Safety

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I don’t even qualify as an armchair private, much less an armchair general.

But watching the Russian army‘s performance in Ukraine, I cooked up a theory.

Modern dictators know they can’t trust their armies; They have to find some way to counterbalance them. That is usually some combination of a smaller, fanatically loyal, better equipped force to serve as a backstop against potential disloyalty from the regular army.

Hitler had the SS (and even then, kept the SS divided against itself, including a special force within the SS that was even more loyal to Hitler). Hussein had the Republican guards. In addition to infiltrating the entire army with the KGB, the Soviets actually built two parallel armies (KGB “border forces “and MVD “internal security troops”) to protect the regime against perfidy by the Red Army,

Even the modern British Army has some vestigial remnants of that same practice; the Guards regiments are technically separate from the rest of the army (hence they are still called “Household Troops”), A throwback to a time when the monarch had a private army to guard itself. The practice is more a nod to the tradition and esprit de corps that is such a huge part of British military practice – nobody thinks the Coldstream Guard will need to beat back a coup by the Rifle Regiment – but that’s basically where i tall started.

Under the Soviet system, the army was kept at a lower state of readiness than the KGB and MVD. And of course they were informants everywhere. Whenever the army bate became too “good “, or a general two popular, the KGB and the party would unite to get rid of them, and cut the army down to size. Frequent purges, with the commensurate loss in combat effectiveness (to the Soviets immense grief in the Winter War with Finland, and the first year of the war against Germany – were deemed acceptable, at least initially, compared to the risk of a coup.

And then the Soviet Union fell.and then the Soviet Union fell.

I am speculating, here – but I suspect modern Russia’s diminished circumstances, and the need to line a lot of oligarchs pockets (including his own), means, I suspect, that Putin may not be able to afford as elaborate a set of redundant military precautions, and may have to keep his army even less capable than before, for his own safety‘s sake.

That’s the only theory I can think of, after 10 years of the Russian military supposedly evolving into a force capable of competing with the first world.

(Want an actual expert? Try this guy).

41 thoughts on “Safety”

  1. Pardon the off topic, but much in the news of course, didn’t know if there was going to be a thread about the SOTU speech and surrounding politics and media coverage.

    The media talking point about the economy is that it is GREAT, and we common SUBJECTS are just too stupid to understand that.

    Also Paul Krugman on oil prices: down to 2018 levels. Why are people unhappy?

    Idiot, they were at an almost an all time high in 2018, President Trump brought them WAY down. 2018 levels, what a maroon.

  2. Lol, fake news cBS put out results from a poll that showed most Americans liked gropey joe’s ‘slur of the union address’, and it made them feel more confident.

    Breakdown?
    49% Dhimmi
    28% ‘independent” (most if not all of peeps who call themselves independent vote dhimmi)
    21% Republican.

    Nice try enemies of the people.

  3. threadjack, but you already knew that. Mitch is too slow… Was hoping maybe he coordinated with D to set up a STFU, oops, sorry SOTU thread.

  4. American intelligence assessments of the strength of the former Soviet Union have been revealed to be wildly off mark, which skewed our responses to their provocations toward capitulation instead of resistance.

    One wonders if Soviet intelligence assessments of Ukraine suffered the same problem in the opposite direction – believing that Ukrainians would fold and with Puddin’ Cup leading the world response, victory would be a cakewalk?

    If your subordinates tell you want you want to hear instead of what you need to know . . . .

  5. But watching the Russian army‘s performance in Ukraine, I cooked up a theory

    Watching it where, exactly? The fake news media has been publishing photos and video that has been proven to be bullshit. No one knows what’s going on there; not even the people in the middle of it.

    For all we know, this whole thing could have been planned by Putin, Lukashenko and Zelinsky to fuck NATO up.

  6. Back on topic – excellent take on the situation and analysis. But this just makes me even more mad how badly the West miscalculated and hang Ukraine/Russian conflict out to dry for 8 fucking years! The West and especially EU were praying for this to end in a matter of days so they can get back to lining Vlad’s pockets and slowly commit suicide while turning green and brown. They are now staring at an escalating conflict with no end in sight. Does anyone other than the mindless trollbots think that even with Vald gone and hostilities suddenly ended that Ukranians will suddenly join hands with Russian in a kumbaya moment? They may look alike and speak similar languages but they will hate each other until kingdom-come.

  7. In fact Putin has already lost, to win militarily he must now get his soldiers to commit atrocities in urban population centres against their Slavic brothers. He has ended Nordstream 2 remilitarized Germany, united NATO, collapsed the Rouble, and created the circumstances of a bank run and domestic hyper inflation. It turns out he is a bad gambler without a strategy and no fallback. His end is obvious, how it happens we don’t know yet.

    The problem is that he is so isolated that he probably now actually believes his own propaganda. He has created a paranoid alternative reality in which he lives. Maybe we should send the Donald over there to console him.

  8. rAT, the mule that hauled our gear the last few days had an IQ 2 deciles above yours, and I’m not kidding.

  9. For all we know, this whole thing could have been planned by Putin, Lukashenko and Zelinsky to fuck NATO up

    Or? All cooked up by (the leadership of) Russia, Ukraine, and the GloboHomo West to distract from what is slowly and surely coming out about the Kung flu and especially the vaccines. As the Foremost Newspaper in the country reported this morning, Putin Receives Nobel Prize In Medicine For Ending COVID Pandemic.

    PS you *do* know the record that Babylon Bee has for predicting the future correctly without even trying to, yes?

  11. I have to concur with Blade’s take, based on a conversation that I had this morning with a customer of mine, that is from Ukraine. His wife is from Belarus. He told me that we are seeing and hearing about a lot of staged or outright fake information. He claims that his nephew was on Snake Island. You know, the one where Ukrainian soldiers told a Russian warship to f- off, then the Russians killed a bunch of them? His nephew said that in reality, the Ukrainians surrendered. They were then taken to Sevastopol by tug boat, fed and given dry clothes and told to go home. His cousin reported that a lot of the guns that were being handed out by the Ukrainian government, were plywood cut outs, painted black. The alleged fighter ace called “The Ghost, is a fake. The videos of planes being shot down by him were actually screen shots from video games and from war games played out about five years ago. The “enemy planes” were actually target drones.
    Finally, I caught a video interview from Monday(?) where an alleged female member of the Ukrainian government told the interviewer that they “were fighting for the New World Order”.

  13. hoss and jdm, we cannot believe a fucking thing that comes from legacy media, or the government. It’s all 100% bullshit.

    The Russians endured decades of bullshit from their government and Pravda, so they’re immune. We need to vaccinate ourselves against Globohomo.

    That’s why I’m harsh on people who present information as anything other than an opinion as to what *might* be happening at any time, anywhere, for anything.

  14. We don’t have journalists anymore. Most of you read in the news is written by girls in their 20s with degrees from far-left liberal arts colleges. They basically just rewrite what they are told by their sources, most of whom are in the employ of intelligence agencies, foreign and domestic.

  15. propaganda I am seeing right now (not just regarding sanctioned incursion but wuhan flu for example) rivals what I had been subjected to in the old country. The only thing I can go by is phone calls from people who are in Kiev and Lviv. Lviv is having a gay ‘ole time while Kiev citizens are cowered in basements with nothing to eat and afraid to stick their head out.

  16. Twat — how was your Brokeback Mountain weekend? 😂

    If Putin has achieved one thing above all else it is the realization in Europe that they take responsibility for their own security without automatically looking to the US to take a disproportionate share of the burden. Too late, but nonetheless hugely important. Hopefully a watershed moment.

  17. In fact Putin has already lost, to win militarily he must now get his soldiers to commit atrocities in urban population centres against their Slavic brothers. – Emery

    Oh, you mean like the 1956 invasion of Hungary or the 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia?

    Speaking of the later, while the streets of New York, London, Paris and Berlin were filled with millions of leftists protesting US action in Vietnam that spring, only blowing newspapers rambled through the same empty streets when the Soviet empire sent troops to reclaim its colonies.

    F**K the left.

    They need to shut their f***ing mouths about the Ukraine. They rooted for their paymasters in Moscow to 50 years, why change sides now?

    BTW, anyone notice how fast the Irish IRA and the Spanish ETA folded in the wake of the dissolution of the USSR?

    You think that was a coincidence?

  18. ^ You forgot one. Russia goes bankrupt and collapses. That is what happened to the old Soviet Union, and it is the end game of your Disaster Scenario. Things do not look good for Russia right this moment.

    The West should announce that every sanction will remain in place until either Putin is replaced or Russia withdraws all troops from Ukraine. Time to draw a line and stick to it.

    Russia Keeps Stock Market Closed in Longest Pause Since 1998
    https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-03-02/russia-keeps-stock-market-closed-in-longest-shutdown-since-1998

  19. Nobody should listen to what Emery says because he is a crazy person.
    He thinks that Trump plotted with Putin to steal the 2016 election from Hillary. He thinks that Biden’s surrender in Afghanistan was a brilliant, perfectly executed move.

  21. MP, it’s not mental illness with rAT; it’s clearly a very low IQ at work with a propensity to lie tossed in.

  22. Thank God that brave Iranians are defending Ukraine, huh Emery? I’m sure they will turn the tide.

  28. ” . . . to win militarily he must now get his soldiers to commit atrocities in urban population centres . . . .” – says E.

    Like this?
    https://popularresistance.org/ukraine-intensifies-shelling-of-donbass-as-western-media-are-silent/

    Oh, wait, that’s from March of LAST year, when the Ukrainian government was firing artillery shells at its OWN citizens in the break-away provinces which Russia is now defending.

    Imagine North Dakota decided to break away from the United States so Lesko Brandon sent the Army to lob artillery shells into Dickinson, Jamestown and Fargo, but the Mounties crossed the border to defend the North Dakotans’ right of self-determination and protect them from being killed by their own government. The media, being firmly in the Democrats’ corner at all times, would report it as a horrific Canadian outrage, the worst since January 6th, worse than Pearl Harbor.

    In a cluster-farge like that, who are the Good Guys and who are the Bad Guys?

  29. Ukraine denied responsibility for the shelling, claiming it was a false flag attack by pro-Russian militants. The Ukrainian National Guard said it was never deployed in the region in which the shelling occurred.

  30. Ever see the Hall of Mirrors scene from “The Lady From Shanghai?” It has nothing on this thread.

  33. Here’s a wild thought – if North Korean hackers inserted a virus into the American banking system that completely shut down all ATMs and credit card readers, most of America would be without money (seriously, who carries cash these days?) If that virus crashed the dollar, the stock market tanked and it looked as if foreign holders of American debt were about to declare us in default, would it be fair to say that virus was a threat to the very existence of the nation?

    When one country delivers an existential attack on another – conventional or financial – can the victim defend itself with weapons of mass destruction? America’s current nuclear policy seems to say so. If it’s sauce for our goose, is it also sauce for Russia’s gander?

    Have Lesko Brandon’s sanctions justified Russia launching a nuclear war against us?

  34. foreign holders of American debt were about to declare us in default

    Clearly you don’t understand banking. If you owe the bank $100000, you have a problem. If you owe the bank $100000000000000, the bank has a problem.

    Foreign holders of American debt could, however, do something worse: stop lending to us anymore. Like whenever those Treasury bond auctions occur and no one shows up. That would be a problem.

  35. Um, Joe, “Popular Resistance” is a commie website that takes that position quite openly, and interestingly…is more or less taking the Russian side in this conflict, as if the collapse of the Warsaw Pact had never occurred. Also very interesting is that a look at their “News” feed suggests, as we conservatives have been noting for decades–too many environmentalists are “watermelon” environmentalists, green on the outside but thoroughly red on the inside.

    I don’t doubt that there could eventually be very real atrocities committed by the Ukrainians, but I’m not going to trust an unabashedly pro-Russian, pro-communist website for news in that regard. As Ronaldus Maximus noted, “Trust, but verify”, and as Deming noted, “In God we Trust; all others must provide data.”

  37. https://rusreality.com/2021/11/18/ukraine-announced-shelling-of-tv-tower-in-donbass/

    I have no idea which sources are reliable so Google it yourself and find a source you like. The point is not to criticize the source, the point is to note that Ukraine and Russia have been at each other throats, killing each other, violating the ceasefire, long before the current phase of hostilities. For America to obsess over it now reeks of opportunistic diversion. Every president wants to be a strong War President, to wave the flag to rally the public. I don’t think it’s working out the way let’s go Brandon had in mind.

  38. Nobody wants nuclear war. However we did sign the 1994 Budapest agreement to provide security to Ukraine, in exchange for Ukraine giving up their nuclear weapons. Are we really just going to stand by and watch while Ukraine is completely destroyed a la Grozny or Aleppo?

  39. Yes, we are. And everybody knows it except Ukraine.

    The whole world isn’t watching, the whole world isn’t helping, the whole world is virtue signaling. Because that’s how Liberals deal with problems, everything from the Taliban to Covid to inflation to Russian tanks.

    Who needs military superiority when you have moral supiority?

  40. Who needs military superiority when you have moral supiority?

    Priceless. You should trademark it.

  41. Pingback: In The Mailbox: 03.03.22 (Afternoon Edition) : The Other McCain

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