RichVR
1839
Is Tom Clancy writing this shit?
Oh, I am well aware of the vulnerabilities of the Internet’s physical infrastructure. I’m just not convinced there is much short-term military advantage, if any, to such a disruption, which if pinned on Moscow would be a huge diplomatic hit and certainly trigger all sorts of sanctions one would imagine. So the only scenarios that make sense are either they can do it and completely escape blame, thus sabotaging Western economies in some way, or they are planning some highly improbable wide-spread conflict.
Of course, attacking such a target would be cutting off their nose to spite their face, as in the long run it would only hurt them across the board. It’s not like they can step into the breach or whatever and make a killing or whatever. That’s not to say they wouldn’t do something spiteful and counter-productive, of course, and I’d be the last to try to predict the Kremlin’s behavior. But the threat seems like one that is sort of endemic rather than acute.
KevinC
1841
I just started reading Red Storm Rising about a week ago to change up my usual reading material. :)
I read a lot of Clancy and Larry Bond, et al, back then. Most of it does not age well, though there are a few that are better than others. If you think beyond the surface techno-war porn, the whole genre is rife with rather disturbing (and disturbingly prophetic) cultural biases.
RichVR
1843
Purely loved Red Storm when I read it as a much younger dude. Let me know how it holds up.
Canuck
1844
Dan Carlin has a couple of good episodes on Ukraine in his Common Sense podcast but they’re archived now so I might have to dole out 99 cents if I want to listen to them again.
jpinard
1845
This is a surprise. Still makes me wonder what the heck they’re up to. Or if this was all about being as annoying as possible in their saber rattling.
Timex
1846
Russia is working both ends of the horseshoe pretty hard, riling up the right wing and saying that any conduct with Russia is just Biden wagging the dog, while also riling up left wingers like Michael Moore with the usual “any military conflict is in service to the military industrial complex”.
I am skeptical that America is going to have the will necessary to challenge Russia on the international stage.
KevinC
1847
Yeah. I mean, America doesn’t even have the will to put on a mask.
Angry Planet has just released an excellent podcast about Ukraine from a Russian perspective.
I’m not sure the real need is to challenge Russia on the international stage, really. In the long term, they don’t have the wherewithal to do much more than blow stuff up. While that needs to be dealt with if necessary, it seems a lot more like a specific sort of problem we can certainly deal with. Everything else they do is mostly posturing with short-term consequences, targeted usually where they can use their local military power advantage effectively. So, yeah, we can’t do much about a lot of their ass-hat actions on their own borders, but that’s less a matter of will as of geopolitical reality.
Now, I will definitely grant that we don’t seem to have the will or the understanding of the situation to effectively counter a lot of the crap the Russians do that is directed specifically at us. There, though, I think it’s actually the fault of our Cold War muscle memory kicking in. We keep trying to parse things through the lenses of containment and rollback, rather than viewing Russia for what it is: a nuclear armed thug state run by a cabal of amoral robber barons and wanna be strongmen.
Timex
1850
They are already doing more than this, man.
No, they are blowing stuff up in different ways–they can destroy, they cannot create. No initiatives, no rallying of people, no leading. They can disrupt, burn down, blow up, corrupt, or steal. Nothing else. And unlike China, which has integrated itself into the global context in many different ways, not all of them negative, the Russians are only as relevant as their ability to hit people, be it with a cyber attack or a tank. In the medium to long run, they are heading towards obscurity if they don’t change their course.
It’s exactly what Peter the Great and others feared would happen.
This is well said and I agree with it in every respect. Putin’s Russia seems bound for the scrap heap of history (to borrow a phrase), but they’re going to raise a fuss all the way there.
They seem to be successful right now in making a lot of you think that supporting Ukraine is very costly and the war is inevitable. If that impotent fear-mongering works on your decision-makers too and they decide that Ukraine is not worthy of potential war then they will allow Russia to get 45 million people more in their sphere of influence. More people will live in an archaic declining time bomb.
I may sound miserable about it but honestly, it’s not the worst possible outcome. It’s not likely to get to Venezuela level of human misery any time soon.
I don’t know who you are talking to here. Me?
Yes. I am saying that yes, Russia is currently on its way to the scrap of history, but the fuss can help them get some more people there on their way.
You’re making an awful lot of unwarranted assumptions about what I think of the situation.
I don’t see any assumptions I’ve made about your thoughts except paraphrasing what you’ve said in the last post.
I don’t think this:
I don’t think that supporting Ukraine is so costly that we shouldn’t do it, and I don’t think that war is inevitable.
