Comment by littlecranky67
14 days ago
Why is that? Undersea cables makes way more sense - the issue is we have maritime law that allows any nation state to freely roam over important cables. During wartimes this is a complete different story - ships won't be allowed near the lines, and if they do get close they will be destoryed without prior warning. No more anchoring "accidents".
> maritime law that allows any nation state to freely roam over important cables.
I'd like to see your version of maritime law that doesn't allow freely roaming over important cables. Your country's enemies would gladly drop cables totally encircling you and say "uh uh uh, important cables!" if you tried to leave your perimeter
This assumes people are very stupid, no? Like, as if they wouldn't know what was happening and just had to let it happen?
I realize US politics may suggest otherwise but I can't imagine the military is just gonna stand by and entertain such a farce..
I think you therefore agree with my reductio ad absurdum argument against the GP's claim. Changing maritime law to prohibit free roaming over "important cables" would be a farce. Therefore, the absence of such a law is not "the issue"
It isn't either/or. Satellites and undersea cables serve different use cases. Cables are great for high bandwidth communications between fixed points but they aren't very useful to mobile military forces and they can't be used for anything beyond communications. We don't have enough ships and patrol aircraft to realistically defend undersea cables outside the littorals.
Satellites can serve multiple purposes including communications, navigation, overhead imagery, signals intelligence, weather, etc. They are also vulnerable, but it's possible to launch replacements faster than repairing damaged cables.
Inofficially Europe is already at war, whether it wants to or not. Maybe someone needs to inofficially keep a close eye on those cables and take inofficial countermeasures against inofficial sabotage acts.
Europe is not at war with another nuclear power, no. Ukraine is at war and Europe is giving support to Ukraine as that's aligned with its interest. This support is neither unconditional nor total and doesn't include going to war with Russia.
No we're not. Nobody in the EU has transitioned to a wartime economy. We are helping out a strategic ally. If Ukraine falls tomorrow an cedes add territory to Russia, the EU is not going to continue fighting, because the war will be over.
That of course assumes that Putin stops at Ukraine. The point is that this isn't our war.
Nine years ago I was in Riga talking with a Latvian friend, and even then she was telling me how Russia was broadcasting separatist propaganda into Latvia
While the EU may not be at war with Russia, Russia is already at war with the EU.
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The truth is that Russia has been making war preparations for a long time, also within the EU. In Finland even during the "good years" (between fall of the Soviet Union and Georgian war) Russian businessmen kept buying property that made zero financial sense, but was located close to strategic infrastructure or military bases.
Yes, we are. Outside of Poland, everybody's closing their eyes to it, but war is coming.
We might be able to stop it before it becomes a hot war, but the ambition is there, the indicators are there, the opportunity is there. Assume it's a war. (Unless you're German. I guess our national sport is now making excuses for Russia)
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You’re in a zero lot line flat and your neighbors house is on fire. I’d be pretty motivated to help out as well, but I don’t think I’d be quite so cavalier about not being on a wartime footing. Russia has shown repeatedly throughout history that it does not honor international agreements in good faith, and that it sees military adventurism as a legitimate way to expand its borders.
After the dust settles on the Ukraine war, if Putin still has the capacity to wage war, he will not likely stop with Ukraine. It is by now obvious that a limited incursion into Poland, for example, will not spark a global thermonuclear war.
Ukrainian suffering is both the litmus test and the vaccination against nuclear escalation that Putin needs to contemplate further expansion.
Political alignments aside, if I were based in Europe I would be very, very concerned.
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The exercise left for the reader is to choose two countries that are not adjacent,
and try to plot a path between them without crossing an undersea cable:
https://www.submarinecablemap.com/
Looks like you can get between Costa Rica and El Salvador without crossing any cables.
We are at war. The United States guided an ATACMS missile into Russian territory yesterday. Imagine the absurdity of if China put missiles on the Mexican border and guided them into missile storage facilities 186 miles inside the border.
I think you'll find the ATACMS missile guided itself, based on inertial navigation and satellite positioning data. If your argument is that the United States guided the missile because the US provides GPS, that's a pretty flimsy argument.
Ukraine would have folded within a few weeks without the weapons systems of the combined Western nations. The Biden administration has given Kyiv permission to use U.S.-supplied missiles in Russian territory in a major escalation that now threatens nuclear war due to the first use doctrine updates. A few hours ago reports of UK Storm Shadow missiles being fired into Russian territory emerged. The West is at war.
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Why do folks like your self make such foolish analogies? If the US had invaded Mexico like Russia invaded Ukraine then yes, it would be completely fine for Mexico to fire missiles into the US.
Russia took land from Ukraine. For how long do you think Ukraine can fire missiles into Russia?
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Imagine the absurdity of if China put missiles on the Mexican border ...
Imagine the US engaging in an invasion of Mexico as equally stupid and unprovoked as Putin's invasion of Ukraine. Then not only would Mexico have a perfect right to seek whatever help it needed to resist the aggression directed at it, we would -- unless we were damned fools -- fully expect Mexico to seek and obtain that help.
When people say "unprovoked" do they not know the history, or they think the history doesn't matter, or do they just not care?
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As far as we know Ukraine both put them there and guided the missiles. Please provide proof otherwise.