Hey Poland, you want to make sure Russia won't take over the country without spending a penny? Here's a tip: half the Poles would be, like, fuck yeah I'll shoot me some ruskies if I'll see them marching trough my backyard.
All you need to do is to un-gay the gun laws. Amend the constitution to make gun ownership an inherit right, not a fuckin' privilege and there you have it! You'll even make money on taxing gun sales. Just saying
@ThatCrazyDude
Small firearms sadly won't stop tanks, UAVs and glider bombs — to stop an army you need one too, not a militia 🤷
@dcc @ThatCrazyDude
Well, I'm sure Poles would be pretty good at guerilla warfare — which would be even more effective in urban areas (of which the Afghanistan does not have much). But it would still take years of that for the occupying army to bleed out enough to consider withdrawing — and damage to your nation would already be done, that is why more economically advanced nations prefer professional armies and diplomatic deterrence, I would certainly choose Poland over Afghanistan any day😅
@m0xee @dcc it's all true, but then you also need to consider the fact that just the knowledge of the fact that if you'll invade will effectively put you in another Afganistan, only worse because the poles can afford half decent gear is a deterrent in itself. After all, why would you waste troops and gear on invading something you can't possibly keep
Russia wants a buffer zone
They will invade, then send enough Russian ethnics into the new land to transform it
This is what they did to Ukraine
No, you're not biased; that's what they want and what they have said they want for decades now. After their WW2 experience, it is easier to understand why.
Eurasia will always be caught between Europe and Asia, never fully trusting either.
@amerika @dcc @ThatCrazyDude
And the Baltic states before that — USSR have mostly been using local communist parties as a pre-text to invade, Russia uses Russian communities, otherwise the playbook didn't change much.
Russians living in Baltic states would never give up their "non-citizen" status for Russian citizenship as it allows them to travel both to EU and to Russia…
@amerika @dcc @ThatCrazyDude
…but they might make "Russia coming to them" seem more legitimate in the eyes of the international community.
That is precisely why I think healthy nationalism has a more important role in deterring this than access to small firearms. Look at Finns — I've never expected them to be as hostile to Russians, but I think it's what allowed them to fend for themselves in the Winter war.
@m0xee this is true. But it is also true that deploying tanks, drones, missiles and all is just a waste of resources if you know darn well that even if you'll invest in all of that stuff you won't be able to move in with ground troops and successfully occupy the land you're trying to take, because the insurgency you'll have to face will both outman and outgun your infantry
+bonifartius 𒂼𒄄
@m0xee @ThatCrazyDude and what use are tanks and uavs and glider bombs if there is no one to fight face to face?
@bonifartius @ThatCrazyDude
There is always someone willing to put up a fight — how strong and self-conscious you are as a nation and how hostile you are to the invading one is a way more significant factor IMO than ready-access to firearms.
Even Afghanistan wasn't originally that trigger-happy hell it is today — it got there very gradually, the US and USSR were supporting different groups, which were nothing like Taliban of today and even resembled political parties at the time.
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