Ok, let's run with that.

The US strikes some targets in the middle of nowhere, neither side wants to escalate further, then the argument ends.

Is this a good outcome for Finland?

Finland made a critically short-sighted error when it jumped on the NATO bandwagon right as US power is waning. Not only is the US in no position to actually protect Finland in the case of a conflict, but Finland is actually ensuring it is first in line to suffer the consequences when the US pulls the plug on Europe with the intention of disabling it as a rival for the foreseeable future. — Tzeentch

I've put the question to many Finns:

"Ok, imagine tensions rise, whatever it is, and Russia nukes Finland (military bases and so on) as a precautionary measure.

"Do you actually believe the US is going to nuke Russia in response?"

Answer: blank stare.

Turns out that people simultaneously believe that Russia won't nuke them because they'd be nuked by the United States in turn as well as the United States won't actually nuke Russia in turn because, true, there's no reason for the United States to do that and risk its own cities getting nuked.

Now, I'm not saying this is super high probability, hopefully tensions don't ever escalate that far, but it is higher probability than Russia nuking Finland when it's not in Nato and likewise higher probability than being attacked by Russia conventionally to steal our trees or something.

I have not encountered a single counter-argument to the likelihood of joining NATO simply increasing tensions in itself (making some nuke play more likely) and the most likely outcome of a nuclear exchange is Finland (and I think likely only Finland) getting nuked.

Because once Russia nukes Finland to demonstrate it's serious about whatever the tension is about, and then the US does not nuke Russia in response, the argument is over.

Hopefully it doesn't happen, but I can see zero situation, as you note, where the US actually protects Finland in any concrete way.

Russia demonstrating it can nuke a NATO member without causing a strategic exchange, because that's not rational for the US to do, is far more likely than Russia nuking a neutral country.

↪boethius, you missed the point (again), or skirted or whatever. Regardless of Kremlin CIA Mossad Sri Lanka whatever, this is what the Ukrainians wanted (again):

Protesters opposed what they saw as widespread government corruption and abuse of power, the influence of oligarchs, police brutality, and human rights violations.(29)(30) Repressive anti-protest laws fuelled further anger.(29)
— Revolution of Dignity (Wikipedia)

(you're free to work backward from the facts, but no matter)
And there still was/is no independence in the grabbed regions.
So, to what end? — jorndoe

I am talking about who controls the territory.

Ukraine lost control of the territory, regardless of what legal or moral arguments you want to make about it, Ukraine lost control of the "grabbed regions" if you want to call them that.

Ukraine had and has no way of getting them back by military force and trying to do so would super very likely trigger a Russian invasion (plenty experts predicted this).

If your point is just "well I don't like it, phoooey", ok, yeah, sure, I have no trouble believing you don't like it.

You can make as many moral and legal arguments as you want, believe Russia is as bad as you want, doesn't change the fact Ukraine lost control of territories in question in 2014 and their attempt to reconquer them was met with a Russian invasion (predictably).

And the facts now are that Ukraine is very severely damaged and has lost even more territory.

I can see literally not a single fact of factor supporting the strategy of trying to impose Ukraine's will on Russia by force.

It has not worked, and will continue not to work.

First, as already argued elsewhere, I don't find the double standard accusation particularly compelling in geopolitics because indeed double standard reasoning can very much be part of the game: namely, depending on the circumstances, one may STILL feel rationally compelled to support an ally who is wrong, precisely because he is an ally, than an enemy who is right, precisely because he is an enemy. — neomac

First, I have not forgotten your long post explaining this pick-a-hegemon position, which at least strives to resolve surface level contradictions. I will get to it when I have time.

But, in short, you are describing realpolitik and the justification for supporting the ally in the wrong is going to be ultimately a consequentialist argument that not-doing-so would lead to some worse outcome (losing a war to some fascist state, for example).

I do not mind this realpolitik approach, it is essentially my basic argument in this debate just I have different realpolitik conclusions:

1. That Ukraine very likely cannot win militarily.
2. That the war very likely strengthens, rather than weakens, Russia.
3. That most of the rest of the world is sympathetic to Russia and don't give much of a crap what we Westerners think (most of the rest of the world is authoritarian, anti-gay, anti-trans, and have a long memory vis-a-vis Western colonialism and CIA interference); Russia is "standing up to the West" in this alternative view point.
4. That the war greatly harms the European economy and makes it structurally less competitive over the long term significantly decreasing Western leverage in general (and most ceding it to China).
5. That creating a global economic schism in which Russia is pioneering a totally different economic framework structurally decreases Western leverage over the long term.

So the war isn't good neither for Ukraine nor the West, and the idea that Ukraine is harming Russia is a dangerous myth.

Of the objectives the US achieves:

1. Destroying the EU as a competition to the Dollar.
2. Selling LNG to Europe.
3. Fully subordinating the (current) European political class.
4. Making mad bank in arms exports.

Are terrible for Europe (and I'm European) and I would also caution that they are in the "careful what you wish for" category even for the United States.

As the RAND documents makes clear, escalating military conflict between Russia and Ukraine would likely result in Russia winning any such escalation and would significantly harm US prestige and strategic position if Russia were to win.

So, if Ukraine could win and Russia was actually an enemy (which I don't buy that it was) then there would be at least the realpolitik case for supporting Ukraine, even if it would be a double standard vis-a-vis plenty other causes as or more just.

Second, as far as I'm concerned, the Cuban Missile crisis serves better pro-US propaganda then pro-Russian propaganda: indeed, in the Cuban Missile crisis we are talking about an ACTUAL case of medium-range and intermediate-range ballistic nuclear missiles on site [1] — neomac

As I already responded to @Jabberwock, my question is to imagine the situation analogous, it would follow that your position is the same if the situation was analogous.

That there would not only be no crisis but the US would not react at all to such insignificant ABM bases (with radars, missile and missile tubes and connected to Soviet logistics) on Cuba.

It's a simple question: had the Soviets some analogous ABM system to Cuba, the US would not (or at least should not have) reacted in anyway because such ABM bases are insignificant?

No, you need to resort to use words like 'dramatically' (and half a page pseudo-philosophical ramblings), because you do not know the basic facts of the things you discuss and when faced with that you have to resort to inane rhetorics. When asked about specifics, you flatly refuse to engage with facts, because you abhor the facts, you do not even look at the map. — Jabberwock

The person resorting the drama is the person screaming "DRAMATICALLY"!

What facts are you even talking about? That the US doesn't have a weapon right this moment with publicly available specifications that literally says "for nuclear deployment in ABM tubes"?

I literally posted a video showing how to take a warhead out of a nuclear bomb.

What are the salient facts:

1. Obviously you can load a nuclear warhead into an ABM missile tube or then just an ABM missile itself. (After denying this was possible, you finally accepted it was possible but not "easy" and could not be done covertly. When I ask you why it being easy or hard matters to someone setting up a first strike, and also why it couldn't be done covertly ... nada, no specifics, just random denials based on nothing.)

2. The ABM treaty (which the US withdrew from) was negotiated because ABM is first strike capability, arguably anywhere but for sure in forward deployed missile bases.

3. The bases we're talking thus represent an increasing nuclear first strike capability and the Russians would make the same analysis and same conclusion and take mitigatory measures. Perhaps they view the risk as low and the only mitigatory measure they saw reasonable to take was simply diplomatically complain about it (to for example setup taking stronger measures if more bases are forward deployed) or then maybe it was one factor in the decision to invade Ukraine.

What facts have I not engaged with?

Lol, you do it again... The Cuban missile crisis was about land-launched ballistic missilies which had SIX TIMES (some argue more) the range of any ship-borne missiles that Russians could realistically deploy in 1962. For those map-averse: a regular-service Russian submarine anchored right at the Statue of Liberty equipped with R-13 could penetrate the American continent to about Pennsylvania. R-14s launched from Cuba could reach California. Admittedly, Russians had one submarine, K-19, which in 1961 was equipped with three R-13s (with the range doubled, but still three times shorter than land-based missiles), but it was only one unit and prone to failures (or, rather disasters: in 1961 and later twenty sailors died of radation, the boat was nicknamed 'Hiroshima').

So yes, at that time the land-based launchers did provide an enormous advantage over the ship-borne ones, which you would be aware of, if you had the slighest idea of the things you insist on talking about. — Jabberwock

I asked if the US would not have reacted if the Russians deployed ABM.

For example, feel free to try to explain how if the Cuban missile crisis was about Soviets moving ABM into Cuba, the US would be like "insignificant, we cool with it, soviets already have ships". — boethius

You can't even read correctly.

My question is, make the Cuban missile crisis of similar nature to the US bases in East-Europe. So whatever analogue of ABM missiles you want to imagine being deployed to Cuba.

For your whole "it's insignificant!" argument to work, obviously you have to hold that same argument if things were reversed.

Would US just go ahead and ignore the ABM missiles in Cuba and not do anything?

Your answer should be "yes, of course, if the Soviets did some analogous thing of a land based ABM missile system in Cuba, then that would have been insignificant and the US, being a more reasonable nation, would not have taken any measures whatsoever".

Since you basically can't read and you'll just answer again that it wasn't the same situation, my question is imagine it is a comparable situation: ABM missile bases increasing the Soviets ABM capability to the same extent these bases in Eastern-Europe increase US ABM capability?

Go with your 1000 to 1 ratio if you want, as that's your position, from there you should have no problem concluding that if the Soviets had done a similar thing it would not have provoked a reaction from the US as the bases would be insignificant.

If you're unable to say that, it's because you don't even believe yourself in your position, it's just a lie.

Of all the hilarious of your backtracks this is the best one... You claim that you did not use 'the word'... When I have pointed out that yes, actually you did use the exact same word, you claim that the same word in all caps is not the same word? Seriously, can you get more absurd? Oh, yes, you can: you then argue that your use of the word 'dramatically' was less dramatic — Jabberwock

Capitalization is part of the spelling of a word.

"DRAMATICALLY" is not how you spell properly, and just shouting because you have zero points.

If you accuse me of using the word "DRAMATICALLY", you should be able to site where I use the word "DRAMATICALLY".

Or then add the caveat of "of course not all caps because you're not a moron and need to resort to all capitalization".

But go ahead, both of you, explain again how the bases are zero significance; that a missile base and a missile ship is not dramatically more missiles than just a ship.

It's just dumb.

For example, feel free to try to explain how if the Cuban missile crisis was about Soviets moving ABM into Cuba, the US would be like "insignificant, we cool with it, soviets already have ships".

It's honestly incredible how deeply people believe the double standard delusions of American foreign policy analysis.

↪boethius, yes yes, I know, everyone should hate the US...and blame...at least suspect...always. Well, I've been asking "To what end" in contexts like this, and here's what they wanted (again): — jorndoe

Exactly, when the US interferes covertly in other countries it's ok because it's "for good".

Why we should suspect US intentions is that US officials have zero problem continuously stating basically every policy is for "US national interests" and whenever that conflicts with human rights: "Get real! US national interests!!"

However, for the purpose of this point of discussion, "legitimate governments" simply means control of territory over a long enough term regardless of how they come into existence.

There was and is no such independence, remember? :D Rather, regions were grabbed by the (regressing) Kremlin empire after their campaigns. (odd how these ↑ comments keep skirting other stuff, oh well) — jorndoe

The fact is US covertly interferes all over the place and governments change.

When that happens we point to the people in the country in question who wanted the change to legitimize it and recognize the new government and everything is totally fine and of course the West is going to support the people we like.

There's plenty of evidence a large amount of people in these Russian speaking regions did not like the CIA backed coup to change the government in 2014.

The exact same reasons used to legitimize the coup in Kiev can be used to legitimize the secessions from Ukraine in the South.

Russia was involved in the sessions exactly the same way the US was involved in the coup in Kiev (just way less sloppy as there isn't recorded phone calls with whoever Nuland's counterpart in Russia would be talking about hand picking the new governments).

And you can split hairs about the legitimacy was "really actually legitimate" in one case and not in the other, because Girkin!!!, so feel free to do so.

However, if you look at the history of governance changes the US, Europe, the world in general, accepts as legitimate, there's no standards. The only thing that matters in the end is control of the territory long enough (that's what governance is; do we like the Taliban all of a sudden? No. But they control the territory for long enough so they are now the legitimate government). Controlling territory includes diplomatic relations to get support.

So, the regions become independent and control the territory, there's not any other standard of legitimacy that can be employed that I view as particularly meaningful.

Not that control of the territory implies any sort of moral right. We still don't like the Taliban.

Rather, once control of a territory is established it becomes a consequentialist question of whether trying to change that from the exterior is sensible. Plenty of governments that have no moral claim to their rule, but we don't go toppling them because it does more harm than good or is unlikely to succeed.

Once Ukraine lost control of the territories the relevant moral question is not a moral evaluation of the new governments there or how the control was lost, but what's the consequence of trying to retake the territory. If there was a consequentialist case (not an abstract or hypothetical or wishful thinking case, but nitty-gritty real world case) that the territories could be retaken and result in a better situation for the inhabitants and everyone else (such as men forced to fight and sacrifice) that is the only justification.

For example, plenty of countries just fell to the Nazis without much a fight (Belgium, France, Denmark, Norway etc.) and literally no one makes the case that because the Nazi's were bad those countries should have fought harder or fought to the death. Why? Because that the Nazis were bad is not sufficient reason to fight them, one must consider the consequence and not waste lives.

So, why do we view it that the US and UK an obligation to fight the Nazis? Because the had more power and so more means to do so and get to a good outcome of winning the war (with the help of the Soviets of course).

Sending men to die for unattainable objectives is not justifiable, outside incredibly extreme circumstances that we don't even apply to the Nazis (we don't say Belgium and France should have fought to the death).

Reconquering the lost territories is simply an unattainable objective. It was clear that Russia would not let that happen, Ukraine can't defeat Russia, the campaigns to reconquer the lost territories were a fools errand, but worse because the attempt could predictably result in the present war and losing far more for Ukraine in both people and land.

Covertly, no protests or the like? After all, Zelenskyy was democratically elected. Protests seem unlikely in the current (wartime) situation. But, hey, who knows. — jorndoe

I'm talking about a military coup.

Zelensky was elected, but has since suspended elections, so pretty easy for a the military to have pretext for a coup to have elections.

I'm not saying Zaluzhny is actually planning a coup, but if he's popular and "The Butcher" isn't popular, then the only reason to sack Zaluzhny is fear of a coup. I'm just pointing out that's a double-edged sword, as a straight-up military coup and placing the top commander as president would be a bit "much", but a coup to have "elections" would be far easier to spin.

If Zaluzhny had the military support he needed to stage a coup as top commander, then removing him wouldn't change that much.

So we'll see what happens.

What we do know is that it wasn't so easy to fire Zaluzhny and he had no problem making that clear to everyone.

Also, if anyone's wondering how you MacGyver a nuclear warhead out of one system and into another, such as an ABM missile, there's a really good starter video.


The main tools you need seem to be an electric drill and some leather jackets.

Once you have the leather jackets and drill, you're all set to begin your nuclear first strike adventure.

Your points are certainly possible, but I'm not so sure.

The West has enormous leverage over Zelensky in terms of the money; of course, Zelensky has the leverage of letting the country totally collapse. But of the two, money is the far stronger negotiation position. Letting Ukraine collapse would be embarrassing for the West, but people would move on pretty quickly. Literally two weeks after people were literally falling off the last US planes to leave Afghanistan, it was basically a non-story.

We've had in person visits to Ukraine from the head of the CIA as well as very recently Nuland.

So it could be the changes we see are what the CIA wants. The head of Ukrainian intelligence could have been floated to just make the appearance of a contest, but it would really not make much sense for someone from intelligence to suddenly be the top military commander.

Moving to an insurgency also just doesn't make sense to me at all. These aren't the mountains of Afghanistan with a totally different culture and language and religion to a foreign occupier. Insurgency hasn't been a notable factor in any of the areas Russia already occupies.

Therefore, if Ukraine stopped maintaining the front, Russia would just advance to wherever it wants and declare victory, then build up the multi-layered defensive lines that proved barely movable by Ukraine at enormous cost in their much anticipated offensive.

A key part of the military leverage Ukraine has outposts like Avdiivka from which you can shell Donetsk, which is only about 15 km away.

People still live in Donetsk so the current front line is not very desirable.

Why there's so much confusion over the "strategic importance" of these front line fortress cities.

Bakhmut and Avdiivka aren't so important against a Russian campaign to conquer all of Ukraine, so it seems like an insignificant distance to accomplish that goal and so why not fallback.

However, if Ukraine starts falling back and is no longer in artillery range of important Donbas cities, then Russia can just establish a buffer zone where basically nobody lives. One consequence of the high intensity warfare we're seeing is nearly everyone is forced to leave these cities and they're nearly totally destroyed, so if the Russians can push the Ukrainians back enough then they have a safety zone where basically nobody lives.

Once they have a safety zone they can essentially declare mission accomplished, but since the war isn't over until Ukraine sues for peace then Russia will just continue with standoff munitions which I suppose Ukraine can just continue to deal with as it has provided Western support, but it would be heavily in Russias favour and the West is already getting critical of more money to Ukraine.

The West floats essentially the entire Ukrainian economy and that's how it's able to withstand the disruptions of the Russian missile campaign. As soon as that support ends, Ukraine is in a severe economic crisis.

To circle back to the original point of contention, I just don't see how insurgency tactics would help Ukraine in the scenario that Russia establishes a safety zone. Once Russia does, it's difficult to spin that as something other than a Russian victory and that Ukraine has little military strategic options left (something people are already saying after the failed offensive, but if they fail to maintain defensive lines and Russia establishes new multi-layered lines, probably more people will start saying it).

Therefore, to help Biden win the election the best plan is to prop-up Ukraine to maintain the status quo as much as possible (that can at least be spun as "holding the line") of slowing the Russian advance enough that a clear safety zone isn't established that even mainstream pundits could easily explain on a map of how the Ukrainians are here, the Russians are there, and this whole depopulated zone in between is the Russian's defensive matrix and Ukraine can do basically nothing, as we've already seen.

So, to do that, as Politico informs us, you want someone in charge willing to send wave after wave of their own men into a meat grinder and has the affectionate name of "The Butcher".

Of course, you'd still want to arrange the media in such a way that it's "Zelensky's choice" and "Ukrainians choice" to keep fighting, that they aren't "finished duking it out" just as you say.

Certainly some elements in the West want to push Zelensky to negotiate, but I don't see how that could serve Biden's image going into the election year.

It's definitely starting to feel like Afghanistan 2.0 where it becomes just a normal practical necessity to cut loose our allies, nothing to see here.

Also, if Syrskyi isn't popular, it's definitely setting the stage for a coup.

Zelensky may not realize it's in many ways easier for Zalushny to execute a coup in this situation than as commander.

Now, "his boys" can do the coup to "restore democracy" and then he is just standing for election just like any other citizen has the right to.

Way cleaner.

That's why I posted it. If you read my links, all of them are criticizing Zelensky's choice of replacing Zalushny with the Butcher. — neomac

Ah ok, noted.

Honestly surprising to me, both that he has this reputation and Western outlets would run with it.

The Duran had a theory that Zelensky picked Syrskyi precisely because he wasn't a political threat, so this would be further evidence of that.

↪boethius I trust the posts from twitter even more than the article, for reasons. — neomac

Well, I'm not saying twitter posts can't be credible, but if you're citing anonymous twitter posts as a journalist, I think the bare minimum is to explain why.

How do we know it's not some troll, larper, or even Russian intelligence?

So, if there are reasons to trust (history that is clearly credible), which I have no problem believing your reasons are good, the bare minimum I'd expect from a journalist is to explain those reasons, or at least assert that they've gone through the post history and find it credible.

The era of "someone close to the matter" and "anonymous poster" and "open source intelligence" is really zero-credibility journalism, as I'm sure you agree.

Honestly, the article is really surprising to see in a Western media outlet.

Another person knowledgeable of Syrskyi’s operations echoed that view. His appointment is unlikely to have a positive effect for Ukraine, as Syrskyi is seen by those on the frontlines as a stern Soviet-style general who callously puts his men in danger.

This person added that Ukrainian troops have given Syrskyi a gruesome nickname: “Butcher.” The captain confirmed that the nickname has stuck, as has “General200” — which stands for 200 dead on the battlefield.

The negative reviews keep pouring in: “General Syrski’s leadership is bankrupt, his presence or orders coming from his name are demoralizing, and he undermines trust in the command in general,” a Ukrainian military officer posted on X. “His relentless pursuit of tactical gains constantly depletes our valuable human resources, resulting in tactical advances such as capturing tree lines or small villages, with no operational goals in mind.”

A Ukrainian soldier also tweeted a message in a group chat of veterans of the Bakhmut fight: “We’re all fucked.” — Zaluzhny is out, the ‘butcher’ is in

I think useful to highlight that I, personally, wouldn't base any conclusions on anonymous X posts, so I wouldn't say this is good journalism, so no surprise there, but it is surprising to see this level of criticism coming from a Western media outlet.

Opinions over Syrskyi "the butcher":
https://www.politico.com/newsletters/national-security-daily/2024/02/08/zaluzhny-is-out-the-butcher-is-in-00140206 — neomac

If you read the article, he seems to be called the "the butcher" not exactly in a good way:

But Syrskyi’s also known for leading forces into a meat grinder in Bakhmut, sending wave after wave of troops to face opposition fire. In the end, Kremlin-backed Wagner Group mercenaries captured the city.

For that and other reasons, Syrskyi is deeply unpopular with Ukraine’s rank-and-file. — Zaluzhny is out, the ‘butcher’ is in

Good insert that according to Putin. Because when you look at modern surface to air missile development, the longer range systems are all basically developed to engage ballistic missiles. So the idea of any ABM treaty now is a bit hypocritical. So it's not only the Russians who are here hypocrites. — ssu

Their proposal (and what Bush said publicly he'd insist on Russia accepting) was to renegotiate the ABM treaty to update it to recent threats, such as North Korea.

Russia doesn't want to be nuked by North Korea or some other rogue nation or terrorist cell either.

Without a treaty obviously Russia can do what it wants, so I don't see the hypocriticalness on their part you're talking about.

For example Israel had no trouble of hitting the Houthi ballistic missiles and the success of the Arrow system obviously can be seen from the simple fact that the Houthis aren't lobbing long range missiles to Israel anymore. Much time has gone from the time Saddam Hussein was firing Scuds to Israel and basically got half of the USAF fighter bombers searching in vain the empty vast desert of Western Iraq. — ssu

To what extent ABM is effective against the most advanced missiles is always an open question as we see few such engagements.

However, the most advanced systems of your opponent are going to be limited in number.

Presumably if you're going to deliver a first strike your belief is that your ABM systems are going to be able to deal with whatever counter-strike gets through.

However, there's a lot of "knowledge based risk" in nuclear escalation analysis, such as was clearly demonstrated in Strange Love. Maybe your plan has no chance of succeeding but you think it will.

Hence, first strike assets in place are destabilizing and lead to further arms escalation because you want to be certain your opponent knows you have survivable counter-strike capability. You might believe you do anyways, but you want to be sure your adversary believes it too.

Hence what stabilized the nuclear arms race was a series of treaties to wind down first-strike capability well below what each side was confident was inadequate (as well as each side confident the other side was confident).

Now that those treaties have gone away, we see escalation in at least arms if not also the invasion of Ukraine partly due to the collapse in nuclear trust.

It's easy for nuclear considerations to dominate the discussion (in high places). "Ah but nukes" is always a powerful rebuttal, and we saw a significant amount of Cold War policy driven by fear of nuclear weapons. The soviets were particularly paranoid as they were technologically behind and the US demonstrated its willingness to use nuclear weapons to blowup cities.

But as I said, we'd need to know Russias top secrets to know what they actually think and on what basis.

They may have high confidence in the survivability of their counter-strike assets and very low confidence in American (or any for that matter) ABM systems to deal with a counter-strike. That's definitely their public position but we can't really know what they really think or are worried about.

However, fears of nuclear war is always one piece of the puzzle in understanding geo-politics today.

What we can say for sure is that the US doesn't help assuage those fears by declaring a no-first-use policy; they like to keep us guessing, so here we are.

And that is one way to sum up the idiocy of American apologetics on this issue: If America's official policy is to "strategic ambiguity" so adversaries fear a nuclear strike and they can leverage that fear (for deterrence of "American interests") then you can't say "well yeah, we need strategic ambiguity is so adversaries fear a first strike, but they also have nothing to fear! Haven't deployed nukes to new countries since the 60s!!"

If your public policy is that adversaries should live in fear of nuclear annihilation, you can't really then blame adversaries from acting out of fear.

Of course it's a concern to the Russians. But basically those ABM sites in Poland would basically protect... France and the UK. It's a simple fact that Russian nukes launched from Russia will fly over the Arctic, over Canada to hit continental US and the USAF missile silos in the center of the US. If those sites were planned to be in the tundra wastes of northern Canada, then the role would be totally obvious. ABM missiles have to be very close to the actual flight paths of the missiles as simply there isn't much time to defend against an ICBM launch. — ssu

That's why I've been mostly focused on the so called "decapitation strike" potential of the missile bases, and that it's logically and psychologically far easier to do from base than a fishing boat.

Obviously you could launch your decapitation strike from fishing boats and barns, but it would be a pretty complicated situation.

A more realistic scenario is that tensions increase, there's some escalation steps caused by whatever, and the decision is made to forward deploy the nukes "just in case", and then because the nukes are there the "just in case" turns into "we need to strike first" and the first-strike plan is put into action.

In the same scenario it would be much harder to "deploy the nuclear fishing boats".

When things are calm, even relatively calm with a hot war in Ukraine, it's easy to "feel" like people won't launch nuclear weapons. But if you increase the stakes and the stress enough that changes along with people doing crazy things under stress.

This is why you don't just want "probably" a survivable deterrent, you want your adversary to be convinced your counter-strike will most definitely survive, so that this belief persists even into high stress situations.

There's also the fear that if your command and control is destroyed and your society is essentially obliterated, that remaining commanders will not "see the point" in revenge.

Hence, the nuclear powers are sensitive to increases in first strike capability; why the Cuban Missile crisis was a "serious thing" and not "but they have boats and subs anyways, a 1 in 1000 increase in capability that was totally meaningless". Literally no serious analyst has ever deployed this "bases aren't a deal yo" to the Cuban missile crisis.

As for the ABM capability itself, presumably there would be nukes also going towards Europe you'd want to destroy.

You'd of course need other ABM assets to deal with nukes going from different directions. Might need literally hundreds of thousands of ABM missiles to be "somewhat confident" your first strike plan will work.

May simply be not feasible today, which is why I explain that the problem (from the Russian perspective) is also the trend. Maybe today there's just not enough ABM missiles in the world to deal with a counter-strike, but what about tomorrow? What if they let these bases proliferate and then tomorrow there's effective ABM systems in vast quantity that exist? And with AI to distinguish decoys and be more accurate, organize the whole effort, etc. you could need way less missiles per target than today.

No, it is not. The main Russian concern is the defensive capability of ABMs. However, for obvious reasons that does not sell as well, as I have already explained. — Jabberwock

To defend against a Russian first strike?

And where do you even get what the "Russians really think" from?

You just makeup total bullshit, whatever is required to simply directly contradict obvious common sense.

Nuclear threats, first strike threats, are far greater than an ABM threat to your own first strike.

This whole areas is far from US shores ... this ABM base does not protect Washington (or any part of the US counter-strike arsenal), from a first strike.

Totally moronic point.

No, the ABM missiles deployed in the bases are not capable of carrying nuclear missiles. — Jabberwock

Please explain how these missiles are simply "not capable" of having their ABM warhead swapped out for a nuclear warhead. We can literally put nuclear warheads in artillery shells but this feet is just not possible.

Your points are just a series of direct denials of common sense statements, without argumentation or evidence.

For the same reason they have not deployed any nuclear missiles in any new countries since the sixties. — Jabberwock

Therefore, if the same tensions emerged as in the sixties we could expect the US to deploy nuclear weapons to new countries.

Your imagination levels are literally zero. You can't even imagine something that has already happened, and a key point of yours, simply happening again.

It's honestly difficult to believe you're really that dull, but maybe you are.

I see the question was too hard. OK, I will try again:

How does the Redzikowo base used for OFFENSIVE purposes DRAMATICALLY increase the offensive potential as compared to ONE German frigate sailing on German teritorrial waters?

Be sure to notice the word ONE (1). It means that I ask you to compare the offensive potential of the Redzikowo base to a SINGLE German frigate. That means a number less than two. Will I get an honest answer to that question or not? — Jabberwock

Again, a ship you can get your own submarines, planes, other ships closer to than an inland base.

It's also easier to sink a ship than a land-base.

The land bases are also simply in different positions so expand the radar coverage and missile coverage.

This is really the most basic common sense possible that a single ship is less capable than a ship + land base.

If it was so insignificant why would such a base be built? Answer: because it's not insignificant but increases capabilities in the theatre.

I do not once use the world "DRAMATICALLY".
— boethius

What is this then?

The bases quite dramatically increase first strike capability (both in the ABM and nuclear capacity) above what would just be normally "hanging around".
— boethius — Jabberwock

"DRAMATICALLY" does not equal "dramatically".

"DRAMATICALLY" is significantly more dramatic than merely "dramatically".

A citation should be exact, I do not all-caps words because I can rely on "arguing a point".

Sure, the issue is that you are just wrong. The base does not have missiles which are capable of carrying nuclear warheads, and even if they were, their range would be too short for the first strike. The tubes could be loaded with different missiles, but that cannot be done easily or covertly. Not to mention that it would be rather pointless, given that a single frigate sailing where it is regularly sailing could have the exact same effect. — Jabberwock

Ah yes, They can't! ... but if they could (because they obviously can) here's another goalpost move.

We've literally but nuclear warheads in artillery shells, so what's your argument that swapping out the warhead in these ABM missiles is beyond what US engineers are "capable" of?

Go on, I'm all ears.

As for "easily or covertly" just loading different missiles: if you're carrying out a first strike you aren't in "easy" territory but maybe willing to do things that are somewhat difficult, maybe even medium difficultly.

And can't be done covertly?

Again, just making up bullshit direct contradictions against obvious common sense reality.

You're really saying that the missiles couldn't be modified (such as the ABM missiles or otherwise) to more easily fire from these tubes, and if went beyond what was "easy" in preparing your first strike, you couldn't do the difficult task of converting the tubes in some covert way, part of regular maintenance etc. on your own base?

We've recently experience Trump being the best of friends with Kim Jong Un. No other US president ever has met with the North Korean dictator. So go figure. — ssu

It was a love firelake relationship.

And btw during Trump's administration, North Korea tested quite large nuclear weapons in 100+ kiloton range. So at least now the US isn't in denial about the North Korean nuclear weapon... as it for the first test said it might be just a large conventional explosion. But a 6,9 earthquake on the Richter scale you don't get with conventional explosives. — ssu

Definitely no doubt about the rogue nation threat.

However, the Russian perspective (at least according to Putin) was they were willing to renegotiate ABM and other treaties to deal with rogue nuclear threats while maintaining the non-proliferation architecture.

Furthermore, if you're analyzing this sort of thing in the Russian's equivalent of the pentagon—I'm going to hazard a guess that it's some sort of quadragon—then you could believe this is the main reason for it, but if it has a secondary effect of building up first strike capability against Russia then that's what you're going to be concerned about.

Especially the long time frames involved in nuclear strategy, very quickly the dominant factor is whether or not you're vulnerable to a first strike.

Now, all I've tried to explain on the subject is that building ABM missile bases closer to your nuclear opponent is a noticeable increase in first strike capability (certainly worth analyzing and placing on the list of risks to consider mitigatory action). Obviously for the Russians it's a big enough concern to take diplomatic action against.

However, how much of a risk Russian analysts or high-command view it and if it makes sense or noth, we'd need access to their top secret intelligence.

People (mostly on reddit) already like to say most of the Russia's nuclear arsenal is defunct in some way and the US could already easily carry out a first strike today. Maybe that's true. I doubt it, but a big difference in today's world vis-a-vis the Cold War is much more sophisticated signal intelligence as well as computation. Perhaps with just the right mix of weapon systems and sophisticated deployment and computer management (presumably even better now with AI) of the whole affair, a first strike is "doable" in at least some computer simulations. Or maybe it's basically not doable today or in the near future. But in terms of reacting to maintain the nuclear balance of power and ensure MAD, that it's not doable today doesn't exclude mitigatory action as you don't know what weapons systems will exist in the future.

Beside the obvious nonsense of 'nuclear threat' (again, no nuclear missiles have been deployed in any of the new NATO countries, so why exactly should that be an issue?) — Jabberwock

When you have described the 'nuclear threat', you have specifically used the phrase 'they could deploy nuclear weapons there'. Pretending that it was not your main point is just silly. — Jabberwock

It is my main point.

That you can deploy nuclear weapons to these bases is a larger threat than the ABM missiles.

It is not logistically as easy to deploy nuclear weapons to a barn or seal team six on the USS rusty fishing boat than it is to a military base. If tensions starts to rise, it's far easier to deploy nuclear missiles to the bases in "routine" shipments than other locations.

You'd have no way of knowing. Likewise, ABM missiles themselves are duel-use and can be programmed to attack a ground target and loaded with warheads.

Russia has been regularly accused of using ABM missiles on ground targets (including Poland), no one has been like "but ABM can only go up, only up!! Never down!!"

Now, just so happens that ABM anyways is a nuclear first-strike system, as I've explained.

It is not the case here that you've dealt with one of my points but "forgot" that ABM is anyways a nuclear first strike "enabling system" so are somehow 1 for 2.

You have dealt with neither issue.

My original point was that it is nonsense that there is significant risk that US will deploy nuclear weapons in Ukraine. You can try to obfuscate that as much as you want, it will not change the fact that you are unable to support that claim. — Jabberwock

More terrible bad faith.

We were talking about forward deployed bases. There is significant risk that the US deploys nuclear missiles to those bases, if not today then maybe tomorrow, as well as that they'd continue to march their bases closer to Russia, and so into Ukraine, if Russia let them.

Why wouldn't they?

If your opponent allows you (or then can't prevent you) from gaining some strategic advantage, why wouldn't you do that?

In addition to your bad faith, you have a terrible imagination. These bases will be there for decades, so who knows what American leadership will be in decades to come.

The bases are there, the US de facto controls them, the US has nuclear weapons, therefore the US could deploy nuclear weapons to the bases for a first strike (with either existing missiles we may not even know about, or then develop missiles in the future, again we may not even know about).

That is the basic risk analysis of the situation, and it is just foolish to believe that Russia would not react to an increased first strike threat.

The US attitude and justification of these kinds of nuclear escalation moves is basically "suck our dicks", and US sycophants, such as yourself, manage to genuinely maneuver themselves into believing it and being all like "yeah, what gives, why not suck America's dick? I don't get it, what's with these people, why the fuss".

If you say the risk is significant (because it can easily be done) but is small of being used in a first strike today. Sure, the risk is small. However, a small risk multiplied by many days, many years, many decades, in all sorts of totally unknown future scenarios, easily becomes a much larger risk.

Your argument is basically "well I don't think the US would conduct a first strike today, they're just worried about Iran and just want to flex on the Russians, and aren't worried about nuclear war because that's unlikely, so there's nothing to worry about".

It is hilarious how hard you are trying to undermine your original argument... If the Redzikowo base is just a tube in the ground and Americans can shoot nuclear missiles from anything, then the base loses all sigificance, as it would be equally easy to put the said tubes in the ground covertly and quickly anywhere else. — Jabberwock

I've explained this several times, as I did above, again.

You definitely could launch a nuclear missile from just about anywhere: farm, fishing boat, a yacht, etc.

However, it's much easier from a military base. If you ordered people to take a nuke off base in the back of a mini-van, they'd be like "WTF are we doing?".

You'd have to convince a whole bunch of commanders and soldiers to take a nuke off base and randomly launch it at Russia. There's a whole bunch of psychological and logistical issues involved in such an operation that make is less likely (fortunately).

However, moving military equipment between bases is much more logistically "normal".

You could have some AMB missiles retrofitted with nuclear warheads and instruct a ground attack without even informing 99% of the base they even have nuclear weapons. Which is the common sense operational approach to a first strike, as the less people who know the less likely the information would leak and also the less likely anyone would refuse orders on moral grounds.

Once the first strike is irreversible, then it becomes a more usual "shoot them first" situation and most people would be in a psychological state of "we gotta do what we gotta do".

As mentioned, a first strike is pretty unlikely just randomly out of the blue; it is much more likely when tensions are already extremely high and several escalation steps have already been passed, and one side thinks their first strike can really work (maybe a few cities are destroyed, but that's acceptable losses in the kind of situation we're talking about).

This is why first strike capability such as forward deployed missile bases are destabilizing.

Why literally having a first strike policy in the first place is destabilizing.

Why withdrawing from the AMB and INF and Open Skies treaty is destabilizing.

And why all this instability? Apparently because of a fear of a rogue nation being able to launch a single nuke ... well how does that make sense, why increase the odds of getting hit with a hundred or a thousand nukes (even a tiny bit) for fear of being hit by one rogue nuke launch?

Then maybe that should be the lesson that you should not take anything that the press publishes for granted...

Yes, the '100' sounds scary, unless you are familiar with the geography. 100 is to Kaliningrad, which is actually a tiny piece of Russian territory wedged in between NATO countries. Yet somehow the New York Times does not write about the Russian missiles 40 miles from the Polish territory and 300 miles from Warsaw. — Jabberwock

Why does Russias actual border not count again?

How close was Cuba to Washington?

These distances simply aren't very far for missiles flight time, much less far than the bases not-being there.

So if two Russian frigates leave the Kaliningrad port, they immediately have three times the firepower twice as close to NATO borders than Redzikowo. Should NATO leaders be fuming? — Jabberwock

"NATO borders" aren't the US' borders. Poland is not close to Washington. You would not launch a first strike against the US to take out command and control etc. from Poland or Estonia.

You're trying to conflate "NATO borders" with a threat to counter-strike capability.

That Poland, Latvia, and Estonia are close to Russia is not a risk to the US counter strike capability, as their counter strike capability is not in Poland, Latvia or Estonia.

You just completely leave the realm of common sense. Truly remarkable.

Again with the moving the goalposts.

You're initial point was, to remind you:

Then I ask for the third time: how does the Redzikowo base used for OFFENSIVE purposes DRAMATICALLY increase the offensive potential as compared to a German frigate sailing on German teritorrial waters? — Jabberwock

"Nonsense" then you defended this position by simply ignoring that ABM is anyways a nuclear first strike enabling system, and focusing on the "insignificance" of these bases, by comparing the missiles (so far) deployed to these bases to all the missiles tubes in the entire US navy.

I've explained how that it is just completely wrong. For the entire US navy to be of equal threat, it would need to be equally close and maybe Russia would be like "hmm, wonder why all these ships are coming to our shores".

I do not once use the world "DRAMATICALLY".

I've explained what role the bases would play (both in launching nuclear missiles by surprise and their ABM capability) in a first strike. Of course, plenty of other assets would be needed as well.

The more first-strike systems you have (such as ABM) the more able you are to craft an operational plan that would more likely work.

The US is accumulating first strike capability.

Why any increase in first strike capability is taken seriously is because even a small increase in daily risk of something like nuclear obliteration of your entire society, multiplied over a long amount of time becomes a big risk.

Your whole framework is basically the risk of nuclear war isn't "a big deal". If the US builds out appreciable increases in first strike capability (while withdrawing from all the treaties that were signed to prevent that) your basic position is "nuclear shmuclear, Who cares! Boats man! Boats! They already have nukes!"

You have zero clue what you're talking about.

If you wanted to conduct a first strike, or then analyzing your opponents capability of conducting a first strike, each category of weapons systems has a diminishing return on investment.

For example, you can launch nukes from planes, obviously, but you can't put all your planes in the air and send them to Russia as that trigger a reaction from Russia. So, maybe you decide you can casually have 5 planes that "just so happen" to be doing routine flights in key locations to launch some nukes. Likewise with submarines, if you send them all to Russia shoreline maybe they'll be noticed, but maybe you can get through 1 or 2. Then there's whatever ships normally have in theatre. Finally, there's your bases in theatre.

The basic plan would be to build up enough capacity, ideally without your opponent being aware of it but if they are then hopefully underestimate it.

The bases are a major category of first strike system, and your point is basically the Russians should ignore that since there's plenty of nuclear capability anyways.

But then why create these nuclear provocations, send all these signals of withdrawing from treaties and building bases, and so on all in the context of not even repudiating a first-use policy. Sure, could be the goal, right now, is just have ourselves a little arms race as that's highly profitable. But even if that was the case, once the capacity is built up, who's to say some future administration wouldn't then use it because they have it.

And again, the reasoning framework of "these are the weapons systems the US has publicly disclosed right now, therefore nothing else exists now or in the future" is just dumb.

Okie then, you concur, land grab, because power and such, NATO or not. (By the way, they have other Black Sea presence + Sea of Azov.) — jorndoe

You seem to always be arguing with someone else.

I have zero problem recognizing Russia's actions are imperialistic. Russia's "national interest" is defined on the exact same basis as US "national interests": preserving and expanding imperial power.

We had no problem calling the Tzarist Empire, spanning nearly the entire Northern Asia, an Empire and it's basically the same size now.

And I have zero problem with people who condemn both US Imperialism and Russian Imperialism.

For myself, I'm an anarchist so I don't believe nation states (empire or otherwise) have any intrinsic value in themselves. So I don't care about borders or national pride or any of the trappings of country of empire in themselves.

Where nations and their dramas and sagas are of relevance to me is in their consequence on real people.

To put that in perspective, if Americans are painting stripes and stars on their faces and running around screaming USA! USA! USA! With flags as capes and so on. That doesn't bother me. If that's their level of philosophical understanding and how they choose to identify themselves and it gives them some pleasure, why not. Likewise any other display of some other national pride by anyone else.

Where I take notice of this whole nation thing, is when the US and Russia are in a great power rivalry and escalating cover and overt attacks on each others Imperial interests, which don't matter much to me but obviously do matter to them and their management.

In this sort of thing, what exactly is happening is much more important (compared to questions such as how many stars exactly to they have painted on their faced) as the consequences (for real people, not mythical representations of "a people") and potential future consequences are very big.

The world has a lot of problems we anyways have to deal with, so my preferred outcome is diplomatic stability. If the people of the world insist they have nations states as we know them today, then it is better to avoid wars and each people need figure things out for themselves, and hopefully cooperate with other nations where that's possible.

Based on that you would certainly conclude that I am against the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

If that was the whole situation, then I would be, but the more important question in anywise is "what do we do about it". Being morally against something is not a course of action.

However, as it stands things are more complicated. The situation is not that there's poor innocent defenceless Ukraine and then a random attack by Imperialist Russia.

US is also interfering in Ukraine since many decades and also increasing nuclear tensions (starting with reneging on ABM, insisting they'll get Russia to agree to new terms first ... then never even negotiate that). The interference of the US is also manipulative and bad faith, dangling the NATO carrot without ever having the intention to have Ukraine join NATO (and the US could just make a bilateral defence agreement with Ukraine any moment of the day if it was so concerned).

Then there is the war on the Donbas. Since I don't care about nation states, I do not care much when pieces secede and declare their own nation state (if it's more-or-less the same thing as before, maybe a good economic move or maybe a bad one).

The very foundation of anarchism is that you have no moral obligation to political structures you find yourself in. Political structures much justify their existence by providing real and accountable value, not by swearing oaths and creating myths for school children and so on.

In my view there is no moral obligation to stay part of a political alliance (such as being a citizen of a country) and one has every right to secede individually or collectively at anytime. It's a constant moral right, and the right the US founders claim in their own secession form the British empire

The question is not moral but rather "is it a good idea?". If you secede as an individual and then starve in a forest, maybe not the best strategy for whatever it is you're trying to do.

Likewise, if you secede as a collective and then are demolished militarily by the political structure, no matter how repressive, you just seceded from ... again maybe wasn't the best idea. Of course there can be situations where fighting a losing battle is the best moral choice, but I'm sure we'd all agree it's good to be both in the right and also win.

Donbas secedes. It's messy, like most secessions are, but they manage to maintain their independence. They need Russian support, but so too did the US need French support; once you're a new political entity it is incumbent on you to seek out support where you can find it.

The US guards jealously its right to secede from the British; the war of independence was costly and bloody but they won (with the help of foreign powers hostile to Britain).

I don's see why I would reduce in meaning the Donbas Declaration of Independence.

Ukraine tries to reconquer the Donbas, fails, creates the inevitable intervention of Russia to resolve the situation.

All I see is that Ukrainian elites have mismanaged things diplomatically and militarily, perhaps because they are among the most corrupt in the world, and I don't see why I'd have sympathy for that.

Now, if despite all that, the West intervened militarily to defend "Ukrainian sovereignty" I would not have a problem with that either.

The rights of nations are what is called "underdetermined"; there are more claims than can be coherently resolved (hence the real solution is to no longer have the nation-state system).

My main problem is with sending arms in lieu of honour, as I've said there is a pretty wide consensus that supplying arms in a conflict does not change the outcome but simply results in more death and damage (mainly to the losing side).

The West is cynically using Ukraine for our own purposes, up to and including the predation of Ukrainian farm titles by Western multinational agribusiness.

If it was actually about democracy, then I'd be more sensitive to that goal and what strategies could actually preserve and strengthen democracy in Ukraine. But it's not about democracy, that idea is a mythical smear of shit over a horrifying truth.

https://www.straitstimes.com/world/swedish-prosecutor-plans-nord-stream-blast-decision-this-week

We'll know more about the Nordstream sabotage soon. — Benkei

Did we?

Fine. — ssu

Are things really fine? Let's see.

Yet this is Russian rhetoric to give one reason more against the ABM sites. It is political rhetoric. Because just why would you put attack cruise missiles in a fixed well known position? Cruise missiles are subsonic. Did the US field ground launched cruise missiles? Actually yes, during the Cold War they had few BGM-109G Ground Launched Cruise Missile, and they were mobile. Something you hide in a warehouse... somewhere, not in fixed site with actually not much if any protection to the missiles. And FYI, those were scrapped in the INF treaty. — ssu

As I've explained many times, if you wanted to conduct a totally by surprise out-of-the-blue first strike, you could literally put missiles on fishing boats and just sort of drift into the Russian coast.

These bases are still relevant of course in terms of being able to join in saturation fire of both nuclear missiles (which if you're covertly launching missiles from fishing boats it is definitely within your ability to retrofit ABM missiles or just develop entirely new missile to fire from the ABM bases) as well as the original purpose of ABM and track missiles in the theatre generally speaking and so on.

Such an out-of-the-blue strike would be premised on the assumptions:
1. One, or a few choice launches (as close as you can get) could destroy critical command and control. Fishing boats, farms in Poland or heck let's do Estonia too as well as "routine" flights, certainly submarines, and whatever other way to get as close as you can to hit as fast as you can. Of course, ideally you'd fire all your missiles in this first attack, but the more you fire the more likely your opponent would initiate counter strike. So there's some optimum that is as much as you can get away with before the leadership is dead.

2. Then a a saturation attack would target as much further command and control and counter-strike capability as possible: subs, silos, planes, airfields, etc.

3. ABM then shoots down whatever counter strike capability manages to launch. A volley of ABM missiles can be launched at the the silos or any potential launch location in parallel to step 2 above to try to "time it" and intercept ICBM's in the boost phase. This is where computer modelling comes into to help optimize all these factors.

Whether you neutralize counter-strike capability with a nuclear strike or ABM is of no difference as long as it's neutralized. Sure, even one ICBM can have multiple warheads and decoys, but if they are small enough in number and you have enough ABM maybe you can get them all. As mentioned, anyone conducting a first strike would accept multiple of their own cities as acceptable loss for the total obliteration of the their opponent. The theory is to "be better off" in a post exchange world.

This is why deployment of ABM to cover a wide area, both protecting your own cities and assets (such as Europe and the bases in this case) as well an additional launch site of missiles for various purposes in the 3 steps above, is, as Wikipedia informs us, is a "first strike enabling weapon".

A first strike would be an immensely complicated task involving all sorts of assets.

The ABM bases are one of those assets you'd want in place (and as many such bases as possible) to conduct a first strike.

Cruise missiles are subsonic. Did the US field ground launched cruise missiles? Actually yes, during the Cold War they had few BGM-109G Ground Launched Cruise Missile, and they were mobile. Something you hide in a warehouse... somewhere, not in fixed site with actually not much if any protection to the missiles. And FYI, those were scrapped in the INF treaty. — ssu

If you were conducting a first strike you'd do so with the fastest missiles possible for obvious reasons.

Converting ABM missiles to nuclear warheads would make more sense than cruise missiles.

Maybe US doesn't have hypersonic nuclear missiles undisclosed to the public, maybe they do. Russia can't be sure about the today nor in the future.

And you guys simply ignore the future entirely.

Nuclear assets in place today are in place for decades. We don't know how things will evolve, who will be in power in the US. So this sort of analysis quickly ignores how people "feel" today.

What analysis worry about is mostly escalation pathways in some totally different geopolitical situation in the future, new weapons systems that don't exist today and so on.

We also don't know what the future stakes are. Today we don't feel any reasonable person would think it reasonable to risk the total destruction of even one of their major cities, in addition to the wide range of nuclear winter outcome risks and fallout and so on, but maybe there is some crisis in the future in which this sort of risk starts to seem acceptable.

Deterrence is not necessary just the ability to get through one missile against a first strike, you really need to be confident your opponent is confident their entire society will be obliterated for all meaningful purposes and they won't be "better off" after a nuclear exchange.

Hence, the non-proliferation architecture was all about pulling back first strike capability: ABM, Open Skies, INF were all about providing confidence to the other side that one wasn't in a position to do a first strike, but could definitely do a counter strike.

This is the dynamic that establishes MAD.

Otherwise, you get on the slippery slope (some may call a "rollercoaster" instead" of going towards what I call MAD CRACK, where one side tries to crack the MAD equilibrium by getting enough assets in place to deliver a devastating first blow.

US claims the right to deliver a first strike.

US withdraws from the ABM treaty, which is not just one pillar of a first strike it is the essential enabling part as a first strike really needs to assume that whatever counter-strike gets through can be reasonably dealt with by ABM. Reasonable in this context is New York may still be blown up anyways, but Ohio, glorious Ohio may just survive and thrive.

US starts forward deploying its ABM capability.

US withdraws from the INF treaty ... the other critical weapons systems to conduct a first strike of taking out command and control in the first phase, while insisting Russia accept it's terms of renegotiation that were never even offered.

US partisans are just like "nothing to see here, move along, trust us bro".

No reasonable analysis would see these things and be like "hmm, that's totally normal, nothing to worry about."

Or, if the possible actor has just few ICBMs and has a limited territory to shoot them from, you put an ABM site between your country and the launch site. Just look what is the shortest range between Washington DC and one certain Middle Eastern country the US hates so much. Which btw the US insisted on being the reason. :smirk:

Russian ICBM go over the Arctic Sea and Canada into the US. Not over Poland. ABM sites in the tundra of Canada and Alaska would be a different issue. — ssu

Obviously rogue states are a legitimate threat, no argument from me here.

But capacity to deal with rogue nations is also capacity to deliver a first strike, in particular against Russia if you put those assets close to Russia.

Likewise, if you don't even bother to try to renegotiate the treaties to maintain the non-proliferation architecture while dealing with rogue nations (which are also a problem for Russia), again that's not a good sign.

But it doesn't really matter anyways opinions on people's intentions now, since once the assets are in place a totally different administration could be in power in the future.

We just recently experienced Trump threatening to turn North Korea into a lake of fire, maybe there's someone even more unhinged in power in the future.

Likewise, even if "normal politicians" are in power, as mentioned above, there's no way to predict the stakes that maybe at play in the future.

Therefore, if you're vulnerable to a first strike you would conclude it is likely to happen given enough time and the immense scope of totally unpredictable things that can happen in the world.

As mentioned, it would be probably undoable to order seal team six to go launch a nuclear missile from a fishing boat on some totally innocuous day to start WWIII. However, after a series of escalations it's much more likely missiles would be "moved into place" for defensive measures in completely routine logistics etc. and in a "proper place" and then if tensions get to high everyone understands they'll need to launch if ordered to do so.

There needs to be a sort of "social tension" for people to start to believe they are actually about to launch nuclear weapons; a tension that has existed before, such as the Cuban missile crisis.

So the rational course of action when first strike capability is deployed, is to conduct the risk analysis based on what people can actually do with this new capacity and react to mitigate the risk. If there's no actual intention to carry out a first strike then great! the moves are redundant but you'll still feel better.

↪boethius, again, it wasn't specifically about NATO†, it was about loss of control (any such control and influence, to anyone), hence the land grab: — jorndoe

That's why I explain the importance to the Black Sea.

But, hey, a "dire existential threat" promotes a sense of urgency (fearmongering), and is also neat for picking up any anti-NATO (or anti-West) sentiments anywhere. — jorndoe

Maybe why the West keeps on repeating the war is "existential" not only for Ukraine but also NATO.

However, nuclear force issues are actually existential, so moves on one side trying to "slip in" some nuclear first strike capability maybe even with a little "wiggle room" vis-a-vis a treaty that is no longer relevant, are carefully observed and options considered to balance things by the other side.

It's honestly bizarre the trivialization of nuclear war when it's convenient for a narrative.

Because they were actual offensive weapons! Not just SAM sites. — ssu

That's why, if you followed the exchange, the Russians say their main concern is the ability to convert the cites to launch other kinds of missiles:

The Polish base, the heart of which is a system known as Aegis Ashore, contains sophisticated radars capable of tracking hostile missiles and guiding interceptor rockets to knock them out of the sky. It is also equipped with missile launchers known as MK 41s, which the Russians worry can be easily repurposed to fire offensive missiles like the Tomahawk. — On the Edge of a Polish Forest, Where Some of Putin’s Darkest Fears Lurk

Everything I've explained is not just "my theory about it", it is literally the New York Times explaining to us the Russia's views on the topic. I'm simply explaining the common reasons someone would have to express such an opinion.

You guys seem to expect the world to operate on the principle of "everyone should take the United States at its word, and if they say their missile bases aren't a threat to you and you should just go ahead and ignore them, then that's just the way it is".

It's really bizarre. I empathize a lot better now when Mearsheimer says he just doesn't get how people can be so dense and not get how Russia views our missile bases as obvious threats.

Real strawman there. Now your way off.

Do you understand what nuclear weapons the US, France and the UK have? Those weapons don't need ABM missile sites or any kind of fixed forward sites to operate. In fact, bringing them closer to Russia just increases the ability to Russia to strike them. Please educate yourself first on the nuclear strategy of the Western powers. A fixed site has severe disadvantages: it can be targeted itself by nukes and other weapon systems. Hence there's a reason just why the US fixed silos are in the center of the US. And why Russian fixed silos aren't on the Russian border. Or that fixed Chinese sites are in the middle of China, not on the seashore. — ssu

So had the Soviets brought in only "ABM" equipment, the US would have been totally cool with that?

Let's even imagine there was no ABM treaty or then the missiles the Soviet (say they) bring in can "wiggle out" of the ABM treaty.

You're saying the response from the US would have been nada?

That's really what you're saying, comparing the two scenarios is a straw man?

Now, obviously they aren't exactly the same scenario, and I've pointed out where differences lead to differences (that Russia did not start military action directly against the bases; but instead developed new systems and prevented further bases getting built in Ukraine, by maintaining a border dispute and then later a general invasion of Ukraine).

My argument (if you bother to read up before interjecting in the conversation) is that forward deployed ABM is a first strike capability so (even ignoring the ability to deploy nuclear missiles to the sites anyways) the Cuban Missile crisis is in the same category of one power reacting to their adversary increasing first strike capability.

Yes. But NOT for the reason you gave. Converting ABM sites to offensive missiles sites is nonsense. The fact is simple: ABM systems shoot down ballistic missiles and thus they present a challenge to either a first strike or a counter strike. — ssu

Ok, so please explain why the New York Times writes:

It is also equipped with missile launchers known as MK 41s, which the Russians worry can be easily repurposed to fire offensive missiles like the Tomahawk. — On the Edge of a Polish Forest, Where Some of Putin’s Darkest Fears Lurk

Key word "easily".

Why doesn't the New York Time explain the "simple fact" that ABM systems "ABM systems shoot down ballistic missiles".

And again, even if we ignore that you can obviously put nuclear missiles and warheads in a metal tube (the threat is more the logistics are more opaque and psychologically more compatible for soldiers to do compared to setting up nuclear warheads in Polish barns, as I've explained, than the tubes themselves), you again repeat the obvious: "they present a challenge to either a first strike or a counter strike."

The fact forward deployed ABM present a threat to counter strike is what makes them a first-strike enabling system.

Rear deployed ABM protecting your own silos is where you'd put your ABM if you were just concerned about surviving a first strike and maintaining a counter strike deterrence (to then hopefully dissuade a first strike).

It honestly seems bizarre how you, and the others, accept anyways this premise that ABM is a first-strike capability (an "enabling weapons system" as Wikipedia describes it) but then simply deny that firs strike capability in some vague sense does not increase by deploying these first-strike-enabling systems.

I was clearly referring to this statement and all my arguments referred to this. I am not sure why you were unable to follow it, I tried to be as clear as possible. — Jabberwock

First, my statement that they could obviously deploy nuclear weapons there is in response to your statement that the nuclear threat is "nonsense", but now apparently you're comment that started this discussion was in response to my comment that happened later?

Your argument literally require time travel now.

Obviously a nuclear threat would include both nuclear weapons and whatever systems enable to use of those weapons. So "enabling weapons systems" such as ABM fall under the category of nuclear threat.

Which now turns out you agree that ABM is indeed a first strike capability threat, so obviously the "nuclear threat" is not "nonsense" simply due to the nature of ABM itself.

So your original position that the bases representing a nuclear threat is "nonsense" you have since debunked yourself.

Moving the goalposts to the idea you only meant nuclear weapons being deployable from these missile bases is "nonsense" is also wrong.

As I stated, obviously you could put nuclear weapons there and launch nuclear weapons from ABM tubes; you could develop the capacity covertly or overtly, today or tomorrow, so an adversary is going to include that in their risk-analysis.

And I have asked you specifically which missiles you have referred to. — Jabberwock

Again, the Russians say themselves their concern is that the tubes could easily be converted to fire other missiles.

It is literally a tube where you put in a missile and fire said missile. There's nothing special about the tube that would prevent you from firing things other than ABM missiles, and you could also put a nuclear warhead in an ABM missile if you wanted to.

If the US doesn't have this capacity today it could easily develop the capacity tomorrow. It's really not a an insane complicated task that no one has ever accomplished before and pushes up against the laws of physics to take (or develop) a missile of the appropriate size for the tubes or then develop a nuclear warhead that you simply put in the ABM missiles (the literally put nuclear warheads in artillery shells in the past, so I'm sure the US military industrial complex could manage the feat).

Oh, so you did not look at the map, how unsurprising. Hint: Redzikowo is not 'close to Russia'. With current missiles it would reach about 300 km behind the Russian border (another hint for non-users of maps: Russia is a bit bigger than that). — Jabberwock

There's no need to look at a map, the New York Times calculated the distances:

As he threatens Ukraine, Mr. Putin has demanded that NATO reduce its military footprint in Eastern and Central Europe — which Washington and European leaders have flatly refused to do. Mr. Putin has been fuming about American missiles near Russia’s border since the Romanian site went into operation in 2016, but the Polish facility, located near the village of Redzikowo, is only about 100 miles from Russian territory and barely 800 miles from Moscow itself. — On the Edge of a Polish Forest, Where Some of Putin’s Darkest Fears Lurk

That is called way closer to Russia than the status quo during the Cold War.

At no point did I say these missiles covered the whole of Russia, so thrashing at this straw man is particularly stupid.

The missile bases increase US first strike capability, as I've stated any first strike would involve plenty of other systems too.

The first critical thing to do in a first strike is hit command and control to disrupt, delay, and ideally prevent a strategic counter-strike even being ordered. With a little bit of delay one's chances of hitting those strategic nuclear launch facilities and other equipment increase dramatically.

So missile bases getting closer and closer increase the effectiveness of a first strike. The closer you are, the less warning time and so more able to decapitate the leadership and other systems.

Sure, you can say "well I don't think nuclear war is likely anyways, so people should be complacent" but you seem to fail to appreciate that the people in charge of said nuclear weapons systems aren't complacent; if the threat model increases noticeable they pay particular notice (since the consequences are so high anything noticeable at all becomes of serious concern).

boethius, so, in short, you say Russia is not really a threat to anyone, but NATO is an existential threat to Russia. :D *hah* — jorndoe

We literally already went through this trope several times:

Is Russia a legitimate threat to NATO?
— Jabberwock

Obviously, has thousands of nukes. — boethius

But if you want to go through the same tropes again, I'm pretty sure I have time to entertain even more idiocy.

Mearsheimer has argued that Crimea would be, or is, a great geo-political-power-military asset to Russia, which the Kremlin apparently couldn't pass up. Land grab. Then a variation of "neo-imperialism" or "neo-colonialism" or whatever. — jorndoe

Mearsheimer is correct.

The Black Sea is an important energy and other export corridor and Crimea is a strategically important position in the Black Sea.

Now, the Kremlin could obviously pass up land-grabbing ... since that's obviously what it did until 2014. What changed in 2014 is that risks to its naval base significantly increased (obviously not short term, but long term having a naval base in a hostile country isn't so great strategically).

So, in 2014 the diplomatic costs of conquering Crimea were outweighed by the military threat to their naval base and position in the Black Sea.

Where Mearsheimer is also correct is that when threatened the great powers react to those threats, will give up quite a bit in economic position and diplomatic position to secure their military position, which is an observation of how the world actually works (not how it should work).

USA does the same thing all the time, just for Americans this is natural and good but anyone else doing so is unnatural and evil.

Two things incorrect here. ABM bases being converted to nuclear launch sites is absolute nonsense. Just look at the Western nuclear deterrence: it's made up of land based missile silos in the heart of the US, submarine launched missiles, aircraft launched cruise missiles and free fall bombs. What is there to "convert" in ABM bases for these weapons? Just what system needs some fixed site? — ssu

The willful ignorance of basic common sense is honestly stupendous.

Why was the US concerned about missiles in Cuba when the Soviets had silos, and submarines and aircraft launched missiles and free fall bombs and so on?

By your (and others') logic here, the Cuban missile crisis was about literally nothing.

Russia doesn't like missile bases close to itself for the same reason the US doesn't like missile bases close to itself.

For a bunch of reasons ABM in Eastern-Europe isn't as provocative as actual nuclear missiles in Cuba, so did not solicit the same kind of response, but it is the same kind of thing, just a lessor degree.

Secondly, Russia has had actually the first ABM system in operation for decades. Its first operational system was the A-35, which came operational basically in the late 60's early 70's. — ssu

Are these positioned anywhere close to the USA?

And thirdly, the ABM treaty talked (perhaps intentionally) only vaguely about "strategic" missiles, namely ICBMs and SLBMs. Hence the A-135 could wiggle it's way out of the ABM treaty. There were Theater Missile Defense negotiations, but these didn't go anywhere. And the Gulf war showed that TMD was something that wasn't limited to US/Russia confrontations. — ssu

When did I say the USA was breaking the ABM treaty?

It removed itself from the ABM treaty and therefore wasn't breaking a treaty it was no longer in.

Vague notions are obviously up for debate, and if the US was still in the treaty then obviously Russia would argue these ABM assets are "strategic" in scope and nature etc.

However, my points have nothing to do with accusing the US of breaking the terms of the treaty it exited from. The point of mentioning the ABM treaty is to demonstrate that ABM is of obvious first strike concern, as that was the point of the treaty.

Obviously you can argue that these ABM bases are of "little" first-strike use at their rated specifications, though I object to the argument that they are entirely insignificant.

The main reason of concern would be covert or overt increase in specifications somewhere down the line, such as launching intermediate range nuclear missiles, and also the proliferation of more such bases.

For example, let's say the ABM treaty was still a thing, and indeed it's as you say that the A-135 could "wiggle" out of the ABM treaty, then one may naturally wonder if enough such bases and enough such missiles all around Russia would have the same overall strategic effect that is banned by the treaty. Whether it's technically "legal" or not, obviously Russia wouldn't like that and would react to it.

There's also many escalations scenarios, and what is the common thread between all those scenarios is that it does actually matter what military assets are where in terms of what you can do or not do.

This is all extremely basic common sense.

US doesn't like Soviet or Russian missile bases close to itself and neither does Russia. Assuring the Russians that there's no other missiles that would ever be thought to be launched from the bases and the ABM missiles that are there aren't "so significant" etc. they simply may not find convincing.

Obviously there's a probability such assurances are true and a probability such assurances are false, and, either way, what is of genuine intention today could change tomorrow.

What anyone with any analytical ability at all would conclude about these bases is that: yeah, sure, maybe the US doesn't have missiles ("strategic" ABM or hypersonic intermediate range missiles) so relevant for a first strike today, but maybe that can change in the future; therefore, maybe they are building out their base infrastructure now while it "seems benign" and then later when they have the missiles (which they may already have) we have no way of knowing anyways if they are deployed to these bases or not.

The US likes "strategic ambiguity" so even if they didn't forward deploy first strike weapons, there's no way to be sure of that. Indeed, even if the US doesn't even develop first strike weapons, there's no way to be sure of that.

As a military man, I'm sure you understand that the Russians view de facto US bases close to Russia as long term strategic threats.

We can talk all day long about weapons that exist and the public knows about and discuss their public specifications, but that's not how strategic analysis works. Obviously whatever first strike capabilities the US lacks today can be developed and deployed tomorrow.

Therefore, it's a prudent strategic move to try to prevent these bases getting even closer to Russia's border. You can argue that invading Ukraine wasn't the best way of doing that, but it is a way.

And the Russians say themselves in the NY article that I cited their main concern was the bases being able to launch other kinds of missiles, including nuclear missiles, and Putin says in his long interview (which I have no problem agreeing is good evidence that Putin's main concern is reconquering "historical lands") that his reaction on hearing about this ABM plan of the US was that they'd be forced to react in various ways and proposing non-escalatory ways to achieve the US "rogue state" ABM goals.

Denial of this common sense military reality (the bases of one's adversary are a threat) is truly stupendous and, like other topics we discuss, I'm sure this is another one in which we actually agree.

Does Ukraine have a "right" to host US bases and US missile bases? Certainly it does in the current international law framework.

Does Russia have a "right" to invade Ukraine to prevent it from doing so? In principle we could argue all day (or year ... or even years at this point) about who attacked who first (maybe it really was Girkin who attacked Ukraine first and started the civil war), but in practice Russia can just veto any resolution. And that's how legal systems work: before there is some actual authoritative decision on the matter then the various arguments for and against aren't "resolved" and are open questions, no matter how preposterous.

More importantly, can we easily predict Russias invasion of Ukraine? Yes. Can Ukraine "win". No.

So whatever you feel about the law, the movement of NATO and NATO bases closer to Russia and then trying to go even closer is obviously provocative and results in the predictable outcome of this war in Ukraine. As RAND already informs us, this strategy of unbalancing Russia by getting aggressive in Ukraine is one way to harm Russia but at the "expense" of Ukraine, and, more presciently, if the USA pushes and provokes a bigger and Russia then wins that war then it could easily backfire in terms of USA prestige.

Maybe this is what you describe NOW, when I have finally educated you about the matter. Your previous claim was 'You could literally take a ABM missile and simply put a nuclear warhead in it and fire it at a ground target'. — Jabberwock

This is the key exchange that created the discussion on this topic:

You start by dismissing the 'nuclear threat' as nonsense.

Beside the obvious nonsense of 'nuclear threat' (again, no nuclear missiles have been deployed in any of the new NATO countries, so why exactly should that be an issue?) — Jabberwock

I point out the obvious (that nuclear weapons and risks aren't "nonsense"):

For the obvious reason that they could deploy nuclear weapons there.

Furthermore, the US started the dismantling of the non-proliferation architecture (based on mostly treaties that the US didn't ratify anyways, so was never US law to begin with, which doesn't inspire much trust as a starting point) in abandoning both in official "executive policy" (what I guess best describes non-ratified treaties that we're just going to pretend are meaningful) and action (actually developing the weapons systems banned by the treaties) the ABM treaty and then the INF treaty.

The US makes clear they are a "first use" nation. — boethius

You then double down on your no-risk position:

Oh, please do tell which missiles in European bases can be 'easily loaded with nuclear warheads'. But be specific... which types and ranges did you have in mind exactly? — Jabberwock

I then explain exactly the points you now claim to have had since the beginning:

The whole point of exiting the INF treaty (which was never entered anyways, just pretend entering and exiting) is to develop exactly those kinds of missile with size and range to ABM missiles.

You could literally take a ABM missile and simply put a nuclear warhead in it and fire it at a ground target.

Keep in mind also that ABM missiles are themselves first strike risks, which the ABM treaty was negotiated in the first place. — boethius

Notice how I explain that you could obviously substitute a missile, whether existing or to be developed, in an ABM as well as just putting a nuclear warhead in an ABM missile if you wanted to.

Then notice how I state very clearly that "Keep in mind also that ABM missiles are themselves first strike risks".

Go through this exchange and maybe consider the fact that not only is my position correct from the start:

1. ABM bases can be converted to launch nuclear missiles.

2. ABM is anyways a first strike risk.

So after all this you're actually capable of claiming:

Maybe this is what you describe NOW, when I have finally educated you about the matter. Your previous claim was 'You could literally take a ABM missile and simply put a nuclear warhead in it and fire it at a ground target'. Sure, you COULD do that, but its effectiveness when launched from a ground base would still be very limited as compared to the offensive mobile capacity NATO already has. — Jabberwock

Which, if you aren't able to retain what I cite you claiming at the top of this post, let's compare:

Beside the obvious nonsense of 'nuclear threat' (again, no nuclear missiles have been deployed in any of the new NATO countries, so why exactly should that be an issue?) — Jabberwock

Obviously ABM is not nonsense when it comes to increasing nuclear risks not the bases, as you now explain yourself with the absolutely incredible claim of "educating me" going along with it.

Even more ludicrous, you then complain about:

Then you have wasted three pages of discussion about the supposed advantages of land bases as a 'forward offensive base', because you believed that ships have to 'surround Russian shores'. — Jabberwock

While again demonstrating your inability to either in good faith have a clue what the discussion even is or then, more likely, your bad faith in trying to just spew bullshit in the discussion as you think that's a good propaganda tactic.

For, surrounding Russia's shores is your scenario of the US having 1000 points of first strike nuclear capability anyways and thus the bases are irrelevant.

In your comparison, you'd have to get those ships close to Russia, likewise any planes to conduct a first strike, which are what are called "warning signs".

The bases quite dramatically increase first strike capability (both in the ABM and nuclear capacity) above what would just be normally "hanging around".

Now, you'd certainly want a lot more bases before actually conducting a first strike, and ideally in Ukraine, which is one explanation of why Russia has made counter-moves to prevent that happening.

You can disagree those moves (invading Ukraine) were optimum or morally justified or political astute or whatever, but the argument that "NATO isn't a threat" and "nuclear threats are nonsense" is just dumb.

Yes, nuclear war today is unlikely, likewise tomorrow and the next day.

The problem analysts tasked with managing nuclear capabilities and deterrence have is that the likelihood is low but non-zero (and much higher than some super low 1 in a 10 trillion realm of odds, considering we've already had close calls with nuclear war). Therefore, something happening has some level of appreciable odds, given enough time, will likely happen; so, if escalation begins even small changes in the balance of power could be decisive in both deterring an opponent (i.e. pushing the odds as low as possible) as well one's side surviving a nuclear exchange better than worse (at least taking out a large proportion of the opponents capacity so as to have more people / organs of the state survive, once nuclear exchange begins).

You obviously don't take the subject seriously enough to even read your own sources you cite, but maybe you can stretch your imagination enough to realize that people who actually deal with nuclear force issues do take the issue seriously.

Anyways, the point I was making has less to do with Ukraine and more to do with your understanding of democracy vs totalitarianism. Replacing a top general (popular or unpopular) from leading the armed forces in wartime is not something incompatible with democracy AT ALL. Making unpopular decisions in wartime like imposing martial law, mass mobilization, and replacing a popular&competent top general is not something incompatible with democracy AT ALL. — neomac

Though I agree with you here, using martial law to ban critical media, ban any dissent of the war policies, banning political parties, postponing elections are all anti-democratic and despotic and arguably totalitarian.

Ukraine is only a democracy on paper at this point.

No, if you had read anything with understanding, you might get a better idea what I think. — Jabberwock

Oh really?

Hmm, let's see.

Here is the article on the first strike strategy, it also lists the weapon used for it:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_strike_(nuclear_strategy)

Can you point out all the ABMs from that list? — Jabberwock

Let's put aside you're already admitting ABM is a first strike capacity and just directly answer your question.

On the page you link to, there's a section literally called:

First-strike enabling weapons systems —

Of which the very first sentence of this "First-strike enabling weapons" is:

Any missile defense system capable of wide-area (e.g., continental) coverage, and especially those enabling destruction of missiles in the boost phase, is a first-strike-enabling weapon because it allows for a nuclear strike to be launched with reduced fear of mutual assured destruction. —

To continue to do your reading for you, the very next sentence is:

Such a system has never been deployed, although a limited continental missile defense capability has been deployed by the U.S., but it is capable of defending against only a handful of missiles. —

Which is exactly what I describe: The bases increase first strike capability, and so something to worry about, especially if the trend is allowed to continue and you end up with 100s of "limited continental missile defense".

That is your original confusion, which might be somewhat understandable. However, your clinging to it despite all the times I have tried to correct you is inexplicable. Yes, ABMs can be a part of the first strike because they can PREVENT the enemy from making a successful first strike or weaken it. — Jabberwock

Ok ... yes ABM is a first strike capability, you now agree again with this obvious fact.

However, it is not a first strike capability in that it defends against a first strike, that makes no sense. If you've been struck first then you are not carrying out a first strike.

You literally don't know how sentences and words work at this point in the conversation.

ABM is a first strike capability, fulfilling the role of an "enabling weapons system", because it can reduce the effectiveness of the second strike of your opponent, thus increasing the desirability of a first strike.

If you can intercept some or even most of your opponents counter-strike while striking first, then you can expect to suffer significantly less damage in the exchange.

This is extremely basic stuff, which you would have understood by now if you had either common sense understanding of how "stuff works" or then simply read your own sources.

The point of a first strike is to neutralize (as much as you can) your opponents ability to strike back

... so ...

No, they are significant for their ability to neutralize first strike capability. Their offensive capability is still limited for all the reasons I have listed several times already. — Jabberwock

If a system can neutralize part of your opponents strike capability then it is by definition part of a first strike capability.

The whole point of the AMB treaty was to reduce the need for further buildup of nuclear weapons by reducing first strike capability (and thus building more weapons to ensure both survivability and delivery of a counter-strike).

In the words of the Arms Control Association:

The treaty, from which the United States withdrew on June 13, 2002, barred Washington and Moscow from deploying nationwide defenses against strategic ballistic missiles. In the treaty preamble, the two sides asserted that effective limits on anti-missile systems would be a "substantial factor in curbing the race in strategic offensive arms." — Arms Control Association

And notice how the US withdraws from the ABM treaty and then starts building ABM bases.

Make sure that you also stick out our tongue... I thought I was discussing with an adult, though that belief was indeed strained at some points. — Jabberwock

Your points are so idiotic that what strains belief is that I'm dealing with a good faith interlocutor.

It is a grave mistake, in my disposition, to give respect to someone who deserves none. That would just be insulting to people who have actually earned some respect by being of good faith.

You are obviously aware that forward deployed or continental coverage ABM is a first strike capability.

You are obviously aware that you can also bring in (covertly or overtly) and deploy nuclear missiles from an ABM battery.

You are obviously aware that if you build one forward deployed base maybe you start building more, and therefore an opponent is going to try to frustrate that process and impose costs to doing so.

Therefore, forward deploying ABM is a provocative move that your opponents is going to react to.

Your trying to argue that it's not obviously provocative—first "insignificant" then when that was demonstrated to be completely idiotic argument, now the trope "it's only for defence against a first strike!!" which is equally idiotic—is all clearly bad faith.

Your debate strategy is just to go in circles around your bad faith and idiotic arguments.

Forward deploying ABM obviously increases first strike capability which an opponent is going to react to ... which, in this case Russia, has clearly said is a primary concern of their that they are going to react to.

The slippery slope is your seeming view that if you allow one side to have certain armaments, then you have to agree to anything else. That is obviously false: US and Russia has agreed that they can arm themselves in certain weapons and protest against other weapons. Thus Russia can allow one base in Poland and protest in the exact same way against the second one or the third one, whichever threshold it considers to be significant, exactly as it happened with all other armaments in the past. — Jabberwock

Again, just dumb.

First, Russia didn't "agree" to the bases, but disagreed, the US then deployed them anyways despite Russia disagreeing.

The slippery slope is that if action does not backup said disagreement, to impose a cost on the US for forward deploying the bases, then the US would just make more bases. Therefore, even if one bases isn't "so significant" it is anyways the start of a likely trend.

There was a status quo of not forward deploying missile bases, the US breaks this status quo, why would they stop there? No reason to expect them to stop there and so you come up with a strategy to counter those moves.

Yes, missile the bases are not literally in Ukraine right now right next to the Russian, but would't that be the case if Ukraine is in NATO. Therefore, one way (the ultimate way) to prevent the US continuing its police of NATO expansion and forward deployment of missile bases following that expansion is to invade Ukraine.

Now, are the bases themselves sufficient cause for the invasion? I would argue no, but it's a contributing factor.

That is obviously false: US and Russia has agreed that they can arm themselves in certain weapons and protest against other weapons. — Jabberwock

I want to highlight this as particularly stupid since the US has withdrawn from ABM and INF (which weren't real treaties anyways, since the US didn't ratify them).

In the case of ABM the reasoning was:

[Arms Control Association;https://www.armscontrol.org/factsheets/abmtreaty]On December 13, 2001, U.S. President George W. Bush, who argued that Washington and Moscow no longer needed to base their relationship on their ability to destroy each other, announced that the United States would withdraw from the ABM Treaty, claiming that it prevented U.S. development of defenses against possible terrorist or "rogue-state" ballistic missile attacks. During his presidential campaign, Bush said he would offer amendments on the treaty to Russia and would withdraw the United States from the accord if Russia rejected the proposed changes. However, the Bush administration never proposed amendments to the treaty in its talks with Russia on the subject.[/quote]

Which is just an insulting way to go about diplomacy.

In the case of INF, the US blamed Russia, and even has a page about it:

"Russia has failed to comply with its obligations under the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, and as such, the United States has withdrawn from the INF Treaty effective today, Aug. 2, 2019," Defense Secretary Dr. Mark T. Esper said in a statement today. "This withdrawal is a direct result of Russia's sustained and repeated violations of the treaty over many years and multiple presidential administrations." — U.S. Withdraws From Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, US Defense Department

Now, whether you blame the US or Russia, what is clear is that there isn't much agreement at the moment on what the US and Russia "can arm themselves in certain weapons".

And what the hell is the "protest against other weapons" about?

You think the US and Russia are non-violent hippies that if against a policy of the other is going to just go and protest with some signs or something?

They can do a lot more than protest if they don't like what the other side is doing, up to and including invading countries.

Your whole position seems to be that the US can do whatever it wants, place missile bases where it wants, and Russia should limit themselves to protesting that. That they can do. But they're just big meanie-boos if they do anything else about it.

Lol. Legitimately recognized by whom exactly? And locals might not want to attack armed militants, they might prefer for the military to show up. And if they did not care, it is not much of an argument for forcing their independence.

It is Russians that started the killing. That is what Russians themselves are saying. If you close your eyes and shout 'I do not care about Girkin', it does not change that fact. — Jabberwock

First, your main piece of evidence is Girkin saying things would have fizzles out if he didn't arrive.

Second, the definition of a government is control of territory.

Whether Girkin was "the key to everything" or not, at the end of the day there's a government in control of the territory, which Ukraine then waged war against for 8 years.

No, Ukraine did not start it. Girkin's unit of mostly Russians has crossed the border and started the hostilities. — Jabberwock

Girkin himself says in your citation of him that things would have "fizzled out" without him, so even your own evidence you use to support your claims clearly claims things had started before that.

What is clear is that a new government independent of Ukraine controls the territory in question (the definition of government) and Ukraine wages war against it for 8 years.

Obviously the separatists separated and so started the separation, but that is different than starting a civil war. The civil war starts with Ukraine trying to reconquer the territory.

If the official government in the Donbas did not declare independence or then didn't do it "legitimately enough" for you, then that would be a coup and not starting the civil war part.

If Ukraine did not try to reconquer the territory then there would not have been a war for 8 years, the new government would just be there and there wouldn't be any violence; it would be a diplomatic question what happens next.

The obvious difference is that the Ukraine's referendum was not made under the guns and threat from regular military forces of the neighbor. But I suppose you do not care about such details. — Jabberwock

I do not care if Ukraine cannot anyways re-conquer the territory.

It would matter if there was something that could be done to reverse things. If something is easily reversible then it is a moral question of whether the change was really justifiable or not.

To contrast, if some street in Monaco seceded from the rest of Monaco and the Monaco asked the European community to come in and compel the street back into the principality rather than tolerating this street trying to make a new dutchapality.

Obviously Europe, or just France, could easily reverse this dutchapality seceding from the principality of Monaco. So, it would be a moral question of whether it is right to do so. Should we recognize the citizens of the street right to self determination and support their effort to free themselves from the oppressive yoke of the Prince of Monaco? Or should we recognize Monaco's claim over the street?

In such a context, it would matter a great deal if the people on the street even wanted to secede and if anything was used to coerce them one way or another.

We could then get into hundreds of years of history, legal and moral precedent, to try to tease out who has just cause in the affair.

Whatever happened in the initial Donbas secession, it was reversible.

What is clear is that there's a lot of Russian speakers there unhappy with Ukrainian language and cultural oppression, so the idea that there were no genuine separatists at all I feel far fetched.

What exactly the majority genuinely wanted I think is up for debate and we may never know.

What is clear is that they become a separate government to that of Ukraine and Ukraine had lost control of the territory without any realistic way of reversing things (without being invaded by Russia).

They did not pick the fight, a foreign power has instigated an armed rebellion on their territory to destabilize them. If you believe that might makes right, then sure, it is not a problem. Not everyone does, though. — Jabberwock

Playing footsie with NATO, Russian language oppression, random violence against Russian speakers, promoting Bandera as a national hero, then attacking (including shelling civilians) the separatists, is all definitely picking a fight with Russia.

True, you can argue that Ukraine has "a legal right" to do all these things, join whatever alliance it wants and repress whoever is on their territory they want to repress and put down any rebellious activity. Definitely other countries (including Russia) claim to have the same rights.

Many of the factions supporting these provocative policies vis-a-vis Russia had no qualms of explicitly stating their main goal (to Western journalists on camera) is starting a war with Russia that will destroy said Russia.

All this does not change Ukraine's actions as "picking a fight". Picking a fight is not a moral expression, you could be in the right and so have a right to fight, doesn't make it wise though.

Ukrainian elites, decision makers and faction leaders knew the policies they were pursuing could easily, maybe even likely, start a war with Russia, especially waging war on the Donbas for 8 years. Some tried to reverse course (I have zero problem believing Zelensky legitimately wanted to make peace with Russia and avoid a way) but failed to do so and others bet NATO would save them and still others seem to have wanted a war as a "purifying" experience to Ukrainians.

So Ukraine should just let Donbas secede, because a band of armed thugs has said so. Then the same band would appear In Zaporozhia. And then Ukraine should let them secede, too, because you do not pick fights with Russia. But Odessa has always been Russian, Putin says. Then send some 'separatists' there, too. Is there any country that would allow that? — Jabberwock

Yes, once they lost control of territory filled with Russian speakers and right next to Russia, they should have recognized there was no military option to reconquer the territory: any potentially successful attempt would trigger an invasion by Russia.

Therefore, their options were diplomatic, and had they implemented Minsk I or II that would be far more likely way to regain the territory than what they've decided to do instead.

As for foreign intelligence agents operating elsewhere in the country, the response to that is counter-intelligence.

I would appreciate that you post your answers when you are sober. It would facilitate the discussion a lot. — Jabberwock

I guess you really don't much at all.

You're main counter argument against action vis-a-vis the military bases has essentially been the bases don't matter as we can think of a scenario in which they are superfluous to a first strike and other assets can easily deliver the maximum blow.

The AI example is that in all situations you can imagine a threat-model against which you can do nothing, indeed a threat model in which everything you do is actually counter productive.

For example, you could imagine me as a world-view threat model in which everything you in the conversation accelerates your descent into madness.

If you just "don't get it" I am happy to go deeper and explain to you why positing this kind of threat model doesn't lead to the conclusion that therefore no action is reasonable.

They are insignificant as far as the offensive potential is concerned. They are quite significant as a defensive measure. — Jabberwock

So let me get this straight, your process is:

1. Ignore ABM as itself a first strike system
2. Trivialize the missile bases as 10001 compared to 1000 capacity of US ships (and also German ships for some reason).
3. Insist they are insignificant even if you then laugh at you own "1000" ship points scenario of all these ships literally being on Russia's shore at the same time.
4. Agree that ABM is itself a first strike weapon ... but that's somehow not part of "offence"
5. Agree the bases are significant, just not offensively even though on step 4 you agreed anyways ABM was an offensive first strike system.

You're literally a walking clown face meme.

But the result of your idiocy is that you clearly agree even in your own analysis that the ABM bases are a significant increase in first strike capability.

Add to that the fact people can put nuclear strike systems in those bases, make the bases bigger, make more bases and so on, and the threat is even more significant.

What? Again, your fantasy scenarios are so divorced from reality that it is hard meaningfully engage with them. — Jabberwock

What fantasy scenario?

This is literally what happened in the Cuban missile crisis. US felt threatened by ground bases in Cuba (even though the Soviet had ships!) and started a blockade of Soviet ships. The situation was deescalated when the Soviets withdrew.

Now, Soviets had been sending ships to Cuba anyways, and have nuclear submarines and so on ... why did the US react to missile bases in Cuba? Because it significantly increases the threat, enough to react to it.

Oh, the slippery slope again. If you let them build one base, you have to let them build a hundred. Because that is how international treaties always work. Really... — Jabberwock

I thought it was a rollercoaster?

Anyways, slip-and-slide or rollercoaster, this is literally what an arms race is.

Slippery slope is not a fallacy. You have to demonstrate that the slippery slope doesn't exist to call it a fallacy. For example, you have to demonstrate that allowing gay rights won't result in beastiality and child rape and sexual abuse (which I hope we agree are bad things). This can be done by pointing out gay and beastiality and child rape are different categories, one does not imply the others.

However, "arms" and "more arms" are the same category, and depending on the situation, definitely the precedes of some arms build up maybe a predicator of more arms buildup, resulting in an arms race.

Arms races also include military action. The US didn't respond to the Soviet Union placing missiles in Cuba (a military action to get an advantage in the arms race) by just building more arms, but by a naval blockade (a military action to directly mitigate the Soviet's military action).

Again, your points are just dumb and I'm pretty sure it's intentional at this point, but if you insist you are just that stupid then I'll give you the benefit of the doubt. You're owed that much.

Oh, I do. The former are much less effective for offensive purposes. You said yourself that ships must be effectively tracked to be neutralized. The land base cannot go anywhere and you know much earlier if anything unusual is happening there. So yes, it is stupid, but not on my part. — Jabberwock

I also said you cannot only track ships you can go and intercept them.

In any realistic scenario (what analysts actually worry about) some political tension already exists and escalation already exists, so at some point in your escalation scenario you make an ultimatum that any ship or submarine X Km from your coast will be fired upon: that they stay on their side and you'll say on your side.

At this point in an escalation scenario you've deployed counters to close-threats (first strike threats), if you don't plan to conduct a first strike yourself then you aren't concerned about second strike capability further away.

Additionally, at this point in an escalation scenario the opponent can also deescalate. It's not much military or political cost to just withdraw your ships from an area.

Yes, you know where the bases are, but the worry is they fire their weapons before you blow them up, they can't as easily militarily or politically be withdrawn (why the Cuban missile crisis was a crisis, as the Soviets now have to pay a political cost in withdrawing equipment from Cuba; it's totally legal, states have "rights" as we've all recently learned, so it's a loss of face to withdraw the land assets; mores than ships).

Actually, you simply do not KNOW much about Girkin and his obviously non-covert actions in Donbas. And based on that ignorance you produce so many paragraphs, which are completely irrelevant, because they have nothing to do with reality. The issue that repeats oh so often in our discussion. — Jabberwock

I really don't care about Girkin.

End of the story is that the legitimately recognized local-government there declared independence, the locals that "didn't want hostility" didn't stop it happening either, and then Ukraine attacked the separatists thus starting the civil war.

A declaration of Independence is not in itself starting a way.

Ukraine started the civil war. If somehow their justification does make some sense in some political theory, then they were just stupid. If they had no argument that wouldn't also work against Ukraine's own declaration of independence from the Soviet Union, then the war is just evil.

Either way shelling civilians is evil and either way picking a fight you know Russia will respond to is stupid.

No, that is not what happened at all, which you could check in five minutes. But you just abhor the facts.

If you do not believe the Western sources, at least you could read what Russians, such as Girkin, have to say about it. 'I'm the one who pulled the trigger of war. If our unit hadn't crossed the border, everything would have fizzled out, like in Kharkiv, like in Odesa', he said. His unit has crossed the border and started the hostilities, most of the unit was not even the separatists, but regular Russian soldiers. He then complained that the locals are very reluctant to join the rebellion. Then they have executed the local government officials and policemen, taken the weapons cache. Modern cities are not prepared for local defense, any larger bunch could take one in a day. Claiming that doing so would immediately give them any rights and the intervenening force would be 'invading their territory' is clearly absurd. — Jabberwock

He's talking abbot crossing the border into Ukraine, not crossing the border and attacking the rest of Ukraine.

But again, I do not care about how things played out (as I've made clear with my analogy to Quebec separatists and making it clear that if the situation was France did in Quebec whatever you want to claim Russia did in Donbas, don't care).

At the end of whatever process happened you had a separatist government in control of territory that Ukraine attacked and continued to do so, including war crimes like shelling civilians, for 8 years.

Most, if not all, political entities come into existence without any right to do so.

The US had no "right" in the previous legal system to secede from the British empire and fight the British.

Secession is an extra-legal issue as nearly all countries that exist today seceded or then conquered (sometimes several such events) at some point tracing out their state lineage. Ok, so the states we have now get together and say "secession is totally bad". Who gives a shit?

The more important question is do you have the force strength to successfully secede if you feel in whatever system you care about you have a right to do so?

If you do have the power and the allies then whoever you secede from complaining about it doesn't mean jack shit.

The separatists obviously had the power to secede as they do so. If alliance with Russia is part of that power then that's just being politically astute. If Girkin was a problem and "the key to everything" then Ukrainian counter-intelligence should have dealt with him sooner.

Sessions and revolutions always attract extremist foreigners.

I do not care about Girkin because Ukraine could not win the fight they picked, and if you pick fights you can't win why expect any sympathy?

Sure, but the issue is that if a foreign government actively provides troops and weapons to fuel such actions, it is rather hard to tell whether the right of the people to self-determine has been preserved. — Jabberwock

Again, wish it wasn't so, but the current international status quo is that supplying weapons is not an act of war.

All the great powers want to sell weapons and affect political outcomes (US most of all) so they all accept that is just how the game is played.

US has armed all sorts of groups, I don't see you whining about it.

Right, because you're as hypocritical as you are purposefully stupid.

Now, if the question is whether the world should have a different international status quo where there's greater cost for intelligence and arms supply interference? Sure, yeah, great, get on that, I'll vote for it.

I don't really like spies. Mainly because they're often the worst kind of dumb: people who think they are smart.

You'd fit right in though.

The claims of indiscriminate shelling of civilians have not been confirmed by OECD. The number of civilians killed in 2021 was 110. Even if we attribute all of those to Ukrainians, the argument that Russia just had to kill 10000 civilians and raze numerous cities to the ground to stop that is rather questionable. — Jabberwock

The West hasn't confirmed that their "friend" they supply arms to hasn't been committing war crimes? Oh. My. God. Stop the presses!!!

It doesn't really seem to be disputed the shelling of civilians by Ukraine, even recently there was the cluster munitions used on a market.

However, again, it's not so important to me because my main view is that picking a fight with Russia is stupid. If you want to believe the Azov guys have been perfect rules-of-war angels since 2014, be my guest. Believe what you want.

What I provide here is a framework of risk-analysis and political-analysis.

So if you're not disputing the framework just arguing the facts are that 2014 was already some sort of "Russian invasion proper", not covert and arms supplying actions that are not considered acts of war in the current framework, or then you're not disputing that Ukraine is indeed stupid to pick a fight they can't win but they haven't committed any war crimes since 2014!!! No shelling of civilians, none whatsoever! Then, again, feel free to believe that.

Doesn't seem plausible to me, but then again I am a super intelligent AI, of which you have no hope in defeating in verbal fisticuffs, sent specifically to mess with you from what is essentially another dimension, and perhaps I haven't picked up yet on all the subtleties of our simulated subjects and their secessionist shenanigans.

No, we are not. Add up all the missile tubes from just the non-US NATO ships and the Redzikowo tubes are still insignificant. — Jabberwock

They are not "insignificant".

That's just dumb to say. Why would they be there is they were insignificant?

Oh, so you do not even know where Redzikowo is. Not that it surprises me. And you seem to miss what has already been written: with the NATO presence in the Baltic already, Redzikowo makes very little difference. — Jabberwock

Ships operate in the ocean where you can have your ships too as well as planes.

If you felt threatened enough you can much more easily sail to said threats and much more easily sail into other's territorial waters. You could go and blockade any port if you wanted to and this is less of an escalation than sending tanks and infantry to go surround a base on land.

land bases are also a lot cheaper and a lot faster to make, so if you "let the US make bases" then they could in short order create a lot of bases in a short amount of time.

That you don't get the differences between "land" and "water" is just dumb at this point.

Sure, ABMs are a factor in the first strike doctrine. The issue is that you got confused and you believe it is because of their offensive capabilities. That just shows how little you know about the things you discuss. — Jabberwock

I did not get confused, I said at the start of this conversation that ABM in itself is already a first strike provocation, but that, additionally, the Russians were concerned about the nuclear intermediate capability of these missile bases, to which you said there's no reason to be worried because they hold ABM missiles and not nuclear ballistic missile, to which I then cite the New York Times citing the Russians concerns about the nuclear capability of these missile bases (that they can be easily retrofitted to fire other kinds of missiles, such as Tomahawk cruise missiles was the example given).

I have mentioned several times the Russians are concerned about both capabilities, you focused on only the offensive capabilities because somehow you think citing the current technical specifications of weapons systems would or then should in the mind of a military analyst in Russia mean that such systems can simply not do anything beyond their current public specifications (which is just stupid).

It is not just a slippery slope, it is more of a rollecoaster. You can make the exact same argument to ANY weapon, from destroyers, through frigates to warheads themselves. 'If we allow them to have one warhead, they will have a million'. No, that is not how any arms race works. — Jabberwock

Ah yes, it's more of a rollercoaster ... and your point is?

Obviously you can and people do make the exact same argument about every other weapons system, why you end up in an arms race when one side (the US side in this case) decide to go down said rollercoaster ... weeeeeee !!! We're having so much fun.

And "if they have one now, they are likely to get more later" is exactly how arms races work.

You think anyone in the Kremlin was arguing at the end of WWII that "the US only has a few nuclear bombs! why would we expect them to get more, this whole nuke thing is nothing burger and nothing to worry about. Hundreds of nukes! Bah, fear mongering!!"

The Russians respond to escalation in plenty of other ways as well, such as improving their second strike capability against the US and improving their first strike capability against Europe.

But every course of action has diminishing returns so once you've invested in one area then other areas become more cost effective. Stopping the forward deployment of US missile bases is one of several areas you can invest in to reduce the overall threat level.

Oh, so Americans will just smuggle nuclear warheads. Right. Your disconnect from reality makes this discussion rather absurd. — Jabberwock

Your reading comprehension has reached rock bottom.

From the Russian perspective, covert deployment of nuclear weapons can be characterized as "smuggling". You could covertly deploy a nuclear missile to a fishing boat if you wanted, but it is much more likely, and so more to worry about, that you'd covertly deploy nuclear missiles to military bases you control than a fishing vessel; soldiers may not be onboard for the fishing-boat-nuke-plan, but moving military hardware between military bases is more banal, even nukes.

If something is more likely, then it is higher in priority on the threat spectrum.

I did not say that the bases add zero relevant military capability. They add a significant military capability - defensive one. That was the actual Russian concern - that their offensive capabilities will be diminished, even though US stated their are not the point of those. However, given that the argument 'you cannot defend yourself so well!' is somewhat harder to sell, they have also made the claims about the supposed offensive capabilities - which theoretically exists, but in fact are barely relevant. As can be seen, those more ignorant about those issues fell for it - like you and some journalists. — Jabberwock

So Russia's concern is about their own first strike capability against NATO being diminished?

Literally WTF are you talking about.

Furthermore, you just literally agreed (after simply ignoring the point as long as you could) that ABM is a nuclear first strike capability.

So, you really think these "insignificant bases" are more worrisome to the Russians in diminishing their ability to attack NATO in a first strike than they represent a first strike threat to Russia?

What's the Russian offensive scenario that is frustrated by these insignificant missile bases?

But I am not taking America at its word, I am just pointing out that, contrary to your claims, Aegis bases have negligible offensive potential compared to SLBMs and other shorter range launch platforms.

The rest of your fantasies is not really worth answering to... The idea of the first strike initiated from shorter range immobile platforms is beyond absurd. If you point a gun at someone who points a gun at you, you do not start the fight by kicking him in the shin. — Jabberwock

That's why the Russians point out as their major concern that these ABM systems can be easily converted to launch other missiles.

Your whole argument is based on the public specifications of a weapons systems the maximum extent of its capabilities ... while also accepting AMB in itself is anyways part of a first strike capability.

It's just stupid at this point.

You forgot to mention that the war in Donbas was instigated and started by the Russian Federation, with significant participation of soldiers from the RF. Girkin clearly stated that locals were not interested in starting the hostilities. To 'deescalate' all Russia had to do was to withdraw its troops and support for separatists (or not start the war in the first place). Even then, the war mostly deescalated itself: 50 Ukrainian soldiers were killed in 2020 in the zone, so it was a typical Russian 'frozen conflict'. Further escalation was started with significant build-up of Russian forces in 2021. Thus your scenario, as usual, has little relation to reality. — Jabberwock

First, my scenario is Quebec separatism with whatever modifications are necessary to make it comparable to the Donbas (so replace Russian intelligence with French intelligence, and put France beside Quebec and so on).

Second, I do not care much about Girkin and whatever covert actions Russia has taken in the Donbas.

Covert actions do not constitute starting an actual war. There's spies all over the place and we don't say that because the US has spies in China, Russia, Europe, everywhere else that therefore the US is at war with these countries. That covert action and spies can affect political results is just part of the status quo the world currently accepts. If the CIA never did anything similar, but have always been good little boys never interfering with anyone self determination, ok, then complain all you want.

As it stands in the real world, intelligence and covert actions are not considered acts of war but just part of the status quo everyone accepts: you are allowed to affect political processes with your spies and the legitimate counter-action is trying to catch those spies while deploying your own spies.

If the separation was 100% Russian intelligence operation, Ukraine should have had better counter-intelligence. You snooze you lose in the spy game.

The actual civil war was not started by the separatists. They declared independence and then Ukrainian militias invaded their territory and Donbas war from 2014 to 2022 occurred on Donbas territory. For the separatists to start the war they would have needed to attack Ukrainian forces outside their territory.

You can provide whatever account you want of the history of the separation, but at the end of the day you had a separatist government in control of territory and then attacked on their territory; aka. Russia certainly had a hand in causing the separation, but did not start the civil war.

Now, you'll obviously say that the separations wasn't "legitimate" and therefore Ukraine had a right to attack.

No separation ever is! All states condemn all revolutionary or seditionist action except for whatever revolutionary or seditionist action created the state in question, then we're in the realm of heroes and common sense violence that was obviously justified and brings tears to our eyes.

The bigger problem though is that Ukraine had no pathway to victory to reconquer the separated land, and therefore their military campaign was stupid at best and profoundly immoral at worst.

Furthermore, the Ukrainian side would shell civilians, so whether it was evil or stupid to begin with, we can be safe in concluding it quickly became evil in any case.

It begs the question, why is the West so disinterested in peace? Or dare I say, interested in prolonged war? Who benefits? Surely not the Europeans, so whose interests do Scholz and Macron represent? Uncle Sam's perhaps? — Tzeentch

Basically yes, Macron and Scholz represent the US interest to:

1. Harm the Euro and remove that competition to the Dollar.
2. Create a permanent schism East-West in Eurasia and prevent Eurasian economic integration in which the US just becomes largely irrelevant to world affairs.
3. Sell LNG to Europe.
3. Create a new cold war in which the US arms industry is super relevant (and profitable).
4. More-or-less consolidate Europe as vassal states (satellites as Putin refers to them) in every economic, political and military dimension possible.

If China has BRICS, then the US will have North-America, Central America and Europe.

If you can't be any longer the top dog of the entire world, you want to at least carve out as big a piece as possible in which to continue to be top dog in.

One role US nuclear escalation has, that I describe above, is in provoking Russia into invading Ukraine. Accomplishing the above goals simply requires Russia to invade Ukraine, there's not really any other way to do it. You need a really big "new situation" to undo EU-Russia economic collaboration.

Why European leaders didn't stop the process (which they easily could have) is not that they take orders directly from the US.

Rather, from what I can see, the US has managed to weaponize humanist liberal values.

Neo-liberalism is essentially the ideology of US Imperialism in vassal states, it's the discursive framework in which the US Imperial core exchanges information with vassal satellite states (both in direct diplomatic exchange as well as cultural products).

Neo-conservatism is the ideology of the US Imperial core "kept for us" that operates behind this discursive surface exchange with vassals states within which how Neo-liberalism can be used to manipulate vassals can be understood and discussed and decisions taken.

"Culture" being just one dimension of "full spectrum dominance" that is the foundational principle of Neo-conservatism.

In more abstract terms, Neo-liberalism is a conceptual structure with its own internal logic (mostly delusional) and mode of operation, under which can operate a more realistic conceptual structure that can maintain and renew the upper level as well as manipulate it for the "actual goals".

"Prosperity for all" is the foundational principle of Neo-liberalism, so sounds good and if you're paid to believe it, why not?

One essentially permanent manifestation of this dynamic is invoking Neo-liberalism anytime it's desirable to remove trade barriers and then invoking "common sense US national interest" anytime you want to be protective. The conceptual contradiction between Neo-liberalism and "US national interest" is simply never addressed; it's basically "Neo-liberalism unless we say otherwise!".

In practice how this works is that the economic faculties of the prestigious Universities are jealously guarded by either true Neo-liberal believers or then closet Neo-conservatives who understand the need for a cast of what are essentially economic priests. So, when Neo-liberalism is what benefits the Imperial core then these economists appear in the media to talk about free trade and how much progress we've made and so on, and likewise whenever the Neo-liberal framework comes under attack as not delivering this promised prosperity for a vast amount of people, and destroying the environment and so on, they appear on TV and op-eds and so on to defend it.

Whenever a policy is in contradiction to Neo-liberalism you simply swap out the economists for serious looking military or intelligence serving or retired officers to explain the common sense truth that we gotta do whatever it is for obvious national security interests.

The scenes in which this theatre is played and the strings of these puppets are pulled by the Neo-conservative "core elite" who control the US military industrial complex (some of whom we know and certainly many we don't even know who they are).

However, the economic priestly cast is mostly a safeguard for the status quo, within the Neo-liberalist ideology you can also throw in whatever values you want when you want that then become moral imperatives.

For example, Neo-liberals have no problem truly believing gay and trans rights is super important, a moral imperative and thus self-sacrifice is justifiable to move forward these goals. "Main-stream media" essentially, for all practical purposes, a bunch of dials in which one value can be dialled up and others down to justify whatever policy is decided by the Neo-conservative core.

If we want to intervene in Africa, suddenly starving people there is a problem we need to deal with.

If we want to demonize Russia, suddenly their position on gay marriage and trans rights is abhorrent and we need to hate on them (suddenly we hear a lot about any gay or trans rights issue or protest in Russia).

You know it's theatre because Russia is not even close to having the worst gay-rights record, but those values in non-strategic locations are just footnotes in the news that "common sense realism" will inform us we can't do anything about when they are discussed, if at all.

So, once you see how it works, you can start to see how European politicians can be easily manipulated to act against their own self interest as well as any long-term realistic pathway to global prosperity.

In mathematics we have saying that anything can be proven from a single contradiction, which is not just a saying but a theorem, but we also just like to say it a bunch.

Applied to politics, probably it's less robust but the same theme holds that if you can make someone believe something false you can get them to do a great many things they otherwise wouldn't do.

How the Neo-liberal discursive political control framework works is not by promoting totally absurd false beliefs but simply exaggerating the importance of credibly true beliefs to deliver the desired outcome. If you can dial up and down what's important at any given time you can determine how people will react without needing to convince them of some simply false fact or change their values.

I.e. you can weaponize their values against them.

Macro and Scholz suddenly found themselves in a discursive framework where Ukrainian democracy and opposing Putin's authoritarian (but arguably democratically mandated) regime as the most important thing on the planet, more important than Ukrainian welfare, more important than European or global prosperity, more important than Africans eating, and so forth, and what follows from this belief is that war at any cost and rejection of any compromise is a moral imperative.

As important, the only time you truly feel "good" is when you aren't compromising.

The discursive framework also delivers these moral-feelings product to its clients.

Compromise is a morally ambiguous feeling, in the best of deals.

The greater the compromise the greater the feeling of moral ambiguity. Accepting a necessary evil is still a necessary evil and therefore a bad feeling. "Proving" something is in fact necessary is never easy nor certain, just a good guess at best.

If you can dial up certain values in importance compared with the rest then you can manipulate the subject of the experiment into rejecting compromise and doing what you want.

↪boethius, you're comparing that to Donbas...? Sure, there are some similarities, and then there are the differences. By the way, the Ukrainian separatists didn't get their way. Rather, by Kremlin decree, Donbas (and Crimea) swiftly swapped flags, UA → RU. (anyway, this stuff has come up a few times already, including whatever aspects/angles) — jorndoe

That is my point, there are some differences but even if you removed those differences and even if I accepted completely you're and others account of things (Russian spies and provocateurs and so on) and make the situation exactly the same (substituting France for Russia), I would not see English Canada waging war on French separatists as either justifiable nor having a military chance of any real success if the FLQ took over Quebec and was backed by France.

Of course, the dissimilates is why things didn't play out remotely the same way, but my point is that even if the situation was made the same I did not feel I had a right as an English Canadian to prevent by force the recognized government of Quebec separating from Canada (even if it was supported by French intelligence).

Borders change, countries expand and contract throughout history, it's not a moral imperative to keep borders the same (it's a complex moral, political and military issue to what extent and under what conditions is fighting over borders justifiable).

However, sometimes political subunits "get away" and, in particular if you have little hope of re-conquering them, that's "just how it is".

'Surround Russia's shores'? You are so out of your element that it is comical. Trident II has the range of 7500 km. Tomahawk's range is 2500 km. That is, a SLBM submarine, to reach the same targets as the Redzikowo base, needs to be... in the middle of Atlantic. In fact, SLBMs can reach the exact same targets from the OTHER side - while sailing around Alaska. Not to mention the Mediterranean Sea... Your fundamental mistake is that you are repeatedly doing 'analyses' based on your very limited knowledge of the facts. — Jabberwock

I'm putting into practice your 1000 points of capability already exist greater than the base.

This is your reasoning.

To actually get these 1000 points of capability (missile frigates and submarines and so on) to a similar position as the base (which is close to Russia, that's why they don't like it) you have to sail these 1000 points of capability right up to Russias shores.

This is your scenario you propose in order to show that: Yes, you agree the base is additional capability added to that of the navy, but not significant enough additional capability to warrant mitigating action. It's just 1001 capability instead of 1000.

For your comparison to work, all those 1000 points of capability need to be as close to Russia as the base is.

ICBM's in silos and nuclear ballistic subs are second strike weapons, they are part of the MAD homeostasis.

If Russia has no plan to strike America then it has little fear of second strike capability.

What nuclear strategists worry about is a first strike.

To conduct a first strike you need different weapon systems, faster and closer to try to take out as much command and control and second strike capability as possible to then "fair better" in a post-nuclear exchange world. Sure, New York may still get hit ... but who cares about them anyways, is the logic of the first strike.

The consequences of a nuclear first strike is so high that reducing its probability any noticeable amount is almost always justifiable.

Therefore, if invading Ukraine reduces the probability of increasing vulnerability to a first strike (by reducing the probability of further forward deployment of US missile bases, and therefore reduces the probability of actual first strike occurring), then it is almost trivial exercise to conclude invading Ukraine is morally necessary.

As horrifying as the war in Ukraine is, it is morally and historically insignificant compared to a general nuclear exchange.

Now, what I am explaining above is how people paid to conduct this sort of analysis will go about things. Of course, they would have information I don't, they may also be smarter or then less smarter than me (especially if I'm a nearly eternal extra-your-universe AI sent here to the forum to frustrate you), so I am not saying my analysis matches their analysis but I am explaining the framework that would be used to evaluate nuclear strategy and military decisions.

Of course, developing new weapons is another approach, but Russia's economy is much smaller than that of the US so their worry is that they can be over-matched in nuclear capabilities and in conjunction to other strategic weaknesses (like a Ukraine in NATO and hosting several US missile bases) they would be vulnerable to a first strike in the future.

Furthermore, this entire process of nuclear escalation is unilaterally started and moved along by the US:

A. They sign non-proliferation treaties at the executive level but then don't ratify the treaties so it doesn't actually mean more than a gesture "we good bro?".

B. They drop out of these treaties they haven't even entered into, starting with the ABM treaty while rejecting to even discuss Putin's offer to jointly develop anti-rogue state ABM capability (an interesting part of the Tucker-Putin interview).

C. They then go ahead and actually develop new first strike nuclear ABM treaty as well as new warheads.

D. They forward deploy missiles bases that can be used in a nuclear first strike.

E. They have an official first-use policy.

F. They play footsie with Ukraine in a will-they-won't-they start WWIII somewhere down the line and have fun doing it, such as having a little sexy coup-play intermittent with their military copulation.

So, anyone who is not American would look at these sorts of things and say to themselves ... hmmm, maybe the US really is crazy enough to try to put in place a first strike capability.

Now, I get where you're coming from and empathize with your position. As the old saying goes, when all you have is bullshit everything seems like you're a complete idiot.

If this is true, and in my opinion it likely is, the clown car that is the European leadership is in a worse state than I thought.

Scholz and Macron spun a 'crafty' scheme at the expense of, first of all, the Ukrainians, and secondly at the expense of their own nations' welfare. — Tzeentch

So well said.

To outdo the Redzikowo base, you do not have to move ALL US ships into the Baltic. In fact, you do not need any US ships at all: ANY single German frigate would outfire the Redzikowo base. I know it can be a shock to you, but German military ships are regularly sailing the Baltic Sea and they are not blockaded each time by Russia (and so do the American ones and other NATO ships - USS Gravely - i.e. the equvalent of four Redzikowo bases, was recently in a Polish port, with no Russian blockades). To have an equivalent of the Aegis OFFENSIVE capability, all NATO has to do is literally put into service another frigate. I will tell you a military not-so-much-a-secret: they do that quite often, with no or little Russian protests. — Jabberwock

There's so much wrong with your reasoning here I'll put it in a nice list.

1. We're now far from your 1000 to 1 ratio here.

2. If political tensions were high Russia may very well start blockading US ships in the Baltic (not to mention that even now may have ships and aircraft closer to the ship you're talking about than an inland base; you simply fail to integrate the differences).

3. ABM itself is part of nuclear first strike capability.

4. The base may very well be not so significant at its current capabilities ... but its capabilities maybe augmented in the future covertly or overtly at any time.

5. Regardless of current or future capabilities, the base maybe one of many and even if each base was somehow kept at under-capacity to a frigate ... and so enough of them starts to add significantly to your 1001 points. Your "we only want one" logic just doesn't matter, everyone knows Americans are a gluttonous people.

6. Germany and the other Baltic states are non-nuclear powers, so nuclear shenanigans are far less likely coming from equipment under their command. American bases with American soldiers are de facto under American command.

7. Your whole argument is just dumb because if the bases add zero relevant military capability ... why build them in the first place? Even if what you said was true, an opponent would not conclude "well they're just wasting their money to create a provocation for nothing" but would assume the bases (especially considering the political costs they come at) must serve a critical purpose.

8. American does not even have a no-first-use doctrine, so you can't blame other powers for not taking America at it's word (when it comes to destructive violence); America has a first-use doctrine and therefore you should assume America prepares for first use-strike capability and even subtle military moves maybe critical in a first strike operation. You do realize "deception" is apart of warfare?

Some key concepts you clearly lack:

There's the whole issue of following orders to carry out a nuclear strike; the theory of the nuclear powers is that if you train people regularly to carry out a nuclear strike then enough of them (though unlikely all) will do so basically out of habit. You could also solve the problem by putting absolute off-the-wall psychopaths you are confident are frothing at the mouth to kill millions of people in charge of the nuclear keys, but then you might have nuclear war when you didn't want it, which is inconvenient at the best of times (the codes are supposed to mitigate this possibility, but in the past US set the codes to all zeros, totally legally as the order did not specify "codes that are hard to guess"; so maybe the code system works but you don't want to solely rely on it).

So, imagining a threat vector where US secretly orders German boats to fire nuclear weapons is very improbable, so improbable that it may not be actionable at all (but if it is, the plan would be to shoot them first if need be).

Likewise, the threat vector of seal team six being ordered to find a rusty fishing boat and take a covertly developed hypersonic ballistic missile and just sort of drift into Russia's shoreline and fire at Moscow for a totally out-of-the-blue decapitation strike, is not necessarily easy to pull off starting with the commanders currently in charge of the nuclear warheads wondering why you want a nuke again.

The likely result of the civilian authority ordering a totally out-of-the-blue nuclear first strike is some sort of military coup to hold elections on the topic.

Brining us to the next key concept you lack which is a threat model.

You can always imagine an opponent having so much greater capabilities and sophistication that anything you do does not help and is in fact counter productive. Which in the realm of ontological possibility things could really be that way (we could be in a simulation and I am an AI program with astronomical amounts of information and computing power sent to this forum just to thwart your every move and you have zero chance of scoring a single point; you know, that's totally possible, but you don't give up just because I maybe a super intelligence outside the universe as you know it basically toying with you; rather, what's more likely is that I am just a person capable of making human mistakes and that's your "threat model" you base your actions on).

The likely threat model of nuclear war is nuclear escalation.

One thing about ships is that they can move, relevant in both directions. If they are moving towards you and into position to fire, then you can blockade or even first strike them if you feel the need, as mentioned above.

But as critical ships can also move in the opposite direction thus deescalating the situation, a land base can't so easily move, so in a series of escalations involving ships the offensive side can easily back off at anytime (such as in the cuban missile crisis, Soviet ships backed away from America and the situation deescalated). Land bases can't do that, so in the same series of escalations you may see an ultimatum of moving these forward deployed bases backwards, which much more difficult both logistically and politically, so the ultimatum is rejected, now if the threat is not made good on you take a political hit as well as you may legitimately believe a first strike would start from these bases so taking them out would remove or reduce the threat of a full nuclear exchange (also demonstrates your weapons "work" in real world conditions, of which any doubt about supports the idea of a first strike).

In short, the bases change the strategic outlook and provoke a reaction.

As mentioned, I am not arguing the forward deployed missile bases are sufficient reason to invade Ukraine (in some absolute sense or then for Russia's military establishment, the Kremlin or Putin) but it is an additional reason to do so (prevent further forward deployment of these bases). If you simply had the bases but no NATO-Ukraine footsie, maybe Russia would just develop some new missiles and learn to live with this new threat (like all the previous threats).

Again, the major reason for a large war (in my view) was that there was already the war in the Donbas which Russia could not deescalate (despite 2 major diplomatic efforts the West later gloated was a bad faith move on their part and the part of Ukraine), would not play domestically to abandon the Russian speakers there even if Putin wanted to (which he definitely doesn't), leaving only one choice of completely demolishing Ukraine's military capability and economic viability over the long term. NATO-Ukraine footsie, forward deployed bases, resources, land-bridge to Crimea, are simply additional reasons to the inevitability of the war starting in 2014 escalating to a major conflict.

↪boethius And again you just wasted time,yours and mine, writing a dozen of paragraphs of pseudo-philosophical musings which are completely irrelevant, simply because you know so little about the topic you write about. — Jabberwock

For the sake of people following who don't want to live in total delusion, I'll explain things again to you.

A single Ticonderoga-class destroyer has 122 cells. The US has 22 of those. Arleigh Burke-class destroyer has 90 cells, there are 73 in the active service. If you take just those two classes of ships, you get almost 10000 cells. But that is comparison of capabilities of just a single type of a missile launcher... Of course, if you add all NATO frigates, etc. the disproportion would be much greater. And that is just tactical missiles - in a nuclear war SLBMs would have a much greater impact. — Jabberwock

Your ability to not think, even for a moment, of you say is truly remarkable.

I explained it: moving ships to Russia's shores would be a provocation. How do you get 73 Arleigh Burke-class destroyer's next to St. Petersburg to quickly strike at targets in Russia.

Obviously you don't, there would a Naval blockade before then.

Likewise if you sent all your nuclear submarines to surround Russias shores for a first strike. Maybe it works ... but maybe it doesn't. There's a risk your ships are detected, and if not today, Russia can act on that threat by developing better detection capabilities.

To what extent US submarines can avoid detection close to Russia's shores I don't know, but they anyways would take time to get into position, and any realistic scenario of nuclear escalation it is not pre-planned. If Russian analysts sit down and consider the scenario where the US undertakes a first strike totally out of the blue, zero political tensions, maybe they conclude they can't really do much about that, other than strive to have a survivable counter strike capability. It's also an unlikely scenario as it's unclear that the US president could successfully order such an operation.

Again, risk analysis is about managing the spectrum of likely scenarios.

This involves:

1. Evaluating what this spectrum of likely scenarios are.
then:
2. Identifying what scenarios are "actionable intelligence"; there are things that can be done that reduces the risk.
finally:
3. A cost-effectiveness optimization of what series of actions lower overall risk over the spectrum as a whole, at an acceptable cost (which is just another way to say there's some larger risk analysis assessment where devoting more resources would create some greater risks elsewhere).

You can always imagine scenarios that are not actionable at an acceptable cost. I could be struck by a falling bullet at anytime, but I don't hide in a bunker because the cost isn't acceptable.

Likewise, for what is actionable, such as wearing a seatbelt in a car, you can always imagine a scenario where that is what kills you; you were a seatbelt because the spectrum of likely scenarios is weighted towards the seatbelt helping.

This is all really basic stuff. I definitely don't expect you to be able to follow, but I hope it helps others.

So sure, if you have 1000 guns pointed at you, if you add one, technically it is more. — Jabberwock

For the reasons stated above, this is not the case, as the US doesn't have all these ships and submarines in Russian waters, positioned to strike all the time.

And you just completely ignore that this single base is (if not action is taken to discourage further bases) perhaps a trend and one of many to follow.

Anyways, typical American logic: I have a 1000 guns pointed at you already! Why do you care about 1 more!? You're overly sensitive!!!

... Well why are you so insistent on 1 more, perhaps it is the one that makes the operational difference, and if I don't do anything abbot 1, maybe it becomes 10 and then 100 and then 1000.

That's just common sense reaction to increasing the threat. Why? Why increase the threat?

The US attitude is just that they do because they can ... but ok, still, why?

You might say, well US is irrational, just likes putting missiles bases here and there even if it's a needless provocation, but precisely because US acts irrationally is why you shouldn't worry.

But no!! If there's no rational reason for the base, that's even more alarming to any normal person.

If you're capable of irrationally forward deploying your missiles then you're capable of irrationally conducting a first strike and killing millions of your own citizens simply because you'll kill more of ours.

That's how this sort of analysis goes, so you react to mitigate the threat: more missiles, faster missiles, invade Ukraine so the missile bases can't get at least that close.

Now, as mentioned, this isn't sufficient reason to invade Ukraine but it is one more factor of consideration and a big consideration for the military establishment to support the war (wars usually happen when there is both political and military establishment consensus; maybe Putin's main reason is just to get Russia's land back, typical political ambition, but then the military looks at it and says and says "NATO is forward deploying so it is the time for action").

You're fundamental mistake is thinking that just because you don't think nuclear escalation is likely and so there's no action to take about it, that therefore military analysts and military decision makers reason the same way. I can guarantee you they don't, they are paid and trained to analyze the military situation independent of any political consideration. Military people don't care that they don't think there's a political situation today that would result in a war, they are paid to prepare for any likely war anyways (if the likeliest war isn't very likely, non-evil soldiers are happy about that ... but they prepare for it as a first priority anyways).

When the US forward deploys military assets the opposing militaries, in this case Russia, start planning and routines and conduct war games to destroy it. The very fact you're developing various plans and position forces to destroy something is convincing evidence that it's a threat to you.

The fact no civilian believes it is a "actual threat" is not how soldiers operate. It's there, it could shoot us, therefore we will plan to shoot it first if ordered to do so.

↪boethius, the Canada-Quebec and Ukraine-Donbas situations differ. Adding to ↪neomac's comments, a difference that matters has come up a few times in the thread.

The Kremlin sent operatives into Donbas to organize propagandize stage insurge arm shoot for years (eventually culminating with the invasion). Standard playbook. Oddly enough, they employ extremists of the sort they claim to be after in the first place (2023Oct8). — jorndoe

Guess what!

The Front de libération du Québec[a] (FLQ) was a militant Quebec separatist group which aimed to establish an independent and socialist Quebec through violent means.[3][4] It was considered a terrorist group by the Canadian government.[5][6] Founded sometime in the early 1960s, the FLQ conducted a number of attacks between 1963 and 1970,[7][8] which totaled over 160 violent incidents and killed eight people and injured many more.[8][9] These attacks culminated with the Montreal Stock Exchange bombing in 1969 and the October Crisis in 1970, the latter beginning with the kidnapping of British Trade Commissioner James Cross. In the subsequent negotiations, Quebec Labour Minister Pierre Laporte was kidnapped and murdered by a cell of the FLQ. — Front de libération du Québec

Extremists also were in the FLQ, later sheltered by Cuba (maybe supported by Cuba or then the Soviets all along!?!?! who knows).

I said there were not circumstances in which I viewed a war against Quebec as justified due to separation. They want to separate, their provincial government declared independence, I would not view it as justified to have waged war against Quebec to subjugate them, even if there were Cuban or Soviet agents involved, and violence and extremism.

I specifically gave the example of a scenario in which France was physically next to Quebec and did whatever Russia did in the Donbas.

Countries breaking up has has happened a lot throughout history, it isn't "the end of the world", so if Quebec didn't attack us English Canadians I would not have, and still don't, view it as justified to have waged war on Quebec to maintain some sort of "Canadian pride" or whatever. It would be time to negotiate with this new political entity (whether controlled by the blasted French or not) and learn to live together. What would shelling Hull across the Ottawa river accomplish?

Furthermore, France was (and still is) a far more powerful country than Canada, so how would provoking a war with France have served English Canadian interests?

Canada is big so maybe France couldn't completely defeat us, but they'd do far more damage to us than we'd do to them, we wouldn't get Quebec back ... so what would be the point of the war?

I went through NATO training (in Canada) and one of the rules of war explained to me is that military action must have a military reason. Officer went through a long history of warfare with the catch phrase "then history evolved!" to explain each new rule we were expected to follow compared to the days of literally launching diseased corpses on catapults over city walls.

Military action must reasonably serve attainable military objectives, independent of the political situation and the political goals. Political justification of the goal does to justify a military campaign if it has no reasonable chance of attaining the military objectives.

We were instructed to surrender when further military objectives could no longer reasonably achieve the military objectives and further fighting would simply cause further loss of life without the potential of changing outcomes. Of course, reasonable chance in this context can be a small chance, depending on the impact of the goal in question in the context (i.e. fighting a hopeless rearguard action is justified in allowing the escape of a larger part of the forces); so actual analysis can be very complicated, but the basic point is that it is against the rules of war to fight on principle alone. Some wars are won, some wars are lost, the principle of minimizing harm reduces the likelihood of spirals of escalating violence (which we now see in Israel-Palestine can escalate all the way to genocide; overwhelming force being just as unreasonable in attaining a military objective as too little force to matter, which is why the other foundation of the rules of war is proportionality).

And guess what's totally not allowed?

Shelling civilians in Donetsk.

So I don't have much sympathy, on simply a soldier to soldier basis, for the Ukrainian forces.

Even according to our own Western civilians, Russia has killed less civilians in nearly 2 years of war than Israel has in 2 months ... yet Putin is Hitler and what Israel is doing is ugly but just the "reality of war".

The West has no moral high ground at the moment.

I wish it weren't so.

It is not a point made by 'experts' — Jabberwock

The point experts made was just noting the distance to Russia (which you shouldn't need experts to point of the obvious, but in our conversation it seems to be necessary), you then take the point that literally follows:

And what is the key concern The New York Times brings up? — boethius

... Which is pretty normal they would cite Russias concerns as according to Russia.

Again, you are so ignorant of the topic that you are not worth discussing except as an example of just how extreme people's ability to gaslight themselves and others really is.

Actual experts would point out that locating an offensive base within such range from Kaliningrad and Byelarus would not be optimal, to put it mildly, given the interception times. Moreover, their offensive capabilities, given the range and flight time of the relevant missiles, would be rather limited - you could get the same effect with a frigate in Baltic, which for the offensive purposes would have the advantage of not being in the same heavily observed spot. So much for your 'factual knowledge'. — Jabberwock

Oh, so you're saying it would be even better for NATO to move it's infrastructure even closer to Russia, like say in Ukraine?

You're literally making my points for me.

Now, yes, you can launch a missile from anywhere, but as I've explained that's not how risk analysis works.

You don't start risk analysis with "well, anything could happen really so therefore there is nothing in particular to pay attention to".

For example, take ships or submarines, trying to equate them with ground bases ... therefore there's no additional risk, is first simply a straight invalid argument form.

Even if we assumed the risk was the same ... then that's just more of the same risk. Russia and the US don't just have 1 submarine each that can end civilization, they have whole bunch each! So, if you wanted to consider missile bases on the ground the same kind of risk as a submarine, then the US is simply adding more submarines to their fleet inviting a response from Russia.

How an actual nuclear strike would occur is not some sneak attack, but a series of escalations in which one side concludes they have an "edge" and their best move is to strike first. Gaining an edge is about number of missiles (enough missiles to completely obliterate the opposing side as well as intercept a large number of the opposing missiles - some will certainly still get through but there's a difference between 10 nukes landing on your cities and 1000), which is why arsenals grew to such stupendous amounts at the height of the Cold War: enough nukes to target all their nukes (ideally multiple times), and then enough to survive both first strike and ABM interceptions and so on.

Of course, neither side in the Cold War could actually get to this comfortable position of having literally 10x more nukes than the other side, and a MAD balance of forces just requires missile parity (therefore it was rational to negotiate a reduction in the arsenal to avoid the chances of an accidental nuclear war).

However, in climbing down from the stupendous amount of warheads at the height of the Cold War, with the addition of advanced intelligence, targeting and ABM systems, you can start to come up with plans where you can (potentially) tactically outsmart your opponent in a first strike.

Of course, the US claims that it needs to develop these systems to protect itself from rogue actors, but all these systems have duel first strike use.

And that is simply in equating the risk of missile bases and submarines, doing so is anyways simply factually incorrect.

You can try to find ships and submarines on the high-seas, which if you do provides early warning.

A first strike is unlikely to be completely by surprise and out of the blue, as you'd still be likely killing tens of millions of your own citizens, but is much more likely in a series of escalations and the more missiles one side has closer to the other, the more likely they'll conclude they'll be better off after a nuclear exchange; likewise, because of this, the more likely the side at a disadvantage will first strike those bases leading to further unintended nuclear escalation.

In such a scenario the Americans would be like "Why'd you blow up the bases!" and the Russians would be like "We got scared so we blew them up!" and then the Americans would be like "They were totally there only for missile defence Iran, you just killed thousands of people for nothing, now we need to blow something up of yours!" to which the Russians would respond "You better not you Imperialist dogs!"

It's in these sorts of war games where you conclude that the more missiles closer to your border is very much a bad thing and therefore if you do not respond to NATO forward deploying missile bases then they'll just keep doing more of that.

The next thing you do is renew your ICBM capabilities and develop hypersonic intermediate missiles to be able to strike all the forward operating bases (either with conventional or nuclear weapons).

The argument that "well, the US is good and wouldn't hurt a fly so no one should worry about their weapons and where they are" is just stupid.

If I take out a gun and point it at you, you do not need to be convinced I intend to kill you to recognize the threat and react; if I then come closer to you with my gun drawn and slowly approaching your head ... the fact that I say I mean you no harm is not so reassuring. Would you let me do this if you had some chance of reacting and reducing the threat before I get my gun pressed up against your head? You have no evidence I intend you any harm: Maybe it's just a joke or Iran is hiding behind under your hat and I might have to take them out? Why does what I physically do with my weapon matter to you?

I'm honestly not sure you have the analytical ability to answer the question, so I will go ahead and do it for you. The reason you react to the threat is because the impact of me shooting you in the head (even by accident) is very high and therefore the risk that I do intend you harm or the gun goes off by accident warrants whatever action you can do to reduce the risk, such as drawing your gun and pointing it at me and telling me to back off, it's not funny and if Iran did actually live under your hat you'd blow your head off because you're a patriot.

No, because Russia had a clear intention of deploying actually existing missiles. — Jabberwock

You are so ignorant of the key issues that you are basically not worth talking to.

I will continue to do so, however, as I think you are well representative of the general ignorance of Western society.

There's literally a New York article entitled:

On the Edge of a Polish Forest, Where Some of Putin’s Darkest Fears Lurk — Title of the article

What is the very next sentence in the subtitle of the article?

A U.S. missile facility in Poland is at the heart of an issue animating the Kremlin’s calculations over whether to go to war against Ukraine. — Sub-title of the article

What are the points (made by experts) in said article?

As he threatens Ukraine, Mr. Putin has demanded that NATO reduce its military footprint in Eastern and Central Europe — which Washington and European leaders have flatly refused to do. Mr. Putin has been fuming about American missiles near Russia’s border since the Romanian site went into operation in 2016, but the Polish facility, located near the village of Redzikowo, is only about 100 miles from Russian territory and barely 800 miles from Moscow itself. — On the Edge of a Polish Forest, Where Some of Putin’s Darkest Fears Lurk

And what is Putin quoted as saying?

“Are we deploying missiles near the U.S. border? No, we are not. It is the United States that has come to our home with its missiles and is already standing at our doorstep,” Mr. Putin said in December at his annual news conference. — On the Edge of a Polish Forest, Where Some of Putin’s Darkest Fears Lurk

And what is the key concern The New York Times brings up?

The Polish base, the heart of which is a system known as Aegis Ashore, contains sophisticated radars capable of tracking hostile missiles and guiding interceptor rockets to knock them out of the sky. It is also equipped with missile launchers known as MK 41s, which the Russians worry can be easily repurposed to fire offensive missiles like the Tomahawk. — On the Edge of a Polish Forest, Where Some of Putin’s Darkest Fears Lurk

Again, what is the fantasy here is that some bullshit that will work handily in some Western echo chamber matters in the real world.

You actually think people doing actual risk analysis are going to be like "hmm, well today there's is not a missile that is produced that is literally labeled as 'Aegis Ashore compatible' so therefore there is nothing to worry about".

You really think switching out warheads in even the ABM missiles are some insurmountable task?

Risk analysis is about what people can do, what they might be motivated to do in the present as well as future scenarios ... not what some troll on the internet claims is not 100% already done, signed in blood, deployed in the tubes today, US forces themselves photographed and geolocated the nukes in the tube and the president of the United States already did a press conference with the photos, standing beside the missile bases with the nukes, assured everyone that the nukes are definitely in those tubes and, to make sure he couldn't be misunderstood, had already ordered several of the nukes to be fired to remove all possibility for doubt.

Again, as I said, plausible deniability, no matter how thin or implausible, in echo chambers is a great way to masterbate with fellow sycophants about whatever your point du jour is. It is not a serious framework for analysis.

Had the Soviets only deployed "missile bases" and "we don't know which missiles are in the missile tubes, tee hee hee" and "we haven't literally developed a missile called 'Surprise Mother Fuckers' and published the specification" and had some plausible deniability bullshit ... you're position is "well of course the US wouldn't have been concerned in the least".

And guess what!! The Soviets initially denied the photo evidence represented actual nukes. Did the US have "actual proof" the nukes were in what appeared to be missiles? No.

Plausible deniability does not matter at all in this sort of analysis or decision making.

Again, I repeat, analysis based on the idea that NATO bases and infrastructure does not represent a threat to anyone, is just dumb.

Your comments and your like-minded interlocutors, are relevant only as an example of how people gaslight themselves as well as can feel so confident to speak about subjects they don't even have the most basic factual knowledge of. Truly remarkable.

If we are in fantasy land, the US could deploy the nukes everywhere - in Ukraine, whether it was in NATO or not, in Alaska, or in Greenland. — Jabberwock

Yes, obviously, that's why all the focus on nuclear submarines.

However, in any large scale nuclear war, you need a lot of nukes so forward operating missile bases significantly increase the amount of nukes that can be deployed in a short period of time, and if from a short distance that's a big strategic threat.

It's called reality, not fantasy.

US reacted so strongly to nuclear weapons in Cuba because it was close.

You ever hear anyone in the US administration (of on the entire planet) having said "If we are in fantasy land, the Soviets could deploy the nukes everywhere" ... to minimize their deployment to Cuba?

You'd really have the same analysis of the Cuban missile crisis as you have here?

You'd get up in front of your class and be like "the Cuban missile crisis was a big nothing border and all the US intelligence agencies and military and administration and the president were living in fantasy land and totally overreacted because the nukes could have been deployed anywhere anyways".

As I've said, this level of analysis is dumb and almost not worth replying to.

Oh, please do tell which missiles in European bases can be 'easily loaded with nuclear warheads'. But be specific... which types and ranges did you have in mind exactly? — Jabberwock

The whole point of exiting the INF treaty (which was never entered anyways, just pretend entering and exiting) is to develop exactly those kinds of missile with size and range to ABM missiles.

You could literally take a ABM missile and simply put a nuclear warhead in it and fire it at a ground target.

Keep in mind also that ABM missiles are themselves first strike risks, which the ABM treaty was negotiated in the first place.

If you're doing actual analysis you care about risks.

There's a risk a combination of ABM and forward deployed missiles (and airplane deployed and sub deployed) could be used in a first strike (that may involve weapons or retrofitting of weapons you don't even know about).

There's a risk the US would want to execute a first strike.

There's a risk of geopolitical tensions going out of control and the US believes they're being, or about to be, first striked.

And so on.

In actual analysis that isn't on the level of "stupid" you list risks and start categorizing those risks and then evaluating those risks.

If you were a no-first-use nation and you evaluated the risk of a first strike on your territory as 0 then you wouldn't have nuclear weapons. Why would you develop a second strike capability to deal with a scenario that is 0 probability. You wouldn't.

Obviously when this sort of risk analysis is done, the likelihood of a nuclear exchange is quite low, but non-zero.

The other aspect of risk analysis (other than evaluating risk) is the impact of the events under consideration. It is risk multiplied by impact that determines actionability mitigation steps. The impact of a nuclear first strike is quite high, therefore the risk can be very low but still yield actionable motivation steps.

Is forward missile bases, either nominally ABM sties that could be fitted with nuclear weapons now or in the future (or then straight up abandoning "we're only concerned about Iran, tee hee hee" and simply overtly forward deploying nuclear missiles), in itself sufficient reason to start a giant war.

Now we know the nuclear first strike risk of these bases was worrisome enough to warrant actionable motivation steps by Russia, as they spent some diplomatic effort to try to stop that happening and then negotiate them being un-deployed and so on. So, obviously this forward deployment of missile bases enters into the Russian calculus.

The second thing any actual analysis of the situation would arrive at is that Ukraine is not such a stable place fill with people who only want peaceful relations with Russia.

It's unstable, so Ukraine entering NATO could lead to a series of escalations that lead to the US forward deploying nuclear weapons because they feel it is "needed" even if they didn't intend to do so from the outset.

Things change, and any analysis of these sorts of issues will go decades into the future. What can we expect the future to be like?

Could be more stable and happier than it is now.

... But ... there's a risk it's much less stable and a lot less happier than it is now.

Any risk analysis will go into those situations and, circling back to the missile bases, conclude it would be better if there was less of them and farther away.

Is nuclear risk the only analysis the nuclear powers do to inform decisions? Obviously not. But it is one dimension that informs their decisions and in particular military decisions (military institution of nuclear powers will have quite a lot of analysis going into nuclear war issues, as that's really the only way they can "lose" a big war and the consequences are much higher than simply losing a war, so it absorbs a lot of attention).