A new trial forum for political discussions. Largely unmoderated, so whilst discussing politics is fine, personal abuse isn't. So please keep it civil.
As with other forums the posts to do not reflect the view of the FLYER team.
  • 1
  • 4
  • 5
  • 6
  • 7
  • 8
  • 207
By Loco parentis
#1894933
Cessna 571

I applaud your caution. If your foreign policy is to mean anything then it has to be credible, believable and meaningful, any thing less and you're exposing yourself to ridicule. What you must never do is to give the international bully any suggestion that your resolve is anything less than total. The D.T. editorial I referred to suggests just that.

If this nation is to be a major player on the world stage, the potential of our military has to be realistic and re-inforced by not-a-step-back diplomacy of the kind not seen during the 1930s appeasement crisis. Never again !
By Bill McCarthy
#1894941
What military - we haven’t got a “meaningful” one any more. The army has been reduced to helping people queue at covid inoculation centres and other civvy duties. Our carrier would be at the bottom of the Black Sea within a day. The RAF, well………We are poking an already alert lion with a sharp stick.
Cessna571 liked this
User avatar
By eltonioni
#1894948
Cessna571 wrote:
eltonioni  wrote:
PPS. Ukraine should invite a few battalions of the British Army in to Kiev without any pretext or half-cock excuse. I reckon that will be the end of it. All this shilly-shallying is just encouraging Putin & Co to misbehave.


I think that’s the worst thing we can do.

Ivan will then just march in.

He will easily overpower a few battalions plus the Ukraine militia.

Then we have a proper problem.

We won’t want WW3 to kick off, and so we’ll have to back down and go home.

Ivan will then have an agreement on his table that he won fair and square, because we agreed to go home.

We have no stomach for a proper war, Ukraine is a long way away, logistics wouldn’t be easy, and Ivan wouldn’t be fighting by setting up IEDs at the roadside, we’d get severely trounced even if we sent everything we have.

We need to make sure we are not backing ourselves into a corner.

For some reason, in chess, beginners Castle, because they think it’s a “clever, advanced” thing. Surround your King with pawns, and a rook to his side, good protection eh?
CheckMate usually follows soon after, as what they’ve usually done is close off all their exit strategies.


I'm not talking about Tommys fighting Ruskis, I wouldn't' expect it to happen in line with traditional MAD protocols.

You refer to "Ivan" where you presumably mean "Putin"?

That last Russian to make the mistake of thinking that they themselves represented the collective Ivan was Boris Yeltsin and that really didn't go well for him. Neither did it go well for Tsar Nikolai, or Katherine The Great so maybe you do have a point - history lessons aren't an indicator of the future. :D

However, what Putin fears most of all is young Russian boy conscripts going home in body bags. Ukraine can give him that with spades and the Russian people might hand him his own shortly afterwards.

I suppose we'll find out soon enough whether they are serious about invading. My hunch is that they aren't but I'm not popping into William Hill on the strength of the hunch.
#1895021
Bill McCarthy wrote:What military - we haven’t got a “meaningful” one any more. The army has been reduced to helping people queue at covid inoculation centres and other civvy duties. Our carrier would be at the bottom of the Black Sea within a day. The RAF, well………We are poking an already alert lion with a sharp stick.



Bill,

With you in charge perhaps we wouldn't have so quickly removed the Argies from the Falklands or, even at all !
Nick liked this
#1895234
Loco - you will know by now that I did so, twice, Operation Journeyman (Dreadnought) in ‘77 and again, Operation Corporate (Splendid)in ‘82. By the way, Wiki gives a false account on our boats activities in the South Atlantic - Dreadnought had no intention of “running away” and Splendid did not sight the carrier 25 De Mayo, but got heavily involved in some scary stuff. I’ll tell you about it one day :)
MikeE, kanga, Loco parentis liked this
User avatar
By eltonioni
#1895962
OCB wrote:I received a very brief notice “from above” today - any project work I had with our subsidiaries in Russia gets pushed out to 2023.


Do you think that's just careful contingency planning or has somebody been given a talking to about sanctions?
User avatar
By OCB
#1896004
eltonioni wrote:
OCB wrote:I received a very brief notice “from above” today - any project work I had with our subsidiaries in Russia gets pushed out to 2023.


Do you think that's just careful contingency planning or has somebody been given a talking to about sanctions?


In this instance, I think it’s a bit of both - I doubt my current client’s activities would be on a sanctions list, but there are certain elements of the “board level” who are on national advisory committees etc - so will have some exposure to what’s happening at policy level.

I clearly remember the sanctions last time around, I was in the banking sector then - and one project was meant to use the Russian dev team which was part of a Western IT consulting firm.

That was a big no-no.
User avatar
By eltonioni
#1896385
eltonioni wrote:
CloudHound wrote:Tobias Elwood MP on telly tonight (17/1) painting a credible but deeply depressing screenplay.

Look out for freezing temperatures for the right conditions to start the war.


I'm officially baffled.

Fighting season is spring to the end of summer, before the ground turns to mud and everything grinds to a messy, bloody halt with people and machinery stuck and going nowhere. Ukraine isn't especially cold in the winter, certainly not permafrost cold. Surely tanks, trucks and boots will quickly mash up the ground in short order without any assistance from artillery or bombs?

Is there a credible explanation of this received wisdom about frozen ground that's doing the rounds because it doesn't sound right to me.


OK, it's two weeks since writing the above and I am more baffled than before. Now the 'experts' are saying that Putin will wait to invade until after the Winter Olympics (ie 4-20 Feb) because something incomprehensible about being nice to Chinese national pride. Obviously frozen ground ain't all that important after all.

Lord, preserve us from experts. They ain't got a Scooby Doo.

Maybe the real reason is that he's been outplayed by NATO doing what he least expected - stepping up.
Flyin'Dutch' liked this
User avatar
By PeteSpencer
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1896396
While not being an apologist in any way for Putin, having looked at the European map before and after the collapse of the Soviet Union c 1996 I think I can see why he's paranoid about the easterly 'creep ' of NATO membership.

Perhaps it would be a face saver for him to let him have Ukraine, after all he's got Crimea and de facto half of Ukraine anyway and its surrounded by Belarus and that other poxy country bottom left whose name I forget anyway, which are both 'his'.

It would save endless bloodshed, we could go back to buying cheapo Yak 52s and Sukhois and the price of gas would go back down again.

And we could stick our arrays of missiles in the other front-facing 'new members' ' countries.

Now where's that sh it-stirring emoji? :lol:
#1896399
Indeed, suggest he join NATO as the Chinese are building up significant military bases around the world and could end up as being more of a threat to world peace. :D
Paul_Sengupta liked this
  • 1
  • 4
  • 5
  • 6
  • 7
  • 8
  • 207