Ukraine invasion

[Zardnaar]

American media is pushing the regime change angle to hard.

Everyone around Putin in essence is guilty so they can't plead it wasn't me. Not talking about current fun and games just in general.

This goes down to the regional level and mayor's. Regimes basically a klepocracy and a patronage based system.

There's no politburo to remove him like Krushchev. There's no designated successor or number 2.

It's not even clear who would take over if he died. Theoretically it's the prime minister but it's not hard coded as I understand it.

Even Hitler had a designated successor (Goring) from a legal PoV

 

[Aeson]

Articles like that make me very skeptical. Some of these things I find it hard to believe happened, or if they did, more than once. Certainly not worthy of a newspaper.

Certainly not a newspaper like The Washington Post. Yet, I buy it. Remember the treatment Asians have faced since the pandemic started. Russians and things considered connected to Russia are now getting similar treatment. A lot of people are ignorant of the larger world around them, and lack the intelligence to understand that ignorance, and are often lead to do and say stupid things. This is just on the lighter, and sillier side of that.

 

[Mannahnin]

American media is pushing the regime change angle to hard.

Is it? News to me. But it's never hard to find at least a few cheerleaders for war.

 

[Zardnaar]

Is it? News to me. But it's never hard to find at least a few cheerleaders for war.

Atm it's more wishful thinking.

 

[Mezuka]

"Twisted Sister’s We’re Not Gonna Take It was a hair-metal ode to teen angst when it came out in 1984. Over the past week, it has gained new fame as a resistance anthem in Ukraine and the band’s lead singer, Dee Snider, is totally cool with that. His grandfather was Ukrainian and Snider has given his blessing to use his song.
Aired: March 5, 2022"

https://www.cbc.ca/listen/live-radio/1-14-day-6

 

[Thunderfoot]

Re: Nuclear doctrine... Part of the original nuclear program was global thermo nuclear war; meaning everyone was involved. Currently, China and India have decided that this is not the time to get involved, so a nuclear strike would be from Russia/Belarus only. This is considered a European strike and would be met by a limited response. Western European based short and medium range strikes and Alaskan medium strikes as well as a few naval based attacks. This would come after several conversations with China and India to ensure this isn't a first strike response on their territories.

If this were a perfect situation the response would be from front line troops using tactical neutron strikes instead of strategic hydrogen attacks, but we aren't positioned for that at the moment. Also, while Mr. Putin is in charge and pushing this assault, the general staff has latitude, especially when the nuclear option is on the table. It's backward from the US but the result is the same, no one person has the ability to screw the pooch. Let's hope we don't have to test the theory.

 

[billd91]

So, back to where we started, I posit that your claim that "the moment NATO detects a ballistic missile launch they WILL retaliate with half of their available nukes" is not true.

It may be a simplistic claim, sure, but that doesn't mean that MAD wasn't effectively adopted. It was just never formally declared as such because it would look bad. But we absolutely had major population centers as our targets and the Soviets, based on a number of sources (including Khrushchev), were skeptical of limited nuclear exchanges. It was deep enough in doctrine to lead to the ABM treaty.

 

[trappedslider]

There's two cases in the USSR where they refused to hit red button. One was a technical glitch the other someone paniced in 1962 iirc.

The technical glitch was 26 September 1983 1983 Soviet nuclear false alarm incident - Wikipedia

Nuclear war was averted in '62 due to the submarine commander saying no The Man Who Saved the World ~ Preview | Secrets of the Dead | PBS

In General, there are two types of nuclear strikes counter value and counterforce. CV is targeting cities, mining sites, an out-of-the-way airport, etc. Counterforce is military targets/ command and control.

I could go on into a ton of information regarding nuclear weapons use planning on both sides including the UK but this thread isn't the place for it.

EDIT: And if you're really interested I can recommend a number of books on the topic.

 

[Umbran]

Even Hitler had a designated successor (Goring) from a legal PoV

You know, when you feel it is a good idea to bring up Hitler as a comparison... you're talking too much about politics for EN world.

 

[Umbran]

It may be a simplistic claim, sure, but that doesn't mean that MAD wasn't effectively adopted.

It seems to me that this is an argument over an unprovable point. Since the doctrine was never employed, this is an argument over whether they would have done so - a complete hypothetical.