Hacker News Reader

Comment by ra | Hacker News Reader

MH17 was shot down by a Russian anti-aircraft missile, killing all 298 p.o.b. with no consequences for Russia.

Russia has flown Bear nuclear-capable bombers over the UK (actually over land), with no consequences [1].

Russia, Iran, and North Korea all trade arms with each other and supply missiles, drones, and ammunition to the Houthi.

Russia invaded Ukraine and deploy weapons from the above "axis" countries.

I don't think a specific individual trigger event exists for a military response. More typically, the West goes to war when energy security is threatened.

[1] My parents live in Cornwall and witnessed this https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/feb/19/russian-bomb...

View on HN

> MH17 was shot down by a Russian anti-aircraft missile, killing all 298 p.o.b. with no consequences for Russia

I don’t think this is a good example, given that the act is widely considered to be a mistake. The US shot down IR655, Soviets KL007, Ukrainians S7-1812, Iranians PS752 ... it happens. MH17 is egregious (as was KL007) for a refusal to admit blame, but hardly a casus belli, despite the tragedy.

Eh, we had them refusing access to the investigation and recovery teams for a while. If the shooting of the airliner wasn’t, that would have been one had it persisted (though it let up after a day or so).

Don't forget: Russians enter UK to perform an assassination using a potent nerve agent (with essentially no repercussions). They do this all the time and get away with it. And like a child that doesn't get told off, they'll keep on doing it.

Though I would hope that in a hopefully civilized age such acts and war crimes would be punished prevented from happening again, I would not say there are no consequences of these actions.

Many Dutch citizens have been killed on board of MH17 - and the amount of military support to Ukraine provided by the Dutch has been quite significant.

As for Iran and North Korea - I would say some lines have been crossed there that will play out longer term, but at least it now seems to be, for some peculiar reason, easier for South Korea to ship artillery shells abroad, either directly to Ukraine or to back fill allied stocks so they can ship what they have to Ukraine.

Also I don't think Isreal/Russia relations will recover from what Iran linked terrorists did on October 7. While rather busy right now, Isreal produces some rather advanced weapon systems, one really does not want to be on the receiving end of (see the Karabakh war as an example).

Also after it became apparent Russia was behind the Vrbetice ammunition warehouse explosion (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_Vrb%C4%9Btice_ammunition_...), which killed 2 Czech citizens, the response was quite significant (on a 10 million citizen country scale):

* almost all Russian diplomats expelled (ending one of the bigger Russian embassies in EU)

* Russia was removed from the lucrative Dukovany nuclear power plant tender

* many Czech companies who still had relations from the soviet times with Russian companies stopped providing support and shipping replacement parts

* LOTS of kit: https://www.oryxspioenkop.com/2022/07/bohemian-brotherhood-l...

- 79 MBTS + 105 more to be restored & shipped to Ukraine

- multiple mi-24 helicopter gunships

- 100+ IFVs

- dozens of self propelled guns

- Anti Shahed technicals (!)

- 10000 RPGs, 1.5+ Million Artillery, Tank And Mortar Shells, a small mountain of small arms, a big mountain of small arms ammunition

Some of this was even crowdfuded - a tank, a Tatra based MLRS system, some of the technicals. There is also an ongoing fundraiser to buy a UH-60 Black Hawk (!): https://www.weaponstoukraine.com/kampane/cestmir

So while in reality evil is often not ended by Gandalf charging in, the same or arguable even worse result for the evildoer is often achieved over a longer time with less glorious, messy but still effective means.

While Vrbetice is one of them, there is a million reasons why Czechs support a defensive war effort against Russia.

E.g: being occupied for decades by Soviets and seeing the country wither under the Moscov rule.

Neighboring countries like Slovakia or Hungary could also state similar historical stuff (I lived through it myself) yet look at their current governments. Hungarians also had 1956 yet look at Orban

Hungary is currently hugely dependent on Russian natgas, so they're completely at Putin's mercy. Putin could have have them freeze to death at a snap of his fingers, which I'm sure was pointed out to Orban during a private audience.

Well, the Czech Republic used to get most of its natural gas from Russia as well, even very recently - mainly due to how the old eastern block pipeline network was laid out.

But it has since the switched to regasiffied LNG & rented a couple LNG terminals for it. Other European countries did the same successfully. Why Hungary can't do that as well ?

Seems more like some direct blackmail against Orban and his people to me.

I believe that Hungary is doing that as well (a quick googling reveals a bunch of projects under development and construction). However, untying themselves from Russia might take a couple of years at least.

I was frankly surprised how quickly & well it went it went for the Czech Republic & other countries. But indeed its not as easy for every country, for various reasons (that might or might not include corruption :P).

Yep - energy security draws battle lines, generally not isolated military events.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com