When is state on state conflict more likely to happen

[Phoney Tony]

A nation declares it believes state on state conflict is not likely and reduces it's arm forces.

Another state revives its armed forces a sees a shift in focus of super power away to the east.


Discuss.

[dagenham]

You are sun tzu and i claim my five pounds

[Wensleydale]

As has often been said - one judges a potential enemy by capability and not intention. Intention can change overnight.


Why am I reminded of the politics of the 1930s, when a nice chap who guaranteed peace decided that his German speaking peoples in Europe were in need of rescue and convinced the rest of the world that his forays into the Rhinelands, the Sudetenland, and Austria were not a threat to anyone's security. Even the start of war was caused by Hitler suspecting another "Western" climb down after he had liberated the Germanic League of Nations city of Danzig in Poland. This after lots of scrapping of armed forces in the previous few years etc. The "West" was following the policy of "Peace at Any Price" but thank God for Churchill and his ilk who argued (and won) policies for re-armament just before it was too late!

[FJJP]

Trouble is, then you could reasonably quickly generate a Spitfire factory and turn out dozens per day. Today, it takes a huge amount of time to build ONE Typhoon let alone a hundred. And then you could replace losses in aircraft and aircrew relatively quickly - how long does it take to train a Typhoon pilot? Oh, I also forgot, we don't have navigators any more...

You would no sooner complete the generation of the first Sqn when the hoards in their thousands roar over the horizon.

And what are you going to do to counter the submarine threat?

Anybody else see a problem developing with the slashing of the Forces at a time when Russia and China are building theirs?

FJJP

[Herod]

I think I see where this is going. The Ukrainians are regretting giving up their nukes. If they still had them, would this disaster in Crimea be happening?

[pr00ne]

What hoards in their thousands roaring over what horizon and for what purpose?
Putin isn't even doing anything of the kind to the Crimea, not that he has thousands to do it with anyway.

One inevitable consequence of all this is going to be irreparable damage to nuclear proliferation control. As Herod rightly points out, would Putin be doing ANY of this if the Ukraine still had a strategic nuclear deterrent?

A lot of people will be looking at all of this and realising that fleets of frigates and destroyers, regiments of tanks and squadrons of shiny jet fighters mean diddly squat compared to just one or two deliverable buckets of instant sunshine.

Shame.

[racedo]

When one side feels it has a substantial advantage either in numerical superiority or technological advancement that it believes other side can't or won't counter.

Remember reading of China-Russia border conflict where China felt grabbing a bit of territory and Russia wouldn't react.

Russia brought up Artillery and bombed the hell out of the area on Chinese side that made whole area a wasteland and made clear it had no intentions of stopping.

China realised it had overstepped the mark and that Russia was not going to play ball.

[Hangarshuffle]

When riches and opportunity beckon. Dress it up with a flag and an accent and some history.

[Gordon Brown]

Tony, Tony, Tony,

Two things:

Anybody who ends the post with, "Dicsuss" is a little suspect.

At the risk of being a grammar / punctuation Nazi, please lose the apostrophe.

Third thing (!)

WTF are you on about?

[Phoney Tony]

Gordon,

Why suspect?

I only went to school for the free school dinners.

Others appear to understand.

[Laarbruch72]

No Tony, I agree with Gordon, "Discuss" is usually suspect, and often lazy. And hey presto, there are many existing threads on the Russia / Ukraine Crimea scenario. No need for a new one really.