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Samizdata quote of the day – anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine version“The U.S. and NATO, in their innermost sanctum, should be asking themselves a question and probably are: Would this war already be over if they had sent a couple dozen F-35s to assert mastery over the skies of at least Western Ukraine on or about day 14?” – Holman W. Jenkins, jnr (Wall Street Journal $). February 19th, 2023 |
 29 comments to Samizdata quote of the day – anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine version |
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Probably not, but giving Ukraine a true deep strike capability (ATACMS & Storm Shadow) might well have ended the war by now, or at the very least seen Russia back close to its start line.
No chance the war would be over by now.
In the end infantry have to occupy land, even in modern warfare. And that might be achieved by armoured drives penetrating the line, but it is still on the ground. No amount of tanks penetrating through a line matter if the infantry don’t follow.
Planes don’t move front lines one inch. Anti-tank operations from F35s is just asking them to be shot down. Even at a relative rate of 5 to 1, that’s stupid.
Counter-battery and ability to shell enemy supplies is hugely useful, but that was one of the first things the West supplied.
Some in the West are absolutely entranced by whizzy new machines, and are convinced that our flash planes and tanks are what win wars. They are completely wrong. No amount of being unable to defeat the Taliban/Isis with them seems to dent their confidence though. Air power has failed since WWII to ever live up to its boosters, and that hasn’t changed.
What takes territory is infantry on the ground, in close co-ordination with armour, and effective supply. Artillery backs that up, and planes a bit more But they back it up, they don’t provide the impetus.
A well trained NATO ground force, with ATGMs and SAMs etc and just in APCs, would carve its way through any amount of Russian tanks and planes. The ability to flexibly co-ordinate arms, react quickly, and supply those moves, is what NATO has.
The planes and tanks are only necessary because it intends to fight away from home, and one flash tank is easier to supply than two lesser ones. If fighting in defence of their home territory, NATO has the wrong forces mix.
With this (US) government, I have to consider that they may have come to that same conclusion back then, and thus didn’t do that.
Yes, it would be over.
Because it would have given the Russian people the proof that what Putin said was true, and it would have given him justification to attack NATO, which would have gone VERY badly for the Russian Military, and the chance that they would have used nukes would have gone up *significantly*.
A quick war isn’t actually in Ukraine’s historical interest. If the West had come in and “rescued” Ukraine from Russian aggression, then they likely would fall back into the Russian sphere within a generation or two. With this epic sort of vicious stupidity by the Russians? They’re creating a national mythos and identity for Ukraine that wasn’t necessarily there before, just like the Soviets did with Finland. If the Russians want to keep Ukraine at this point, then they’re going to have to commit total genocide on it. With the state of things a year ago, I could see Ukraine gradually falling back into line with Russian interests. Now? I think they’ll gladly line up to die in order to not be Russian.
Long-term, the current cluster-fark of epic proportions is going to do more damage to Russia than about anything else Putin could have done, and not a bit of it has to do with the thing people have paid attention to. The way he’s made clear the position of the various ethnic minorities (cannon fodder…) vis-a-vis their actual place within Russky Mir, he’s given great clarity to the whole question of whether it’s in their benefit to keep on keeping on with participating in that fantasy-world creation. The economy doesn’t really matter, the sanctions don’t really matter… What does matter is that the minority ethnicities have been given a sudden vision into their actual status within the Russian scheme, and they’re almost certainly going to start asking why they’re participating in it all.
As well, Putin has managed to destroy most if not all of his really reliable regime-support troops. The ones remaining will be hated with an unending passion because they’ve been used as stop-line troops, forcing others to go to the front. When this is all over, it’s going to be Putin and his generals sitting in their bunkers and dachas with a bunch of pissed-off, unpaid, and grudge-holding Russian soldiers looking for blood. That female general that was recently defenestrated? Look at her former job, and connect a few dots. The troops haven’t been getting paid; Wagner hasn’t been getting paid, and neither has anyone else besides the bigwigs like Shoigu whose dachas are fully built.
There are a lot of false fronts that are about to come crashing down, revealing the cesspools of corruption they’ve been covering over. When it all shakes out, Russia is probably not going to be the country it was on 23 February, 2022. No idea what’s going to go first, or when, but my read of the tea leaves says it will go the way of all things flesh before 2030. Maybe even this year…
The Wall Street Journal – named after Wall Street, New York City.
Credit Bubble Central.
The Corporations are joined at the hip with the Government.
But that does NOT justify Mr Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.
Russia has the numbers for a win by attrition, but I wonder what Vlad thinks he is going to win. What’s the prize? As well as the problems Kirk states, there will be a resentful conquered land that has always felt itself distinct from Russia, a lot of neighbouring countries wondering who’s next, a broken set of armed forces with a lot of kit and people who need replacing. And the Chechens. Did Wagner build that force solely to use as mercenaries or is there an ambition to use it against a broken Russian army to gain independence.
“No chance the war would be over by now.”
^That. What is driving the Ukraine war now, and has been since their defeat in front of Kiev, is that Putin CAN NOT be seen to make a mistake, and most especially not a mistake of this magnitude – it would literally be the death of him. The war must go on until final Russian victory, or Putin’s death; and only one of those is acceptable to Putin.
My take on the whole mess is that Ukraine must prevail, and we must support them as much as we can without triggering WW3 – and all the former Soviet republics appear to share this view. If Putin wins he will not stop at Ukraine, he’s already said so; and his horde of Russian followers have not gotten the message (because nobody’s told them) that the war is a bloodsoaked disaster their country can not afford. Only after they run out of excuses as to why they haven’t triumphantly crushed the nazified troglodytes and restored Ukraine to its former place in the Soviet sun, will they begin to reexamine the entire issue – and I earnestly hope that their fury at being deceived will lead to the collapse of Russia’s ruling mafiocracy.
It’s going to be long and hard and bl00dy expensive in terms of materiel and lives lost – but the longer it drags-on in its present form (i.e., Ukraine successfully fighting back, severely limiting Russian gains and regularly defeating them in the field), the better the chance of Russia suffering a people’s-revulsion-style turning point. And one very positive message from the conflict has already changed the world for the better – I’m sure Xi no longer views the seizing of Taiwan as a liberational walk-in-the-park, or he would’ve invaded them already.
Paul, I love how you turn everything, absolutely everything, into a riff on credit bubbles and central banks. Dammit, you probably would blame England failing to defeat Germany in a penalty shootout in the World Cup to fractional reserve banking.
The problem with a lot of people who look at this situation is that they’re looking at the historical record and going “Well, Russia has always won its wars through attrition and sacrificing a lot of lives…”, then extrapolating out to say that they can and are doing all that again, which means that victory is assured for them…
All I can say is that the demographic underpinnings for doing that simply aren’t there, any more. The other point is that the cultural ones, wherein they convince all these minorities like the Kalmyk and Tuvans to do their dirty work for them are increasingly in doubt, as the minorities look at the losses and then realize that they’re being played for fools by the ethnic Russians.
I don’t think Putin recognizes it, as of yet, but he’s like some idiot diamond cutter applying his hammers and chisels to the precise cleavage points of the Russian Federation. The moment is going to come where the various members of the kleptocracy recognize what a mess he’s made of things from the center, and then they’re also going to recognize that he’s essentially stripped his cupboard bare of regime support troops, burning them up in Ukraine like some gambler throwing away his mortgage payment.
Then, there’s the “minor” demographic problem he’s creating by killing off a lot of the males in this already sadly depleted military-age generation. It’s like he is performing the coup de grace on the Russian ethnicity, and doesn’t even realize it. You can see the parallels with what the Roman Boni did, building up their vast fortunes and latifundia at the expense of the Roman yeoman farmers and country gentlemen, driving all the free Romans from the countryside into the cities as poverty-stricken burdens on the state. Putin is eating the Russian seed corn, rather than addressing the root causes of Russian demographic decline and poverty. Short-sighted and criminal in nature, that’s how the modern Russian leadership class thinks. In the end, same fate as the first two Romes…
Which is ironic as hell. It’s almost like reaching for empire is this inherently self-destructive enterprise all on its own.
End of the day, Russia is going to be a very different place, if it exists at all as it was on the 23rd of February, 2022. My guess is that we’re in for some very “interesting times” in the near future, with regards to the Russian Federation and its imperial ambitions in the world.
I’d lay you long odds that the Chinese are casually positioning themselves to offer “protectorate” status to any regions of the former Russian Federation that decide to get out of the whole “decline and fall” thing. End of all this, I fully expect that China will be making an oh-so-very-casual grab for Central Asian supremacy, and I also find myself wondering if it is really accidental that Shoigu, an ethnic Tuvan, is a major part of that decline and fall. It’s like you want to call up Putin and tell him “The calls are coming from inside the house, dumbass…”, because Shoigu had to have known a lot of what went into all of this happening. Either that, or he’s as delusional as his “master” is.
The war would definitely be over if we had sent NATO ground troops too. Over, after the inevitable exchange of nuclear weapons, something those F35s may have also precipitated. I find it terrifying and the worst type of irresponsibility that we are engaged in this insane game of chicken with nuclear armed states. And the people who are making the decisions? Biden and Putin? Do we really want to trust the safety of the world to one drooling, blithering idiot, and one crazy maniacal monster?
The Ukraine war ends in negotiations, with concessions on both sides, no other way can be countenanced. It is not a tool to modify the world order, or to get rid of political leaders you don’t like. It needs to be settled by negotiation, by competent people, so we can get back to building and growing, not blowing stuff and people up. But unfortunately, it is massively to the advantage of the USA to keep it going as long as possible, to fleece the US tax payer to give a trillion dollars worth of money to arms manufacturers in exchange for political contributions, buying stuff that by its nature “needs to be replaced regularly”. It is great business, except of course if you are some poor Ukrainian schmuck, or some cannon fodder Russian troop.
I fear that you are delusional, Fraser Orr. You apparently think that Putin can be negotiated with, that he is a rational actor you can engage with and trust.
Men like Putin are not like your middle-class rational peers; they’re a sort of highly-functioning sociopath that simply doesn’t operate on the same ruleset that you’re used to and which you are projecting onto him.
If you don’t stop him now, before he takes the next bite of his expansionist meal, you’re going to be getting that nuclear war you don’t want, and in far more certain a fashion. The stakes are low enough now that you can stop him effectively and without as much effort as it will take later on. That makes nuclear war rather less likely than if you keep kissing his ass and giving the bully what he wants. Eventually, he’s going to graduate from other kid’s lunch money, and be asking for far more than you’re willing to give up, but because you stood by and let him take over the school, there’s nobody there to stand with you… Which means you’re going to have to do a lot more to him than you really want to.
Had Putin been stopped at his initial foray into expansionism, which would have been Georgia, we wouldn’t have seen Crimea and the Donbas in 2014. Because the West let those things happen, we got 24 February 2022, and if you let that stand, you’re going to get the Poland/Baltics Tour before 2030, followed by the rest of the former Warsaw Pact going back under the yoke.
It really is that simple, and the lessons of the run-up to WWII apparently went right past you during your school years. Hitler would have been easily crushed in 1938, had he invaded a Czechoslovakia that had French and British support, along with Poland’s. As it was, he went from triumph to triumph, enabled by craven attitudes just like yours. Until he “went too far”, and then had to be put down like the mad dog he always was.
Had it been done early on, fewer would have died. As it was, you got the six years of total war that wrecked Europe. That was the real price for “Peace in our time…”
It’s the same, today: Stand against despotism and tyranny, or become its eventual victim. I don’t like the Ukrainian oligarchs any more than I like the Russian ones, but the Ukrainians aren’t invading another country with an eye towards looting it and destroying its culture. The Russians are.
The way we should want this war to end is with a truce roughly along the current line of engagement. Russia has to pay to rebuild the cities south and east of that, in particular Mariupol, and they can pay for it by selling gas to the west again.
Ukraine gets to keep everywhere north and west of that and can get stuck into its socially fascistic agenda on the main parts of its territory knowing it has established some kind of nationalist identity. We should feel for all those UA citizens who wanted to retain a bit of both identities but have had to choose a side, but we cannot go back for them now.
The way this war should end is with Russia’s ambitions not only frustrated, but with them sufficiently “burned” by the experience so as to learn a lesson about doing it ever again. Note the state of affairs vis-a-vis Finland… While the Russians have tried dominating the Finns, that hasn’t really stuck all that hard, down the years. What they need is a salutary lesson in “hands off”, and that’s not going to come with the establishment of any Russian territorial gains on Ukrainian soil. That’ll just encourage them to nibble off some more at some point in the future where they think they can get away with it.
No, what this situation really requires is a painful lesson of loss, one that resonates into the future, such that the next time some Russian says “Let’s attack Ukraine…”, the rest of the Russians at the table with him just give him that look, call him an idiot, and quietly stop taking the idiot seriously.
This is one of those cases where you have to inflict sufficient pain on the Russians that they actually learn something from the experience. That may be at least a half-million dead Russians.
I’m not particularly happy about that, but that’s the way these things go. Half-victories where the defeat doesn’t grind the face of the aggressor into the ground are what lead to situations like we have with Israel against the Arabs in the West Bank and Gaza. You don’t “win” in those people’s minds until you’ve utterly destroyed their homes, sowed the ground with salt, and sold their children into slavery. That’s emphatic “defeat” in their minds. By doing the civilized thing with the Arabs surrounding Israel, I fear that all Israel has done is cement the idea in those Arabian heads that they’ve been winning, all these years.
Far more merciful and emphatic to be brutal once, finish the job, and then go back to normal lives. The half-ass Western idea of warfare by steady tit-for-tat back-and-forth escalation, carefully monitored and calibrated? That’s actually a lot less humane, over the long haul. It’s like with the Germans after WWI and WWII. In WWI, their defeat wasn’t thorough enough; they never felt defeated in their souls. So, they came up with the fairy tale about a “stab in the back”, and we got WWII. After WWII, with the entire country flattened and Allied armies standing on every inch of German soil, the point was made: They’d lost the damn war.
You’ll note which war produced the more lasting peace. So, as a pragmatic observation, in WWI? We failed to kill enough Germans. In WWII, we killed at least enough. Which is also why we didn’t achieve similar victories in Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, or Afghanistan. You want victory? Permanent, lasting peace? Than, your war needs to be at least as lethal to the enemy as WWII was to the Germans and Japanese. You don’t win these things by worrying about their feelings; that’s the chief and primary mistake of the various idiots saying we need to give Putin an off-ramp. He and the Russian people need to feel this defeat in their souls such that they cannot possibly deny it. Then, they’ll leave Ukraine alone. Until then, well… They’re just going to keep coming back for more. Allowing Putin and the Russians to “save face” is just going to lead to a continual bleeding border like the one between the Israelis and the Arabs, going on forever into the future.
In other words, you can’t just hit the bully a few times in the face. You have to make them feel it in their very soul, before they’re going to abandon that line of behavior. No reward, no mercy, no leniency.
Who do you think that “we” covers? Because pretty much everyone in the West wants the peace to be along the legal limits of Ukraine. Crimea is the only possible discussion point, because it wasn’t historically Ukrainian.
And Ukraine simply isn’t going to agree to have a massive portion of its territory stolen. No country willingly accepts that.
I suspect you live in some kind of dream state. Russia isn’t going to rebuild anything in Ukraine — Putin’s aim is to subjugate it, not build it up. Has he helped develop properly any of the other territories he has seized/destroyed, such as Chechnya, Trans-Dnestr, Abkazia? No. And he’s never going to.
@Kirk
I fear that you are delusional, Fraser Orr. You apparently think that Putin can be negotiated with, that he is a rational actor you can engage with and trust.
Men like Putin are not like your middle-class rational peers; they’re a sort of highly-functioning sociopath that simply doesn’t operate on the same ruleset that you’re used to and which you are projecting onto him.
I have often been accused, justifiably, of being delusional, so you may be right. However, I wasn’t suggesting that the negotiations be like buying car from the used car lot. It needs to have some bite, but bite does not at all need to be at the point of a nuclear weapon. To give an example, the utter incompetence and ideological idiocy of the Biden admin has taken exactly the wrong approach with, for example, sanctions. Blockading oil is the WORST thing to do, since it drives UP prices making Russia richer, not poorer. They should have fundamentally driven for new oil production to drive down the price and put them out of business. The Russian people are, generally speaking behind Putin, and that is another place where the West has failed utterly. Turning his people happens through trade and amity, not trying to drive them into the ground, and starving them. Blocking banks, blocking network connections, throwing everyone they can reach in jail. A perfect example is the oligarchs, rather than stealing their yachts, planes and football teams, they should have used the threat of that to pressure them into helping.Here There are many many levers they can pull for pressure, but they, generally speaking did the wrong thing every time.
There is a saying, if you have a Navy you are going to use it, and that is what is happening here. The idea that the USA accuses Russia of being a bully given their endless history of poking their nose in where it doesn’t belong is a joke.
The problem fundamentally is that war in Ukraine is good for the west. The idea that they are driving with every ounce or effort to bring it to an end is exactly wrong. The western governments HUGELY benefit from these wars, so why should they try to stop them?
And let me offer one final irrefutable piece of evidence that NATOs “almost intervening” strategy is wrong. Almost without exception, every politician in Washington, London, Berlin and Paris agrees that this is the right strategy. If ever there was evidence that the strategy is wrong, it is that every politician thinks it is right.
Anyway, I sound like a broken record on this. You guys have your view, and I think it is f-ing crazy, but I’m sure your view will prevail. We are definitely closer to a nuclear war than we have ever been, perhaps closer than during the Cuban missile crisis (which, BTW, was resolved with negotiation, including giving up substantial things like missile bases in Turkey.) These bilateral warmongers are going to be the death of us all.
I do not see the point of Mr Putin’s war – and my opinion is that most Russian soldiers do not see the point of it either, I may have to eat those words – but such is my opinion.
As for the Wall Street Journal and the rest of the “Controlled Opposition” in the United States (with their support for blatant election rigging, and everything else – as long as the Credit Money keeps flowing to the Corporations) they can Burn-In-Hell – but that is a different matter.
I don’t think so. As long as both sides act predictably, more or less along current lines, then we are currently in not a bad situation. The danger is in unpredictable situations, not bad ones as such.
Nuclear weapons are not as powerful as people imagine. In the end they are just big bombs. Tactical ones wouldn’t win the war in Ukraine for Putin (his army is not sufficiently equipped to deal with them) so what would he gain by launching them?
Putin has already decided to not go nuclear or he would have. NATO never were going to hit the button anyway, regardless.
The only thing now that would tip one party over, would be Ukraine invading Russia proper. Which simply is not going to happen.
We are at far more danger with China and Taiwan than Ukraine. Precisely because the Ukraine war has already started and we know its pattern.
Biden is the USA President.
Nuclear war is drastically overestimated in the public imagination. Not the least because the powers that were wanted it that way, because then they could shrug their shoulders and say to their constituents “Hey, we don’t want a nuclear war, do we…?” under provocation. Half of what the Soviet Union got up to during the Cold War would have been casus belli in other times…
I think that the next century is going to see a lot of the gloss we’ve put on nukes as these world-ending super-weapons come off. Sad, but true; the people in charge are doing everything they can to undo the non-proliferation efforts of the past, not the least of which was when they blithely slaughtered the one guy who voluntarily gave up his nuclear program, Muammar Quadafy. Epic stupidity, there.
The raw fact is, nuclear war ain’t all that it is cracked up to be. And, especially Russian-involved nuclear war. Does anyone out there fantasize that somehow the dysfunction, corruption, and utter demonstrated incompetence of the Russian military in general somehow magically doesn’t extend to its Strategic Rocket Forces?
Friend of mine was on one of the observation teams that went into Russia after the collapse of the Soviet Union. The crap he came back with… Seriously, you wouldn’t believe half of what he related, and that was the entirely unclassified stuff. The Soviets had lousy records; verification of anything was a nightmare, and when his team was working from the records they were given from the central authorities in Moscow, then went out to look at the actual missile bases? His conclusion was that most of the secrecy surrounding those installations was meant to conceal the corruption of the people running them, from the Soviet authorities and the US. The levels of bad practices he observed, especially with the then still liquid-fueled ICBM installations were unbelievable. His take on the whole thing was that at least one reliable way to tell if the Soviets were launching on us would be to keep an eye out for any massive explosions at their bases.
The other thing was that anyone that thinks the industrial practices inside the Soviet nuclear industry were any different than the ones in their other ones is nuts. The phantom production credits, the diversion of funds… All of it happened with regards to even warheads. I don’t know if you remember, but there was mass fear and panic about “lost warheads” around the time the Soviet Union fell. My informant was sanguine on the issue; he was morally certain that the supposedly “lost” weapons had never actually been built, nor had the necessary nuclear materials been manufactured. There was so much BS built into the system that even Moscow couldn’t be certain what was real and what was faked up for the inspectors, who were well known to dine like kings every time and every place they “inspected”. Not to mention all the gorgeous young women the base commanders kept on hand to otherwise engage their interests. The whole thing was mind-boggling to him, including the vicious abuse of the junior privates in the forces… Dedovschina was hardly unknown among the guards and the missile troops, hard as that may be to believe.
I don’t know what it looks like now, but I’d be willing to wager that things haven’t actually improved all that much. I’d suspect that from the spate of nuclear accidents the Russians have had, testing new weapons? Things may have even deteriorated.
Putin may launch, but we may also be treated to the spectacle of a nuclear power experiencing a bit of a fizzle, with the expected side effects of finding out that a lot more of the US weapons actually work. I doubt Putin really knows the truth, himself–After all, this war in Ukraine was predicated upon the idea that the Russian Army was actually competent. We all know how that worked out…
@Chester Draws
I don’t think so. As long as both sides act predictably, more or less along current lines, then we are currently in not a bad situation. The danger is in unpredictable situations, not bad ones as such.
You say, just as Russia is withdrawing from the START treaty. The problem is that war is extremely unpredictable. It is easy to imagine a bomb going off target and landing in Poland. In fact, I think that happened and they covered it up. Something more serious that could not be covered up where Polish citizens die… that will not go well.
Nuclear weapons are not as powerful as people imagine. In the end they are just big bombs.
I have heard this more and more. For sixty years the overton window was that nuclear war is terrible and the end of civilization. It is scary how many people are saying “huh, maybe it wouldn’t be too bad after all?” Nuclear bombs are not “just big bombs”. They blow whole cities up. They make areas uninhabitable for decades. They poison the water table. Their fallout blows thousands of miles in the wind. Enough of them could give us a real climate crisis. Additionally even regular bombs not specifically designed to do so, produce huge electromagnetic pulses that destroy all electronics and power systems within huge blast radii, meaning those who didn’t die in the explosion or from the radiation poisoning, slowly die from lack of heat, or lack of food, and they do so silently, since communication is destroyed for years. They are not just big bombs, they are civilization ending disasters. They could lead to the horrific death of half the world’s population if the fallout destroyed ten years of harvest.
Russia supposedly has a nuclear torpedo than can travel thousands of miles and is basically undetectable. It has a 100 Megaton nuclear warhead. To put that in perspective, according to this that one torpedo has 30 times the explosive power of ALL the bombs dropped in every theater in the second world war. Plus it is designed to be a dirty bomb, polluting the area for decades, and leaving those who survived the bombing in so much pain and suffering that they consider the dead the lucky ones.
So no, it is not just a big bomb. It is the apocalypse.
Putin has already decided to not go nuclear or he would have. NATO never were going to hit the button anyway, regardless.
There are many people who vehemently disagree with this assessment, even people who are pro Ukraine war. Konstantin Kisin for example. When asked if Putin would go nuclear, he matter of factly replied “of course.”
The only thing now that would tip one party over, would be Ukraine invading Russia proper. Which simply is not going to happen.
Are you sure? For example, what if Ukraine decides to recover Crimea? Russia definitely considers that part of Russia proper.
We are at far more danger with China and Taiwan than Ukraine. Precisely because the Ukraine war has already started and we know its pattern.
I don’t know if I agree with “far more danger” part, but certainly that is another area that Biden’s approach has utterly screwed up, and presents its own horrific dangers. And of course the United States if far less well equipped to deal with it because things are lingering in Eastern Europe.
That is not an end to the war, that is a two to three year ceasefire on terms advantageous to Russia.
You must be joking…
Yes, clearly you are joking. That is never going to happen as the one BIG strategic plus coming out of this for the west is the end of dependence on Russian gas forever.
You clearly know absolutely nothing about Ukraine that you haven’t got from Russia Today.
@Fraser Orr,
I fear you’ve bought a bit too deeply into the propaganda. Nuclear weapons are a bit of a Schrodinger’s Cat, in that they are and are not something simultaneously. Potentially, they’re all that you say. On the other hand, given the frictions of war and the incompetence of man, there are things which tend to militate against their actual status as bogeymen.
That weapon of Putin’s you mention? Are you aware that it’s not operational, and that the testing they were doing on it is what blew up in their faces a few years back, killing his engineers?
The problem with the whole nuclear weapons complex in every country was that it was sold to politicians by their respective military-industrial complexes as being these immensely effective 100%-will-work-as-advertised things, and the reality is quite a bit different. Nothing is as deadly as they claim it is, and the people behind all this are extremely leery of having their deceits found out.
Frankly, I’d be entirely unsurprised if the actual contents of that much-feared “nuclear football” in most nations consists of a note to the military aide carrying the damn thing ordering him to murder the national command authority and pretend the order never happened. That’d make a hell of a lot more sense for the brass than having to explain why their multi-trillion dollar wunderwaffe didn’t work…
And, yeah… It’s really about that bad. My estimate, based on what I know? Maybe 10% of the Russian weapons would launch, and some unknown percentage of that launch would actually succeed in hitting their targets, probably a small one. I’m admittedly a cynic on the issue of the reliability of these things, but that’s the way I see it. You have to figure that most of these weapons have been sitting in silos with really half-ass maintenance by some really shady characters, and they weren’t all that when they were factory-fresh, either.
I’m not even all that confident in our own set of toys, TBH. That-which-was-SAC has demonstrated some alarming deficiencies these last few decades, like losing accountability on actual nuclear gravity bombs that wound up on a completely different base due to the ineptitude of the crews loading and unloading weapons. That’s what you might term a “leading indicator” for how well they’d do at some 03:00 come-as-you-are affair, launching on the President’s orders.
They ever decide to hold a real nuclear war, what I expect is actually going to be a bit more of a mess than anything actually apocalyptic. Ya have to remember: Everything else in the way of high-tech weapons has been tested to death by actual use, and the initial forays with everything have turned up some really embarrassing glitches. I rather doubt that the first use of the strategic weapons forces are going to show anything else. Especially on the Russian’s side.
@Kirk
Potentially, they’re all that you say. On the other hand, given the frictions of war and the incompetence of man, there are things which tend to militate against their actual status as bogeymen.
Which is to say nuclear war isn’t really all that big a deal? TBH I’m not sure what to say to such an ominously frightening viewpoint. But as I said before that does seem to be more and more the view of US military planners. So, even if your view is terrifying, it is at least becoming more mainstream.
@Fraser Orr,
It makes not one whit of difference how you perceive these things. Or, how anyone else does, really. You can be frightened of reality, and fail to cope with it, or you can view it dispassionately and make rational decisions. Your choice.
Your response seems to intimate that you think I’m author of these things, that I support them and agree with them. I do not; I merely report that which I see in cold and rational terms. It is, in my opinion, a truth that the fools who’ve blithely done all they can to abrogate the principles of non-proliferation like the vaunted Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have ensured that it is highly likely that the bombs are going to be flying before the turn of the next century. Just like George Bush’s decisions after 9/11 eroded the rules of Westphalian world where nation-states were the sole parties responsible for inter-state violence. His de facto acquiescence to the idea that a pair of nation-states could escape paying the price for creating and enabling a third-party non-state actor and attack a superpower? Sheerest idiocy.
All I do is observe and report what I see. If the things I say frighten you? That says rather more about you and your view of the world than anything else. I’m mostly just outraged at the sheer feckless stupidity of it all, on all sides. Most of these things are avoidable; there’s no possible justification for Russia to be sending its young men to die forcing Russian ‘culture’ and obedience to Moscow onto Ukraine. The question about whether or not Ukraine wanted to be a part of Russky Mir was already asked and answered, back in the early 1990s. That should have been enough. All else is folly.
I was at Fort Meade a bit ago, and sat in a bar with a nicely liquored pile of weenies who know how to find Russia on a map.
Putin’s trigger finger: fart in a windstorm, or something to take seriously, I asked them.
Turns out, if things start looking dicey, they’re all looking to grab spouses and jump in cars and head straight into DC.
“Safer there?”, I asked. Nope. Quicker death, ‘cuz nobody who knows anything would really want to survive what’s to come.
They must be lying, or something. They all speak great Russian.
@Kirk
It makes not one whit of difference how you perceive these things.
I appreciate your input, and perhaps you think I am a frightened little girl hiding in the corner. Heck yeah, I am indeed scared of a nuclear exchange. But honestly, and with all due respect (and, to be clear, I certainly think you are very smart and insightful, so “due respect” is meant with sincerity) I think you are part of the problem. When your commentary diminishes the severity of nuclear war you give cover to the warmongering nutjobs who talk about winnable nuclear holocaust. Of course you aren’t a big part of the problem, in fact I have always found you a very sensible and knowledgeable commentator. But the ground on which this Ukraine war is built is this insane game of chicken and unless the consequences are clearly articulated, nay, yelled from the rooftops, this big dick measuring contest will lead to very bad places. And it seems to me that sensible people should be saying “stop this nonsense, I’d like my children to have a future.” And perhaps destruction is, as you suggest, inevitable. But even so, surely we should use our last breath before the missiles fall to make one last call for sanity?
They need to negotiate a settlement, but they won’t. The biggest lie is that the western governments want a resolution, are trying hard to bring the war to an end. This war is HUGELY beneficial to the worst types in government. It is in fact the perfect war — all the usual political benefits of war with no dead American soldiers giving them bad press on the TV. Though they do miss out on the tearful, hand on heart news coverage of flag draped coffins, with somber calls that they didn’t die in vain. Swings and roundabouts I guess. If we don’t call them out they’ll keep doing this till they kill us all.
@Fraser Orr,
The point I’m trying to make is that there’s not really a hell of a lot to be gained by reacting from a position of fearfulness. “Oh, dear… The Russians might try to nuke us, therefore we must let them do as they like…” is not any more of a winning formula for your kids, in the long run, than “Nuke ’em from orbit ’til they glow…”
Nuclear blackmail has enabled a whole lot of outright evil. Acquiescing to it is no virtue; all it does is delay the moment when the confrontation has to come.
I understand where you’re coming from, and it gives me no joy to say the things I do. I wish a pox upon all their varied and sundry houses, but the problem is that there really is no good answer to human folly. They’re going to do what they’re going to do, and about all you can do is dodge the elephant’s feet while they dance. I don’t like it, but it does no good whatsoever to deny the fact that the elephants are likely going to be dancing.
We all ought to be paying rather better attention to the idjits we elect, and what they’re getting up to. I still don’t know what the hell the Obama crew was thinking when they did what they did in the Ukraine; Victoria Nuland strikes me as a worthy person for investigation and censure.
However, now that we’re here, where we are, and things are eventuating as they are? The only real answer is to help Ukraine be the rock that Russian ambition fails upon.
@ Perry de Havilland (London)
You do want the most smashed up cities to be rebuilt and for Russia to pay for that, presumably? To be fair it does sound like you’re indifferent to people with dual identities which have been battered over the last 6 years.
But if my presumption is right, how do you suggest getting Russia to pay?
Btw, Russia Today has been banned in my jurisdiction for the last 11 months, and in any event has not informed my views. The elected deputies of the south and eastern regions of Ukraine who opposed the minority language discrimination of Kyiv has informed them somewhat.