> I truly don't understand why they'd do this.
Spoken like a true westerner that doesn't quite grasp Russian brashness, recklessness, carelessness, and disregard for human life.
Spoken like a true westerner that doesn't quite grasp Russian brashness, recklessness, carelessness, and disregard for human life.
If the US doesn’t want space further militarized we could take the symbolic action of dissolving the Space Force and take actual action to forge treaties that slow down the militarization of space.
This is nothing but vandalism... an infantile nation acting out without fear of punishment.
This is Elon "we're training our alpha product in a production environment, thank you for dying to train the neural net" Musk we're talking about. Do think this darling of the "civilized" West gives a single nanoparticle of care to scorching space when there's shares to be pumped?
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[1] https://www.space.com/spacex-starlink-satellite-collision-al...
Musk is not motivated to turn LEO into an orbiting junkyard. Of course, to your point, neither are the Russians, yet here we are...
Bringing Spacex into this is just disingenuous. The two are in no way comparable.
Kind of a nonsensical argument, if anyone else were putting out as many or more satellites then they'd be involved in a similar proportion of incidents. The part that matters is how SpaceX responds and coordinates with others to prevent collisions. You can't look at the raw numbers to get that.
Planes pass within a kilometer of each other all the time, but it isn't an emergency because we have people whose job it is to make sure they don't actually hit each other, even when flying in nearby airspace. Same with satellites.
Where can you buy Starlink shares?
There's the EU, and the rest of the world is failed states.
Especially after the events of the 20th century, there's not much moral high ground left at the international level. Trump certainly sucks, but he's too incompetent to be genuinely dangerous. Strictly bush-league compared to some of the "enlightened" European leaders we've seen.
(Also, there was no EU when Hitler, Mussolini, etc. were around, and the EU is not a monolithic bloc with a meaningful identity today either.)
Trump won't be the last of his breed, of course.
(Also, there was no EU when Hitler, Mussolini, etc. were around, and the EU is not a monolithic bloc with a meaningful identity today either.)
Given the relatively short time that's elapsed since the last world war started by Europeans, I think this amounts to a special pleading.
I have this vaguely whimsical conjecture (that fills me of shame, I’m myself Italian) that Italy is a country of “forerunners”. If you look back, many of the behaviors and characters that animated our tormented history have become models for followers in other countries: the Roman Empire, Mussolini, Berlusconi…
Continent of Europe, sure, I agree: even within EU member states, Poland and Hungary are currently worrying me.
It’s just that painting the border around the EU feels like the wrong level of distinction for me, given the EU isn’t really a country, it just sometimes has country-like power delegated to it by its members. (And yes, this also applies upthread to the attempt to divide the world into [civilised <=> EU] => [!EU <=> !civilised]).
Who knows what he would do if he was an absolute dictator. Power corrupts and messes with your head.
All the countries involved are smaller so the absolute impact over people's lives will be smaller. But there are also crazies.
Meanwhile, the French and German authoritarians seem to be getting like 20% of the vote and climbing.
What is this brazen propaganda of Russian militarism doing on hn?!
Hell, my SO left her home country because of a lack of economic opportunity; now we're moving to her home country because of better economic opportunity. Things change.
Russia has a much more sinister regime now.
Take Ukraine for example, they are still fully in the "being invaded by Russia" situation.
The 90's started the rebuilding of most countries. The rebuild that was needed after the economic, infrastructural, intellectual and population destruction by the Russians.
Why this needs to be pointed out to some people is just mind boggling.
Ever heard about Ukraine? (or Moldova, or Georgia...)
EDIT: Considering "learning Czech" in your profile, you might be interested in Russian military activity in Czech republic in recent times https://www.bellingcat.com/news/uk-and-europe/2021/04/26/how...
Considering half my family is Ukrainian, yes. I'm aware of many of the things happening in that part of the world, bad and good.
I've seen the same attitude a lot with most immigrants from that region of a certain generation.
In short, at least one country has legitimate reasons to never trust Russia. Since around 2011, Russia has not given a single reliable signal that it's about to change its colours, or that they got rid of the old military attitudes. Instead, they've been provoking as much as they want.
IMO, economics are important, but national survival is also at stake here.
For example, few in the Eastern Bloc realize how legitimate Russia's own fears of being surrounded by US-backed enemies and invaded are. To many of us, Russia is the great invader (that is what it has been to our countries, even before WWII), so it seems absurd to imagine them fearing attack.
This is not to say, boo hoo poor misunderstood Russia. They have done and continue to do terrible things to others, and to their own people. But it is also important to remember that they have rational motivations behind those ruthless actions, and sometimes even legitimate concerns leading to them (though the loss of human life they cause is not excusable!).
It's also important to remember that US and European promises rarely amount to much. Just look at the extension of NATO, an organization explicitly considering Russia an enemy, to the East of East Germany, despite assurances from Bush to Grobachev that it would never do so. Look at the history of unilateral US reneging on deals with Iran. Russia doesn't consider the US a trustworthy deal maker, and they respond in kind. That they are willing to sacrifices human lives to do so is despicable, but hardly unique among powerful states.
In 2014, Russia will supply Donbass insurgents and help them with press campaigns and supply via proxy.
Discuss?
sources, this is quite an outlandish claim?
> In 2014, Russia will supply Donbass insurgents and help them with press campaigns and supply via proxy.
Do you mean Russian troops invaded Ukraine but took off their id tags and have full military support? (and diplomatic since everyone knows they're Russian troops and anyone other then Ukraine killing them would provoke war?)
With a lot of western media routinely showing Chechen insurgents as good people, Russian army as bad people (and then, showing Donbass insurgents as bad people, Ukrainian army as good people) they had it all fully coming. Wagging your tongue in press is an act of war.
This is what you said:
> In 1994, "the west" will supply Chechen insurgents and help them with press campaigns and supply via proxy.
Where's the sources that "the west" supplied the Chechen insurgents and helped them?
And please share an English version of wikipedia, not a yandex translated version of a wikipedia page in Russian that has edits which have not even been verified. (which should have an equivalent in English anyway but I could not find it)
What I would expect is similar to the CIA involvement in Afghanistan when Russia invaded which is widely sourced and documented and a quick google search away. If there was such involvement as you say, it would have sources already. (that being 30 years ago)
I'm just saying that, based on Russian wikipedia, Russians have moral base to think they're getting worse treatment from other parties than their own treatment of other parties, so they are on the good side of Kantian categorical imperative.
You can't disprove that by just saying "I don't agree", "I don't like your wikipedia" and "My media says otherwise".
The only thing they had in common is that in both wars Russia won. Where were those evil Western forces then? Only in Russian rhetoric to justify its wars.
Then these people will talk of whatboutism.
Here's a more complete list of Russia's attacks on its neighbor's territories. You'll notice they're pretty much all victories in the end:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_involving_Russia#...
Still waiting to see those Western attacks on Russian territories that worry you so much to justify the aforementioned aggressions.
Someone hasn't heard of the Ukraine independence referendum of 1991, I see. And, unlike the Crimean Anschluss referendum, that one was in fact free and fair, with both sides campaigning and no comrades with AK-47s at the polling stations.
Either both Chechnya and Donbass are allowed to use military force to try and become independent, or none of them are.
Either way, the two situations could hardly be more different: Chechnya (for better or worse) had a completely home-grown, self-financed separatist government that fought independently of any third party, certainly in the first war when it didn't even have support by rag-tag groups of foreign Islamists, who came later.
Donbass was an invasion by Russia in August 2014, preceded by six months of an astroturfed separatist rebellion by its own proxies, not only initiated by a group of Russian citizens led by Strelkov, but also fully financed, armed, and partially manned by Russia. When this astroturfed rebellion was failing and Ukraine was about to take control of its border, Russia invaded with its own regular troops (twice actually, once in August 2014 and then again in January/February 2015).
The difference between Chechen and Donbass insurgencies is multi-faceted, but the point stands.
Insurgencies happen. Civil wars happen. Although intervention in them is often driven by geopolitical interests, it's hard for countries in the free world to justify doing so without other rationales, e.g. terrorism, genocide, etc. No such problem exists for countries like Russia, run by authoritarian imperialists. They intervene early and often, and also create fake 'insurgencies' to invade without committing.
I agree that means for the insurgency were supplied from Russia, and that these regions would probably not take the bait did they know that the Russia will abandon them hanging in the limbo instead of Crimea scenario.
The justification for Libya was really crappy and for Afghanistan it was nonexistent so the difference is moot anyway. Large countries use force, that's that.
There are also various examples of NATO or its member countries attacking Russian allies or friendly states close to its borders, notably in the Middle East, but also in Europe (the Kosovo war).
You mean expand The Empire to the countries it occupied?! Oh no no no no no. You are not gonna point to Russia's victims and declare their wounds attacks on their aggressor.
And I was asking about actual attacks on the Russian territories, since that is what you pretend they are afraid of and protecting themselves against while happily attacking neighboring non-Russian territories without hesitation.
Nazi Germany was USSR's ally. It is technically "west", but you are not really answering OP's question in good faith IMO.
> there are many examples of US and European efforts to destabilize various members/vassals of the USSR (culminating in its dissolution)
Ohh please. The "CIA/Soros/NATO agents de-stabilized this country we are occupying (or trying to occupy) so it is _their_ fault we are doing it" is classical Russian propaganda trope. People were fed up with communism and voted to leave. Stop trying to take away their agency!
> There are also various examples of NATO or its member countries attacking Russian allies or friendly states close to its borders, notably in the Middle East, but also in Europe (the Kosovo war).
So answer is no, you can't provide any examples of NATO states attacking Russian territory?
And a very smart thing for countries that joined NATO to push for. Just look at the consequences of not doing that in Ukraine... Or Moldova before. Poor Russia cannot abuse the now NATO countries anymore...
Give it a break trying to paint them into victim, Russia isn't afraid of anything with nukes and it's oversized military.
Even the satellite strike is a warning to other parties to not get involved in its affairs or it CAN seriously hurt everyone without resorting to nukes. It's another type of MAD where everyone loses but Russia being so backwards it doesn't care. (i.e: don't help Ukraine or else)
Russia is not a victim, absolutely - it's an autocratic regime trying to cling to the last vestiges of their former empire with ultra-violence when it feels threatened, with no respect for human life. It's also not some monstrous, one of a kind villain. Can you imagine what would have happened if, say, China started building military bases in Mexico? Would the US ever allow that to happen? No country with the power to stop such things allows hostile military presence to build up at its border - that's really the be-all, end-all of much of Russia's decisions.
> Russia isn't afraid of anything with nukes and it's oversized military.
Russia's military is hundred of times smaller than NATO's. If NATO ever decides to attack Russia, Russia's military will be easily wiped out. There are US nukes on Russia's borders (in Turkey, arguably in Israel; slightly further away, in UK, France). There are anti-missile shields near to Russia's borders (in Romania).
Not really, depends what you compare. Perhaps hundred of times smaller budget wise, but capability it's not.
> If NATO ever decides to attack Russia, Russia's military will be easily wiped out.
Russia can easily block their own airspace to foreign fighters. They can also wipe out satellites as shown here. After that it becomes land warfare where they have superior numbers and wouldn't have issues repelling attack.
> There are anti-missile shields near to Russia's borders (in Romania).
Sure, this prevents nuclear strikes hopefully... but would be overwhelmed fast by amount of rockets Russia can throw. Plus Russia has hyper-sonic missiles that hug the ground... and this would be a priority target...
Budget accounts for a lot.
> Russia can easily block their own airspace to foreign fighters.
Citation needed. The combined air-forces of NATO are not "easily block"ed from anywhere.
> After that it becomes land warfare where they have superior numbers and wouldn't have issues repelling attack.
The USA has more active personnel than Russia, and Turkey (a NATO member) is another large military by active personnel. Technology wise, NATO is also far ahead (those budgets again).
> Sure, this prevents nuclear strikes hopefully...
The (unstated) point of the shield is to allow a NATO nuclear first-strike to go through without retaliation. The current shield is probably not enough to ensure Russia's military could be crippled with that first strike, but future versions of the shield may get there.
You do realize that if a nuke goes off in the atmosphere anti-missile-tracking becomes impossible? (good luck doing radar, thermal or anything else...)
So anti-missile only works for preventing a very small first strike... (or a mistake or anything of the sort)
Now, I would wager that something like Starlink where each satellite has anti-missile tech could prevent a first strike with ballistic missiles.
Then you have missiles that hug the ground... those are impossible to detect or destroy... Radar needs some ground clearance, their speed also makes it had to detect in time and stop.
As for the rest I'll try and read and fetch citations, but Russian anti-air are effective in downing stealth aircraft and most aircraft. (see Serbia in the 90s...), SR-71 or others which fly too fast might not be stoppable but those can't really cause too much harm.
> The USA has more active personnel than Russia, and Turkey (a NATO member) is another large military by active personnel. Technology wise, NATO is also far ahead (those budgets again).
How do you move those to Russia's border and do logistics? :), also I'm not sure about that... but will take your word for it.
> Budget accounts for a lot.
Sure... but forced draft + cheap weapons have won wars in the past...
Why?
> it moved to the UHF region to help mitigate this effect.[16] Even then, it would be heavily attenuated.[7]
> This means that exoatmospheric explosions are very effective against long-range early-warning radars like PAR or the Soviet Dnestr. A single 1 Mt warhead detonated at 250 km altitude would be about 600 kilometres (400 mi) downrange given typical trajectories, and might be expected to create an ionization disk 300 kilometres (200 mi) across. As seen from the radar, this would be an angle of (300 km/600 km)2 ≈ 0.3 sr, enough to hide any warheads approaching along similar paths. This would allow, for instance, a single warhead from a particular missile field to hide all the following ones from the same field. Although this would not affect the operation of the interceptors directly, being outside the range of even the very long-range Spartan, such operations could seriously upset raid direction and overall battle planning. Moreover, because the explosion takes place outside the range of the interceptors, there is no simple means of stopping it.[8]
There's also a lot of uncertainty meaning it might be much worse, that is describe on same link.
In this scenario, the NATO nukes would be fired, Russia would detect them, Russia would attempt to reatliate by firing their own missiles, the shield would destroy [some of] this volley of Russian missiles, then the NATO nukes would hit their targets and wipe out Russian ability to send any other retaliatory strikes. There may be a window between the first NATO nuke hitting (when the shield becomes useless) and the complete destruction of Russian reatliatory capabilities that still allows Russian nukes to be fired, but this at least gives some chance of a successful NATO first strike compared to the current version.
> Russian anti-air are effective in downing stealth aircraft and most aircraft.
This doesn't make them impenetrable. Defenses can be overwhelmed, artillery can be deployed to take down anti-air, strike troops can do the same.
> How do you move those to Russia's border and do logistics? :), also I'm not sure about that... but will take your word for it.
The numbers I got from here [0]. Note that I used the active personnel numbers - Russia does have more overall troops if you include reserves. Logistics is a problem, which becomes much simpler if there are already established NATO military bases in Ukraine and maybe even other former Soviet countries. Logistics is also not a trivial problem for Russia to solve - it's not like all of their troops are sitting at the Russia-Ukraine border, and they could also find themselves attacked through multiple borders.
[0] https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/military-...
Russia used to have 10K+ rockets, now it's around 3000 but they're MIRVs, so they just split when reaching space and have independent targetting... so 3000 x 10/20 payloads to track and destroy.
The anti-missile shield won't be able to destroy them before they reach space (Russia is big... anti-missile shield can't reach Russian territory...)
Russia can detect preemptive attacks (spies, radars, satellites, ...)
After they're launched, good luck stopping them.
As for the Nuclear Blackout, strategy is like this - launch all of them, some of them would blow in space (just need a few 1M nukes blowing off at the same time to black out tracking for all that follow and added benefit - fry out satellites)
This is ignoring all the submarine launched nukes...
So, I hope you understand the first strike then neutralize is unrealistic...
Even if those are somehow not launched, what happens to:
- short range tactical nukes - army groups can launch independently and who knows where they're deployed
- hypersonic hug-the-ground missiles - can't radar track them since they're flying so low, can't hit them due to speed...
- submarines launching nukes / destroying most major population centers...
- Nuclear winter... even if say everything works and Russia decides not to fight back... the world is stuck with nuclear winter for century or two...
- Other players?, would the rest of the world sit idly by for nuclear winter?
> This doesn't make them impenetrable. Defenses can be overwhelmed, artillery can be deployed to take down anti-air, strike troops can do the same.
Sure... nothing is impenetrable, but 70-80% losses would make it prohibitive to sustain operations...
Nuclear tipped anti-air missiles make overwhelming attacks really stupid... just need one of these to wipe out an attack...
Tactical nukes make overwhelming ground attacks trying to neutralize anti-air stupid...
Taking that out of the equation attackers are limited to small strikes which would take heavy losses... but hopefully limited to conventional only..
> they could also find themselves attacked through multiple borders.
NATO is only on the western border... Russia is big... Look how well invading turned out for Napoleon or Hitler...
Hell... Look at Vietnam and Korea to see what happens when you meet a determined defendant to appreciate how NATO would fumble on offensive...
There were NATO military bases being build in Ukraine or Moldova?
> No country with the power to stop such things allows hostile military presence to build up at its border - that's really the be-all, end-all of much of Russia's decisions.
This is one of most repeated "justifications" for Russian military aggression, but it makes no sense if you think about for a second. Russia have already had land border with several NATO member states (Estionia, Latvia) for quite some time now, and Pskov and Saint-Petersburg are still unmolested by NATO's hostile legions, as far as I'm aware.
> Russia's military is hundred of times smaller than NATO's. If NATO ever decides to attack Russia, Russia's military will be easily wiped out. There are US nukes on Russia's borders (in Turkey, arguably in Israel; slightly further away, in UK, France). There are anti-missile shields near to Russia's borders (in Romania).
Are you saying anti missile systems in Europe can provide protection from whole Russian missile arsenal? What are you basing this on? Did you consider their capabilities to launch from submarines? All analyses that I read on the subject suggests that nuclear war between NATO and Russia is still MAD.
The assurances concerned non-sovereign territories of a totalitarian state. Now that these states are newly sovereign and post-Soviet (and likely still politically hostile to the idea of going back to the way things were), they are free to do whatever they choose to do. It's their right.
While countries are free to associate, there are obvious diplomatic costs to joining a hostile military alliance (and NATO is still explicitly hostile to Russia). The fact that Russia has a single blunt instrument that it chooses to wield in these situations is as much the fault of Russia as it is the fault of people seeking to bring hostile military bases on their borders.
And again, I am fully aware of how noxious Russia is to the countries that it controls, either today or in the past. Russian influence is autocratic, corruption focused, socially conservative, and insists on Russian interests in the region before the interests of the local populace. I am under no illusions about Russia as some benevolent victim, and not trying to make any propaganda about that.
But that doesn't mean we should ascribe their actions to pure malice either, as much propaganda is wont to do; nor that we should feel that much better about being under the influence of their rivals - Empires are never good, and it's always much better to be self-determined, even if at various points various empires have been better or worse in certain regions.
You keep repeating that Russian propaganda line and simultaneously claim that your are not trying to "make any propaganda about that". I repeat my question from another message: Were there any NATO bases being build in Ukraine (or Georgia, as another example) at the time of Russian military incursion?
> But that doesn't mean we should ascribe their actions to pure malice either
Who is doing that? Yes, it is obviously nice to have a buffer from "hostile NATO states", but there are multiple other considerations why Russia would like to control its neighbors (economical, political, ideological, etc.).
No. Ukraine had just started talks with NATO about the possibility of joining. Not sure why this is relevant, I was already calling this a pre-emptive move from Russia, not a reactive one.
Georgia is a different case, as they had not been attempting to join NATO as far as I know. Russia is imperialistic, and like every empire, they do not take kindly to supposed vassals tryin to assert their independence for the sake of their people.
> Who is doing that? Yes, it is obviously nice to have a buffer from "hostile NATO states", but there are multiple other considerations why Russia would like to control its neighbors (economical, political, ideological, etc.).
I should have presented a stronger alternative, you are right that 'pure malice' was a straw man. The better point would be that, while Russia's imperialistic, controlling tendencies need to be stopped by the international community (as is true for any other imperialistic tendencies, such as the US or China's), bringing hostile military alliances to Russia's borders is not a stake way of achieving this goal. NATO expansion at Russia's border is too big a peril for Russia to ignore, and is bound to provoke a reaction. Other diplomatic means of protecting Georgia, Ukraine, Moldova etc. are much more likely to cause a stable peace in the region, and assuage tensions.
Specifically: It's completely against their interests if they still care about space.