MAD Mutual Assured Destruction

tahanson43206 · 2024-09-23 17:40:50

This topic is offered for those (few) NewMars members who are worried about the threat of nuclear destruction.

This threat has been hanging over the human race since the invention of the atom bomb, and the decision by Russia to enter into competition with the United States to see who could destroy the other most quickly and most efficiently.

The purpose of this topic is primarily to provide a venue for NewMars members who are overwhelmed with fear, to the extent they cannot participate in normal discussions on the forum.

AI Overview
Learn more
…
As of September 10, 2024, the Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD) doctrine is still being applied, even though the Cold War ended in the early 1990s. MAD was a military doctrine that was used during the Cold War to define the balance between the US and the Soviet Union. The doctrine was based on the idea that the fear of retaliation and destruction would prevent the use of nuclear weapons.
However, some say that MAD may no longer be viable due to growing threats from Russia. Others say that deterrence is now obsolete because nuclear war can never be won, and thermonuclear weapons are 1,000 times more powerful.
The 2022 Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) states that the United States will continue to rely on nuclear weapons to deter strategic attacks, including nuclear employment and high consequence attacks using non-nuclear means. The United States has also refused to adopt a No First Use (NFU) policy, which would mean that nuclear weapons would only be used in response to a nuclear attack against the United States or its allies.

(th)

tahanson43206 · 2024-09-23 17:41:53

This post is reserved for an index to posts that may be contributed by NewMars members over time.

(th)

kbd512 · 2024-09-24 15:18:09

The first thing you must understand about Russia, China, North Korea, and similar regimes, is their leadership actually believes that if they have some sort of military advantage, their military can "win" some form of warfare tantamount to annihilation, purely on something similar to "the last man standing" principle. For most of us in the West, that seems either incredibly naive or astonishingly egotistical, as well as demonstrating callous disregard for the lives of their own people, because it is. Accept that you're dealing with profoundly self-interested people who don't receive much pushback against their more questionable beliefs about themselves, until it no longer matters.

Presidents Putin and Xi don't attend grand strategy sessions with their military apparatus. Unless their situation is incredibly dire, they're more concerned with infighting than rallying to win something worthwhile for their countrymen, which would be economic rather than military advantages. Sometimes that can be achieved through military action, but in all cases a military option makes your people endure great suffering and hardship during and after the war. How else would a country with the pitiful military resources of Ukraine be blowing up infrastructure across Russia? They receive money from the West, of course. I don't feel bad for the Russians at all, but I think subjecting them and the Ukrainians to endless warfare is a very empty endeavor. If it matters so greatly to America, then our troops should be fighting alongside the Ukrainians. Anyway... The underlings in these regimes either tell their political leaders what they want to hear, or they get replaced. Most dictatorships ultimately meet their demise as a byproduct of this style of leadership, but not before they've ruined or ended a lot of lives. This sort of relationship between the political leadership and the military leadership simply doesn't exist here in the West, which is why we're generally more successful in war than they are. There is still infighting, but it has limits. For them, it's been that way for much of their history. They basically don't operate without either warlords and chaos, or a great strongman (Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, Putin, etc) who keeps everyone in line, so there's some semblance of peace. There is either chaos or strongmen for them, and very little else.

Oddly enough, that is not how liberal democracies, the military, the media / press, and the people interact here in the West, because to some degree we have freedom of speech, albeit not for most of our history. America is very unique in that regard. President Washington could've been a King, but after fighting the worst excesses of a tyrannical monarch, he thought better of us having "rulers". The Founders determined that we still need rules, but not rulers.

Where did this system start to break down?

Well, our leftists, like all the Old World leftists, have always been keenly intent on destroying the liberal democracy of the west and replacing it with a global tyranny / ruler. It's part of their nature. They don't follow rules, they want to dictate the rules to everyone at all times, by becoming the rulers they denounce. It's a feature of their ideology, not a bug. It's been proven to fail, repeatedly, but they cannot accept that they have no benevolent intellectual arguments in favor of rulers, merely a will to power. This all came to a head during the Viet Nam War, and without an American led liberal democratic order, we only have chaos and rulers / strongmen to choose from, like everyone else. They create the problems they purport to solve, then project onto others that which they are actually doing unto others. They probably think nobody can figure out what they're doing, because the majority of their supporters don't know what they're doing, but this is false. The left is also the very first to become disillusioned with the results of their own machinations. That's what the "Summer of Love" was all about in places like Seattle- miserable leftists rebelling against the leftists they elected, because there was nobody on the right for them to attack. That said, this process started in earnest in the universities during the Viet Nam War, and has continued to this day.

Our fervently anti-American media likes to tell everyone that America "lost" the Viet Nam War, but even according to the commies they never won a single battle against America. We lost 58,281 men out of 2,709,918 who served. They lost 849,018, or about 1,100,000 in total if you include the various other commies who came to get slaughtered by our war machine. They lost an entire platoon for every soldier we lost. It was a very one-sided and brutal campaign, even though it wouldn't seem that way to our own veterans if they watched our own news media. Every offensive they attempted while America was present, they lost more men than we did, and sometimes a lot more. This is hardly surprising, because they didn't produce much of anything. Given their sometimes non-existent training and poor logistics, heavy losses were inevitable. They managed to endure the relentless beating America and our allies dished out on the battlefields, for about 10 years, until our politicians and young adults grew tired of the killing and the chaos back home. When we decided, not the North Vietnamese, then the war ended. If that was their "great victory" over America, then it's as hollow a victory as any I can fathom.

Why is what happened during the Viet Nam War so relevant to something as esoteric yet insane as "MAD"? Our anti-American media, and presumably anti-Americans the world over, suddenly learned that they could influence the decision making of those in power here in America, by using false perception rather than observable reality. They could "paint a scary picture" of something that was objectively going to be a horrific military loss for our enemies as somehow warping the perception of America being bruised and bloodied in a way that simply wasn't reported that way to the American people during, say, WWII. During WWII, we lost 7 times as many men, yet that was declared a "great victory". Was it? How would we "know so"? Oh, that's right, because we were "told so" by our media. It was always perception that mattered, not reality. Japan and Germany capitulated because we kept bombing and shooting them until they finally realized they were never going to win, so they gave up, mostly secure in the knowledge that America would never do to them what they did to their enemies who surrendered. Well... The North Vietnamese themselves stated that they were mere days away from doing the same thing the Japanese and Germans did, after we unleashed our B-52s over Hanoi. They were peasants with AKs and RPGs and pointy stick booby traps fighting people with strategic bombers capable of flying half-way around the world. We allowed a bunch of very unimpressive and weak-minded leftists within our media, our unimaginative "perceivers of reality", to warp public perception of what was so plainly observable to our own enemies- they were losing the war and never had a prayer of winning anything except a one-way ticket to oblivion. War is an ultimate form of responsibility, similar to bearing children, which is anathema to their core beliefs. You give up what you want in deference to what is best for society.

Our allies, adversaries, and enemies alike, are as mystified by what the Americans will or won't do as they are about their own chances of actually "winning" a war with us, because at least half the people in America (our leftists) are "signaling" to them that they've somehow won, when it always boiled down to whether or not we were going to fight them, come hell or high water.

Neither Hitler nor Stalin respected the US military, for different reasons, but they begrudgingly had to contend with the objective fact that our ability to out-produce them was terrifyingly real. Total war not involving straightforward nuclear annihilation is not a question of technological prowess. This is something nearly all civilians, regardless of how educated they are, who invariably have zero military experience or understanding of what war entails, attempt to apply to various military problems. The results of a battle or a war almost always boil down to simple local numerical superiority, not "wunderwaffe" (a substitute word for technological prowess or superiority). Germany wasn't defeated because they lacked for technology. Technologically speaking, they truly were "ahead of the power curve". None of that amounted to a hill of dog turds because they lacked the numbers and logistical support to do anything with all of their "wunderwaffe". They squandered labor and materials building wildly inaccurate ICBMs that probably killed more bricks and cows than people. They developed assault rifles, but had to conceal what they were doing from their own inept leadership, because Hitler had no clue about what offensive infantry warfare involved, having never been involved in any offensive infantry action himself. They had jet aircraft, but persisted with development of various dead-on-arrival engine and long range bomber projects for which they had no resources, blissfully unaware that they were rapidly running out of time to produce enough war materiel to win the coming air war that would ruin Germany long before the allies ever set foot on German soil. That was not simply a Hitler problem, it was a Luftwaffe and manufacturer problem. All their marvelous technical know-how and organizational abilities were squandered through infighting, pursuing militarily pointless wunderwaffe projects, and simple egotism.

If the Chinese started a war with 2,500 stealth fighters and America started the war with 25,000 WWII era Hellcats (with reasonably modern avionics, sensors, and weapons), then by the end of the first month of fighting, despite horrendous losses, the only planes left in the sky would be American. The math required to get there would be very ugly, but there is only one possible result. If the force structures were reversed, then the only planes in the sky would be Chinese. It's not a matter of "we're smarter than you". It's, "we produced 10 of each for every 1 you produced." Certain types of military problems cannot be overcome by any amount of flashy high technology. Any thinking enemy will also adapt to whatever tech you do have. Think about the fact that we fought peasants in Afghanistan as well, yet failed to wipe them out. They never won a single battle, but some merely survived until we grew tired of fighting them. That is the only form of "victory" they will ever know. Regardless of beliefs, if both sides are totally committed to wiping out the other's military forces, simple numbers win wars. Germany and Japan didn't lose WWII due to any sort of meaningful technological inferiority. Their leaders had such wild egos that they thought they could fight industrialized powers possessing in excess of 20 times more people and industrial capacity than their nations could muster. That is the only reason they lost. If population and industrial capacity were in their favor, then they would've won. Period.

Calling them incompetent or evil is a cop-out which seeks to ignore ugly reality. It certainly doesn't explain anything. By all accounts, they had military strategists and tacticians who were every bit our equals, if not our superiors. None of their apparent advantages at the outset of WWII could save them from ultimate defeat, because numbers do matter. If anyone in academia is worried that we're losing some ill-defined great power competition with Russia and China, perhaps reminiscent of some historical resemblance to our position at the outset of WWII, then I suggest we cease and desist with all the flamboyantly wasteful wunderwaffe programs, and get on with the task of out-producing them.

The Russians were absolutely terrified of our battleships, and for good reason. The 16 inch guns of all 4 Iowa class battleship's can drop 50% more steel on the heads of our enemies than all 76 B-52, 45 B-1, and 19 B-2 bombers in our Air Force. At the end of WWII, we had 23 battleships. Nearly all of them had 8 to 9 of the 16 inch guns. Cruise missiles are very nice standoff weapons to have, but only when you have them available in quantity. Virtually all war gaming indicates that in a great power competition with Russia or China, we'd fire off our entire stockpile inside of a month, and then we can't make them fast enough. Everyone should take note of have few Iskander ballistic missiles (ATACMS facsimile) and Club cruise missiles (Tomahawk facsimile) the Russians are firing off against the Ukrainians these days. They ran out. The same will happen to us, but faster.

The battleships that were sunk during WWII were either hit with gigantic weapons by modern standards 10,000 to 20,000lbs, or they were hit with 15 to 20 weapons delivering warheads comparable in size to modern cruise missile warheads, which were only intended to punch through modern paper thin ship hulls. Armor really does work, even when something out there can punch through. The rinky dink little 500 pound warheads in Harpoon or Silkworm (Chinese Harpoon) anti-ship cruise missiles will do a good bit of nothing to a 12 inch thick main belt. Any ship can be sunk, yet very few ships, apart from battleships and super carriers, need to be hit a couple dozen times to sink them. It's a fairly safe bet that a battleship's shell would go right through both sides of any modern cruiser, destroyer, or frigate type warship that all major naval powers use. The 16 inch shells were designed to punch through 20 feet of concrete or 20 inches of steel armor. Cruise missile warheads don't do anything like that. They're still quite damaging and dangerous, but that's the difference in power level between those big shells and small missile warheads. If the Type 052 missile cruiser accidentally wanders within range of 16 inch guns, it'll be transformed into steel confetti with a single salvo.

The other common mistake civilians make is thinking we conduct something akin to "dueling", in the military. Everything in war is not a silly this vs that game that only civilians fixate on. It's our entire military vs your entire military. We didn't do battleship vs aircraft carrier duels during WWII. The carrier's air wing protected the battleship and amphibious landing forces from air attack while the battleship obliterated anything on land, in the air, or at sea, which ventured too close to our ships. Battleships turning the sky black with flak was one reason why we didn't lose more ships to kamikazes. Shooting down planes at 75 miles using gigantic missiles was something we did exactly 2 times during the 10 years of the Viet Nam War. Major caliber guns to cheaply obliterate targets is a nice complement to pair with fancy missiles. It's not economical to bombard an island for 72 hours using cruise missiles (at $1M to $4M for each cruise missile vs $75,000 for each 16 inch shell and powder, in 2024 dollars). Shelling an island for 72 hours before attempting an amphibious assault was standard practice during WWII. Despite all that shelling, it still didn't kill everyone on the island. If dropping cars on islands didn't kill all or even most of the defenders, neither will taking pot shots at them using tiny missiles and mortars. That is real fighting vs movie fantasy.

So, that brings us to the ultimate form of explosive casualty-inducing weaponry- nuclear weapons. When the nukes start flying, unless you're in a bunker miles underground, like all the cowards who start wars but never want to participate in them like the rest of us, and all the "fun" that involves, bend over and kiss your rear end goodbye. It doesn't matter what else we have going on, what weapons tech we do or don't have, because that's a showstopper. That's why we don't need to fixate on it, nor look for more inventive ways to mass murder each other. Shooting and bombing with lots of steel and explosives does that job well enough. More Japanese were killed during a single fire bombing raid on Tokyo than were killed by both nuclear weapon drops. We already have enough nukes to end the world several times over, as does Russia, and very soon, China as well. We don't need to weaponize space or fight with Russia and China over lunar resources. There's plenty available for everyone. In fact, the quantities of metal are near-limitless for our purposes.

kbd512 · 2024-09-24 15:34:27

Casually observing what's going on, the questions I've arrived at are as follows:

How has the American political left, which used to despise war and protested endlessly and vehemently against our war in Viet Nam, now convinced so many people we need to engage in yet another pointless great power competition with nuclear armed nations such as Russia and China?

If the left so hated what went on back then, why are we now spending hundreds of billions and digging ourselves ever-deeper into the border and energy conflicts involving Russia, China, and their neighbors?

What in the heck is this really about? When did the left start supporting endless wars? That's definitely "new".

Russia and China are dying societies- dead by their own hands. When your enemy is making a serious mistake, exercise prudent judgement by staying out of their way. Putin and Xi are the biggest threats to Russia and China. We should stop antagonizing them and break out the popcorn and beer while they implode again. One way or another, we'll be saddled with cleaning up their messes.

kbd512 · 2024-09-24 16:07:02

At the end of WWII, our military establishment was somehow convinced that the very same wunderwaffe would "win" the wars that German and Japanese wunderwaffe lost. There is no "winning" a nuclear war. Deterrence has never worked, not even once, much like the end results of leftism.

What's that saying about fascism and communism?

Fascism was defeated, but never really proven wrong. Communism was repeatedly proven wrong, but never really defeated.

As an American, that's why I'm not overly-interested in either of those ideologies. The leftists, which largely control the culture and academia because actual far right people aren't interested in enslavement to culture or debt, have convinced a large number of uneducated but completely indoctrinated people that fascism is a feature of the far right, in the same way that communism is a feature of the far left. That doesn't actually define far left vs far right, though. Far left is communism. Far right is anarchy. Both fascism and communism are dictatorial forms of governance, and merely two sides of the same bloody coin.

Racism and bigotry doesn't have bean dip to do with anarchy, either. Plenty of fascist and communist regimes have been racist or otherwise bigoted in nature, frequently against the Jews, but true anarchists don't believe in authoritarian centralized governance. Even if some of them were racists or bigots, they have no ability to wield the power of a nonexistent government to inflict their ideology on others. Some of us think that's a win. We don't need to constantly remind everyone else as to why the bigoted are wrong, because the consequence of such people having some minor form of power over others is so minimal when there is no centralized authoritarian government to take from others, merely because they look different or have a different religion. If lethal force, the right to self defense, is also well-distributed, then merely despising someone else on the basis of race or religion doesn't mean you can do as you please to them without consequence.

Those unsolvable cultural and governance policy questions aside, why is it that we don't need to have another "militarized space race" with the Russians or Chinese to weaponize space?

Whether we win or lose that competition, what useful outcome will we arrive at?

Are there not enough dangers facing humans living in space?

We have to add nation-state military assaults to the long list of lethal threats posed by the environment itself?

We can't at least agree to confine our sporadic mass murder sprees to Earth so that the people who choose to leave Earth aren't subjected to such petty harassment?

I think this is why having boundaries are so important.

RobertDyck · 2024-09-24 16:51:22

kbd512: TLDR

Under Ronald Regan, the US developed Strategic Defence Initiative (SDI) aka Star Wars. Most of the weapons developed would never work. For example: a satellite with a proton beam capable of destroying a nuclear re-entry vehicle while in space. Tests showed they could produce a proton beam, but aiming was an issue. To hit anything the range was 300km, meaning it had to orbit in Low Earth Orbit (LEO). To ensure at last one such satellite is over the continental United States at all times, at least 24 satellites were required. These satellites were so large, building just one would require 100 launches of the Space Shuttle. Shuttle never flew more than 6 missions per year. After the Columbia mission, it only flew 4 missions per year. However, late 1980s was after the Challenger accident, and Endeavour was built out of spare parts as a replacement, so Shuttle was still flying 6 missions per year. Even though each weapon system had a different "got-ya", the Soviet Union believed the US would succeed. If the US possessed an effective defence while also maintaining ballistic missiles of their own, that gave the US a first-strike capability. So the Soviet Union tried to develop their own. I'm sure Ronald Regan believed it would succeed when he started SDI, but after all the problems this instead became a game of chicken: let's see who's economy would collapse first. Military spending was so high that neither country could sustain that level without economic collapse. But Regan felt the US economy was stronger, so continued the game of chicken. The Soviet Economy did falter. As their economy was falling apart due to military overspending, Mikhail Gorbachev attempted to bring in perestroika (restructuring) and glasnost (openness and transparency). Mr Gorbachev was born and raised in the Soviet Union, he believed in it. So he believed openness would result in citizens of the Soviet Union proudly supporting their country. The goal was to reduce military spending used to force captured parts of the Soviet Union to remain in the Union, and instead focus military spending on countering the American threat. But oops! Once the Baltic States no longer had the threat of Soviet tanks, they separated. Followed by other parts. The Soviet Union fell apart.

This is still important because SDI succeeded in developing ground-launched missiles that could intercept incoming missiles. Most people have heard of Patriot missiles, but there are others intended for ICBMs. Rather than repeating, I'll link to a Wikipedia article: United States national missile defense

This raises issues: would a Soviet attack be successful, or would US missile defence stop them? When first introduced in 2006, interceptors were shown to only hit their target 1/3 of the time. And just 10 missiles deployed in Alaska, that could stop perhaps 3 incoming Russian missiles. There were later 10 more deployed in Alaska, and 20 in California. Total incoming threats that could be stopped: 12 to 14. This article claims Russia currently has 400 ICBMs, which carry up to 1,185 warheads. If warheads are intercepted after the Multiple Re-entry Vehicle (MRV) bus separates them, then each warhead must be intercepted separately. This is a great reduction from past decades, but still far more than the US can intercept. If you read the Wikipedia article, there has been further development, however, still not enough to stop all Russian warheads.

If Russia does attack, expect Russia to become a radioactive hole in the ground. The US has fewer warheads, but they're high precision and warheads maintained so extremely few duds. Note: nuclear material for a warhead is radioactive, which means it has a half-life. When too much tritium has decayed to helium-3, there's the danger it will not detonate. Uranium and plutonium have extremely long half-lives, measured in thousands of years, but stuff used for the detonator does not. US warheads are maintained to be ready to go, but Russian warheads are not maintained as well. Still, if only 3/4 of the warheads will work, and 90% can get through the US defence system, that still means massive destruction.

Another question is whether Russia believes they can effectively get through America's defence system, or whether a large portion will be intercepted. If Russia believes 90% will be intercepted (only 10% get through), then would they dare attack?

On Saturday (September 21) Russia attempted a test launch of their newest and most advanced ICBM: RS-28 Sarmat. This missile is launched from a hardened silo. The test did not have a real warhead, it had a dummy with the same weight and balance. The test failed, the missile exploded in the silo. Explosion was propellant (rocket fuel and oxidizer), not any warhead. It destroyed the silo. So how reliable are the deployed missiles? Here's an image of the test, satellite images before and after. Courtesy of a Ukrainian news website. Other news sites covered the test, but this one has a before-and-after image. Click on the image if you want the source news article.

kbd512 · 2024-09-24 17:56:55

RobertDyck,

The simple answer is that weaponizing space is utterly irrelevant to "winning" a nuclear war with the US or Russia or China, as well as a colossal waste of both time and money, because it simply will not stop or even delay a retaliatory nuclear strike involving thousands of warheads spread across ICBM silos, stealth bombers, and ballistic missile submarines.

There is no realistic "defending against" thousands of incoming nuclear warheads. Even against ponderously slow drones and cruise missiles, some of those always manage to get past any air defenses, regardless of how much money was spent on missiles and radars. Anyone who claims otherwise hasn't bothered to watch any of the videos of drones and missiles that SM-6 or Patriot or Buk or S-400 or Iron Dome systems all failed to intercept with anything approaching a 100% success rate.

If the Chinese are dumb enough to squander the money associated with launching nuclear or kinetic energy weapons from the moon using SpinLaunch, then we'll have days of advance warning that they're headed our way. Anyone who thinks such weapons can somehow be hidden from radars or thermal imagers or LIDAR, is grossly misinformed about our modern sensing capabilities. This will be viewed as a surprise nuclear attack, to which we will respond in kind. I would suggest anyone who thinks these hyper-velocity devices are "stealthy" spend the time to read "The Radar Game". Google it. You can read it for free. If they're stupid enough to launch anyway, then they won't be alive to witness the results.

We don't need to squander our time or money or intellectual capacity on yet another minor variation of the mass murder game we call "nuclear deterrence" or "MAD". The only "actual deterrence" provided is the knowledge that after you launch, you no longer have a country of people to rule over. Anyone who does this should recognize that launching will be their final act in charge of anything but radioactive ash and dust. Hopefully nobody is dumb enough to believe otherwise, but the stupidity of most people never ceases to amaze me. Since we cannot deter stupid people from being stupid, no matter how much money is spent, our time and efforts are best directed towards more lucrative economic endeavors.

We, as Americans, know why we're going back to the moon. It's a full dress rehearsal and proving ground for a Mars mission. I believe one of your own astronauts is part of that first mission crew.

RobertDyck · 2024-09-24 20:17:49

Reliable news sources have reported that the US federal government has given a warning to Vladimir Putin: do not use any nuke. If Russia uses a single nuke anywhere, even a tactical nuke in Ukraine, then the US will personally target Putin. They won't attack the Russian military, they will target Putin personally. And the US will not use a nuclear weapon, they'll use a conventional weapon. The warning from the US didn't specify what the weapon would be, but one pundit speculated a Hellfire missile launched at Putin's motorcade.

RobertDyck · 2024-09-24 20:53:26

I've said this before, but have to say it again. The war in Ukraine is NOT a proxy war. It is not about American contractors making money. It is not anything about the US. Europe experience wars since before recorded history, more wars that can be counted. Germany would take a piece of territory from France. France would take it back. Each country would claim it's theirs. On and on. World War 1 was supposed to be the War to end all Wars. It failed. World War 2 is the war that ended wars in Europe. No more! Europe cannot allow the cycle of wars to begin again. Once the Soviet Union broke up in 1991, that is the end. Peaceful dissolution of the empire, no more wars. Europe cannot allow anyone to take by force any territory from any European country. Period. Full stop. No exceptions, no compromise.

If Russia is allowed to keep any territory from Ukraine, that will just encourage them to demand more. It will also encourage other dictators to do the same. Wars begin again, but now we have smart bombs, satellite targeting, drones with AI, chemical weapons, and nuclear weapons. Hopefully COVID-19 taught everyone not to use biological weapons. Not for the destruction it wrought, but because the disease infects the country that released it.

Parallels to World War 2 are many. Hitler justified his invasion of Czechoslovakia by claiming he was protecting German speaking people. Putin justified invading Ukraine by claiming he was protecting Russian speaking people. Once Czechoslovakia was conquered, Germany conscripted (drafted) citizens from that country into their military to attack the next country. And used Czech industry to manufacture more weapons and ammunition. Russia has already conscripted citizens from occupied regions of Ukraine to fight against the Ukrainian military, and if he wins intends to conscript citizens to attack the next country. East Ukraine was a major part of the military-industrial complex supplying the Russian military, and Russia intends it to exclusively supply Russian with more weapons and ammunition. The next country Nazi Germany invaded was Poland. Putin has already said the next country he intends to invade is Poland. This isn't the first war Russia has engaged in since the break-up of the Soviet Union. Russia invaded Chechnya, when that didn't go well they signed a ceasefire in 1997. But Russia just built more weapons and ammunition, recruited and trained more soldiers, then invaded again in year 2000. Russia invaded Georgia in year 2008. Each time, when the world appeased Russia by claiming "you can take this, but no more", it only emboldened Putin to demand ever more. When Hitler had Nazi Germany take territory, each time Europe allowed it, that only emboldened Hitler to demand ever more. If Russia is not stopped in Ukraine, it will lead to World War 3.

What's going on in Ukraine will not start WW3, what's going on is to prevent WW3. Staying out of it and thinking an ocean will somehow protect America will not keep citizens out of the war, it will start the war. And Putin has already filed a document with the international community claiming that everything that was ever part of the Soviet Union, or ever part of the Russian empire before it, now belongs to Russia. Alaska used to belong to Russia. That claim includes Alaska. There are citizens of Russia who have been indoctrinated in Russian propaganda who seriously believe America "stole" Alaska from Russia. Truth is Russia sold it, because maintaining settlements on Alaska cost the Russian government far more than Alaska earned for them. Alaska was a money pit. Of course that was before discovery of gold, oil, and many other natural resources. Pelts from fur-bearing animals did not earn them enough money, and although Alaska had vast forests of timber, Siberia was closer to Moscow and Siberia had far larger forests, far more timber. The fact Russia sold Alaska is an inconvenient truth, won't stop Russia from coming to take it back by force. To say nothing about disruption of trade. America stayed out of World War 1 for many years. WW1 started in 1914, but America didn't join the war until 1917. On 7 May 1915 a passenger ocean liner called RMS Lusitania crossed from the Atlantic coast of America to Ireland, and was sunk by a German submarine. There were 693 crew, 3 stowaways, and 1,264 passengers, mostly British nationals as well as a large number of Canadians, along with 159 Americans. Many of the Americans were rich and famous. The final straw that caused America to enter WW1 was when Germany sent a telegram to Mexico asking them to attack America. Germany claimed Mexico could keep the southern states that America took from Mexico by force more than a century earlier. Mexico refused, and sent a copy of the telegram to Washington. America's response was to declare war on Germany. So if a major war breaks out in Europe, don't think America can stay out of it.

kbd512 · 2024-09-24 23:30:45

RobertDyck,

I don't think there are any reliable news sources. Any anonymously attributed report is likely not worth the paper it's printed on. All the ridiculous threatening is completely over-the-top, though. In any event, killing a foreign head of state is an act of war. If Putin was killed or died of old age, whomever seizes power in Russia will likely be worse than him. All past experience with Russian leadership indicates it's foolish to believe otherwise. Anyone perceived to be ineffective or amicable towards the West will be removed. Sometimes the US gets away with killing foreign heads of state because the person we killed treated their people horribly, but that doesn't make it right, nor does it change the fact that it's an act of war. I think we should stop doing that. Killing terrorists and military commanders operating on foreign soil is not even close to the same thing.

I never thought for a second that America would escape participation in a war in Europe. I already stated that if fighting the Russians was so important to America's political and military leadership, then they should've articulated their reasoning to the American people and sent our troops to fight alongside the Ukrainians. That is what statesmen do. I'm thoroughly unimpressed with President Biden and Vice President Harris. They were given power, but refused to take responsibility for their own actions. A rocky start would've been forgiven with time, but the Biden administration has been a train wreck from the word "go".

As to what Putin thinks he's justified in doing, I really don't care. From my viewpoint, he's another street thug- par for the course when it comes to Russian leadership. I actually read his essays, because I bother to learn about people first, then make judgements about them or what they're doing. That's the opposite of how the left works. They pass judgement first, and then contort reality to match their judgement. Putin thinks he has a mandate to reestablish a Russian Empire, and to "restore Russian greatness". He's "saving Russia" in much the same way that our anti-Democrats are "saving democracy"- by not practicing it. If they weren't in power, then it might be mildly amusing. I have to believe that some part of the Russian population wants Putin's vision for Russia, some no doubt oppose him, and a good number are mostly ambivalent, but they're patriotic in the same way that most Americans are, so they support their country and will do what is asked of them.

I'm not interested in feeding fuel into the European social breakdown bonfire. That was my overriding point. I think we should fix our own problems here at home, and only become involved in European affairs if our leadership can articulate clearly defined policy objectives, an exit strategy, and NATO requests our involvement. Dictating military affairs to the Europeans is overstepping our authority. Biden and Harris are not competent to run a lemonade stand, much less make decisions with strategic implications. I thought the lunatics on the left would calm down after they were elected, but they merely dove deeper into their own delusions. Apart from redistributing our wealth to their party donors, they have no other accomplishments. Our economy hasn't improved, the rest of the world is more of a mess, and they took a giant crap all over the American people with their illegal immigration and energy policy idiocy. I'm merely hoping that we don't add "started WWIII" to their list of dumb policy decisions.

kbd512 · 2024-09-26 07:42:19

China fires ICBM into Pacific Ocean in first such public test in decades as regional tensions flare

New Mars Forums

Announcement

#1 2024-09-23 17:40:50

MAD Mutual Assured Destruction

#2 2024-09-23 17:41:53

Re: MAD Mutual Assured Destruction

#3 2024-09-24 15:18:09

Re: MAD Mutual Assured Destruction

#4 2024-09-24 15:34:27

Re: MAD Mutual Assured Destruction

#5 2024-09-24 16:07:02

Re: MAD Mutual Assured Destruction

#6 2024-09-24 16:51:22

Re: MAD Mutual Assured Destruction

#7 2024-09-24 17:56:55

Re: MAD Mutual Assured Destruction

#8 2024-09-24 20:17:49

Re: MAD Mutual Assured Destruction

#9 2024-09-24 20:53:26

Re: MAD Mutual Assured Destruction

#10 2024-09-24 23:30:45

Re: MAD Mutual Assured Destruction

#11 2024-09-26 07:42:19

Re: MAD Mutual Assured Destruction

Board footer