United Kingdom of Poland wrote:Rio Cana wrote:
That is the problem. The idea of putting NATO troops in the Ukraine. Remember, when the Soviets collapsed and the Russian Federation came into being, it was agreed that NATO would not go further east. The Russians should have asked for it in writing but it was only by word of mouth. So they do not trust the West and NATO which wants to drive up to the border with Russia. NATO should have waited a few decades before even trying to get too involved in the Ukraine.
Having said that the Russians have done the following to counter the Western NATO advance on them.
Short news video from March - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gPPlKI7VnSU
and more recently from last month.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G-CZEXkKLvQ
to be fair, if the Russians honestly had expected that all the former Warsaw Pact nations would be buddies with them after almost 50 years of being oppressed, they may have been sampling a little to much of their own product.
Who ever suggested Russia wanted the former Warsaw Pact as "buddies"?
It would be a rather strict working relationship.
Organized States wrote:The Orson Empire wrote:If NATO goes to war with Russia, it will most likely end with both sides firing nukes at each other, resulting in the extinction of the Human race....so, I'm not really sure this is a good idea.
I'm not too entirely sure of that, both would lose tremendously from any Nuclear Conflict, so contrary to popular belief, neither side would deploy nuclear weapons.
They probably would, we'd see a tactical nuclear exchange.
What's worrying is that the NATO tactical nuclear arsenal is much smaller than the Russian arsenal. The primary nuclear arm of NATO is the B-61 gravity bomb, though it can be dialled up to 300kt or so. There are about 180 of these in Europe of a total US stockpile of about 400.
This said, the US does have nuclear tomahawks for air and sea launch. Their range would probably consider them strategic arms, though their launch platform would make them valid as military arms. TLAM-A was supposedly retired last year.
You would deploy tactical nuclear arms against forces in the field and against all the targets you'd be using guided conventional weapons - air defences, headquarters, artillery, depots, forward bases. No doubt a large number of B-61s (180 B-61s is a lot more than it seems, to be honest, plus the rest of the serviceable stockpile) would be reserved for the striking of more strategic facilities, such as petrochemical, ports, airbases etc.
Northwest Slobovia wrote:Padnak wrote:Mentioning guerrilla war... they were victorious in Chechnya with a military that was a shadow of what it is today with an economy close to collapse and their opponent was rather determined and quite well armed
Let's see... fighting started in 1994, the Russians gave up for a while, then fighting resumed, and the Russians declared they won in 2009. That took them 15 years, against guys yes, determined and armed, but not AFAIK, armed with modern NATO weapons. Also, all of Chechnya has a population less than that of Kiev (~1.5M vs ~2.1M), much less all of the Ukraine (44M). Little different, eh? Lots more people to try to keep down, lots more money to buy weapons with, even assuming NATO doesn't just give them stuff for fun.
What do you mean "without modern NATO weapons"?
For a fairly long list of reasons, what the Chechens had were Soviet-era (which wasn't that long ago tbh) infantry weapons and artillery. For a similarly long list of reasons, they did have access to Soviet "heavy" weapons, such as MANPADS, so trying to go Afghanistan on the Chechens probably wouldn't have really done much. In 1994, the Russian Ground Forces were in a truly dire state, never mind what happened in Georgia.
Saiwania wrote:-The Unified Earth Governments- wrote:No, unless Putin is an idiot, he won't resort to using nukes at all.
Russia launching any nukes would essentially be giving NATO full permission to do the same to Russia. No- if anything, diplomacy and heaven forbid even conventional warfare should be given a chance before considering the use of nuclear weapons. Going straight to the last resort weapon and not having any restraint in exhausting all the other options first, would be dooming Russia and perhaps the rest of the world to ruin.
Tactical nuclear arms are not "last resort" weapons.
Tactical nuclear exchange also has little reason to escalate directly to strategic nuclear exchange, because Europe, Russia and the US would be fucked. NATO and Russia will swallow their losses and continue to swap their limited tactical arsenal.