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Two HIMARS vehicles arrived back in the US for repairs.
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How does repairing their gear not qualify as a casus belli for Russia?
The Russians don't want to get immediately destroyed, so they let it slide, that's how.
They say that about everything NATO does.
Why should repairing vehicles be any more of a casus belli, then providing it in the first place. Or things like providing intel or training soldiers? The UK for example is providing long range storm shadow cruise missiles that can be programmed to target a specific objective, presumably training how to use it, and maybe even intel that leads to target selection. At that point one could argue that the only major difference is who presses the button.
I think it boils down to the fact that there is no strict definition what counts as a cases belli, but it rather is a choice whether or not someone declares it one. If they wanted to I am sure both sides Russia and NATO could declare a number of instances as such, but they choose not to, since neither party is interested in a direct confrontation.
Because that would have serious consequences which might even come down to nuclear weapons, considering the imbalance of strength in conventional military. With NATO (especially the US) vastly outclassing Russia.
Yeah that makes sense. I was just curious about it
This is actually an interesting question.
Traditionally, doing things like supplying arms to Ukraine would have been treated as making states party to the conflict.
The standards for what is expected of a neutral party have kind of shifted over time. At one point, there was an expectation that a neutral party could not treat parties to a conflict differently; if they would permit arms shipments to one side, they must also permit arms shipments to another.
Over time, various parties have kind of decided that they are going to distinguish between parties directly involved in a conflict and parties aiding one side.
https://lieber.westpoint.edu/future-law-of-neutrality/
The article also talks about the implications of intelligence sharing on neutrality.
The US has taken the position that providing intelligence to a party in a conflict -- as the article points out, which is being done with Ukraine -- is okay for a non-belligerent. That is not something that everyone has historically decided they agreed with. In World War II, US warships -- theoretically still neutral at that point -- would look for German U-Boats and, while not attacking them, would tell the British where they were, who then attacked them.
In World War II, the US considered herself neutral during the Greer incident:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Greer
That being said, the existence of satellites today kind of makes intelligence sharing harder to treat as causus belli anyway. Like, if I let a belligerent party use images from a satellite that some company in my country operates, is that a causus belli? There are a lot of countries running around with satellites, and it's pretty hard to tell who they transfer that data to (or to whom people that they transfer data to may transfer data to).
To give some examples from Ukraine, the US has had UAVs, like Global Hawks, regularly orbiting (and broadcasting their position) in Ukraine prior to the invasion, and after, just outside Ukraine. These are intelligence-gathering platforms with fancy radars and sensors. The US is going to be transferring data from those to Ukraine. The US sent out JSTARS aircraft (which were right on the brink of retirement, and were just retired last year), aircraft with airborne radar that can track ground vehicles in an area right before and during the invasion; no doubt they were telling Ukraine what vehicles Russia was moving around.
The US has also had a whole lot of tanker aircraft -- with transponders on -- fly right up to the border and sit right outside of Ukrainian airspace doing laps, then returning to base. It's a pretty safe bet that they aren't going up there to just see the sights; the US Air Force published at least one photo of one taken from a tanker refueling an F-35 that showed a bit of ground. That was geolocated to a point in Poland just outside Ukraine. The F-35s have not had their transponders on, and the one shown in the photo was flying in stealth configuration, with the radar reflectors removed. They can act as intelligence-gathering platforms, and at the minimum they were flying right next to Ukraine, if not over it or in other airspace in the area. And it's probably a pretty good bet that, while they aren't shooting, they've been telling the Ukrainians what they see. And Ukraine may go and shoot at things that they see.
Is that a causus belli? Well, the US doesn't consider it to be one, but over history, I expect that different countries would have taken different views on that matter. I imagine that Russia could decide to treat it as one, but I also imagine that Russia isn't looking to have a direct war with the US, so probably isn't going to bring it up.
Similarly, when Russia had that Su-27 dumping fuel on that Reaper and the Russian pilot dicked up and collided with the Reaper's propeller, bringing it down, was that a causus belli? Well, the actual collision was, no doubt, accidental -- Russia isn't going to risk losing a manned fighter jet to bring down a Reaper -- but dumping fuel on the UAV, something which could hypothetically bring it down, could probably be considered a form of attack. But...the US has decided not to treat that as a causus belli, as the US isn't looking to kick off a direct war with Russia either. Both the Su-27 and the Reaper can carry air-to-air weapons, but Russia wasn't shooting at Reapers -- just dumping fuel on them -- and the US isn't shooting at Russian fighters that get too close to US drones.
Bro just dropped a whole dissertation. Great comment.
Oh this is a phenomenal answer thanks
Because Russia doesn’t want to lose? They can’t even handle Ukraine with hand me downs.
If they don't have a casus belli to be in Ukraine in the first place it's hard to see how they could bitch about this
They're also not a superpower anymore as evidenced by their 3-day special operation entering its 2nd year. Nowadays they're just ex-USSR state with nukes.
Let them come
In theory if Russia wanted to declare a war on the United States, it could probably use "they repaired (and indeed, sent in the first place) these pieces of enemy military equipment" as a justification to their population. It might not be as effective a justification as something like a direct attack from the US on Russian troops would be, but it'd probably be more effective at gaining public support than declaring such a war for no reason and maybe anger uninvolved parties slightly less, so in that sense it could be called a casus belli. However, having a casus belli does not require one to declare a war, and if war is desired, one can probably be fabricated anyway. Russia knows that the consequences of a direct war will the US would be disastrous at best and risk the very existence of their country at worst, depending on how far the conflict escalated, so it will not actually declare such a war over something like this, even if it technically could
Because Russia (and indeed anybody else) doesn't want open war with anybody they don't think they can beat.
In most cases the cold war continues in proxy form.
Russia doesn't want its front teeth kicked in?