- US officials are considering letting Ukraine strike Russia with US weapons, The New York Times reports.
- Ukraine says it’s necessary to fight cross-border attacks.
- But fears of crossing Russia’s red lines have long made the US hesitate.
The US has barred Ukraine from striking targets in Russian territory with its arsenal of US weapons.
But that may be about to change. The New York Times on Thursday reported that US officials were debating rolling back the rule, which Ukraine has argued severely hampers its ability to defend itself.
The proposed U-turn came after Russia placed weapons across the border from northeastern Ukraine and directed them at Kharkiv, the Times reported, noting that Ukraine would be able to use only non-American drones to hit back.
The Times reported that the proposal was still being debated and had yet to be formally proposed to President Joe Biden.
As long as US officials restrict strikes to avoid Russian nuclear deterrence installations, I don’t really see why this wasn’t already permitted.
The key US policy consideration in the conflict should be to avoid nuclear escalation. Don’t strike nuclear early warning radars, don’t strike nuclear silos, and everything else should be fine.
Putin can Crimea fucking river, stop bombing Ukraine and you won’t have to worry about it!
“The US is thinking about…”
This means literally nothing. This is not news. This is a trash headline for a trash article.
It’s scouting public or opinion and/or fabricating consent. Nothing new
Well the fact that it includes the words “enrages Putin” in the title actually means that they think it matters a lot to get ahead of it and get people to think it’s a bad idea to support Ukraine.
They let Israel do it. What’s stopping them from… not caring that Ukraine does it too?
I assume you mean that we let Israel strike Palestine? Yes, that’s been true, but neither Hamas, nor the Palestinian Authority, or any other Palistinian group, have nuclear capabilities. That’s the concern with Russia, that they will respond with a tactical nuclear strike, or worse. Whether that fear is founded or not is a different question, of course.
Which would be the most elaborate suicide of the 21st century. If Putin drops a nuke somewhere the remaining lifespan of himself and his nation will be measured in minutes, as all of NATO and the west no longer have a potential worst option to avoid. At this point we just have to hope he understands that. I hope nobody loses a city because of it.
Is Biden really trying to start WWIII before the election?
Fuck Putin. Send Ukraine the big shit and let them end the war and put Putin’s bullshit to an end.
Russia has nukes. We can’t do that
Actually, we can and should. Here’s why…
Russia’s nukes are mostly 40 year old warheads on 50 year old delivery systems. These systems have been maintained by notorious black market scalpers who have somehow managed to sell massive amounts of valuable rocket fuels, nav computers and other unique parts on the black market over the last several decades. We can be sure the launch, guidance and detonation failure rates would be extremely high. High enough that, even without intervention, a long-range attack is very unlikely to be successful.
Now, factor in the decades of aggressive research and spending the west has focused on mitigating nuclear threats, with a high focus on Russian systems. While it’s always best to avoid the attempt if possible, Russia has almost zero chance of posing a serious threat to the west. The threat to Ukraine, however, is a bit higher as they may (smartly) choose very simple delivery methods instead of what we would be able to defend against. But, that still requires a ton to go right and could cause the U.S. or the EU to become aggressive. Putin will do almost anything to avoid that outcome.
So, the smart money on expediting the end to this war and minimizing casualties is to have a policy to almost always call Putin’s bluff. He has a very weak hand and has shown it to pretty much everyone at the table.
Y’all are gonna get us all killed.
Nah, it’s part of the game, he’s just sending a healthy message that western governments also have their share of deluded drunken idiot medvedev equivalents, so only start nuking if you’re sure you have absolutely nothing to lose, because that’s what you’re going to end up with.
Robert Frost’s Fire and Ice but it’s about whether chuds will end the world through overt jingoism and aggression or libs though a lack of self-awareness of how jingoistic they are combined with intentionally deluding themselves about the state of the world.
Fucking Americans. Fucking post-communist Russia too (which is also America’s fault). We coulda had an enemy properly terrified of a nuclear exchange and committed to peaceful coexistence but noooo, we gotta open up those markets and now the omnicidal liberals want to risk destroying the world rather than give up a bit of land none of them could find on a map three years ago. Liberals are functionally indistinguishable from someone screaming “Blood for the blood god! Skulls for his skull throne!” except they know how to be all polite about it. A kinder, gentler global thermonuclear war.
Thank God the capitalists who rule this country don’t give a shit what their supporters think or all humanity would be dead in a week. Sure they’re bringing about the climate change apocalypse but at least that’s more delayed than a nuclear apocalypse and I guess that’s where the bar is these days.
Sorry I’m low-key drunkposting rn so I’m telling the truth more directly than usual.
If authoritarian dictators can do whatever they want via nuclear blackmail, we’re already all doomed anyway
The world will be split into two camps: countries with nukes or otherwise under some sort of nuclear umbrella, and countries who are desperately rapidly developing a nuclear program, the third group who doesn’t have nukes and isn’t rushing to develop them will have already been annexed by the first group
What we have here are people convincing themselves that nuclear war is either not a possibility at all, or a tolerable outcome. That’s a incredibly dangerous and delusional perspective.
There is a middle ground between “letting nuclear armed countries do whatever they want” and “completely disregarding any and all risks of escalation.” The entire postwar order of the past 70 years has been grounded on that. If those lunatics ever get anywhere near the levers of power, then they will provoke nuclear war, maybe not with this specifically (maybe), but if they’re taking that kind of cavalier and deluded approach in general, then it’s only a matter of time.
If you go all-in every hand, you will eventually bust.
can dbzer0 users comment here on lemmy.world?
Let’s find out together
Idk seems unlikely.
That’s the whole point of Lemmy, isn’t it.
well see my post I made. Apparently there can be sync issues that are quite apparent.
There used to be a lot of problems with that back in December/January after the 0.19 release was being rolled out, but they managed to fix them eventually and I haven’t really had any issues for the past three months or so. Has your instance recently upgraded their software perhaps?
well the sync issues im talking about are quite specific use cases which you wouldnt encounter on the regular. See my post for reference. It’s about searching specific communities on difference instances from another instance. Then, only the communities with very little traffic will not be synced. I’ve no idea what my instance’s latest version is. Can a non-admin even check that?
It should be at the bottom of the page. Looks like your instance is on version 0.19.3, which I believe is the most recent one.
For any further questions, you should probably talk to your instance admin.
If it’s the latest version, then talking to instance admins wouldn’t be of any help, because every instance suffers from the same issue…
It might, because it could be configuration issue.
We’re cool with Israel using our weaponry to do a genocide but we’re on the fence about whether Ukraine can use our weaponry to take back the land that Russia invaded and stole?
We really fucked up when we decided to form societies larger than tribes, huh? We could’ve basically just had community gardens and leisure, and instead we chose this. If I were an alien, I would consider Earth a flyover shithole not worth visiting.
There is one significant difference: Hamas does not, as far as I know, have any nuclear weapons.
You’re right and I hate it. Bullies will fuck with smaller kids all school year, but not the kid who has a gun at home. My country is just a nepo baby rich kid bully on the world stage.
I wish Hamas had nuclear weapons
Jesus fucking Christ.
That’s not even close to what I said. I was saying that we don’t dare stand up to anybody who has nuclear weapons, meaning Israel and Russia. We don’t even dare give (conventional) weapons to Ukraine to take back what Russia stole from them solely because Russia has nukes. We will bully any other country as much as we want because they don’t have nukes though.
As an American, and therefore a potential target, this is a risk I am willing to take. I think Putin is better at talking shit than actually carrying out his threats.
It’s tragic that this war is still going on. Putin needs to be stopped. Now.
Punishing attackers makes future attack less likely. I’m an American and I’m all for allowing Ukraine to actually HURT Russia, but I don’t actually think that would make the world more dangerous.
I think striking attackers where they are vulnerable makes peace more likely, not less.
Also when you give someone a gift it’s not yours any more. It’s now their thing. Ukraine has the right to defend itself, and retaliation is the only workable defense against something like military action since straight up blocking attacks with a huge wall or the like isn’t feasible.
Do it
Why wouldn’t Biden allow it?
The same reason most of NATO have been very hesitant and the like:
Supporting a defensive war is one thing. Supporting an offensive war, against a nuclear power that threatens to nuke people on days ending in ‘y’, is another. And while it is incredibly unlikely that putin would actually attack anyone (since they can’t even handle a Ukraine with one arm tied behind its back), it will still lead to political turmoil as people insist the world is about to end.
But now? This is a REAL good way to distract people from the other, much less defensive, war that we are financing.
Two words: Nuclear War
First you have to have nukes that work and that is debatable. Second, if they send a single nuke, they’ll be wiped off the face of the earth in about 15 minutes.
…but so will the a large part of the US
From who?
Russia, or possibly China and North Korea.
Come on, no chance. Russia likely doesn’t have any that work, China won’t nuke us, and North Korea??? Rofl. They’d blow themselves up before they get one to us.
You cannot tiptoe around dictators, you need to crush them
sword missile his car, please