> There needs to be sufficient deterrent to actually stop this from happening
One ship might be considered a reasonable pawn to sacrifice. I'd go further: require that any ships passing through the strait to be bonded at some eye-watering amount like 10x the price of the ship plus the repair costs of the cable. Make it so if the cable is cut, you make a profit.
Only works if you find someone to pay. I listened to a lengthy (German) podcast about international maritime law. To sum it up: you can’t do that much, because you won’t find the responsible person/company/state.
It was about Russian tankers breaking the sanctions, but with a well put explanation of why we can't just stop these ships even with extreme confidence in their fraudulency.
To be clear, why we don’t want to. Freedom of navigation makes all of us tremendously richer, even if it permits such fuckery.
Every great power has, at this point, rejected the notion in limited contexts. And if you’re not concerned about trashing trade, there is no incoherence to ignoring these rules.
In a hypothetical future where sailing under flags of convenience becomes untenable, all the legitimate merchant vessel owners would rush to register in the US or China. Those vessels would still be able to sail anywhere unmolested. Outside of a few pirate gangs, no one would be stupid enough to screw with them and risk kinetic retaliation. This might increase shipping costs by a few percent.
Russia can bluster and threaten but their navy is weak and shrinking. Most of their commissioned warships never venture far from port. Outside of their territorial waters they have minimal capability to protect their own merchant vessels or interdict anyone else's sea lines of communication.
I am formerly a Marine. This a rather silly notion and I think you should back your claim up with some evidence. Even with as much damage as Donald Trump has done to the US's military preparedness and hegemony around the globe no other fleet operates like the Marine Expeditionary Units. No other fleet can respond to any critical location in less than 24 hours. Add the Coast Guard for near-CONUS and partnered patrols and the US still maintains dominance both at home and abroad.
Nations, like China, are catching up but largely because of two outsized factors:
- The US for some time has not been able to produce ships at home, at scale, and at cost. This is more of a slow burn because the fleet has been kept up to date for the most part. Eventually, new ships need to be built at home.
- Donald Trump has done damn near everything he can to install lackey's within the military, which reduces the military's top decision making acumen down to yes-men to a 79 year old geriatric patient.
Russia's fleet, on the other hand, is an aging joke. It is where we will be if we continue electing fascists that install Martians like Hegseth.
> US can't afford to field the navy necessary to back this ams hasn't been able to for many decades
This is nonsense. The U.S. Navy de facto guarantees freedom of navigation today. Globally.
If we switched to a national system, our Navy wouldn’t literally escort U.S.-flagged ships. Its military would just need to enforce the threat that you get bombed if you fuck with America.
We’d save money switching to a big-stick model. (I think we’d be poorer for it in the long run. But if you’re playing chess and your opponent machete, you’re not going to find any winning moves on the board.)
> (German) podcast about international maritime law
Russia isn’t even pretending to follow international maritime law. China hasn’t for a decade. And now America is being creative with its interpretations.
Most of the water isn't internal.. getting in and out of the baltic sea goes past Sweden/Denmark.
But we probably have promised not to blockade ships in some conventions. And little Denmark (or Sweden) do not benefit from setting a precedence that conventions can be broken.
Most nations have either signed the UNCLOS to otherwise agreed to follow most of those rules. This includes the right of innocent passage through territorial waters. Of course if a vessel engages in hostile acts then they're no longer entitled to exercise that right.
Still I don't see an issue - basically you either pay the armed coast gard cutter that stands in your way or you don't go through the straight. If you don't cause any trouble, the other cutter on the other end will pay you back. No money, no transit - unless you really like being boarded.
Regardless of what specific rules could be set you have to consider rules of engagement and potential escalation. What happens if a Russian merchant vessel (either legitimately flagged or shadow fleet) refuses to cooperate? Do you use force to stop them? What if they're being escorted by a Russian warship or combat aircraft?
Put mines where? How do you prevent neutral vessels from hitting them? What happens when they inevitably break loose in a storm and drift away? Naval mines are quite effective for closing down a body of water in an unrestricted hot war but we haven't reached that stage yet. EU and NATO countries still want to be able to use the Baltic Sea and Gulf of Finland for their own purposes.
If these ships are independent operators being influenced by Russia, seizing the ship will be a significant consequence because the next time Russia will have a harder time convincing a crew to sabotage a cable.
That's fine. Let Russia escort ships that then break cables. It'll make it more obvious it's deliberate, and provide a reason for blockade and confrontation.
careful, Brigadier they can introduce a foriegn substance into our precious bodily fluids without the knowledge of the individual, and certainly without any choice. That's the way your hard core commie works.
Well maybe the Russians should stop joking about it if it’s so serious. How many times do I have to hear from Medvedev about how Russia will rain nuclear hellfire on London?
Fuck around, you’ll find out. These guys are wimps. If they want to end the world, so be it. China would be destroyed too.
Happy to suggest some books on how cold War was actually navigated by both parties without destroying the planet. Not to spoil the ending, but at no point in time was "if we do this and then they blow us all up, so be it" a strategy
The best way to avoid confrontation is to have an irrational adult at the helm, then all calculated escalation bets are off and you tend to just not play.
If your plan is one that ends with the end of the world and billions dead, it's a bad plan. Attacking strawpersons doesn't make it better. You need a better plan.
> one that ends with the end of the world and billions dead
The point is it doesn’t. Ukraine is on its way to wiping out Russia’s Black Sea Fleet. It’s pure posturing to pretend Moscow is stupid enough to end its existence over a naval battle, much less simply credible threats of one.
That statement doesn't really amount to much given the risk. I think we need something far more convincing; and many experts clearly think nuclear war is a risk.
It's not yet demonstrated Russia will make the jump from a limited conventional confrontation to an all out nuclear war, even as its territory is under daily attack from a non-nuclear country.
Edit: by that I mean, with that attitude we would just have never developed nukes, or given the nukes to the Russians preemptively, because who wants nuclear war, right? Anything is better than that.
Good start. Then turn off Russia’s cable that runs via Finland [1] and make vague threats about (a) seizing shadow-fleet vessels in the Baltics and (b) how vulnerable Russia’s cable to Kaliningrad [2] would be to careless anchors.
All the while: start setting up non-cable based back-up bandwidth for if Russia severs these cables in advance of invasion.
I suspect the price of a ship compared to economic damages caused by the cut cable is negligible. This is what russia calls "assymetric war". The response should be more economic sanctions.
Economic sanctions won't prevent the FSB from paying off ship captains to do these things. Seizing ships and imprisoning captains might provide some amount of deterrent. Clearly only way economic sanctions will have a behavioral impact on Russia is if the effects are so bad it triggers revolution which has its own dangers. Direct consequences for the people in the sphere of these actions is more prudent.
yup. RU will literally wait decades and then send their lil KGB/GRU agents all around the world to assassinate you, chop you up, or poison you. they play the long game and never forget.
Many of the shadow fleet crew members aren't even Russians. Typically only the master and some officers are privy to the real mission. The other crew members are just random seamen hired from the usual poor countries so jailing them would be pointless.
Russia has already carried out chemical attacks on UK soil, used radioactive poisoning in London, sabotaged rail infrastructure in Poland, and launched cyberattacks against German air traffic control.[1]
Russia supplied the Buk missile system that shot down MH17, killing 298 civilians, most of them Europeans. Putin eliminates political opponents, like Alexei Navalny, who died in custody days before a possible release.
European leaders may be passive and slow, but what is making the situation truly dangerous, is the dictator-jealousy fueled encouragement and indulgence of the current U.S. administration, and all its sycophants, which got to the point of publicly applauding a dictator on U.S. soil.
That behavior legitimizes aggression, emboldens Moscow, and directly undermines European security, and is making thinks really, really, sketchy right now.
> what is making the situation truly dangerous, is the dictator-jealousy fueled encouragement and indulgence of the current U.S. administration, and all its sycophants, which got to the point of publicly applauding a dictator on U.S. soil.
I personally think there's a more direct link between the US administration and Russia, in line with the rest of your points. I think it's more than "dictator-jealousy fueled encouragement", although what that "more" is I'm not entirely sure, and I'm not sure the differences between the possibilities matters in the end.
I really think it's hard not to read [about] Foundations of Geopolitics and the history of Viktor Yanukovych, the ties between the latter and Trump, and not conclude Russia's tendrils in the US, England, and elsewhere are far deeper than is generally acknowledged in the press.
I lost a lot of trust in most media to cover this issue appropriately when people in the UK started mysteriously dying and zipping themselves in body bags, and the coverage was a collective shrug. Why they would report something like that and then with a straight face conclude an article with "police say there's no evidence of foul play" is beyond me. But then again how the Mueller investigation got spun as an exoneration is also beyond me as well.
I know it's often seen as dismissive or shallow to blame the media for things, but I really do place a huge proportion of the blame for our current mess, at least in the US, on news outlets and media soft-pedaling what's been happening for the last 10 years. A lot of what people trust became propaganda, and a lot of the rest of it chased that audience around for clicks.
Regarding the spy in a bag -- the person involved was a GCHQ mathematician seconded to the SIS and studying Russia, whose "naked, decomposing remains were found in the bath of the main bedroom's en-suite bathroom, inside a red sports bag that was padlocked from the outside, with the keys inside the bag. [...] Inconclusive fragments of DNA components from at least two other individuals were found on the bag. A forensic examination of Williams's flat has concluded that there was no sign of forced entry or of DNA that pointed to a third party present at the time of his death.
Scotland Yard's inquiry also found no evidence of Williams's fingerprints on the padlock of the bag or the rim of the bath, which the coroner said supported her assertion of "third-party involvement" in the death. Metropolitan Police deputy assistant commissioner Martin Hewitt said it was theoretically possible for Williams to lower himself into the bag without touching the rim of the bath. A key to the padlock was inside the bag, underneath his body"
(See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Gareth_Williams)
It's absolutely mad, but remember this happened in 2010 -- before Russia did many of those bad things you mention. It wouldn't surprise me if a combination of political pressure and police incompetence made this go away.
But does it matter? 77 million Americans knowingly voted a convicted felon and court adjudicated sexual assaulter back into the presidency instead of a jail cell. From those, about 40 million were women, fully aware that a jury found him liable for sexual assault, and that multiple judges affirmed the verdict.
The majority of Americans saw criminality, sexual violence, and contempt for the law and decided that was acceptable leadership. :-))
I respectfully suggest a future campaign slogan that sets a simple yet high policy bar: make America good again.
Let that be the prism through which all future political action is seen. Let's be real. Let's be good. Let's strive to eliminate and replace this farcical hyperbole, self-agrandizement, this pyramid scheme of a pretense at government. Let's have some confidence and ambition: work to restore a real balance of power between our three branches. There is so much we could do in the near and long term if we just set out sights on a simple, positive goal.
We may never be great again. Maybe we never were. But we can be good.
That's true, though it might attribute too much intentionality to voter decisions.
My hunch is that a lot of Americans ticked 'Trump' because of brand recognition.
It's like buying laundry detergent. Most people know nothing about the chemistry or efficacy. They pick whatever package looks familiar, 'Tide' probably
I don’t believe the leadership sees Russia as an existential threat in Brussels. Baltics and Poland see it differently.
A pre-emptive strike would be expensive and immediately retcon into making Putin be the good guy - he’s long said NATO is the aggressor. Best to make invading EU to be too expensive to be worth it.
I think the bigger risk currently that Europe faces is the low and mid level corruption where Russian agents extend their tendrils into government structures in EU.
> Best to make invading EU to be too expensive to be worth it.
How do you propose to estimate how much it is worth doing it?
IMO, it is best is to make the kremlin government collapse by all mean necessary. Including sabotage, assassination, propaganda, confiscation, corruption/trahison. And preemptive strike if needs to be.
This has already happened. Just as in the US, all of the far-right "movements" in the EU are Russian fronts.
The two biggest targets are the UK and France, because both have an independent nuclear deterrent. If those are captured by puppets, expect nuclear explosions over European capitals.
This is not hyperbole. Russian government insiders have made it absolutely, unambiguously clear that Europe must be "crushed."
As a direct quote.
The real tragedy is oligarch complicity. Oligarchs and aristocrats in the US, UK, and EU have decided they have more in common with their Russian counterparts than with the native populations of their respective countries.
How many armies in the world, have ever had a person in uniform demand that "the other army must be crushed" ? ok, is there any army that did not say that, to each other, or to an audience? Get a grip on the invective and do not blabber!
> Isn't the logical action for EU to launch massive pre-emptive strikes
To be clear, strikes wouldn't be "pre-emptive", Russia is already in a war, and it's entirely allowed for any nation to join the side of Ukraine. None of the rules of war prevent helping a friendly country by joining the fight.
It's not about "hating the western way of life" or any such silliness. They can hate whatever they want within their internationally recognized borders.
War is best prevented by robust deterrents. When it comes to belligerent fascist regimes who want to see how far you can be pushed, not responding to provocations and aggression forcefully makes larger-scale war more likely in the future.
No, pre-emptively starting another war is not a good idea. But yes, the West should work hard to make sure their enemy loses the war it has already started.
That's why I think Putin won't use nukes but would just load chemical weapons on drones to attack European cities and blame it on some terrorist organization. Trump might even support him in claiming that Russia is innocent and NATO shouldn't be involved. They already tested it on Poland with empty drones and said Russia didn't send any drones.
Any reasonable planning requires looking at the scenario your action creates - the range of outcomes. The range certainly includes Putin using nuclear weapons (which is part of Russia's military doctrine - see 'escalate to deescalate'). That needs to be part of your plan.
> range certainly includes Putin using nuclear weapons (which is part of Russia's military doctrine - see 'escalate to deescalate'). That needs to be part of your plan
If we had acted decisively at the beginning of the Ukraine war, the risk of nuclear war would be lower today.
Appeasement can work. But it can also increase risks. In this case, giving into a bully invites escalation itself, which increases the chances of a fuckup (e.g. a misfired drone taking out an early-warning radar) which legitimately calls for nuclear escalation.
The stereotypical warmonger rhetoric is (and not at all calling you one, just the extreme example), either you are hyper-aggressive or you are a cowardly appeaser. Think how binary that is; then think how literally one-dimensional even the critique is that it's as binary - the implication is there is a continuum between two poles, as if the field of options is a line, only one variable.
The true IR expertise - and you'll see this from the actual experts (and caveat: I am no more than a well-read amatuer) - is to neither escalate nor appease. The focus is on outcomes, not 'getting justice' (I can't think of a better term: reaction, emotional satisfaction, blame, fighting back, etc.). It endlessly frustrates many in the public, because of course they want emotional satisfaction; it also endlessly frustrates me because the leaders don't explain this.
It's like an engineering problem: You don't want to make decisions in anger; blame is terrible leadership; trying to hurt whoever caused your problem is absurd. It all would make your situation worse, even if you solve the original problem. Obviously, you think about the overall outcome for your organization and plan the best way to get there.
In sports, 'trash talk' is used to get that emotional reaction from people, because it takes them away from trying to win the game. The moment you get that response, you know you've won. Russia is working for that moment and is getting it from some.
> If we had acted decisively at the beginning of the Ukraine war, the risk of nuclear war would be lower today.
I agree completely - depending on what you mean (I certainly oppose direct combat between NATO and Russia). And we can still do it now: If NATO guarantees Ukraine unlimited material support until they win the war, no matter how long, not only would Ukraine win but when Russia was convinced of that (however that might happen), they would give up. The Europeans could do it themselves - they have ~~ 20x the economy of Russia. It would be much cheaper than the alternative of Russia gaining ground and fighting them later, and it would drain Russia's military and economy substantially.
Certainly that's not appeasing and it's barely escalatory: It's not a threat to Russian security - Ukraine obviously isn't invading - though it's eventually a threat to Putin's political standing, he may navigate it. And escalatory risk could be further decreased by offering Russia a permanent security treaty based on the old borders, with disarmament on both sides. That's the outcome NATO wants anyway.
The preferred outcome is to further fragment the Russian Federation, leaving the rump successor state too small and weak to pose a significant threat. We did the same thing once before so let's just do it again.
Are these ships actually owned by the Russian state? I thought it was more Russia paying private operators to do some sabotage alongside legitimate business. In which case, ships being seized would absolutely be a huge deterrent to whoever owns or insures the ships.
But yes, imprisoning the crew (especially the captain) is also a good idea.
Russia commits acts of aggression against NATO states that straddle the line of ambiguity where a bad faith actor could call it accidental or at least unauthorized.
This makes invoking article 5 likewise somewhat difficult because it allowed other NATO members pressure the border states into "not overreacting". The point is to slowly escalate into outright hostility without ever having "the event" that makes it obvious article 5 must be invoked.
and the goal for this toeing the line is to spark discussion and disagreement between member states. Article 5 credibility is already at it's lowest point after Vance's speech and the new US security strategy, now isn't just the matter of sowing further disagreement.
Also a provocation that forces a reaction that is difficult to modulate. Activating Article 5 demonstrates NATO solidarity and that it means business, but it would be disastrous. Doing nothing demonstrates fecklessness and impotence of NATO. The reaction needs to be measured and proportionate.
But outright hostility is not necessarily the goal. Hybrid warfare is more “subtle”. Its targets are more diverse and the aim is less overt defeat and more war of attrition in a broad sense. You want to wear your enemy down.
I'm not sure what Russia had to gain from violating our (Finland) airspace with military aircraft countless of times before we joined NATO. Yet they kept doing it.
Russia is an imperialistic state that really doesn't like having neighbours that are not under its political and military control. Violating airspace, GPS jamming, cutting undersea cables is just their way of showing force, and damaging us, who they perceive as their enemies for not submitting to their rule.
I'm sure some bright spark will soon show up to say that it was actually NATO who was violating our airspace for decades
, just like they're claiming that NATO is the one cutting cables here
> Some officials from Scandinavia, the Baltic states and the European Union have pointed the finger at Russia. They say the incidents appear to be part of what experts say is the Kremlin’s hybrid war on the West.
The only blame placed in the article is targeted at Russia. And I'd quite like to see some speculation on Russia's possible motive for this, it sounds pointless and risky for their shipping on the face of it.
Probably to make sure it stays that way. Logistics by ship generally has a big advantage over logistics by land. There is a rough pattern over the last century or so of the big navel empires (UK, US, Japan) having a big military advantage. In the case of the UK and US their strategic policy has a big component that involves restricting their opponents access to resources water (eg, Germany around the world wars, China in the modern era or the way the US controls the sea-based routes out of Saudi Arabia and the land routes tend to be militarily unstable).
Preventing oil exports and increase insurance premiums for Russia's export economy, because Western sanctions clearly are unsuccessful in destroying the Russian economy.
My post history shows that I do support Russia's self defense against U.S./NATO threats. In my opinion Ukraine entering NATO is indeed an existential threat to Russia, because since (at least) the collapse of the UDSSR the U.S. and it's vassals openly communicated and pursued the goal of regime changing Russia (+ Belarus, Georgia).
That's not extreme. They destroyed a piece of expensive critical infrastructure. Prison and seizure should be the bare minimum. I just mean it's not enough to prevent it in the future.
The other side wants escalation of tension, otherwise they wouldn't do this. And they get to choose when and where and, to a degree, the means by which it happens - you can be sure it's a time and place and means that benefits them.
The fundamental of international relations in conflict is to deter without escalation, and to act in the time, place, and manner of your choosing. You'll see leaders cite that specifically: 'We have this problem; we will respond in the time, place, and in the way we think best.'
The fact that this area where the incident happened, Gulf of Finland, is not fully part Finnish/Estonian territorial waters, is only because of a bilateral Finnish-Estonian agreement. This was done in the 1990's purely for benevolence towards Russia.
Russia clearly hasn't acted in such way that they should enjoy these kinds of acts of benevolence. Finland and Estonia should seriously consider retreating from this agreement.
No, he's saying that the area is international waters because Finland and Estonia agreed it was not either's territorial waters. It doesn't have to be international waters.
That narrow passage is becoming a war zone. Look at a map. It's one of Russia's few outlets to the sea.
Look at the history of Russia vs. Finland and Russia vs. Estonia. This is one of the world's most hostile choke points.
I will never understand why it has to be this way and Russia cannot be a normal country that has the goal to join the EU and be prosperous instead of doing nonsense for over a hundred years now.
Nations make their own Logic. The US has to control or befriend the oil producing countries to maintain the petrodollar (which really maintains the dollar, which is the lynchpin of the global economy). This leads to “wars for oil” where the US doesn’t take any oil (it just needs the country to return to the dollar market - so price their oil in dollars).
Russia is a continental state so it requires its Neighbors to be weak so they cant threaten Russia. As much as it tries to escape this logic, it can’t. Russia’s core interest is to dominate and subjugate its near abroad. It has to. It’s the only way for it to become a global power.
Because then they’d have to recognise their failures. It’s like an alcoholic that keeps drinking in order to keep pushing back the reckoning of reality.
When I think about this, I often come back to thinking that the societies that underwent some conflict or difficult times, absolutely cannot have a member of an older generation in charge, because the only thing they do is to continue that conflict, completely manufacturing it again if needed, just to get their "revenge". Current Russian attempt at genociding Ukrainians is all the more tragic in that the generations, that remember the previous hostilities, were almost all gone by now. Alas, that corner of the world is again poisoned for several generations ahead.
Because that wouldn't benefit Putin personally as much as the status quo? And he's the decision maker. Dictators routinely make decisions where they hurt their country to keep a much bigger slice of the pie for themselves...
Russia would first have to be a "normal country". It would need an educated populace and a non-extractive (manufacturing or services) economy. It suffers from both a resource curse and Dutch disease. It is difficult to form a middle class that's independent of state institutions and employment. It has poor demographics and brain drain. It has no independent elites (academics, journalists, judges, business people), so the only restorative force in the society is brutal punishment for non-alignment with a cult of personal power.
Even if Putin wanted to join the E.U., the economy, social structures and institutions, and uneducated voting populace wouldn't allow it to be stable enough to join.
Russia at this point can't even be a successful authoritarian state like China. It's hard to say that it will never be a democracy, but those with a memory of the 1990's find that idea traumatic. Looking far forward in time, eventually global oil independence and demographic decline may force economic reform.
Yes: Notice that without the Baltic Sea, which is effectively closed, and the Crimean region of Ukraine, Russia is not a European naval power, and experts have long argued (afaik) not much of a European power.
Similarly, notice how much they invested in their naval base in Syria on the Mediterranean (though I'm not sure of its status now, and they oddly seemed to abandon Assad, who provided it to them).
More critically, think of a war: How do they trade by sea by sea? Their economy could be choked off, restricted to Pacific trade and trains across Asia to the population centers. They are in a corner.
Yep, if Russia wants to expand its conflict against Europe, Narva in Estonia is most likely place for it. Over 90% of its population is ethnic Russian, and it's located right next to the Russian border. It's the perfect place to send some armed "separatists" to see how NATO responds.
My bet is that it'll happen sometime between 2029-2035, after UK, France and Germany have had their general elections, where populist parties with more pro-Russian stances are likely to gain power.
> Yep, if Russia wants to expand its conflict against Europe, Narva in Estonia is most likely place for it. Over 90% of its population is ethnic Russian, and it's located right next to the Russian border. It's the perfect place to send some armed "separatists" to see how NATO responds.
Fortunately while close, the border runs along a fairly wide river with just a single bridge across, so logistically somewhat complicated to supply with heavy equipment from the Russian side. At least covertly.
But definitely a scenario that needs to be considered.
Narva is a bad spot, from there it would be a long trek South. Doing it just North of the Polish town of Suwalki would allow a pincer movement that cuts off 3 EU countries in one go from a land bridge. That's also why it is right now one of the heaviest militarized zones in Europe.
I honestly don't know much about warfare, but that seems like a pretty insane move to me.
First, it assumes the people of Belarus is willing to start a war with NATO and it's very grumpy neighbor to the south. There isn't a world in which the Suwałki gap it cut off without strikes and an invasion of Belarus. Lukashenko might want it, but given the last "election" there will likely be a 5th, 6th, and 7th column waiting for guns to be carried over the border from Poland and Ukraine.
Second, while Kaliningrad might be defensible (though I doubt that), the Baltic Sea is not. Sweden, Denmark, and Germany will shut down any ships entering and leaving the Baltic. Ukraine and Turkey cut off the Black Sea, and the Russian fleet is left in Murmansk (which is likely immediately destroyed), and Vladivostok... which as a single port as mostly useless, and can be mostly cut off in the Sea of Japan.
I just really don't see a way that Russia takes any NATO territory without the entire thing being a psyop against NATO not responding via far-right isolationists, and we're not there yet, or as an assist to help China take Taiwan, which likely means world war, and we're all fucked.
>First, it assumes the people of Belarus is willing to start a war with NATO
I think there is a more than 50% chance that Belarus is reintegrated in some form into Russia within this century. It's very clear that there is no plan for sovereignty post-Lukashenko and all of the opposition(like in Russia) has been exiled(so powerless). This is probably the 2nd biggest miss of EU foreign policy in the 21st century after Ukraine, they basically put Lukashenko in the same basket as Putin even though up until 2020 he did everything he could to maintain his sovereignty and got hit with horrible sanctions. But IMO it's too late now.
>Second, while Kaliningrad might be defensible (though I doubt that)
Russian military doctrine is kind of nebulous, but the one thing it is extremely clear on is that Kaliningrad will be defended using nuclear weapons. Exactly because it's basically not defensible using conventional means.
The point is you don't have to attack Kaliningrad. A siege trivially collapses the place. The place is wildly vulnerable on all sides despite the short distance to Belarus. This isn't a "the Kerch Bridge is outside of missle range" situation. Literally every way in and out of the enclave can be exploded on a daily basis, even without striking the enclave itself.
So if the idea is to invade the Baltics, but "not allow an invasion of Kaliningrad, without nuclear retaliation"... well then we've going to have a nuclear war and everyone loses, simply because you can't retake the Baltics without Kaliningrad, and NATO isn't going to allow the Baltics to be lost.
> I just really don't see a way that Russia takes any NATO territory without the entire thing being a psyop against NATO not responding via far-right isolationists, and we're not there yet, or as an assist to help China take Taiwan, which likely means world war, and we're all fucked.
I mean that's really the setup.
1. Get America to move towards a more isolationist setup / unwilling to help Europe or Taiwan. This is already in motion politically and via social media operations.
2. Get America stuck in a conflict with Iran. This is ramping up.
3. China takes Taiwan. Probably in the next 2-5 years.
4. Russia takes the Baltics and starts to carve further into Europe.
My further total crackpot theory on all of this is that most of this has been agreed upon by all the major powers involved.
1. Russia gets to claim over Europe in the future.
2. China gets Taiwan and control of Africa + APAC.
3. US gets control of North America and South America. This culminates in the annexation of Greenland once Russia takes Europe. This is the agreed upon transaction for America to back out of Russo-European affairs and China-Taiwan affairs. Canada and Mexico eventually are also merged into the US unwillingly but without any major allies left there isn't much to prevent it.
There are biggest protests in Iran in years & they lost a war with Israel recently - I don't see them being a problem in a long term & with a bit of luck their horrendous regime that regularly slaughters their own citizens might be gone.
In your mind what does a “Russian claim over Europe” mean. Do you really imagine a country with one third the population of the EU is going to dominate the EU + UK?
US annexing Greenland is just an excuse for US to leave NATO, Trump or Vance might do it if Putin attacks Europe, and he will when China attacks Taiwan.
With 10 undersea cables damaged in the Baltic 2023-2025, it’s obvious a different part of the government needs to become involved. Acting for your national security doesn’t need to (shouldn’t) mean there is no trial.
Every single ship in/out of St Petersburg goes via the Gulf of Finland. All those ships will be "Russian" (have stopped in Russia). It doesn't mean they're "Russian". Owner, charterer, flag, crew can all have very different nationalities.
Which part or combination makes them "Russian", in the sense of "the Russian state asked asked the ship to harm Finnish infrastructure, and they actually did it"?
You can lazily speculate about the aggressive, warmaking nation (that illegally annexed Crimea, is currently at war with Ukraine, is regularly sending submarines, ships, drones, jets into the territories of its neighbours) all you like... but if you want to be able to prosecute them, you need to be able to show evidence of the Russian state ordering this action, and that the cable damage was actually caused by that ship. Where is your evidence?
The crew on these ships are usually all Russians, the ship is often registered in Cayman, Panama or somewhere else. These ships often sail under a third nationality, but when the ships are seized, only complaints are filed from Russian lawyers. Take from that what you will.
If you don't declare war, you don't get those emergency powers. You only get peacetime powers.
Russia loves to go right up to the line, and then cross it a little bit, just to antagonise you. But unless you're willing to be the instigator of WW3, you'll stick to peacetime powers and peacetime courts with peacetime standards of evidence
Because they're an authoritarian shithole with a strongman leader who openly murders dissenters, personally controls all branches of government, controls the military and has people arrested just for holding up blank sheets of paper. He can pretend the country is not at war when it clearly is, and suffer no consequence, because nobody can replace him or even censure him without the country completely collapsing. When he eventually dies, the ensuing power vacuum will make the entire country a basket case. It's a dead country walking.
Do you want to make your country such a nightmare country, so you can also cheat like they do?
No, I want my country to have democratic rule of law on the inside (including when dealing with normal criminals of any kind, including murderers).
But when dealing with an outside state-level aggressor, I want my country to be be a cunning, hypocritical, powerful strongman.
The distinction under what mode a certain event should be treated should be pretty straightforward and can be determined using democratic means, e.g. a normal judge ruling "I rule this cable cutting incident to be an act of state-sponsored aggression against our democracy" (which would allow the alphabet agencies, special ops etc to "do their thing" with no repercussions whatsoever.)
for example:
1) a murder happens between a husband and wife, two normies, after lengthy, normal court proceedings the proof who did it is not 100% conclusive, accused person goes free
2) a murder of an anti-russian political dissident happens, a russian ex speznas officer is caught in relation to the event -> he "disappears" one day and the case is closed
I believe this is the only way to "win" this cold war.
People in other places don't have rights, and lives, and deserve freedom? If they don't, you don't. If they can be ruled out, so can you. Freedom and rights only exist if they are fundamentally universal.
No declarations of War has been needed for decades, internationally you only get disadvantages from doing that. Russia hasn't declared war to Ukraine, neither has Ukraine to Russia, so what.
Same reason they infiltrate airspace duringtraining, fly drones over airports, run submarines through ports.
Testing limits and tolerance, threatening what they could do in a real attack. Creating econocic pain in retaliation for support with a strong alibi to blame.
Boarding and detaining is a new escalation. How many cables cut before we consider military reaction? 3? 10? all of them?
The EU and US were an unassailable bastion of freedom, peace, and prosperity, with arguably the most solid political foundations in history in democracy, and the most solid alliance in history in NATO.
How do you defeat such a place? You turn up the heat, to describe it very generally. It means, n a sense, radicalizing the population, a classic solution to Russia's problem. That's what terrorists do: How do you cause the US to shoot itself in the foot: terrorize people into thinking they are unsafe and overreacting (even though 9/11 affected on small area of one city).
One way they turn up the heat is to spread ethnic hatred, social distrust, embrace of violence, and abandonment of those things that prevent those maladies: universal human rights, democracy, rule of law, etc.
You can see it in this thread: People rooting for warfare, abandonment of the rule of law, etc. - all by some minor, cost-effective actions, like cutting a cable.
The expensive action and infinitely more consequential action - the invasion of Ukraine - remarkably doesn't create the same outrage. That outrage would trigger the obviously best solution: Guaranteeing unlimited material and political support for Ukraine until they win the war.
That is, it's remarkable if you don't appreciate information dominance, especially with social media companies either abandoning all responsibility or openly aiding the radicalization. Russia can create radicalization directly too.
Agreed it's what they're doing but this looks more like "turning everyone against you". And you want your enemies to underestimate you (like Song or Kievan Rus' underestimated the Mongols) but the world doesn't underestimate Russia. Maybe it could have but WW2 and appeasement are still too fresh in memory.
Russia needs to work with the private sector to buy and crew the ships, and there is only so many ships they can buy and lose before it's not worth the money or hassle for either Russia or their private partners.
Why wouldn't it work? The oligarchs would certainly be a bit upset if they lost their yachts, mansions, sports teams, and everywhere else they keep their wealth away from Putin.
Just like Trump's tariff bs, I'm starting to think that for Putin's M.O. that we should be fighting fire with fire.
Why not send a couple ships to drag anchors across Russia's cables? "Oh we are but innocent fishermen" is still valid going the other way.
Then when Russia inevitably seizes and imprisons the crew, the international community can do the same for every Russian controlled ship with the bare minimum of suspicion.
Would be a pretty sucky mission though, so many risks of capture. But the Russian government does it because they don't care about their people and also the rest of the world is too toothless to do anything about it (until this occurrence at least, go Finland - but then they know Russia's tactics very well).
Russia has been doing a "stop hitting yourself, stop hitting yourself" to the world for too long, abusing the "nice" way we desperately try to see things, pretending even when it's obvious. Like they'll do something egregious and then when the West calls them out, suddenly their political mouthpieces are all "we can't believe that the West is making this shocking and provocative accusation which is of course completely false, EU are bullies!" and then the world responds by taking a step back, pretty much every single time.
Oh, not at all. I don't have the balls or the skills for that.
Though perhaps we could test some autonomous trawling vessels, you know, big tech company stuff. But as we know, software can sometimes be difficult and have...bugs... ;3
[...] two of their submarine cables – one between Sweden and Estonia and one between Estonia and Finland – have been damaged. The first cable was damaged on December 30th and the second on December 31st.
(Arelion is AS1299/formerly known as Telia Carrier. The name change happened because it's now owned by a Swedish government-managed infrastructure-focused pension fund.)
Effin' Russian govt, the rest of the world is too easy on them. They'll break ceasefires, they'll target non-military sites, they'll interfere with elections, they'll spread misinformation on social media, they'll lie to everyone and especially to their own citizens.
Who controls these ships and what is their perspective? I don't understand how we know what they 'understand' or not?
Also, how do you identify the ships? Do you blockade all maritime traffic in the Baltic Sea? All too and from Russia? The first would destroy our own economy, the second is a certain act of war.
> What I mean is that they will only understand counter measures that you'd take in a war, like blockade or sink them for instance.
Likely that is what they want. Do you think Russian planners are ignorant, and can't foresee that? This sort of game is long played in international relations.
It's chess: You try to cause your opponent to put themselves in a bad position. Provocations are manipulation - it's obvious what Russia is trying to provoke.
I doubt they want that. Blockade will undermine their war efforts which strongly depend on their oil and other exports.
More likely they think countries around Baltic Sea are too scared to offer strong resistance, so they can engage in such activity with impunity. And they won't limit it to Baltic Sea either, they'll do it anywhere they feel they can.
It's a mobster mentality. As I said, the only language they understand is response with force, nothing else.
Russia wants to show global south that the West is evil and aggressive and wants to encroach on and break up Russia. Provoking a European nation into military action first is the way to do that.
Global south cares for Russia as much as Russia is paying (giving discounts) anyone to care for it, not a barrel of oil more.
The most obvious reason here is simply mobster style intimidation. I.e. "You are helping Ukraine? We'll get back at you by damaging cables and what not".
I'd say the proper response to such incidents is to increase military help for Ukraine and blockade / confiscate / sink Russian ships wherever they do this stuff. Ships which engage in that should be treated as hostile military vessels.
That is not an option. They might as well bomb St. Petersburg - it's a seige, an act of war.
> the only language they understand is response with force, nothing else
I see no evidence of that.
Putin is in fact a political operator at a high level, and understands politics exceptionally well. Warfare is merely politics by other means, one tool in the toolchest (for people like him).
That's the only option, because otherwise you are saying that Russia can engage in acts of war against Europe and Europe can't respond. That's not how it should work. And what they do with cables is totally acts of war.
> I see no evidence of that.
Their Black Sea fleet hides in their ports, because they know the moment they'll try to roam, Ukraine will sink them. What other evidence do you need? It works.
It is: Look up the theory of status quo and 'revisionist* powers, and how they interact. Russia is acting as the revisionist, very predictably in many ways. And many in the West act predictably as status quo - including not being able to fathom why anyone would revise their happy power structure (with them on top).
You can see the same thing in many areas, such as race relations. The status quo is outraged and can't believe that other groups may be unhappy - after all, things work well in the status quo person's experience!
Yeah sure, we keep cutting our own telecoms cables multiple times per year, using Russian-operated ships as a front.
The Eagle S (I think it was?) case was brought to court here in Finland and they even admitted to dragging heir anchor but steadfastly maintained that it was due to their own incompetence (which the judge unfortunately believed.)
The US is blowing up Venezuelan boats, and according to Seymour Hersh, blew up Nord Stream. Why would a few cables be beyond US/NATO capabilities if it drums up popular support for US extra-judicial interdiction of other countries' maritime activity?
Do you understand that this has been going on for much longer than the US's Venezuelan murder spree, and longer than Trump has been president (this time around)?
Also, as I said, we have a crew of a Russian-operated ship on the record admitting to cutting a cable by dragging their anchor, and all the previous cases have also been traced to other Russian-operated ships (well, I think one was Chinese though) using AIS and radar data, and this has been done by OSINT folks in addition to the local authorities here around the Baltic. Are all of these people being controlled by NATO and the US?
Pro-Russian people like you assume that other countries will always just let the US or "NATO" do whatever they want and have absolutely zero autonomy at all, and you're absolute experts at ignoring everything that doesn't fit your insanely simplistic narrative that's predicated on the idea that Russia is just a perpetual victim and a spooky spooky NATO CIA USA cabal is actually doing everything bad that the Russians get up to.
Nowhere in this article does it say anything about Russians admitting to cutting the cable, let alone doing it on purpose with malicious intent, so you are just making things up now.
The list of US acts of terrorism goes beyond the Trump presidency; it's convenient for liberals to blame everything on Trump but the bombing of Nord Stream occurred under Biden; Obama was droning weddings while Hilary Clinton was setting fire to Libya (using NATO, the "defensive" alliance that strikes first!)
All the previous cases of cable cutting, alleged by Western news papers without any shred of evidence, is a good way of beating the war drums. The war propaganda and hysteria this time is more intense than the Iraq war, which I think you are too young to remember. It is unclear what material advantage Russia would get from cutting cables, but with hysteria, reason is not required.
"Pro-Russian people" like me .. well I'm pro-peace actually rather than pro-Russian and have seen that the Russians offered negotiations with the US and Europe multiple times that were rejected. Negotiations that might have averted bloodshed. It's interesting that a "non-binary" person like you (according to your Github) wants to view people in a binary category as pro/anti-Russian rather than perhaps having a different perspective.
As to the substance of your last point: I remember Europe actually arguing against the US during the 2003 invasion of Iraq and now seeing Europe being a bunch of kept poodles that would prefer to commit economic, moral and geopolitical suicide rather than stand up for themselves.
> The war propaganda and hysteria this time is more intense than the Iraq war, which I think you are too young to remember.
This feels like falling into a time warp back to February 2022 when the same sentiments were expressed vis-a-vis the imminent invasion. I see a lot of whataboutism, but not a whole lot of reasoning for why this isn't likely to be more of the same?
The court threw out the previous case since there was no proof of sabotage. I understood the court ruled that they have no jurisdiction over accident cases under international law.
As far as I understand, it is totally different case if they find any proof of intent.
I don't understand how we arrived at letting "random nation crew drags their anchor making the boat extremely slow and loud and breaks $100M+ critical infrastructure" get off scot free including their boat but it clearly can't continue to go on. If not a court then government must step in, nothing less is acceptable to any voting person.
Sinking the ships and then denying knowing anything about it would probably be the best course of action. That's what Russians would do, if the roles were reversed.
Unfortunately too many Western leaders still think that it's possible to negotiate in good faith with Russians. In reality they respect only force, and see European rules based order and "fair play" as weakness. If Baltic states didn't belong to NATO and Finland didn't have such a big army, Russians would be already doing a lot worse things than cutting cables.
Over here in Finland, even during the "good" years between collapse of the Soviet Union and invasion of Crimea, Russian businessmen kept buying property that made absolutely no economic sense, but was located next to critical infrastructure. Better relations between West and Russia were largely an illusion, especially since Putin took over.
"Sinking the ships and then denying knowing anything about it would probably be the best course of action. That's what Russians would do, if the roles were reversed."
You mean like NATO did off the coast of Spain a year ago?
I didn't remember that case, very interesting. But yes, silently torpedoing a Russian ship transporting military technology to another hostile rogue state is exactly what NATO should be doing.
Did I miss NATO declaring war on Russia and N. Korea? Or are we OK with the Chinese silently torpedoing the next batch of military equipment to Taiwan (a rouge province under intl law)?
Your argument, taken to its limit, is might makes right. Which, fine; but we're just not that strong anymore. Certainly not the EUpeeans.
As long as the EUpeans don't drag me, my loved ones, or my taxes into a war with Russia I couldn't care less if any this is declared or not nor do I care if they torpedo Russian ships.
However, I also couldn't care less if the Russians Oreshniks Liverpool or Marseille.
Too many warmongering, aggressive people in the comments. This is not how we get the good ending. Cooler heads prevail. You don't understand this. That's okay. It's not your fault.
Yes, we must submit and capitulate to Russia at every turn, or face war. Good plan.
Russia would deny any involvement, right? So throwing the crew in prison for a few decades and scrapping the ship aren't actions against Russia. They're not a party to this at all.
That's the classic warmonger argument: Call people who disagree 'chicken' and 'coward', like high school taunts.
There are many other solutions, and if you read the experts, that's what rational governments pursue. It's not as emotionally satisfying as starting a war, but it's far more satisfying than what comes after that start.
Warfare, as anyone who has experienced it, is a catastrophe win or lose or stalemate. The victors of WWII put extraordinary effort into preventing future wars, including outlawing it, creating the UN and EU, rebuilding their former enemy's economies, etc.
What do you know about warfare that they don't? Were they cowards? Naive or innocent about evil?
I'm not sure where you got the 'chicken' business from, but regardless, folks who want everyone to bend the knee to Putin are usually acting out of malice, not fear.
Is it really warmongering to suggest a country should police it's own territory, or defend it's own interests from aggression aimed at them? And, how is that aggression towards them not warmongering? If Russia isn't responsible for these attacks on infrastructure, then no one should have a problem with the crew being tossed in prison and the boat being chopped up and turned into patio furniture or repurposed as a reef. If they are responsible, then they're the warmongers; only a fundamentally dishonest person would suggest a measured response to or self defense against an attack is warmongering.
btw
i'm not even suggesting anyone go to war with russia. But more than likely capitulation is going to fail and russia will cross a line with their acts of sabotage and terrorism in Europe (or they'll just move on to whoever is next after Ukraine.) Since you brought up WWII, remind me, how did capitulating to Hitler in 1938 work out in the long run?
> I'm not sure where you got the 'chicken' business from
Implying that people are cowardly for not pursuing aggression is like high schoolers calling each other 'chicken' for not doing something.
> folks who want everyone to bend the knee to Putin are usually acting out of malice, not fear.
I don't necessarily agree - people do feel fear. Regardless, who wants capitulation? Could you point out some leader? Or even a comment on this long page?
Not agreeing with aggression != supporting capitulation. There are infinitely more solutions. The question is, what outcome do you want and what acts are most likely to get you there? Aggression is emotionally satisfying, in the short term, but usually results in bad outcomes.
> Is it really warmongering to suggest a country should police it's own territory, or defend it's own interests from aggression aimed at them?
If the proposed solution is warfare, then it's warmongering. The point is that are many other solutions. And self-righteousness is irrelevant - it doesn't make the outcome better or worse; it's therefore a dangerous distraction, likely to cause sub-optimal outcomes (usually bad ones). Using it as a reason to pursue warfare is a hallmark of warmongering.
> they're the warmongers
They are, in a sense, but that doesn't change what you do. Again, it's an argument from self-righteousness - 'they started it'. That doesn't matter; what matters is the outcome and warfare is one option that provides one range of outcomes (almost all horrible, almost universally different than what was expected when the decision was made - think of Ukraine, Iraq, etc. etc.).
Russia is not a warmonger, in an important sense: They deliberately use 'grey zone' tactics, actions short of being sufficient to provoke war. It's fundamental to their strategy and therefore essential to understand:
They intend to cause political change, not warfare. You can see their effectiveness in the emotional responses on this page. They disregard outcomes - you can bet that while some have temporary emotional satisfaction, the outcomes will be Russia's.
>Cooler heads prevail. You don't understand this. That's okay. It's not your fault.
You don't understand that your comment is incredibly aggressive and insulting? That's ok. You just don't understand that. Might not even be your fault you don't.
Russia is already in a state of armed aggression against Ukraine, and committing sabotage against other countries throughout Europe.
Cooler heads in this case are idiotic heads. It doesn’t take two partners to start a war, it only takes one and Russia already decided.
Someone in the other comments linked an article stating that Europe was doing the “unthinkable” of planning to retaliate and I was agog reading it if true. Not because Europe was going to retaliate but that they hadn’t even come up with plans over the past decade of increasing aggression from Russia.
You don’t have war plans for every crazy situation your analysts and strategists can conceive of because you’re excited to use them. You have them so your state apparatus is prepared and ready to go in an unlikely emergency instead of needing to take the months to years that any large bureaucracy needs to be ready to take action.
That seems to contradict itself? Cooler heads plan carefully; hotheads act out - seek immediate emotional satisfaction without thinking of the consequences.
> It doesn’t take two partners to start a war, it only takes one and Russia already decided.
Wars are not acts, but the conseuqences of long chains - large graphs - of decisions often lasting decades or more. Wars come from situations where there is no other choice.
The main goal of international relations policy is to create optimal scenarios, to not get caught in a situation where you have bad options or no options. Russia's 'grey zone' actions, including of course online propaganda campaigns (seriously, why wouldn't they?), are trying to create the scenarios that suit Russia best. They are preparing the political ground, and warfare is fundamentally politics (the most widely accepted maxim of warfare - see Clausewitz).
For an example, people emotionally and aggressively advocating for warfare, like on this page, if widespread can set the political ground.
It takes two (or more) to get into that position. It's a game of chess - checkmate isn't the result of one move.
> That seems to contradict itself? Cooler heads plan carefully; hotheads act out - seek immediate emotional satisfaction without thinking of the consequences.
No, because “cooler heads” are advocating for not retaliating. I’d accept the opinion of “cooler heads” if it was things like “we’re not ready yet and need to build up our military before being able to risk active conflict” vs “we should never fight back, war is bad :(“
> Wars are not acts, but the conseuqences of long chains - large graphs - of decisions often lasting decades or more. Wars come from situations where there is no other choice.
I have no idea how that is a response to what I said instead of just waxing poetic. If another nation decides they are at war with your nation, then guess what buddy, you’re at war. Even with your head in the sand.
> I’d accept the opinion of “cooler heads” if it was things like “we’re not ready yet and need to build up our military before being able to risk active conflict” vs “we should never fight back, war is bad :(“
I agree, essentially, and would say that your example is not one of a cooler head; it's just a different emotional response.
But who is saying “we should never fight back, war is bad :(“ ? Could you name someone? I haven't heard it at all. Do you see it even on this HN page, even once? I haven't heard any leader say anything of the sort.
> If another nation decides they are at war with your nation, then guess what buddy, you’re at war. Even with your head in the sand.
I'm just repeating a fundamental consensus of experts.
That's not how wars happen - the leader of a country doesn't just decide to do it one day, other than perhaps 'wars' against helpless targets like the US invading Grenada.
Warfare is very complicated. A 'nation' can't decide something, though the leadership can. But that doesn't mean they can execute it - that the nation and its internal powers will follow them sufficiently to carry it out. If Trump actually decided to invade Canada, obviously that would be the end of Trump's term in office.
Then, even if they get support, that doesn't at all mean they will be successful. Look at the US wars since WWII: Mostly failed, only one clear victory of any significance (the Gulf War), even those most were against substantially weaker foes.
So what is necessary to 'succeed' in warfare?
The most respected maxim of warfare is Clausewitz's, 'war is the continuation of politics, by other means' (not exact, and Clausewitz wrote in German of course). That is, it's politics, but by means of organized violence rather than by economic or diplomatic means (though those are involved too).
Wars start with politics; and leaders are very limited politically by the situation. They can't just do anything at all. They need political options, to create suppport and sustain it, etc.
Wars only end with effective political solutions. For example, in Afghanistan, the US lacked an effective political solution; then the US ran out of political will and withdrew. The war ended when the Taliban provided a stable political solution, for good or ill.
It's politics, and Russia's leadership knows that well. If they just start a war without considering politics, they'll fail badly. Instead, they are creating the political ground where they have the best options and their targets have bad ones.
It honestly starts to sound like they just botched the design and placement of these cables - placing them in shallow and exposed passages, with no proper defense against dragged anchors.
Real shades of "that cable shouldn't have been dressed like that, in a dark and narrow channel, clearly marked on navigation charts(to mitigate exactly this scenario, from good captains at least)" energy.
The response needs to be forceful: seize and auction off the ships. There needs to be sufficient deterrent to actually stop this from happening.
One ship might be considered a reasonable pawn to sacrifice. I'd go further: require that any ships passing through the strait to be bonded at some eye-watering amount like 10x the price of the ship plus the repair costs of the cable. Make it so if the cable is cut, you make a profit.
There was a Planet Money episode touching on Maritime law:
https://www.npr.org/2025/10/17/nx-s1-5577076/shadow-fleet-ru...
It was about Russian tankers breaking the sanctions, but with a well put explanation of why we can't just stop these ships even with extreme confidence in their fraudulency.
To be clear, why we don’t want to. Freedom of navigation makes all of us tremendously richer, even if it permits such fuckery.
Every great power has, at this point, rejected the notion in limited contexts. And if you’re not concerned about trashing trade, there is no incoherence to ignoring these rules.
Russia can bluster and threaten but their navy is weak and shrinking. Most of their commissioned warships never venture far from port. Outside of their territorial waters they have minimal capability to protect their own merchant vessels or interdict anyone else's sea lines of communication.
The US can't afford to field the navy necessary to back this ams hasn't been able to for many decades
Nations, like China, are catching up but largely because of two outsized factors:
- The US for some time has not been able to produce ships at home, at scale, and at cost. This is more of a slow burn because the fleet has been kept up to date for the most part. Eventually, new ships need to be built at home.
- Donald Trump has done damn near everything he can to install lackey's within the military, which reduces the military's top decision making acumen down to yes-men to a 79 year old geriatric patient.
Russia's fleet, on the other hand, is an aging joke. It is where we will be if we continue electing fascists that install Martians like Hegseth.
This is nonsense. The U.S. Navy de facto guarantees freedom of navigation today. Globally.
If we switched to a national system, our Navy wouldn’t literally escort U.S.-flagged ships. Its military would just need to enforce the threat that you get bombed if you fuck with America.
We’d save money switching to a big-stick model. (I think we’d be poorer for it in the long run. But if you’re playing chess and your opponent machete, you’re not going to find any winning moves on the board.)
Russia isn’t even pretending to follow international maritime law. China hasn’t for a decade. And now America is being creative with its interpretations.
But we probably have promised not to blockade ships in some conventions. And little Denmark (or Sweden) do not benefit from setting a precedence that conventions can be broken.
Getting payback is easy though: support Ukraine.
You haven't really thought this plan through.
They won't be able to seize those without opening fire.
https://ioplus.nl/en/posts/how-seven-students-unmasked-russi...
Fuck around, you’ll find out. These guys are wimps. If they want to end the world, so be it. China would be destroyed too.
This is not a way rational adults make decisions. I truly hope you are not a voter in any democratic nuclear-armed country.
If Russia doesn’t like it they can stop with the dumb threats.
The point is it doesn’t. Ukraine is on its way to wiping out Russia’s Black Sea Fleet. It’s pure posturing to pretend Moscow is stupid enough to end its existence over a naval battle, much less simply credible threats of one.
That statement doesn't really amount to much given the risk. I think we need something far more convincing; and many experts clearly think nuclear war is a risk.
Edit: by that I mean, with that attitude we would just have never developed nukes, or given the nukes to the Russians preemptively, because who wants nuclear war, right? Anything is better than that.
Good start. Then turn off Russia’s cable that runs via Finland [1] and make vague threats about (a) seizing shadow-fleet vessels in the Baltics and (b) how vulnerable Russia’s cable to Kaliningrad [2] would be to careless anchors.
All the while: start setting up non-cable based back-up bandwidth for if Russia severs these cables in advance of invasion.
[1] https://www.submarinecablemap.com/submarine-cable/bcs-north-...
[2] https://www.submarinecablemap.com/submarine-cable/kingisepp-...
Jailing crews in comfy Scandinavian prisons can hardly be a strong deterrent either.
Russia is all-in on this confrontation, Europe is much wealthier but won't commit anywhere near the effort or expense.
The Associated Press has documented 59 Russian hybrid operations across Europe. A systematic campaign of intimidation, sabotage, and violence: https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-war-europe-hybrid-...
Russia supplied the Buk missile system that shot down MH17, killing 298 civilians, most of them Europeans. Putin eliminates political opponents, like Alexei Navalny, who died in custody days before a possible release.
European leaders may be passive and slow, but what is making the situation truly dangerous, is the dictator-jealousy fueled encouragement and indulgence of the current U.S. administration, and all its sycophants, which got to the point of publicly applauding a dictator on U.S. soil.
That behavior legitimizes aggression, emboldens Moscow, and directly undermines European security, and is making thinks really, really, sketchy right now.
Germany accuses Russia of air traffic control cyber-attack: [1] - https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cvgrrnylzzyo
I personally think there's a more direct link between the US administration and Russia, in line with the rest of your points. I think it's more than "dictator-jealousy fueled encouragement", although what that "more" is I'm not entirely sure, and I'm not sure the differences between the possibilities matters in the end.
I really think it's hard not to read [about] Foundations of Geopolitics and the history of Viktor Yanukovych, the ties between the latter and Trump, and not conclude Russia's tendrils in the US, England, and elsewhere are far deeper than is generally acknowledged in the press.
I lost a lot of trust in most media to cover this issue appropriately when people in the UK started mysteriously dying and zipping themselves in body bags, and the coverage was a collective shrug. Why they would report something like that and then with a straight face conclude an article with "police say there's no evidence of foul play" is beyond me. But then again how the Mueller investigation got spun as an exoneration is also beyond me as well.
I know it's often seen as dismissive or shallow to blame the media for things, but I really do place a huge proportion of the blame for our current mess, at least in the US, on news outlets and media soft-pedaling what's been happening for the last 10 years. A lot of what people trust became propaganda, and a lot of the rest of it chased that audience around for clicks.
Scotland Yard's inquiry also found no evidence of Williams's fingerprints on the padlock of the bag or the rim of the bath, which the coroner said supported her assertion of "third-party involvement" in the death. Metropolitan Police deputy assistant commissioner Martin Hewitt said it was theoretically possible for Williams to lower himself into the bag without touching the rim of the bath. A key to the padlock was inside the bag, underneath his body" (See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Gareth_Williams)
It's absolutely mad, but remember this happened in 2010 -- before Russia did many of those bad things you mention. It wouldn't surprise me if a combination of political pressure and police incompetence made this go away.
The exhibits are short and worth looking at
https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/pr/justice-department-d...
But does it matter? 77 million Americans knowingly voted a convicted felon and court adjudicated sexual assaulter back into the presidency instead of a jail cell. From those, about 40 million were women, fully aware that a jury found him liable for sexual assault, and that multiple judges affirmed the verdict.
The majority of Americans saw criminality, sexual violence, and contempt for the law and decided that was acceptable leadership. :-))
"Kushner Companies and Russian individuals exchanged suspicious money transfers at the height of the 2016 race, ex-Deutsche Bank employee says" - https://www.businessinsider.com/jared-kushner-russia-2016-mo...
Let that be the prism through which all future political action is seen. Let's be real. Let's be good. Let's strive to eliminate and replace this farcical hyperbole, self-agrandizement, this pyramid scheme of a pretense at government. Let's have some confidence and ambition: work to restore a real balance of power between our three branches. There is so much we could do in the near and long term if we just set out sights on a simple, positive goal.
We may never be great again. Maybe we never were. But we can be good.
Run with the ad Homs if that’s the narrative needed to win, then use the power to implement policy. Anything less is bringing a book to a gun fight
My hunch is that a lot of Americans ticked 'Trump' because of brand recognition.
It's like buying laundry detergent. Most people know nothing about the chemistry or efficacy. They pick whatever package looks familiar, 'Tide' probably
Isn't the logical action for EU to launch massive pre-emptive strikes on this big bad country that hates the western way of life ?
A pre-emptive strike would be expensive and immediately retcon into making Putin be the good guy - he’s long said NATO is the aggressor. Best to make invading EU to be too expensive to be worth it.
I think the bigger risk currently that Europe faces is the low and mid level corruption where Russian agents extend their tendrils into government structures in EU.
Come on. Who cares what he pretend?
> Best to make invading EU to be too expensive to be worth it.
How do you propose to estimate how much it is worth doing it?
IMO, it is best is to make the kremlin government collapse by all mean necessary. Including sabotage, assassination, propaganda, confiscation, corruption/trahison. And preemptive strike if needs to be.
The two biggest targets are the UK and France, because both have an independent nuclear deterrent. If those are captured by puppets, expect nuclear explosions over European capitals.
This is not hyperbole. Russian government insiders have made it absolutely, unambiguously clear that Europe must be "crushed."
As a direct quote.
The real tragedy is oligarch complicity. Oligarchs and aristocrats in the US, UK, and EU have decided they have more in common with their Russian counterparts than with the native populations of their respective countries.
To be clear, strikes wouldn't be "pre-emptive", Russia is already in a war, and it's entirely allowed for any nation to join the side of Ukraine. None of the rules of war prevent helping a friendly country by joining the fight.
War is best prevented by robust deterrents. When it comes to belligerent fascist regimes who want to see how far you can be pushed, not responding to provocations and aggression forcefully makes larger-scale war more likely in the future.
There should be a tit for tat response but the tit needs to be much larger than the tat to create the incentive for no longer attacking
Good luck with that, though.
Depending on the days, the priority changes, between Russia or attacking the US first, maybe with the help from Canada :-))
You have to deal with one threat at a time, and it seems the fight against chlorinated chicken will take priority for now... :-)
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/us/news/2025/12/17/trump-demands...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025_Russian_drone_incursion_i...
Any reasonable planning requires looking at the scenario your action creates - the range of outcomes. The range certainly includes Putin using nuclear weapons (which is part of Russia's military doctrine - see 'escalate to deescalate'). That needs to be part of your plan.
If we had acted decisively at the beginning of the Ukraine war, the risk of nuclear war would be lower today.
Appeasement can work. But it can also increase risks. In this case, giving into a bully invites escalation itself, which increases the chances of a fuckup (e.g. a misfired drone taking out an early-warning radar) which legitimately calls for nuclear escalation.
The true IR expertise - and you'll see this from the actual experts (and caveat: I am no more than a well-read amatuer) - is to neither escalate nor appease. The focus is on outcomes, not 'getting justice' (I can't think of a better term: reaction, emotional satisfaction, blame, fighting back, etc.). It endlessly frustrates many in the public, because of course they want emotional satisfaction; it also endlessly frustrates me because the leaders don't explain this.
It's like an engineering problem: You don't want to make decisions in anger; blame is terrible leadership; trying to hurt whoever caused your problem is absurd. It all would make your situation worse, even if you solve the original problem. Obviously, you think about the overall outcome for your organization and plan the best way to get there.
In sports, 'trash talk' is used to get that emotional reaction from people, because it takes them away from trying to win the game. The moment you get that response, you know you've won. Russia is working for that moment and is getting it from some.
> If we had acted decisively at the beginning of the Ukraine war, the risk of nuclear war would be lower today.
I agree completely - depending on what you mean (I certainly oppose direct combat between NATO and Russia). And we can still do it now: If NATO guarantees Ukraine unlimited material support until they win the war, no matter how long, not only would Ukraine win but when Russia was convinced of that (however that might happen), they would give up. The Europeans could do it themselves - they have ~~ 20x the economy of Russia. It would be much cheaper than the alternative of Russia gaining ground and fighting them later, and it would drain Russia's military and economy substantially.
Certainly that's not appeasing and it's barely escalatory: It's not a threat to Russian security - Ukraine obviously isn't invading - though it's eventually a threat to Putin's political standing, he may navigate it. And escalatory risk could be further decreased by offering Russia a permanent security treaty based on the old borders, with disarmament on both sides. That's the outcome NATO wants anyway.
But yes, imprisoning the crew (especially the captain) is also a good idea.
Many international ships are crewed by what is essentially slave labor. Too many google links to share them all, but try this to start: https://pulitzercenter.org/stories/thats-slavery-seafarers-s...
This makes invoking article 5 likewise somewhat difficult because it allowed other NATO members pressure the border states into "not overreacting". The point is to slowly escalate into outright hostility without ever having "the event" that makes it obvious article 5 must be invoked.
But outright hostility is not necessarily the goal. Hybrid warfare is more “subtle”. Its targets are more diverse and the aim is less overt defeat and more war of attrition in a broad sense. You want to wear your enemy down.
Russia is an imperialistic state that really doesn't like having neighbours that are not under its political and military control. Violating airspace, GPS jamming, cutting undersea cables is just their way of showing force, and damaging us, who they perceive as their enemies for not submitting to their rule.
The only blame placed in the article is targeted at Russia. And I'd quite like to see some speculation on Russia's possible motive for this, it sounds pointless and risky for their shipping on the face of it.
EDIT looking at your post history its very clear you have no intention of discussing this in good faith.
My post history shows that I do support Russia's self defense against U.S./NATO threats. In my opinion Ukraine entering NATO is indeed an existential threat to Russia, because since (at least) the collapse of the UDSSR the U.S. and it's vassals openly communicated and pursued the goal of regime changing Russia (+ Belarus, Georgia).
What should NATO and the EU do to Russia, since Russia would like to break up NATO and the EU?
Honestly, give any Russian or shadow-vessel crew a bounty if they surrender. Turn Moscow’s fleet into a cheap source of intelligence and scrap.
The other side wants escalation of tension, otherwise they wouldn't do this. And they get to choose when and where and, to a degree, the means by which it happens - you can be sure it's a time and place and means that benefits them.
The fundamental of international relations in conflict is to deter without escalation, and to act in the time, place, and manner of your choosing. You'll see leaders cite that specifically: 'We have this problem; we will respond in the time, place, and in the way we think best.'
Russia clearly hasn't acted in such way that they should enjoy these kinds of acts of benevolence. Finland and Estonia should seriously consider retreating from this agreement.
Russia is a continental state so it requires its Neighbors to be weak so they cant threaten Russia. As much as it tries to escape this logic, it can’t. Russia’s core interest is to dominate and subjugate its near abroad. It has to. It’s the only way for it to become a global power.
Even if Putin wanted to join the E.U., the economy, social structures and institutions, and uneducated voting populace wouldn't allow it to be stable enough to join.
Russia at this point can't even be a successful authoritarian state like China. It's hard to say that it will never be a democracy, but those with a memory of the 1990's find that idea traumatic. Looking far forward in time, eventually global oil independence and demographic decline may force economic reform.
Similarly, notice how much they invested in their naval base in Syria on the Mediterranean (though I'm not sure of its status now, and they oddly seemed to abandon Assad, who provided it to them).
More critically, think of a war: How do they trade by sea by sea? Their economy could be choked off, restricted to Pacific trade and trains across Asia to the population centers. They are in a corner.
My bet is that it'll happen sometime between 2029-2035, after UK, France and Germany have had their general elections, where populist parties with more pro-Russian stances are likely to gain power.
Fortunately while close, the border runs along a fairly wide river with just a single bridge across, so logistically somewhat complicated to supply with heavy equipment from the Russian side. At least covertly.
But definitely a scenario that needs to be considered.
Little green men. Crimea is an island.
Narva is much less interesting in that sense.
It would be easy to set up a Russian military presence, and it would be hard to dislodge it from a distance without considerable effort and expense.
First, it assumes the people of Belarus is willing to start a war with NATO and it's very grumpy neighbor to the south. There isn't a world in which the Suwałki gap it cut off without strikes and an invasion of Belarus. Lukashenko might want it, but given the last "election" there will likely be a 5th, 6th, and 7th column waiting for guns to be carried over the border from Poland and Ukraine.
Second, while Kaliningrad might be defensible (though I doubt that), the Baltic Sea is not. Sweden, Denmark, and Germany will shut down any ships entering and leaving the Baltic. Ukraine and Turkey cut off the Black Sea, and the Russian fleet is left in Murmansk (which is likely immediately destroyed), and Vladivostok... which as a single port as mostly useless, and can be mostly cut off in the Sea of Japan.
I just really don't see a way that Russia takes any NATO territory without the entire thing being a psyop against NATO not responding via far-right isolationists, and we're not there yet, or as an assist to help China take Taiwan, which likely means world war, and we're all fucked.
I think there is a more than 50% chance that Belarus is reintegrated in some form into Russia within this century. It's very clear that there is no plan for sovereignty post-Lukashenko and all of the opposition(like in Russia) has been exiled(so powerless). This is probably the 2nd biggest miss of EU foreign policy in the 21st century after Ukraine, they basically put Lukashenko in the same basket as Putin even though up until 2020 he did everything he could to maintain his sovereignty and got hit with horrible sanctions. But IMO it's too late now.
>Second, while Kaliningrad might be defensible (though I doubt that)
Russian military doctrine is kind of nebulous, but the one thing it is extremely clear on is that Kaliningrad will be defended using nuclear weapons. Exactly because it's basically not defensible using conventional means.
So if the idea is to invade the Baltics, but "not allow an invasion of Kaliningrad, without nuclear retaliation"... well then we've going to have a nuclear war and everyone loses, simply because you can't retake the Baltics without Kaliningrad, and NATO isn't going to allow the Baltics to be lost.
This is hilarious as naval blockade by itself is an act of war.
I mean that's really the setup.
1. Get America to move towards a more isolationist setup / unwilling to help Europe or Taiwan. This is already in motion politically and via social media operations.
2. Get America stuck in a conflict with Iran. This is ramping up.
3. China takes Taiwan. Probably in the next 2-5 years.
4. Russia takes the Baltics and starts to carve further into Europe.
My further total crackpot theory on all of this is that most of this has been agreed upon by all the major powers involved.
1. Russia gets to claim over Europe in the future.
2. China gets Taiwan and control of Africa + APAC.
3. US gets control of North America and South America. This culminates in the annexation of Greenland once Russia takes Europe. This is the agreed upon transaction for America to back out of Russo-European affairs and China-Taiwan affairs. Canada and Mexico eventually are also merged into the US unwillingly but without any major allies left there isn't much to prevent it.
can confirm!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balticconnector#2023_damage_in...
In 2024, another Chinese ship damaged telecom cables in the Baltic Sea area between Sweden and the Baltic countries.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_Baltic_Sea_submarine_cabl...
Which part or combination makes them "Russian", in the sense of "the Russian state asked asked the ship to harm Finnish infrastructure, and they actually did it"?
You can lazily speculate about the aggressive, warmaking nation (that illegally annexed Crimea, is currently at war with Ukraine, is regularly sending submarines, ships, drones, jets into the territories of its neighbours) all you like... but if you want to be able to prosecute them, you need to be able to show evidence of the Russian state ordering this action, and that the cable damage was actually caused by that ship. Where is your evidence?
If you declare war without there being a bona fide casus belli, you'll be whisked out of power so fast your head will spin. See e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_South_Korean_martial_law_...
If you don't declare war, you don't get those emergency powers. You only get peacetime powers.
Russia loves to go right up to the line, and then cross it a little bit, just to antagonise you. But unless you're willing to be the instigator of WW3, you'll stick to peacetime powers and peacetime courts with peacetime standards of evidence
Clearly this will need to change somewhat, if the other side wants to engage in hybrid war tactics. Nothing new, Cold War was a thing.
Do you want to make your country such a nightmare country, so you can also cheat like they do?
But when dealing with an outside state-level aggressor, I want my country to be be a cunning, hypocritical, powerful strongman.
The distinction under what mode a certain event should be treated should be pretty straightforward and can be determined using democratic means, e.g. a normal judge ruling "I rule this cable cutting incident to be an act of state-sponsored aggression against our democracy" (which would allow the alphabet agencies, special ops etc to "do their thing" with no repercussions whatsoever.)
for example:
1) a murder happens between a husband and wife, two normies, after lengthy, normal court proceedings the proof who did it is not 100% conclusive, accused person goes free
2) a murder of an anti-russian political dissident happens, a russian ex speznas officer is caught in relation to the event -> he "disappears" one day and the case is closed
I believe this is the only way to "win" this cold war.
You're standing in a forest, lighting a forest fire to kill the other guy. There is lots of history about this most fundamental error.
Testing limits and tolerance, threatening what they could do in a real attack. Creating econocic pain in retaliation for support with a strong alibi to blame.
Boarding and detaining is a new escalation. How many cables cut before we consider military reaction? 3? 10? all of them?
The EU and US were an unassailable bastion of freedom, peace, and prosperity, with arguably the most solid political foundations in history in democracy, and the most solid alliance in history in NATO.
How do you defeat such a place? You turn up the heat, to describe it very generally. It means, n a sense, radicalizing the population, a classic solution to Russia's problem. That's what terrorists do: How do you cause the US to shoot itself in the foot: terrorize people into thinking they are unsafe and overreacting (even though 9/11 affected on small area of one city).
One way they turn up the heat is to spread ethnic hatred, social distrust, embrace of violence, and abandonment of those things that prevent those maladies: universal human rights, democracy, rule of law, etc.
You can see it in this thread: People rooting for warfare, abandonment of the rule of law, etc. - all by some minor, cost-effective actions, like cutting a cable.
The expensive action and infinitely more consequential action - the invasion of Ukraine - remarkably doesn't create the same outrage. That outrage would trigger the obviously best solution: Guaranteeing unlimited material and political support for Ukraine until they win the war.
That is, it's remarkable if you don't appreciate information dominance, especially with social media companies either abandoning all responsibility or openly aiding the radicalization. Russia can create radicalization directly too.
Agreed it's what they're doing but this looks more like "turning everyone against you". And you want your enemies to underestimate you (like Song or Kievan Rus' underestimated the Mongols) but the world doesn't underestimate Russia. Maybe it could have but WW2 and appeasement are still too fresh in memory.
In the grand scheme, repairing the cables and supporting Ukraine will cost less and hurt Russia more than escalating tentions in the Baltic sea.
Works for small and medium-sized private companies. Doesn't work for major nations like Russia.
Doing as you suggest is like writing parking tickets for delivery trucks. They don't care. It's just a cost of doing business.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46445484
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46443925
Why not send a couple ships to drag anchors across Russia's cables? "Oh we are but innocent fishermen" is still valid going the other way.
Then when Russia inevitably seizes and imprisons the crew, the international community can do the same for every Russian controlled ship with the bare minimum of suspicion.
Would be a pretty sucky mission though, so many risks of capture. But the Russian government does it because they don't care about their people and also the rest of the world is too toothless to do anything about it (until this occurrence at least, go Finland - but then they know Russia's tactics very well).
Russia has been doing a "stop hitting yourself, stop hitting yourself" to the world for too long, abusing the "nice" way we desperately try to see things, pretending even when it's obvious. Like they'll do something egregious and then when the West calls them out, suddenly their political mouthpieces are all "we can't believe that the West is making this shocking and provocative accusation which is of course completely false, EU are bullies!" and then the world responds by taking a step back, pretty much every single time.
-- Then when Russia inevitably seizes and imprisons the crew
Are you volunteering yourself for a vacation in a Russian gulag?
Though perhaps we could test some autonomous trawling vessels, you know, big tech company stuff. But as we know, software can sometimes be difficult and have...bugs... ;3
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nord_Stream_pipelines_sabotage
Destroying that pipeline pushed Germany to act more against Russia (being officially unable to continue buying gas).
Historically anti russian states like Denmark, Sweden, Finland and Estonia or even NATO would have liked that.
Russia could have blown it up themselves to pin it on Ukraine to decrease support, but that doesn't seem to be the outcome.
Even germany could have blown it up to pivot their own politics.
It's a massive game of clue. It may become declassified in 20 years by whoever did it.
https://www.aftonbladet.se/nyheter/a/JOow58/kabelbrott-mella... (Swedish)
[...] two of their submarine cables – one between Sweden and Estonia and one between Estonia and Finland – have been damaged. The first cable was damaged on December 30th and the second on December 31st.
(Arelion is AS1299/formerly known as Telia Carrier. The name change happened because it's now owned by a Swedish government-managed infrastructure-focused pension fund.)
Also, how do you identify the ships? Do you blockade all maritime traffic in the Baltic Sea? All too and from Russia? The first would destroy our own economy, the second is a certain act of war.
What I mean is that they will only understand counter measures that you'd take in a war, like blockade or sink them for instance.
I.e. they are already engaging in the acts of war, so it's late to worry about that, the question is what is anyone doing about it.
Ukraine sinks their fleet in the Black Sea, and they understood it very well - they don't leave their ports.
Likely that is what they want. Do you think Russian planners are ignorant, and can't foresee that? This sort of game is long played in international relations.
It's chess: You try to cause your opponent to put themselves in a bad position. Provocations are manipulation - it's obvious what Russia is trying to provoke.
More likely they think countries around Baltic Sea are too scared to offer strong resistance, so they can engage in such activity with impunity. And they won't limit it to Baltic Sea either, they'll do it anywhere they feel they can.
It's a mobster mentality. As I said, the only language they understand is response with force, nothing else.
The most obvious reason here is simply mobster style intimidation. I.e. "You are helping Ukraine? We'll get back at you by damaging cables and what not".
I'd say the proper response to such incidents is to increase military help for Ukraine and blockade / confiscate / sink Russian ships wherever they do this stuff. Ships which engage in that should be treated as hostile military vessels.
That is not an option. They might as well bomb St. Petersburg - it's a seige, an act of war.
> the only language they understand is response with force, nothing else
I see no evidence of that.
Putin is in fact a political operator at a high level, and understands politics exceptionally well. Warfare is merely politics by other means, one tool in the toolchest (for people like him).
> I see no evidence of that.
Their Black Sea fleet hides in their ports, because they know the moment they'll try to roam, Ukraine will sink them. What other evidence do you need? It works.
You can see the same thing in many areas, such as race relations. The status quo is outraged and can't believe that other groups may be unhappy - after all, things work well in the status quo person's experience!
The Eagle S (I think it was?) case was brought to court here in Finland and they even admitted to dragging heir anchor but steadfastly maintained that it was due to their own incompetence (which the judge unfortunately believed.)
I suppose that was also a NATO ploy?
Also, as I said, we have a crew of a Russian-operated ship on the record admitting to cutting a cable by dragging their anchor, and all the previous cases have also been traced to other Russian-operated ships (well, I think one was Chinese though) using AIS and radar data, and this has been done by OSINT folks in addition to the local authorities here around the Baltic. Are all of these people being controlled by NATO and the US?
Pro-Russian people like you assume that other countries will always just let the US or "NATO" do whatever they want and have absolutely zero autonomy at all, and you're absolute experts at ignoring everything that doesn't fit your insanely simplistic narrative that's predicated on the idea that Russia is just a perpetual victim and a spooky spooky NATO CIA USA cabal is actually doing everything bad that the Russians get up to.
The list of US acts of terrorism goes beyond the Trump presidency; it's convenient for liberals to blame everything on Trump but the bombing of Nord Stream occurred under Biden; Obama was droning weddings while Hilary Clinton was setting fire to Libya (using NATO, the "defensive" alliance that strikes first!)
All the previous cases of cable cutting, alleged by Western news papers without any shred of evidence, is a good way of beating the war drums. The war propaganda and hysteria this time is more intense than the Iraq war, which I think you are too young to remember. It is unclear what material advantage Russia would get from cutting cables, but with hysteria, reason is not required.
"Pro-Russian people" like me .. well I'm pro-peace actually rather than pro-Russian and have seen that the Russians offered negotiations with the US and Europe multiple times that were rejected. Negotiations that might have averted bloodshed. It's interesting that a "non-binary" person like you (according to your Github) wants to view people in a binary category as pro/anti-Russian rather than perhaps having a different perspective.
As to the substance of your last point: I remember Europe actually arguing against the US during the 2003 invasion of Iraq and now seeing Europe being a bunch of kept poodles that would prefer to commit economic, moral and geopolitical suicide rather than stand up for themselves.
This feels like falling into a time warp back to February 2022 when the same sentiments were expressed vis-a-vis the imminent invasion. I see a lot of whataboutism, but not a whole lot of reasoning for why this isn't likely to be more of the same?
As far as I understand, it is totally different case if they find any proof of intent.
That would pass the right message if courts keep refusing to make things right.
Unfortunately too many Western leaders still think that it's possible to negotiate in good faith with Russians. In reality they respect only force, and see European rules based order and "fair play" as weakness. If Baltic states didn't belong to NATO and Finland didn't have such a big army, Russians would be already doing a lot worse things than cutting cables.
Over here in Finland, even during the "good" years between collapse of the Soviet Union and invasion of Crimea, Russian businessmen kept buying property that made absolutely no economic sense, but was located next to critical infrastructure. Better relations between West and Russia were largely an illusion, especially since Putin took over.
You mean like NATO did off the coast of Spain a year ago?
Your argument, taken to its limit, is might makes right. Which, fine; but we're just not that strong anymore. Certainly not the EUpeeans.
Russia invaded Ukraine just fine without ever declaring war.
However, I also couldn't care less if the Russians Oreshniks Liverpool or Marseille.
Meanwhile, we'll be protecting your loved ones.
And please don't flatter yourself. Europe couldn't field an army of a 100 000 riflemen if you put all of the EU countries together.
Russia would deny any involvement, right? So throwing the crew in prison for a few decades and scrapping the ship aren't actions against Russia. They're not a party to this at all.
There are many other solutions, and if you read the experts, that's what rational governments pursue. It's not as emotionally satisfying as starting a war, but it's far more satisfying than what comes after that start.
Warfare, as anyone who has experienced it, is a catastrophe win or lose or stalemate. The victors of WWII put extraordinary effort into preventing future wars, including outlawing it, creating the UN and EU, rebuilding their former enemy's economies, etc.
What do you know about warfare that they don't? Were they cowards? Naive or innocent about evil?
Is it really warmongering to suggest a country should police it's own territory, or defend it's own interests from aggression aimed at them? And, how is that aggression towards them not warmongering? If Russia isn't responsible for these attacks on infrastructure, then no one should have a problem with the crew being tossed in prison and the boat being chopped up and turned into patio furniture or repurposed as a reef. If they are responsible, then they're the warmongers; only a fundamentally dishonest person would suggest a measured response to or self defense against an attack is warmongering.
btw
i'm not even suggesting anyone go to war with russia. But more than likely capitulation is going to fail and russia will cross a line with their acts of sabotage and terrorism in Europe (or they'll just move on to whoever is next after Ukraine.) Since you brought up WWII, remind me, how did capitulating to Hitler in 1938 work out in the long run?
Implying that people are cowardly for not pursuing aggression is like high schoolers calling each other 'chicken' for not doing something.
> folks who want everyone to bend the knee to Putin are usually acting out of malice, not fear.
I don't necessarily agree - people do feel fear. Regardless, who wants capitulation? Could you point out some leader? Or even a comment on this long page?
Not agreeing with aggression != supporting capitulation. There are infinitely more solutions. The question is, what outcome do you want and what acts are most likely to get you there? Aggression is emotionally satisfying, in the short term, but usually results in bad outcomes.
> Is it really warmongering to suggest a country should police it's own territory, or defend it's own interests from aggression aimed at them?
If the proposed solution is warfare, then it's warmongering. The point is that are many other solutions. And self-righteousness is irrelevant - it doesn't make the outcome better or worse; it's therefore a dangerous distraction, likely to cause sub-optimal outcomes (usually bad ones). Using it as a reason to pursue warfare is a hallmark of warmongering.
> they're the warmongers
They are, in a sense, but that doesn't change what you do. Again, it's an argument from self-righteousness - 'they started it'. That doesn't matter; what matters is the outcome and warfare is one option that provides one range of outcomes (almost all horrible, almost universally different than what was expected when the decision was made - think of Ukraine, Iraq, etc. etc.).
Russia is not a warmonger, in an important sense: They deliberately use 'grey zone' tactics, actions short of being sufficient to provoke war. It's fundamental to their strategy and therefore essential to understand:
They intend to cause political change, not warfare. You can see their effectiveness in the emotional responses on this page. They disregard outcomes - you can bet that while some have temporary emotional satisfaction, the outcomes will be Russia's.
You don't understand that your comment is incredibly aggressive and insulting? That's ok. You just don't understand that. Might not even be your fault you don't.
Cooler heads in this case are idiotic heads. It doesn’t take two partners to start a war, it only takes one and Russia already decided.
Someone in the other comments linked an article stating that Europe was doing the “unthinkable” of planning to retaliate and I was agog reading it if true. Not because Europe was going to retaliate but that they hadn’t even come up with plans over the past decade of increasing aggression from Russia.
You don’t have war plans for every crazy situation your analysts and strategists can conceive of because you’re excited to use them. You have them so your state apparatus is prepared and ready to go in an unlikely emergency instead of needing to take the months to years that any large bureaucracy needs to be ready to take action.
> It doesn’t take two partners to start a war, it only takes one and Russia already decided.
Wars are not acts, but the conseuqences of long chains - large graphs - of decisions often lasting decades or more. Wars come from situations where there is no other choice.
The main goal of international relations policy is to create optimal scenarios, to not get caught in a situation where you have bad options or no options. Russia's 'grey zone' actions, including of course online propaganda campaigns (seriously, why wouldn't they?), are trying to create the scenarios that suit Russia best. They are preparing the political ground, and warfare is fundamentally politics (the most widely accepted maxim of warfare - see Clausewitz).
For an example, people emotionally and aggressively advocating for warfare, like on this page, if widespread can set the political ground.
It takes two (or more) to get into that position. It's a game of chess - checkmate isn't the result of one move.
No, because “cooler heads” are advocating for not retaliating. I’d accept the opinion of “cooler heads” if it was things like “we’re not ready yet and need to build up our military before being able to risk active conflict” vs “we should never fight back, war is bad :(“
> Wars are not acts, but the conseuqences of long chains - large graphs - of decisions often lasting decades or more. Wars come from situations where there is no other choice.
I have no idea how that is a response to what I said instead of just waxing poetic. If another nation decides they are at war with your nation, then guess what buddy, you’re at war. Even with your head in the sand.
I agree, essentially, and would say that your example is not one of a cooler head; it's just a different emotional response.
But who is saying “we should never fight back, war is bad :(“ ? Could you name someone? I haven't heard it at all. Do you see it even on this HN page, even once? I haven't heard any leader say anything of the sort.
> If another nation decides they are at war with your nation, then guess what buddy, you’re at war. Even with your head in the sand.
I'm just repeating a fundamental consensus of experts.
That's not how wars happen - the leader of a country doesn't just decide to do it one day, other than perhaps 'wars' against helpless targets like the US invading Grenada.
Warfare is very complicated. A 'nation' can't decide something, though the leadership can. But that doesn't mean they can execute it - that the nation and its internal powers will follow them sufficiently to carry it out. If Trump actually decided to invade Canada, obviously that would be the end of Trump's term in office.
Then, even if they get support, that doesn't at all mean they will be successful. Look at the US wars since WWII: Mostly failed, only one clear victory of any significance (the Gulf War), even those most were against substantially weaker foes.
So what is necessary to 'succeed' in warfare?
The most respected maxim of warfare is Clausewitz's, 'war is the continuation of politics, by other means' (not exact, and Clausewitz wrote in German of course). That is, it's politics, but by means of organized violence rather than by economic or diplomatic means (though those are involved too).
Wars start with politics; and leaders are very limited politically by the situation. They can't just do anything at all. They need political options, to create suppport and sustain it, etc.
Wars only end with effective political solutions. For example, in Afghanistan, the US lacked an effective political solution; then the US ran out of political will and withdrew. The war ended when the Taliban provided a stable political solution, for good or ill.
It's politics, and Russia's leadership knows that well. If they just start a war without considering politics, they'll fail badly. Instead, they are creating the political ground where they have the best options and their targets have bad ones.
I'm sorry I have no snark-free way to respond to this.
But how hard could it be to get a Cat 395 excavator in there? Dig a little trench and bury it.
Sounds like a weekend project to me. Has someone told the telecoms this?
Geez, how are we so much better at this than the actual engineers?
Edit: to parent comment, I think people missed your joke.