Russia-Ukraine situation

Glad to see Tiffy back.

 

I don't think so. An invasion of Taiwan is not an invasion of Ukraine. The military build-up and control of the seas required to safely transport sufficient troops across 180km (110 miles) of the South China Sea, form a beachhead and take the island is not trivial. The world would know it's coming for perhaps a month, and there would be no realistic way for China to pretend that's not their intention.

What we've seen from this invasion of Ukraine is that voters in the West care about other nations sovereignty. I firmly believe there would be a popular movement in the US, Australia, perhaps Japan to commit to the physical defence of Taiwan, and our leaders would have no choice but to make a firm commitment to defend Taiwan. Depending on the governments in charge, especially in Australia but also the US, they would actually desire the agency to make an unequivocal commitment to Taiwan. It seems unfeasible then that China would continue an invasion if there were American and other allied troops in Taiwan building up defences before China even left their mainland.

Welcome back!

 

https://nationalinterest.org/blog/s...essfully-repel-chinese-invasion-taiwan-166350
Recent wargames jointly conducted by the Pentagon and RAND Corporation have shown that a military clash between the United States and China, especially over the Taiwan issue, would likely result in a U.S. defeat. In simulated wargames between the United States and China, RAND analyst David Ochmanek bluntly said America got “its ass handed to it.”......... What are we doing to do, band together and retake the island? I think not. It is better to be realist about the issue.

 

Well it's important to appreciate the purpose of wargames is to develop yourself into a state of readiness where you do succeed, not just acknowledge that is the state of things and give up. We're not saying China will invade Taiwan in March 2019 - that is two years before the new AUKUS treaty-alliance was signed that commits all three nations (Australia, the UK, the US) to new spending and training commitments specifically designed around making those nations ready for a military response to China. Secondly, the purpose of deploying troops to Taiwan prior to an invasion, while China builds up for an invasion, is to deter Chinese aggression and prevent a war. Just as that article details a potential victory may result in devastating strategic losses, an allied defensive build up in Taiwan could flip the scales for China where it would make sense to put the Dragon back to sleep and wait for a better opportunity to strike. They have no interest in decimating their own country either.

I'd also follow up by saying I looked into the 2019 war games discussed in that article. Firstly it was a war game of straight up US versus 'red' (Russia/China). That's not the reality of a defence of Taiwan. The reality would include British, Australian and Japanese forces, with some possibility of Canadian and other European coalition forces, and plenty of support, if not actual troops, from South Korea. The US would likely also have the economic support of most of the developed world. It implies only 'red' has the capacity to fire ship killing missiles from their mainland, whilst obviously the US cannot do the same from their mainland. This is unreasonable though, it implies no capacity for return attacks from South Korea, Japan, or a pre-emptive build up on Taiwan.

It would appear to me that the purpose of the war games was not genuine strategic readiness (although of course that factors into the design), but rather to design a scenario so unfavourable to the US that they would always lose. This is new to me so I'm not going to pretend I'm already an expert on this sort of inner-government politiking in a country I'm not native to, but it seems uncomfortably obvious to me from an outside perspective that this whole exercise was designed to manufacture a result so dire they could then squeeze more defence spending out of congress.

As an aside, they repeated the war game in April, and achieved victory (albeit at a devastating cost). In this war game they still excluded allied military contributions (other than Taiwan), but did allow for them to supply remote airfields for deployment, repair and refueling, and delayed the war to 2030 with future equipment and communications infrastructure. Importantly to my argument though, at the beginning of the game the red command determined it was not sensible to invade Taiwan. This is the actual objective of a deployment to Taiwan - to make it so unreasonable for China to invade that they would demobilise and avoid a war.

 

Yes that but even the US defense department has put out that they are not sure we can defend Taiwan. I am not even sure we should or could. Chinese capabilities have increased faster than ours. They focus on only one area of the world. Denying the US access to what they consider their territorial waters/Taiwan why we focus on the whole world. Their supply chain is way shorter and ours is stretched across the Pacific. Why is Taiwan worth the death of thousand of American, Australian, British or Japanese lives? If something like this was to happen, I don't mean this mean in any way, but the US would be doing the bulk of the fighting and dying. That would be people like me. In an all out war with China I am still young enough I would probably get drafted. Taiwan is not worth enough for me to stop a bullet for. Japan yes. Taiwan no. Any place that is part of the territorial US, territory or state, yes.

 

I have read all of the posts about right and obligation of others to assist Ukraine, etc. I wish to ask another avenue of thought....has anyone else thought of the fact that Russia is NOT amongst those nations that advocate for a New World Order whose agenda is pushed by George Soros and Cabal? The banks of the world are controlled by people like Soros, the Rothchilds and all of the rest that we have read about for decades. It is said that all wars in recent history have been profitable for many of those in banking and industry. Are they after Russia because she will not conform to their agenda? Just my thoughts...

 

Seriously? Russia wants the new world order to be run by Russia, specifically by him! They have banks too, mostly storing money for oligarchs. Putin bought up all the things he nationalised first - if that isn't profitable, what is? What do you find to admire in this guy?

 

What makes you think that they are all after Russia? It seems to me that Putin (as an individual with control of the power behind the Russian State), is after Ukraine, simply because they speak Russian. If Putin's looney logic is actually accepted then Ireland, South Africa, Australia, the USA and all other English speaking nations legitimately BELONG to the UK, so England could theoretically invade them and bring them under its political and military control. This is of course quite insane reasoning, but that won't stop Putin thinking that way.

Putin is another Hitler, expanding his influence by violent means, using insane ideology to justify his greed for power and possession, with delusions of a past glorious national empire which he intends to reinstate by force.

Nations who suffered under Adolf Hitler’s insanity are reluctant to let another greedy, looney, leader, goose step all over them, starting but not stopping with the destruction and annexation of Ukraine.

 

He does not want a New world order ran by him. He is very clear on what he wants if you actually listen to him. He wants to restore Russia to glory and to create in a way the old Soviet Union of buffer and client states around Russia.

 

He is not going to annex Ukraine but he is going to install a puppet government there. He is not Hitler. Come on people get a grip. Listen to what he actually says. You use the Hitler analogy. He also wrote and said what he was going to do but no one took that serious

 

And of course we have to believe the word of a cruel and murderous dictator who has just invaded a peaceful nation. You are a Putin lover I take it?

I don't take him at his word any more than anyone should have taken Hitler at his. You are being fooled.

 

Of course he's not Hitler, Hitler's nice and crispy now, but Putin has a similarly deranged mindset concerning his nation's destiny and a similarly ruthless determination to pursue his personal military and political objectives, unless he's unitedly resisted.

 

Not even close. You should have taken Hitler at his word when he laid out in Mein Kamph what he wanted to do. He literally tried to do it. I just study international relations and have even at the graduate level.

Lets brake down a few things about Russia right now
1) They are not the Soviet Union they are much smaller and weaker economically and militarily. They have an economy the size of South Korea.
2) They have a shrinking population. Last year it shrank by over 1 million people birth to death.
3) As we are seeing in Ukraine. Their military is not all that impressive.
4) They are a regional power with a unique history and they want a buffer area around them.
5) They have a short time frame to do things like this and Putin and everyone who knows anything knows this. In all likelihood this is his and Russia last hoorah for a long while and they desperately wanted Ukraine to stay in their orbit. Mission failed there.

I will demand an apology for saying I am a Putin admirer. I am no admirer of that murderous tyrant.

 

I think the situation has altered a little since my previous post. Ukraine has resisted more than most thought it would. I hope and pray their resolve holds and resistance continues. They're very brave. Russia hasn't succeeded in the way if thought. There is talk of this being Putin's Waterloo. The West has responded more coherently and thoroughly than I had anticipated and the opinion seems to be more than Putin anticipated. I don't know how this will play out. Putin won't pull out because he'd lose face. It remains to be seen how much longer the Kremlin remains behind him as he appears to be descending into madness. I think he's in danger of losing the support of the Russian people. Not only the economic sanctions being imposed but the fact many see Ukraine as a friendly neighbour. Plus Russians will be wondering why their daughters and sons are being used as cannon fodder to fight a pointless war.

I'm a little more relaxed now about China and Taiwan. I think Xi Jinping may be a little surprised by the West's response. In many ways China has far more to lose than Russia if very severe economic sanctions were placed on China. I doubt the rhetoric about taking Taiwan back will ever disappear. They simply couldn't backpeddle on that. I think it also plays well to their domestic audience. I don't think Taiwan is safe but may be a little safer for now than it was.

 

This is conspiracy theory nonsense. No nation advocates for a 'New World Order', at least in the very specific sense that is implied by the term. Soros gets his money from being a hedge fund manager (e.g. buying and selling stocks), not from banking (e.g. loaning people money), so he has no control over any banks. Outside of the US he is not influential, he doesn't have the power to direct the leaders of dozens of countries as someone like, say, Rupert Murdoch can - he's just a donor to the Democrats. The Rothschild Family has not controlled the international banking system since the Napoleonic Wars. Banks will not be making any profit from this crisis - the sanctions are now targeting SWIFT, which although are designed to brutalise Russian banks, will also cause genuine harm to banks in the West that trade with Russian banks (e.g. all the big ones). Western banks are the economic losers on our side of this conflict.

I am genuinely curious how one comes to buy into this rubbish. When I was in high school I was really into these sorts of conspiracy theories (not because I believed them, but because they fascinated me). The arguments and rationale for these things, even to a high school mind, were nonsensical. How have you come across these ideas and found them persuasive?

 

I agree. Depicting any national leader as pursuing “world domination” is cartoonish. Putin wants Ukraine as a buffer state. He will probably annex the eastern part of the country and then have the western part as a client state. Putin has shown himself to be quite risk-averse. The Russian military isn’t that great, and isn’t strong enough to confront NATO.

 

It would have been foolish to fail to predict Hitler's desire for world domination. He was at the head of a nation and a following that had climbed out of deep depression and humiliation to become a military power of some consequence bent upon securing the natural resources required to build an empire. Hitler envied the British Empire and admired Britain's ability to control it's vast expanse and reap the material benefits of conquest. Putin has much the same mindset. He is not just bent of preserving Russia's security, he is bent on conquest and his rhetoric proves it.

 

As I said, this is a cartoonish portrayal that bears little relation to actual history.

 

Hitler actually wrote about his plans. HE published them in a book .