Hacker News Reader

> organizing direct strikes in Russian territory

Well. Ukraine just wants to shoot at the places where rockets and artillery are shooting at them. It happens that the Russians conveniently are doing so behind the border. They can shoot at you. But you can't shoot back.

I honestly don't understand how people can spin this up as that NATO wants to strike Russia with a straight face.

It makes more sense when you figure it’s projection.

That’s when it gets scary too.

Russia has very good influence operations and seeds this type of propaganda. It’s all over on social media.

See Maria Butina and the total ownership of the NRA. Starting with Putin bare-chested riding horses in the GWB “I’m looking into his soul” era to today, the American right wingers are pretty much pro-Russia… amazing feat considering that killing Russians has been historically a priority for them since 1917.

> They've made it quite clear that they want the war to continue until something in Russia breaks.

Huh? I'd expect most non-Russian-aligned parties would be happy to see Russia retreat from Ukraine, pay reparations, and call that a peace. Russia only needs to break if Russia persists in occupying other countries.

That's simply not going to happen. The West isn't sending enough military aid to tip the scales, and this is an existential war for Russia and they are managing it well enough.

The likelihood of it is kinda irrelevant, if it were to happen I expect it would satisfy "The West", hence the want the war to continue part sounds wrong.

> They've made it quite clear that they want the war to continue until something in Russia breaks.

The war can end tomorrow. All that has to happen is for Russia to pack up and leave the territory of another sovereign country. It's really that simple.

If Russia gives up, the war ends. If Ukraine gives up, there is a genocide.

I really don’t understand tankie logic. The nation that has been your geopolitical rival for a century is suddenly the beacon of western civilisation and ideals, despite stating they hate you and everything you stand for, and then attacking a country for merely thinking of allying with you!?

“I believe everything this former KGB operative says about my government! Finally, a neutral party without self-interests who can reveal the truth!”

How often you you come across people saying any of that, though? That is a straw man position of the people pointing out that this conflict was quite a likely outcome of NATO's persistent expansion and that the strategic pressure on Russia has been extraordinarily damaging to US interests, European interests, Russian interests and the global security situation. The only people who ended up benefiting from NATO expansion so far have been India and to a lesser extent China.

> How often you you come across people saying any of that, though?

I'm paraphrasing, but I have friends that believe 100% of Russian propaganda they hear on the Internet and 0% of western mainstream media. "What the BBC is saying is just propaganda!" is a common comment I hear from people quoting Russian disinformation verbatim.

> likely outcome of NATO's persistent expansion

That is literal Russian disinformation. If they cared about NATO expansion, they would have invaded Finland to stop them joining. Or would have bolstered their border defence with them instead of reallocating the local troops to go fight in Ukraine, as they have.

They only cared about Ukraine joining NATO because that would have stopped them invading, as they were planning for over a decade and are doing right now.

A thief that plans to rob you cares deeply about your security system being upgraded! Not upgrading your security to appease the thief will not stop the robbery.

PS: Alexander Lukashenko accidentally let slip in early 2022 that the next target for invasion after Ukraine would have been Moldova. Guess which country Trump suddenly thought shouldn't be joining NATO right after meeting Putin?

Not any other country in Europe. No. Just Moldova, very specifically. Trump was very concerned about it, a country he would not have known the name of or been able to place on a map the day before that meeting. (Or, most likely, even after that meeting.)

One or more nuclear powers has been at war for basically the entire nuclear era. They have all had wars in which they have "lost more troops than in any war since WWII". Even if this is the end of the Putin regime, this wouldn't even be the first time that the Soviet Union/Russia collapsed. I don't know what the path you think you see from where we are now to "full scale nuclear war", but it seems incredibly silly to suggest "the situation is more tense than it ever has been before", especially after you have already name checked Able Archer and the Cuban Missile Crisis.

> I don't know what the path you think you see from where we are now to "full scale nuclear war", but it seems incredibly silly to suggest "the situation is more tense than it ever has been before", especially after you have already name checked Able Archer and the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Able Archer was one of a series of (annual) scheduled training exercises. The Cuban missile crisis was a fairly civil dispute over where people stationed military assets that was resolved diplomatically. The Ukraine War has involved the mobilisation of the Russian military with estimates in the 100s of thousands for Russian casualties and active strikes on Russian military infrastructure.

How are you construing the first two are more tense than the last? The last is a significant escalation of tensions from the first two. We're a long way up the escalation ladder.

And, putting it to you a second time, what warnings are you expecting to see months before a nuclear war starts? I don't think you can see any path from any scenario to nuclear war. I doubt you would have seen a path from Able Archer to nuclear war, or a path from the US deploying missiles in Turkey to nuclear war either.

During the Cuban Missile Crisis the US dropped depth charges in the vicinity of the Soviet submarine B-59. This was meant as a sign to surface, but it was interpreted by the sub as an attack suggesting war had already broken out. The Soviet rules of engagement allowed for the launch of nuclear weapons in this situation if all three of the sub's highest ranking officers agreed. Two of them were in agreement, but Vasily Arkhipov disagreed. His decision that day single-handedly stopped nuclear war.

So yes, I think we were closer to "full scale nuclear war" during the Cuban Missile Crisis than we are today. There isn't much point in continuing the conversation if you can't agree with that.

That is kinda my point though - you don't seem able to predict that sort of thing with foresight. Before the Cuban missile crisis you wouldn't have seen a path to nuclear war. During the crisis you probably wouldn't have seen a path. For 40 years [0] after the crisis you wouldn't have believed there was a path.

Then, 40 years later, someone ion the Russian military would explain to you that a person attempted to fire the nukes and it was narrowly prevented by a coincidence. At that point you would see a path to nuclear war. And based on my read of this conversation you probably wouldn't make the connection with the escalatory policy in Turkey as a threat to the Soviets without decades in hindsight either. That was less threatening than the NATO work the US has been orchestrating in Europe.

The publicly available information we have on the Ukraine war suggests a tenser situation than the Cuban missile crisis in 1962. Russia's mainland nuclear defence infrastructure has literally been targeted. That is pretty dicey compared to harassing a presumed-harmless submarine near Cuba.

[0] In case you haven't read up on it, the incident you are referring too wasn't publicly discussed until 2002. A lot of other details also weren't available without hindsight.

> Before the Cuban missile crisis you wouldn't have seen a path to nuclear war. During the crisis you probably wouldn't have seen a path.

Come on, people couldn't see a path to nuclear war during the Cuban Missile Crisis? The whole reason it was labeled a "crisis" was because it made the path to war incredibly short. I know it is hard to say "I was wrong", but it is better than tying yourself into knots until you are spouting nonsense like this.

The reality of the situation, whether it was known in real time or not, is that one person prevented the use of nuclear weapons in 1962. How do you get closer to the use of nuclear weapons than it being prevented by one person? Half a person preventing it?

> The whole reason it was labeled a "crisis" was because it made the path to war incredibly short.

Yes, but the reason the Ukraine war isn't called the "Ukraine crisis" is because the crisis point came, went and then a war began. That is why tensions are higher - we're further up the escalation ladder. The Russian army has partly mobilised and people are shooting at them. The situation is a lot more fraught than a relatively civil argument over where missile emplacements were going to be put and nobody had any actual intentions of killing any Russians.

I put my challenge to you again - what warnings are you expecting to see months before a nuclear war starts? Your last answer was that you'd discover those signs 40 years post-hoc when the Russians told you and I don't think you can defend that as a rational position. If you want an explicit reason, 40 years hindsight is not a warning sign. Warning signs come before the event.

> fairly civil dispute over where people stationed military assets

Your argument is that USSR stationing assets, including nukes, in Cuba isn't a provocation against the US while the mere thought of Ukraine joining NATO (not involving any actual NATO assets in Ukraine before the invasion in 2014!) is a provocation?

It nearly led to nuclear war. Obviously it was a provocation. The USSR was trying to provoke the US as far as I read the story.

But compared to the Ukraine war it was a pretty civil dispute. Nobody was intended to get hurt.

Nuclear war is the one situation Putin can't guarantee his own survival, which is ultimately the only metric he cares about.

The chances of a Russian fizzle are very high given the maintenance issues with the regular army, but nobody wants to take that bet.

Is that NATO currently in the room with you?

This is purpose of NATO - to prevent the lines on the map from changing. Ukraine may not be a member of NATO officially but it doesn't need to be - the Soviet era reason for Ukraine is the same as the NATO, a buffer state.

Russian aggression reinforced the need for a buffer state - before it wasn't obvious, now it is. NATO is intending to force Russia to leave Ukraine and they are willing to play a very long game bc it's a buffer state in play, not a NATO state.

The end result of this strategy is either Russia breaks or the war escalates.

Nope. NATO did change the lines on the map.

But thanks for playing.

The USSR asked to join NATO, which was quite funny to learn about.

Russia-NATO relations were pretty good, even heading (slowly) towards such membership under Putin in 2000.

Unfortunately, Putin didn't like GWB leaving the ABM treaty, and did like having the old USSR back, so aggression and all else as you say.

Perhaps, he saw the result of NATO aggression against Serbia?

"Russian paratroopers seized Slatina airport to become the first peacekeeping force in the war zone" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NATO_bombing_of_Yugoslavia

Which was a surprise at the time, and left some convinced it was a UN rather than NATO operation.