Bear bombers blocked by bold Britons:

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-35598892

In news of the current Russian norm, Russia decided to buzz British airspace. Unlike the US Air Force's reactions, the RAF just intercepted them and deterred them. To be frank, if I was Putin and given a green light to invade my neighbors at will and support people with extreme prejudice, murder people I don't like overtly and not even try to hide it with crocodile tears and non-enforced laws and the like, I'd be doing the exact same thing. There is nothing irrational about Russia's provocations and intent to break up NATO. From the brute logic of Realpolitik, it illustrates that Putin's the only leader in broader Western civilization other than Merkel even trying to shape events.

What Merkel gets with the wallet Putin gets with tanks but the same result ensues.

Meanwhile the USA is an empire in relative decline with an ineffectual President and deranged lunatics driving the opposition into the ground expect to get paid for not working for a living and thus not really able to do much about what either of the other two do.

We'll see if Russia keeps this up and if NATO suddenly decides that doing this in Western European airspace, unlike Turkish Airspace, really is a problem or not. 

Comments

[abomvubuso.livejournal.com]

How is this the new norm?

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Yeltsin's Russia didn't have the balls to do buzz-overs of NATO with impunity and expect it to work. Putin doesn't care.

[abomvubuso.livejournal.com]

Yeltsin couldn't afford it. His country was in shambles.

His ineptitude was an exception rather than norm.

[luzribeiro.livejournal.com]

In the meantime, hundreds of armed rebels cross from Turkey into Syria (http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/feb/18/hundreds-of-armed-rebels-cross-from-turkey-into-syria-says-monitor).

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

OK, and? Russia's bombing Assad's enemies for him. Turkey's far less overt than Russia or the United States here.

[luzribeiro.livejournal.com]

And you're far from covert in your biases here. You haven't stopped yammering about Russia. About Turkey, though? Not a word.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Russia provoking Turkey can start WWIII due to Article V of NATO. Turkey and Greece keeping up their pissing match because Greek nationalism still can't suck it up and deal with the fall of Constantinople isn't. I'm not talking about China's bluffing in the Pacific either, because the PRC is a bit too intelligently ruthless to actually start a shooting war. Putin, on the other hand, has a clear pattern of aiming to break up NATO and he may well succeed in that at the rate he's going. But if he doesn't, ensue general nuclear exchange.

It may surprise you but there are priorities and not getting nuked because some dumbass somewhere does some dumbass thing is one of them.

And frankly put, Turkey's been shelled by Assad and bombed by Daesh both and has taken a shit ton more refugees than any European state without a fraction of the whining, crying, and bitching about the downfall of its holy sacred culture.

Relative to anyone in the EU or the USA, I do have more sympathy for Turkey because they've had it driven home in brutally clear fashion that NATO only cares about Syria when it leads to massed gunfire in Paris. Bombs in Ankara or cities shelled by Assad? Nobody gives a damn if Syria blows up a few Muslims in Turkey.

But go after a soccer match and cry havoc and let slip the dogs of war.

[luzribeiro.livejournal.com]

Yeah, cry me a river about poor innocent Turkey.

[htpcl.livejournal.com]

Didn't get the soccer reference. Just so we're clear, was that a cheap shot at flaming?

[dreamville-bg.livejournal.com]

Someone has a beef with Russia, it would seem.

I've yet to see you say a word about Turkey violating Greek airspace thousands of times annually.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

It's not something that could get my country nuked because some idiot in Ankara or Moscow decides they've got a hard on to start WWIII.

[garote]

Russia has been a hollow shell of itself since the 90's. Their primary exports are coal, gas, and bitterness. The value of those is what's truly "in decline". The same family of oligarchs has been presiding over that quasi-failed state for the last 20 years, and their riches have been steadily sapped by the combat-via-dollars that you are apparently ridiculing. (Heck, "oligarch" is a Russian word, originally coined to describe these very people.) They got absolutely hammered in 2008 and these unwelcome military actions and exercises are only about as "realpolitik" as the drunken blows of an abusive husband whose unemployment checks are running out.

As for the US being "in decline" ...

To my ears, this sounds like one of those "Apple is doomed" articles that have appeared like clockwork for the last 15 years. The latest round was declaring the imminent death of Apple because the growth of their smartphone sales was less than the previous year-ago quarter. Near the top - or at it, depending on whom you ask - of most valuable companies in history, with 200 billion dollars in cash in the bank, and those articles still find their audience, and do their job of manipulating the share price of Apple and/or its competitors and suppliers.

I see this as more of the same, but directed at the US. "America is being slightly less progressive than I expect from them" would be more accurate, in my opinion.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Not really, Bush II killed the USA's ability to act unilaterally and China and the EU are actually getting to be counterweights in practice as opposed to theory alone. Relative decline simply means other people get back on their feet and the USA's long gilded ride of maximum benefit for no real effort to maintain it crashes and burns as it deserves to do so.

Oligarch is actually Greek, BTW. :)

[garote]

Only insofar as Latin stole words from Greek. The modern coinage is specifically about Russians.

[peamasii.livejournal.com]

The US could crush the whole world put together, except that they still need everyone to buy their bonds.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Only by a mass nuclear salvo. To really do that we'd need a draft and that would start a civil war.

[mikeyxw.livejournal.com]

The US would certainly win any direct conflict we enter with Russia. This is why Mr. Putin has been attacking countries which aren't of much interest to the US. Ukraine would be nice to have in NATO, but there's nothing essential about it and the US has almost no interest in Syria. Those are places we'll drop a few billion dollars, but not take any real risks and it seems Mr. Putin knows this.

Looking at what happened to Mikhail Khodorkovsky, it's hard to see that any oligarchs are going to be willing or able to stand up to Mr. Putin. Sure, if they all acted together, they just might be able to bring him down I guess, but to what end? Russia still has elections, if Mr. Putin isn't there, someone might get elected who tries to better represent the interests of the average Russian, then where would the oligarchs be?

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

All the same, if Putin sees this as a success streak and a means to keep attacking NATO with impunity and a means to keep pushing with zero reprisal, why wouldn't he escalate matters? I would in his shoes. There's no rational harm to come out of it thus far and NATO keeps folding and refusing to accept Article V means anything for Turkey the way it would for say, France.

Which is why Daesh and Syria spilling over into Paris is an act of war and Assad shelling Turkish cities wasn't.

[garote]

Sid Meier's 1990's masterpiece Civilization gets it right again:

If you choose "communist" as a government, you can deal with unhappy citizens by parking menacing military equipment inside the city.
If you choose "democracy" as a government, every time a military unit leaves a city, people protest, and the only thing that mollifies them is pop culture. Still, if you allow civil unrest to occur in any single city throughout your empire for more than one turn, your entire government collapses into anarchy for years.

It's like he had a crystal ball. ;)