Is anyone at all worried about Russia retaliating directly against America for all this success? The U.S. media loves gloating about this kind of stuff but it seems gratuitous at best.
It has become clear that Russia had no capacity to wage war in Ukraine and take on anyone else in a meaningful way. As long as pot boils, but doesn’t spill over the USA will be able to continue to slowly increase its support.
> As long as pot boils, but doesn’t spill over the USA will be able to continue to slowly increase its support.
Also noteworthy is the fact that the support from US in particular and NATO in general has been decades-old and potentially decommissioned hardware that was either mothballed or phased out, and the overall investment, with regards to each nation's budget, amounts to pocket change.
>Is anyone at all worried about Russia retaliating directly against America for all this success?
No.
Direct retaliation would mean the end of the Putin regime.
Total financial aid to Ukraine from the US over the last 21 months has amounted to $77 billion so far. About $30 billion or so more has been appropriated but has not been spent yet.
That is a lot of money, but the amount spent so far is only ~0.3% of the US's GDP and ~5.4% of its annual Federal Budget-- spread out over nearly 2 years.
With that, and contributions from other allies roughly doubling that total, Ukraine has fought Russia to a standstill and is very slowly gaining ground.
Any direct conventional retaliation against the United States would bring to bear a much, much, larger percentage of its resources and very likely result in the complete annihilation of any involved forces. Russian forces are very poorly equipped, trained, and led which means there have been single weeks (particularly the last several weeks) in the War in Ukraine where more Russian losses occurred than occurred in total over 20 years of US involvement in the Global War on Terror.
So that leaves a nuclear response.
A nuclear response would end in the annihilation of Russia itself. The Putin regime seems very interested in self-preservation.
That leaves indirect proxy responses. Historically, proxy wars against the United States have not ended well for either the proxy or the supporter of the proxy.
Even proxies who "win" are often damaged to the point of ruin, taking decades to recover.
Also very important is that the vast majority of military aid to Ukraine involves decades old technology the U.S. would never use.
If anything, some of these will end up saving the U.S. money because maintenance and eventual disposal would have been far more expensive than shipping it to Ukraine.
> Total financial aid to Ukraine from the US over the last 21 months has amounted to $77 billion so far.
To put that in more direct terms: that's $77 billion over 21 months, spread across around 168 million US taxpayers. That comes out to $21.83/month per taxpayer.
> anyone at all worried about Russia retaliating directly against America for all this success?
Cognisant of, yes. Worried, no. For the same reasons we aren’t sending a carrier strike group to bomb Crimea. To the extent there is a media circus in this fight, it’s around pandering to Russian escalation theatre.
I think they are more worried about drawing in the US and NATO, despite their chest puffing, than we are of them. I mean, they are barely passing by as it is.
I'm honestly not sure but I'm also not sure we have ever seen a nuclear power with its back against the wall to this degree have we? I'm not trying to make people worried it's just something I personally worry about.
> (...) I'm also not sure we have ever seen a nuclear power with its back against the wall to this degree have we?
What do you perceive as "this degree"?
I mean, Ukraine's endgame is to free its occupied territories from Russia's occupation. This means that Russia's worst-case outcome is doing yet another goodwill gesture, pack up and leave, and claim they succeeded in whatever was they claimed their goal was.
All the redline arguments regarding NATO expansion and bullshit about protecting Russian speaking segments of the population were already thoroughly discredited and abandoned, and more importantly Putin's regime didn't even objected to them.
In the meantime, Putin's regime seems to have its populace under tight control to the point they have pundits openly calling out in Russia's own mass media for the death of any Russian citizen not supporting Putin's regime without causing any backlash.
So where is this existential threat you're talking about?
All the harm that was lingering over Putin's regime was already done. Russia's economy is in shambles, Russia's diplomatic standing ceased to be, Russia switched from a world player to a vassal state of China and Iran, and is already being subservient to North Korea. Russia's arms industry also took a major reputation hit. Russia also lost Europe as a energy cliënt, which was basically it's diplomatic and economic support.
At this point the only options on Russia's table is to either continue following the sunk loss fallacy path, or cutting its losses. Which one is supposed to be the wall?
(Possible) undersea pipeline and undersea cable destruction.
Pushing the limit with attacks near the Polish or Romanian borders.
Aggressive agitation / Agit-Prop efforts in the US. Likely pushing the MAGA GOP Republicans to obstruct obstruct obstruct, and doing things like not confirming high ranking generals.
Efforts via Wagner in Africa, and leaning on Middle Eastern powers to take action as things get hotter w/r/t Israel and Palestine. This has seen attacks on US bases in the Middle East, albeit without tremendous impacts.
Russia can't really take direction action since now Finland is NATO, and there are tons of NATO, to include US, UK, French, Canadian, et al, forces in Poland, the Baltics, and now Finland. Russia has, at best, token forces blocking most of those borders. They still have some gear in reserve in case NATO gets involved -- not a lot of call for AShMs in Ukraine, for example -- but even then there isn't much stopping NATO forces from driving straight into St. Pete's or Pskov.
>
March_f6 5 hours ago | parent | context | flag | on: Ukraine's American Missiles Wrecked 21 Russian Hel...
I'm honestly not sure but I'm also not sure we have ever seen a nuclear power with its back against the wall to this degree have we? I'm not trying to make people worried it's just something I personally worry about.
Nuclear powers (including Russia and the USSR) have lost wars before so I’m not sure how they are backed against a wall.
Second statement does not follow from the first. For all we know those tires are poorly maintained because they spend their limited resources on maintaining their nuclear arsenal.
Either way, you can’t call their bluff without risking nuclear annihilation. All it takes is a few dozen MIRV tipped IC/SL ballistic missiles to bypass anti missile systems and destroy a good chunk of the US population.
Sorry, which part of that 47 pages document debunkes my assertion? I thought you were gonna link me to a video of a Russia nuclear weapon detonating... oh wait that hasn't happened in 70 years...
Russia is another level compared to India and Pakistan in terms of corruption.
China, maybe. The difference is that Chinese nukes are relatively new. How old are Russia's nukes? 40 years old? 60? You do know that nukes are extremely finicky. Getting a nuke to detonate is a highly precise thing.
It has become clear that Russia had no capacity to wage war in Ukraine and take on anyone else in a meaningful way. As long as pot boils, but doesn’t spill over the USA will be able to continue to slowly increase its support.