Europe, Boring Until it's Not

[SuburbanFarmer]

It doesn't have to make strategic sense. The politicians would lose their shit. We would go to war over any action in the baltics, regardless of Article V, and Putin doesn't seem to realize it.

[Smitty-48]

Oh no, the politicians would never lose sight of the hydrogen bombs, the hydrogen bombs loom large, they well know that if the United States and Russia ever came to head to head in a shooting engagement, the situation could and likely would spin out of control, so countries which are in the immediate evirons of Russia, and which are not of critical strategic interest to the United States, such as Finland, the Baltic States, Ukraine, Moldova, and Transcaucasia, are all quite vulnerable to Russian agression.

There are things which the United States might take things to the brink of a nuclear war over, but none of those states are one of those things.

[Okeefenokee]

The cold war's over. Gone is the idea that the Soviets can take over the world. The stakes are lower now. Russia's been nibbling away pieces of territory for years. No war yet.

[Smitty-48]

That's the thing, the threat of the Soviets was all the way to the English Channel, the threat of the Russians, is much more localized, moreover, the Soviets were attempting to incite socialist revolution against the established order, whereas the Russians are the opposite.

There is no American critical strategic interest against the Russian's interests in their near abroad and environs, and there is no ideological basis for America to oppose the Russian rough and ready version of democratic crony capitalism.

To wit, there is no cause for war between the United States and Russia, there are red lines which either could cross which could incite a conflagration by misapprehension, miscalculation, or mistake, but they are not in the Russian Near Abroad nor immediate environs, the Russians could go quite some ways beyond where they are now, before they would incite the United States to actually open fire on them in earnest.

If they didn't have 8,000 hydrogen bombs, it might be different, but they do have 8,000 hydrogen bombs, so it gives them quite some considerable leeway, to push the envelope, before America would really dig its heels in for a fight.

[Speaker to Animals]

Russia doesn't have enough young males, nor a healthy fertility rate, to do anything like this. The only major wars they can realistically engage in are nuclear. Putin has to turn around his demographic decline in order to rescue the Russian economy. He doesn't have time for conquest of Western Europe right now, and frankly, who wants it now other than the Muslims?

Anybody who conquers Western Europe has to deal with all the Muslims now. Americans already learned our lesson in Iraq and Afghanistan. Fuck that noise.

[Smitty-48]

The Russians have no interest in conquering Europe, they merely seek to cow their immediate neighbors into Finlandization, doesn't require massive numbers of troops, and the Russian arm of decision, like America, is airpower, not infantry.

They wouldn't even have to invade Finland to subjegate it, they could take it apart with airpower alone, Finland is not North Vietnam, there's only so much they would be willing to soak up in terms of bombardment, before they sued for peace on Russia's terms.

The real issue that is deterring the Russians in the near term, is their rearmament program, they're simply not there yet, in terms of upgrading their equipment accross the board, they're in the midst of a crash modernization program, and their newest kit is just coming on line now, they want more time, to bring their military up to snuff, in terms of having state of the art kit in all their front line units.

If the Russians sent a bunch of "young males" charging across the border into Finland like this was 1917, then sure, the Finns would cut them to pieces, but this is not 1917, and that's not how the Russians would force the Finns to capitulate to their terms.

Never mind that ultimately, the Russians could use tactical nuclear weapons, that is definitely on the table if the Russians feel like they are backs against the wall, Nuclear Deescalation, is certainly in the mix, beginning with a demonstration of resolve, likley against an offshore maritime target.

[ssu]

Well,

Finland enjoyed I think in 1941 air superiority over it's front. And that's that.

Never it has been even assumed that the Finnish Air Force could win the enemy Air Force, only to challenge it periodically and to make it suffer some losses. Perhaps gain a local air superiority if it gambles with it's fighters for uhhh... a very brief time? The Air Force guys have a lot of insisting to do here that they are an effective force for the long haul. But the basic doctrine is that the enemy basically has Air Superiority and if you see an combat aircraft, it's likely not yours.

As to the Hornet Flanker-E comparison, well, the FAF had a gap of one "generation" when they transitted from Saab Draken and MiG-21bis aircraft into the Hornet. The gap between a C/D Hornet and Flanker E isn't as huge as with a Draken/MiG-21bis and an early Flanker A. (Those old aircraft flew basically ALLWAYS as low as possible). The replacement to the Hornet C/D is thought now to be there in 2025, but this hugely expensive project that hasn't gone much further than being started. Decisions ought to be somewhere at the start of the 2020's and then perhaps in a decade...



From the Russian viewpoint, there is of course a totally rational reason to put some of your best fighters on the Finnish border. From the Finnish aerospace it is a very short range to St Petesburgh area with it's large military-industrial complex, to Murmansk and to Moscow itself. The Baltic doesn't simply have the depth as Finland/Sweden has. For the Russians the big problem now is that these three crucial areas are all now within range of even tactical fighters.

But from the Russian viewpoint the idea of occupying Finland has been allways a "defensive" move.

[Smitty-48]

Ironically, what you really need, is a bunch of S-400 systems. Perhaps you could get the Chinese HQ-9 instead, it's like an S-300+

[ssu]

The Russians have no interest in conquering Europe, they merely seek to cow their immediate neighbors into Finlandization, doesn't require massive numbers of troops, and the Russian arm of decision, like America, is airpower, not infantry.

And let's remember that this "cowing"-process is something that is on right now, on peacetime.

You don't actually need a hot war for these things to change. You just need incompetent politicians that fuck everything up with a shrewd player like Putin, and Putin gets what he wants.

The strategic mistake has been for the West that it simply didn't anticipate that Russia could emerge into a player after the Soviet Union collapsed. The true window of opportunity to make fresh start, to have good relations with Russia would have been right there and then when the flag of the Soviet Union went down and was replaced with the Russian flag in the Kremlin. Then the Russian people were sincerely open for new ideas about the West. Then you could have a) either ended NATO or b) got Russia to be part of NATO. But in order to do that, the Western (or American) politicians should have realized that Russia was just temporary on it's knees and the Bear would get up again, hence it wouldn't be just a member-state as other puny member-states like Belgium or Portugal.

There was none of that kind of vision, not in the US, and then not in Russia. And then you had the NATO wars in Yugoslavia which brought back the deep freeze the Russians have now. And now you have KGB guys running the show that likely believe their own ideas that the US is intent to get them and thus the best defence is attack. Perhaps not literally in the traditional way, but with other ways.

[Smitty-48]

Well I was one of the people in the West who predicted that this was going to happen, there was a brief moment of euhporia of course, when the East Germans walked straight out across the trace and the border guards just let them, but certainly when the hardliners backlashed against Gorbachev in 91', I was convinced that Ivan wasn't actually dead after all.

Realistically, the Russians were not really ever prepared to join NATO, there would be no joining NATO with the nuclear arsenal they were maintaining, and they were not in any way prepared to give it up, and America is the boss of NATO, NATO reports to SACEUR, and the Russians were in no way prepared to do that neither.

What the Russians actually wanted, even then, was for the Americans to desolve NATO and for Europe to have a new alliance, with the Russians as a major player, and nobody in Europe was up for that.

This whole "hey, the Russians were totally prepared to join NATO but NATO said no" is not how it was, the Russians were in no way prepared to submit to NATO's terms, so NATO didn't say no to Russia, the Russians said no to NATO, when it was made clear to them that NATO was not going to bend to Russia's terms, which was Russia as equal partner to the Americans.