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[Starver]

Does three weeks of actual combat started in 1945 after four years of official mutual neutrality, a couple of years after the previous pre-WW2 climax of seven prior years of border skirmishes really count?

[Kot]

Well, WW2 technically ended in Europe only in 1991 since no peace treaty with Germany was signed up until then since there was no singular German state.

[martinuzz]

Technically WW2 is still ongoing until Russia and Japan sign a peace treaty

[Starver]

WW1 ended 'only' in an armistice, in 1918. Versailles was signed in 1919, the victorious Western powers then smeared their formal endings of conflict across 1920 until 1924ish.  The initial phase of the Russio-Japanese conflict (described above) was 1932, the hotter Sino-Japanese one started 1937 and continued unabated until '45, with other alternatives (never mind the US erroneously imaging Pearl Harbour was the point of globality to the conflict) like the international participation¹ in the 1936 Spanish Civil War possibly considerable, even if the Russian Civil War (up to '23) was traditionally a 'local' affair.

So 21 years presupposes many things that can be nibbled away at as maybe not so clear cut. Insist on that value and I'll happily insist that WW2 started (or started to start) with Poland and ended either with Potsdam (before Russia even broke its neutrality treaty with Japan, maybe or maybe not adding to the pressures from the two bombs) or on the USS Missouri.  All remaining/subsequent conflicts are no longer really so global.


¹ Mostly on a personal, rather than national, basis for combatants on both sides, but noting that future Axis powers  did add their national support to one side (often described as 'practice' for WW2) and Russia and even Mexico took the socialist side.

[Erkki]

I think we never signed proper peace treaty with some African countries and Germany. Although I suppose that the post-war Germany(Germanies?) was politically a different entity, so the party war was waged against no longer exists.

[martinuzz]

Sadly, Putin's visit to Japan did not end WW2. Japan and Russia still couldn't come to an agreement over the disputed Kuril islands (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuril_Islands)
So no peace treaty was signed. Japan and Russia still technically at war.
Japan had hoped that Russia would abandon it's claim on the Kuril islands, in exchange for huge investments by Japan into the backwater, underdeveloped far east of Russia. But Putin didn't like it. (Or rather, he created so many hardcore nationalists in Russia, that he can't give away territory without angry nationalist mobs back home)

The two leaders did agree to start various joint investment programs on the island, to work towards a better climate to come to diplomatic agreement.
It is doubted that those projects will really come to pass, since Putin insists that they should be under RUssian law, while Abe insists that the projects may in no way infringe Japan's claim on the territory.

Russia-specialist Itsuro Nakamura, from Tsukuba university said in an analysis that 'Putin has not conceded even half an inch. Regarding the territorial dispute, no progress at all was made. It would be best to see this meeting not as a path towards a solution, but rather as the beginning of the end of negotiations'

For all we know we won't get ww3, but just a continuation of ww2 hostilities.

[martinuzz]

EDIT: dangit, I keep confusing the EU with the Non-EU thread. I think exitism has got to me. Moving article about Poland to EU thread

[Toady One]

Ukrainian Ranger is out.  Please continue the discussion without the incitement to further murder.

[smjjames]

Ukrainian Ranger is out.  Please continue the discussion without the incitement to further murder.

Thanks.

Reposting the link on the assasination (the CNN one anyhow): http://www.cnn.com/2016/12/19/europe/turkey-russian-ambassador-shot/index.html

[Sergarr]

A lot of people are running around in circles and saying that this will somehow cause WW3, which I don't... quite... see happening.

Also, nuuuu not UR, who will now provide us with news on how the free and democratic Ukraine is growing stronger each day and will soon overcome Russia?

[Sheb]

 How long until Putin gets impeached about Ankaraghazi?

[smjjames]

A lot of people are running around in circles and saying that this will somehow cause WW3, which I don't... quite... see happening.

Also, nuuuu not UR, who will now provide us with news on how the free and democratic Ukraine is growing stronger each day and will soon overcome Russia?

Yeah, it's not exactly the assassination of the archduke. And UR dug his own hole, I gave him multiple opportunities to stop.

[Erkki]

Next on Erdo Show: gunman connected to Fethullah Gulen and CIA!!

[martinuzz]

Ukrainian Ranger is out.  Please continue the discussion without the incitement to further murder.

Thanks

[Starver]

After Berlin's incident at the Christmas Market, the other day (somewhat personal, given that I knew the streets involved, although it was never Christmas time when I was there), I've now observed armed police (as well as the regular bunch, being much more visible than usual) deployed to stroll around both the city-centre and the out-of-town shopping centre in pairs, here in the UK.

The connection seems obvious. We don't (out here in the provinces, at least) often see these guys walking round our British streets, and I've never noticed them in the latter locale. These serious-looking guys don't get deployed on a whim.

I wouldn't go so far as to say there's a credible threat, but maybe a credible fear, enough to make those in charge think it's less worrying for people to see them than it is to not see them. (Or, uncharitably, a political decision to make people think the situation is such that this is what they should be thinking.)

I don't think I've seen so many police firearms in one day since the day I happened to be wandering through the back streets of London to avoid a particularly rowdy anti-capitalism march in central London and happened to pass by an obvious staging post for backup patrols of various types (riot, equine, firearms, paramedics... no firefighters though), waiting to see if they were needed. (And they almost certainly weren't, despite how the march later turned out on the news.)


I imagine that the DefCon level is similarly raised all over, this week, across Europe as a whole.