It’s not splitting hairs. East Germany existed for 50 years. It was a real place. That was their name.
Splitting hairs is pretending otherwise.
I never pretended otherwise. Again, that’s why I didn’t mention East Germany. Poland and Hungary are the hairs you split from your original statement.
MMDV after all. 
Suppressing rebellion = war?
Eh…I guess it depends how far it goes.
I have never heard those actions described as a “war” but I grant there is a gray area there.
It is when you have to move major forces from your own country into another to put said rebellion down. Certainly, a hell of a lot of folks were killed…not just rebels but lots of civilians too.
The point is that whether you want to split hairs or not, the Soviets did a lot of this sort of thing to maintain their empire. I’ve lost track of the original point of this tangential discussion at this point, however, so I’ll bow out of this part anyway and leave it at that.
It came from @MrDibble suggesting in post #9 that, “East Germans, the Poles, the Finns, the Estonians” were examples of countries that prevailed in wars versus the Russians/Soviets.
I do not think any of those examples relate to what is happening today. I think East Germany, as an example, is completely weird. The other two are not much better.
I think Russia has far more capacity to lean on the Ukrainians than they have capacity to resist. It all comes down to how much Putin is willing to screw Russia in pursuit of this goal. He’ll never suffer hardship and has never shown that he actually cares for his citizens. I also think Putin is not keen on admitting defeat and will instead keep pushing ahead against all reason.
If the other Russian oligarchs can’t budge him I think Putin is not likely to back off.
I hope I am wrong.
Well, I certainly agree that the Poles didn’t do particularly well against the Soviets…but I do think they fought them several times. The Finns prevailed in a way, but lost a bunch of territory and plenty of folks doing it. But, yeah, East Germans only ‘prevailed’ in the sense they broke free (like the Poles and Estonians) when the Soviet Union started to go TU.
That’s the key question at this point. Can Ukraine and the Ukrainians keep up the resistance long enough for the sanctions and other economic pressures to force Russia to back down? I don’t know that answer…and I doubt anyone else does either. I always thought Ukraine would fight, but I didn’t think they could do even as well as they have done so far against the Russians. But the Russians, for a variety of reasons, seem to have been completely unprepared to actually invade and take Ukraine, and though Putin did prepare for sanctions, he didn’t think it would be like this.
He may have no choice. Right now, Russia still has the advantage of force, but they seem unable or unwilling to really use it as a hammer to punch out Ukraine. But…in a few months, maybe half a year? I get the sense it might be like the final year or so of WWI…both sides on the verge of collapse, the ‘winner’ being the one who doesn’t. If this thing continues on for very long, I wouldn’t like to be in Putin’s shoes with anyone standing behind him, long table or no…
Setting aside East Germany for the nonce … there is no question that the USSR moved militarily against Estonia, Poland, and Finland – and not just “on the way” to fighting Germany during WWII. All were Soviet incursions in their own right, initially independent of what Germany was doing at the time.
Finland held off the Soviets and certainly won in the medium and long terms. Poland and Estonia were overrun in the short term and remained under Soviet control for decades, but were able to come out from under Soviet hegemony by the early 1990s.
Were they wars? Would you say Poland and Estonia and East Germany “won?”
Gah…NM. I already said I was out of this portion of the discussion. I’m like a dog seeing a squirrel…
I think the OP treats nuclear war as far less bad that it actually would be. Large Russian and US cities would be hit, at minimum.
Russia has lost this war. Even if they do manage to take Ukraine temporarily, they lack the troops to hold it. They missed their objective of looking strong, like they could be a bigger power on the world stage. They couldn’t unite “Greater Russia.” Their military looks weaker than people thought.
There is nothing for them to gain by going nuclear. That doesn’t lead to a win, either. It leads to NATO stomping them to the ground. It most likely loses them their tentative alliance with China.
The only reason they go nuclear is if we fuck it up, making it seem like Russia as a whole is under threat, and not just their operations outside their borders. Or, of course, if Putin really has gone mad and no one is willing to stop him.
FWIW I liked your previous answer.
This is what worries me.
I have very little sense of how much control Putin has within his country.
And a despot about to lose power is dangerous.
I also concur. As @BigT said the only reason nuclear weapons would ever be used is if their owner faces an existential threat and so had nothing left to lose. So long as NATO remains remotely sane, Russia won’t be facing an existential threat based on what is going on in Ukraine. The problem is that if it goes badly, Putin may be facing a personal existential threat, so the question is does Russia control the nuclear weapons or does Putin.
That said, I actually don’t think that Putin would use nuclear weapons even if facing a personal existential threat, for a couple of reasons. First off until the very end, there is always the chance that he can pull off a miracle and come out on top so he will probably go down struggling with political manuevers rather than give up and hit the auto destruct button. Secondly I think he does care how he is seen by history, I think he really sees himself as Russia’s savior, and so I don’t think he wants to go down as the person who turned it, along with everywhere else, into a radioactive slag heap.
I think here we do need to step back and differentiate between Putin and Russia. Russia stands to gain nothing by going nuclear, Putin . . . well, he’s very, Very in love with his own view of himself and his goals. Pyrrhic victory is still a victory for some people and all that.
And I’m not the only one (even in this thread) saying it.
I really, really hope you are right about this but I do not see it. Putin is a kleptocrat through and through and I don’t think he has an interest beyond his own.
If he uses one, it will be a smaller battlefield weapon.
While desperation would be part of it, another factor is whether there is a great mass of Ukrainian armor in a small area. Ukraine may be deliberately trying to avoid presenting such a perfect battlefield nuclear weapon target.
Massing large numbers in one spot to go against Russian forces in some set piece style battle is also not the tactic that plays best for Ukraine in this battle.
I cited where they did, in each instance.
i.e. “in the long run”
Post #15?
No you didn’t.