How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?

[paxromana]

3 minutes ago, Brille said:

It might help the own military effort because it will hinder the economy (less (motivated) workers, damage to the infrastructure) and so hinder the military options for the "enemy". 

But it stays a war crime non the less.

Again, NO, the Allied Bombing campaigns were NOT war crimes under the Hague and Geneva Conventions which were applicable.

So many people who, presumably, have either not read them or understood what they read - try reading the Commentaries on the relevant treaties available on the ICRC Website - keep on repeating this shibboleth, which doesn't in the slightest make it true.

The Germans were accused of a War Crime over the bombing of Rotterdam, and acquitted, they were never charged with any other crimes regarding bombing cities.

Why? Because the targets were not the cities per se, but the industries, transport hubs and suchlike that just happened to be in the cities. Given the inaccuracy of the weaponj systems available at the time it was inevitable that bombs would miss, which was unfortunate for nearby non-military things/people which/who were hit, but not a crime.

The various High Contracting Powers who had signed Hague and Geneva treaties had tried to come up with an agreement that would set up a system of 'bomber sanctuary cities' in the inter-war years (see the relevant ICRC Commentaries, noted above) but had never been able to come up with an agreement that couldn't be easily gamed, and they really tried.

Remember, the entire purpose of International Humanitarian Law has always been to minimise the awfulness associated with war ... those who negotiated the treaties (and presumably those Nation States who signed them) have never been under the illusion that it would eliminate it entirely.

[DesertFox]

 

 

[chuckdyke]

31 minutes ago, paxromana said:

Nope. Not according to Hague IV and Geneva. Which is why the bombing of Rotterdam didn't make it as one either.

Wrong, maybe, a war crime, no.

This is the most ridiculous answer I can think of. They couldn't pursue Kesselring too much because they had to admit their own war crimes. Kesselring's excuse was the bomber crews didn't see the flares to cancel the raid. 

[paxromana]

2 minutes ago, chuckdyke said:

This is the most ridiculous answer I can think of. They couldn't pursue Kesselring too much because they had to admit their own war crimes. Kesselring's excuse was the bomber crews didn't see the flares to cancel the raid. 

I respectfully point out that you have ignored the actual relevant sections of the Geneva and Hague Conventions and the aforementioned ICRC commentaries.

Edited May 31, 2023 by paxromana

[panzermartin]

Oh yes, flattening of Dresden did so much to shorten the war. Not. 

The Germans had only themselves to blame for but it's so sad to walk today in those cities, see the old parts that survived and wonder how the rest would be otherwise. Berlin, Leipzig, Dresden, Hamburg, Cologne and others... At this certain moment walking through their streets I could only think "what a justified crime the Anglo-Americans committed". 

[paxromana]

3 minutes ago, panzermartin said:

Oh yes, flattening of Dresden did so much to shorten the war. Not. 

Actually it played played a part - lots of optics (IIRC) factories in and around, and a major transport hub supplying the east front armies.

The Bombing Campaign was cumulative in its effects. Dresden was a nail in the coffin of german war industry.

Edited May 31, 2023 by paxromana

[Butschi]

20 minutes ago, DesertFox said:

and they got what they deserved

You can justify aspects of that bombing campaign, e.g. the actual damage to the German industry and infrastructure. But a blanket "they deserved"? How exactly did the thousands of children who died in the Hamburg raid deserve what they got? And that was not collateral damage, the bombs were dropped deliberately in a way to maximize fires spreading in Hamburg.

Let's tread a little more carefully on this topic, shall we? Even 80 years after this is still a sensitive area that can quickly get inflammatory.

[chuckdyke]

4 minutes ago, paxromana said:

I respectfully point out that you have ignored the actual relevant sections of the Geneva and Hague Conventions and the aforementioned ICRC commentaries.

History was written by the victors. If the war had gone the other way the likes of Bomber Harris would have swung from a rope. Just point where it is written in the conventions that you can lawfully kill civilians, what the US conveniently calls collateral damage. You can't even use hollow points according to the conventions but nothing wrong with using HE instead. The conventions show their 19th century age. 

[Kraft]

8 minutes ago, paxromana said:

Actually it played played a part - lots of optics (IIRC) factories in and around, and a major transport hub supplying the east front armies.

The Bombing Campaign was cumulative in its effects. Dresden was a nail in the coffin of german war industry.

A nail in the coffin in mid February 1945? Sir, Nazi Germany was dead and buried by then. 

Those bombings may have had a real effect on the war in 1942.. not 1945. They only denied the Soviets those factories, for the price of close to 35 000 women and children.

Edited May 31, 2023 by Kraft

[paxromana]

12 minutes ago, chuckdyke said:

History was written by the victors. If the war had gone the other way the likes of Bomber Harris would have swung from a rope. Just point where it is written in the conventions that you can lawfully kill civilians, what the US conveniently calls collateral damage. You can't even use hollow points according to the conventions but nothing wrong with using HE instead. The conventions show their 19th century age. 

The Conventions said that you couldn't specifically target civilians and only civilians ... but they accepted that bombing industry and transport targets almost inevitably resulted in incidental civilian damage and deaths.

As I noted, the various High Contracting Powers tried really really REALLY hard to come up with a system of 'Bomber Sanctuary Cities' in the Inter War years - but gave up since none of them could come up with a system that couldn't be gamed.

AIUI the same general rule applies today - no specific targetting of civilians, but no war crime if they are collateral damage.

Immoral? Sure.

All War is ultimately immoral. But to prevent worse immorality it is necessary to fight.

Edited May 31, 2023 by paxromana

[chuckdyke]

Just now, paxromana said:

Immoral? Sure.

Who is going to be prosecuted depends on who wins the war. Now we have another side of the sorry story. You can't commit a warcrime if there is not a war but a special military operation. So according by this wisdom now you don't commit a warcrime if you use dumb munitions which just saturate an area.

[paxromana]

5 minutes ago, Kraft said:

A nail in the coffin in mid February 1945? Sir, Nazi Germany was dead and buried by then. 

Those bombings may have had a real effect on the war in 1942.. not 1945. They only denied the Soviets those factories, for the price of close to 40k women and children.

But the Nazi elite didn't accept that. Dresden paid the price for their insane intransigence.

It's like the time I had a serious discussion with a pacifist who couldn't grasp the idea that the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki saved tens of thousands of allied lives for every day they shortened the war for the simple reason that the Japanese High Command had sent out orders to slaughter, to exterminate, all POWs and Civilian Internees ... and they were in the process of doing just that when the bombs ultimately stopped them dead in their tracks.

She whined about 'all those poor innocent Japanese' ... but simply couldn't explain why we owed them more than we owed our own citizens whom their government were murdering.

Same sort of false moral equivalency here.

[DesertFox]

8 minutes ago, Butschi said:

You can justify aspects of that bombing campaign, e.g. the actual damage to the German industry and infrastructure. But a blanket "they deserved"? How exactly did the thousands of children who died in the Hamburg raid deserve what they got? And that was not collateral damage, the bombs were dropped deliberately in a way to maximize fires spreading in Hamburg.

Let's tread a little more carefully on this topic, shall we? Even 80 years after this is still a sensitive area that can quickly get inflammatory.

We can easily agree to disagree. A nation which is responsible for killing 6 Mio civilians in Poland alone, not to mention Belorussia, Ukraine and the rest of Europe and deliberately supported the regime with using slave workers everywhere for everyone to see until 1945 has no right to moan about 600k civilian casualties due to collateral damage by the allied strategic bombing campaign. They got what they deserved. They started it, they had to carry the consequences.

[Pete Wenman]

Good articles from Tom Cooper summarising the recent days air actions

https://xxtomcooperxx.substack.com/p/ukraine-war-30-may-2023-the-game

https://xxtomcooperxx.substack.com/p/ukraine-war-31-may-2023-that-with

P

Edited May 31, 2023 by Pete Wenman

[chuckdyke]

3 minutes ago, DesertFox said:

They started it,

It was France and the UK who declared war not the other way around. What Germany did was wrong they waged war against their own people just because they were Jewish. But WW2 started when France and England declared war out of support for Poland. Never mind they themselves colonized most of Africa, and Asia. 

[Butschi]

21 minutes ago, DesertFox said:

They started it, they had to carry the consequences.

But I asked you in what way the children deserved it. They certainly didn't start it? That's the problem with indiscriminate bombing: You also hit those who don't deserve it. And for good reasons no civilized country condones punishing children for the crimes their parents committed.

That tough talk is all nice and well but you quickly end up going down the slippery slope where suddenly everything can be justified in one way or another.

Edited May 31, 2023 by Butschi

[DesertFox]

1 minute ago, Butschi said:

But I asked you in what way the children deserved it. They certainly didn't start it?

That´s collateral damage. I think we can agree that in contrast to the nazis the allied bomber command wasn´t out on a spree to hunt down civilians, can we?

[chuckdyke]

4 minutes ago, Butschi said:

no civilized country condones punishing children for the crimes their parents committed.

Really? children of parents who betted on the wrong horse so to speak were discriminated against well into the 60's. No point for them to apply for certain jobs.

[Maciej Zwolinski]

1 hour ago, Brille said:

When in history did bombing major cities stop a war? Not counting in Hiroshima and Nagasaki because of the scale it had. 

Off the top of the head, Rotterdam. Serbia 1999.

 

[Butschi]

5 minutes ago, DesertFox said:

That´s collateral damage. I think we can agree that in contrast to the nazis the allied bomber command wasn´t out on a spree to hunt down civilians, can we?

The main goal of some (I mentioned Hamburg) bombing raids was explicitly to kill civilians, so I can't really see how that was collateral damage.

[Butschi]

1 hour ago, Maciej Zwolinski said:

Off the top of the head, Rotterdam. Serbia 1999.

 

The Netherlands had already surrendered (or were about to or whatever), Serbia wasn't indiscriminate bombing of civilians.

Edited May 31, 2023 by Butschi

[The_Capt]

On the drone strikes in Russia:

- far too soon for direct attribution back to Ukraine.  Even if those drones were Ukrainian made that does not mean they were targeted and executed by the UA. Ukrainian government appears to have denied and Russia has failed to attribute sponsorship or direct operation.

- these strikes could just as easily be Ukrainian sponsored but carried out by Russia resistance/insurgents - this scenario is far more disruptive and undeciding for the Russian government than a direct UA attack.

- these attacks could also be Russian government sponsored and carried out with captured or re manufactured Ukrainian systems. Given the light damage and lack of any real noted casualties, this could easily be a scare tactic by Putin on his own people to drive support narrative his way. Right now there has been no conclusive evidence either way.

- if this was a UA directed and executed strike well it was both impressive and not.  We are either looking at a behind the lines op with a lot of moving parts or a 500-600 deep strike.  It is not impressive in that it was imprecise and hit no serious targets beyond breaking some windows and rattling shingles in a “rich neighbourhood”.  This is what lend me to think it was third party or inside job.  Ukraine has demonstrated significant precision in its deep strikes - Kerch Bridge, airfields in Crimea, and those ships on the Azov in port.  So to suddenly be “blind lobbing” into Moscow is off trend.

- As to the legitimacy of the targets, well what were the actual targets?  We do not know. Those drones could have been aimed at a number of military targets but Russian EW drove them into those neighborhoods.  Those “rich people” could be leadership in the Russian government or military which would make them legit and any civilians as acceptable collateral - and here it gets into a whole lot of targeteering and legality issues.

- Effects.  Well a lot of them and more than a little muddled.  Ukrainian moral will be buoyed as they are finally hitting back so there is a symbolism there. Russians will be scared as their war comes home to roost; however, this is hardly “shock and awe”.  This will likely drive a lot of support Putin’s way to protect his people and do whatever it takes.  It will also likely provide fodder for anti-Putin sentiment as he did not protect them and drove Russia into this mess.  

The targeting of “rich neighborhoods” is interesting as it sends a message of class divides - this is more likely sign of insurgency, an inside Russian false flag job would have targeted common folk. In the West we will raise an eyebrow and scratch our heads a bit. I mean we start seeing dead Russian children and there will likely be a backlash (two wrongs not making right in many books) but this was not that. Ukraine does need to tread carefully here (and has), no point conducting operations that enhance anti-war support in the West.

Militarily it could pull more AD assets back into Russia proper and away from the main theatre, so in that way it could be shaping.  So overall a bit of a mishmash really.  All negative decision pressure but some could work for Putin and gang, while others do not.  Gotta be honest, to my eyes this looks a lot like third party backfield pot stirring - central question remains “by whom?”

Effective attribution is three layers deep: What happened?  Who did it? (an entire chain there from operator to sponsor).  Why did they do it?  Right now as far as I can see we do not even have the first one covered fully.

[panzermartin]

21 minutes ago, DesertFox said:

That´s collateral damage. I think we can agree that in contrast to the nazis the allied bomber command wasn´t out on a spree to hunt down civilians, can we?

Here one could object maybe. For instance in Dresden it was known that civilians fleeing the red army from the East had found shelter in the city significantly increasing population density. Incediary bombs were used, there were reports mustangs were strafing refugees columns the next morning. It was a blood for blood collective punishment, as they knew war was soon going to be over, and such chances for a carnivorous ritual , would be zero. 

And it's wasn't only guilty German civilians that suffered from this type of blind bombings. My father experienced the bombing of Piraeus that had many casualties among the local Greek population for little military value. https://www.newgreektv.com/news-in-english-for-greeks/greece/item/31481-history-the-destruction-of-piraeus-by-allied-bombers-11-jan-1944

If we fail to grasp our side is also capable for producing wrong and evil, we will never be able to have an objective view even on contemporary events. 

Edited May 31, 2023 by panzermartin

[chuckdyke]

Grenada 1492, the Muslim defenders realized the game was up when the artillery had the high ground. History always repeats.

[Butschi]

19 minutes ago, The_Capt said:

On the drone strikes in Russia:

- far too soon for direct attribution back to Ukraine.  Even if those drones were Ukrainian made that does not mean they were targeted and executed by the UA. Ukrainian government appears to have denied and Russia has failed to attribute sponsorship or direct operation.

- these strikes could just as easily be Ukrainian sponsored but carried out by Russia resistance/insurgents - this scenario is far more disruptive and undeciding for the Russian government than a direct UA attack.

- these attacks could also be Russian government sponsored and carried out with captured or re manufactured Ukrainian systems. Given the light damage and lack of any real noted casualties, this could easily be a scare tactic by Putin on his own people to drive support narrative his way. Right now there has been no conclusive evidence either way.

- if this was a UA directed and executed strike well it was both impressive and not.  We are either looking at a behind the lines op with a lot of moving parts or a 500-600 deep strike.  It is not impressive in that it was imprecise and hit no serious targets beyond breaking some windows and rattling shingles in a “rich neighbourhood”.  This is what lend me to think it was third party or inside job.  Ukraine has demonstrated significant precision in its deep strikes - Kerch Bridge, airfields in Crimea, and those ships on the Azov in port.  So to suddenly be “blind lobbing” into Moscow is off trend.

- As to the legitimacy of the targets, well what were the actual targets?  We do not know. Those drones could have been aimed at a number of military targets but Russian EW drove them into those neighborhoods.  Those “rich people” could be leadership in the Russian government or military which would make them legit and any civilians as acceptable collateral - and here it gets into a whole lot of targeteering and legality issues.

- Effects.  Well a lot of them and more than a little muddled.  Ukrainian moral will be buoyed as they are finally hitting back so there is a symbolism there. Russians will be scared as their war comes home to roost; however, this is hardly “shock and awe”.  This will likely drive a lot of support Putin’s way to protect his people and do whatever it takes.  It will also likely provide fodder for anti-Putin sentiment as he did not protect them and drove Russia into this mess.  

The targeting of “rich neighborhoods” is interesting as it sends a message of class divides - this is more likely sign of insurgency, an inside Russian false flag job would have targeted common folk. In the West we will raise an eyebrow and scratch our heads a bit. I mean we start seeing dead Russian children and there will likely be a backlash (two wrongs not making right in many books) but this was not that. Ukraine does need to tread carefully here (and has), no point conducting operations that enhance anti-war support in the West.

Militarily it could pull more AD assets back into Russia proper and away from the main theatre, so in that way it could be shaping.  So overall a bit of a mishmash really.  All negative decision pressure but some could work for Putin and gang, while others do not.  Gotta be honest, to my eyes this looks a lot like third party backfield pot stirring - central question remains “by whom?”

Effective attribution is three layers deep: What happened?  Who did it? (an entire chain there from operator to sponsor).  Why did they do it?  Right now as far as I can see we do not even have the first one covered fully.

Now that is a very balanced and nuanced post, thanks.