TheVulture

Please remind me when did the Republicans took the house. If I’m not mistaken, Biden’s admin had almost a year where they could have done almost anything they wanted in terms of aid… but they didn’t.
The slow-rolling of useful equipment, and refusal to give aid in quantity (cluster shells that we aren’t using, old ATACMS, all of the old Bradleys, F16s with volunteer pilots, a cruise missile for every missile that caused a civilian death etc.)… that’s entirely on the executive branch. We’ve all been complaining about this since the beginning of this war.

Like most Russian propaganda, it's probably not really meant to be believed or disbelieved.  It's meant to cause arguments and distrust,  widen divisions and increase mutual suspicion between those who chose to believe it and those who chose not to. Whether Putin would actually prefer Biden or not is a completely unrelated Issue. 
It's meant to generate heat,  not shed light.

Like most Russian propaganda, it's probably not really meant to be believed or disbelieved.  It's meant to cause arguments and distrust,  widen divisions and increase mutual suspicion between those who chose to believe it and those who chose not to. Whether Putin would actually prefer Biden or not is a completely unrelated Issue. 
It's meant to generate heat,  not shed light.

Today's Perun has a good high-level overview of the Chinese military that is worth a listen for anyone interested in the China  / Taiwan / US situation.
Also has the wry observation that China is modernising its navy partly to be able to protect its international trade, which it is very dependent on economically. Particularly with the US, Japan and Korea. But the main geopolitcal threats it sees  to its international trade are from the US, Japan and Korea. So it is trying to build a navy to compete with those countries in order to be able to protect its trade with the same countries....
 

Like most Russian propaganda, it's probably not really meant to be believed or disbelieved.  It's meant to cause arguments and distrust,  widen divisions and increase mutual suspicion between those who chose to believe it and those who chose not to. Whether Putin would actually prefer Biden or not is a completely unrelated Issue. 
It's meant to generate heat,  not shed light.

Like most Russian propaganda, it's probably not really meant to be believed or disbelieved.  It's meant to cause arguments and distrust,  widen divisions and increase mutual suspicion between those who chose to believe it and those who chose not to. Whether Putin would actually prefer Biden or not is a completely unrelated Issue. 
It's meant to generate heat,  not shed light.

Like most Russian propaganda, it's probably not really meant to be believed or disbelieved.  It's meant to cause arguments and distrust,  widen divisions and increase mutual suspicion between those who chose to believe it and those who chose not to. Whether Putin would actually prefer Biden or not is a completely unrelated Issue. 
It's meant to generate heat,  not shed light.

Like most Russian propaganda, it's probably not really meant to be believed or disbelieved.  It's meant to cause arguments and distrust,  widen divisions and increase mutual suspicion between those who chose to believe it and those who chose not to. Whether Putin would actually prefer Biden or not is a completely unrelated Issue. 
It's meant to generate heat,  not shed light.

Like most Russian propaganda, it's probably not really meant to be believed or disbelieved.  It's meant to cause arguments and distrust,  widen divisions and increase mutual suspicion between those who chose to believe it and those who chose not to. Whether Putin would actually prefer Biden or not is a completely unrelated Issue. 
It's meant to generate heat,  not shed light.

Yes, both videos clearly have at least a second drone hitting precisely on the area badly damaged by the first hit, and causing big explosions (the second drone is pretty much going to be inside the armour when it triggers).
That they've done it successfully two attacks in a row implies that it's something that can be pulled off now with a reasonable degree of confidence with the people and equipment they have.  That really does seem like a game changer for naval warfare in near-coastal regions (might be harder to pull off in the mid pacific).
The race is on to find an effective counter. 

It wasn't gifted at all. It was paid for. The UK was broke at wars end. The payments contined for years after. Australia too paid for US equipment. As part of the agreement, useful equipment had to be dumped at wars end. Total waste of taxpayers money!
 
 
 

They just got done swatting down a border bill that had everything they were asking for, because Trump needs that issue to run on to scare older white folks who live nowhere near a good Mexican restaurant. He has no other issue to really campaign for. 
The US mis leadership class, if willing to just allow a two bit conman to become dictator, proves that this system and those that defend it deserve every heap of scorn that radicals put on them.  
I'm not going to accept American Putinism, even if they win the election. I will not comply and I hope most of the civil service and military defies him and his thugs, openly and directly.
 
 

What will have changed is that trump will have learned that he can act with impunity and no one will stop him.  Jeebus F-in' Kristo, he actually led a coup against the elected gov't and nothing has been done about it as people quibble and wet their pants over legalisms that trump shredded already.  It's insane. 
The supreme court has no executive authority, how would they make trump comply with anything?  Congress, if there's enough snakes to not impeach (probably will be), then what are they gonna do?  Call out the army on the white house? -- the army doesn't answer to congress.
Seriously, if 2nd term trump in unimpeachable, then he can do anything he wants that is within his power.  And within his power he has the military, homeland security, the justice dept, and many other agencies that answer directly to him.  Our country is very much ruled by norms as much as laws and Trump will know neither apply to him.
Trump is actively, both in legal filings and in speeches, making the case that the president can do anything he wants, commit any crime, and without that power then it destroys the presidency.  It's bat**** but that is what he is currently arguing.  An appeals court just shot that ludicrous position down, thoroughly and sternly, but it's headed for the supreme court, who hopefully will simply refuse to hear it, letting the appeals court ruling stand.  Seriously, why does any think that someone who holds the position that they are above the law worry about the law?
Just like why do his supporters think it's impossible that he sexually assaulted a woman even though he was recorded bragging about grabbing women by the p--y and how because he's a tv star no one could do anything about it.  He literally bragged about sexually assualting women, yet someone his cult can't believe he'd actually assault a woman.  
Jesus, just take the f--er at his word and you can see how dangerous he is.

K, I'm gonna start spamming with relevant stuff to poke this dead horse back to life. 

I think this is a big misread of what is happening and going to happen. 
Trump was limited in his first term by a several things: 
1. He did not actually expect to win the race and so didn't come into office with a coherent program. 
2. He didn't have any idea of how things worked and still saw value in working somewhat within the system.
3. He believed that he actually had alliances within the conservative movement...starting with the Federalist Society...who would safeguard his hold on office. 
Trump today is no longer that politician. He knows that he doesn't have allies in the conservative movement but also that they don't control the party any more. He does. He knows that the Pentagon won't willingly help him achieve power and he is embittered towards the generals he would be dealing with in a second term. He also is explicitly saying...along with potential VP candidates like Vance and Stefanik...that he will ignore Supreme Court decisions he doesn't agree with. Finally, at Heritage/Claremont/etc a coherent and nakedly fascist program is being articulated which includes pulling out of NATO, mass seizure and deportation on day 1 and worse. 
Trump's supporters in DC are making no bones about it. This is the big one. This is the emergency. Nobody should imagine that it will resemble the first term. 

Nah it will not. If Trump get elected he can delay decision makings and troop deployment enough to get Europe tangled in a war alone. I don't understand how an idiot like Trump can compete in the race to white house but i'm not American.
The whole russian strategy is to isolate the USA, and i cant understand how are they that successful with it. It almost feel like you guys wanna lose the next major conflict of the human history.
NATO is a sheet of paper only held together by trust. If you guys betray that trust than you global hegemony will be lost. As soon as peoples around the world get a whiff of cowardliness from the USA they gonna look for other partners. Everything that makes you live on the level of standards that you accustomed is based on your country's hegemony. Once things go down they go down quick.
 
I don't know what you guys doing on the other side of the sea but everything seems messier by the week.

Afghanistan is a perfect example of what I am talking about - political jerking off:
https://apnews.com/united-states-government-fd2ec2085b0b4fd3ae0a3b03c6de9478#
https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/US-Withdrawal-from-Afghanistan.pdf
Obama slashed US troop presence from 100k in 2010 to 10k in 2015 - the war was basically over by 2016 but he could not finish the job.  
Trump gets in and initially increases troop strength  back up to 14k so he could be seen as doing the “art of the deal” with the Taliban - who sat back and rolled their eyes the whole time.  And then drew down to 2500 by 2021 - which left him the option to declare “peace with honour” in a second term or stick Biden with the job and use it as an attack vector.  Which is exactly what he did.
So you see my point - the whole thing is a game for domestic US consumption.  Not some deep foreign policy or strategy.  Trump is a master at getting nothing done and blaming someone else.  Major muscle movement in Europe will only come if he can look good doing it.  Some sort of rapprochement with Putin angle, but of course even he is not dumb enough to trust Putin now.

Well that’s where Putin’s long winded interview comes in, which is a framing shifting narrative to slowly move the American voter away from seeing NATO as an inherent structure of American dominance to one of American overextension and waste in Russian sphere of influence.
Trump’s framing of the 2% gdp target is just one part of it. He’s long voiced disappointment and discontent with insufficient “protection money” attained from Europe. (At the end of the day, he has shown all the hallmarks of a dictator who believes the government serves at his word and its resources his to allocate and enjoy)I think this is actually something Putin with his mafia like structure of Russian government would be intimately familiar with and able to exploit and manage vs Trump. We have seen how this occurred via Ukraine, Trump seeking political dirt on Biden and leveraging aid to Ukraine for it. 

You rarely have all the information to hand as a leader to know if you are being bold or reckless.
That's what Historians determine 

Oh c’mon, that is selective analysis to the point of deliberately ignoring parts of that war to fit a narrative.  Why did  all those Central Powers “crumble”.  It wasn’t decisive offensive action, we know that much.  WW1 was largely a positional war of attrition on multiple fronts.  Both sides tried operational offensives and suffered horrendous losses.  The bulk of the overall effects delivered in that war were defensive and attritional, particularly by the allies after about 1917.  Of course there were final offensives once the Germans collapsed but these were coup de grace after they Germans had essentially buckled under the weight of loses.  In fact the naval blockade, a largely defensive action in Sea Control, led to strategic pressures that ultimately broke Germany.
The fact that one finishes with offensive action does not negate the massive effects the defensive actions had in the course of any war.  Hell in this war Kharkiv and Kyiv were only possible after the RA had been decisively defensively defeated.  The fact that the UA drove through the RA at the end of all that is not a “see told ya, offensive” moment.
Poor man’s victory - BS.  History of warfare is filled with counter examples.  In fact Exhaustion is one of the major strategies of warfare since freakin Sun Tzu.  The Cold War was one massive monument to defensive containment actions.  We did not even finish that one with an operational offensive.  That binary framework did not serve is the past and it definitely does not serve in this war.  Ukraine may very well win this war by simply not losing.  Their “consolation” is remaining an independent nation free to chart their own destiny.
”That dog won’t hunt!”  Would be the English saying.

What message politically does that send the US? If you won't supply Ukraine to defend your own national interests, we'll reward you by paying you billions of dollars and do it for you?
Defending Ukraine is in Europe's interests too of course, which is why they are spending money on it.  But for things like artillery shells it is better to invest the money in their own production capacity,  not throwing it at the US as a temporary solution and ignoring the long term one. 
Particularly true if the US is going to become an unreliable ally that is going to abandon allies because of internal ideological politics.

Where there’s a will there’s a way… but this doesn’t help in the US case if where the administration did not have much will for the last 2 years, and now that it’s too late and they’ve lost congress, they are flailing around.
Biden could absolutely allow Ukraine to use our weapons on Russia, or provide volunteer jet pilots, or any sort of other action, but that hasn’t happened and won’t happen because his administration itself is conflicted on how much aid to provide. If they really cared, they’d absolutely just crate over stuff and say it’s scrap, laws be damned. What are the Republicans going to do, impeach Biden?

What message politically does that send the US? If you won't supply Ukraine to defend your own national interests, we'll reward you by paying you billions of dollars and do it for you?
Defending Ukraine is in Europe's interests too of course, which is why they are spending money on it.  But for things like artillery shells it is better to invest the money in their own production capacity,  not throwing it at the US as a temporary solution and ignoring the long term one. 
Particularly true if the US is going to become an unreliable ally that is going to abandon allies because of internal ideological politics.

What message politically does that send the US? If you won't supply Ukraine to defend your own national interests, we'll reward you by paying you billions of dollars and do it for you?
Defending Ukraine is in Europe's interests too of course, which is why they are spending money on it.  But for things like artillery shells it is better to invest the money in their own production capacity,  not throwing it at the US as a temporary solution and ignoring the long term one. 
Particularly true if the US is going to become an unreliable ally that is going to abandon allies because of internal ideological politics.

What message politically does that send the US? If you won't supply Ukraine to defend your own national interests, we'll reward you by paying you billions of dollars and do it for you?
Defending Ukraine is in Europe's interests too of course, which is why they are spending money on it.  But for things like artillery shells it is better to invest the money in their own production capacity,  not throwing it at the US as a temporary solution and ignoring the long term one. 
Particularly true if the US is going to become an unreliable ally that is going to abandon allies because of internal ideological politics.