October 2023 there was similar incident where Chinese cargo ship cut Balticonnector cable and EE-S1 cable. Chip named 'Newnew Polar Bear' under Chinese flag and Chinese company Hainan Xin Xin Yang Shipping Co, Ltd. (aka Torgmoll) with CEO named Yelena V. Maksimova, drags anchor in the seabed cutting cables. Chinese investigation claims storm was the reason, but there was no storm, just normal windy autumn weather. The ship just lowered one anchor and dragged it with engines running long time across the seabed until the anchor broke.
These things happen sometimes, ship anchors sometimes damage cables, but not this often and without serious problems in the ship. Russians are attempting plausible deniability.
cabirum 14 hours ago [-]
After the Nordstream pipeline attacked and destroyed, its reasonable to expect shortened lifetimes for undersea cables and sattelites.
ajross 3 minutes ago [-]
I think Nordstream is more of a special case. It was clandestine, but definitely not terrorism. It was an attack on enemy infrastructure in pursuit of an actual, real-life shooting war. One can argue that it was a bad (or good) idea, or that it was/wasn't effetive, or even that its externalities were beneficial in the long term, etc...
But it's not really in the same category as casually cutting internet lines to your peacetime competitors out of pique or whatever.
allenrb 2 hours ago [-]
Undersea satellites? You know, like after a launch failure.
trhway 13 hours ago [-]
it sounds like you've probably never seen this - tanker Minerva Julie (belonging to Putin's friends) traveling through the Baltic Sea suddenly decided to hang around for a week right at the same place where couple weeks later Nord Stream exploded:
It was clearly Norway trying to sell more gas to Poland.
credit_guy 2 hours ago [-]
And Soros was the mastermind.
burnt-resistor 25 minutes ago [-]
I'm waiting for Nazis and Jews to be blamed because Godwin's law after all.
The US destroyed the Nordstream pipeline for certain and Sy Hersh has the evidence.
It is more than probable that this incident indicates possible collusion between the Chinese and Russian governments to sabotage European interests. The simplest fix is for Sweden and Denmark to ban Chinese and Russian ships from their territorial waters until they deliver accountable assurances that this sort of behavior will not happen again. Until then, they must be stopped and European countries must play hardball because that's the only language these criminals understand.
mmooss 5 hours ago [-]
Where is evidence that the US and Russia were involved?
oneshtein 4 hours ago [-]
> it sounds like you've probably never seen this - tanker Minerva Julie (belonging to Putin's friends) traveling through the Baltic Sea suddenly decided to hang around for a week right at the same place where couple weeks later Nord Stream exploded: https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2023/03/16/23/68797949-11868975...
mcphage 3 hours ago [-]
Just look upthread from my comment.
valval 1 hours ago [-]
A common goal seems to unite people of all nationalities.
baybal2 11 hours ago [-]
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tsimionescu 4 hours ago [-]
Yes, of course Putin decided to sabotage the largest infrastructure investment in his country's history, that he worked for a decade to get built.
trhway 59 minutes ago [-]
Putin sabotaged the 3 centuries of Russia’s progress. The pipeline is just a pocket change.
burnt-resistor 14 minutes ago [-]
It's probable the US and possibly Norway did it under cover of BALTOPS 22.
Snopes only offers FUD but not a single contradiction or refutation of any of Sy Hersh's reporting or claims other than it boils down to "it relies on a single source". Sometimes, in secret operations, that's the reality. There exist genuine anonymous sources who cannot be revealed themselves. Part of the principle of benefit-of-the-doubt is trusting that Sy Hersh isn't merely looking for a quick payday to sellout his journalistic integrity for a few dollars and that he isn't an easily-fooled novice when it comes to doing due-diligence on sources and facts. It's mostly a disrespectful hit-piece lacking in evidence. With all likelihood, like the identity of Deep Throat, the truth will come out once the source retires and write a book about it.
Yes, this is why having a prompt satellite launch capability to replace attrition losses is now a strategic imperative. We need to be able to put up new ones in a matter of hours, not months.
littlecranky67 5 hours ago [-]
Why is that? Undersea cables makes way more sense - the issue is we have maritime law that allows any nation state to freely roam over important cables. During wartimes this is a complete different story - ships won't be allowed near the lines, and if they do get close they will be destoryed without prior warning. No more anchoring "accidents".
amiga386 39 minutes ago [-]
> maritime law that allows any nation state to freely roam over important cables.
I'd like to see your version of maritime law that doesn't allow freely roaming over important cables. Your country's enemies would gladly drop cables totally encircling you and say "uh uh uh, important cables!" if you tried to leave your perimeter
zelphirkalt 3 hours ago [-]
Inofficially Europe is already at war, whether it wants to or not. Maybe someone needs to inofficially keep a close eye on those cables and take inofficial countermeasures against inofficial sabotage acts.
delusional 3 hours ago [-]
No we're not. Nobody in the EU has transitioned to a wartime economy. We are helping out a strategic ally. If Ukraine falls tomorrow an cedes add territory to Russia, the EU is not going to continue fighting, because the war will be over.
That of course assumes that Putin stops at Ukraine. The point is that this isn't our war.
jyounker 29 minutes ago [-]
Nine years ago I was in Riga talking with a Latvian friend, and even then she was telling me how Russia was broadcasting separatist propaganda into Latvia
While the EU may not be at war with Russia, Russia is already at war with the EU.
K0balt 2 hours ago [-]
You’re in a zero lot line flat and your neighbors house is on fire. I’d be pretty motivated to help out as well, but I don’t think I’d be quite so cavalier about not being on a wartime footing. Russia has shown repeatedly throughout history that it does not honor international agreements in good faith, and that it sees military adventurism as a legitimate way to expand its borders.
After the dust settles on the Ukraine war, if Putin still has the capacity to wage war, he will not likely stop with Ukraine. It is by now obvious that a limited incursion into Poland, for example, will not spark a global thermonuclear war.
Ukrainian suffering is both the litmus test and the vaccination against nuclear escalation that Putin needs to contemplate further expansion.
Political alignments aside, if I were based in Europe I would be very, very concerned.
valval 1 hours ago [-]
This is a wildly unpopular opinion after 2022, but Ukraine has nothing to do with Europe other than being in close vicinity geographically.
Ukraine is a corrupt third world country competing in the same league with Botswana and Zambia.
Frankly Botswana is beating Ukraine in GDP and Zambia in perceived corruption.
nradov 3 hours ago [-]
It isn't either/or. Satellites and undersea cables serve different use cases. Cables are great for high bandwidth communications between fixed points but they aren't very useful to mobile military forces and they can't be used for anything beyond communications. We don't have enough ships and patrol aircraft to realistically defend undersea cables outside the littorals.
Satellites can serve multiple purposes including communications, navigation, overhead imagery, signals intelligence, weather, etc. They are also vulnerable, but it's possible to launch replacements faster than repairing damaged cables.
greenavocado 3 hours ago [-]
We are at war. The United States guided an ATACMS missile into Russian territory yesterday. Imagine the absurdity of if China put missiles on the Mexican border and guided them into missile storage facilities 186 miles inside the border.
NovemberWhiskey 2 hours ago [-]
I think you'll find the ATACMS missile guided itself, based on inertial navigation and satellite positioning data. If your argument is that the United States guided the missile because the US provides GPS, that's a pretty flimsy argument.
greenavocado 2 hours ago [-]
Ukraine would have folded within a few weeks without the weapons systems of the combined Western nations. The Biden administration has given Kyiv permission to use U.S.-supplied missiles in Russian territory in a major escalation that now threatens nuclear war due to the first use doctrine updates. A few hours ago reports of UK Storm Shadow missiles being fired into Russian territory emerged. The West is at war.
maximilianburke 54 minutes ago [-]
The passive voice is doing a lot of work here.
Who is now threatening nuclear war?
avereveard 1 hours ago [-]
By that logic every dictator t72 field trip would make Russia participant in that local war... Absolutely absurd statement. Siria civil war would see Russia waging war on Russia since their equipment was in both hands. What a contrived statement that the arm provider is at war itself.
anigbrowl 17 minutes ago [-]
Why do folks like your self make such foolish analogies? If the US had invaded Mexico like Russia invaded Ukraine then yes, it would be completely fine for Mexico to fire missiles into the US.
jeltz 1 hours ago [-]
As far as we know Ukraine both put them there and guided the missiles. Please provide proof otherwise.
Gud 8 hours ago [-]
If someone starts blowing up satellites it’s pretty much game over for space based communications.
Kessler is often overplayed. Kessler trashes a low orbit and you wouldn't want to launch more birds into the trashed orbit. But, loads of com sats live in MEO or GEO, which is far too high for the numbers to work. They're all fine.
You will even see Kessler cited as some sort of barrier to leaving, which is nonsense.
Imagine there's a 1x1m spot where on average once per week, entirely at random and without warning a giant boulder falls from the sky and if you're there you will be crushed under the boulder. Clearly living on that spot is a terrible idea, you'd die. But merely running through it is basically fine, there's a tiny chance the boulder hits you by coincidentally arriving as you do, but we live with risks that big all the time. If you're an American commuter for example that's the sort of risk you shrug off.
Likewise, Kessler isn't a barrier to leaving, humans won't be leaving because there's nowhere to go. The only habitable planet is this one, and we're already here.
The most likely explanation for the unexplained disassembly is that Boeing made it. Second, most likely, is a collision with a hunk of something invisible.
davidt84 2 hours ago [-]
GEO is very cramped. It's just a circle, not a sphere.
Edit: I guess I was assuming geostationary. There's a whole sphere of geosynchronous orbits to play with.
Edit2: I was right the first time, GEO (geosynchronous equatoral orbit) / GSO (geosynchronous orbit), apparently. Now my head hurts.
tialaramex 43 minutes ago [-]
> GEO is very cramped. It's just a circle, not a sphere.
"cramped" the way that like, Alaska is cramped on account of how everybody has to live on the surface, not evenly distributed through the volume of the planet?
Like yeah, it's "just a circle" but did you check the radius of that circle?
Remember if there's debris, the debris isn't stuck in the circle, but, any time it's not in the circle it's harmless. This has the effect of significantly defusing the problem, so in total it's too low risk to be worth considering.
Gud 3 hours ago [-]
LEO is where starlink is stationed.
Really, there is no good scenario where LEO is unusable due to some dumb reason, like blowing up junk in space. I'm not sure our "world leaders" appreciate this.
jgalt212 5 hours ago [-]
The latency on GEO orbits exclude them from many use cases.
elif 4 hours ago [-]
Not true. China has taken down 2 US satellites in the last few years.
bgarbiak 46 minutes ago [-]
They shoot down their own redundant satellites, and it was in 2007 in 2010.
K0balt 2 hours ago [-]
Really? Thats wild. How is this not seen as a military provocation?
varispeed 5 hours ago [-]
Could they place a giant electromagnet in space to collect debris?
datadrivenangel 4 hours ago [-]
A large enough electromagnet could actually increase effective drag in conductive materials, which may help. All the non-conductive materials would still be there, and paint chips can be brutal at orbital speeds.
kube-system 4 hours ago [-]
Space is too big, and the field of even the world's strongest electromagnets are too small for this to be practical. And even if it did work, you'd only collect ferromagnetic material.
nradov 7 hours ago [-]
The military is shifting toward LEO constellations for communications such as SpaceX Starshield. Kessler syndrome isn't a serious concern for those because the orbits decay fairly quickly anyway.
yencabulator 5 hours ago [-]
That "quickly" is on the order of years (as opposed to decades, centuries, etc). If the Starlink constellation goes boom, you can't start launching new ones for several years -- and then the build-up would take years, from there.
nradov 3 hours ago [-]
Nah. In any major future conflict, the combatants will go ahead and launch replacement satellites immediately regardless of the risks or long-term consequences (or they'll do it at least as long as their manufacturing and launch facilities survive). A constellation of hundreds of satellites can't go "boom" all at once. Even with a bunch of orbital debris floating around the hazards will be sparse and some satellites will live long enough to be operationally useful.
yencabulator 2 hours ago [-]
For the purposes of the crisis, sure. But commerce and average consumer internet access will suffer hugely. Similarly, severing the sea cable had no direct military effect, but was economic damage. Kessler syndrome is still a serious concern even in LEO, just not to the same extent of practically denying access to space for the foreseeable future.
PaulDavisThe1st 4 hours ago [-]
"we" are not doing anything AFAICT. Various privately owned corporations might be, and that's very different.
Yes, I know the undersea cables are privately owned too.
nradov 2 hours ago [-]
At this point it's a distinction without much of a difference. For better or worse, SpaceX has now been fully integrated into the US military-industrial complex. They have huge DoD contracts to build out the Starshield constellation, including the prompt replacement capability. The US government is going to treat attacks on our critical communications infrastructure seriously, regardless of whether the hardware is publicly or privately owned.
1oooqooq 2 hours ago [-]
weren't those cut exactly because they are the starlink backbone when over Ukraine?
dylan604 7 hours ago [-]
You can have the ability to launch 100 satellites in 10 days, but that doesn't really help if you don't have 100 satellites
nradov 7 hours ago [-]
Well obviously you need to have a supply of replacements in stock. From a military perspective, think of satellites as rounds of ammunition that will be expended during a conflict.
dylan604 6 hours ago [-]
I think it'd be more apropos to compare them to fighter jets/tanks vs bullets
nradov 3 hours ago [-]
Not really comparable. A new Starlink satellite costs ~$1M. A new F-35 costs ~$100M, and some of the guided missiles it carries actually cost more than the satellite. The militarized Starshield satellites probably cost more than their Starlink cousins but still I think you get the point that there are orders of magnitude differences in unit cost.
dylan604 2 hours ago [-]
And a bullet costs $0.0001, so it's off just as much in the other direction.
Also, your focus on cost was not the point. The point was numbers necessary. You need $lots of bullets, but you don't need any where near the same number of jets/tanks. You don't need $lots of satellites. You need a much smaller number closer to the number of jets/tanks. At least based on Starlink constellation numbers.
thfuran 1 hours ago [-]
I assume you can get some significant bulk discounts at DoD scale, but it's probably still more like $0.10 than $0.0001, which is admittedly still rather less than $1M
nradov 1 hours ago [-]
I think you might be getting a little confused by terminology. In military terms a round of ammunition doesn't necessarily describe just a small arms cartridge. It can be any munition that's stored for a long period until needed with minimal maintenance. So even an expensive missile or satellite might be treated as a round of ammunition, depending on the design and concept of operations.
dylan604 20 minutes ago [-]
Unless the satellite is meant to collide with another object, it's never going to be considered ammunition. It is a strategic platform for communication or intelligence gathering or maybe both. So calling a satellite ammunition is just belaboring the point for internet points or something.
indymike 4 hours ago [-]
> After the Nordstream pipeline attacked and destroyed
This happend a very, very long time ago. Destroing things years after the fact is not logical and is not longer a defensive response. Using this as justification is just trying to escalate.
> its reasonable to expect shortened lifetimes for undersea cables and sattelites
Why is this reasonable? It seems like a pointless attack that achieves little other than reminding the world that horrible, oppessive governments are dangerous to everyone. Oppression is incredibly expensive for humanity, and only benefits the few that are the oppressors.
mglz 4 hours ago [-]
> This happend a very, very long time ago.
It happened on 26. September 2022. That is not a long time ago.
> It seems like a pointless attack that achieves little other than reminding the world that horrible, oppessive governments are dangerous to everyone
It sends a message, as sabotaging communications is frequently done before an attack. Also it damages morale and is a show of power.
throwaway829 4 hours ago [-]
"very, very long time ago", it was two years ago.
yett 14 hours ago [-]
Yeah and this time they won't let them get away.
According to Finnish Minister of Defence: "The authorities in the Baltic Sea region have learned from the mistakes of the Baltic Connector investigation and are prepared, if necessary, to stop a ship in the Baltic Sea if it is suspected of being involved in damaging communications cables."[1]
And it looks like according to marinetraffic.com that the Yi Peng 3 is indeed at full stop surrounded by at least 3 Danish navy vessels.
It would be useful to have a site that logs all plausible issues of this kind, at arm's length from Wikipedia editors.
Kind of a "Who watches the watchers?" type of thing.
squigz 3 hours ago [-]
Why would that not be prone to the same issue you think Wikipedia faces?
zelphirkalt 3 hours ago [-]
Maybe it would not, but putting all your eggs in one basket has never been a good idea either.
squigz 3 hours ago [-]
I don't think that's what we're doing, considering Wikipedia points to other 'baskets' as sources.
mistermann 3 hours ago [-]
Superior methodology (transcending numerous cultural / psychological / cognitive norms and obligations) is how I would go about it.
For example: banning the conflation of opinion and fact, like what's going on (and always goes on) in this thread, a behavior that is protected (doing otherwise "is not what this site is for").
If an imperfection is noted: log it, investigate, improve. Rinse, repeat.
Also: best prepare one's will, life insurance, etc before undertaking such a project.
4 hours ago [-]
12 hours ago [-]
spongebobstoes 15 hours ago [-]
What are some concrete reasons why someone would want to damage these cables? Who benefits?
flohofwoe 14 hours ago [-]
Assuming it was intentional, just trying the waters. Testing what the response is, who actually responds versus who's willing to sweep the incident under the carpet, how hard any response is and how quickly it happens, how much of the internet infrastructure is affected for how long, etc... etc... that's a lot of useful information as preparation for an actual attack.
eric-hu 12 hours ago [-]
This is really interesting how you’ve explained it.
In many professional fights the competitors start matches with light, quick jabs to probe their opponents defense.
This feels just like that now that you put it this way. I never connected those dots though.
diggan 11 hours ago [-]
Maybe it's because I'm Swedish and we've experienced Russia's "probing defenses" tactic for a very long time (mainly "breaking" into Swedish airspace with airplanes, and discovering submarines at the Swedish shores), but I always thought this was common knowledge, always interesting to learn it isn't for everyone :)
eric-hu 4 hours ago [-]
I lived in Taiwan for a while and China does this to Taiwan often. Flying planes into Taiwan’s air defense identification zone, sailing warships through the strait. It’s portrayed in (US, TW) media as war preparations, but some locals assume it’s all bark with no bite. How are those Russian actions portrayed in Swedish media?
Gud 8 hours ago [-]
Not just Russian. Even NATO aircraft were rejected frequently, though not anymore for obvious reasons.
The situation escalated beyond probing, this is tit for tat response for Ukraine getting and launching US tactical missiles. Russia seems to be now aggressively monitoring and raiding the submarine pipes and cables. Blowing up of Nord Stream made Russia go ballistic.
diggan 11 hours ago [-]
> The situation escalated beyond probing
Not sure we understand "probing" differently. Russian currently is at the edges, testing the responses from things like cutting cables and otherwise interfering with the infrastructure. This is what "probing" means for me. "Beyond probing" would be actually launching attacks one way or another, which we haven't seen yet (except of course, for the Ukraine invasion).
onlypassingthru 6 hours ago [-]
> actually launching attacks one way or another, which we haven't seen yet
On the contrary. The attacks have been ongoing for years now. You're looking for the tanks and missiles when the attack is actually happening right under your feet. Rot and corruption are more powerful than any bullets or missiles.
lifestyleguru 3 hours ago [-]
> Rot and corruption are more powerful than any bullets or missiles.
The developed world knows this even better. Offering yachts, real estate, supercars, prostitutes, and other luxuries to oligarchs. Thanks to this their military is rather in shambles right now.
onlypassingthru 1 hours ago [-]
Does it? You think Russia can't corrupt a German Chancellor or a US President? Boy have I got news for you!
Terr_ 1 hours ago [-]
... Wow, this must be peak Kremlin shilling: Blaming other countries for Russia's decades of kleptocratic leadership and endemic corruption at all levels.
It's historically, financially, and strategically incoherent. Trying to bribe people who are already rich with hard-to-hide things, just to make them extra-corrupt in the vague hope that it somehow results in pilfered AK-47s being sold on the black market?
Sorry, but no: Being shaken down by Russian traffic cops for bribes every week is a domestic problem.
euroderf 6 hours ago [-]
A next step for them might be to disable/poison something like an entire urban water distribution system. But come to think of it, the US et al. might be able to do the same back to Russia. Because, you see, there is a whole 'nother ladder of escalation to explore.
A submarine cable is an attractive target for Russia because Russia doesn't have cables of their own exposed: Russia is a continental power, not a maritime alliance. A cable attack is an asymmetric attack, difficult to respond to appropriately.
mongol 4 hours ago [-]
I recently saw a cable from St Petersburg to Kaliningrad at one of these maps.
jajko 3 hours ago [-]
It would be a shame if somebody dragged a massive ship anchor over it by accident. Through potato field.
Terr_ 24 minutes ago [-]
Again? [0]
> The 1,000 kilometre (620 miles) Baltika cable belonging to state-owned Rostelecom runs from the region of St. Petersburg to the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad on the southern Baltic Sea.
> A gas pipeline linking Finland and Estonia and two other telecoms cables, connecting Estonia to Finland and Sweden, were also damaged last month. Finnish police believe damage to the Baltic connector gas pipeline was caused by a Chinese container ship dragging its anchor along the seabed but have not concluded whether this was an accident or a deliberate act.
> The Finnish coast guard said the Russian outage may be linked to the previously reported damage.
>"Beyond probing" would be actually launching attacks one way or another, which we haven't seen yet
he's saying "this was not a probe, this was an actually launched attack"
drtgh 6 hours ago [-]
> Blowing up of Nord Stream made Russia go ballistic
Russia started invading Ukraine six months before Nord Stream blow up. Previously Russia invaded Crimea in 2014.
The next invaded country, will be also an escalation?
All of this is about a few psychopaths filling their pockets with the money that generates the corpses of their criminal business, some encouraging the production of war, others encouraging the waging of war.
Why are these psychopaths and their "business" not prosecuted?
Numerlor 6 hours ago [-]
Because their prosecution means going to war. I don't know about you but as someone living less than 30 minutes from Ukraine I don't want my country to go to war.
jyounker 23 minutes ago [-]
If Ukraine falls, the war is coming whether we like it or not.
wbl 6 hours ago [-]
Si vis pacem, para bellum.
dgfitz 5 hours ago [-]
> If you want peace, prepare for war
mediaman 6 hours ago [-]
Who are you referring to? Putin and Russian oligarchs? If so, how would you imagine the mechanics of prosecuting them to work?
6 hours ago [-]
lifestyleguru 6 hours ago [-]
German political and industrial elite with their former chancellor are within the reach of Western jurisdiction. They were smirking at Trump when he was exactly pointing out their dependency on Russian gas so.... who knows...
llamaimperative 11 hours ago [-]
No, decades of rampant kleptocracy and alcoholism made Russia go ballistic
WalterSear 5 hours ago [-]
Decades? I suppose that 40 decades is still decades.
so i guess you've got russia all figured out. what's your excuse for the staggering amounts of violence and invasions from americans?
llamaimperative 8 hours ago [-]
A savior complex that's sometimes misled, sometimes absolutely warranted.
codezero 3 hours ago [-]
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mrguyorama 2 hours ago [-]
>This feels just like that now that you put it this way. I never connected those dots though.
Boxers learned from the art of war, not the other way around.
"Probing attacks" are a standard doctrine. It's not always a clear signal of intent to increase hostilities because it's also just useful as an intelligence gathering exercise.
viraptor 11 hours ago [-]
That's very similar to how the "accidental" flights over neighbouring territory works as far as I understand. This happens regularly between many countries. Just far enough to get some response, but not enough to get shot down immediately.
I cannot find any lists (either in English or Swedish) but I remember Russia has been accidentally breaking into Swedish airspace like once a year for as long as I can remember. Submarines also sometimes "accidentally" end up close to Swedish shores.
It'd be interesting to see some total numbers, and compare other countries with how often it happens between Sweden/Russia.
nabla9 9 hours ago [-]
Russia wants to end NATO without going to war with NATO.
NATO's political unity and ability to respond is tested with these attacks. Russia does them one after another gradually escalating. Russia maintains plausible deniability or does so small operations that they can always walk them back.
Eventually, some country invokes Article 4 or 5 consultations. Russia hopes that US, Hungary, or Germany waters down NATO response. The conflict continues, but between individual countries not under NATO. NATOs as a organization may continue, but raison d'être is gone.
dylan604 7 hours ago [-]
Russia and these NATO countries being probed are like the two siblings in the back seat. Mom, he's touching me. Stop touching your brother. Mom, he's holding his finger right next to me. Dad eventually says, don't make me pull this car over and start a global thermonuclear war
exceptione 4 hours ago [-]
Not quite. Be careful, Russia invests a lot in disinformation campaigns and spreading (conflicting, but that is part of their doctrine) narratives. Bothsidisms and False Equivalency are some of the common tools in muddying the information sphere.
NATO and Europe did quite a lot to normalize relations with Russia. Russia was invited and became participant of the NATO program Partnership For Peace [0].
The program contains 6 areas of cooperation, which aims to build relationships with partners through military-to-military cooperation on training, exercises, disaster planning and response, science and environmental issues, professionalization, policy planning, and relations with civilian government
Very nice, but the secret services that took over the empire did and does not fancy a rule-based, harmonious order based on mutual relations, human rights, freedom of press etc. As any autocracy or kleptocracy understands, that is very much a threat to their power, beacuse
- Population will demand political influence.
- Mindset. A criminal thinks in terms of I win, you lose. Might makes right. Complete opposite of what makes up the dna of the free world.
The imperative is on us to understand that message really well. It goes slowly unfortunately. It is hard for us to grok.
Notice how on our part, helped via tech oligarchs, there is an incessant bombardment to undermine support for those values. Kremlin troll factories are a thing, but the Chinese are speading up rapidly in the information sphere too. Especially youngsters are targeted.
The war has already begun, but we don´t want to see it. And that is dangerous.
> Be careful, Russia invests a lot in disinformation campaigns and spreading (conflicting, but that is part of their doctrine) narratives.
You may also want to be careful (or not):
- all countries engage in these things
- how things are seem like how they seem, but this is very often not the case...and rather than consciousness raising warnings for such situations, it very often does the opposite
As always, I recommend a meta-perspective on geopolitical stories, it is much more fun than being a Normative, poorly constrained imagination actor like the vast majority of people.
coupdejarnac 2 hours ago [-]
> - all countries engage in these things
And thus the disinformation campaign has succeeded, as you've turned off your brain and refused to address the threat.
exceptione 2 hours ago [-]
I certainly welcome critical thinking. How GOP got of the rails with the adventures of Bush Jr (War on Terror) is worthy of deep analysis. Backed by Russia, which might give you a pause.
Geopolitical affairs are indeed difficult to follow. It requires deep internal domain(s!) knowledge, which does not fit your average corporate media business model. The niche outlets that do have a capable editorial board are threatened by takeovers [1, 2] from the likes of Axel Springer [3]. 1 Billion USD for Politico. An idiotic sum for a buyer that small, Wikipedia might pique your interest [3]. That is not to say that Politico is useless now, but you can count on journalistic degradation over time.
But sweeping statements are not of help to get a sharper picture. Instead they risk promoting false equivalence and may turn participants(!) of democracies into passive nihilists. Which is precisely the aim of the foreign influence we are talking about.
It takes one hour to listen. Take notes and verify the facts afterwards. No disinformation there, much less Russian.
exceptione 3 hours ago [-]
Mearsheimer has been debunked many a times and his theory just doesn´t hold up with reality. I am not going to debunk it, because I will repeat what other really respectable people have said about the subject.
Just one rebuttal, but there are many more to be found on the internet.
Mearsheimer, who bases his theory on 'Putin never lies'. Sorry if that's your starting point then you're just promoting fantasy.
callc 5 hours ago [-]
Humorous yet concerning that our governments act like children.
wbl 4 hours ago [-]
Except its always Russia instigating. We never sent someone to look at the spire of Saint Basil (the pathetic excuse offered for explaining the presence of GRU officers in Salisbury carrying out chemical warfare), or really struck at their weak points.
dylan604 2 hours ago [-]
Are you actually saying the US has never engaged in propaganda within another country or attempted to influence the outcomes of their elections or influence their populace to rise up against their leaders?
You cannot be serious with that kind of belief
wbl 2 hours ago [-]
But of a jump from that to spraying poison all over the place.
dylan604 2 hours ago [-]
Not really sure what you're referring. The US has most definitely sprayed poison all over the place in South America with cocoa plant eradication efforts. Or Agent Orange in South East Asia.
If you mean poison as in disinformation, then you'd be wrong there as well. We literally "bombed" Iraq with pamphlets from airplanes encouraging them to rise up against Suddam and we'd be there to support them; we didn't.
Sabinus 42 minutes ago [-]
No, the GP means literal poison. Neurotoxin, specifically.
This is strange to me because this is basically forcing drills that better prepare their enemy.
michaelt 4 hours ago [-]
Sound the fire alarm over a birthday cake candle once, and you've got a drill making people get better at evacuating.
Sound the fire alarm over a birthday cake candle several times a week, and people learn the alarm means there's no fire, no need to rush, they've got time to finish that e-mail and grab their coat.
kube-system 4 hours ago [-]
If you never go to war with your enemy, your enemy's continued preparations are wasted money and resources (both political and economic), aren't they?
krisbolton 12 hours ago [-]
While not directly addressing undersea cable sabotage this is a comprehensive open access article with case studies on 'hybrid warfare' which provides context to these types of actions. 'Shadows of power beneath the threshold: where covert action, organized crime and irregular warfare converge' - https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/02684527.2024.2...
toast0 3 hours ago [-]
Ok there's all the signalling between states that breaking a cable has. That also works for false flag operations, or true flag operations while making it look like a false flag operation (etc).
But also, cutting these cables doesn't stop communications. There are other land and undersea routes, and maybe terrestrial radio/satellite routes as well. You might damage these cables so that communications travel other routes which are more observable (or less observable). Or you might damage these cables so you can modify them elsewhere to enhance observability before they're repaired (or as part of the repair process).
Or it could be a training mission for your elite squad of cable biting sharks.
Lots of potential for intrigue here.
threeseed 14 hours ago [-]
When Trump becomes President next year he is expected to demand that Ukraine settle the war with Russia or risk losing US aid and military support. It is why Russia is throwing everything at re-taking Kursk and US is now allowing long range strikes.
If the EU decides to join the US the war is over and Russia will keep the occupied lands. If the EU decides to support Ukraine then because of the devastating sanctions there is a strong chance Russia loses.
So it's in Russia's interest to make life as difficult as possible for Europe over the coming months in order to convince them that ending the war is in their best interest.
pvaldes 19 minutes ago [-]
> So it's in Russia's interest to make life as difficult as possible for Europe over the coming months
Unsurprisingly this week after Macron speech, "French" farmers decided to organize again on groups directed by leaders and block and destroy Spanish cargo trucks at the frontier, without any policemen to be found at place.
Is obvious that somebody is trying again the old trick to confront and divide in the EU. We had seen the same before in Poland, etc.
But a trick overused can became counterproductive. I'm sure that Macron and other in EU can sum deux and deux and understand that surrender is not an option anymore. Is not just Ukraine but also their own political survival what is at stake. If they let this agents roam free and grow, they will lose gradually the power.
diggan 11 hours ago [-]
> If the EU decides to join the US the war is over and Russia will keep the occupied lands.
As a European, I'd say there is just about 0 chance of the EU unilaterally supporting Russian taken any occupied areas to themselves and Ukraine surrendering. Not only would it signal to Russia that they can take European land without consequences, but public opinion is very much against any sort of cessation of defenses. In my ~30 years I've never seen as strong NATO support from the common man in countries like Sweden and Spain as there is today.
bananapub 11 hours ago [-]
> As a European, I'd say there is just about 0 chance of the EU unilaterally supporting Russian taken any occupied areas to themselves
I agree, but it's not about accepting or saying it's a good idea, it's about whether European countries can replace the US support enough that Ukraine can reasonably keep defending themselves.
onlyrealcuzzo 2 hours ago [-]
> it's about whether European countries can replace the US support enough that Ukraine can reasonably keep defending themselves.
Your economy is nearly 10 times the size of Russia.
If Russia can continue, then you can almost 10 times more easily.
It's not a "can" issue. It's a "are you willing to do more than absolute minimum?" issue.
diggan 11 hours ago [-]
I don't know if EU would be able to match the current support the US gives to Ukraine (maybe it already does? Or maybe it exceeds? I don't know either way) but what I'm sure off is that Europe won't stop trying even if it wouldn't be enough.
adriand 10 hours ago [-]
If you add up all the aid from the US and compare it to aid from the EU plus European nations, I think the share of contributions is roughly equal. But if that’s right (and I did the math in my head while scrolling a huge spreadsheet on my phone), then the loss of support from the US is significant. The US ability to produce armaments is also unparalleled in the West, so a loss of that supply is also a huge issue. Then you have the loss of the US as a military backer which may free Putin to be more aggressive - dirty bombs, tactical nukes, blowing up a nuclear reactor, assassinating Ukrainian leadership, who knows what. It’s a huge problem for Ukraine if they lose the US. But will they? It’s hard to know for certain.
bluGill 8 hours ago [-]
Europe is great at producing armaments as well - but there are a lot of useful armaments that are only produced in the US. If you had to choose either EU or US support, the US is the better option as they can give you things that the EU cannot even though the EU has more people than the US and a good economy.
The Patriot system is one the of best examples. EU doesn't really have anything in this space, but Ukraine needs more of it yesterday.
diggan 7 hours ago [-]
> The Patriot system is one the of best examples. EU doesn't really have anything in this space, but Ukraine needs more of it yesterday.
The full setup for missile defense. This includes radar, computers and so on.
apelapan 3 hours ago [-]
The European system often contain some American components. Perhaps the French a bit less so.
This has turned out to be a major problem, as the US has used their re-export restrictions on components to block very significant parts of planned European military aid to Ukraine.
I speculate that there will be (already is) some extremely heavy investments in military tech R&D to remove/reduce dependence on American components going forward. As a continent, we can't have our hands tied like this in future conflicts.
diggan 10 hours ago [-]
Thanks a lot for doing that, even thought kind of ad-hoc :) Some data for guesses is better than none!
I'm guessing that if US pulls their support, EU will try to add as much to cover up for it as humanly possible, as most compatriots see Ukraine as the frontline of something that can grow much, much bigger which because of remembering history, we'd obviously like to avoid.
sabbaticaldev 11 hours ago [-]
how sure are you? I think the economic struggles + losing US support would make every incumbent leader lose their jobs until UE is full of Trump supporters
diggan 11 hours ago [-]
Fairly confident, at least for the countries I frequent and have friends in. As an example, public opinion of NATO in Sweden was really negative up until ~2013 (Crimea occupation) where it kind of was equally positive/negative and then fast forward to today where it's at 64% positive. https://www.gu.se/en/news/opinion-on-nato-record-shift-betwe...
Being a Swede myself, and knowing how apathetic Swedish people are about basically anything, something having that large of support is pretty uncommon and signal a strong will to make NATO and EU defenses stronger, if anything.
Even people I know who been historically anti-"anything military" in the country have quickly turned into "We need to defend our Nordic brothers and sisters against the Russians" which kind of took me by surprise.
> UE is full of Trump supporters
That won't ever happen. Even right-wingers (Europe right, not US right) are laughing at Trump and the Republicans.
thaklea 10 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
honzabe 8 hours ago [-]
> Public opinion is against further weapons shipments to Ukraine
The linked article is about the opinion of Germans about shipments of German weapons. When you don't specify that in the context of this thread, which is about Europe, not Germany, people might mistakenly interpret that as data about Europe.
sekai 4 hours ago [-]
Okay, now let's see polls for Poland, Finland, or UK.
diggan 8 hours ago [-]
I know there are some countries where support is less than in other places (Germany being one, as you highlighted).
I still stand by my original statement that unilateral decision in EU of stop supporting Ukraine and letting Russia keep the occupied territories.
rksbank 8 hours ago [-]
Support in Germany is the same as support in Ukraine itself (according to the above Gallup poll at least).
Support in other European countries does not differ much from Germany:
Unfortunately, many of my German countrymen are either stupid or complacent for not wanting more weapon deliveries, so a striving democracy can defend itself.
danielovichdk 2 hours ago [-]
Would be an economical win for Europe if the US drew their aid. The amount of money needed to be spent in military aid across Europe would create markets within the region that would in the longer run create good wealth.
Alone from that reason, USA will not pull their aid. USA cannot afford losing Europe as an arms client
ssijak 12 hours ago [-]
"If the EU decides to support Ukraine then because of the devastating sanctions there is a strong chance Russia loses."
How did that not work then yet?
justin66 11 hours ago [-]
They question you're really asking is "why is the war taking so long?"
Because it's a war.
misja111 4 hours ago [-]
I think he is asking how well the devastating sanctions have been working so far.
Which is a retorical question of course, because obviously they haven't harmed Russia all that much. Actually, they are hurting the EU as well because of the risen energy prices.
sekai 4 hours ago [-]
> haven't harmed Russia all that much
Ruble is below a single penny.
Interest rates are at 21%, highest since 2003.
Inflation is out of control.
Not really all that rosy.
sabbaticaldev 11 hours ago [-]
look, if someone looks like they are losing a war in the beginning, middle and the end act of it, I wouldn’t have much faith that extending it is the best solution to finally win.
llamaimperative 11 hours ago [-]
Tautological
The Nazis were mopping the floor with Europe until they weren’t. The Japanese were conquering Asia until they weren’t.
lukan 10 hours ago [-]
But obligatory reminder, that back then there were no nukes. So it is not exactly the same situation.
lpcvoid 4 hours ago [-]
Russia will not use nukes. If you believe they will, then they have you exactly where they want you to be.
lukan 3 hours ago [-]
So how do you know that?
Why wouldn't russia use a tactical nuke in west Ukraine to destroy tank factories? They already are a international Pariah, that is why they align with North Korea.
The only answer is - to remain the last standing they have. But at some point, they might not care. It is dangerous to put someone with nukes in a desperate position. Putin would not survive retreating from Ukraine - he would be in a desperate position if the odds of war are against him - currently they ain't.
aguaviva 3 hours ago [-]
Why wouldn't russia use a tactical nuke in west Ukraine to destroy tank factories?
Because the Biden administration communicated to its regime (in late 2022) that this would definitely trigger a massive kinetic response. In particular it indicated that its ground forces in Ukraine would be utterly destroyed (as Putin knows it is very much capable of doing).
lukan 3 hours ago [-]
Talking and doing are not the same thing. Geopolitics is like Poker, who is bluffing and who is calling it.
You are saying only Putin is bluffing - well, I do read russian military blogs/telegram chats. Spoiler: they also think Biden is bluffing.
Don't you see, how this can turn out wrong?
aguaviva 3 hours ago [-]
Anything can happen, and people say all sorts of stuff online.
But from the fact that the warning was expresed privately, and using carefully chosen language (unlike Putin's warnings, which are generally aimed at the public sphere, and are full of bluster) -- and considering, again, that the US is fully capable of carrying through with its promise in this regard -- it seems likely the message was received as intended.
Could still go wrong, but the likelihood of things going wrong by not promising any sufficiently serious consequences at all to Russia's regime if it actually deploys nukes seems to be (unequivocally) far greater.
lukan 2 hours ago [-]
If the warning would have been really private, you would not know about it. Since you know about it - it was apparently rather a public statement as well. We both don't know about the real backroom deals and what exact words are used there. What are the real red lines that are communicated behind the curtains - most of those statements are just show. Part of the game. I am pretty sure, that Putin would like to remain in power and not radiated. But I would not bet on it. There are rumors he is sick - and sacrifice and suffering is somehow part of the russian mentality.
llamaimperative 2 hours ago [-]
The threat is public so people like you can go and sow fear because Russia itself has been revealed as a paper tiger. Kleptocracy can only take a modern civilization so far.
lukan 2 hours ago [-]
"because Russia itself has been revealed as a paper tiger."
I see, you have personally checked the russian nukes and found they are all worthless? Or have access to top secret informations confirming that?
Otherwise it seems a bit out of this world, to claim the country with the most nukes on earth is a paper tiger.
And the russian conventional military is far from a paper tiger as well. That tale comes from the fantasy, that Ukraine is facing russia alone. But the whole NATO is supporting it. Without NATOs weapons and money, Ukraine would have been russian since over 2 years.
But yes, I do have fear. But more from people like you, who look at reality in a way, that fits their ideology.
Just assume for a moment, you are wrong. What would happen as a result, if the people in command would think like you?
3 hours ago [-]
llamaimperative 9 hours ago [-]
Eh, MAD brings us back to equilibrium. It's a significantly more dangerous equilibrium, for sure, but we should be much more afraid of a nuclear accident (not reactor meltdowns but accidental weapon launch) than of purposeful use of a nuclear weapon.
lukan 7 hours ago [-]
Well, the result is the same, no? If one rocket flies, chances are, they will all fly.
actionfromafar 10 hours ago [-]
Neither is now the situation exactly that having nukes, means you can tell everyone to back down and do exactly as you say or else.
meiraleal 9 hours ago [-]
The nazis won many wars even tho they lost the big one. Will NATO win against Russia? Who knows. But in the showdown NATO/Ukraine vs Russia, they lost.
llamaimperative 9 hours ago [-]
“NATO/Ukraine”? I am literally giggling at the absurdity :D Get a grip.
Russia is getting bombed every day and doesn’t even hold all of its initial territory. It is not clear who will win this.
It is extremely obvious that Russia would be crushed within days by a confrontation with NATO (but this conflict almost certainly wouldn't materialize due to nuclear weapons).
justin66 7 hours ago [-]
> It is extremely obvious that Russia would be crushed within days by a confrontation with NATO (but this conflict almost certainly wouldn't materialize due to nuclear weapons).
It's interesting the extent to which people haven't internalized this. Russia's industry has really ramped up on military production in the past two years, and their military will eventually get to the point where it can cause tremendous damage against a poorly-equipped Ukraine, through attrition. But the invasion revealed how far behind they are technologically, and a combined NATO force would turn off their entire military's command and control on day one of a real conflict.
It's an inversion of the situation forty or fifty years ago, when Europe had to rely on the the nuclear threat because the Russian conventional forces were considered to be overwhelming.
chinathrow 12 hours ago [-]
It would be so nice to not be dragged into this war by the aggressor. Russia is playing a very stupid game here.
mschuster91 12 hours ago [-]
> Russia is playing a very stupid game here.
They are not, if you take the larger context into account - and that is China and their saber rattling not just against Taiwan but also against everyone else in what China thinks is "their" influence sphere such as the Philippines.
Russia's warmongering (not just in Ukraine, but also via Syria, Iran and Yemen!) is breaking apart both the US and EU internally - recent elections have shown that both populations are pretty much fed up with the wars and their consequences, and once enough countries either fall to Putin's 5th column outright or their governments pull a Chamberlain, China can be relatively certain no one will intervene too much when they decide that now is the best time to annex other countries.
justin66 11 hours ago [-]
I wonder if anyone thinks this seems likely:
American Secretary of Defense: "Mr. President, the Chinese just destroyed our Naval base in the Philippines, killing hundreds of US servicemen. As part of a plan to annex the country or something."
American president: "Let's not intervene too much."
mschuster91 10 hours ago [-]
I don't think the Chinese will attack US infrastructure or vessels directly, they are not that stupid - but they did attack Philippine ships in what is widely recognized Philippine territory [1] or fish illegally in Philippine territory [2].
The only response the entire West was able to give in years of Chinese transgressions were strong words, about as effective as "thoughts and prayers". China is a bully that escalates continuously (similar to Russia's behavior in Syria with the countless "red lines" that were crossed, eventually including chemical weapons) and needs to be brought to its knees before they one day trigger WW3 by accident.
Putin and Xi's big advantage over the US is that American presidents get elected every 4 years. If they gradually encroach on their neighbors and make intervention unpopular in the US via propaganda they don't need to attack a US base.
mindslight 4 hours ago [-]
The other big issue is US adventurism in Iraq (and to a lesser extent Afghanistan) has made US citizens wary of any international actions, no matter the details. It's especially galling how many of the same people who were cheering on the direct military conquering of Iraq are now against supporting Ukraine at an arms length. "Can't get fooled again", indeed.
justin66 2 hours ago [-]
> The other big issue is US adventurism in Iraq (and to a lesser extent Afghanistan) has made US citizens wary of any international actions, no matter the details.
That this is not as big a deal as you think was the reason for my grandparent post. The "US citizens wary" thing can reverse itself the moment Americans are killed by a hostile adversary.
throwawaymaths 11 hours ago [-]
Well the result of China's 5d chess has been to install a leader in the US that is likely to escalate a trade war with china when with an impending demographic crisis they most need someone to stop the trade war. Sheer genius!
mschuster91 11 hours ago [-]
The problem with dictators of all kinds is that their personal concerns (say, appearing before the local populace as "the one who re-unified China") can and will trump over what makes sense for the country long-term.
Of course that can and does also happen in democracies, but at least most reasonable democracies have some sort of "checks and balances" that at least prevents open war from breaking out.
llamaimperative 11 hours ago [-]
The world will be looking to China as a stable partner while the US voluntarily dismantles its economy and very possibly its political system.
So yeah, the US absolutely got outplayed here.
throwawaymaths 8 hours ago [-]
The us is currently one of the most stable economies, so there's a long way to go.
I think it's unlikely that the world will pick an economic partner that:
- builds 90% of the new coal fired plants while the rest of the world (including the US) is decarbonizing
- has 280+% debt to GDP ratio
- has capital controls on its currency (the real exchange rate could change suddenly at the drop of a hat)
llamaimperative 8 hours ago [-]
Well... that stuff will be easier to overlook when the US deploys its military to deport millions of people operating the most foundational portions of its economy like agriculture and construction.
throwawaymaths 7 hours ago [-]
OK this is some sort of "America bad" fever dream. Listen America isn't perfect or anything, but you're basically looking down the barrel of crazy if you ignore the steel advantages that the US has, and the history and pattern of US recovery from crises
llamaimperative 6 hours ago [-]
It isn't "America bad" at all! I believe America is the greatest country in the world, its economy is clearly second to none, and it's clearly the best trading partner for the vast majorities of nations. I also believe America will almost certainly recover from whatever dark period it's (probably) about to endure.
But I'm also well aware of the fact the US has gone through extremely dark periods and its past success is not a promise of future success. At the end of the day a country very possibly plunged into Great Depression II and almost certainly with trade policy changing by the day is not a good trading partner.
There is a very real possibility that we deport our way into a famine. The US economy cannot possibly sustain the type of deportations that have been promised and are already being put into motion by the incoming administration.
dark_glass 4 hours ago [-]
This was also said about slavery and the economy prospered post-slavery. The US economy is absolutely sustainable by paying citizens legal wages. In fact, it is unsustainable to encourage illegal labor and immigration.
llamaimperative 3 hours ago [-]
I didn't say anything about long-term viability. I am talking about near-term shocks and then questioning how long a recovery would take. The south's economy was in ruins post-Civil War and only revitalized through immense subsidy, aid, and debt programs. Broadly speaking, the South was in deep, destitute poverty until the New Deal (that is more than sixty years for anyone counting at home!).
Obviously most of that devastation was from the war itself, but if every enslaved person in the country were shipped back to Africa (as many proposed at the time), it absolutely would've had deeply negative near-term consequences. To suggest otherwise is to suggest that economies don't actually depend on labor. Dismissible on its face! And to be explicit: those near-term consequences were morally necessary to bear anyway.
> In fact, it is unsustainable to encourage illegal labor and immigration.
Not sure what this is responding to, tbh
mschuster91 2 hours ago [-]
> > In fact, it is unsustainable to encourage illegal labor and immigration.
> Not sure what this is responding to, tbh
I think this is related to this here:
> The US economy is absolutely sustainable by paying citizens legal wages.
They do have a point there - their argument (as I read it) is that the widespread use of undocumented/illegal labor and the exploitation of these laborers in agriculture has led to an economic gridlock situation: employers make big bucks by not paying their fair share in social security and taxes, fair employers have a hard time competing on price because the cost of fair, legal labor is too high, and they cannot raise prices to a sustainable level because the consumers have no money to pay for that because they themselves don't get paid fairly.
The associated economic theory is commonly associated with the economic effects of minimum wage hikes - these lead (despite all the Corporate Whining) to economic growth because the lowest rungs of society, those actually living on minimum wage, go and immediately spend their additional money, similar to what happened with the Covid stimulus checks, while the upper levels of society hoard additional income and do not directly contribute to economic growth.
mschuster91 6 hours ago [-]
> and the history and pattern of US recovery from crises
Well at least in prior crises, the US had sensible leadership on both sides that was willing to put country before party.
The 47th however? Not just the man himself but especially the cabinet picks are an utter joke. None of the currently known picks are known for any kind of competence or even experience in their respective fields, and there are ideas floating to have the Senate go into recess so the 47th can appoint them without the usual review process - astonishing in itself given that the Republicans control the full Congress, they shouldn't have to fear any of their candidates not getting past the Senate. What politics they want to follow is just as dangerous - Musk and DOGE slashing 2 trillion $ from government expenditure for example, large parts of the government will literally be unable to do their job (which is, among others, to handle crises).
tzs 5 hours ago [-]
China is building new coal plants but the their utilization rate is going down and is expected to continue to go down because of all the solar, hydro, and nuclear plants they are building.
As far as stability goes, the comment above you talked about a stable trading partner, not a stable economy. China is probably more stable as a trading partner than the US is. The US changes trade policy too often.
mrguyorama 1 hours ago [-]
Ah yes, Trump famously hates china,
How well did that trade war go last time he was in office? Trick question, farmers got fucked, and rational minds agree that the US lost.
>Initiating steel and aluminium tariff actions in March 2018, Trump said "trade wars are good, and easy to win,"[54] but as the conflict continued to escalate through August 2019, Trump stated, "I never said China was going to be easy."
It doesn't matter what you claim to want to do or who you claim to "hate" if your sheer incompetence prevents you from accomplishing your desire.
Maybe putting a serial business failure in charge of a trade war isn't very effective?
Biden didn't get rid of them, because it's basically impossible to unwind a trade war, and then put some more limitations on solar panels. I don't think there is a clear answer yet on Biden's addition to the trade war. Probably will be "meh".
A trade war between the US and China is almost always going to be extremely negative sum. Both of our countries rely on each other for prosperity and nice shit.
chinathrow 12 hours ago [-]
Sure, but I am commenting from a non-military, non-geopolitics, non-strategy related background: It's a stupid game. Stupid in the sense of: I don't like it, I don't want to play it, thus it's stupid.
jacknews 12 hours ago [-]
Plausible.
But alternatively, it is the outgoing Biden administration that do not want a freeze, and are escalating their involvement in the war, by giving permission to use their long-range missiles to attack inside Russia, in order to derail any potential 'agreement'.
And they are now sewing the press with 'hybrid war' mania. I see news sites are now plastered with fearmongering stories about embassies being closed in Kyiv, that Ukraine front might collapse without aid, and so on and on. Note that none of it is actual Russian attacks or any actual events, just fear of them. It looks very much like a media campaign to me.
edit: oh dear, a few people on HN really do not like this take, without offering any take-down, which just makes me think there's probably something to it.
ethbr1 11 hours ago [-]
Russia has been striking civilian targets throughout Ukraine with ballistic missiles since the beginning of the war.
How is allowing Ukraine to use ATACMS on military targets in Russia an escalation?
jacknews 11 hours ago [-]
That's beside the point.
It is a very clear escalation in US/European involvement. Ukraine were prohibited from using long-range western weapons to attack targets inside Russia up until now.
I'm not saying if it's right or wrong.
But it's a very clear escalation in western 'participation'. Russia have for a long time been saying that such action would be tantamount to a NATO attack, and so everyone involved surely understands that this is an escalation in the NATO-Russia face-off.
ceejayoz 11 hours ago [-]
> Russia have for a long time been saying that such action would be tantamount to a NATO attack
They say this every time. When Obama sent non-lethal aid, they used the same line.
jacknews 11 hours ago [-]
none-the-less, it is a clear escalation ON THE INVOLVEMENT OF EUROPE AND THE US in the war.
It is not that Ukraine are escalating the war by using long-range missiles. Of course Russia have been using them all along.
But it is a clear escalation in western 'participation' in the war.
soco 11 hours ago [-]
So "finally replying to constant attacks" gets redefined by putin as escalation, no surprise here. Or is there any other argument I'm missing?
valval 25 minutes ago [-]
Well the somewhat obvious thing you’re missing is that Russia is waging a war against Ukraine, not the US or NATO.
From that follows the logical conclusion that it’s not the US’ or NATO’s job to “reply to constant attacks”, and instead getting involved in the conflict is just that — waging war against Russia.
mapt 11 hours ago [-]
That is a very particular use of the term 'escalation' which is bound to mislead people.
Normally, if we show up at the flagpole at noon to confront each other, and you throw a punch, you have escalated things to a fistfight, and then my return punch is not an escalation. If I pull a knife, I have escalated things to a knife fight. We escalate from fist to knife to gun. Reciprocation - self defense - does not count.
The only way to torture the term into contextual use is to suggest that Russia is not firing rockets at NATO because Ukraine is not NATO, but NATO is firing rockets at Russia because all these missile systems are not Ukrainian, but NATO. This is Putin's framing, and it incorporates the idea that the missile systems are actually being manned but US & EU soldiers.
If you are not adopting that frame, "escalation" only really works if you explicitly define the context as a Great Powers proxy war with a potential nuclear endpoint, where Ukraine is stipulated for the sake of argument to have no agency.
honzabe 7 hours ago [-]
> That is a very particular use of the term 'escalation' which is bound to mislead people.
I am not the OP, but I think your interpretation is not as obvious as you make it to be. This often leads to misunderstandings.
AFAIK military analysts use the term escalation as a morally neutral term. Escalation is anything that goes up on the 'scala' (= "ladder", the Latin root of the word). In this interpretation, D-Day would be an e_scala_tion (climbing up the ladder) simply because opening a new front means number_of_fronts_today > number_of_fronts_yesterday. In this interpretation, self-defense and escalation are not mutually exclusive.
Apparently, the term changed meaning. Many people now treat it the way you do (if I understand you correctly) as something associated with aggression. Therefore, they assume that when someone labels something like an escalation, they mean it is an act of aggression, unjustified, something you should not be allowed to do, and not morally neutral.
I am not saying you are wrong. I am just pointing out that when people talk about escalation, it is worth checking whether they mean the same escalation.
sabbaticaldev 10 hours ago [-]
Right. URSS putting nuclear missiles in Cuba was not an escalation then.
throwaway2037 10 hours ago [-]
I only learned about this a few years ago. Before the Cuban Missile Crisis (where Russia installed nuclear missiles in Cuba), the US installed nukes in Italy and Turkey. This made USSR very upset. Plus, the US was heavily meddling in Cuban domestic affairs. The first two paragraphs are very instructive here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuban_Missile_Crisis
My point: I think USSR (and Cuba) had a good reason to install those missiles. It wasn't an unprovoked action.
tmnvix 4 hours ago [-]
And as I understand it, part of the solution to the Cuban Missile Crisis involved the US quietly agreeing to abandon the placement of nukes in Turkey.
There is some analogy here for the Ukraine NATO situation.
ethbr1 4 hours ago [-]
Definitely! I think the obvious quid-pro-quo would be if Russia and Ukraine both agree to stop targeting anything behind the current front lines.
Arguably, this would even be in Russia's favor, given its manpower advantage. But Ukraine might agree to it to stop civilian terror and power infrastructure attacks.
mistercheph 3 hours ago [-]
If a robber is holding an innocent at gunpoint and the innocent pulls out a gun and starts pointing it at the robber, has the situation escalated?
ceejayoz 2 hours ago [-]
I mean, maybe. If the robber is using a replica firearm, the innocent may have successfully deescalated the situation.
The question in this thread is more along the lines of "if the robber shouts 'fighting back is a red line!', should we avoid fighting back?"
mistercheph 2 hours ago [-]
Whether or not the innocent should avoid fighting back and whether or not fighting back would result in an escalation are two separate questions
ceejayoz 2 hours ago [-]
Only sorta; they've heavily linked.
The current war in Ukraine is a direct result of the international community not making much fuss when Russia, largely unopposed, took chunks of Moldova, Georgia, and Ukraine over the last few decades.
As with appeasing Hitler, we prioritized short-term quiet for longer-term encouragement of aggression.
jacknews 8 hours ago [-]
Ukraine is very clearly a proxy war between NATO and Russia, merely framed as a plucky country defending it's sovereignty, though it is that too, of course.
With all the backlash here, I feel like some kind of radical, but here is a BBC article from 2 DAYS AGO that basically says what I'm saying: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cx2nrlq1840o
Although they miss out the bit about a media campaign, and so on, of course.
This is the BBC, pretty much the mouthpiece of the UK government.
And although they frame recent actions as trying to give Ukraine an advantage in any Trump negotiations with Russia, the truth is that these missiles will probably not advance Ukraine's military position, but will certainly change Europe and America's standing, possibly to the point of derailing any possibility of negotiation.
ethbr1 6 hours ago [-]
> though [Ukraine] is [a plucky country defending it's sovereignty] too, of course
No "too"
It is only that.
If Russia retreated behind its internationally recognized borders and returned Crimea today, Ukraine would stop attacking it today.
That tells you everything you need to know about who the aggressor and escalator is in this conflict.
Anything else is a Russian talking point in service to their trying to lose fewer troops while invading a neighboring country.
jacknews 5 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
ethbr1 5 hours ago [-]
> yeah, fook off, you have nothing to say.
Oh, sorry, I was under the impression you wanted a discussion.
> edit: oh dear, a few people on HN really do not like this take, without offering any take-down
If you just wanted to complain, but not have anyone challenge your opinions, you should have phrased the above differently.
jacknews 5 hours ago [-]
Indeed, you are right, and I apologize.
I took your comment to be a dismissive 'Russia should just retreat' directive.
Ain't gonna happen.
And The problem is, Ukraine really is not just a simple country that got invaded. It really matters, for the whole world, if we let Russia get away with aggression. It matters if we push too hard and in the chaos Russia unleashes nuclear weapons. It matters how the west conducts supposed peace-keeping operations, etc. It's reallt is not just about Ukraine, and the very fact that you (probably not Ukrainian or Russian) are commenting is evidence.
ethbr1 4 hours ago [-]
Absolutely! The thing that rubs me the wrong way is that Russia has very intentionally used nuclear sabre rattling in an attempt to limit the flow of Western military aid to Ukraine.
Unfortunately for the world, that's an extremely dangerous propaganda approach to take, because it blurs the actual red lines that Russia would resort to nuclear retaliation. (Of which Russia certainly has some! And possibly even some within Ukraine's military ability to inadvertently cross)
Trusting that "Russia never means what it says" is problematic on so many levels.
Imho, the biggest mistake in the West's approach to the entire war has been its failure to proactively announce military aid changes and the conditions that would trigger them.
It's like the West collectively forgot how to properly create deterrence in the 1960s sense.
F.ex. the West could have publicly announced "If Russia receives military aid from North Korea or Iran, in the form of ammunition or soldiers, then we will provide additional long range strike options to Ukraine and authorize their use against Russian territory."
That might have encouraged Russia to self-limit and not pursue those actions.
Instead, it's been a hamfisted, weak display of waiting for Russia to do something, then hurriedly conferring behind closed doors, then announcing a reaction.
Which... the entire point of deterrence is to cause the opponent not to take the action in the first place. >.<
ceejayoz 8 hours ago [-]
Your link backs up what people here are trying to get across to you:
> Russia has set out “red lines” before. Some, including providing modern battle tanks and fighter jets to Ukraine, have since been crossed without triggering a direct war between Russia and Nato.
And no-one has been 'getting anything across to me', inferring that I'm 'not getting it'. They've been throwing incomplete or irrational arguments, like yours, or simply downvoting.
Sure there have been 'red lines' by Russia, and the US has continuously pushed across them.
But this one was also a US 'red line'. Consistent with keeping a proxy-war in-theater.
Why have they crossed it, now?
What do they hope it will achieve?
Most likely very little militarily.
But maybe quite a lot in shaping or constraining future US policy.
ceejayoz 7 hours ago [-]
> But this one was also a US 'red line'. Consistent with keeping a proxy-war in-theater. Why have they crossed it, now?
For the same reason they crossed all the others - continued Russian aggression.
Each expansion of US aid or reduction in restrictions on how that aid is utilized has followed logically from Russian actions. Obama started with non-lethal aid; we've initially balked at every single step since that before eventually going "ok, now it's warranted".
It's very clear the US is keeping responses small and incremental to take the wind out of Russian bluster about nuclear holocaust if they do this one more little thing to piss Putin off. It's also very clear the Russian "no don't send Javelins/HIMARS/Patriots/Abrams/MiGs/F-16s/ATACMS, we'll be very mad" has lost a lot of its potency.
jacknews 7 hours ago [-]
So what, would you say, triggered the US to cross their own red line, and a rather obvious principle of proxy warfare?
And, backtracking, how aware have you been about the situation in Ukraine, or baltic sea infrastructure, in the past few months (even year), compared to the last week? Just a marginal increment, no doubt.
ceejayoz 6 hours ago [-]
> So what, would you say, triggered the US to cross their own red line...
I'd first reject the use of the term "red line" entirely for the ATACMS situation.
"No, not ever" is a red line. The Russians love issuing these for other people, but it's embarassing when they're crossed without significant consequence.
"No, not now" is not a red line. The US tends to shy away from issuing them - one of Obama's biggest mistakes was proclaiming one in Syria and then looking a bit feckless when they violated it. (https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/the-president-bli...)
Letting Ukraine hit Russian territory with ATACMS is like the fourth or fifth expansion of how they're permitted to use that weapons system so far, as was giving them ATACMS in the first place after HIMARS (which saw a similar set of gradually reduced limitations; https://www.defensenews.com/land/2022/07/08/us-to-send-more-...).
> And, backtracking, how aware have you been about the situation in Ukraine, or baltic sea infrastructure, in the past few months (even year), compared to the last week? Just a marginal increment, no doubt.
I've closely followed the situation in Ukraine since Euromaidan.
aguaviva 5 hours ago [-]
Here is a BBC article from 2 DAYS AGO that basically says what I'm saying
Which says nothing at all about the conflict being "a proxy war".
jacknews 5 hours ago [-]
nitpick.
It exactly states that Biden might be stirring things up in anticipation of Trump sueing for a freeze.
aguaviva 5 hours ago [-]
Which still says nothing about the conflict being fundamentally a proxy war.
Symbiote 11 hours ago [-]
The USA, UK and France approving the use of the long-range missiles was described as a response to Russia using North Korean soldiers.
jacknews 8 hours ago [-]
A fair point, but described by who?
And was this just a post-hoc justification, or had the western powers declared that they would retaliate if Russia involved other armies?
In any case, surely the 'punishment' should be directed at North Korea?
ethbr1 6 hours ago [-]
Why should it be directed at North Korea?
North Korean troops are helping Russia invade Ukraine (by freeing up Russian garrison troops to participate in their offensive).
Ergo, redress is something that helps Ukraine resist the military advantage North Korean involvement gives Russia -- e.g. being able to target Russian military targets supporting the invasion, in Russia.
dragonwriter 6 hours ago [-]
> In any case, surely the 'punishment' should be directed at North Korea?
The problem is at least as much Russia inviting NK as North Korea positively responding, aiding Ukraine works against all the belligerents aligned against it, NK as well as Russia, and the North Koreans in Russia are not protected by the Armistice the way North Koreans on the Korean peninsula are.
no_exit 5 hours ago [-]
North Korean soldiers that mysteriously have yet to materialize in a fashion that isn't blatant propaganda.
preisschild 11 hours ago [-]
> are escalating the war (they started, with the long-range missiles),
Wrong. Using long range missiles is not an escalation. Russia has been using them against Ukrainian lands for years now. Why shouldn't Ukraine be allowed to use them against Russian land?
jacknews 11 hours ago [-]
No, you are wrong.
Russia are at war with Ukraine, so they are bombing them. Ukraine have every right to reply with their own long range weapons too, and that would indeed not be an escalation in the fighting itself.
But, the west clearly prohibited the use of their donated long range weapons in direct attacks on Russia, in order to limit their liability, responsibility, 'participation' or whatever, until now.
Russia have been very clear that such permission would constitute an escalation OF WESTERN 'PARTICIPATION' in the war, and even be tantamount to a direct NATO attack, and so it is at least an escalation.
Whether it is right or wrong is not the point, it is a clear change in the depth of western involvement.
sekai 4 hours ago [-]
> Russia have been very clear that such permission would constitute an escalation OF WESTERN 'PARTICIPATION' in the war, and even be tantamount to a direct NATO attack, and so it is at least an escalation.
Since the war started, Russia has moved their red lines dozens of times. The “escalation” argument lost it's meaning.
close04 9 hours ago [-]
> right to reply with their own
This seems like an arbitrary line [0] drawn exactly where it suits your argument. How does having North Korean soldiers fighting for Russia stay on the right side of that line? What about any components that originated outside of Russia but are employed in Russian weaponry or equipment (for example chips)? The information war is a part of "the war", is an "official" non-Russian hacker or troll crossing the line? Or a non-Russian boat or crew employed for acts of sabotage.
[0] It can be fair to draw an arbitrary line, at least you know it's straight and will intersect whatever is unfortunate to be in its way regardless of the side you prefer. But you're trying to draw tiny arbitrary circles around whatever you don't like and that's feeble.
jacknews 8 hours ago [-]
The line is clear, that western, or US-supplied long-range missiles should not be used to attack targets inside Russia, and it was drawn both by the US (fearing that they'd be 'drawn into the war') and by Russia who clearly stated this as a 'red line'. You can argue about the arbitrariness, but it was clearly understood on both sides.
Ukraine is quite obviously not just a plucky country defending it's sovereignty (though it is that too), but the theater of a great-power proxy war.
The rules of that game are that you keep the conflict within the theater, or risk a world war.
That was already breached by Ukrainian incursions into Russia, armed to some extent with western weapons, but this is much more direct, and a clear escalation of US participation in the conflict.
ceejayoz 6 hours ago [-]
> The rules of that game are that you keep the conflict within the theater, or risk a world war. That was already breached by Ukrainian incursions into Russia...
In what insane alternate Marvel universe is Russia not part of the Russo-Ukrainian War theater?
zdp7 4 hours ago [-]
The line isn't clear, because there is no line. These lines you keep bringing up are just gamesmanship. Nothing changes because any of them are crossed. The war was fully escalated when they invaded. Ukraine has every right to attack targets in Russia. Russia and everyone else is just posturing to hopefully extract advantages. Everybody is trying to figure out what they can get away with that doesn't negatively impact them. When Trump won the situation changed for the current administration. Do you believe Russia wouldn't use nukes if it would strengthen Russia? Do you believe Europe and the US wouldn't have immediately shut down the invasion if Russia wasn't a nuclear power.
sabbaticaldev 11 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
thaklea 10 hours ago [-]
Public opinion is being manipulated hard, the U.S. just closed down its embassy in Kyiv:
Russia will not stop taking its land in Kursk back because the Americans tell them to do so, this is just Western delusion, and, as I've said before on this forum, a complete misunderstanding coming from the Westerners on how Russia operates.
> devastating sanctions
Devastating for Europe, you mean.
suraci 12 hours ago [-]
I'm very curious, can any European here, or perhaps a German for specificity, tell me whether they believe these sanctions have harmed Russia more than Europe?
Also it would be better if any Russians here could answer a similar question
brazzy 11 hours ago [-]
German here. Yes, it seems pretty obvious these sanctions have harmed Russia more than Europe.
Russia: inflation around 8-9%.
EU: inflation around 2%.
EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK 11 hours ago [-]
That's not a result of sanction, simply Russia spends 40% of its budget on the war, and Europe spends nothing.
suraci 10 hours ago [-]
Thank you for the information. I believe that only those who are there can truly describe the situation there, beyond what I read in the media
Recently, a professor I know wrote an article about his impressions of Russia and Germany when he attended meetings in both countries.
Can you help to check what he said?
> Macroeconomic data indicates that the European economy is not doing well, but the economic conditions I experienced during my days in Berlin could be described as depression. What surprised me the most was that there were not many people or cars on the streets of Berlin during the daytime on weekdays. Berlin in early October is not yet cold, but the desolate feeling on the streets does not match the image of the capital of Europe's largest economy. Europe's inflation, which started later than in the United States, has also clearly hurt the lives of the people, which was my perception from conversations with taxi drivers during my rides.
throwaway2037 10 hours ago [-]
> the European economy
Any time you see "European" used in an argument... run away. Europe is a continent. It is huge and varied. There are 27 countries in the EU and further 23 more countries in the European continent. It is very, very hard to generalise about "Europe". Albania and Norway are both in Europe, and, yet, they could not be further apart in terms of human and economic development.
brazzy 9 hours ago [-]
Yes, inflation was pretty high in 22 and 23, that hurt a lot of people.
But his claim of a "desolate feeling on the streets" being an indication of "economic conditions ... could be described as depression" read like badly written propaganda. There's nothing to be checked there, just some vague feelings. Berlin isn't as crowded as he expected, so the only explanation is that nobody can afford a car and half the population is sitting at home wallowing in misery due to economic depression? Really?
suraci 10 hours ago [-]
Also, here's the sections about Russia, hope any locals can help to check this
> (In Vladivostok) War typically leads to a rise in prices. Several Russian sources have reported that compared to two and a half years ago, current prices have roughly doubled, and housing prices have also increased significantly. However, it is somewhat comforting that the wages of most people have also increased proportionally, so people's lives have not been greatly affected so far. The supply of goods on the market is still quite abundant. Due to financial sanctions from the US and Europe, as well as multinational corporations, many brands' products and services are no longer available in the Russian market. Nevertheless, this does not prevent Russian citizens from drinking cola or eating American fast food. It is said that these brands have localized, but the products remain essentially unchanged: for example, the taste of Russian cola is not significantly different from Coca-Cola, as they can purchase the concentrate from third countries and mix it themselves.
> The official unemployment rate published by Russia is only 2%, and I believe this data is likely accurate. The reasons are not only because the war itself requires the hiring of a large number of young people, but also due to the wealth redistribution, increased consumption, and robust production that the war has brought about. Russia is a country with severe wealth disparity, where the lower classes traditionally lack money for consumption. This war has provided an opportunity for lower-income families to obtain cash flow: by sending their sons or husbands to the battlefield, families can receive a one-time subsidy of nearly 500,000 yuan. Even prisoners in jail can receive this benefit. This sum of money, equivalent to targeted transfer payments and proactive fiscal policies aimed at the poor, has given lower- and middle-income families a chance to gamble their lives for money. This has led to cases where some people join the military to escape punishment and receive subsidies, serve for a year, return home, and then reoffend and go to jail again, relying on a second enlistment to escape punishment and receive another subsidy.
> The increased cash flow among the lower-income population has led to a surge in consumer demand, and the robust production of military goods has also stimulated employment, income, and consumption. While the products of military industry are indeed consumed on the battlefield, for the macroeconomy, what matters is the flow rather than the stock; production and consumption are meaningful in themselves. As for whether the produced goods are expended as shells and missiles on the battlefield or become paper wealth on the other side of the ocean as export commodities, there is no fundamental difference for the current macroeconomic operation.
There are rumors circulating on Chinese self-media about how much the ruble has depreciated on the black market in Russia. I specifically went to restaurants and other consumer venues in Vladivostok to test for any significant difference between the official and black market exchange rates by using US dollars and Chinese yuan for payment. However, neither Russian-run nor Chinese-run restaurants offered discounts for payment in US dollars or Chinese yuan cash. This phenomenon is usually sufficient to debunk rumors about the Russian ruble black market.
The current social mood in Russia is relatively stable, which may be due not only to a decent economic foundation but also to strict control over public opinion. According to our research feedback, even in private settings, if colleagues or neighbors make remarks against Putin or the war, and are reported, those who oppose the war or Putin may face legal troubles.
actionfromafar 7 hours ago [-]
Did the source also mention that the low unemployment is in no small part due to the would-be workforce going to the frontlines, and also a huge initial wave of emigration to other countries among those privileged enough to own a passport.
rksbank 7 hours ago [-]
The professor is correct.
rksbank 8 hours ago [-]
As a European, I can say that the sanctions did harm European economies, which is reflected in various political Eu government crises.
It is hard to know how much Russia has been harmed, because both sides probably exaggerate the figures.
I wonder whether "more harm" is the right question. The question should be whether the sanctions have any impact on Russia's war economy, which they do not. If anything, they make Russia more independent and strengthen Russian ties with China and India.
This is all to the detriment of the EU, the only one here who profits is the U.S. by making the EU more dependent.
sekai 4 hours ago [-]
> It is hard to know how much Russia has been harmed, because both sides probably exaggerate the figures.
> The question should be whether the sanctions have any impact on Russia's war economy, which they do not
Ruble is below a single penny.
Interest rates are at 21%, highest since 2003.
Inflation is out of control.
> they make Russia more independent and strengthen Russian ties with China and India.
ah, so that's why Putin went to North Korea to beg for troops and ammunition?
thalsand 3 hours ago [-]
According to the IWF, 2024 inflation is 7.9% and GDP growth 3.6%:
I do not believe the German inflation numbers. Health care got 30% more expensive with more hikes coming, rents are exploding, groceries are 20% higher since 2022.
EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK 11 hours ago [-]
These consumer side sanctions are idiotic. When a Russian buys a European beer, he spends money which goes from Russia to Europe, and in addition he damages his health.
On the other side, Europe buys billions of dollars of oil and gas from Russia. That money goes in the opposite direction, from Europe to Russia, and is used toward soldier salaries, Iran drones and North Korean mercenaries.
Maybe true for the Netherlands, I apologize, I meant all of EU.
haccount 5 hours ago [-]
[dead]
raverbashing 12 hours ago [-]
Neither will Ukraine try to take their territory back as much as sycophants and dictator-appeasers think Ukraine have no agency
14 hours ago [-]
mmooss 4 hours ago [-]
Look up 'Grey Zone Conflict': Destroying another country's assets is generally an act of war, but obviously this incident falls short of causing a war. That is the 'grey zone', a prominent feature of current international relations and a major focus of the defense of the democratic world and international order, including in the US military.
The international order is often called the 'US-led rules-based interntional order'. Russia, China, and some others dislike the first element, of course. The second element refers to the legal, rules-based structure (rather than power-based anarchy, which led to the centuries or millennia of war before the 'order' was created post-WWII). Aggressive international warfare is outlawed, for example; if France and Germany have a dispute, there is no question of violence - they use a legal structure to resolve it, which wasn't always true!
Grey zone activities accomplish illegal things without reprocussions. And therefore they also serve the goal of undermining the international order by demonstrating its powerlessness in these situations. In some ways, it's like trolling.
Russia uses grey zone tactics heavily - for example, they used them to capture Crimea (which was before the clear act of war, their 2022 invasion). They use them to run destabilizing 'grey zone' campaigns throughout the world, including directly interfering in elections. The tactics suit Russia in particular because they cannot compete miltarily with the democratic world.
China uses them too, for example using their 'coast guard' and 'civilian' 'fishing boats' to attack (up to a point) and intimidate ships from other countries in the South China Sea. If China used their navy, it would possibly be acts of war. A Chinese coast guard ship shooting water cannon at a fishing boat, though illegal in international waters, isn't going to start a war. 'Civilian' 'fishing' boats from China blockading access to a reef won't either.
Edit:
Before you look at Russia and China and other Grey Zone actors as miscreants, understand that it's just the normal behavior of 'revisionist' powers - those who want to change the current rules. The current rules serve the interests of the 'status quo' powers, who get all self-righteous about 'illegal' activities.
In a more common situation on HN, think of IP outsiders, who break the 'rules' made by major IP holders, such as DMCA or those extending copyright for decades or restricting access to scientific knowledge - the IP holders want the status quo and call violations 'theft' and the outsiders 'criminals', etc. If the US wasn't a status quo power, they'd be doing grey zone things.
(That doesn't at all justify Russia and China's goals of stealing land, oppressing people's freedoms, and solving problems through violence.)
r00fus 3 hours ago [-]
> The international order is often called the 'US-led rules-based interntional order'.
There's the actual international law (and the UN) and there's the US-led rules-based international order (ie, what the US wants basically). They're completely at odds - often times the US (and Israel or a couple of other minor countries) vote against or simply flout whatever the rest of the UN wants.
The US is king of Grey zone actions. Random drone strikes, funding insurgency and terror groups, invading countries without international approval, blockading Cuba, etc. - the list is very long.
So when the US complains about Russia doing similar things (often responding to provocation by the US or NATO), the complaints can easily be filed in the "hypocrisy bin".
You have to look deeper into what kind of government has a problem with an international rule-based order. It is not the democratic countries with trias politica that have a problem with that, but autocratic regimes.
How are you going to ethnically cleanse Uyghurs in a rule based order, or run international crime networks at the level of statehood?
Answer is: you can't, unless the common people take ownership over their own countries. Very difficult.
mmooss 2 hours ago [-]
> You have to look deeper into what kind of government has a problem with an international rule-based order. It is not the democratic countries with trias politica that have a problem with that, but autocratic regimes.
The democratic countries follow the pattern of status quo powers. Is that because they are democratic or because they are status quo, or some of both?
The rules are of the status quo powers (matching their political cultures), by the status quo powers, for the status quo powers. Of course they follow those rules and support them. The rules seem to require a country to be a democracy to be legitimate - I agree with that as necessary to legitimacy (not sufficient), but obviously that doesn't suit non-democratic countries.
And like status quo powers, when they break the rules - most prominently the US many times, such as the Iraq war; the EU treatment of refugees and undocumented immigrants; and currently by Israel with US sponsorship - then they let themselves off the hook. They engineer technicalities, such as the weak UN resolution arguably authorizing the Iraq invasion; or just look the other way. They say they can't be handcuffed etc. (And some of those actions may be the right choice - I'm not judging - but they certainly violate the rules.)
mightyham 1 hours ago [-]
Just a reality check: the United States is currently funding and providing military equipment to Israel, who is carrying out an ethnic cleansing in the Gaza strip. Apparently, democratic governments also have a problem following the rules.
benterix 12 hours ago [-]
The ship was sailing from Russia and the captain is Russian. Using a Chinese ship is a good trick from Putin.
As for the core of your question: there is no benefit, it's just his mentality. "The West" supports Ukraine so let's just do some harm, retaliate in some way. Burn some buildings here and there, plants some inflammable materials on airplanes etc. Pointless for you and me, meaningful for that guy.
"So - according to Russian federal port records, the Chinese ship suspected of cutting the communications cables in the Baltic Sea was captained by a Russian citizen (one Stechentsev A.E.). Interestingly Yui Peng 3 was only transferred to its current owner in China earlier this month.
The ship is carrying goods/oil from Ust-Luga in Russia, to Port Said in Egypt. Same captain also comandeered URSUS ARCTOS also carrying goods from Ust-Luga to Egypt. Mapped using
@SensusQ
. "
bluGill 8 hours ago [-]
Hard to say. They will claim this is only Flag of convenience as they are caught. However China still has the opportunity to say that this is something for their law enforcement to take care of not international, and then give the captain "a slap on the wrist".
What we don't know is if China knew they were going to try this beforehand or not. Flag of Convenience is common enough that we can't be sure. This could have been planned on the high level from China and we would never know - something conspiracy theorists will run with! If China knew they would probably give the crew a sever punishment, but unofficially it is for getting caught and not doing the act. Most likely though China didn't know before hand.
huijzer 8 hours ago [-]
Prof. Stephen Kotkin — an historian who wrote multiple extensive biographies on Stalin — calls the Russian regime a "gangster regime".*
Once you see them as gangsters, it's not difficult to see why they would do this.
*A full link with exact timestamp of Kotkin saying this is [1]. Here he talks about why Merkel kept making oil deals with Putin even though in hindsight this was probably not the best idea. Kotkin argues that, yes, according to econ 101 trade is good for both parties, but not when the opposite party is a gangster. Merkel thought that Putin was thinking like her, but he wasn't.
One theme of cyberpunk is that Russia remains a gangster regime in the future. William Gibson's "Kombinat".
mopsi 8 hours ago [-]
It should be noted that Putin was personally an enforcer for St Petersburg's mayor Anatoly Sobchak[1] in the early 1990s, and his "circle of friends" from that time now mans key positions of the entire government. For example, Viktor Zolotov[2], Sobchak's bodyguard and Putin's judo partner, is now in charge of National Guard, despite not having qualifications for the job.
Russia is literally run buy thugs who ran protection rackets not so long ago. So there's much more to this than just a fitting figure of speech. Someone from the worst parts of LA would be better equipped to understand and deal with such people than those who spent their teens and early adulthood playing Model UN at a foreign relations club.
It doesn’t even really stop anything right? Communications just have to route around it and use other cables and satellites. It just seems like Russia wants to be annoying.
Hamuko 15 hours ago [-]
Destroying the gas pipeline between Estonia and Finland did take it out for like six months. I think it may have had some negative impact on Estonian electricity prices during that time.
lifestyleguru 12 hours ago [-]
This is basically Russian retaliation for US providing Ukraine with ATACMS and first Ukrainian attack using ATACMS.
tauntz 5 hours ago [-]
The "retaliation" against US is to disrupt communications between.. Finland and Germany?
Applying the same logic, Ukraine should retaliate against Russia for bombing their hospitals with an attack on.. Iranian civilian infrastructure? Did I get that right?
lifestyleguru 4 hours ago [-]
Russia is fighting "Western fascists" and NATO. Don't try to understand this.
aguaviva 3 hours ago [-]
Russia's regime pretends to be fighting those entities. It's real enemy is simply independent Ukraine with its currently recognized borders.
This is entirely straighforward. Nothing that requires any struggle to understand.
wqefjwpokef 14 hours ago [-]
[dead]
aguaviva 10 hours ago [-]
Tit-for-tat response to the NS2 bombing.
Assuming it bears out that the Russian state is the perpetrator.
givemeethekeys 4 hours ago [-]
The CCP thanks the expendable crew for their sacrifice. May they continue to suck the resources of their new host countries for many years to come.
brazzy 15 hours ago [-]
So according to the Bluesky thread, the ship was captained by a Russian citizen. One has to wonder whether this was done with the approval of the Chinese government, or whether the ship was just chosen by opportunity (which seems possible given that China is the second most common merchant flag). Or whether implicating China was even an explicit goal.
netsharc 14 hours ago [-]
For an analogy, it seems like a scrappy preteen throwing around his big brother's name, knowing that if he gets into trouble, big brother will intervene...
(i.e. the European countries might be more wary about boarding a Chinese ship compared to a Russian ship, because escalating against China is scarier...).
_djo_ 13 hours ago [-]
Indeed. The best way to understand Russia's approach to foreign policy is that it's an extension of its mafia state-derived domestic policy, where there are no true allies and anyone brought into the circle is tainted through compromising actions to ensure they stay loyal to you.
It's not dissimilar to the way criminal gangs will ensure that they have dirt on anyone joining or intentionally implicate others in order to ensure compliance.
graemep 12 hours ago [-]
I think China stands to gain from escalation of the war so its possible they approved. It makes Russia weaker and more dependant on them, distracts the US from the Pacific, and weakens Europe in many ways.
Similar to both Russia and China gaining from war and disruption in the Middle East.
There are many possibilities here.
whizzter 14 hours ago [-]
Russian captain, how does the ownership history of the ship look? Could be some sanction evading ship that was owned by Russian interests anyhow.
Doesn't mean its current Russian captain is serving Chinese interests, of course, but at least it seems to be Chinese owned.
lukan 5 hours ago [-]
I doubt China will be happy, if Russia staged chinese support. But rumors have it, that the North Korean troop support for the war in Ukraine also came out of the blue for China, so Putin might make a risky gamble here, but I doubt he dares it. If China would seriously drop support for Russia, they would be srewed.
mytailorisrich 12 hours ago [-]
China did not want the war in Ukraine, which has created serious problems for them including for Belt and Road. So behing closed doors China must be passed off but Russia is important to them and they can't let them collapse.
Of course Putin knows this hence him somewhat taking the p.
aurareturn 14 hours ago [-]
Given that ships often cut undersea internet cables and China has the biggest export economy, doesn't it make sense that the most likely country to accidentally cut an internet cable would be a Chinese trade ship?
On average, it seems like undersea internet cables break 200+ times per year.
For example, Vietnam's internet cables break on average 10 times per year.
What would be the motivation for a Chinese trade ship to deliberately cut an internet cable? It has next to no impact on internet communication and only serves to annoy a small amount of people for a short period of time. In addition, China and Europe are trying to have a better relationship in general so it doesn't make sense for the Chinese government to order this.
brazzy 11 hours ago [-]
I could believe that cutting one cable was an accident. But two, by the same ship, 60 miles apart?
Absolutely no way this wasn't intentional.
13 hours ago [-]
Hamuko 14 hours ago [-]
>What would be the motivation for a Chinese trade ship to deliberately cut an internet cable?
Money. Russia is reportedly bribing people into doing sabotage in western nations.
There's also reports that Yi Peng 3 is captained by a Russian national, which would also be another reason for a Chinese trade ship to conduct sabotage operations beneficial to Russia.
raverbashing 14 hours ago [-]
> What would be the motivation for a Chinese trade ship to deliberately cut an internet cable?
The most charitable reason is that they don't give a fluck. Same reason why their rocket boosters just fall wherever they fall, population center or not
Why would destabilising europe before peace talks be beneficial? Seems like they would lose a lot of leverage.
jacknews 12 hours ago [-]
So how long ago were US long-range missiles used to attack Russia?
Because that's what seems to be claimed here, that Russia are retaliating for that.
How long does it take a ship to travel to a 'suspicious' site like this?
versus, how long does it take to intercept the nearest Russian ship, and escort it away as a spy ship and 'potential saboteur'?
p2detar 4 hours ago [-]
The info that the Biden administration would greenlight this, should have been known in Moscow for weeks now. I assume the news arrive later only for us - the public.
byearthithatius 26 minutes ago [-]
YESS!! Finally a bsky link instead of X. Hope this is how it is from now on.
bobbob1921 4 hours ago [-]
What I don’t understand - if the yi peng was intentionally trying to damage the FO cables, why would they not spoof or disable their AIS data/broadcast (ship tracking transponder which is the source of this positioning data we see).
Anyone have some insight on that?
wlll 4 hours ago [-]
AIS is required for large ships in many if not most jurisdictions, to have it turned off is suspicious in itself. If you turn it off then re-appear later on somewhere else having had to traverse the area where the cables where at the time they got damaged, that's suspicious. You could turn it off in port, head out, cut the cables then return and turn it on again, but the window of time you had it off would straddle the cable damage time, and there's a high chance you would have been documented (video, radio traffic) leaving port in that time, and depending on the departure port it may be hard to leave without AIS on as the authorities may notice.
Already__Taken 3 hours ago [-]
fishing boats and military often have it off btw.
stainablesteel 2 hours ago [-]
fishing boats turn it off when they're in places they're not supposed to fish
AllegedAlec 1 hours ago [-]
Chinese fishing boats specifically.
coriny 55 minutes ago [-]
Botswana is well in the top half of least-corrupt countries. I suspect you know nothing about Ukraine or Botswana.
rafinha 1 hours ago [-]
If a cable goes down, isn't the traffic just re-routed? Don't see the point of intentional damage here.
nessbot 1 hours ago [-]
Dunno what the real reason is, but it's easy to see possible a intentional reason: Testing to see how it well it works and how other nations respond.
hnuser123456 1 hours ago [-]
Cost of new anchor = X
Cost of fixing cable = >>X
Damage = done
TinkersW 11 hours ago [-]
This is the 2nd time China did this in that Baltic isn't it? Both times look intentional.. maybe don't allow Chinese ships in the Baltic?
Arnt 8 hours ago [-]
No it isn't.
Both of the two Chinese registries are open, pretty much anyone can register ships there. It's a bit like the .tv domain — if you see something.tv you can't assume that it's a company in the country Tuvalu.
Look at the nationality of the captain and the beneficial owner instead.
lowbloodsugar 2 hours ago [-]
Right. So they might need some motivation to change that.
tossandthrow 11 hours ago [-]
That would not swing.
Denmark controls the waters of the seaway to Sct. Petersburg and Kaliningrad that are some of the strategically most important ports of Russia.
Blocking of traffic to these would be a severe escalation.
Regularly Russian subs pass through Danish waters - controlled and allowed.
mihaaly 11 hours ago [-]
I'd consider the serious escalation of offensive (cowardly) acts were carried out by Russia many many years ago repeatedly, increasingly, throughout Europe (elsewhere too), with mild consequences. Got seriously unabashed escalating further. Being cautious with the nazi Germany blew into the face of the World, will definitely not work with the imperialist Russia either. China acts on behalf of Russia here - Russia being coward for open confrontation with anyone (believed by them) able hitting back hard. China has secondary benefits for self as well.
lowbloodsugar 2 hours ago [-]
Was it Shakespeare who wrote “Discretion is the better part of valor”? That level of cynicism might be appropriate here. The cowardice is on the European side, surely?
rightbyte 10 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
Tade0 11 hours ago [-]
Damaging infrastructure is already a severe escalation. Should not have done that.
tossandthrow 11 hours ago [-]
These are times to chill - unless we want a full on nuclear war.
(I do realize that in particular US citizens have very high confidence in their own military capacity and might be overly bullish on situations like these)
Tade0 10 hours ago [-]
Not American - I'm Polish. I've got friends who got drafted already (if only for training) so it's entirely possible I'll join them eventually.
My take is that Russia's plan is to continue sabotaging and a weak (or lack of) response to that only emboldens them.
Also nuclear war with what? Their recent Satan II ICBM test demonstrated that they don't necessarily have the technical chops to launch anything sufficiently capable and it must have come as a surprise to them as well.
p2detar 4 hours ago [-]
We were chill since 2014 if not earlier. It brought nothing but pain both to Ukrainians and to us in the West. It doesn’t work.
tallanvor 11 hours ago [-]
Nuclear war is not a realistic concern, luckily. If it was, it would have happened after the first "red line" Russia claimed the west had crossed.
tokai 11 hours ago [-]
On the contrary, chilling would endanger everyone living the in the free world even further.
meindnoch 3 hours ago [-]
It's high time for the West to man up and solve the Russian problem once and for all.
euroderf 5 hours ago [-]
> Regularly Russian subs pass through Danish waters - controlled and allowed.
I've always wondered how subs handle tidal flows there, and how challenging the tidal flows are.
malermeister 11 hours ago [-]
How severe an escalation would it be?
As severe as... say starting the largest war in Europe since WW2 right at our doorstep? Or as damaging our critical infrastructure? Or manipulating our democratic processes?
It's time the West pulls its head out of its ass. We're already at war, whether we want it or not.
rightbyte 11 hours ago [-]
> We're already at war, whether we want it or not.
I think you should complain about 'appeasement' abit longer before switching gear to 'to late YOLO'.
That would help your cause better.
malermeister 11 hours ago [-]
I don't think I have a cause. I'd like to not be constantly attacked by foreign adversaries, is that a cause? But if attacks happen, we can't just ignore them because hitting back might make the abuser more mad.
rightbyte 11 hours ago [-]
Seems quite easy for an 'adversary' to manipulate two other 'adversaries' into an extended suicide with that mindset.
talldayo 6 hours ago [-]
Am I missing something, or do you post peacenik appeasement demands under every HN submission? It's such a radically stupid position that I'm legitimately starting to think you're a Russian propagandist. Why would any rational country appease a madman? Because people like you write internet comments about pissing your pants?
If we reach the "to [sic] late YOLO" stage it won't matter what options we picked. That's why appeasement is a fundamentally pointless idea that the US has refused for decades. If you even once play the "give a mouse a cookie" game you will end up surrendering everything to a power that can threaten you with nuclear terrorism. Only a moron would appease Russia in this scenario.
rightbyte 2 hours ago [-]
I could be anyone except you. I don't see the relevance in speculating about that.
The US have no qualms appeasing Netanyahu. Biden and his party was even fine arguably losing the election over it. I don't see any contradiction there.
Russia and the US from time to time more or less arbitrarily bombs or invades some other country.
I guess Russia's Holywood need to make better movies depicting their own soldiers as victims of their own wars. Still glorying though. There is work to be done there for sure. The two I've seen depicted soldiers as pathetic losers.
I mean, trying to economically, socially and culturally isolate the US would probably make it wreck even more mayhem over the world than trying to have cultural exchange, be nice, and what not. And when this fails not throwing yourself on a spike might be preferable.
talldayo 2 hours ago [-]
> The US have no qualms appeasing Netanyahu.
The US didn't give Israel Mandatory Palestine - Britain did. America selling arms to Israel is a moot point, and if we want to compare like-to-like then Russia is guilty of the exact same thing with India. But neither situation is an appeasement in the first place, so it's a plainly facetious argument.
> Russia and the US from time to time more or less arbitrarily bombs or invades some other country.
America hasn't arbitrarily invaded any country since the Philippines. Comparing bombings to occupation of a sovereign nation is a faux-pas that reveals you aren't arguing in good faith. They are drastically different things and anyone with a serious perspective of military escalation understands this. I pity you for not recognizing that these are incomparable situations and suggest that you reflect on whether or not this kind of judgement is worth sharing online. Every comment I've read from you repeats the same fearful tone without suggesting a serious response besides giving Russia what they want. You are either falling for propaganda or a blatant mouthpiece yourself.
> trying to economically, socially and culturally isolate the US would probably make it wreck even more mayhem over the world than trying to have cultural exchange, be nice, and what not
A perspective you could only possibly possess if you were economically, socially and culturally isolated from the rest of the world. Or is India and Iran enough to keep Putin company? Some world "superpower" Russia is.
adverbly 4 hours ago [-]
Should be very easy to verify if this was the cause.
All you have to do at this point is go look at the cable near the crossings.
If there is evidence of an anchor hitting the cables in both of these locations then you've got pretty clear proof.
Someone should obviously be checking into this right now. No point speculating until it's confirmed really.
I guess you might still want to board just to find out weather there is any evidence of intent rather than negligence in the case that this is confirmed to be the cause...
ActionHank 4 hours ago [-]
At best fall guy captain will claim ignorance, malfunction, or negligence. Retire or move to some cushy job.
No one will want to implicate China in something that would support Russia's war and would all be afraid of the economic fallout.
Etheryte 1 hours ago [-]
This is not how ship registration works. A useful model is to think of a ship's flag like a tld, just because a site is .cn doesn't mean the company is based out of China. Ships usually fly one flag or another based on tax and legislative reasons, and it's often unrelated to the country of origin.
The ship suspected of breaking the cables has been apprehended and it turns out it was currently sailing from Russia with a Russian captain [0].
> The speed of cargo ship Yi Peng 3 was affected negatively as she passed the 2 Baltic Sea cable breaks C-Lion 1 and BSC.
> Before the incidents she held normal speeds. After stopping and drifting for 70 minutes she again held normal speeds. By this time the two cables were broken.
> No. I checked the 5 most close ships heading the same way. They did not slow down similarly in the same wind. The ship most closely resembling Yi Peng 3 actually sped up. The Lady Hanneke.
Some additional information:
- Putin calls the region "NATO Lake"
- German Defense Minister has called the line failure sabotage
- Danish Naval ships are now shadowing Yi Peng
It's unlikely that all information will become public in any meaningful time. I assure you, *someone* is checking on this and verifying. But as is common with many acts like this one side is operating on (not so) "plausible deniability" while the other is just not going to publicly declare an accusation but continue to watch more closely. It's like when a mob boss says "it would be a shame if something were to happen". This isn't evidence in of itself, but contextually it is suspicious as hell.
The other part is that explicit accusations create a lot of political tensions. Obviously so does the actual act of sabotage. But definitive proof is quite difficult to actually reach. Unless there is literally a letter on that captain's desk from a military leader ordering the action (a "smoking gun") then it is easy to just blame the captain and/or crew, as Hank mentions. After all, a country should not be blamed for the actions of individual citizens not made with the direction of that country, though it is also important that countries hold their citizens accountable. Accusations will more depend on how hawkish the leaders are. Obviously all countries play games like this, but certainly some are more aggressive than others. One major country loves to play the victim card while creating "red lines" which violate international laws. So take it as you will
usr1106 12 hours ago [-]
Looks suspicious, but there were 4 vessels in the area whose transponder signal was lost by public trackers during that night.
It has also been pointed out that this is a location with lively traffic. So if it turns out that is was an anchor (as in the New New Polar Bear case) that's extra suspicious because anchoring in such location is not normal. On the other hand if it were explosives like in the Nord Stream case, they could have been applied also weeks before.
a1o 15 hours ago [-]
C-Lion -> Sea Lion, but not the IDE from JetBrains.
hinkley 3 hours ago [-]
Do we need to get James Cameron and associates to design a DitchWitch that can operate at 2 miles down? How deep can ship anchors go?
> Cable ships also use “plows” that are suspended under the vessel. These plows use jets of high-pressure water to bury cable three feet (0.91 m) under the sea floor, which prevents fishing vessels from snagging cables as thrall their nets.
fjfaase 7 hours ago [-]
It looks like that the pilot ship Styrbjoern [1] came along side the Yi Peng 3 today. It traveled from the harbor of Grenaa to the ship and back. It possible that they took some people in for questioning or put a pilot and/or guards on the ship.
Going from fishing illegally in south american waters to damaging internet cables in Europe.
Hamuko 15 hours ago [-]
Yi Peng 3 has been stopped in the Kattegat with Danish navy ships around it for about 11 hours now. Currently HDMS Søløven is anchored right next to it. HDMS Hvidbjørnen was also not too far away before its signal went dark.
To be less ambiguous in word choice, they jammed a satellite from the ground. Russians used a ground based dish to spoof a TV station signal to a repeater satellite, causing TV stations near Ukraine to go down and show an interference error. I'm just clarifying because "sabotage" could mean any number of more costly and damaging things, like a spy loosening a bolt before launch or something. https://nos.nl/nieuwsuur/artikel/2544558-verantwoording-en-b...
trhway 13 hours ago [-]
>Last ports: Murmansk - Port Said - Luga Bay (never docked, Ust-Luga, Russia)
All the way to Luga and decided to not dock. Large cargo ship pleasure wandering the sea like a yacht.
Crowdsourced military intelligence offers some hope for the future.
11 hours ago [-]
selimnairb 11 hours ago [-]
I guess WWIV has been on a slow burn for going on three years now.
VyseofArcadia 7 hours ago [-]
Did I miss WWIII?
queuebert 8 hours ago [-]
More like since Deng Xiaoping initiated the modern Chinese economic strategy in the '80s to control the West through trade.
RevEng 4 hours ago [-]
The West did a fine job of this themselves. Outsourcing to poorer countries is what has made the West so wealthy for so long - goods whose price is subsidized by cheap labor. Now that China and other countries have caught up, the West doesn't get the same discount, but they also don't have their own manufacturing because they all outsourced. We did this to ourselves.
p2detar 4 hours ago [-]
Very much this. We could have also used that time to advance and perfect on-demand production like 3D-printing, enhance our society by promoting more robust and prone to repair products, but instead we clinched on mass-consumption and profit. Our whole economic system needs recheck.
mrguyorama 49 minutes ago [-]
Sorry best we can do is an incompetent admin full of 3rd rate celebrities who explicitly want to dismantle everything our ancestors built with a side of outright grift. The department of education is for losers. What do you mean half the country can't read at a high school level?
mitjam 11 hours ago [-]
It was crossing right on time for the interruptions, a Russian officer was on board, it slowed down while crossing, no other ships were slowing down in that area during that time (rulingnout headwinds) - it cannot get much clearer. China is now participating in hybrid warfare against Europe (unless they present stronger evidence against this assumption)
netsharc 11 hours ago [-]
> China is now participating in hybrid warfare against Europe
Geez, I'm glad you're not war minister. It's a Chinese registered ship with a Russian captain.
If a terrorist crashes a truck with Portuguese plates into the US embassy in Berlin, would that mean Portugal's declared war against the USA?
Arnt 8 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
holowoodman 7 hours ago [-]
Well, yes, Flag of Convenience is a thing.
But there is a "but", which is that in the articles of war, the flag of a ship does have quite a few implications. E.g. when two nations are at war, stopping ships flagged as belonging to the opposition gives certain rights of stopping and searching them, blockading their passage, seizing the vessels and cargo, etc.
And the relevant characteristic in that case is the flag, not the captain's nationality:
> Art. 51. Enemy character. The enemy or neutral character of a vessel is determined by the flag which it is entitled to fly.
If you want to be formal about it, none of the countries with Baltic coastlines are formally at war.
holowoodman 7 hours ago [-]
Yes, but there is the huge other "but" that in modern use, a formal declaration of war is no longer necessary, committing acts of war is sufficient for a state of war to exist. (However, committing acts of war without a preceding declaration is of course a war crime.)
Of course this isn't really automatic and triggered by the smallest thing, both sides kind of have to "agree" to be at war, e.g. by a counter-attack, a declaration following the attack or something like that. And nobody really wants to take that bait, due to the huge consequences involved.
Yet, it is China playing with fire here, we all can be happy that none of the affected nations took them up on their "offer" of war.
escape_goat 6 hours ago [-]
Just to clarify again, this is a dry bulk / Panamax vessel. It is part of the shipping industry. At scale, it is analogous to a railroad car. In 2015 it was operating as the Avra under the flag of Greece. The foreknowledge of the Chinese government that a Russian officer would conduct hybrid operations from the vessel cannot be inferred from the circumstance. It is like thinking that someone with an American passport is an American spy.
holowoodman 6 hours ago [-]
It is quite the opposite from what you are arguing. China is responsible for the conduct of the vessels they allowed to fly their flag.
They can later claim that the crew and captain acted on their own will, without orders from the Chinese leadership. They can duly punish the captain and crew or disavow the vessel and declare them renegade, disallow them to fly their flag. But without such a declaration, a nation such as China is responsible for the conduct of their fleets, be they civilian or military. And any vessel they allow to fly their flag is part of their (in this case civilian) fleet.
WitCanStain 5 hours ago [-]
Is the US responsible for any crime committed by members of ships that fly the star-spangled banner?
ceejayoz 3 hours ago [-]
To some extent, yes. US law applies on US-flagged ships.
> A ship's flag state exercises regulatory control over the vessel and is required to inspect it regularly, certify the ship's equipment and crew, and issue safety and pollution prevention documents.
Yes, good points. It's not a wild stretch of the imagination that Mr P and gang are actively trying to drag China into the Ukraine conflict and I'd imagine Beijing is pretty pissed off today about being (ostensibly) implicated in this sabotage. So the usual underhand scheming from the Kremlin imho, don't fall for it. China and Russia's relationship is very complicated of course and there's many a convincingly analysis out there that predicts conflict between them in the near future (an example flashpoint being Siberia).
baybal2 7 hours ago [-]
[dead]
netsharc 8 hours ago [-]
Yes, this is what I'm saying, but with less words.
But look around (even in these comments) and look at how many people are thinking "Chinese act of war!!!11!!"
jstummbillig 7 hours ago [-]
> Yes, this is what I'm saying, but with less words.
That's really not all you are saying, and the difference is important. Maybe not to you, though.
netsharc 7 hours ago [-]
Then, elaborate please, Jochen, what's the important difference?
PhasmaFelis 7 hours ago [-]
As far as I can tell, you're both saying the same thing: that registering a ship in China does not mean China is responsible for that ship's actions. If you've got a different point to make, please make it clear.
Arnt 8 hours ago [-]
Yes… A lot of them really need have it spelt out, twice, in large clear type.
scrps 7 hours ago [-]
So the Russians who are at this point highly dependant on Daddy Xi to keep their economy and military afloat are gonna false flag the West to suck China into a quagmire of a war a few months before the most unpredictable and venomously anti-china president (who has thin skin, a hair trigger, and no qualms about conducting airstrikes on high-ranking Iranian generals unilaterally on a whim) in modern US history is about to take office at the head of a country with the largest functioning stockpile of nuclear weapons and a massive military? You think Chinese intelligence is asleep at the wheel and wouldn't notice given the stakes and absurd levels of geopolitical risk the entire planet is at?
China may back Russia to try to shift perception of the west's military might/will or to drain resources or just to buy Russia by making them dependant to get those juicy Russian natural resources but they aren't going to start world war iii to help Putin with his fetishistic "yet another European dictator" fantasy.
The Chinese know how to play the game same as the Russians and the US. All these little games are just calibrated psyops, why destroy, very publicly, comms lines when tapping it would be far more beneficial to a war effort and much quieter? Maybe to make the West look weak and unable to defend their borders which affects consequences domestically like say channeling political support to isolationist politicians who want to retreat from supporting Ukraine? Cause those politicians didn't make gains in the last European elections or nothing.
xbar 8 hours ago [-]
Well said.
mitjam 4 hours ago [-]
True but China can support or not support investigations and prosecution. After all they are the ones who can exercise their sovereign rights on ships sailing under their flag. I‘m really curious and open minded how this plays out but sadly would be surprised if China would support the EU in this case.
bungle 6 hours ago [-]
It was the second Chinese registered ship with Russian crew within a short period of time. A year ago this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newnew_Polar_Bear cut the gas pipe and another communications line.
I am sure if the cowardly Russians ever did this to USA, it would cause a much bigger drama and retaliation wave, and China would take the hit as well.
Larrikin 10 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
Octoth0rpe 8 hours ago [-]
They're not asking for Russia to get the benefit of the doubt, they're asking (reasonably IMO) for China.
jajko 7 hours ago [-]
A well-earned result of decades of their hard work, although this is about china-registered vessel
mschuster91 7 hours ago [-]
> If a terrorist crashes a truck with Portuguese plates into the US embassy in Berlin, would that mean Portugal's declared war against the USA?
At the very least, the cooperation of Portugal's authorities would be expected to determine how the truck ended up being used for the attack, and if anyone knew about how the vehicle was to be used.
I expect the same amount of cooperation from China as the flag state.
drewcoo 10 hours ago [-]
> war minister
Due to an earlier generation's newspeak, that's "defense," not "war."
Arnt 8 hours ago [-]
Are you sure about that?
I happened to notice that at least in some cases, the change of terminology happened roughly when it became clear that offensive war was a losing proposition in terms of money and resources. I suspect that as invading the neighbours became financially irrational, the cool heads that tend to survive in management shifted their stand from mixed offense/defense to just defense.
mitjam 4 hours ago [-]
Yes Mr Pistorius is „Verteidigungsminister“ as in defence, and it‘s called that way since 1955. Not that hard to find out.
Arnt 3 hours ago [-]
Germany's a good example. In 1914 the ministry was called Kriegsministerium, and an invasion wasn't seen as a necessarily bad idea. I think it already was, but at the time, you could argue in Berlin that a country that started a war could benefit from that war, if executed well. That kind of argument wouldn't make people doubt your judgment yet.
A few years later it was clear that offense was necessarily a resource loss. Someone who wanted to build a career as a civil servant might then see a defense ministry as a viable option, but not any sort of offensive war. Offense was clearly not viable, and therefore not a good basis for budget allocations, and therefore the good career move for the civil servants was to focus the ministries entirely on defense.
greener_grass 11 hours ago [-]
So if Trump is against China, and China aligns with Russia, will Trump then support Ukraine? Interesting (and choppy) times ahead.
n4r9 10 hours ago [-]
Even if China doesn't explicitly align with Russia, I believe there are strategic reasons why the US would want a favourable outcome for Ukraine. I outlined a few points in a post a couple of weeks ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42059787
I'm no international relations hawk though, so I'm keen to hear opposing viewpoints.
pclmulqdq 6 hours ago [-]
I agree with what you have said here, but I don't know if the US is in a position to turn the war around in 2024 without a huge escalation. It remains to be seen if there is any possible way to do that without "boots on the ground" (formally starting WW III) or the use of nuclear weapons (again, formally starting WW III).
There were plenty of options to pressure Ukraine into preventing Russia from having a causus belli in early 2022 (too bad the Biden admin didn't do any of those), but those are gone now and Russia currently controls much of the territory they had as military objectives.
chx 1 minutes ago [-]
Of course there is but the Western allies were slow to arm Ukraine because they feared the Russian nuclear retaliation.
To recap, Ukraine received very few , around a hundred ATACMS missiles with severe restrictions where it might fire them. They got less than two dozen F-16 jets. This is just nothing compared what the US might be able to send if they wanted to, they have over 300 Falcons at Davis-Monthan AFB (aka Boneyard) to begin with. There are near four thousand ATACMS missiles manufactured so far. And so on, with tanks etc.
aguaviva 5 hours ago [-]
Doesn't need to be a huge escalation.
Just enough to send the tide of attrition turning slowly the other way for a while.
After which HN will instantly fill up with comments about "how badly Russia is losing", "it's clear Ukraine has already lost", and so forth.
There were plenty of options to pressure Ukraine into preventing Russia from having a causus belli in early 2022
Russia never had casus belli in this conflict, and no one did anything to present it with such.
pclmulqdq 4 hours ago [-]
I'm not sure Ukraine wins a war of attrition in any meaningful way. Russia is also shockingly good at wars of attrition, and the entire Russian economy has been built around war with the West. Ukraine is a small state in comparison, and they are running out of men, money, and munitions so fast that even tipping the scales by 10x will sink Ukraine before Russia retreats from the territory they now own. In 2022, the goal would be to make it costly to acquire territory so ideas about attrition would have worked a lot better, but it's 2024 and Russia has already grabbed the land. Someone needs to go take it back.
Here's a memo for you on Russia's causus belli. You can claim that they didn't have a legitimate one (I don't think they did), but they had one that got them enough local and international support to work in both 2014 and 2022: https://www.ponarseurasia.org/vladimir-putins-casus-belli-fo...
n4r9 4 hours ago [-]
In your opinion what could Ukraine have done to avoid the causus Belli in 2022?
pclmulqdq 4 hours ago [-]
The causus belli was twofold, and was aimed at the Russian people:
1. Prevention of NATO encroachment toward Russia
2. Protection of ethnic Russians in Donbas
Any and/or all of the following would have weakened or broken Putin's narrative:
1. Stop the military buildup in Donbas that had started in 2021
2. Cease admission of new NATO member states for 3-5 years
3. Stop the process of Ukraine getting closer to NATO and the EU
4. Reduce or stop US military assistance funding to Ukraine
5. Drop the Biden administration's economic sanctions of Russia
6. Continue implementation of the Minsk accords
7. Stop the planned deployments of US missiles to Ukraine
There are many more options. The US administration in 2020 was bringing Ukraine into the fold (because it wanted to be there), but that is not a recipe for peace. NATO had previously agreed not to get close to Ukraine or other states bordering Russia.
The basic flaw in what you're suggesting (that the war could have been averted by mollifying Putin on the terms of his stated narrative), is that, as we both seem to agree, the stated narrative was never the real basis for his decision to invade.
Putin's actual reasons, in turn, seem to have been primarily about:
1. Securing the 3 currently (as of Feb 2022) occupied regions, especially the Crimea, for permanent annexation. Russia's position in the Crimea in particular was at the time severely compromised, due to Ukraine's shutting off of its water access. It also "needed" a land bridge (around the Azov) in order to be reasonably secure in the long term. (We put "needed" in quotes here to remind ourselves that this was the regime's internal desire, not any kind of objective or real "need"). As gravy, or as a way of offsetting the cost for the whole operation, there was also the matter of the Donbas region's significant lithium reserves (estimated at $3T).
2. Permanent deterrence of any NATO bid on Ukraine's part, likely involving some form of formal declaration of permanent neutrality (Finlandization).
3. As gravy, anything it could have also won in terms of regime change in Kyiv, preventing whatever rump state (if any) that remained in Western Ukraine from joining the EU, or simply damaging its chances for success and prosperity generally ("wrecking it", in Mearsheimer's words) would have been a very signicant plus.
The thing is, (2) by itself could have been had without resorting to a full-scale invasion. The West was eager for some kind of deal to end the 2014-2022 conflict, and having Ukraine in NATO was always optional, as far as it was concerned.
But the price for Putin -- forgoing his paramount desire for (1) -- would have been far too high. Plus he thinks of himself as a visionary leader, destined to make his mark on history, and for many years had deluded himself as to Russia's actual capabilities for military adventures of this sort.
So that's why he went "whole hog" in Feb of 2022. The main point here is that there doesn't seem to be much logic in thinking the war could have been avoided by addressing the stated narrative. When Putin's real reasons for invading, with emphasis on (1) above, would be in no way addressed by tactical appeasement of this sort.
Dalewyn 7 hours ago [-]
I used to support Ukraine winning the war at any cost (them losing and that result being recognized implies that warmongering is acceptable). However, that war is now in its third year with no end in sight.
Our (the west's) response to warmongering has been to trickle just enough resources and monies to keep Ukraine from losing but not so much that they win. The "donated" resources of course need to be replenished, the military industrial complex is quite literally making a killing.
At this point the question of declaring a firm stand against warmongering is lost. It's three years and going, warmongering as it turns out is fine. I hate that. My tax dollars are going towards endlessly and needlessly extending human suffering for the benefit of the military industrial complex. I hate that.
So I say, enough of this bullshit. Unless we suddenly send in so much support that Ukraine decisively wins very quickly, I don't want to see a single cent more of my tax dollars going towards this. My taxes are not blood money and the military industrial complex can go fuck themselves.
myrmidon 6 hours ago [-]
I think classifying western aid to Ukraine as tax transfer to the military industrial complex is just incorrect. Because a lot of it does/did NOT need to be directly replenished for the donors-- instead the donations was more like getting rid of older stockpiles, and for some systems moving the modernization schedule up.
And I think the attitude "its pointless to try and keep helping against the Russians, people have suffered from them for so long anyway" is completeley beside the point (and dangerous!)-- the main gain from helping the Ukraine in my view is discouraging the kind of neo-imperialistm that led to this attack, and stopping the support just sends a signal to ambitious tyrants all over the world that you don't really care about them plundering their weaker neighbors (and with having the biggest military comes some kind of obligation in this regard in my view).
I also think that you are patronizing the Ukrainians themselves in the worst way-- if anyone should get to decide how long it is worth it to fight for their country, it should be them.
tmiku 4 hours ago [-]
> if anyone should get to decide how long it is worth it to fight for their country, it should be them.
Are there other less partisan sources reporting this? From what I understand, Newsweek has been an alt-right mouthpiece since 2022.
tmiku 1 hours ago [-]
Yeesh, I wasn't aware that that happened at Newsweek. The Gallup link in the sibling comment is the best source, I had seen those results in a couple different places so I just grabbed one from the top of Google (wrongly assuming that remembering Newsweek being on my parents' coffee table 15 years ago is sufficient vetting). Thanks for keeping me honest!
Dalewyn 4 hours ago [-]
The linked article is just repeating numbers and findings from Gallup:
Thanks for the link! Was really suprised to see EU being favored as brokers over the US.
Makes me kinda curious if there is still significant blame/resentment regarding the Budapest Memorandum (against the US specifically)...
n4r9 3 hours ago [-]
Thanks! The article does indeed seem impartial, at least up until the Trump parts. It's not surprising. My own resolve would probably wane sooner than most Ukrainians. It cannot be easy to live in fear of loved ones dying at any time.
Dalewyn 5 hours ago [-]
>instead the donations was more like getting rid of older stockpiles, and for some systems moving the modernization schedule up.
That is precisely the benefitting of the military industrial complex that I am fed up with.
>"its pointless to try and keep helping against the Russians, people have suffered from them for so long anyway"
That is not what I'm angry about. I am angry that this war is dragging on far longer than there is any reasonable reason to be. If we hadn't trickled in support Ukraine would have lost already, if we had placed our full weight behind Ukraine they would have won already; either way the war would have ended long ago.
With the question of warmongering settled at this point (it's okay to warmonger, whether any of us like it or not), the only thing I care about is people not dying. I sincerely don't care how the war ends anymore, all I care about at this point is that it stops ASAP, that people stop dying.
>if anyone should get to decide how long it is worth it to fight for their country, it should be them.
If they want to continue fighting that's totally within their right, but I as an American taxpayer am not obliged to foot their bill much less in the manner we've been doing it.
mrguyorama 35 minutes ago [-]
>the only thing I care about is people not dying
If you think Ukrainians are just going to roll over and submit if everyone abandons them and Ukraine must capitulate, you are an idiot.
These are people who's ancestors had their ethnicity half erased. Even this war is part of that erasure. Russia literally kidnaps children to ship them off who knows where.
The Ukrainian people will resist. It will be Afghanistan all over again.
Plenty will continue to die.
A lack of ATACMS will not change that. The ONLY outcome that stops people dying is Russia going the fuck home. Ukrainians have been dying to push out Russian invaders for 10 years now, not 2.
myrmidon 3 hours ago [-]
> That is precisely the benefitting of the military industrial complex that I am fed up with.
This whole position just strikes me as misguided, because the numbers simply dont work. At all. Because if what you mainly care about is reducing US taxes flowing into weapon manufacturers, then the Ukraine is such a marginal portion that it basically does not matter at all:
If you said "lets reduce US spending on military to what all the rest of NATO together spends" (mind you, that is still the largest military budget in the world!), then that change alone would save in a single year over 4 (total!) Ukraine aid programs (and this is including all financial and humanitarian aid so far).
If you look at the stock price for major US arms manufacturers (RTX, LMT, NOC-- picked for being large and majority non-civilian revenue), then the whole Ukraine thing is basically not even a blip-- you would not even be able to tell (contrast the whole bitcoin/AI boom which is clearly visible in Nvidia price).
> With the question of warmongering settled at this point
I strongly disagree that this question is settled with a yes. I do absolutely agree with you that the answer from the US and especially its european allies should have been more decisive and unambiguous.
In the end, what the Ukraine war did and still does is establish a price on blatant imperialism. That price needs to be as high as possible to discourage and prevent repetitions as much as possible.
I would argue that this was a success in that regard already, but a small one, especially regarding the EU. Cutting further support would undermine and weaken this even more.
I'd also like to challenge your position on wanting to force an end to avoid further loss of life: How can you be confident that an (immediate) conclusion in Russians favor by cutting Ukraine military, humanitarian and financial aid (possibly also from allies) would actually be a net benefit in lives saved?
If you just look at the first and second Chechen war and the 8 years of insurgency directly after, what would make you confident that the exact same atrocities would not repeat at 20 times the scale?
To me personally, cutting support for the Ukraine when ones country is founded on principles of self-determination, freedom and democracy is peak hypocrisy.
How can people keep repeating the russian talking point that equates helping Ukraine resist the invasion with "extending the suffering". Don't they know what kind of hell the occupied regions have become? One can't pretend not to understand that the ultimate russian goal is complete annexation and assimilation, which by the way will provide ample cannon fodder for the next war of conquest.
I can't take in good faith this whole "suffering" rhetorics -- not containing the imperialistic expansionist nuclear-armed empire is sure to bring more suffering to the world.
Dalewyn 4 hours ago [-]
I think you're not understanding the whole argument: We're not helping Ukraine defend themselves, we're not containing the "imperialistic expansionist nuclear-armed empire". If we were then this war would have ended long ago and we wouldn't be having this conversation and Trump probably wouldn't have been elected.
No, I am angry because our response has been halfassed and lukewarm. We are keeping the war going with no end in sight, my tax dollars are being used explicitly to extend human suffering rather than end it. Sincerely fuck that noise. Either we go all in or do nothing at all, the current timeline is the worst one we could have possibly chosen.
dagenleg 7 minutes ago [-]
Yes, I'm definitely not following your argument. You're claiming that keeping the war going is extending the human suffering, while pushing Ukraine towards losing it would somehow end the suffering. That's false. Ukraine under russian occupation would be hell, and Ukrainians know it very well - that's why they are still fighting for survival.
karp773 4 hours ago [-]
"The military industrial complex" has pocketed trillions upons trillions of tax payers money to arm NATO for a possible confrontation with Russia. Now that Russia is being beaten up and worn down on the cheap, people are throwing tantrums over the amounts that are essentially a pocket change (a half of which stays in the US anyways). How does this make sense?
Dalewyn 4 hours ago [-]
>on the cheap
Human lives are not "cheap". Sincerely what the fuck, my dude.
karp773 4 hours ago [-]
Whose lives are we talking about here?
rangestransform 5 hours ago [-]
I’m fine with using my tax dollars to cripple a geopolitical rival and maintain the Pax Americana status quo
tmnvix 4 hours ago [-]
I would be ashamed if my tax dollars were funding what is happening to Gaza.
n4r9 7 hours ago [-]
Yep, I'm mostly in agreement with you and am also hoping that the West does enable a sudden decisive victory. The best option would have been to nip it in the bud. Instead, Russia were given the space to landmine swathes of land, modernise their military tactics, and build an alliance with Iran and North Korea. And as you say the wrong kinds of people are winning here.
The only thing is, what happens next if the West pulls out? Ukraine's military collapses, Russia moves in on Kyiv, Putin gains another Belarus-like satellite state, and at least considers encroaching on Estonia, Finland etc... . It's more than just the principle of whether warmongering is acceptable - a lot of people will suffer as a consequence and possibly for decades to come. We have to be really careful to consider which is worse in the long-term.
anon84873628 2 hours ago [-]
I agree with both of you, but also want to point out that it's easier to make these criticisms in retrospect.
I think the West was making the best calculus it could as the situation developed. Sure, you can say we should have known Putin was bluffing about redlines. But the downside of all out war is high enough that, when multiplied by the probability, you still get a bad number. I think it's reasonable that Western governments played it cautiously and hoped for a different resolution (like a successful internal coup).
But yes, now we are where we are and it sucks for Ukraine.
bungle 6 hours ago [-]
You seem to be worried because of _just enough_ of part of somehow your money is given to Ukraine. Come on. They are fighting for all of us. And all we need to do is to give support. And you are getting tired. I am also disappointed that the west have not acted as a single front. In EU it seems we cannot even put puppets like Viktor Orbán in control. Yes, whole west needs to step up. Russia doesn't listen anything else than force. Period.
petesergeant 7 hours ago [-]
Trump is pro Trump-looking-strong, and that's about it. Interesting times ahead for sure, but trying to predict Trump's future positions is a mug's game. I suspect regarding Ukraine, someone will give him a plan that they tell him is fair ($10 says Russia keeps Crimea but virtually nowhere else and Ukraine agrees not to join NATO), and he'll manage to get both sides to sign it by threatening them.
Epa095 2 hours ago [-]
I will be absolutely flabbergasted if he manages that deal. I think Ukraine will have to give up significantly more than Crimea unfortunately:-/
petesergeant 49 minutes ago [-]
Perhaps. His key leverage here is that he’s chaotic, a lunatic, and will be the CiC, and who the fuck knows what he’ll do if he doesn’t get his way? Enforce a no-fly zone? Flood the country with weaponary? Abandon Ukraine for Russian oil? Leave NATO? Provide explicit nuclear umbrella to the Poles and tell them to have at the erbfeind if they want to?
About the only thing you can rely on is that he’ll do whatever he and his equally loony and chaotic advisors think will make him look good in the short term, based on feels, backed by the might of the American military.
Given all that, is Putin really going to defy him when presented with a deal that Putin has any chance at of spinning as a win at home? Putin's singular leverage is threatening nuclear war, but that only works if you can convince your opponent you're more unhinged than they are, and Putin loses that particular metric to Trump every time.
duxup 11 hours ago [-]
Trump didn’t do anything with regards to China the first time around. I think there’s reason to doubt he is opposed to China in any significant way.
An economic conflict between China and the United States has been ongoing since January 2018, when U.S. President Donald Trump began setting tariffs and other trade barriers on China with the goal of forcing it to make changes to what the U.S. says are longstanding unfair trade practices and intellectual property theft.
anon84873628 2 hours ago [-]
Let's not forget pulling out of the TPP, which likely empowered China.
That reads like token efforts and then he just moved on ... quit on the whole thing.
lysace 7 hours ago [-]
By late 2019, the United States had imposed approximately US$350 billion in tariffs on Chinese imports, while China had imposed approximately US$100 billion on US exports.
Then the Biden admin happened.
The Joe Biden administration kept the tariffs in place and added additional levies on Chinese goods such as electric vehicles and solar panels. In 2024, the Trump presidential campaign proposed a 60 percent tariff on Chinese goods.
It will be interesting to see what happens. 60% all at once would be too disruptive, I think.
duxup 6 hours ago [-]
Trade conflicts all seem like a test of wills.
But if you're not testing, you're not doing anything.
throwawaymaths 7 hours ago [-]
Well Biden put Catherine Tai in as the chief trade negotiator, who has been hard on China. Tariffs were expanded. And the de minimis exemption was rescinded in august.
So hardly "nothing further".
lysace 7 hours ago [-]
Sorry - just edited away the "nothing further" part as it was incorrect - a minute before reading your comment.
underseacables 8 hours ago [-]
In his first administration he engaged directly with North Korea which has been widely regarded as a Chinese puppet state. The last thing China wants, in my opinion, is a united and free Korea.
dole 7 hours ago [-]
Although China's been taking over the SCS, I haven't seen many open hostilities between South Korea and China covered in western news media, almost like SK ignores China's activities for the most part. I don't think there's any chance of a reunified Korea under the Kim dynasty or within 10 years.
edit: forgot to shoutout above's username
fakedang 7 hours ago [-]
Considering a significant bunch of Korean companies have production facilities in China, I'd say the relationship is more amiable than say the Japan-China one. Both were aligned in protesting the release of Fukushima water into the ocean for example.
duxup 8 hours ago [-]
He engaged with North Korea almost as an admirer and their leadership is close to China / Russia.
I'm not sure that means much as far as China goes....
pclmulqdq 6 hours ago [-]
The whole Trump/Russia conspiracy theory was all fake anyway - the Steele dossier which is the basis of the whole thing was fabricated and is unsourced. I expect him to be relatively hawkish on Ukraine because losing in Ukraine makes the US look weak, although Ukraine is currently losing the war relatively badly so I expect some territory to be ceded to Russia.
IAmGraydon 1 hours ago [-]
This. The amount of downvoting on these comments is proof of the amount of influence propaganda can have on the population. A large number of people here appear to still be convinced that Trump and Russia are working together.
IncreasePosts 6 hours ago [-]
You should probably get it out of your head that Trump supports Russia. Especially considering Russia decided to get frisky with Ukraine in 2014 (during Obama), and 2022(Biden), but took no real action in this regard during the Trump presidency.
tediousgraffit1 6 hours ago [-]
This line of reasoning keeps popping up and something about it bothers me - why go to war when you can get what you want in other, cheaper ways? It seems likely the correlation is real but so far no one has adduced any reasons to assume the causation actually goes the way they assume.
pclmulqdq 5 hours ago [-]
If you note that what Russia wants is Ukrainian territory (first Crimea in 2014 and then a land connection to Crimea in 2022), that was guaranteed to involve some amount of war. That will give you everything you need to infer the correct direction of causation.
tediousgraffit1 5 hours ago [-]
Why do you think Russia wants territory? Why did they suddenly develop an appetite for territory in 2014?
ceejayoz 3 hours ago [-]
> Why did they suddenly develop an appetite for territory in 2014?
They have wanted it since the fall of the Soviet Union and access to the Black Sea has immense strategic value to them. They only had geopolitical (and local political) cover to get it in 2014 and 2022.
tediousgraffit1 4 hours ago [-]
So not because ukraine rejected them in 2013? To be explicit, I still have seen no evidence for the premise that '_some_ amount of war' was inevitable. Belarus would seem to be an obvious counterexample.
3 hours ago [-]
pclmulqdq 3 hours ago [-]
No person seriously discussing that region of the world would have ever thought Ukraine would give Crimea to the Russians without a fight. Countries, in general, don't give up land without a fight. Crimea is also one of the most militarily valuable pieces of land in the world. Putin, at the same time, wanted to do some "re-unification" of some previous Soviet territories including Crimea.
I'm also not sure why you're citing Belarus here. It was split off from the Soviet union in 1990 and governed itself the whole time despite being essentially a vassal state of Russia. Belarus has not ceded any land to Russia, either.
Edit - I see what you're saying about control or territory. If you want control, directly controlling the territory is better than having a puppet government. While Russia would have accepted a puppet government, as they have in Belarus (since there has been no good opportunity to go to war with Belarus to take it over), they had the opportunity to go to war for direct control and the West made it clear that Ukraine as a vassal state was not an option (see the 2014 revolution). If you think someone wants control, why do you think that they see $0 of extra value in directly owning the territory?
tediousgraffit1 3 hours ago [-]
> It was split off from the Soviet union in 1990 and governed itself the whole time despite being essentially a vassal state of Russia.
It's obvious that Russia wants ukraine as a vassal as well. I would note that the invasion of Ukraine was launched _via_ Belarus, despite the fact that Russia does not formally control that territory. So again I ask, if Russia can get what it wants (which is _control_, not territory) without going to war, why would it do so?
Let's be plain - we are ultimately dancing around an empirical question, whether Trump will be hawkish or dovish towards Russia. Ultimately I think he's too chaotic for past behavior to be a good guide. So let's see what happens! I for one hope that you are right, but I think I have plenty of reasons to be cautious.
energy123 4 hours ago [-]
Whoever was POTUS played no role in the timing of 2014. Putin invaded Donbas in 2014 in response to a revolution in Ukraine that ousted the unpopular Russia-aligned Yanukovych. Not because Obama was POTUS or because Trump wasn't POTUS.
IncreasePosts 3 hours ago [-]
Okay, and why did Putin wait until 2022 to (re)invade Ukraine, if that was the goal? Shouldn't he have done it when he had a stooge in the white house?
ceejayoz 2 hours ago [-]
> Shouldn't he have done it when he had a stooge in the white house?
If you think said stooge is likely to get reelected (which, except for COVID coming out of the blue, was highly likely) and that stooge is already making noise about isolationism, why interrupt?
2022 looks a lot like an "oh shit, plan B" scenario.
dragonwriter 2 hours ago [-]
> Okay, and why did Putin wait until 2022 to (re)invade Ukraine
Because that's when he had intelligence leading him to believe the Ukrainian regime would crumble quickly or capitulate in the face of a large-scale invasion, and possibly also the NATO would fail to unite and respond, in part due to the success of Russian influence operations, which were not only directed at the US.
giraffe_lady 8 hours ago [-]
Why did they leave AIS on?
diggan 8 hours ago [-]
Having AIS on is mandatory. I'm sure turning it off would raise even higher warning flags than just leaving it on while doing your shady stuff.
Regardless, there are satellites covering the area, so you wouldn't get rid of being tracked anyways, would just be a bit slower.
jeroenhd 8 hours ago [-]
Having AIS on is mandatory, but in practice a lot of ships turn it off regardless. From shadow oil fleets laundering sanctioned oil to fishermen, fake or disabled AIS systems are hardly an exception.
I don't think Russia is trying to hide their sabotage, though. Even with AIS disabled, there's no way European intelligence agencies didn't know what ships were floating above these cables at the time they went down.
This was a warning, not a secret operation.
bergie 8 hours ago [-]
Having AIS on is mandatory, and in many places taken quite seriously. Last night we sailed from Fuerteventura to Gran Canaria. There was a cargo ship with broken AIS in the area, and the VTS broadcasted their position over VHF every half hour (with DSC all ships alarms and everything)
giraffe_lady 8 hours ago [-]
Every recreational sailor knows that AIS is "mandatory." It's completely routine to see commercial ships running without it.
WinstonSmith84 7 hours ago [-]
With "commercial", I guess you imply fishing vessels doing this to go fishing outside their delimited area. That's different from a massive bulk carrier in the middle of the Baltic
giraffe_lady 5 hours ago [-]
No I meant what I said. I've never seen a like supertanker without AIS but I've seen smaller cargo ships, ferries, and specifically in northern europe energy company tenders running without it.
diggan 8 hours ago [-]
> It's completely routine to see commercial ships running without it
I think this depends a lot on the location, as different areas seems to make it different levels of "mandatory". Are you speaking about the Baltic Sea specifically based on experience?
giraffe_lady 7 hours ago [-]
Yes. I spent a pandemic summer sailing the north sea, denmark, sweden with a friend. We sailed much less in the baltic and I admittedly kind of mix the north & baltic in my memory but they are very similar regulatory environments re boats so it would surprise me if it was common in one but not the other.
diggan 7 hours ago [-]
> they are very similar regulatory environments re boats so it would surprise me if it was common in one but not the other.
One has Russia and their ports, while the other doesn't. So preparedness and military presence certainly is different between the two at least.
giraffe_lady 2 hours ago [-]
I defer to your presumably greater baltic sailing experience.
mistrial9 8 hours ago [-]
recent statistic : Global Fishing Watch’s study published in Science Advances on November 2, 2022, revealed that:
Over 55,000 suspected intentional disabling events of AIS signals were identified between 2017 and 2019, obscuring nearly 5 million hours of fishing vessel activity.
This phenomenon accounts for up to 6% of global fishing vessel activity.
upofadown 11 hours ago [-]
I strongly doubt that this is an official military act of the Chinese government. It will most likely turn out that this is not an official military act of any government as the intent was to do this in secret.
dylan604 7 hours ago [-]
Just because the intent was to be secret does not negate an official act of any country. To assume that any military does nothing in secret is naivety at its finest.
underseacables 8 hours ago [-]
I don't know if the evidence is conclusive, but I do think we can say China is supplying Russia with military hardware and supporting them in other ways. So.. it's possible.
gizmo 8 hours ago [-]
China trades with pretty much everybody, don't read too much into that.
China is not allied with Russia and China is unlikely to engage in sabotage like this because they stand nothing to gain from it.
What the words are worth in a time of need remains to be seen. Neither side is exactly trustworthy :)
gizmo 7 hours ago [-]
Blessedly we're citizens of good and noble western countries that are supremely trustworthy and that would never ever renege on a deal or fight unjust wars.
fakedang 7 hours ago [-]
From what I understood, China was completely blindsided by the invasion (given that it happened so soon after the announcement of the alliance), and actually somewhat pissed. Russia basically used their alliance as insurance against a fully global sanctions regime, and China had to stick around to save face.
tannedNerd 7 hours ago [-]
This has to be the biggest propaganda I’ve seen from a CCP agent on here. China and Russia have are allies, they have a defense pact. Stop trying to sow disinformation.
miningape 7 hours ago [-]
I'm no fan of the CCP either but really what do they stand to gain here? Getting dragged into Russia's conflicts and the sanctions that would ensue would be devastating to the Chinese economy and security of the CCP's control.
The CCP are aware of this fact and they're planning for it, but they're not ready yet.
gizmo 7 hours ago [-]
What they have falls short of a defense pact. The "Treaty of Good-Neighborliness" contains language that the countries shall immediately discuss military options when under attack, but an agreement to talk is not an agreement to join a war.
This is what article 9 says: "When a situation arises in which one of the contracting parties deems that peace is being threatened and undermined or its security interests are involved or when it is confronted with the threat of aggression, the contracting parties shall immediately hold contacts and consultations in order to eliminate such threats."
Russia desperately needs allies. Russia wants China to be their unconditional ally. Unfortunately for Putin, and fortunately for the rest of us, China cares primarily about China.
petesergeant 7 hours ago [-]
> China is not allied with Russia
They don't have a mutual defense treaty, sure, but they describe themselves as having a “friendship without limits”. I would agree that China has no interest in getting involved in Putin's idiot war in Ukraine though, and there's zero benefit to China in antagonizing Europe.
vlovich123 7 hours ago [-]
Reading that thread it sounds like it was a Russian ship that was sold to China last month (perhaps as a pretext to mask this) so ownership is unclear.
Coincidentally (or not) a couple lines were down a few hours ago in this south china sea degrading connectivity
11 hours ago [-]
knowitnone 3 hours ago [-]
They'll obviously point the finger at another country
a-french-anon 11 hours ago [-]
So, when do we know it's not just another operation Northwoods?
rightbyte 10 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
guerrilla 11 hours ago [-]
So what would China's motivation be here?
llm_nerd 8 hours ago [-]
China likely has nothing to do with this. It is unlikely they have any participation or even knowledge of this. Twice now some Russians in a China flagged ship caused trouble, and the China-flagging seems very intentional.
Russia is desperately trying to make the China-Russia thing a reality, and is probably trying to drag them in against their great resistance. China has zero credible reason to be dragged into Russia's nonsense, and a billion reasons why they want nothing to do with it.
The ideal outcome of this is that China realizes that Russia is outright trying to drag them into conflict, and that they repudiate that country entirely.
pclmulqdq 5 hours ago [-]
China has already been involved quietly, funneling weapons and intel to the Russians, essentially playing the opposite role to the US. Make no mistake - this war has a component of the US and China probing each others' capabilities.
The Russians could have done this with a fishing trawler (they cut cables accidentally all the time), so like you I doubt we can infer some nefarious Chinese plot from the flag on the vessel.
anon84873628 2 hours ago [-]
I'd say another reasonable view is that China is happy to put morality aside and make money off weapons sales so long as they can get away with it.
Tade0 11 hours ago [-]
Might be just a crew paid off by Russians to do it.
In my country saboteurs largely weren't Russian - it's easier to pay off a local than have ano5 Russian cross the border, when his predecessor gets caught.
KSteffensen 11 hours ago [-]
China has a lot of interest in the war not ending one way or the other. Their peer competitors are spending resources on it and a potentially problematic regional competitor is becoming more irrelevant the longer it runs.
euroderf 5 hours ago [-]
In the superpower listings they're Number 2 with a bullet.
duxup 11 hours ago [-]
Finding out how far they can go without consequences / test the will of another nation to do something?
Article indicates this isn’t the first time.
kube-system 4 hours ago [-]
"Chinese-flagged" does not equal "Chinese operated"
PontifexMinimus 11 hours ago [-]
Helping Russia
a-french-anon 11 hours ago [-]
So what's the strategic importance of this move? inb4 "they're just acting like hoodlums to show off their strength".
kstenerud 11 hours ago [-]
Keeping Europe on edge and cowed, so that they spend less time and effort on Ukraine. This allows Russia to capture more of the historic Russian Empire in the east, which makes them more powerful and embarrasses the Western countries, pushing more unaligned countries into BRICS.
The endgame here is to build a new world order with Russia and China calling the shots (actually, China calling the shots, but we're not supposed to say that yet).
a-french-anon 11 hours ago [-]
This seems very unrealistic, as the resulting distraction is probably of low consequence concerning Ukraine.
Not even replying to the claims about world domination, I don't have time for these... "suppositions".
kstenerud 10 hours ago [-]
Yes, and that's half the problem. The only ones taking this seriously are the Latvians, Estonians, and Lithuanians (although the Finns and Poles finally woke up to it last year - also why Poland upped its military spending to 5%). The Estonian military reports are particularly enlightening, and Timothy Snyder offers background into the why.
0rzech 1 hours ago [-]
> although the Finns and Poles finally woke up to it last year - also why Poland upped its military spending to 5%
Poland has been warning about Russia at least for over 14 years now, since before Crimea annexation for sure. It started with Russia invading Georgia, I think.
Likewise, Poland has also been meeting NATO spending quota for years, upping it even more these days.
Poland refused to let another gas pipe from Russia through its territory without it going through Ukraine too, because it was obvious Russia would use it as leverage against Ukraine. This is what actually led to NS project which, for the same reason and this time additionaly because of the risk of creating leverage against other CEE countries, Poland refused to participate in and had been instead alarming that NS will result in troubles with Russia and security of Europe and Ukraine in particular.
Poland has been raising the issue of not only Ukrainian, but Georgian situation too. Many people forget, that Russia has been occupying parts of Georgia for over 16 years now.
Poland, despite paying penalties for that and being called racist etc., has been also blocking illegal immigration influx on its border with Belarus due to it being a hybrid war of Russia against Europe.
If anything, Poland did not sleep over Russia's plans. Quite the opposite, actually.
a-french-anon 8 hours ago [-]
Europe spent half the previous century ravaged by two world wars stemming in part from suppositions, paranoia and alliance networks. Never forget that.
guerrilla 5 hours ago [-]
Dude, Chinese state TV still calls Russia a "gas station with nukes." Of course they make money off of it and uphold their agreements but so far China has avoided any direct involvement with Russia's bs.
euroderf 5 hours ago [-]
Also to the point, Burkina Faso with nukes.
suraci 11 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
jmward01 3 hours ago [-]
Completely aside from the cable discussion, I'm glad this was on bsky. I could finally follow the comments in the link again. I hope this trend continues.
FlyingSnake 3 hours ago [-]
BlueSky has attained critical mass and it is the next generation of microblogging. We’re witnessing the long awaited dethroning of twitter and it will end up ceding the space like Reddit did.
SoftTalker 2 hours ago [-]
Until users get disenchanted with it and move to the next thing....
moomin 2 hours ago [-]
I never got disenchanted with Twitter. It got boring. If it had stayed the same I’d still be on there complaining about it.
dragonwriter 2 hours ago [-]
Transitioning from not finding it boring to finding it boring is exactly being disenchanted with it.
CalChris 2 hours ago [-]
… which is the way it should be. Users vote with their fingers and eyeballs.
FlyingSnake 2 hours ago [-]
That’s the whole point. These next gen protocols make it easy enough to move on to the next thing.
“Be like water making its way through cracks. Do not be assertive, but adjust to the object, and you shall find a way around or through it. If nothing within you stays rigid, outward things will disclose themselves.
Empty your mind, be formless. Shapeless, like water. If you put water into a cup, it becomes the cup. You put water into a bottle and it becomes the bottle. You put it in a teapot, it becomes the teapot. Now, water can flow or it can crash. Be water, my friend.”
- Bruce Lee
NovemberWhiskey 2 hours ago [-]
Actually that bit I care less about.
jonas21 2 hours ago [-]
What happened to Reddit? AFAIK, they're bigger than ever now.
Cyph0n 2 hours ago [-]
Astroturfing and moderator controlled subreddits have ruined Reddit for me. /r/worldnews is one example of the latter.
jiggawatts 2 hours ago [-]
Someone analysed a popular post and found that 19 of the top 20 comments were bots.
The Dead Internet theory is all too true.
ceejayoz 2 hours ago [-]
In any of the larger subreddits, the posts are heavily repost bots and the top comments stolen from the last time it was posted.
PittleyDunkin 2 hours ago [-]
It's also astroturfed to death, including moderation.
PittleyDunkin 2 hours ago [-]
I think some of the community will also move to substack
talldayo 2 hours ago [-]
As an outsider, I've always associated Bluesky/Twitter with "volitile but potentially cutting-edge reporting" and followed it but with a grain of salt.
When I see an article on Substack I always assume the worst. The signal-to-noise ratio is lower on Medium and Substack than any other social platform I browse, which is a tragic indictment of where long-form blogging has gone.
PittleyDunkin 1 hours ago [-]
As with all social media, it's about who you follow. I've found it particularly attractive for international reporting, albeit typically with some clear bent or polemic.
mardifoufs 2 hours ago [-]
I mean, it's still a very small niche website of again, mostly tech related westerners. Twitter is much more diverse
dogleash 2 hours ago [-]
> very small niche website of again, mostly tech related westerners
That's what they want. A social club with an overton window they like.
It's designed for mass userbase so it can feel like a big party that "everybody" is at. But once "everybody" includes their parents then the party is over.
danielovichdk 2 hours ago [-]
Diverse is probably a stretch.
More like an echo chamber for the choir preachers.
Postosuchus 2 hours ago [-]
Nope. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
treyd 2 hours ago [-]
It still seems to require JavaScript be enabled to render anything.
China will do more and more of this as the USA withdraws from policing the world.
kkfx 2 hours ago [-]
Ahem... Cui prodest/cui bono?
What kind of interest Chinese could have to damage such cables? IMVHO ZERO. Also I doubt Russians have interests to do so.
Who could be interested?
- some private company for makes and insurance/the public pay to fix something who need money from the owner for other reasons (like I break on purpose my car to get it repaired for free or at least less money than what it would costing me avoiding the self-sabotage);
- some countries wanting war at all costs trying to create a casus belli to justify the push toward WWIII
- some countries experimenting the resilience of their infra
I fails to see any other potentially interested party.
weweersdfsd 11 hours ago [-]
I think it's time for a special navy operation which captures a Russian or Chinese cargo ship every time a cable gets damaged. The ships and their cargo could be then sold to the highest bidder.
KSteffensen 11 hours ago [-]
It that really a precedent we would want to set? It sounds like it would be bad for global trade that state actors could arbitrarily seize privately owned property.
mihaaly 11 hours ago [-]
Wrong time getting cuastic (except if you are supporting China and Russia in their bully and troublemaker sabotaging efforts).
preisschild 11 hours ago [-]
... And profits are given to Ukraine.
sva_ 11 hours ago [-]
Am I hearing this right? You're volunteering to be on the front lines?
rightbyte 11 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
sedan_baklazhan 13 hours ago [-]
So Two Minutes Of Hate towards Russia is over in this aspect?
Very Orwellish.
myrmidon 12 hours ago [-]
What are you even talking about? Are you suggesting that "the West" has a too negative public opinion of Russia or China?
I would argue that interactions/treatment specifically toward Russia, especially by European nations in the last 20 years, was actually too positive and naive-- specifically because unlike Europe, Russia definitely did not leave its imperialistic ambitions behind, and treating/trading with it as a friendly somewhat flawed democracy during those years might have done more harm than good in hindsight.
I'm curious how you think about this?
sedan_baklazhan 12 hours ago [-]
Just yesterday on the front page there was a topic largely consisting of accusations of Russia breaking these cables.
Now I see a sudden switch of the "criminal" and a possible start of a new 2-minute of Hate.
It's very Orwellish indeed.
myrmidon 7 hours ago [-]
People are speculating about whether this was intentional, and, if so, who is to blame.
How is that "Orwellian"?
Russia has quite the recent history of poisoning civilians both native and foreign (do you dispute that?). Those acts are already a significant step above simple sabotage, so why would it be Orwellian to consider them a possible perpetrator?
In my view, common current western view of Russia is everything but:
Orwellian would be a strong, emotional public expressions of hate (with frequently switching target).
Current western view (can only really talk about central Europe) is more of a muted mix of disappointment, sadness and disgust about what Russia did/does in the Ukraine...
preisschild 11 hours ago [-]
Did you even read the thread? It was captained by a Russian, and CN is a Russian ally.
The Kremlin may very well be behind this.
sedan_baklazhan 10 hours ago [-]
Wow
throw2343223434 12 hours ago [-]
[dead]
dfadsadsf 14 hours ago [-]
It could be false flag operation to create pretext for NATO/EU to block shipping to Russian ports in Baltic Sea.
Similar to Nordstream destruction in 2022 it could have been either Ukrainians or CIA/NSA. This could be last attempt by current US administration elements to create leverage for the Ukraine before negotiations start.
mnky9800n 13 hours ago [-]
what possible reason would nato need to blockade russian ports that doesnt already exist?
maxglute 12 hours ago [-]
Blockade is legal act of war. RU at war with UKR, not NATO, and vice versa. Hence NATO would need casus belli of RU attacking NATO or NATO owned infra to declare blockade (read: declare war on RU).
kryptiskt 4 hours ago [-]
Russia isn't at war with Ukraine, it's a special military operation. Declaring a little exclusion zone outside all their ports for live-fire naval exercises isn't an act of war either. It'll be temporary, they'll be over by 2028, honest.
preisschild 11 hours ago [-]
Russia is already assassinating and sabotaging in NATO countries, which are legal acts of war too.
Rendered at 23:01:03 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) with Vercel.
These things happen sometimes, ship anchors sometimes damage cables, but not this often and without serious problems in the ship. Russians are attempting plausible deniability.
But it's not really in the same category as casually cutting internet lines to your peacetime competitors out of pique or whatever.
https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2023/03/16/23/68797949-11868975...
https://www.wsj.com/world/europe/nord-stream-pipeline-explos...
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baltic_Pipe
The US destroyed the Nordstream pipeline for certain and Sy Hersh has the evidence.
It is more than probable that this incident indicates possible collusion between the Chinese and Russian governments to sabotage European interests. The simplest fix is for Sweden and Denmark to ban Chinese and Russian ships from their territorial waters until they deliver accountable assurances that this sort of behavior will not happen again. Until then, they must be stopped and European countries must play hardball because that's the only language these criminals understand.
https://seymourhersh.substack.com/p/how-america-took-out-the...
Snopes only offers FUD but not a single contradiction or refutation of any of Sy Hersh's reporting or claims other than it boils down to "it relies on a single source". Sometimes, in secret operations, that's the reality. There exist genuine anonymous sources who cannot be revealed themselves. Part of the principle of benefit-of-the-doubt is trusting that Sy Hersh isn't merely looking for a quick payday to sellout his journalistic integrity for a few dollars and that he isn't an easily-fooled novice when it comes to doing due-diligence on sources and facts. It's mostly a disrespectful hit-piece lacking in evidence. With all likelihood, like the identity of Deep Throat, the truth will come out once the source retires and write a book about it.
https://www.snopes.com/news/2023/02/10/hersh-nord-stream-sab...
I'd like to see your version of maritime law that doesn't allow freely roaming over important cables. Your country's enemies would gladly drop cables totally encircling you and say "uh uh uh, important cables!" if you tried to leave your perimeter
That of course assumes that Putin stops at Ukraine. The point is that this isn't our war.
While the EU may not be at war with Russia, Russia is already at war with the EU.
After the dust settles on the Ukraine war, if Putin still has the capacity to wage war, he will not likely stop with Ukraine. It is by now obvious that a limited incursion into Poland, for example, will not spark a global thermonuclear war.
Ukrainian suffering is both the litmus test and the vaccination against nuclear escalation that Putin needs to contemplate further expansion.
Political alignments aside, if I were based in Europe I would be very, very concerned.
Ukraine is a corrupt third world country competing in the same league with Botswana and Zambia.
Satellites can serve multiple purposes including communications, navigation, overhead imagery, signals intelligence, weather, etc. They are also vulnerable, but it's possible to launch replacements faster than repairing damaged cables.
Who is now threatening nuclear war?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kessler_syndrome
You will even see Kessler cited as some sort of barrier to leaving, which is nonsense.
Imagine there's a 1x1m spot where on average once per week, entirely at random and without warning a giant boulder falls from the sky and if you're there you will be crushed under the boulder. Clearly living on that spot is a terrible idea, you'd die. But merely running through it is basically fine, there's a tiny chance the boulder hits you by coincidentally arriving as you do, but we live with risks that big all the time. If you're an American commuter for example that's the sort of risk you shrug off.
Likewise, Kessler isn't a barrier to leaving, humans won't be leaving because there's nowhere to go. The only habitable planet is this one, and we're already here.
The most likely explanation for the unexplained disassembly is that Boeing made it. Second, most likely, is a collision with a hunk of something invisible.
Edit: I guess I was assuming geostationary. There's a whole sphere of geosynchronous orbits to play with.
Edit2: I was right the first time, GEO (geosynchronous equatoral orbit) / GSO (geosynchronous orbit), apparently. Now my head hurts.
"cramped" the way that like, Alaska is cramped on account of how everybody has to live on the surface, not evenly distributed through the volume of the planet?
Like yeah, it's "just a circle" but did you check the radius of that circle?
Remember if there's debris, the debris isn't stuck in the circle, but, any time it's not in the circle it's harmless. This has the effect of significantly defusing the problem, so in total it's too low risk to be worth considering.
Yes, I know the undersea cables are privately owned too.
Also, your focus on cost was not the point. The point was numbers necessary. You need $lots of bullets, but you don't need any where near the same number of jets/tanks. You don't need $lots of satellites. You need a much smaller number closer to the number of jets/tanks. At least based on Starlink constellation numbers.
This happend a very, very long time ago. Destroing things years after the fact is not logical and is not longer a defensive response. Using this as justification is just trying to escalate.
> its reasonable to expect shortened lifetimes for undersea cables and sattelites
Why is this reasonable? It seems like a pointless attack that achieves little other than reminding the world that horrible, oppessive governments are dangerous to everyone. Oppression is incredibly expensive for humanity, and only benefits the few that are the oppressors.
It happened on 26. September 2022. That is not a long time ago.
> It seems like a pointless attack that achieves little other than reminding the world that horrible, oppessive governments are dangerous to everyone
It sends a message, as sabotaging communications is frequently done before an attack. Also it damages morale and is a show of power.
And it looks like according to marinetraffic.com that the Yi Peng 3 is indeed at full stop surrounded by at least 3 Danish navy vessels.
1. article in Finnish https://www.hs.fi/politiikka/art-2000010845324.html
Kind of a "Who watches the watchers?" type of thing.
For example: banning the conflation of opinion and fact, like what's going on (and always goes on) in this thread, a behavior that is protected (doing otherwise "is not what this site is for").
If an imperfection is noted: log it, investigate, improve. Rinse, repeat.
Also: best prepare one's will, life insurance, etc before undertaking such a project.
In many professional fights the competitors start matches with light, quick jabs to probe their opponents defense.
This feels just like that now that you put it this way. I never connected those dots though.
https://youtu.be/Z_EnkvE6LZA
Not sure we understand "probing" differently. Russian currently is at the edges, testing the responses from things like cutting cables and otherwise interfering with the infrastructure. This is what "probing" means for me. "Beyond probing" would be actually launching attacks one way or another, which we haven't seen yet (except of course, for the Ukraine invasion).
On the contrary. The attacks have been ongoing for years now. You're looking for the tanks and missiles when the attack is actually happening right under your feet. Rot and corruption are more powerful than any bullets or missiles.
The developed world knows this even better. Offering yachts, real estate, supercars, prostitutes, and other luxuries to oligarchs. Thanks to this their military is rather in shambles right now.
It's historically, financially, and strategically incoherent. Trying to bribe people who are already rich with hard-to-hide things, just to make them extra-corrupt in the vague hope that it somehow results in pilfered AK-47s being sold on the black market?
Sorry, but no: Being shaken down by Russian traffic cops for bribes every week is a domestic problem.
A submarine cable is an attractive target for Russia because Russia doesn't have cables of their own exposed: Russia is a continental power, not a maritime alliance. A cable attack is an asymmetric attack, difficult to respond to appropriately.
> The 1,000 kilometre (620 miles) Baltika cable belonging to state-owned Rostelecom runs from the region of St. Petersburg to the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad on the southern Baltic Sea.
> A gas pipeline linking Finland and Estonia and two other telecoms cables, connecting Estonia to Finland and Sweden, were also damaged last month. Finnish police believe damage to the Baltic connector gas pipeline was caused by a Chinese container ship dragging its anchor along the seabed but have not concluded whether this was an accident or a deliberate act.
> The Finnish coast guard said the Russian outage may be linked to the previously reported damage.
[0] https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/finland-says-russian-ba...
he's saying "this was not a probe, this was an actually launched attack"
Russia started invading Ukraine six months before Nord Stream blow up. Previously Russia invaded Crimea in 2014.
The next invaded country, will be also an escalation?
All of this is about a few psychopaths filling their pockets with the money that generates the corpses of their criminal business, some encouraging the production of war, others encouraging the waging of war.
Why are these psychopaths and their "business" not prosecuted?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vK7l55ZOVIc
Boxers learned from the art of war, not the other way around.
"Probing attacks" are a standard doctrine. It's not always a clear signal of intent to increase hostilities because it's also just useful as an intelligence gathering exercise.
Doesn't always work
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2015_Russian_Sukhoi_Su-24_shoo...
I cannot find any lists (either in English or Swedish) but I remember Russia has been accidentally breaking into Swedish airspace like once a year for as long as I can remember. Submarines also sometimes "accidentally" end up close to Swedish shores.
It'd be interesting to see some total numbers, and compare other countries with how often it happens between Sweden/Russia.
NATO's political unity and ability to respond is tested with these attacks. Russia does them one after another gradually escalating. Russia maintains plausible deniability or does so small operations that they can always walk them back.
Eventually, some country invokes Article 4 or 5 consultations. Russia hopes that US, Hungary, or Germany waters down NATO response. The conflict continues, but between individual countries not under NATO. NATOs as a organization may continue, but raison d'être is gone.
NATO and Europe did quite a lot to normalize relations with Russia. Russia was invited and became participant of the NATO program Partnership For Peace [0].
Very nice, but the secret services that took over the empire did and does not fancy a rule-based, harmonious order based on mutual relations, human rights, freedom of press etc. As any autocracy or kleptocracy understands, that is very much a threat to their power, beacuse The imperative is on us to understand that message really well. It goes slowly unfortunately. It is hard for us to grok.Notice how on our part, helped via tech oligarchs, there is an incessant bombardment to undermine support for those values. Kremlin troll factories are a thing, but the Chinese are speading up rapidly in the information sphere too. Especially youngsters are targeted.
The war has already begun, but we don´t want to see it. And that is dangerous.
___
0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Partnership_for_Peace
You may also want to be careful (or not):
- all countries engage in these things
- how things are seem like how they seem, but this is very often not the case...and rather than consciousness raising warnings for such situations, it very often does the opposite
As always, I recommend a meta-perspective on geopolitical stories, it is much more fun than being a Normative, poorly constrained imagination actor like the vast majority of people.
And thus the disinformation campaign has succeeded, as you've turned off your brain and refused to address the threat.
Geopolitical affairs are indeed difficult to follow. It requires deep internal domain(s!) knowledge, which does not fit your average corporate media business model. The niche outlets that do have a capable editorial board are threatened by takeovers [1, 2] from the likes of Axel Springer [3]. 1 Billion USD for Politico. An idiotic sum for a buyer that small, Wikipedia might pique your interest [3]. That is not to say that Politico is useless now, but you can count on journalistic degradation over time.
But sweeping statements are not of help to get a sharper picture. Instead they risk promoting false equivalence and may turn participants(!) of democracies into passive nihilists. Which is precisely the aim of the foreign influence we are talking about.
___
1. https://foreignpolicy.com/2022/01/06/axel-springer-politico-...
2. https://countercurrents.org/2021/09/a-right-wing-german-news...
3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axel_Springer_SE#Criticism
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JrMiSQAGOS4
It takes one hour to listen. Take notes and verify the facts afterwards. No disinformation there, much less Russian.
Just one rebuttal, but there are many more to be found on the internet.
https://euideas.eui.eu/2022/07/11/john-mearsheimers-lecture-...
You cannot be serious with that kind of belief
If you mean poison as in disinformation, then you'd be wrong there as well. We literally "bombed" Iraq with pamphlets from airplanes encouraging them to rise up against Suddam and we'd be there to support them; we didn't.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poisoning_of_Sergei_and_Yulia_...
Sound the fire alarm over a birthday cake candle several times a week, and people learn the alarm means there's no fire, no need to rush, they've got time to finish that e-mail and grab their coat.
But also, cutting these cables doesn't stop communications. There are other land and undersea routes, and maybe terrestrial radio/satellite routes as well. You might damage these cables so that communications travel other routes which are more observable (or less observable). Or you might damage these cables so you can modify them elsewhere to enhance observability before they're repaired (or as part of the repair process).
Or it could be a training mission for your elite squad of cable biting sharks.
Lots of potential for intrigue here.
If the EU decides to join the US the war is over and Russia will keep the occupied lands. If the EU decides to support Ukraine then because of the devastating sanctions there is a strong chance Russia loses.
So it's in Russia's interest to make life as difficult as possible for Europe over the coming months in order to convince them that ending the war is in their best interest.
Unsurprisingly this week after Macron speech, "French" farmers decided to organize again on groups directed by leaders and block and destroy Spanish cargo trucks at the frontier, without any policemen to be found at place.
Is obvious that somebody is trying again the old trick to confront and divide in the EU. We had seen the same before in Poland, etc.
But a trick overused can became counterproductive. I'm sure that Macron and other in EU can sum deux and deux and understand that surrender is not an option anymore. Is not just Ukraine but also their own political survival what is at stake. If they let this agents roam free and grow, they will lose gradually the power.
As a European, I'd say there is just about 0 chance of the EU unilaterally supporting Russian taken any occupied areas to themselves and Ukraine surrendering. Not only would it signal to Russia that they can take European land without consequences, but public opinion is very much against any sort of cessation of defenses. In my ~30 years I've never seen as strong NATO support from the common man in countries like Sweden and Spain as there is today.
I agree, but it's not about accepting or saying it's a good idea, it's about whether European countries can replace the US support enough that Ukraine can reasonably keep defending themselves.
Your economy is nearly 10 times the size of Russia.
If Russia can continue, then you can almost 10 times more easily.
It's not a "can" issue. It's a "are you willing to do more than absolute minimum?" issue.
The Patriot system is one the of best examples. EU doesn't really have anything in this space, but Ukraine needs more of it yesterday.
Are you talking about SAM capabilities or something else? Because there are plenty of SAMs produced by European countries; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_surface-to-air_missile...
This has turned out to be a major problem, as the US has used their re-export restrictions on components to block very significant parts of planned European military aid to Ukraine.
I speculate that there will be (already is) some extremely heavy investments in military tech R&D to remove/reduce dependence on American components going forward. As a continent, we can't have our hands tied like this in future conflicts.
I'm guessing that if US pulls their support, EU will try to add as much to cover up for it as humanly possible, as most compatriots see Ukraine as the frontline of something that can grow much, much bigger which because of remembering history, we'd obviously like to avoid.
Being a Swede myself, and knowing how apathetic Swedish people are about basically anything, something having that large of support is pretty uncommon and signal a strong will to make NATO and EU defenses stronger, if anything.
Even people I know who been historically anti-"anything military" in the country have quickly turned into "We need to defend our Nordic brothers and sisters against the Russians" which kind of took me by surprise.
> UE is full of Trump supporters
That won't ever happen. Even right-wingers (Europe right, not US right) are laughing at Trump and the Republicans.
The linked article is about the opinion of Germans about shipments of German weapons. When you don't specify that in the context of this thread, which is about Europe, not Germany, people might mistakenly interpret that as data about Europe.
I still stand by my original statement that unilateral decision in EU of stop supporting Ukraine and letting Russia keep the occupied territories.
Support in other European countries does not differ much from Germany:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/feb/21/barely-10-per-...
Yes, it seems to differ in at least one place by a lot: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42193290
I'm sure that's true for other places too.
Alone from that reason, USA will not pull their aid. USA cannot afford losing Europe as an arms client
How did that not work then yet?
Because it's a war.
Ruble is below a single penny.
Interest rates are at 21%, highest since 2003.
Inflation is out of control.
Not really all that rosy.
The Nazis were mopping the floor with Europe until they weren’t. The Japanese were conquering Asia until they weren’t.
Why wouldn't russia use a tactical nuke in west Ukraine to destroy tank factories? They already are a international Pariah, that is why they align with North Korea.
The only answer is - to remain the last standing they have. But at some point, they might not care. It is dangerous to put someone with nukes in a desperate position. Putin would not survive retreating from Ukraine - he would be in a desperate position if the odds of war are against him - currently they ain't.
Because the Biden administration communicated to its regime (in late 2022) that this would definitely trigger a massive kinetic response. In particular it indicated that its ground forces in Ukraine would be utterly destroyed (as Putin knows it is very much capable of doing).
Don't you see, how this can turn out wrong?
But from the fact that the warning was expresed privately, and using carefully chosen language (unlike Putin's warnings, which are generally aimed at the public sphere, and are full of bluster) -- and considering, again, that the US is fully capable of carrying through with its promise in this regard -- it seems likely the message was received as intended.
Could still go wrong, but the likelihood of things going wrong by not promising any sufficiently serious consequences at all to Russia's regime if it actually deploys nukes seems to be (unequivocally) far greater.
I see, you have personally checked the russian nukes and found they are all worthless? Or have access to top secret informations confirming that?
Otherwise it seems a bit out of this world, to claim the country with the most nukes on earth is a paper tiger.
And the russian conventional military is far from a paper tiger as well. That tale comes from the fantasy, that Ukraine is facing russia alone. But the whole NATO is supporting it. Without NATOs weapons and money, Ukraine would have been russian since over 2 years.
But yes, I do have fear. But more from people like you, who look at reality in a way, that fits their ideology.
Just assume for a moment, you are wrong. What would happen as a result, if the people in command would think like you?
Russia is getting bombed every day and doesn’t even hold all of its initial territory. It is not clear who will win this.
It is extremely obvious that Russia would be crushed within days by a confrontation with NATO (but this conflict almost certainly wouldn't materialize due to nuclear weapons).
It's interesting the extent to which people haven't internalized this. Russia's industry has really ramped up on military production in the past two years, and their military will eventually get to the point where it can cause tremendous damage against a poorly-equipped Ukraine, through attrition. But the invasion revealed how far behind they are technologically, and a combined NATO force would turn off their entire military's command and control on day one of a real conflict.
It's an inversion of the situation forty or fifty years ago, when Europe had to rely on the the nuclear threat because the Russian conventional forces were considered to be overwhelming.
They are not, if you take the larger context into account - and that is China and their saber rattling not just against Taiwan but also against everyone else in what China thinks is "their" influence sphere such as the Philippines.
Russia's warmongering (not just in Ukraine, but also via Syria, Iran and Yemen!) is breaking apart both the US and EU internally - recent elections have shown that both populations are pretty much fed up with the wars and their consequences, and once enough countries either fall to Putin's 5th column outright or their governments pull a Chamberlain, China can be relatively certain no one will intervene too much when they decide that now is the best time to annex other countries.
American Secretary of Defense: "Mr. President, the Chinese just destroyed our Naval base in the Philippines, killing hundreds of US servicemen. As part of a plan to annex the country or something."
American president: "Let's not intervene too much."
The only response the entire West was able to give in years of Chinese transgressions were strong words, about as effective as "thoughts and prayers". China is a bully that escalates continuously (similar to Russia's behavior in Syria with the countless "red lines" that were crossed, eventually including chemical weapons) and needs to be brought to its knees before they one day trigger WW3 by accident.
[1] https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/chinese-coast-gua...
[2] https://maritime-executive.com/article/philippine-official-a...
That this is not as big a deal as you think was the reason for my grandparent post. The "US citizens wary" thing can reverse itself the moment Americans are killed by a hostile adversary.
Of course that can and does also happen in democracies, but at least most reasonable democracies have some sort of "checks and balances" that at least prevents open war from breaking out.
So yeah, the US absolutely got outplayed here.
I think it's unlikely that the world will pick an economic partner that:
- builds 90% of the new coal fired plants while the rest of the world (including the US) is decarbonizing
- has 280+% debt to GDP ratio
- has capital controls on its currency (the real exchange rate could change suddenly at the drop of a hat)
But I'm also well aware of the fact the US has gone through extremely dark periods and its past success is not a promise of future success. At the end of the day a country very possibly plunged into Great Depression II and almost certainly with trade policy changing by the day is not a good trading partner.
There is a very real possibility that we deport our way into a famine. The US economy cannot possibly sustain the type of deportations that have been promised and are already being put into motion by the incoming administration.
Obviously most of that devastation was from the war itself, but if every enslaved person in the country were shipped back to Africa (as many proposed at the time), it absolutely would've had deeply negative near-term consequences. To suggest otherwise is to suggest that economies don't actually depend on labor. Dismissible on its face! And to be explicit: those near-term consequences were morally necessary to bear anyway.
> In fact, it is unsustainable to encourage illegal labor and immigration.
Not sure what this is responding to, tbh
> Not sure what this is responding to, tbh
I think this is related to this here:
> The US economy is absolutely sustainable by paying citizens legal wages.
They do have a point there - their argument (as I read it) is that the widespread use of undocumented/illegal labor and the exploitation of these laborers in agriculture has led to an economic gridlock situation: employers make big bucks by not paying their fair share in social security and taxes, fair employers have a hard time competing on price because the cost of fair, legal labor is too high, and they cannot raise prices to a sustainable level because the consumers have no money to pay for that because they themselves don't get paid fairly.
The associated economic theory is commonly associated with the economic effects of minimum wage hikes - these lead (despite all the Corporate Whining) to economic growth because the lowest rungs of society, those actually living on minimum wage, go and immediately spend their additional money, similar to what happened with the Covid stimulus checks, while the upper levels of society hoard additional income and do not directly contribute to economic growth.
Well at least in prior crises, the US had sensible leadership on both sides that was willing to put country before party.
The 47th however? Not just the man himself but especially the cabinet picks are an utter joke. None of the currently known picks are known for any kind of competence or even experience in their respective fields, and there are ideas floating to have the Senate go into recess so the 47th can appoint them without the usual review process - astonishing in itself given that the Republicans control the full Congress, they shouldn't have to fear any of their candidates not getting past the Senate. What politics they want to follow is just as dangerous - Musk and DOGE slashing 2 trillion $ from government expenditure for example, large parts of the government will literally be unable to do their job (which is, among others, to handle crises).
As far as stability goes, the comment above you talked about a stable trading partner, not a stable economy. China is probably more stable as a trading partner than the US is. The US changes trade policy too often.
How well did that trade war go last time he was in office? Trick question, farmers got fucked, and rational minds agree that the US lost.
>Initiating steel and aluminium tariff actions in March 2018, Trump said "trade wars are good, and easy to win,"[54] but as the conflict continued to escalate through August 2019, Trump stated, "I never said China was going to be easy."
It doesn't matter what you claim to want to do or who you claim to "hate" if your sheer incompetence prevents you from accomplishing your desire.
Maybe putting a serial business failure in charge of a trade war isn't very effective?
Biden didn't get rid of them, because it's basically impossible to unwind a trade war, and then put some more limitations on solar panels. I don't think there is a clear answer yet on Biden's addition to the trade war. Probably will be "meh".
A trade war between the US and China is almost always going to be extremely negative sum. Both of our countries rely on each other for prosperity and nice shit.
But alternatively, it is the outgoing Biden administration that do not want a freeze, and are escalating their involvement in the war, by giving permission to use their long-range missiles to attack inside Russia, in order to derail any potential 'agreement'.
And they are now sewing the press with 'hybrid war' mania. I see news sites are now plastered with fearmongering stories about embassies being closed in Kyiv, that Ukraine front might collapse without aid, and so on and on. Note that none of it is actual Russian attacks or any actual events, just fear of them. It looks very much like a media campaign to me.
edit: oh dear, a few people on HN really do not like this take, without offering any take-down, which just makes me think there's probably something to it.
How is allowing Ukraine to use ATACMS on military targets in Russia an escalation?
It is a very clear escalation in US/European involvement. Ukraine were prohibited from using long-range western weapons to attack targets inside Russia up until now.
I'm not saying if it's right or wrong.
But it's a very clear escalation in western 'participation'. Russia have for a long time been saying that such action would be tantamount to a NATO attack, and so everyone involved surely understands that this is an escalation in the NATO-Russia face-off.
They say this every time. When Obama sent non-lethal aid, they used the same line.
It is not that Ukraine are escalating the war by using long-range missiles. Of course Russia have been using them all along.
But it is a clear escalation in western 'participation' in the war.
From that follows the logical conclusion that it’s not the US’ or NATO’s job to “reply to constant attacks”, and instead getting involved in the conflict is just that — waging war against Russia.
Normally, if we show up at the flagpole at noon to confront each other, and you throw a punch, you have escalated things to a fistfight, and then my return punch is not an escalation. If I pull a knife, I have escalated things to a knife fight. We escalate from fist to knife to gun. Reciprocation - self defense - does not count.
The only way to torture the term into contextual use is to suggest that Russia is not firing rockets at NATO because Ukraine is not NATO, but NATO is firing rockets at Russia because all these missile systems are not Ukrainian, but NATO. This is Putin's framing, and it incorporates the idea that the missile systems are actually being manned but US & EU soldiers.
If you are not adopting that frame, "escalation" only really works if you explicitly define the context as a Great Powers proxy war with a potential nuclear endpoint, where Ukraine is stipulated for the sake of argument to have no agency.
I am not the OP, but I think your interpretation is not as obvious as you make it to be. This often leads to misunderstandings.
AFAIK military analysts use the term escalation as a morally neutral term. Escalation is anything that goes up on the 'scala' (= "ladder", the Latin root of the word). In this interpretation, D-Day would be an e_scala_tion (climbing up the ladder) simply because opening a new front means number_of_fronts_today > number_of_fronts_yesterday. In this interpretation, self-defense and escalation are not mutually exclusive.
Apparently, the term changed meaning. Many people now treat it the way you do (if I understand you correctly) as something associated with aggression. Therefore, they assume that when someone labels something like an escalation, they mean it is an act of aggression, unjustified, something you should not be allowed to do, and not morally neutral.
I am not saying you are wrong. I am just pointing out that when people talk about escalation, it is worth checking whether they mean the same escalation.
My point: I think USSR (and Cuba) had a good reason to install those missiles. It wasn't an unprovoked action.
There is some analogy here for the Ukraine NATO situation.
Arguably, this would even be in Russia's favor, given its manpower advantage. But Ukraine might agree to it to stop civilian terror and power infrastructure attacks.
The question in this thread is more along the lines of "if the robber shouts 'fighting back is a red line!', should we avoid fighting back?"
The current war in Ukraine is a direct result of the international community not making much fuss when Russia, largely unopposed, took chunks of Moldova, Georgia, and Ukraine over the last few decades.
As with appeasing Hitler, we prioritized short-term quiet for longer-term encouragement of aggression.
With all the backlash here, I feel like some kind of radical, but here is a BBC article from 2 DAYS AGO that basically says what I'm saying: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cx2nrlq1840o
Although they miss out the bit about a media campaign, and so on, of course.
This is the BBC, pretty much the mouthpiece of the UK government.
And although they frame recent actions as trying to give Ukraine an advantage in any Trump negotiations with Russia, the truth is that these missiles will probably not advance Ukraine's military position, but will certainly change Europe and America's standing, possibly to the point of derailing any possibility of negotiation.
No "too"
It is only that.
If Russia retreated behind its internationally recognized borders and returned Crimea today, Ukraine would stop attacking it today.
That tells you everything you need to know about who the aggressor and escalator is in this conflict.
Anything else is a Russian talking point in service to their trying to lose fewer troops while invading a neighboring country.
Oh, sorry, I was under the impression you wanted a discussion.
> edit: oh dear, a few people on HN really do not like this take, without offering any take-down
If you just wanted to complain, but not have anyone challenge your opinions, you should have phrased the above differently.
I took your comment to be a dismissive 'Russia should just retreat' directive.
Ain't gonna happen.
And The problem is, Ukraine really is not just a simple country that got invaded. It really matters, for the whole world, if we let Russia get away with aggression. It matters if we push too hard and in the chaos Russia unleashes nuclear weapons. It matters how the west conducts supposed peace-keeping operations, etc. It's reallt is not just about Ukraine, and the very fact that you (probably not Ukrainian or Russian) are commenting is evidence.
Unfortunately for the world, that's an extremely dangerous propaganda approach to take, because it blurs the actual red lines that Russia would resort to nuclear retaliation. (Of which Russia certainly has some! And possibly even some within Ukraine's military ability to inadvertently cross)
Trusting that "Russia never means what it says" is problematic on so many levels.
Imho, the biggest mistake in the West's approach to the entire war has been its failure to proactively announce military aid changes and the conditions that would trigger them.
It's like the West collectively forgot how to properly create deterrence in the 1960s sense.
F.ex. the West could have publicly announced "If Russia receives military aid from North Korea or Iran, in the form of ammunition or soldiers, then we will provide additional long range strike options to Ukraine and authorize their use against Russian territory."
That might have encouraged Russia to self-limit and not pursue those actions.
Instead, it's been a hamfisted, weak display of waiting for Russia to do something, then hurriedly conferring behind closed doors, then announcing a reaction.
Which... the entire point of deterrence is to cause the opponent not to take the action in the first place. >.<
> Russia has set out “red lines” before. Some, including providing modern battle tanks and fighter jets to Ukraine, have since been crossed without triggering a direct war between Russia and Nato.
This is the latest of a long list of small, slow, racheting-up responses to unilateral Russian aggression. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_lines_in_the_Russo-Ukraini...
And no-one has been 'getting anything across to me', inferring that I'm 'not getting it'. They've been throwing incomplete or irrational arguments, like yours, or simply downvoting.
Sure there have been 'red lines' by Russia, and the US has continuously pushed across them.
But this one was also a US 'red line'. Consistent with keeping a proxy-war in-theater.
Why have they crossed it, now?
What do they hope it will achieve?
Most likely very little militarily.
But maybe quite a lot in shaping or constraining future US policy.
For the same reason they crossed all the others - continued Russian aggression.
Each expansion of US aid or reduction in restrictions on how that aid is utilized has followed logically from Russian actions. Obama started with non-lethal aid; we've initially balked at every single step since that before eventually going "ok, now it's warranted".
It's very clear the US is keeping responses small and incremental to take the wind out of Russian bluster about nuclear holocaust if they do this one more little thing to piss Putin off. It's also very clear the Russian "no don't send Javelins/HIMARS/Patriots/Abrams/MiGs/F-16s/ATACMS, we'll be very mad" has lost a lot of its potency.
And, backtracking, how aware have you been about the situation in Ukraine, or baltic sea infrastructure, in the past few months (even year), compared to the last week? Just a marginal increment, no doubt.
I'd first reject the use of the term "red line" entirely for the ATACMS situation.
"No, not ever" is a red line. The Russians love issuing these for other people, but it's embarassing when they're crossed without significant consequence.
"No, not now" is not a red line. The US tends to shy away from issuing them - one of Obama's biggest mistakes was proclaiming one in Syria and then looking a bit feckless when they violated it. (https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/the-president-bli...)
Letting Ukraine hit Russian territory with ATACMS is like the fourth or fifth expansion of how they're permitted to use that weapons system so far, as was giving them ATACMS in the first place after HIMARS (which saw a similar set of gradually reduced limitations; https://www.defensenews.com/land/2022/07/08/us-to-send-more-...).
> And, backtracking, how aware have you been about the situation in Ukraine, or baltic sea infrastructure, in the past few months (even year), compared to the last week? Just a marginal increment, no doubt.
I've closely followed the situation in Ukraine since Euromaidan.
Which says nothing at all about the conflict being "a proxy war".
It exactly states that Biden might be stirring things up in anticipation of Trump sueing for a freeze.
And was this just a post-hoc justification, or had the western powers declared that they would retaliate if Russia involved other armies?
In any case, surely the 'punishment' should be directed at North Korea?
North Korean troops are helping Russia invade Ukraine (by freeing up Russian garrison troops to participate in their offensive).
Ergo, redress is something that helps Ukraine resist the military advantage North Korean involvement gives Russia -- e.g. being able to target Russian military targets supporting the invasion, in Russia.
The problem is at least as much Russia inviting NK as North Korea positively responding, aiding Ukraine works against all the belligerents aligned against it, NK as well as Russia, and the North Koreans in Russia are not protected by the Armistice the way North Koreans on the Korean peninsula are.
Wrong. Using long range missiles is not an escalation. Russia has been using them against Ukrainian lands for years now. Why shouldn't Ukraine be allowed to use them against Russian land?
Russia are at war with Ukraine, so they are bombing them. Ukraine have every right to reply with their own long range weapons too, and that would indeed not be an escalation in the fighting itself.
But, the west clearly prohibited the use of their donated long range weapons in direct attacks on Russia, in order to limit their liability, responsibility, 'participation' or whatever, until now.
Russia have been very clear that such permission would constitute an escalation OF WESTERN 'PARTICIPATION' in the war, and even be tantamount to a direct NATO attack, and so it is at least an escalation.
Whether it is right or wrong is not the point, it is a clear change in the depth of western involvement.
Since the war started, Russia has moved their red lines dozens of times. The “escalation” argument lost it's meaning.
This seems like an arbitrary line [0] drawn exactly where it suits your argument. How does having North Korean soldiers fighting for Russia stay on the right side of that line? What about any components that originated outside of Russia but are employed in Russian weaponry or equipment (for example chips)? The information war is a part of "the war", is an "official" non-Russian hacker or troll crossing the line? Or a non-Russian boat or crew employed for acts of sabotage.
[0] It can be fair to draw an arbitrary line, at least you know it's straight and will intersect whatever is unfortunate to be in its way regardless of the side you prefer. But you're trying to draw tiny arbitrary circles around whatever you don't like and that's feeble.
Ukraine is quite obviously not just a plucky country defending it's sovereignty (though it is that too), but the theater of a great-power proxy war.
The rules of that game are that you keep the conflict within the theater, or risk a world war.
That was already breached by Ukrainian incursions into Russia, armed to some extent with western weapons, but this is much more direct, and a clear escalation of US participation in the conflict.
In what insane alternate Marvel universe is Russia not part of the Russo-Ukrainian War theater?
https://www.newsweek.com/russia-ukraine-war-latest-us-shuts-...
The current U.S. administration wants to make the most out of the remaining 60 days. Perhaps they have a little help:
https://www.wired.com/story/inside-the-77th-brigade-britains...
> devastating sanctions
Devastating for Europe, you mean.
Also it would be better if any Russians here could answer a similar question
Russia: inflation around 8-9%.
EU: inflation around 2%.
Recently, a professor I know wrote an article about his impressions of Russia and Germany when he attended meetings in both countries.
Can you help to check what he said?
> Macroeconomic data indicates that the European economy is not doing well, but the economic conditions I experienced during my days in Berlin could be described as depression. What surprised me the most was that there were not many people or cars on the streets of Berlin during the daytime on weekdays. Berlin in early October is not yet cold, but the desolate feeling on the streets does not match the image of the capital of Europe's largest economy. Europe's inflation, which started later than in the United States, has also clearly hurt the lives of the people, which was my perception from conversations with taxi drivers during my rides.
But his claim of a "desolate feeling on the streets" being an indication of "economic conditions ... could be described as depression" read like badly written propaganda. There's nothing to be checked there, just some vague feelings. Berlin isn't as crowded as he expected, so the only explanation is that nobody can afford a car and half the population is sitting at home wallowing in misery due to economic depression? Really?
> (In Vladivostok) War typically leads to a rise in prices. Several Russian sources have reported that compared to two and a half years ago, current prices have roughly doubled, and housing prices have also increased significantly. However, it is somewhat comforting that the wages of most people have also increased proportionally, so people's lives have not been greatly affected so far. The supply of goods on the market is still quite abundant. Due to financial sanctions from the US and Europe, as well as multinational corporations, many brands' products and services are no longer available in the Russian market. Nevertheless, this does not prevent Russian citizens from drinking cola or eating American fast food. It is said that these brands have localized, but the products remain essentially unchanged: for example, the taste of Russian cola is not significantly different from Coca-Cola, as they can purchase the concentrate from third countries and mix it themselves.
> The official unemployment rate published by Russia is only 2%, and I believe this data is likely accurate. The reasons are not only because the war itself requires the hiring of a large number of young people, but also due to the wealth redistribution, increased consumption, and robust production that the war has brought about. Russia is a country with severe wealth disparity, where the lower classes traditionally lack money for consumption. This war has provided an opportunity for lower-income families to obtain cash flow: by sending their sons or husbands to the battlefield, families can receive a one-time subsidy of nearly 500,000 yuan. Even prisoners in jail can receive this benefit. This sum of money, equivalent to targeted transfer payments and proactive fiscal policies aimed at the poor, has given lower- and middle-income families a chance to gamble their lives for money. This has led to cases where some people join the military to escape punishment and receive subsidies, serve for a year, return home, and then reoffend and go to jail again, relying on a second enlistment to escape punishment and receive another subsidy.
> The increased cash flow among the lower-income population has led to a surge in consumer demand, and the robust production of military goods has also stimulated employment, income, and consumption. While the products of military industry are indeed consumed on the battlefield, for the macroeconomy, what matters is the flow rather than the stock; production and consumption are meaningful in themselves. As for whether the produced goods are expended as shells and missiles on the battlefield or become paper wealth on the other side of the ocean as export commodities, there is no fundamental difference for the current macroeconomic operation.
There are rumors circulating on Chinese self-media about how much the ruble has depreciated on the black market in Russia. I specifically went to restaurants and other consumer venues in Vladivostok to test for any significant difference between the official and black market exchange rates by using US dollars and Chinese yuan for payment. However, neither Russian-run nor Chinese-run restaurants offered discounts for payment in US dollars or Chinese yuan cash. This phenomenon is usually sufficient to debunk rumors about the Russian ruble black market.
The current social mood in Russia is relatively stable, which may be due not only to a decent economic foundation but also to strict control over public opinion. According to our research feedback, even in private settings, if colleagues or neighbors make remarks against Putin or the war, and are reported, those who oppose the war or Putin may face legal troubles.
It is hard to know how much Russia has been harmed, because both sides probably exaggerate the figures.
I wonder whether "more harm" is the right question. The question should be whether the sanctions have any impact on Russia's war economy, which they do not. If anything, they make Russia more independent and strengthen Russian ties with China and India.
This is all to the detriment of the EU, the only one here who profits is the U.S. by making the EU more dependent.
> The question should be whether the sanctions have any impact on Russia's war economy, which they do not
Ruble is below a single penny.
Interest rates are at 21%, highest since 2003.
Inflation is out of control.
> they make Russia more independent and strengthen Russian ties with China and India.
ah, so that's why Putin went to North Korea to beg for troops and ammunition?
https://www.imf.org/en/Countries/RUS
Germany has 2.4% inflation and 0% growth:
https://www.imf.org/en/Countries/DEU
I do not believe the German inflation numbers. Health care got 30% more expensive with more hikes coming, rents are exploding, groceries are 20% higher since 2022.
On the other side, Europe buys billions of dollars of oil and gas from Russia. That money goes in the opposite direction, from Europe to Russia, and is used toward soldier salaries, Iran drones and North Korean mercenaries.
https://energyandcleanair.org/august-2024-monthly-analysis-o...
The international order is often called the 'US-led rules-based interntional order'. Russia, China, and some others dislike the first element, of course. The second element refers to the legal, rules-based structure (rather than power-based anarchy, which led to the centuries or millennia of war before the 'order' was created post-WWII). Aggressive international warfare is outlawed, for example; if France and Germany have a dispute, there is no question of violence - they use a legal structure to resolve it, which wasn't always true!
Grey zone activities accomplish illegal things without reprocussions. And therefore they also serve the goal of undermining the international order by demonstrating its powerlessness in these situations. In some ways, it's like trolling.
Russia uses grey zone tactics heavily - for example, they used them to capture Crimea (which was before the clear act of war, their 2022 invasion). They use them to run destabilizing 'grey zone' campaigns throughout the world, including directly interfering in elections. The tactics suit Russia in particular because they cannot compete miltarily with the democratic world.
China uses them too, for example using their 'coast guard' and 'civilian' 'fishing boats' to attack (up to a point) and intimidate ships from other countries in the South China Sea. If China used their navy, it would possibly be acts of war. A Chinese coast guard ship shooting water cannon at a fishing boat, though illegal in international waters, isn't going to start a war. 'Civilian' 'fishing' boats from China blockading access to a reef won't either.
Edit:
Before you look at Russia and China and other Grey Zone actors as miscreants, understand that it's just the normal behavior of 'revisionist' powers - those who want to change the current rules. The current rules serve the interests of the 'status quo' powers, who get all self-righteous about 'illegal' activities.
In a more common situation on HN, think of IP outsiders, who break the 'rules' made by major IP holders, such as DMCA or those extending copyright for decades or restricting access to scientific knowledge - the IP holders want the status quo and call violations 'theft' and the outsiders 'criminals', etc. If the US wasn't a status quo power, they'd be doing grey zone things.
(That doesn't at all justify Russia and China's goals of stealing land, oppressing people's freedoms, and solving problems through violence.)
There's the actual international law (and the UN) and there's the US-led rules-based international order (ie, what the US wants basically). They're completely at odds - often times the US (and Israel or a couple of other minor countries) vote against or simply flout whatever the rest of the UN wants.
The US is king of Grey zone actions. Random drone strikes, funding insurgency and terror groups, invading countries without international approval, blockading Cuba, etc. - the list is very long.
So when the US complains about Russia doing similar things (often responding to provocation by the US or NATO), the complaints can easily be filed in the "hypocrisy bin".
https://towardfreedom.org/story/archives/americas/the-u-s-ma...
You have to look deeper into what kind of government has a problem with an international rule-based order. It is not the democratic countries with trias politica that have a problem with that, but autocratic regimes.
How are you going to ethnically cleanse Uyghurs in a rule based order, or run international crime networks at the level of statehood?
The question is: how are you going to integrate criminal and very powerful clangs in a world that is past the French Revolution? We tried, we failed. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Partnership_for_Peace
Answer is: you can't, unless the common people take ownership over their own countries. Very difficult.
The democratic countries follow the pattern of status quo powers. Is that because they are democratic or because they are status quo, or some of both?
The rules are of the status quo powers (matching their political cultures), by the status quo powers, for the status quo powers. Of course they follow those rules and support them. The rules seem to require a country to be a democracy to be legitimate - I agree with that as necessary to legitimacy (not sufficient), but obviously that doesn't suit non-democratic countries.
And like status quo powers, when they break the rules - most prominently the US many times, such as the Iraq war; the EU treatment of refugees and undocumented immigrants; and currently by Israel with US sponsorship - then they let themselves off the hook. They engineer technicalities, such as the weak UN resolution arguably authorizing the Iraq invasion; or just look the other way. They say they can't be handcuffed etc. (And some of those actions may be the right choice - I'm not judging - but they certainly violate the rules.)
As for the core of your question: there is no benefit, it's just his mentality. "The West" supports Ukraine so let's just do some harm, retaliate in some way. Burn some buildings here and there, plants some inflammable materials on airplanes etc. Pointless for you and me, meaningful for that guy.
"So - according to Russian federal port records, the Chinese ship suspected of cutting the communications cables in the Baltic Sea was captained by a Russian citizen (one Stechentsev A.E.). Interestingly Yui Peng 3 was only transferred to its current owner in China earlier this month.
The ship is carrying goods/oil from Ust-Luga in Russia, to Port Said in Egypt. Same captain also comandeered URSUS ARCTOS also carrying goods from Ust-Luga to Egypt. Mapped using @SensusQ . "
What we don't know is if China knew they were going to try this beforehand or not. Flag of Convenience is common enough that we can't be sure. This could have been planned on the high level from China and we would never know - something conspiracy theorists will run with! If China knew they would probably give the crew a sever punishment, but unofficially it is for getting caught and not doing the act. Most likely though China didn't know before hand.
Once you see them as gangsters, it's not difficult to see why they would do this.
*A full link with exact timestamp of Kotkin saying this is [1]. Here he talks about why Merkel kept making oil deals with Putin even though in hindsight this was probably not the best idea. Kotkin argues that, yes, according to econ 101 trade is good for both parties, but not when the opposite party is a gangster. Merkel thought that Putin was thinking like her, but he wasn't.
[1]: https://www.youtube.com/live/jJSDdCPpbto?t=4410
Russia is literally run buy thugs who ran protection rackets not so long ago. So there's much more to this than just a fitting figure of speech. Someone from the worst parts of LA would be better equipped to understand and deal with such people than those who spent their teens and early adulthood playing Model UN at a foreign relations club.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anatoly_Sobchak
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viktor_Zolotov
Applying the same logic, Ukraine should retaliate against Russia for bombing their hospitals with an attack on.. Iranian civilian infrastructure? Did I get that right?
This is entirely straighforward. Nothing that requires any struggle to understand.
Assuming it bears out that the Russian state is the perpetrator.
(i.e. the European countries might be more wary about boarding a Chinese ship compared to a Russian ship, because escalating against China is scarier...).
It's not dissimilar to the way criminal gangs will ensure that they have dirt on anyone joining or intentionally implicate others in order to ensure compliance.
Similar to both Russia and China gaining from war and disruption in the Middle East.
There are many possibilities here.
Doesn't mean its current Russian captain is serving Chinese interests, of course, but at least it seems to be Chinese owned.
Of course Putin knows this hence him somewhat taking the p.
On average, it seems like undersea internet cables break 200+ times per year. For example, Vietnam's internet cables break on average 10 times per year.
What would be the motivation for a Chinese trade ship to deliberately cut an internet cable? It has next to no impact on internet communication and only serves to annoy a small amount of people for a short period of time. In addition, China and Europe are trying to have a better relationship in general so it doesn't make sense for the Chinese government to order this.
Absolutely no way this wasn't intentional.
Money. Russia is reportedly bribing people into doing sabotage in western nations.
There's also reports that Yi Peng 3 is captained by a Russian national, which would also be another reason for a Chinese trade ship to conduct sabotage operations beneficial to Russia.
The most charitable reason is that they don't give a fluck. Same reason why their rocket boosters just fall wherever they fall, population center or not
Edit: https://x.com/Tendar/status/1859147985424196010
> The skipper of the Chinese ship is a Russian national and the route leads from Ust-Luga (Russia) to Port Said (Egypt).
I think we need a total ships sailing for country / cuts.
[0] https://www.csce.gov/briefings/russias-genocide-in-ukraine/
(This is also a rare English-language tweet from an account that usually only tweets in Danish)
including
> Social media reports said that the vessel had a Russian captain, although this has not been independently confirmed.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/nov/16/russian-spy-sh...
So definitely seems like a coordinated attempt to destabilise Europe ahead of anticipated peace talks early next year.
https://www.theportugalnews.com/news/2024-11-18/russian-ship...
Because that's what seems to be claimed here, that Russia are retaliating for that.
How long does it take a ship to travel to a 'suspicious' site like this?
versus, how long does it take to intercept the nearest Russian ship, and escort it away as a spy ship and 'potential saboteur'?
Cost of fixing cable = >>X
Damage = done
Both of the two Chinese registries are open, pretty much anyone can register ships there. It's a bit like the .tv domain — if you see something.tv you can't assume that it's a company in the country Tuvalu.
Look at the nationality of the captain and the beneficial owner instead.
Denmark controls the waters of the seaway to Sct. Petersburg and Kaliningrad that are some of the strategically most important ports of Russia.
Blocking of traffic to these would be a severe escalation.
Regularly Russian subs pass through Danish waters - controlled and allowed.
(I do realize that in particular US citizens have very high confidence in their own military capacity and might be overly bullish on situations like these)
My take is that Russia's plan is to continue sabotaging and a weak (or lack of) response to that only emboldens them.
Also nuclear war with what? Their recent Satan II ICBM test demonstrated that they don't necessarily have the technical chops to launch anything sufficiently capable and it must have come as a surprise to them as well.
I've always wondered how subs handle tidal flows there, and how challenging the tidal flows are.
As severe as... say starting the largest war in Europe since WW2 right at our doorstep? Or as damaging our critical infrastructure? Or manipulating our democratic processes?
It's time the West pulls its head out of its ass. We're already at war, whether we want it or not.
I think you should complain about 'appeasement' abit longer before switching gear to 'to late YOLO'.
That would help your cause better.
If we reach the "to [sic] late YOLO" stage it won't matter what options we picked. That's why appeasement is a fundamentally pointless idea that the US has refused for decades. If you even once play the "give a mouse a cookie" game you will end up surrendering everything to a power that can threaten you with nuclear terrorism. Only a moron would appease Russia in this scenario.
The US have no qualms appeasing Netanyahu. Biden and his party was even fine arguably losing the election over it. I don't see any contradiction there.
Russia and the US from time to time more or less arbitrarily bombs or invades some other country. I guess Russia's Holywood need to make better movies depicting their own soldiers as victims of their own wars. Still glorying though. There is work to be done there for sure. The two I've seen depicted soldiers as pathetic losers.
I mean, trying to economically, socially and culturally isolate the US would probably make it wreck even more mayhem over the world than trying to have cultural exchange, be nice, and what not. And when this fails not throwing yourself on a spike might be preferable.
The US didn't give Israel Mandatory Palestine - Britain did. America selling arms to Israel is a moot point, and if we want to compare like-to-like then Russia is guilty of the exact same thing with India. But neither situation is an appeasement in the first place, so it's a plainly facetious argument.
> Russia and the US from time to time more or less arbitrarily bombs or invades some other country.
America hasn't arbitrarily invaded any country since the Philippines. Comparing bombings to occupation of a sovereign nation is a faux-pas that reveals you aren't arguing in good faith. They are drastically different things and anyone with a serious perspective of military escalation understands this. I pity you for not recognizing that these are incomparable situations and suggest that you reflect on whether or not this kind of judgement is worth sharing online. Every comment I've read from you repeats the same fearful tone without suggesting a serious response besides giving Russia what they want. You are either falling for propaganda or a blatant mouthpiece yourself.
> trying to economically, socially and culturally isolate the US would probably make it wreck even more mayhem over the world than trying to have cultural exchange, be nice, and what not
A perspective you could only possibly possess if you were economically, socially and culturally isolated from the rest of the world. Or is India and Iran enough to keep Putin company? Some world "superpower" Russia is.
All you have to do at this point is go look at the cable near the crossings.
If there is evidence of an anchor hitting the cables in both of these locations then you've got pretty clear proof.
Someone should obviously be checking into this right now. No point speculating until it's confirmed really.
I guess you might still want to board just to find out weather there is any evidence of intent rather than negligence in the case that this is confirmed to be the cause...
No one will want to implicate China in something that would support Russia's war and would all be afraid of the economic fallout.
The ship suspected of breaking the cables has been apprehended and it turns out it was currently sailing from Russia with a Russian captain [0].
[0] https://x.com/visegrad24/status/1859132263746744367
The other part is that explicit accusations create a lot of political tensions. Obviously so does the actual act of sabotage. But definitive proof is quite difficult to actually reach. Unless there is literally a letter on that captain's desk from a military leader ordering the action (a "smoking gun") then it is easy to just blame the captain and/or crew, as Hank mentions. After all, a country should not be blamed for the actions of individual citizens not made with the direction of that country, though it is also important that countries hold their citizens accountable. Accusations will more depend on how hawkish the leaders are. Obviously all countries play games like this, but certainly some are more aggressive than others. One major country loves to play the victim card while creating "red lines" which violate international laws. So take it as you will
It has also been pointed out that this is a location with lively traffic. So if it turns out that is was an anchor (as in the New New Polar Bear case) that's extra suspicious because anchoring in such location is not normal. On the other hand if it were explosives like in the Nord Stream case, they could have been applied also weeks before.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cable_layer
> Cable ships also use “plows” that are suspended under the vessel. These plows use jets of high-pressure water to bury cable three feet (0.91 m) under the sea floor, which prevents fishing vessels from snagging cables as thrall their nets.
[1] https://www.vesselfinder.com/?mmsi=219003826
https://nltimes.nl/2024/11/15/dutch-childrens-channel-outage...
All the way to Luga and decided to not dock. Large cargo ship pleasure wandering the sea like a yacht.
Geez, I'm glad you're not war minister. It's a Chinese registered ship with a Russian captain.
If a terrorist crashes a truck with Portuguese plates into the US embassy in Berlin, would that mean Portugal's declared war against the USA?
But there is a "but", which is that in the articles of war, the flag of a ship does have quite a few implications. E.g. when two nations are at war, stopping ships flagged as belonging to the opposition gives certain rights of stopping and searching them, blockading their passage, seizing the vessels and cargo, etc.
And the relevant characteristic in that case is the flag, not the captain's nationality: > Art. 51. Enemy character. The enemy or neutral character of a vessel is determined by the flag which it is entitled to fly.
http://hrlibrary.umn.edu/instree/1913a.htm
Of course this isn't really automatic and triggered by the smallest thing, both sides kind of have to "agree" to be at war, e.g. by a counter-attack, a declaration following the attack or something like that. And nobody really wants to take that bait, due to the huge consequences involved.
Yet, it is China playing with fire here, we all can be happy that none of the affected nations took them up on their "offer" of war.
They can later claim that the crew and captain acted on their own will, without orders from the Chinese leadership. They can duly punish the captain and crew or disavow the vessel and declare them renegade, disallow them to fly their flag. But without such a declaration, a nation such as China is responsible for the conduct of their fleets, be they civilian or military. And any vessel they allow to fly their flag is part of their (in this case civilian) fleet.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of_convenience
> A ship's flag state exercises regulatory control over the vessel and is required to inspect it regularly, certify the ship's equipment and crew, and issue safety and pollution prevention documents.
Because US law is strong in this regard, the US military is by far the largest contributor to the count. Less than 200 civilian vessels are flagged in the US; https://www.statista.com/statistics/652126/us-flag-oceangoin....
But look around (even in these comments) and look at how many people are thinking "Chinese act of war!!!11!!"
That's really not all you are saying, and the difference is important. Maybe not to you, though.
China may back Russia to try to shift perception of the west's military might/will or to drain resources or just to buy Russia by making them dependant to get those juicy Russian natural resources but they aren't going to start world war iii to help Putin with his fetishistic "yet another European dictator" fantasy.
The Chinese know how to play the game same as the Russians and the US. All these little games are just calibrated psyops, why destroy, very publicly, comms lines when tapping it would be far more beneficial to a war effort and much quieter? Maybe to make the West look weak and unable to defend their borders which affects consequences domestically like say channeling political support to isolationist politicians who want to retreat from supporting Ukraine? Cause those politicians didn't make gains in the last European elections or nothing.
I am sure if the cowardly Russians ever did this to USA, it would cause a much bigger drama and retaliation wave, and China would take the hit as well.
At the very least, the cooperation of Portugal's authorities would be expected to determine how the truck ended up being used for the attack, and if anyone knew about how the vehicle was to be used.
I expect the same amount of cooperation from China as the flag state.
Due to an earlier generation's newspeak, that's "defense," not "war."
I happened to notice that at least in some cases, the change of terminology happened roughly when it became clear that offensive war was a losing proposition in terms of money and resources. I suspect that as invading the neighbours became financially irrational, the cool heads that tend to survive in management shifted their stand from mixed offense/defense to just defense.
A few years later it was clear that offense was necessarily a resource loss. Someone who wanted to build a career as a civil servant might then see a defense ministry as a viable option, but not any sort of offensive war. Offense was clearly not viable, and therefore not a good basis for budget allocations, and therefore the good career move for the civil servants was to focus the ministries entirely on defense.
I'm no international relations hawk though, so I'm keen to hear opposing viewpoints.
There were plenty of options to pressure Ukraine into preventing Russia from having a causus belli in early 2022 (too bad the Biden admin didn't do any of those), but those are gone now and Russia currently controls much of the territory they had as military objectives.
To recap, Ukraine received very few , around a hundred ATACMS missiles with severe restrictions where it might fire them. They got less than two dozen F-16 jets. This is just nothing compared what the US might be able to send if they wanted to, they have over 300 Falcons at Davis-Monthan AFB (aka Boneyard) to begin with. There are near four thousand ATACMS missiles manufactured so far. And so on, with tanks etc.
Just enough to send the tide of attrition turning slowly the other way for a while.
After which HN will instantly fill up with comments about "how badly Russia is losing", "it's clear Ukraine has already lost", and so forth.
There were plenty of options to pressure Ukraine into preventing Russia from having a causus belli in early 2022
Russia never had casus belli in this conflict, and no one did anything to present it with such.
Here's a memo for you on Russia's causus belli. You can claim that they didn't have a legitimate one (I don't think they did), but they had one that got them enough local and international support to work in both 2014 and 2022: https://www.ponarseurasia.org/vladimir-putins-casus-belli-fo...
1. Prevention of NATO encroachment toward Russia
2. Protection of ethnic Russians in Donbas
Any and/or all of the following would have weakened or broken Putin's narrative:
1. Stop the military buildup in Donbas that had started in 2021
2. Cease admission of new NATO member states for 3-5 years
3. Stop the process of Ukraine getting closer to NATO and the EU
4. Reduce or stop US military assistance funding to Ukraine
5. Drop the Biden administration's economic sanctions of Russia
6. Continue implementation of the Minsk accords
7. Stop the planned deployments of US missiles to Ukraine
There are many more options. The US administration in 2020 was bringing Ukraine into the fold (because it wanted to be there), but that is not a recipe for peace. NATO had previously agreed not to get close to Ukraine or other states bordering Russia.
Putin's actual reasons, in turn, seem to have been primarily about:
1. Securing the 3 currently (as of Feb 2022) occupied regions, especially the Crimea, for permanent annexation. Russia's position in the Crimea in particular was at the time severely compromised, due to Ukraine's shutting off of its water access. It also "needed" a land bridge (around the Azov) in order to be reasonably secure in the long term. (We put "needed" in quotes here to remind ourselves that this was the regime's internal desire, not any kind of objective or real "need"). As gravy, or as a way of offsetting the cost for the whole operation, there was also the matter of the Donbas region's significant lithium reserves (estimated at $3T).
2. Permanent deterrence of any NATO bid on Ukraine's part, likely involving some form of formal declaration of permanent neutrality (Finlandization).
3. As gravy, anything it could have also won in terms of regime change in Kyiv, preventing whatever rump state (if any) that remained in Western Ukraine from joining the EU, or simply damaging its chances for success and prosperity generally ("wrecking it", in Mearsheimer's words) would have been a very signicant plus.
The thing is, (2) by itself could have been had without resorting to a full-scale invasion. The West was eager for some kind of deal to end the 2014-2022 conflict, and having Ukraine in NATO was always optional, as far as it was concerned.
But the price for Putin -- forgoing his paramount desire for (1) -- would have been far too high. Plus he thinks of himself as a visionary leader, destined to make his mark on history, and for many years had deluded himself as to Russia's actual capabilities for military adventures of this sort.
So that's why he went "whole hog" in Feb of 2022. The main point here is that there doesn't seem to be much logic in thinking the war could have been avoided by addressing the stated narrative. When Putin's real reasons for invading, with emphasis on (1) above, would be in no way addressed by tactical appeasement of this sort.
Our (the west's) response to warmongering has been to trickle just enough resources and monies to keep Ukraine from losing but not so much that they win. The "donated" resources of course need to be replenished, the military industrial complex is quite literally making a killing.
At this point the question of declaring a firm stand against warmongering is lost. It's three years and going, warmongering as it turns out is fine. I hate that. My tax dollars are going towards endlessly and needlessly extending human suffering for the benefit of the military industrial complex. I hate that.
So I say, enough of this bullshit. Unless we suddenly send in so much support that Ukraine decisively wins very quickly, I don't want to see a single cent more of my tax dollars going towards this. My taxes are not blood money and the military industrial complex can go fuck themselves.
And I think the attitude "its pointless to try and keep helping against the Russians, people have suffered from them for so long anyway" is completeley beside the point (and dangerous!)-- the main gain from helping the Ukraine in my view is discouraging the kind of neo-imperialistm that led to this attack, and stopping the support just sends a signal to ambitious tyrants all over the world that you don't really care about them plundering their weaker neighbors (and with having the biggest military comes some kind of obligation in this regard in my view).
I also think that you are patronizing the Ukrainians themselves in the worst way-- if anyone should get to decide how long it is worth it to fight for their country, it should be them.
Looks like the popular sentiment over there is shifting towards a negotiated peace with territorial concessions. https://www.newsweek.com/ukrainians-changing-their-minds-war...
https://news.gallup.com/poll/653495/half-ukrainians-quick-ne...
Makes me kinda curious if there is still significant blame/resentment regarding the Budapest Memorandum (against the US specifically)...
That is precisely the benefitting of the military industrial complex that I am fed up with.
>"its pointless to try and keep helping against the Russians, people have suffered from them for so long anyway"
That is not what I'm angry about. I am angry that this war is dragging on far longer than there is any reasonable reason to be. If we hadn't trickled in support Ukraine would have lost already, if we had placed our full weight behind Ukraine they would have won already; either way the war would have ended long ago.
With the question of warmongering settled at this point (it's okay to warmonger, whether any of us like it or not), the only thing I care about is people not dying. I sincerely don't care how the war ends anymore, all I care about at this point is that it stops ASAP, that people stop dying.
>if anyone should get to decide how long it is worth it to fight for their country, it should be them.
If they want to continue fighting that's totally within their right, but I as an American taxpayer am not obliged to foot their bill much less in the manner we've been doing it.
If you think Ukrainians are just going to roll over and submit if everyone abandons them and Ukraine must capitulate, you are an idiot.
These are people who's ancestors had their ethnicity half erased. Even this war is part of that erasure. Russia literally kidnaps children to ship them off who knows where.
The Ukrainian people will resist. It will be Afghanistan all over again.
Plenty will continue to die.
A lack of ATACMS will not change that. The ONLY outcome that stops people dying is Russia going the fuck home. Ukrainians have been dying to push out Russian invaders for 10 years now, not 2.
This whole position just strikes me as misguided, because the numbers simply dont work. At all. Because if what you mainly care about is reducing US taxes flowing into weapon manufacturers, then the Ukraine is such a marginal portion that it basically does not matter at all:
If you said "lets reduce US spending on military to what all the rest of NATO together spends" (mind you, that is still the largest military budget in the world!), then that change alone would save in a single year over 4 (total!) Ukraine aid programs (and this is including all financial and humanitarian aid so far).
If you look at the stock price for major US arms manufacturers (RTX, LMT, NOC-- picked for being large and majority non-civilian revenue), then the whole Ukraine thing is basically not even a blip-- you would not even be able to tell (contrast the whole bitcoin/AI boom which is clearly visible in Nvidia price).
> With the question of warmongering settled at this point
I strongly disagree that this question is settled with a yes. I do absolutely agree with you that the answer from the US and especially its european allies should have been more decisive and unambiguous.
In the end, what the Ukraine war did and still does is establish a price on blatant imperialism. That price needs to be as high as possible to discourage and prevent repetitions as much as possible.
I would argue that this was a success in that regard already, but a small one, especially regarding the EU. Cutting further support would undermine and weaken this even more.
I'd also like to challenge your position on wanting to force an end to avoid further loss of life: How can you be confident that an (immediate) conclusion in Russians favor by cutting Ukraine military, humanitarian and financial aid (possibly also from allies) would actually be a net benefit in lives saved?
If you just look at the first and second Chechen war and the 8 years of insurgency directly after, what would make you confident that the exact same atrocities would not repeat at 20 times the scale?
To me personally, cutting support for the Ukraine when ones country is founded on principles of self-determination, freedom and democracy is peak hypocrisy.
Sources:
https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/RTX
https://de.finance.yahoo.com/quote/LMT
https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/NOC/
Ukraine aid volume:
https://www.cfr.org/article/how-much-us-aid-going-ukraine
I can't take in good faith this whole "suffering" rhetorics -- not containing the imperialistic expansionist nuclear-armed empire is sure to bring more suffering to the world.
No, I am angry because our response has been halfassed and lukewarm. We are keeping the war going with no end in sight, my tax dollars are being used explicitly to extend human suffering rather than end it. Sincerely fuck that noise. Either we go all in or do nothing at all, the current timeline is the worst one we could have possibly chosen.
Human lives are not "cheap". Sincerely what the fuck, my dude.
The only thing is, what happens next if the West pulls out? Ukraine's military collapses, Russia moves in on Kyiv, Putin gains another Belarus-like satellite state, and at least considers encroaching on Estonia, Finland etc... . It's more than just the principle of whether warmongering is acceptable - a lot of people will suffer as a consequence and possibly for decades to come. We have to be really careful to consider which is worse in the long-term.
I think the West was making the best calculus it could as the situation developed. Sure, you can say we should have known Putin was bluffing about redlines. But the downside of all out war is high enough that, when multiplied by the probability, you still get a bad number. I think it's reasonable that Western governments played it cautiously and hoped for a different resolution (like a successful internal coup).
But yes, now we are where we are and it sucks for Ukraine.
About the only thing you can rely on is that he’ll do whatever he and his equally loony and chaotic advisors think will make him look good in the short term, based on feels, backed by the might of the American military.
Given all that, is Putin really going to defy him when presented with a deal that Putin has any chance at of spinning as a win at home? Putin's singular leverage is threatening nuclear war, but that only works if you can convince your opponent you're more unhinged than they are, and Putin loses that particular metric to Trump every time.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China%E2%80%93United_States_tr...
China–United States trade war
An economic conflict between China and the United States has been ongoing since January 2018, when U.S. President Donald Trump began setting tariffs and other trade barriers on China with the goal of forcing it to make changes to what the U.S. says are longstanding unfair trade practices and intellectual property theft.
https://www.cato.org/blog/5-years-later-united-states-still-...
Then the Biden admin happened.
The Joe Biden administration kept the tariffs in place and added additional levies on Chinese goods such as electric vehicles and solar panels. In 2024, the Trump presidential campaign proposed a 60 percent tariff on Chinese goods.
It will be interesting to see what happens. 60% all at once would be too disruptive, I think.
But if you're not testing, you're not doing anything.
So hardly "nothing further".
edit: forgot to shoutout above's username
I'm not sure that means much as far as China goes....
Did they? They took a chunk of Georgia in 2008 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russo-Georgian_War) and have been actively occupying some of Moldova since 1990 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transnistria_conflict).
I'm also not sure why you're citing Belarus here. It was split off from the Soviet union in 1990 and governed itself the whole time despite being essentially a vassal state of Russia. Belarus has not ceded any land to Russia, either.
Edit - I see what you're saying about control or territory. If you want control, directly controlling the territory is better than having a puppet government. While Russia would have accepted a puppet government, as they have in Belarus (since there has been no good opportunity to go to war with Belarus to take it over), they had the opportunity to go to war for direct control and the West made it clear that Ukraine as a vassal state was not an option (see the 2014 revolution). If you think someone wants control, why do you think that they see $0 of extra value in directly owning the territory?
It's obvious that Russia wants ukraine as a vassal as well. I would note that the invasion of Ukraine was launched _via_ Belarus, despite the fact that Russia does not formally control that territory. So again I ask, if Russia can get what it wants (which is _control_, not territory) without going to war, why would it do so?
Let's be plain - we are ultimately dancing around an empirical question, whether Trump will be hawkish or dovish towards Russia. Ultimately I think he's too chaotic for past behavior to be a good guide. So let's see what happens! I for one hope that you are right, but I think I have plenty of reasons to be cautious.
If you think said stooge is likely to get reelected (which, except for COVID coming out of the blue, was highly likely) and that stooge is already making noise about isolationism, why interrupt?
2022 looks a lot like an "oh shit, plan B" scenario.
Because that's when he had intelligence leading him to believe the Ukrainian regime would crumble quickly or capitulate in the face of a large-scale invasion, and possibly also the NATO would fail to unite and respond, in part due to the success of Russian influence operations, which were not only directed at the US.
Regardless, there are satellites covering the area, so you wouldn't get rid of being tracked anyways, would just be a bit slower.
I don't think Russia is trying to hide their sabotage, though. Even with AIS disabled, there's no way European intelligence agencies didn't know what ships were floating above these cables at the time they went down.
This was a warning, not a secret operation.
I think this depends a lot on the location, as different areas seems to make it different levels of "mandatory". Are you speaking about the Baltic Sea specifically based on experience?
One has Russia and their ports, while the other doesn't. So preparedness and military presence certainly is different between the two at least.
Over 55,000 suspected intentional disabling events of AIS signals were identified between 2017 and 2019, obscuring nearly 5 million hours of fishing vessel activity. This phenomenon accounts for up to 6% of global fishing vessel activity.
China is not allied with Russia and China is unlikely to engage in sabotage like this because they stand nothing to gain from it.
What the words are worth in a time of need remains to be seen. Neither side is exactly trustworthy :)
The CCP are aware of this fact and they're planning for it, but they're not ready yet.
This is what article 9 says: "When a situation arises in which one of the contracting parties deems that peace is being threatened and undermined or its security interests are involved or when it is confronted with the threat of aggression, the contracting parties shall immediately hold contacts and consultations in order to eliminate such threats."
They are absolutely allies, though. Per Putin himself. https://www.reuters.com/world/putin-says-china-is-russias-al...
They don't have a mutual defense treaty, sure, but they describe themselves as having a “friendship without limits”. I would agree that China has no interest in getting involved in Putin's idiot war in Ukraine though, and there's zero benefit to China in antagonizing Europe.
The US has two carrier groups there now, and has maintained a presence there for the last few years:
https://news.usni.org/2017/05/29/brief-history-us-freedom-na...
Russia is desperately trying to make the China-Russia thing a reality, and is probably trying to drag them in against their great resistance. China has zero credible reason to be dragged into Russia's nonsense, and a billion reasons why they want nothing to do with it.
The ideal outcome of this is that China realizes that Russia is outright trying to drag them into conflict, and that they repudiate that country entirely.
The Russians could have done this with a fishing trawler (they cut cables accidentally all the time), so like you I doubt we can infer some nefarious Chinese plot from the flag on the vessel.
In my country saboteurs largely weren't Russian - it's easier to pay off a local than have ano5 Russian cross the border, when his predecessor gets caught.
Article indicates this isn’t the first time.
The endgame here is to build a new world order with Russia and China calling the shots (actually, China calling the shots, but we're not supposed to say that yet).
Not even replying to the claims about world domination, I don't have time for these... "suppositions".
Poland has been warning about Russia at least for over 14 years now, since before Crimea annexation for sure. It started with Russia invading Georgia, I think.
Likewise, Poland has also been meeting NATO spending quota for years, upping it even more these days.
Poland refused to let another gas pipe from Russia through its territory without it going through Ukraine too, because it was obvious Russia would use it as leverage against Ukraine. This is what actually led to NS project which, for the same reason and this time additionaly because of the risk of creating leverage against other CEE countries, Poland refused to participate in and had been instead alarming that NS will result in troubles with Russia and security of Europe and Ukraine in particular.
Poland has been raising the issue of not only Ukrainian, but Georgian situation too. Many people forget, that Russia has been occupying parts of Georgia for over 16 years now.
Poland, despite paying penalties for that and being called racist etc., has been also blocking illegal immigration influx on its border with Belarus due to it being a hybrid war of Russia against Europe.
If anything, Poland did not sleep over Russia's plans. Quite the opposite, actually.
https://pluralistic.net/2024/11/02/ulysses-pact/
“Be like water making its way through cracks. Do not be assertive, but adjust to the object, and you shall find a way around or through it. If nothing within you stays rigid, outward things will disclose themselves.
Empty your mind, be formless. Shapeless, like water. If you put water into a cup, it becomes the cup. You put water into a bottle and it becomes the bottle. You put it in a teapot, it becomes the teapot. Now, water can flow or it can crash. Be water, my friend.”
- Bruce Lee
The Dead Internet theory is all too true.
When I see an article on Substack I always assume the worst. The signal-to-noise ratio is lower on Medium and Substack than any other social platform I browse, which is a tragic indictment of where long-form blogging has gone.
That's what they want. A social club with an overton window they like.
It's designed for mass userbase so it can feel like a big party that "everybody" is at. But once "everybody" includes their parents then the party is over.
More like an echo chamber for the choir preachers.
What kind of interest Chinese could have to damage such cables? IMVHO ZERO. Also I doubt Russians have interests to do so.
Who could be interested?
- some private company for makes and insurance/the public pay to fix something who need money from the owner for other reasons (like I break on purpose my car to get it repaired for free or at least less money than what it would costing me avoiding the self-sabotage);
- some countries wanting war at all costs trying to create a casus belli to justify the push toward WWIII
- some countries experimenting the resilience of their infra
I fails to see any other potentially interested party.
I would argue that interactions/treatment specifically toward Russia, especially by European nations in the last 20 years, was actually too positive and naive-- specifically because unlike Europe, Russia definitely did not leave its imperialistic ambitions behind, and treating/trading with it as a friendly somewhat flawed democracy during those years might have done more harm than good in hindsight.
I'm curious how you think about this?
How is that "Orwellian"?
Russia has quite the recent history of poisoning civilians both native and foreign (do you dispute that?). Those acts are already a significant step above simple sabotage, so why would it be Orwellian to consider them a possible perpetrator?
In my view, common current western view of Russia is everything but:
Orwellian would be a strong, emotional public expressions of hate (with frequently switching target).
Current western view (can only really talk about central Europe) is more of a muted mix of disappointment, sadness and disgust about what Russia did/does in the Ukraine...
The Kremlin may very well be behind this.
Similar to Nordstream destruction in 2022 it could have been either Ukrainians or CIA/NSA. This could be last attempt by current US administration elements to create leverage for the Ukraine before negotiations start.