Tux

We can assume that the so called “China’s peace plan for Ukraine” is a wishful thinking from some hot heads, it won’t produce any positive result (even to China). Just take a look at recent disastrous PRC diplomacy in middle east.
Back in Dec 2022, our great leader visited Saudi. In the hope this is the beginning of a new world order, no one dare to tell him that the Gulf states laid a trap for him. 
The joint statement between PRC and Saudi/ Gulf Cooperation Council made Iran outranges. The statement not only called on Iran to cooperate with the IAEA but also support UAE’s position to "reach a peaceful solution" with Iran on three disputed islands (that can be interpreted as support UAE’s claim on the three islands currently controlled by Iran)
https://amwaj.media/media-monitor/china-slammed-in-iran-over-unfriendly-posturing-in-riyadh
Iran was outrages and summoned Chinese ambassador, condemn the statement as an interference into the Iran’s internal affairs. And later Irani president Raisi demand compensation from Beijing during a meeting with a Chinese envoy.
And Raisi visited Beijing last month, he got what he wants, an assurance from China (if not, then at least a good posture) that China will pursue strategic partnership with Iran, a joint communique that railed against “efforts by certain governments to politicalize the work” of the IAEA (that is a 180-degree turn compare to the joint statement with GCC in Dec), also an investment agreement of $3.5 billion
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/2/18/how-will-raisis-beijing-visit-impact-iran-china-ties
Wondering when the Saudi and Israeli will send their envoy to Beijing, claim that the Irani visit hurt their feeling and demand the compensation in cash. 😄
 
Our great leader has hundreds of nicknames, a very popular one call him DSB. It comes from first letters in pinyin “Da Sha Bi”. It means “a big a**hole”. It also has a similar pronunciation that describes a fool “spend money in a foolish way but get nothing in return.” .By looking at the drama in middle east diplomacy, I guess we can understand why he got this nickname.
 
It might surprise people that Chinese diplomat and Xi’s Consultant don’t give a warning to him about the potential issue in the joint statement with GCC. Maybe they are so incompetent and thought Irani are Arabs so they should get along with each other (lol, of course NO). Or maybe they are aware of the risk but decided to keep silence. This is a kind of "Resistance".
The arrogant big boss will brush aside any concerns as “not willing to thinking unorthodox” and will punish anyone speak out the truth. The slang “Tang Ping / Lying flat” was born from internet back in 2021, but the essence of Tangping has been practiced dozens of years in part of China. In many of those self-sustained, isolated state own enterprises, everything is running under the will of the leader, his word is the law.  That is the sprite of 我不要你觉得，我要我觉得 😃 .
Any talent person will quickly know his/her correct position in the organization, any dissident voice will be quickly silenced (although they will not be sacked or fired due to some special rule in Chinese state-owned corps.)
An active resistance is futility in this kind of environment, Tangpin, a resistance similar to Satyagraha (but it is much more passive than Satyagraha) is the best solution in this kind of situation.
Another type of passive resistance is called “acceleration”, note this word is copied from “Accelerationism” but has a totally different meaning in China.
https://chinadigitaltimes.net/space/%E5%8A%A0%E9%80%9F%E4%B8%BB%E4%B9%89
Basically, if your arrogant boss is heading towards to a trap, why stop him? On the contrary, you should encourage him , ask him double speed. In a company or a government agency, the disaster could get your supervisor removed, that means you get your chance to promotion  . For a country that controlled by a bunch of idiots, well, just like a Nirvana, only a death can led to a new re-birth.    Of course there is too much optimism in “acceleration ideology”,  it is based on the assumption that you can be excluded from the consequence of the disaster. In reality this kind of action driven by the blinded optimism can be called as accomplice. For example, if a war broke out, hardly anyone can be excluded from the aftermath of that.  

Nothing of this should come as a surprise to anyone here. We German forumites told you so more or less every time when everyone demanded that Germany should deliver Leopards from Bundeswehr stocks to Germany. 🤷‍♂️

Dan ,
you are close to the truth. It is a posturing. However, the audience is neither Russia, US, EU nor any 3rd world countries. It is targeting domestically, more specifically, to make great leader happy. Let him know that “Under your guidance we just create a proposal, and all the foreigners are listening to your wisdom.”
In Ministry of Foreign Affairs of PRC , after years of purge, the staff with professional training/experience have either been replaced or too timid to speak out the truth. They don’t do evaluation, questioning and planning anymore. All they know is to follow the “leader’s instructions” (aka , grasp the essence from leader’s word) .  I can talk more about this later,  that should also partially explain the root cause of “Wolf warrior diplomacy”. And very unfortunately, just like Ministry of Foreign Affairs, almost all Chinese government agencies are following the same path to abyss.

And yet similar nationalist populist demagoguery managed to rip the UK out of the EU... It needs countering. Biden's doing okay at the moment, but it worries me.
 

At least in this it shows that the author either has no clue what he is talking about or has a political agenda. Probably the latter.
Let's ignore the "vassal of Berlin" BS (or did I miss the part where our Polish neighbors bent the knee before their liege lord Scholz instead of being cocky about Leopard tanks? 😉) No EU member is forced to have the Euro as currency. Sweden being an example that certainly meets the criteria but just opted against it. And "unaccountable burocracy"? That's the usual talk by populist politicians who want to blame the EU for their own failings. In Brussel nothing happens that didn't receive an ok from the respective national governments first.

Fun linguistics trivia: 'you' used to be plural only. The singular was 'ye'. When people started abandoning ye and just using you for both plural and singular various old fogies of the time freaked out over the destruction of the grammar of the English language. You are in good company and this story about language usage if an often repeated tale.
Eventually it will fade away. Perhaps with the Boomers and the GenXers. 🙂

Splitters.

A clown became a president and a president became a clown. 

"Dude" is gender neutral.  (edit: when used in the second person)
FWIW, it doesn't take long to get used to using NB pronouns, especially "they/them", since it's already a fairly common thing in English anyway.

What's your point, dude? Just because countries in the global south were colonized and victimized in the past doesn't make them arbiters of morality and the common good forever. In fact, I think it's pretty disgusting that people from India, Vietnam, or South Africa can't empathize with the Ukranian people trying to fight off their historical colonial oppressor. You'd think those countries would understand it far better than those of us in the west.

Well, it tells us that the rest of the world doesn't buy our pretty Sunday speeches, and rightly so. Our precious western values apply mostly to ourselves and definitely only extend to other regions of the world as far as they don't interfere with our interests. Which usually means we don't give a f*** about autocrats as long they are "our" autocrats and we don't care about human rights when cheap resources and workforce are better accessible without them.
That's why it means nothing to quite a few countries that we are democracies and China and Russia are not. For them it matters how they are treated and as a matter of fact, so far we have a worse track record.
What we should learn from that is that we shouldn't take it for granted that we are seen as the good guys and everyone gathers under our banner. If this is to become a clash of systems then we better make sure to win the hearts and minds of the rest of the world through deeds not words.

1 year of the war is passed. From the start of the invasion and to the huge count of air and missile strikes. One of my friends has been killed by wagner artillery in Bohorodichne village near Bakhumt. My father-in-law has been killed by storming the defensive enemy positions in the Kherson region 1st of October. I gave 3 of my salaries (all what I have)on the first day of the war on the military budget. Thanks to all of you, thanks for your help. Taking carry of our refugees, helping our soldiers to destroy enemy forces with AT weapons, artillery, APS, AFV, and Tanks, peoples who served in foreign legions. Thank you for giving billions of money to support our economy. Special thanks to battlefront for small support for me, when I asked about a discount, they gave me 2 games with all DLCs for free - I didn't expect this. Some of my relatives were in Kherson in occupation, and all high-value electronic and expensive things were looted from them by Russian forces. And now we don't fear rocket strikes (10 times they exploded 700-1000m from my house) we don't fear nuclear threat, we don't fear the second army in the world and you shouldnt. Sorry for we English would that what I want to say for all of you, I can tell you many things about the war but first i will try to improve my language knowlages.

Warren, as an old school maneuverist and die-hard Boyd School mission command advocate this was a very interesting write up. Probably my favorite post of yours in the entire thread. You have actually given me some things to think about, rare for you.   
The future of the tactical and operational battlefield is an exciting thing. We are lucky to have something like Combat Mission to enable experimentation.
Bil

Ok and @Kinophile can jump in on this one too.  So we are muddying up some stuff here, so to clarify:
- The original point on MC vs DC was to point out the cultural constipation of conventional services and how they are nowhere near as innovative or open to disruptive thinking as is often sold.  Over the military generations, military doctrine becomes dogma and counter-thinking in an organization that literally exists to create uniformity in behaviour is not well accepted.  We in the west have built a democratic myth of "empowerment and gumption" but it really does not translate well into actual military reality.  We can debate this but I know what I have lived for the better part of 3.5 decades. 
- The UA is a hybrid mix of Soviet and Western schools, and for them I think this was a major advantage.  It was not because we peppered them with western doctrine and training, it was because they had both worlds to pull from.  If we had an all western force in this thing, with the same restraints/constraints and capabilities as the UA, my hypothesis is that we would have done worse because we would have tried to apply an all-western approach.  I can definitely see in Phase I where this would have gotten us into a lot of trouble.  The UA is already outside of boxes and pulling in so much from the civilian side so quickly also helped in breaking doctrinal group-think and creating whatever this has turned into.  As to which school MC or DC, that the UA employs I do not think we have a clear idea but it is also likely a hybrid - which was how the entire thing was actually designed to work.
- MC vs DC schools of thought.  Ok, this is a whole other thing.  Mission Command is a essentially (and I will just use my own descriptions, feel free to go look up others) is essentially empowered command.  It arms subordinates with context and intent, "why we are doing this and here is what we are looking for".  This, plus allowing them to exercise initiative to exploit opportunity - the alignment of circumstance, context and capability, theoretically provides a force with higher potential for tempo advantage.  The thinking goes that empowered tactical commanders can see opportunity well before formation level and as such if they exploit it without waiting to be told the entire force can OODA faster than an opponent.  This is a cornerstone of Manoeuvre Warfare which is really a strategy of Annihilation through Dislocation.  We seriously bought off on all this and drank the Kool Aid on it about 40 years ago, to the point it became so dogmatic that it left little room for counter thought.
DC is one of mission control being held at higher levels.  Subordinates are empowered to do a task (The terms are actually derived from the Germans largely because Depuy and Starry really were hot for German warfare - Auftragstaktik and Befehlstaktik, The first meaning "mission tactics" the second "detailed orders tactics").  They then wait for further direction before exploiting opportunity.  They can still execute initiative in execution of the task but not the overall mission. 
So was born the Great American Military Myth (and frankly almost every western nation jumped onboard).  We were a democratized military built on "good ol 'merican innovation and initiative."  Further this All-Yankee Doodle (sorry but we really got beat over the head on this one back in the day) approach is very economic as it yields quick nearly bloodless wars.  The Persian Gulf became the poster child for this type of warfare, but more than few put up their hands and asked if it wasn't a false-positive.  The Gulf War was highly attritional and mostly driven by air supremacy - the land battle of mission command and manoeuvre warfare was basically executed against an already beaten foe, and one crushed by far more Detailed Command approaches of the Air Force. (This brings up the other problem with the Kool Aid, it really does not work for either the Navy or Air Force - and does not work enough for SOF, kinda).  
The truth is far more complicated.  The largest problem with Mission Command is that while it is great in theory it runs into serious problems in full execution because of all those pesky enablers.  Tactical commanders can run all over the place all empowered but there is only so much ISR, artillery, engineers and logistics to go around.  So what really happens is far more control in practice.  The Main Effort gets a lot more empowerment but if you are on a side gig, well you might very well get held back because the boss simply does not have the stuff to support you if you go all manouvrey.  Detail Command it far to restrictive and you get into micromanagement, so in reality neither systems works in extremes.
The future.  Well the problem was seen coming way back during the RMA days.  "What happens when a higher level commander knows more than a tactical one?"  I suspect if the UA has created a sort of ad hoc JADC2 system then this has already happened.  If a higher formation commander knows more than the tactical level, then DC starts to make a lot more sense.  And then what does Manoeuvre Warfare turn into? Well a form of Corrosive Warfare is one option apparently.  There is a lot of sense to this, we already do it with unmanned systems, which are going to expand in use not contract.  Detail Command that controls the battlespace like a production line and not a jazz band is not totally out of the question.  
So at one end we have "lets go all DC because higher can see all".  While at the other end we have "remove higher command entirely."  This is hyper-Mission Command, or self-synchronization.  Here tactical units are loaded up and basically command themselves with their peers - this gets a lot of traction in SOF circles. They then share enablers in a hand-off system where "higher" is really coordination and not command and control.  Here we get into military effects clouds and inverted command systems.  This also makes some sense but many are shy as to human nature.  How are enablers going to be shared?  This is always a friction point, and higher commanders are the referees.  What happens if we get rid of them.  Some have suggested AI does the job as it can calculate requirements far faster than a human can, or a human AI pairing because human can do context.
So in the end there is no "answer".  We should continue to try both, and maybe have a C2 system that can swing wildly from one to the other based on good ol human art of war.  But service cultures and equities already get in the way.  This is way tanks got resisted, the machine gun and even unmanned systems.  We make idols of our history and sometimes it gets in the way of evolution.  Experimentation and paying attention to wars like these are absolutely critical as we can start to get some idea of where things are going and then plan to adapt at a better rate than an opponent.      

Sorry, but I think this will be appreciated here...

While I (and I think most here) sympathise with your position here I think there may be a little bit getting ‘lost in translation’:  “Beggars can’t be choosers” is a common phrase in English which is not meant to imply any additional offence to the “beggar” in question, to the extent that the word itself can be seen as derogatory.  It’s just a pithy way of saying that people with no other choice shouldn’t be too critical of the form of assistance they get.  “Don’t bite the hand that feeds you” is another one. 
Sorry if you knew that; I don’t mean to patronise.
Ultimately though Butschi does have a point: there is no legal obligation on any European country to give Ukraine anything (as brainless and immoral as it would be for them not to).  The people on this board will likely be sympathetic to your complaints about the rate of assistance offered but there are those who would take offence and use it to justify ceasing assistance altogether. 

It’s a bit like putting Wehrmacht insignia on your tank:  ‘dark humour’ to you and your mates, forgivable foolishness to friends who understand your plight, gold dust to those who want ammunition to feed a propaganda war.

How many taxpayer dollars would it have cost the US not to have supported Ukraine?
I don’t think the answer is zero…

deleted, not worth it

This sentence does not make sense. Individually, the words are sensible, but put together like this the describe an impossible outcome, something like "intelligent labrador."

While I (and I think most here) sympathise with your position here I think there may be a little bit getting ‘lost in translation’:  “Beggars can’t be choosers” is a common phrase in English which is not meant to imply any additional offence to the “beggar” in question, to the extent that the word itself can be seen as derogatory.  It’s just a pithy way of saying that people with no other choice shouldn’t be too critical of the form of assistance they get.  “Don’t bite the hand that feeds you” is another one. 
Sorry if you knew that; I don’t mean to patronise.
Ultimately though Butschi does have a point: there is no legal obligation on any European country to give Ukraine anything (as brainless and immoral as it would be for them not to).  The people on this board will likely be sympathetic to your complaints about the rate of assistance offered but there are those who would take offence and use it to justify ceasing assistance altogether. 

It’s a bit like putting Wehrmacht insignia on your tank:  ‘dark humour’ to you and your mates, forgivable foolishness to friends who understand your plight, gold dust to those who want ammunition to feed a propaganda war.

Sharing a whole continent with only two other countries while having a population more than twice as large as the other two combined does tend to make life simpler. Although the other two might feel different about the situation.
The last two times we tried to make the political situation on the European continent simpler, the USA were instrumental in preventing that. Please make up your mind about what you want. 😉

It only shows that there is still a long way to go until we have something like a really "unified europe". On the other hand let´s be gratefull. In the not so distant past a lot of terrible wars were fought in central europe due to various reasons. Hopefully we are beyond that point and can focus on the one bad guy right now.

Why, if we had a new DLC for BS called "Dutch freedom beggars" I would actually buy it.

While I (and I think most here) sympathise with your position here I think there may be a little bit getting ‘lost in translation’:  “Beggars can’t be choosers” is a common phrase in English which is not meant to imply any additional offence to the “beggar” in question, to the extent that the word itself can be seen as derogatory.  It’s just a pithy way of saying that people with no other choice shouldn’t be too critical of the form of assistance they get.  “Don’t bite the hand that feeds you” is another one. 
Sorry if you knew that; I don’t mean to patronise.
Ultimately though Butschi does have a point: there is no legal obligation on any European country to give Ukraine anything (as brainless and immoral as it would be for them not to).  The people on this board will likely be sympathetic to your complaints about the rate of assistance offered but there are those who would take offence and use it to justify ceasing assistance altogether. 

It’s a bit like putting Wehrmacht insignia on your tank:  ‘dark humour’ to you and your mates, forgivable foolishness to friends who understand your plight, gold dust to those who want ammunition to feed a propaganda war.

No snide remark, I honestly don't get how this is related to what I said.
About this survey itself: Well, dying for your country has really come out of fashion here and, frankly, that's not such a bad thing, I think. And I wouldn't read too much into it. I mean, what do you expect when asking people, during peacetime, when the last war was about 80 years ago? After hammering it into each and every German after said last war that war is bad? I can imagine that the situation would be quite different if the Russians actually came knocking at our door.