Russian-Belarussian Wargames - "West 2009"

[Admiral Yi]

Vietnam is pretty much the only semi-relevant one and these these events were during the cold war. The world was a very different place back then.
Even with this though...

Suez- the UN sorted the situation.
Israel- neither side were listening to the UN. Not really relevant here anyway as the defender won. Had Israel been overran and conquered then you would have saw something.
Kashmir- The UN did arrange a cease fire on both occasions.
Falklands- The UK won before the UN could do anything.
Iran-Iraq- Both sides thought they could win and fought hard, it was the UN who eventually arranged the cease fire.
Hungary/Czechs- Not officially cross border invasions. The local governments asked the Soviets in to help against the rebels. And of course, the UN isn't going to encourage WW3, its job is not to do that.

Suez: what the fuck did the UN do?  The US threatened to cut off IMF money to the UK and that killed it.
Israel: the one example of UN imposed cease fires affecting events on the ground.
Kashmir: what the fuck did the UN do?  India had beaten Pakistan, gotten everything they wanted, Pakistan knew they were beaten, both sides were ready to stop.
Falklands:  Man, it took like 6 months to get your bloody troops down there.
Iran-Iraq: So the UN is awesome at arranging cease fires when both sides are ready to cease fire.  :golfclap:
Hungary & Czechoslovakia: I know the formally constituted government of Hungary asked the West for help, pretty sure the same is true in Czechoslovakia.

The US, UK, Canada, Saudi, France, etc....

You're telling me if the UN didn't exist the US, UK and Saudi Arabia would have taken a nap after Iraq invaded Kuwait?

[Agelastus]

Britain is one of the nations which really needs a military yes- if at least because we'd lose our security council seat without it.
And the world certainly has gotten safer since the end of the cold war. This war on terror stuff is a joke compared to a real war.
Or are you referring to Russia still being the bad guy? True there but they're not quite so bad as the soviets were- they're ruled by buisnessmen and any move against the west would ruin their economy before a shot is even fired. Also of course they're smaller, have no decent allies of note and their military is a shambles.

The bipolarity of the cold war actually exercised a restraining effect on a good portion of the regional crazies, because of the active involvement of both sides in finding proxies in the various regions of the world. With the end of the Cold War, one of the Superpowers disappeared, and the other lost a lot of interest in large chunks of the world. As has been seen over the last few years, this has let a lot of the crazies off the leash, even in Europe. We may have pulled back from the "press the button and the world is dead" situation, but that has to balanced in the increased dangers from the increased instability.

As for who I am thinking of, see below.

On the rare occasion it does; the UN.
Their track record for getting other nations to handle cross border invasions is very good.

As Yi has pointed out, it is in fact spectacularly bad at this, and depends on the interest of the USA being aroused and local nations being willing to co-operate with the USA. Fundamentally, this is not a stable situation.

I'm a realist, not a optimist. The world just doesn't work like a strategy game. Britain could invade and overrun Ireland in five minutes....but that's stupid. There's no way they're ever going to do that.

No, because due to accidents of geography and our own history with that nation we'd be the first ones springing to their defence if attacked. So no, there's no way we'd ever do that. Not all nations see their neighbours in the same way though.

Besides, as I said, one of the things the so called "peace dividend" should have been redirected to was Heavy Lift capacity. Even if I am a man engaged in a "jingoist pissing match" I don't want to invade Ireland.

As for potential war initiating nations (just the first 12 I can think of.)

Russia
China
North Korea
India
Pakistan
Iran
Syria
Eritrea
Ethiopia
Armenia
Azerbaijan
Venezuela (the only one on this list who is a little iffy; the rhetoric and the threats are their, but I am not convinced Chavez has the willpower to ever go beyond his own overblown threats.)

We're not speaking about Africa though, I specifically said western Europe.
Nations in Africa work by completely different rules to the rest of the world.
But nonetheless actual foreign invasions remain rare there. Its far far more internal rebels and the like that make Africa a shit hole. I really struggle to think of any actual invasions in the last few years barring Ethopian involvment in Somalia and Eritrea's little local squabbles.

The recent troubles in the Congo/former Zaire is the prime example of this in recent years. It was far from being a simple albeit multi-sided, civil war.

Yes, see the mention of economic effects.
I'd still doubt though that Britain makes a net profit out of military stuff, foreign sales help recoup some costs but not much.

Net profits are tricky with regard to military hardware. After all, we are getting a lot of service out of the hardware we have bought, at which point politics come in to any assessment as to how much this use is worth to the country.

As for specific arms sales though, it appears that Britain sells about a billion dollars of weapons a year (less than I thought and have heard previously) compared to a 60 billion dollar defence budget. This does look grim from the view of claiming that Britain makes a "net profit" from arms sales.

Something's very odd though, see -

Oxford Economic Forecasting states that in 2002 BAE's UK businesses employed 111,578 people, achieved export sales of £3 billion and paid £2.6 billion in taxes. These figures exclude the contribution of Airbus UK.[74]

£3 billion is just under $5 billion dollars, which does not at all square with the figures for arms sales from various other sources.

The benefit of employing over a 100000 people to the economy from the perspective of their purchasing power can't be all that bad either.

[Sheilbh]

Don't you think he would know better than you whether he disagrees? Or are you questioning the vehemence of said disagreement?

I always question Tim's vehemence.  No-one can feel that much

Definitely less dangerous, but a strong case could be made for more unstable.

I'm not convinced on the stability part either.

[Admiral Yi]

I'm not convinced on the stability part either.

Border changes, new states, ethnic cleansing.

[Josquius]

The bipolarity of the cold war actually exercised a restraining effect on a good portion of the regional crazies, because of the active involvement of both sides in finding proxies in the various regions of the world. With the end of the Cold War, one of the Superpowers disappeared, and the other lost a lot of interest in large chunks of the world. As has been seen over the last few years, this has let a lot of the crazies off the leash, even in Europe. We may have pulled back from the "press the button and the world is dead" situation, but that has to balanced in the increased dangers from the increased instability.

As for who I am thinking of, see below.

Where have nations lost interest?
Africa has never been of interest beyond a very passing glance at the height of the cold war. Asian interest dropped off temporarily for a while but with the war on terror its back again.
With the end of the cold war things are much safer in general, if one angsty 3rd world shit hole invades its neighbour it will not be doing so with the permission of one super power thus leading the other to be dubious about helping.

As Yi has pointed out, it is in fact spectacularly bad at this, and depends on the interest of the USA being aroused and local nations being willing to co-operate with the USA. Fundamentally, this is not a stable situation.

As I pointed out though there were no comparable situations.
1: The cold war was a very different place to the modern world.
2: Vietnam was the only one of those situations that sort of compared- but even then it was heavily the S.Vietnamese viet-minh mainly involved with the north only getting involved later.

No, because due to accidents of geography and our own history with that nation we'd be the first ones springing to their defence if attacked. So no, there's no way we'd ever do that. Not all nations see their neighbours in the same way though.

In western Europe we do though.
If Portugal got rid of its military tomorrow bar a few thousand men for emergencies and some patrol boats would Spain attack? No.
If by some random chance someone did invade Portugal (not going to happen) Spain would jump in to help however.

As for potential war initiating nations (just the first 12 I can think of.)

Russia
China
North Korea
India
Pakistan
Iran
Syria
Eritrea
Ethiopia
Armenia
Azerbaijan
Venezuela (the only one on this list who is a little iffy; the rhetoric and the threats are their, but I am not convinced Chavez has the willpower to ever go beyond his own overblown threats.)

You've got a few groups in there though.
Azerbaijan-Armenia, Ethiopia-Eritrea, Pakistan-India.
Beyond these groups they aren't going to be starting any wars (except for Djibouti in the African one of course).
Russia is the only real big threat to a large number of its neighbours. China are iffy.

£3 billion is just under $5 billion dollars, which does not at all square with the figures for arms sales from various other sources.

The benefit of employing over a 100000 people to the economy from the perspective of their purchasing power can't be all that bad either.

Yep but...well the liberal in me can't help but choke a little at the government employing people 'just because'.

You're telling me if the UN didn't exist the US, UK and Saudi Arabia would have taken a nap after Iraq invaded Kuwait?

If the UN didn't exist we'd be in a alternate history scenario so who knows, everything would be different. As it is though it does and it was the one who said go.

[Berkut]

The UN fought and won WWII.

That is going to leave a mark.

[Sheilbh]

Border changes, new states, ethnic cleansing.

That's true.

On the other hand there's now some agreed ways of dealing with a civil war.  International intervention and ceasefire brokering to end civil wars was relatively rare during the cold war (and unprecendented prior to that).  I think globalisation has similarly stabilised the world as a new international structure trying to aim towards some form of economic governance.  I think fundamentally what's changed is that there's no two systems competing which inherently destabilises every situation because one side or the other would involve themselves with local partisans in some global battle.

Cold War summits involved two powers, in the nineties there was the G8, right now we have the G20 - which is proving to have taken over quite surprisingly peacefully.  We've seen in the past week a remarkable thing happen.  A Chinese leader's called for concerted international action on climate change, he's got together with a secularist PM from India and a socialist President from Brazil to plead for the world not to retreat into protectionism.  Meanwhile a French President's calling for global dirigisme to cap bankers' bonuses.  Now little of that may actually come of those statements but what they show is incredible in that these governments of about 90% of the world economy and 80% of the world's population are invested in one sort of global ideology.  There are very few states that aren't connected to that sort of global consensus.

I think a world in which the biggest threats are terrorist groups and rogue states seem more unstable because there can be an intense lack of stability in certain effected areas, but many of these groups only present a real threat on a localised level.  So I think while there's local destabilisation - as there was in the Cold War - there's no overarching global threat.  Europe's stable and almost united - though it wasn't even a decade ago.  The America's have two or three mildly troublesome problems.  The Pacific Rim's pretty stable, as is most of Asia.  I think Africa's got far less problems than they had in the 80s - with the exception of the DRC and Zimbabwe - I think Africa's made tremendous progress in the last 20 years.  The Middle East is difficult because frankly its extreme stability is the problem.  The only area I think is less stable now than it was in 89 is South Asia - which is troubling.  But I think everywhere else has made progress.  Though, of course, there was an element of chaos in the immediate post-Cold War, as there was in the immediate post-war.

[Admiral Yi]

If the UN didn't exist we'd be in a alternate history scenario so who knows, everything would be different. As it is though it does and it was the one who said go.

Sure, and the sun rises in the morning because the rooster crows.  All of Bush Sr.'s much touted phone diplomacy--meaningless.  All the quid pro quos for the Arab states--meaningless.  Plus you have three of the principal participants (US, UK, France) holding permanent seats on the UNSC.  So in effect they ordered themselves to go.  You're probably right, if they hadn't ordered themselves to go they might not have gone.

[Viking]

The UN fought and won WWII.

That is going to leave a mark.

UN /= UN Organisation

[Valmy]

Venezuela (the only one on this list who is a little iffy; the rhetoric and the threats are their, but I am not convinced Chavez has the willpower to ever go beyond his own overblown threats.)

That and I don't think the Venezuelans would put with it.

[Berkut]

The UN fought and won WWII.

That is going to leave a mark.

UN /= UN Organisation

Huh?

Please, do tell me how you are going to spin the idea that the UN (established in 1945) won WW2.

[Admiral Yi]

I think it was something like 6 weeks; we're not even late to the start of our own wars. 

edit:
according to wiki, Falklands invaded 2nd April, main landing at San Carlos on 21st May so 7 weeks.

quibblequibblequibble

[ulmont]

The UN fought and won WWII.

That is going to leave a mark.

UN /= UN Organisation

Huh?

Please, do tell me how you are going to spin the idea that the UN (established in 1945) won WW2.

The Allies were referred to as the United Nations as early as 1942.

[Sheilbh]

Huh?

Please, do tell me how you are going to spin the idea that the UN (established in 1945) won WW2.

FDR used the phrase 'United Nations' to describe the Allies.

[Josquius]

If the UN didn't exist we'd be in a alternate history scenario so who knows, everything would be different. As it is though it does and it was the one who said go.

Sure, and the sun rises in the morning because the rooster crows.  All of Bush Sr.'s much touted phone diplomacy--meaningless.  All the quid pro quos for the Arab states--meaningless.  Plus you have three of the principal participants (US, UK, France) holding permanent seats on the UNSC.  So in effect they ordered themselves to go.  You're probably right, if they hadn't ordered themselves to go they might not have gone.

Well of course.
What else is the UN but a collection of states? United nations so to speak.