On one hand, Russia’s sudden aggressiveness worries the shit out of me and makes me wonder if we (meaning NATO) don’t need to better demostrate our capabilities. Just out-and-out saying you might vaporize Poland - a country with good reason to mistrust Russians - is not the sort of thing a friendly nation does.
On the other hand, a missle defense shield right on Russia’s border is little more than an open announcement you’re trying to negate their strategic capabilities. If Russia build a missle defense capability in Mexico, the U.S. would rightly consider it an aggressive move.
What’s the right strategy here? Engaging Russia to find out how we can come to a mutually agreeable defense arrangement? Or pushing them to see if they’ll back down?
How much “official” capacity does this general have to represent the Kremlin? I know in the old days, they seemed pretty autonomous. Is that the case today? Or is it just assumed because he wasn’t immediately slapped down by the President?
The general basically said that if the ABMs get deployed then Poland will have been deemed to have left the fence and now subject to Russian targetting.
I’d say that the Russians are engaging in PsyWarOps to spook the average ski on the street and if they are like the poles that I know , its more likely to backfire on the Russkies and have Warsaw demanding that the Shield be brought on line.
My understanding of the statement is that the installation in Poland of the missile system will be deemed by the Russians to constitute a “status change” for Poland, whereby Poland is now fair game for a nuclear strike in the event of hostilities, where previously they would have only been a conventional target.
This would be a far cry from “Russia Threatens Nuclear Attack on Poland”. Maybe that’s why it’s buried in the middle pages.
It strikes me that we’re seeing another uptick in irresponsible warmongering from the US media lately. Obviously the balance of power needs to be maintained, but hysteria sure doesn’t help.
Lets say you wanted something said, but didn’t want to come out and directly say it yourself as it was threatening/improper/a violation of treaty and or int. law/ an out-right lie. (Think along the lines of ‘Swift-Boating’ or leaks from that old standby from yesteryear ‘high-level unnamed sources’.)
What better way to float that sort of turdlet than through an expendable underling who you can, if necessary, distance yourself from and slap-wri… I mean slap-down later? Or, depending on how it plays out in the press afterwards, say nothing.
Yeah, good idea. The exact thing an exchange of rising nuclear tensions needs is a bit of bat-shit lunacy from the other side in “demonstrating our capabilities,” aka making a wanton nuclear threat of our own. Excellent thinking, RickJay.
Look, installing a sort of nuclear shield in Poland does something to upset the nuclear equilibrium that has existed between us and Russia in some form for a period better than five decades. It may be a well considered step given the risks and benefits, but it’s a shifting of the nuclear dynamic in some way. It isn’t unreasonable to expect some sort of bluffing or talking from the opposite side in response, and the appropriate reaction to this bluster is not further escalation but simply letting it slide in the public arena. We already have the physical nuclear deterrent on the ground or will shortly, there’s no purpose in seeking to further aggravate Russia.
Overwhelmingly, nuclear war is still not in neither our nor their interest. Let’s not be hot-headed dumbasses nor force a very public chain of tit-for-tat reactions like the Cuban Missile Crisis.
Why would Russia nuke a country so close to it anyway? It seems a little self-defeating…
If you look at a map though, Poland is certainly smack-dab in the middle between what is now considered Western Europe and the former Soviet satellites on it’s eastern border.
I’m not sure putting a missle defense system in Poland is the right idea…why can’t it be put a little farther west, like in Germany? Couldn’t it still provide some modicum of protection for Poland? That is of course, if the damn thing were to work properly anyway.
The thing is, I think it’s not really intended for Russia; it’s intended to block missiles from Iran and the rest of the middle east. Preferably over Iran or the middle east. Germany is getting a little on the far side, I think.
Putin knows the anti missile system is not a credible threat to Russia. They still have thousands of missiles and warheads (assuming they still work) which would simply overwhelm the proposed system. Russia is really carrying the water for their good buddies the Iranians. They want the Iranians to be able to threaten both the US and the EU. This would cause all sorts of problems with us having to deal with the nutso Iranians and the flaccid EU types. So maybe there would be nuclear war between the US and Iran, and Russia can sit back and pick up the radioactive pieces.
Just because the ‘missile shield’ couldn’t overwhelm Russia doesn’t mean they’re eager to have portions of the country nuked. And I doubt they’re all that enormously fond of the Iranians themselves. Opportunistic, yes. That I’ll buy. But I think there is some legitimate concern there. Doesn’t excuse what they’re doing. But people don’t necessarily do rational things when they’re frightened and trying to bully and bluster their way out.
ETA: I also think they may be making a power grab at the same time, btw.
We would? Why? If such a thing as a missile shield existed (which it unfortunately does not), I would sleep a lot easier if everyone who could put them up everywhere they could. It might shift global nuclear policy away from the suicidally insane MAD, to something which might actually work.
Because a missile shield, if I understand it correctly, isn’t like a force field. It’s anti-ballistic missiles. It would be pretty easy for a country with malignant intent to sneak more aggressively intended missiles in there with them, I’d think. The line between offensive missiles and defensive missiles is just not that hard and fast.
Or am I all wet?
ETA: That’s why I keep putting ‘missile shield’ in quotes.
To what, a belief that a nuclear exchange could in some manner be anything less than an utter Pyrrhic victory for the initiating side? A willingness to engage in nuclear conflict under the likely mistaken belief that one’s own side can come out with anything less than lethal wounds?
Exactly what sort of beneficial advances in the dynamics that dictate the exercise of nuclear power between global players do you envision from the deployment of a missile defense system?
A policy that has kept global powers with vehemently opposed world views and goals at largely at peace, and most importantly without nuclear warfare, hardly strikes me as suicidally insane.
Now, I’m actually not opposed to the deployment of missile defense systems, even if they’re unlikely to work, because they have the potential of sowing a seed of doubt in the confidence an actor with a small number of warheads (Iran, North Korea, etc.) has in their nuclear force when they’re calculating the risk/benefit tables for a devastating attack against anyone else and their own annihilation. But face it, MAD has served us well through history and will continue to be the dominant theme in nuclear decision making between the United States and Russia well into the future. I imagine the history of the later 20th century would have proven unimaginably bloody without it.
