The Arab Spring

Shinra - This may sound like a really silly question, but what exactly are you referring to?

edited 4th Nov '16 2:36:19 AM by KnitTie

The Syria policy and the way Obama handled it. By telegraphing that he would not enforce anything he wanted, the Russians were able to make mockery of him and Kerry's efforts.

No, I meant why is Russia more powerful than the US thinks it is?

Perception of the ability of the Russian state to survive. Resilience against adversity. It's been through worse.

edited 4th Nov '16 2:50:17 AM by TerminusEst

Russia getting underestimated to the detriment of the estimator is a historical running gag.

Except for the Mongols. They had both Moscow and Bagdad nailed.

Let's be fair now, Russia was not a thing when the Mongols came around. It's much easier to steamroll over a dozen or so disunited principalities than to do so against a unified huge state.

As a fun aside, the topic of "whether or not was Russia a proper state and/or Russian a proper language at some point in time" is a horrible, horrible thread-killer in the Runet. You can't bring it up and not have an army of nationalist lunatics of all flavours come out of nowhere.

edited 4th Nov '16 6:19:50 AM by KnitTie

I'd say it's pretty clear that, much like in China, the Mongols helped forge and define a Russian state and identity, an identity which (again like China) had existed before but was poorly defined both as an identity and especially as a state. The Yuan Empire and the Golden Horde helped set the tone for the pre-Romanov Empire and the Ming who followed the Mongols in both cases, and those were the states that really created the modern perception and boundaries that were largely accepted afterwards.

We're veering a bit off topic.

Any news?

I've been keeping track of the Battle of Mosul through the Google News feed and things seem to be going well there.

The Iraqi Army is making steady progress in Eastern Mosul and if I'm reading the maps right they have close to half the area east of the Tigris river under their control.

The most densly populated areas of Mosul, including the Grand Mosque ^note which is where the Islamic State was officially declared, making it symbolically important to ISIS, is west of the river however. Which makes me think they could be consentrating their defenses there.

Here is to hoping Mosul's defences were actually overestimated. A snowball's chance, I know, but it'd be nice for something to go through cleanly.

I saw some headlines suggesting that Al-Baghdadi might be in Mosul. If that's true I hope they get him.

Oh if they get him, I'd imagine the ICC would clear its schedule....

Even if he is there, its a long shot to get him alive. Between him fighting to the death, committing suicide, getting away or being summarily executed on capture.....

We can dream though.

I'm half-suspecting them to set off a dirty bomb once the coalition gets close enough.

edited 4th Nov '16 11:41:30 AM by TerminusEst

With what?

I'd suspect some by-products of nuclear fission, which have a tendency of getting around. Seems like something they'd do to go out in a blaze of glory.

I just get an itchy feeling that they've prepared one last big...boom.

edited 4th Nov '16 12:03:42 PM by TerminusEst

Ah. Thought you might have heard specifics on fissile material.

Still, I hope that does not come to pass. Enough black swans in this conflict as it is.

Didn't some hospital nuclear material go missing ages back? Was it eventually you found or not? Now it clearly can't be used to make a bomb even if ISIS have it, but could it be used to iridiate an area in some other way?

Aerosol delivery devices for example. We know perfectly well that ISIS has access to some pretty talented engineers.

Caesium-137 isn't that hard to find, specially in abandoned hospitals and dentist offices with x-ray machines.

However it is still a fairly dense metal and powdering it could be risky for the people doing it, I wouldn't discard an IED meant to disperse shards of Caesium-137 over a relatively large area or targeted at the incoming troops as radioactive shrapnel.

I haven't seen anyone try building a radioactive IED dirty bomb though.

If ISIS have WMDs I'd expect Sarin to be more likely -if the got some of Assad's stock of precursors.

I don't think Baghdadi will be taken alive. He'll die fighting or get executed on the spot. I can't think of a plausible scenario where the ones that take him will be keen to settle for arresting him.

If he dies, ISIS loses its alleged mandate, so it would - or, well, should - be the end of any delusions they might have of a final victory. They might still choose to die in battle rather than surrender, but it would be for nothing at that point.

Detonating a WMD as an invading army advances into a city . . .

Things just stretched from Command & Conquer to Call Of Duty 4 Modern Warfare.

The leaders of insurgencies tend to be Genre Savvy enough to flee to fight another day while they can. A living or dead leader is often all it takes for an organization to succumb into infighting without a clear center of charisma.

edited 4th Nov '16 2:39:50 PM by FluffyMcChicken