The world's largest military is prepared to neutralize all nuclear threats as soon as the first bomb goes off. It's not hyperbole to suggest that much of the western Russian military infrastructure (Army, Navy and AF) would be eliminated within days. Remember, NATO is only giving UA the small weapons and Russia can't even defend against those.
Yours reads like a comment that even the NATO propaganda department would be too embarrassed to attach their name to.
In a nuclear conflict between the US and Russia, Europe would be wiped out. UK, France, Germany, Italy and other countries hosting nuclear weapons will be certainly annihilated. Poland, the Baltics, Finland, Romania, etc will probably be nuked out of spite and whatever’s left will wither under a radioactive cloud.
Even the US “win” means being hit by hundreds of nuclear weapons. Those claiming that nuclear war can be won are just suicidal in a very contorted way.
> The world's largest military is prepared to neutralize all nuclear threats as soon as the first bomb goes off.
So in other words, you are rooting for WWIII to start.
Does anyone seriously think that NATO would be able to completely neutralize Russia's nuclear capability before they get a single ICBM launched?
Warmongers in the Pentagon have been trying to start a "winnable" nuclear war since the 1960s.
Perhaps we can minimize casualties to only a few tens of millions on our side, if we are lucky.
London, New York and Paris have multiple ballistic missiles aimed at them from different sites (that we even know about). Are you so confident that every single missile could be intercepted? Is Ukraine worth the risk?
Russia has been preparing for this for a very long time. Even if we shoot down every one of their bombers and nuke every one of their silos, they have a fleet of nuclear submarines waiting to destroy our population centers. Only a complete psychopath would continue to escalate things at this point.
> Russia has been preparing for this for a very long time.
We've all seen the "mighty" Russian military at this point and how pathetic it truly is. It's so gutted at this point it's sending old men to the frontlines as cannon fodder for the impending military defeat.
A last ditch effort to scare the world with a nuclear weapon would bring much of the western world into its borders to dismantle whatever military and industrial capability it has left. Any nuclear subs would be hunted by superior Navies to a watery grave.
There would be no WWIII. It would be the end of the Russian empire and all of the Russian oligarchs would carve up the remnants (Prigozhin, Kadyrov, etc).
ps- the oligarchs are likely to do it anyway, but they prefer to get the spoils before the West destroys the infrastructure.
> Any nuclear subs would be hunted by superior Navies to a watery grave.
That is a fantasy. Even if we knew exactly where all of the subs were, we could never hope to destroy every single one before any of them fires off its payload.
And why would the crews of these subs willingly go to a watery grave without launching their nukes, especially if they were backed into a corner.
Do you understand that tens of millions of civilians could die if a single submarine fired missile is launched?
urban combat is not working for them. but their rockets are working. just you can't conquer using rockets. you need to go door to door in a prolonged war
russians burned down couple of houses and villages around Belgorod while using S-300 for destroying civilian ground targets in Kharkiv. They have tank companies with some tanks unable to reload or turn the turret. Plenty of recordings from BTRs with jammed turrets/guns. Just a couple of days ago some russian soldier uploaded a video of them shooting rpg-7s without removing shaped charge safety pins. Recruits receiving rusted thru AK47 is a classic.
Consensus is their soviet era weapons are falling apart, and on top of that they dont know how to use them.
... against soft targets, which just add to the list of war crimes. Shoigu et al. will spend the rest of their days behind bars should the West nab them before they fall out of windows.
Ukraine isn't what's at stake here. Give in to Russia, and local conflicts will flare up all over the world, Russia escalating to Nuclear would definitely lead to WW3 one way or another, but I'd sure prefer it being World VS Russia instead of free for all that giving in to Russian agression will spark.
First of all, it’s not Russia vs. the World, it’s Russia vs. NATO. India has literally said that Europe’s problems are not the world’s problems, China has been officially declared as an enemy of NATO. Africa has not forgotten the suffering at the hands of their former colonial masters. South America still remembers the coups they went through.
The only other countries in the world aligned with NATO are Australia, Japan and South Korea.
Secondly, conflicts are flaring around Russia because it’s weakened. This is a repeat of what happened after the fall of the USSR, with civil wars exploding in former satellites.
Thirdly, Ukraine is what’s at stake here. But NATO joined the war and now NATO’s reputation or whatever’s left of it is also at stake by own choice.
why would an outcome in this conflict have a deciding factor in other conflicts that would be predicated on their own set of issues and would involve different kinds of people of different abilities with different agendas? This looks like an unneccessary generalization, as there's no way to tell if the same conflicts wouldn't flare up if Russia were peaceful.
It already happened: Budapest memorandum wasn't held, in the long run countries around the globe will seek to get nukes because only nuclear deterrence will work against a stronger attacker. If you allow one to blackmail others to get territories you are opening Pandoras box and others will repeat it if it shows to be a successful strategy.
That is nonsense.
When the US attacks other sovereign nations than it's a freedom fight that can't be televised, when someone else does it it's an evil act of aggression.
Yes, it's very tiring. If you're an American, use your vote to demand answers from leaders. If you live in a democracy, reach your politicians, bring the issue on the international level. If you're not in a democracy, work towards the ability to influence the better behavior - that is, work towards democracy.
> If you live in a democracy, reach your politicians, bring the issue on the international level
So, has that ever worked? The US for example still has a law to invade Netherlands if even one of its military criminals is caught and brought to Hague to stand trial.
I am implying that countries with capable military that present themselves as "democratic" don't seem to fare substantially better in this matter.
In fact, the things that are considered ok for them to do are some of the worst examples.
Did democracy help Assange after he had uncovered the evidence of US' warcrimes? Were Bush era "no one will dare to hold the US accountable" laws repelled?
IMO, all it did is helped people "vent out" and "voice concerns" without any real and meaningful change in politics. This all lead us to a point where we see people profiting from war and taking a hypocritical moral high-ground at the same time.
Which in turn leads to that most outside observers don't even take "democratic" states seriously anymore in that matter.
I don't read their comment as rooting for anything like WWIII: simply stating a fact that an action as stupid as using nukes there will have military consequences from the West.
> I don't read their comment as rooting for anything like WWIII: simply stating a fact that an action as stupid as using nukes there will have military consequences from the West.
So, a nuclear war would be the consequence of NATO nuking Russia as a consequence of Russia nuking Ukraine.
How do you read NATO "neutralizing" all nuclear threats, other than a direct attack on Russian nuclear assets? A direct attack on Russian nuclear assets will start WWIII.
Unless NATO can neutralize every single Russian nuclear sub all over the world all at once, then how can we prevent Russia from firing nuclear weapons at our cities, or at least our military assets?
Russia has more advanced hyper-sonic missiles than NATO, and they have already used them with conventional warheads in Ukraine. We don't even have the capacity to effectively track Russian hyper-sonic missiles. Russia has a clear advantage with nuclear first strikes. And it is profoundly stupid and irresponsible for NATO to risk those consequences.
> So, a nuclear war would be the consequence of NATO nuking Russia as a consequence of Russia nuking Ukraine.
No, NATO won't nuke Russia. The brilliance of the situtation is that Russia is so broken NATO can neutralize it using only conventional weaponry.
Russia will still claim it has to use nukes, as it's "too dangerous to the state existence itself". They won't have means, but more importantly, they won't have the will.
Of course this is all not clear nor guaranteed. That's the nature of a serious war. But we have what we have, and surely attempting to make the best steps possible.
> No, NATO won't nuke Russia. The brilliance of the situtation is that Russia is so broken NATO can neutralize it using only conventional weaponry.
First of all, it does not matter to Russia if NATO uses nuclear weapons or not. If Russia is on the verge of total defeat in their own country, they will use nuclear weapons on us. They have no reason not to, and they have said that they would. So they will.
How exactly is NATO going to use conventional weapons to neutralize nuclear launch facilities buried deep under mountains and in remote parts of Siberia?
What are we going to do if a single ICBM is launched? We do not have any effective defenses against even a 1960s style ICBM, much less Russia's hypersonic ICBMs. They can be launched from anywhere on the planet, and Russia has many of them.
What if we assume that only 1/10th of them are in working order. Or even 1/1000. Many of them would still get through.
> Of course this is all not clear nor guaranteed. That's the nature of a serious war. But we have what we have, and surely attempting to make the best steps possible.
We have no right to risk hundreds of millions of lives. This was a debate that was already had in the 1960s, and thankfully people like you did not get their way.
The millions of people who risk nuclear incineration are not acceptable losses. Any leader who would casually put us in harms way like that has no business making decisions at all.
You should educate yourself about concepts like mutually assured destruction, and the nuclear triad.
You're right in many points, but not quite right in general. You should take into account not only theoretical aspects, but also the specifics of the moment, for example, the values of those in power in Russia today.
The risks are there, but they are not certainties. Neither can the West totally eliminate them - technically Russia was able to wreak havoc for many years. Yet that doesn't mean the resistance is futile, does it?
In other words, the doormat strategy. We already tried it with Crimea, it doesn’t work. Do you think Putin would be content with half of Ukraine? Will you keep groveling as he takes more and more?
Arming and training Ukraine and including them in NATO all but in name is being a doormat?
What about santioning Europe for its own protection to deter NordStream 2?
And what about the sanctions against Russia?
This appeasement meme is tiresome. One forced a country to give up territory, the others did everything except open warfare all in the name of a country which is neither in the EU nor NATO.
Awww, it's so cute when western folk think that they behave politically flexible and benevolent.
Wake up, you people bring up this rhetoric on each collision with someone "inferior".
South America, Africa, Central and Eastern Asia, even parts of Eastern Europe - isn't it kind suspicious that most of the world the same kind of tensions with the western US-centric world and has some strong opinions on your politics.
> Do you think Putin would be content with half of Ukraine?
I wonder if you are even aware that Russia had been pushing for new security agreements before the war and after Trump had dissolved the IRNFT treaty.
Oh I’m sure Putin pinky promised it was all just for security and he would go no further. If you fall for that crap, that’s the doormat strategy.
There is a line and to the right of the line Putin gets to have his way, and to the left he does not. That’s the border and if Putin remains behind his border he has nothing to fear. He has not been attacked, he has attacked.
Every Russian who can afford it prefers to spend as much time as possible in the west they paint as so decadent. It should be clear that whatever the rhetoric the Russians yearn for the freedom of the west and that’s dangerous for a dictator like Putin. But that is not to blame on the west, that is to blame on Putins dictatorship and is for him to deal with. Inside his borders.
If he wants a neutral zone between his territory and the west, he’s free to build it inside his borders. It’s ridiculous to think he gets to claim a sovereign nation for his own political plays.
And at the end of the line, countries are sovereign in their own borders which are defined as the part they can successfully defend. It’s pretty clear Russia has overextended its reach and now that its bluff has been called it should be happy if its tiresome nuclear threats suffice for keeping its borders as they were before they took Crimea. Perhaps if he comes to his senses quickly the west will even let Putin remain on his throne. Until he gets deposed by his own people, of course.
Sorry, you've lost me at me your assumptions on how Russians tend to spend their vacations. I don't see how that it is related to war-game and security.
It’s pretty clear you don’t see it indeed. All you see is the picture painted in Russian propaganda, where everything is to blame on the arrogant west underestimating Putin and his determination to restore the Russian empire of old.
Good luck with that. I hope you don’t get drafted to die at the front as untrained cannon fodder.
You've thrown out a wall of incoherent ideological nonsense, implying that supposed vacation preferences of Russians is somehow a counterpoint to the criticism and objective examples of failures of western foreign politics.
With all your projections and just how wild your imagination had started running to make up what you suppose is my perspective, I'd suggest you bite your tongue before screaming of propaganda.
Gee, I thought I had lost you, as you said yourself, but it appears you were just making grandstanding dismissive motions.
The only failure of the west is trusting Putin would be content only taking Crimea. The failure of Putin appears expecting the west to make that mistake once more with Ukraine, as you propose. Unfortunately the west has united, Finland is joining NATO, Europes dependency on Russian energy is disappearing and the war is a failure.
But good luck supporting your dictators neo imperialist dreams!
Putin has one leg in the grave - won't survive long without power, and power doesn't stay for long in many places, Russia included, with those who loses a military campaign, especially against a country perceived less capable. And Putin loses war to Ukraine alright.
With Crimea the West essentially took things as they were, not wanting to change status quo which was set so abruptly. Ukraine proved it can resist - enough to start getting western help, so the situation is different now. Taiwan take notice.
> London, New York and Paris have multiple ballistic missiles aimed at them from different sites (that we even know about). Are you so confident that every single missile could be intercepted? Is Ukraine worth the risk?
If the world lets Russia get away with using a nuke with no serious repercussions it will likely lead to a serious increase in nuclear proliferation and destabilise the world.
Because if Russia can nuke Ukraine with no consequences why can’t other nuclear powers?
Because of this the best and most stabilising thing that can happen if Russia uses a nuke is a devastating and overwhelming response that shows the world what happens if you nuke another country.
It's a bit too late for that, there is already a precedent set.
> Because of this the best and most stabilising thing that can happen if Russia uses a nuke is a devastating and overwhelming response that shows the world what happens if you nuke another country.
Specifically what, lol? How can an "devastating and overwhelming response" on a nuclear state be anything near "the best and most stabilising thing"?
It is as if you imagine that Russia would just sit there and do nothing as you devastate and "overwhelm" it. Srsly?
It weirds me out how some people are still so hard on "watchagonnado" politics, despite everything that had happened last half a year.
Did everyone already forget all that previous "wathcagonnado", that had now escalated to hundreds of thousands casualties, millions refugees and almost total leveling of half of Ukraine?
> Specifically what, lol? How can an "devastating and overwhelming response" on a nuclear state be anything near "the best and most stabilising thing"?
NATO is more then capable of collapsing the entirety of Russia with conventional weapons but they won’t do that.
My guess is that you will see something like the entirety of the Black Sea fleet sunk or a bunch of air bases wiped off the face of the earth.
Or something like Russian positions in Ukraine being devastated by the west.
I don’t think you’ll see much of a strike against Russia proper unless the attack comes from there.
> It is as if you imagine that Russia would just sit there and do nothing as you devastate and "overwhelm" it. Srsly?
Russia cannot even protect its soldiers and fleet in Ukraine from the Ukrainian navy and airforce in what way will Russia protect themselves from the much more technologically advanced NATO?.
> It weirds me out how some people are still so hard on "watchagonnado" politics, despite everything that had happened last half a year.
> Did everyone already forget all that previous "wathcagonnado", that had now escalated to hundreds of thousands casualties, millions refugees and almost total leveling of half of Ukraine?
The only thing that got us where we are now is the colonial expansionist goals of Russia.
If Russia wants to escalate to unprecedented levels that haven’t been scene for 70 years then they need to expect to have a retaliation against them.
Firstly I'd suggest you stop using big words you don't fully understand if you want to have a meaningful discourse.
Otherwise it just feels like you are using random words with negative connotations just to sound impressive.
Spoiler: you don't, you sound like Putin when he starts talking of genocide of Russians in Ukraine. Ridiculous at best, disrespectful to victims of real genocides in general.
But for the sake of making this easy I’ll also quote it.
> In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:
> a. Killing members of the group;
> b. Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
> c. Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
> d. Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
> e. Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.
We will focus on point e.
Below is an article where the Russian childrens ombudsman brags about how they have forcefully relocated children from Ukraine and changed their views.
“The Commission has documented cases in which children have been raped, tortured, and unlawfully confined. Children have also been killed and injured in indiscriminate attacks with explosive weapons. The exposure to repeated explosions, crimes, forced displacement and separation from family members deeply affected their well-being and mental health.“.
> Otherwise it just feels like you are using random words with negative connotations just to sound impressive.
I’d suggest you educate yourself on the definitions you argue about, because it is clear you don’t know what they actually are.
> Spoiler: you don't, you sound like Putin when he starts talking of genocide of Russians in Ukraine. Ridiculous at best, disrespectful to victims of real genocides in general.
You sound like someone trying to excuse war crimes and genocide in Ukraine.
> But for the sake of making this easy I’ll also quote it.
Uh-uh, you forgot to quote the most important part where the specific meaning of these points are explained. I.e.:
> Importantly, the victims of genocide are deliberately targeted - not randomly – because of their real or perceived membership of one of the four groups protected under the Convention (which excludes political groups, for example). This means that the target of destruction must be the group, as such, and not its members as individuals.
Good luck finding distinction between Ukrainians, Hungarians, Polish and Russians, each group represented in modern Ukraine.
Sure, better leave them to a random death in a warzone.
Thank you for being transparent about your values.
And just out of curiosity, do you label each child refugee evacuation programme (i.e. US moving children from Iraq and Afghanistan for adoption) as genocide, or are you just being an ideological hypocrite? ;)
The current sanctions and weapons have nothing to do with nukes, the west can go much harder on both if they wanted.
If you thinking Russia using a nuke wouldn’t cause there country to collapse internally due to the response your kidding yourself.
Russia has been threatening nukes for 8 months now and people have repeatedly crossed whatever line Russia drew in the sand.
That’s because Russia doesn’t want to nuke anyone cause they know the response will be devastating, what Russia wants to do is threaten nukes to get there way.
So you are blaming "warmongers in the Pentagon" for Russia theoretically dropping the first nuke? Wouldn't warmongers in the Kremlin be the responsible party?
This sounds familiar. Chamberlain's appeasement to tyranny.
Giving Putin what he asks for would kick the can down the road for couple years, too. Meanwhile, a genocidal antagonistic ideological social group, this Russian regime, will gladly spend the time preparing for more war. Putin's speech is a demand for a ceasefire in exchange for annexation. It's illegal on the face of it, aside from being unethical to agree to it.
There is no trusting the Russian regime, at all. No peace treaty with Russia is trustworthy. They are already signatories to agreements saying they would not do the very goddamn thing they are doing right now.
>London, New York and Paris have multiple ballistic missiles aimed at them from different sites (that we even know about)
We know this how? We can't verify it either way, but I think it would be appropriate and useful for Xi and Mobi to ask if Russia is abiding by at least this prior agreement, given the proclivity to disregard their other more important agreements.
It is not only Ukraine that is at stake here. Putin will not stop at Ukraine if we give in. Next he will try with a NATO member (e.g. Baltic countries), if we repeat the same fear about ww3 and nuclear war, it is the same situation as of now (except that Russia is stronger with Ukraine occupation).
Since when do nukes target "population" and since when is it a success metrics of a nuclear strike?
Nukes target industrial and economic centers. Both NATO and Russia have enough nukes for at least 1% to bypass missile defense end ensure mutual industrial and economic collapse.
Most of the global population would likely survive, it's just that there won't be any NATO or Russia anymore, just random tribes of survivors.
Which 5% of NATO's protectorate population do you consider an acceptable loss? Will losing the London or New York metro area be worth it? That is probably still <5% the population.
Maybe we can be ok with just having Lisbon or Munich or Lion incinerated instead?
Would the mirror image of U.S.'s Curtis LeMay in Russia choose to bomb to the West or East of the dividing line in the mind of James Baker when Michael Gorbachev's Soviet Union came to an historic end? And? France takes revenge...
Holy cow. Wow. This image really opened my eyes to the design world. I’m just personally wondering whatever happened with “an eye for design” and intuition.
It’s not just about AlbinoBlacksheep and NewGrounds. Flash was the most consequential technology on the web’s frontend prior to and even after html5. It was enabled on a staggering 98% of web browsers. So much so it was basically synonymous with web browsing. You can trace the trail of flash to the invention and adoption of social media. There would be no MySpace, no YouTube and Meebo. The internet would have had a completely different story.
It’s an odd thing but the way I work on projects is I acquire a high quality domain name upfront and then work on whatever the domain name is. The interestingness of the domain focuses me to produce quality work so as to live up to the domain name. I can’t do this with every domain I own but I’ve done this with more then a handful.
This. When an extension is installed the privacy sandbox is removed. Google manually audits each extensions code and looks out for bad behavior. You cannot call out to external scripts or use mangled source code.
> It's a decentralized future of autonomous, interoperable communities with their own infrastructure who have power over what they choose to be and what happens to what they are and have.
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/it-will-be-mostly-a-white-...
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2022/sep/17/tech-silico...