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Comment by MomoXenosaga | Hacker News Reader

I'm actually amazed the Netherlands found anything to give. It was generally assumed that war was over because Europeans had become civilized. Unfortunately the Russians never got that memo and remained barbarian. A few years ago Dutch soldiers had to yell "bang bang" at exercises for lack of ammunition.

Dutch politicians have noticed this is looking a lot like 1940.

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> Unfortunately the Russians never got that memo and remained barbarian.

I don't believe referring to any group of people as barbarians is an appropriate comment for HN, or indeed for any place purporting to be a forum for civilized discourse.

He's also implicitly calling Yemenis, Afghanistanis, Palestenians and Israelis uncivilized too. I heard the same statement ("We are too civilized for war unlike other places") coming from Ukranian tv hosts and it left me dumbfounded.

Which ones of Ukrainian TV hosts?

I was aware of same EU TV person, maybe a UK person, having majorly stepped in it along those lines. It's just incredibly narrow to presume that war-torn places were would choose that.

Thank you for calling this out; the comment serves only to heighten animosity against your average Russian. I'm sure OP aimed it at the Kremlin leadership, but being precise here is important.

I see nothing in his comment to justify such a charitable interpretation.

I agree, but in discourse I strongly subscribe to the Principle of Charity [0]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_charity

Further, said principle is mandated by Hacker News. <https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html> states:

>Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith.

I don’t know what else you call invading a sovereign country because they don’t want to be your vassal though? That seems pretty barbaric to me.

If that is the standard by which the population of a country can be judged to be barbarians, then the category of barbarians is a wide one indeed.

Would you say the same of Israel?

I think it's a lot more like September 1939 than 1940. Crimea was Sudetenland. Ukraine is Poland. And, at the moment, the other major world powers haven't joined in. Yet.

This analogy isn't necessarily a good one. Especially since we've seen that the Russian army is way less capable than the Wehrmacht. Kraków felt 5 days after the invasion started, and the Germans controlled roughly two third of Poland by day 15, and so with vehicles two times slower than modern ones.

Unlike Hitler, Putin cannot realistically contemplate the conquest of the entire Europe with the army he has, even without NATO intervention…

Crimea is Sudetenland, but Ukraine is more like rump Czechoslovakia.

I don't have problem with the principle that a country has broad latitude to handle internal affairs in its own way.

Nor a country, within limits, seeking to project power in its neighborhood. The principle of self-determination, as articulated by Wilson's Fourteen Principles a century ago, is very difficult to reconcile with condemning too heavily the Russian majority of Crimea seeking to leave Ukraine and rejoining Russia. The current invasion of Ukraine is different.

As for why Putin (I would have written Russia, except based on many news reports it seems like Putin made this decision alone, shocking/amazing everyone around him) invaded Ukraine: I don't know. Putin's own words indicate a goal of rebuilding the physical USSR, but there is a good case to be made that Russia was strengthened after 1991 by losing chunks on the outer edges peopled by non-Russian ethnic groups. (Chechnya being an example of a chunk that it really ought to have lost.)

NATO expansion isn't a satisfactory answer, either. NATO has bordered Russia since Norway became a charter member in 1949. Russia wasn't thrilled about Poland joining NATO but it seemed to be able to live with it, and one is hard pressed to say that NATO is actually strengthened by having the likes of Montenegro as members. Everyone knew that Ukraine wasn't going to be allowed to join NATO as long as the Crimea and eastern Ukraine territorial situations remained, so in practice Ukraine was permanently blocked.

So why this war? At least Hitler could cite lebensraum for rump Czechoslovakia, even without the ethnic Germans that had justified taking the Sudetenland. But no one thinks that Russia, whose population is shrinking anyway, needs more space. The only two things I can think of are:

* Russia feels the need to expand its borders and build buffer zones as much as possible before its demographic crisis really hits in a few years and the country can no longer staff its military. (Peter Zeihan has talked about this for years.)

* Putin really has, as Macron and others have observed/hinted, gone crazy.

The difference is that a war with Russia will not mean 5 years of struggle, but rather the loss of billions of people and (at least) three continents becoming void of human life.

At this point the war is only in Ukraine. I know you can never believe Putin but his internal and external communication was crystal clear: we want to retake control of Ukraine by any means possible. What is not clear, however, is how long the war will last. Given the deplorable state of the Russian army and tons of modern weapons delivered to Ukraine, it wouldn't surprise me if it took a long time.

I don't disagree; I was just pointing out that the overall tone of the conversation, when bringing in 1939-1940, would logically imply that Western countries have to enter the fight directly. That would likely trigger nuclear war, which would be very different from the likes of the Battle of Britain - something that a lot of people tend to forget.

My understanding is that military capacity across all EEA member states, and UK and Switzerland, would dramatically outweigh Russia's. Countries don't necessarily need to increase their military spend after this, especially with all the other economic issues we already have to grapple with, following both the great recession, covid, heavy inflation, the switch to green economy, and now all the economic effects being linked to the war in Ukraine.

As far as I understand, only UK and France have defence forces that can mount a proper fight and have operational experience, even their own nuclear triad. Rest of Europe is far weaker.

Yes, NATO in Europe is US+UK+FR+TK, with some significant manpower commitment from Eastern European states, and that's all.

It boggles my mind why Turkey keeps being ignored in this discourse. They have army big enough, modern, and powerful to alone defeat all Russian force in Ukraine.

> It boggles my mind why Turkey keeps being ignored in this discourse.

Are they? They've contributed a lot of already-legendary Bayraktar drones[1], they've rejected Russia's request to move war ships through Bosporus[2], they're pretty clearly invested in supporting Ukraine despite the unwillingness to impose sanctions on Russia.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TpmfKc96j8Y

[2] https://asia.nikkei.com/Politics/Ukraine-war/Turkey-rejects-...

They do, but NATO heads of state seem to forgot that Turkey exists, and is an extremely strong military power, which can put can on top of any Russian activity in their vicinity within days.

Erdogan is effectively a Putin de-facto ally and would likely resist any such calls.

Turkey is a sui generis NATO ally. The US "claimed it" to get the straits, effectively providing a nuclear arsenal as payment, but it's become very clear that the country's priorities have always been somewhat unique and shifted considerably since the Cyprus conflict - even more so since Erdogan's purges.

Turkey would definitely be a NATO ally in an all-out war (which would be the end of humankind, so whatever), but they will probably never engage Russia directly in a limited fashion while Putin and Erdogan are in power.

Is your suggestion that because Turkey has a large army, countries like the Netherlands need to increase their military capacity? Or reduce it? Or neither/other?

I suggest NATO launch war, retake Ukraine, and deprive Russia of 60% of its military for almost no cost.

This will be followed by Putin having to spend the next 40% of its military on keeping order within Russia. If he will use nukes, he will obviously not be able to do so (NATO nuclear retaliation will destroy at least 50% of remaining Russian military.)

Even if Putin will stay in power, sending military to police innumerable Russian cities, and towns will take him off the list of potential threats for next decade at least.

Use the time won to remilitarise the West.

> This will be followed by Putin having to spend the next 40% of its military on keeping order within Russia. If he will use nukes, he will obviously not be able to do so.

Initiating a nuclear launch is not a high-manpower operation.

Ok, that's enough. After years of trying to explain to you why posting like this is unacceptable on HN, I think we have to ban this account again for now.

Obviously emotions and tensions are super high right now, but (a) that's a reason not to post like this, and (b) this has been a problem for a long time.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Edit: here's what I mean - and this doesn't include the large number of emails:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30470909 (Feb 2022)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29621256 (Dec 2021)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26896780 (April 2021)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26892834 (April 2021)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26630216 (March 2021)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26630202 (March 2021)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25843844 (Jan 2021)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20072350 (June 2019)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18802969 (Jan 2019)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15658648 (Nov 2017)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14786407 (July 2017)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13511792 (Jan 2017)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13464959 (Jan 2017)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13446598 (Jan 2017)

Turkey's air defenses are supplied by Russia. Ergodan was so indignant to get the S-400 that he risked loosing the F-35 over it, and did in fact loose the plane even though Turkey manufactures parts of the plane.

After snubbing the Americans and the rest of Europe for the S-400, Turkey's only unburned military bridge with a strong power is Russia. They dare not burn that bridge as well.

> Turkey's only unburned military bridge with a strong power is Russia.

They’re literally part of NATO.

> They dare not burn that bridge as well.

They closed the entrance to the Black Sea to Russia yesterday. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/3/2/russia-cancelled-bla...

They’re sending Ukraine more drones today, too.

  > They’re literally part of NATO.

Yes, then snubbed NATO with the S-400 purchases.

  > They closed the entrance to the Black Sea to Russia yesterday.

It seems from the linked article that Turkey requested the Russians to not cross, and the Russians obliged. The Russians are just as happy with Turkish relations as Turkey is with Russian relations. However, rest assured that if a Russian warship decided that it absolutely must traverse the Bosphorus strait and a Turkish ship were to confront it, the Russians would have no problem asserting their crossing over a sunk Turkish warship.

> the Russians would have no problem asserting their crossing over a sunk Turkish warship.

Much agreed. And just like the U.S. they don't cross a bridge like that unforced. Or so far they are playing it that conservatively.

With the problem that sinking a Turkish ship could easily trigger Nato Article 5 if Turkey wanted it to happen.

As war is not declared between Russia and either Turkey or NATO, the Turkish blockade would be considered provocation (as per treaties, Black Sea states have open access to Bosporus and Russia is a Black Sea state) and would not require NATO to invoke Article 5. Which in turn would weaken further propositions to invoke Article 5 in the future: a desirable outcome for Russia.

>Turkey's only unburned military bridge with a strong power is Russia.

Which is kind of odd, since in recent history they've shot down a Russian jet, and had an assassination of the Russian ambassador perpetrated by a uniformed police officer.

The disrespect for Italian forces is all over this thread. Definitely not as active as UK/FR (because their constitution, y'know, literally forbids any action on foreign soil not authorized by the UN), but still decently armed - all the way to the infamous F-35...

> only UK and France have defence forces that can mount a proper fight and have operational experience

France released a report two weeks ago concluding it can only withstand high intensity war for a few days. We have good forces to do small scale interventions in foreign countries but we wouldn't be much better than Ukraine at defending our own land. Plus it's a small army and most citizen aren't trained.

The air force allegedly has only 2 days worth of ammunitions

Our only redeeming quality is our nuclear submarines float but that's more of a deterrence option.

We're mostly relying on the US in case of a "real" war.

The other side is that the US is the only country capable of fighting a "real" war against France. No other country has the logistics capacity to send a significant force to fight so far away from home. Russia is already having serious trouble with logistics in Ukraine, and the troops haven't advanced that far from the border.

> It was generally assumed that war was over because Europeans had become civilized

You mean the same "civilized" Europeans that conduct war in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, etc.? Those ones? Or is it ok to wage war on "third world" countries because they're not in Europe? As they say, out of sight, out of mind.

Very inappropriate. You can argue that US supremacy was what kept European countries in peace after WWII. Hardly a cultural evolution

From the outside, yes. But from the inside the EU is what kept the peace.

Please don't lump us barbarians in with evil like Putin. Russian people are awesome. I know people mean "the government" when they say Russia/Russians here in geopolitical context but really, we have to be more careful than that.

The Netherlands bought the weapon from Germany and shipped it to Ukraine.

Now, how do we define civilization is the question, given that quite a few of them were growing imperium.

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