Originally Posted by fdr (Post 11308100)

Russia's nuclear arsenal is presume to be equal in care to it's other military assets, so that makes the assumption that they can actually get a low fall out outcome as being improbable.
Dropping a nuke for demo in the Black Sea or on Ukraine will be a repudiation of wanting to be part of civilization henceforth. In economic terms, that leaves Russia with the trading partner of North Korea, and that is going to be their road to prosperity?

Does anyone think that secondary sanctions by all other than North Korea would arise from the use of a TNW by Russia in any form?

In the meantime, Ukraine is just the start of the headaches for Putin. Putin has achieved the destruction of the Russian armed forces to an extent that NATO could only have dreamed of. Their military now is inadequate to maintain a stable 'stable" of client states around their border. It is incongruous that their rapacious criminal attack on Ukraine is leading to the de-stabilizing of many of the other countries that have been held within their grip by the perception of force from Russia. Their hypocrisy in conscripting from minority states and from press-ganged victims of their invasion (that being contrary to the Geneva Convention) further weakens their legitimacy for a say in the republics beyond that achieved by force alone. The demographics, Russia is accelerating the collapse of their military and their economy by making their greatest export in metric tonnage being Russian men aged 18 to 65. Their upside down demographics was already a slow motion train wreck, but Putin just rammed the throttle wide open for that. What is interesting is what happens in the future where Russia claims hegemony based on the fact that a Russian speaker running away from Putin and his evil empire, ends up in Jamaica, and Putin pushes for another referendum to make Jamaica a Russian state, to preserve Russian speaking people.... and to defeat the [add invective description of your choice] perfidious locals.

Any nuclear release will change the history of mankind, and not in a good way for Russia. Putin will get his immortality, he will be appreciated as much as Pol Pot and Hitler.

Turkey and Greece would not sit back idly and consider a detonation in their backyard to be other than an existential threat, which is what the reason for the release is. It is an explicit threat, not by accident, and any response other than a global response to remove Russia from their current position seems to be inappropriate; invasion of a sovereign state in contravention of countless treaties and conventions, and against international laws and standards of behavior. A TNW release will unite nations against Russia, and will elicit at the very least a conventional use of force to remove Russia and their residual arms from Ukraine, "Ukraine" including Donbas and Crimea.

To not respond with a single voice is to invite the next short stature sociopath that has delusions of strategy beyond his (or her) competency.

If we have to suffer images of bare chested horse riding megalomaniacs, please can we have a woman next time as the resident sociopath? :}

Originally Posted by AndySmith (Post 11308079)

This is the one they recovered from the sea.

Originally Posted by Bksmithca (Post 11308153)

Do you have anything that supports this? Would the missiles stay on after being dragged thru the ocean for several mile?

Originally Posted by Big Pistons Forever (Post 11308161)

Putin may be evil but I don’t think he is stupid. He floated the nuke issue to see what the response will be. It sounds like he got his answer and not in a way good for him so the real question is how does he up the ante without risking an overwhelming response that will be unrecoverable by Russia.

I think the sabotage of the Nordstream pipe line is a signal of his intent to go after European energy infrastructure. There is lots of room for mischief with wink wink nudge nudge deniability.

If he can get the EU to crack he thinks he can leverage imposed negotiations on Ukraine with terms favourable to him…..

Originally Posted by GlobalNav (Post 11308168)

He’s not stupid, but he is foolish and operates with a self-created and false version of reality. He’s not insane and insanity will be no defense for the evil, heartless, atrocities he has committed. He is is immoral, has no respect for the lives and happiness of others. Whether he is bluffing about the nuclear option is hard to say, but I doubt he has any moral inhibitions about it. What he did with the gas lines he is just as capable of any evil act. We are foolish for trying to explain it, when we should be putting an end to it. The caution and timidity of inaction with which the west responded to the Crimean episode now has led to the death and destruction we have seen this year in Ukraine.

Originally Posted by Bksmithca (Post 11308153)

Do you have anything that supports this? Would the missiles stay on after being dragged thru the ocean for several mile?

Originally Posted by Big Pistons Forever (Post 11308161)

Putin may be evil but I don’t think he is stupid. He floated the nuke issue to see what the response will be.

Originally Posted by GlobalNav (Post 11308168)

Whether he is bluffing about the nuclear option is hard to say ... .

Originally Posted by NutLoose (Post 11308255)

I would say it goes back further, the response to Georgia that had set its goals on joining NATO and was partaking in peace keeping with us all set the ball rolling that resulted in Crimea.

Originally Posted by Addlepate (Post 11308288)

White House quoted yesterday as saying they haven't seen any reason to change their nuclear stance. Mind you, that could also be bluff or optics.

Originally Posted by dead_pan (Post 11308295)

Given their first round response is likely to be conventional, its noteworthy there hasn't been any noticeable stepping up of the US's conventional forces in Europe. It doesn't appear they have the forces in place here to conduct anything more than a token strike somewhere. Unless of course it'll be more along the lines of Libya, with European states committing much of the firepower.

Originally Posted by Beamr (Post 11308299)

All the NATO countries have increased their fast deployment capabilities. In June NATO announced to increase the high readiness troops from 40000 to over 300000. Thats plenty more than what the Russians have had in Ukraine..

Originally Posted by dead_pan (Post 11308302)

I was thinking more about airpower. AFAIK there's not much in the way of forward deployments to the likes of Poland or Romania.

Originally Posted by peter we (Post 11308367)

F22 and F35 deployed in Poland at least