Roosia wants. It may not get. Time will tell.

Whether Russia would benefit from continued discounted oil sales depends on the cost of production. In 2020 Putin signaled Russia was comfortable with $40 prices and as oil is heading north of $100 one would assume it’s still profitable.

As to the use of small nukes– I read Russia has developed something in the range of 20 kilotons, I think it’s most likely propaganda. Would the prospect of thermonuclear war be more likely to bring Ukraine to the negotiating table more than continued bombing and abuse of civilians?

The use of nuclear weapons seems much more scorched earth and I would assume Russia wants to benefit economically from controlling portions of eastern Ukraine.

But combine with uncertainty of nukes, along with a long cold European winter might have many of the EU rethinking their resolve for a protracted war. And I would include the US in that.

One of the things in the article was the fractured nature of NATO and the EU. Germany has been a reluctant (hostile?) partner for some time. As the US fades from the world scene, should Russia particularly care about EU postering?

This was considered fascist, not solely because of the stupid hat Doogie Howser wore in the worst move made from a good book.

Since I would qualify as a citizen, along with most men in my family going back, possibly, to the Spanish-American War, the idea interested me.

Heinlein was at pains to describe how one who wanted to serve could do so, despite handicaps. Testing new combat space suits on Titan, maybe. Or…something which cost time and effort and was down and dirty and made the price of the franchise something worth contemplating, one way or another.

It’s an interesting idea. Chicken hawk is a stupid idea. One may or may not be right about war, irrespective of service history.

The veterans of WW II might have been nearly universally in favor of French resistance to the German militarization of the Rhineland…after the war. Likely would have prevented the war in Europe, or made it less horrid and precluded the Holocaust. But how about the veterans of WW I, seeing the European Usual happening yet again? What would they be thinking in 1936?

Sowell, in “Intellectuals and War” gives the intellectuals a real shellacking for their views running up to WW II. Their insistence that the Axis wouldn’t do what the Axis were threatening to do, and the consequent resistance to preparedness cost the Allies horribly in the event.

Nowhere in this calculation does the serving soldier or his family have a lock on what is the best thing going forward. Sowell details the lasting horrors of WW I. Sepsis was controlled, but there was no reconstructive or cosmetic surgery. Hence, those who might have died in hospital in earlier wars were walking reminders, with their ceramic faces (in France, at least), presuming they could walk of the horrors of war. And to do it again in 1936…? Would have been a good idea, notwithstanding the military service record of those who were for it, or their families.

Cruise Missiles: Russia’s Bombardment of Ukraine

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JfSy_6ihdgI

The phrase “13 minutes” is not heard in this video.

The key fallacies I find with the Tablet Mag are twofold.

Confidence that the Western sanctions regime will outlast Russia’s financial resources likewise overlooks the fact that the Russian central bank can print money if it needs to, which it currently doesn’t. EU countries have paid more than 100 billion euros to Russia for fossil fuel imports since the invasion began. Russia will record a current account surplus this year of some $200 billion; the West’s hit to its foreign exchange reserves, while unprecedented, was still relatively modest. Many of Russia’s Western imports are being rapidly substituted by China and even U.S. allies like India, South Korea, Taiwan, and Japan, while markets for Russian energy are being expanded all over Asia and the Middle East.

This strikes me as being too trusting of surface level economic analysis from the Kremlin. For starters, being able to print money does not mean you can print value or make people value said money, which they are transparently doing less (especially among nations in the Eurozone refusing payment in Rubles), along with unstable inflation (that the Russian Government managed to over-correct for and now needs to lower the value of the Ruble). It also ignores the fact that Russian sovereign debt is quite high in relation to that of the West, and that it is facing harder issues getting credit. In addition, there has been a noted crisis in the Russian foreign markets as other nations cut or trim down commitments with Russia and have openly expressed worries about the quality of Russian equipment.

What the author fails to address is that many of the deals (especially oil) are only sustained by the Kremlin offering rather prohibitive discounts to its market partners. All of which cuts into Russia’s long term viability in a long war negatively compared to the West. I am no tea leaf reader beyond a very rudimentary amount but that has to be measured relative to the very real Western problems.

Secondly:

There are plenty of Germans who are panicked that Putin would sooner ignite a thermonuclear exchange with the United States than be removed from office or killed: Their analysis does not go anywhere the president of the United States didn’t go in his remarks at a Democratic fundraiser last Thursday, when he warned of “the prospect of Armageddon.” But there are also German officials and policymakers who, all too reasonably, read Putin’s snowballing nuclear threats as a strategy aimed specifically at Berlin.

Washington has signaled that a Russian nuclear strike on Ukraine could trigger NATO’s Article 5 collective defense clause on the grounds that radioactive fallout would spread to NATO territory. It is unimaginable that Poland, for example, would accept anything less. At the end of September, U.S. national security adviser Jake Sullivan claimed that, “We have communicated directly, privately, and at very high levels to the Kremlin that any use of nuclear weapons will be met with catastrophic consequences for Russia, that the U.S. and our allies will respond decisively.”

As many Germans see it, Ukraine’s dazzling advances do not leave Putin with the binary choice of accepting his own death and defeat or else embarking on Armageddon. He may instead be left with the potentially attractive option of deploying a tactical nuclear bomb to achieve a limited military objective in Ukraine, or of causing an “accident” at the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant and attempting to blame it on the Ukrainians. This would almost certainly trigger some sort of NATO attack on Russia—to which Germany would never, under any circumstances, ever agree. Berlin would instead lead a small dissenting bloc within NATO, including Hungary, refusing any use of its funds, communications, weapons, or territory. In other words, Germany would violate its treaty obligations—as Putin has likely judged.

The issue I see with this is in assuming that even a tactical nuclear strike in Ukraine would IMMEDIATELY lead to an Article 5 NATO war with Russia, that such a strike would not do major work to destabilize pro-Russian or Dovish leaders in Hungary, Germany, and elsewhere, AND that the intentionally-vague threat definitively amounts to a threat of war.

While I have very little love for the Brandon Junta, none of these seem safe assumptions, let alone taken together. The most favorable one is the question of cleavage, since a nuclear strike might either displace people like Scholz or Orban or make them stronger I simply don’t know.

But we HAVE encountered a situation where nuclear fallout hit the West before (including NATO countries) thanks to Russian actions, and Chernobyl should loom larger in this analysis than it does given how the war factored in. This did not lead to Article 5 being invoked at all. Now granted you might argue this is comparing Apples to Oranges and that Chernobyl was above all an accident that hurt nobody more than the Soviets. And that is true, but it also establishes that NATO might not immediately go to war over a fallout “attack.”

Moreover, I’d argue they have little incentive to. Instead they have an incentive to use this within a short period of time to try and wring concessions out of Putin, counting on the international shock from this to galvanize support and THREATENING intervention if not met. This is appealing (at least to the Pols, and dangerous for everyone) for a few different reasons, starting with the fact that it seems to offer the possible benefits of direct war without the costs, and the fact that such an unprecedented strike on something very much less than Imperial Japan in 1945 is going to go down sourly with the wider world.

A 24-72 hour delay or ultimatum sets in the aftermath would likely hurt Putin far more than it helps him, and we have to assume that at least some parts of the Russian public would be aghast at this, even if they otherwise support the war, precisely because of the risks it entails. It would also be an opportunity for ambitious would-be-Tsars to bump Putin off in the name of “peace” without having to abandon most of his policies or actions (or at least so they might think).

whether or not a person served in the past whether it was a sinecure or real service or didnt serve is irrelevant to me.

what matters more is would they or their family be willing to share the sacrifice now.

If like the Bush and Cheney families during Iraq , I have only contempt. Its easy to make pawns of other peoples children.

Dear God, this is such tortured “logic” it isn’t even funny. This is getting out of hand.

Let me count the ways.

Firstly: You’re conflating WILLINGNESS to serve with actually serving, which is a problem. Especially when you are dealing with services that try to maintain fairly high standards of readiness. For instance, I would like to think I would be willing to serve (and indeed talked extensively with recruiting offices). But that doesn’t change the fact that I was and am physically INCAPABLE of doing so, at least until I get MUCH healthier, and might be psychologically unable to do so (since I have an Autism Spectrum Disorder).

It doesn’t take much to realize that some of “the elite” probably have similar situations, even if not much.

And this is before we talk about those who are told or at least suggested, George Bailey style, that they can do more help to the effort at home in civilian capacities. To be sure, a significant number of people have gotten filtered into support roles, often outside of the official military in many of the contractor roles, whether PMCs (unlikely in most cases) or those tasked with maintaining equipment and logistics. Who not infrequently have sizable chunks of their organization go into the AO with all the attendant risks that implies (if you want to read lists of the number of “civilians” or “contractors” killed in places like the Green Zone of Baghdad from assorted terrorist attacks, by all means. it is grim reading).

Now, are more than a few of the people – especially from well to do families or the like- entering into those precisely because they are more lucrative or less at risk? Almost certainly, sure. But that doesn’t change the fact that outside of outright make-work positions (which granted, certainly exist: see Hunter Biden), those jobs have to be done.

George P did a Mayor Pete style political 8 month sinecure out of harms way for future political considerations.

And? Like, there doesn’t have to be any particularly lavish praise on that but a lot of times those terms of service Do need to be done. Which is one reason why people like Nathan Phillips (the man who claimed to be a combat veteran while actually being a domestic, home front logistics man) are so loathed; because while terms of service out of the combat zone may not be either glamorous or particularly horrifying, they ARE necessary for a war machine to run.

But at the same time this kind of chickenshit “chickenhawk” accusation helped breed more of them, precisely because of the incoherent, subjective, and inconsistent standards and the heavy opprobrium accompanied by it. And sure, a lot of times that is justified, but far from all of it.

do you not think a mercenary army has negative ramifications.

Of COURSE I do, which is one reason why I have been distressed and alarmed by the growth of our dependence on militarized contractors, especially PMCs, because it points to some pretty systematic flaws in the US and its military, as well as the fact that for various reasons these corps are more attractive to the people who Would be going into the Military than the actual military. That’s not a healthy situation.

But the fact remains that one has to view the military practically.

Politicians who have no skin in the game while other peoples children do?

You speak as if this is particularly unusual or shocking.

The simple fact of the matter is that conscription is pretty alien to American military traditions. Just about the highest level of organization you could get it to prior to the Civil War was the County or Town level with assorted mandatory militias, and when Lincoln instituted the Draft it was (justifiably) controversial in spite of there been an existential, incredibly bloody civil war for the survival of the Union. It went on and off for another century and change before being pretty decisively discontinued.

Mix this in with the fact that the military can only ever budget for so many people, and in a volunteer context it has a vested interest in picking only those it deems “the best” for whatever criteria (which doesn’t necessarily mean they ARE the best for doing their duty, but which can be used), and it really isn’t surprising you have a surprising amount of people whose families and children were never directly involved in the military. Hell, this was the case even in the World Wars, and I’d need to check regarding the Revolutionary and Civil Wars.

when was the last time a first degree relative of yours served AND served in combat ( not a George P/ Mayor Pete gig?) Any losses?

Both grandfathers served in WWII, and I know an uncle that served in the Nam in some capacity I do not know.

But this too is illustrative. One Grandfather was an Army Ranger who fought the Japanese through the islands of the Pacific, certainly “in combat.”. The other was a USAAF Air Traffic Controller who while intimately involved in the war effort would probably never have seen “combat” (especially given the extremely desiccated state of the Luftwaffe and its puppet air forces) precisely because the only enemy planes were hundreds of miles away and probably had half-empty tanks and half-cannibalized hulls by the time he got there.

Does that mean he “never saw combat” or was involved in a “sinecure”? Here’s another thing: WOULD IT EVEN MATTER if it was?

Tooth v. Tail. Learn It. Seriously Learn it.

Because you’ll realize how a war machine operating at peak performance should always have most of its vital personnel operating outside of combat roles.

I wonder why George P didn’t go to Ranger School like his inspiration?

Simple Answer: it’s Fucking Ranger School. If the US military and assorted PMCs as a whole are or were fairly selective (and I’d argue they still are, just with the criteria for selection being much more politicized and less military relevant than it was), the Rangers are doubly so. They take only those they deem the best, and they regularly wash out even those. Hell they semi-regularly wash some Ranger Trainees out THROUGH LITERALLY NO FAULT OF THEIR OWN in order to test their resilience and willingness to go through the hell again.

There’s a REASON why the Ranger motto is “Rangers lead the Way” and why even back in their origins they served as specialist light infantry during the colonial wars of the American Frontier rather than line troops (whether regulars or militia). Because this is a specialist role that most people are flatly not qualified for.

Any answer to the question you posed above that DOES NOT account for these facts as a basis is by definition short-sighted and flawed.

Perhaps if there were a few missing faces in the Cheney/Bush Xmas gathering ,

Seriously avi, go fuck yourself for this nonsense. Because the military veterans I am used to are more than open about the fact that war is dangerous and who comes back and who does not is often a matter of raw chance, regardless of your position. ESPECIALLY but NOT ONLY in combat roles.

With this in mind, turning this into some kind of Wound-Counting by measure of who didn’t and did lose family members is not merely stupid and illogical, it is immoral.

For starters, George H. W. Bush VERY NEARLY avoided becoming one of those missing faces. The rest of his unit FUCKING DIED either from exposure or being literally eaten by the Japanese, and he was lucky to have been picked up by a US Warship (and to have carried out duties like a seaman on it until he returned to harbor).

He has ever right to be counted as any actually missing faces. And that is just one example.

they might have second thoughts on BS wars or prolonging BS wars

To which I respond: “define BS wars. PLEASE do. Because it’s been a few weeks since I’ve tonguelashed the last person who tried to argue that there was no justification for Iraq and Saddam was totally not a terrorist sponsor and collaborator with Al Qaeda who did not have WMDs.”

And this- as Neo astutely pointed out- is another matter entirely than “chickenhawk” issues. It goes to the merits of military action, or more specifically (because one can be utterly justified in principle in fighting but utterly foolish to do so in practice; see the issue of Luxembourg or Denmark against Nazi Germany) the stated reasons for this. Afghanistan should be a literal no-brainer in justifications even if not in execution, since it was an Islamist dictatorship that openly and knowingly sheltered the world’s most prolific terrorist while he struck the US Heartland and killed thousands.

Iraq was a Communist-Fascist Cosplay Dictatorship that violated the Gulf War Ceasefire, opportunistically supported Islamist terrorists like the aforementioned Al Qaeda, and in fact INTENSIFIED said support after 9/11 in one of the greatest Galaxy Brain moves in Middle Eastern History for reasons I still struggle to fathom on a rational level.*

Fixation on the WMD (which I always opposed precisely because) or arguing about to which degree Bush “lied” or so about the intel they had about them or the exact level of cooperation between Saddam and Osama is and always has been a red herring that completely ignores that Saddam had no rights to be even ambiguous on the matter.

* Oh, and anybody who wants to claim that “Saddam didn’t support Al Qaeda” or “Saddam didn’t have WMD” will trigger me putting sources on my boot before I insert said boot as far as I can. Which is one of the issues I loathe Bush most for: his complete inability to effectively counter-attack on this issue.

by ignoring the plan and disbanding the Iraqi Army.

I have plenty of issues with how the Iraq War was run (and I will mention some), but “the plan” that was ignored was ignored because it had serious flaws.

And as someone who is friends with many who did serve and has a couple Iraqi friends (admittedly largely Kurds), I do think that disbanding the Iraqi Army was correct, THOUGH NOT THE WAY IT WAS DONE.

The Iraqi Army was institutionally rotten by way of Baathist politicization and tribal Sunni favoritst politics. While it had already had a sketchy history going back to before WWII (including sectarian atrocities that give those of us studying the matter deja vu), by 2003 it had become a totalitarian institution that essentially existed to keep the House of Hussein and the Sunni Arabs in power using any measures. During which time they had committed hideous genocides and other war crimes such as systematic rape, torture, mutilation, and reprisal executions in places like the Southern Marshes and Kurdistan, which (among many other things) meant that their credibility and goodwill among non-Sunni non-Arabs was Negative (to the point where the Kurds are STILL hesitant about flying the official flag of Iraq in the North for all kinds of reasons).

Which is one reason why we decided to disband it. That and the fact that people literally could not stop giving reports about how captured Iraqi units in captivity had the (largely Shiite) Enlisted venting their rage at (largely Sunni or other loyalist) officers or vice versa.

The entire organization needed to be destroyed root and trunk in order to rebuild, not unlike the German and Japanese Armies after WWII or North Korea if we did liberate it, and I will happily defend THAT much.

THE PROBLEM was the Method. That in the pollyanna delusion, we simply disbanded the military and began turning its members loose – sometimes even with their weapons – immediately after liberation. Which unsurprisingly resulted in a lot of people with guns and no particular reason to love the West out on the streets, and IN PARTICULAR created a jittery, militaristic, and brutal “Sunni Street” that had maintained power in Iraq for decades through a mixture of patronage of terror stripped of their power. Power that they (unsurprisingly) mostly wanted back, while being (often justifiably) terrified about retaliation from their previously downtrodden rivals (and considering how Shiite dominated the current Iraqi government is, I CAN’T EVEN SAY THEY WERE WRONG except in matters of degrees).

These people were very obviously a nexus of recruiting for Neo-Baathist hardliners or Sunni Islamists, and the failure to acknowledge this was one of the most grievous of the many, Many US policy failures in Iraq. Which is why I (as a “chickenhawk” non-combatant with the benefit of hindsight, but also with a knowledge of successful reforms) would have favored disbanding the military but continuing to intern most of its personnel in reasonably comfortable situations until a new Iraqi government and military could be established. But keeping them in organization or even trying to repurpose them institutionally was a bad idea that likely would’ve lead to more of the same atrocities and helped destabilize our efforts even more than what happened. Which of course tends to be ignored by those who want to use this merely as a cudgel to beat the Bush Admin for rather than actually asking what kind of system the Iraqi Army under Saddam was and what would happen if it was left around.

And I note that this failure was far from unique to “chickenhawks” or those who had never served in combat roles.

But they profited while others lost.

Which is unsurprising for the reasons I mentioned, including basic Tooth v Tail limits. Unfortunately in many cases, certainly, but still.

I posted the definition of chicken hawk proving once and for all that I was correc and you were not.

There are multiple definitions of it, even if they usually have overlap.

If you want to support wars that neither you nor your loved ones would die for, that is on you.

If you want to support or oppose wars PERIOD, that is on you. But ultimately that can’t be divorced from the merits (or lack thereof) of said arguments for them.

Also, let’s ignore the fact that there have been more than a few examples where people have actively hoped their family or “friends” would die in war. The most extreme of which being where they wanted it so much they literally started a war to do it, or otherwise tried to arrange it (like the story of Uriah the Hittite, which may or may not have really happened but sure as hell establishes that Bronze Age people could CONSIDER it).

Saying it over and over and over still doesn’t make it so.

Here’s the dictionary definition of “chickenhawk,” by the way:

disparaging : a person who strongly supports or promotes a war or warlike policies but who has never served in the military

By your definition, lots of people would not be allowed to have opinions in support of a war. Also, of course, it depends on the definition of “loved ones,” according to avi the wise. Do cousins qualify? Nephews? Great-nephews? Second cousins? Devoted friends? Are women without sons automatically disqualified from having such opinions? What about conscientious objectors who might think a war is just but refuse to fight in it themselves?

Otay.

“As many Germans see it, Ukraine’s dazzling advances do not leave Putin with the binary choice of accepting his own death and defeat or else embarking on Armageddon. He may instead be left with the potentially attractive option of deploying a tactical nuclear bomb to achieve a limited military objective in Ukraine, or of causing an “accident” at the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant and attempting to blame it on the Ukrainians. This would almost certainly trigger some sort of NATO attack on Russia—to which Germany would never, under any circumstances, ever agree. Berlin would instead lead a small dissenting bloc within NATO, including Hungary, refusing any use of its funds, communications, weapons, or territory. In other words, Germany would violate its treaty obligations—as Putin has likely judged.

NATO would thus officially break along the lines Putin knows it is already broken. The EU’s commitment to Ukraine would also fracture. The U.S.-German alliance would be no more. Even a small nuclear explosion would send markets crashing, and the German economy would grind to a halt. All of Europe would enter a depression more severe than anything Russia has experienced to date. It would no longer make sense to speak of “the West.” This, as much as reclaiming lost territories, would be Putin’s life’s work.”

Russia may be better equipped to survive such a scenario than either the US or the EU.
https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/germany-apokalypse-now