Author | Lightnews

Reposted by Somebody Sometimes an AI

Just Security @justsecurity.org · 12h

Europe is rearming to reduce dependence on the US and address the increased security threat from #Russia.

Chris Rogers outlines the criticality of #CivilianProtection in that expansion, and offers lessons:

www.justsecurity.org/122816/europ...

As Europe Rearms, Learn from the Pentagon’s Efforts to Modernize Civilian Protection

European militaries can adapt and operationalize civilian protection as they increase defense spending to protect themselves against Russia.

www.justsecurity.org

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Somebody Sometimes an AI @bobhooker.bsky.social · 10h

Canada?

Somebody Sometimes an AI @bobhooker.bsky.social · 10h

It has lost a lot of wars but in each case it was the loss at an edge, with the two sides coming to a peace agreement and Russia electing to give up rather than fight to the bitter end. Hitler had no interest in making a deal with Stalin after the initial invasion so the USSR had to fight it out

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Somebody Sometimes an AI @bobhooker.bsky.social · 10h

And even the Mongol invasion was not really of what we today call Russia. Though Russia is over 1,000 years old it was originally the Keiv state, modern Russia with its modern land mass and center in Moscow was born after the Mongol invasion, it has been invaded many times but never conquered

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Somebody Sometimes an AI @bobhooker.bsky.social · 10h

People often point to France as collapsing and there is a great deal of truth to that, but nations like France and Poland had a long history of being fulled conquered throught their history. Both Nepolians had lost Paris. Russian only fell to the Mongols and they were really something else.

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Somebody Sometimes an AI @bobhooker.bsky.social · 10h

To call the Soviet Union well built by 1940 is really something. The nation was run entirely by terror at this point. Stalin had purged the entire officer core and for the first 2 years of the war Soviet biggest problem were lack of commanders on all levels despite many Civil War leaders

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Somebody Sometimes an AI @bobhooker.bsky.social · 10h

Afghanistan is the same, and if anybody tried to invade the US they would find the same thing, some nations geography and/or population make it impossible to be fully invaded and then perm occupied. Some places like Belgium, France, Poland, Levant don't have such protections. Russia does.

Somebody Sometimes an AI @bobhooker.bsky.social · 10h

Yet despite being in a civil war, despite massive regions ruled by war lorders, having no real domestic industry, China was able to prevent Japan from taking over the entire nation, over a much longer period than the war in Russia. Why? Because China is also a nation impossible to conquer.

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Somebody Sometimes an AI @bobhooker.bsky.social · 10h

Here is another example, Japan was not able to conquer China and in the end China also won World War 2. Now NOBODY goes on about how well run China was before and during the war, actually the opposite, China was a mess, this was still the century of humiliations. They were in a civil war

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Somebody Sometimes an AI @bobhooker.bsky.social · 10h

That phrase is always used with irony, people say it because they know perfectly well that the cigar is not a cigar and Freud must have been fully aware he had a oral fixation that in the end ruined his life. He continued to smoke even after many painful operations on his jaw

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Somebody Sometimes an AI @bobhooker.bsky.social · 11h

The USSR had dodged a massive bullet and could have returned to its pre-war borders, including the Baltic nations, knowing that the Americans and British would never dare to try what Hitler had failed to do, but Stalin was constantly trying to expand even before the war

Somebody Sometimes an AI @bobhooker.bsky.social · 11h

In the period right after WW2 Russia's number one goal should have been rebuilding and peace with the Western power, at almost any cost. Russia had shown that could not be conquered by even the Nazis, and the US though strong lacked the military culture, man power, or even incentive to ever try

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Somebody Sometimes an AI @bobhooker.bsky.social · 11h

The Cold War was entirely unnecessary. Certainly the US super power was never going to be happy about a Communist Soviet Union, but Russia didn't need to occupy and impose puppet regimes on Eastern Europe. it was a typical Stalin overreach which in the end exhausted the Soviet Union

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Somebody Sometimes an AI @bobhooker.bsky.social · 11h

The Russian Civil war had ended 30 years before the Cold War began. Russia didn't have to occupy Eastern Europe, and in the end the people of Easern Europe were more than delighted to see them gone.

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Somebody Sometimes an AI @bobhooker.bsky.social · 11h

So Stalin had to throw the USSR into a miltiary arms race with an economic power that in the end simply exhausted it because the Greek government had a civil war with the Communists?

Somebody Sometimes an AI @bobhooker.bsky.social · 11h

Yes the Soviet Union, with the US and UK won World War 2. The Germans attacked too much, they could not defeat the raw material and human resources of what at that time were the 3 largest econoic and political entities on earth.

It was impossible for Germany to win that war

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Somebody Sometimes an AI @bobhooker.bsky.social · 11h

The lost wars but they always survived, the French English and Turks could not take Odessa, sometimes a nation would defeat Russia an take some territory, but the huge land mass always prevented a full conquest.

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Somebody Sometimes an AI @bobhooker.bsky.social · 11h

Oh please, you cannot possibly NOT know about the vast military catastrophes that hit the USSR because Stalin either ordered no retreat or order offensives when it was not possible. To this day the largest military defeats in history were suffered by Russian in the first year of the war.

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Somebody Sometimes an AI @bobhooker.bsky.social · 11h

It was close but still impossible, just like with the French once you make it to Moscow from Europe winter kicks in and the vast supply lines and cold and vast supply of Russian people inevtiably destroy you, the Mongols didn't come from this direction remember

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Somebody Sometimes an AI @bobhooker.bsky.social · 11h

Lets also not forget that after WW2 Stalin was determined to expand territory, getting the USSR into a Cold War with the US when before the war the two didn't really have much relations at all, and the Cold War was something the USSR could never hope to win, a very mixed record

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Somebody Sometimes an AI @bobhooker.bsky.social · 11h

Lets also not forget that to get his victory Stalin war result in something like 25,000,000 Soviet deaths, created a perminent demographic scare on the nation which it never really recovered from

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Somebody Sometimes an AI @bobhooker.bsky.social · 11h

With the exception of the Mongol invasion, the Nazi invasion was the only time a force even came close to a full conquest of European Russia, the French took Moscow but the Capital was St Petersburgh at that time.

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Somebody Sometimes an AI @bobhooker.bsky.social · 11h

Stalin certainly kept the USSR government focused and together, but he needed all his positive skills because his mistakes like moving the stratgic resources and troops from the Stalin line or ordering no retreat or purging almost all the top commanders meant the USSR came pretty close to the end

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Somebody Sometimes an AI @bobhooker.bsky.social · 11h

Stalin's record in WW2 was very mixed, no question. But if you are going to say he built a nation that could not be conquered by the Nazis well Napoleon failed to take Russia or make it collapse as did Charles XII of Sweden

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Somebody Sometimes an AI @bobhooker.bsky.social · 11h

didn't count

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