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Subject: The Axis Of Outcasts
SYSOP    9/29/2014 5:11:45 AM
 
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keffler25       9/29/2014 8:58:34 PM
With ONE very important difference. Atomic weapons and flight times measured in minutes. Anyone reading this article should remember that difference.   
 
You don't bounce back from that mistake. 
 
 
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Nate Dog       9/29/2014 11:09:52 PM
Read Barbara Tuchmans "March of Folly"
Discusses this very issue.
And yes, as above, Nukes make it a disastrously bad decision when errant idiots that happen to be in charge at the time, err.
I guess that's the huge impetus to prevent Iran getting its hands on Nukes.
As for our current conundrum with aggressive russians and chinese, I sincerely hope that when the nukes fly, they are between Moscow and Beijing, and the rest of us merely have to deal with a short nuclear winter (2-3 years), rather than a world wide conflagration, from which there is no return. 
 
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keffler25       9/29/2014 11:32:26 PM
Not the right idiots. You really have not paid careful attention to the discussions about Ukraine and ISIL, here have you?
 
Tuchman is also someone I believe knows less about what led up to WW I than I do.
 
Her storytelling is good FICTION. 
 
 
Hew  Stracham. Try him and get some perspective . 
As for our current conundrum with aggressive russians and chinese, I sincerely hope that when the nukes fly, they are between Moscow and Beijing, and the rest of us merely have to deal with a short nuclear winter (2-3 years), rather than a world wide conflagration, from which there is no return. 

 
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robbief1       9/30/2014 3:16:24 AM
To contain a conflict, or avoid exacerbating it because :-
you are too weak / do not wish to devote scarce resources / have other fish to fry etc.,
there is an old (popular in KGB) trick which goes something like this, I believe.
 
Play your two enemies off against each other, with (surreptitious or overt) support using, amongst others :-
 
1.  those whom your opponents have irritated / scared / attacked (lots of candidates: see below),
2. agent provocateurs
3. "honourable idiots" / those with morals
4. your own agents eg sleepers
5. assassination
 
Candidates for support
 
China: virtually the whole of East Asia 
Russia : former vassal states 
 
This is already happening, to a degree, but more should be done.
  
 
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trenchsol       9/30/2014 8:26:58 AM
Axis powers lacked important resources and raw materials during both World Wars. Their international trade was cut off by Allied blockade of the sea lanes. It was an important factor.
 
It reminds to century and the half old Heartland theory by  Mackinder. Except, this time New Axis powers have resources within the territory they cover. They, kind of, own the Heartland.
 
However, there is a serious dispute between the ranks of the  New Axis. The dispute is about who is the top dog, Russia or China.
 
 
 
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Sty0pa       10/1/2014 2:51:13 PM

 
So you might just want to back off that arrogance throttle a touch. 
 
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Sty0pa       10/1/2014 2:57:39 PM
Strategypage's 1993-era comment posting software strikes again, eating the bulk of another comment. What it deleted was my extended rant against Keffler's astonishing hubris asserting that he "knows more about the start of WWI than Tuchmann" and then references Strachan. You should know more than her; she wrote her definitive work in 1963...while we've had the advantage of another HALF CENTURY of historical revelation. Strachan HIMSELF is charitable to her in his review of Hastings' book on WWI: that she gleaned the insights and overview that she did almost entirely from what was said (and what wasn't) from memoirs - as National Archives were still not open on the subject - was an astonishing and seminal piece of scholarship. To diminish it from a remove of 50 years is crass and rather childish.
 
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keffler25       10/1/2014 5:32:39 PM
Actually I think I do. And for more than the reasons you mentioned. 
 
Just to be BLUNT. Tuchman was a closet Marxist, who let her own class warfare biases get in the way of what was even then plainly known about the economic and political drivers that impelled and brought on that original war.
 
 
To say that she was not objective in her treatments in 1963 with the evidence she had is just the truth. 

What it deleted was my extended rant against Keffler's astonishing hubris asserting that he "knows more about the start of WWI than Tuchmann" and then references Strachan.
You should know more than her; she wrote her definitive work in 1963...while we've had the advantage of another HALF CENTURY of historical revelation.
Strachan HIMSELF is charitable to her in his review of Hastings' book on WWI: that she gleaned the insights and overview that she did almost entirely from what was said (and what wasn't) from memoirs - as National Archives were still not open on the subject - was an astonishing and seminal piece of scholarship.
To diminish it from a remove of 50 years is crass and rather childish.

 
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