Poland`s aid to Ukraine if Russia invades - part 2

An important point, which makes the following perplexing:


The main enemy? Sure, Russia has proven to be a provocateur, but it has also shown it's vulnerabilities. Vulnerabilities that make one wonder if they the will to expand their aggression; and, if so, the capacity to be effective. Their Uke excursion doesn't exactly inspire the belief they could be effective...alone.

I guess there is something to say about wounded pride and the need to assuage that wounded pride by being more provocative and aggressive. But, I'm not of the belief that the Kremlin is filled with idiots and morons. I'd bet that there are plenty within the Kremlin that see the vulnerabilities and know expanding agression would be very much a fool's errand that would do great harm to Russia.

Building up NATO installations in the East and bringing the alliance into compliance by spending more on defense is essential, IMO. But, this expansion of NATO and overreaction is what I feared-but, I'm just a lump of aging cells behind a computer in middle America, I may be completely wrong. :)

@Bratwurst Boy
It's clearly a war of aggression.

@PolAmKrakow
You are being deceitful I'm not sure if you are being so deliberately or not, I suspect deliberately.

.....as long Russia has nukes and Putin has the access to the red button....nothing is unthinkable, I fear!

I would be easy for him to be pi***ed because of his vulnerabilities and his empire building didn't worked as hoped to get a fit and press the button and to destroy a capital like....say....Berlin....just like that. Just to feel better!

What now?

Sure you can! there are wars to support USA hegemony and there wars by imperlistic. evil and inferior countries that bring only havoc and miserty to all.

Sure, it is no good that people die during those wars, it would be better without those wars but American wars are in terms of the lost lifes a rather small in scope. If we compare them to history.

Also, American wars are only last and not that big part of the USA power and apeal.
Russia on the other hand destroy and kills and wage wars as that is their only means to be counted as a big power. Other then that they have nothing to offer.

Those are not the same! It is simplification.

I'm not here to tell you that Russia can single-handedly take down the Western alliance - but look at the context.

America has stated that it's run down half of its stockpile of anti-tank guided missiles. It's been explained that it may take years to rebuild domestic stocks.

Eastern and Central Europe have been emptied of virtually their entire stocks of anti tank and shoulder fired anti air missiles.

Pentagon and Ukrainian officials have said that Russia fires more shells daily, than are produced globally, let alone by any single nation.

Shipments of heavy weapons, as large as the 200 T-72 tanks provided by Poland, get digested within mere weeks, not months.

Point I'm trying to make - by fighting Ukraine now, in many ways we are fighting the entire West. When Czechs or Poles start pounding their chest, saying "come on russki, come at us" - it's funny because we understand that Ukraine, as helped by the West, is much stronger than any individual nato country save the US or Turkey maybe.

If Ukraine is defeated wholesale, everything that remains in its rear (Europe), will be quite denuded of weapons.

Of course, what's left outside the brackets is that we can just shower each other with radioactive death and then nobody wins.

Who else would you name? China is not threatening NATO territory. Taiwan and South Korea are not part of NATO.


Such as?


Do you have data that support your doubt?


That is hardly true in some key areas, most notably the Ukrainian air force is severely lacking compared to even smaller countries like Finland.

Russia was able to lock Ukraine into a war of attrition because it has - limited - air superiority.

Western Combat doctrine emphasizes air superiority over artillery strikes. The already heavily struggling Russian air force would be overwhelmed in days if it engaged NATO. And good luck trying to engage then the defenders into a war of attrition.

At the summit, biden just announced a permanent U.S. troop presence in Poland.
He said NATO would be stepping up the number of troops in Europe.


It sure the hell looks like it.

@Cojestdocholery
You are over thinking it, if it looks, walks and sounds like a duck it most probably is a duck.

@Barney
Again, please point out the deceit or incorrectness of my statements. Dont just call them deceitful, make sure you point out the facts. Otherwise FO.

@Bobko
Special NATO operation? Maybe NATO should take it upon themselves to liberate Kaliningrad and free the oppressed Russians while offering them a Lithuanian or Polish passport? They are so oppressed, and can not even receive goods by rail. Or maybe trains should be loaded in Kaliningrad taking Russians to Moscow?

@PolAmKrakow
It's deceitful to dismiss US led aggression as simply chasing terrorists that is the same as Putin's Nazi claims.

Edit
Recognising annexation is also against international law

@Barney
Imperialism is not defined as chasing terrorists. Get your terminology straight. US is not imperialist, period. You can disagree with the wars or whatever you want to call them, but they were not imperialist by definition or practice. Russian war in Ukraine is imperialist by definition and in practice.

@PolAmKrakow
But that is not what the US were doing.

@Bobko

I have not been paying much attention to the weapons production side of this conflict nor do I know enough about access to needed materials to build these weapons, so I can't really argue intelligent ly about it.

However, we do know that the west does have the capacity to produce these weapons, so I have to believe that a west denuded of weapons may be temporary or simply a stretch.

Regardless, China benefits from this, at least temporarily.

Yes, @Tacitus China is our greatest threat economically and militarily. Its economy and military is far more modern than Russia's. It may not be threatening to invade NATO, but it is challenging the West in all areas of geopolitical and economic life. It desires to be the one and only superpower.


Right. Something neither the west or Putin wants. This unjust invasion is about security (control and influence over lands buffering Russian border) from a Russian perspective, so MAD makes no sense whatsoever.


Highly improbable. Putin wants Russia (and his rule) to endure. Pushing the button all but ensures that doesn't happen.

@AntV

....my radioactive waste will be satisfied to know! ;)


I read that NATO still sees itself primarily as a trans-atlantic-european alliance....to change course to react to China's ambitions would mean a bigger change for NATO.

(Japan was invited for the first time so that change may have already started....)

But right now all power get's concentrated on Russia....because it's mainly the biggest european problem right now!

Naturally. If even a country like the United States gets put on a total war footing, than all bets are off. You are correct that it would be only a temporary window of opportunity. Important in this equation, is how much of our strength we waste on Ukraine (your goal), and how much time we will need to rebuild our own war-making stocks.

I'm confident that a country the size of Russia, if dedicated to a single task of war, can produce colossal amounts of weapons (right now we spend something like 5% of GDP on armed forces total, whereas in Soviet peace times it approached a quarter). However, I understand that the West can produce more. The caveat, is that they are democratically run (in their own peculiar definition of it). Will their populations support this kind of effort? For how long? For what gain?

When the stakes are raised, people in London, Washington, and Paris will be more inclined to think about their own skins than those in faraway Riga or Vilnius.

@Barney
Again, no examples. Thanks for wasting time.

@Bobko
As a result of a fire in a missile, ammunition and explosives depot in the Vladimir region of Russia, more than 400 anti-tank missile systems of type 9M113 Konkurs were destroyed; at least three soldiers were killed. Interesting isn't it? Or how about the big fire burning outside of Moscow right now.

The US spends ten times the amount on military than Russia, and your boys are running out of stocks already. You have no idea how Americans think about Russians. You just don't get it. Hating Russia is a tradition, and wanting to end Russia as we know it, goes back to the end of WW2. For most of the US, there is zero difference between Russia and the USSR, none of the positions have changed, the players are just copies of the previous players.

Russia lost the Cold War. It will lose this one as well. In the end, China and India will not go out of their way to help Russia unless it is strategic for them to do so. Once their oil reserves are full, Russia is of no use to them. Like the rest of the world. Xi can't wait to get his hands on Siberia, and that may be sooner than anyone is thinking.

Really?

Is effecting regime change and toppling a murderous dictator far away the same as pursuing a scorched earth policy in a neighbouring country.

No. Of course it bloody isn't.

Russian Tzars were wise to spread borders of country thru wasteland to Siberia and behind. Great thanks to them. They saved us all Europeans. We shall now all become part of Eurasian Union.

@PolAmKrakow
If you don't want to waste your time don't reply.

@jon357
Compare the before and after of your wars of liberation looks pretty much like scorched earth to me.

The wars are not the same but there is an equivalence that needs pointing out. The war in Ukraine and the numerous wars started by the US and its allies have/had no moral or legal justification.

"My" wars??

Which wars do you mean?

Would you have preferred murderous, fascistic and torturing dictators to remain in power just because they made the trains run on time and had a nice house in Berchtesgarten or wherever?


No there isn't and no there doesn't.

You can oppose a war without feeling the need to oppose or comment on others.

Ok your wars was a bit clumsy. The wars you seem to be excusing or justifying.

The situation before the Middle East wars was much better than what came after and was entirely predicted.

Edit


True but in this case no

Am I? Or supporting removal of torturers from public office?


Before the Six Day War? Long before my time

Or do you mean Saddam Hussein Altikriti's invasion of Kuwait? It was certainly better in Kuwait before that.

Not in Iraq though.

Other wars in other centuries on other continents are irrelevant (despite r*ssia's malign hand being somewhere in all of them). We are taking about the illegal and unprovoked r*ssian invasion of Ukraine.

I assume you unambiguously oppose it

Jon you are smarter than that

In this case very much yes.

There is no equivalence, no moral or ethical grey area here

Russia are the aggressor.

Russia is the aggressor and others were the aggressors at different times.

Yes. Saddam (who I suspect you mean) was certainly an aggressor. Kuwait, Iran and Kurdistan where he gassed people.

Backed by r*ssia too.


This is the key.

Good that you support Uraine and the Western democracies against r*ssia though.

Very perceptive! While the West has an element of Uke as a free sovereign country in its aid to Uke, I think exhausting Russia's military is as important to it, if not its main goal, as you stated.


Good point. We often overlook the importance of production, IMO.


Those are the questions I've asked since the beginning of this. Right now, it looks like Putin has made an abjectly miserable miscalculation, but how will it all play out over time?

Personally, I'm glad to see the Euros gung-ho, but will it endure? Euros (western euros in particular) seem much more fickle than USians when it comes to this kind of stuff.


And, this, IMO, is key: how far do we raise the stakes? How do we keep the stakes from turning into something that ends up spreading hell fire.

@Bratwurst Boy

:) What gives me consolation is knowing your helmet will protect you from radioactive waste. :)

Maybe NATO needs to rethink its aims. Protecting Europe from Russia is nothing to glance over, but is it a legitimate existential threat to Europe? My concern is we screw up the long game by overplaying the short game.

Please cut down on your quotes

Yeah Putin....bring it on!

This sums up the attitude of certain politicians.

• 
  Compress_20220629_17.jpg
  

Zelensky as a Christ figure? 🫤