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The Moscow Raid & trends in the long-range warMay 24th, 2026 |
 12 comments to The Moscow Raid & trends in the long-range warLeave a Reply |
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I wonder if a country like Iran had the sheer willpower not to flatten the enemy to smithereens with some big bombs but instead opted to dick around years on end.
China made it very clear nukes are not acceptable, and if you think what China thinks doesn’t matter to Russia, you would be mistaken.
Plus even nuking Kyiv would not necessarily end the war
Seems to me the war will be decided by seeing what gives way first – the Ukrainian front line or the Russian economy. Right now it looks like the Russian economy will fold first.
Nuclear powers don’t lose…no matter what anyone thinks.
That’s the point of having them. Israel will never “lose”…neither will Russia.
More importantly than attacks on Moscow (which are political gestures – just as the Russian attacks on Kiev are political gestures) – the Ukrainians are attacking supply roads in the south, which is causing serious logistical problems for the Russian forces in that area. There are lots of burned out trucks on the roads.
Russian forces are still advancing in other areas – but in the south they are in trouble, for example Kharkiv is on higher ground than the Russians on the other side of the river, and Kharkiv has many high rise buildings – Russian forces (on the lower ground in the settlement on the other side of the river) can not move without being seen and attacked by drones. Logically Russian forces should be pulled back – but Mr Putin will not allow that.
Trucks are important, because logistics (supply ammunition and other supplies – and men) is important, for example the Red Army would have been crushed by the Germans had it not been for vast numbers of American (and Canadian) trucks to move both supplies and men.
American (and Canadian) spares for Red Army tanks were also vital.
Mr Putin may be a victim of many decades of Soviet propaganda – which pounded into the heads of people that the Red Army “won the war” and pretended that supplies from the West were of little importance – when they were really of vital importance.
As was once explained to me – “but the factories beyond the Urals were indeed key – after all the world is round, and so factories in Detroit and so on, are beyond-the-Urals”.
Of course to people getting on in years Kharkiv is Kharkov – but it has been a Ukrainian majority city since the 1930s (unlike the Crimea which has never had a Ukrainian majority), and Ukrainian nationalism (not a big movement before the First World War) has massively grown due to the savage treatment of Ukrainians by the Soviet Marxists.
It is true that the Soviet Marxists murdered millions of other people as well, including millions of Russians, but saying “forget about the mass murder of Ukrainians, because the Soviets, whom Mr Putin admires – statues of Lenin are still up, murdered millions of other people as well” is not a strong argument.
Had a clean break with the Soviet past been made, things might be different – but a clean break was not made. Indeed some of the first things that Mr Putin did on coming to power in 2000 (some 26 years ago now) were to scrap the plans to move to trial by jury (which had existed before the First World War – as it also did in Germany before the First World War) and to scrap the plans to move to an all volunteer professional army.
My two best chums from Ukraine are from Dnipro & Kharkiv respectively, both extensively Russian speaking areas. They grew up speaking Russian for the most part and spoke Russian to each other even though they are both fluent in Ukrainian. And like many Ukrainians, such is their transcendental loathing of all things Russia post 2014, they no longer speak Russian at all, not even to each other in private.
Who lost a war in Afghanistan? Nuclear USA and the nuclear Soviet Union. Who lost a war with Communist Vietnam war? Nuclear USA and (debatably) nuclear China.
No. The point of having nuclear weapons is to not get nuked by other nuclear powers & (in reality) that seat on the UN security council.
What Old Jack Tar said, with one qualification:
Nuclear powers can lose wars fought abroad, but nobody has yet tried to invade any nuclear power.
Except for the Falklands.
Perry – yes wicked deeds are often resented.
Mr Putin has made free will decisions (he has moral agency – he could have decided to do other than he did), and there are consequences for all Russians from his free will decisions.
The argument of (for example) Dr Martin Luther that humans can not decide do anything morally good, that they, by their nature, always do evil (unless God acts to make humans do good things), unintentionally makes God the author of sin – as, as Dr Luther accepted, God created humans – and, therefore, created their nature. “The Bondage of the Will”, in effect (although unintentionally) turns God into Satan.
Mr Putin, and others, are morally to blame – because they made a free will choice, they could have chosen other than they did.
And saying that incompatible concepts are “compatible” does not make them so – Kant and William James were not wrong about everything. and when they said that Compatibilism was a “wretched subterfuge”, “word jugglery”, “stealing the name of freedom to work their underlying deception” in a “quagmire of evasion”, they were using harsh language – but expressing a correct position (although one the late 19th century William James choose to ignore when he wrote his Harvard work on psychology in which he makes a determinist assumption – an error not made in the works on psychology written only a few years before by Noah Porter of Yale and James McCosh of Princeton – works that William James does not refute – he just ignores them, and all other non-determinist works on psychology from Ralph Cudworth to his own time).
To cut a long story short – yes Mr Putin was brought up in the Soviet Union, but he could have chosen to reject its evils – he has free will (he is a person – not just piece of material, he has freedom in the moral sense – not “freedom” in the sense of water when a damn is blown up) and, therefore, is morally responsible for his terrible actions.
Which is why he should be executed.
Old Jack Tar – it is not “arguably” that the People’s Republic of China lost in 1978, it was a defeat – and led to a fundamental rethinking of Chinese military doctrine. A move, over decades, away from human waves – to a more technological force (for example the vast number of missiles and drones now pointing at Taiwan – which make the Taiwan strait a death-trap).
And NO the United States did not lose a war in Vietnam – the Republic of Vietnam fell years AFTER American forces (apart from embassy guards) had left Vietnam – although (YES) victory was strictly forbidden by Washington during the 1960s, so there was a defeat – although of a political, not military, nature. In 1975 even the air support that had defeated the Easter Invasion of 1972 was denied to the Republic of Vietnam (Cambodia and Laos were also betrayed).
Some people would prefer the word “treason” to the words “political defeat” – but certainly there was no military defeat (at any point) of the American armed forces.
Certainly the American media and education system was very strongly on the side of the enemy – but the key problem was in Washington D.C. with their obsession a “political settlement” which was present from the start (hence victory being strictly forbidden – see Admiral Sharp “Strategy for Defeat”).
One does not (or rather should not) make deals with enemies – one kills them. This is not understood in Washington – which has a rather “Star Trek” view of war, with war being understood as being about getting a good deal.
Hence such treason as the betrayal of Chang in 1946 (the American demand that he call off the Manchurian offensive against the Communists).
The American media and education system were also very much on the side of domestic enemies – although there is no real distinction as the domestic enemies of the late 1960s and early 1970s had the same world-view, Marxism, as the external enemies – they were the same enemy, Marxism.
The riots and terrorism (there were many bombings and shootings – but the media were only interested in bombings and shootings that came from the right, even though most bombings and shootings came from the left) came AFTER the Civil Rights Act of 1964 – so there was no excuse for these actions – especially as they occurred in northern cities (NOT the formally Jim Crow south) – even the occupation of university offices (such as Cornell) by Communists armed with pistols and rifles got more support than condemnation – and the demands of the Communists were normally accepted, and opposition to them described as “racism” – it was much the same in 2020 after Mr Floyd killed himself with drugs he willingly consumed, and areas of cities were burned by organisations which were (and are) Marxist.
This is not some new thing – it has been true since at least the 1930s.
However, the American establishment is guilt ridden (guilt ridden about past racism and other such) and therefore is supportive of movements that wish to destroy the United States – failing to understand that their own comfortable life style would end if the United States is destroyed.
I am reminded of a leading “liberal” in Rhodesia (“Zimbabwe” whose daughter was raped on the orders of Mr Mugabe (who wished to make a point).
The “liberal” continued to support the regime – as, in his mind, it would have been “racist” not to do so. That it is racist to make the assumption that black men “have to” to commit such crimes – did not seem to occur to the “liberal”, in reality black people, like white people, have free will – they do not “have to” rape or murder – they can choose NOT to do so. They are people – persons.
So Mr Mugabe (a brutal, but also intelligent Marxist) had made his point – namely that white “liberals” are (to use a Russian expression) “shit eaters” – who will eat any amount of shit they are presented with, even if everything falls apart around them and their family is raped, mutilated and murdered.