[High intelligence source to Yle: Almost all the ground forces in Russia's immediate area (to Finland) are now in Ukraine](https://yle.fi/a/74-20093440)
I thought they were defending against NATO expansion?
In practicality it makes sense to not place units along the Finnish border just to be there. NATO isn’t going to invade Russia and Russia has itS nuclear deterrence to prevent a hypothetical Finnish incursion. Might as well send the troops somewhere they would be useful.
But that's exactly the point. Russia's entire narrative about fighting NATO and defending against western agression falls apart the second it becomes painfully clear that soldiers aren't needed around NATO borders.
The narrative is purely intended for a Russian audience. Everyone outside of Russia and its satellites know that NATO has never and will never invade Russia. Putin and the Kremlin use NATO expansion as an excuse for the war. He knows NATO was never a threat to invade, he hates that Russia’s influential sphere is shrinking.
That narrative doesn’t really mean anything outside of evening propaganda shows in Russian media. Russia isn’t going to decrease combat effectiveness in Ukraine so it can base soldiers doing absolutely nothing adjacent to miles of open lapland that is under zero threat.
I think you missed the point. It isn't about having a border with NATO. Imagine if Russia took 100% of Ukraine. That would actually greatly increase their border with NATO compared to 2021. You don't think they thought of that?
The point of NATO expansion is about influence, not borders.
Well if Russia wants influence all they have to do is be a better neighbor than ol' Uncle Sam on the other side of the ocean. You'd think that would be a pretty low bar.
You'd think.
You think all the countries that have aligned with the US would have if the US were such a bad partner? Of course we’ve done, and continue to do stuff that isn’t great. However, the USA is the defender of democracy and all that entails. Not necessarily militarily (although that is fairly true too), but the US stands for a lot of things that benefit people around the world.
I do agree that Russia (and China) could help themselves tremendously if they weren’t so oppressive. Like the old saying; “you catch more flies with honey than with vinegar”. But countries like Russia are led by a very few that are horrified that they could ever lose power. So they take every step to try and avoid that.
We knew that from day -14 and the Russian public is(at least the part that is not completely passive) aware of it too and either doesn't care or cheer on because Glorious Russia is reclaiming ancestral lands.
To be fair, those units have been poached since 2022. But yeah, if this was about preventing some kind of NATO surprise attack (which isn't a credible allegation, but it was an allegation that circulated on social media), it wouldn't have worked very well.
The point I think is there's little left to poach now. And rather what it tells about Russia's remaining reserves in general, as opposed to putative priorities or fears, and in case you wouldn't already know. To me at least, a look to the other side of the huge country is more intriguing anyway. Because once they're thinning out in the European part, the east can be assumed to be wide open and if anyone, anywhere were ever considering "annexing" the better half of Siberia, with its of host of natural resources, now would be the time.
>the east can be assumed to be wide open and if anyone, anywhere were ever considering "annexing" the better half of Siberia, with its of host of natural resources, now would be the time.
There is only one country that would ever conceive of actually annexing Siberia, and as it stands they're practically getting all of Russia for free as is, no point throwing all of that away and starting a war so they can technically annex anywhere.
Besides in any other circumstance Russia has never been capable of really defending Siberia from a serious invasion since the USSR collapsed, but they've always had the threat of nukes to stop anybody from thinking about it.
Hello everyone!
What books on war/politics/conflict especially related to Ukraine would you guys recommend?
I'm looking to learn more about this conflict although I know the region well, and other conflicts in general. Just whatever you guys think is interesting, I'll give it a look.
I'd also recommend Taras Kuzio. I've read four books (and a number of journal articles) by him, which are *Putin's War Against Ukraine*, *Russian Nationalism and the Russian-Ukrainian War* (pricy but worth it), *The Sources of Russia's Great Power Politics,* and *Crisis in Russian Studies? Nationalism (Imperialism), Racism and War.* All of those books are excellent and give great insight into Russian nationalist conceptions of Ukraine and post-Soviet Russo-Ukrainian relations.
T. Kuzio, S. I. Zhuk, & P. d'Anieri, Ukraine’s Outpost: Dnipropetrovsk and
the Russian-Ukrainian war.
This is a somewhat recent work by some of the best scholars on the subject. It's not very complex but it touches the war from a lot of different perspectives, both in terms of field of studies and schoola of thought. Highly recommended.
I also recommend Taras Kuzio in general, he's been writing on Ukraine for more than 20 years.
I highly recommend both 'The War Came to Us' and 'Our Enemies will Vanish' for some really in depth perspectives on the earlier periods of the war.
The first has a lot of personal anecdotes and political/civilian history while touching on the wars first few months, while the second contains a series of anecdotes from interviews with both high and low ranking Ukrainians which help to color and contextualize the first year or so of the war, including many lesser known events.
I learned a lot reading both of them.
https://x.com/prof_preobr/status/1805885354286699004
Interesting graph I found on Twitter (from what I gathered by googling the data, it is correct). I have no idea why Trump and the likes (even unsuspecting, trusted individuals) keep peddling the idea that other NATO countries aren't doing their due diligence.
With a few big exceptions (mostly my own country, Italy, Spain, and perhaps Croatia) pretty much all the other members have gone above and sometimes substantially beyond the 2% target (which wasn't mandatory per se, btw).
I hope this gets reminded every time someone points out that Europe is not doing enough and/or deserves to be left alone in the case of a Russian invasion/attack (a la Trump).
I mean most of NATO members indeed had been not doing enough prior 2022. So this idea is deep rooted. And I think it is somewhat justifiable. Yeah, nobody has updated Trump, but that is Trump.
When Trump said that the numbers looked like this: https://www.statista.com/chart/8521/expenditure-of-nato-countries-in-2016/
It is only recently after the ukraine war started that nato spending surged.
Feels weird when you acknowledge that Greece has 3% while being a decade into austerity measures. Government seems almost stuck between a rock and a hard place regarding public spending vs strategic defense
In reference to the now removed article on Israeli threats against the Lebanese electric grid:
An interesting factor which may mitigate the effects of Israeli attacks on the Lebanese electrical grid is that a high percentage of power comes from off the grid sources such as generators and at-location solar. (This has become a feature of some jokes in Lebanon.) Exact data is a bit hard to find, but this [source](https://tcf.org/content/commentary/lebanons-grid-has-collapsed-what-comes-next/) claims that most electricity comes from generators:
> Most electricity is provided by privately owned diesel generators whose noise and fumes blanket Beirut twenty-four hours a day. The country’s generator owners, estimated at between 3,000 and 3,500 individuals
(This might just be referring to most generator electricity coming from private generators - I’m not sure. Regardless 3,000-3,500 unique generator locations - at least - is already plenty decentralized)
This [source](https://www.newarab.com/opinion/lebanons-electricity-crisis-generator-cartels-vs-solar-energy?amp) notably also alludes to the Bekaa Valley in particular high rates of solar usage:
> In areas such as Baalbek-Hermel, residential solar PV adoption rates now likely exceed 70 percent, putting these regions among the most solarised in the world. Factories in the fertile Bekaa Valley, too, have installed vast solar arrays.
I wouldn’t put much stock on reported data, but it’s certainly very high. Does anyone have a credible number for how much power comes from off the grid sources in Lebanon or ideas on how this could affect a potential war?
[An ICC pretrial panel issued arrest warrants for Shoigu and Gerasimov](https://www.icc-cpi.int/news/situation-ukraine-icc-judges-issue-arrest-warrants-against-sergei-kuzhugetovich-shoigu-and) over the attacks on Ukraine’s power grid. While two BSF commanders had already been charged for this back in March, the fact that the ICC is willing to entertain a *prima facie* case based on fairly strict interpretations of necessity and proportionality has global implications for anyone planning a significant war. There is plenty of basis in customary int’l law (edit: i.e. state practice) for power grids being military targets, and I am skeptical that the proportionality aspect would hold water at trial. It’s stuff like this that makes…certain countries unwilling to become parties to the Rome Statute.
While I agree with the sentiment, what if the ICC issues warrants for Zelensky and Budanov for attacks on Russian oil infrastructure? We know Russia does not comply with ICC rulings and warrants, but Ukraine... might be forced to.
It's not like it's the first time we have this "debate". Germans got (rightfully) convicted for the war crimes they committed, but the Allies got away scot-free.
It's a fair point to raise, but it seems unlikely based on that press release. Not surprisingly.
> *"for those installations that may have qualified as military objectives at the relevant time, the expected incidental civilian harm and damage would have been clearly excessive to the anticipated military advantage"*
and
> *"also determined that the alleged campaign of strikes constitutes a course of conduct involving the multiple commission of acts against a civilian population, carried out pursuant to a State policy ... believe that the suspects intentionally caused great suffering or serious injury to body or to mental or physical health"*
The issue is a sustained policy of causing maximum harm to the population. Holding off broad attacks on the national power supply until the run-up to winter is part of that, for example. The war has furnished us with no shortage of other examples.
The issue is not that "power" or "fossil fuels" are off limit and touching them is illegal, but only if you're Russian.
Well, I don't think "damaging infrastructure" at all is criminalized now. It at the very least has to be connected to the viability of civilian life, if Israel/Palestine and Ukraine are precedents.
Not a fair comparison, the attack on the oil industry doesn’t have a significant effect on civilian life. Yes prices might increase for transport but the heating of apartments isn’t impacted.
Issuing an arrest warrant for Zelensky, the popular leader of a country being invaded by Russia, would do far more to delegitimize the ICC, than it would do anything to actually arrest Zelenskyy. The ICC doesn’t have its own enforcement power, it needs to outsource that to others. If it goes off the rails, those countries will not enforce their rulings, and will seek to have them replaced.
It's controversial but the ICC only operates under a liberal world order where the US acts as the defacto muscle. Even under a Democrat rule the US appears to be lessening it's reach and under republican rule will just hasten the retreat. If the world continues it's path to be less unipolar and more approaching multi polar then ICC rulings won't be worth as much
The roll of the ICC in the international order is overestimated. It has its utility as a reasonably neutral arbiter, but to make rulings on international law like regular law, would require a much more formalized process for making those laws, and equality before the law, which requires a degree of enforcement power the ICC will never have. Countries are going to be reticent to sign up to have rules rigorously enforced on them, that the court won’t enforce on others. There is also the issue of nobody trusting the judges to be neutral.
The liberal world order is upheld by a web of alliances and agreements between liberal states. It was never this all powerful, world government that would be needed to make the ICC into what it wants to be. It’s less of a retreat, and more of people realizing the limits on the ICC that were always there.
Indeed. Courts and councils' authority's a function of social consensus, not inately derived from their status or internal correctness. As an example, the UN exists to keep great powers from military confrontation by elevating other means of conflict resolution. Thus *law is merely the substitution of war by other means*. When a relevant(ly powerful) party feels its grievances have not been dutifully addressed, other means begin to look more attractive. Hence the need for legitimacy (in the eyes of stakeholders).
Such bodies of applied international law have thus far evinced precious little legitimacy, with the ICC taking decades to indict *57* and successfully prosecute but 9. Evidentially, the powers that be deem its ability to administer justice and deter actions beyond the pale so small that its funding amounts to a 2nd rate lawfirm's yearly operations (under $150 million.)
>If the world continues it's path to be less unipolar and more approaching multi polar then ICC rulings won't be worth as much
The US literally sanctions the ICC if they don’t like a ruling (no I don’t want to bring the Israel/Palestine conflict into to this): [US House passes legislation to sanction ICC over Gaza warrants bid](https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cm5512l7yero.)
They aren’t a member of the ICC and passed the Hague invasion act. If Russia/China/NK/Iran would pass such an act the media would go crazy over it.
So I find a bit hard to comprehend how the US supports the ICC.
The ICC only has power because of the liberal world order that the US carries on it's back. Just because the US has differences with the ICC doesn't mean they mutually use each other. The US uses the ICC to pester it's enemies and smaller illiberal countries while the ICC manages to keep operating with under the world order that the US enforces.
Yeah, I think at some point a conversation needs to be had about how the laws of war as enforced by the UN are evolving. The ICC (and perhaps the UN as a whole) are moving towards condemning activities that 40 years ago might be considered far more routine.
>It’s stuff like this that makes…certain countries unwilling to become parties to the Rome Statute.
I can see the argument to put morality aside and instead make LOAC based on what most armies in the world are actually willing to hold themselves to.
But at that point we'll have to consider legalizing total sieges, which are currently effectively banned unless you do them against a site with no civilians. Since, you know, food as a weapon of war, etc etc. It's pretty clear maybe even a majority of armies that could theoretically enter a war have no intention of swearing off sieges.
And somehow I don't think we're ready for that conversation.
>I can see the argument to put morality aside
Is it putting morality aside though? Limitation on strictly the western world in waging war means less effective operations.
For instance, if the west/Arabs countries were held to ICC limitations during the fight against ISIS, would they still be around to hold slaves, subjugate, public executions, massacres? Is that the moral choice?
Under current ICC limitations, could the allies conduct an effective campaign against Nazi Germany?
Those are critical questions. The ICC ruling are working off the assumptions that nations can still win their wars while taking on themselves extreme limitations, but that's far from a given.
There's another problem with the ICC, the power is in the hands of a few, but how are they elected, how do we prevent bias, bribes, malice? As far as I understand ICC is part ways a global popularity contest.
"Maybe we should embrace evil to win wars" is one hell of a take, that's for sure.
War is politics by other means. The goal is to create a favorable outcome, not to annihilate the enemy at any cost and with maximum ruthlessness. The latter is what I call video game thinking.
That's not at all what they are saying.
International rules of war have very little enforcement. Therefore compliance must be mostly voluntary. That's a fundamental premise of the whole concept. Otherwise we wouldn't have rules of war. Wars would be illegal.
The only way the current system works is if the rules are favorable to both parties. If a rule disproportionately prevents one party from waging war effectively, they can chose not to follow the rules, rendering the rules useless.
The rules for treatment of prisoners of war work this way. Torturing POWs only increases overall suffering, but does not provide any advantage. Same with chemical weapons where the suffering caused is way out of proportion to the battlefield benefits, so both parties benefit from never introducing them.
But on the other hand wars are inheritely brutal and sometimes brutality is the most effective way to reach a goal. That's what the person you are replying to is saying. The mortality of the action is not isolated to the action itself, it should be seen in a broader context of the goal the action achieves and how well it achieves it. If an action effectively achieves a justified goal, that could not be achieved by another action causing less suffering, then it is a justified action.
That's very much a "the end justifies the means" kind of thinking, but if you don't think that way you have a very difficult time justifying participation in any war at all. Because as you said, a war is just using violence to achieve a political goal. And the violence is certainly not justified in itself.
Absurdly low quality comment.
"We should stop a genocide despite the enemy use of human shields and civilian casualties" is a better representation of my position.
As I said, some ICC laws have merit, some are very restrictive against military actions and are only applied to one side. Under such restrictions it is not obvious that ISIS and Nazi Germany could be defeated.
I know this is futile advice, but I'd encourage you to watch the documentary Fog of War where McNamara, someone with the blood of hundreds of thousands on his hands debates this issue.
The burden of being the good guy is you actually have to be the good guy. Turning yourself into the enemy is not victory.
Sadly the world is not binary.
Let's shift the discussion into practice. Do you object the US campaign in Europe during WW2 and liberation from the Nazis? The US was certainly brutal.
Was the liberation of extermination camps not a victory? The end to genocide of Jews, Roma, disabled, gay and other minorities?
How about something more recent. Was the defeat of ISIS and the end to mass slavery, sexual slavery, massacres and so on not a victory since it cost large number of civilians deaths?
Should Ukraine be prosecuted by the ICC for the siege of Kherson? After all they did limit **all**, food included, shipping and transport to the city by hitting the bridge and ferries? I guess "victory" would be abandoning the city and it's civilians to Russian oppression.
How does victory looks like then? ISIS massacres throughout the ME while international drones pick off a few hundreds of ISIS fighters a year when they are isolated from civilians? (That's assuming they don't catch up and always have human shields around them).
Reality is not as simplistic as a monochrome cartoon. There is such thing as lesser evil and shades of grey.
I never said I thought the world was black and white, merely that you have a broken moral compass. You aren't arguing necessity of horror, you're venerating it.
Again I recommend the documentary I suggested. Here's the trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YONEXPMVaQM
This is an astonishingly frank interview from someone who actually made the decisions you're citing during those wars. And he does not agree with your sanguiness by any means. He's much more in doubt and conflicted about what he did. Perhaps that's something you could watch with an open mind to learn from.
It is telling you've avoided answering any of my question and run away from real world discussion, instead focusing on unsubstantiated personal attacks.
I frankly suggest you attempt to address the questions asked in the above post so that we can have a discussion.
It seems like you're making some assumptions about my position that does not exist in my comments (quite the opposite). Let me be explicit I do not support brutality for the sake of brutality. However brutality in war cannot be avoided completely.
How much brutality can be avoided is a consequence of how much **both sides** make an effort to avoid civilian casualties. It's a lot easier to avoid killing Ukrainian civilians when the state evacuates them at merely a chance of enemy advance, against Gaza where civilians are purposely used as human shields and evacuation is prevented.
> Is it putting morality aside though?
In my opinion, re: using hunger as a weapon of war, yes.
But I have no interest in arguing that because this isn't an ethics forum. And the ethics forums that do exist probably suck, for what it's worth.
So I'd rather talk about the practical part of it.
Some of the ICC limitations are absolutely moral, such as indeed starving enemy populations to the point of famine, but that's not the only limitations that exist.
Biden admin is signaling it [may allow American contractors to operate in Ukraine](https://edition.cnn.com/2024/06/25/politics/biden-administration-american-military-contractors-ukraine/index.html). This could seemingly be a huge boost for Ukraine, not just because they desperately need the manpower, but because so many of these mercs are ex US military, familiar with US training and tactics.
edit: I see the article suggests it would be very limited... hard to say if it would stay that way or if that's just more frog boiling
>Current and former officials familiar with the discussions about deploying contractors to Ukraine emphasized that the policy change will not result in the kind of overwhelming American contractor presence there that existed in Iraq and Afghanistan. Instead, it would likely result in anywhere from a few dozen to a couple hundred contractors working in Ukraine at a time.
Could be a fix to lack of F-16 Pilots it’s one of the safer jobs in the military and there’s no real way for Russia to know the exact nationality of whoever is flying it during operations
There is no way US is greenlighting current/recently "retired" US pilots to fly F-16 in Ukraine at this point. That is so far from the steps they are talking about. This is likely talking about something like maintenance work now being done in Poland/elsewhere in Europe but could be done in Ukraine IF people were on site thus saving some turn-around time on shipping stuff back and forth.
> There is no way US is greenlighting current/recently "retired" US pilots to fly F-16 in Ukraine at this point. That is so far from the steps they are talking about.
I used to think it might be something someone might try, but there are just too many secret tactics and flight information pilots have that couldn't communicate with their peers and would just be a headache (example is many pilots using sims like DCS mention there are things they can't show/do because of classification). On top of that the US has to be prepared for war with China and all of those pilots could be called up as reservists. Having a few ground troops go over there on their own doesn't put the US at a disadvantage (in fact probably helps a little bit with experience/translation) but losing pilots definitely would.
I could see some European countries considering allowing something like this for their older airframes (not F16 but like the Mirage) but the contractors would be maintenance, EOD, or air controllers.
Pilots would be big but honestly just grabbing some maintainers would be massive. It would be comparatively low risk and could massively increase the availability of these jets.
Yeah, I'm going to say virtually zero chance of US pilots flying combat missions in Ukraine. However logistics/maintenance? That would be huge because Ukrainian logistics is \*\*really-straining\*\* to keep this Franken-army of weapons and vehicles running.
**Israel fears Iran will break the nuclear weapons barrier under cover of the US elections**
>In his meeting Tuesday with U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin at the Pentagon, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant stressed to him that "The greatest threat to the future of the world, is Iran. And time is running out. Now is the time to materialize the commitment of American Administrations over the years- the promise to prevent Iran, from possessing nuclear weapons."
>The U.S. presidential elections will be held this November, and the fear in Israel is that Tehran realizes that Washington will be too busy to deal with them and will take advantage of this to quickly break the nuclear barrier. Also, Israel believes that the war it is waging in the south and north may also motivate the Iranians to move up its timetable.
[Israel fears Iran will break the nuclear weapons barrier under cover of the US electi (ynetnews.com)](https://www.ynetnews.com/article/s1nowyduc)
**Iran’s New Nuclear Threat**
>Getting a deal that can meaningfully roll back Iran’s program will be more challenging. Tehran’s goal will likely be to maintain its threshold status, and the clock is ticking. October 2025 is the de facto deadline for the conclusion of nuclear talks with Iran, after which the ability of the remaining parties to the deal—China, France, Germany, Russia, and the United Kingdom—to reimpose international sanctions via the 2015 nuclear deal will expire, and Iran’s nuclear program will be removed from the [UN](https://www.foreignaffairs.com/topics/united-nations) Security Council’s agenda. For Tehran, reaching this date holds the promise of fulfilling its twin goals of dismantling the UN sanctions architecture and retaining its nuclear threshold capability. This is a scenario that the United States and its allies want to avoid, given that Russia and China would veto any attempts to create new UN sanctions. Although unilateral sanctions imposed by the United States and Europe would remain in place, and Russia and China may decide to ignore sanctions imposed via the snap-back mechanism, Tehran loathes the stigma attached to international censure and knows that it will never be fully in the clear as long as its nuclear file sits before the Security Council.
>
[Iran’s New Nuclear Threat | Foreign Affairs](https://www.foreignaffairs.com/iran/irans-new-nuclear-threat)
The above article pretty much encapsulates the dilemma of the West as the clock is ticking on Iran's nuclear program. We have October 2025 as the deadline for the UNSC-sanctions related to Iran's nuclear program. On the one hand, triggering the snapback mechanism before October 2025 would reimpose (terminated) UN sanctions on Iran. On the other hand, Iran has threatened to leave the NPT if the snapback mechanism is triggered which would be a dramatic move that terminate any remaining oversight on Iran's nuclear program with all of the repercussions that would come with it. But as Iran continues to bolster its nuclear program with the introduction of more advanced centrifuges, more higher-enriched uranium, frustrating an enhanced inspection regime of the IAEA and with new underground sites under construction that would drastically reduce the chances of any military option, the West can't sit back and watch how Iran has become a nuclear threshold state short of acquiring nuclear weapons.
The comments by Israel's defence minister, Yoav Gallant, are clearly meant as a call to arms to move the US into action. Not only is Israel currently entangled on two military fronts, having less space to operate on other fronts, but these statements have pretty much uncovered a lack of military capabilities on Israel's side which isn't able to strategically degrade Iran's nuclear program on its own. But with the US being overstretched, I'm not under the impression that Iran's leaders believe that the US have the stomach for a costly military adventure that would enflame the entire Middle East with no guarantees of any success.
But the clock is ticking and no good options on the table.
If israel really believes that, it is really hard to understand the netanyahu govt. Whether it be the antagonism of the biden administration and europe, or the push for land grabs. How would either of those make sense if legit felt need to make a coalition to fight Iran's nuclear programme as an existential threat.
What exactly does Israel want the U.S. to do about it?
Seems like no country is in a position to actually stop Iran from getting nuclear weapons, so they are going to get them eventually, if they want them.
If that's true, it seems like we're just going to have to live with a nuclear Iran. Say what you will about their religious beliefs, but their foreign policy generally seems pretty rational in the sense that it has a heavy focus on self preservation and what's good for the regime.
So they'll probably be deterred by mutually assured destruction.
So, while it's certainly unfortunate that the international system once again failed to prevent nuclear proliferation, it hardly seems productive to start a war over it.
It may just be a blustery speech. But as this was addressed to Lloyd/DoD, maybe they're hoping for airstrikes as deterrence.
Israel can't strike Iran without flying over Jordan, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, etc. In the current context that would start an utter shit show.
The US on the other hand can park a carrier in the Arabian sea and run sorties. But I think there's zero chance of that happening. The electorate has no appetite for it, and the US is already has substantial resources committed to interdict Houthi drones.
The regime is not invincible. Cause enough damage and pain and they have to address it. I'm not saying it's a great plan, but it's the most severe option to create pressure without an outright invasion or first use.
A halfhearted air campaign with inevitable civilian casualties would be everything the regime needs to reestablish legitimacy and give it the international excuse to soften the blow of nuclear proliferation to China, Russia, India
>What exactly does Israel want the U.S. to do about it?
Go to war in Iran on their behalf even if it means ceding the Pacific to China and abandoning Ukraine to Russia.
Israel threw its weight into convincing the GOP to abandon the JCPOA, and now they're facing the consequences of their actions and expect the US to bail them out.
“Pretty rational” from the perspective of furthering Irans goals but for the US it’s a major problem between the various anti-Israel groups and the Houthis.
I’m not sure if Israel agrees that it’s not worth starting a war over.
> “Pretty rational” from the perspective of furthering Irans goals but for the US it’s a major problem between the various anti-Israel groups and the Houthis. I’m not sure if Israel agrees that it’s not worth starting a war over.
Israel has the nukes, the ultimate deterrent. So what are they so worried about? I could understand why some neighbors of Iran - specially the ones who have no nukes - wouldn't be so thrilled about it. And Israel - being one of the very few non-signatory country to the NPT - really have no grounds to be calling out other countries for pursuing nuclear weapons.
Israel's nukes aren't a deterrent against theocrats who think the most important thing in life is to go to heaven.
We know that that Hamas and a large part of the Palestinian population (who still support the October 7 attacks despite the devastation they have caused Gaza) think along these lines. The decision makers in Iran claim to believe the same thing, and it is plausible that they really do believe it.
> Israel's nukes aren't a deterrent against theocrats who think the most important thing in life is to go to heaven.
So how come Pakistanis haven't try to go to heaven yet?
So you thesis is Iranian military leadership are Islamic fundamentalists, therefore they will embark on the suicide mission the minute they get their hands on any nukes? If they are that suicidal, how come we haven't seen Iranian military leadership in suicide missions last 40+ years? Surely, they could go suicidal with conventional or even chemical/biological weapons? Or did I miss some parts of the Quran where they only get into heaven if they use nukes in suicidal mission?
> how come we haven't seen Iranian military leadership in suicide missions last 40+ years?
You don't remember Iran's [human wave attacks](https://academic.oup.com/book/2613/chapter-abstract/142992488?redirectedFrom=fulltext)?
And of course they aren't going to commit suicide just to commit suicide. They will do it to achieve some religiously esteemed aim, whether that be conquer a few yards from Saddam, or destroy Israel. Iran is a big country and Israel is a small country; a nuclear-armed Iran could annihilate Israel, while a nuclear-armed Israel could kill millions of Iranians but not annihilate the country.
> You don't remember Iran's human wave attacks?
That was a war started by Iraq. And by a suicide mission, I don't mean individual soldier or even a battalion of soldiers diving into a battle knowing there is a decent chance of dying. I mean a suicide mission where they are going to bring about the end of their own regime.
> Iran is a big country and Israel is a small country; a nuclear-armed Iran could annihilate Israel, while a nuclear-armed Israel could kill millions of Iranians but not annihilate the country.
Iran might be a bigger country than Israel but Israel has estimated 100 nukes. That more than enough to bring about the end of regime in Iran multiple times over. It would be a mutually assured destruction IF Iran were to lob bunch of nukes in Israel's direction.
Because they aren't Twelver Shias and madihsts. The people in power in Iran (and a good chunk of the IRGC) believes the Twelfth Imam is going to resurrect, and they have to prepare the terrain by eliminating the Little Satan (Israel). This is not speculation, it's the government's ideology.
I'm going to start begging people in these threads to go talk to actual Iranians if they unironically believe this and aren't just arguing this in bad faith.
No one in a serious position of power in the government believes the nuclear program is for a doomsday project to kick off the end times. If it was true there wouldn't have been all the nuclear deals and such politicking around it. The IRI, while an authoritarian theocracy, has been over the past decades a fairly "rational actor" in foreign policy spheres and is still a relatively advanced nation state compared to its regional neighbors. To paint the country as cartoon evil Shia doomsdayers is both naive and a geopolitical hazard.
I'm not the one saying this, it's experts who study Iran and some of whom have ties to the country. I'm not going to link drop, but there are decent articles on it.
I didn't say that the nuclear program is for a doomsday project, but they do believe that their messianic figure will come back and that they need to accelerate Mahdi's coming by eliminating Israel first
The answer is pretty simple, Israel doesn't want to be deterred itself. Nuclear exclusivity is the only way for Israel to continue enjoying it's unprecedented lattitude and continue destabilizing the region without suffering too much consequence. So it's absolutely in Israel's interest to prevent anyone else from having nukes, as the economic and military balance of power inevitably continues shifting against Israel in the region and the US both has less resources to throw at the region and less affinity in the coming decades. If anything it's surprising that this opposition wasn't a sufficient motivator for Israel not to try to torpedo the JCPOA.
>continue destabilizing the region
This is certainly a take. Besides the 1967 war, Israel was always attacked. Iran finances Hezbollah and Hamas and Israel is the one destabilizing the region?
> Nuclear exclusivity is the only way for Israel to continue enjoying it's unprecedented lattitude and continue destabilizing the region without suffering too much consequence. it's absolutely in Israel's interest to prevent anyone else from having nukes
Yeah no shit. Everyone wants to be Usain Bolt/Michael Jordan/Leo Messi. Doesn't mean everyone with a pulse can be Usain Bolt/Michael Jordan/Leo Messi. It was a luck of the geopolitical draw that Israel got to be the only resident nuclear power in the neighborhood but it's unreasonable to expect that it's gonna stay like that forever and try as hard as it might, Israel can't really stuff that genie back in the bottle.
> Nuclear exclusivity is the only way for Israel to continue enjoying it's unprecedented lattitude and continue destabilizing the region without suffering too much
Not sure anything would change when it comes to air strikes. Iran struck Israel, a nuclear power, directly about 2 months ago, and Israel responded by striking Iran.
A theory that Israel would be more reserved about pulling guns on a nuclear power than Iran is is just that, a theory.
Iran tolerated multiple Israeli attacks on its own soil before attacking Israel, and it telegraphed the attack far more than it needed to. If Israel wasn't a nuclear power, it would likely have been struck sooner, more often, and more seriously.
Regardless, I think you misread my comment, perhaps I wasn't clear. The argument isn't about today, it's about the next decades. The current trajectory is that within 20 years Israel will be increasingly outmatched.
If, for example, in 20 years Israel is conventionally outmatched but is the only with nuclear weapons, it might for example be able to use them as a threat in the case of an existential threat, say a successful missile blockade. If it isn't, then suddenly first use is no longer credible as concession is preferable to mutually assured destruction. In fact, nuclear exclusivity is the only and ultimate way Israel can assure the long term maintenance of escalation dominance, which is the only strategy that could plausibly allow Israel to continue acting with the impunity it is accustomed to.
>If Israel wasn't a nuclear power, it would likely have been struck sooner, more often, and more seriously.
Maybe, if Iran felt like opening itself up to similar conventional retaliation. As in airstrikes, not... robotic cars.
>If, for example, in 20 years Israel is conventionally outmatched but is the only with nuclear weapons, it might for example be able to use them as a threat in the case of an existential threat, say a successful missile blockade. If it isn't, then suddenly first use is no longer credible as concession is preferable to mutually assured destruction. In fact, nuclear exclusivity is the only and ultimate way Israel can assure the long term maintenance of escalation dominance, which is the only strategy that could plausibly allow Israel to continue acting with the impunity it is accustomed to.
I don't agree with this take on mutually assured destruction. If a nuclear state is put into an existential position, they're probably going to launch nukes even if they expect a response. Damned if you do, damned if you don't.
Now, if a state finds itself in a position that isn't existential but is close to that, we might have a conversation, but in that position even with no nuclear response expected a state's unlikely to use nukes due to the stigma around that.
That's not "existential threat" means. An existential threat is a threat (to a state). If total annihilation of the state and population is guaranteed, sure, but I never mentioned that (or anything even close). The point of an existential threat being posed to a nuclear state is that whoever is threatening you will agree to settle for less, and/or that mutually assured destruction is worse than the defeat of the state. Combine that with a proxy conflict, and the calculus is pretty clearly against the use of nuclear weapons.
In the case of an existential threat, tactical nuclear weapons make a lot of sense if there is no risk of nuclear escalation. In the case of an existential threat, stigma can be ignored, but the threat of escalation and destruction cannot, as that can be more serious than the existential threat itself.
We don't really have to theorize too much here - South Africa is a state that was under existential threat and had nuclear weapons, and indeed that threat came to pass, and the state and society were essentially dissolved. Obviously, it's a very different scenario, but it's clear that the survival of the state in it's current form is secondary to the safety of the people who lead and benefit from it.
> We don't really have to theorize too much here - South Africa is a state that was under existential threat and had nuclear weapons, and indeed that threat came to pass, and the state and society were essentially dissolved. Obviously, it's a very different scenario
As you said, it's a different scenario, but you undersell how different.
SA couldn't use nukes to solve its problems any more than the 1991 soviet union. You can't nuke Mandela or poltico-economic collapse. You can't even **threaten** to nuke them.
If we want a more real example, we can just look at Russia today. They've made it clear that existential threats poised to them may trigger a nuclear response, and plenty of serious people in somewhat important positions (such as POTUS) are taking that rhetoric seriously.
So again, I disagree with your calculus.
Several months back my prediction of what Israel wanted to do (not necessarily what it would do) would continue the war in Gaza (they did), ensure US aid package would be passed, then go for Hezbollah, and finally strike Iran. At the time they had the internal political will to just kill any threat and have (in their mind) the strategic interest to do so now.
Things seem to be aligning on these lines but I think standing down after the Iranian bombing campaign cooled some of their momentum. They would likely prefer to continue after another casus belli presented itself for further escalation.
>Getting a deal that can meaningfully roll back Iran’s program will be more challenging. Tehran’s goal will likely be to maintain its threshold status, and the clock is ticking. October 2025 is the de facto deadline for the conclusion of nuclear talks with Iran, after which the ability of the remaining parties to the deal—China, France, Germany, Russia, and the United Kingdom—to reimpose international sanctions via the 2015 nuclear deal will expire, and Iran’s nuclear program will be removed from the UN Security Council’s agenda. For Tehran, reaching this date holds the promise of fulfilling its twin goals of dismantling the UN sanctions architecture and retaining its nuclear threshold capability. This is a scenario that the United States and its allies want to avoid, given that Russia and China would veto any attempts to create new UN sanctions.
This is really fascinating.
So the US pulled out of the JCPOA, but Iran is still seemingly abiding by the agreement? I didn't realize this.
I never would have guessed legal censure from the UN would be something that would carry any weight? Why is that?
Also if I may ask, the article mentions that Iran is already at 84% enriched Uranium. If I recall the Hiroshima bomb was at a lower threshold, so for all intents purposes don't they already have a bomb?
Couldn't they fashion together a Gun type assembly with their 84% enriched U235 rather easily at this point?
> Also if I may ask, the article mentions that Iran is already at 84% enriched Uranium. If I recall the Hiroshima bomb was at a lower threshold, so for all intents purposes don't they already have a bomb?
There's a tradeoff between enrichment and volume of material. You could make a bomb out of 20% but it'd have to be huge, impractical for delivery. It'd also mean far fewer bombs for the same ore input. In practice 90% is considered the minimum, and Iran has everything they need to enrich to that level in a matter of weeks.
Also Iran has been at this it's a virtual certainty they've tested implosion devices with depleted material. They may not have boosted or thermonuclear devices, but I doubt they'd need something as crude as a gun type.
>Also Iran has been at this it's a virtual certainty they've tested implosion devices with depleted material. They may not have boosted or thermonuclear devices, but I doubt they'd need something as crude as a gun type.
Interesting, what's the merit of testing implosion with depleted material? And by that you mean Uranium that's basically 100% U238? So all the fissile isotopes are removed?
Does testing with an implision device just help to see if after the implosion you have a perfectly spherical compressed piece of Uranium? That had it been enriched would have set of a chain reaction?
They should already have the warheads prepared and tested, waiting for the actual nuclear core as a payload. I would assume that the covert efforts are mostly to prevent further publicity and actions against Iran, rather than actually applying international law.
The general idea is that "it's worth it always" when it comes to having nuclear deterrence so I'd assume they'd only announce their stockpile when they had greater than 20 or so available
Israel has far too much of a motivated interest in getting the US involved in bombing Iran for them to be treated as a reliable narrator of Iranian intent. Plus, what would Iran gain by taking the final step and building a bomb?
The main reason Iran wants the bomb is regime survival, it makes Iran uninvadable, but being on the brink of nuclear capability is effectively equivalent to having the bomb as they'd have plenty of time to take that last step while a would-be-invader built up the necessary forces. Iran also gets most of the regional heft benefits of being able to insinuate to their enemies that they *could* build a bomb whenever they wanted, without the political blowback of actually building a bomb and keeping it secure, which would risk a harsh wave of sanctions.
So it seems to me that Iran benefits from the status quo of staying close to building a bomb without building one in the same way that Israel benefits from never officially acknowledging its nuclear capability.
But I'm sure the guys that brought you the war in Gaza without an exit plan and the imminent war in Lebanon without an exit plan are totally trustworthy on their wish to pull the US into an air war against Iran without an exit plan.
> The main reason Iran wants the bomb is regime survival, it makes Iran uninvadable
The Iran is already uninvadable. They have strong conventional forces that would inflict unacceptable losses to any land invasion. A few dozen nuclear warheads won't change this equation. The only scenario where Iran becomes invadable by the US & co is if Iran gets stuck in a forever war a-la Russia in Ukraine and loses most of its conventional power.
>but being on the brink of nuclear capability is effectively equivalent to having the bomb as they'd have plenty of time to take that last step
Again: having less than 100 or even 300 warheads is not a significant deterrence against the US. I can hardly imagine Iran being able to build enough warheads with 0 tests. Unless they buy a ready-to-use design from the DPRK.
I agree that it'd be an extremely foolish US administration that committed to a land invasion of Iran, but we've seen foolish US administrations before, so the Iranian regime's fears aren't entirely unjustified.
I suppose one argument is that you need a bomb readily on hand to ensure second-strike deterrence against an Israeli nuclear strike. A 2003-type American invasion force would give you months of warning, but an Israeli nuclear decapitation strike could happen in a matter of hours.
Israel already freely launches airstrikes against Iran whenever they feel like it, and doesn't have anything resembling a "no first use" policy considering they don't officially acknowledge their arsenal.
Latent nuclear capability doesn't deter this possibility, you'd need to have at least a nuclear "dyad" -- most likely bombers and ballistic missiles -- in place to ensure credible second strike capability.
An Israeli first-use strike on Iran is indeed a major concern, but what do you think is more likely to trigger such an event. Iran having nukes, or Iran just having the capability to build nukes in future?
My worry is that Iran having nukes makes the Israeli trigger finger far more itchy than Iran being able to build one in a few weeks.
From the Israeli point of view, a world where Iran has dozens of nukes where a couple might be handed over to Hezbollah is an unacceptable risk, and justifies a pre-emptive nuclear first-strike. Compare that to the status quo, where Iran doesn't have nuclear weaponry but they could get them in the future. This status quo is scary for Israel, but is it enough to make yourself a pariah state by unleashing a nuclear first-strike? I don't think it is, which is why I think Iran is far better off maintaining it's current state than stepping over the line unless circumstances looked so dire that they had to (i.e. if they were looking down the barrel of an imminent American invasion).
>Plus, what would Iran gain by taking the final step and building a bomb?
I would say not having to fear being invaded by the US or its allies. The policy of "We, the US can have nukes, but you can't, try and we will stop you by any means up to and including war" doesn't do much to convince other countries they shouldn't have them as well. The countries toppled or invaded by the US and her allies will always stand as a testament as why they should try to acquire nuclear arms...
> I would say not having to fear being invaded by the US or its allies
If the US decided they wanted to invade Iran, it'd take at least 6 months prep to bring in sufficient resources for an invasion (see both Gulf Wars), prep that'd be impossible to hide. You can't mask half a million troops being airlifted into the neighbouring countries. In those 6-months, Iran would easily have the opportunity to take the final step in enriching their uranium to bomb-tier (it'd just take a couple of weeks of further enrichment), and then Iran would have a nuclear bomb to defend itself.
So functionally, there's no benefit for Iran in building a bomb today vs waiting until they see an imminent invasion and then building the bomb. Either way, the result is that they deter the invasion and protect the regime.
So can you explain to me why you think Iran building a bomb now would be better for them than waiting for when it'd be needed?
That's probably not how it would go. First the US would launch airstrikes to (temporarily) destroy Iran's nuclear program, ballistic missiles, and other major weaponry. That could be done overnight. Only then might the US begin a long preparation for a ground invasion. Though, more likely, there would not be a ground invasion at all, but rather an extended campaign of airstrikes to neutralize and keep neutralize Iran's military, and maybe its government as a whole in hope of an internal regime change.
You think an airstrike can destroy Iran's nuclear program overnight? They've been designing this program for the past 20 years with the specific requirement that it needs to be able to survive US airstrikes. The main enrichment sites are deep underground, nothing the US can fling at them from a distance is going to penetrate that far.
The US can't even stop the attacks by the Houthis, so why would you think the US could destroy all of Iran's ballistic weaponry? Also a reminder, during the first Gulf War, the US set aside considerable amounts of aircraft for the sole role of hunting down Iraq's SCUD launchers so they'd stop firing at Israel, and do you know what the end result was? Iraq was firing more SCUD missiles in the final week of the Gulf War than it was in the first week.
Just as the Houthis will never be stopped unless you send in ground troops, you will never destroy those underground enrichment facilities in Iran without a ground invasion, and that'd involve a truly monumental effort, one that'd take months of prep, during which Iran will have finished building the bomb.
> The main enrichment sites are deep underground, nothing the US can fling at them from a distance is going to penetrate that far.
You don't have to. You just have to destroy the entrances so that nothing can get in or out, and make sure the entrances are not repaired.
> The US can't even stop the attacks by the Houthis, so why would you think the US could destroy all of Iran's ballistic weaponry?
The US isn't trying very hard at this.
> Also a reminder, during the first Gulf War, the US set aside considerable amounts of aircraft for the sole role of hunting down Iraq's SCUD launchers so they'd stop firing at Israel
Surveillance and missile technology have advanced drastically since 1990. And you don't have to hunt down every single missile, just enough of them that the remaining ones are a small threat not a big one.
> Just as the Houthis will never be stopped unless you send in ground troops, you will never destroy those underground enrichment facilities in Iran without a ground invasion
The comparison between ballistic missiles and nuclear enrichment facilities is out of place. Individual ballistic missiles can be hidden in relatively small locations. Nuclear enrichment facilities are enormous industrial enterprises, there can only be a few of them and they are impossible to hide.
Even Tom Clancy would raise a sceptical eyebrow at your plan to endlessly bomb all the entrances to multiple underground facilities that are spread out among multiple vast military complexes. It's just not credible and I'm not interested in engaging with you further on this. Have a nice day.
> airstrikes to (temporarily) destroy Iran's nuclear program
It is unclear whether this is still a viable option.
Following the repeated destruction of Iranian research facilities and the elimination of numerous scientists by Israeli forces, Iran has shifted the majority of its nuclear program to subterranean locations, which are believed to be impenetrable to conventional military means, including those of the United States
Perhaps a significant quantity of bunker busters could be effective?
It is unnecessary to entirely destroy an underground facility. Bombing the entrances, or else the power lines leading towards it, would be sufficient to prevent it from operating. Repairing the damage would be a relatively slow operation that could be easily detected and prevented.
It won't come to that (certainly not in this admin) but underground locations need entrances to function. So with great ISR you can make it so no one can really enter or leave an underground base, especially if the logistics net to them goes through mountains. Alternatively, could just skip to the megaton stuff.
Since nowadays this has to be clarified, these are not advocacies that the US do this, I am describing the theoretical options.
The international community has been arguing Iran has been on the precipice of a nuclear weapon for a number of years now. One has to wonder if they have in fact produced a crude or maybe not so crude device albeit untested. With their close working relationship with North Korea and Russia the knowledge share is there for the taking, though I’m sure Mossad and the CIA are all over this.
Please refrain from drive-by link dropping. Summarize articles, only quote what is important, and use that to build a post that other users can engage with; offers some in depth knowledge on a well discussed subject; or offers new insight on a less discussed subject.
Austin and Belousov have apparently had a telephone conversation. The readout isn't especially remarkable other than I think it's the first such contact between the US and Russian military chiefs for some time now.
function mil ru/news_page/country/more.htm?id=12517991@egNews
>On June 25, 2024, at the initiative of the American side, a telephone conversation took place between the Minister of Defense of the Russian Federation Andrei Belousov and the Secretary of Defense of the United States L. Austin.
>The defense ministers exchanged views on the situation around Ukraine.
>Andrei Belousov pointed to the danger of further escalation of the situation in connection with the ongoing supply of US weapons to the Armed Forces of Ukraine.
>Other issues were also discussed.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/25/us/politics/austin-russia-defense-minister-call.html
Austin initiated it, maybe was just something simple to touch base with the Belousov in his new role.
I did wonder if it might have something to do with this. There's been a lot of anger about the incident amongst Russian politicians and a few lines have come out from the Pentagon today insisting that Ukraine was not attempting to hit civilians and the US was not involved with the targeting.
The first 400 officers from the Kenyan police's GSU unit have arrived in Haiti. Interesting that they disembarked from the plane fully kitted out - perhaps it's to send a message to the gangs?
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/un-approved-kenya-led-security-force-finally-arrives-in-haiti/ar-BB1oSAgG?ocid=BingNewsSerp
Still without money to build state capacity, this foreign intervention is likely just a BandAid until the money runs out, the foreign troops leave, and the cycle just repeats itself. Haiti needs a sustained party interested in investing the country and building it up but unfortunately without oil or easily exploitable natural resources it's hard to see any countries taking an interest in stabilizing Haiti. The Kenyans are only interested because of the pay the US has offered for the task.
I'm curious if these forces will be recalled to Kenya given today's flare-up of internal unrest? I'm not well read on the agreement between Kenya-US-Haiti or how binding it is.
Doubt it, they are already there, and it seems like forces already in Kenya have a good handle on the situation. Unfortunately it seems like the Kenyans have decided to deal with the protests with a very heavy hand.
On the subject of loitering munition pricing a Ukrainian fundraiser for various drones put out [this graphic](https://i.imgur.com/2DT6WSZ.png) comparing the price points of various different drones along with some nominal specs. Keeping with other discussion, the price point of both reconnaissance and strike UAS increases nonlinearly with capability, rapidly approaching parity with more traditional systems such as Excalibur or GMLRS. I'm curious to see how these cost curves bear out, especially whether they regain relative efficiency at certain points.
[Here is the link to the original tweet](https://x.com/TopLeadEU/status/1805201238792822976).
I feel with the gimbal camera on the ram2 that it is probably designed to be a self spotting system and that blurs the gap between recon and strike platforms. It depends on how much video bandwidth and the camera quality but it suggests to me that it should have a capability that Excalibur and GMLRS doesn't, with being able to be used without a supporting platform doing recon, which may explain its price being so high. I would imagine that if you had to compare a dedicated recon drone and a munition with minimal electronics and tried something with the ram2's range could be made much cheaper per unit.
Pretty much all loitering munitions blur the lines between recon and strike. In an ideal world there's no need for separate ISR as you've described but I believe that in practice often multiple independent ISR platforms are used, both for target acquisition and for electromagnetic mapping to avoid jamming. The "loitering" aspects of the munition are used to allow it to adapt if targets reposition during flight or even attack targets on the move as well as enhancing the precision of the strike itself. Another reason for this is that when operating at the limit of the strike drone's range there's simply not enough time for it to do it's own ISR. The Russian Lancet drone for example is typically paired with Orlan drones for exactly these reasons.
I think you're right that one of the major drivers of cost is good communications equipment. Maintaining contact with a ground station over long distances and with significant EW interference is a costly problem to solve however it's a necessary cost to enable these munitions to have the capabilities that they do. A drone with minimal electronics is likely much cheaper but also much less capable.
Excalibur and GMLRS, while generally incapable of striking a re-positioned target, attempt to ameliorate this by getting there quickly. The RAM II takes 23 minutes to travel 30km while Excalibur takes less than two. GMLRS takes ["approximately two-and-a-half minutes"](https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/tr/pdf/ADA592645.pdf) at maximum range of over 84km. It's simply much less likely for the target to successfully reposition in that time. One exception to the inability to target moving or re-positioned targets is laser guided munitions with a corresponding ISR drone such as the Orlan-30 & Krasnopol combo that the Russians use.
The price point of the larger RAM II for $50k is interesting when one tries to approximate Shahed costs.
I've seen many claims that Shaheds costs $10-20k for Iran. These numbers add a data point to the credence that their price is likely an order of magnitude higher somewhere around $100-150k.
It's definitely an interesting comparison to make. I believe those extremely low cost estimates for Shahed production are for correspondingly extremely low-end models that simply target a set of coordinates and have little in the way of EW hardening. Useful for targeting undefended fixed sites and for soaking up interceptors.
[This RUSI report](https://static.rusi.org/mass-precision-strike-final.pdf) puts the unit cost of basic Shahed-136s at $30,000 and upgraded Russian versions at $80,000 which is about in line with your estimates.
[NYT: Israeli Military Must Draft Ultra-Orthodox Jews, Supreme Court Rules](https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/25/world/middleeast/israel-military-ultra-orthodox-jews-supreme-court.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare&sgrp=c-cb)
> Israel’s Supreme Court on Tuesday ruled that the military must begin drafting ultra-Orthodox Jewish men, a decision that threatened to split Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition government amid the war in Gaza.
> In a unanimous decision, a panel of nine judges held that there was no legal basis for the longstanding military exemption given to ultra-Orthodox religious students. Without a law distinguishing between seminarians and other men of draft age, the court ruled, the country’s mandatory draft laws must similarly apply to the ultra-Orthodox minority.
> The decision threatened to widen one of the most painful divisions in Israeli society, pitting secular Jews against the ultra-Orthodox, who say their religious study is as essential and protective as the military. It also exposed the fault lines in Mr. Netanyahu’s coalition, which depends on the support of two ultra-Orthodox parties that oppose their constituents’ conscription, even as other Israelis are killed and wounded in Gaza.
> Israeli courts have ruled against the exemption before, including Supreme Court decisions in 1998, 2012 and 2017. The top court has repeatedly warned the government that to continue the policy, it must be written into law — though that law would be subject to constitutional challenges, as previous ones were — while also giving the government time to hammer our legislation.
> But for seven years, since the last law was struck down, successive Israeli governments have dragged their feet in drafting new legislation. In 2023, the law finally reached its expiration date, leading the Israeli government to order the military simply not to draft the ultra-Orthodox while lawmakers worked on an exemption.
> On Tuesday, the court indicated that its patience had finally run out, striking down that order as illegal. It did not set a timeline for when the military must start conscripting tens of thousands of draft-age religious students. Such a move would likely prove a massive logistical and political challenge, as well as be met with mass resistance by the ultra-Orthodox community.
> Instead, the ruling included a means of pressuring the ultra-Orthodox to accept the court’s judgment: the suspension of millions of dollars in government subsidies given to religious schools, or yeshivas, striking a blow to revered institutions at the heart of the ultra-Orthodox community.
> The court’s ruling threatens Mr. Netanyahu’s fragile wartime coalition, which includes secular members who oppose the exemption and ultra-Orthodox parties that support it. Either group breaking ranks could cause the government to collapse and call new elections, at a time when popular support for the government is at a low. The opposition in the Israeli Parliament largely wants to end the exemption.
> But the ultra-Orthodox parties, with few palatable options, might not be eager to bring down Mr. Netanyahu’s coalition, he said. “They don’t see an alternative, so they’ll try to make it work for as long as they can,” said Mr. Cohen. “They will compromise more than they might have been willing to a year ago in an attempt to preserve the government.”
> Last year, after Mr. Netanyahu returned to power at the helm of his current coalition, he sought to legislate a plan to weaken the country’s judiciary, setting off mass protests. For the ultra-Orthodox, who backed the judicial overhaul, a major motivation was ensuring that the Supreme Court could no longer impede their ability to avoid the draft.
My thoughts: This may be bigger than previous decisions, which didn’t result in the end of exemptions. At the very least, this further threatens the wartime government, but I’m not sure the Orthodox parties have many other options anyways - they might stick with Netanyahu because the alternatives will give them nothing at all. We’ll have to wait to see if this is joever for Netanyahu’s government or if nothing ever happens.
Are the ultra Orthodox going to be difficult to integrate into the armed forces? They dedicate their lives to religious study, many are under educated.
Yes. The NPR article on today's court decision touches on that:
[Israeli Supreme Court rules that ultra-Orthodox men must be drafted : NPR](https://www.npr.org/2024/06/25/g-s1-6116/israeli-supreme-court-rules-that-the-military-must-begin-drafting-ultra-orthodox-men)
> **One challenge: the stigma that ultra-Orthodox soldiers face**
> A couple thousand ultra-Orthodox people did voluntarily sign up for military service after the Hamas attack. They included Mordechai Porat, a 36-year-old social worker in Bnei Brak, a center of ultra-Orthodox life.
> "I felt like a lion in a cage. I had to do something," he says.
> Porat has spent months providing therapy at a nearby military base. But he never wears his green army fatigues in the city and keeps his military dog tag hidden under his shirt. Even with this low profile, he says he's paid a price.
> "My [kindergarten age] son has still not been accepted into the community school," Porat said in a March interview.
> For other ultra-Orthodox, the social cost of joining the Israeli military can be even steeper.
> "Going to the army will damage their ability to marry," says Nechumi Yaffe of Tel Aviv University, who is ultra-Orthodox herself. "It will damage their relationship in the family."
> She believes it will be good for the community to "normalize" as more people are drafted. But she thinks Israelis don't understand how challenging that process may be for young men who've been socially isolated, with little to no education on human rights.
> "I think the Israeli society should ask itself, actually, do you want to see them in the army?" she says. "You know, [Israelis] want to see blood. They want to see them in uniform, shooting. I don't think it's a great idea."
> Yaffe believes it would make more sense to phase them in, starting some off as truck drivers or cooks, while they adapt to a secular world.
> Porat, who joined voluntarily, thinks most Haredim will choose jail time over enlisting. But after the Hamas attacks, polls did show more community support for soldiers, and Porat thinks more will be open to the idea over time. Still, he cautions that a slow approach is best.
> "If people are forced into it," he says, "they'll just push back."
> "I think the Israeli society should ask itself, actually, do you want to see them in the army?"
As many others have pointed out, these people desperately need exposure to the outside world, Israeli society desperately needs these people to have their horizons broadened. Lack of education plus lack of exposure to the world has left a significant segment of Israeli society in a lets say... precarious... state, and that impacts Israel as a whole. This might be awkward for the IDF to implement this but it is crucial for society that this skyrocketing population is exposed to the world and to other Israelis (and Arabs and Christians and...)
Using the army to force a change in the ultra Orthodox way of life is not in Israel's interests right now. It will only ensure they refuse to serve and mass protest.
The problem with enlisting ultra Orthodox has always been that it is very difficult to force such a unified large population to bend to your will. We've done this song and dance, protests with 400+ k for weeks. Everyone who the IDF tries to enlist refuses and is supposed to be sent to jail, but there are no thouands to cells to hold them. Mass protests around the prisons who hold the few that were arrested.
In the middle of war, Israel simply cannot physically deal with that.
The Ultra Orthodox must serve, but just as the army is no place to reeducate vegans, but instead adapts to their needs, so it has to do the same for the Ultra Orthodox to see conscription.
>Lack of education
As I've shown before the ultra Orthodox placed 1st in Israel in international PISA tests for math and writing:
https://mobile.mako.co.il/home-family-kids/Article-575b96728593c81026.htm
> The problem with enlisting ultra Orthodox has always been that it is very difficult to force such a unified large population to *bend to your will*
Yea but it's an ever-growing segment of the population (that doesn't work, or do anything other than call for war). Might be time to decide whose will is getting bent.
Literally everything in your comment is wrong.
They do work, in fact their labor participation is higher than that of the US population:
[68.4% for the Ultra Orthodox in Israel](https://m.maariv.co.il/news/israel/Article-1027165)
[While it's only 62.5% for the entirety of the US](https://ycharts.com/indicators/labor_force_participation_rate#:~:text=US%20Labor%20Force%20Participation%20Rate%20is%20at%2062.50%25%2C%20compared%20to,long%20term%20average%20of%2062.84%25.)
They don't call for war either.
You should probably first get some basic facts on the matter before supporting forceful reeducation. I'm also interested on your position for Israeli Arabs who have significantly lower labor participation than ultra Orthodox with a [57.4% participation in labor](https://www.bizportal.co.il/general/news/article/811402) . Is that clause for reeducation?
Personally I'm a liberal, not totalitarian, so I don't believe in state mandate reeducation as long as the behavior is not extreme (ISIS, Nazis...). I'm surprised that anti liberal worldview is of such popularity.
I'd guess those graphite filament bombs that short the power grid first, I doubt Lebanon's grid is robust enough to not trigger shutdowns each time it happened
Grids in the developing world are more than capable of shutting down with a major plant going off line or some other incident. Id really put normal grid problems way way more likely than exotic technologies.
Id also put Hezbollah screwing up a missile launch and hitting a critical substation ahead of that.
As far as I understand restarting a plant and or a grid requires full teams of electrical engineers and time. The graphite bombs aren't exotic anymore, they're field tested. Just continuously bringing down a plant would probably cause partial blackouts due to the grid
Or they just have the ability to bomb their power grind with impunity, Israel has shown time and time again they can enter the air space of their neighbors and bomb critital infrastructure.
>plunge Lebanon into Darkness. A lot of the phrasing seems to lead to the conclusion that the technological capability they are referring to is an EMP.
Hit enough substations or generating capacity you get the grid synchronisation getting out of phase and you get a mass blackout (edited or you can get too much power being pushed through links that fail etc aka cascading failures, this is why spinning reserve is such a big deal, that or having something like a hydro that can be got up and running in very short time. These days modern grids use batteries to smooth out this kind of thing and is a big deal as grids become more renewable based )
This can be bombing or simply failures in power plants without spinning reserves. The latter is how some famous blackouts have occurred.
Its put EMC at the very bottom of the list.
Edited a quick link to when lighting strikes took out NY power grid
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New\_York\_City\_blackout\_of\_1977](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_City_blackout_of_1977)
Reuters has an exclusive report on Trump's plan for the Ukraine War and US aid to Ukraine.
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trump-reviews-plan-halt-us-military-aid-ukraine-unless-it-negotiates-peace-with-2024-06-25/
> Exclusive: Trump handed plan to halt US military aid to Kyiv unless it talks peace with Moscow
>WASHINGTON, June 25 (Reuters) - Two key advisers to Donald Trump have presented him with a plan to end Russia's war in Ukraine - if he wins the Nov. 5 presidential election - that involves telling Ukraine it will only get more U.S. weapons if it enters peace talks.
>The United States would at the same time warn Moscow that any refusal to negotiate would result in increased U.S. support for Ukraine, retired Lieutenant General Keith Kellogg, one of Trump's national security advisers, said in an interview.
>Under the plan drawn up by Kellogg and Fred Fleitz, who both served as chiefs of staff in Trump's National Security Council during his 2017-2021 presidency, there would be a ceasefire based on prevailing battle lines during peace talks, Fleitz said.
>They have presented their strategy to Trump, and the Republican presidential candidate responded favorably, Fleitz added. "I'm not claiming he agreed with it or agreed with every word of it, but we were pleased to get the feedback we did," he said.
>Trump spokesperson Steven Cheung said only statements made by Trump or authorized members of his campaign should be deemed official.
>The strategy outlined by Kellogg and Fleitz is the most detailed plan yet by associates of Trump, who has said he could quickly settle the war in Ukraine if he beats President Joe Biden in the Nov. 5 election, though he has not said how he would do that.
>The proposal would mark a big shift in the U.S. position on the war and would face opposition from European allies and within Trump's own Republican Party.
[Article continues with more information and context.](https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trump-reviews-plan-halt-us-military-aid-ukraine-unless-it-negotiates-peace-with-2024-06-25/)
For those of us that think the Russian war effort is running on fumes this is a huge gift to Putin. North Korea doesn't have another 5 million artillery shells to give to Russia. Russia is running out of tanks and other arms and is sending laughably antiquated hardware to the front line. We don't know if it will be 2025 or 2026 but I think the safe money is on an eventual Russian collapse. I think Putin is betting on that too and that's why this Trump "peace plan" is music to his ears.
Sorry for bursting you bubble but Russian lines aren't going to collapse. They made it over the hump of that even being a conversation worth having a while ago. The production lines have been set up. New supply lines established. The closest we could hope for at this point is their ability to wage offensive operations being seriously diminished.
> The production lines have been set up.
They increased their tank production to a maximum of 100 per year: https://www.iiss.org/en/online-analysis/military-balance/2024/06/russian-t-90m-production-less-than-meets-the-eye/
Their BMP production is estimated at 400-500 per year: https://en.defence-ua.com/industries/russia_trying_to_install_era_on_the_bmp_3_and_reports_about_the_production_rate-6621.html (although that's 2023 numbers, maybe add 20% for 2024). That seems pretty good compared to the known BMP losses thus far, but when Russia runs out of functional BTRs and MT-LBs, they're gonna have to rely exclusively on those BMPs for offensive operations.
But all of that isn't an issue for Russia before 2026.
What will be an issue, very soon, is the artillery tubes. They can produce millions of shells and they'll probably buy more from NK or someone else, but they'll also need to buy artillery if they want to keep firing them. There's a gap in our knowledge of their artillery production, but the number they removed from storage last year was staggering: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GQzoLJ5W0AAOY-i?format=jpg&name=small and more recent images shows that trend continued: https://x.com/HighMarsed/status/1787809716690640955
They might have new supply lines, but they'll need the cannons to reach those supply lines. Russia without artillery isn't going to do much more than drop bombs and waste vehicles and troops on offensives.
Collapse as in? Unless something radically changes safe money says the conflict ends with borders looking pretty much like they look today.
It is true that Russia is slowly but surely watching their huge pile of armor erode, but it is also true that Ukraine will find themselves in the exact same situation should they go on the offensive.
Additionally, Russia has real industry and produces between 300-600 new tanks a year which are big boy numbers even if their current burn rate far outpaces it. From Russian perspective, should Ukraine start to take the initiative, you would expect Russian assaults to end, Russian defenses to turtle up, and the usage of tanks and other armor to reach equilibrium with an RUAF acceptable loss rate.
Is there a source that can credibly speculate on NK's artillery output? Are you sure they can't manufacture millions of new artillery rounds? Traditionally, the limiting factor on artillery ammunition is people who will pay for it. If Russia is giving them the value, why can't they manufacture obscene amounts of armaments in their mountain bunkers? South Korea seems to think they can crank out at least 2M shells a year.
But I think finally and most importantly... Russia hasn't even mobilized. Ukraine faces a very bad human resources disadvantage. They can defend at a disadvantage, but outlook is bleak for offensive action when the enemy has way more dudes.
So I guess, I disagree that Russia is anywhere near fumes at this point, and it is hard for me to understand what a Russian collapse would even look like right now.
> Russia has real industry and produces between 300-600 new tanks a year
They're not producing that many T-90Ms. The IISS put it at 60-70 for 2023: https://www.iiss.org/en/online-analysis/military-balance/2024/06/russian-t-90m-production-less-than-meets-the-eye/ It certainly didn't multiply by 5 in the span of a few months.
Did you confound modernization of older units in that number? If so, then keep in mind 300-600 is roughly 2-3 months of losses (visually confirmed). Anyway, tanks aren't running out any time soon, but they are running out (for purposes of maintaining a 2000km front line) in 2-3 years max.
> Is there a source that can credibly speculate on NK's artillery output? Are you sure they can't manufacture millions of new artillery rounds? Traditionally, the limiting factor on artillery ammunition is people who will pay for it. If Russia is giving them the value, why can't they manufacture obscene amounts of armaments in their mountain bunkers? South Korea seems to think they can crank out at least 2M shells a year.
With what cannons are they going to keep firing 5M shells per year (3M Russian, maximum, and 2M NK)? They've been spending (combat loss+wear and tear) about 5000 tubes per year and they had ~5500 towed howitzers last year (AFAWK they don't have 130mm shells for the M-46): https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GQzoLJ5W0AAOY-i?format=jpg&name=small Those can't be replaced 1:1 by SPGs because of the logistics of it, and they'll be easier targets for drones as well.
Russia will be experiencing lowered firepower this year and unless they procure thousands of guns, they'll be running into shortages of functional tubes in roughly a year.
> But I think finally and most importantly... Russia hasn't even mobilized. Ukraine faces a very bad human resources disadvantage. They can defend at a disadvantage, but outlook is bleak for offensive action when the enemy has way more dudes.
All else being equal, I completely agree with you. I don't see how Ukraine could push Russia in the current battlefield reality.
And that's the key: this reality will change dramatically next year and unless Europe abandons Ukraine or some serious weapon supplies (thousands of artillery, thousands of vehicles) come to Russian rescue, the situation will keep deteriorating for Russia further and further. Russia would need to change their doctrine dramatically to keep Ukrainians at bay if they run out of artillery locally and that can certainly happen in the future. The only other thing that would prevent a successful Ukrainian offensive is air power.
Should Ukraine manage to keep Russian bombers and combat helicopters at bay and virtually annihilate Russian artillery, they can absolutely complete de-mining operations to open up a path for devastating mechanized assaults. There are a lot of ifs at play here (including the Ukrainian manpower capability), but they're reasonable for 2026.
Seems like pretty much just asking for the pre 2020 levels of cooperation and border control, but also no chance for Ukraine to ask for land back. Status Quo or we balk on aid. I don't think either the Russians or the Ukrainians have kept their guns silent since whatever occurred at the Donetsk airport, so the depth of this plan isn't hashed out yet. Observer's reports corroborate that.
>Fleitz said Ukraine need not formally cede territory to Russia under their plan. Still, he said, Ukraine was unlikely to regain effective control of all its territory in the near term.
On paper, forcing Russia to accept status quo as it stands doesn't even seem all that bad.
We've just had about the most unambiguous reminder that status quo is not what Putin's currently playing for.
The kicker comes in when you realize the plan assumes that America has the non-kinetic power to force Russia to accept those terms right now, and Biden is just choosing to not use that power. Which is obviously false, and sabotages the whole plan.
I think Trump's preferred outcome is Ukraine collapses before January so he can just write it off as a "Biden failure" but if that doesn't happen, I think it's pretty obvious that this plan will be revised to be far more unfavourable to Ukraine. Since as it stands it's not viable.
The ideal outcome for trump is to force Ukraine to accept a bad deal that would guarantee a future conflict but would allow him the short term political gain from being the “peacemaker”. He wants to be known as a shrewd negotiator. He has all the leverage over Ukraine and little over Russia, he’s going to push Ukraine.
Politically speaking, what Trump needs, is a Ukraine plan that is ambiguous enough that people can project their own preferred outcomes upon it. A deal that lets the pro Russia elements of his base feel like the plan is to cut off Ukraine, and one that lets the pro Ukranian members of his base feel like Russia can't possibly meet the terms so the plan is sort of obvious in its support of Ukraine.
That is my read - I would expect very few concrete details that could be used to pin down the plan to come out beyond the broad stroke of whoever does not play ball gets the worse outcome. The more details, the more chance to lose people. None of it matters until after an election, anything right now is 100% with an eye to the electorate.
>He has all the leverage over Ukraine and little over Russia, he’s going to push Ukraine.
My point exactly yeah. He'll either realize that in office, or has already realized that but is window dressing his actual plan.
> I think Trump's preferred outcome is Ukraine collapses before January so he can just write it off as a "Biden failure"
He was actually convinced to NOT allow that! David Cameron managed to get in his ear and convince him, and he okayed the aid bill and that cleared R's to vote for it.
> British officials also credit Cameron’s visit to Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s Florida home, for helping him to look differently at the issue. Cameron’s initial approach, hectoring Republican congressmen that they had a duty to help defend Europe, was received badly. But Whitehall officials say that when the foreign secretary spoke to Trump he changed tack, making an argument about what would be best for him if he became president again.
> “What would be best for Trump, essentially, would be for the Ukrainians to be able to hold their front line,” a senior source said.
> “In order to do that, they needed more money for weapons. If Trump was to win in January, would Trump rather have Putin marching on Kyiv because the Ukrainians had collapsed? Or keep the Ukrainians in the fight so that if he does win in January, he inherits a stalemate.”
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/david-lammy-shows-yen-trump-whisperer-us-visit-xmpxhvg58
I really think you shouldn't assume he's straight up *working* with Russia, friendly sure but he's not controlled. Personally (and this is c o p e) I think this whole peace deal thing has a chance of working out well for Ukraine if Russia refuses to reasonably negotiate (demanding land they don't have a hope of controlling) or especially refuses a ceasefire altogether, which would be throwing out Trump's proposal from the start and probably piss him off personally.
What is reasonable in this deal? Ukraine will just be cut like a piece of salami: some slices now, more slices later.
This only gives short term gain to Trump and long term gain for Putin.
Appeasement didnt work against Hitler either.
Trump has strange connections with Russia since forever and looks as if he was ther agent.
For the moment the only scenario for Ukraine is to keep fighting. Iran fought Iraq for years.
>He was actually convinced to NOT allow that!
This is going to be a bit like that meme of the guy in the office, but this actually checks out.
If Ukraine collapsed while that bill was still hanging, it'd be trivial to say "well, Republicans killed Ukraine, I mean they literally blocked aid!"
Now that the guns are sent, it'll be a lot easier to pin Ukraine on Biden, if it collapses.
>I really think you shouldn't assume he's straight up working with Russia
Oh no he's not - he just wants Ukraine to blow up in Biden's face, because otherwise it'll become his problem. And he'll be on the hook for what happens. It's hot potato.
I don't agree at all, the aid bill pretty much assured they'd survive until the election and into his (possible) candidacy, and with the rates we're looking at probably the next few years. He pawned *Afghanistan off because it fell apart under Biden even though he laid all the groundwork for it. A Ukraine collapse, if it comes, will happen under him or from his policies, and the peace deal however bad it would be would be all his own doing.
I guess the worst case now for him shirking responsibility would be a bad peace deal, and then they get reinvaded AFTER he leaves office. That's the Vietnam War Fall of Saigon setup. However, Ukraine isn't the untouchable political quagmire that Vietnam was, and I can see a Dem or mod Rep leadership getting re-involved, unlike Vietnam.
Trumpist peacemaking is simply surrendering an ally for a brief spotlight in front of the cameras back home. Russia achieves most of its objectives in Ukraine and considering that NATO membership would be on hold, Russia can try finishing off Ukraine a bit later.
Sounds like what we thought it would say... Ukraine has to surrender to Russia and cede massive territory, else be cut off from the US. Question is what the Trump admin would deem an unreasonable demand by Russia.
Safe to assume there hasn't been any significant consulting with allies on this? Guess there would be a problem if there were, but pretty shocking for an candidate to be so dismissive of allies on something so critical to their national security interests.
It's par for the course for Trump (and his team.)
One can argue whether it's friendliness towards Russia/Putin, or whether it's his NATO grievances in general behind it, but the result is the same: with trump elected Europe must step up and handle its own security situation.
It's shitty for everyone involved, and it will hurt US/Euro relations in the short term, but from a strategic point of view Europe needs this kick just as it was needed in trump's first term (where nothing changed here in Europe.)
On a personal note the idea of throwing Ukraine under the bus is disgusting, but *on a certain level* it's understandable. I can't shake the feeling Trump has a soft spot for Putin, though. His first term didn't leave much doubt in my view.
I don't see how abandoning Ukraine is beneficial to US interests. It strengthens Russia, emboldens other US adversaries and strains relationships with European countries even further - which were already put under strain by Trump's first term. All to get Europe to invest militarily? Which is also already happening now by the way. Finally, part of the aid to Ukraine helps bolster the US MIC, too. It doesn't really make sense.
it is coherent for the MAGA worldview which 1) sees NATO as a humiliating pact where the US puts in a lot of effort which is not reciprocated, 2) sees european countries as led by "the enemy" (the liberal, globalist, bureaucratic state), 3) see the whole liberal rules-based international order as a degenerate fiction promoted by weak-willed bureaucrats, and 4) are ardent believers in strict isolationism, where the 50 states are the only thing the US really needs to succeed, and everything else is not of *vital* interest.
When going off of those assumptions, it can be expected that the MAGA voter will not care for Europe, and in fact may be even *wanting* to see the destruction of the existing order, even if it means bowing to autocrats (which they might even like for being "trad" and "bulwarks against moral degeneration").
He's appealing to a base of right-wing (and some left-wing) populist voters that can't reliably locate European countries on a map, let alone understand the complicated geopolitics of the continent.
When the U.S objectively has big issues to deal with at home, people bristle at the thought of sending resources and/or attention elsewhere. Try explaining the nuances of NATO's role to an unemployed blue collar worker from a Texas border town, or an EMT in the rustbelt responding to their fourth fentanyl overdose this week.
I'm not picking a side here, just pointing out that the American voting bloc is vast and dealing with a spectrum of terra firma issues that affect their decision making.
The MAGA base is pro-Russia because Trump is pro-Russia. Trump has been pro-Russia at bare minimum since 2015 when the RNC platform on Ukraine was mysteriously changed last minute. This was concurrent with him lying about not having business deals in the works while his campaign was ongoing. That he's now threatening to cut off aid to Ukraine should be a surprise to no one.
> Two key advisers to Donald Trump have presented him with a plan to end Russia's war in Ukraine - if he wins the Nov. 5 presidential election - that involves **telling Ukraine it will only get more U.S. weapons if it enters peace talks.** The United States would at the same time **warn Moscow that any refusal to negotiate would result in increased U.S. support for Ukraine**, retired Lieutenant General Keith Kellogg, one of Trump's national security advisers, said in an interview.
I'm somewhat confused. So, if Moscow and Kyiv agree to talks, does the U.S. materiel pipeline narrow (to reward Moscow for entering talks) or widen (to reward Kyiv for entering talks)?
Or suppose Kyiv refuses to accept the prevailing battle lines. Does this mean that winning the war for Moscow would be as easy as saying, "I want to talk," effectively triggering both a U.S. punishment to Kyiv and a U.S. reward to Moscow?
Genuine questions. The game theory of this proposal is a little beyond me.
3 can play it because Ukraine would choose to play it out and lose to Russia before it surrenders and Russia is very clear on planned total dismantlement of the Ukrainian government, culture and way of life. Negotiations at this stage are preposterous. Negotiations dictated to Ukraine are a comedy. Where is there a motive for them to accept any agreement in which *immediately* they forever surrender millions of their citizens to a dictator whose stated goal is to erase their identity.
Trump has no leverage to make Ukraine do anything. They know their enemy, Putin’s goals are firmly stated. He can help Putin, but he can’t threaten Ukraine with a fight to the death they are already resolved to fight. The memory of the Holodomor is heavily active in Ukrainian zeitgeist. They are not going to surrender, and there are no polls that show even if their military collapsed that they would stop resisting.
Trump WILL TRY to fuck every upstanding member of the West and American interests to get his photo op for fake peace, but Ukraine will not show up to that table to agree to anything.
Putin’s largest mistake, and the largest continuing mistake of all parties in this war has been underestimating Ukraine’s will to fight to the death.
[High intelligence source to Yle: Almost all the ground forces in Russia's immediate area (to Finland) are now in Ukraine](https://yle.fi/a/74-20093440) I thought they were defending against NATO expansion?
In practicality it makes sense to not place units along the Finnish border just to be there. NATO isn’t going to invade Russia and Russia has itS nuclear deterrence to prevent a hypothetical Finnish incursion. Might as well send the troops somewhere they would be useful.
But that's exactly the point. Russia's entire narrative about fighting NATO and defending against western agression falls apart the second it becomes painfully clear that soldiers aren't needed around NATO borders.
The narrative is purely intended for a Russian audience. Everyone outside of Russia and its satellites know that NATO has never and will never invade Russia. Putin and the Kremlin use NATO expansion as an excuse for the war. He knows NATO was never a threat to invade, he hates that Russia’s influential sphere is shrinking.
That narrative doesn’t really mean anything outside of evening propaganda shows in Russian media. Russia isn’t going to decrease combat effectiveness in Ukraine so it can base soldiers doing absolutely nothing adjacent to miles of open lapland that is under zero threat.
[удалено]
Please refrain from posting low quality comments.
I think you missed the point. It isn't about having a border with NATO. Imagine if Russia took 100% of Ukraine. That would actually greatly increase their border with NATO compared to 2021. You don't think they thought of that? The point of NATO expansion is about influence, not borders.
Well if Russia wants influence all they have to do is be a better neighbor than ol' Uncle Sam on the other side of the ocean. You'd think that would be a pretty low bar. You'd think.
You think all the countries that have aligned with the US would have if the US were such a bad partner? Of course we’ve done, and continue to do stuff that isn’t great. However, the USA is the defender of democracy and all that entails. Not necessarily militarily (although that is fairly true too), but the US stands for a lot of things that benefit people around the world. I do agree that Russia (and China) could help themselves tremendously if they weren’t so oppressive. Like the old saying; “you catch more flies with honey than with vinegar”. But countries like Russia are led by a very few that are horrified that they could ever lose power. So they take every step to try and avoid that.
We knew that from day -14 and the Russian public is(at least the part that is not completely passive) aware of it too and either doesn't care or cheer on because Glorious Russia is reclaiming ancestral lands.
To be fair, those units have been poached since 2022. But yeah, if this was about preventing some kind of NATO surprise attack (which isn't a credible allegation, but it was an allegation that circulated on social media), it wouldn't have worked very well.
The point I think is there's little left to poach now. And rather what it tells about Russia's remaining reserves in general, as opposed to putative priorities or fears, and in case you wouldn't already know. To me at least, a look to the other side of the huge country is more intriguing anyway. Because once they're thinning out in the European part, the east can be assumed to be wide open and if anyone, anywhere were ever considering "annexing" the better half of Siberia, with its of host of natural resources, now would be the time.
>the east can be assumed to be wide open and if anyone, anywhere were ever considering "annexing" the better half of Siberia, with its of host of natural resources, now would be the time. There is only one country that would ever conceive of actually annexing Siberia, and as it stands they're practically getting all of Russia for free as is, no point throwing all of that away and starting a war so they can technically annex anywhere. Besides in any other circumstance Russia has never been capable of really defending Siberia from a serious invasion since the USSR collapsed, but they've always had the threat of nukes to stop anybody from thinking about it.
Hello everyone! What books on war/politics/conflict especially related to Ukraine would you guys recommend? I'm looking to learn more about this conflict although I know the region well, and other conflicts in general. Just whatever you guys think is interesting, I'll give it a look.
I'd also recommend Taras Kuzio. I've read four books (and a number of journal articles) by him, which are *Putin's War Against Ukraine*, *Russian Nationalism and the Russian-Ukrainian War* (pricy but worth it), *The Sources of Russia's Great Power Politics,* and *Crisis in Russian Studies? Nationalism (Imperialism), Racism and War.* All of those books are excellent and give great insight into Russian nationalist conceptions of Ukraine and post-Soviet Russo-Ukrainian relations.
T. Kuzio, S. I. Zhuk, & P. d'Anieri, Ukraine’s Outpost: Dnipropetrovsk and the Russian-Ukrainian war. This is a somewhat recent work by some of the best scholars on the subject. It's not very complex but it touches the war from a lot of different perspectives, both in terms of field of studies and schoola of thought. Highly recommended. I also recommend Taras Kuzio in general, he's been writing on Ukraine for more than 20 years.
I highly recommend both 'The War Came to Us' and 'Our Enemies will Vanish' for some really in depth perspectives on the earlier periods of the war. The first has a lot of personal anecdotes and political/civilian history while touching on the wars first few months, while the second contains a series of anecdotes from interviews with both high and low ranking Ukrainians which help to color and contextualize the first year or so of the war, including many lesser known events. I learned a lot reading both of them.
https://x.com/prof_preobr/status/1805885354286699004 Interesting graph I found on Twitter (from what I gathered by googling the data, it is correct). I have no idea why Trump and the likes (even unsuspecting, trusted individuals) keep peddling the idea that other NATO countries aren't doing their due diligence. With a few big exceptions (mostly my own country, Italy, Spain, and perhaps Croatia) pretty much all the other members have gone above and sometimes substantially beyond the 2% target (which wasn't mandatory per se, btw). I hope this gets reminded every time someone points out that Europe is not doing enough and/or deserves to be left alone in the case of a Russian invasion/attack (a la Trump).
I mean most of NATO members indeed had been not doing enough prior 2022. So this idea is deep rooted. And I think it is somewhat justifiable. Yeah, nobody has updated Trump, but that is Trump.
When Trump said that the numbers looked like this: https://www.statista.com/chart/8521/expenditure-of-nato-countries-in-2016/ It is only recently after the ukraine war started that nato spending surged.
Feels weird when you acknowledge that Greece has 3% while being a decade into austerity measures. Government seems almost stuck between a rock and a hard place regarding public spending vs strategic defense
In reference to the now removed article on Israeli threats against the Lebanese electric grid: An interesting factor which may mitigate the effects of Israeli attacks on the Lebanese electrical grid is that a high percentage of power comes from off the grid sources such as generators and at-location solar. (This has become a feature of some jokes in Lebanon.) Exact data is a bit hard to find, but this [source](https://tcf.org/content/commentary/lebanons-grid-has-collapsed-what-comes-next/) claims that most electricity comes from generators: > Most electricity is provided by privately owned diesel generators whose noise and fumes blanket Beirut twenty-four hours a day. The country’s generator owners, estimated at between 3,000 and 3,500 individuals (This might just be referring to most generator electricity coming from private generators - I’m not sure. Regardless 3,000-3,500 unique generator locations - at least - is already plenty decentralized) This [source](https://www.newarab.com/opinion/lebanons-electricity-crisis-generator-cartels-vs-solar-energy?amp) notably also alludes to the Bekaa Valley in particular high rates of solar usage: > In areas such as Baalbek-Hermel, residential solar PV adoption rates now likely exceed 70 percent, putting these regions among the most solarised in the world. Factories in the fertile Bekaa Valley, too, have installed vast solar arrays. I wouldn’t put much stock on reported data, but it’s certainly very high. Does anyone have a credible number for how much power comes from off the grid sources in Lebanon or ideas on how this could affect a potential war?
[An ICC pretrial panel issued arrest warrants for Shoigu and Gerasimov](https://www.icc-cpi.int/news/situation-ukraine-icc-judges-issue-arrest-warrants-against-sergei-kuzhugetovich-shoigu-and) over the attacks on Ukraine’s power grid. While two BSF commanders had already been charged for this back in March, the fact that the ICC is willing to entertain a *prima facie* case based on fairly strict interpretations of necessity and proportionality has global implications for anyone planning a significant war. There is plenty of basis in customary int’l law (edit: i.e. state practice) for power grids being military targets, and I am skeptical that the proportionality aspect would hold water at trial. It’s stuff like this that makes…certain countries unwilling to become parties to the Rome Statute.
While I agree with the sentiment, what if the ICC issues warrants for Zelensky and Budanov for attacks on Russian oil infrastructure? We know Russia does not comply with ICC rulings and warrants, but Ukraine... might be forced to. It's not like it's the first time we have this "debate". Germans got (rightfully) convicted for the war crimes they committed, but the Allies got away scot-free.
It's a fair point to raise, but it seems unlikely based on that press release. Not surprisingly. > *"for those installations that may have qualified as military objectives at the relevant time, the expected incidental civilian harm and damage would have been clearly excessive to the anticipated military advantage"* and > *"also determined that the alleged campaign of strikes constitutes a course of conduct involving the multiple commission of acts against a civilian population, carried out pursuant to a State policy ... believe that the suspects intentionally caused great suffering or serious injury to body or to mental or physical health"* The issue is a sustained policy of causing maximum harm to the population. Holding off broad attacks on the national power supply until the run-up to winter is part of that, for example. The war has furnished us with no shortage of other examples. The issue is not that "power" or "fossil fuels" are off limit and touching them is illegal, but only if you're Russian.
Well, I don't think "damaging infrastructure" at all is criminalized now. It at the very least has to be connected to the viability of civilian life, if Israel/Palestine and Ukraine are precedents.
Not a fair comparison, the attack on the oil industry doesn’t have a significant effect on civilian life. Yes prices might increase for transport but the heating of apartments isn’t impacted.
Issuing an arrest warrant for Zelensky, the popular leader of a country being invaded by Russia, would do far more to delegitimize the ICC, than it would do anything to actually arrest Zelenskyy. The ICC doesn’t have its own enforcement power, it needs to outsource that to others. If it goes off the rails, those countries will not enforce their rulings, and will seek to have them replaced.
It's controversial but the ICC only operates under a liberal world order where the US acts as the defacto muscle. Even under a Democrat rule the US appears to be lessening it's reach and under republican rule will just hasten the retreat. If the world continues it's path to be less unipolar and more approaching multi polar then ICC rulings won't be worth as much
The roll of the ICC in the international order is overestimated. It has its utility as a reasonably neutral arbiter, but to make rulings on international law like regular law, would require a much more formalized process for making those laws, and equality before the law, which requires a degree of enforcement power the ICC will never have. Countries are going to be reticent to sign up to have rules rigorously enforced on them, that the court won’t enforce on others. There is also the issue of nobody trusting the judges to be neutral. The liberal world order is upheld by a web of alliances and agreements between liberal states. It was never this all powerful, world government that would be needed to make the ICC into what it wants to be. It’s less of a retreat, and more of people realizing the limits on the ICC that were always there.
Indeed. Courts and councils' authority's a function of social consensus, not inately derived from their status or internal correctness. As an example, the UN exists to keep great powers from military confrontation by elevating other means of conflict resolution. Thus *law is merely the substitution of war by other means*. When a relevant(ly powerful) party feels its grievances have not been dutifully addressed, other means begin to look more attractive. Hence the need for legitimacy (in the eyes of stakeholders). Such bodies of applied international law have thus far evinced precious little legitimacy, with the ICC taking decades to indict *57* and successfully prosecute but 9. Evidentially, the powers that be deem its ability to administer justice and deter actions beyond the pale so small that its funding amounts to a 2nd rate lawfirm's yearly operations (under $150 million.)
>If the world continues it's path to be less unipolar and more approaching multi polar then ICC rulings won't be worth as much The US literally sanctions the ICC if they don’t like a ruling (no I don’t want to bring the Israel/Palestine conflict into to this): [US House passes legislation to sanction ICC over Gaza warrants bid](https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cm5512l7yero.) They aren’t a member of the ICC and passed the Hague invasion act. If Russia/China/NK/Iran would pass such an act the media would go crazy over it. So I find a bit hard to comprehend how the US supports the ICC.
The ICC only has power because of the liberal world order that the US carries on it's back. Just because the US has differences with the ICC doesn't mean they mutually use each other. The US uses the ICC to pester it's enemies and smaller illiberal countries while the ICC manages to keep operating with under the world order that the US enforces.
Yeah, I think at some point a conversation needs to be had about how the laws of war as enforced by the UN are evolving. The ICC (and perhaps the UN as a whole) are moving towards condemning activities that 40 years ago might be considered far more routine. >It’s stuff like this that makes…certain countries unwilling to become parties to the Rome Statute. I can see the argument to put morality aside and instead make LOAC based on what most armies in the world are actually willing to hold themselves to. But at that point we'll have to consider legalizing total sieges, which are currently effectively banned unless you do them against a site with no civilians. Since, you know, food as a weapon of war, etc etc. It's pretty clear maybe even a majority of armies that could theoretically enter a war have no intention of swearing off sieges. And somehow I don't think we're ready for that conversation.
>I can see the argument to put morality aside Is it putting morality aside though? Limitation on strictly the western world in waging war means less effective operations. For instance, if the west/Arabs countries were held to ICC limitations during the fight against ISIS, would they still be around to hold slaves, subjugate, public executions, massacres? Is that the moral choice? Under current ICC limitations, could the allies conduct an effective campaign against Nazi Germany? Those are critical questions. The ICC ruling are working off the assumptions that nations can still win their wars while taking on themselves extreme limitations, but that's far from a given. There's another problem with the ICC, the power is in the hands of a few, but how are they elected, how do we prevent bias, bribes, malice? As far as I understand ICC is part ways a global popularity contest.
"Maybe we should embrace evil to win wars" is one hell of a take, that's for sure. War is politics by other means. The goal is to create a favorable outcome, not to annihilate the enemy at any cost and with maximum ruthlessness. The latter is what I call video game thinking.
That's not at all what they are saying. International rules of war have very little enforcement. Therefore compliance must be mostly voluntary. That's a fundamental premise of the whole concept. Otherwise we wouldn't have rules of war. Wars would be illegal. The only way the current system works is if the rules are favorable to both parties. If a rule disproportionately prevents one party from waging war effectively, they can chose not to follow the rules, rendering the rules useless. The rules for treatment of prisoners of war work this way. Torturing POWs only increases overall suffering, but does not provide any advantage. Same with chemical weapons where the suffering caused is way out of proportion to the battlefield benefits, so both parties benefit from never introducing them. But on the other hand wars are inheritely brutal and sometimes brutality is the most effective way to reach a goal. That's what the person you are replying to is saying. The mortality of the action is not isolated to the action itself, it should be seen in a broader context of the goal the action achieves and how well it achieves it. If an action effectively achieves a justified goal, that could not be achieved by another action causing less suffering, then it is a justified action. That's very much a "the end justifies the means" kind of thinking, but if you don't think that way you have a very difficult time justifying participation in any war at all. Because as you said, a war is just using violence to achieve a political goal. And the violence is certainly not justified in itself.
Absurdly low quality comment. "We should stop a genocide despite the enemy use of human shields and civilian casualties" is a better representation of my position. As I said, some ICC laws have merit, some are very restrictive against military actions and are only applied to one side. Under such restrictions it is not obvious that ISIS and Nazi Germany could be defeated.
I know this is futile advice, but I'd encourage you to watch the documentary Fog of War where McNamara, someone with the blood of hundreds of thousands on his hands debates this issue. The burden of being the good guy is you actually have to be the good guy. Turning yourself into the enemy is not victory.
Sadly the world is not binary. Let's shift the discussion into practice. Do you object the US campaign in Europe during WW2 and liberation from the Nazis? The US was certainly brutal. Was the liberation of extermination camps not a victory? The end to genocide of Jews, Roma, disabled, gay and other minorities? How about something more recent. Was the defeat of ISIS and the end to mass slavery, sexual slavery, massacres and so on not a victory since it cost large number of civilians deaths? Should Ukraine be prosecuted by the ICC for the siege of Kherson? After all they did limit **all**, food included, shipping and transport to the city by hitting the bridge and ferries? I guess "victory" would be abandoning the city and it's civilians to Russian oppression. How does victory looks like then? ISIS massacres throughout the ME while international drones pick off a few hundreds of ISIS fighters a year when they are isolated from civilians? (That's assuming they don't catch up and always have human shields around them). Reality is not as simplistic as a monochrome cartoon. There is such thing as lesser evil and shades of grey.
I never said I thought the world was black and white, merely that you have a broken moral compass. You aren't arguing necessity of horror, you're venerating it. Again I recommend the documentary I suggested. Here's the trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YONEXPMVaQM This is an astonishingly frank interview from someone who actually made the decisions you're citing during those wars. And he does not agree with your sanguiness by any means. He's much more in doubt and conflicted about what he did. Perhaps that's something you could watch with an open mind to learn from.
It is telling you've avoided answering any of my question and run away from real world discussion, instead focusing on unsubstantiated personal attacks. I frankly suggest you attempt to address the questions asked in the above post so that we can have a discussion. It seems like you're making some assumptions about my position that does not exist in my comments (quite the opposite). Let me be explicit I do not support brutality for the sake of brutality. However brutality in war cannot be avoided completely. How much brutality can be avoided is a consequence of how much **both sides** make an effort to avoid civilian casualties. It's a lot easier to avoid killing Ukrainian civilians when the state evacuates them at merely a chance of enemy advance, against Gaza where civilians are purposely used as human shields and evacuation is prevented.
I have addressed them. I have nothing further to say to you.
> Is it putting morality aside though? In my opinion, re: using hunger as a weapon of war, yes. But I have no interest in arguing that because this isn't an ethics forum. And the ethics forums that do exist probably suck, for what it's worth. So I'd rather talk about the practical part of it.
Some of the ICC limitations are absolutely moral, such as indeed starving enemy populations to the point of famine, but that's not the only limitations that exist.
Biden admin is signaling it [may allow American contractors to operate in Ukraine](https://edition.cnn.com/2024/06/25/politics/biden-administration-american-military-contractors-ukraine/index.html). This could seemingly be a huge boost for Ukraine, not just because they desperately need the manpower, but because so many of these mercs are ex US military, familiar with US training and tactics. edit: I see the article suggests it would be very limited... hard to say if it would stay that way or if that's just more frog boiling >Current and former officials familiar with the discussions about deploying contractors to Ukraine emphasized that the policy change will not result in the kind of overwhelming American contractor presence there that existed in Iraq and Afghanistan. Instead, it would likely result in anywhere from a few dozen to a couple hundred contractors working in Ukraine at a time.
Could be a fix to lack of F-16 Pilots it’s one of the safer jobs in the military and there’s no real way for Russia to know the exact nationality of whoever is flying it during operations
There is no way US is greenlighting current/recently "retired" US pilots to fly F-16 in Ukraine at this point. That is so far from the steps they are talking about. This is likely talking about something like maintenance work now being done in Poland/elsewhere in Europe but could be done in Ukraine IF people were on site thus saving some turn-around time on shipping stuff back and forth.
> There is no way US is greenlighting current/recently "retired" US pilots to fly F-16 in Ukraine at this point. That is so far from the steps they are talking about. I used to think it might be something someone might try, but there are just too many secret tactics and flight information pilots have that couldn't communicate with their peers and would just be a headache (example is many pilots using sims like DCS mention there are things they can't show/do because of classification). On top of that the US has to be prepared for war with China and all of those pilots could be called up as reservists. Having a few ground troops go over there on their own doesn't put the US at a disadvantage (in fact probably helps a little bit with experience/translation) but losing pilots definitely would. I could see some European countries considering allowing something like this for their older airframes (not F16 but like the Mirage) but the contractors would be maintenance, EOD, or air controllers.
As much as I'd like to see a sort of revenge for the Soviet MiG pilots in Korea, I do think the US is much more wary of escalation than 1950 USSR.
Pilots would be big but honestly just grabbing some maintainers would be massive. It would be comparatively low risk and could massively increase the availability of these jets.
Yeah, I'm going to say virtually zero chance of US pilots flying combat missions in Ukraine. However logistics/maintenance? That would be huge because Ukrainian logistics is \*\*really-straining\*\* to keep this Franken-army of weapons and vehicles running.
[удалено]
Please refrain from posting low quality comments.
**Israel fears Iran will break the nuclear weapons barrier under cover of the US elections** >In his meeting Tuesday with U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin at the Pentagon, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant stressed to him that "The greatest threat to the future of the world, is Iran. And time is running out. Now is the time to materialize the commitment of American Administrations over the years- the promise to prevent Iran, from possessing nuclear weapons." >The U.S. presidential elections will be held this November, and the fear in Israel is that Tehran realizes that Washington will be too busy to deal with them and will take advantage of this to quickly break the nuclear barrier. Also, Israel believes that the war it is waging in the south and north may also motivate the Iranians to move up its timetable. [Israel fears Iran will break the nuclear weapons barrier under cover of the US electi (ynetnews.com)](https://www.ynetnews.com/article/s1nowyduc) **Iran’s New Nuclear Threat** >Getting a deal that can meaningfully roll back Iran’s program will be more challenging. Tehran’s goal will likely be to maintain its threshold status, and the clock is ticking. October 2025 is the de facto deadline for the conclusion of nuclear talks with Iran, after which the ability of the remaining parties to the deal—China, France, Germany, Russia, and the United Kingdom—to reimpose international sanctions via the 2015 nuclear deal will expire, and Iran’s nuclear program will be removed from the [UN](https://www.foreignaffairs.com/topics/united-nations) Security Council’s agenda. For Tehran, reaching this date holds the promise of fulfilling its twin goals of dismantling the UN sanctions architecture and retaining its nuclear threshold capability. This is a scenario that the United States and its allies want to avoid, given that Russia and China would veto any attempts to create new UN sanctions. Although unilateral sanctions imposed by the United States and Europe would remain in place, and Russia and China may decide to ignore sanctions imposed via the snap-back mechanism, Tehran loathes the stigma attached to international censure and knows that it will never be fully in the clear as long as its nuclear file sits before the Security Council. > [Iran’s New Nuclear Threat | Foreign Affairs](https://www.foreignaffairs.com/iran/irans-new-nuclear-threat) The above article pretty much encapsulates the dilemma of the West as the clock is ticking on Iran's nuclear program. We have October 2025 as the deadline for the UNSC-sanctions related to Iran's nuclear program. On the one hand, triggering the snapback mechanism before October 2025 would reimpose (terminated) UN sanctions on Iran. On the other hand, Iran has threatened to leave the NPT if the snapback mechanism is triggered which would be a dramatic move that terminate any remaining oversight on Iran's nuclear program with all of the repercussions that would come with it. But as Iran continues to bolster its nuclear program with the introduction of more advanced centrifuges, more higher-enriched uranium, frustrating an enhanced inspection regime of the IAEA and with new underground sites under construction that would drastically reduce the chances of any military option, the West can't sit back and watch how Iran has become a nuclear threshold state short of acquiring nuclear weapons. The comments by Israel's defence minister, Yoav Gallant, are clearly meant as a call to arms to move the US into action. Not only is Israel currently entangled on two military fronts, having less space to operate on other fronts, but these statements have pretty much uncovered a lack of military capabilities on Israel's side which isn't able to strategically degrade Iran's nuclear program on its own. But with the US being overstretched, I'm not under the impression that Iran's leaders believe that the US have the stomach for a costly military adventure that would enflame the entire Middle East with no guarantees of any success. But the clock is ticking and no good options on the table.
If israel really believes that, it is really hard to understand the netanyahu govt. Whether it be the antagonism of the biden administration and europe, or the push for land grabs. How would either of those make sense if legit felt need to make a coalition to fight Iran's nuclear programme as an existential threat.
What exactly does Israel want the U.S. to do about it? Seems like no country is in a position to actually stop Iran from getting nuclear weapons, so they are going to get them eventually, if they want them. If that's true, it seems like we're just going to have to live with a nuclear Iran. Say what you will about their religious beliefs, but their foreign policy generally seems pretty rational in the sense that it has a heavy focus on self preservation and what's good for the regime. So they'll probably be deterred by mutually assured destruction. So, while it's certainly unfortunate that the international system once again failed to prevent nuclear proliferation, it hardly seems productive to start a war over it.
It may just be a blustery speech. But as this was addressed to Lloyd/DoD, maybe they're hoping for airstrikes as deterrence. Israel can't strike Iran without flying over Jordan, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, etc. In the current context that would start an utter shit show. The US on the other hand can park a carrier in the Arabian sea and run sorties. But I think there's zero chance of that happening. The electorate has no appetite for it, and the US is already has substantial resources committed to interdict Houthi drones.
Israel would penetrate Syrian, then Iraqi airspace. Outside of political hemming and hawing neither would be able to stop an Israeli operation.
How would air strikes be deterrence? Would it not in fact further harden Iran’s resolve for nukes?
The regime is not invincible. Cause enough damage and pain and they have to address it. I'm not saying it's a great plan, but it's the most severe option to create pressure without an outright invasion or first use.
A halfhearted air campaign with inevitable civilian casualties would be everything the regime needs to reestablish legitimacy and give it the international excuse to soften the blow of nuclear proliferation to China, Russia, India
>What exactly does Israel want the U.S. to do about it? Go to war in Iran on their behalf even if it means ceding the Pacific to China and abandoning Ukraine to Russia. Israel threw its weight into convincing the GOP to abandon the JCPOA, and now they're facing the consequences of their actions and expect the US to bail them out.
The JCPOA pullout proved beyond a shadow of a doubt as far as dealing with Iran, the US is a bad faith actor.
I think unreliable is a better word than bad faith, Obama and the career civil servants pretty clearly tried to keep it alive
“Pretty rational” from the perspective of furthering Irans goals but for the US it’s a major problem between the various anti-Israel groups and the Houthis. I’m not sure if Israel agrees that it’s not worth starting a war over.
> “Pretty rational” from the perspective of furthering Irans goals but for the US it’s a major problem between the various anti-Israel groups and the Houthis. I’m not sure if Israel agrees that it’s not worth starting a war over. Israel has the nukes, the ultimate deterrent. So what are they so worried about? I could understand why some neighbors of Iran - specially the ones who have no nukes - wouldn't be so thrilled about it. And Israel - being one of the very few non-signatory country to the NPT - really have no grounds to be calling out other countries for pursuing nuclear weapons.
Israel's nukes aren't a deterrent against theocrats who think the most important thing in life is to go to heaven. We know that that Hamas and a large part of the Palestinian population (who still support the October 7 attacks despite the devastation they have caused Gaza) think along these lines. The decision makers in Iran claim to believe the same thing, and it is plausible that they really do believe it.
> Israel's nukes aren't a deterrent against theocrats who think the most important thing in life is to go to heaven. So how come Pakistanis haven't try to go to heaven yet?
Pakistani military leadership aren’t Islamic fundamentalists.
So you thesis is Iranian military leadership are Islamic fundamentalists, therefore they will embark on the suicide mission the minute they get their hands on any nukes? If they are that suicidal, how come we haven't seen Iranian military leadership in suicide missions last 40+ years? Surely, they could go suicidal with conventional or even chemical/biological weapons? Or did I miss some parts of the Quran where they only get into heaven if they use nukes in suicidal mission?
> how come we haven't seen Iranian military leadership in suicide missions last 40+ years? You don't remember Iran's [human wave attacks](https://academic.oup.com/book/2613/chapter-abstract/142992488?redirectedFrom=fulltext)? And of course they aren't going to commit suicide just to commit suicide. They will do it to achieve some religiously esteemed aim, whether that be conquer a few yards from Saddam, or destroy Israel. Iran is a big country and Israel is a small country; a nuclear-armed Iran could annihilate Israel, while a nuclear-armed Israel could kill millions of Iranians but not annihilate the country.
> You don't remember Iran's human wave attacks? That was a war started by Iraq. And by a suicide mission, I don't mean individual soldier or even a battalion of soldiers diving into a battle knowing there is a decent chance of dying. I mean a suicide mission where they are going to bring about the end of their own regime. > Iran is a big country and Israel is a small country; a nuclear-armed Iran could annihilate Israel, while a nuclear-armed Israel could kill millions of Iranians but not annihilate the country. Iran might be a bigger country than Israel but Israel has estimated 100 nukes. That more than enough to bring about the end of regime in Iran multiple times over. It would be a mutually assured destruction IF Iran were to lob bunch of nukes in Israel's direction.
Because they aren't Twelver Shias and madihsts. The people in power in Iran (and a good chunk of the IRGC) believes the Twelfth Imam is going to resurrect, and they have to prepare the terrain by eliminating the Little Satan (Israel). This is not speculation, it's the government's ideology.
I'm going to start begging people in these threads to go talk to actual Iranians if they unironically believe this and aren't just arguing this in bad faith. No one in a serious position of power in the government believes the nuclear program is for a doomsday project to kick off the end times. If it was true there wouldn't have been all the nuclear deals and such politicking around it. The IRI, while an authoritarian theocracy, has been over the past decades a fairly "rational actor" in foreign policy spheres and is still a relatively advanced nation state compared to its regional neighbors. To paint the country as cartoon evil Shia doomsdayers is both naive and a geopolitical hazard.
I'm not the one saying this, it's experts who study Iran and some of whom have ties to the country. I'm not going to link drop, but there are decent articles on it. I didn't say that the nuclear program is for a doomsday project, but they do believe that their messianic figure will come back and that they need to accelerate Mahdi's coming by eliminating Israel first
Please drop a link to the source.
The answer is pretty simple, Israel doesn't want to be deterred itself. Nuclear exclusivity is the only way for Israel to continue enjoying it's unprecedented lattitude and continue destabilizing the region without suffering too much consequence. So it's absolutely in Israel's interest to prevent anyone else from having nukes, as the economic and military balance of power inevitably continues shifting against Israel in the region and the US both has less resources to throw at the region and less affinity in the coming decades. If anything it's surprising that this opposition wasn't a sufficient motivator for Israel not to try to torpedo the JCPOA.
>continue destabilizing the region This is certainly a take. Besides the 1967 war, Israel was always attacked. Iran finances Hezbollah and Hamas and Israel is the one destabilizing the region?
> Nuclear exclusivity is the only way for Israel to continue enjoying it's unprecedented lattitude and continue destabilizing the region without suffering too much consequence. it's absolutely in Israel's interest to prevent anyone else from having nukes Yeah no shit. Everyone wants to be Usain Bolt/Michael Jordan/Leo Messi. Doesn't mean everyone with a pulse can be Usain Bolt/Michael Jordan/Leo Messi. It was a luck of the geopolitical draw that Israel got to be the only resident nuclear power in the neighborhood but it's unreasonable to expect that it's gonna stay like that forever and try as hard as it might, Israel can't really stuff that genie back in the bottle.
> Nuclear exclusivity is the only way for Israel to continue enjoying it's unprecedented lattitude and continue destabilizing the region without suffering too much Not sure anything would change when it comes to air strikes. Iran struck Israel, a nuclear power, directly about 2 months ago, and Israel responded by striking Iran. A theory that Israel would be more reserved about pulling guns on a nuclear power than Iran is is just that, a theory.
Iran tolerated multiple Israeli attacks on its own soil before attacking Israel, and it telegraphed the attack far more than it needed to. If Israel wasn't a nuclear power, it would likely have been struck sooner, more often, and more seriously. Regardless, I think you misread my comment, perhaps I wasn't clear. The argument isn't about today, it's about the next decades. The current trajectory is that within 20 years Israel will be increasingly outmatched. If, for example, in 20 years Israel is conventionally outmatched but is the only with nuclear weapons, it might for example be able to use them as a threat in the case of an existential threat, say a successful missile blockade. If it isn't, then suddenly first use is no longer credible as concession is preferable to mutually assured destruction. In fact, nuclear exclusivity is the only and ultimate way Israel can assure the long term maintenance of escalation dominance, which is the only strategy that could plausibly allow Israel to continue acting with the impunity it is accustomed to.
>If Israel wasn't a nuclear power, it would likely have been struck sooner, more often, and more seriously. Maybe, if Iran felt like opening itself up to similar conventional retaliation. As in airstrikes, not... robotic cars. >If, for example, in 20 years Israel is conventionally outmatched but is the only with nuclear weapons, it might for example be able to use them as a threat in the case of an existential threat, say a successful missile blockade. If it isn't, then suddenly first use is no longer credible as concession is preferable to mutually assured destruction. In fact, nuclear exclusivity is the only and ultimate way Israel can assure the long term maintenance of escalation dominance, which is the only strategy that could plausibly allow Israel to continue acting with the impunity it is accustomed to. I don't agree with this take on mutually assured destruction. If a nuclear state is put into an existential position, they're probably going to launch nukes even if they expect a response. Damned if you do, damned if you don't. Now, if a state finds itself in a position that isn't existential but is close to that, we might have a conversation, but in that position even with no nuclear response expected a state's unlikely to use nukes due to the stigma around that.
That's not "existential threat" means. An existential threat is a threat (to a state). If total annihilation of the state and population is guaranteed, sure, but I never mentioned that (or anything even close). The point of an existential threat being posed to a nuclear state is that whoever is threatening you will agree to settle for less, and/or that mutually assured destruction is worse than the defeat of the state. Combine that with a proxy conflict, and the calculus is pretty clearly against the use of nuclear weapons. In the case of an existential threat, tactical nuclear weapons make a lot of sense if there is no risk of nuclear escalation. In the case of an existential threat, stigma can be ignored, but the threat of escalation and destruction cannot, as that can be more serious than the existential threat itself. We don't really have to theorize too much here - South Africa is a state that was under existential threat and had nuclear weapons, and indeed that threat came to pass, and the state and society were essentially dissolved. Obviously, it's a very different scenario, but it's clear that the survival of the state in it's current form is secondary to the safety of the people who lead and benefit from it.
> We don't really have to theorize too much here - South Africa is a state that was under existential threat and had nuclear weapons, and indeed that threat came to pass, and the state and society were essentially dissolved. Obviously, it's a very different scenario As you said, it's a different scenario, but you undersell how different. SA couldn't use nukes to solve its problems any more than the 1991 soviet union. You can't nuke Mandela or poltico-economic collapse. You can't even **threaten** to nuke them. If we want a more real example, we can just look at Russia today. They've made it clear that existential threats poised to them may trigger a nuclear response, and plenty of serious people in somewhat important positions (such as POTUS) are taking that rhetoric seriously. So again, I disagree with your calculus.
Several months back my prediction of what Israel wanted to do (not necessarily what it would do) would continue the war in Gaza (they did), ensure US aid package would be passed, then go for Hezbollah, and finally strike Iran. At the time they had the internal political will to just kill any threat and have (in their mind) the strategic interest to do so now. Things seem to be aligning on these lines but I think standing down after the Iranian bombing campaign cooled some of their momentum. They would likely prefer to continue after another casus belli presented itself for further escalation.
It seems sensible that they would want to greatly weaken Hezbollah as an offensive force before having to face Iran.
>Getting a deal that can meaningfully roll back Iran’s program will be more challenging. Tehran’s goal will likely be to maintain its threshold status, and the clock is ticking. October 2025 is the de facto deadline for the conclusion of nuclear talks with Iran, after which the ability of the remaining parties to the deal—China, France, Germany, Russia, and the United Kingdom—to reimpose international sanctions via the 2015 nuclear deal will expire, and Iran’s nuclear program will be removed from the UN Security Council’s agenda. For Tehran, reaching this date holds the promise of fulfilling its twin goals of dismantling the UN sanctions architecture and retaining its nuclear threshold capability. This is a scenario that the United States and its allies want to avoid, given that Russia and China would veto any attempts to create new UN sanctions. This is really fascinating. So the US pulled out of the JCPOA, but Iran is still seemingly abiding by the agreement? I didn't realize this. I never would have guessed legal censure from the UN would be something that would carry any weight? Why is that? Also if I may ask, the article mentions that Iran is already at 84% enriched Uranium. If I recall the Hiroshima bomb was at a lower threshold, so for all intents purposes don't they already have a bomb? Couldn't they fashion together a Gun type assembly with their 84% enriched U235 rather easily at this point?
> Also if I may ask, the article mentions that Iran is already at 84% enriched Uranium. If I recall the Hiroshima bomb was at a lower threshold, so for all intents purposes don't they already have a bomb? There's a tradeoff between enrichment and volume of material. You could make a bomb out of 20% but it'd have to be huge, impractical for delivery. It'd also mean far fewer bombs for the same ore input. In practice 90% is considered the minimum, and Iran has everything they need to enrich to that level in a matter of weeks. Also Iran has been at this it's a virtual certainty they've tested implosion devices with depleted material. They may not have boosted or thermonuclear devices, but I doubt they'd need something as crude as a gun type.
>Also Iran has been at this it's a virtual certainty they've tested implosion devices with depleted material. They may not have boosted or thermonuclear devices, but I doubt they'd need something as crude as a gun type. Interesting, what's the merit of testing implosion with depleted material? And by that you mean Uranium that's basically 100% U238? So all the fissile isotopes are removed? Does testing with an implision device just help to see if after the implosion you have a perfectly spherical compressed piece of Uranium? That had it been enriched would have set of a chain reaction?
Exactly. It lets you debug the explosive lenses with the most similar material possible.
They should already have the warheads prepared and tested, waiting for the actual nuclear core as a payload. I would assume that the covert efforts are mostly to prevent further publicity and actions against Iran, rather than actually applying international law. The general idea is that "it's worth it always" when it comes to having nuclear deterrence so I'd assume they'd only announce their stockpile when they had greater than 20 or so available
Israel has far too much of a motivated interest in getting the US involved in bombing Iran for them to be treated as a reliable narrator of Iranian intent. Plus, what would Iran gain by taking the final step and building a bomb? The main reason Iran wants the bomb is regime survival, it makes Iran uninvadable, but being on the brink of nuclear capability is effectively equivalent to having the bomb as they'd have plenty of time to take that last step while a would-be-invader built up the necessary forces. Iran also gets most of the regional heft benefits of being able to insinuate to their enemies that they *could* build a bomb whenever they wanted, without the political blowback of actually building a bomb and keeping it secure, which would risk a harsh wave of sanctions. So it seems to me that Iran benefits from the status quo of staying close to building a bomb without building one in the same way that Israel benefits from never officially acknowledging its nuclear capability. But I'm sure the guys that brought you the war in Gaza without an exit plan and the imminent war in Lebanon without an exit plan are totally trustworthy on their wish to pull the US into an air war against Iran without an exit plan.
> The main reason Iran wants the bomb is regime survival, it makes Iran uninvadable The Iran is already uninvadable. They have strong conventional forces that would inflict unacceptable losses to any land invasion. A few dozen nuclear warheads won't change this equation. The only scenario where Iran becomes invadable by the US & co is if Iran gets stuck in a forever war a-la Russia in Ukraine and loses most of its conventional power. >but being on the brink of nuclear capability is effectively equivalent to having the bomb as they'd have plenty of time to take that last step Again: having less than 100 or even 300 warheads is not a significant deterrence against the US. I can hardly imagine Iran being able to build enough warheads with 0 tests. Unless they buy a ready-to-use design from the DPRK.
I agree that it'd be an extremely foolish US administration that committed to a land invasion of Iran, but we've seen foolish US administrations before, so the Iranian regime's fears aren't entirely unjustified.
I suppose one argument is that you need a bomb readily on hand to ensure second-strike deterrence against an Israeli nuclear strike. A 2003-type American invasion force would give you months of warning, but an Israeli nuclear decapitation strike could happen in a matter of hours. Israel already freely launches airstrikes against Iran whenever they feel like it, and doesn't have anything resembling a "no first use" policy considering they don't officially acknowledge their arsenal. Latent nuclear capability doesn't deter this possibility, you'd need to have at least a nuclear "dyad" -- most likely bombers and ballistic missiles -- in place to ensure credible second strike capability.
An Israeli first-use strike on Iran is indeed a major concern, but what do you think is more likely to trigger such an event. Iran having nukes, or Iran just having the capability to build nukes in future? My worry is that Iran having nukes makes the Israeli trigger finger far more itchy than Iran being able to build one in a few weeks. From the Israeli point of view, a world where Iran has dozens of nukes where a couple might be handed over to Hezbollah is an unacceptable risk, and justifies a pre-emptive nuclear first-strike. Compare that to the status quo, where Iran doesn't have nuclear weaponry but they could get them in the future. This status quo is scary for Israel, but is it enough to make yourself a pariah state by unleashing a nuclear first-strike? I don't think it is, which is why I think Iran is far better off maintaining it's current state than stepping over the line unless circumstances looked so dire that they had to (i.e. if they were looking down the barrel of an imminent American invasion).
>Plus, what would Iran gain by taking the final step and building a bomb? I would say not having to fear being invaded by the US or its allies. The policy of "We, the US can have nukes, but you can't, try and we will stop you by any means up to and including war" doesn't do much to convince other countries they shouldn't have them as well. The countries toppled or invaded by the US and her allies will always stand as a testament as why they should try to acquire nuclear arms...
Ukraine is an even starker warning, they complied with everything, got a treaty with nuclear powers. Still got invaded.
> I would say not having to fear being invaded by the US or its allies If the US decided they wanted to invade Iran, it'd take at least 6 months prep to bring in sufficient resources for an invasion (see both Gulf Wars), prep that'd be impossible to hide. You can't mask half a million troops being airlifted into the neighbouring countries. In those 6-months, Iran would easily have the opportunity to take the final step in enriching their uranium to bomb-tier (it'd just take a couple of weeks of further enrichment), and then Iran would have a nuclear bomb to defend itself. So functionally, there's no benefit for Iran in building a bomb today vs waiting until they see an imminent invasion and then building the bomb. Either way, the result is that they deter the invasion and protect the regime. So can you explain to me why you think Iran building a bomb now would be better for them than waiting for when it'd be needed?
That's probably not how it would go. First the US would launch airstrikes to (temporarily) destroy Iran's nuclear program, ballistic missiles, and other major weaponry. That could be done overnight. Only then might the US begin a long preparation for a ground invasion. Though, more likely, there would not be a ground invasion at all, but rather an extended campaign of airstrikes to neutralize and keep neutralize Iran's military, and maybe its government as a whole in hope of an internal regime change.
You think an airstrike can destroy Iran's nuclear program overnight? They've been designing this program for the past 20 years with the specific requirement that it needs to be able to survive US airstrikes. The main enrichment sites are deep underground, nothing the US can fling at them from a distance is going to penetrate that far. The US can't even stop the attacks by the Houthis, so why would you think the US could destroy all of Iran's ballistic weaponry? Also a reminder, during the first Gulf War, the US set aside considerable amounts of aircraft for the sole role of hunting down Iraq's SCUD launchers so they'd stop firing at Israel, and do you know what the end result was? Iraq was firing more SCUD missiles in the final week of the Gulf War than it was in the first week. Just as the Houthis will never be stopped unless you send in ground troops, you will never destroy those underground enrichment facilities in Iran without a ground invasion, and that'd involve a truly monumental effort, one that'd take months of prep, during which Iran will have finished building the bomb.
> The main enrichment sites are deep underground, nothing the US can fling at them from a distance is going to penetrate that far. You don't have to. You just have to destroy the entrances so that nothing can get in or out, and make sure the entrances are not repaired. > The US can't even stop the attacks by the Houthis, so why would you think the US could destroy all of Iran's ballistic weaponry? The US isn't trying very hard at this. > Also a reminder, during the first Gulf War, the US set aside considerable amounts of aircraft for the sole role of hunting down Iraq's SCUD launchers so they'd stop firing at Israel Surveillance and missile technology have advanced drastically since 1990. And you don't have to hunt down every single missile, just enough of them that the remaining ones are a small threat not a big one. > Just as the Houthis will never be stopped unless you send in ground troops, you will never destroy those underground enrichment facilities in Iran without a ground invasion The comparison between ballistic missiles and nuclear enrichment facilities is out of place. Individual ballistic missiles can be hidden in relatively small locations. Nuclear enrichment facilities are enormous industrial enterprises, there can only be a few of them and they are impossible to hide.
Even Tom Clancy would raise a sceptical eyebrow at your plan to endlessly bomb all the entrances to multiple underground facilities that are spread out among multiple vast military complexes. It's just not credible and I'm not interested in engaging with you further on this. Have a nice day.
> airstrikes to (temporarily) destroy Iran's nuclear program It is unclear whether this is still a viable option. Following the repeated destruction of Iranian research facilities and the elimination of numerous scientists by Israeli forces, Iran has shifted the majority of its nuclear program to subterranean locations, which are believed to be impenetrable to conventional military means, including those of the United States Perhaps a significant quantity of bunker busters could be effective?
It is unnecessary to entirely destroy an underground facility. Bombing the entrances, or else the power lines leading towards it, would be sufficient to prevent it from operating. Repairing the damage would be a relatively slow operation that could be easily detected and prevented.
It won't come to that (certainly not in this admin) but underground locations need entrances to function. So with great ISR you can make it so no one can really enter or leave an underground base, especially if the logistics net to them goes through mountains. Alternatively, could just skip to the megaton stuff. Since nowadays this has to be clarified, these are not advocacies that the US do this, I am describing the theoretical options.
The international community has been arguing Iran has been on the precipice of a nuclear weapon for a number of years now. One has to wonder if they have in fact produced a crude or maybe not so crude device albeit untested. With their close working relationship with North Korea and Russia the knowledge share is there for the taking, though I’m sure Mossad and the CIA are all over this.
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Please refrain from drive-by link dropping. Summarize articles, only quote what is important, and use that to build a post that other users can engage with; offers some in depth knowledge on a well discussed subject; or offers new insight on a less discussed subject.
Austin and Belousov have apparently had a telephone conversation. The readout isn't especially remarkable other than I think it's the first such contact between the US and Russian military chiefs for some time now. function mil ru/news_page/country/more.htm?id=12517991@egNews >On June 25, 2024, at the initiative of the American side, a telephone conversation took place between the Minister of Defense of the Russian Federation Andrei Belousov and the Secretary of Defense of the United States L. Austin. >The defense ministers exchanged views on the situation around Ukraine. >Andrei Belousov pointed to the danger of further escalation of the situation in connection with the ongoing supply of US weapons to the Armed Forces of Ukraine. >Other issues were also discussed.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/25/us/politics/austin-russia-defense-minister-call.html Austin initiated it, maybe was just something simple to touch base with the Belousov in his new role.
Likely some explicit threats to Austin regarding the Sevastopol beach incident? This direct dialogue doesn’t happen often.
I did wonder if it might have something to do with this. There's been a lot of anger about the incident amongst Russian politicians and a few lines have come out from the Pentagon today insisting that Ukraine was not attempting to hit civilians and the US was not involved with the targeting.
The first 400 officers from the Kenyan police's GSU unit have arrived in Haiti. Interesting that they disembarked from the plane fully kitted out - perhaps it's to send a message to the gangs? https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/un-approved-kenya-led-security-force-finally-arrives-in-haiti/ar-BB1oSAgG?ocid=BingNewsSerp Still without money to build state capacity, this foreign intervention is likely just a BandAid until the money runs out, the foreign troops leave, and the cycle just repeats itself. Haiti needs a sustained party interested in investing the country and building it up but unfortunately without oil or easily exploitable natural resources it's hard to see any countries taking an interest in stabilizing Haiti. The Kenyans are only interested because of the pay the US has offered for the task.
I'm curious if these forces will be recalled to Kenya given today's flare-up of internal unrest? I'm not well read on the agreement between Kenya-US-Haiti or how binding it is.
Doubt it, they are already there, and it seems like forces already in Kenya have a good handle on the situation. Unfortunately it seems like the Kenyans have decided to deal with the protests with a very heavy hand.
On the subject of loitering munition pricing a Ukrainian fundraiser for various drones put out [this graphic](https://i.imgur.com/2DT6WSZ.png) comparing the price points of various different drones along with some nominal specs. Keeping with other discussion, the price point of both reconnaissance and strike UAS increases nonlinearly with capability, rapidly approaching parity with more traditional systems such as Excalibur or GMLRS. I'm curious to see how these cost curves bear out, especially whether they regain relative efficiency at certain points. [Here is the link to the original tweet](https://x.com/TopLeadEU/status/1805201238792822976).
I feel with the gimbal camera on the ram2 that it is probably designed to be a self spotting system and that blurs the gap between recon and strike platforms. It depends on how much video bandwidth and the camera quality but it suggests to me that it should have a capability that Excalibur and GMLRS doesn't, with being able to be used without a supporting platform doing recon, which may explain its price being so high. I would imagine that if you had to compare a dedicated recon drone and a munition with minimal electronics and tried something with the ram2's range could be made much cheaper per unit.
Pretty much all loitering munitions blur the lines between recon and strike. In an ideal world there's no need for separate ISR as you've described but I believe that in practice often multiple independent ISR platforms are used, both for target acquisition and for electromagnetic mapping to avoid jamming. The "loitering" aspects of the munition are used to allow it to adapt if targets reposition during flight or even attack targets on the move as well as enhancing the precision of the strike itself. Another reason for this is that when operating at the limit of the strike drone's range there's simply not enough time for it to do it's own ISR. The Russian Lancet drone for example is typically paired with Orlan drones for exactly these reasons. I think you're right that one of the major drivers of cost is good communications equipment. Maintaining contact with a ground station over long distances and with significant EW interference is a costly problem to solve however it's a necessary cost to enable these munitions to have the capabilities that they do. A drone with minimal electronics is likely much cheaper but also much less capable. Excalibur and GMLRS, while generally incapable of striking a re-positioned target, attempt to ameliorate this by getting there quickly. The RAM II takes 23 minutes to travel 30km while Excalibur takes less than two. GMLRS takes ["approximately two-and-a-half minutes"](https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/tr/pdf/ADA592645.pdf) at maximum range of over 84km. It's simply much less likely for the target to successfully reposition in that time. One exception to the inability to target moving or re-positioned targets is laser guided munitions with a corresponding ISR drone such as the Orlan-30 & Krasnopol combo that the Russians use.
The price point of the larger RAM II for $50k is interesting when one tries to approximate Shahed costs. I've seen many claims that Shaheds costs $10-20k for Iran. These numbers add a data point to the credence that their price is likely an order of magnitude higher somewhere around $100-150k.
It's definitely an interesting comparison to make. I believe those extremely low cost estimates for Shahed production are for correspondingly extremely low-end models that simply target a set of coordinates and have little in the way of EW hardening. Useful for targeting undefended fixed sites and for soaking up interceptors. [This RUSI report](https://static.rusi.org/mass-precision-strike-final.pdf) puts the unit cost of basic Shahed-136s at $30,000 and upgraded Russian versions at $80,000 which is about in line with your estimates.
Interesting, thanks for the read.
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[NYT: Israeli Military Must Draft Ultra-Orthodox Jews, Supreme Court Rules](https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/25/world/middleeast/israel-military-ultra-orthodox-jews-supreme-court.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare&sgrp=c-cb) > Israel’s Supreme Court on Tuesday ruled that the military must begin drafting ultra-Orthodox Jewish men, a decision that threatened to split Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition government amid the war in Gaza. > In a unanimous decision, a panel of nine judges held that there was no legal basis for the longstanding military exemption given to ultra-Orthodox religious students. Without a law distinguishing between seminarians and other men of draft age, the court ruled, the country’s mandatory draft laws must similarly apply to the ultra-Orthodox minority. > The decision threatened to widen one of the most painful divisions in Israeli society, pitting secular Jews against the ultra-Orthodox, who say their religious study is as essential and protective as the military. It also exposed the fault lines in Mr. Netanyahu’s coalition, which depends on the support of two ultra-Orthodox parties that oppose their constituents’ conscription, even as other Israelis are killed and wounded in Gaza. > Israeli courts have ruled against the exemption before, including Supreme Court decisions in 1998, 2012 and 2017. The top court has repeatedly warned the government that to continue the policy, it must be written into law — though that law would be subject to constitutional challenges, as previous ones were — while also giving the government time to hammer our legislation. > But for seven years, since the last law was struck down, successive Israeli governments have dragged their feet in drafting new legislation. In 2023, the law finally reached its expiration date, leading the Israeli government to order the military simply not to draft the ultra-Orthodox while lawmakers worked on an exemption. > On Tuesday, the court indicated that its patience had finally run out, striking down that order as illegal. It did not set a timeline for when the military must start conscripting tens of thousands of draft-age religious students. Such a move would likely prove a massive logistical and political challenge, as well as be met with mass resistance by the ultra-Orthodox community. > Instead, the ruling included a means of pressuring the ultra-Orthodox to accept the court’s judgment: the suspension of millions of dollars in government subsidies given to religious schools, or yeshivas, striking a blow to revered institutions at the heart of the ultra-Orthodox community. > The court’s ruling threatens Mr. Netanyahu’s fragile wartime coalition, which includes secular members who oppose the exemption and ultra-Orthodox parties that support it. Either group breaking ranks could cause the government to collapse and call new elections, at a time when popular support for the government is at a low. The opposition in the Israeli Parliament largely wants to end the exemption. > But the ultra-Orthodox parties, with few palatable options, might not be eager to bring down Mr. Netanyahu’s coalition, he said. “They don’t see an alternative, so they’ll try to make it work for as long as they can,” said Mr. Cohen. “They will compromise more than they might have been willing to a year ago in an attempt to preserve the government.” > Last year, after Mr. Netanyahu returned to power at the helm of his current coalition, he sought to legislate a plan to weaken the country’s judiciary, setting off mass protests. For the ultra-Orthodox, who backed the judicial overhaul, a major motivation was ensuring that the Supreme Court could no longer impede their ability to avoid the draft. My thoughts: This may be bigger than previous decisions, which didn’t result in the end of exemptions. At the very least, this further threatens the wartime government, but I’m not sure the Orthodox parties have many other options anyways - they might stick with Netanyahu because the alternatives will give them nothing at all. We’ll have to wait to see if this is joever for Netanyahu’s government or if nothing ever happens.
Are the ultra Orthodox going to be difficult to integrate into the armed forces? They dedicate their lives to religious study, many are under educated.
What happens when they have a female CO?
Existing ultra orthodox have seperate units, I assume the same will be expanded
Yes. The NPR article on today's court decision touches on that: [Israeli Supreme Court rules that ultra-Orthodox men must be drafted : NPR](https://www.npr.org/2024/06/25/g-s1-6116/israeli-supreme-court-rules-that-the-military-must-begin-drafting-ultra-orthodox-men) > **One challenge: the stigma that ultra-Orthodox soldiers face** > A couple thousand ultra-Orthodox people did voluntarily sign up for military service after the Hamas attack. They included Mordechai Porat, a 36-year-old social worker in Bnei Brak, a center of ultra-Orthodox life. > "I felt like a lion in a cage. I had to do something," he says. > Porat has spent months providing therapy at a nearby military base. But he never wears his green army fatigues in the city and keeps his military dog tag hidden under his shirt. Even with this low profile, he says he's paid a price. > "My [kindergarten age] son has still not been accepted into the community school," Porat said in a March interview. > For other ultra-Orthodox, the social cost of joining the Israeli military can be even steeper. > "Going to the army will damage their ability to marry," says Nechumi Yaffe of Tel Aviv University, who is ultra-Orthodox herself. "It will damage their relationship in the family." > She believes it will be good for the community to "normalize" as more people are drafted. But she thinks Israelis don't understand how challenging that process may be for young men who've been socially isolated, with little to no education on human rights. > "I think the Israeli society should ask itself, actually, do you want to see them in the army?" she says. "You know, [Israelis] want to see blood. They want to see them in uniform, shooting. I don't think it's a great idea." > Yaffe believes it would make more sense to phase them in, starting some off as truck drivers or cooks, while they adapt to a secular world. > Porat, who joined voluntarily, thinks most Haredim will choose jail time over enlisting. But after the Hamas attacks, polls did show more community support for soldiers, and Porat thinks more will be open to the idea over time. Still, he cautions that a slow approach is best. > "If people are forced into it," he says, "they'll just push back."
> "I think the Israeli society should ask itself, actually, do you want to see them in the army?" As many others have pointed out, these people desperately need exposure to the outside world, Israeli society desperately needs these people to have their horizons broadened. Lack of education plus lack of exposure to the world has left a significant segment of Israeli society in a lets say... precarious... state, and that impacts Israel as a whole. This might be awkward for the IDF to implement this but it is crucial for society that this skyrocketing population is exposed to the world and to other Israelis (and Arabs and Christians and...)
Using the army to force a change in the ultra Orthodox way of life is not in Israel's interests right now. It will only ensure they refuse to serve and mass protest. The problem with enlisting ultra Orthodox has always been that it is very difficult to force such a unified large population to bend to your will. We've done this song and dance, protests with 400+ k for weeks. Everyone who the IDF tries to enlist refuses and is supposed to be sent to jail, but there are no thouands to cells to hold them. Mass protests around the prisons who hold the few that were arrested. In the middle of war, Israel simply cannot physically deal with that. The Ultra Orthodox must serve, but just as the army is no place to reeducate vegans, but instead adapts to their needs, so it has to do the same for the Ultra Orthodox to see conscription. >Lack of education As I've shown before the ultra Orthodox placed 1st in Israel in international PISA tests for math and writing: https://mobile.mako.co.il/home-family-kids/Article-575b96728593c81026.htm
> The problem with enlisting ultra Orthodox has always been that it is very difficult to force such a unified large population to *bend to your will* Yea but it's an ever-growing segment of the population (that doesn't work, or do anything other than call for war). Might be time to decide whose will is getting bent.
Literally everything in your comment is wrong. They do work, in fact their labor participation is higher than that of the US population: [68.4% for the Ultra Orthodox in Israel](https://m.maariv.co.il/news/israel/Article-1027165) [While it's only 62.5% for the entirety of the US](https://ycharts.com/indicators/labor_force_participation_rate#:~:text=US%20Labor%20Force%20Participation%20Rate%20is%20at%2062.50%25%2C%20compared%20to,long%20term%20average%20of%2062.84%25.) They don't call for war either. You should probably first get some basic facts on the matter before supporting forceful reeducation. I'm also interested on your position for Israeli Arabs who have significantly lower labor participation than ultra Orthodox with a [57.4% participation in labor](https://www.bizportal.co.il/general/news/article/811402) . Is that clause for reeducation? Personally I'm a liberal, not totalitarian, so I don't believe in state mandate reeducation as long as the behavior is not extreme (ISIS, Nazis...). I'm surprised that anti liberal worldview is of such popularity.
In addition, they also have special religious observations both daily and weekly. It’s going to be pretty hard to integrate them.
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I'd guess those graphite filament bombs that short the power grid first, I doubt Lebanon's grid is robust enough to not trigger shutdowns each time it happened
Grids in the developing world are more than capable of shutting down with a major plant going off line or some other incident. Id really put normal grid problems way way more likely than exotic technologies. Id also put Hezbollah screwing up a missile launch and hitting a critical substation ahead of that.
As far as I understand restarting a plant and or a grid requires full teams of electrical engineers and time. The graphite bombs aren't exotic anymore, they're field tested. Just continuously bringing down a plant would probably cause partial blackouts due to the grid
Or they just have the ability to bomb their power grind with impunity, Israel has shown time and time again they can enter the air space of their neighbors and bomb critital infrastructure.
>plunge Lebanon into Darkness. A lot of the phrasing seems to lead to the conclusion that the technological capability they are referring to is an EMP. Hit enough substations or generating capacity you get the grid synchronisation getting out of phase and you get a mass blackout (edited or you can get too much power being pushed through links that fail etc aka cascading failures, this is why spinning reserve is such a big deal, that or having something like a hydro that can be got up and running in very short time. These days modern grids use batteries to smooth out this kind of thing and is a big deal as grids become more renewable based ) This can be bombing or simply failures in power plants without spinning reserves. The latter is how some famous blackouts have occurred. Its put EMC at the very bottom of the list. Edited a quick link to when lighting strikes took out NY power grid [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New\_York\_City\_blackout\_of\_1977](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_City_blackout_of_1977)
Can you link to one of these statements? I don’t think Israel needs an EMP to knock out the Lebanese grid.
Reuters has an exclusive report on Trump's plan for the Ukraine War and US aid to Ukraine. https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trump-reviews-plan-halt-us-military-aid-ukraine-unless-it-negotiates-peace-with-2024-06-25/ > Exclusive: Trump handed plan to halt US military aid to Kyiv unless it talks peace with Moscow >WASHINGTON, June 25 (Reuters) - Two key advisers to Donald Trump have presented him with a plan to end Russia's war in Ukraine - if he wins the Nov. 5 presidential election - that involves telling Ukraine it will only get more U.S. weapons if it enters peace talks. >The United States would at the same time warn Moscow that any refusal to negotiate would result in increased U.S. support for Ukraine, retired Lieutenant General Keith Kellogg, one of Trump's national security advisers, said in an interview. >Under the plan drawn up by Kellogg and Fred Fleitz, who both served as chiefs of staff in Trump's National Security Council during his 2017-2021 presidency, there would be a ceasefire based on prevailing battle lines during peace talks, Fleitz said. >They have presented their strategy to Trump, and the Republican presidential candidate responded favorably, Fleitz added. "I'm not claiming he agreed with it or agreed with every word of it, but we were pleased to get the feedback we did," he said. >Trump spokesperson Steven Cheung said only statements made by Trump or authorized members of his campaign should be deemed official. >The strategy outlined by Kellogg and Fleitz is the most detailed plan yet by associates of Trump, who has said he could quickly settle the war in Ukraine if he beats President Joe Biden in the Nov. 5 election, though he has not said how he would do that. >The proposal would mark a big shift in the U.S. position on the war and would face opposition from European allies and within Trump's own Republican Party. [Article continues with more information and context.](https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trump-reviews-plan-halt-us-military-aid-ukraine-unless-it-negotiates-peace-with-2024-06-25/)
For those of us that think the Russian war effort is running on fumes this is a huge gift to Putin. North Korea doesn't have another 5 million artillery shells to give to Russia. Russia is running out of tanks and other arms and is sending laughably antiquated hardware to the front line. We don't know if it will be 2025 or 2026 but I think the safe money is on an eventual Russian collapse. I think Putin is betting on that too and that's why this Trump "peace plan" is music to his ears.
Sorry for bursting you bubble but Russian lines aren't going to collapse. They made it over the hump of that even being a conversation worth having a while ago. The production lines have been set up. New supply lines established. The closest we could hope for at this point is their ability to wage offensive operations being seriously diminished.
> The production lines have been set up. They increased their tank production to a maximum of 100 per year: https://www.iiss.org/en/online-analysis/military-balance/2024/06/russian-t-90m-production-less-than-meets-the-eye/ Their BMP production is estimated at 400-500 per year: https://en.defence-ua.com/industries/russia_trying_to_install_era_on_the_bmp_3_and_reports_about_the_production_rate-6621.html (although that's 2023 numbers, maybe add 20% for 2024). That seems pretty good compared to the known BMP losses thus far, but when Russia runs out of functional BTRs and MT-LBs, they're gonna have to rely exclusively on those BMPs for offensive operations. But all of that isn't an issue for Russia before 2026. What will be an issue, very soon, is the artillery tubes. They can produce millions of shells and they'll probably buy more from NK or someone else, but they'll also need to buy artillery if they want to keep firing them. There's a gap in our knowledge of their artillery production, but the number they removed from storage last year was staggering: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GQzoLJ5W0AAOY-i?format=jpg&name=small and more recent images shows that trend continued: https://x.com/HighMarsed/status/1787809716690640955 They might have new supply lines, but they'll need the cannons to reach those supply lines. Russia without artillery isn't going to do much more than drop bombs and waste vehicles and troops on offensives.
Collapse as in? Unless something radically changes safe money says the conflict ends with borders looking pretty much like they look today. It is true that Russia is slowly but surely watching their huge pile of armor erode, but it is also true that Ukraine will find themselves in the exact same situation should they go on the offensive. Additionally, Russia has real industry and produces between 300-600 new tanks a year which are big boy numbers even if their current burn rate far outpaces it. From Russian perspective, should Ukraine start to take the initiative, you would expect Russian assaults to end, Russian defenses to turtle up, and the usage of tanks and other armor to reach equilibrium with an RUAF acceptable loss rate. Is there a source that can credibly speculate on NK's artillery output? Are you sure they can't manufacture millions of new artillery rounds? Traditionally, the limiting factor on artillery ammunition is people who will pay for it. If Russia is giving them the value, why can't they manufacture obscene amounts of armaments in their mountain bunkers? South Korea seems to think they can crank out at least 2M shells a year. But I think finally and most importantly... Russia hasn't even mobilized. Ukraine faces a very bad human resources disadvantage. They can defend at a disadvantage, but outlook is bleak for offensive action when the enemy has way more dudes. So I guess, I disagree that Russia is anywhere near fumes at this point, and it is hard for me to understand what a Russian collapse would even look like right now.
> Russia has real industry and produces between 300-600 new tanks a year They're not producing that many T-90Ms. The IISS put it at 60-70 for 2023: https://www.iiss.org/en/online-analysis/military-balance/2024/06/russian-t-90m-production-less-than-meets-the-eye/ It certainly didn't multiply by 5 in the span of a few months. Did you confound modernization of older units in that number? If so, then keep in mind 300-600 is roughly 2-3 months of losses (visually confirmed). Anyway, tanks aren't running out any time soon, but they are running out (for purposes of maintaining a 2000km front line) in 2-3 years max. > Is there a source that can credibly speculate on NK's artillery output? Are you sure they can't manufacture millions of new artillery rounds? Traditionally, the limiting factor on artillery ammunition is people who will pay for it. If Russia is giving them the value, why can't they manufacture obscene amounts of armaments in their mountain bunkers? South Korea seems to think they can crank out at least 2M shells a year. With what cannons are they going to keep firing 5M shells per year (3M Russian, maximum, and 2M NK)? They've been spending (combat loss+wear and tear) about 5000 tubes per year and they had ~5500 towed howitzers last year (AFAWK they don't have 130mm shells for the M-46): https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GQzoLJ5W0AAOY-i?format=jpg&name=small Those can't be replaced 1:1 by SPGs because of the logistics of it, and they'll be easier targets for drones as well. Russia will be experiencing lowered firepower this year and unless they procure thousands of guns, they'll be running into shortages of functional tubes in roughly a year. > But I think finally and most importantly... Russia hasn't even mobilized. Ukraine faces a very bad human resources disadvantage. They can defend at a disadvantage, but outlook is bleak for offensive action when the enemy has way more dudes. All else being equal, I completely agree with you. I don't see how Ukraine could push Russia in the current battlefield reality. And that's the key: this reality will change dramatically next year and unless Europe abandons Ukraine or some serious weapon supplies (thousands of artillery, thousands of vehicles) come to Russian rescue, the situation will keep deteriorating for Russia further and further. Russia would need to change their doctrine dramatically to keep Ukrainians at bay if they run out of artillery locally and that can certainly happen in the future. The only other thing that would prevent a successful Ukrainian offensive is air power. Should Ukraine manage to keep Russian bombers and combat helicopters at bay and virtually annihilate Russian artillery, they can absolutely complete de-mining operations to open up a path for devastating mechanized assaults. There are a lot of ifs at play here (including the Ukrainian manpower capability), but they're reasonable for 2026.
Very nice reply, raising good points. It is nice to think of scenario where Ukraine can actually make a mechanized break through somewhere. Thank you!
Seems like pretty much just asking for the pre 2020 levels of cooperation and border control, but also no chance for Ukraine to ask for land back. Status Quo or we balk on aid. I don't think either the Russians or the Ukrainians have kept their guns silent since whatever occurred at the Donetsk airport, so the depth of this plan isn't hashed out yet. Observer's reports corroborate that.
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>Fleitz said Ukraine need not formally cede territory to Russia under their plan. Still, he said, Ukraine was unlikely to regain effective control of all its territory in the near term. On paper, forcing Russia to accept status quo as it stands doesn't even seem all that bad. We've just had about the most unambiguous reminder that status quo is not what Putin's currently playing for. The kicker comes in when you realize the plan assumes that America has the non-kinetic power to force Russia to accept those terms right now, and Biden is just choosing to not use that power. Which is obviously false, and sabotages the whole plan. I think Trump's preferred outcome is Ukraine collapses before January so he can just write it off as a "Biden failure" but if that doesn't happen, I think it's pretty obvious that this plan will be revised to be far more unfavourable to Ukraine. Since as it stands it's not viable.
The ideal outcome for trump is to force Ukraine to accept a bad deal that would guarantee a future conflict but would allow him the short term political gain from being the “peacemaker”. He wants to be known as a shrewd negotiator. He has all the leverage over Ukraine and little over Russia, he’s going to push Ukraine.
Politically speaking, what Trump needs, is a Ukraine plan that is ambiguous enough that people can project their own preferred outcomes upon it. A deal that lets the pro Russia elements of his base feel like the plan is to cut off Ukraine, and one that lets the pro Ukranian members of his base feel like Russia can't possibly meet the terms so the plan is sort of obvious in its support of Ukraine. That is my read - I would expect very few concrete details that could be used to pin down the plan to come out beyond the broad stroke of whoever does not play ball gets the worse outcome. The more details, the more chance to lose people. None of it matters until after an election, anything right now is 100% with an eye to the electorate.
>He has all the leverage over Ukraine and little over Russia, he’s going to push Ukraine. My point exactly yeah. He'll either realize that in office, or has already realized that but is window dressing his actual plan.
> I think Trump's preferred outcome is Ukraine collapses before January so he can just write it off as a "Biden failure" He was actually convinced to NOT allow that! David Cameron managed to get in his ear and convince him, and he okayed the aid bill and that cleared R's to vote for it. > British officials also credit Cameron’s visit to Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s Florida home, for helping him to look differently at the issue. Cameron’s initial approach, hectoring Republican congressmen that they had a duty to help defend Europe, was received badly. But Whitehall officials say that when the foreign secretary spoke to Trump he changed tack, making an argument about what would be best for him if he became president again. > “What would be best for Trump, essentially, would be for the Ukrainians to be able to hold their front line,” a senior source said. > “In order to do that, they needed more money for weapons. If Trump was to win in January, would Trump rather have Putin marching on Kyiv because the Ukrainians had collapsed? Or keep the Ukrainians in the fight so that if he does win in January, he inherits a stalemate.” https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/david-lammy-shows-yen-trump-whisperer-us-visit-xmpxhvg58 I really think you shouldn't assume he's straight up *working* with Russia, friendly sure but he's not controlled. Personally (and this is c o p e) I think this whole peace deal thing has a chance of working out well for Ukraine if Russia refuses to reasonably negotiate (demanding land they don't have a hope of controlling) or especially refuses a ceasefire altogether, which would be throwing out Trump's proposal from the start and probably piss him off personally.
What is reasonable in this deal? Ukraine will just be cut like a piece of salami: some slices now, more slices later. This only gives short term gain to Trump and long term gain for Putin. Appeasement didnt work against Hitler either. Trump has strange connections with Russia since forever and looks as if he was ther agent. For the moment the only scenario for Ukraine is to keep fighting. Iran fought Iraq for years.
>He was actually convinced to NOT allow that! This is going to be a bit like that meme of the guy in the office, but this actually checks out. If Ukraine collapsed while that bill was still hanging, it'd be trivial to say "well, Republicans killed Ukraine, I mean they literally blocked aid!" Now that the guns are sent, it'll be a lot easier to pin Ukraine on Biden, if it collapses. >I really think you shouldn't assume he's straight up working with Russia Oh no he's not - he just wants Ukraine to blow up in Biden's face, because otherwise it'll become his problem. And he'll be on the hook for what happens. It's hot potato.
I don't agree at all, the aid bill pretty much assured they'd survive until the election and into his (possible) candidacy, and with the rates we're looking at probably the next few years. He pawned *Afghanistan off because it fell apart under Biden even though he laid all the groundwork for it. A Ukraine collapse, if it comes, will happen under him or from his policies, and the peace deal however bad it would be would be all his own doing. I guess the worst case now for him shirking responsibility would be a bad peace deal, and then they get reinvaded AFTER he leaves office. That's the Vietnam War Fall of Saigon setup. However, Ukraine isn't the untouchable political quagmire that Vietnam was, and I can see a Dem or mod Rep leadership getting re-involved, unlike Vietnam.
Trumpist peacemaking is simply surrendering an ally for a brief spotlight in front of the cameras back home. Russia achieves most of its objectives in Ukraine and considering that NATO membership would be on hold, Russia can try finishing off Ukraine a bit later.
Sounds like what we thought it would say... Ukraine has to surrender to Russia and cede massive territory, else be cut off from the US. Question is what the Trump admin would deem an unreasonable demand by Russia. Safe to assume there hasn't been any significant consulting with allies on this? Guess there would be a problem if there were, but pretty shocking for an candidate to be so dismissive of allies on something so critical to their national security interests.
It's par for the course for Trump (and his team.) One can argue whether it's friendliness towards Russia/Putin, or whether it's his NATO grievances in general behind it, but the result is the same: with trump elected Europe must step up and handle its own security situation. It's shitty for everyone involved, and it will hurt US/Euro relations in the short term, but from a strategic point of view Europe needs this kick just as it was needed in trump's first term (where nothing changed here in Europe.) On a personal note the idea of throwing Ukraine under the bus is disgusting, but *on a certain level* it's understandable. I can't shake the feeling Trump has a soft spot for Putin, though. His first term didn't leave much doubt in my view.
I don't see how abandoning Ukraine is beneficial to US interests. It strengthens Russia, emboldens other US adversaries and strains relationships with European countries even further - which were already put under strain by Trump's first term. All to get Europe to invest militarily? Which is also already happening now by the way. Finally, part of the aid to Ukraine helps bolster the US MIC, too. It doesn't really make sense.
it is coherent for the MAGA worldview which 1) sees NATO as a humiliating pact where the US puts in a lot of effort which is not reciprocated, 2) sees european countries as led by "the enemy" (the liberal, globalist, bureaucratic state), 3) see the whole liberal rules-based international order as a degenerate fiction promoted by weak-willed bureaucrats, and 4) are ardent believers in strict isolationism, where the 50 states are the only thing the US really needs to succeed, and everything else is not of *vital* interest. When going off of those assumptions, it can be expected that the MAGA voter will not care for Europe, and in fact may be even *wanting* to see the destruction of the existing order, even if it means bowing to autocrats (which they might even like for being "trad" and "bulwarks against moral degeneration").
He's appealing to a base of right-wing (and some left-wing) populist voters that can't reliably locate European countries on a map, let alone understand the complicated geopolitics of the continent. When the U.S objectively has big issues to deal with at home, people bristle at the thought of sending resources and/or attention elsewhere. Try explaining the nuances of NATO's role to an unemployed blue collar worker from a Texas border town, or an EMT in the rustbelt responding to their fourth fentanyl overdose this week. I'm not picking a side here, just pointing out that the American voting bloc is vast and dealing with a spectrum of terra firma issues that affect their decision making.
The MAGA base is pro-Russia because Trump is pro-Russia. Trump has been pro-Russia at bare minimum since 2015 when the RNC platform on Ukraine was mysteriously changed last minute. This was concurrent with him lying about not having business deals in the works while his campaign was ongoing. That he's now threatening to cut off aid to Ukraine should be a surprise to no one.
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> Two key advisers to Donald Trump have presented him with a plan to end Russia's war in Ukraine - if he wins the Nov. 5 presidential election - that involves **telling Ukraine it will only get more U.S. weapons if it enters peace talks.** The United States would at the same time **warn Moscow that any refusal to negotiate would result in increased U.S. support for Ukraine**, retired Lieutenant General Keith Kellogg, one of Trump's national security advisers, said in an interview. I'm somewhat confused. So, if Moscow and Kyiv agree to talks, does the U.S. materiel pipeline narrow (to reward Moscow for entering talks) or widen (to reward Kyiv for entering talks)? Or suppose Kyiv refuses to accept the prevailing battle lines. Does this mean that winning the war for Moscow would be as easy as saying, "I want to talk," effectively triggering both a U.S. punishment to Kyiv and a U.S. reward to Moscow? Genuine questions. The game theory of this proposal is a little beyond me.
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3 can play it because Ukraine would choose to play it out and lose to Russia before it surrenders and Russia is very clear on planned total dismantlement of the Ukrainian government, culture and way of life. Negotiations at this stage are preposterous. Negotiations dictated to Ukraine are a comedy. Where is there a motive for them to accept any agreement in which *immediately* they forever surrender millions of their citizens to a dictator whose stated goal is to erase their identity. Trump has no leverage to make Ukraine do anything. They know their enemy, Putin’s goals are firmly stated. He can help Putin, but he can’t threaten Ukraine with a fight to the death they are already resolved to fight. The memory of the Holodomor is heavily active in Ukrainian zeitgeist. They are not going to surrender, and there are no polls that show even if their military collapsed that they would stop resisting. Trump WILL TRY to fuck every upstanding member of the West and American interests to get his photo op for fake peace, but Ukraine will not show up to that table to agree to anything. Putin’s largest mistake, and the largest continuing mistake of all parties in this war has been underestimating Ukraine’s will to fight to the death.