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Comment by eric-hu

14 days ago

This is really interesting how you’ve explained it.

In many professional fights the competitors start matches with light, quick jabs to probe their opponents defense.

This feels just like that now that you put it this way. I never connected those dots though.

Maybe it's because I'm Swedish and we've experienced Russia's "probing defenses" tactic for a very long time (mainly "breaking" into Swedish airspace with airplanes, and discovering submarines at the Swedish shores), but I always thought this was common knowledge, always interesting to learn it isn't for everyone :)

  • I lived in Taiwan for a while and China does this to Taiwan often. Flying planes into Taiwan’s air defense identification zone, sailing warships through the strait. It’s portrayed in (US, TW) media as war preparations, but some locals assume it’s all bark with no bite. How are those Russian actions portrayed in Swedish media?

    • when your enemy cry wolf consistently, you can become complacent and stop being overly alert.

      This conditioning is how you prepare for an actual attack, so that they're not prepared at the actual time of the real attack. It's also why some military exercises near a country is considered provocative, even tho it's "just an exercise".

      Not to mention that it drains resources to respond/monitor these cry-wolf fakes.

  • The situation escalated beyond probing, this is tit for tat response for Ukraine getting and launching US tactical missiles. Russia seems to be now aggressively monitoring and raiding the submarine pipes and cables. Blowing up of Nord Stream made Russia go ballistic.

    • > The situation escalated beyond probing

      Not sure we understand "probing" differently. Russian currently is at the edges, testing the responses from things like cutting cables and otherwise interfering with the infrastructure. This is what "probing" means for me. "Beyond probing" would be actually launching attacks one way or another, which we haven't seen yet (except of course, for the Ukraine invasion).

      9 replies →

    • > Blowing up of Nord Stream made Russia go ballistic

      Russia started invading Ukraine six months before Nord Stream blow up. Previously Russia invaded Crimea in 2014.

      The next invaded country, will be also an escalation?

      All of this is about a few psychopaths filling their pockets with the money that generates the corpses of their criminal business, some encouraging the production of war, others encouraging the waging of war.

      Why are these psychopaths and their "business" not prosecuted?

      8 replies →

>This feels just like that now that you put it this way. I never connected those dots though.

Boxers learned from the art of war, not the other way around.

"Probing attacks" are a standard doctrine. It's not always a clear signal of intent to increase hostilities because it's also just useful as an intelligence gathering exercise.