Don’t know how good stealth tech is against S-400 these days, but with B-2s, there is a certain amount of plausible deniability. The U.S. could blow up a Russian target in Ukraine every single week and say “explosion? What explosion?”, reminiscent of how Russian whistleblowers or dissidents always seem to mysteriously fall out of building windows. A month or two of this and Russian military morale in the Ukraine would start to really get frayed, wondering if it’s their turn next week.
And if Putin tries to threaten nuclear retaliation, a gentle reminder that Russian skin and cell DNA is just as susceptible to the effects of radiation and thermal burns as Western skin may do the trick.
Effective deterence can come with just straight up fucking with them without admitting it. Oh, you didn’t actually invade Crimea? Well, we didn’t actually promise Saudi Arabia new jets if they dumped oil at below cost.
I’m not sure you guys really get what I’m saying. It would absolutely be in doubt. We’re not talking about Russia bitch slapping Ukraine’s military off the field of battle, we’re talking Russia absorbing and holding a country of 45m indefinitely that will all but certainly actively resist in perpetuity. Modern day Russia could barely pacify Chechnya, a region of less than 2 million.
This is actually a much heavier lift than the U.S. task in Afghanistan or Iraq–because despite some liberal fearmongering about how Cheney was going to annex Iraq, the reality is we never had a serious plan to do anything but turn those countries over to (hopefully America friendly) independent governments “at some point.” That some point appeared to equate with when we felt we didn’t give a shit about being there anymore relative to the cost of staying there in blood and treasure.
It’s non trivial to annex territory permanently that doesn’t want to be annexed. Crimea wanted to be part of Russia, the whole of Ukraine does not. Russia has experienced significant budgetary issues just from its more limited involvement in Ukraine so far, and has faced budgetary issues from having to prop up Crimean pensions etc that it wasn’t previously funding. I think people just aren’t aware of the economics and logistics involved in annexing a country of 40m permanently.
There simply is no reason to think that. Putin has never done anything even 1/10th the scale of annexing Ukraine. Chechnya is like 1/40th the size of Ukraine, and never had formal independence to begin with. Annexing Ukraine in Russia’s current state is a significantly heavier lift than the 1980s attempt by the USSR to create the SSR of Afghanistan and integrate it into the USSR, and the USSR failed at that.
In the era in which many of the old, great multiethnic Empires were made, most people had little real information of the world outside of their own home village. Much of their lives were taken up with the daily rigors of agriculture, what free time they did have was not usually spent doing things that didn’t exist hundreds of years ago–like browsing the internet, social media, calling friends on the phone etc. People were more isolated and less concerned with things outside their immediate sphere of existence. Even when the very earliest forms of information spread started to get bigger, in the 19th century with the growth of cities, more people meeting in salons and bars and coffee houses to chat about things, a huge growth in newspapers publishing facts and opinions every day, this suddenly created a world of shared information bigger than the street or village where your home was. This created Hungarians who cared about what it meant to be Hungarian and how that related to their King being a German speaking Austrian. The Ottomans conquered lands, assessed minor taxes, and mostly left local stuff alone. Most big Empires were ran similarly, with significant devolution of authority.
This is not to say there were never troubles with the “small folk” in the past, the Middle Ages chronicle several major peasant uprisings, and there were serious riots in Ancient Rome, slave revolts and etc. The other democratization after information, is that of physical power or force. Peasant revolts in the middle ages were limited to very combat-ignorant people with clubs and farm tools. Modern day insurgents are usually able to get access to quite good weaponry–the insurgents that America fought in Afghanistan and Iraq had many weapons better than those that say, the German Army had in WW2. They also had a shared knowledge of guerrilla warfare, the understanding that you don’t fight pitched battles, of how to hide in the community, of how to terrorize collaborators and the occupier’s forces.
I think it is tremendously harder to do in the modern world than it was in the pre-modern world. There are actually few examples of successful long term annexations when said annexation is of a region significantly large in size comparable to the country annexing it. All of the relatively “smooth” annexations I can think of have several things in common: low population regions (Tibet, Sakhalin islands etc), or regions where the populace was fairly pro-occupier (Crimea.) Most occupations I can think of that don’t fall into these definitions are either ongoing and troublesome (Palestine, or ultimately failed (any number of long duration 20th century occupations done by the USSR for example.)
Then we were talking past each other. I was thinking strictly about winning the war, as opposed to winning the peace. When it comes to winning the war, I have no doubt that Russia would, as you say, bitch slap Ukraine’s military off the field of battle. Seinfeld called it back in the 90s.
Perhaps you can explain why they would spend a significant amount of capital and allocate a significant force there to create that new military post?
Do the Russians want their own Quebec-style ice-hotel for rest and relaxation?
One with a better Ruble exchange rate perhaps?
(I’m sure the bear has absolutely no interest in the moose’ oil… the same way Xi was only building a resort island… and had absolutely no interest in the China Sea. )
To protect their rights to international waters and early warning of air attacks from North America. Crossing 1000+ miles of ice and water to invade northern Canada would be magnitudes of stupidly over the failed invasions of Russia by Napoleon and Hitler.
Because global warming is opening up new areas of the arctic to shipping and explotiation of natural resources, and the best way to guarantee the biggest slice of the pie is to have the ability to project military power over the contested region.
And, though geographic boundaries may be in dispute, am I correct in that Russian Diplomacy is much less like “Oh wee…! We need to act defensively against those skeery 'Mericans and Canadians” and more akin to “Might Makes Right; it’s yours if you can take it, it’s yours if you can keep it”?
Yes but there is different levels of might makes right. I think the Putin might makes right is more in the direction of: “only we we are allowed to drill in these coastal waters and ships passing through this this region have to pay us a toll”, rather than a thousand mile death march/swim in order to invade the closest ally of the ranking superpower.
15 House R’s led by @MikeTurnerOH
ask POTUS to consider sending US troops to Ukraine, immediately send intel & weapons support – as Russian forces stage on border. T saying Russian troops/tanks & aggressive behavior fuels concerns Russia is planning additional incursions
Well, the are certainly taking their time about it. I see this thread is from back in April and still no Russian invasion. I doubt they will try and invade in winter, even though that is supposedly Russia’s forte.
Had they invaded I doubt the US would have done much outside of possibly providing assistance (most likely non-military, maybe food, possibly intelligence or less likely military aid). We certainly wouldn’t have gone to Ukraine’s defense militarily, at least IMHO. Hell, there are serious questions of if we’d go to Taiwan’s aid, and we care about them a lot more both strategically and from a national standpoint (I hope we would go to Taiwan’s aid). Our European brethren and sistren however, they SHOULD care about it a bit more, though as others up thread pointed out, neither we nor the other NATO members have any sort of treaty with the Ukraine.
Now, if we are talking about the Baltic states, that’s a whole 'nother kettle of fish. We are obligated by treaty to care about them…and so is the rest of NATO. I’ve seen various European 'dopers who questioned this in the past, and I know there is a number of European citizens who don’t want to fight Russia for the Baltic states (or Poland, seemingly), but I think at the government level they would have to fight or risk NATO falling apart. If we won’t fight for every state, then how can they be confident we’d fight for an state that is in the alliance?
I see this thread is from back in April and still no Russian invasion. I doubt they will try and invade in winter, even though that is supposedly Russia’s forte.