Peter wrote:
Russia never will be, short of a “revolution”
Right. And I would not put that possibility too far out of reach. Maybe not today, not tomorrow but in the future? Loads of people in Russia and those who have fled have no other wish than for Russia to be accepted back into the world community, for their own sake/economy/whatever. So never say never.
Peter wrote:
In Japan, even less so; even Hirohito remained in the throne as a part of the deal with the US.
Yep and it became a quite valued member of the world community. It took time but it did happen.
Peter wrote:
It probably was tracked all the way but it would be normal to cover that up to avoid stirring up emotions, since it was obviously a cockup.
It could also be a tactical thing not to reveal it at this time but telling the Russians quietly, “we know it was you” to keep pressure on them. The Russians are quite aware that this is a case where the worst interpretation of would trigger Article 4. IMHO they have no intention of doing that.
It took time but it did happen.
It took 1945-1955 IIRC, an unconditional surrender, total occupation, Hirohito remaining as Emperor, no war crimes investigations…
There are probably some parallels, but Japan was/is an extremely compliant society, plus they could not believe the magnanimity of the US. After their war crimes they expected some sort of permanent enslavement. Just read a long book on the Pacific war (Nemesis, by Max Hastings). There are other compliant societies, but I am not sure if Russia counts. Communism has since 1921 turned the population into load of brainwashed zombies who mostly think Putin has the sun shining out of his ar*se (and same for Stalin, btw, who killed only a few tens of millions of them) but the key difference is that it can never be invaded, and their love of strong men (gangsters) ensures that things will pretty much carry on as before. Even without selling cheap gas 
It could also be a tactical thing not to reveal it at this time but telling the Russians quietly
No need to tell them; they know
Airborne_Again wrote:
I can’t imagine that anyone in NATO would seriously view this as a deliberate military attack on Poland. It is clearly an accident on Russia’s part. Why would Russia target a Polish farm?
I would have thought that was obvious – to escalate past the NATO territory red line in a semi-deniable fashion and satisfy themselves that it leads to no military response.
Russian escalation tends to be very gradual and incremental. They start ‘taking the piss’, as we say in the UK, and of course denying what they’re doing – which in itself raises no eyebrows because Russia telling barefaced lies is normal. If it turns out to be Russian-made and launched from Russia, they’ll say it was a cock-up and that they’re very sorry – and do you believe them? Some gullible people will, I expect.
Same as when they shot down that Malaysian airliner. Entirely deliberate, semi-deniable, establishing new norms of what the west will allow them to get away with.
Graham wrote:
Russian escalation tends to be very gradual and incremental. They start ‘taking the piss’, as we say in the UK, and of course denying what they’re doing – which in itself raises no eyebrows because Russia telling barefaced lies is normal. If it turns out to be Russian-made and launched from Russia, they’ll say it was a cock-up and that they’re very sorry – and do you believe them?
Or they’ll just say (some are already saying) “shit happens, happened before” referring to below and continue doing what they are doing.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_bombing_of_the_Chinese_embassy_in_Belgrade
Graham wrote:
Same as when they shot down that Malaysian airliner. Entirely deliberate, semi-deniable, establishing new norms of what the west will allow them to get away with.
And it was not the first time they brought down airliner… and they got away both times.
The 1983 job involved a US plane straying into USSR airspace, IIRC. The US claimed a navigation error. The Russkies should not have done that because no civilised country would do so but they are not a civilised country.
The Malaysian job could have been authorised by Putin but could also have been a renegade missile unit. Lessons were learnt, like not flying over war zones. Other airlines were already avoiding it, but it was costing them money.
Well, it appears that the US know indeed. However, the POTUS has just announced that it is “unlikely” that the missile was fired from Russia.
“There is preliminary information that contests that. I don’t want to say that until we completely investigate it,” Biden responded.
He added that “it’s unlikely in the minds of the trajectory that it was fired from Russia. But we’ll see.”
The missile in question appears to be Russian made but is used by both sides, as an attack missile by Russia and an anti air missile by Ukraine. The statement of Biden comes after several folks knowing the weapons expressed doubt that it was an attack missile fired from Russian territory, as that particular missile does not have the range to reach the village it came down in. So most figure that it may well be an Ukrainian anti air missile which went astray when trying to bring down a drone or an airplane.
Clearly the only ones who would wish NATO to invoke Article 4 and possibly 5 right now would be Ukraine, so personally I don’t think it is unlikely that they might have taken the opportunity to try to blame their own missile on Russia. False flag operations are nothing new in warfare, neither is trying to spin a mishap towards the enemy.
Biden will for sure play it down – it’s in his interest that the official outcome is that it wasn’t Russian.
Because obviously there’s going to be no actual NATO military response – with it being such a small incident and apparently isolated. But if it was Russian, they’ve fired on NATO territory and killed people – with no military response – and thus they are another step closer to establishing that the NATO red line counts for nothing.
The fact that it’s sowing such disagreement as we see here demonstrates that it’s working as a tactic – that’s the point of it.
The Guardian’s analysis piece on the event makes the following statement:
Incident in which two people died probably falls short of threshold needed to prompt collective Nato action against Russia
And of course, as long as Russia moves very gradually and doesn’t do anything too blatant there will always be western voices that make that argument. NATO is far from united on the black and white nature of the red line. It will always be “an isolated incident”, “not worth escalating over”, or some such. If they were to start routinely striking logistical targets in south east Poland – targets associated with the supply of hardware to Ukraine – you would still have western voices saying that this was actually just a spill-over from the existing theatre of conflict and that Russia’s actions weren’t serious enough to warrant invoking Article 5.
Graham wrote:
Why should the Ukrainians not launch things at Moscow or other Russian cities? Escalation? Hardly, it would only be returning in kind what Russia is doing.
1. It will use up missiles without furthering the current military goals. Russia is currently making this mistake, the ISW reckons they’ve used up most of their stockpile of precision weapons on militarily unimportant targets.
2. It may reduce support for Ukraine if their millitary is now doing something more than simply a war of defence.
3. Russia’s attacks on civilian infrastructure is just hardening Ukranian resolve. Doing the same to Russia will just increase Russian resolve. It is advantageous to Ukraine that Russia’s troops have poor morale and as many of them as possible wondering what they are doing in Ukraine. An attack on the motherland might motivate Russian troops.
In my opinion is either:
1- a false flag ops from Ukraine.
2- a counter-missile attempt that falls short of expectations. They haven’t learned that maintenance is a critical factor in S300 operability. Syria docet. They use the same system but are extremely more effective…
