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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   1211 thread views

Transnational Thursday for November 21, 2024

Transnational Thursday is a thread for people to discuss international news, foreign policy or international relations history. Feel free as well to drop in with coverage of countries you’re interested in, talk about ongoing dynamics like the wars in Israel or Ukraine, or even just whatever you’re reading.

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NYT produces a shocker: https://archive.is/4G56L

Several officials even suggested that Mr. Biden could return nuclear weapons to Ukraine that were taken from it after the fall of the Soviet Union. That would be an instant and enormous deterrent. But such a step would be complicated and have serious implications.

Where does America find these people? Either the officials or the journalists are crazy. It would indeed be very complicated to get nukes that were returned to Russia into Ukraine's hands. Not to mention the delivery systems, you can't exactly slip an SS-25 mobile launcher in a brown paper bag and slip it under the toilet door. And how the hell would it deter Russia, as opposed to igniting a pre-emptive strike against this 'deterrent' before it can be fully established? Does Ukraine have any early warning systems set up for such close distances, against Russia? There's no safe strategic depth in Ukraine to establish these weapons...

People wonder at my scepticism of the official war narratives when this is the sort of stuff we get in the for-popular-consumption media.

I think our dear and gone friend Hlynka did actually suggest, to paraphrase, handing Ukraine their nukes back with an apology note attached.

If US policymaking is at the level of random forum discussions, there are serious problems.

I really think it's dangerous if there are crazy people in the room when important decisions are being made, especially with regard to nuclear strategy.

If you think about it for five minutes, it opens up such a big can of worms... Do we say we're giving nukes to Ukraine and warn Russia? Do we hope they don't see them until they're set up (like Russia hoped during the Cuban Missile Crisis)? What do we do if they pre-emptively nuke them and take them out? What are the second-order effects if this strategy 'works', does Russia hand over nukes to Yemen and Venezuela? That'll raise oil prices! What if Russia continues the war anyway, daring Ukraine to start a nuclear war with a nuclear superpower?

There's such a deficit of sanity. We spent years fighting in Afghanistan, on a nation-building campaign, trying to win hearts and minds. Meanwhile our Afghan allies were raping children on a huge scale and some group of officers or officials decided that this wasn't worth cracking down on: cultural practices, just ignore it soldiers, leave it to the Afghan government... How the hell do you win hearts and minds when the friends you're arming, funding and training are raping children? This isn't just an isolated error, there's a whole host of monumentally retarded things we were doing there - that's why we lost the war.

https://www.seattletimes.com/nation-world/soldier-punished-for-interfering-in-child-assault-by-afghan/

What if the genius strategists behind the war in Afghanistan (or whoever signed off on hiring them) are in charge of nuclear strategy?

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