What's the biggest warning sign to you?

I live in Washington, so I get to die before I know for sure that the world is ending. Yay!

You can rest, JECE, I think that at a maximum we are Talking about bombings of Ukraine here. I really hope that we will Never her there though. I think that the decision-making echelons realise both the danger and the uselessness of sich action.

https://m.lenta.ru/articles/2022/10/06/stefanovich/

It really just shows what Putin can be when he is desperate. He isn't stupid (but in some ways he is) and he is going to try to regain the territory he has partial control of atm. We've seen threats of the nuclear tsunami. Personally, I do not believe he is that mad to send off nukes. Einstein really messed us up here.

Has anyone ever seen the Soviet war plans for fighting in Europe during the 1970s and 1980s? It is really bonkers and actively involved the tactical use of nuclear weapons. Nukes were to be used much as MacArthur wanted to use them in Korea to seal off a battle theater to achieve localized tactical superiority.

It is all well and good but I think Russians have more cause to be scared of the US than the US and Europe do to be scared of Russia. I mean, what power decides to nuke 2 Japanese cities with children, women, men just going about their day? That is a whole new level of messed up. The British Empire was undoubtedly the best to live under followed by the French, etc. One Empire I would be the most scared to live under if it existed at that time would be the US. There is a story that I heard recently that took place in New Zealand during WW2. American soldiers were stationed there in a capital building (I cannot remember the name), but anyways, they tried to enforce segregation between between the Maori soldiers fighting and the British Empire soldiers from New Zealand. Let us just say that they both fought back with 2 Americans dead and many injured. At the end of the day, Europe is just caught between the US and Russia. In a crossfire zone.

Lord Saviour, would you please remind the forum which allied country was it that pushed the United States to give up daylight precision bombing in favor of nighttime area bombing against civilian populations? There is some quote about Germany sowing the wind and reaping the whirlwind, if I recall.

@Lord Saviour....you are living under the US Empire right now and have been your entire life.

@Schlieffen Both Germany and Britain did it to eachother. Japan didn't nuke the US. It is tit for tat. The US's bombings were overkill.

Gopher, not sure about that tbh. But I am not gonna argue. I don't know if I can be bothered as I am busy atm. I am not going to win.

The UK bombing Germany and the US bombing Japan has nothing to do with tit for tat. It was about destroying the capability of the other nation to wage war--a war Germany and Japan started.

@Lord Saviour....The Japanese had several days between the two atomic bomb drops. The Japanese leadership actively decided to continue the war after the first one. I will confidently assert that that disproves the possibility of it being overkill. American soldiers faced no moral or ethical obligation to die so as to reduce Japanese casualties, and even there a strong argument exists that more Japanese would have died during an invasion. Additionally, more Japanese died during the fire bombing of Tokyo than from the two atomic bombs.

I wouldn't be proud of the firebombing either.

Would you be proud of Sherman's March to the Sea?

Would a purely conventional conquest of Japan, with millions of Japanese casualties, both civilian and military, and a big chunk of the country under Soviet occupation, have been preferable?

The bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki arguably saved a million lives.

Back to Putin, I think stories like that of Stanislav Petrov are probably a good indicator that of all the nukes we and the Russians think we have, a small percentage would actually reach their targets or get fired at all. Malfunctions combined with human error or consciences would likely keep the death toll to less than we imagine it would be. The question is how many nuclear explosions in major population centers before the planet becomes unlivable and we all die a slow death.

@Schlieffen, I do not understand the point. Are you defending Nagasaki and Hiroshima because Japan and Germany started the war? Japan's bomings had nothong to do with destroying capabilty to enact war. It was a fear mongering tactic. Designed to pressure the Japanese into surrendering seeing the power of the US. It was not for Japan to say "oh, we haven't got as many workers, time to surrender"

I just can't see why you would try to defend the borderline genocide of two cities...

This is a fun thread...

Oftentimes, difficult ethical questions like this arise because of mistakes made earlier. Would anybody like to open a debate about the relative lack of allied intervention in the early days of the Sino-Japanese war instead?

Even at a time of war. I am proud of my country (England). But I can even aknowledge when something is wrong. I am not blinded to it.

@ ChristinaFeggy, yes, I would like to talk about that.

I agree it saved lives but I don't agree that bombing 2 cities full of innocents is the right way to go about it.

It was probably the best of bad options - a conventional invasion, as mentioned would have been atrocious, and a split Japan could not possibly be better than the unified post-war Japan we know. Perhaps a case could be made that targeting civilians is that much morally worse than killing the much larger number of soldiers that would have perished, but for me, it's hard to justify a course of action that would lead to a worse result over the long term.

I've heard many conflicting reports over the time in between the two bombings--iirc there was some weird stuff going on in the Japanese high command. I suspect that the second bombing was a bit too early to be fully justified though

Bonatogether, I agree and you could not have said it better. I agree that in the long term it was right but regardless of intention I was just mentioning the bombings themselves.

If you admit that my position on this issue is correct, I will support you into Belgium. This is my final offer!

Feggy, that 2nd was too early tbh.

I am expecring Belgium : )

No problem, ordering Smy S NTH-Bel right now!

I blame the Japanese. If they have just been more foresighted, less institutionally dysfunctional and more self-assured, they would have had Semyonov tear up 100 miles or so of the railroad tracks in the retreat from Omsk in late 1919. The Bolsheviks were probably a decade away from being able to manufacture a 100 miles of railway ties, getting them logistically deployed to the middle of Siberia and organizing labor gangs to rebuilt the line. With 70,000 Japanese soldiers in Siberia and control of a secure railway line to the Pacific, they could have made Semyonov's Buryat Kingdom a sustainable reality as a Manchukuo-style client state along with the Bagd Khan's new Mongolia. Given a decade to prepare for the Red Army being able to seriously project power, my money would be on the Japanese to hold their new territories.

That would have provided the Empire of Japan with nearly unlimited natural resources and endless vistas to absorb their sociological nervous energies of adolescence and expanding population. The Japanese probably would have still carved off Manchuria as a logistical necessity but other than that they would have had enough to keep them busy for at least half a century. Plus the course of Soviet History would have been massively altered. It is fashionable at the moment to speak gravely of the Holodomor, but the Bolsheviks basically stripped the farms bare in Siberia and left multitudes to starve in order to keep their urban power bases from starving in 1919 and 1920. The existence of a Japanese protectorate under Semyonov's Buryat banner would have likely drawn a massive exodus to the East instead of the Green Army rebellions (at least in western Siberia).