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"There are other similarities between Ukraine and Iran. Both are wars instigated by the leaders of great powers in the apparent belief of easy victory. Both hav

by beloch 5mo ago

"There are other similarities between Ukraine and Iran. Both are wars instigated by the leaders of great powers in the apparent belief of easy victory. Both have developed in ways those leaders did not anticipate into something like a stalemate—stalemates in which, for Russia and America alike, a lack of victory looks increasingly like defeat. Are technological changes making the role of the defender easier? Or systematically encouraging big powers to start wars they cannot win? Or is this merely a case of business as usual—great powers blundering into ill-advised wars that reflect the prevailing technologies of the day?" ------------------ Putin was advised that Russian disinfo had worked and Ukrainians would welcome Russian troops as liberators while Zelensky's government would fold immediately. His generals feared to offer a less rosy assessment because doing so would have been immediately fatal. Trump was advised that invading Iran was a very bad idea[1]. Putin's brutality led to him being misinformed, but Trump ignored good information and made a bad decision. New technology didn't cause either of these bad decisions. It was old-fashioned arrogance, thuggishness, and stupidity. As for drone warfare... A real X factor is going to be production capacity. Ukraine has managed to capture manned Russian positions with only drones. Drone tech evolves so quickly that one side's technological edge can be blunted or even reversed in just a few weeks or months. Stockpiles are not to be relied upon. Being able to out-evolve the enemy is critical, but being able to turn lessons learned into new hardware immediately will likely be a deciding factor in future conflicts. [1]https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cn0zrwzr519o https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cn0zrwzr519o

nkrisc 5mo ago
It will be interesting (and scary) to see weapons technology developed in near real time for the conflict that is actually happening, as opposed to the one you thought would happen 15 years ago.
- nfkhd67 5mo ago
  The universe already created microbes. Check out how fast they can evolve. The chimp troupe is full of itself. Its intelligence and "innovations" are highly overated. Covid brought the whole world to its knees. No intelligence or drones required. As Lynn Margulis famously said - we are not the main show.
  - nkrisc 5mo ago
    Interesting but I fail to see how that’s relevant to a discussion about man made weapons.
like_any_other 5mo ago
Trump attacked Iran because Israel was going to attack Iran: Rubio says US struck Iran fearing it would retaliate for Israeli attack - https://abcnews.com/Politics/rubio-us-struck-iran-fearing-retaliate-israeli-attack/story?id=130694505 https://abcnews.com/Politics/rubio-us-struck-iran-fearing-re... Part of a long trend: Israeli Operatives Who Aided Harvey Weinstein Collected Information on Former Obama Administration Officials to undermine the Iran Nuclear Deal - https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/israeli-operatives-who-aided-harvey-weinstein-collected-information-on-former-obama-administration-officials https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/israeli-operatives-... To help make the case on Iran, Graham traveled several times to Israel in recent weeks, meeting with members of the country’s intelligence agency. “They’ll tell me things our own government won’t tell me,” he said. He spoke with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, coaching him on how to lobby the president for action. - https://www.wsj.com/politics/policy/lindsey-graham-trump-iran-fa5f54f0 https://www.wsj.com/politics/policy/lindsey-graham-trump-ira... (https://archive.is/G1Dt0 https://archive.is/G1Dt0) Netanyahu started this war by attacking Iran. He assassinated Ali Shamkhani, Iran’s lead nuclear negotiator, deliberately sabotaging US-Iran nuclear negotiations. - https://x.com/BernieSanders/status/1934659864610918435 https://x.com/BernieSanders/status/1934659864610918435 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ali_Shamkhani#Assassination_attempt_and_death https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ali_Shamkhani#Assassination_at...)
- orwin 5mo ago
  > Trump attacked Iran because Israel was going to attack Iran When Israel attacked Iran in 2025, Iran was very, very clear that they did not consider it an attack from the US and did not retaliate against US assets. The US choose to support israel with intel and weapons, and Iran still didn't strike at US interests. Then the US joined forces with israel to push for bigger concessions from Iran just before the ceasefire (that the US broke 8 month later, once again during peace talks). So do not act as if Israel pushed the US into this war. This was a political and strategical choice the US made, and you should own it. People who were silent on the 2025 bombardment and are now saying "we shouldn't fight Israel war" are to me hypocrites.
  - like_any_other 5mo ago
emerongi 5mo ago
I have it on good authority that Putin woke up, took a big fart (the housemaid was surprised), thought the smell was an Ukrainian attack and decided to retaliate. That's how the war started. Your claims about Putin are just as good as mine.
risyachka 5mo ago
> Both are wars instigated by the leaders of great powers having nukes and a lot of empty land does not make russia "great power", and their war results match this.
- notaigenerated 5mo ago
  By your definition, there are no great military powers in the world right now.
  - jmye 5mo ago
    Is that not sort of the obvious conclusion, right now? Military power is in flux, and not what it was even ten years ago? It sure feels like “soft power” is “real” power - at least until (if) someone sorts out a defensive strategy. Bluster and bullshit appear to get very limited results, no matter how many missiles are behind them.
lukan 5mo ago
"Putin was advised that Russian disinfo had worked and Ukrainians would welcome Russian troops as liberators" And where does your inside info from the Kremlin and Putin's head is coming from? Putin was raised in the KGB, I think he knows a bit how to get intel. And with secret war style he was very successful in 2014 seizing the Krim and some areas. It was likely just overconfidence in the ability of the russian army in a conventional war and underestimating the will of the ukrainians to hold their ground in the beginning of the war. If that battle in the beginning would have turned out different, Kiew would likely have fallen and then the war would have been largely over in a few days https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Antonov_Airport https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Antonov_Airport Not many believed, myself included, that Ukraine was strong enough to hold of the russian army - but they did. And now both sides use Drones heavily.
- jemmyw 5mo ago
  Sergei Beseda chief of the FSB "fifth service" was arrested after the start of the war. https://meduza.io/en/feature/2022/06/20/no-infighting-here https://meduza.io/en/feature/2022/06/20/no-infighting-here is a story I found around it. I guess we can't be definite, but that journalist in Russia was citing sources saying that the service had essentially embezzled money and made up the data about their resources on the ground in Ukraine, and misrepresented polling data they had that Russia would be welcomed by the general population.
  - lukan 5mo ago
    "Soldatov argued that decision makers in Moscow had approached the invasion as a police operation, not a military campaign, because they believed the Ukrainians would actually welcome Russian forces." " a Moscow FSB agent once tried to convince him not to investigate the October 2002 Moscow theater hostage siege" Ok, so the source is one russian journalist who was known at least since 2002 to the FSB as someone to keep away from inner sanctum information. It is something, but I doubt he got really access.
    - mopsi 5mo ago
Forgeties79 5mo ago
> and Ukrainians would welcome Russian troops as liberators while Zelensky's government would fold immediately. It is wild how many conflicts involve this blunder. I can’t think of a single major example where the advisors were right. It’s such a great example of believing your own propaganda and/or being too afraid to actually look under the hood of your claims to your leader. Autocracy tends to breed lying yes men near the top I suppose.
- matusp 5mo ago
  There are many ethnic Russians in Eastern Ukraine that really welcomed the Russian army. The problem is that the rest of the country is not that happy about this.
  - Forgeties79 5mo ago
    This has always been overblown and clearly that “many” was an insignificantly small portion of the population once the rubber met the road. Just because you have a favorable opinion of the Russian government doesn’t mean you’re going to suddenly start singing the anthem when their tanks cross the border as they bomb you/your friends (who according to Putin are all probably Nazis) out of nowhere. So many left after all this so Ukraine’s sympathetic-to-Russia population will no longer be significant by any metric. Putin knows this. He’s lost Ukraine forever if he doesn’t make them surrender.
notaigenerated 5mo ago
Learning from the failures and being able to turn lessons into hardware/weapons modifications has *always* been a deciding factor in any conflict. What's changed is this ability is now easily accessible.

by beloch 5mo ago

nkrisc 5mo ago

It will be interesting (and scary) to see weapons technology developed in near real time for the conflict that is actually happening, as opposed to the one you thought would happen 15 years ago.

nfkhd67 5mo ago
The universe already created microbes. Check out how fast they can evolve. The chimp troupe is full of itself. Its intelligence and "innovations" are highly overated. Covid brought the whole world to its knees. No intelligence or drones required. As Lynn Margulis famously said - we are not the main show.
- nkrisc 5mo ago
  Interesting but I fail to see how that’s relevant to a discussion about man made weapons.

like_any_other 5mo ago

Trump attacked Iran because Israel was going to attack Iran: Rubio says US struck Iran fearing it would retaliate for Israeli attack - https://abcnews.com/Politics/rubio-us-struck-iran-fearing-retaliate-israeli-attack/story?id=130694505 https://abcnews.com/Politics/rubio-us-struck-iran-fearing-re... Part of a long trend: Israeli Operatives Who Aided Harvey Weinstein Collected Information on Former Obama Administration Officials to undermine the Iran Nuclear Deal - https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/israeli-operatives-who-aided-harvey-weinstein-collected-information-on-former-obama-administration-officials https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/israeli-operatives-... To help make the case on Iran, Graham traveled several times to Israel in recent weeks, meeting with members of the country’s intelligence agency. “They’ll tell me things our own government won’t tell me,” he said. He spoke with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, coaching him on how to lobby the president for action. - https://www.wsj.com/politics/policy/lindsey-graham-trump-iran-fa5f54f0 https://www.wsj.com/politics/policy/lindsey-graham-trump-ira... (https://archive.is/G1Dt0 https://archive.is/G1Dt0) Netanyahu started this war by attacking Iran. He assassinated Ali Shamkhani, Iran’s lead nuclear negotiator, deliberately sabotaging US-Iran nuclear negotiations. - https://x.com/BernieSanders/status/1934659864610918435 https://x.com/BernieSanders/status/1934659864610918435 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ali_Shamkhani#Assassination_attempt_and_death https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ali_Shamkhani#Assassination_at...)

orwin 5mo ago
> Trump attacked Iran because Israel was going to attack Iran When Israel attacked Iran in 2025, Iran was very, very clear that they did not consider it an attack from the US and did not retaliate against US assets. The US choose to support israel with intel and weapons, and Iran still didn't strike at US interests. Then the US joined forces with israel to push for bigger concessions from Iran just before the ceasefire (that the US broke 8 month later, once again during peace talks). So do not act as if Israel pushed the US into this war. This was a political and strategical choice the US made, and you should own it. People who were silent on the 2025 bombardment and are now saying "we shouldn't fight Israel war" are to me hypocrites.
- like_any_other 5mo ago

emerongi 5mo ago

I have it on good authority that Putin woke up, took a big fart (the housemaid was surprised), thought the smell was an Ukrainian attack and decided to retaliate. That's how the war started. Your claims about Putin are just as good as mine.

risyachka 5mo ago

> Both are wars instigated by the leaders of great powers having nukes and a lot of empty land does not make russia "great power", and their war results match this.

notaigenerated 5mo ago
By your definition, there are no great military powers in the world right now.
- jmye 5mo ago
  Is that not sort of the obvious conclusion, right now? Military power is in flux, and not what it was even ten years ago? It sure feels like “soft power” is “real” power - at least until (if) someone sorts out a defensive strategy. Bluster and bullshit appear to get very limited results, no matter how many missiles are behind them.

lukan 5mo ago

"Putin was advised that Russian disinfo had worked and Ukrainians would welcome Russian troops as liberators" And where does your inside info from the Kremlin and Putin's head is coming from? Putin was raised in the KGB, I think he knows a bit how to get intel. And with secret war style he was very successful in 2014 seizing the Krim and some areas. It was likely just overconfidence in the ability of the russian army in a conventional war and underestimating the will of the ukrainians to hold their ground in the beginning of the war. If that battle in the beginning would have turned out different, Kiew would likely have fallen and then the war would have been largely over in a few days https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Antonov_Airport https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Antonov_Airport Not many believed, myself included, that Ukraine was strong enough to hold of the russian army - but they did. And now both sides use Drones heavily.

jemmyw 5mo ago
Sergei Beseda chief of the FSB "fifth service" was arrested after the start of the war. https://meduza.io/en/feature/2022/06/20/no-infighting-here https://meduza.io/en/feature/2022/06/20/no-infighting-here is a story I found around it. I guess we can't be definite, but that journalist in Russia was citing sources saying that the service had essentially embezzled money and made up the data about their resources on the ground in Ukraine, and misrepresented polling data they had that Russia would be welcomed by the general population.
- lukan 5mo ago
  "Soldatov argued that decision makers in Moscow had approached the invasion as a police operation, not a military campaign, because they believed the Ukrainians would actually welcome Russian forces." " a Moscow FSB agent once tried to convince him not to investigate the October 2002 Moscow theater hostage siege" Ok, so the source is one russian journalist who was known at least since 2002 to the FSB as someone to keep away from inner sanctum information. It is something, but I doubt he got really access.
  - mopsi 5mo ago

Forgeties79 5mo ago

> and Ukrainians would welcome Russian troops as liberators while Zelensky's government would fold immediately. It is wild how many conflicts involve this blunder. I can’t think of a single major example where the advisors were right. It’s such a great example of believing your own propaganda and/or being too afraid to actually look under the hood of your claims to your leader. Autocracy tends to breed lying yes men near the top I suppose.

matusp 5mo ago
There are many ethnic Russians in Eastern Ukraine that really welcomed the Russian army. The problem is that the rest of the country is not that happy about this.
- Forgeties79 5mo ago
  This has always been overblown and clearly that “many” was an insignificantly small portion of the population once the rubber met the road. Just because you have a favorable opinion of the Russian government doesn’t mean you’re going to suddenly start singing the anthem when their tanks cross the border as they bomb you/your friends (who according to Putin are all probably Nazis) out of nowhere. So many left after all this so Ukraine’s sympathetic-to-Russia population will no longer be significant by any metric. Putin knows this. He’s lost Ukraine forever if he doesn’t make them surrender.

notaigenerated 5mo ago

Learning from the failures and being able to turn lessons into hardware/weapons modifications has *always* been a deciding factor in any conflict. What's changed is this ability is now easily accessible.