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Old 2008-11-22, 00:53   Link #85
4Tran
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Join Date: Dec 2005
Quote:
Originally Posted by ganbaru View Post
The Russian gouvernement, are opposed to Islamic fundamentalist ) and separatist group), but on the ground, the russian general saled weapons at Islamic in the past. so the scenario of a group with enough money than could ''buy'' a nuclear weapon from Russian troup.
For all sorts of reasons (not least of which are that the Kremlin now has much tighter control of military officers than in the past and that the security on nuclear weapons is nontrivial), this is even less likely than terrorists simply stealing nuclear weapons.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Mumitroll View Post
i am not so sure. i dont know if you have watched all of Putin's and Medvedev's recent speeches and interviews on US policy. I have - at least most of them. they are very, very critical of the US. thats to say it mildly. to say it less mildly, I am not sure that if the current highly aggressive anti-Russian US policy continues, they would not at some point covertly provide a tactical 50kt nuclear warhead to some islamic organization.
I've seen a few, and I also know that most of those speeches are for domestic consumption - they aren't necessarily a guideline as to Russian actions. In any case, they're smart men, and they're quite open to dialogue with the U.S. If it weren't for Bush's silly diplomatic moves, American-Russian relations would be much better right now.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Mumitroll View Post
i can just hope so. publications of US politology professors - who are surely more familiar with the situation than Obama - make you think otherwise.
Don't put too much stock into what any of those guys say. Obama has yet to commit himself to any particular course of action aside from Iraq and Afghanistan. He has also shown that he's quite willing to reexamine any existing preconceptions of American geopolitics, so that's already a step in the right direction. While I don't expect all that much to change, at least the tone of the rhetoric should be calmer.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Mumitroll View Post
a conventional guided missile strike is possible anytime. a nuclear strike though - I dont think so.
To my knowledge Israel doesn't have any medium range missiles, so any attack is going to have to be launched from F-16s. In order to pull that off, their refueling aircraft will have to be parked in Iraq, so American cooperation is essential.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Mumitroll View Post
the offensive was in late July-early August. it was over by August 20th.
Sorry. That was a brain seizure on my part - I have no idea where September came from. August Storm started on 9 August 1945, at around the same time Fat Man was dropped on Nagasaki, and three days after Little Boy on Hiroshima. The decisions to drop those bombs came long before the attack materialized.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Mumitroll View Post
thats only regarding the US losses. it has little relation to the USSR advance on Japan.
That's because the Americans never thought that the Soviet attack would be so massive or so quick. They certainly never expected that the Soviets were in a position to capture northern Japan either. And for that matter, the Japanese were far more aware of the situation on the ground, and they had no clue that any of this was possible either. They didn't think that the Soviets would even be in a position to attack until 1946.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Mumitroll View Post
I am not so sure about that. I think that US military intelligence and strategic planning at the time certainly had a good idea of the level of top Soviet German front divisions. they would have had to to be stupid not to. as i've said, those were regiments who had fought for 4 years against an extremely powerful enemy - victoriously. as the Japanese continental army had barely encountered any major opposition, it must have been an obvious conclusion that it would be totally outmatched against the Soviet army once the German front was gone.
American intelligence was generally quite clueless about what was happening on the Eastern Front, and most of the significance of Soviet actions weren't known to the West until after the archives were opened up starting in the '90s. At the time, none of the Western Allies had any foreknowledge of August Storm - if they gave any thought to Stalin's promise of war on Japan, it was probably assumed that it would be just a token attack.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Mumitroll View Post
i.e. if you ask me - I dont think that the US military intelligence at the time was stupid. not at all. i do think that they probably didnt know of some things - like that Stalin had spies in the US nuclear program and was well-informed about it - but they were surely very much in the clear regarding the power distribution of the Soviet Far Eastern forces vs. the Japanese Manchurian army.
From what I can tell, this isn't the case at all. American intelligence on Germany was fairly good, but that was partially because the Gestapo was so incompetent. Their intelligence on Japan was much worse, and the intelligence network in the Soviet Union was all but nonexistent. This really isn't a matter of how smart they were; it's a matter of how many people they had on the ground.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Mumitroll View Post
yes, thats commonly quoted in Western historical sources. what you should consider though is, again, the sheer size of the conflicts. both Okinawa and Iwo Jima were fought with not even 1/10th of the size of the continental Japanese army - which opposed the Soviet Far Eastern armies.
Yes, but there were garrisons scattered throughout the Pacific islands, including many which were never attacked at all. Moreover, the best troops were kept in the Home Islands themselves, and the dregs went to the Kwantung Army since it hadn't seen any real fighting since about 1939.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Mumitroll View Post
whats particularly funny is thats the view of a US military analyst specializing in this theatre of cónflict.
It's written by David Glantz while he was in the U.S. Army. Right now, he's regarded as the foremost Western expert on Soviet military operations in World War II.
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