Replies

Ukraine ping

Desert Rhino: [Call your flying monkeys Chinaman. I don’t care. But you are a loon if you think we can openly conduct airstrikes -inside- Russia and the Russians would never DARE hit us back. Hate to break it to you, but the pressure Putin faces domestically is that he is being too weak.
After the Russians got nukes, it became a near religious article of faith over there that Russia would never again face war on their own soil, as it has so many times from Europe, without the attackers being wiped out at that moment.

They think the days of Napoleon, the Crimean War, the US/Brit intervention in the Russian Civil War, WWI, WWII were finally in the “never again” zone because the attacker would not remain safe and untouched in their homelands ever again. Its’ a deeply held matter of doctrine.

Your whole argument is “they wouldn’t dare, even if we bomb them inside Russia”. So call all of your government Uke shill bots. Don’t care a bit. But I am glad to know you disliked what I said.

Flak.... Target.]

First off, I’m not Chinese. Not that there’s anything wrong with being Chinese, of course. I’ve been described as a genocidal Sinophobe, but I’m not that either. What I am is a longtime China watcher - hence the handle, which refers to a Chinese historical figure around the time of a tumultuous era of the Roman empire.

This ping list is meant to share insights and solicit occasional commentary. I don’t labor under the illusion that this is changing minds. This is basically a bull session on steroids. We have all strong views and most of the people on my ping list don’t agree with me.

As to the rest, you’ve expressed all kinds of violent hostility towards multiple domestic political figures. There are literally hundreds of thousands of people like you. And yet the people you talk about remain unharmed. The analogy to Putin being deterred from a nuclear first strike is simple. Someone could go after a domestic political figure and no one would go after his family. Whereas if Putin nuked the West, his family would be annihilated in a retaliatory nuclear strike. You may hope that Putin will nuke the US to fulfill your desire that the nation be punished for its sins. Putin, however, is deterred by the fear of death as well as the prospect of his entire nation dying with him. That’s a heavy burden. The same burden has prevented other Russian leaders from using nukes to achieve their territorial or other goals.