To think we're on the brink of WW3?

[TellMeStraight]

If the US and Russia become at war with each other, can we possibly stay out of it?

What if Donald Trump is president when it all kicks off?

Should I buy a gun? Or build a shelter? Or stock up on tins?

I am genuinely frightened.

Thanks hope I assumed it would be something like that

Interesting leaflet which the council sent to every house in the city in the 80s.

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I watched the BBC WW3:Inside the War Room. I am told that it is very realistic as to how Putin operates with asymmetric warfare, and this is an ongoing concern for NATO and the Baltic States.

That said, I think Putin has probably got trouble trying to digest Crimea and sort out his tactics for Ukraine, let alone Syria. Much of his noise is for his domestic audience imo.

Interesting responses on this thread.

Putin is not sabre rattling. If anything, he has been spent doing the last few years trying to get the US and the EU to realise exactly how dangerous its foreign "interventions" are. He held a press conference for Western journalists a few years ago where he said "I have no idea how to get through to you people anymore." And he's right. Western policy in Syria is batshit insane. US policy in Libya was beyond insanity. In fact I can't think of any US or UK foreign policy on Eastern Europe, the ME or Africa that has not been seriously dodgy for the last thirty years.

While everyone is buffooning Trump, there's a lot of leftwing thinkers that are seriously worried about a Hilary Clinton presidency. This is the woman that said "We came, we saw, he died" and then laughed about the extrajudicial execution of Gaddafi. Libya, a very stable country with such good food subsidies that people fed bread to cows, then descended into a extremist hell hole. The woman is a hawk, and a dangerous one.

All I can say is thank God we got rid of Cameron and his ilk (though Boris Johnson is still talking utter shit). Between May and Corbyn, the likelihood of Britain getting deeper into this murk is somewhat arrested.

What was Putin's annexation of Crimea then? Is not Russian policy in Syria equally batshit insane?

As much of Eastern Europe was still Warsaw Pact and behind the Iron curtain within the last 30 years, you might need to amend your time frame somewhat, as it's not 30 years yet since the Wall came down. The Baltic states are sovereign and have made their decisions now about joining NATO and the EU, as have many other Eastern European states...what was 'seriously dodgy' about policy there?

How about Vlad pulling out of Kaliningrad? That might make people feel safer.

Just coming back to you OP, as I haven't been online for a couple of days: I think owning a gun is unnecessary. You have said things I did not insinuate - to be considering murdering your own children now is off the scale imo. And it isn't 'mass suicide's.

What was Putin's annexation of Crimea then? Is not Russian policy in Syria equally batshit insane?

Russia is supporting the sovereign Syrian state against foreign proxy mercenary forces. You can't really argue against this; however you may feel about Assad, he is the sovereign leader of Syria and Syria is a sovereign state. What Britain and the US is doing in Syria is actually contravening the sovereignty of another sovereign state without the reason of direct threat to their own territory (this is why Blair tried to argue for the 40 min WMD; he needed the threat to his own territory to make the argument for the invasion of Iraq to the UN security council). This essentially makes the British Syrian action an invasion, and against any understanding of international norms. This is what Putin is trying to say.

You fuck with these understandings, and you've got a serious geostrategic problem.

A similar scenario would be the Chinese deciding to bomb Britain because they decided they didn't like Teresa May and wanted to support the upswell of a "revolutionary" movement that essentially consisted of a bunch of non-Brits who'd been enticed to come to Britain to fight for shit and giggles.

Crimea is complicated. The EU knew that they were asking for trouble by challenging the politics around a Black Sea port that led to the Bosphorus and through into the wider Med, but they did it anyway.

A lot of this goes back years, particularly under the previous Labour government that didn't notice the power they had given the Russian state by not challenging the "awkwardness" of Gasprom contracts that delivered energy throughout Europe (at one point, Russian gas was fueling a number of NHS hospitals and York Minster). Now everyone has noticed and they are panicking and making stupid, panicked decisions. Syria is one of them. It stands in the way of a pipeline from Qatar to Europe, designed to dissolve European dependence on Russian gas.

We are the bad guys here. And I really wish people would see it.

Putin, I have to say, is being very measured. And I am no fan of the Russian administration.

That was hugely informative, Werks

Great post Werks

I found news of the British military sending troops and supplies to Estonia very interesting.
www.riskmap.com/#/m/6789794/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter

I would be very interested to be pointed in the direction of some decent back ground articles on this, if anyone has any?