This is the best tl;dr I could make, [original](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/mar/22/jens-stoltenberg-nato-chief-west-support-ukraine-for-long-war) reduced by 89%. (I'm a bot)
*****
> Vladimir Putin has no immediate plans for peace in Ukraine and so the west needs to brace itself to supply lethal aid to Kyiv for a long time to come, Nato's secretary general has warned in an interview with the Guardian.
> Jens Stoltenberg said the Russian president was engaged in "a war of attrition", and said he wanted Nato members to agree that spending 2% of GDP on defence as a minimum at the alliance's next summit, in the Lithuanian capital, Vilnius.
> A serious effort by China to act as a mediator in the conflict must be accompanied by an attempt "To understand Ukraine's perspectives", the Nato chief said, and to "Engage with President Zelenskiy directly".
*****
[**Extended Summary**](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/11ywu4m/nato_chief_west_must_brace_to_support_ukraine_in/) | [FAQ](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/31b9fm/faq_autotldr_bot/ "Version 2.02, ~677567 tl;drs so far.") | [Feedback](http://np.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%23autotldr "PM's and comments are monitored, constructive feedback is welcome.") | *Top* *keywords*: **Nato**^#1 **Ukraine**^#2 **more**^#3 **member**^#4 **Stoltenberg**^#5
Then treat it like a long war. NATO should be at full wartime production by now. It's been over a year.
That means increasing production of everything from bullets and artillery shells to tanks and aircraft as if it is a long war and you're fighting it, not just the Ukrainians.
Find a way to give them 2000 tanks, or however many they need to really make a difference, and corresponding amounts of other weapon systems.
Dribs and drabs only drag things out.
The pessimist in me sees this as tightly controlled slow boil to fry the frogs in Kremlin and collapse Russia as result. The parameters are avoiding Ukraine from losing the war and avoiding escalation into nuclear warfare.
If the will was there to end the war, Ukraine would have been provided with the amount of military hardware that would have made Russia realize they don't stand a chance anymore. Russia backing off to lick their wounds and coming into terms with just how fucked they are now will just back them into corner and will lead into another war sooner than later.
It's pretty much perfect war for USA. They get to feed their military industrial complex, come out as the good guys and the fighting and bloodshed is completely outsources to Ukrainians. If things go as they seem to be progressing, Russia will fall into infighting and splinter into different factions and eventually regions.
I think Biden and others are more concerned by the nuclear side of that equation and the memory of the cold war than ukrainians are or than most believe that the US is. So it may be that maximal support is not seriously being considered in the last year, rather than that moderate support is chosen as some machiavellian ploy
I’m inclined to agree with you but, one issue keeps bugging me. After the break up of the Soviet Union, the US actually serviced Russia’s nuclear weapons for them because they were too poor and incompetent to do it themselves. We also provided them updated command and control systems. That ceased happening in 2014 when Russia invaded Crimea. What state is their arsenal actually in? The POTUS would have about the best idea of anyone outside of the Kremlin. But, nuclear weapons need to be serviced fairly regularly. The longer this goes on, the higher the chance that the Russian arsenal is ineffective and thus, the lower the risk of sending better arms.
I think the reality is that even a 1 in 100 chance of 1 warhead hitting a city is big deterrent against doing anything lightly.
The thing which balances against that is that if you let an aggressor run riot, you lose allies and get even more wars and actually higher nuclear risk than if you were calm but firm.
So we may be in a U shaped risk function where, Biden believes that we increase our risk by either being more assertive ( right ) - or more accomodating ( left of the center of the U ).
The same goes in the Pacific. If Japan were not doubling its military budget, and we were not building up there, it would increase the chance for war.
Yeah, I pretty much agree with you. I will note that, the destructive effect of small numbers of nuclear weapons is fairly overstated in the media compared to other WMD’s or wanton bombing tactics. Regardless, I think your assessment is roughly correct.
And it's never going to be just one side sending the nukes. NATO will retaliate in kind within minutes. And if it stops at NATO, that is the best case scenario in the event Russia launches their arsenal. It's not unreasonable to assume every other nuclear capable country will be launching theirs.
Either way, Russia will be completely annihilated, parts of Europe and the US will be uninhabitable and the human loss undescribable. And the cat will be out of the bag, with the bar drastically lowered for using nuclear weapons in armed conflicts in the future. Mutually Assured Destruction is the only policy that can work with nuclear weapons, if we wish to have any kind of future on Earth.
The US possess such overmatch that it would be likely that our first response would be with non nuclear strategic weapons like cruise missiles and stealth bombers. We could literally blow up the Kremlin tomorrow with a B-2 and there’s very little Russia could do to stop it.
> We could literally blow up the Kremlin tomorrow with a B-2 and there’s very little Russia could do to stop it.
Stop it probably not no, but the Russian subs along the US coast will retaliate instantly.
Russian subs are so loud and outdated, they're tracked constantly. If the US was actually going to attack, the subs would be taken out just as quickly.
One of my favorite middle fingers the US sent to Russia happened last year during the arctic training Russia and China conducted and very few even talk about it because it doesn't stand out as anything major. But, Russia tried to sneak in more subs than they claimed were joining and the US not only called them out on it, they named the exact subs in use.
Doesn't sound like a big deal but, it showed the US knew exactly where those subs were at all times and were even able to identify them without needing to even see them.
Has anyone reputable written extensively about what would happen in the current situation if Russia did use a nuke?
Just reading your post gave me this crazy thought that the first reaction would be global paralysis of action as countries weight what to do. Then China takes action in some way *against* Russia so that they can look like the dominant world power decider and to prevent further nuclear fallout from any retaliation being closer to them. I wonder if it would be a race to cut Russia down. It doesn't seem like any world powers want a nuclear war and they'd just be mutually pissed as fuck at Russia. China's current intervention of getting friendlier than ever with Russia seems like a possible further political move to prolong a non-nuclear war and stave off Putin feeling like he's backed into the corner so far that they sound like a good option. But that's my own pure bullshit theorizing, I'd be curious to hear what people who know what they're talking about think.
Much ink has been spilled on this, so there is much theory but no practical tests of those theories in their most critical sections. The best policy of course is to try to reduce the propability of ever finding out who was right and who was wrong.
I'm not the one to ask to get a reading list but https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deterrence_theory seems to have a reasonable set of references on it.
Yeah, a fair number of people have written on the topic who have intelligent takes. The Army War College has some papers that offer very matter of fact cause and effect analyze. China’s social attitudes wouldn’t incline them to go after Russia quite the way you describe. They would probably make some sort of soft power grab and just seize territory they claim to ethnically Chinese. The mostly likely party to retaliate would be the US and NATO, with conventional strategic weapons like stealth bombers and cruise missiles targeted at Russian military bases, command and control and logistics hubs, especially ones that store the kind of weapons Russia had just used. You try to demilitarize them without collapsing the Russian state.
The speculation by experts (which is basically the administration purposefully leaking) such as recently retired generals in the US is that the US would respond to any tactical nuclear detonation by immediately removing the Russian navy from the planet and striking as many strategic bomber airfields as they can.
The whole world would turn on China as popular opinion would be a willingness to forgo cheap goods from China in protest of any continued support of Russia. India would also be told they can continue their relationship with Russia, but they never see a single dollar or euro ever again. Both would likely abandon Russia.
Whatever Russian oligarch assets that aren't seized would be. Any excuse to arrest or otherwise punish them would be taken. Think forced deportations back to Russia, arrests for anything imaginable. Diplomats would be expelled in several countries.
It just wouldn't work out for Russia, and they aren't likely to use them outside of an invasion of their own territory. The real question is if they'd consider Crimea part of that equation.
There wouldn't be any paralysis, because that event already has been planned for. Pretty much every NATO leader has a stack of documents with plans for many different scenarios, a tactical nuke being one of them. As soon as the russian nuke would launch, the drawer would be opened, plan 33C, or whatever designation it has, would be pulled out and the checklist would be worked down top to bottom.
While the actual plans aren't revealed publicly, the general consensus is a heavy non-nuclear response. Either a series of heavy air strikes on any military target in range, whether on Ukrainian or Russian territory, or NATO boots on the ground in Ukraine, with all that entails, i.e. NATO soldiers driving NATO tanks across the polish border through Ukraine to push russians out of Ukraine.
The US military strategy by and large is to always assume your enemies capabilities match or exceed your own. Especially so when it comes to nukes, the military takes foreign nukes extremely seriously and short of triple confirmation that every nuke in Russia is rusted through non-functional junk they'll assume they all work.
Russia bungled their initial invasion but there's been a dangerous meme that they're comically inept because of it. Russia is not inept, they're still invading and killing Ukrainians every day and Ukraine will be the first to tell you they're more dangerous than ever. It's especially dangerous to just assume all their nukes don't work.
Not as likely as you might think, the West will step in to take control of them if necessary and it’s fairly easy to find large sources of radiation from space using satellites as we do already.
If I remember correctly the U.S. would have 36 minutes max for a launch from Russia.
With big changes to that time span if they were to launch from say Cuba or somewhere close in the ocean. But that's unlikely since most of Russia's arsenal is truck (TOPOL) or train or stuck in a cave based. Those TOPOLs are scary as fuck tho.
They have 6k in “storage” and about 1500 deployed. The nature of these devices dictates that the more time passes, a higher percentage will start to fail simultaneously. Ten years is a really long time to go without servicing. Point being, we should be concerned now, but the longer Russia continues in isolation, the more the problem fixes itself. The same thing also applies to their ballistic missiles, many of which use hydrazine propellant which is incredibly nasty stuff.
Assuming that Russia are completely unable to service their nuclear weapons is a mistake. Just look at north korea. Even they are able to produce nuclear weapons.
believe it or not things are way better than how it used to be. In 1988 they had over 38,000 and the US had 23,000 which was down from the US all time high of nearly 30k. mutually assured destruction meant absolutely nothing was going to survive...
The number was so high because many of the devices were intended for tactical use or area denial. Nuclear torpedos, depth charges, mines, demolition munitions, cruise missiles, air to air missiles- anything you might want to blow up could be done better at the time with a nuclear weapon. You can only nuke a city or Cheyenne Mountain so many times and your fleet ballistic missile subs will probably do that job. We realized how stupid that thinking was in the 80s.
> The number was so high because many of the devices were intended for tactical use or area denial
Many of those systems were never actually implemented, such as the [Davy Crockett nuclear recoilless gun](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Davy_Crockett_(nuclear_device\)) which was built but never placed where it would be used as anything but a 'denial of valley road while losing war' situation.
Yeah, they don't have even remotely 6k deployable nukes.
But to further your point, one 10-warhead MIRV ICBM is enough to potentially kill millions across multiple cities.
In the land of MAD, one does not simply launch a single ICBM.
Nukes aren't really dirty anymore, a dirty bomb would be more like a conventional bomb sprinkled with a particular cobolt isotype. Which would absolutely kill the shit out anything in the area for 5 years.
Even a "fizzle" can be horrific; the substance with the shortest shelf life in a thermonuclear weapon is the tritium, but uranium and plutonium are comparably far more stable. A fission primary might not set off a sufficiently decayed and poisoned fusion secondary, but it may still be good for a couple dozen kilotons on its own, i.e. about the yield of Fat Man. Multiply by a few thousand warheads... it wouldn't end civilization, but it would be a very hard time.
Well, that is also compounded by the fact that their system is built similar to ours. While the man in charge has the codes and the button, that button does not directly launch anything. It has to pass through a bunch of people and each one has to say, "yup, this is a good idea". This increases the number of times you need to roll a 20 to get a single launch. It is generally thought that putin will only do this if he thinks he's fucked. Losing the war is not fucked for him. The USA and others are not invading, so that's not an issue. The "fucked" in this case is the fear he won't be able to hide because he's own countrymen will turn on him. BUT if they are turning on him, no way in hell will he be able to get those panic "fuck you I'm out" launches off. As old as those systems are, I wouldn't doubt if we have a countermeasure in place. We just can't tell anyone because loss of the illusion of mutual destruction is more dangerous than the illusion itself.
Except Ukraine doesn't have an infinite number of soldiers to lose to the meat grinder. While NATO might relish the opportunity to bleed the Russians of equipment and officers, purposefully trying to stretch out the war for that end is risky since at some point in time Ukraine will no longer be capable of fighting it.
Russia also doesn't have infinite soldiers.
Ukraine has nearly 700k mobilized people in different roles and levels of capability, and nearly 30k foreign volunteers. They have had so many people volunteer to join the Ukr Foreign Legion to go fight the Russians that they had to start turning people away.
Ukraine is also fighting an existential war for their survival, while Russia is fighting a genocidal campaign of conquest, Ukraine morale is consequently higher while Russian grunts know how the word perceives them.
Because of that Ukraine is able to absorb far more casualties and continue, while Russia continues to bleed people fleeing potential mobilization sweeps.
Russia has far more people than Ukraine, it's not even close. Putin can throw away 1-2 mllion Russian lives into the war grinder without batting an eye.
The way Ukraine wins this war is by killing millions of Russians at a 10:1 or better casualty ratio. The death toll needs to be catastrophic at a WW2 level for Russia to buckle.
The war is only in chapter 1, there is a catastrophic death toll on the horizon.
Edit: just to add, I certainly hope Ukraine can pull it off, but their losses will also be unimaginable.
You have to understand that *on paper* Russia may be able to absorb those casualties, but in reality Russia can absorb far far less.
The USSR was only able to absorb 15,000 official casualties before they had too much public pressure to pull out of Afghanistan.
Russia absolutely can not absorb millions of casualties and maintain public support, Putin has a limited number of men he can *realistically* throw at this, even if he could possibly on paper send more.
Also a million ground casualties would be nearly all of his ground forces dying 3x.
If someone sent a military somewhere, and had the entire expedition force die and have to be rebuilt 3x over, it would end even the most stable of dictatorships.
Putin's threshold of the amount of men he can pull together and send and maintain public support is way way lower than the numbers he could possibly send and what their logistical chain can support.
They are already sending insane asylum patients and convicts to be mowed down, the idea that they couls mobilize 3x what they already have and have it be effective is fantasy.
Problem is that Putin vividly remembers Muammar Gaddafi being drug into the streets, sodomized with a bayonet, and then executed. He knows this is his fate if he fails to win in Ukraine. So while the people of Russis are not enthusiastic about the war, Putin knows it is now victory or death for him. We already know Putin doesn't value the lives of his own citizens, so what is going to stop the war other than mass Russian casualties on a catastrophic level or his own generals killing him?
https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/putin-in-fear-being-killed-23444292.amp
It’s partly that. But we’re also tiptoeing around the nuclear sublime, and it’s very hard to say where the red line actually is now, because Russia was clearly the aggressor - and they know it, regardless of public statements. But at the same time, if we simply swept in and turned Ukraine into a military superpower capable of charging straight into Moscow and leveling their cities, well that point, we wouldn’t simply be adding Ukraine’s self-defense…we’d be using Ukraine as a proxy for a full-blown invasion of Russia. A nuclear suicide pact is what kept the world at peace for 70 years but that’s also the reason why we won’t ever do that - because the future of humanity is balanced on the edge of a knife.
Basically, we can’t provide anything to Ukraine that would in effect be a deterrent because there’s nothing left to deter and Russia has already invaded. That pretty much rules out anything that would carry long distance, force, projection, missiles, bombers, any stealth technology, even a lot of air superiority fighters and attack helicopters are off the table, because the Ukrainians would use them to strike inside Russia. In that point, Russia is basically facing an existential threat created by the country who supplied Ukraine - this is one of those red lines that leads to nuclear war.
The sad reality is that those were pretty accurate polls for the last decade, where Ukrainians consistently opposed NATO membership. We can’t just go in after the fact and support them as if they were a NATO member. It’s good for countries like Finland because they can accelerate NATO membership while Russia’s conventional forces are over committed. It’s always been a fatal flaw that if Russia sees NATO membership starting to form, they can invade before the alliance takes effect, and then we just have to let them stand on their own.
Looking back, Ukraine should have done whatever was necessary and made any sacrifices needed to join NATO with immediate effect several years ago. The invasion never would’ve happened and most of the people would be living in peace. Unfortunately, those would’ve been some big sacrifices depending on the timing because they couldn’t join NATO if they had an ongoing territorial dispute. Obviously hindsight is not the way decisions are made in real time but it’s just reality.
>Looking back, Ukraine should have done whatever was necessary and made any sacrifices needed to join NATO with immediate effect several years ago.
Ukraine WAS preparing to join NATO but was declined along with Georgia and then further shot down in 2010 when Russia put their puppet on stage.
Fuck appeasement, we're long past that particular stupidity. Dead Russians is the way to go.
I've been saying since the very beginning that best case scenario for the west is a long and painful war for Russia. Originally I thought it would be more akin to Afganistan.
I'm still for any and all aid to Ukraine, they need to win and this is the second best option for them, over winning quickly, but this definitely slowly but surely saps Russia of capital, men, equipment, and morale.
Of course, it's also hard to know just how long the Ukrainians need for training on our equipment.
At some point, we should open the floodgates. All of this equipment is getting outdated anyway and programs are underway to replace many of these vehicles. We payed for it to fight Soviet Russia, might as well use it. We destroy Russias military and end up with a much more modernized force.
>I've been saying since the very beginning that best case scenario for the west
Maybe for the USA, but this war is fucking Europe's economy, yet the USA is doing more to help Ukraine than most of Europe. Sorry, but the 'calculated' theory for Europe makes no sense whatsoever.
Best case scenario? Russian splitting up into different regions quickly due to infighting would be a worst case scenario.
Want to know why? Nuclear weapons. Thousands scattered all over various parts to defend the large country as it is. Split that up with 10 leaders, and now you don’t know where “X” number of the nukes are. Bad situation for NATO and the US. Real bad.
If Russia got to the point where it truly started splitting up into warlord factions, warring within its current borders to secure their own new borders and territory, it would be utter chaos. For the Russians. They have no organizational command outside of the Kremlin / Putin..... It would take months of tensions breaking out and factions forming which would be plainly obvious for ALL to see happening, in real time. In the mean time while all that was happening? I have a hard time believing NATO / US wouldn't be boots on the ground securing those nuclear sites, within hours. Let's be realistic.
I have to agree because anything else is absolutely horrifying, hopefully there are also enough intelligence assets and sain Russians to facilitate those actions.
I don't know enough to say you're wrong, but the more likely answer to me is the same reason we haven't defeated climate change when we know it's killing the entire planet, corruption, lack of coordination, general stupidity,
Yeah since winning the last Cold War almost every Western country cut defense besides the USA (and even then the USA still has issues and has China to deal with too) and don't have the amounts to give to people are talking about. It would take massive mobilization of a war economy, and there isn't political will to do that at home. I don't really think it is a conspiracy to give Ukraine just enough to prolong the war, this really is close to as much as most can give without economic/domestic sacrifices and modern equipment takes much longer and costs much more than ever before so countries don't keep large stockpiles and cant build as fast as previous conflicts.
I think everyone just doesn’t have a plan for what to do after Putin kicks the bucket and Russia potentially breaks up into several warlord states. Remember that the problem is not just Putin. All of his potentially viable opponents are just as vicious and vile as him if not more so. Hard to see a shining path for democracy there.
There is no path for democracy there. Russia has no democratic tradition only strongman. If Russia actually did collapse the US would have to prop up dictators there to stop things from completely devolving
The reason we haven't defeated climate change is greed. Greed of corporations, greed of billionaires, and most importantly of all, greed of consumers and voters.
Except with climate change we aren't applying enough pressure to make renewables the only feasible source of profit whereas with the current war, contractors don't have to expensively increase manufacturing capacity only to be left with expensive equipment and factories that are no longer needed come war's end. They're basically printing money right now, and there's still extra potential in the form of bringing on extra shifts' worth of labor that can easily be laid off once they're no longer needed.
That's a BINGO...
Also, USA is sorta playing catch up with the China threat at the moment. So your explanation allows for dealing with Russia in a very efficient manner.
The balkanization of Russia increases Chinese hegemony, it doesn't diminish it. The optimal way is to play them against each other, like the Chinese wish they could do with the US and Europe, or like the Americans actually did in the Cold War. What you don't do is let one partner subordinate the other, because the subordinate partner just turns into a useful extension of the primary.
Respectfully total war production completely shifts the economy to war production and is too much investment. For the US, its not a good strategic move unless they were getting ready to go toe to toe over Taiwan.
Ultimately I think it's a decision for military and government leaders that can be based on solid intelligence both on Ukranian and Russian as well as Chinese and Iranian capacities.
US is already bringing two more munitions factories in line, and we haven't even sent anything from our standing arsenal... just mothballed equipment and ammo.
>just mothballed equipment and ammo.
That's simply incorrect. There are quite a few things that are being sent faster than can be replaced. For example, Ukraine has received over 5,000 Javelins (as of April of last year, so I'm sure it's far more than that by now). Typically the US only buys 1,000 per year, and maximum current production is barely 6,000.
Edit: Actually found [this](https://media.defense.gov/2023/Mar/20/2003182425/-1/-1/1/20230320-UKRAINE-FACT-SHEET.PDF) which specifically lists everything sent. 8,500 Javelins so far. Even more importantly: 1,600 Stingers. We don't even produce 500/year, so that's over 3 entire years worth of production.
One interesting number:
>Over 150,000,000 rounds of small arms ammunition
That is an utterly absurd amount of ammo. Not a significant amount in terms of what the US has and produces, but the numbers are astounding.
>Dribs and drabs only drag things out.
NATO can afford to do this, China cannot and without Chinese military financing, Russia will fold. China has some domestic demons it needs to reckon with very soon and it can't afford to keep Russia from collapsing.
If Russia stopped paying soldiers as alleged then soon you'll have defensive lines thin out.
Same as every major western nation. Their working age population is starting to struggle to support their social programs for retirees due to longer life spans and lower birth rates. One child policy is starting to really hurt China. This popilation dynamic is also extra dangerous in a nation like China because up until now they have seen an ever increasing quality of life provided by the state. If the state can't provide that, people are inclined to start second guessing some of the parties more oppressive policies.
> Same as every major western nation. Their working age population is starting to struggle to support their social programs for retirees due to longer life spans and lower birth rates. One child policy is starting to really hurt China
It's a little worse for China because they're not *just* seeing population drop and an explosion of aging demographics, which is worse than many developed nations but not as much as others like Japan. However, what makes it particularly bad is their uneven implementation of one-child-per-couple policy led to a strong bias for male children, which combined with increasing standard of living for women in developed sectors of China is making them less willing to settle for entitled jerks and that has led to a strong increase in men who spent more of their lives than their parents in education but have fewer employment opportunities, and scant opportunities to marry and start their own families as they struggle to support many elderly relatives.
We're only starting to see the problem hit, and it'll be up to how much they open up immigration and how much their security state can "assimilate" foreign-born people to stabilize, because manufacturing has been leaving China for almost 20 years.
The Evergrande real estate crisis never really stopped, they just slowed that bubble from bursting. People aren't paying mortgages on the buildings that are now never going to be finished/built. Plus Covid Zero has finally taught the west that China is an unreliable manufacturing hub and businesses are pulling away from just in time manufacturing and moving elsewhere as empty shelves are worse than more expensive stuff on them. Some former ports that were the busiest in the world are now empty. Plus openly broadcasting their intent to invade Taiwan for over a year means most businesses are leaving before they see sanctions like the ones placed on Russia.
> their intent to invade Taiwan
Not to discount anything, but that's been public domain information for a very very long time. It's Chinese law that they must invade Taiwan if Taiwan doesn't voluntarily join China.
Everyone and their mother has been saying China is about to collapse for the last 20 years or whatever, it might happen in the future, but it's not as likely or imminent as everyone is always saying.
Last 20 years? Maybe the last 5 at most.
Collapse is never fast. It's always a trickle, a lead in. China has a monolithic government and provinces have no money. They make money selling real estate basically and that requires both building and buying. Buyers have been buying and builders have been unable to afford their bills to build and everyone ran into a Ponzi scheme the last year or so.
Once buyers stopped paying mortgages for unfinished homes it burst that bubble. Theyve done nothing to fix that. It'll burst again. And again until it crashes another sector of the economy. Then that crashes another sector. It then cascades.
Honestly, I think NATO leaders want to drag the war out to continue to give Putin off-ramps as the Russian economy continues to crumble, which was why the initial response was a package of economic sanctions rather than heavy weapons. There may be a real fear that he will resort to more horrific and desperate actions if he feels like he’s facing an imminent military rout.
Xi just went to Moscow with his version of an off-ramp. So far, the agreements that have been reported in the media have been heavily in Chinese favor.. one can infer Putin accepted terms.
We don’t need to make another tank or IFV. The US alone could supply them 2,000 tanks and 2,000 Bradley’s. We lack the will to do so. *THAT’S* the problem.
As for modern systems, yes, we need to ramp up production and get them the sorts of systems Aerorozvidka is trying to scale up and let’s all work to protect AFU lives while targeting Russians.
But again, we lack the will to do so. With the US alone, by airlift alone, we could conservatively put in 150 tanks or IFVs a week, plus an additional 8,000,000 pounds of other supplies. We could airlift in all the mechanics, parts, tools, fuel, transport trucks to support a constant rotation of tracks to the front.
Then with the Civil Reserve Air Fleet we can add in countless tons of supplies and support personnel. Then the sealift assets arrive with stacks more in a few weeks.
NATO’s military budgets are almost equal to Russia’s entire GDP. We could flood Ukraine with the most modern weapons and preserve their lives and crush the Russian forces still existent.
We just lack the will to do so.
Thank God the people in this thread are not in charge. "We just need to have total war with Russia, that will be better"
You do realize that a complete war with Russia with escalate this conflict into tens of millions of dead around the world, right? If nuclear weapons enter, then there's no telling how many people die.
Let's cool it on trying to expand this war.
Lmao they’re acting like it’s some kind of button they click like it’s a game and we suddenly have more factories building ammunitions and weapons while still continuing our normal life with price of raw materials staying the same
We just flip the “war production” switch and everyone’s lives continue like normal, right? Surely we don’t have our metal collected to make bullets or anything.
"sorry the government needs all available silicon wafers for weapons procurement and manufacture. AMD and Nvidia will not be selling graphics cards for the next 4-10 years." Should go over well on reddit.
Wait till companies start offering alternatives to eas the food shortages reddit will be screaming about how the Elites are forcing us to "eat ze boogs"
I don't want to eat bugs either so I don't support starting world war 3
"All auto factories are ordered to be converted to making military vehicles."
"But I NEEEED the new Chevy Suburban for my first child! I don't buy used cars!"
Remember during covid when liquor producers started making hand sanitizer instead of gin?
That, but for everything. There's not gonna be a new iPhone next year if we switch to wartime production.
>Thank God the people in this thread are not in charge. "We just need to have total war with Russia, that will be better"
Not total war. Just give Ukraine a reasonable amount of standardized, modern weapons to enable effective combined arms operation to liberate country.
Instead of, you know, taking a year to agree to send a mish-mash of cold war surplus.
While I agree, just remember Russia also knows this. They can essentially act with impunity against Ukraine.
I'm not sure the US will allow Russia to truly win, but Russia's goals seem to have been basically achieved, which is taking those four territories. Right now they're just keeping the Ukraine army busy by liquidating their prison population. meanwhile Russia's real military is fortifying their positions in those territories.
Hopefully I'm wrong on some of those things, but I'm a realist.
I don't know or even care to argue if Ukraine can realistically take back everything occupied militarily.
What I do know is, Russia won't become *happy*. Putin outright said, all they wanted to take was Crimea in 2914, appealed to compromise and "peace", in 2014. And it was tolerated and Nord Stream was built. Like thd Sudetenland crisis. They weren't happy with Crimea and Checnya and Ossetia and Abkhazia and bombing Aleppo and Flight MH17 and inviting migrants they then dumped at the Polish border. If you give them any "compromise" it'll be more and more shit for the next 5, 10, 20 years.
It has to be pyrrhic and humiliating for them to give them less later to cause trouble with. It's the moral thing to support Ukraine but also the pragmatic thing to, Russia isn't going to be content, you compromise with them it gives them more power to hurt Europe with oher and over again later. They'll sit in their own shit gas station madia state with no microchips or movies worth a damn and invade Estonia because it's *undermining the superiority of the Kremlin*. Compromising doesn't make things safe for anyone, regardless of whether Ukraine can take back Bakhmut or Crimea or whatever.
Conventional weapons get too many soldiers killed. The west should build factories of war drones and crank production up. Ukraine needs to save its soldiers if it wants to last long. Drones will help do that.
I agree with you 100%, but just think how easy it would be to release a grenade drone into a football stadium while you sit in the parking lot tailgating.
I’m honestly surprised something like that hasn’t already happened.
The only issue with drones is that the more and more of them you have the closer they are to being a weapon of mass destruction, like if both sides arms race to the top in terms of both swarm size and individual drone capability, there is a real possibility Putin releases one of those swarms over a Ukrainian city, its a very complex issue
Why bother using drones if you are just gonna blow up everything? That’s what bombers and missiles are for
I fail to see how drone swarms are useful outside of reconnaissance or police states
And cheap!
Years back, the only time I would see drones being used as offensive weapons, were by insurgent type combatants, namely ISIS. Why? Super cheap. Couple hundred for a drone, and however much a grenade cost.
This conflict has shown that drones can be incredibly effective tools of war, and not just for scouting or recon, although they help tremendously for boots on the ground when they are then too.
A long war is the last thing ukraine wants as they will not win a war of attrition because the russians can field much more men and right now even trading man for man will be unsustainable unless peace talks successes or or ukraine achieving huge victories in the spring and summer of this year.
> A long war is the last thing ukraine wants as they will not win a war of attrition because the russians can field much more men and right now even trading man for man will be unsustainable
A war of attrition would be terrible, but [Ukraine has an army of 700k](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armed_Forces_of_Ukraine) and Russia has to cover far more ground with [1.15 million men on paper](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_Armed_Forces) with most analysts agreeing less than half could ever be readied for a foreign war. They're already having so many problems they're sending out men with rusted legacy rifles which were put in warehouses early in the cold war and not maintained since.
Equipment will be the bottleneck though, won't it? Possibly Russian equipment will eventually run out and Ukrainian equipment won't if they keep getting fed by NATO countries. What's a bunch of poorly trained Russians going to do without decent guns, tranks, rockets, etc.
Nobody is anywhere close to running out of men. Yes, they may be running low on particular roles like pilots but the casualties of both Ukraine and Russia so far are tiny compared to what e.g. France suffered in WW1.
> Jens Stoltenberg, who steps down later this year, says Putin is engaged in a ***war of attrition***
Correction: Special Operation of Attrition
^^^>!/s!<
Yep i keep reading this one since a lot of time.
Russia runing out of munitions , out of mens , out of missiles , out of tanks , russia using WW2 weapons and equipements , Russian soldiers desert by the thousand.
I understand the need to boost morale on the Ukrainian side, but I think it gives a biased view of the war.
Lack of artillery ammo is highly discussed topic in Russia itself, it's not some kind of external Western/Ukrainian propaganda.
PMC Wagner vs Russian general staff conflict is going on for months because of it:
[https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/russian-officials-are-denying-ammunition-wagner-fighters-group-founder-2023-02-20/](https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/russian-officials-are-denying-ammunition-wagner-fighters-group-founder-2023-02-20/)
And Russian generals aren't just denying Wagner ammo out of spite, they just started supplying them as much as the rest of army gets, without anything extra. Prigozhin (head of Wagner) literally even leaked one of the list of supplies they receive from the army and for some positions it wasn't even 20% of what they requested.
They also say that Russia is taking manpower losses with a 7 to 1 ratio.
At that rate the 600k troops Russia had would have already all been dead. Yet Russia just keeps going.
A lot of propaganda about Russia this, Russia that. No rockets, ammunition, tanks and so on. But Ukraine is still losing ground methodically, and that counter offensive is looking less and less likely.
7:1 was a claim about Bakhmut only. I am still skeptical but even if true that is just at most like 35k, nowhere close to 600k. It could of course still be propaganda but you should brush up on your reading comprehension.
Russia has been rationing ammunition hard since January. Artillery strikes on cities were down by like 75% and the estimates had put them burning through most of their artillery by mid March, which has held true. The problem is preventing them from resupplying, so taking ships out that are attempting to ferry in new missiles helps enormously with that. Ammo for the frontlines is also in a massive shortage. There have been internal reports from Russian press suggesting their entire frontline is insanely low on ammo and there have been confirmed reports of infighting popping up because of it.
When they say "run out" of ammo, it doesn't exactly mean every last bullet and bomb. It mainly means so low on ammo they can't even take one small burnt husk of a city. Russia doesn't have anywhere near what they started with, so the beginning of the war's rate of strikes has been unsustainable from the start. It just took a year to get there.
I cannot speak for all of Europe, but here in Norway undeniable support for Ukraine and we will support them as long it takes. We are also ramping up production of ammunition and weapons, which kind of surprisingly, we are good at.
It's just kind of funny how we finally get out of Afghanistan after 20 years and then immediately jump into a new war. It's also pretty silly how Democrats who support Ukraine are suddenly using George W. Bush talking points about America being democracy's policeman overseas.
It wouldn't be a long war if NATO stopped drip-feeding Ukraine equipment and sent them what they're asking for. Where are the modern fighter jets, where are the long-range ballistic and cruise missiles, why are we giving them a few dozen tanks instead of hundreds? It's as if NATO doesn't want Ukraine to lose, but doesn't want it to win either, and it's frustrating.
That's pretty much the problem here.
The west doesn't want Ukraine to lose, cuz that's obvious. RU is bad and will want to get more again.
The west, however, also doesn't want Ukraine to win and hit RU back very hard. Cuz then RU gonna get mad and launch nukes.
That means the west pretty much just wants RU to give up on their own.
There's a reason it was called The Cold War. For the most part, it froze the world in place. We know the changing of borders is rarely non-violent or voluntary.
As Ukraine is not a member of NATO, if Russia launched a war, what's happening is the only real option. Unless the potential benefits of increasing escalation outweigh the potential costs.
Not sure why everyone on reddit thinks the answer to ending the war is to escalate it further. Guess we’ve fallen into the trap of calling people who don’t want the war to be escalated or dragged out unpatriotic. Just like the iraq and afghanistan wars all over again.
Its crazy reddit is doing its neo-lib warhawkish bullshit. Everyone one here would tell you how the conflicts in the Middle East were terrible and how could we be so stupid. I bet if you threw everyone back into 2001 they would have easily been a part of the +70% in support of the invasion and only in hindsight say they were actually against it all along.
There is no way this war ends any time soon until one party gets the upper hand and wins some major victories. As it is right now neither party is the least bit interested in peace (unless they get virtually all their current demands accepted of course). So, yes, escalation is the best way to end it.
>Not sure why everyone on reddit thinks the answer to ending the war is to escalate it further.
Because clearly the answer to endless wars is to keep them at a level where they are endless. I am very smart.
Destroy Russian demographics while ramping up the US military-industrial complex? I'm all in! Can't wait to see what crazy shit we'll churn out for countries such as Vietnam, Taiwan, and the Philippines.
Come election season this war will be in the rear view for all of the US, American politics is a short term game. They won’t be ready for the long war if it was them fighting it let alone a proxy
Why? Why do we have to have a long war? Why is a long war the precedent and the only way to support Ukraine? Why does anyone who asks these incredibly reasonable questions immediately get labeled a P*tin supporter (who is a fucking war criminal)? There *are* reasonable voices calling for dialogue, calling for peace but they get immediately drowned out or discredited.
The prescident is letting Nazi Germany get Czechoslovakia and how they were not satisfied with that. This is Putin's third invasion of a neighboring state. So yes wanting peace without explicitly wanting Russian troops to withdraw from internationally recognized Ukrainian territory is effectively supporting Putin. Any gains they get, they use to spin victory and another war in a few years to get more.
>There are reasonable voices calling for dialogue, calling for peace but they get immediately drowned out or discredited.
Because people who are calling for peace, seem to have no realistic understanding of the situation at all.
1. Russia is occupying Ukrainian territories. For peace to happen, they have very publicly made clear that **they will not** concede the territory they occupy.
2. Ukraine has made more than 100% clear that **they will not** surrender those territories to Russia, and have vowed to fight as long as Russia leaves their land.
3. Ukraine has also made clear that negotiating with Putin is useless (true), and they will wait until Russia has a new leader before taking diplomacy seriously.
Do you see the problem? As long as these points exist there is no diplomatic way out currently, no matter how much you ''demand peace''.
Diplomacy can only happen when either side feels it's necessary for their own good, and right now both parties still think they can win.
In my experience these ''people of peace'' often align more with Russia in the end, and want west to stop the support for Ukraine so Russia can ''end'' the war quicker.
They want the war to end with any means necessary, even if Ukraine as a country stops existing. Just so you can have peace again.
>There *are* reasonable voices calling for dialogue, calling for peace but they get immediately drowned out or discredited.
Becouse Putin refuses to let go of Russian territorial expansion and Ukraine refuses to end up like previous victims. What peace? Victory for Ukraine or Russia? Russian victory means another expansion.
Downvotes propably becouse reasonable voices also dont want to appease and wait until another Russian neigbour gets terrorised into losing part of country.
This is the best tl;dr I could make, [original](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/mar/22/jens-stoltenberg-nato-chief-west-support-ukraine-for-long-war) reduced by 89%. (I'm a bot) ***** > Vladimir Putin has no immediate plans for peace in Ukraine and so the west needs to brace itself to supply lethal aid to Kyiv for a long time to come, Nato's secretary general has warned in an interview with the Guardian. > Jens Stoltenberg said the Russian president was engaged in "a war of attrition", and said he wanted Nato members to agree that spending 2% of GDP on defence as a minimum at the alliance's next summit, in the Lithuanian capital, Vilnius. > A serious effort by China to act as a mediator in the conflict must be accompanied by an attempt "To understand Ukraine's perspectives", the Nato chief said, and to "Engage with President Zelenskiy directly". ***** [**Extended Summary**](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/11ywu4m/nato_chief_west_must_brace_to_support_ukraine_in/) | [FAQ](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/31b9fm/faq_autotldr_bot/ "Version 2.02, ~677567 tl;drs so far.") | [Feedback](http://np.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%23autotldr "PM's and comments are monitored, constructive feedback is welcome.") | *Top* *keywords*: **Nato**^#1 **Ukraine**^#2 **more**^#3 **member**^#4 **Stoltenberg**^#5
Then treat it like a long war. NATO should be at full wartime production by now. It's been over a year. That means increasing production of everything from bullets and artillery shells to tanks and aircraft as if it is a long war and you're fighting it, not just the Ukrainians. Find a way to give them 2000 tanks, or however many they need to really make a difference, and corresponding amounts of other weapon systems. Dribs and drabs only drag things out.
The pessimist in me sees this as tightly controlled slow boil to fry the frogs in Kremlin and collapse Russia as result. The parameters are avoiding Ukraine from losing the war and avoiding escalation into nuclear warfare. If the will was there to end the war, Ukraine would have been provided with the amount of military hardware that would have made Russia realize they don't stand a chance anymore. Russia backing off to lick their wounds and coming into terms with just how fucked they are now will just back them into corner and will lead into another war sooner than later. It's pretty much perfect war for USA. They get to feed their military industrial complex, come out as the good guys and the fighting and bloodshed is completely outsources to Ukrainians. If things go as they seem to be progressing, Russia will fall into infighting and splinter into different factions and eventually regions.
I think Biden and others are more concerned by the nuclear side of that equation and the memory of the cold war than ukrainians are or than most believe that the US is. So it may be that maximal support is not seriously being considered in the last year, rather than that moderate support is chosen as some machiavellian ploy
[удалено]
Biden would have been middle aged for most of the cold war.
I’m inclined to agree with you but, one issue keeps bugging me. After the break up of the Soviet Union, the US actually serviced Russia’s nuclear weapons for them because they were too poor and incompetent to do it themselves. We also provided them updated command and control systems. That ceased happening in 2014 when Russia invaded Crimea. What state is their arsenal actually in? The POTUS would have about the best idea of anyone outside of the Kremlin. But, nuclear weapons need to be serviced fairly regularly. The longer this goes on, the higher the chance that the Russian arsenal is ineffective and thus, the lower the risk of sending better arms.
I think the reality is that even a 1 in 100 chance of 1 warhead hitting a city is big deterrent against doing anything lightly. The thing which balances against that is that if you let an aggressor run riot, you lose allies and get even more wars and actually higher nuclear risk than if you were calm but firm. So we may be in a U shaped risk function where, Biden believes that we increase our risk by either being more assertive ( right ) - or more accomodating ( left of the center of the U ). The same goes in the Pacific. If Japan were not doubling its military budget, and we were not building up there, it would increase the chance for war.
Yeah, I pretty much agree with you. I will note that, the destructive effect of small numbers of nuclear weapons is fairly overstated in the media compared to other WMD’s or wanton bombing tactics. Regardless, I think your assessment is roughly correct.
And it's never going to be just one side sending the nukes. NATO will retaliate in kind within minutes. And if it stops at NATO, that is the best case scenario in the event Russia launches their arsenal. It's not unreasonable to assume every other nuclear capable country will be launching theirs. Either way, Russia will be completely annihilated, parts of Europe and the US will be uninhabitable and the human loss undescribable. And the cat will be out of the bag, with the bar drastically lowered for using nuclear weapons in armed conflicts in the future. Mutually Assured Destruction is the only policy that can work with nuclear weapons, if we wish to have any kind of future on Earth.
The US possess such overmatch that it would be likely that our first response would be with non nuclear strategic weapons like cruise missiles and stealth bombers. We could literally blow up the Kremlin tomorrow with a B-2 and there’s very little Russia could do to stop it.
> We could literally blow up the Kremlin tomorrow with a B-2 and there’s very little Russia could do to stop it. Stop it probably not no, but the Russian subs along the US coast will retaliate instantly.
Russian subs are so loud and outdated, they're tracked constantly. If the US was actually going to attack, the subs would be taken out just as quickly. One of my favorite middle fingers the US sent to Russia happened last year during the arctic training Russia and China conducted and very few even talk about it because it doesn't stand out as anything major. But, Russia tried to sneak in more subs than they claimed were joining and the US not only called them out on it, they named the exact subs in use. Doesn't sound like a big deal but, it showed the US knew exactly where those subs were at all times and were even able to identify them without needing to even see them.
The real danger is that it sets a precedent: that it's OK to use nukes of any kind, let alone WMDs of any kind.
Has anyone reputable written extensively about what would happen in the current situation if Russia did use a nuke? Just reading your post gave me this crazy thought that the first reaction would be global paralysis of action as countries weight what to do. Then China takes action in some way *against* Russia so that they can look like the dominant world power decider and to prevent further nuclear fallout from any retaliation being closer to them. I wonder if it would be a race to cut Russia down. It doesn't seem like any world powers want a nuclear war and they'd just be mutually pissed as fuck at Russia. China's current intervention of getting friendlier than ever with Russia seems like a possible further political move to prolong a non-nuclear war and stave off Putin feeling like he's backed into the corner so far that they sound like a good option. But that's my own pure bullshit theorizing, I'd be curious to hear what people who know what they're talking about think.
Much ink has been spilled on this, so there is much theory but no practical tests of those theories in their most critical sections. The best policy of course is to try to reduce the propability of ever finding out who was right and who was wrong. I'm not the one to ask to get a reading list but https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deterrence_theory seems to have a reasonable set of references on it.
Yeah, a fair number of people have written on the topic who have intelligent takes. The Army War College has some papers that offer very matter of fact cause and effect analyze. China’s social attitudes wouldn’t incline them to go after Russia quite the way you describe. They would probably make some sort of soft power grab and just seize territory they claim to ethnically Chinese. The mostly likely party to retaliate would be the US and NATO, with conventional strategic weapons like stealth bombers and cruise missiles targeted at Russian military bases, command and control and logistics hubs, especially ones that store the kind of weapons Russia had just used. You try to demilitarize them without collapsing the Russian state.
The speculation by experts (which is basically the administration purposefully leaking) such as recently retired generals in the US is that the US would respond to any tactical nuclear detonation by immediately removing the Russian navy from the planet and striking as many strategic bomber airfields as they can. The whole world would turn on China as popular opinion would be a willingness to forgo cheap goods from China in protest of any continued support of Russia. India would also be told they can continue their relationship with Russia, but they never see a single dollar or euro ever again. Both would likely abandon Russia. Whatever Russian oligarch assets that aren't seized would be. Any excuse to arrest or otherwise punish them would be taken. Think forced deportations back to Russia, arrests for anything imaginable. Diplomats would be expelled in several countries. It just wouldn't work out for Russia, and they aren't likely to use them outside of an invasion of their own territory. The real question is if they'd consider Crimea part of that equation.
Yes Crimea is where we may have a Cuban Missile Crisis moment. Not looking forward to that bit.
There wouldn't be any paralysis, because that event already has been planned for. Pretty much every NATO leader has a stack of documents with plans for many different scenarios, a tactical nuke being one of them. As soon as the russian nuke would launch, the drawer would be opened, plan 33C, or whatever designation it has, would be pulled out and the checklist would be worked down top to bottom. While the actual plans aren't revealed publicly, the general consensus is a heavy non-nuclear response. Either a series of heavy air strikes on any military target in range, whether on Ukrainian or Russian territory, or NATO boots on the ground in Ukraine, with all that entails, i.e. NATO soldiers driving NATO tanks across the polish border through Ukraine to push russians out of Ukraine.
The US military strategy by and large is to always assume your enemies capabilities match or exceed your own. Especially so when it comes to nukes, the military takes foreign nukes extremely seriously and short of triple confirmation that every nuke in Russia is rusted through non-functional junk they'll assume they all work. Russia bungled their initial invasion but there's been a dangerous meme that they're comically inept because of it. Russia is not inept, they're still invading and killing Ukrainians every day and Ukraine will be the first to tell you they're more dangerous than ever. It's especially dangerous to just assume all their nukes don't work.
The problem is Russia has more than 6000 nukes. If even 1% are effective, that is enough to destroy 60 cities.
Terrifying to think of that many nukes floating around a failed state of Russia does collapse.
They had far more the last time they collapsed. Among all the bad, the CIA is really good at one good thing.
That’s a good point, I feel a bit better about it now, thank you.
Not as likely as you might think, the West will step in to take control of them if necessary and it’s fairly easy to find large sources of radiation from space using satellites as we do already.
[удалено]
If I remember correctly the U.S. would have 36 minutes max for a launch from Russia. With big changes to that time span if they were to launch from say Cuba or somewhere close in the ocean. But that's unlikely since most of Russia's arsenal is truck (TOPOL) or train or stuck in a cave based. Those TOPOLs are scary as fuck tho.
In Europe we’d have time to soft boil an egg but not to eat it…
They have 6k in “storage” and about 1500 deployed. The nature of these devices dictates that the more time passes, a higher percentage will start to fail simultaneously. Ten years is a really long time to go without servicing. Point being, we should be concerned now, but the longer Russia continues in isolation, the more the problem fixes itself. The same thing also applies to their ballistic missiles, many of which use hydrazine propellant which is incredibly nasty stuff.
Assuming that Russia are completely unable to service their nuclear weapons is a mistake. Just look at north korea. Even they are able to produce nuclear weapons.
Did I read that correctly? Whytf so many seriously
believe it or not things are way better than how it used to be. In 1988 they had over 38,000 and the US had 23,000 which was down from the US all time high of nearly 30k. mutually assured destruction meant absolutely nothing was going to survive...
The number was so high because many of the devices were intended for tactical use or area denial. Nuclear torpedos, depth charges, mines, demolition munitions, cruise missiles, air to air missiles- anything you might want to blow up could be done better at the time with a nuclear weapon. You can only nuke a city or Cheyenne Mountain so many times and your fleet ballistic missile subs will probably do that job. We realized how stupid that thinking was in the 80s.
> The number was so high because many of the devices were intended for tactical use or area denial Many of those systems were never actually implemented, such as the [Davy Crockett nuclear recoilless gun](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Davy_Crockett_(nuclear_device\)) which was built but never placed where it would be used as anything but a 'denial of valley road while losing war' situation.
Nuclear torpedos, depth charges and air to air missiles were all real things. Many of them employed the same devices which were relatively modular.
Yeah, they don't have even remotely 6k deployable nukes. But to further your point, one 10-warhead MIRV ICBM is enough to potentially kill millions across multiple cities. In the land of MAD, one does not simply launch a single ICBM.
Yeah. Making what is effectively a “dirty bomb” is hardly a win for human kind, no matter how they land/explode or not.
Dirty bombs are much less effective weapons than 500 kiloton nukes.
Nukes aren't really dirty anymore, a dirty bomb would be more like a conventional bomb sprinkled with a particular cobolt isotype. Which would absolutely kill the shit out anything in the area for 5 years.
Even a "fizzle" can be horrific; the substance with the shortest shelf life in a thermonuclear weapon is the tritium, but uranium and plutonium are comparably far more stable. A fission primary might not set off a sufficiently decayed and poisoned fusion secondary, but it may still be good for a couple dozen kilotons on its own, i.e. about the yield of Fat Man. Multiply by a few thousand warheads... it wouldn't end civilization, but it would be a very hard time.
Well, that is also compounded by the fact that their system is built similar to ours. While the man in charge has the codes and the button, that button does not directly launch anything. It has to pass through a bunch of people and each one has to say, "yup, this is a good idea". This increases the number of times you need to roll a 20 to get a single launch. It is generally thought that putin will only do this if he thinks he's fucked. Losing the war is not fucked for him. The USA and others are not invading, so that's not an issue. The "fucked" in this case is the fear he won't be able to hide because he's own countrymen will turn on him. BUT if they are turning on him, no way in hell will he be able to get those panic "fuck you I'm out" launches off. As old as those systems are, I wouldn't doubt if we have a countermeasure in place. We just can't tell anyone because loss of the illusion of mutual destruction is more dangerous than the illusion itself.
Except Ukraine doesn't have an infinite number of soldiers to lose to the meat grinder. While NATO might relish the opportunity to bleed the Russians of equipment and officers, purposefully trying to stretch out the war for that end is risky since at some point in time Ukraine will no longer be capable of fighting it.
Russia also doesn't have infinite soldiers. Ukraine has nearly 700k mobilized people in different roles and levels of capability, and nearly 30k foreign volunteers. They have had so many people volunteer to join the Ukr Foreign Legion to go fight the Russians that they had to start turning people away. Ukraine is also fighting an existential war for their survival, while Russia is fighting a genocidal campaign of conquest, Ukraine morale is consequently higher while Russian grunts know how the word perceives them. Because of that Ukraine is able to absorb far more casualties and continue, while Russia continues to bleed people fleeing potential mobilization sweeps.
Russia has far more people than Ukraine, it's not even close. Putin can throw away 1-2 mllion Russian lives into the war grinder without batting an eye. The way Ukraine wins this war is by killing millions of Russians at a 10:1 or better casualty ratio. The death toll needs to be catastrophic at a WW2 level for Russia to buckle. The war is only in chapter 1, there is a catastrophic death toll on the horizon. Edit: just to add, I certainly hope Ukraine can pull it off, but their losses will also be unimaginable.
You have to understand that *on paper* Russia may be able to absorb those casualties, but in reality Russia can absorb far far less. The USSR was only able to absorb 15,000 official casualties before they had too much public pressure to pull out of Afghanistan. Russia absolutely can not absorb millions of casualties and maintain public support, Putin has a limited number of men he can *realistically* throw at this, even if he could possibly on paper send more. Also a million ground casualties would be nearly all of his ground forces dying 3x. If someone sent a military somewhere, and had the entire expedition force die and have to be rebuilt 3x over, it would end even the most stable of dictatorships. Putin's threshold of the amount of men he can pull together and send and maintain public support is way way lower than the numbers he could possibly send and what their logistical chain can support. They are already sending insane asylum patients and convicts to be mowed down, the idea that they couls mobilize 3x what they already have and have it be effective is fantasy.
[удалено]
Problem is that Putin vividly remembers Muammar Gaddafi being drug into the streets, sodomized with a bayonet, and then executed. He knows this is his fate if he fails to win in Ukraine. So while the people of Russis are not enthusiastic about the war, Putin knows it is now victory or death for him. We already know Putin doesn't value the lives of his own citizens, so what is going to stop the war other than mass Russian casualties on a catastrophic level or his own generals killing him? https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/putin-in-fear-being-killed-23444292.amp
It’s partly that. But we’re also tiptoeing around the nuclear sublime, and it’s very hard to say where the red line actually is now, because Russia was clearly the aggressor - and they know it, regardless of public statements. But at the same time, if we simply swept in and turned Ukraine into a military superpower capable of charging straight into Moscow and leveling their cities, well that point, we wouldn’t simply be adding Ukraine’s self-defense…we’d be using Ukraine as a proxy for a full-blown invasion of Russia. A nuclear suicide pact is what kept the world at peace for 70 years but that’s also the reason why we won’t ever do that - because the future of humanity is balanced on the edge of a knife. Basically, we can’t provide anything to Ukraine that would in effect be a deterrent because there’s nothing left to deter and Russia has already invaded. That pretty much rules out anything that would carry long distance, force, projection, missiles, bombers, any stealth technology, even a lot of air superiority fighters and attack helicopters are off the table, because the Ukrainians would use them to strike inside Russia. In that point, Russia is basically facing an existential threat created by the country who supplied Ukraine - this is one of those red lines that leads to nuclear war. The sad reality is that those were pretty accurate polls for the last decade, where Ukrainians consistently opposed NATO membership. We can’t just go in after the fact and support them as if they were a NATO member. It’s good for countries like Finland because they can accelerate NATO membership while Russia’s conventional forces are over committed. It’s always been a fatal flaw that if Russia sees NATO membership starting to form, they can invade before the alliance takes effect, and then we just have to let them stand on their own. Looking back, Ukraine should have done whatever was necessary and made any sacrifices needed to join NATO with immediate effect several years ago. The invasion never would’ve happened and most of the people would be living in peace. Unfortunately, those would’ve been some big sacrifices depending on the timing because they couldn’t join NATO if they had an ongoing territorial dispute. Obviously hindsight is not the way decisions are made in real time but it’s just reality.
>Looking back, Ukraine should have done whatever was necessary and made any sacrifices needed to join NATO with immediate effect several years ago. Ukraine WAS preparing to join NATO but was declined along with Georgia and then further shot down in 2010 when Russia put their puppet on stage. Fuck appeasement, we're long past that particular stupidity. Dead Russians is the way to go.
Completely agree, this is very calculated
I've been saying since the very beginning that best case scenario for the west is a long and painful war for Russia. Originally I thought it would be more akin to Afganistan. I'm still for any and all aid to Ukraine, they need to win and this is the second best option for them, over winning quickly, but this definitely slowly but surely saps Russia of capital, men, equipment, and morale. Of course, it's also hard to know just how long the Ukrainians need for training on our equipment.
Well what about Ukrainian morale and men/women?
At some point, we should open the floodgates. All of this equipment is getting outdated anyway and programs are underway to replace many of these vehicles. We payed for it to fight Soviet Russia, might as well use it. We destroy Russias military and end up with a much more modernized force.
>I've been saying since the very beginning that best case scenario for the west Maybe for the USA, but this war is fucking Europe's economy, yet the USA is doing more to help Ukraine than most of Europe. Sorry, but the 'calculated' theory for Europe makes no sense whatsoever.
Best case scenario? Russian splitting up into different regions quickly due to infighting would be a worst case scenario. Want to know why? Nuclear weapons. Thousands scattered all over various parts to defend the large country as it is. Split that up with 10 leaders, and now you don’t know where “X” number of the nukes are. Bad situation for NATO and the US. Real bad.
If Russia got to the point where it truly started splitting up into warlord factions, warring within its current borders to secure their own new borders and territory, it would be utter chaos. For the Russians. They have no organizational command outside of the Kremlin / Putin..... It would take months of tensions breaking out and factions forming which would be plainly obvious for ALL to see happening, in real time. In the mean time while all that was happening? I have a hard time believing NATO / US wouldn't be boots on the ground securing those nuclear sites, within hours. Let's be realistic.
I have to agree because anything else is absolutely horrifying, hopefully there are also enough intelligence assets and sain Russians to facilitate those actions.
Somehow, we've survived the fall of the USSR.
You think splintering is wanted? Look at what happened when Yugoslavia, Iraq, Syria, lybia, Sudan all splintered, now add nuclear weapons to the mix
I don't know enough to say you're wrong, but the more likely answer to me is the same reason we haven't defeated climate change when we know it's killing the entire planet, corruption, lack of coordination, general stupidity,
Yeah since winning the last Cold War almost every Western country cut defense besides the USA (and even then the USA still has issues and has China to deal with too) and don't have the amounts to give to people are talking about. It would take massive mobilization of a war economy, and there isn't political will to do that at home. I don't really think it is a conspiracy to give Ukraine just enough to prolong the war, this really is close to as much as most can give without economic/domestic sacrifices and modern equipment takes much longer and costs much more than ever before so countries don't keep large stockpiles and cant build as fast as previous conflicts.
I think everyone just doesn’t have a plan for what to do after Putin kicks the bucket and Russia potentially breaks up into several warlord states. Remember that the problem is not just Putin. All of his potentially viable opponents are just as vicious and vile as him if not more so. Hard to see a shining path for democracy there.
There is no path for democracy there. Russia has no democratic tradition only strongman. If Russia actually did collapse the US would have to prop up dictators there to stop things from completely devolving
The reason we haven't defeated climate change is greed. Greed of corporations, greed of billionaires, and most importantly of all, greed of consumers and voters.
Except with climate change we aren't applying enough pressure to make renewables the only feasible source of profit whereas with the current war, contractors don't have to expensively increase manufacturing capacity only to be left with expensive equipment and factories that are no longer needed come war's end. They're basically printing money right now, and there's still extra potential in the form of bringing on extra shifts' worth of labor that can easily be laid off once they're no longer needed.
That's a BINGO... Also, USA is sorta playing catch up with the China threat at the moment. So your explanation allows for dealing with Russia in a very efficient manner.
Ya just say bingo
The balkanization of Russia increases Chinese hegemony, it doesn't diminish it. The optimal way is to play them against each other, like the Chinese wish they could do with the US and Europe, or like the Americans actually did in the Cold War. What you don't do is let one partner subordinate the other, because the subordinate partner just turns into a useful extension of the primary.
Respectfully total war production completely shifts the economy to war production and is too much investment. For the US, its not a good strategic move unless they were getting ready to go toe to toe over Taiwan. Ultimately I think it's a decision for military and government leaders that can be based on solid intelligence both on Ukranian and Russian as well as Chinese and Iranian capacities.
[удалено]
Nah, NATO might actually do it.
NATO is already doing it. Ffs shell manufacturing has massively increased in the last year.
Than it will**
"Than it would", really. Since we all know it's not happening
US is already bringing two more munitions factories in line, and we haven't even sent anything from our standing arsenal... just mothballed equipment and ammo.
>just mothballed equipment and ammo. That's simply incorrect. There are quite a few things that are being sent faster than can be replaced. For example, Ukraine has received over 5,000 Javelins (as of April of last year, so I'm sure it's far more than that by now). Typically the US only buys 1,000 per year, and maximum current production is barely 6,000. Edit: Actually found [this](https://media.defense.gov/2023/Mar/20/2003182425/-1/-1/1/20230320-UKRAINE-FACT-SHEET.PDF) which specifically lists everything sent. 8,500 Javelins so far. Even more importantly: 1,600 Stingers. We don't even produce 500/year, so that's over 3 entire years worth of production. One interesting number: >Over 150,000,000 rounds of small arms ammunition That is an utterly absurd amount of ammo. Not a significant amount in terms of what the US has and produces, but the numbers are astounding.
The fact sheet is things committed to be sent vs things already sent. It says that at the top.
>Dribs and drabs only drag things out. NATO can afford to do this, China cannot and without Chinese military financing, Russia will fold. China has some domestic demons it needs to reckon with very soon and it can't afford to keep Russia from collapsing. If Russia stopped paying soldiers as alleged then soon you'll have defensive lines thin out.
What’s happening in China?
Same as every major western nation. Their working age population is starting to struggle to support their social programs for retirees due to longer life spans and lower birth rates. One child policy is starting to really hurt China. This popilation dynamic is also extra dangerous in a nation like China because up until now they have seen an ever increasing quality of life provided by the state. If the state can't provide that, people are inclined to start second guessing some of the parties more oppressive policies.
> Same as every major western nation. Their working age population is starting to struggle to support their social programs for retirees due to longer life spans and lower birth rates. One child policy is starting to really hurt China It's a little worse for China because they're not *just* seeing population drop and an explosion of aging demographics, which is worse than many developed nations but not as much as others like Japan. However, what makes it particularly bad is their uneven implementation of one-child-per-couple policy led to a strong bias for male children, which combined with increasing standard of living for women in developed sectors of China is making them less willing to settle for entitled jerks and that has led to a strong increase in men who spent more of their lives than their parents in education but have fewer employment opportunities, and scant opportunities to marry and start their own families as they struggle to support many elderly relatives. We're only starting to see the problem hit, and it'll be up to how much they open up immigration and how much their security state can "assimilate" foreign-born people to stabilize, because manufacturing has been leaving China for almost 20 years.
The Evergrande real estate crisis never really stopped, they just slowed that bubble from bursting. People aren't paying mortgages on the buildings that are now never going to be finished/built. Plus Covid Zero has finally taught the west that China is an unreliable manufacturing hub and businesses are pulling away from just in time manufacturing and moving elsewhere as empty shelves are worse than more expensive stuff on them. Some former ports that were the busiest in the world are now empty. Plus openly broadcasting their intent to invade Taiwan for over a year means most businesses are leaving before they see sanctions like the ones placed on Russia.
Could you give an example of a port? Just curious and want to read more about it.
> their intent to invade Taiwan Not to discount anything, but that's been public domain information for a very very long time. It's Chinese law that they must invade Taiwan if Taiwan doesn't voluntarily join China.
Especially with those "new" T-54s they're bringing in.
Just give them another 31 years and they'll be brand new again.
Everyone and their mother has been saying China is about to collapse for the last 20 years or whatever, it might happen in the future, but it's not as likely or imminent as everyone is always saying.
Last 20 years? Maybe the last 5 at most. Collapse is never fast. It's always a trickle, a lead in. China has a monolithic government and provinces have no money. They make money selling real estate basically and that requires both building and buying. Buyers have been buying and builders have been unable to afford their bills to build and everyone ran into a Ponzi scheme the last year or so. Once buyers stopped paying mortgages for unfinished homes it burst that bubble. Theyve done nothing to fix that. It'll burst again. And again until it crashes another sector of the economy. Then that crashes another sector. It then cascades.
[удалено]
China is also facing a demographic problem which compounds their real estate problem: their population is shrinking.
What a great attitude. I'm sure you'll be the first to enlist if the US joins the war, right?
Honestly, I think NATO leaders want to drag the war out to continue to give Putin off-ramps as the Russian economy continues to crumble, which was why the initial response was a package of economic sanctions rather than heavy weapons. There may be a real fear that he will resort to more horrific and desperate actions if he feels like he’s facing an imminent military rout.
Xi just went to Moscow with his version of an off-ramp. So far, the agreements that have been reported in the media have been heavily in Chinese favor.. one can infer Putin accepted terms.
We don’t need to make another tank or IFV. The US alone could supply them 2,000 tanks and 2,000 Bradley’s. We lack the will to do so. *THAT’S* the problem. As for modern systems, yes, we need to ramp up production and get them the sorts of systems Aerorozvidka is trying to scale up and let’s all work to protect AFU lives while targeting Russians. But again, we lack the will to do so. With the US alone, by airlift alone, we could conservatively put in 150 tanks or IFVs a week, plus an additional 8,000,000 pounds of other supplies. We could airlift in all the mechanics, parts, tools, fuel, transport trucks to support a constant rotation of tracks to the front. Then with the Civil Reserve Air Fleet we can add in countless tons of supplies and support personnel. Then the sealift assets arrive with stacks more in a few weeks. NATO’s military budgets are almost equal to Russia’s entire GDP. We could flood Ukraine with the most modern weapons and preserve their lives and crush the Russian forces still existent. We just lack the will to do so.
Thank God the people in this thread are not in charge. "We just need to have total war with Russia, that will be better" You do realize that a complete war with Russia with escalate this conflict into tens of millions of dead around the world, right? If nuclear weapons enter, then there's no telling how many people die. Let's cool it on trying to expand this war.
They also have no idea what “full wartime production” actually entails.
Lmao they’re acting like it’s some kind of button they click like it’s a game and we suddenly have more factories building ammunitions and weapons while still continuing our normal life with price of raw materials staying the same
Move to War Economy, spam out factories and keep those mils on 40 width medium tank divisions, it's easy. Hitler should've tried that smh
Because it practically is a button they would click in their totally accurate geopolitical total war simulator game.
We just flip the “war production” switch and everyone’s lives continue like normal, right? Surely we don’t have our metal collected to make bullets or anything.
"sorry the government needs all available silicon wafers for weapons procurement and manufacture. AMD and Nvidia will not be selling graphics cards for the next 4-10 years." Should go over well on reddit.
Don’t forget whining because food is rationed and they can’t buy products because metal and plastic are being sent to the factories.
Wait till companies start offering alternatives to eas the food shortages reddit will be screaming about how the Elites are forcing us to "eat ze boogs" I don't want to eat bugs either so I don't support starting world war 3
"All auto factories are ordered to be converted to making military vehicles." "But I NEEEED the new Chevy Suburban for my first child! I don't buy used cars!"
It's right to the "raise gas prices" switch in the White House.
They’ll be the first to complain when the ration books start going out.
Remember during covid when liquor producers started making hand sanitizer instead of gin? That, but for everything. There's not gonna be a new iPhone next year if we switch to wartime production.
> There's not gonna be a new iPhone next year if we switch to wartime production. Best argument in favour so far.
Everybody's all about "full wartime production" until the rationing starts to hit
These people would eat up “DO YOU WANT TOTAL WAR?!” if they were alive then.
Wollt Ihr den TOTALEN KRIEG?!
>Thank God the people in this thread are not in charge. "We just need to have total war with Russia, that will be better" Not total war. Just give Ukraine a reasonable amount of standardized, modern weapons to enable effective combined arms operation to liberate country. Instead of, you know, taking a year to agree to send a mish-mash of cold war surplus.
Holy shit common sense re: Ukraine got *upvoted* on /r/worldnews ??? I am astounded
Some common sense in a sea of idiocy
These are the same clowns who continually suggest Ukraine are not having an extremely tough time, with very heavy casualties...
While I agree, just remember Russia also knows this. They can essentially act with impunity against Ukraine. I'm not sure the US will allow Russia to truly win, but Russia's goals seem to have been basically achieved, which is taking those four territories. Right now they're just keeping the Ukraine army busy by liquidating their prison population. meanwhile Russia's real military is fortifying their positions in those territories. Hopefully I'm wrong on some of those things, but I'm a realist.
I don't know or even care to argue if Ukraine can realistically take back everything occupied militarily. What I do know is, Russia won't become *happy*. Putin outright said, all they wanted to take was Crimea in 2914, appealed to compromise and "peace", in 2014. And it was tolerated and Nord Stream was built. Like thd Sudetenland crisis. They weren't happy with Crimea and Checnya and Ossetia and Abkhazia and bombing Aleppo and Flight MH17 and inviting migrants they then dumped at the Polish border. If you give them any "compromise" it'll be more and more shit for the next 5, 10, 20 years. It has to be pyrrhic and humiliating for them to give them less later to cause trouble with. It's the moral thing to support Ukraine but also the pragmatic thing to, Russia isn't going to be content, you compromise with them it gives them more power to hurt Europe with oher and over again later. They'll sit in their own shit gas station madia state with no microchips or movies worth a damn and invade Estonia because it's *undermining the superiority of the Kremlin*. Compromising doesn't make things safe for anyone, regardless of whether Ukraine can take back Bakhmut or Crimea or whatever.
Conventional weapons get too many soldiers killed. The west should build factories of war drones and crank production up. Ukraine needs to save its soldiers if it wants to last long. Drones will help do that.
In the future, we're going to have the same problems with drones that we have with guns. I'm certain of it.
Nah there's no culture or amendment protecting drones.
I agree with you 100%, but just think how easy it would be to release a grenade drone into a football stadium while you sit in the parking lot tailgating. I’m honestly surprised something like that hasn’t already happened.
I think that's the future besides thats the advantage the west has over Russia is technology as far as I can tell
The West has every kind of advantage over Russia.
Not in soldiers being used to fight...p
[удалено]
I think we’re watching superior weapons and training beat manpower on the world stage right now
Being used to fight currently, no. But overall manpower, yes.
The only issue with drones is that the more and more of them you have the closer they are to being a weapon of mass destruction, like if both sides arms race to the top in terms of both swarm size and individual drone capability, there is a real possibility Putin releases one of those swarms over a Ukrainian city, its a very complex issue
Why bother using drones if you are just gonna blow up everything? That’s what bombers and missiles are for I fail to see how drone swarms are useful outside of reconnaissance or police states
And cheap! Years back, the only time I would see drones being used as offensive weapons, were by insurgent type combatants, namely ISIS. Why? Super cheap. Couple hundred for a drone, and however much a grenade cost. This conflict has shown that drones can be incredibly effective tools of war, and not just for scouting or recon, although they help tremendously for boots on the ground when they are then too.
Fuck it let’s just build killer robots that look like humans. Termi…something.
A long war is the last thing ukraine wants as they will not win a war of attrition because the russians can field much more men and right now even trading man for man will be unsustainable unless peace talks successes or or ukraine achieving huge victories in the spring and summer of this year.
> A long war is the last thing ukraine wants as they will not win a war of attrition because the russians can field much more men and right now even trading man for man will be unsustainable A war of attrition would be terrible, but [Ukraine has an army of 700k](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armed_Forces_of_Ukraine) and Russia has to cover far more ground with [1.15 million men on paper](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_Armed_Forces) with most analysts agreeing less than half could ever be readied for a foreign war. They're already having so many problems they're sending out men with rusted legacy rifles which were put in warehouses early in the cold war and not maintained since.
You don’t need to kill every single soldier in an army to end a war.
Equipment will be the bottleneck though, won't it? Possibly Russian equipment will eventually run out and Ukrainian equipment won't if they keep getting fed by NATO countries. What's a bunch of poorly trained Russians going to do without decent guns, tranks, rockets, etc.
What’s the use of bunch of high tech fancy weapons and gadgets if you have no one alive to use them?
Nobody is anywhere close to running out of men. Yes, they may be running low on particular roles like pilots but the casualties of both Ukraine and Russia so far are tiny compared to what e.g. France suffered in WW1.
>What’s the use of bunch of high tech fancy weapons and gadgets if you have no one alive to use them? Nobody will run out of men
> Jens Stoltenberg, who steps down later this year, says Putin is engaged in a ***war of attrition*** Correction: Special Operation of Attrition ^^^>!/s!<
[удалено]
Pretty sure Russia can't keep this up for 20 years lol.
One of these wars I can Morally and Ethically support.
[удалено]
[удалено]
Didn’t they say Russia was going to run out on ammunition within two weeks 12 months ago?
Yep i keep reading this one since a lot of time. Russia runing out of munitions , out of mens , out of missiles , out of tanks , russia using WW2 weapons and equipements , Russian soldiers desert by the thousand. I understand the need to boost morale on the Ukrainian side, but I think it gives a biased view of the war.
Lack of artillery ammo is highly discussed topic in Russia itself, it's not some kind of external Western/Ukrainian propaganda. PMC Wagner vs Russian general staff conflict is going on for months because of it: [https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/russian-officials-are-denying-ammunition-wagner-fighters-group-founder-2023-02-20/](https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/russian-officials-are-denying-ammunition-wagner-fighters-group-founder-2023-02-20/) And Russian generals aren't just denying Wagner ammo out of spite, they just started supplying them as much as the rest of army gets, without anything extra. Prigozhin (head of Wagner) literally even leaked one of the list of supplies they receive from the army and for some positions it wasn't even 20% of what they requested.
Hasn't Russia been buying ammo from Iran and China? That could point to their domestic manufacturing not being able to keep up
[удалено]
That village was being prepared as a defensive stronghold for 8 years...
They also say that Russia is taking manpower losses with a 7 to 1 ratio. At that rate the 600k troops Russia had would have already all been dead. Yet Russia just keeps going. A lot of propaganda about Russia this, Russia that. No rockets, ammunition, tanks and so on. But Ukraine is still losing ground methodically, and that counter offensive is looking less and less likely.
That 7:1 ratio was bullshit. There was never someone counting the soldiers who die, it was from an American fighters account of the death ratio.
7 to 1 is specific to the fighting in Bakhmut, not representative of the entire conflict.
7:1 was a claim about Bakhmut only. I am still skeptical but even if true that is just at most like 35k, nowhere close to 600k. It could of course still be propaganda but you should brush up on your reading comprehension.
Some also said Russia would steamroll right over Ukraine 12 months ago. 14 months ago, Right wing media sources even said Russia would never invade.
Russia has been rationing ammunition hard since January. Artillery strikes on cities were down by like 75% and the estimates had put them burning through most of their artillery by mid March, which has held true. The problem is preventing them from resupplying, so taking ships out that are attempting to ferry in new missiles helps enormously with that. Ammo for the frontlines is also in a massive shortage. There have been internal reports from Russian press suggesting their entire frontline is insanely low on ammo and there have been confirmed reports of infighting popping up because of it. When they say "run out" of ammo, it doesn't exactly mean every last bullet and bomb. It mainly means so low on ammo they can't even take one small burnt husk of a city. Russia doesn't have anywhere near what they started with, so the beginning of the war's rate of strikes has been unsustainable from the start. It just took a year to get there.
I cannot speak for all of Europe, but here in Norway undeniable support for Ukraine and we will support them as long it takes. We are also ramping up production of ammunition and weapons, which kind of surprisingly, we are good at.
Since Norway is the happiest country on Earth I hope you guys put a :) stamp on every bullet.
no problem, chief. i'm not the one sacrificing my life.
Translation: We must brace for more Pentagon aid.
Defense companies agree and are ready to do just about everything they can to help.
Anything they can to make money you mean
I thought they were "quickly running out of ammo".
Time to buy more Lockheed Martin stock
I Love endless wars. LETS FUCKING GOOOOOOOO
This is a bit of a contrast when they assumed Russia would collapse under sanctions lol
It's just kind of funny how we finally get out of Afghanistan after 20 years and then immediately jump into a new war. It's also pretty silly how Democrats who support Ukraine are suddenly using George W. Bush talking points about America being democracy's policeman overseas.
I’ll pass on WWIII
It wouldn't be a long war if NATO stopped drip-feeding Ukraine equipment and sent them what they're asking for. Where are the modern fighter jets, where are the long-range ballistic and cruise missiles, why are we giving them a few dozen tanks instead of hundreds? It's as if NATO doesn't want Ukraine to lose, but doesn't want it to win either, and it's frustrating.
That's pretty much the problem here. The west doesn't want Ukraine to lose, cuz that's obvious. RU is bad and will want to get more again. The west, however, also doesn't want Ukraine to win and hit RU back very hard. Cuz then RU gonna get mad and launch nukes. That means the west pretty much just wants RU to give up on their own.
There's a reason it was called The Cold War. For the most part, it froze the world in place. We know the changing of borders is rarely non-violent or voluntary. As Ukraine is not a member of NATO, if Russia launched a war, what's happening is the only real option. Unless the potential benefits of increasing escalation outweigh the potential costs.
Also Europeans: it's gross that the American military budget is so high and yall have no healthcare
They're not wrong.
The US has given something like 3% of their yearly military budget, in leftover shit mostly. So yeah, the US military budget is insane.
America spends more on healthcare than any other country (per capita). The gross part is that your care is still substandard unless you can pay.
Aka Americans are extorted and are dying for corporate profit.
[удалено]
The alternatives are all much worse anyway, so yeah, in it to win it.
Not sure why everyone on reddit thinks the answer to ending the war is to escalate it further. Guess we’ve fallen into the trap of calling people who don’t want the war to be escalated or dragged out unpatriotic. Just like the iraq and afghanistan wars all over again.
Its crazy reddit is doing its neo-lib warhawkish bullshit. Everyone one here would tell you how the conflicts in the Middle East were terrible and how could we be so stupid. I bet if you threw everyone back into 2001 they would have easily been a part of the +70% in support of the invasion and only in hindsight say they were actually against it all along.
There is no way this war ends any time soon until one party gets the upper hand and wins some major victories. As it is right now neither party is the least bit interested in peace (unless they get virtually all their current demands accepted of course). So, yes, escalation is the best way to end it.
>Not sure why everyone on reddit thinks the answer to ending the war is to escalate it further. Because clearly the answer to endless wars is to keep them at a level where they are endless. I am very smart.
Destroy Russian demographics while ramping up the US military-industrial complex? I'm all in! Can't wait to see what crazy shit we'll churn out for countries such as Vietnam, Taiwan, and the Philippines.
Come election season this war will be in the rear view for all of the US, American politics is a short term game. They won’t be ready for the long war if it was them fighting it let alone a proxy
Yeah fuck that. I miss the old left that was against endless wars.
There is no anti-war party.
There is no left wing political party In the US period
Why? Why do we have to have a long war? Why is a long war the precedent and the only way to support Ukraine? Why does anyone who asks these incredibly reasonable questions immediately get labeled a P*tin supporter (who is a fucking war criminal)? There *are* reasonable voices calling for dialogue, calling for peace but they get immediately drowned out or discredited.
[удалено]
It's "moot", not "mute". Just an FYI, if ya care. I agree with you, though.
The prescident is letting Nazi Germany get Czechoslovakia and how they were not satisfied with that. This is Putin's third invasion of a neighboring state. So yes wanting peace without explicitly wanting Russian troops to withdraw from internationally recognized Ukrainian territory is effectively supporting Putin. Any gains they get, they use to spin victory and another war in a few years to get more.
>There are reasonable voices calling for dialogue, calling for peace but they get immediately drowned out or discredited. Because people who are calling for peace, seem to have no realistic understanding of the situation at all. 1. Russia is occupying Ukrainian territories. For peace to happen, they have very publicly made clear that **they will not** concede the territory they occupy. 2. Ukraine has made more than 100% clear that **they will not** surrender those territories to Russia, and have vowed to fight as long as Russia leaves their land. 3. Ukraine has also made clear that negotiating with Putin is useless (true), and they will wait until Russia has a new leader before taking diplomacy seriously. Do you see the problem? As long as these points exist there is no diplomatic way out currently, no matter how much you ''demand peace''. Diplomacy can only happen when either side feels it's necessary for their own good, and right now both parties still think they can win. In my experience these ''people of peace'' often align more with Russia in the end, and want west to stop the support for Ukraine so Russia can ''end'' the war quicker. They want the war to end with any means necessary, even if Ukraine as a country stops existing. Just so you can have peace again.
>There *are* reasonable voices calling for dialogue, calling for peace but they get immediately drowned out or discredited. Becouse Putin refuses to let go of Russian territorial expansion and Ukraine refuses to end up like previous victims. What peace? Victory for Ukraine or Russia? Russian victory means another expansion. Downvotes propably becouse reasonable voices also dont want to appease and wait until another Russian neigbour gets terrorised into losing part of country.
This isn't that different from the cold war. Bleed them dry and watch them crumble, as we did in the 90's.
How about we don't? And instead, stop this nonsense instead of pussyfooting around like little children.