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Comment by roenxi | Hacker News Reader

The US really dropped the hammer on Russia last year and yet Russian troops kept advancing. There isn't much proof-in-the-pudding right now that they can stop a top-10 global economy. This isn't the 90s and it isn't clear how much the US can throw their weight around.

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> Russian troops kept advancing

Did they? The war is in a stalemate. Militarily this isn't that different than the proxy wars of the Cold War EXCEPT Russia has suffered more casualties by a magnitude or two than the USSR did in Afghanistan or the US in Vietnam. For the Russian regime this war is now 100% an existential threat.

For the US from an entirely a real-politik point of view, if the end goal is to defeat Russia dragging the war on might even be a preferable option. After this is over Russian will be militarily crippled for the next 10-20 years due to massive and unsustainable manpower and economic costs. The balance of power will tip even further towards NATO making any further Russian expansion in Eastern Europe impossible (especially now that Finland and Sweden have joined).

Of course Ukraine is caught in between...

> For the Russian regime this war is now 100% an existential threat.

For everyone this war is an existential threat. It is unusual for governments that come in after a revolution to be more stable than their predecessors and any successor to Putin will still have the worlds largest nuclear weapons stockpile. There is an outside chance of a literal replay of Germany WWI -> WWII if the Russians collapse. Not to mention the risk of armageddon from the current war; I'd still expect to get another Able Archer style story to add to the near misses out of this conflict.

And from a realpolitik perspective, sure the US is coming off better than Russia here. But the US isn't coming off well; it's military looks a bit wheezy through all this. If they can't deter the world's 11th largest economy from going to war in NATO's sphere of influence; what can they deter? If they can't muster the resources to turn back the Russians in 2023, what are they going to be able to pull in Africa, the middle east and APAC region?

EDIT Bearing in mind we're talking about someone trading Bitcoin in a way they don't like. "this assumes USD hegemony is a distant memory. does bitcoin have the largest weapons cache and standing military in the history of humanity?" is just bunk. They don't have that sort of power these days.

> There is an outside chance of a literal replay of Germany WWI -> WWII if the Russians collapse

True but "only" because Russia has nukes (you certainly have an extremely valid point about that). However despite WWI Germany was still one of the (or the) economically strongest powers in Europe and the whole world. Besides oil and other raw resources the Russian economy is a joke. Due to their demographic issues and the mass casualties in this war they wouldn't even have the manpower to pull off something even remotely similar to what Germany did. So their only tool they'll have left is "do what we want or we'll blow up the entire world" (and you can only get so far with that..)

> it's military looks a bit wheezy through all this

It it their military itself or rather their "soft"/diplomatic power? It doesn't really matter how strong your conventional army is if you and your opponents know that you won't/can't use it?

> in NATO's sphere of influence

Prior to 2014 Ukraine was certainly in Russia's sphere of influence. This whole thing started because Ukraine (mostly peacefully) was trying to leave it and US/NATO didn't really want to get involved that much into the whole situation until it was too late. So I'm not sure it's that clear cut.

> Bearing in mind we're talking about someone trading Bitcoin in a way they don't like. "this assumes USD hegemony is a distant memory. does bitcoin have the largest weapons cache and standing military in the history of humanity?" is just bunk. They don't have that sort of power these days.

I don't agree with the whole premise. The ability of the US to project military power these days is only somewhat tangentially related to its (and the Dollar's) global economic and financial dominance. They most certainly can more or less stop "trading Bitcoin in a way they don't like" without firing a shot it's just the the cost of doing that is not (yet) worth the effort. AFAIK China is not that eager to switch to bitcoin either (and without China, US, Europe and their allies you only have non particularly economically relevant third tier countries/economies left).

> any successor to Putin will still have the worlds largest nuclear weapons stockpile

Possibly. Given how much of the rest of the Russian forces turned out to be paper tigers, I wouldn't be surprised if 80% of the missiles' flight computers are missing something flight critical and 80% of the warheads have unenriched (or even outright depleted) uranium instead of weapons grade uranium or plutonium, with the real stuff having been lost (or never made in the fist place) due to corruption, and the SLBMs… well, thinking of replaying history, the Kursk comes to mind.

And while I don't think much of the promises of western anti-ICBM defences, they're probably still at least a bit better than the Russian delivery mechanisms.

Certainly possible that we'll see a repeat of Germany WWI -> WWII when the Russians collapse, I think that fear was why the west tried to be supportive of Russia when the USSR collapsed.

> "this assumes USD hegemony is a distant memory. does bitcoin have the largest weapons cache and standing military in the history of humanity?" is just bunk.

Sure. "Largest weapons cache" is too vague anyway — anyone can tell that the number of longbows don't matter too much any more, but sometimes we get people surprised that battleships also don't matter any more.

(Also: I thought the largest standing army was China, anyway?)

>I wouldn't be surprised if 80% of the missiles' flight computers are missing something flight critical

Are these the missiles that Russia ran out of in March 2022, March 2023 and then in June 2023 or the other ones?

No, they're specifically the ICBMs and nuclear-armed SLMBs.

I suspect that people are a little more cautious about corruption whenever the results are regularly tested, e.g. if they think the missile they make this month gets shipped to the front line next month, and if it doesn't launch they will be personally posted to a flood-prone trench near a dam in the Dnipro river.

ICBMs are supposed to not get launched outside of tests, they're meant to defend a country by their mere existence threatening mutually assured destruction. This doesn't work so well if people (like me) openly doubt they work. It also means that corruption is much easier to hide, which in turn means it's much more likely to happen. (This latter point also applies to the USA's arsenal, FWIW, but that only matters to the extent that anyone fears the USA collapsing into its second real civil war).

Sending some funding and weapons is considered dropping the hammer? What do we call it when the US actually commit troops to an engagement?

We're all lucky that the US hasn't dropped the hammer on Russia. A hot war between two major nuclear powers wouldn't / won't end well for anyone.

The US is not at war with Russia and no US forces are engaging Russian forces. This is actually an important distinction. It's much less of a conflict than the Iraq war.

It does show two things: US hegemony over certain European countries that might want to take Russian money and gas is weak, and the US foreign policy coherence is weak as Ukraine policy is at risk from cranks.

If they can't win the not-war they're fighting against Russia, what is their huge military stockpile supposed to do? If it isn't useful here, they can't use it.

The US military stockpile is staffed by Americans, not Ukranians, and there's no political will to transfer some of the really expensive stuff which requires extensive training like F35s. The transfers of Patriot anti-missile batteries, HIMARS, Bradley vehicles etc have been extremely effective in pushing back the Russian line of control from the initial invasion, but now it's a nasty question of assaulting well defended positions without air superiority.

https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/IF/IF12040

• 39 High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS);

• 12 National Advanced Surface-to-Air Missile Systems (NASAMS); 1 Patriot air defense battery; other air defense systems; and 21 air surveillance radars;

• 31 Abrams tanks, 45 T-72B tanks and 186 Bradley infantry fighting vehicles;

• 300 M113 and 189 Stryker Armored Personnel Carriers;

• 2,000+ Stinger anti-aircraft missiles;

• 10,000+ Javelin and 90,000+ other anti-armor systems;

• Phoenix Ghost, Switchblade, and other UAS;

• 198 155 mm and 72 105 mm Howitzers and artillery;

• 227 mortar systems;

• Remote Anti-Armor Mine (RAAM) Systems;

• 9,000+ Tube-Launched, Optically-Tracked, Wire- Guided (TOW) missiles;

• High-speed anti-radiation missiles (HARMs) and laser- guided rocket systems;

• 35,000+ grenade launchers and small arms;

• communications, radar, and intelligence equipment; and

• training, maintenance, and sustainment.

(What's NOT on that list? Aircraft. What's the US doctrine way of winning a war, such as OIF? Air power.)

Wow, nice find with the evidence right there! Comments like this is why I read HN. The US may not be fighting with troops, but definitely fighting proxy with it's m.i.c.

Edit: Do you think no aircraft because they'd have to use US trained pilots?

Don't go crazy internet list person on me; arguing with you is part of the fun of HN.

Now I've got 2 persapectives here. There is "largest weapons cache and standing military in the history of humanity" from pyvpx and there is this rather smaller list from yourself. I'm inclined to go with your list - I don't think the US is in a position to deploy the largest weapons cache in the history of humanity.

The evidence we have is that the US is broke and only capable of bullying people with this rather less impressive list of ad-hoc assembled gear with no air support. Which is not nothing, but has observably failed to turn back the Russians. They don't have the industrial or financial foundations to project do-what-I-say strength overseas any more against larger economies like Russia.

It is pretty obvious they don't have that capability, or they'd have used it.

lend-lease isn’t even lifting a finger to find the hammer. there is more “hammer” droning eastern Africa surreptitiously than direct US force in Ukraine.

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