While We Wait: Writer's Block & Other Lame Excuses

[Kozmos]

Playing through the old Front Mission games now when I am much older and I must admit I am slightly baffled by JRPG logic. (crappy character behaviour aside) Launching a major attack on another nation with a carrier battle group only might be considered an act of war?

 

[Golden1Knight]

Yeah, no offense but war in this region is somewhat common since antiquity. Egypt vs Hittites, greeks vs persians, ptolemaic egypt vs seleukids, romans vs sassanids, the crusades, etc..

 

[North King]

That doesn't mean a lot, really. You could say that of pretty much every region that's been ruled by states since antiquity.

 

[DC123456789]

Isn't that kind of because it's at the crossroads of three continents with all the different civilizations and states that have sprung up there, all trying to establish its own hegemony?

 

[Golden1Knight]

There is the religion issue too.

 

[Symphony D.]

Playing through the old Front Mission games now when I am much older and I must admit I am slightly baffled by JRPG logic. (crappy character behaviour aside) Launching a major attack on another nation with a carrier battle group only might be considered an act of war?

Belarus supreme developer of genetic engineered soldier!

 

[erez87]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-evIyrrjTTY

Pretty much describes the situation perfectly...

 

[Kozmos]

Belarus supreme developer of genetic engineered soldier!

Belarus produces superior Numbers to the rest of the world! Is part of anthem! Well it is 2112, a lot can happen in...98 years.

Spoiler :

Child abandonment becomes fun!

 

[Symphony D.]

Link to video.

It's clearly a broth.

 

[Wrymouth3]

I will stop drinking from my delcious Jamba Juice Razzmatazz smoothie to tell all of you that all of the answers to life are within this, or a meal from Zaxby's.

 

[Symphony D.]

John McCain : Vladimir Putin
Cliven Bundy : Igor Girkin
Mike Huckabee : Ayman al-Zawahiri

If there was only one faith, and only one nation, these people would all be equivalent. The only thing separating them are these distinctions, these Aristotelian categories. It is only the vagaries of geography and culture that have determined their loyalties.

 

[Symphony D.]

This article makes me laugh.

Therefore, the Chinese position is as follows: The United States ostensibly tries to maintain the postwar order, but actually intends to make strategic amendments to the regional status quo in order to ensure its continued hegemony. China, though often viewed as a potential challenger or even a threat to the regional order, is actually trying to defend the postwar regional order, particularly with regard to the role of Japan.

1. Duh. 2. lol.

Like, okay. The JSDF was established in more or less its present form in 1954. That basically totally contravenes Article 9, which has been something of a PR sham ever since. The Heer was established in 1955. In other words, the postwar order militarily stopped existing by 1955, directly in response to the realities of the Cold War. Most other elements of the postwar order collapsed in bits in pieces thereafter, like Bretton Woods ending in 1971. The fact that the PRC sits on the UNSC, instead of the RoC, is itself a direct rejection of the postwar order! (When Helmut Kohl was reunifying Germany by buying off the USSR with 55 billion deutschmarks and maybe sacrificed the deutschmark for French support, Thatcher staunchly opposed it and wanted to keep Soviet troops in East Germany! Kohl was trying to upend the postwar order and Thatcher preserve it! Which was in the right?)

By 1991, no element of the postwar international order really remained other than American dominance and the continued existence of the Western Allies under the banner of NATO and some token limits on German and Japanese militaries really only kept in place by a lack of need and popular disinterest. Realistically, the postwar order stopped existing 60 years ago, even regionally in East Asia. So, what, China actually believes that in a world with at least 8,000 years of recorded history, when Japan was "forever" banned from war, it actually really did mean forever? (Particularly when its own aggressiveness is what's driving the remilitarization effort?)

What a joke. No sense of irony at all. (Particularly when it's pretty clear that outside forces compelling a nation to exist in a "non-normal" status clearly leads to resentment and national psychoses, see also: the PRC itself and its intense nationalist fixation on righting the "Century of Humiliation;" gee, what harm could come from trying to forcibly demilitarize a country forever?)

 

[Symphony D.]

Russia is probably violating the 1987 Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces Treaty and basically a state sponsor of terrorism now. Putin's working hard to earn that Cold War II Time cover.

"What you call a leader," says Rudolph "Noun+Verb+9/11" Giuliani.
"One of us," says Pat "I'm Such a Fossil I Call Myself Paleoconservative" Buchanan.
Other conservative luminaries such as Mitt Romney and Sarah Palin were less sanguine, more or less resorting to pointing furiously and mouthing "I told you so."

 

[ChiefDesigner]

Putin's working hard to earn that Cold War II Time cover.

Yeah, remember how we used to fear Red science?

Given that in the '90s, all those Red scientists picked up and took teaching positions in the West, this Cold War is going to be much shorter than the last one.

I mean, come on, we're not talking about partisans in Germany or Italy; we're talking about the frakking Ukraine committing to the European project

 

[Symphony D.]

Given that in the '90s, all those Red scientists picked up and took teaching positions in the West, this Cold War is going to be much shorter than the last one.

You don't follow this thread very hard if you thought I was at all anything but condescendingly sarcastic in the remark you quoted.

 

[Kozmos]

Well that's an odd agreement. Isn't the intermediate range the expected next step in cruise missile development? I mean, the capability has to be there anyway nowadays.

Sponsoring state terrorism is a big boy activity. Is Russia ready to become a man again?

 

[Symphony D.]

You can park more cruise missiles on land than you can on a ship or on a plane. Witness the 1,500 or so ballistic and cruise missiles that the PRC has parked opposite the strait from Taiwan. Only 276 Pershing IIs and 443 GLCMs were built, but they each had 5-80kt and 10-50kt dial-a-yield warheads. Imagine if things had gone unchecked and there were thousands of them. The Soviets did.

Between them, GLCM and Pershing II made a lethal combination. GLCM missiles could be launched, undetected, followed 2 hours later by a Pershing strike, which would fly so quickly that it was possible no response could be made before the Pershings struck. Aside from presenting an course of action to NATO commanders in the event of war, it put the Kremlin leaders (in range of the GLCM and possibly the Pershing, even in Moscow) in a position of fearing a decapitating NATO first strike, which could have moved them toward a launch on warning policy as the only way to maintain deterrence.5 However, the USSR did have submarine-launched missiles (i.e. Golf and Hotel class SSBNs armed with R-27 Zyb and SS-N-5s) available during this time, so any fears of a decapitating first strike were not necessarily justified.[1]

Despite initial fears of greater instability, the deployment of GLCM ultimately caused Soviet leaders to enter into negotiations for, and finally signature of, the INF treaty. The recognition by Soviet leaders of the threat posed by the GLCM and Pershing II missiles made them far more inclined to agree to negotiate their own intermediate-range weapons, especially the SS-20, out of service, in exchange for the elimination of the threat posed by the GLCM and the Pershing II.6

Pushing the SS-20 was sort of stupid because it could only target Europe whereas any equivalent US weapon could hit the USSR directly, which is why it was ultimately a losing proposition (you think they'd have learned from the Cuban Missile Crisis). Anyway, anything you can fit a meaningful warhead onto, you can probably fit a nuclear warhead onto. And mass-producing those is bad news because they're not big, slow, and easily monitored like strategic weapons, which is why they were banned, and breaking the ban is a big (though not huge) deal.

 

[Daftpanzer]

Ever wonder why Russia is even that big a deal with such a small population?? 1/2 of the USA alone and 1/4 of Europe.

 

[Crezth]

Ever wonder why Israel is even that big a deal with such a small population??

 

[Symphony D.]

Ever wonder why Russia is even that big a deal with such a small population?? 1/2 of the USA alone and 1/4 of Europe.

8,500 nuclear weapons, #3 oil producer, #6 economy, #9 population. A paper tiger, but one that can't be written off.

One might also ask why "If collectively the EU is the biggest market in the world and has the third largest population, why is it completely useless at anything that matters?" I always wondered what happened to the European Rapid Reaction Force idea and apparently they approved the creation of "Synchronised Armed Forces Europe" (SAFE) in 2009 and... have done absolutely nothing with it of note since.