TWX: Izunbacol: flucto: The most disquieting aspect of this is that it's largely crafted to reassure factions in Russia who want to dramatically escalate the war and their expansionist aims. In other words the biggest jeopardy he faces is from those who think he's not acting bat-sh*it crazy enough.

Yep.  Everyone who thinks Vlad is a megalomaniac extremist whose political opponents should hurry to give a Polonium cure would do well to read up on Russia. Vlad is trying to keep the more aggressive right wing nutters at bay. They sound a lot like the Nazi party of 1930's Germany trying to avenge their great international humiliation.

There aren't many scenarios where a destabilized, reeling, embarrassed, economically-injured, nuclear-armed Russia with a power vacuum is better than one with a meticulous, conniving Putin.

But shiat, we see the "why don't we just nuke them!?!" crowd on here too.

At this stage we need it to be crystal-clear to Russia that we could and that, in the right circumstances, we would.  This does not mean that I endorse nuking them, but I look at the potential for nuking them as a reactionary event, not a proactive one, and their understanding that "if X then Y" is paramount to Russia not filling in X with a nuclear blast or nuclear power plant disaster is absolutely paramount.

For the record I don't want to die as a result of nuclear war, but it isn't the United States or the rest of NATO that's intentionally trying to change the conditions in order to escalate towards a nuclear war.

So alot of the we will retaliate with Nuks logic came out of a cold war where we believed that Russia was a peer with a possible numerical advantage in Europe.

I think we have all seen that that is no longer true. so if we can absolutely gain air superiority and just rain conventional hell on their forces, why not.

The real problem is once they launch one, all bets are off and if we respond conventionaly the likelyhood of it going from tactical to strategic becomes exponentially higher.

There is also a big difference in how we respond based on if they launch counterforce or counterpopulation.

/Random thoughts for the day from someone with no expertise

cheeseaholic: Izunbacol: flucto: The most disquieting aspect of this is that it's largely crafted to reassure factions in Russia who want to dramatically escalate the war and their expansionist aims. In other words the biggest jeopardy he faces is from those who think he's not acting bat-sh*it crazy enough.

Yep.  Everyone who thinks Vlad is a megalomaniac extremist whose political opponents should hurry to give a Polonium cure would do well to read up on Russia. Vlad is trying to keep the more aggressive right wing nutters at bay. They sound a lot like the Nazi party of 1930's Germany trying to avenge their great international humiliation.

There aren't many scenarios where a destabilized, reeling, embarrassed, economically-injured, nuclear-armed Russia with a power vacuum is better than one with a meticulous, conniving Putin.

But shiat, we see the "why don't we just nuke them!?!" crowd on here too.

If we destroy enough of Russia's power, though, there will be essentially zero chance of them having a working nuke in the future.  Even now there's a lot of doubt that they have any working nukes.  Now imagine if they're economy is down to 10% of what it used to be for a few decades and they have no Soviet stockpiles of weapons to lower their actual defense spending needs.  Plus the usual corruption, etc.

The trick is to do it in such a way that they won't launch any nukes.  This seems to be working.  Russia is sprinting headlong into its own demise.

I don't think there is a lot of doubt on Russia having a working nuke. I know it's a pretty popular opinion here on fark where I'll the true experts on such things reside. But judging from the way countries with actual intelligence apparatus are treating them I think there is very little doubt by actual decision-makers.