cross-posted from: https://piefed.social/c/noncredibledefense/p/1490862/the-correct-response

Interestingly no country gave this correct responde. Or even took a passing interest.

this happened once in syria https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Khasham

I'm pretty sure my country's then-leader was very interested but was fobbed off with a deal for cheap Russian gas, subsequently growing our industry almost fully dependent on that discounted energy. Great deal, Angela. Well done.

I'd say go for it, even with Putin's threat of nukes.

With how much Russia's oligarchy plundered their own war-chest over the years, to the point where they had to rely on Iran for weapons, I actually question if any of Russia's nukes actually work.

I wonder if dead hand* is even real at this point lol

I hate to defend her but before the invasion of Ukraine by Russia (i.e. pre 2014), using Russian gas to soften the dependency on fascist-murica seemed like a good option.

Meh. Germany had a good initial run of renewable energy expansion which was almost ground to a halt when this happened the first time around 2008 and Putin bought Merkel's rejection of a Ukrainian accession into NATO. It was already detrimental then if you had some foresight, and it was absolutely devastating the second time.

This would only happen if it was in Israel's interest.

I remember that time. Putin said that the Russian Army had not invaded Ukraine, not that there weren't Russian troops there. There were plenty of Russian military members who took a leave of absence to help restore democracy in Ukraine after the Euromaidan riots threatened the elected government into resigning. That was the official Russian position.

Trump was elected in 2016. Obama was still president in 2014. While the problems with American imperialism obviously go back a very, very long way, their overt slide into fascism had not begun in 2014. If you'd tried to talk about "American Fascism" pre-2016 people would have assumed you were a very specific kind of racist who is probably deeply concerned about FEMA for vague and implausible reasons.

Maybe the correct respond is something like the missile need to take their annual paid leave and eastern ukraine sounds like a good place to be.

So....

Is the US supposed to be the world police or not?

Budapest memorandum entitles Ukraine to assistance in this case.

Magastan became Magastan in 2016 (2020 depending on how you look at it). But many of the country's policies were fascist long before. Not sure how you get from despising 'murica to racism though.

Depends on the day and personal beliefs of the person advocating for it. So, Schroedinger’s World Police. As a USian, I would prefer the EU took over the world police job. It's not worth the effort.

The trick is to have a US-controlled strategic interest there. See Syria, Russians attack a US-defended oilfield, Russia denies they are Russian regulars, US turn 200 of them into moist ash with artillery and JDAMs

You don't, and I didn't say that. What I was pointing out was that the people throwing around the term "fascism" to describe America in Obama's tenure were primarily racist weirdos who believed that FEMA was going to round them up into internment camps. That was kind of a major part of the right-wing discourse at that time.

America sucked in 2014, but broadly speaking the idea of the US being fascist, or being a threat to their allies (esp Europe and Canada) was not remotely a part of public discourse. Obama did a lot to repair the public image damage Bush had inflicted, despite how little he actually did to fix any of the bad stuff America was doing.

And deny a symmetrical warfare environment to develop the next generation of drones? Never!

Raytheon's index price wasn't even $70 in 2014!

Considering that Russia attacked them, I think any entitlements in the memorandum are null in their eyes. The agreement is effectively nullified. From what I've briefly read, the document is not forcing any party to assist Ukraine, beyond advocating for them at the UN security council.

I'd say the main difference here is that Ukraine probably wanted the "support" of the US. I think we did alright giving them access to money, weapons and training to defend themselves early on, and the major shortcoming was limiting the targets that they could strike with the weapons we sold. Turnabout is fair play, if Vlad wants to start throwing hands, he has to accept that he may get punched in the face.

Crazy! I didn't hear about that when it happened.

"Hey we're being attacked, this you?"

"Nope, not us."

"Cool, cause we're about to fuck shit up."

"Wait... no! Not like that!”

This also ignores that the US has intervened aggressively, just in its usual fashion of profitable arms sales and supporting fascist militias.

Uh, maybe I'm unfamiliar with the engineering behind nukes. Do they expire? Or are you joking that they've just stripped the parts?

It's because Ukraine doesn't have oil

They do expire. Problem is that there's a lot of them. Fire 100 nukes, and even if 99% fail, that's at least one mushroom cloud in the most fertile land on earth. And the ones that did expire become essentially dirty bombs.

Ish? Personally, gamergate was my alarm bell, especially when I saw some of the stuff people were saying in the weirder corners.

They do have mineral reserves and if the US threw their weight into supporting Ukraine, their businesses would be very willing to work with the US. Even from a self benefiting, pragmatic perspective, the US should be supporting them.

Did Ukraine ask for help?

yes

That's pretty much why I was asking, I figured that no level of neglect would make one of these not dangerous. Which also makes it pretty clear that someone who's so comfortable with their use is likely confident that they would not be victims of that use.

Okay, I think we're in agreement on all points. I think Obama was really charismatic (still is) and I had high hopes, but I cringed at the premature peace nobel price, and I had to admit in hindsight that many really bad foreign policies continued under his administration. So thinking about interventions in South America (e.g. Salvador Allende), Cambodia (the only person I wished to have to endure eternal hellfire is Kissinger), Vietnam and Iran (Mohammed Mossadegh) - I said that Magastan policies were always fascist.

There were plenty of alarm bells, but that's not the point in contention here. The person I replied to was trying to claim - effectively - that it was public policy in Germany to cut ties with "fascist America" in 2014 and that's just not remotely true.

But you didn't say that. You said;

I hate to defend her but before the invasion of Ukraine by Russia (i.e. pre 2014), using Russian gas to soften the dependency on fascist-murica seemed like a good option.

At no point did I claim that America was a shining beacon of goodness and light in 2014. On that point we agree.

But you tried to present the claim there was a strong public opinion in 2014 - at least in Germany if not elsewhere - that nations needed to cut ties with "fascist America", and that's not even remotely accurate. While a lot of people were broadly concerned about the US' behaviour, and the behaviour of their electorate, there was never any real public impetus towards cutting ties, or fear that they would badly mistreat their allies until the last few years. Sure, a lot of leftists might have been arguing for those things, but that's not the same thing at all.

Then it's simple. The US should help Ukraine. They're being invaded and are asking for help. For the "pragmatists", any nation what helps Ukraine with have an easier time doing business with them afterwards.

That's why I'm so confused about the lukewarm support. From a purely capitalist lens, Ukraine could have been exploited to hell and back once Russia was BTFOd. But now they're looking at a decades long demining operation which is gonna hurt the exploitation effort bottom line billionaires pockets uhhhhh something.

Well our capitalists are really really bad at capitalism, and are much more proficient at cronieism.....cronism?........cronyism? Oh ok it's the last one

Neglect measured on the scale of centuries might make them effectively safe...you need to have all the conventional explosives in the implosion shell fail to explode. If some of them fail, you likely won't reach criticality in the warhead itself, in which case you just detonated a regular bomb that had enriched uranium shrapnel.

That being said, most modern explosives become less stable and more sensitive over time, not inert. So the implosion timing is gonna be off, which means no criticality. Just spreading radioactive material.

It's basically Chamberlain++.

Chamberlain's appeasement for fear of kicking off WWII was bad enough, but now nuclear missiles are on the table, so there's much more fear.

There's never a good time to kick off WWIII, so most nations are going to bend over backward to not do so.

No it does not. Not even a little bit.

The Budapest memorandum A) isn’t even a binding treaty. And B) only guarantees assurances from the US, UK, and Russia that they won’t invade Ukraine.

There are absolutely ZERO provisions for the US giving military defense to Ukraine in the event they are invaded.

The US and UK have upheld that. Neither have ever invaded Ukraine.

The US has.

Ukraine has explicitly NOT asked for direct military assistance. They have not asked for troops or US airstrikes.

They have asked for weapons, logistics, intelligence, and ammunition. All of which have been provided by the US and European NATO nations.

I do not believe that Russia has working nukes and I bet most nation's intelligence don't believe they do either, but no one wants bet on that.

Also, I believe we're already in WWIII. At least at some point in the future, the start of it will be retroactively decided to have happened before now.

I do not believe that Russia has working nukes and I bet most nation’s intelligence don’t believe they do either, but no one wants bet on that.

That's a huge stretch. Working ICBMs are 1960s tech'. Russia has repeatedly demonstrated they're perfectly capable of employing 1960s tech' reliably enough to function sometimes.

It doesn't take a 2026 nuke to hit a country in 2026. The more modern, the more likely it hits, but they have so many.

Also, I believe we’re already in WWIII. At least at some point in the future, the start of it will be retroactively decided to have happened before now.

You're being pedantic about the term WWIII. We both know what I meant.

Do you have a source to read further on this at all?

The anti-war coalition that got Obama elected by giving the party a pivot from the stain of voting for Bush's wars were long accustomed to using that terminology.

It was always used for the Bush administration post 9/11.

Obama got a bit of a pause but the troop surge in 2009 really fractured that coalition.

It was during Obama's terms that criticism of policy could be automatically slapped with a racism charge, mostly due to all the overt racism being leveled at Obama at the time.

But, yeah, I don't think it was common in German or European discourse to consider America overtly fascist in 2014.

Umm. Not really? I'm kinda pulling together basic implosion-type nuke design, where you have a nuclear core surrounded by conventional shaped charges that are supposed to detonate and compress the nuclear core just prior to the nuclear reaction.

As you would expect, most governments are a bit touchy on details about military explosives that they use...I just happen to have done a decent amount of explosives R&D in the past. Picked up a few things.

That is a very short-sighted view. The US' role as world police allowed it to station troops all over the world, projecting power and influence in every corner of the world. Every deal any country in the world made, always at least considered a US deal. The US was able to influence politics without actually having to flex the military muscle. They could always still do that if diplomacy didn't work. The projection of scientific and cultural power was also part of that influence.

Nukes don't store forever. They require more upkeep then other types of military equipment and Russia has proven to be lacking by their initial invasion. Keen eyes noticed that the trucks they were using were sitting for years by the dryrot wear on the tires.

And why can't the EU step up? The EU chose to let the US become the world police because they thought it would easier and cheaper. And now they are pissed about it.

I'm no nuclear expert but I do dabble in statistics, and you're making an argument for "the majority of the Russian stockpile will be too decrepit to function," not an argument for "all of the Russian stockpile will be too decrepit to function."

All it takes is one to kill millions. That's the scenario The West is desperately trying to avoid at any cost.

I don't know why you're doing mental gymnastics to deny either above point, but it's getting exhausting trying to keep up with you.

I never said anything about a strong public opinion. As most people, Germans are mostly politically illiterate and hardly known for wise decisions in elections. But no matter who -as the Antichrist/Kissinger said: 'murica doesn't have friends, only interests - so making sure the dependency on any critical resource is balanced between multiple evils is a better idea than committing fully to one single despicable regime.

That's absolutely not what I said at all. I said the decision to add some contracts with Russia seemed like a good decision at the time, and fascist murica was entirely my opinion/assessment. I last set foot into fascistan in 2010 and I will not do so again ever. So much damage done, it can't be repaired in a single lifetime.