World News

Dude it's fuckin weird

I watched some videos from one of those pro-Russian military Youtube channels, and the whole thing is two years worth of uninterrupted victory, steady forward progress, missions accomplished and disasters for Ukraine. And yet, there's no acknowledgement that if everything had gone as they said the Russian armed forces would have swept across Ukraine, on through Europe, and circled the globe 5 or 6 times by now, with how much progress they have made... but that in reality the eastern front line has in that time not gone anywhere.

I think Russia is pretty good at creating believable bullshit (they are certainly good at influencing elections), but when faced with an actual problem that objectively exists in the real world, it just looks hilarious to see them attacking it for 2 years continuously by simply insisting with absolute passionate confidence that they are solving it better than anything you've ever seen, and they're on the verge of yet another great and crushing success, as everyone can see, just watch.

Trying to do brinksmanship only works if there is believability to the idea of you crossing the brink. Putin who doesn't want anyone to be allowed to sit near him, constantly asks his friend-countries if they've been hanging out with NATO behind his back, and managed to fuck up one war with one tiny country this badly with the whole weight of the biggest nation in the world behind the effort, is very different from Khrushchev overseeing the cold war and the development of the nuclear arsenal and directly challenging the Cuba blockade, banging his shoe on the podium at the UN and screaming "We will bury you!" Putin may view the threat that he will attack the US as believable, but I do not think that anyone in the US or Russian government considers it a strong possibility and like I said I think the "not touching you" game (if that is in fact what he's doing) just makes him look weaker to both parties TBH.

(I hadn't even really considered the death sentence that is attacking the US with nukes as on the table for Russia; the nuclear option I was envisioning was attacking Ukraine and gambling that the rest of the world would be so against starting WW3 that they could get away with it.)

Hm... I thought that the Ukrainian navy was pretty much fucked as a branch of service after the fall of Crimea -- most of the naval vessels captured by Russia, other countries talking about giving them some ships but not following through (or not yet), naval drones being piloted by members of the GUR instead of by someone affiliated with "Navy of Ukraine." I sort of put all that stuff in a category with airplanes being flown by the army of a country that doesn't have a dedicated air force -- like yes they have boats but they don't have a navy. IDK, I don't know the formal status and I could be wrong in my thinking; that was just how I was looking at it.

The article was also pretty non-inflammatory in my opinion.

They (governments) don't do it because it's taken as threatening, but more because it's not. It's a very specifically not belligerent way to push back on a country. "I can wander in here right up against your borders because your zone of exclusive control isn't as big as you claim".

We do the same thing with China to push back on their claims that certain waterways belong to them. (Ours looks a little different since we routinely patrol shipping lanes, so a more overt ship but also more common to just see tooling around looming at would be pirates, so it's not the same message as if a Russian missile destroyer showed up off the Florida coast. We send that message with a carrier group.). By overtly and openly using a waterway we say "LOOK AT US JUST NORMALLY USING THIS PUBLIC ROUTE LIKE A NORMAL SHIP IN PUBLIC WOULD DO WHEN THEY WEREN'T VIOLATING CHINESE TERRITORIAL WATERS".

We would rather other nations not send military vessels near the US mainland. Russia would rather not have a bunch of stuff happen that we regularly facilitate. So they discreetly give us the finger by doing the tamest version of what we don't want while still having a perfectly normal excuse.

I think the only big thing to note is I don't think Russia sends ships elsewhere all that frequently. Their navy is a bit of a joke. It's still not provocative, but it is different.

I'm assuming the us showed the sub as a signal saying "we were right there with you. Did you even detect us? You don't stand a chance, so don't start anything."