This is blatant fear mongering, russia can’t even defeat the Ukraine. How the fuck do they manage a second front?
this post was submitted on 16 Mar 2025
631 points (96.9% liked)
World News
44190 readers
3291 users here now
A community for discussing events around the World
Rules:
-
Rule 1: posts have the following requirements:
- Post news articles only
- Video links are NOT articles and will be removed.
- Title must match the article headline
- Not United States Internal News
- Recent (Past 30 Days)
- Screenshots/links to other social media sites (Twitter/X/Facebook/Youtube/reddit, etc.) are explicitly forbidden, as are link shorteners.
-
Rule 2: Do not copy the entire article into your post. The key points in 1-2 paragraphs is allowed (even encouraged!), but large segments of articles posted in the body will result in the post being removed. If you have to stop and think "Is this fair use?", it probably isn't. Archive links, especially the ones created on link submission, are absolutely allowed but those that avoid paywalls are not.
-
Rule 3: Opinions articles, or Articles based on misinformation/propaganda may be removed. Sources that have a Low or Very Low factual reporting rating or MBFC Credibility Rating may be removed.
-
Rule 4: Posts or comments that are homophobic, transphobic, racist, sexist, anti-religious, or ableist will be removed. “Ironic” prejudice is just prejudiced.
-
Posts and comments must abide by the lemmy.world terms of service UPDATED AS OF 10/19
-
Rule 5: Keep it civil. It's OK to say the subject of an article is behaving like a (pejorative, pejorative). It's NOT OK to say another USER is (pejorative). Strong language is fine, just not directed at other members. Engage in good-faith and with respect! This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.
Similarly, if you see posts along these lines, do not engage. Report them, block them, and live a happier life than they do. We see too many slapfights that boil down to "Mom! He's bugging me!" and "I'm not touching you!" Going forward, slapfights will result in removed comments and temp bans to cool off.
-
Rule 6: Memes, spam, other low effort posting, reposts, misinformation, advocating violence, off-topic, trolling, offensive, regarding the moderators or meta in content may be removed at any time.
-
Rule 7: We didn't USED to need a rule about how many posts one could make in a day, then someone posted NINETEEN articles in a single day. Not comments, FULL ARTICLES. If you're posting more than say, 10 or so, consider going outside and touching grass. We reserve the right to limit over-posting so a single user does not dominate the front page.
We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.
All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.
Lemmy World Partners
News !news@lemmy.world
Politics !politics@lemmy.world
World Politics !globalpolitics@lemmy.world
Recommendations
For Firefox users, there is media bias / propaganda / fact check plugin.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/media-bias-fact-check/
- Consider including the article’s mediabiasfactcheck.com/ link
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
It's unfortunate that we've configured our world like this, with rival nation states and militaries vying for supremacy. In reality, the conflict is between humans and militarism. Militarism will kill us all, in one way or another.
Switzerland been preparing for war since 1648.
If Putin had any desire to conquer Switzerland, all I'll say is good luck. They're:
- Heavily fortified, with hundreds of bunkers dotting the countryside
- Highly mountainous, which would heavily slow down a ground invasion.
- One of the few states to still practice mandatory military service.
- Pretty lax with gun ownership, to the point where citizens have a statutory duty to bear arms in the event of an invasion.
- A substantial player in the banking sector with many oligarchs using their service. Any freeze they'd put on Russian assets would likely go above and beyond what NATO and the EU managed, just because of how synonymous their banks are with the wealthy. They would probably send the Russian economy into freefall long before they could even get anywhere near Zurich.
- Surrounded from all sides by NATO and EU member states, and would likely have plenty of time to prepare their own forces in the unlikely event that Russia mounts a full-scale invasion and takes over the rest of Europe.
Basically: Si vis pacem, para bellum
Tangentially related, he once said: "I had a German tell me one time, he said, the two pillars for us are NATO and the EU. NATO is for life, EU is for quality of life." I wonder how that'll play out in the near future.
EDIT: corrected link.
Make him a present, some winter vacations in Switzerland and some summer ones in Italy. Cool those US guys down, down to the bottom of earth
If anyone is interested in the state of things in Switzerland:
Our defense is in chaos right now. A scandal in our state-owned but public weapons manufacturer just broke a few weeks ago and shortly after the secretary of the departement of defense announced her resignation. We will see if the newly elected one will improve the situation.
The army is generally seen as somewhat of a joke, especially by people who served, which is more than half of all Swiss men. We like to call it a "Pfadiverein" (boy scouts association).
Even with all that, the right wing parties want to give a shitload more money to defense, and cut costs in social spending and foreign aid to compensate. Left of centre the need to improve defense is also accepted, but 1) before the army gets more money, they need to get their shit together and 2) more important than the army itself is integration with the european security Infrastructure (the left parties are also very pro-EU). The centre politicians usually mix blth stances and lean more one or the other way.
Also we still stand to buy fighter jets from the US, and only the left parties are calling to cancel the deal.
If it makes you feel any better, we have a joke in Austria that we might as well not have an army, because we border 1) NATO, 2) Switzerland, and if either of those become a threat, we might as well capitulate immediately.
load more comments
(9 replies)
Has the USA ever won a war?
I seem to recall a pretty successful one against the British...
LOL. How much help did you get though?
Yes, they win most of them. They mostly lose when they try to occupy a foreign country and do counterinsurgency.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_involving_the_United_States
Counter insurgency is tough to overcome. As you kill insurgents, more insurgents pop up because the initially killed insurgents were their family and friends. The only way to do it is to rule with an iron fist.
I disagree that there is any way to do it. Ultimately, people don't want you there and are unhappy enough that they're willing to die rather than cooperate. It is simply too expensive in terms of man hours, lives, and money to keep a population under occupation like that. At the very least, you need to do as the colonial powers did and exploit a local division to deputize some of the locals to rule on your behalf.
The Mongolians did it. Rome did it. History is littered with countless examples of one nation overcoming another.
Every war they've ever declared. They just haven't declared war since WW2
Desert Shield/Storm and Panama were overwhelmingly sucessful military operations because they had clear, achievable objectives. George HW Bush was a bastard, but his team could execute a military mission.
Also, the Iranian army didnt fight back because they didnt want to. Some even asked, "what took you so long?..."
load more comments
(4 replies)
Their civil war?
Nailed it.
view more: next ›