W is going to pass Michelle some candy at the event where Biden declares war and then we will know that we survived Trump.
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there is important context to consider.
- as a show of force, putin really doubled down on building up a russian land army tailored for the european theater. they basically (on paper) got more new tanks than any other nation. any land war would have to use them across the entire front.
- except thereâs a huge problem. russia would lack the element of surprise, which was probably decisive in both georgia 2008 and ukraine 2014.
- ukraine is a lot more prepared, with potentially ally troops also joining the conflict if russia makes big advances.
- the new tanks are actually considered faulty, in 2014 ukraine blew up several of them in unexpected ways. most reliable machinery is from soviet times (!), and ukraine has javelins now.
- ukraine has famously soft and fertile rural terrain, which makes a tank invasion make much more sense in the winter. yet due to global warming, ukraineâs winter is not only warmer, but shorter too. putinâs tanks could literally get stuck in the mud.
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I am guessing the US doesnât stick its dick directly into this situation but still sends Ukraine guns and money under the table.
This is what kept the German army from taking Moscow and pushing the Red Army behind the Urals. Is there rasputitsa in Ukraine?
lend and lease works wonders
I read an article how regular civilians started milita training on the weekends. Ukraine canât stop a Russian invasion but they can make an occupation really painful.
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there is, but rasputâye is more of a vastness of russia thing, and having only dirt roads. i am for sure going to be disappointed in the actual numbers, but i would think they built some infrastructure between 1941 and 2021.
Sure but that infrastructure can be sabotaged and long lines of tanks on roads are vulnerable.
well, you are not the only one concerned with it, so there is probably something to it. i am not a ukrainian speaker, i only know of the russian connotation. fwiw, the mud was not really mentioned in russian ww2 history class, because everyone knows itâs russian heroism that stopped hitler, not anything else.
Weather: An invasion that begins in January or February would have the advantage of frozen ground to support the cross-country movement of a large mechanized force. It would also mean operating in conditions of freezing cold and limited visibility. January is usually the coldest and snowiest month of the year in Ukraine, averaging 8.5 hours of daylight during the month and increasing to 10 hours by February.8 This would put a premium on night fighting capabilities to keep an advance moving forward. Should fighting continue into March, mechanized forces would have to deal with the infamous Rasputitsa , or thaw. In October, Rasputitsa turns firm ground into mud. In March, the frozen steppes thaw, and the land again becomes at best a bog, and at worst a sea of mud. Winter weather is also less than optimal for reliable close air support operations.
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What I know about war in these circumstances comes from this. Possibly partly based on Alexander Solzhenitsynâs experiences.
This isâŚnot going to work.
https://twitter.com/sahilkapur/status/1483552185396957194?s=21
https://twitter.com/burgessev/status/1483561384935895040?s=21
figured russia was just going to go the crimea route and just take whatever they wanted but not trying to full military do it as neither us nor them want a direct war but I donât think theyâd care about a war with europe.
theyâve made it clear they want the USSR back tho
well they donât know what to do, manchin and sinema arenât going to budge so their only ideas are to make a show of trying
outside of uh, crazy shit nobody really has any ideas, outside of people here who are more than willing to go way way way too far
The fact that Manchin gets away with pretending the filibuster is some sacred Constitutional thing, rather than a stupid Senate rule thatâs been changed several times throughout our history is so frustrating. He gets so little pushback.
The filibuster was created accidentally in 1806, never used until 1837, rarely used after that for nearly a century⌠and the rules about it were changed in 1917, 1949, 1959, 1970, 1975, 1979, 2013, and 2017.
It was the change in 1970 that got rid of the talking filibuster and allowed the silent filibuster. So for the first 164 years, we had a talking filibuster. For the last 51 years, weâve had a silent filibuster. But sure, letâs pretend that going back to the talking filibuster would be a horrific erosion of norms!
Define âway way way too far.â
Right but none of this matters. No matter how perfectly he gets windmill dunked on, he simply doesnât care. Heâs a corrupt piece of shit human and the only way to apply pressure is by doing LBJ-type things our current generation of limp dick democrats are unwilling to consider.
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I think LBJ-style pressure wonât work on Manchin. If he could simply be bribed, he would have been bribed by now. If threats would work, he would have been threatened by now. I mean, maybe if you could credibly threaten bodily harm against him and his family, that might work, but I donât think anyone has the stomach for that.
I think he is ideologically tied to the idea of bipartisanship and the only way to bring him on-board is to persuade a few Republicans to cross the aisle. Good luck with that.
I recognize they have a huge army, but they still get wafflestomped by Russian tanks, no? Isnât the correct strategy for them long term to save lives upfront and make Russia fight a long term insurgency a la Afghanistan? Otherwise theyâre sacrificing just so many lives.
This is really interesting, thanks.
Boy, itâs almost like the years of global instability due to Covid have brought us to a nonzero chance of nuclear war. Who could have seen that coming?