https://twitter.com/DefenceHQ/status/1499005871770288132?t=eGIYmYAoueYYA10b-OhbnQ&s=19
2 Likes
Toddler brain > self absorbed egotistical intellectuals that are inable to say “I was wrong”. They will just stack more books to their book cases to show off during zoom calls.
1 Like
From a realism POV, ex ante, the only way this is a mistake for the US is if it ends up in nuclear war, heads we win, tails you lose. Either a) our dastardly plan to give a real democracy to a land God has determined belongs to Putin defies the laws of nature and works or b) Putin ends up in a quagmire that destroys his economy and unites the Western world against him, just to get land that was rightfully his in the first place.
Which begins the question, why is a supposedly hard headed realist using the word “fault” to begin with? The “you made me do this” abuser analogy gets more and more apt the more you flesh it out. Moralism is introduced into the question only to the extent necessary to absolve the abuser.
1 Like
Wrong about what? I’m sure that Mearsheimer would admit to being wrong when he said, on February 15 2022, that Putin wasn’t going to invade Ukraine. He said that the military buildup was to get the West’s attention and say, hey, stop this. That’s obviously not why the buildup happened, it was to invade Ukraine.
NATO = good
American Imperialism = bad.
This is what toddler brain thinks and its a position too humbling for Measheimer to take post Ukraine war.
1 Like
Victor you clearly don’t get the point of that post. It isn’t about who is right or wrong in the Israel v Palestine conflict. It’s that no one here would seriously argue the entire conflict is the Palestinians fault because they would just shut the fuck up and go with what the power in the region dictated
3 Likes
Big picture I suspect the real problem the Russians are having is that tanks are totally worthless if the other side has lots of artillery + satellites to tell them where to shoot. The counter to this is obviously to have total air dominance and destroy the artillery… but they very clearly don’t have that and can’t get it or they would have.
The Russians fucked up big time. A war has a limited amount of fighting space at the front and they are massively overweight on tanks…
As for @anon10396289 showing up and saying the Ukrainians only have 47 javelins that’s just not true. They have 47 javelins from prior arms packages and they have 2000 british mlaws which are pretty damn similar + whatever they’ve been sent less publicly.
I place absolutely zero value on the predictions of military experts who have made an entire career out of overestimating the strength of the Russian military to justify additional military spending. They thought this war would go entirely different than it has so far. And I bought it until the Russians threw the first punch and the Ukrainians expertly parried it and savagely counterpunched. Then I looked harder at the situation and realized the Russians are invading a borderline fully developed nation with a real military industrial complex that experienced genocide at their hands in living memory.
The Russians are going to kill a lot of innocent civilians blind firing artillery at Ukrainian cities over the next few weeks… but that’s not going to push their goal of winning this war forward at all and will actually almost certainly be counterproductive. Every little kid they blow up has an extended family that will immediately want revenge.
The US dropped more firepower on North Vietnam than they dropped in all of WW2 and they still lost. The Ukrainians are giving me a similar vibe. The flow of arms into Ukraine from the rest of the world to fight the Russians is getting bigger every day.
Putin is fucked. He drank his own Koolaid and bit off massively more than he could chew and now he’s going to choke to death on it and not especially slowly.
4 Likes
America conquered all those NATO countries without a bullet fired at them while spending its own money protecting all of NATO.
3 Likes
Diabolical.
One difference between NATO and Russia is that NATO doesn’t invade you or threaten to invade you if you decline the invitation to join.
2 Likes
NATO isn’t necessarily bad but it is part of the post-WW2 framework that the US assembled, with the US as the western hegemon. Again, not a bad thing. After the fall of the Soviet union the US wanted to expand its liberal hegemony to try to make eastern Europe more like western Europe. With mostly good intentions, I think. And some good results like Poland and Romania and other Warsaw Pact states. It’s simplistic to say it’s “American Imperialism” but it’s a joke with some truth to it.
very true!
It’s simplistic to say it’s “American Imperialism” but it’s a joke with some truth to it.
2 Likes
lol hilarious that you think those posts are inconsistent or anything
It’s consistent if you don’t actually believe the points you’re making.
5 Likes
lol I posted a Morpheus meme with a somewhat exaggerated view of what I think? BAD FAITH! Call the posting police immediately.
3 Likes
One of the main issues here is just how weak the International community and any governing bodies like the UN actually are. NATO is a great concept. We have a set of nations that all agree on their right to exist as independent sovereign nations and agree that any nation within NATO that is attacked will be defended by the entire NATO community. Why not extend this to every nation in the world? Not doing so essentially says that there are some nations that are ok to invade, and others that are not.
So what are the valid reasons to invade another country according to the powers that be? This seems like the sort of thing that needs to be established at a worldwide level. Either it’s not ok to invade another sovereign nation without drawing every other country on earth into battle against you, or there should be very clear guidelines on when this is allowed.
This likely sounds like a pipe dream because of how fucked we all are, but these are the sort of discussions that the UN is supposed to be for. I’m sure all of the defense contractors would hate this sort of agreement though.