yeah this is a shit era of humanity, nukes are an easy button no one can push but every other nuclear power has to strategize around. we've shifted beyond who can make the biggest or longest range nuke, and into a time where interception of nukes is the goal and having short range nukes as close to your target as possible from a safe position is the end goal.

what Russia fears is exactly that, one day a future where they're surrounded by so many nuclear interceptors that the cant win a nuclear confrontation and will have to forfeit without any nukes even being launched off.

Russia joining the east ? It would not be a good thing at all. China and Russia are not allies.
On the other hand they have a common point: their both populations have a i-dont-want-to-live-here birthrate
India is a big deal, thus it could annihilate itself with pakistan in a nuclear war.

This post was edited by Saucisson6000 on Apr 1 2022 08:48am

This is the talk of the video game generation that thinks wars can be won by air and monitor screens. Against a determined opponent, they can't.

I did not say China and Russia were allies, and I made no reference as to whether it would be a good thing or not. Also, I think its too broad to say that Russians and Chinese dont want to be born Russian and Chinese. I don't agree with this. I would rather say their governments are not great (some worse, some better).

India and Pakistan would have nuked each other into oblivion in the past but for American intervention. America gets merit points for this.

This post was edited by ferdia on Apr 1 2022 09:31am

I was thinking that too. If you read up on analysis on his presidential performance pre-war, he had done a 6 or 7/10 job overall, but it was noted that his government was trying to silence some dissenting voices in the media. It seems like he may have a bit of authoritarian in him, but it's too early to say. They're in a war after all

I just don't think this argument has any merit. Particularly if Russia expected a blitz, there's no reason to not go for a shock-and-awe strategy where they send their best troops and their most modern equipment into Ukraine, win the war in a few weeks and leave the West shaking at the sight of the mighty and seemingly greatly modernized Russian army. If they had better troops, why hold them back and risk pictures of T-72s (lol) being towed away by Ukrainian farm tractors? If Russia was afraid of a military conflict with NATO, this would be all the more reason to try to project as much strength as possible!

Holding their best troops back only makes sense if they expected a war of attrition that grinds to a standstill from the get go - but if that had been the course of the war their strategists expected, there would have been no reason to start this kind of war in the first place.



There's only two logically consistent explanations for what went down so far:
1. They expected to win this war quickly and decisively with aging equipment and poorly trained, poorly motivated conscripts, deliberately holding back their best troops because they thought they wouldn't need them.
2. The Russian army is indeed a paper tiger and what we're seeing is indeed (close to) the best they can do.


Explanation #1 would represent a historic amount of hybris and misreading of the strategic situation. I have a hard time believing that the Russian military leadership is THAT incompetent. Explanation #2 assumes a far lower degree of incompetence by the Russian side: they overestimated their capabilities somewhat, underestimated the Ukrainian resistance somewhat and their offense got stuck as a result.

Because the goal wasn't shock-and-awe. It was a quick regime change.

They aren't going to impress American no matter the equipment they put out there. We are the world fucking leader in all things military.

This post was edited by NetflixAdaptationWidow on Apr 1 2022 01:17pm

These two things aren't mutually exclusive.


... and obesity, incarceration rates and healthcare costs.

This post was edited by Black XistenZ on Apr 1 2022 01:20pm

They aren't mutually exclusive, but I am still telling you emphatically, the goal was never shock and awe. They will never intimidate America with anything less than their nuclear arsenal.

Damn, this is really bad.

https://twitter.com/RALee85/status/1509971837186363399