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I disagree with that analogy. Modern Russia is not an unstoppable army of nomadic warriors with a strong martial culture arising from their making their living

I disagree with that analogy. Modern Russia is not an unstoppable army of nomadic warriors with a strong martial culture arising from their making their living as herders. It's a badly run kleptocracy trying desperately to remain relevant.

jacquesm 5y ago
Which happens to command a very large arsenal of nuclear weapons which they can deliver around the globe on 15 minutes notice.
- dmichulke 5y ago
  How do you think they will use them to conquer land?
  - noduerme 5y ago
    Come and see. They don't have to hold land and in most cases, the strategic goal is to have puppets hold it for them. USSR was three levels deep in puppets (four if you count "republics").
    - unfocussed_mike 5y ago
      They tried puppets in Ukraine for some time. They also have a dependent client state on another of Ukraine's borders, in Belarus, "led" by a terrified semi-lame autocrat who needs to prove his loyalty to Putin to continue in office. Bad things (and increasingly belligerent, isolated psychopaths) on two sides.
  - jacquesm 5y ago
    As a very credible threat. We will now do 'x', and if you interfere we will nuke the capital of those countries that interfere. Note that Putin has nothing to lose from all of this.
    - unfocussed_mike 5y ago
      Not only does Putin have nothing to lose from all of this, there is more than a hint that he has nothing to lose full stop. More than one analyst and political aide has observed that Putin has changed significantly on a personal level, and appears to be paranoid about Covid and about all his generals and advisers. It's not just a threat; at this point it is a risk.
      - jacquesm 5y ago
        Agreed. The attack on Ukraine is actually rather later than I imagined that it would happen (I thought this would happen immediately after Trump lost the election). What happens next is anybody's guess and that's a very bad feeling to have in times like these, the fate of the world as we know it is in the balance.
        unfocussed_mike 5y ago
        As we have seen before, only very recently: bad things happen when psychopaths start to unravel, especially malignant narcissists. Putin has long kept his narcissism under a kind of control. A bit of bare-chest, bareback horseriding. A few ice hockey matches with opponents who comically offer little resistance. A gigantic pseudosecret palatial residence that looks like a seat of power for a Bond villain, but is actually his safe space. But even in Russia's nationally televised broadcasts Putin appears to be struggling to control his emotions and his temper. It's not particularly difficult to see that loyalty to a psychopath loses its currency when that psychopath has no use for you, but also that using your loyalty as a constant mediating influence becomes impossible when the psychopath departs from reality. The question for any kind of diplomacy, hardball or softball, is this: is Vladimir Putin still in full control of himself? Because he's behaving unusually on the basis of his prior record. Only a handful of years ago he was a very different figure on the world stage. If his narcissism has no supply, no moderation, things could get even uglier. And yet again he is signposting it -- "all relevant decisions have been taken." We kept pretending his signposts were diplomatic noise, when in fact he's just a psychopath telling people what he is going to do to them.
  - tingle 5y ago
    Old men are dangerous: it doesn't matter to them what is going to happen to the world. -- George Bernard Shaw https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/6809999-old-men-are-dangerous-it-doesn-t-matter-to-them-what https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/6809999-old-men-are-dangero...
    - jacquesm 5y ago
      Precisely.
- jessaustin 5y ago
  Shit, we keep forgetting this!
- hajile 5y ago
  Nuclear weapons require constant, ongoing maintenance if they have any hope of going bang. Russia doesn't have the assets to keep that up anymore. Their nuclear arsenal is probably a fraction of its theoretical capability. In addition, if Putin tried to launch nukes, I doubt the other oligarchs would go along with his mass suicide plan.
  - jacquesm 5y ago
    If there is one thing I've learned about Russian technology then it is that in general it will operate 'good enough' to do what it was designed to do even if that means that it isn't designed in a way that we would consider elegant. Assuming that Russia's nuclear arsenal is dysfunctional or even non-existent would be a very large - and possibly fatal - mistake, especially given that it never was designed as a precision tool anyway but relied on massive overkill. You may well be right, but if history is any guide here making assumptions without hard evidence about the nature of an enemy arsenal, either positive or negative will lead to trouble.
    - hajile 5y ago
      I had a couple conversations with an engineer who worked a long career on maintaining nuclear warheads. I was rather surprised when he told me that he didn't view nuclear war as likely. As he explained it, plutonium warheads break down over time. They create helium gas pockets and sometimes internal fractures that prevent detonation. The solution is to reform the warhead every few years. The problem here is that plutonium has over a dozen crystalline forms. If they don't achieve a uniform crystal, the warhead will fail to detonate due to the imperfections along the lines where the different crystals come together. This takes a ton of time and money (and often many, many attempts). Together these mean that the warheads are getting very old and the upkeep to keep them working is huge. Russia can keep a few in working order, but not nearly what their previous arsenal would imply.
      - jacquesm 5y ago
        It doesn't take 1000's of them to be effective.

jacquesm 5y ago

Which happens to command a very large arsenal of nuclear weapons which they can deliver around the globe on 15 minutes notice.

dmichulke 5y ago
How do you think they will use them to conquer land?
- noduerme 5y ago
  Come and see. They don't have to hold land and in most cases, the strategic goal is to have puppets hold it for them. USSR was three levels deep in puppets (four if you count "republics").
  - unfocussed_mike 5y ago
    They tried puppets in Ukraine for some time. They also have a dependent client state on another of Ukraine's borders, in Belarus, "led" by a terrified semi-lame autocrat who needs to prove his loyalty to Putin to continue in office. Bad things (and increasingly belligerent, isolated psychopaths) on two sides.
- jacquesm 5y ago
  As a very credible threat. We will now do 'x', and if you interfere we will nuke the capital of those countries that interfere. Note that Putin has nothing to lose from all of this.
  - unfocussed_mike 5y ago
    Not only does Putin have nothing to lose from all of this, there is more than a hint that he has nothing to lose full stop. More than one analyst and political aide has observed that Putin has changed significantly on a personal level, and appears to be paranoid about Covid and about all his generals and advisers. It's not just a threat; at this point it is a risk.
    - jacquesm 5y ago
      Agreed. The attack on Ukraine is actually rather later than I imagined that it would happen (I thought this would happen immediately after Trump lost the election). What happens next is anybody's guess and that's a very bad feeling to have in times like these, the fate of the world as we know it is in the balance.
      - unfocussed_mike 5y ago
        As we have seen before, only very recently: bad things happen when psychopaths start to unravel, especially malignant narcissists. Putin has long kept his narcissism under a kind of control. A bit of bare-chest, bareback horseriding. A few ice hockey matches with opponents who comically offer little resistance. A gigantic pseudosecret palatial residence that looks like a seat of power for a Bond villain, but is actually his safe space. But even in Russia's nationally televised broadcasts Putin appears to be struggling to control his emotions and his temper. It's not particularly difficult to see that loyalty to a psychopath loses its currency when that psychopath has no use for you, but also that using your loyalty as a constant mediating influence becomes impossible when the psychopath departs from reality. The question for any kind of diplomacy, hardball or softball, is this: is Vladimir Putin still in full control of himself? Because he's behaving unusually on the basis of his prior record. Only a handful of years ago he was a very different figure on the world stage. If his narcissism has no supply, no moderation, things could get even uglier. And yet again he is signposting it -- "all relevant decisions have been taken." We kept pretending his signposts were diplomatic noise, when in fact he's just a psychopath telling people what he is going to do to them.
- tingle 5y ago
  Old men are dangerous: it doesn't matter to them what is going to happen to the world. -- George Bernard Shaw https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/6809999-old-men-are-dangerous-it-doesn-t-matter-to-them-what https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/6809999-old-men-are-dangero...
  - jacquesm 5y ago
    Precisely.
jessaustin 5y ago
Shit, we keep forgetting this!
hajile 5y ago
Nuclear weapons require constant, ongoing maintenance if they have any hope of going bang. Russia doesn't have the assets to keep that up anymore. Their nuclear arsenal is probably a fraction of its theoretical capability. In addition, if Putin tried to launch nukes, I doubt the other oligarchs would go along with his mass suicide plan.
- jacquesm 5y ago
  If there is one thing I've learned about Russian technology then it is that in general it will operate 'good enough' to do what it was designed to do even if that means that it isn't designed in a way that we would consider elegant. Assuming that Russia's nuclear arsenal is dysfunctional or even non-existent would be a very large - and possibly fatal - mistake, especially given that it never was designed as a precision tool anyway but relied on massive overkill. You may well be right, but if history is any guide here making assumptions without hard evidence about the nature of an enemy arsenal, either positive or negative will lead to trouble.
  - hajile 5y ago
    I had a couple conversations with an engineer who worked a long career on maintaining nuclear warheads. I was rather surprised when he told me that he didn't view nuclear war as likely. As he explained it, plutonium warheads break down over time. They create helium gas pockets and sometimes internal fractures that prevent detonation. The solution is to reform the warhead every few years. The problem here is that plutonium has over a dozen crystalline forms. If they don't achieve a uniform crystal, the warhead will fail to detonate due to the imperfections along the lines where the different crystals come together. This takes a ton of time and money (and often many, many attempts). Together these mean that the warheads are getting very old and the upkeep to keep them working is huge. Russia can keep a few in working order, but not nearly what their previous arsenal would imply.
    - jacquesm 5y ago
      It doesn't take 1000's of them to be effective.