Now you’ve got me worrying that at some point a leader of a country with a relatively weak navy but plenty of nukes will make the calculation that taking out enemy ships with a nuke-tipped torpedo (which are a thing) won’t really be the start of an all-out nuclear war the same way that launching ICBMs at populated area would be, and that they might be able to get away with it. A Soviet submarine came fairly close to using one of those during the Cuban missile crisis.
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New country, who dis?
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I’m pretty well convinced that WWIII has already begun, and this announcement is another piece of evidence for it. Japan of all nations sabre rattling!
We don’t realize yet that we are in a global war, because it appears (perhaps a mirage) that there is still a point of no return somewhere ahead of us. But think of it from Putin’s perspective. He is going be out of options in weeks if not months, and the only options he has are catastrophic to him and/or his fantasy Russian empire. Someone that egomaniacal and desperate could do anything.
It takes some distance from historical events in order to know for certain when that point of no return was crossed, so I do hope I’m wrong.
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Japanese right-wingers love their territorial disputes.
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Indeed it is believed that there were nuclear torpedoes onboard the Soviet Submarine S-363 when it ran aground in Swedish territorial waters in 1981
Indeed the risk of a wider war can’t be ignored. You know, I got my kickstarter of the new edition of Twilight: 2000 in last year and right now it is looking a bit too on point to play.
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Who knew Obama’s bike helmet could bring back revanchism. /s
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Reminds me of how Paul Atreides used atomic weapons in a clear breach of his society’s established norms in Dune, but was able to successfully rationalize that it didn’t violate the relevant treaties because the nuclear strike targeted the shield wall protecting the city they were attacking rather than targeting the city itself. Seemed pretty wishy-washy logic then too.
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Yeah, the signs that Paul was a secret asshole are all there in the first book.
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Also known as “belligerent neighbors often have territorial disputes”. See: China vs. every single country they share a border with (and some they don’t, like Japan)
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Once Canada’s Conservatives replace their disposable leader, I expect they’ll raise the issue of Hans Island again.
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Googling “Manifest Destiny,” is an exercise left to the reader.
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For the past decade, Putin has been leading Japan on with talk of a deal that would see two of the islands go to Russia and two of the islands go to Japan. This deal never seems anywhere close to materializing in spite of sporadic talks.
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It’s the I+II super redux! All the territory annexation and treaty domino effect of the first, but now featuring the second’s fascists and nuclear weapons! If I were an archduke, I’d be really nervous about now…
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“You recognize that all four islands are inviolable parts of Russia, and in return, I’ll cede two of them.”
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Are there even any archdukes to assassinate anymore?
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There’s got to be one around here somewhere…
ETA, good news everyone! Luxembourg still has one.
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Pretty much. And successive prime ministers have fallen for it, and that’s why Japan hasn’t pressed the issue with Russia for a while.
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RFK might have been analogous to the archduke. A future leader of a great power, killed by a foreign terrorist.
