pbourke

> besides, rail is more efficient.

How is that tunnel under the Pacific Ocean coming along?

> I don't think NATO engaging necessarily leads to nuclear war. It's highly unlikely.

I don’t know what war you’ve been following over the past month, but Russia would be destroyed by NATO in a conventional conflict. According to their doctrine, they will go nuclear if this happens. They’ve threatened the use of nuclear weapons at various levels of government and it’s been floated on Russian state media programs.

Given all that, it does not seem highly unlikely that nuclear weapons would be used.

He sounds like Bismarck in this interview: casually discussing the US and Russia carving up Ukraine. Pretentious ideologue.

> Russia is not a military superpower.

Russia is still part of a small club of countries that can send human civilization back to the Stone Age.

See also Seattle’s SR99 tunnel and Boston’s Big Dig (though the latter is 15 years old now).

Tunneling through an existing city, often near water, is just hideously complex and expensive.

I’m not sure what you mean by SDI - that died in the early 90’s. The post-Soviet missile defense system that the US developed (GMD) is aimed squarely at countering ICBMs from a small nuclear state like North Korea. Does the US have another missile defense system in the pipeline?

MAD implies rational/peer actors. Some of the US moves in recent decades have been to deter and counter rogue nuclear states such as NK.

If Russia’s willing to drop cluster munitions on Ukrainian cities, I don’t see why they wouldn’t send a tactical nuke to a air base or industrial area. The relations between Russians and Ukrainians seem well and truly fucked at this point as it is.

We can hope that a mutiny will happen but it’s by no means guaranteed.

I can’t believe you’d discuss this situation without considering the nuclear angle. Putin holds a significant wild card in terms of tactical nuclear weapons.

I’m sure Russia believes that they could be deployed inside of Ukraine in order to force an end to the Ukrainian resistance and the west would continue to remain on the sidelines to avert escalation to the end of the world.

A total defeat/humiliation of Russia without nukes flying seems like a remote possibility. Putin realizes that defeat signals the end of his regime and likely the Russian Federation as constructed today, just like the Russo-Japanese war led to the end of the Russian Empire and Afghanistan war led to the end of the USSR.

Right now there lacks Sun Tzu’s “golden bridge” across which Russia could retreat in dignity.

Why would China ever do that when they can have Russia as a client state at zero military cost? China can merely incorporate a weakened Russia into its belt-and-road neo-colonial strategy.

A counterpoint to Mearsheimer from historian Stephen Kotkin in conversation with David Remnick:

https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/stephen-kotkin-putin-...

Can you not see how this statement must be true at some point?

I don’t know why you’re being downvoted. What you say is correct and ethical, in my view. Putin and the Russian government are to blame, not random Russian citizens.

> This is a 19th century war with 21st century weapons.

And we hope that it doesn’t turn into a 20th century war with 21st century weapons.

There are many holes in your statements. I am too tired to rebut them in HN-normal form.

However, I will say this: even if one accepts everything that you claim at face value, nothing justifies what Putin/Russia are doing in Ukraine right now.

Because I am apparently a masochist, I watched Threads for the first time in the week leading up the the war. It lives up to its billing.

Apparently we will have all of the downsides of Armageddon without the bliss of its few upsides.

I’ll make sure to update JIRA ahead of standup the afternoon of the apocalypse.

An N95 mask might help with inhaling irradiated dust. But yeah, COVID would be rather low on the list of concerns.

“Last Updated: 02/25/2022”

“Reynolds: Do you really think he’ll use a nuclear weapon?

Hill: The thing about Putin is, if he has an instrument, he wants to use it. Why have it if you can’t? He’s already used a nuclear weapon in some respects. Russian operatives poisoned Alexander Litvinenko with radioactive polonium and turned him into a human dirty bomb and polonium was spread all around London at every spot that poor man visited. He died a horrible death as a result.”

A “sober and calculating” person would never have entered into this conflict.

Putin seems to have an almost-religious perception of this situation. He views Ukraine as part of a “greater Russia”, and the post-Soviet reorganization that put Ukraine on a vector away from Russian influence as a great historical humiliation.

His comments about there being no point to a world without Russia in it (from 2018) and about the Russia/Ukraine split as an accident of history rather than a fact to be recognized (from last summer) are deeply disturbing.

Russia seems to be relatively weak in all dimensions but two: the ability to indiscriminately level a city and nuclear weapons.

Perilous times.

Little green men.

> Russia seem to be closer and closer to the point where their only winning condition is a Grozny scenario and if that happens then there is no chance that NATO would stand by.

If that happens we are facing the very real possibility of escalation to some kind of nuclear war per Russia’s doctrine.

What if enforcing a no-fly zone over Ukraine leads to a full nuclear exchange a.k.a. end of the world?

We are actually seeing some strong early results from the soft power approach. The US under Trump all but abandoned this powerful and necessary tool. Give it a chance.

> Let’s not escalate the situation or a war might break out.

You are being pithy, but is this not the truth? We are on the first rung of a ladder that leads up to the end of the world.

The NATO strategy so far seems to be to isolate and damage Russia economically and politically and provide weapons (and one can assume intel) to Ukraine. I think it makes sense.

One of the major problems with escalation is that Russia is weak - so weak that any direct NATO intervention will almost certainly provoke some kind of nuclear response.

At the very least, Russia lost two gigantic IL-76 last night (confirmed by US). We don’t know how many people were aboard, but each one could easily have 200-400. A figure of 3500 casualties (KIA + wounded) does not seem unreasonable.

At the very least, Russia does not yet have air superiority and seems to have made some huge tactical blunders around attacking the airports. They lost 2 IL-76 transports yesterday which seems indicative of things going off the rails.

> Or at least we'd send them thousands of anti helicopter and antitank missiles

That happened - the UK sent 2000 NLAW anti-tank missiles and the US sent Javelins.

> The historical original reason for its existence have disappeared

It seems that we are being reminded that it has not.

I love seeing well-organized code in a single HTML file - very easy to read and comprehend. Kudos!