Seems like it would be vastly better for everyone to just make Sweden stop supporting Marxist radicals (the PKK) instead of kicking out the 2nd largest member of NATO. Hmm, I wonder why the media might not support that...
They're hardly "Marxism radicals". They're left libertarian since the international-kidnap-arrest of the supreme comrade who then very much mellowed out in the Turkish prison. They abandoned Marxism and picked up an ideology of a pretty obscure American whose name I don't even remember now.
Also foreign anarchists like to hang out with them but they're not anarchists themselves, they're into (federal) state making and organized parties (multiple in Syria and Iraq, in Turkey they have violently purged rival rebels in the 1980s when they actually were "radical").
It's similar to the (other) Kurdish parties in Iraq that still have politbiuros and maybe red stars in flags, but are no longer Marxist at all, for decades too. (Except the fringe Communist Party of Kurdistan.)
MAD theory clearly fucking works. We have not had a direct conflict between great powers since 1945 - an unprecedented level of global peace for 77 years.
Nuclear weapons have prevented more wars and saved more lives than we can imagine.
When you consider how Communism works, and how aggressive it is, it's pretty obvious to me that the ONLY way to dissuade communist states from attacking is nuclear annihilation.
Even then, I don't even think you need MAD. I think a competant military with tactical nuclear weapons is still plenty effective at dissuading aggression from larger powers.
It's funny that I should mention Tropico so regularly, but it's a good point. Tropico's setting is based off of how Island nations, particularly in the Caribbean, had to survive the cold-war period dealing with the US and USSR. Well, the US isn't necessarily the good guy, and can get pretty demanding. The USSR isn't really better either, they just have different objectives. Both will overthrow you if they want, and if they can't overthrow you, both will send a task force down and invade. They will constantly press for an advantage over you if you don't build a strong military and try to placate everyone. That pressure only stops when you add a military base of one of the factions on your island, or by arming your island with nukes. The nukes don't actually threaten DC or Moscow, but they do threaten their fleets.
In the Falkland Islands conflict, Argentina had the General Belgrano sunk. IIRC Nearly 2,500 people died. The majority of all lives lost were from one ship. This loss was so destabilizing that it's not unreasonable to argue that collapsed the will of the government and people to fight and the embarrassment of the loss of the war meant that the government lost it's legitimacy and was overthrown. ONE. SHIP.
Anti-ship missiles are something that terrifies modern navies because of how effective they are at this point. The Falklands proved that. Argentina fucked up, but there's a real chance the British could have suffered the same fate if the Argentinian Exocet missile or anti-ship bombs had functioned better. The British lost a cruiser, but they could have just as easily lost a carrier or several troop transports. There was a real risk that both countries could have lost thousands of lives, more than even lived on the island. If the British had lost a carrier or a troop transport, Margret Thatcher's government would have been destroyed.
In the "Millennium Challenge" war games scenario, a USMC General was tasked with being Opposition Forces against an American naval task force, basically designed to mimic an invasion of Iran. However, he was ordered to basically roll over and fail. He decided to reject this, and trained his forces to attack the USN with targeted suicide boats, anti-ship missile fire, and again: troop transports; combined with a preemptive strike. The USN lost badly in the exercise. Total loss of the American carriers, and a sinking of several other ships and troop transports, with only some ground gained on the shore by the Americans. Yes, his forces were exhausted, but casualty estimates for the American forces were several thousand in a single day. He was ordered to do the exercise as intended, and then dismissed for embarrassing the Pentagon, but his point was clear. A competent and aggressive enemy could cause a catastrophic loss to the US military, even with limited and archaic technology. The political ramifications of the bloodiest day in American history resulting from a lost carrier, after the order of an offensive war on a minor nation shouldn't need to be stated. See: Argentina above.
Well, the same thing can work for tactical nukes. Iran has the advantage of having a very large military for it's size. But if you can't field such a military, you need force multipliers. If you are a minor nation, and a great power has sent a carrier task force, or even an armored column to your shores/border; a few tactical nuclear warheads could cause thousands, or tens of thousands of casualties, and quickly dissuade most aggressors. Your enemy would work to attempt other avenues of attack both economically and diplomatically, but a physical invasion would be stopped dead in it's tracts because of the politically unacceptable losses. If there was any dissent in their military that such an invasion was unwarranted, you could even be looking at a demoralized military or even a military coup.
If the first day of the invasion costs 10,000 dead on the invading force, there will be very little political will to keep pressing.
While I agree with your overall point, I would just like to say that from what I understand, he was put on blast for a lot more than going rogue. We are talking stuff like boats carrying missiles bigger than them, the kamikazes exceeding their own buoyancy with how many explosives they were carrying, motorcycle messengers that would have to be moving at light speed to do what they were doing, the whole shebang.
But like I said, the general point you are making is a good one, and even if he achieved the results through copious amounts of bullshit, the results would indeed speak for themselves. Its also part of why I think Taiwan would be even more able to hold off an attack than Ukraine is (since it has a pretty extensive anti-ship missile network, with further backing from the Japanese).
In the end, it remains true: No matter how much we think we have changed history, the only true way to ensure peace and the survival of your nation is through superior firepower.
Nuclear fallout would come back and do more harm than good if used in a distance that short. Neutrality, a land and air based army and the country's geographic is the best protection against Russia. Assuming Bidet won't get the crazy idea to nuke Russia, then Finland would be lost anyway.
I disagree. Low yeild tactical nuclear warheads, like Kiloton or 10 Kiloton warheads would be highly effective at dissuading an invasion, and also disrupting formations. Neutrality comes with the nuclear weapons.
Problem is Finland (at least its government) is anything but neutral, and as such if they got nukes...well I would assume that Russia would view that as an existential threat.
No. God no. No feminist states should be allowed nukes. The same reaction that people have to Iran and NK having them is what I have to the idea of Finland having them.
If you can just expel nations from NATO to be politically expedient and give them up to the singular nation that NATO was specifically made to fight...
Then what is the point of NATO? If Russia put the thumbscrews on Sweden and Finland, I guess NATO would just get calls to expel them from it, too.
It's a defensive pact. You don't break it the moment you might actually be called upon to, you know, defend.
Imagine the timeline we're in right now, where a glorified dictator and radical Islamist is all that stands between us and yet another push towards nuclear war, led by people who are best described in ways I can't write here.
To be fair Turkey buying Long range anti aircraft missile systems from Russia and F-35s should have got them the boot. Buying NATOS brand new stealth fighter and having to integrate friend or foe ID with the missile system most likely to target them, and a missile system only serviceable by Russian technicians is not only a bad idea, it possibly screws over the rest of NATO.
I'll take "how to drive Turkey into the arms of Russia, lose access to the Black Sea, and overflight rights" for $100, Alex.
Seems to me that floating the possibility of NATO membership to Ukraine is what stated all this, and now adding Sweden and Finland could fracture the alliance. Maybe we should have just left it alone like we promised to at the end of the Cold War.
America has always done poorly at international politics and whoever is behind playing fuck-fuck games with Russia lately seems incapable of understanding second and third order effects.
The only reason Turkey is useful to NATO is the Bosporus strait(but we saw how useful that was, when they let Russian ships willy nilly until they closed it days after the war began). Frankly? They should have been kicked when they invaded Cyprus, and double kicked during the F-35 and S400 fiasco. Which Trump successfully kicked them out of the F-35 program.
I will have to respectfully disagree on the f-35. It is a more open program, using different costing method(full life cycle) and the technology on that plane is astounding. See through the fuselage, stealth, high speed with load(while other planes can't achieve the same speed with loads). Sure there are problems, and there were many more on many planes. Including the lawn dart.... Yep, the venerable F-16.
It had issues upon issues upon issues, until it became the incredible weapon we see today. The f-35 seems to be following that footstep. Not even the f-22 seems to have the same sensor suite the F-35 has.
Turkey is quite butthurt over it, not only due to loss of revenue from manufacturing some parts, but from all the technology they lost.
Give the f-35 a chance, it will surprise you like the f-16.
If we abandoned something overpriced and with many issues, the F-16 would have been stopped at less than 50 models made. Yet, it is over 4,000. The F-16 had massive issues. One of the best, the joystick did not move, it used force sensing. The pilots did not like it, to the point they would break the joystick of the F--16 away with the force applied. The solution was to allow a small lee-way to confuse the brain into thinking it is moving.
Anyone know if Hunter or the Big Guy have shares in hydrocarbon energy or shipping companies?
Or any democratic leader of the US since Bill Clinton took office?
I'm not saying that it is right to deny a foreign sovereignty to decide what takes place within its borders and so dick move by Russia but lots of oil and gas come from that area and if Turkey gets protection from Russia all prices West of the Black Sea are going to hit the stratosphere.
Not only that, I'd be fine with it. Turkey was only useful because they were a staging point for mid-range ballistic missiles and bombers before the days of ICBMs. It was tolerable then because they had a secularist streak running, but now? I'd rather have Russians than Islamists.
It is funny how what is basically a 3rd world country is the second largest in NATO. Almost like how every other NATO country doesn't give a shit because the US will protect them.
Turkey is a regional superpower. The entire Middle East and North Africa region has only Turkey, Israel and Iran as real players (not counting Russian, American, Chinese meddling). They're also the dominant naval power in the Med.
Now they also make the world's best performing combat UAVs, that were instrumental in the victories in multiple conflicts for them and the others, only because the Americans refused to sell them the (now obsolete) Predators.
I may not me some fancy media expert but isn't Turkey kind of important in a FUCKING BLACK SEA CONFLICT?
Seems like it would be vastly better for everyone to just make Sweden stop supporting Marxist radicals (the PKK) instead of kicking out the 2nd largest member of NATO. Hmm, I wonder why the media might not support that...
They're hardly "Marxism radicals". They're left libertarian since the international-kidnap-arrest of the supreme comrade who then very much mellowed out in the Turkish prison. They abandoned Marxism and picked up an ideology of a pretty obscure American whose name I don't even remember now.
Also foreign anarchists like to hang out with them but they're not anarchists themselves, they're into (federal) state making and organized parties (multiple in Syria and Iraq, in Turkey they have violently purged rival rebels in the 1980s when they actually were "radical").
It's similar to the (other) Kurdish parties in Iraq that still have politbiuros and maybe red stars in flags, but are no longer Marxist at all, for decades too. (Except the fringe Communist Party of Kurdistan.)
I think that Finland would be better off going on it's own and having a large stock-pile of nuclear weapons.
Support nuclear proliferation.
Taiwan and Japan will probably not survive Biden’s administration without their own nukes
I think Taiwan, Japan, South Korea, and Indonesia are starting to co-operate more militarily for exactly that reason.
Yeah, no
Oops, thanks for catching that.
Lots of bad blood between Japan and South Korea, based on what I've read.
Yes, but not as bad as both of them with China.
I agree.
MAD theory clearly fucking works. We have not had a direct conflict between great powers since 1945 - an unprecedented level of global peace for 77 years.
Nuclear weapons have prevented more wars and saved more lives than we can imagine.
When you consider how Communism works, and how aggressive it is, it's pretty obvious to me that the ONLY way to dissuade communist states from attacking is nuclear annihilation.
Even then, I don't even think you need MAD. I think a competant military with tactical nuclear weapons is still plenty effective at dissuading aggression from larger powers.
It's funny that I should mention Tropico so regularly, but it's a good point. Tropico's setting is based off of how Island nations, particularly in the Caribbean, had to survive the cold-war period dealing with the US and USSR. Well, the US isn't necessarily the good guy, and can get pretty demanding. The USSR isn't really better either, they just have different objectives. Both will overthrow you if they want, and if they can't overthrow you, both will send a task force down and invade. They will constantly press for an advantage over you if you don't build a strong military and try to placate everyone. That pressure only stops when you add a military base of one of the factions on your island, or by arming your island with nukes. The nukes don't actually threaten DC or Moscow, but they do threaten their fleets.
In the Falkland Islands conflict, Argentina had the General Belgrano sunk. IIRC Nearly 2,500 people died. The majority of all lives lost were from one ship. This loss was so destabilizing that it's not unreasonable to argue that collapsed the will of the government and people to fight and the embarrassment of the loss of the war meant that the government lost it's legitimacy and was overthrown. ONE. SHIP.
Anti-ship missiles are something that terrifies modern navies because of how effective they are at this point. The Falklands proved that. Argentina fucked up, but there's a real chance the British could have suffered the same fate if the Argentinian Exocet missile or anti-ship bombs had functioned better. The British lost a cruiser, but they could have just as easily lost a carrier or several troop transports. There was a real risk that both countries could have lost thousands of lives, more than even lived on the island. If the British had lost a carrier or a troop transport, Margret Thatcher's government would have been destroyed.
In the "Millennium Challenge" war games scenario, a USMC General was tasked with being Opposition Forces against an American naval task force, basically designed to mimic an invasion of Iran. However, he was ordered to basically roll over and fail. He decided to reject this, and trained his forces to attack the USN with targeted suicide boats, anti-ship missile fire, and again: troop transports; combined with a preemptive strike. The USN lost badly in the exercise. Total loss of the American carriers, and a sinking of several other ships and troop transports, with only some ground gained on the shore by the Americans. Yes, his forces were exhausted, but casualty estimates for the American forces were several thousand in a single day. He was ordered to do the exercise as intended, and then dismissed for embarrassing the Pentagon, but his point was clear. A competent and aggressive enemy could cause a catastrophic loss to the US military, even with limited and archaic technology. The political ramifications of the bloodiest day in American history resulting from a lost carrier, after the order of an offensive war on a minor nation shouldn't need to be stated. See: Argentina above.
Well, the same thing can work for tactical nukes. Iran has the advantage of having a very large military for it's size. But if you can't field such a military, you need force multipliers. If you are a minor nation, and a great power has sent a carrier task force, or even an armored column to your shores/border; a few tactical nuclear warheads could cause thousands, or tens of thousands of casualties, and quickly dissuade most aggressors. Your enemy would work to attempt other avenues of attack both economically and diplomatically, but a physical invasion would be stopped dead in it's tracts because of the politically unacceptable losses. If there was any dissent in their military that such an invasion was unwarranted, you could even be looking at a demoralized military or even a military coup.
If the first day of the invasion costs 10,000 dead on the invading force, there will be very little political will to keep pressing.
While I agree with your overall point, I would just like to say that from what I understand, he was put on blast for a lot more than going rogue. We are talking stuff like boats carrying missiles bigger than them, the kamikazes exceeding their own buoyancy with how many explosives they were carrying, motorcycle messengers that would have to be moving at light speed to do what they were doing, the whole shebang.
But like I said, the general point you are making is a good one, and even if he achieved the results through copious amounts of bullshit, the results would indeed speak for themselves. Its also part of why I think Taiwan would be even more able to hold off an attack than Ukraine is (since it has a pretty extensive anti-ship missile network, with further backing from the Japanese).
In the end, it remains true: No matter how much we think we have changed history, the only true way to ensure peace and the survival of your nation is through superior firepower.
Nuclear fallout would come back and do more harm than good if used in a distance that short. Neutrality, a land and air based army and the country's geographic is the best protection against Russia. Assuming Bidet won't get the crazy idea to nuke Russia, then Finland would be lost anyway.
I disagree. Low yeild tactical nuclear warheads, like Kiloton or 10 Kiloton warheads would be highly effective at dissuading an invasion, and also disrupting formations. Neutrality comes with the nuclear weapons.
TBH I don't know how Russia would respond to that. Having an openly hostile neighbor on your border with nukes is...well thats a bit much.
That's why I said neutrality. Refuse to join NATO at all.
None of the bigger countries like smaller countries having nukes. That's why it's important for the smaller countries to have nukes.
Problem is Finland (at least its government) is anything but neutral, and as such if they got nukes...well I would assume that Russia would view that as an existential threat.
Sure, I'm just saying what I'd prefer, not what is reality.
Fair
No. God no. No feminist states should be allowed nukes. The same reaction that people have to Iran and NK having them is what I have to the idea of Finland having them.
If you can just expel nations from NATO to be politically expedient and give them up to the singular nation that NATO was specifically made to fight...
Then what is the point of NATO? If Russia put the thumbscrews on Sweden and Finland, I guess NATO would just get calls to expel them from it, too.
It's a defensive pact. You don't break it the moment you might actually be called upon to, you know, defend.
The point of NATO is the vehicle for the eventual creation of an EU army.
EU, protectorate of USA
Imagine the timeline we're in right now, where a glorified dictator and radical Islamist is all that stands between us and yet another push towards nuclear war, led by people who are best described in ways I can't write here.
At least the Islamists aren't led by women, right?
The Prophet, peace be upon him, said, "never will succeed such a nation as lets their affairs carried out by a woman."
Broken clock
The hour hand and the minute hand.
broken clock
And that's the second time of day it's right.
He also said : women make false allegations all the time - so their testimony in court needs to be backed up by 4 guys to be admitted
Makes you wonder if we've been here before.
Really makes you think.
Did feminism pop up trying this same plan and get shut down way back in the past?
To be fair Turkey buying Long range anti aircraft missile systems from Russia and F-35s should have got them the boot. Buying NATOS brand new stealth fighter and having to integrate friend or foe ID with the missile system most likely to target them, and a missile system only serviceable by Russian technicians is not only a bad idea, it possibly screws over the rest of NATO.
I would bet the russkies will figure out how to spoof the id, either way.
I'll take "how to drive Turkey into the arms of Russia, lose access to the Black Sea, and overflight rights" for $100, Alex.
Seems to me that floating the possibility of NATO membership to Ukraine is what stated all this, and now adding Sweden and Finland could fracture the alliance. Maybe we should have just left it alone like we promised to at the end of the Cold War.
America has always done poorly at international politics and whoever is behind playing fuck-fuck games with Russia lately seems incapable of understanding second and third order effects.
The only reason Turkey is useful to NATO is the Bosporus strait(but we saw how useful that was, when they let Russian ships willy nilly until they closed it days after the war began). Frankly? They should have been kicked when they invaded Cyprus, and double kicked during the F-35 and S400 fiasco. Which Trump successfully kicked them out of the F-35 program.
The occupation of Cyprus, they were in the right in the invasion itself.
The F-35 program is a disaster and I wish Poland never touched it.
I will have to respectfully disagree on the f-35. It is a more open program, using different costing method(full life cycle) and the technology on that plane is astounding. See through the fuselage, stealth, high speed with load(while other planes can't achieve the same speed with loads). Sure there are problems, and there were many more on many planes. Including the lawn dart.... Yep, the venerable F-16.
It had issues upon issues upon issues, until it became the incredible weapon we see today. The f-35 seems to be following that footstep. Not even the f-22 seems to have the same sensor suite the F-35 has.
Turkey is quite butthurt over it, not only due to loss of revenue from manufacturing some parts, but from all the technology they lost.
Give the f-35 a chance, it will surprise you like the f-16.
Technology that doesnt work - is not better than no technology at all. -Abe lincoln.
But if we design an overpriced airborne tesla, who cares if theres a 50 inch iPad display, if its a shitty car to start.
If we abandoned something overpriced and with many issues, the F-16 would have been stopped at less than 50 models made. Yet, it is over 4,000. The F-16 had massive issues. One of the best, the joystick did not move, it used force sensing. The pilots did not like it, to the point they would break the joystick of the F--16 away with the force applied. The solution was to allow a small lee-way to confuse the brain into thinking it is moving.
And pilots are loving the plane
http://milforum.net/showthread.php/50077-Forsvaret-kjøper-F-35-kampfly-fra-Lockheed-Martin/page110?p=1235285&viewfull=1#post1235285
https://theaviationist.com/2019/04/02/heres-what-three-italian-f-35-instructor-pilots-with-62nd-fs-have-to-say-about-their-first-red-flag-with-the-lightning-ii/
https://theaviationist.com/2017/05/31/red-flag-memories-combat-pilot-explains-how-rf-has-evolved-and-why-the-f-35-is-a-real-game-changer-in-future-wars/
https://theaviationist.com/2019/06/23/dutch-f-35s-perform-9000-km-long-surprise-attack-on-dutch-range-as-part-of-a-rapid-reaction-test/
Let me begin with the simple:
That's it, already absolete.
disband nato
Anyone know if Hunter or the Big Guy have shares in hydrocarbon energy or shipping companies?
Or any democratic leader of the US since Bill Clinton took office?
I'm not saying that it is right to deny a foreign sovereignty to decide what takes place within its borders and so dick move by Russia but lots of oil and gas come from that area and if Turkey gets protection from Russia all prices West of the Black Sea are going to hit the stratosphere.
Yes, they are as stupid as they look.
No one would trade Turkey for Sweden and Finland. Not even the generals claiming that Arma 3 footage is "UUUUUUKRAINE PWNING RUSSIA".
Are these the same generals that can't answer "What is a woman?"
If so I'll take that bet.
Not only that, I'd be fine with it. Turkey was only useful because they were a staging point for mid-range ballistic missiles and bombers before the days of ICBMs. It was tolerable then because they had a secularist streak running, but now? I'd rather have Russians than Islamists.
It is funny how what is basically a 3rd world country is the second largest in NATO. Almost like how every other NATO country doesn't give a shit because the US will protect them.
Turkey is a regional superpower. The entire Middle East and North Africa region has only Turkey, Israel and Iran as real players (not counting Russian, American, Chinese meddling). They're also the dominant naval power in the Med.
Now they also make the world's best performing combat UAVs, that were instrumental in the victories in multiple conflicts for them and the others, only because the Americans refused to sell them the (now obsolete) Predators.
Interesting. Didn't know that.
Best performing is a stretch, z has been destroying many of them.
What made Turkey join NATO was Stalin making noises about the "west Armenia".