't let nuclear blackmail stand".

- "Putin's nuclear buster has to be challenged".

- "Who is afraid of nuclear escalation anyway".

 

And now you wrote that highlighted (by me) remark in the quoted post.

 

For starters, I am afraid of nuclear escalation. I even fear the use of just one, yes just one, nuke. Not because of my own safety, (A. The Netherlands isn't exactly a top-target for nukes and B. I'm old, and have lived a less than pleasant life so far, so if dying through a nuke comes next, so be it.), but of the EXCEPTIONAL HORROR a (load of) nukes creates for at least tens of thousands, but possibly hundreds of millions, of humans. (Not to mention flora, fauna, environment etc.)

The effect of nuclear bombs exceeds every other horrible thing we humans used against one another, by so much, that it cannot even be imagined what multiple nukes will do on the scale of gruesome.

Your reactions, and maybe I copied them out of context, seem to indicate to me that you either firmly belief that nukes won't be used (again), WHICH I THINK IS A DANGEROUSLY WRONG ASSUMPTION, or you seem to think that the use of nukes would be less dangerous for the world, then when Russia would defeat Ukraine.

Your remark about "not letting stand nuclear blackmail" baffles me, because the way I see it is that the world since 1945 (or 1949, when Stalin got his nukes) has been living in this constant state of "blackmail". Because possible mutual destruction is a form of two-sided blackmail, and I do not think it wise to disturb that, how ridiculous the situation may be.

Nuclear war is, to say it very euphemistically, not to be taken lightly, but some of your postings make me nervous and I wonder, do you realize what you are talking about?

 

( Sad disclaimer: For the ones that would assume that I am thinking that the Russians will defeat Ukraine, or assume that I would want the Russians to defeat Ukraine..

 I am absolutely sure Russia wil NOT defeat Ukraine and Russia should get the hell outta there.)

 

 

Edited July 22, 2023 by Seedorf81
disclaimer added

[The_Capt]

5 hours ago, Battlefront.com said:

But what if the same force attacks separately, but concurrently, in 1km wide frontages with 10km between them?  This would no doubt stress out Russia's artillery and air, making it less likely they could clobber any one of them like they could if it was the only attack.  To make things even more challenging, what if after the first wave goes into action a second wave a few hours later hits in between where the previous ones hit?  Now you have two battalion sized forces engaged in combat, but no more than 1 company in one place at one time.

This is an over simplification, but I think you get my point.  Dispersed mass may yield results superior to concentrated mass and whatever we want to call the small scale nibblings.

So I suspect this is what the UA may be building up to.  It would be the culmination of corrosive warfare.  We saw “infiltrate-isolate-annihilate-repeat” last fall to significant effect so the question is scale of this approach.  One thing missing from the academic criticisms is “why?”  The UA has demonstrated the ability to run two simultaneous operations, 500km apart, last fall.  “But over Xmas they forgot all that and are now penny packing Coy nibbles…silly Ukrainians”?  This is why I am convinced this is shaping.  By employing this probing and poking strategy they are obviously doing so for a reason.  Most likely to draw out RA HVT such as artillery.  These small scale nibblings are not designed to yield breakthroughs, they are designed to stress the RA system until a dispersed mass operation can be set in motion, which then may enable a more traditional mechanized breakout.  Ukraine is doing extra steps because that is how the battle space works.

As to the West, well the Taliban demonstrated that we are really no better than anyone else once you take away our advantages.  I suspect that warfare itself is evolving away from the advantages we had in many ways and we need to rethink things.  We do have the high ground on C4ISR for now.  However if we do not solve for force protection, particularly AirPower at all altitudes, we may find ourselves in serious trouble as other redefine the battle spaces.

[The_Capt]

5 hours ago, JonS said:

Mmm, that depends. If I could get a Russian company - or an artillery battalion - to respond in the open to a raid or a probe by a platoon, and I could be assured of destroying said company or battalion with my ISR-and-fires, then I'd be attacking (or "attacking") at 1:3 odds all over the damn place, and be very happy about it.

Absolutely.  But I think it is the enablers to those “3” that are the prize right now.

[The_Capt]

48 minutes ago, Seedorf81 said:

KevinK,

The next sentences are from a few recent reactions you posted:

 

- "We can't let nuclear blackmail stand".

- "Putin's nuclear buster has to be challenged".

- "Who is afraid of nuclear escalation anyway".

 

And now you wrote that highlighted (by me) remark in the quoted post.

 

For starters, I am afraid of nuclear escalation. I even fear the use of just one, yes just one, nuke. Not because of my own safety, (A. The Netherlands isn't exactly a top-target for nukes and B. I'm old, and have lived a less than pleasant life so far, so if dying through a nuke comes next, so be it.), but of the EXCEPTIONAL HORROR a (load of) nukes creates for at least tens of thousands, but possibly hundreds of millions, of humans. (Not to mention flora, fauna, environment etc.)

The effect of nuclear bombs exceeds every other horrible thing we humans used against one another, by so much, that it cannot even be imagined what multiple nukes will do on the scale of gruesome.

Your reactions, and maybe I copied them out of context, seem to indicate to me that you either firmly belief that nukes won't be used (again), WHICH I THINK IS A DANGEROUSLY WRONG ASSUMPTION, or you seem to think that the use of nukes would be less dangerous for the world, then when Russia would defeat Ukraine.

Your remark about "not letting stand nuclear blackmail" baffles me, because the way I see it is that the world since 1945 (or 1949, when Stalin got his nukes) has been living in this constant state of "blackmail". Because possible mutual destruction is a form of two-sided blackmail, and I do not think it wise to disturb that, how ridiculous the situation may be.

Nuclear war is, to say it very euphemistically, not to be taken lightly, but some of your postings make me nervous and I wonder, do you realize what you are talking about?

 

 

I do not use the Ignore function often but in this case may I recommend it.  “Real men do not fear the bomb” is just dumb.  It was during the Cold War and dumber now.  If some people want to wrap themselves in dumb and feel all safe and warm, well there are entire social media platforms dedicated to that.

[Letter from Prague]

The West might not think it is in war with Russia, but Russia for sure is in war with the West. Not only do they say that like twice a day, their actions show it.

For example, the grain deal. Putin is attacking Ukraine's ability to sell grain, to cause famine and instability in Africa and Middle East, with the objective of causing refugee crisis - and those refugees will all try to get into EU, which would cause instability, get more power to fascists on his payroll, etc.

It's not a new tactic, they have been doing things like that for years, up to and including Belarus literally getting people in Middle East on planes, flying them to Belarus, driving them to Polish border and forcing them to cross, just to cause trouble And of course there are many other ways Russia and its allies are attacking the West - from disinformation to oil prices.

But some parts of the West are being suicidally stupid. They are shouting "I'm not in a fight" while the other guy is swinging for them. I do not understand why they have to lie to themselves. But they do.

Ultimately Russia is not that strong. But China will ramp up what Russia is doing now, and they will crush us if we don't give up this stupid, self-destructive pacifism.

But we won't. People would rather die than have to face they have been wrong. See Climate Change for the same example.

[Billy Ringo]

Since it was one of my comments that started some of the recent banter, I would like to clarify my post regarding red-lines and spineless positions.

My frustration is centered around Russia's use of force against purely civilian targets, with seemingly no counter other than some verbal condemnations and defensive weapons against missiles/drones.   IMO, right or wrong, Russia should be clearly warned that attacks against civilian targets will result in specific actions against the delivery vehicles of those actions.  (If militarily possible which is out of my area of expertise.)    NATO/US would supply a limited number of weapons that would be used to specifically target the ships/subs/planes that delivery civilian carnage.

It's not about using direct NATO/US forces, nuclear forces, etc.  But simply some kind of publicly stated red-line followed by a tangible response, if militarily possible, to make the Russians think twice before blowing up a cafe or apartment building.

Peace.

 

 

[kevinkin]

3 hours ago, Seedorf81 said:

Your remark about "not letting stand nuclear blackmail" baffles me, because the way I see it is that the world since 1945 (or 1949, when Stalin got his nukes) has been living in this constant state of "blackmail". Because possible mutual destruction is a form of two-sided blackmail, and I do not think it wise to disturb that, how ridiculous the situation may be.

This is the first time a nuclear nation, which has become weak in comparison to the the US, is hiding behind the threat of using WMDs to conquer its neighbor. During the cold war, America and the USSR never got to the point we are now. For example, the west ceded Czechoslovakia and had a bunch of relatively low level conflicts with the Soviets across the globe. Never with tens of thousands killed in a short time as we have today. What we face is different. It is only because of its nuclear weapons Russian is in the fight. Period. That's why I call it blackmail. Russian in 2023 is not the USSR in 1970. The possession of a single nuke gives a nation more power than it would naturally have without one. We can't let this become a trend into the future or there is little future. We also can't let one nation shoulder all the burden fighting on the ground because we don't have the stomach to call Russia's bluff. This a teachable moment. It was inevitable once the wall fell and Ukraine gave up it's nukes. If there was ever a time to confront Russia it's now. By asking who’s afraid of escalation I am merely trying to get a sense of what aggressive actions the west can take to help Ukraine without causing Russia to go nuke. I think the west is nowhere near that red line. And Ukrainians are suffering because of the west’s inaction. 

Edited July 22, 2023 by kevinkin

[Seedorf81]

Well, I do not agree with your conclusion.

Suppose the boxing legend Mike Tyson in his prime (fit as USSR in 1970's) had an argument with you ("The West"), and both of you carried a loaded handgun.

Would it make a real difference for the escalatory danger for both of you if, years later, Mike Tyson had become an emaciated cancer-victim, sitting in a wheelchair, while suffering from dementia and parkinsons disease ( Russia in 2023)?

As long as Tyson would be able to pull the trigger of his gun, the real danger would still be exactly the same. How weak one of - or both - the belligerents would be.

Like it or not, it's the gun that matters, not the physical size, or condition, or even the mental state of the one who holds it.

And as long as that gun can kill, you'd better act wisely and yes, careful.

 

Edited July 22, 2023 by Seedorf81
addition