True. But NATO membership requires we have them. Clearly there's a loophole that doesn't require them to actually work.
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Originally posted by Lang Spoon View PostAs the Arctic melts away, Canada, US, Denmark and eh Russia are all going to have competing claims on territory/shipping lanes. Having working defensive weapons might be an idea.
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I think "thousands of miles of uninhabited and uninhabitable soggy melting permafrost that becomes impassably and impossibly cold in winter" is probably a workable defensive strategy that most countries would be OK with.
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Yeah. The only country that's conceivably a threat is to the south. And they could pretty much take us in long weekend if they felt like it, but why would they? They can pretty much have what they want and we'd just be a pain in the arse to manage.
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Right on cue.
Being that the United States or Continental Army has a perfect record of invading the North, I would hope we never cross that line.
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Originally posted by Lang Spoon View PostYeah, they aren't going to be the winners in that fight.
That thing about Canada only having a small proportion of their tanks being ready for use, is what most armies are like in practice. Being ready for war at a moments notice is an expensive business and only a country as rich as Denmark can afford that sort of thing.
I don't know just how enthusiastic russia would be about getting into a dispute with denmark. Particularly when they get their f 35s to go with the rest of their cutting edge equipment. No one is going to ever try anything on with them, so the situation isn't going to arise yes the russians could get troops up to the Arctic, but the danes would be guaranteed to have brought shoes and food, and you couldn't guarantee that of the russian army.
It's a similar story with Finland. The Finns spent a very long time treading a fine line between East and west, but the flip side of being worried about Russia invading, is making russia worried about invading, and the Soviets would sooner have taken their chances with west Germany than the Finns before the end of the cold War. A conventional invasion of Finland would have been a horrifically bloody and messy affair.
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Originally posted by The Awesome Berbaslug!!! View PostA [Russian] conventional invasion of Finland would have been a horrifically bloody and messy affair.
Nobody deludes themselves that we could defeat Russia in a straight fight, we can't and they can grind us through sheer numbers in the manner they're currently trying in Ukraine. What we can do, however, is carry the threat of such heavy casualties to the Russians that it removes their wanting to invade us.
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Seymour Hersh
Last June, the Navy divers, operating under the cover of a widely publicized mid-summer NATO exercise known as BALTOPS 22, planted the remotely triggered explosives that, three months later, destroyed three of the four Nord Stream pipelines, according to a source with direct knowledge of the operational planning.
Two of the pipelines, which were known collectively as Nord Stream 1, had been providing Germany and much of Western Europe with cheap Russian natural gas for more than a decade. A second pair of pipelines, called Nord Stream 2, had been built but were not yet operational. Now, with Russian troops massing on the Ukrainian border and the bloodiest war in Europe since 1945 looming, President Joseph Biden saw the pipelines as a vehicle for Vladimir Putin to weaponize natural gas for his political and territorial ambitions.
Asked for comment, Adrienne Watson, a White House spokesperson, said in an email, “This is false and complete fiction.” Tammy Thorp, a spokesperson for the Central Intelligence Agency, similarly wrote: “This claim is completely and utterly false.”
Biden’s decision to sabotage the pipelines came after more than nine months of highly secret back and forth debate inside Washington’s national security community about how to best achieve that goal. For much of that time, the issue was not whether to do the mission, but how to get it done with no overt clue as to who was responsible.
There was a vital bureaucratic reason for relying on the graduates of the center’s hardcore diving school in Panama City. The divers were Navy only, and not members of America’s Special Operations Command, whose covert operations must be reported to Congress and briefed in advance to the Senate and House leadership—the so-called Gang of Eight. The Biden Administration was doing everything possible to avoid leaks as the planning took place late in 2021 and into the first months of 2022.
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Originally posted by Lang Spoon View PostAfter the shit Hersh has pulled over Syria, I'm.... unconvinced.
It doesn't alter the fact that his sources, and his record, on several other cases from My Lai to Abu Ghraib have been pretty good.
The narrative makes sense to me. It certainly never seemed to add up that Russia blew up their own pipeline.
But then I've read the piece. Have you?Last edited by Nefertiti2; 08-02-2023, 19:03.
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I would be massively surprised if anyone other than Russia blew that pipeline up.
As arrogant as the US can be I can't believe they would take that kind of action in EU territory without prior consultation. Maybe under Trump, but not otherwise.
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Originally posted by Nefertiti2 View Post
I've no idea what did or didn't happen in Syria- and I expect neither have you.
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Originally posted by Sean of the Shed View PostI would be massively surprised if anyone other than Russia blew that pipeline up.
As arrogant as the US can be I can't believe they would take that kind of action in EU territory without prior consultation. Maybe under Trump, but not otherwise.
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Originally posted by Lang Spoon View Post
oh come on, that's utter shit. You might as well start the Clare Daly shit about white helmets or Bellingcat. There's plenty of verifiable fucking evidence out there about what happened in Syria.
Do I believe the US or MI6 is capabla fabricating a story like that. Also yes
Is Bellingcat funded by MI6. Indubitably
Have I ever read anything by Calre Daly. no.
Do I think the US sabotaqed Nordstream ?- on the basis of Cui Bono it seems most likely.
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see eg the hints dropped in other papers Times and NYT this week
https://twitter.com/SolHughesWriter/status/1623391082678558720?s=20&t=xIui2QEaucsi8kq1bcC6-g
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