Look at the news, Putin's already started it.
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Discussion on NATO, Russia, China and Cold War 2.0.
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Logan Carroll
Member
NATO should have been disbanded or Russia should have been invited after the Cold War.
Pointlessly antagonising them is going to get us nowhere. Good relations should be the priority.
Way, way too simplistic. How much do you remember of geopolitics around 1991/92?
Logan Carroll
Member
Could you explain to me how this was not possible?
birchesgreen
Established Member
Yeah i am far more concerned about Russian state hackers attacking things like vaccine development than some theoretical foreheads which Biden might order warheads onto.
Gloster
Veteran Member
I think that either disbanding NATO or admitting Russia to it would have been possible, but both would have been a very bad idea. Russia and much of Eastern Europe went into a long period of utter chaos after the fall of communism. It was not clear what would emerge, so you might be getting rid of your defence against whatever would emerge or allowing the fox in to the chicken run. What has emerged is pretty bad, although not as bad as it could have been. Putin would love to either have a divided opposition to be picked off individually and played off against each other, or to be inside the organisation causing as much trouble as possible.
Logan Carroll
Member
Aslong as they exist nuclear weapons should be the top priority when it comes to geopolitics.
Until a total worldwide ban is reached on weapons of mass destruction every effort must be made to keep things from going hot.
Nothing is worth nuclear war.
As @Gloster says, the fall of the Soviet Union - and by extension the Warsaw Pact - was very, very messy. You say that NATO should have invited Russia to be a member. Would that have been Russia or the entire CIS? What of former Warsaw Pact countries? The western powers did do a lot to stabilise the situation - for example funding and facilitating the denuclearisation of Ukraine, Georgia, Azerbaijan, etc. but there was no way they were ready to join NATO Even today, only Ukraine meets the requirements to join.
Again, way to simplistic. There is near-zero chance of any of the nuclear powers launching a first strike against any of the others. As @ainsworth74 posted earlier in this thread, the real danger is that a small, insignificant conflict slowly deteriorates to the point that tactical nukes get used, which then opens the door to strategic weapons being employed.
daodao
Established Member
The suggestion that the Ukraine could join NATO is mad. It is a borderland state (as its name implies) and it and the EU should have recognised its position in Russia's near abroad. The EU-inspired coup in Kiev in February 2014 has led to disastrous consequences, as has the general eastern expansionist approach of the EU, which has echoes of previous German policy of Drang nach Osten. It is best not to arouse the Great Bear.
Logan Carroll
Member
Operation RYAN and by extension the Able Archer war scare proves this wrong.
There’s no defence against plain human stupidity and world leaders can think up any nonsense in their heads and any other number of events which could domino into one country believing an attack against them is imminent.
Gloster
Veteran Member
Nevil Shute’s 1957 post-apocalyptic novel On the Beach has such a situation as the cause of the nuclear war that is the background to the novel and the end of the world. The worrying thing is that this plot element remains all too plausible over sixty years later.
Logan Carroll
Member
Testament (1983) is my personal favourite nuclear war fiction.
The church meeting’s attendance rapidly thinning out is far more effective than anything in Threads or The Day After
The Authoritarian block is still a clear threat to our way of life. It is very heartening (although not surprising) that President Elect Biden is taking it seriously.
In terms of the small war escallating, it's always dangerous, but to destroy a bunker, you could use something like a daisy cutter and not go nuclear.
In terms of the small war escallating, it's always dangerous, but to destroy a bunker, you could use something like a daisy cutter and not go nuclear.
Logan Carroll
Member
Who is this referring to?
Russia and China mainly. Although obviously they're not joined at the hip.
Logan Carroll
Member
What is it they are doing which you believe threatens “our way of life”
Bevan Price
Established Member
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"The West" needs to recognise that "Western Style Democracy" may not suit the traditions and/or state of development of every other country. Mr Putin may do some things we consider "unpleasant", but we need to remember thar Russia is a proud nation, and it is not our place to tell them how to run their country. Also, "The West" should learn that it is not our duty to "police" the rest of the world when things happen that we do not like. (and nor is that the duty of Russia or any other powerful country.)
However, I feel that the chance of nuclear catastrophy lies not with Putin or Biden, but rather with some extremist nutters getting hold of crude nuclear weapons, and using them - possibly in the Middle East -- and would USA & Russia be sensible enough not to get involved and escalate the situation into world destruction ??
However, I feel that the chance of nuclear catastrophy lies not with Putin or Biden, but rather with some extremist nutters getting hold of crude nuclear weapons, and using them - possibly in the Middle East -- and would USA & Russia be sensible enough not to get involved and escalate the situation into world destruction ??
Well, Russia has been undertaking chemical warfare operations on our soil that has shut down the economy of Salisbury, as an example.
With regard to Communist China, the threat comes if it manages to embed its technology in global data infrastructure. We're used to Google and the like harvesting all of our data for advertising purposes. Do we really want websites developed in an authoritarian country with back doors to authoritarian regimes sifting through our data ?
As for Cold War II, I don't really see why Biden would be any more likely to ignite one, more than his close predecessor, President Obama. What one might hope for is a less hot and cold (Russia good, China bad), less strident ( in terms of China anyway) but more consistent and effective policy of containment against the authoritarian threat than under Trump.
As long as Russia accepts that it is not their place to tell countries that are not Russia how to run their countries.
Logan Carroll
Member
Putin is evil and deserves to rot in prison but i don’t believe that sabre rattling between us and Russia is going to solve anything.
His time will come as with all dictatorships and thankfully for the world he has a better held on his shoulder than the ailing soviet leadership of the 70s and early 80s.
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It's comforting to think that dictatorships will fall, but the sad reality is that without opposition, there's no guarantee that they will. In all the history of human Governmment, democracies are within the minority, not the majority.
Logan Carroll
Member
What do you suggest we do besides wait it out?
I'm not convinced that disbanding NATO achieves anything other than destabilising the situation rather than helping to promote peace. Whilst I agree that it was misstep to expand NATO to include the Baltic States (because, frankly, I think their membership risks fatally undermining Article 5 as I'm not convinced that any one will trade Washington, London, Berlin, Paris or any other city for the sake of Tallinn, Vilnius or Riga) or to make overtures towards Ukraine or Georgia (Russia's undisputed backyard, our reaction would have been a bit negative if the Soviet Union had courted Ireland to join the Warsaw Pact by way of example*) regarding NATO/EU alignment.
But beyond that, more generally, NATO provides the counter balance to any Russian thoughts towards chancing their arm beyond their very near abroad even then a lot of their adventures, whilst blatant, have some element of plausible deniability (the little green men in Crimea or the surprisingly well equipped rebels in eastern Ukraine). Remove NATO as a counter balance to Russia and I don't see how that does anything other than destabilise the situation. Hell you may well find something like that even encourages nuclear proliferation. Would the UK's nuclear deterrent now consist of around 120 active warheads with only around 40 deployed at any one time? I'm not sure but I bet the discussion would have been had. It's unlikely any other European nations beyond ourselves and the French would develop nuclear weapons but I wonder if the EU might not have been tempted, in such a scenario, to sound ourselves and the French out to bring the EU under our "nuclear umbrellas"?
Personally speaking I'm struggling to see how NATO does anything other than help promote peace and security. Missteps have been made (as I outlined above) but in the round NATO has helped to keep the peace since 1949 and I see no reason why it won't continue to do so.
* Even if a bit unlikely!
Yes and no. The reason that RYAN and Able Archer nearly brought about war was because of the Soviets inherent paranoia (to be fair being invaded twice by Germany in as many decades, including once with significant tactical, though not strategic, surprise will do that to a nation). They managed to get themselves so worked up by their image of Regan as some sort of boogieman that they actually thought that we were about to launch a surprise attack. But I'm not sure that chain of events is particularly likely anymore in the current geopolitical situation we find ourselves in. Would Putin really think that Biden is about to nuke Moscow? Or Xi think that Biden is going to escalate the "trade war" into "hot war" with a nuclear first strike? None of the relevant actors on the world stage, to me, appear to have the necessary fallibilities to think that such a 'bolt from the blue' attack is likely.
No the nightmare scenario now remains something kicking off somewhere conventionally (and there are plenty of places that could happen, Taiwan for instance, or the one that's recently boiled over with Armenia and Azerbaijan) and then some damn fool getting it into their head that using a low yield tactical weapon will help fix things. Or something like North Korea collapsing and some general making off the with nukes and either threatening Seoul or nuking a rival warlord.
There's plenty of reason to be worried and plenty of reasons to work toward denuclearisation but the US and Russia nuking each other out of the blue? That would only happen, these days, as a result of a catastrophic error along the lines of the 1983 Soviet false alarm due to sunlight reflecting off clouds or the 1979 NORAD false alarm due to a training programme being loaded into the live computer systems.
I would suggest 2 things primarily:
We reduce our dependance on authoritarian regimes. Over the past twenty years, we've dissolved our own manufacturing capability in favour of purchasing goods from an authoritarian country that is now usinf that wealth to promote authoritarian values across the world, supporting authoritarian countries and bullying its neighbours.
We concentrate on maintaining/improving living standards within our own societies. We have become too obsessed with free market ideology that has destroyed wages/job security in our own countries. This is a mistake. When residents of the Soviet Union/Eastern Europe looked to the west in the late twentieth century, they were looking for better living standards, as well as freedom. Western democtacy can't hope to compete if it can't in some way maintain living standards. That might not necessarily mean stuff, it could just as much mean job security and a good retirement.
The west was at its strongest in the post WWII era when it was looking after these things.
Gloster
Veteran Member
One problem is that for forty or more years we had politicians who had fought at the sharp end of war: Colonel Heath, Majors Carrington and Healey, Squadron-leader Rees, etc. They knew what war was and also understood what appeasement led to. The same would have been true of many other countries.
Few of the present bunch of politicians have seen action. (There are a number who play up their military credentials, but most haven’t seen action. A few have, but mostly either on peace-keeping or in Northern Ireland, which though they can be nasty, are not total war (*).) To most politicians war is just an abstract, theoretical possibility, rather than something very nasty when experienced.
* - Someone will probably now produce a list of leading politicians with illustrious military records.
Few of the present bunch of politicians have seen action. (There are a number who play up their military credentials, but most haven’t seen action. A few have, but mostly either on peace-keeping or in Northern Ireland, which though they can be nasty, are not total war (*).) To most politicians war is just an abstract, theoretical possibility, rather than something very nasty when experienced.
* - Someone will probably now produce a list of leading politicians with illustrious military records.
GRALISTAIR
Established Member
Henry Kissinger believes the bigger threat is from China.
Video is here.
www.bloomberg.com
Video is here.
Henry Kissinger Warns of U.S.-China Conflict
Former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger speaks with Bloomberg Editor-In-Chief John Micklethwait about how the incoming Joe Biden administration needs to work with China, and the balance of power in the post-pandemic world. They speak during the Bloomberg New Economy Forum. (Source: Bloomberg)
www.bloomberg.com
I don't believe that China presents a direct military threat to the USA. The main military threat is to US allies - primarily South Korea, Japan and Australia - and to the freedom of the seas. China is much more of a strategic economic threat to the USA, though that can easily continue to be turned into a mutually beneficial arrangement.
Gloster
Veteran Member
Mutually beneficial to them, but probably not to the rest of the world.
Well, anything that keeps them on good terms is probably good for the rest of us., The last time they got into an economic spat it almost started a global recession.
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