The watershed

ivanotter

All,

This is really just a little thing for fun.

We often talk about the watershed - the moment 'everyone' realizes a serious change. The change may still years to materialize in a concrete fashion, but the watershed has determined the outcome.

There will of course always be some within the community who refuses to 'give up' or give way.

Which watershed moments can we point to? I have a few of them:

Tet offensive (I think): it convinced 'everyone' that it was a losing proposition. Never mind it still took years to get out.

1976 Soweto uprising: Not sure about this one. I would rather point to the state of emergency in 1984 as the watershed moment. From there it was downhill.

Was it Stalingrad or Kursk?

Midway?

Anything else?
 
Calcaterra

Calcaterra

Donor
The beginning of the Iraqi Civil War in 2006. It was when the US public began to truly realize that the war couldn't be won the way they wanted it to be.
 

ivanotter

Chernobyl - absolutely.
I read somewhere that the Soviet leadership realized just how dangerous a nuclear conflict would be. even a small one.
… and that set the scene for real reductions in nuclear arms.

Did 3-mile Island have a similar impact? was 3-mile Island also a watershed moment?

Solidarity is a funny one. Hungary 1956, Czech in '68: all nailed hard by Soviet et al.

Sure, Valencia got put in jail but Solidarity was still there, the seed had been sown.

Was that where it was realized that USSR would fall?
 
NHBL

NHBL

I think that the first flight of the Montgolfier's Balloon was a major watershed. It proved beyond all doubt that humanity could actually FLY. Everything else after that was simply better ways to fly.
 

ivanotter

Was the nuclear test In itself the watershed? The science community knew at that time that a bomb was indeed possible. However, was it the magnitude of the explosion, the actual implementation, or was it earlier?

WWI casualty figures and that the British army got populated (at officer level) by 'not-gentry'. Suddenly everybody understood that the old world had just died in the trenches
 

Sam R.

ivanotter said:
Tet offensive (I think): it convinced 'everyone' that it was a losing proposition. Never mind it still took years to get out.
Click to expand...

For the VWP (Northern) sure. For the PLAF sure. For the southern revolution? Not really. The watershed was 1975 there.
 

Colonel Zoidberg

After the booming economy of the 90s, the burst of the dot-com bubble counts for a lot. It wasn’t the beginning of the recession as we know it, but it was the derailment of the gravy train.
 
Vuu

Vuu

Banned
It's not something that "pricks the eye" as most of these moments do, but the bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999.

NATO ramped up it's interventionism even further, and Russia realized that they will never ever be treated with respect no matter what. Also the moment that stealth technology went obsolete. It's an event that quite literally defined global geopolitics and led to pretty much every single thing happening now.
 
Histor32

Histor32

Vuu said:
It's not something that "pricks the eye" as most of these moments do, but the bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999.

NATO ramped up it's interventionism even further, and Russia realized that they will never ever be treated with respect no matter what. Also the moment that stealth technology went obsolete. It's an event that quite literally defined global geopolitics and led to pretty much every single thing happening now.
Click to expand...
what does yugoslavia and russia have to do with it? europe was tired of the crazy conflict. russia wanted to keep it going?

i just dont get it. russia wants respect.. fine.. come to the table and work for it. i agree dont be anyones biatch.. but a massive genocidal war in se europe isnt good for anyone??
 

Saint_007

Histor32 said:
what does yugoslavia and russia have to do with it? europe was tired of the crazy conflict. russia wanted to keep it going?

i just dont get it. russia wants respect.. fine.. come to the table and work for it. i agree dont be anyones biatch.. but a massive genocidal war in se europe isnt good for anyone??
Click to expand...
Russia is Yugoslavia (well, Serbia's) historic and ethnic ally, being Orthodox Slavs. Yes, the Stalinist/Titoist split marred relations between them, but there was a sense that the Balkans were Russia's sphere of interest. When NATO simply barged ahead without consulting the Russians, it made things pretty clear where the Russians, a former superpower, stand - and it wasn't pleasant.

I think a more important one was the First Chechen War. The Russian army had been once the terror of the battlefield, now it couldn't handle some pissant little separatist bunch. That became the motivation to improve its power and solve the Chechen issue at all costs, including the rise of Vladimir Putin to power.
 

Saint_007

Calcaterra said:
The beginning of the Iraqi Civil War in 2006. It was when the US public began to truly realize that the war couldn't be won the way they wanted it to be.
Click to expand...
The Abu Ghreib scandal added to that. The USA had entered as the liberator, a force for good to stop an evil, torture-loving sadist tyrant with a blatant disregard for human lives and dignity.

After the scandal broke out, the USA was the evil, torture-loving sadist with a blatant disregard for human lives and dignity, or at least that was the public image it got. It badly damaged America's image in the War on Terror, and gave its enemies plenty of ammunition.
 
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