i am deeply concerned with the direction India's politics has taken the 2024 elections there (assuming the world still exists) will have far-reaching consequences for the world
An argument some like to make is that Japan was essentially out of most resources, so they wouldn’t be able to mount a defense at anything close to an even technological pace. While true, the same was also true at Okinawa and we lost a third of the invasion force.
When searching for verified information about Ukraine on Twitter, there are so many tweets about India. Lots of stuff critical of Modi plenty of weird propaganda as well
Fiona Hill: Putin tried to warn Trump he would go nuclear, but Trump didn't understand the warning If you remember the name Fiona Hill, it’s likely because of her testimony in Donald Trump’s first impeachment inquiry, at which she distinguished herself as a forceful, knowledgeable, and fearless public servant. Hill is a Russia expert who was speaking about her time as the senior director for European and Russian affairs at the National Security Council under Trump. She offered a strong warning about Russia’s efforts to undermine U.S. democracy in that testimony. So she’s an interesting and important person to hear from about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine—even as we should keep in mind that Hill is known as a Russia hawk and speaks from that perspective—and Politico’s Maura Reynolds gives us that chance with an in-depth interview. It’s scary stuff, even beyond Hill’s warning that Putin really might use nuclear weapons—and in fact that he had tried to warn Trump about his willingness to do so (only Trump didn’t understand the warning). “The thing about Putin is, if he has an instrument, he wants to use it. Why have it if you can’t?” Hill said. Running through Russia’s recent history of poisonings with radioactive polonium and the Novichok nerve agent, Hill concluded, “So if anybody thinks that Putin wouldn’t use something that he’s got that is unusual and cruel, think again. Every time you think, ‘No, he wouldn’t, would he?’ Well, yes, he would. And he wants us to know that, of course.” She continued, “It’s not that we should be intimidated and scared. That’s exactly what he wants us to be. We have to prepare for those contingencies and figure out what is it that we’re going to do to head them off.” Spoiler Hill faults the United States and NATO on failure to be prepared for contingencies, going back years. “I think there’s been a logical, methodical plan that goes back a very long way, at least to 2007 when [Putin] put the world, and certainly Europe, on notice that Moscow would not accept the further expansion of NATO. And then, within a year in 2008, NATO gave an open door to Georgia and Ukraine. It absolutely goes back to that juncture,” she told Reynolds. “Back then, I was a national intelligence officer, and the National Intelligence Council was analyzing what Russia was likely to do in response to the NATO Open Door declaration. One of our assessments was that there was a real, genuine risk of some kind of preemptive Russian military action, not just confined to the annexation of Crimea, but some much larger action taken against Ukraine along with Georgia. And of course, four months after NATO’s Bucharest Summit, there was the invasion of Georgia. There wasn’t an invasion of Ukraine then because the Ukrainian government pulled back from seeking NATO membership. But we should have seriously addressed how we were going to deal with this potential outcome and our relations with Russia.” Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, though, is not mostly about NATO, in Hill’s assessment. It’s not even entirely about restoring the borders of the Soviet Union. Hill thinks Putin is looking back further in time. “I’ve kind of quipped about this, but I also worry about it in all seriousness—Putin’s been down in the archives of the Kremlin during COVID looking through old maps and treaties and all the different borders that Russia has had over the centuries,” she said. “He’s said, repeatedly, that Russian and European borders have changed many times. And in his speeches, he’s gone after various former Russian and Soviet leaders, he’s gone after Lenin and he’s gone after the communists, because in his view they ruptured the Russian empire, they lost Russian lands in the revolution, and yes, Stalin brought some of them back into the fold again, like the Baltic States and some of the lands of Ukraine that had been divided up during World War II, but they were lost again with the dissolution of the USSR. Putin’s view is that borders change, and so the borders of the old Russian imperium are still in play for Moscow to dominate now.” Domination doesn’t necessarily mean occupying or annexing another country. “You can establish dominance by marginalizing regional countries, by making sure that their leaders are completely dependent on Moscow, either by Moscow practically appointing them through rigged elections or ensuring they are tethered to Russian economic and political and security networks,” Hill noted. “You can see this now across the former Soviet space,” including Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Georgia, and Belarus, with Ukraine being “the country that got away.” Putin’s determination to break Ukraine could mean occupation, but, Hill said, “What Putin wants isn’t necessarily to occupy the whole country, but really to divide it up. He’s looked at Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and other places where there’s a division of the country between the officially sanctioned forces on the one hand, and the rebel forces on the other. That’s something that Putin could definitely live with—a fractured, shattered Ukraine with different bits being in different statuses.” Putin is also engaged in what Hill describes as “a full-spectrum information war.” In that information war, “You get the Tucker Carlsons and Donald Trumps doing your job for you. The fact that Putin managed to persuade Trump that Ukraine belongs to Russia and that Trump would be willing to give up Ukraine without any kind of fight, that’s a major success for Putin’s information war.” Hill said that the response to Putin’s invasion of Ukraine must go beyond NATO. “I’m not saying that that means an international military response that’s larger than NATO, but the push back has to be international,” she clarified. That means an economic response that goes beyond sanctions. ”Sanctions are not going to be enough. You need to have a major international response, where governments decide on their own accord that they can’t do business with Russia for a period of time until this is resolved. We need a temporary suspension of business activity with Russia,” Hill said. “Just as we wouldn’t be having a full-blown diplomatic negotiation for anything but a ceasefire and withdrawal while Ukraine is still being actively invaded, so it’s the same thing with business. Right now you’re fueling the invasion of Ukraine. So what we need is a suspension of business activity with Russia until Moscow ceases hostilities and withdraws its troops.” And, Hill said in a conversation that repeatedly invoked World War II as a precedent, Putin will not stop at Ukraine unless the response is such that he has no choice. There’s a lot more there. Agree or disagree with her, Hill’s take as an expert not just on Russia but on Putin specifically is worth reading in full.
We need that guy who can get within 100 yards of anywhere in 5 seconds on geoguessr to monitor Russian soldier social media
Over the last 5 years just Wagner Group has been linked to operations in Sudan, CAR, Libya, Mozambique, Madagascar, Botswana, Burundi, Chad, Congo, Guinea, Nigeria, Zimbabwe and Mali. So yes I think you're right
This feels like when one coach is about to leave and go to another school, but it gets blown up by the media and the deal falls through
They were a defeated nation with next to zero air or naval forces left. Acting like the only options were to either nuke them or invade and lose countless American lives is dumb
Modi is wildly popular with voting Hindus and gets huge support from Indian-Americans; baring some sort of disaster, he's going to win by a wide margin
It sounds like the world is now following her playbook. " ”Sanctions are not going to be enough. You need to have a major international response, where governments decide on their own accord that they can’t do business with Russia for a period of time until this is resolved. We need a temporary suspension of business activity with Russia,” Hill said. “Just as we wouldn’t be having a full-blown diplomatic negotiation for anything but a ceasefire and withdrawal while Ukraine is still being actively invaded, so it’s the same thing with business. Right now you’re fueling the invasion of Ukraine. So what we need is a suspension of business activity with Russia until Moscow ceases hostilities and withdraws its troops.”"
For sure, and involved in a very bloody civil war in Ethiopia / Tigray right now with serious atrocities and human rights violations (indiscriminate bombing and shelling of civilians, mass starvation, gang rape, etc.) on both sides to varying degrees. Like many countries in Africa, they are heavily dependent on Russian weaponry, ammunitions, and spare parts so they can keep killing people. btw, the same Turkish drones mauling Russian armor in Ukraine are indiscriminately killing tons of civilians in Tigray right now. https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/interactive/2022/ethiopia-tigray-dedebit-drone-strike/
ya we could have blockaded them right and starved a million people to death. Or we could have just continued fire bombing every city left on the map. That’s better
Roman claiming the net proceeds from selling Chelsea will go to Ukrainian victims and efforts :skepticalhippo:
wait you think we’d blockade them and then just go back to business as normal? War is over we’re just going to perpetually surround Japan for the next 50 years. That says nothing with regards to the human and industrial till the war had took on the country. Shit look at what happened to Iraq after the 91 war with the sanctions we had on them. Now do that times infinity and you have a blockaded Japan in 1946
Do you guys just never question the narrative that the only answer was to drop nuclear bombs on a country? There was never a moment you thought that didn't pass the smell test?
One aspect that isn’t talked about enough is the effect that requiring an unconditional surrender had. Japan had already tried to start peace talks be Potsdam but we demanded an unconditional surrender. Unconditional surrender can lead to unconditional defense.
If you want to ignore the shit tons of evidence that show we knew they were preparing to surrender any way due to the Soviets demolishing their armies in Manchuria, sure.
People’s tendency to take incredibly complex issues and reduce them to a binary response is really bizarre. The only options aren’t “do absolutely nothing” or “nuclear winter.”
they were so ready to surrender they didn’t surrender after the first bomb and they tried a military coup after the second. They were free to surrender at any time, they didn’t
Even without nuking the norm was firebombing the shit out of everything, so not all that different and people act like that wouldn't have kept happening. The 2 bombs probably saved a ton of lives relative to the fire bombing option alone.
Can we just sum up this conversation with this? https://www.atomicheritage.org/history/debate-over-japanese-surrender
The sad thing is we have major news networks and politicians pushing that network so he makes a good point.
my only point was acting like the alternative explanations are only said by idiots is dumb. i think we've even started threads on this topic in the past. but you're welcome that theres the most mild of pushback at american mythology