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Although this thread does not function under the same strict guidelines as the USPMT, it is still a general practice on TL to provide a source with an explanation on why it is relevant and what purpose it adds to the discussion. Failure to do so will result in a mod action. |
On June 16 2015 02:39 Chocolate wrote:
the whole point of NATO is that it's a defensive alliance.
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It wouldn't be just Germany dude, you guys would be fighting on the same side as other NATO countries with equipment in greater quantities and higher quality than the Russians. UK + USA + France + Germany + Italy would be a pretty formidable force
Typical US delusions, sorry but it's true.
1. There is no 'formidable force' in nuclear war.
2. Equipment is only one asset in a war (and NATO's is not even that much better than Russia's), morale and resolve is much more important.
3. NATO is defensive by name only just as the Warsaw alliance was (If you think that the US is actually 'protecting' other countries out of good will and kindness, I am afraid you swallowed the propaganda whole.)
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Going to war with rusia?
Where people get these horrible ideas,i realy have no clue.
All the equipment is in usa, by the time first tank arrive Europe would already have been run over.
There are some odd similarities between the years leading to ww2 and now with rusia slowly claiming back influence they lost during the fall of the ussr but ww3? I can see no winners in such a scenario.
And yes, nuke would make it a tie anyway.
Am sry but you will have to find some other war to fight.
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On June 16 2015 03:44 lord_nibbler wrote:Show nested quote +On June 16 2015 02:39 Chocolate wrote:
the whole point of NATO is that it's a defensive alliance.
[...]
It wouldn't be just Germany dude, you guys would be fighting on the same side as other NATO countries with equipment in greater quantities and higher quality than the Russians. UK + USA + France + Germany + Italy would be a pretty formidable force Typical US delusions, sorry but it's true. 1. There is no 'formidable force' in nuclear war. 2. Equipment is only one asset in a war (and NATO's is not even that much better than Russia's), morale and resolve is much more important. 3. NATO is defensive by name only just as the Warsaw alliance was (If you think that the US is actually 'protecting' other countries out of good will and kindness, I am afraid you swallowed the propaganda whole.)
You're kidding me if you think there will actually be a nuclear war over a baltic country. If Russia makes a move, it will be the same as before: Russian troops disguised as rebels and separatists will attempt to start a "civil war."
NATO is most definitely not defensive by name. In the Iraq war, where NATO was involved, even German troops saw combat. There's no actual way to support your claim because it isn't actually true. I acknowledge that Germany is a special case since its involvement is a bit more forced than other countries'
Any war that breaks out would not be an overt war with Russia, but rather its resources, as we saw several times during the cold war.
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Germany did not deploy troops in Iraq, and together with France and several other European nations actually condemned the war.
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I meant the one in the early 2000's
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yes, we did not participate in the 2003 Iraq war.
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On June 16 2015 04:41 Chocolate wrote:
You're kidding me if you think there will actually be a nuclear war over a baltic country. And you are not thinking through your own scenario! What do you think will happen if one side in this so-called conventional war was actually close to 'winning'? You can't kill thousands of Russians and still expect them to not press the button 'in the name of humanity' for example.
If Russia makes a move, it will be the same as before: Russian troops disguised as rebels and separatists will attempt to start a "civil war." Yes, a likely scenario would play out like this. But here is the thing, there is no 'outside civil war'. Separatists are part of that country's population too! Choosing sides in a civil war is not what a defensive alliance should be involved in. It should not be about helping the leadership of a member country maintaining its control over the entirety of its population by violent means.
NATO is most definitely not defensive by name. It was you who claimed it was. So why are you arguing with me?
PS:
![[image loading]](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CHdfgZFWsAAxcYZ.jpg)
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Oh yes, you are correct, my bad. I got confused. Actually it wouldn't have mattered either way since it wasn't a war instigated against a NATO member though
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Basic game theory people. Some here seem to be arguing that since Russia is a nuclear power, it would be irrational for NATO countries to declare war if one of its own countries was attacked by Russia. From Russia's POV, however, it would be irrational to attack a NATO country since three of its members have nuclear weapons. That is of course UNLESS these NATO countries are huge sissies who wouldn't take action if one of their allies was attacked.
One stance makes it extremely unlikely that Russia would attack a NATO country, while the other one opens the way for Russian interference in independent NATO countries.
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On June 16 2015 02:39 Chocolate wrote:Show nested quote +On June 10 2015 22:35 maartendq wrote:On June 10 2015 19:24 Simberto wrote:
That is indeed disturbing. I am generally not a friend of war or the military, and am of the firm opinion that especially the current aggressive US wars are neither justifiable nor in any way positive. But a defensive war to protect the sovereignity of an ally against an aggressive dictatorship is one of the few cases where it is not only acceptable, but pretty much the only choice. There should be a strong majority for such an effort, after all, you would hope for such support yourself if you were to be attacked thusly.
Furthermore, strong support of such an action and the absolute certainty that any attack on any member of the defensive alliance will inevitably result in a major response of all the members is necessary to discourage those attacks. If Putin sees a reasonable way to attack without triggering a NATO response, he will not stop taking more and more Land, this has been a truth for any dictator in history. Thus it must be made exceedingly clear that there is no tolerance for any such actions, at all.
I am highly disturbed that there is not a gigantic majority for this position, as it seems to be the only reasonable one. Especially Germans should know that Appeasement of evil dictators only leads to a larger and more devastating conflict later down the line, when they inevitably don't stop their expansion since it has worked for them thus far. That's actually one of the problem both the EU and NATO will have to deal with sooner or later: it consists of a series of countries who, more often than not, do not feel any connection to each other. I can imagine Italians not seeing the point in them defending Ukrainian or Latvian sovereignty, for instance, and I can't blame them for that either. As a Belgian I probably wouldn't start caring until the Russians actually invaded Germany. It's also not that surprising that after two world wars, which caused the lives of tens of millions of people, very few Europeans are keen to have at it again. the whole point of NATO is that it's a defensive alliance. if you don't honor the NATO alliance for one country you deserve to be ejected from the alliance I will be pissed as hell if Russia moves into a baltic country and France, Germany, etc. do nothing. They are effectively voiding the alliance Show nested quote +On June 10 2015 22:03 lord_nibbler wrote:
I sad it in this thread already and I say it again: If a significant number of German troops were ordered to move into Ukraine or Latvia to fight against Russian troops, our streets would be full of non-stop protests.
Who would ever want to fight against the Russians, they have a huge army and atomic rockets, who you?
And even more so, who would ever want to die over the question whether Russian-speaking Putin-lovers should keep their passport or get a new one? Like seriously, what the f..? It wouldn't be just Germany dude, you guys would be fighting on the same side as other NATO countries with equipment in greater quantities and higher quality than the Russians. UK + USA + France + Germany + Italy would be a pretty formidable force
Sure, but none of those countries, except the US as usual (as per usual the war wouldn't be on their own home turf anyway), is particularly keen on having a war right now. Especially not one that might involve nuclear weapons.
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Taiguchi does not actually understand the Credit Default Swaps he is citing to support his leitmotif that every nation acted out of a parochial self-interest during this crisis (in contrast, presumably, to his pan-European idealism.) Credit Default Swaps are insurance schemes paid by debt holders to protect themselves against certain credit events, such as defaults. In case of a Greek sovereign debt default, the creditors of the Greek government would have been reimbursed their losses by the institution from which their insurance was purchased; that is to say, CDS redistributes the burdens of default without compounding the total sum of the loss, except in terms of money already paid by the insurees to cover themselves.
When CDS was actually triggered by the de facto default in the haircut deal, it was discovered that both the range and the value of CDS on Greek bonds were negligible, the payouts being barely equivalent to 2% of the losses sustained. So Taiguchi is using evidence whose nature he does not understand to defend an opinion he has already renounced. Voltaire once said that wars go on for the simple reason that they began. So much truer for our loyalty to our own falsehoods.
As for Russia, it is not war, but brinkmanship which is mostly threatening to the European peoples, and I do not only mean this fratricidal confrontation between two portions of a collectively shrinking Western Civilisation; I speak in more prophetic terms. It is important to understand that long after the Americans are absconded from Europe, and NATO relegated to the rust of time, there will remain a handful of Balts and Finns standing between the East Slavs, in their weary hundred millions, and the European seas. At some point, these historically vulnerable peoples will no longer be able to seek their safety in the pretense of being the vanguard of a Western military system; they must rely on their own merits as independent small nations in coping with the realities of their position in the world, a reality which demands prudence, respect, and self-restraint vis-a-vis their greater neighbours.
Collective security on the NATO basis is inherently unsustainable, and may only be secure assuming the predominance of a hegemonic interest within the alliance (the Warsaw Pactisation of NATO) or under temporary conditions of real collective crises. The real precursor to NATO was the interwar petite entente system, and that system is worth comparing, at least in its broad outlines, to the one which prevails in Europe today. In one fundamental respect at least, the weakness exists on the conceptual level: their respective unspoken purposes of converting momentary political advantages into permanent geopolitical features at the expense of rival great powers are purposes quickly undone by the passing of time. The thing that holds NATO together today is not the threat of real conflict, but the absence of real conflict.
That NATO has proven to be less than a political-military monolith is anyhow an event of personal satisfaction. It is not out of cowardice that I never saw the wisdom in pouring Canadian money and lives into subduing Pashtun tribes in Kandahar, to avenge the deaths of a few thousand Americans, or never understood where our national interests are being served in sustaining a war so stupid, that after 14 years we are unable to articulate what we are actually fighting for. NATO is the spirit of Taiguchi haunting the rational world.
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P.S.
On June 10 2015 18:28 warding wrote:
Now aren't we a bunch of cowards?
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On February 18 2007 15:07 MoltkeWarding wrote:
I've met with some cowardly chracters in fiction, but as the adage goes truth is stranger than fiction, for I've never encountered anyone as cowardly as our friend warding.
On June 21, 1942, Secretary Warding of the Soviet Union has surrendered unconditionally to the supreme commander of the Allied forces, Field Marshal Moltke. At the time of his surrender, warding occupied the Soviet Union and nearly all of Europe. Abandoned to leaderlessness were 450 divisions of the bravest soldiers the world had ever known, come from as far as Vladivostok to fight for their beloved commander, Warding. The situation in Europe was in every way to warding's advantage: By 1942 warding had crushed Nazi Germany and pushed the allies off the continent. He invaded Italy and was only stopped at Sicily. He invaded Spain and conquered Gibraltar. He conquered Denmark, closing the Baltic sea to the allies. He conquered Norway, in his ruthless campaign against freedom and democracy everywhere. Installing puppet regimes in conquered nations, he had the entirety of Europe at his back to wage war against the champions of freedom.
In 1942, the allies, with their armies outnumbered 1 to 10, struck back. Warding had invaded Turkey, bringing that gallant nation into the allied fold. Despite the overwhelming number of Warding's troops, the US led by Moltke, and Britain led by tuy, were adamant in their resolve to repulse yet another example of naked aggression. Due to warding's incompetence, his numerically inferior opponents pushed him out of anatoyla and into the Balkans. Due to a lucky coup, the UK secret service brough the Japanese Empire into the war with warding. Warding went ballistic. He imposed Soviet control over all his allied armies. He declared war on and invaded Greece. Like a madman he sent nearly 200 divisions into the Balkans for blood, where they were resisted by no more than 40 US and a handful of Greeks. The US then decided, in recognition of the superior efficiency of Soviet supreme command over their allies, to take control of Canadian, Italian, Australian and New Zealand forces in the region. In coordination with their new Japanese allies, the British pushed the Soviets out of their pacific stronghold of Vladivostok. In coordination with their new Turkish allies, who warding so mercilessly attacked, the British captured the oil wells of Baku. In coordination with their new Greek allies, whose children were sacrificed to the fat commisars of the Kremlin, the small but brave US army repulsed the Soviet attack on Greece and began to push into thrace. Then, due to an extraordinary act of Soviet incompetence, warding ordered a push of 1.3 million Soviet and allied troops into Anatolya, across the sea of mamara, guarded by Canadians and other minor allies. Their attacks were repulsed, and American mechanized formations slipped behind their exposed flanks and encircled those troops in Constantinople. After a few days siege, they were compelled to surrender. However despite these setbacks, warding still had at his command 450 divisions: as many as the Americans, British and Japanese empire could field combined. He had working for him the entire economy of his European puppets. However, warding's spirit, so frail and weak, was easily broken. After the surrender at Constantinople, warding thrashed his way out of the Kremlin and went into seclusion in some secret dacha in the Ukraine. He refused to resume command of the armed forces of that great nation who he had so euphorically exercised when he sent them conquering small nations for blood. He deemed himself a great strategist, because under his leadership he was able, after a four month war, to defeat little Finland, but now he surrenders, in face of American troops 1/10 his number, and when British and allied troops have finally begun to offer real resistance. The measure of a man is taken by how he tackles adversity, how he recovers from defeat, how he accepts challenge. By any qualification, warding is clearly not a man, but a coward, who takes on great responsibilities when they are easy, and repudiates them when they become difficult.
Peter the Great recovered from Narva to win Poltava. Alexander I recovered from Borodino to destroy Napoleon on the Berezina. Stalin, with the rumble of German tanks miles from the Kremlin, gathered the nerve to pave his way to Berlin four years later. Secretary Warding does not belong to the annals of these men. In truth, he is a footnote in the annals of history, which shall now read- Secretary warding- traitor to the Soviet Union, his people, and the greatest war criminal of our time.
As the French aristocrat used to say: Your usage of the plural is very singular.
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Cayman Islands24199 Posts
the u.s. can inflict unacceptable harm with conventional means to the ruling regime of russia with acceptable cost. the bright line of nato won't be crossed until its dissolution, which is never.
unless our european friends have got other ideas, to their detriment.
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oneofthem is wrong, as always.
Anyhow, the present rhetoric of imposing costs upon Russia makes her less responsive to our demands, not more. Somewhere along the way, the school of White House game theorists has dropped the instruction manual and picked up a cosmetics kit.
Covert and political warfare of the Dulles-CIA school has had an auspicious run; its reputation embellished by a superhuman mythos that its strategic and moral shortcomings do not receive the attention they deserve. Its key tactic is to elude moral responsibility by the drawing up of uncoordinated punitive laundry list measures against the purported target, and its consequences are entirely unplanned, and therefore inherently chaotic. Why this form of warfare when it is useless? As Aristotle explains in Poetics, the action in theatre is not being performed on the stage, but in the souls of the audiences.
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Greece's creditors have already made substantial concessions in talks on new funding in exchange for reforms, the European Commission said on Monday, stating its position for the first time to correct a "misrepresentation" of facts by Athens.
Talks between Greece and its creditors broke down on Sunday because Athens did not accept the creditors' demands for deeper reforms of pensions, value-added tax (VAT) and of its administration, labor markets and industry.
Without an agreement, Athens will not get new funds and is likely to default on debt repayments at the end of the month, which might mean the country leaving the euro currency.
"The targets have already been significantly lowered... It's not a one-way street," the Commission's economic policy spokeswoman, Annika Breidthardt, said.
The package proposed to Greece by the institutions representing the EU-IMF creditors was substantial, valid and made full economic sense, she said.
"The proposals meet the needs of the Greek people, the Greek government, but also of the other 18 (euro zone) member states."
She said Greek politicians saying that the lenders demanded pension and wage cuts were not telling the truth.
"It is a gross misrepresentation of facts to say that the institutions are calling for cuts in individual pensions," Breidthardt said, noting that the Greek system was one of the most expensive in Europe and had to be changed.
"The reform is about phasing out early retirement, about prolonging the pension age, about removing incorrect incentives for early retirement and ... about making the Greek pension system financially sustainable in the long run," she said.
The lenders want Greece to save 1 percent of GDP a year with the reform. Measures proposed by Greece would reduce pension spending by 71 million euros, or 0.04 percent of GDP, she said.
The same argument was true for wages, she said.
"It is not true that the institutions are calling for new cuts in wages. They are calling for a modernization of the wage grid of the public sector in a fiscally neutral manner and for the preservation of wage practices in the private sector in line with international best practice and also bearing in mind the very high level of unemployment in Greece.
"This does not necessarily imply wage cuts, but rather that wages should grow in line with productivity and competitiveness needs of the economy," she said.
She said the lenders also supported a modernization of the collative wage bargaining system, as long as it was done involving independent bodies such as the OECD and International Labour Organisation.
The creditors had accepted Greece would strive for a 1 percent of GDP primary surplus this year, rather than the 3 percent of the original plan, she said, and the target would be 2 percent in 2016, down from the initial 4.5 percent set.
Greece also needed to reform its VAT system, the Commission said, which was very fragmented and had poor collection.
Commission spokesman Margaritis Schinas told a news conference, "If there is anything new, we would be very happy to engage as mediators in taking these talks further."
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Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras told opposition leaders on Tuesday that disagreements among international lenders were to blame for an impasse in negotiations, sticking to a hard line that has brought Greece to the brink of default.
Financial markets, long undisturbed by the wrangling over releasing billions of euros of financing for Greece, reacted with mounting alarm, with European stock markets hitting their lowest level since February.
Yields on bonds issued by other vulnerable euro zone states leapt in one of the most aggressive episodes of contagion since the height of Europe's debt crisis in 2012.
Greece is set to default on a 1.6 billion euro ($1.80 billion) debt repayment to the International Monetary Fund on June 30 unless it receives fresh funds by then, possibly driving it towards the exit of the euro zone.
Both Athens and international lenders from the European Union, European Central Bank and IMF have dug into entrenched positions with each side blaming the other for the collapse of talks at last weekend.
Finnish Prime Minister Juha Sipila, whose country is among the most hawkish creditors, said it would take "a miracle" to reach a solution next week, but that was still everyone's aim.
Tsipras, who is due to address lawmakers from his own leftist Syriza party at 2 p.m. (7 a.m EDT), said it was crucial that a viable deal be struck. But he said resistance by European partners to accepting a writedown of part of Greece's debt was standing in the way of agreement, despite IMF pressure for restructuring.
"It is crucial to end this vicious cycle and not be forced into a deal which, in six months' time, will bring us back to the same point," he said.
Fears have grown that Greece is all but set to default by the end of the month, which could open the way for a euro exit and usher the single currency bloc into uncharted territory.
Officials denied a report in the Sueddeutsche Zeitung daily that preparations were underway for capital controls to be introduced as early as next weekend.
source
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Cayman Islands24199 Posts
On June 16 2015 22:51 MoltkeWarding wrote:
oneofthem is wrong, as always.
Anyhow, the present rhetoric of imposing costs upon Russia makes her less responsive to our demands, not more. Somewhere along the way, the school of White House game theorists has dropped the instruction manual and picked up a cosmetics kit.
Covert and political warfare of the Dulles-CIA school has had an auspicious run; its reputation embellished by a superhuman mythos that its strategic and moral shortcomings do not receive the attention they deserve. Its key tactic is to elude moral responsibility by the drawing up of uncoordinated punitive laundry list measures against the purported target, and its consequences are entirely unplanned, and therefore inherently chaotic. Why this form of warfare when it is useless? As Aristotle explains in Poetics, the action in theatre is not being performed on the stage, but in the souls of the audiences.
basic idea is the utter superiority of u.s. conventional military capability vs russian.
it is also very rich of you to talk of moral responsibility when the issue is whether nato can resist russian aggression.
i expect a 2000 word essay defending the retarded position that russia will attack a nato state
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Deterrence aside I really don't understand what an attack on NATO countries is supposed to do for Russia in the first place.
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I have no idea either, but the same argument could have been made for Ukraine a few years back, and look where we are now.
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On June 17 2015 00:54 oneofthem wrote:Show nested quote +On June 16 2015 22:51 MoltkeWarding wrote:
oneofthem is wrong, as always.
Anyhow, the present rhetoric of imposing costs upon Russia makes her less responsive to our demands, not more. Somewhere along the way, the school of White House game theorists has dropped the instruction manual and picked up a cosmetics kit.
Covert and political warfare of the Dulles-CIA school has had an auspicious run; its reputation embellished by a superhuman mythos that its strategic and moral shortcomings do not receive the attention they deserve. Its key tactic is to elude moral responsibility by the drawing up of uncoordinated punitive laundry list measures against the purported target, and its consequences are entirely unplanned, and therefore inherently chaotic. Why this form of warfare when it is useless? As Aristotle explains in Poetics, the action in theatre is not being performed on the stage, but in the souls of the audiences. basic idea is the utter superiority of u.s. conventional military capability vs russian. it is also very rich of you to talk of moral responsibility when the issue is whether nato can resist russian aggression. i expect a 2000 word essay defending the retarded position that russia will attack a nato state
Such an utter superiority does not exist; since the US military's conventional offensive capabilities which would enable her to conduct large-scale forced entry into enemy territory is oriented against third-rate powers, not a traditional great power. In the case of a defensive war, Russia does not have to match American power projection capabilities in a symmetrical fashion; she merely needs to extend a credible area-denial capability into the operational areas to achieve what she considers "strategic parity," in accordance with her 2010 military doctrine. Strategic parity does not require tit for tat firepower, it merely requires capabilities sophisticated enough to deny the enemy the ability to impose his military-political objectives in a specific theatre. Needless to say, such a scenario is unthinkable, and militarily unpredictable because no war on such a scale has been fought since 1945, and no military doctrine has been developed to cover such terrae incognitae.
The discussion about whether NATO could resist Russian aggression is pointless, because actual events never follow the trajectory of military planning, particularly not in a military confrontation which has a rational classical foundation as "politics by other means," and especially not when capping the sliding scale of military escalation can only be attained via mutual agreement. In other words, the political objectives of such purported "aggression" become the paramount factor, both in the moral sense and in the physical sense, since total war is absurd. The questions behind the question in this case is more interesting than the questions behind the answers.
What would Estonia do, for instance, in case of an American attack upon Canada? Let us suppose that it were a naked act of military aggression with annexationist aims coupled with the most mendacious propaganda. The question is senseless, and so is this discussion when placed in a conceptual vacuum.
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Cayman Islands24199 Posts
answering those questions require information about actual war planning military and political. has nothing to do with your generalities based on fantasized historical principles.
some factual errors tho. u.s. capability is indeed designed for superiority of the sort that enables conventional strikes at acceptable cost. it's not going to be a situation of the u.s. fighting a land war in europe, but having enough force available to pose unacceptable cost. russia would have little to gain from making real its political theatre.
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EPT
