yogthos

Ukraine can claim whatever it likes, they're just a proxy. However, if Russia started lobbing Iskanders into Texas from Mexico then we'd be instantly in WW3 scenario.

I'm not changing any story. If you go back to the start of the discussion then you'll see that it's the same thing I keep trying to explain to you over and over throughout this thread. Meanwhile, you just keep making straw man arguments instead of engaging with what I'm saying.

The realistic way to read this is that Russia could retaliate using nuclear weapons in Ukraine, and then the ball will be in NATO court where NATO has to decide if they want to escalate further towards a nuclear holocaust or back off. Both sides can play the escalation game.

Of course, Russia could also escalate asymmetrically, for example they could provide weapons to Yemen, Syria, and Iran that could shoot down stuff like F35s and get past AD. The US is incredibly exposed globally, and there are plenty of pressure points that Russia can exploit. This is the main reason I don't expect Russia to respond directly to strikes into its territory.

The US has ruined and degraded Syria, neutralized its regional power, and turned it into a destabilized interzone.

Yet, Syria is still a viable state and the US forces in the region are slowly being squeezed out. The point here was that the objective of getting a regime change in Syria failed. Again, if US couldn't even take down Syria, there was no hope of this working in Russia.

Meanwhile, you don't seem to understand the importance of Russia to China. Russia provides a shield in the west that prevents China being surrounded by NATO, and it provides China with the natural resources China needs meaning that it cannot be blockaded. These two factors make it vital to China that Russia stays stable and friendly to China. Which means there was absolutely no scenario where China could allow Russia to be defeated.

It's absolutely not overblown copium. Huge amounts of trade are already happening outside the dollar, and China can obviously see they're the next target so they're redirecting their trade away from the west now as well. This should help you put things in perspective https://youtu.be/RQ3YjZAzqxA

The west has an over inflated view of itself. It's entirely possible that the managers of the empire still don't realize the amount of trouble they're in as well. Once again, you keep trying to treat US as a rational actor here which it demonstrably is not. There is vague realization that things are turning in China's favor, but there's still plenty of chauvnism to go around.

Also, I highly doubt that the oligarchs running the US really want to spend the rest of their days in a nuclear bunker. They'd much rather rule over a diminished empire.

China already said they wouldn't do this, Europe is just not that important of a market for them at this point. This was a really good perspective on it https://youtu.be/RQ3YjZAzqxA

Everything anarchists do in tangible terms helps maintain liberal capitalist rule. That's the reality of the situation. Hence why anarchists are just LARPing without any tangible plan of action. Anarchists love moaning about being brutally repressed, but refused to take any action against the repression.

The US is losing geopolitically across the board now. We're seeing huge amounts of trade being redirected outside the dollar now as a direct result of the war. BRICS is growing by leaps and bounds. Middle East, Latin America, and Africa are becoming increasingly assertive. The whole empire is coming apart at the seams. All of this ties back to the war in Ukraine where the US overcommitted and that led to the economic war with Russia that is now turning into a bloc conflict between G7 and BRICS. The war was never about Ukraine itself.

I'm arguing that Russia cannot set a precedent that NATO can just shoot missiles into Russian territory. Surely it can't be that hard for to understand why Russia has to respond to this.

This is literally what they tried and were successful at doing to Assad.

Except that they weren't even successful with Assad. Last I checked he's still in charge and Syria has not collapsed. Given that they couldn't even do it to a small and poor country there was no rational reason to believe it could ever work against Russia. The whole scheme was hare brained from the very start and could never work in practice. And this is my whole point, the US is not a rational actor that operating on an evidence based doctrine.

My point was that the US has shown that it is absolutely willing to keep escalating when backed into a corner. I'm not falling for any US propaganda traps, I'm just treating the US as a rabid dog that it obviously is.

The US does not need to do this, but this is literally what US is doing as we're speaking. This is happening, it's not a hypothetical. You're just making a straw man here that has nothing to do with what's actually being said to you. Nowhere did I suggest that US is going to try to hide behind Ukraine to do a nuclear strike on Russia. That's a scenario you made up.

What I actually said to you was that the US is firing nuclear capable missiles from the territory of Ukraine, and that if Russia does not respond that can be perceived as a sign of weakness and invite further escalation. Given that you yourself agree that US is unhinged, it should be obvious why this is a volatile situation.

Meanwhile, please explain to me what tangible benefit there was from the looney toons ass plans the US has pursued over the past two years. There's obviously been no rational plan here at any point in time. Why would we be expecting rational behavior from an actor that's proven itself to be utterly irrational?

There is no source for the nuclear version existing, Wikipedia has no source of a nuclear version existing. If a nuclear version of ATACMS exists it’s literally a US state secret and multiple levels of insanity would have to be limit broken for it to end up on a HIMARS truck in Ukraine.

Many levels of insanity have already been broken over the past two years if you haven't noticed. Biden himself stated that sending tanks and f16s to Ukraine would carry an unacceptable risk of escalation at the start of the war. Every red line the west has drawn for itself has been crossed. At this point, it's becoming clear that NATO is losing the war, and we're seeing increasingly desperate actions being taken.

We might as well be arguing about how you could also strap suitcase nukes to drones so Ukraine shouldn’t use drones to attack Russia either. And we know those exist

We're arguing about the US firing long rang missiles potentially capable of nuclear payloads into Russia from Ukrainian territory.

So the country of Iran still existing literally disproves this.

The problem with this argument is that Iran is not known to posses nuclear weapons.

The reality is that the old nuclear framework with MAD has been destroyed by both the US and Russia for different reasons, and as such the reality is that nobody can consider ballistic missile launches a nuclear threat. Especially since the US in 2001 unilaterally withdrew from the ABM treaty, and Russia followed suit. Lobbing cruise and ballistic missiles at your opponent has been a common occurrence in the last 20 years from both nuclear and non-nuclear states.

The destruction of treaties simply means that the risk of a nuclear exchange is much higher now. I strongly urge you to watch this interview with Theodore Postol explaining just how dangerous the current situation is. He's an actual expert on the subject. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RH7LT1bIdpY

Like I said if this is a real line of reasoning every Iskander used in the Ukraine theater is a reason for the US to go apeshit and say they’re going to nuke the Ukranians, we should nuke them first.

If Russia launched Iskanders into US, then US absolutely would go ape shit.

The United States would level Mexico in an instant if they ordered too much shit off of Ali Baba at this point. No one is arguing that the US is a rational actor. Russia has been extremely rational and pragmatic in this war, and to ascribe the level of irrationality you’re ascribing to them right now is to literally label them in the same way the Western propaganda has been labeling them but from a position of support.

Russia has been incredibly rational and restrained, however there comes a point where being restrained starts to look like a weakness. If Russia states red lines and then allows the west to cross these lines without consequence then it encourages further escalation. At some point Russia will be forced to retaliate to make a point. Russia unequivocally stated that there would be severe retaliation the first time the idea of deep strikes into Russia was brought up.

It is entirely likely that Russia will choose to wait a couple of months until the administration changes to see what happens. However, it's important to understand that we absolutely are on the brink of a nuclear holocaust here.

Liberalism is fundamentally an ideology of private property ownership and that's why it always inevitably devolved into fascism in times of crisis.

Therefore, whenever economic liberalism finds itself under threat from “populism”, it quickly jettisons the principles of political liberalism to which it is theoretically tied.

In other words, these “principles” are not principles at all, just convenient postures designed to cloak the unpleasant reality of the economic liberals’ capitalist system.

https://orgrad.wordpress.com/articles/liberalism-the-two-faced-tyranny-of-wealth/

Anarchists talk a lot about community, but reject actual practical way to organize communally and combat capitalism. And the argument for rejecting practical means is that these approaches restrict individual freedoms. Anarchists place their individual freedom above collective good, and thus align with liberal capitalists in action.

Anarchists are liberals who like LARPing as leftists. You share the same ideology and focus on individualism above all else.