In my experience people who are against more Ukraine aid think that the dollar amount we send is actual cash that can be spent in other places, rather than pallets of munitions that don’t keep forever anyway.
And a part of that is old stuff that would be decommissioned so the cash is to make the new products. Or so I have understood it.
nah that’s right. we’ve sent ukraine a shit ton of basically decommissioned shit. and even then we’ve been weirdly stingy, and unresponsive to their non military aid requests (their biggest ask is glass)
Uhh… why glass?
Probably on account of every window in every city being broken by shockwaves from bombardments
also ukrainian winters are notably brutal
Wouldn’t plexiglass be a better thing to ask for during war time in that case?
I am guessing that outside of the frontlines bombings are still fairly rare events. Risk is low enough for installing proper windows, but high enough to ensure there are not enough.
Seems weird to ask the US for glass when they can get it from a lot closer, assuming we’re just talking about normal glass.
they’ve been asking literally all their allies for glass. it’s been a constant struggle for them to get aid, especially as the western countries they used to rely on shifted focus to helping Israel
And we’re also saving a bunch on disposal costs for the old stuff.
It’s literal economic stimulus, US sends them old shit, and buys new and more expensive shit from local military suppliers. This is the “creating jobs” thing the right likes so much, except when it’s against Russian interests
Yes, but it is really inefficient. If we simply ignore the nuke threat it would probably take the US a month of bombing to restore pre 2014 borders.
Even for new weapons and ammo it is usually just spending on the local weapons manufacturers so basically just supporting your own economy.
Good point. Chuck Norris-style thumbs up.
This is the most obscene attempt to understate the US’s involvement in the war in Ukraine I’ve ever seen.
Da comrade, USA always fault. Very fault.
Not always, but it’s the fault of the USA far more than it should be. Like a pants shittingly stupid amount of the time. Almost as pants shittingly stupid as Americans who pretend that isn’t the case.
It’s USA’s fault Russia annexed Crimea? and now attempting to annex more?
How’s that?
sponsoring a coup d’etat that threatens the russian Black Sea Fleet’s command center. but you know that.
Got any evidence… Of said sponsored elements involved in coup
The Department of TrustMeBro is immune to FOIA and rarely releases documents.
Eaglestan has been known to start weird unnecessary wars, but this is not one of them.
(I personally can’t really comment on surplus vs. new in detail, though)
The tankies aren’t going to like this meme.
If they browse NCD they’ll be mad a lot. People on here have the normal take on whether the North Koreans are secret Wakanda good guys, and it comes up constantly.
Fuck em.
I take Putin very seriously.
Us military is on the same page.Weirdo nutjobs on the Internet create memes on how much everyone is wrong but them.
Okay but everyone else IS wrong but me
I can vouch for this one.
I wanted to argue but I got deterred.
Visegradians, Viking-chans, and Baltics are taking kremlin far more seriously than the most of West. At the same time we cant take seriously yet another boo hoo we satan warsaw, we take berlin nazi and polands next after baltics.
Hell, we take kremlin mafia far more seriously than most of the tankies. We just want to either throw molotovs or piss bottles into their old babushka cursing at everyone window and be done with it.
Because Kremlin is an old Babushka bully. She will spit and yell at everyone, then play the victim. So you either ignore or drop kick it.
maybe ask someone professional for help.
Like assassin’s? 🤣
Did you take him seriously when he said sending cruise missiles to Ukraine would be considered a nuclear attack? Or that sending f16s would be a nuclear attack? Or when he said Ukraine was planning to use a nuclear dirty bomb? He has every incentive to blow everything out of proportion, so we can’t go off of what he says.
Do you have some sources for those quotes?
I don’t care about Ukraine. Just don’t involve us into this crap.
I believe he is 100% serious. And I still think it shouldn’t matter. The conflict will grow regardless, and the West shouldn’t concede a single inch to the psychopathic asshole.
Otherwise we might as well hand him all of Europe on a silver platter.
Why are WE the ones afraid of consequences? Why should the so-called “mightiest nation on Earth” be the one that cowers whenever someone makes nuclear threats? Didn’t we used to lead the world in creating fear of our military and our nuclear weapons?
I don’t get how the right in particular treats the USA like a mighty jugger- nah I can’t even frame my rhetorical thought, we all know that Russia is deeply involved in shaping the opinions and attitudes of our country’s dumbest fuckwads.
The US military is a juggernaut in conventional war, but there’s no winners in nuclear war.
There can absolutely be a winner in a limited-scale nuclear exchange.
Otherwise we might as well hand him all of Europe on a silver platter.
And sadly I believe that a lot of Americans would prefer isolationism and are fine with this, as they’d get to cut military spending.
Of course, Europeans buy American goods and vice versa. If Russia ruled over all of Europe, Putin could just stop all trade with the US as a giant middle finger.
Except he can’t rule over all of Europe…
Oh they don’t want to cut military funding
Some at least pretend to. “If we didn’t have to police the world, we could save so much on military spending, Europe should get its’ own shit together”
And while I as an European agree about the last part, I still think NATO is a beneficial alliance to everyone involved.
My bet is, if Putin dares to drop a single nuke, he will get assassinated. Lot of secret service agents, and other enthusiasts are straight up going to try that. During war that’s allowed right?
Mutually assured destruction is still a thing. We may not be at Cold War levels of insanity, where between the US and Russia there were enough nukes to glass the planet like 150 times over, but plenty of nations have arsenals (especially in Europe), and the best way to make enemies of the entirety of the world would be to be the first one to launch a nuke. Dropping a nuke would signal to every leader in the world that no country is safe from becoming an irradiated wasteland.
I think if Putin dropped a nuke, his allies would drop him faster than it would take NATO to declare all out war with Russia.
You say that, and yet Exxon-Mobil have proven that actively trying to destroy the world does nothing to turn world leaders away from trying to buddy up with you.
When you exon does it, it’s slowly and for money. So there are “winners”. Nukes have no winners.
Sure they do, the rest of the universe wins by not having to deal with another species stupid enough to destroy itself.
My point was, the assassination goal would be him not being able to drop a second one. Also slay the first 100 people in the chain of command and leave them headless.
Cool thing is that nuclear winter will fight global warming
Unfortunately, nobody would be able to take him out that quickly. Russia still has plenty of nukes, and they could fire them all before anybody has time to react. If that nuke is an ICBM, though, as soon as it leaves the silo the world would know, and the counter barrage of nukes would be firing up before it even lands.
I originally meant that dropping a nuke would have the entire world declare war on Russia, even his former allies because no one wants to rule over a pile of radioactive rocks, but thinking about it, his allies would probably be the ones most likely to try to have him assassinated in that situation. A maniac with a big stick is only useful so long as you don’t have to worry about him smacking you with it, too.
Russia still has plenty of nukes, and they could fire them all before anybody has time to react. If that nuke is an ICBM, though, as soon as it leaves the silo the world would know, and the counter barrage of nukes would be firing up before it even lands.
Obviously an ICBM is armageddon. However a tacticsl nuke, one dropped from a plane or something onto Ukraine would be a different story.
The world will be far less inclined to launching ICBMs over that. So it’s just a game of how much they can get away with.
nuclear winter is not a thing
Patroling the Mojave almost makes me wish it was though
Source?
Seems pretty likely that all those fires would cause a lot of soot that blocks out some of the sunlight, thus causing a global temperature drop
sagan et al overstated amount of soot from full nuclear exchange from targets most susceptible to large scale fires by 10x-ish and this is the only way they could come up with actual nuclear winter
when counterexample happened during gulf war they dropped it, but when people forgot this was a thing they brought it up again. this is not how you do science https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_winter#Criticism_and_debate
Not off hand but the idea is the amount needed to cause one is not as low as previously stated (the 3 large scale bombs being enough was likely off by an order of magnitude).
The fear of instant nuclear winter was likely more cold war scare then sound science, but the chance of nuclear winter is still there. We just don’t know exactly how many nukes and where would kick one off.
I think if you’re assassinating a public figure you’re a little past caring about what’s “allowed”
I’ll pitch in bail money either way.
Me too, just tell me where to send the Doge
I was taking about like, it’s considered a war crime? Skipping the soldiers dying and straight up killing the dude.
Well once the nuke is dropped, anything related to Geneva Conventions or any other Conventions go out the window.
Cool
sure, a stand-of between Biden and Putin would have been best right at the beginning.
Why Biden? He’s not in this war except as a multi service shop. It would have been Zelinsky/Putin.
please take a closer look at the posted graphics!
The conflict is between Russia and Ukraine, so it would be Zelenisky vs Putin
Any major power could easily assasinate the leadership of any other major power, but doing so is taboo for obvious reasons.The nuclear taboo is higher on the list of “things that are not done.”
Opening the door to actually using nuclear weapons represents a threat to everyone – including the rich and powerful. Whoever is dumb enough to use even a tactical nuke is going to not only find themselves a pariah, they’re going to face coordinated efforts to eliminate the threat they represent by everyone.
Imagine being in his inner circle: you’d be getting credible offers of “whatever you need and want” to remove Putin from power from every major power on the planet.
Tankies: “Liberals are so blood-thirsty”
Le natoo is a warmongering countri intensifies.
My favourite was “inherently escalatory organization”.
Fox news is desperately pushing this and signal boosting their true leader constantly.
Fox has been pumping up the Russophobia since Putin started saber-rattling, most likely to justify Trump’s incoming “peace negotiations” that will result in sacrificing Ukrainian territory.
They need Biden to go easy on russia until the fat orange can get in power and come save daddy putin.
That’s exactly why Biden authorized Ukraine to use US missiles on Russian territory and supplied antipersonnel mines.
If they take out Ukraine and only talk between Trump and Putin, then the war continues, the US just won’t be their shop… Plenty of countries need to update their weapons on Ukrainian money.
Man, I wonder if those Russian propaganda guys ever wish they had more non-bullshit to spew. Like, they have to keep up appearances, but it’s usually easy to tell which statements are for the public, and which ones they might actually mean (like the threat to do proxy wars of their own), so it’s just a lot of wasted words.
One day the fire of a thousand suns will cleans the world from good and evil alike and will bring true balance.
Nah. It’s gonna be bird flu.
Covid shut down the world with a death rate of like 1%.
Bird flu is 56%.
Don’t let the sink in. It’s coughing and looks like it’s got Bird flu.
And this time people know to get mad and deliberately cough on each other for freedom in advance, instead of just buying TP.
I think bird flu is deadly enough that people will actually take it seriously, the survival rate of Covid was high enough it was possible you would know multiple people who’ve had it and survived.
But if it does kick off, it’s going to kick off with absolutely the worst people in charge of managing it coupled with lunatics running podcasts who see everything as a conspiracy or are snakeoil salesman/women with a massive reach.
It’s going to rival the Black Death if it happens under Trumps administration.
no it won’t. plenty of infected people probably got under the radar because they thought it’s regular flu. covid initially had much higher fatality too
Thankfully, I’m nowhere near the USA, and my country has largely competent leaders, so I’ll be watching in horror from the other side of the world.
H5N1 has never left, there were outbreaks 20 years ago already
“I’ve seen this one before!”
Por que no los dos?
Bird flu pandemic + actual hot nuclear´war. This is doinh miracles for my mental health. I always felt as if nothing really ever mattered.
It doesn’t. We’ll be a tiny stain on an otherwise lifeless rock.
fortunately the death rate of Bird flu is much lower. look at what’s going on in the US milk industry. there are hundreds of infections amongst workers, very few died.
One can only hope.
Pay attention to my threats or I’ll… I’ll MaKe MoRe ThReAtS! I MeAn It! I’mN oT KiDdInG ArOuNd!! ! !!!
Can someone explain to me why it’s ridiculous to take them seriously? Genuine question.
that’s because MAD still works and things like sending ATACMS are nowhere close to actual nuclear threshold, which would be nuclear attack or overwhelming conventional invasion threatening existence of country. nobody would be even thinking of nukes until Ukrainian tanks roll to Moscow lol. if you have a spare hour https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fWKGYnO0Jf4
But what about tactical nukes which wouldn’t trigger MAD?
There has been some debate over the response to tactical Nuclear weapons - notably NATO threatened a conventional response to the use of nukes (likely meant to be read as, “We will end this war, no nukes needed.”) but it would depend massively on their usage.
When your enemy has strategic nukes, the extreme ways to respond are:
A, not taking the nuclear threat seriously.
B, give up.
Saying we shouldn’t arm Ukraine because of nukes is close to option B.
Nukes may go off, but if arming Ukraine is the trigger, than we were likely to witness nuclear war because we wouldn’t accept option B, rather than any weapon system giving Ukraine an advantage. If that is the case, nuclear war has most likely already been decided.
The real game is to make those in Russia believe that backing down works towards their goals. If they hope in 20 years the US will fall apart, they may wait, or maybe someone will kill Putin and take over Russia, being rewarded by less sanctions.
Long story short, nuking Ukraine don’t benifit Russia more than it will hurt it.
I am not an expert
And where do you stop appeasement? Kyiv? Warschau? Berlin? Amsterdam? London?
USA should conquer Taiwan, Cuba and South America before somebody gives them nukes.
Opposing this would be blood thirsty war mongering, a direct cause of WW3.
So conquering other countries is wrong after all? Or are you being serious? Because that is precisely the Kremlin’s rationale for this war: Take out Ukraine before it joins the west and becomes too powerful to conquer.
No, of course I’m not being serious. Sovereign countries are sovereign and their borders should not be violated by anyone.
It’s not called conquering if somebody decides to join an alliance or a trade union.
No need to use them now that Trump will withdraw support.
Add a soyjak with an ushanka in the bottom frame next to the chud for extra accuracy
Huh? Why was this redrawn? Was it for the hair?
Not sure if we should taunt a powerful dictator in the last third of his lifespan, who is slowly losing his war and his lifegoal of a reunited Russia. I know it’s fun to humiliate a bad guy, but if he decides “if I die, the world dies”, we’re doomed.
This is NCD. That’s precisely what we’re going to do.
What’s NDC?
If we let him win do you know how many other wannabe world rulers are going to try the same thing? And how many other countries this particular asshole is going to try to invade?
I don’t want to let him win. There is s huge gray area between “okay, you win” and “go nuke us, coward”: Good old civilized diplomacy, Star Trek-style! It’s smart, elegant and everybody get’s his/her voice heard. It’s more difficult now than it was 2 or 5 or 10 years ago, and not as popular with voters. But I still hope the world is better than “let’s kill the bad guy!”
And how do you achieve anything with diplomacy with someone who explicitly broke the last few agreements related to the country in question to invade?
You’re in the wrong place
if he decides “if I die, the world dies”, we’re doomed.
Unlikely, he’s got kids.
