Yi Peng 3 crossed both cables C-Lion 1 and BSC at times matching when they broke

Russia wants to end NATO without going to war with NATO.

NATO's political unity and ability to respond is tested with these attacks. Russia does them one after another gradually escalating. Russia maintains plausible deniability or does so small operations that they can always walk them back.

Eventually, some country invokes Article 4 or 5 consultations. Russia hopes that US, Hungary, or Germany waters down NATO response. The conflict continues, but between individual countries not under NATO. NATOs as a organization may continue, but raison d'être is gone.

Russia and these NATO countries being probed are like the two siblings in the back seat. Mom, he's touching me. Stop touching your brother. Mom, he's holding his finger right next to me. Dad eventually says, don't make me pull this car over and start a global thermonuclear war

Humorous yet concerning that our governments act like children.

This is strange to me because this is basically forcing drills that better prepare their enemy.

Except its always Russia instigating. We never sent someone to look at the spire of Saint Basil (the pathetic excuse offered for explaining the presence of GRU officers in Salisbury carrying out chemical warfare), or really struck at their weak points.

Sound the fire alarm over a birthday cake candle once, and you've got a drill making people get better at evacuating.

Sound the fire alarm over a birthday cake candle several times a week, and people learn the alarm means there's no fire, no need to rush, they've got time to finish that e-mail and grab their coat.

If you never go to war with your enemy, your enemy's continued preparations are wasted money and resources (both political and economic), aren't they?

Not quite. Be careful, Russia invests a lot in disinformation campaigns and spreading (conflicting, but that is part of their doctrine) narratives. Bothsidisms and False Equivalency are some of the common tools in muddying the information sphere.

NATO and Europe did quite a lot to normalize relations with Russia. Russia was invited and became participant of the NATO program Partnership For Peace [0].

   The program contains 6 areas of cooperation, which aims to build relationships with partners through military-to-military cooperation on training, exercises, disaster planning and response, science and environmental issues, professionalization, policy planning, and relations with civilian government

Very nice, but the secret services that took over the empire did and does not fancy a rule-based, harmonious order based on mutual relations, human rights, freedom of press etc. As any autocracy or kleptocracy understands, that is very much a threat to their power, beacuse

  - Population will demand political influence.
  
  - Mindset. A criminal thinks in terms of I win, you lose. Might makes right. Complete opposite of what makes up the dna of the free world. 

The imperative is on us to understand that message really well. It goes slowly unfortunately. It is hard for us to grok.

Notice how on our part, helped via tech oligarchs, there is an incessant bombardment to undermine support for those values. Kremlin troll factories are a thing, but the Chinese are speading up rapidly in the information sphere too. Especially youngsters are targeted.

The war has already begun, but we don´t want to see it. And that is dangerous.

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0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Partnership_for_Peace

These anti disinformation posts are quite peculiar. I'd advise anyone who wants to dig deeper to listen to West Point graduate Mearsheimer:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JrMiSQAGOS4

It takes one hour to listen. Take notes and verify the facts afterwards. No disinformation there, much less Russian.

Mearsheimer has been debunked many a times and his theory just doesn´t hold up with reality. I am not going to debunk it, because I will repeat what other really respectable people have said about the subject.

Just one rebuttal, but there are many more to be found on the internet.

https://euideas.eui.eu/2022/07/11/john-mearsheimers-lecture-...

> Be careful, Russia invests a lot in disinformation campaigns and spreading (conflicting, but that is part of their doctrine) narratives.

You may also want to be careful (or not):

- all countries engage in these things

- how things are seem like how they seem, but this is very often not the case...and rather than consciousness raising warnings for such situations, it very often does the opposite

As always, I recommend a meta-perspective on geopolitical stories, it is much more fun than being a Normative, poorly constrained imagination actor like the vast majority of people.

Are you actually saying the US has never engaged in propaganda within another country or attempted to influence the outcomes of their elections or influence their populace to rise up against their leaders?

You cannot be serious with that kind of belief

But of a jump from that to spraying poison all over the place.

I certainly welcome critical thinking. How GOP got of the rails with the adventures of Bush Jr (War on Terror) is worthy of deep analysis. Backed by Russia, which might give you a pause.

Geopolitical affairs are indeed difficult to follow. It requires deep internal domain(s!) knowledge, which does not fit your average corporate media business model. The niche outlets that do have a capable editorial board are threatened by takeovers [1, 2] from the likes of Axel Springer [3]. 1 Billion USD for Politico. An idiotic sum for a buyer that small, Wikipedia might pique your interest [3]. That is not to say that Politico is useless now, but you can count on journalistic degradation over time.

But sweeping statements are not of help to get a sharper picture. Instead they risk promoting false equivalence and may turn participants(!) of democracies into passive nihilists. Which is precisely the aim of the foreign influence we are talking about.

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1. https://foreignpolicy.com/2022/01/06/axel-springer-politico-...

2. https://countercurrents.org/2021/09/a-right-wing-german-news...

3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axel_Springer_SE#Criticism

Not really sure what you're referring. The US has most definitely sprayed poison all over the place in South America with cocoa plant eradication efforts. Or Agent Orange in South East Asia.

If you mean poison as in disinformation, then you'd be wrong there as well. We literally "bombed" Iraq with pamphlets from airplanes encouraging them to rise up against Suddam and we'd be there to support them; we didn't.

Mearsheimer, who bases his theory on 'Putin never lies'. Sorry if that's your starting point then you're just promoting fantasy.

No, the GP means literal poison. Neurotoxin, specifically.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poisoning_of_Sergei_and_Yulia_...

Do you ever wonder why mainstream school curriculum doesn't include the discipline most suitable for navigating these waters: philosophy?

And if you do now: do you wonder if this is 100% coincidence, or oversight? How often do you hear the idea even discussed, as compared to, say, how often we hear about "misinformation", and the need for more "critical thinking"?

I am glad this situation has a substantial humorous aspect to it, otherwise I'd probably get stressed out about it.

> who bases his theory on 'Putin never lies'.

Can you cite anything that he has actually said that even resembles this?

Ironically this is what caused the fall of the Soviet Union.