Quote (Goomshill @ Jan 25 2023 02:52am)
Now that NATO weapons shipments have switched from a restrained and measured approach into an all-out escalation aimed at an offensive into Russian held territory, and while all the public facing intelligence indicates Russia is treating the Ukrainian war as an existential crisis, we're right on course for a nuclear war. But where will that hammer fall first? Will the cloudy weather on any given day make the gerbils they strap into each MRBM's targeting computer decide to change course like how providence spared Kokura? Could it occur in the next few months as the spring enables a ground offensive, or in a year or two to come as the conflict festers? How many Russians will Putin allow to be killed by NATO before he escalates in turn?
Every step so far in this war has shown a passive-aggressive NATO pledging its restraint and unwillingness to invest the necessary force to win, yet willing to find whatever red line Russia sets and cross it. Likewise Putin as the aggressor has shown he wasn't bluffing when he staged his troops, wasn't going to withdraw when a quick and easy war was out, and keeps vowing to escalate in what he declares to be existential to his country. Unlike normal brinksmanship where a standoff remains an uneasy peace until one side blinks or both sides plunge into suicidal conflict, we're already in a spiraling conflict with bullets flying, MAD didn't stop us from reaching this point.
So what would the outcome be? What options would Russia have? Its imaginable they could sabre rattle by revoking disarmament treaties and conducting a nuclear test in the ocean as a show of force, but like the deliberations that went into the hiroshima decision making, that would not serve Russia's aims: The US would need only to keep propping up the Ukrainian war status quo. To really shock the west into submission would require actually nuking a city, and then we enter the red zone. Would Joe Biden get up an give an impassioned speech about how we're the bigger men and don't want the whole world destroyed so we're negotiating peace with Russia? Would nukes start flinging back and forth between the US/EU and Russia? Would China wait until we've already shot our wad and then pile the rest of their nukes into the US and be the last men standing? All suffused with an incandescent glow, billions of hunks of well done steak
Yawn.
Quote (ZaDeda @ Jan 25 2023 03:07am)
One of the most controversial actions taken by the Allied forces during the Second World War was the February 1945 firebombing of Dresden. The largely civilian city served as the capital of the German state of Saxony, and modern scholars question the extent to which Dresden could be considered a military target
No less than 90% of the city center, where most of the artisan workshops were believed to be, was destroyed by the RAF. Over 17,000 civilians were killed, and the population of the town dropped from the tens of thousands in 1939 to mere dozens in 1945.
You forgot to switch to awful broken English for this post.
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