To think that preparing for war with Russia is total madness?

[Newbutoldfather]

General Patrick Sanders, our top general, warns troops ‘must be prepared to fight Russia in the battlefield’.

There is increasing acceptance of the idea that we could somehow fight a limited war with Russia. I just don’t believe this.

Leaving aside that our military consists of a toy battleship and an old man with a wooden gun (only slight hyperbole), have people wished nukes away?

I am very curious as to what this war would look like. Are they envisaging that there would be a limited battlefield and a list of allowed weapons and that the loser would shake hands and walk away?

I think we are perilously close to the total annihilation of Homo sapiens (which would happen in a nuclear war). We, meaning the west and, especially, the increasingly jingoistic UK, need to dial back the rhetoric and look for a way to find peace, even if we have to compromise on our principles.

Interested in what people think and whether people do think that AIBU.

Yes he can't be allowed to spin anything as a win against the west, which is the narrative he is using. If he can say he's defeated nato in ukraine all bets are off. Ukraine should be supported to the hilt to achieve the best outcome for us all, and that's what's at stake and what is being fought for.

@MagicFox ,

So, let’s assume it turns into a rout, with Russian troops running for their lives.

What happens next?

Do you 100% trust the Ukrainian force to stop at the border? I don’t. And that is even assuming it gets that far.

My bet is, at that point, we see the first use of a nuclear warhead in anger since 1945.

No thanks!

The Americans are playing it just right, enough support not to lose, not enough to win. And after Russia is tired and fed up with fighting, Putin will be offered a face-saving solution.

This won’t end wIth the invasion of Moscow.

It won't happen, ukraine are in a forced position of active defence as Lawrence Freedman wrote today.

It's absolutely ridiculous. There is zero that any one of us can do and it just increases anxiety and nihilism amongst a population that already have enough to deal with due to no proper health service, shit education, unaffordable housing, cost of living, incompetent government and worries about getting older.

I predict the world will be at war in the next decade.

Given there isn't a year in recorded history when there hasn't been a war somewhere in the world that's not really prediction is it ?

I used the term world.
We've not had a world war for over 80 years.

We should hope for the best but prepare for the worst.

Just because the war could quickly descend into an all-out nuclear annihilation of life on this planet doesn't mean we shouldn't prepare for a more conventional form of warfare in case that happens first/instead.

We are hopelessly unprepared at the moment - food security and energy security are non-existent. Most importantly government after government has tightened the restrictions on private weapons. Almost nobody has a gun, barely anyone is skilled in using knives (and any type of "fighting" knife is banned). We need to start arming people so that they are able to use weapons to fight "street to street, house to house" if that's what it comes to.

Right now Putin could just cut off our gas and blockade our ports and we'd be on our knees within days, we'd fall within weeks.

You obviously don’t live in East London 😂😂

Arming random people with no training is not going to help anything except crime rates (as in, help them go higher). If you want the general public to be a part of defence then they need training (i.e. bring back conscription)

Ah Lawrence Fox the oracle.

Thanks op this thread has really cheered me up no end! How did you manage to get such a ‘quirky’ collection of responses? It’s like a conspiracy theorist convention with tin hats on steroids!

Will you do a follow up with what we might need following your doomsday predictions too? Or are we just treated to this one thread? 🪡

Did you combine the username with suggestion

I don’t know the person but on googling he seems legit

Sir Lawrence David Freedman, KCMG, CBE, PC,FBA (born 1948) is a British academic, historian and author specialising in foreign policy, international relations and strategy.[1] He has been described as the "dean of British strategic studies"[2] and was a member of the Iraq Inquiry.[3] He is an Emeritus Professor of War Studies at King's College London.

https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/ukraine-needs-more-attack-aircraft-war-effort-ground-forces-commander-2024-01-12/
Colonel-General Oleksandr Syrskyi spoke to Reuters in an exclusive interview at an undisclosed location in the northeastern region of Kharkiv that borders western Russia.
"This is active defence when we are not just sitting on the defensive but constantly counterattacking, and in some directions switching to the offensive," he said. "And the enemy knows this."

It's the Ukrainians themselves using the active defence terminology.
Quite obviously it's all a ruse, a collection of paranoid rantings by Lawrence Fox.🙄

Russia has already lost, or at least nearly a million of them have.

Anyone who can order that many lives to their death because they can't abide a neighbouring country having autonomy is a despot. That he remains in power shows how lost the Russian people are.

I'd be glad to see Ukrainian boots in Moscow, if only to bring back their children that have been taken for re-education. I think they could be persuaded to stay at their own pre 2014 borders.

What makes you think that anything in Russia is worth fighting for if you are Ukrainian? It's Russian fear thinking that others have the same rotten outlook which makes them think others want to conquer them. It's not the middle ages, most of humanity has evolved.

I looked up Russian elections as there is one soon and I
wondered how Putin will get in regardless. I don’t think there’s much choice

With only Putin and his supporters allowed on the ballot paper.

It's funny how many that go against him fall out windows, mysteriously die of unknown causes, survive poisoning and end up in prison.

Sounds like a free and fair election.

Russia have been causing problems for how long now? I'd be happy to see the country broken up. They can't hold the world to ransom like this as well as bullying all their neighbours.

We really need to get closer to Trump so that when he and Putin carve up east and west Europe amongst themselves, we would be just a large Trump golf course and have a Trump Tower of London than become an occupied territory or a nuclear wasteground. I think a lot of the lawyers, concierge services, bankers and service industries who launder and service oligarchs from the US and Russia would love this.

I saw an article that suggested we are already in one. I’m not sure what the definition is and whether it’s a retrospective label. Was WWII seen as starting when Germany invaded Poland? I’m not great with History. I doubt that WWII was announced as having started on that day. I wonder if retrospectively, the day Putin invaded Ukraine might be seen as the start. But I’m not a historian.

@AnyoneelsefeellikethisNC we are, we’re just fighting it by proxy.

Doesn't General Sanders say this quite a lot?

It’s probably all part of a strategy of some sort.

FWIW I don’t think Putin wants to invade us, I think he just wants the old USSR put back together and wants more power THAN us. Hence the meddling in elections etc. He wants influence and power, I don’t think he’s expansionist beyond Eastern Europe.