- US officials are considering letting Ukraine strike Russia with US weapons, The New York Times reports.
- Ukraine says it’s necessary to fight cross-border attacks.
- But fears of crossing Russia’s red lines have long made the US hesitate.
The US has barred Ukraine from striking targets in Russian territory with its arsenal of US weapons.
But that may be about to change. The New York Times on Thursday reported that US officials were debating rolling back the rule, which Ukraine has argued severely hampers its ability to defend itself.
The proposed U-turn came after Russia placed weapons across the border from northeastern Ukraine and directed them at Kharkiv, the Times reported, noting that Ukraine would be able to use only non-American drones to hit back.
The Times reported that the proposal was still being debated and had yet to be formally proposed to President Joe Biden.
Fuck Putin. Send Ukraine the big shit and let them end the war and put Putin’s bullshit to an end.
Russia has nukes. We can’t do that
Can’t get nuked if it’s a hypothetical and you’re on a keyboard!
You know, somebody in Ukraine is bound to be taking volunteers if you’re all so committed to taking down Putin. (Not you OP)
Actually, we can and should. Here’s why…
Russia’s nukes are mostly 40 year old warheads on 50 year old delivery systems. These systems have been maintained by notorious black market scalpers who have somehow managed to sell massive amounts of valuable rocket fuels, nav computers and other unique parts on the black market over the last several decades. We can be sure the launch, guidance and detonation failure rates would be extremely high. High enough that, even without intervention, a long-range attack is very unlikely to be successful.
Now, factor in the decades of aggressive research and spending the west has focused on mitigating nuclear threats, with a high focus on Russian systems. While it’s always best to avoid the attempt if possible, Russia has almost zero chance of posing a serious threat to the west. The threat to Ukraine, however, is a bit higher as they may (smartly) choose very simple delivery methods instead of what we would be able to defend against. But, that still requires a ton to go right and could cause the U.S. or the EU to become aggressive. Putin will do almost anything to avoid that outcome.
So, the smart money on expediting the end to this war and minimizing casualties is to have a policy to almost always call Putin’s bluff. He has a very weak hand and has shown it to pretty much everyone at the table.
Y’all are gonna get us all killed.
Nah, it’s part of the game, he’s just sending a healthy message that western governments also have their share of deluded drunken idiot medvedev equivalents, so only start nuking if you’re sure you have absolutely nothing to lose, because that’s what you’re going to end up with.
Robert Frost’s Fire and Ice but it’s about whether chuds will end the world through overt jingoism and aggression or libs though a lack of self-awareness of how jingoistic they are combined with intentionally deluding themselves about the state of the world.
Fucking Americans. Fucking post-communist Russia too (which is also America’s fault). We coulda had an enemy properly terrified of a nuclear exchange and committed to peaceful coexistence but noooo, we gotta open up those markets and now the omnicidal liberals want to risk destroying the world rather than give up a bit of land none of them could find on a map three years ago. Liberals are functionally indistinguishable from someone screaming “Blood for the blood god! Skulls for his skull throne!” except they know how to be all polite about it. A kinder, gentler global thermonuclear war.
Thank God the capitalists who rule this country don’t give a shit what their supporters think or all humanity would be dead in a week. Sure they’re bringing about the climate change apocalypse but at least that’s more delayed than a nuclear apocalypse and I guess that’s where the bar is these days.
Sorry I’m low-key drunkposting rn so I’m telling the truth more directly than usual.
If authoritarian dictators can do whatever they want via nuclear blackmail, we’re already all doomed anyway
The world will be split into two camps: countries with nukes or otherwise under some sort of nuclear umbrella, and countries who are desperately rapidly developing a nuclear program, the third group who doesn’t have nukes and isn’t rushing to develop them will have already been annexed by the first group
What we have here are people convincing themselves that nuclear war is either not a possibility at all, or a tolerable outcome. That’s a incredibly dangerous and delusional perspective.
There is a middle ground between “letting nuclear armed countries do whatever they want” and “completely disregarding any and all risks of escalation.” The entire postwar order of the past 70 years has been grounded on that. If those lunatics ever get anywhere near the levers of power, then they will provoke nuclear war, maybe not with this specifically (maybe), but if they’re taking that kind of cavalier and deluded approach in general, then it’s only a matter of time.
If you go all-in every hand, you will eventually bust.
Indeed.
Iraq (no nukes) - armies flattened and US-installed government running the show.
North Korea (nukes) - stern finger-wagging by Democrats and angry rhetoric followed by hand jobs from Trump.
Pakistan (got nukes violating treaties) - serious frowning by US until we needed them for our pointless “war on terror” in Afghanistan, then all was forgiven and forgotten.
Iran (desperately seeking nukes) - agreed to stop their efforts for a hot minute until Trump rolled the deal back, showing that US is an unreliable partner and not to be trusted.
Overall the message is clear: get nukes as fast as you can and you’ll be safe to torture and oppress your people. The west in general and the US in particular doesn’t have any real efforts to stop you (although watch your opsec and don’t use Israeli USB sticks you find lying around…).
1% success rate * 5,580
Still more nukes than I want to deal with today. Nobody off of Lemmy/Reddit seriously suggests this.
Russia also doesn’t and hasn’t had the money to maintain them.
I don’t think this particular policy would result in a nuclear war, but “they haven’t maintained their nuclear weapons” doesn’t sound to me like a good enough argument to not risk a nuclear exchange.
Even one successful weapon exploding would be catastrophic.
Why are we less concerned about provoking Putin than we are about provoking Netanyahu?
Putin is already irritated at us and there’s no advantage to preventing further irritation short of actually engaging in direct combat with NATO forces, and a general principle of not letting others control your escalation (We want to control when US weapons are used against Russia because it impacts our diplomatic stance, even if Ukraine is the one firing them).
There is advantage to us for Ukraine winning, particularly if it’s with our weapons and support. It reassures our allies, it drives interest in closer alliances with us, and generally reinforces the “aligning with the US brings trade, wealth, safety and protection” message we like to use to spread influence. See also: Finland and Sweden.Israel on the other hand is a historical ally in a region of significance and contested influence.
Israel’s genocidal actions against the Palestinians is unacceptable. Full stop.
From a political standpoint, the actions Hamas took that precipitated the current military campaign make it difficult to condemn the response without undermining the message that US allies get US support when they’re attacked. It’s why all the wording and messaging gets so verbose: how do you say “of course you can defend yourself and we’ll help” while also saying “maybe not the big guns, and stop with the civilian killings”.
If the region weren’t contested, weren’t important, we had significantly moreallies in the area, and it wasn’t important for domestic political reasons, it would be a different story.Lemmy users don’t understand nuance. “Israel bad” is all they understand.
That’s not what I was saying at all. I was legitimately asking the question. I hadn’t considered the foreign policy implications of Israel being an ally.
It’s good that you are willing to acknowledge that. A lot of people on here truly reject the concept that the situation is more complicated than “stop supporting Israel”. People are quick to spout that without thinking about the knock-on effects.
There are even people on here who are outright in support of Hamas, an oppressive Islamist group that has a far worse human rights record than Israel.
Thank you for providing some nuance. Ugh, this situation is so complicated. I do wonder, however, how much it’s worth that we have such strong values surrounding the way we support our allies if we are willing to countenance the evil things they do and still call them allies.
I’m unfortunately not sure how much of it’s “values” and how much is “utility”.
People have values, nations don’t. Nations only exemplify their national values because the citizens will be outraged if they’re breached too far. Otherwise a nations foreign policy is better looked at through a lens of detached utilitarianism.Usually our value of “supporting our friends” and the self image of being the hero (I think WW2 was America’s highschool football) lines up nicely with the utility it provides.
We get a lot of advantages out of our allies, not least of which is fat piles of sweet, sweet trade goods. We would never precondition military training exercises, intelligence sharing or sensitive service export regulation exemptions on getting a favorable trade deal on mangoes, but we do tend to reserve those things for our close allies, and trade agreements are a very efficient way to develop those bonds.
Waterway access lets us send our navy everywhere which massively reduces piracy, to the benefit of all, but to our benefit the most, as the leading consumer of oceanic transport goods.
A military base will get you very strong support, and furthers our security interests of global force projection.Israel is very useful to us. The give us a naval port in the Mediterranean, military staging areas, and a regional toehold that would otherwise be significantly weaker. We also, again, get a lot of trade value from their medical supplies and electronics, and we get to sell them a lot of services.
Combined with the previously mentioned points about signaling strong resolve and unwavering support if you’ve earned it, it would be very costly for us to abandon Israel.It’s why our politicians with constituents who care about human rights are trying very hard to walk the tightrope of supporting Israel against Hamas while opposing killing civilians. (The messaging is not going well).
The Palestinians, unfortunately, do not possess strategic value. Their “value” comes from internal political pressure to not allow or support evil, which is tempered by the opposing political view being to make the evil worse, which explains a relatively subdued response.With goods, sales, power, influence and PR worth tens of billions one one side, and internal political pressure towards an ethical stance that might endanger some fraction of that value on the other, it’s a question of how much value we stand to loose by listening to that pressure, and exactly how strong that pressure is.
Utility is when an action or tool moves you closer to what you value.
They aren’t opposites; they’re two components of the same mechanism.
Ding ding ding on all points but - it’s not ‘the end of history’ anymore, definitely not after 9/11 and GWOT.
There are headwinds coming for US and western leadership, and the unlimited ‘bear hug’ support for
BibiIsrael has America standing alone at the UN, a global hypocrite in the “rules based international order” whilst pointing the finger at Russia and Ukraine, or China and the11109 dash line/Taiwan/Senkaku Islands/etc…The global south is turning against western leadership; South Africa’s dogged case at the ICC, the French getting ejected from their peacekeeping missions in multiple former colonies, India is sending assassins to run hits on US and Canadian soil, OPEC expansion, that nut in Argentina… There’s growing rejection of the Pax Americana and/or Bretton Woods, and not in same bipolar competition like in the Cold War
Oh, totally. Don’t disagree with anything you said. 😊
To be clear, I was just trying to illustrate “how nations choose to act” and a bit of the context of “why Ukraine and not Palestine?”.
Location and advertising reliability as an ally are just the easiest to convey, but there are of course so many different things that go into everything a nation as big as the US does.
The state department has tens of thousands of workers, before you even get to the “boring” parts of what the CIA does to get them the data (analyzing public shipping records mostly) they need to make those policies and agreements. Any attempt to summarize the considerations of those people will have to cut some content.
Well yeah, only half our politicians work for Putin, but 100% work for Netanyahu.
As long as US officials restrict strikes to avoid Russian nuclear deterrence installations, I don’t really see why this wasn’t already permitted.
The key US policy consideration in the conflict should be to avoid nuclear escalation. Don’t strike nuclear early warning radars, don’t strike nuclear silos, and everything else should be fine.
We’re cool with Israel using our weaponry to do a genocide but we’re on the fence about whether Ukraine can use our weaponry to take back the land that Russia invaded and stole?
We really fucked up when we decided to form societies larger than tribes, huh? We could’ve basically just had community gardens and leisure, and instead we chose this. If I were an alien, I would consider Earth a flyover shithole not worth visiting.
There is one significant difference: Hamas does not, as far as I know, have any nuclear weapons.
You’re right and I hate it. Bullies will fuck with smaller kids all school year, but not the kid who has a gun at home. My country is just a nepo baby rich kid bully on the world stage.
I wish Hamas had nuclear weapons
Jesus fucking Christ.
That’s not even close to what I said. I was saying that we don’t dare stand up to anybody who has nuclear weapons, meaning Israel and Russia. We don’t even dare give (conventional) weapons to Ukraine to take back what Russia stole from them solely because Russia has nukes. We will bully any other country as much as we want because they don’t have nukes though.
You punch the bully with the gun at home anyway and watch him fold like a bitch.
Kind of annoyed people here still haven’t made the connection that NATO doesn’t want to support an offensive war because that would cost money and the entire MIC would not be making tech for profit. Hence why most tech given to Ukraine has been 90s surplus.
Nukes don’t really mean anything even to Putin. Unless Moscow is under direct invasion, MAD will keep even the most insane at bay.
Ukraine has been slowly evolving into a 1980s era NATO army, while Russia has slowly been regressing into a 1960s Soviet one
It’s not like we haven’t already seen Ukrainians strike across the border. But the attacks have been expensive, exhaustive, and done little to curb subsequent Russian advances.
I guess Americans want us to unleash our double super secret Win Every Time war machines to finally beat Putler Once And Forever. Perhaps we’re coming to terms with the reality of modern warfare relative to the hype.
Why the hell are we concerned with Putin’s feelings on the subject?
I’m sure it also enrages him that we’re helping Ukraine at all, so what’s the point?
In fact, we should be going out of our way to purposefully piss him off.
He’s 71 and possibly has cancer, inducing a coronary might be the quickest way to get this war over with.The europeans are very worried about the war crossing countries. For the Americans it’s easier to say that because war is not at your door.
I don’t have a clear view of what’s better, but obviously we can’t let Russia win that war in the sense of conquering Ukraine.
I suppose at the end it will calm, and it will be more like a South Corea / North Corea cold war.obviously we can’t let Russia win that war
What does Russian victory look like at this point? I’ve heard folks insist anything less than NATO troops in Crimea constitutes a Russian win.
My opinion is that Russia will keep a part of Ukraine, and there will be a tacit stop of the war. Noone says they won, noone surrender, a little bit like North and South Corea. Maybe Russia says internally that they have finished the nazis so the special operation is finished (so they ‘win’ officially to their people) but that they can’t leave Ukraine or they will come back.
Noone says they won, noone surrender, a little bit like North and South Corea.
The Korean War ended with an enormous defeat by western military forces. I could conceivably see a situation in which the Russians overextend, provoke a reprisal by - idk, Poland or Romania - and get run back to the Donbas. But in that event, I don’t know if NAFO meme-teams are satisfied. When this war started, you had dudes cheering for bombs across Moscow and troops pouring up into Georgia and down through Finland.
I’m not sure who signs the peace deal with Russia when these are the expectations. It really does feel like westerners see Russians the same way Israelis see Palestinians.
Hard to swallow pills: Putin dying is not a positive outcome for the world - yet. There’s no groomed successor or lieutenant in the wings, when he leaves the scene it will be knives out inside the Kremlin (and outside it), which will lead to a fractured Moscow with Balkanization of the fringes like Georgia and Chechnya, or an even more brutal dictator, likely coming from the military sphere rather than civil.
There is no moderate off-ramp for Russia currently, and after Prigozin nobody in Russia is going to be permitted to collect power that can even think of challenging Putin.
None of what you said makes me think the situation would be worse than having Putin in charge. It’s a stretch to say Putin came from the civil sphere, and he assassinates his enemies in foreign countries using nerve agents and throws people out of windows at home.
Yeah but he’s not launching nuclear weapons. It can be a lot worse.
Putin took the civilian route and “won elections” before the leapfrogging the presidency with Medevev and eventual solidification of his autocracy. He is a dictator in autocrats’ dress, faux elections and rivals aplenty, but not a general or warlord. Accordingly he insulates himself from meaningful challenge, which (like Xi and the CCP’s leadership) requires culling anyone competent immediately below you, or keeping them distracted with intra-competition for favor instead of seeking the top role.
A crumbling Muscovy regime, a fractured society with war fatigue, an arsenal of nuclear weapons that are scattered in Russia and in client states like Belarus, an ocean of conventional arms and equipment, Russia set up in a war economy, and then add a power vacuum are NOT positives for Ukraine, Europe, or the world.
During the fall of the Soviet Union, there were a lot of CIA agents and friends running around trying to secure and round up those nukes, lest they enter the black market or the local warlord/strongman decides “that’s OURS now” and another nuclear actor is on the chessboard.
Though the deconfliction hotlines are broken, non-proliferation treaties not renewed, and hypersonics changing the viability of ‘first-strike’ strategy, Russia still is a known actor. Someone like Prigozin is not, and that’s my point. Putin will play ‘the game’ of great power competition. A blowhard populist with an insecure power base and multiple rivals has a very different incentive structure, and may do the unthinkable if it means solidifying their hold on power.
If missles start landing on Russia with American flags on them things could get confusing really quickly.
Pretty sure the UK has given green light to use its weapons on Russian soil. Macron keeps the option open to deploy French troops. US weapons are approved for use against unarmed civilians in Palestine.
🤷♀️
Putin can Crimea fucking river, stop bombing Ukraine and you won’t have to worry about it!
Like they even need it anymore. They’ve hit an oil refinery or storage facility every other day for the past month with goddamn homemade kamikaze drones. A good chunk of them deep in Russia.
Is Biden really trying to start WWIII before the election?
Presidents traditionally do better during war time
Liberals generally don’t try to start wars. They start them by trying as hard as they can to avoid them, deriving their choices from a woefully incorrect model of how war happens.
that old ‘you don’t change horses mid stream’ energy
Lol you mean Putin is calm and collected now?
What a dumb headline. “We’re just thinking about it. We’re also thinking about going to the beach on Sunday. 🫳🤜”
“felt cute, might delete later” vibes
As an American, and therefore a potential target, this is a risk I am willing to take. I think Putin is better at talking shit than actually carrying out his threats.
It’s tragic that this war is still going on. Putin needs to be stopped. Now.
I think Putin is better at talking shit than actually carrying out his threats
Unless this post is coming from inside the Pentagon, I question it’s reliability.
As an American, and therefore a potential target, this is a risk I am willing to take. I think Putin is better at talking shit than actually carrying out his threats.
Same.
Further, even if Putin is serious about carrying out his threats, when do we stop capitulating? If Russia had Ukraine, then invaded Latvia? Then? After Russia rolls into Warsaw? Then? How about with Russian troops in Munich? Then? How about Anchorage?
If Putin is willing to attack when his other invasion of a sovereign country is threatened then the time to push back is RIGHT NOW when a free and sovereign Ukraine is still the future.
He’s already changing borders in the Baltics. If anyone thinks he’s stopping with Ukraine they’re an imbecile. After the Baltics are strategically surrounded, Georgia will be next. The northeast border of the Black Sea will be his next major fortification against NATO, all the way from Romania to Turkey.
Fortification against NATO? If NATO wanted to attack Russia they would do it now. Prigozhin was able to march in Moscow with something NATO might sneeze out and forget about.
Kremlin propaganda says that Putin is invading Ukraine as a defensive measure, and that’s horse shit. It’s a war of brutal and barbaric conquest against a peaceful country.
when do we stop capitulating? If Russia had Ukraine, then invaded Latvia? Then? After Russia rolls into Warsaw? Then? How about with Russian troops in Munich? Then? How about Anchorage?
There’s a great British comedy skit describing exactly this scenario that someone on here recently introduced me to. Short watch.
If Russia had Ukraine, then invaded Latvia?
Rolling tanks across a flat plain is easier than rolling them up a mountain.
Might as well ask "Why keeps Switzerland safe if Belgium is taken?
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Salami Slicing Tactics are actually a very real thing.
It’s basically what Russia and China have been doing for decades
That is very very good, and depressingly accurate. The only difference today is that the fall of the Soviet Union in the 90s pushed back the border to Russia farther away from Europe. However the inclusion of the Baltic countries pushed it slightly closer, and then Russia pushed it closer from their side by invading Crimea then Luhansk and Donetsk. Then Russian pushed again invading Kherson, Zaporizhzhia, and Kharkiv. Then NATO moved closer with the induction of Finland and Sweden. So we’re nearly back to the situation in that video skit.
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Punishing attackers makes future attack less likely. I’m an American and I’m all for allowing Ukraine to actually HURT Russia, but I don’t actually think that would make the world more dangerous.
I think striking attackers where they are vulnerable makes peace more likely, not less.
Also when you give someone a gift it’s not yours any more. It’s now their thing. Ukraine has the right to defend itself, and retaliation is the only workable defense against something like military action since straight up blocking attacks with a huge wall or the like isn’t feasible.
Late as fuck but better than nothing. The airfields used to deploy glide bomb launchers should be obliterated
