My objection goes to the part where the author mentions that US airborne forces are poised in Germany, Romania and Poland. Just out of curiousity,
1. Has anyone discussed with the boobs in the White House just how long parachute dropping aircraft survive in contested airspace when both belligerents have the most modern anti-air weapons on the planet?
2. Has anyone discussed with the nincompoops running the State Department if any of the named countries are willing to be a party to staging U.S. forces for a counterinvasion of Ukraine should it come to a shooting war with the Russian Federation? Those familiar with history have to look no further than our first big war in Iraq when our NATO ally and partner Turkey stabbed us in the back and refused to give permission for the 4th Infantry Division to transit Turkish soil forcing them to go around to the Persian Gulf if they meant to take part in the invasion and sort of putting a wobble in the devestating pincer attack that Schwarzkopf was going to destroy the Iraqi army with. And, let us not forget our ever faithful ally France which joined NATO allies in Spain and Portugal and refused permission for the USAF F-111s staging out of bases in England to overfly their sovereign territory when we retaliated against Qadafi and Libya for the PanAm bombing.
I really don't think Poland and Romania will give permission for attacks out of their sovereign countries and I know Germany won't. I'm not sure what all the fuss is about and can't help but wonder if we're watching morons slide us all into a war they created because they cannot think of a non-embarrassing way of saying, "oops, sorry about that."
Look again at the maps and see how many countries that once existed less than a hundred years ago no longer exist and the plethora of 'new' countries that sprang into existence when nobody in the White House was looking or cared.
22 comments:
In answer to your title question, No, not as long as idiots are in charge.
It's like The Hunt for Red October in real life:
"This business will get out of control. It will get out of control and we'll be lucky to live through it."
-Admiral Josh Painter
as I see it, Putin just wants to finish his pipeline to the eu bank accounts and keep the cash flowing into his accounts. to do that before his pipeline is finished, he is flowing product thru Ukraine. all the border blather is to keep the flow of money going to Putin. It would be convenient to get Ukraine back into the fold, but he sees an political problem with it. Militarily, he could snap fingers and it would be done and over with. We don't see that as what he wants. right now, he is causing Ukraine as much pain as he wants. sending four BUFFs and a squadron of F-15 into the area along with troops is just His Fraululence's handlers playing with their new toys at the risk of soldiers, sailor's, and airmen's lives no matter whos military they are in.
I hate brinkmanship and sabre rattling. it proves the failure of diplomacy and why politicians should be shot for trying it.
War, a democrat cure for inflation
We are now sharing the apex world power spot with other nations, and we need to start acting like it. No longer are we the number one superpower, and we need to quit trying to bully and coerce the rest of the world into being democracies, which is what we pretend to be. We need an administration and State department that knows how to prioritize and distinguish what are our true national interests, and quit sticking our dicks into foreign hornets nests that have nothing to do with us. And above all, learn that we know fuck-all about nation building for 9th century cultures when we can barely keep our own functioning.
It's probably going to take a bunch more massive failures before we learn that the chess board has changed dramatically, and we have to start behaving in a totally realpolitik approach.
This is an evil way for Biden to distract the people from his own failures.
Paratroops aren't there because someone intends to drop them from airplanes into contested airspace: they're there because being essentially light infantry (like Marines), they are the easiest to move in a hurry.
No tanks, artillery or long enormous and ponderous logistical tail to move.
Paratroops can still move by truck, rail, bus, or even march to where they have to be, if needed (see: Bastogne). A regiment, or so, of paratroops is merely a symbolic gesture, not an indication that someone plans a Market-Garden style catastrophe.
Even the wok JCS knows all this.
Let's slow the roll a little.
You have to see not just the battlefield but the strategic picture. You and cleared “ the roads in Iraq and the Stan. We cleared with fire. The Russians arebpnt and neither are they in a hurry to get armor into kill zones like cities where antitank missiles can do again to them what the Chechens did. They are smarter than that, give them credit. How did the Russians dominate the battlefields in their last war? Artillery. You haven’t seen any of that. Did you think they forgot it or left it behind? Where are the waves of attack hell’s.
Once again all the idiot pundits are thinking 100% a quick war. Why?
When Europe turns off the Soviet banks, they’ll turn off all of the oil and gas and with crocodile tears tell the freezing guy fuelless, no fertilizer for crops Europeans that they had no choice since the West turned off the world monetary system.
Srsly, it is to laugh.
I'm not sure if that was directed at me (if it was, it made little sense, vis-a-vis paratroops). The traditional Russian style of warfare (blast everything, send the peasant conscripts in in frontal assault) isn't being used here because the strategic "picture" is "reunification".
It's difficult to reunify a pile of rubble, and making said pile doesn't make you any friends. Which is what Putin has said he's wanted -- i.e. when he gave a speech last week identifying Ukrainians as brothers and highlighted the long-standing cultural links between the two peoples.
This was a bluff...and it got called: hence, that 40-mile long traffic jam outside Kiev. The "alert" nuke forces are a bluff, too. since sources I've been reading and seeing on the idiot box indicate no movement of strategic forces to firing positions, submarine movement, or preparation of heavy bombers.
Putin believed, it now appears, that he could panic the regime in Kiev into flight, and failing that, capture them en masse (probably with airborne troops), seeing resistance as a minor inconvenience.
Instead, all that's been accomplished is to demonstrate a) Russia's conventional forces suck, hard. b) The conventional forces Achilles Heel is logistics and c) Russian forces are inadequate to achieve the multiple strategic goals they've been given.
And to top it all off, Russia has gotten it's traditional enemies -- particularly Germany, Finland and Sweden -- to start rearming and even to -- gasp! -- seriously considering EXPANDING NATO, which was a "Big Picture" aim -- to prevent Ukraine from joining.
If you let me have another response, I'll get to the "Ukraine doesn't exist" argument you made earlier, and why you may want to revisit it.
P.S. The West didn't "turn off the world monetary system" -- they simply excluded Russia from it.
I've spent most of my life on Wall Street and I've discovered in all that time that most people don't understand how banks and finance actually work
But that's an argument for another day.
"Ukraine doesn't exist; Ukraine never existed".
Before there was a Russia there was a principality of Kiev.
Even before the rise of the Russian Empire, or the Soviet Union, the region was known as "Ukraine".
There has always been a Slavic language known as "Ukrainian".
Ukraine, identified as such, has at various times been under the rule or attempted conquest by Poles, Germans, French, Swedes, Austrians, who have always referred to it as "Ukraine".
The people are different enough from ethnic Russians that Soviet rulers often considered them no better than monkeys and treated them accordingly.
Ukraine didn't simply spring into existence because someone signed a piece of paper, unlike, say Iraq, Iran or Syria.
Even the Nazis considered it a different nation, altogether.
Obviously, there is -- and has been for a very long time -- such a place as "Ukraine" and a people known as "Ukrainians".
The way my comment was supposed to be.
Darned iPad.
You have to see not just the battlefield but the strategic picture. You can see how we went and cleared “ the roads in Iraq and the Stan for our columns. We cleared with fire. We purely massacred innocent vehicles and guilty ones that didn't stop. Just blew them away with 50cal and 7.62 mg fire.
The Russians are not doing either and neither are they in a hurry to get armor into kill zones like cities where antitank missiles can do work very well against them from upper levels in high buildings and have that happen to them again to them again as in their first invasion of Chechnya. They are smarter than that, give them credit. They learn. How did the Russians dominate the battlefields in their last war? Artillery. You haven’t seen any of that. Did you think they forgot it or left it behind? Where are the waves of attack helicopters (stupid ios). The old Red Army attacks on E. Germany and Hungary were against a disarmed populace. They know very well what they're up against in Ukraine and they don't want to make thousands of martyrs and so they are restraining the urge to kill. They have all the time in the world. The sanctions the West imposed will now roll on for years before being swept aside. They have time to get what THEY WANT. They don't WANT Ukraine. They want parts of it and they want the idiots in the West to stop pushing NATO frontiers right up against Russia. Any idiot could see that.
Once again all the idiot pundits are thinking 100% a quick war. Why?
When Europe turns off the Soviet banks, they’ll turn off all of the oil and gas and with crocodile tears tell the freezing guy fuelless, no fertilizer for crops Europeans that they had no choice since the West turned off the world monetary system.
Srsly, it is to laugh.
You are always welcome here.
To the point that you make about the Russians not achieving their strategic objectives because poor logistics. They're about the last people on the planet that fail to grasp the essentials of logistics. They support advanced research and drilling on ice flows that are cut off for 7 or more months a year. They know very well how much is required. They are not giants but neither are they mental pygmies. A lot of what you and the press see is just a facade they want you to see.
How much have you seen of the integration of Crimea into Russia?
How much of the integration of the eastern Ukraine over the last 3 years have you seen?
I'll say again, the Russians are running a huge scam on the naive fools in the CIA and Pentagon who think that the be all/end all of "victory" is control of some nation's capital. Seriously! When was the last time that fucking happened? The Russians are willing to leave most of Ukraine to Ukraine but they really really want to make the point now on an easy no-kill/no-harm/no-foul target like Ukraine that NATO rolling ever Westward is OVER. The Baltics better knuckle under to being good domestic partners to Russia and NATO or the Germans will need to up their defense budget by another 20%/year if they mean to honor the commitment they and NATO made to the Baltic Republics.
The funny thing about Wall Street to me, all those Zillionaire Russian Wall Street guys SHORTED the market in all things affected by this stupidity and made another $200 or $600 trillion. They could see this coming ten miles and 200 days away. What was Wall Street's excuse?
Sorry about the posting. My computer won't work without a lame web browser and my eyes won't let me type well on an iPad.
When Europe turns off the Russian banks, they'll buy their fertilizer elsewhere -- like from us, or South Korea, or Canada, it's not like fertilizer is only made in one place.
The point of excluding Russia from the international banking system was to prevent them from financing the export of their main commodities. Finance runs, primarily, on debt, and it costs money to ship goods and products, especially internationally. Without the ability to finance debt - to contract ocean-going vessels, the buy insurance for cargoes, to keep your own merchant fleet or other cargo-moving apparatus moving, you need to incur debt or make purchases from outside of your own economic base. If no one will accept rubles, if no one will extend credit, then Russia can extract all the oil and natural gas and make all the Borscht in the world, and it means nothing: there's no access to market, there's no means of getting it to market, in any case, and the continued production only means you're taxing your own economic base for no return on investment.
You might as well bake a trillion loaves of bread and immediately set fire to them, or scoop up billions of pounds of fish from the sea and then release them.
This is, somewhat relatedly, the purpose of Green Energy schemes -- to use up labor, resources and finance that in the end produces nothing and merely consumes wealth (wealth that doctrinaire Socialists insist would otherwise only be "hoarded"), but which does not materially improve anyone's standard of living.
Yesterday, the German government began to reverse their policy of shutting down coal-fired and nuclear power plants. Individual Eu members have been revisiting their defense spending and needs for the last week.
So, good job, Putin! you've gotten Germany to start thinking about it's own national survival and revival and to upgrade it's military forces. When was that ever good for Russia?
In the meantime, you look like a putz on the international stage and no number of bare-chested photos on a horse will rehabilitate that image.
Ask yourself,
"Self, what would or could I possibly do with the leadership of Ukraine if I had them in the bag?"
Not a damned thing.
As with all the terrorist leadership the Pentagon and CIA have crowed for years about culling everywhere, they are 'fungible'.
No problem. Tech isn't always user-friendly.
I agree, the thing is predicated on traditional Russia anxiety over the traditional invasion route into Russia, proper, i.e. Ukraine. Which is flat, featureless and presents invaders with no physical obstacles. Creeping NATO up to Russia's doorstep was ridiculously stupid -- the only reason you do that is because American defense contractors need clients, and because bureaucrats with no purpose (The Cold War is over) always find a means of redefining their "mission".
I also agree the whole thing is a farce, but disagree on who or what the intended target(s)are (were).
When we start slinging around CIA and NATO and so forth, we're starting to get into Tom Clancy territory, when, really, the impetus is much-less complicated.
Ukraine could not be allowed to join NATO. There have been too many invasions of Russia via Ukraine to let that happen. In a Russia that is literally surrounded by hostile neighbors on all sides, that was a possibility that just could not be countenanced.
A preview of that policy occurred in Crimea in 2014. If Ukraine had joined NATO then, Russia's only operational naval base in the Black Sea would have been lost to them, hence, invasion.
Everyone is shorting the market. In case no one told you, the market is vastly over-inflated. Has been since Obamatard turned the printing presses on 24/7, and since you couldn't put your zero-interest, mandated-that-you-take-it cash into real estate or T-bills for a decade, the only place to put it where it could turn a profit was in stocks. Still is, because the other scam -- Cryptocurrencies -- are one stroke of a bureaucrat's pen from being regulated like a menstrual cycle.
That's why those of us who know how the sausage is made got out of the market prior to 2008, and only went back in the last few years. When your doorman and the guy who pumps your gas start getting 400k mortgages on a 40k a year salary, with no money down, you protect your ass and run for the hills. Common sense...which is why the Mortgage Crisis was allowed to happen -- there is none in the government or government bodies who promulgate and advance these policies.
Replace them, naturally.
With people more-amenable to you.
That was the point.
Interesting take. Good analysis, too:
https://claireberlinski.substack.com/p/letter-to-the-editor-a-response?s=r
They are a commodity that can be bought and sold by either side in the current kerfuffle. None has any more intrinsic value than the other. The West/Ameica has shown again and again that if they don't like the democratically elected leaders any, they like even less the ones picked by the oligarchs.
It is a war over a principle that is ancient beyond belief and as readily identifiable as Mount Rushmore. ANYBODY could see what NATO expansion was going to lead to and yet the PTB didn't care.
I am reading the article you posted but need some more time. Needless to say it raised hackles when it talked about France and the stationing of forces in the second paragraph. Go back and read DeGaulle and the breakdown of NATO as France OPTED OUT. THEY DID TAKE THE ROUTE THE AUTHOR MENTIONED AS ONE THEY DIDN'T.
Politics, say, "turn off the spigot and the flow of money." System responds by doing as ordered.
The spigot is oil and natural gas. There is zero cost to move it at this point. Natural gas turns out to be fertilizer as a by product but you are hasty and ignore what politics did. In a month or two you realize.
All that liquid/gas is fueling your economy, heating your houses, and, making fertilizer as a byproduct.
All that Putin has to do to wreak Europe is,......nothing at all.
I don't think you actually realize that sometimes, the demon does cut his own face to spite the world.
On that subject, Putin, 20 years in power is not some sort of ill-favored demon step child of the Biden style. He is not, delicately poised on the fangs or spears of the boyars or the oligarchs. He rules just like Peter the Great and don't you forget it. Stalin was a piker compared to this master of the state.
The gell-mann is in full force in the media. Don't watch it or read it. They are the most ignorant shitty people on earth.
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