Bay 12 Games Forum

Interesting article, making the point that Putin ain't so much a chessmaster trying to take over the Free World(tm) as scrambling to save what can be saved of Russian influence in the region. After all, 25 years ago, Moscow controlled the whole Black Sea coast save for Turkey. Now, with Georgia definitely West and Ukraine heading that way too, all that's left is a small stretch of Russian coast and Abkhazia. The same dynamic is at play all over Europe, with the west (in the guise of the EU and NATO) surging eastward over the last 25 years.

Since as I said before Russia won't assimilate into the West, Putin understandably feel more and more isolated. After all, he may have taken Crimea, but over the last months he lost the rest of Ukraine. 

(Fun fact: the West now stretch all the way to 25° East.)

This

Quote from: Knit tie on March 03, 2014, 09:34:48 pm

Quote from: KingBacon on March 03, 2014, 09:26:46 pm

Is it me or does this whole series of events seem like the plot of a Tom Clancy novel?

Also, isn't it also weird that Russia is intervening militarily so close to the Olympics again?

You know, the funny thing about conspiracy theorists is that they assume that all malevolent rulers are hypercompetent, while they clearly aren't. Here's one example of a blunder on a dictator's behalf - by invading Ukraine right after the olympics, Putin has made everyone forget about them and thus utterly destroyed any positive PR he might've gotten from the event.

Stalin frequently overruled his general's commands so he could play commander. Badly.

To give ol' Moustachio credit, he got better during the course of the Great Patriotic War, learning to trust his command staff more. As opposed to Hitler, who went in the opposite direction - from supervising to micromanaging. We all know how it ended.

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I meant that NATO can't get involved because the NATO getting involved automatically means nukes

We have no precedent of direct war between two nuclear powers but we have a precedent of WW2 and chemical weapons. Hitler never used his stockpiles of chemical weapons.
Not that I think that NATO-Russian war is possible in the near future.

If you are optimistic, my friend, then we all should be, too.

It's win-win until the nukes come. Then it's lose-lose-nope, still lose-lose again, damn-it's losing all the way down.

The nukes are unlikely to be used until it's a full-out extermination war precisely for that reason.

Quote from: Sergarr on March 03, 2014, 07:51:22 pm

It's win-win until the nukes come. Then it's lose-lose-nope, still lose-lose again, damn-it's losing all the way down.

There are one little win. : Survivors will have a chance to build better civilization than this shitty one

The civilisation we have is pretty okay, actually. If you think Putin is bad, you should've seen Stalin.

Hopefully the war won't start. But if it does, UR, I want you and all other ukrainians to give us hell like you gave Hitler.

Dear Nil McCook and his wife Todok McMiner,

Please. Stop. Breeding. You are both in fucking traction, for god's sake!

Your seriously concerned for your health Overseer.

My dad is a very devout conspiracy theorist whose favourite phrase is something along the lines of "actually, everything was not like this", so there's also that.

Regardless, I do not believe that Russia will start a new world war because even with nukes, it cannot take on the entire NATO. It certainly can fight Ukraine alone, but this will probably be another "Winter War".

Well, if Putin wants the entire Ukraine, he'll have to deal with armed resistance and partisan movements. I don't know much about ukrainian army, but when the nazis came, the ukrainians fought with suicidal bravery and grim determination and the partisans in particular were an absolute nightmare to the wehrmacht. I am not saying that Ukraine will win, but it certainly will go down kicking and screaming and take Russia's image and probably Putin's populatity as well down with it.
He's not that crazy. I hope. Oh, hell, I don't, this is Putin.

Anyway, I just talked to my dad and he thinks that this entire situation is Putin enacting vengeance on the English government after it broke the terms of the secret pact it made wih Putin and let the ukrainian uprising it sponsored remove Yanukovich.

EDIT: World War 3, I believe, is unlikely as both NATO and Russia have a lot of nukes. There certainly may be war in Ukraine if Dobbyface goes full retard, but the world won't all go to war. Hopefully.

There is another issue that will go against Putin if he starts a world war, even if it won't involve nukes - russian military is corrupt, inefficient, underequipped and   not at all ready to combat the professional armies of NATO members. The spending, factoring in misappropriation, is not that great. And let's not get into the issue of morale: most of the soldiers are conscripts with no real stake in the war.