Originally Posted by
Lonewolf_50
I lived through and served in the cold war. My ASW warfare specialty was in part concerned with keeping an eye on and hoping to neutralize (or sink) submarines filled with nuclear weapons. The ever present threat of nuclear war was a daily concern as I grew up and grew into adulthood.
Not sure what is behind your shrill overreaction here. It's a threat, yes, and I not pleased that it was made. (I doubt many people are, to include some important people in Moscow who are not the president). Nothing extraordinary in governments making threats and talking big. Hell, Mr Kim in North Korea has been doing that on and off for years.
Then we were doing the same thing and probably doing it in the same types of aircraft.
Mr Kim isn't in a hot "special military operation" where his tanks are cooking off like frying pans, and where a considerable of his troops are declining to join in the party after the reception in the North of the country they were supposed to be liberating the natives didn't include throwing flowers at the incoming troops, it was Molotov cocktails, NLAWS, and 7.62's instead. F-Troop is slow on the uptake that the people in Ukraine didn't take kindly to being murdered and raped by uninvited F-Troops hordes.
You and I have never, since October 62 had a threatened risk that is as clear and present as it is today, with a despot who is isolated from his own cabinet by a 40' table sits brooding over the brilliance of attacking in February, and of attacking at all.
The UN is a worthless waste of money, usually. If it is going to earn it's keep, then this is one of those times that it can achieve what it was put together to do. If they don't and we all get through this, you included, without catastrophe, then they show they are irrelevant and utterly toothless. They are in fact worse than irrelevant if they do not follow their charter which is pretty bloody simple in scope. Getting the UN to do their job is at least an affirmative action to stopping F-Troop from acting unwisely. The UN has multiple means to remove Russia from the UNSC, either Art.108 of Art.92 and then by Art.5 & Art.6. [1] [2]
Shrill? maybe, but the last time the world got close to being turned into a brickette was on
26 September 1983. We were one rational person, Lt Col Stanislav Petrov [4] away from a mess, when the rational actor had to refuse to launch a massive counter-strike against a computer error.
The thousands of hours I sat overhead Deltas, Yankees, Victors and Alphas, etc, didn't have any of the immediacies of threat that exists today. NK is nowhere near the same level of danger, nor is Pakistan & India, Iran-Israel, or anywhere else on this planet.
Russia is a train wreck, and apparently, the lad in charge has anger management issues along with a distorted view on the history of his own country. Adult supervision is desirable.
There was expediency in putting Russia into the UNSC, which Williams [3] noted, also considering the Alma-Ata Protocol (Declaration) [5] as being the basis of the USA's push to accept Russia at that time. Their seat can be contested.
References:
[1] Charter of the United Nations, 26 June 1945, https://www.un.org/en/about-us/un-charter/full-text
[2] THE MEANING OF "STATES" IN THE MEMBERSHIP PROVISIONS OF THE UNITED NATIONS CHARTER, Chen, F.T., (2001)
IND. INT'L & COMP. L. REv. Vol 12.1,
[3] Williams Paul R., The Treaty Obligations of the Successor States of the Former Soviet Union, Yugoslavia, and Czechoslovakia: Do They Continue in Force, 23
Denv. J. Int'l L. & Pol'y 1 (1994).
[4]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1983_S...alarm_incident
[5]
"THE ALMA-ATA DECLARATION". Federal Research Division / Country Studies / Area Handbook Series / Belarus / Appendix C. Library of Congress. Archived from the original on 2001-01-22.