Ukraine War | Ukraine launches ground attack in Russia
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gtyellowjacket
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These types of terror attacks never work short of a nuclear weapon. They tend to harden the population against the country that is bombing them. At best it shows your population that you are striking back, but that can be done in other ways that strike military targets.
Its one thing to be bombing a fuel depot deep inside Russia. Totally different thing to be hitting an apartment complex.
I'd argue the opposite. There are too many fuel depots to make any impact by destroying some.
However, the political support of Moscow is important for the war effort to continue under Putin. The most propagandized portion of the population is in places like Moscow and hitting them where they live will make the war more real to them.
Let's see if their resolve can stand up to actually being bombed.
gtyellowjacket
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That's always the plan: "we'll just bomb them until the populace rises up to overthrow their rulers." But it never happens. Hitler tried it on Great Britain. Then we tried it on Germany. Then we really tried it with fire bombs on Japan. Then we tried it on Vietnam. And Putin tried it on Ukraine. It hasn't worked before, but maybe this time it will work?
The goal isn't to make them overthrow Putin but to make it politically expedient for the Russians to stop the war as soon as possible and enter negotiations motivated to get a deal done.
Literally fuck that dude sideways with a lunchbox. STOP IT! Biden? How about STOP IT! Putin! Unfortunately, the bribery slush fund that has accumulated in autocratic societies around the world is horribly warping the morality of the post-soviet world. No good answers that won't stomp on individual rights, but the brazenness of halfwit grifters with even a smidgen of notoriety is a plague on civilization we may not survive.
gtyellowjacket
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When has that ever worked in the past?
gtyellowjacket
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Just to be clear, I have no idea if Ukraine struck an apartment building. I was using it as an example of a civilian target vs a military one. I was assuming Ukraine was striking civilian targets based on the drone swarm towards Moscow tweet but they may be a very bad assumption with drones being fairly accurate.
I'm order to site something from the past, there has to be a comparable conflict with similar dynamics as the Russo-Ukrainian war. There isn't anything in modern warfare that's comparable.
Most modern conflicts have either been civil wars or insurgencies, not between nation states.
After your admonishment of citing things from over a hundred years ago, I'm hopeful you won't be citing the Germans bombing the Brits ;-)
In this particular case, neither country can afford to keep prosecuting this war indefinitely. Ukraine's breaking point is whenever they lose enough men that fighting is no longer feasible because they are defending their home. Russia's breaking point is going to be whenever one of several factions (Putin, Military, white collar electorate, China) lose the will to keep going.
gtyellowjacket
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I did cite the Germans bombing the brits. But more recently we bombed the Vietnamese. The Syrians and Russians bombed Syrian rebels. And the Israelis are bombing Hamas. Its too soo to tell for Israel and probably Syria, but it definitely did not work in Vietnam.
It's not a myth. There are many rules to follow. A lot of your nuts and bolts that you buy at the hardware store are now meeting some sort of standard. Imagine picking up two same screws and one can withstand one force and another a different force.The reason the hammer is $400 is actually a funny story. TLDR, it was a weird accounting issue. The government was buying a bunch of spare parts, one of which was a hammer. The accounting department spread the cost of r&d and some other stuff evenly across all the spare parts so the hammer got the same markup as a jet engine.
And again, spending more than the next nine countries, six of whom are our allies, makes no sense. Is the UK using North Korean or Iranian weapons?
Your one example may be true but the cost of doing business with DOD can be and usually is more expensive.
"Made in China" not good....
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When has fighting back ever worked in the past? What?
I love Ukraine taking the fight into Russia. Russians have been in a disinfo fog for a long time, and Russian state media is basically Baghdad Bob telling everyone that Putin shits roses and rainbows every morning and that everything in Ukraine is "fine, fine, fine." So hey, here's some drones that say otherwise. I love it. Hope they send more (but control them a bit better so they don't hit apartments)
gtyellowjacket
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Fighting back works. Hitting civilian targets with a few bombs or even lots of bombs doesn't work. It might feel good to retaliate. Countries might justify it by saying the other side did it first or it will sap the will to resist but it never works.
Hitting military targets with a few bombs is much more effective.
gtyellowjacket
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It wasn't my example. It was literally your example that was shown to be erroneous with a quarter century old article.
And this is why there's no solid equivalent: those examples only work if the Vietnamese bombed the US, the Syrians bombed Russia or Hamas was able to bomb Israel at all.
To Tar Spiels point, the Russians haven't had to taste their own medicine as the aggressor. Let's see if their resolve is as strong when inflation is ridiculously high, assets are scarce AND they're getting hurt or killed.
gtyellowjacket
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Well Hamas does bomb Israel. And their allies bomb Israel as well even though Israel retaliates. It hasn't stopped Israel and Israel's bombings haven't stopped them from being bombed.
But no. I'm specifically citing the strategy of bombing civilian targets hoping that that will somehow cause those civilians to force an end to the war. It doesn't work. It hasn't worked. One of the reasons we don't have a whole lot of recent examples is because the West figured out it does not work. Ukraine will figure it out too.
Batt Boy
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Demographics are a disaster in Ukraine. From Col Cossand's column:
"The biggest problem Ukraine faces is not the rebuilding of destroyed towns but the continuing depopulation. Ukrainian birth rates are catastrophically low, and were terrible even before the war. Mortality has spiked as access to healthcare has suffered. Ukraine might be left with a population of as low as 15 million people in the government-controlled part of the territory (as opposed to the part Russia occupies) by 2030, if millions of war refugees don't all flood back. In many cases Ukraine might end up with semi-empty cities especially as the older groups start to die off. Russian authorities in the Lugansk region have already made some comments to the effect that rebuilding some of the destroyed towns doesn't make sense because nobody is going to live there anyway."
"The biggest problem Ukraine faces is not the rebuilding of destroyed towns but the continuing depopulation. Ukrainian birth rates are catastrophically low, and were terrible even before the war. Mortality has spiked as access to healthcare has suffered. Ukraine might be left with a population of as low as 15 million people in the government-controlled part of the territory (as opposed to the part Russia occupies) by 2030, if millions of war refugees don't all flood back. In many cases Ukraine might end up with semi-empty cities especially as the older groups start to die off. Russian authorities in the Lugansk region have already made some comments to the effect that rebuilding some of the destroyed towns doesn't make sense because nobody is going to live there anyway."