Ukraine Thread

[Gilrandir]

Not sure the dissolution following the end of the "cold war" is really "conquest," per se, but it certainly did result from a prolonged political/economic struggle.

I might be mistaken, but Brenus probably means that Crimea was conquered by Russian empire in 1873 and remained a part of it (and later the USSR) till it was transferred to Ukraine in 1954.

Interesting consideration just now, and one I haven't seen in discussions of WW2 nuclear strategy: if in hope of causing the Japanese government to submit unconditionally (or nearly so) without resort to nuclears, would fire bombing and other mass destruction have proved ethically-superior (all discussion I have seen regards Japanese readiness to surrender in the abstract, or the cost-benefit ratio to amphibious invasion of the main islands.) Though plenty take some issue with strategic bombing in the war, it would indeed have been a continuation of prior means, and it would have been relatively cheap and simple.

In the end the nuclear bombs were about effecting speedy surrender toward immediate occupation, and demonstrating to the Soviet Union the power precipitating the surrender. Questioning the ethics of nuclear weapons is invariably caught up in anxiety about the American empire. I think this means more to people than any perceived inhumanity or existential threat of the weapons themselves.

I wasn't talking only of NUCLEAR bombings. I tried to draw attention to the fact that all parties to WWII at one time or another were involved into deeds of (to put it mildly) questionable morality which can't be justified by any strategic considerations or need for reprisals. They can be EXPLAINED by such reasons, but not JUSTIFIED.