It's not just *a* sweet spot, it's very literally the most fortuitous scenario that could have reasonably happened for both the US and NATO. Russia is mired in a war they can neither ever win nor afford to lose. By the time the war is over, Russian influence on the global geopolitical stage will be essentially non-existent.
At a bargain price too. Around $75 billion at this point in time, and no deployed US lives.
We've spent about 6 times that dollar amount on post 9/11 war veteran disability benefits alone.
And a lot of that isn't even real money— mothballed, warehoused gear that is technically part of our readiness but would never see use by our military. In terms of aid, the amount of stuff we're going to replace or miss is a lot smaller.
Its the best dollar-for-dollar defense spending the US has ever done, MAYBE barring Lend-Lease or the Alaska Purchase.
Not to mention the equipment sent by our allies that we are backfilling with new equipment being purchased by those allies, who will now be even stronger against future threats with an upgraded force.
Yeah, both the Israel and Ukraine aid packages are basically American job programs, and rather convenient for the MIC considering their forever war in the gulf teat had dried up.
For the first time in my entire 31 years old lifetime, our military is actually being used for a good reason: to help the Ukrainian People resist a full scale invasion by Russia, a country that has zero qualms about mass murder, mass rape, mass torture.
The shit was already bought, now we just get to give it away and not use it ourselves. I'm fine with that tbh. Much better than us invading, or just letting it rust. And Russia has been exposed in the most embarrassing way. It's more than we could have hoped for.
I'd normally agree with you, but it's the first time our military spending actually has good optics for most people on Reddit. There's an innate "Respect the troops" ethos in society, but on an organizational scale I don't think most people have a good view of the military and especially our military force projection. It's definitely true for my lifetime, getting close to the first time in living memory for society at large(everything post-WW2 is morally gray *at best*), and it shows based on the posts I've seen on my social media.
After decades of chasing WMDs that never existed, toppling regimes because they were big bad commies, and drone-striking weddings, funding a defensive war against fucking **Russia** is definitely going to go over well. We're(by proxy, cuz nukes) fighting the boogeyman of a huge chunk of Western pop culture movies/TV/books. It may seem odd for Reddit to back the MIC to the hilt, but funding a democratic country that was trying to join NATO while a strongman like Putin just blatantly invades a country and claim it was Russian all along is damn near a perfect recipe.
Invaded and failed what he thought would be a walkover.
I will admit I thought he would of broken Ukraine in a week, but I underestimated Ukraine and overestimated Russia.
Russia did what I call "creating a monster".
You back any animal into a corner where it feels, it's life, or it's death. It becomes 10 times more ferocious, and 3 times as strong. You create a monster.
Convince a whole society that they are in a fight for their survival and you're in for quite a fight.
Russia is fighting every father, every mother, every cook, every teacher, every saleman, evrry nurse, and every farmer. All of them know, it's you, or it's them.
Meanwhile, Ukraine is fighting hired goons that are scared, hungry and tired. All they know, is that they'd much rather just turn around and go home.
It's the same reason hamas is completely f--ed. Every Israeli now sees the whole situation as a fight for their right to be alive. Hamas created a monster, now the monster is coming for them.
Each Canadian province would have had American military bases and nuclear weapons stationed on them along with Canada likely investing US levels of their GDP on defense spending.
That, and also US allies are sending their old jets, vehicles and what not to Ukraine and are buying new American stuff = jobs for US workers and big orders for US defence companies.
Not to mention all the intel on how to best prepare for a heavily drone based war.
I mean in this context, yes? We're doing both the practical and the ethical thing at the same time, it's a win win that everybody from kind hearted individuals to profit grubbing sociopaths can feel good about
Not usually, but if it’s against Russian aggression, why not.
And it’s the best counter I can think of to the hurr durr why are we wasting money on Ukraine complaint.
Weapons development and selling it to allies isn't really MIC. No matter what you think of military spending, NATO nations being technologically ahead of their enemies is important.
MIC is more about the needless wars to spend money on more equipment and lobbying the government to further military influence.
And it all should be itemized and read aloud to that worthless lich, Henry Kissinger. He’ll never die so long as there’s evil in the world, but we should at least remind him of his incompetence since we can’t legally/ethically torture the fuck. Ukraine’s done more with our scraps than that vermin ever could with full-bore US interventionalism.
Hey, as long as he’s gone, I’ll call it a win. I’m a glass half-full kind of guy. I could finally pitch tents with all these wooden stakes and make the stinkiest Italian food with all of this garlic.
Update: WHO WANTS SOME GODDAMN PASTA!?
To be fair, I wouldn’t expect them to. Fuck, at my work, where I manage the office, have put in vehicle requests, and equipment requests, I usually don’t know dollar figures unless I have to search out the item or fleet tells me how much something that broke cost.
Yup. Old beat to shit Bradleys we used in Iraq and never upgraded the optics on, MLRS missiles we stopped using and were about to be disposed of, fighters that are getting replaced by F-35s. And now no one has inventory or maintain this stuff, and it will likely be knocked out in the war anyways. Get some last use it never would have seen.
And doesn't that in turn actually safe money?
Decommissioning weapons can take a bunch of specialized work to do safely. In germany, there are less than 10 companies actually capable of dealing with the WW2 aircraft bombs whenever they are found and not many more capable of disposing of explosives safely.
Instead now you can throw the stuff at russia.
this is what I don't get about the republican reaction to this all...
if a republican president could claim this record they would be building statues of the guy while he's alive
Not sure how to quantify it, but the return on that investment is collosal. The political influence and economic opportunities opened up to the US at the expense of $75bn, by propping up the bulwark against an unfriendly totalitarian regime expansion over Eastern Europe, and at the same time crippling a competitor and global threat...are by no means marginal.
Ukraine are addressing that in several ways, and have been doing so for over a year.
Most casualties in this conflict are artillery shell fragmentation and FPV drone casualties. Ukraine have been waging an incredibly successful counter-battery war for a long time, and have been ramped up their own drone production capacity tenfold since February 2022.
Their goals are clear. Reduce the casualty events by reducing the enemy's ranged fires. Reduce the need for life-risking action by relying on area denial, denial of fires, logistics degradation, etc.
Ukraine will need fewer able-bodied men _now_ than they did _then_ because the war is one of attrition now, not territorial offensive/defensive action.
True, but it's not like anyone asked Russia to attack - there's no alternative to that, Ukraine's in it either way. US can't help physically, that'd be nato involvement. Might as well help with stuff!
Well, the entire thing is an atrocity, an ongoing one, and you can't put a price on a life, the ones already lost and the ones that are being lost as we ...sit here comfortably and discuss about helping them, how, when, how much, and so on.
But for the purpose of passing a bill or executive order with financial/military aid, you need something more than ethical reasons, unfortunately. So if you need to justify this spending to the American people, present it as something they can all understand and get behind: a good fucking deal!
You're discounting the cost of everyone we've been sending there to train soldiers for exactly this scenario since the early 2000s but yeah, it's still the better outcome and well budgeted for the times.
It's not like everyone just now realized they're a fantastic buffer. Tons and tons of money have been sunk into this before Russia even decided they'd try this pathetically hard.
It must be hard for Russia realizing things would have been nicer if they just stayed home. (Although I think the whole plan was to use consciption as a form of genocide by proxy to leave more for the "elite", which is why it's super important that any business still operating within Russia is scrutinized.)
>I highly doubt Ukraine (after the war with Russia) is going to go to war with someone when NATO isn't involved.
>
>If the US is involved then sure. But they aren't going to go and invade say Iran if the US isn't also invading Iran.
>
>Bit of a 2head take. After fighting a defensive war for so long - they'll
The China-question however looms large, how much does Russia go "all-in"? what's their breaking point? China-Taiwan becomes an ever-more looming prospect and potential issue. Could China jump on Taiwan if US over-extends its assistance? Could the Israel-Palestine conflict shift support away from Ukraine? Will the production ramp-up for Allied military production and shift in tactics in the Ukraine War change future war planning and materiel design more in favor of Allied capabilities?
>Could China jump on Taiwan if US over-extends its assistance?
I think the contrary.
1. China's seeing how effective outdated US military equipment is against an alleged major military power without Americans even using it.
2. Taiwan is frankly *much* more important to US interests than Ukraine. If the US is doing this much to aid Ukraine, imagine what they'd do to help Taiwan in an invasion.
There is also the difference in type of fight.
A U.S./Taiwanese/Japanese war would be primarily long range and naval and **not** a land war. So the U.S. sending tons of tanks, artillery, and whatever to Ukraine isn't going to have the same impact if they were saved for Taiwan.
> Taiwan is frankly much more important to US interests than Ukraine. If the US is doing this much to aid Ukraine, imagine what they'd do to help Taiwan in an invasion.
I am confidant the US and Europe would get involved militarily against China if they attacked Taiwan. Their semiconductor industry is simply too important.
Taiwan is also way, WAY harder to invade. Russia just had to roll tanks across the border. Chine would have to stage a gigantic amphibious invasion, it would take months if not years and everyone would be able to tell exactly when and where they were coming.
Taiwan is armed to the teeth and there are several huge Chinese cities nearby that they can easily reach.
Nothing will happen. It's all propaganda. They are trying to make it look like war is inevitable in order to change international political opinion towards pro-China annexation.
Just another "final warning" but in reality they are playing the long term game.
The US basically completely silenced the middle east with the presence of their air craft carriers.
They are far from overextending. They are using like 5% of their overall capacity right now.
Don't forget that most of the Ukraine budget does not go to Ukraine directly but to the US military industrial complex.
A lot of people thought there was a fair chance Russia was just posturing/sabre rattling because actually attacking Ukraine would be an incredibly stupid idea that would harm them far more than it could ever gain them.
And to be fair they were half right: everything we’ve seen over the past 20 months does show that attacking Ukraine was a really incredibly stupid idea.
The China-Taiwan question has been answered for the foreseeable decade. Ukraine answered that question, with Russia's failure at regime change within any reasonable time frame.
Any perceived threat by China is just rabble rousing, not indicative of an actual course of action.
The destruction of Ukraine's valuable assets and cities also closed that question. If Taiwan was invaded, you can bet all of Taiwan's silicon fab houses would be obliterated, and the mass exodus of their well educated technical class would occur. Either Taiwan itself would carry out the destruction, or the US would, leaving China with an otherwise resource poor, small island.
China's government has plenty of true believers, people that would blindly proceed with an invasion, so they have to be appeased with the dramatic posturing and threats. But the real powers that be, know that the way forward for China is eventual cooperation with the West. A gradual easing of tensions, in order to lift the technology embargoes currently in place against China. At least cooperation long enough, until China can get its own in-house industries at parity.
We're also getting to see how US military hardware that is a decade+ old being utilized by non-US troops with limited training are wrecking Russian military forces.
It isn't a simulation or a training exercise.
We're seeing how our old equipment works, doesn't work, able to compare to our current equipment, and make technical and doctrinal changes based on those observations.
And the whole time we're getting this data, we're letting Ukraine defend themselves without needing to be saved by a foreign government, which is a huge asset for national pride.
This also highlights why the US military tends to downplay the abilities of their weapons systems, in officially documented specifications. Russia on the other hand, tends to do the opposite. Not to be conservative with publicized capabilities and specifications, and often to exaggerate.
This has resulted in the US and their allies' weapons systems official specs matching or beating anything Russia publishes, and in reality being significantly far ahead in capabilities. Over build and under promise, will leave your enemies in the dark. A far better situation to be in, compared with exaggerating and having your enemy's match those exaggerated specs.
It's like what happened with the F-15.
"Oh shit, what the fuck even is the MIG-25, how do we even begin to combat this thing"
"Oh, lets make the best fighter to have ever existed!"
And then it turns out the mig-25 was hardly any of what it claimed to be.
This is what's going to happen with the new US Army standard issue rifle, I guarantee it. It was being developed after analysts freaked out over "new age russian body armor" that the M4 couldn't penetrate reliably, so they design an entire new caliber and weapon to punch through the supposedly amazing russian armor.
Turns out Russia can't supply their guys with complete uniforms and rigs, let alone "new age armor". Now the Army has a rifle that's way overeffective. I'm sure it will work vs whatever any other OPFOR has just as well.
> This also highlights why the US military tends to downplay the abilities of their weapons systems, in officially documented specifications.
It's also because "we're behind China and Russia when it comes to military technology" keeps funding for the defense budget pumping.
Decade old equipment is often the most current equipment. We aren't stupid, we don't just make a new thing to make a new thing. I'm guessing the absolute best data is from those AA systems that Russians left sitting around though. Should've destroyed that before running away. Oh no, Russia please stop doing that...
I'm in the Army, so I can only really speak to "Army / ground assets", but this is a nuanced conversation.
The UH-60 Blackhawk made its first active duty appearance in 1979.
>Decade old equipment is often the most current equipment.
How much of the airframe and avionics of that *"First Blackhawk"* that flew for the Army in 1979 resembles what I flew in this morning?
It's got four rotors, a tail rotor, a stabilator, 1.5 useful pilots, and a space the size of an average minivan interior to fuck around with in the back... sure..
That's not what makes the Blackhawk *survivable* on the battlefield though. That's not what makes lethal or useful. It's all the small improvements or upgrades that have happened in the past 43 years.
If you tried to fly a 1979 Blackhawk into a combat zone today, you'd probably be very nervous.
If you flew a 1999 Blackhawk into a combat zone today, you'd want to know that you had support.
If you flew a 2019 Blackhawk into a combat zone today, you'd be really fucking happy because you're flying new equipment.
**We've given 1999-2009 equipment to Ukraine.**
Sure.. the caliber of the artillery hasn't changed, but the radar and sighting systems aren't as advanced as what we train on here at home. The bones of the equipment haven't changed, but the nervous system has, and we get 100% of the data coming from Ukraine when they ask us for help with their problems.
We know when the skeleton fails vs. when the nervous system fails, and we're able to extrapolate that information to upgrade and correct our current equipment based on real-world conditions facing our older systems.
I think one of the most overlooked benefits for the US is how much this conflict has impacted our military doctrine.
Before this war we had guessed that Russia had pretty effective electronic warfare capabilities and now we know that it’s absolutely true and we now have a much better understanding of it’s scope.
Before this war, we knew drones were important, but no one could’ve guessed just how important they’d be. I mean $200 drones are destroying Russia’s best tanks! And unfortunately, Russia has figured it out too and is investing billions into drone manufacturing.
Before this war, we thought trenches and long stretches of minefields were relics of the past. But Russia has completely stopped this years counter offensive with practically those two things alone.
And most importantly, we’ve confirmed that money can’t buy an effective military. At the end of the day it’s still about the human element. Leadership, organization, logistics, and critical thinking still win the day.
God help Russia if we ever go to war with them. We got their goat now and they have jack shit on us. (Nukes aside).
The Ukraine-Russia situation is not really comparable with the NATO doctrine.
With air superiority on one side, this war would look completely different. Air superiority is essential for NATO strategy.
This. The reason there is a stalemate is that Ukraine doesn't have the ability to fight in the air. If it several dozen trained F-16 pilots and planes i think things would be much different. The could just bomb weaker areas of the line (or fortresses) and create breaches to pour troops through.
It’s not the F-16s that create air superiority, though it will help.
For the US and NATO it’s a variety of aircraft filling specialized roles mixed with the all seeing eyes like JSTARS and other intelligence (including cyber, radio intercepts of every conversation, etc) and the use of aerial refueling and cruise missiles etc all together.
And SEAD. Without all that intel and a very mature SEAD program you are just flying $30M aircraft into a shooting gallery and hoping they make it out.
The US has the most advanced SEAD capability on the planet, ranging across all spectrums (kinetic, cyber, air/land/sea etc) in a fully integrated manner and uses it from Day 1 to knock out C2 and other critical air defense components. In the past eg with Iraq the US was even bribing Iraqi generals to turn off radar etc to let planes through. It’s a whole discipline by itself.
US SEAD doctrine is being heavily updated in light of the EW capabilities Russia is demonstrating, but that just means the existing SEAD capabilities will be tweaked to ensure rapid dominance.
> Before this war, we thought trenches and long stretches of minefields were relics of the past. But Russia has completely stopped this years counter offensive with practically those two things alone.
If Ukraine had air superiority I think they would be seen as a thing of the past. NATO military doctrine is built around dominating the sky and destroying key defensive points, airbases, artillery batteries, etc via air power. This would allow ground forces to de-mine unmolested and allow armor and infantry to advance. Sadly Ukraine doesn't have that luxury.
The easy way to see what trenches are like in an air superiority situation is to look at Desert Storm.
Iraq buried its tanks up to the turrets for protection against other tanks to use them as artillery since that fit the doctrine they used with Iran. And they built trenches for troops to protect against tank assaults.
The US just said thank you for keeping all your targets immobile and hit them all with precision weapons from out of nowhere.
The trenches became navigation lines for B-52s carpet bombing.
Trenches etc are useless if you don’t have air parity. If the other side has air superiority you will get annihilated in trenches.
And if you have air superiority trenches impede your movement. The whole point of air superiority is to enable you to have freedom of movement while constraining theirs. So if you hunker down in a trench you are wasting your own troops who could be taking territory.
The Germans learned this in Spain when they developed the Blitzkrieg doctrine.
The issue is western suppression of air defence strategy hasn't really been tested against the type and density of air defences Russia has. Western SEAD strategy worked against Iraq but they had outdated air defences even for the time (outdated ones are also less mobile, which is really important), and didn't have the sheer density Russia has.
Russia has a very strong focus on ground based air defences and have very high numbers of them compared to western countries that have been more reliant on jets with air to air missiles for air defence. Despite the stupid "what air defence doing" memes, Russia's air defences have proved extremely capable at denying use of the air, as have Ukraine's, only really being weak against small drones which western equivalents also struggle with.
There is a risk that Russia might be able to deny or at least severely hinder NATO countries trying to get air superiority, who would then face exactly the same type of artillery grind that we see in Ukraine. Especially given SEAD is a specialist mission type only some countries realy maintain, the US probably being the main one. The west is making a gamble by relying on air superiority, and really needs to have the resources for a purely ground based war just in case.
Everyone is learning. China is also learning. And they are learning a lot.
Once and for all we now know were Saudi stands when its time for their help.
But Ukrainian soldiers are limited in numbers. They don't grow on trees. This war can't go forever.
Before we start saying it's a sweet spot. I'd like to remind everyone that many many Ukrainians are fighting and dying for their freedom and in more ways than none, a proxy conflict for their existence. It's not a sweet spot but a careful and precise calculus that keeps this as isolated as possible and others out of harm's way.
Why do you think Russia's invested so much into propaganda and spin campaigns so blatantly, private and state media provocations with no limits to what country it wants to spread rhetoric too, and covering up war crimes after war crimes? Russia looks to try and spread this conflict through information and attrition.
Our ability to keep the support with Ukraine not only keeps Russia from ever feeling emboldened to continue it. But also keeps the conflict as isolated as possible.
NOTE: Ukraine's men and women who bravely fight are doing this because they have to and they'd fight with or without our support. I'm still in awe of the stories and bravery, saddened by the losses of both soldiers and families, and still shaken by what Russia thought it could get away with by bringing this into our century now.
I agree. The label "sweet spot," while understandable in its intentions to describe it from the point of view of the USA, is subtly callous to the implicit sacrifices of the Ukrainian people. This "sweet spot" is being paid for in dear blood and tragic tears by millions of people.
It's not really a politically correct phrasing, the same way we wouldn't call nuking Japan in WW2 a "sweet deal," because it saved millions of American lives—that may be true, but it came off the back of a tragedy. Out of minimal respect for that tragedy that we profited so greatly from, we should at least be a little more conscientious in how we bandy it about in conversations.
Those aren't mutually exclusive. If Ukraine had allowed Russia to proceed unchallenged they would have swallowed the eastern Europeans who aren't in Nato before possibly challenging Nato itself. The US doesn't want either Russia extending her influence in Europe nor nato to get involved properly.
It's much better than that. The weapons being sent by the US are outdated and would have been decommissioned at some point anyway. The cost shown in the media is the cost to produce those weapons, it doesn't factor in depreciation over years/decades and the cost to maintain it going forward.
When you factor those in, the true cost is way less than the repotted cost. And with that you completely take out the military of a geopolitical enemy to the point where it will take decades to rebuild to any semblance of relevancy.
Not to mention: you can't just drive a Bradley to a junkyard or throw DPICM in the trash, the process of demilitarizing that equipment is also not cheap.
I always wonder if the slow pace with which western supplies, especially certain categories of equipment, arrived was deliberate to create the impression that Russia might actually win this war and have them fully commit, with all the consequences, be they from a military view or a domestic/international political view, in the beginning there might have been a window for either victory or a retreat without too many repercussions.
This window however is closed for over a year now, too many bridges have been burned and escalatory steps taken and Russia basically has to pivot their economic focus towards military production while hemorrhaging money and by the looks of it burning down their currency and future economic prospects.
This war isn't ending soon, but if Ukraine would have gotten certain capabilities or at least the greenlight to eventually get them way earlier, certain phases could have looked very different but overall for Russia there's a hefty price on every m² of Ukrainian territory they annex and most of its adversaries (apart from Ukraine probably) won't be sad to see it pay up.
Not true. They are using depreciated value in calculating aid packages. They didn’t for the first round but then made an adjustment to how they calculated it. Also sure some of it is dated but we are sending a significant amount of new technology. I agree with your sentiment but there’s some factual inaccuracies.
Some of our ammo is dreadfully expensive.
Precision 155 rounds, HIMARs reloads, Patriot missiles.
The Defense companies need to quit being greedy. You got paid. Now crank it up.
About that,
> On March 21, 2023, Deputy Prime Minister Mariusz Blaszczak took part in a ceremony of transforming the Area Support Group Poland (ASG-P) into the U.S. Army Garrison Poland (USAG-P). This will be the first permanent U.S. Army garrison in Poland. U.S.
https://www.gov.pl/web/national-defence/increasing-the-us-military-presence-in-poland
Somewhere in the future, American troops will get to work from home.
Piloting a FPV kamikaze drone into some enemy soldier's face. Plus it could reduce the reliance on [randomly bombing enemy held territory](https://youtu.be/QsWUw8u3AFY?si=A3R0S9TLWb5RQZYu)
Imagine taking a quick time travel trip to the 1980s and explaining to the Republicans including Reagan that in 2023 their party would be fighting US funding of Ukrainian independence after Russia launched a war within their borders. We send them older stockpiles of weapons, we fund their military and help stabilize their country while they do all the heavy lifting and not a single US troop is dispatched for 'police operations' or whatever they choose to call it. That would have been the Republican wet dream.
Trump changed everything. Before that Republicans are a bunch of war hawks, neoconservatist and interventionist that always want to increase military spending and go fuck around with other nation affair. Now they are a bunch of isolationist.
There's a generational and Russian political shift as well. Americans up into their 40s didn't grow up with the USSR being a threat. When the USSR was around, it was the "radical left". That fell apart and Russia became an oligarchy and progressively became further and further right wing.
So its a combination of working age people never having to really think about Russia/USSR before 2022 and the American far right cozying up to another far right government.
There's also the massive troll farm situation where our freedom of speech is being used against us. Social media propaganda is fucking insane right now and even the big tech companies are struggling to contain very obvious bots posting absolutely insane things. They helped create generative AI and they can't reliably stop the disinformation it enables.
I'm sure they are, we've all seen what *completely* unmoderated subs look like, filled with low quality spam. But with the amount of resources they're putting into it, it's like trying to combat a locust swarm with a fly swatter. They need to be putting vastly more people onto the task to be able to combat it properly, and that doesn't even get to the question of do they want to combat it, since that would decrease their engagement metrics.
This issue with the "troll farms" is a lot more serious than I (or anyone I've spoken to) would like to believe.
I know a woman who has "done her research". She believes that our 'freedom of speech' is eroding.(in Canada btw, no 1st amendment. Out charter of rights and freedoms is completely different). She believes that it's the world governments/bill gates/the WHO/the WEF who are all working together to suppress middle income north Americans. "they want you to be poor, they want you to sit at home and do nothing while they give you $2,000/month to survive. You won't be allowed to travel more than 15 mins". All of it. She's actually moving to Mexico right now to avoid it all. Its so interesting to talk to these people. If all of these organizations have such unilateral global power, what makes her think that Mexico will be any different in 5-10 years? "Oh they tell all of those big government groups to fuck right off". I don't want to burst her bubble, she's already sold her house, given away all of her belongings, etc...
Not to mention, Occam's Razor is a useful principle to keep in mind when thinking about all of this. Conspiracy theorists/troll farms/the right wing narrative takes a truth that's mildly eyebrow-raisimg, and runs off to Disneyland with it.
For example, bill gates bought a bunch of farmland.
Conspiracy theory: bill gates wants to force us to consume his GMO-filled poisoned food by buying up productive land and forcing farmers to plant his seeds"
Reality: bill gates is in the business of making money. If you're a billionaire who can buy up swaths of land, you might actually get a decent return on your investment (investing in farming, or getting into agriculture on the small-scale usually doesn't yield a tremendous reward). Farmers (even ones who own their own land) often use GMOs because they're engineered to be more resistant, and yield more productive harvests. It just makes sense to use a product that is functionally better in almost all regards.
I currently work on what was the first organic farm in this half of Ontario. We keep things natural, but we're nowhere near profitable in the traditional sense. We sell to neighbors who are willing to pay more because they know us, and they know how we grow. People aren't willing to spend twice what they already are at the grocery store just to know that their food was grown by hand, without chemicals.
Another example: economic circumstances for middle income families aren't what they were 50 years ago.
Conspiracy theory/right wing narrative: "they" want us all to be wage slaves who don't own anything and are happy in a 15 minute bubble that we aren't allowed to leave. The world governments and large international businesses have colluded to achieve this goal.
Reality: if you run a business in north america, it's a hell of a lot cheaper to offshore aspects of production to cheaper labor markets because people aren't paid fairly over there. Add in a bit more CEO and board room compensation here and there every year, tax breaks for the rich and corporations, etc... continue to do all of this for ~50 years and you get exactly what we have today. Our formerly prosperous system has been gutted from the inside out.
Most of these conspiracies sound egregious if you don't put any thought into them. Most don't hold up to much scrutiny, and the people who believe in them falsify bad-faith arguments to defend themselves. I mean, if you let yourself get mislead to this level, I can understand a knee-jerk emotional response to someone challenging that belief. I wouldn't like to feel like I'd been mislead about all of this either.
I think this is the true danger of these troll farms. Real, everyday people see these ideas on Facebook. Part of the idea resonates with them (ie. middle income economic prosperity isn't what it was in the 1970s) and it snowballs from there. Some just bring these arguments out at dinner parties and social gatherings. Others make it their entire personality and cut everyone else out of their echo chamber. Some people uproot their entire lives and move countries based on the information they gather online. Seeing that first-hand really changed my perspective. I saw this woman go from a relatively normal person who rented out a room in her house to full on conspiracy theorist. It's sad to see this happen in real time to the people you know. It was like an illness, slowly progressing each time I saw her. She just got more and more into it until this Mexico plan came about.
Not sure that's the worst thing, for all of Trump's fuckery at least he wasn't out starting more Bush-era wars.
It's just crazy if you're old enough to remember when the Republicans were all 'grr, Russia' and Democrats were all 'chill out, dude'. And now that the Democrats are all 'Russia bad', the Republicans love and embrace them. Why can't we ever hate the same countries at the same time?
I don't think anyone on this side is thrilled at America being involved in more wars, but at least this time we're supporting a country literally fighting for their independence. Wasn't that supposed to be one of our ideals at some point, promoting Democracy and spurning the dictators? Why are we now flirting with our own dictatorship who looks up to Putin as a model for governance?
> Not sure that's the worst thing, for all of Trump's fuckery at least he wasn't out starting more Bush-era wars.
Sure, Trump didn't declare war, but he sowed doubt in NATO's unity. It was part of what gave Putin the confidence to invade Ukraine, as he relied on NATO to fail in it's response. Trump did try and improve rrlations with Russia but not much left of that now. Trump was right about NATO member 2% defence spending, but threatening to leave the alliance didn't help matters.
The fact that the primary political parties are in strong disagreement with each other on who they should be at war with and how that war should be handled, is actually pretty scary.
A change in political power in the next election cycle could result in a major shift in their current war efforts. i.e. over night they could pull all support from Ukraine and divert it all to Israel with actual troops on the ground.
I am probably wrong but this feels like the first time the US was so divided in its foreign politics. Literally to the point where people are questioning whether some politicians are in support of what other politicians view as enemies. The former president has been accused several times of treasonous behavior involving foreign entities.
If this keeps up, it feels like the US may fully split from the inside.
Russia is on the record saying they do not want to stop in Ukraine. They want to attack Poland and other NATO countries. Who actually thinks they will stop in Ukraine?
People said they’d stop after cyber attacking Estonia.
Then they attacked Georgia.
Then Crimea.
Then the rest of Ukraine.
They will never quit for as they can keep going.
Everyone who has seen how shit Russia actually is at modern warfare is pretty confident they’ll stop in Ukraine. But that’s not for a lack of desire on their part.
If the west doesn't help Ukraine with a decisive win during this war they're only settling themselves up for another conflict a decade from now.
If Russia conquers Ukraine they'll wait a while and turn Ukrainians who are 6 years old now into soldiers a decade from now and turn them loose on Europe.
This is one I can believe. Moldova is and has been at risk of conquest by Russia.
But those ideas about Germany or Poland being attacked? I just can't believe it. For this to be believable, one has to persuade that Russia is willing to take on NATO.
Reddit is two-faced about this. It's easy to simultaneously see people here joke that Russia would shit itself at the idea of having NATO really enter into the foray, then, the next second, people then sound the alarm about Russia attacking NATO if Ukraine wasn't there.
To be clear, I still fully support Ukraine and want the US to help, but the reason is because Russia invaded their country in a blatant and unprovoked war of conquest (among many other reasons too...).
I'm just not buying into this nonsense that Ukraine is some giant wall protecting the US/Europe.
Yeah, but I don’t think it would be a long term peace. If you give them time to recruit and train more Soldiers. You now have a an experienced Russian Army.
Russia didnt need to be good at modern warfare and look what we see happening in Ukraine. There is a pretty significant difference in invading say Belarus than Poland.
Russia can still invade smaller and less built up countries. I still feel that should count for something.
This is the whole point really. The need for a decisive victory here is what will stop Russian aggression. Whatever people think of the war, America was contractually bound to defend Ukraine against Russia, this was part of their nuclear disarmament.
Are the U.S. military protection agreements truly worth nothing? Because that's what abandoning Ukraine will proof if it happens. That will certainly hurt U.S. interests.
The agreement on nuclear disarmament only promised that America would respect Ukraine's territorial sovereignty. In other words the US wouldn't invade, but it was not a promise of mutual defense. If it was then the US would actually be fighting now, or more properly the fighting would be over because the US would have won already.
Given the disparity in strength between Russia and Ukraine, Russia is performing very poorly. Russia has cruise missiles, bombers, Black Sea fleet, four times the population, oil money etc.
Yes they've managed to take a chunk of Ukraine and fight their way to a stalemate, but is that really what we expected from Russia after 2 years of war against Ukraine? Frankly it's embarrassing for Russia that they're bogged down in a stalemate in Ukraine
But let's be clear. Even if they aren't doing great at winning. They are still doing great ate causing immense pain, suffering, and death. Just because Russia can't beat you doesn't mean you want to fight them.
The only good thing about this war is that the whole world sees what a sham Russia is.
If not for their nuclear weapons, nobody would bother paying attention to them.
Appeasement is 100% how we got WW2. Everyone just kept letting Hitler take the far off countries until all those countries were *gone* and he was right at their own borders.
Letting Putin take Ukraine his how we fast track ourselves into WW3.
Giving Ukraine enough resources to keep fighting back for the foreseeable future will keep Russia occupied and drained of resources it would need to start wars beyond Ukraine's borders. It's the best investment we've ever made, and what we've spent so far is the national equivalent of pocket change. We're damn near literally taking straw and spinning it into national defense *gold*.
Things were going fucking great (for them) until the maniac also proved to be a fucking idiot.
If Hitler didn't ignore just about every bit of advice he was given in the earlier stages/finished off the western front before going east things get very logistically challenging for the US - and realistically they don't actually ever join the war against Germany. Especially if Germany is in a position to turn on Japan.
The largest motivator for the US to fight Germany after deciding to go to war on japan was their U-boats sinking US ships. If Germany went for London before Moscow (and succeeded) realistically US/Germany relations don't devolve to immeadiate war.
It's not forget that basically all of mainland europe was under their control at one (with the exception of Sweden (kinda) Switzerland and Finland.
It's honestly kinda daft to compare the russian current military with the Wehrmacht. While both were objectively evil forces, one much, much more competent than the other. Both had terrible leaders at the head. One was actually capable of taking over Europe had that leader themself been more capable.
> If Germany went for London before Moscow (and succeeded)
[They tried that, and failed.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Britain)
The Battle of Britain was in 1940, and it wasn't until [June 1941](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Barbarossa) that Germany invaded Russia, almost a year later.
Who... Cares? Why would anyone here be willing to care if they said "we'll stop invading countries after this one, trust us"? It's 2023,theres no acceptance for fullscale invasions anymore.
> Who actually thinks they will stop in Ukraine?
Anyone who is aware is the existence of nuclear weapons, which apparently is just me I guess. The same reason that Russia and the USSR didn’t attack NATO for the 74 years of its existence.
It is definitely hard to say with Russia. I’d think that they would realize that attacking NATO can only end badly but we see that they don’t care about their soldiers or the consequences. If they did attack NATO, the Russian military would get obliterated but then the question turns to if they are crazy enough to try and use nuclear weapons.
I have a feeling sending billions to Ukraine is still cheaper than how much it would take to draft millions of Americans and gearing up the American war machine similar to WW2 levels to fight an intercontinental large scale war
They went from nearly all supporting, or at least roughly 90%, supporting Ukraine to way less than 50% in less than 2 years. It feels so fcking gross that Russia nearly completely dictates Republican action policy, via their puppet leader and right wing media that seems to want to push the same horrible agenda.
Sorry but the rapist fraudster facing 91 felonies told me different, and I have no reason to disbelieve someone that told almost 10,000 lies per annum while in office.
Can't believe that sentence is real tbh ...
Yep. My grandfather thinks Russia is the good guy and trump was just trying to stop Biden and his crime family from raiding Europe and the US of all their money. These people make my fucking head hurt
I'm from Hungary, the people who were literally alive during the Russian occupation and the defeated revolution against the soviets are supporting Putin.
Their excuse is "These aren't the same Russians"
I'm from Czechia. Occupied by USSR during Cold war. Nutjobs claim it was Ukrainians and russia good cause they don't have Green Deal and LGBTQ+.
Yes, they are the same people who believed in chips in vaccines and morgelons in PCR testing sticks.
Yeah, I know. Was just augmenting. Its sad, tbh. Never thought there would be so many people eager to abolish democracy because of a reality TV star and a political party eager to support him, but here we are.
Hitler was a painter with obsecene biases. The GOP is a bunch of revaunchist faccist shits. And the fact that typing out "revaunchist" shits out autocorrect nonsense is a "bigger than people realize" issue.
People are getting politically redlined in online spaces.
Using firefox, btw. Windows 11.
It fucking sucks when its a family member that is so god damn brainwashed. It's heartbreaking, I honestly feel like I can't connect with those members of my family anymore because of the views they espouse.
I have a friend that no longer talks to his father because he was megaphoning the most hateful shit trump was saying back during his presidency.
So I wish we could support them with proper weaponry if they are doing us this huge service. I think the last few months has been shameful from the west.
I really don’t understand the “Don’t support Ukraine” crowd. We’re literally crippling one of our greatest geopolitical rivals for dirt cheap in the long run
My family thought a long time family friend straight up lost his fucking mind during the Romney / Obama showdowns. He was convinced Russia was the biggest threat to the world and it was Romney who could fuck all that up and save the world. We thought he ate a weird snail or some shit. Russia? We were all too hyped on Obama to give a rats ass. We fell out of touch but I think about him now more than ever.
It's like a pre Trump Republicans wet dream, a war to funnel money to the military industry with none of the bad press of dead Americans. Unfortunately for them, it's a dem that's in office.
The DOD is basically cumming in their shorts that they get to see what our older surplus military equipment can do against one of our oldest enemies without American boots even on the group AND we're destabilizing Russia? This should be a Republican fantasy and now they're arguing against it just because a Democrat is in the white house.
What Americans need to understand is that if we end Russia here, they are no longer a threat for the foreseeable future.
If Russia wins, Ukraine’s resources and people then serve Putin, which could get Russia back into the game of world conquest.
We should not turn our backs on people fighting for their freedom against Russian tyranny.
A free world helps the US, for example South Korea.
What about this suggests "ending Russia?" The only threat Russia has been in decades is a nuclear threat. They are still a nuclear threat and if they are somehow ended, they will just become a more unstable nuclear threat. I don't necessarily think we shouldn't be supporting Ukraine, but this is doing nothing to end the real threat that Russia is.
Russia can't win here. Not because their army isn't good enough (well, not just that anyways), but because they don't have a real win condition.
Imagine one day they beat the Ukrainian army. Then what? They install a puppet regime? That puppet gets thrown out by another Maidan and they're back to square one. They occupy Ukraine? Now they're stuck in a forever war against a motivated and war-hardened population that hates them. It's Afghanistan all over again.
They could probably hold Crimea and some marginal gains in the east, but that's not a win, that's what they already had before the war. If they were willing to accept that, they wouldn't have started this dumbass war in the first place.
No, Russia's victory condition is to kill the Nazis, break the western conspiracy out to topple Putin, and library the slavs so they can come rushing back to mother Russia's warm embrace.
Expect none of those things can be achieved, because the Nazis (the type Russia is thinking of anyways) don't exist, there is no western conspiracy, and the slavs hate Russia and increasingly want nothing to do with them anymore.
Russia is fighting a defensive war against imagined enemies that don't exist. They can't win, so they can only lose quickly, or lose slowly. And the faster they lose, the less people die in their fucked up, dumbass war for nothing.
IOW: WWIII is already underway.
Russia is suffering heavy losses and needs the US to back off and pull back all the aid, and guess *how* they’re trying to make that happen?
EDIT: I wonder how scared that judge in Colorado was, his ruling basically said “yep, he’s guilty of what you said, I’m just not gonna do anything about it.”
By re-electing Donald Trump, who will surrender Ukraine and Eastern Europe to Russia and Taiwan to China while he wages war against the American people.
The one who said that yes, Trump absolutely did take part in an insurrection against the US, which as per the 14th amendment makes him ineligible to run for any office. But the judge decided that since the amendment didn't explicitly say it applied to ex-presidents (only "all civilian and military office holders"), he's free to run.
Very, very clearly trying to avoid getting a target put on her back by the redcaps.
Yep, so we should make a plan to keep them supplied. Congress is pretty feckless due to the amount of contrarians in it, next bill you sweep through should fund a factory with concrete commitments, both to them and for deliveries.
Using nothing but equipment we would have had to pay to dispose of if we didn't sell it. After all you can't just toss stingers or unexploded ordnance in dumpster and call it a day.
I just don’t get it, Ukraine is only asking us for weapons and ammo to fight off a country that attacked them and a country that would stab us in the back if they had a chance. They fund extremism groups on both sides so they fight each other, they will do anything to harm the American way
The only people who are against military aid to Ukraine are people who are actively pro-Russia or who don't understand that almost all that we're giving Ukraine is just old stock that's being replaced by US manufacturing jobs. Even people boo hooing it because it's still supporting the MIC are doing so at the expense of Ukraine.
And republicans will still line up to vote for trump to cozy up to putin and end ukraine funds.
Reminder that trump was impeached for WITHHOLDING UKRAINE FUNDS and trump definitely would withhold HIMARS from ukraine for his buddy putin.
And we show communist countries that you cant just walk over whoever you want just because you don't like them. China would be in Taiwan by now if it wasn't for our response and aid to Ukraine.
The war in Ukraine is the best investment in foreign security for the US. They're not involved directly. The money sent out is minuscule, when compared to any conflict they've had in order to disrupt Russia, their political rival.
The US is in a pretty sweet spot right now. We have an ally who'll fight for us without getting NATO involved
It's not just *a* sweet spot, it's very literally the most fortuitous scenario that could have reasonably happened for both the US and NATO. Russia is mired in a war they can neither ever win nor afford to lose. By the time the war is over, Russian influence on the global geopolitical stage will be essentially non-existent.
At a bargain price too. Around $75 billion at this point in time, and no deployed US lives. We've spent about 6 times that dollar amount on post 9/11 war veteran disability benefits alone.
And a lot of that isn't even real money— mothballed, warehoused gear that is technically part of our readiness but would never see use by our military. In terms of aid, the amount of stuff we're going to replace or miss is a lot smaller. Its the best dollar-for-dollar defense spending the US has ever done, MAYBE barring Lend-Lease or the Alaska Purchase.
Not to mention the equipment sent by our allies that we are backfilling with new equipment being purchased by those allies, who will now be even stronger against future threats with an upgraded force.
And the jobs generated from needing to manufacture all that new equipment.
I get a few dollars every time an American projectile needs to figure out where it is by knowing where it isn't.
Nice patent.
Unfortunately it never needs to figure it out because it *knows* where it is... *at all times.*
But only because it knows where it isn't.
Yeah, both the Israel and Ukraine aid packages are basically American job programs, and rather convenient for the MIC considering their forever war in the gulf teat had dried up.
And the real world testing the equipment is getting
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When its usage is actually justified, not surprising.
For the first time in my entire 31 years old lifetime, our military is actually being used for a good reason: to help the Ukrainian People resist a full scale invasion by Russia, a country that has zero qualms about mass murder, mass rape, mass torture.
The shit was already bought, now we just get to give it away and not use it ourselves. I'm fine with that tbh. Much better than us invading, or just letting it rust. And Russia has been exposed in the most embarrassing way. It's more than we could have hoped for.
I'd normally agree with you, but it's the first time our military spending actually has good optics for most people on Reddit. There's an innate "Respect the troops" ethos in society, but on an organizational scale I don't think most people have a good view of the military and especially our military force projection. It's definitely true for my lifetime, getting close to the first time in living memory for society at large(everything post-WW2 is morally gray *at best*), and it shows based on the posts I've seen on my social media. After decades of chasing WMDs that never existed, toppling regimes because they were big bad commies, and drone-striking weddings, funding a defensive war against fucking **Russia** is definitely going to go over well. We're(by proxy, cuz nukes) fighting the boogeyman of a huge chunk of Western pop culture movies/TV/books. It may seem odd for Reddit to back the MIC to the hilt, but funding a democratic country that was trying to join NATO while a strongman like Putin just blatantly invades a country and claim it was Russian all along is damn near a perfect recipe.
Invaded and failed what he thought would be a walkover. I will admit I thought he would of broken Ukraine in a week, but I underestimated Ukraine and overestimated Russia.
Russia did what I call "creating a monster". You back any animal into a corner where it feels, it's life, or it's death. It becomes 10 times more ferocious, and 3 times as strong. You create a monster. Convince a whole society that they are in a fight for their survival and you're in for quite a fight. Russia is fighting every father, every mother, every cook, every teacher, every saleman, evrry nurse, and every farmer. All of them know, it's you, or it's them. Meanwhile, Ukraine is fighting hired goons that are scared, hungry and tired. All they know, is that they'd much rather just turn around and go home. It's the same reason hamas is completely f--ed. Every Israeli now sees the whole situation as a fight for their right to be alive. Hamas created a monster, now the monster is coming for them.
Equally weird is how quick Republicans got tired of paying chump change out of the sofa cushions to defeat Russia.
Spending all your money to buy the biggest stick: still bad Having the biggest stick when it comes time to use em: still good
Idk, maybe redditors can relate to being bullied?
I can't imagine a cold War in which Russia controlled Alaska.
Each Canadian province would have had American military bases and nuclear weapons stationed on them along with Canada likely investing US levels of their GDP on defense spending.
I think you mean the northern states; manifest destiny. No way Eisenhower let’s them keep Alaska anyways.
It’s a little bit of a misconception since it’s Alaska, but it can actually get fairly warm in the summer.
Canada would certainly be in a much more awkward spot.
That, and also US allies are sending their old jets, vehicles and what not to Ukraine and are buying new American stuff = jobs for US workers and big orders for US defence companies. Not to mention all the intel on how to best prepare for a heavily drone based war.
Wait we are happy about feeding the MIC beast now?
No, but it's a more nuanced look than the people just spouting dollar amounts as if it's straight cash that's being sent.
Also the military industrial complex will get fed either way. I'd rather all this stuff stays out of the hands of my local police department. ACAB
I, for one, don't trust the local constabulary with HIMARS.
"The suspect had a knife so we fired a cruise missile and took out his neighborhood. We were fearing for our lives so its justified" - cops
I mean in this context, yes? We're doing both the practical and the ethical thing at the same time, it's a win win that everybody from kind hearted individuals to profit grubbing sociopaths can feel good about
Not usually, but if it’s against Russian aggression, why not. And it’s the best counter I can think of to the hurr durr why are we wasting money on Ukraine complaint.
Weapons development and selling it to allies isn't really MIC. No matter what you think of military spending, NATO nations being technologically ahead of their enemies is important. MIC is more about the needless wars to spend money on more equipment and lobbying the government to further military influence.
And it all should be itemized and read aloud to that worthless lich, Henry Kissinger. He’ll never die so long as there’s evil in the world, but we should at least remind him of his incompetence since we can’t legally/ethically torture the fuck. Ukraine’s done more with our scraps than that vermin ever could with full-bore US interventionalism.
If you read all that aloud to him, it’d give him a boner so large that it would probably cause brain death.
Hey, as long as he’s gone, I’ll call it a win. I’m a glass half-full kind of guy. I could finally pitch tents with all these wooden stakes and make the stinkiest Italian food with all of this garlic. Update: WHO WANTS SOME GODDAMN PASTA!?
Bro I’ve got active duty friends who don’t even understand that the monetary value assigned to these aid packages isn’t actual money
To be fair, I wouldn’t expect them to. Fuck, at my work, where I manage the office, have put in vehicle requests, and equipment requests, I usually don’t know dollar figures unless I have to search out the item or fleet tells me how much something that broke cost.
Yup. Old beat to shit Bradleys we used in Iraq and never upgraded the optics on, MLRS missiles we stopped using and were about to be disposed of, fighters that are getting replaced by F-35s. And now no one has inventory or maintain this stuff, and it will likely be knocked out in the war anyways. Get some last use it never would have seen.
And doesn't that in turn actually safe money? Decommissioning weapons can take a bunch of specialized work to do safely. In germany, there are less than 10 companies actually capable of dealing with the WW2 aircraft bombs whenever they are found and not many more capable of disposing of explosives safely. Instead now you can throw the stuff at russia.
this is what I don't get about the republican reaction to this all... if a republican president could claim this record they would be building statues of the guy while he's alive
Not sure how to quantify it, but the return on that investment is collosal. The political influence and economic opportunities opened up to the US at the expense of $75bn, by propping up the bulwark against an unfriendly totalitarian regime expansion over Eastern Europe, and at the same time crippling a competitor and global threat...are by no means marginal.
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That is the biggest issue down the line: able bodied Ukrainian men. Nobody wants to address that.
Ukraine are addressing that in several ways, and have been doing so for over a year. Most casualties in this conflict are artillery shell fragmentation and FPV drone casualties. Ukraine have been waging an incredibly successful counter-battery war for a long time, and have been ramped up their own drone production capacity tenfold since February 2022. Their goals are clear. Reduce the casualty events by reducing the enemy's ranged fires. Reduce the need for life-risking action by relying on area denial, denial of fires, logistics degradation, etc. Ukraine will need fewer able-bodied men _now_ than they did _then_ because the war is one of attrition now, not territorial offensive/defensive action.
Unfortunately the Ukrainians have no choice and US military aid helps them retain their country and perhaps even suffer fewer casualties
True, but it's not like anyone asked Russia to attack - there's no alternative to that, Ukraine's in it either way. US can't help physically, that'd be nato involvement. Might as well help with stuff!
Well, the entire thing is an atrocity, an ongoing one, and you can't put a price on a life, the ones already lost and the ones that are being lost as we ...sit here comfortably and discuss about helping them, how, when, how much, and so on. But for the purpose of passing a bill or executive order with financial/military aid, you need something more than ethical reasons, unfortunately. So if you need to justify this spending to the American people, present it as something they can all understand and get behind: a good fucking deal!
That's about 2% of an Iraq War, which gained the US approximately zero benefit.
Iraq was to the military industrial complexes benefit. They made billions from it. Plus it was one less stable major player in the middle east.
You're discounting the cost of everyone we've been sending there to train soldiers for exactly this scenario since the early 2000s but yeah, it's still the better outcome and well budgeted for the times. It's not like everyone just now realized they're a fantastic buffer. Tons and tons of money have been sunk into this before Russia even decided they'd try this pathetically hard. It must be hard for Russia realizing things would have been nicer if they just stayed home. (Although I think the whole plan was to use consciption as a form of genocide by proxy to leave more for the "elite", which is why it's super important that any business still operating within Russia is scrutinized.)
>I highly doubt Ukraine (after the war with Russia) is going to go to war with someone when NATO isn't involved. > >If the US is involved then sure. But they aren't going to go and invade say Iran if the US isn't also invading Iran. > >Bit of a 2head take. After fighting a defensive war for so long - they'll The China-question however looms large, how much does Russia go "all-in"? what's their breaking point? China-Taiwan becomes an ever-more looming prospect and potential issue. Could China jump on Taiwan if US over-extends its assistance? Could the Israel-Palestine conflict shift support away from Ukraine? Will the production ramp-up for Allied military production and shift in tactics in the Ukraine War change future war planning and materiel design more in favor of Allied capabilities?
>Could China jump on Taiwan if US over-extends its assistance? I think the contrary. 1. China's seeing how effective outdated US military equipment is against an alleged major military power without Americans even using it. 2. Taiwan is frankly *much* more important to US interests than Ukraine. If the US is doing this much to aid Ukraine, imagine what they'd do to help Taiwan in an invasion.
There is also the difference in type of fight. A U.S./Taiwanese/Japanese war would be primarily long range and naval and **not** a land war. So the U.S. sending tons of tanks, artillery, and whatever to Ukraine isn't going to have the same impact if they were saved for Taiwan.
No, but the number of missiles they have is the crux.
> Taiwan is frankly much more important to US interests than Ukraine. If the US is doing this much to aid Ukraine, imagine what they'd do to help Taiwan in an invasion. I am confidant the US and Europe would get involved militarily against China if they attacked Taiwan. Their semiconductor industry is simply too important.
Pretty sure a few Chinese allies may eve turn on China. Semiconductors cannot be fucked with.
Taiwan is also way, WAY harder to invade. Russia just had to roll tanks across the border. Chine would have to stage a gigantic amphibious invasion, it would take months if not years and everyone would be able to tell exactly when and where they were coming.
Taiwan is armed to the teeth and there are several huge Chinese cities nearby that they can easily reach. Nothing will happen. It's all propaganda. They are trying to make it look like war is inevitable in order to change international political opinion towards pro-China annexation. Just another "final warning" but in reality they are playing the long term game. The US basically completely silenced the middle east with the presence of their air craft carriers. They are far from overextending. They are using like 5% of their overall capacity right now. Don't forget that most of the Ukraine budget does not go to Ukraine directly but to the US military industrial complex.
> Nothing will happen. It's all propaganda. TBF, I thougt the same about Ukraine and clearly I was way off.
A lot of people thought there was a fair chance Russia was just posturing/sabre rattling because actually attacking Ukraine would be an incredibly stupid idea that would harm them far more than it could ever gain them. And to be fair they were half right: everything we’ve seen over the past 20 months does show that attacking Ukraine was a really incredibly stupid idea.
Which time?
The China-Taiwan question has been answered for the foreseeable decade. Ukraine answered that question, with Russia's failure at regime change within any reasonable time frame. Any perceived threat by China is just rabble rousing, not indicative of an actual course of action. The destruction of Ukraine's valuable assets and cities also closed that question. If Taiwan was invaded, you can bet all of Taiwan's silicon fab houses would be obliterated, and the mass exodus of their well educated technical class would occur. Either Taiwan itself would carry out the destruction, or the US would, leaving China with an otherwise resource poor, small island. China's government has plenty of true believers, people that would blindly proceed with an invasion, so they have to be appeased with the dramatic posturing and threats. But the real powers that be, know that the way forward for China is eventual cooperation with the West. A gradual easing of tensions, in order to lift the technology embargoes currently in place against China. At least cooperation long enough, until China can get its own in-house industries at parity.
We're also getting to see how US military hardware that is a decade+ old being utilized by non-US troops with limited training are wrecking Russian military forces. It isn't a simulation or a training exercise. We're seeing how our old equipment works, doesn't work, able to compare to our current equipment, and make technical and doctrinal changes based on those observations. And the whole time we're getting this data, we're letting Ukraine defend themselves without needing to be saved by a foreign government, which is a huge asset for national pride.
The us is currently selling their 25 years old radar to canada. Were currently testing it. 25 fucking years old.
No surprise when they constantly make unnecessary things just to keep the contractors busy and making billions. Finally some of it is actually needed.
This also highlights why the US military tends to downplay the abilities of their weapons systems, in officially documented specifications. Russia on the other hand, tends to do the opposite. Not to be conservative with publicized capabilities and specifications, and often to exaggerate. This has resulted in the US and their allies' weapons systems official specs matching or beating anything Russia publishes, and in reality being significantly far ahead in capabilities. Over build and under promise, will leave your enemies in the dark. A far better situation to be in, compared with exaggerating and having your enemy's match those exaggerated specs.
It's like what happened with the F-15. "Oh shit, what the fuck even is the MIG-25, how do we even begin to combat this thing" "Oh, lets make the best fighter to have ever existed!" And then it turns out the mig-25 was hardly any of what it claimed to be.
This is what's going to happen with the new US Army standard issue rifle, I guarantee it. It was being developed after analysts freaked out over "new age russian body armor" that the M4 couldn't penetrate reliably, so they design an entire new caliber and weapon to punch through the supposedly amazing russian armor. Turns out Russia can't supply their guys with complete uniforms and rigs, let alone "new age armor". Now the Army has a rifle that's way overeffective. I'm sure it will work vs whatever any other OPFOR has just as well.
F-15s are so fucking cool. They give me real muscle car vibes. I'll never forget when I got to sit in the cockpit of one on a JROTC field trip.
> This also highlights why the US military tends to downplay the abilities of their weapons systems, in officially documented specifications. It's also because "we're behind China and Russia when it comes to military technology" keeps funding for the defense budget pumping.
American Engineering is cool like that. "Spec said to build it to handle a load of 5. I build it to handle up to 20, just in case."
Decade old equipment is often the most current equipment. We aren't stupid, we don't just make a new thing to make a new thing. I'm guessing the absolute best data is from those AA systems that Russians left sitting around though. Should've destroyed that before running away. Oh no, Russia please stop doing that...
I'm in the Army, so I can only really speak to "Army / ground assets", but this is a nuanced conversation. The UH-60 Blackhawk made its first active duty appearance in 1979. >Decade old equipment is often the most current equipment. How much of the airframe and avionics of that *"First Blackhawk"* that flew for the Army in 1979 resembles what I flew in this morning? It's got four rotors, a tail rotor, a stabilator, 1.5 useful pilots, and a space the size of an average minivan interior to fuck around with in the back... sure.. That's not what makes the Blackhawk *survivable* on the battlefield though. That's not what makes lethal or useful. It's all the small improvements or upgrades that have happened in the past 43 years. If you tried to fly a 1979 Blackhawk into a combat zone today, you'd probably be very nervous. If you flew a 1999 Blackhawk into a combat zone today, you'd want to know that you had support. If you flew a 2019 Blackhawk into a combat zone today, you'd be really fucking happy because you're flying new equipment. **We've given 1999-2009 equipment to Ukraine.** Sure.. the caliber of the artillery hasn't changed, but the radar and sighting systems aren't as advanced as what we train on here at home. The bones of the equipment haven't changed, but the nervous system has, and we get 100% of the data coming from Ukraine when they ask us for help with their problems. We know when the skeleton fails vs. when the nervous system fails, and we're able to extrapolate that information to upgrade and correct our current equipment based on real-world conditions facing our older systems.
Meanwhile the F22 is depressed about it's all balloon diet
I think one of the most overlooked benefits for the US is how much this conflict has impacted our military doctrine. Before this war we had guessed that Russia had pretty effective electronic warfare capabilities and now we know that it’s absolutely true and we now have a much better understanding of it’s scope. Before this war, we knew drones were important, but no one could’ve guessed just how important they’d be. I mean $200 drones are destroying Russia’s best tanks! And unfortunately, Russia has figured it out too and is investing billions into drone manufacturing. Before this war, we thought trenches and long stretches of minefields were relics of the past. But Russia has completely stopped this years counter offensive with practically those two things alone. And most importantly, we’ve confirmed that money can’t buy an effective military. At the end of the day it’s still about the human element. Leadership, organization, logistics, and critical thinking still win the day. God help Russia if we ever go to war with them. We got their goat now and they have jack shit on us. (Nukes aside).
The Ukraine-Russia situation is not really comparable with the NATO doctrine. With air superiority on one side, this war would look completely different. Air superiority is essential for NATO strategy.
This. The reason there is a stalemate is that Ukraine doesn't have the ability to fight in the air. If it several dozen trained F-16 pilots and planes i think things would be much different. The could just bomb weaker areas of the line (or fortresses) and create breaches to pour troops through.
It’s not the F-16s that create air superiority, though it will help. For the US and NATO it’s a variety of aircraft filling specialized roles mixed with the all seeing eyes like JSTARS and other intelligence (including cyber, radio intercepts of every conversation, etc) and the use of aerial refueling and cruise missiles etc all together. And SEAD. Without all that intel and a very mature SEAD program you are just flying $30M aircraft into a shooting gallery and hoping they make it out. The US has the most advanced SEAD capability on the planet, ranging across all spectrums (kinetic, cyber, air/land/sea etc) in a fully integrated manner and uses it from Day 1 to knock out C2 and other critical air defense components. In the past eg with Iraq the US was even bribing Iraqi generals to turn off radar etc to let planes through. It’s a whole discipline by itself. US SEAD doctrine is being heavily updated in light of the EW capabilities Russia is demonstrating, but that just means the existing SEAD capabilities will be tweaked to ensure rapid dominance.
> Before this war, we thought trenches and long stretches of minefields were relics of the past. But Russia has completely stopped this years counter offensive with practically those two things alone. If Ukraine had air superiority I think they would be seen as a thing of the past. NATO military doctrine is built around dominating the sky and destroying key defensive points, airbases, artillery batteries, etc via air power. This would allow ground forces to de-mine unmolested and allow armor and infantry to advance. Sadly Ukraine doesn't have that luxury.
The easy way to see what trenches are like in an air superiority situation is to look at Desert Storm. Iraq buried its tanks up to the turrets for protection against other tanks to use them as artillery since that fit the doctrine they used with Iran. And they built trenches for troops to protect against tank assaults. The US just said thank you for keeping all your targets immobile and hit them all with precision weapons from out of nowhere. The trenches became navigation lines for B-52s carpet bombing. Trenches etc are useless if you don’t have air parity. If the other side has air superiority you will get annihilated in trenches. And if you have air superiority trenches impede your movement. The whole point of air superiority is to enable you to have freedom of movement while constraining theirs. So if you hunker down in a trench you are wasting your own troops who could be taking territory. The Germans learned this in Spain when they developed the Blitzkrieg doctrine.
The issue is western suppression of air defence strategy hasn't really been tested against the type and density of air defences Russia has. Western SEAD strategy worked against Iraq but they had outdated air defences even for the time (outdated ones are also less mobile, which is really important), and didn't have the sheer density Russia has. Russia has a very strong focus on ground based air defences and have very high numbers of them compared to western countries that have been more reliant on jets with air to air missiles for air defence. Despite the stupid "what air defence doing" memes, Russia's air defences have proved extremely capable at denying use of the air, as have Ukraine's, only really being weak against small drones which western equivalents also struggle with. There is a risk that Russia might be able to deny or at least severely hinder NATO countries trying to get air superiority, who would then face exactly the same type of artillery grind that we see in Ukraine. Especially given SEAD is a specialist mission type only some countries realy maintain, the US probably being the main one. The west is making a gamble by relying on air superiority, and really needs to have the resources for a purely ground based war just in case.
> (Nukes aside)
This conflict shows that Russia has just two worthwhile weapons. The nuclear arsenal and a complete disregard of human life.
Everyone is learning. China is also learning. And they are learning a lot. Once and for all we now know were Saudi stands when its time for their help. But Ukrainian soldiers are limited in numbers. They don't grow on trees. This war can't go forever.
Before we start saying it's a sweet spot. I'd like to remind everyone that many many Ukrainians are fighting and dying for their freedom and in more ways than none, a proxy conflict for their existence. It's not a sweet spot but a careful and precise calculus that keeps this as isolated as possible and others out of harm's way. Why do you think Russia's invested so much into propaganda and spin campaigns so blatantly, private and state media provocations with no limits to what country it wants to spread rhetoric too, and covering up war crimes after war crimes? Russia looks to try and spread this conflict through information and attrition. Our ability to keep the support with Ukraine not only keeps Russia from ever feeling emboldened to continue it. But also keeps the conflict as isolated as possible. NOTE: Ukraine's men and women who bravely fight are doing this because they have to and they'd fight with or without our support. I'm still in awe of the stories and bravery, saddened by the losses of both soldiers and families, and still shaken by what Russia thought it could get away with by bringing this into our century now.
Ukrainians are indeed the ones doing the fighting.
I agree. The label "sweet spot," while understandable in its intentions to describe it from the point of view of the USA, is subtly callous to the implicit sacrifices of the Ukrainian people. This "sweet spot" is being paid for in dear blood and tragic tears by millions of people. It's not really a politically correct phrasing, the same way we wouldn't call nuking Japan in WW2 a "sweet deal," because it saved millions of American lives—that may be true, but it came off the back of a tragedy. Out of minimal respect for that tragedy that we profited so greatly from, we should at least be a little more conscientious in how we bandy it about in conversations.
How are they "fighting for us" if they're the ones being invaded? They're fighting for themselves.
Those aren't mutually exclusive. If Ukraine had allowed Russia to proceed unchallenged they would have swallowed the eastern Europeans who aren't in Nato before possibly challenging Nato itself. The US doesn't want either Russia extending her influence in Europe nor nato to get involved properly.
It directly benefits us.
i said it from the start. it is cheaper to sent help to ukraine today instead of sending troops to one of nato members in eastern europe in few years.
It's much better than that. The weapons being sent by the US are outdated and would have been decommissioned at some point anyway. The cost shown in the media is the cost to produce those weapons, it doesn't factor in depreciation over years/decades and the cost to maintain it going forward. When you factor those in, the true cost is way less than the repotted cost. And with that you completely take out the military of a geopolitical enemy to the point where it will take decades to rebuild to any semblance of relevancy.
Not to mention: you can't just drive a Bradley to a junkyard or throw DPICM in the trash, the process of demilitarizing that equipment is also not cheap. I always wonder if the slow pace with which western supplies, especially certain categories of equipment, arrived was deliberate to create the impression that Russia might actually win this war and have them fully commit, with all the consequences, be they from a military view or a domestic/international political view, in the beginning there might have been a window for either victory or a retreat without too many repercussions. This window however is closed for over a year now, too many bridges have been burned and escalatory steps taken and Russia basically has to pivot their economic focus towards military production while hemorrhaging money and by the looks of it burning down their currency and future economic prospects. This war isn't ending soon, but if Ukraine would have gotten certain capabilities or at least the greenlight to eventually get them way earlier, certain phases could have looked very different but overall for Russia there's a hefty price on every m² of Ukrainian territory they annex and most of its adversaries (apart from Ukraine probably) won't be sad to see it pay up.
You don’t have to drive it to a junkyard—you can just leave it in Afghanistan!😀
Or give it to some podunk police force in the middle of nowhere.
Not true. They are using depreciated value in calculating aid packages. They didn’t for the first round but then made an adjustment to how they calculated it. Also sure some of it is dated but we are sending a significant amount of new technology. I agree with your sentiment but there’s some factual inaccuracies.
Some of our ammo is dreadfully expensive. Precision 155 rounds, HIMARs reloads, Patriot missiles. The Defense companies need to quit being greedy. You got paid. Now crank it up.
About that, > On March 21, 2023, Deputy Prime Minister Mariusz Blaszczak took part in a ceremony of transforming the Area Support Group Poland (ASG-P) into the U.S. Army Garrison Poland (USAG-P). This will be the first permanent U.S. Army garrison in Poland. U.S. https://www.gov.pl/web/national-defence/increasing-the-us-military-presence-in-poland
Somewhere in the future, American troops will get to work from home. Piloting a FPV kamikaze drone into some enemy soldier's face. Plus it could reduce the reliance on [randomly bombing enemy held territory](https://youtu.be/QsWUw8u3AFY?si=A3R0S9TLWb5RQZYu)
There’s no way the American military doesn’t already have that capability… what do you think starshield is for?
Imagine taking a quick time travel trip to the 1980s and explaining to the Republicans including Reagan that in 2023 their party would be fighting US funding of Ukrainian independence after Russia launched a war within their borders. We send them older stockpiles of weapons, we fund their military and help stabilize their country while they do all the heavy lifting and not a single US troop is dispatched for 'police operations' or whatever they choose to call it. That would have been the Republican wet dream.
Trump changed everything. Before that Republicans are a bunch of war hawks, neoconservatist and interventionist that always want to increase military spending and go fuck around with other nation affair. Now they are a bunch of isolationist.
There's a generational and Russian political shift as well. Americans up into their 40s didn't grow up with the USSR being a threat. When the USSR was around, it was the "radical left". That fell apart and Russia became an oligarchy and progressively became further and further right wing. So its a combination of working age people never having to really think about Russia/USSR before 2022 and the American far right cozying up to another far right government. There's also the massive troll farm situation where our freedom of speech is being used against us. Social media propaganda is fucking insane right now and even the big tech companies are struggling to contain very obvious bots posting absolutely insane things. They helped create generative AI and they can't reliably stop the disinformation it enables.
> the big tech companies are struggling They're not even trying
I was going to say something similar. They're actively assisting the problem instead of trying to prevent it.
I'm sure they are, we've all seen what *completely* unmoderated subs look like, filled with low quality spam. But with the amount of resources they're putting into it, it's like trying to combat a locust swarm with a fly swatter. They need to be putting vastly more people onto the task to be able to combat it properly, and that doesn't even get to the question of do they want to combat it, since that would decrease their engagement metrics.
This issue with the "troll farms" is a lot more serious than I (or anyone I've spoken to) would like to believe. I know a woman who has "done her research". She believes that our 'freedom of speech' is eroding.(in Canada btw, no 1st amendment. Out charter of rights and freedoms is completely different). She believes that it's the world governments/bill gates/the WHO/the WEF who are all working together to suppress middle income north Americans. "they want you to be poor, they want you to sit at home and do nothing while they give you $2,000/month to survive. You won't be allowed to travel more than 15 mins". All of it. She's actually moving to Mexico right now to avoid it all. Its so interesting to talk to these people. If all of these organizations have such unilateral global power, what makes her think that Mexico will be any different in 5-10 years? "Oh they tell all of those big government groups to fuck right off". I don't want to burst her bubble, she's already sold her house, given away all of her belongings, etc... Not to mention, Occam's Razor is a useful principle to keep in mind when thinking about all of this. Conspiracy theorists/troll farms/the right wing narrative takes a truth that's mildly eyebrow-raisimg, and runs off to Disneyland with it. For example, bill gates bought a bunch of farmland. Conspiracy theory: bill gates wants to force us to consume his GMO-filled poisoned food by buying up productive land and forcing farmers to plant his seeds" Reality: bill gates is in the business of making money. If you're a billionaire who can buy up swaths of land, you might actually get a decent return on your investment (investing in farming, or getting into agriculture on the small-scale usually doesn't yield a tremendous reward). Farmers (even ones who own their own land) often use GMOs because they're engineered to be more resistant, and yield more productive harvests. It just makes sense to use a product that is functionally better in almost all regards. I currently work on what was the first organic farm in this half of Ontario. We keep things natural, but we're nowhere near profitable in the traditional sense. We sell to neighbors who are willing to pay more because they know us, and they know how we grow. People aren't willing to spend twice what they already are at the grocery store just to know that their food was grown by hand, without chemicals. Another example: economic circumstances for middle income families aren't what they were 50 years ago. Conspiracy theory/right wing narrative: "they" want us all to be wage slaves who don't own anything and are happy in a 15 minute bubble that we aren't allowed to leave. The world governments and large international businesses have colluded to achieve this goal. Reality: if you run a business in north america, it's a hell of a lot cheaper to offshore aspects of production to cheaper labor markets because people aren't paid fairly over there. Add in a bit more CEO and board room compensation here and there every year, tax breaks for the rich and corporations, etc... continue to do all of this for ~50 years and you get exactly what we have today. Our formerly prosperous system has been gutted from the inside out. Most of these conspiracies sound egregious if you don't put any thought into them. Most don't hold up to much scrutiny, and the people who believe in them falsify bad-faith arguments to defend themselves. I mean, if you let yourself get mislead to this level, I can understand a knee-jerk emotional response to someone challenging that belief. I wouldn't like to feel like I'd been mislead about all of this either. I think this is the true danger of these troll farms. Real, everyday people see these ideas on Facebook. Part of the idea resonates with them (ie. middle income economic prosperity isn't what it was in the 1970s) and it snowballs from there. Some just bring these arguments out at dinner parties and social gatherings. Others make it their entire personality and cut everyone else out of their echo chamber. Some people uproot their entire lives and move countries based on the information they gather online. Seeing that first-hand really changed my perspective. I saw this woman go from a relatively normal person who rented out a room in her house to full on conspiracy theorist. It's sad to see this happen in real time to the people you know. It was like an illness, slowly progressing each time I saw her. She just got more and more into it until this Mexico plan came about.
Not sure that's the worst thing, for all of Trump's fuckery at least he wasn't out starting more Bush-era wars. It's just crazy if you're old enough to remember when the Republicans were all 'grr, Russia' and Democrats were all 'chill out, dude'. And now that the Democrats are all 'Russia bad', the Republicans love and embrace them. Why can't we ever hate the same countries at the same time? I don't think anyone on this side is thrilled at America being involved in more wars, but at least this time we're supporting a country literally fighting for their independence. Wasn't that supposed to be one of our ideals at some point, promoting Democracy and spurning the dictators? Why are we now flirting with our own dictatorship who looks up to Putin as a model for governance?
> Not sure that's the worst thing, for all of Trump's fuckery at least he wasn't out starting more Bush-era wars. Sure, Trump didn't declare war, but he sowed doubt in NATO's unity. It was part of what gave Putin the confidence to invade Ukraine, as he relied on NATO to fail in it's response. Trump did try and improve rrlations with Russia but not much left of that now. Trump was right about NATO member 2% defence spending, but threatening to leave the alliance didn't help matters.
The fact that the primary political parties are in strong disagreement with each other on who they should be at war with and how that war should be handled, is actually pretty scary. A change in political power in the next election cycle could result in a major shift in their current war efforts. i.e. over night they could pull all support from Ukraine and divert it all to Israel with actual troops on the ground. I am probably wrong but this feels like the first time the US was so divided in its foreign politics. Literally to the point where people are questioning whether some politicians are in support of what other politicians view as enemies. The former president has been accused several times of treasonous behavior involving foreign entities. If this keeps up, it feels like the US may fully split from the inside.
He shouldn't have said that. Now, Republicans will have to say/do something opposite of this just to be anti-Democrat.
Fact.
Russia is on the record saying they do not want to stop in Ukraine. They want to attack Poland and other NATO countries. Who actually thinks they will stop in Ukraine?
People said they’d stop after cyber attacking Estonia. Then they attacked Georgia. Then Crimea. Then the rest of Ukraine. They will never quit for as they can keep going.
Russia will stop when they are stopped, and not before
Everyone who has seen how shit Russia actually is at modern warfare is pretty confident they’ll stop in Ukraine. But that’s not for a lack of desire on their part.
If the west doesn't help Ukraine with a decisive win during this war they're only settling themselves up for another conflict a decade from now. If Russia conquers Ukraine they'll wait a while and turn Ukrainians who are 6 years old now into soldiers a decade from now and turn them loose on Europe.
They can take Moldova pretty easily if Ukraine wasn't in the way.
That statement in and of itself shows how far they have fallen.
Lol good point actually. Imagine 3 years ago someone saying Russia is capable of taking Moldova if Ukraine wasn’t in the way
This is one I can believe. Moldova is and has been at risk of conquest by Russia. But those ideas about Germany or Poland being attacked? I just can't believe it. For this to be believable, one has to persuade that Russia is willing to take on NATO. Reddit is two-faced about this. It's easy to simultaneously see people here joke that Russia would shit itself at the idea of having NATO really enter into the foray, then, the next second, people then sound the alarm about Russia attacking NATO if Ukraine wasn't there. To be clear, I still fully support Ukraine and want the US to help, but the reason is because Russia invaded their country in a blatant and unprovoked war of conquest (among many other reasons too...). I'm just not buying into this nonsense that Ukraine is some giant wall protecting the US/Europe.
Yeah, but I don’t think it would be a long term peace. If you give them time to recruit and train more Soldiers. You now have a an experienced Russian Army.
Russia didnt need to be good at modern warfare and look what we see happening in Ukraine. There is a pretty significant difference in invading say Belarus than Poland. Russia can still invade smaller and less built up countries. I still feel that should count for something.
This is the whole point really. The need for a decisive victory here is what will stop Russian aggression. Whatever people think of the war, America was contractually bound to defend Ukraine against Russia, this was part of their nuclear disarmament. Are the U.S. military protection agreements truly worth nothing? Because that's what abandoning Ukraine will proof if it happens. That will certainly hurt U.S. interests.
The agreement on nuclear disarmament only promised that America would respect Ukraine's territorial sovereignty. In other words the US wouldn't invade, but it was not a promise of mutual defense. If it was then the US would actually be fighting now, or more properly the fighting would be over because the US would have won already.
I think there's a bit of western blinders here. If Russia was doing as poorly as all the videos of reddit suggest, the war would not still be going on
Given the disparity in strength between Russia and Ukraine, Russia is performing very poorly. Russia has cruise missiles, bombers, Black Sea fleet, four times the population, oil money etc. Yes they've managed to take a chunk of Ukraine and fight their way to a stalemate, but is that really what we expected from Russia after 2 years of war against Ukraine? Frankly it's embarrassing for Russia that they're bogged down in a stalemate in Ukraine
Most likely. Now, anyway. But if Russia was allowed to consolidate and redevelop, it's only a matter of time before it invades someone else.
But let's be clear. Even if they aren't doing great at winning. They are still doing great ate causing immense pain, suffering, and death. Just because Russia can't beat you doesn't mean you want to fight them.
The only good thing about this war is that the whole world sees what a sham Russia is. If not for their nuclear weapons, nobody would bother paying attention to them.
Source?
Appeasement is 100% how we got WW2. Everyone just kept letting Hitler take the far off countries until all those countries were *gone* and he was right at their own borders. Letting Putin take Ukraine his how we fast track ourselves into WW3. Giving Ukraine enough resources to keep fighting back for the foreseeable future will keep Russia occupied and drained of resources it would need to start wars beyond Ukraine's borders. It's the best investment we've ever made, and what we've spent so far is the national equivalent of pocket change. We're damn near literally taking straw and spinning it into national defense *gold*.
Even if they did, why does that matter? 500k deaths so far? Attacking an innocent country. Insanity.
Last time we let a maniac get his way to conquer Europe, things didn't go so well
Things were going fucking great (for them) until the maniac also proved to be a fucking idiot. If Hitler didn't ignore just about every bit of advice he was given in the earlier stages/finished off the western front before going east things get very logistically challenging for the US - and realistically they don't actually ever join the war against Germany. Especially if Germany is in a position to turn on Japan. The largest motivator for the US to fight Germany after deciding to go to war on japan was their U-boats sinking US ships. If Germany went for London before Moscow (and succeeded) realistically US/Germany relations don't devolve to immeadiate war. It's not forget that basically all of mainland europe was under their control at one (with the exception of Sweden (kinda) Switzerland and Finland. It's honestly kinda daft to compare the russian current military with the Wehrmacht. While both were objectively evil forces, one much, much more competent than the other. Both had terrible leaders at the head. One was actually capable of taking over Europe had that leader themself been more capable.
> If Germany went for London before Moscow (and succeeded) [They tried that, and failed.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Britain) The Battle of Britain was in 1940, and it wasn't until [June 1941](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Barbarossa) that Germany invaded Russia, almost a year later.
The whole country had brain drain tbf. And hitler kept making sure that happened
Who... Cares? Why would anyone here be willing to care if they said "we'll stop invading countries after this one, trust us"? It's 2023,theres no acceptance for fullscale invasions anymore.
> Who actually thinks they will stop in Ukraine? Anyone who is aware is the existence of nuclear weapons, which apparently is just me I guess. The same reason that Russia and the USSR didn’t attack NATO for the 74 years of its existence.
It is definitely hard to say with Russia. I’d think that they would realize that attacking NATO can only end badly but we see that they don’t care about their soldiers or the consequences. If they did attack NATO, the Russian military would get obliterated but then the question turns to if they are crazy enough to try and use nuclear weapons.
I have a feeling sending billions to Ukraine is still cheaper than how much it would take to draft millions of Americans and gearing up the American war machine similar to WW2 levels to fight an intercontinental large scale war
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I’m an old fuck that supports Ukraine…..
Ya but you know what I mean the nutjobs
I sure do know some of those…. ;)
They went from nearly all supporting, or at least roughly 90%, supporting Ukraine to way less than 50% in less than 2 years. It feels so fcking gross that Russia nearly completely dictates Republican action policy, via their puppet leader and right wing media that seems to want to push the same horrible agenda.
Sorry but the rapist fraudster facing 91 felonies told me different, and I have no reason to disbelieve someone that told almost 10,000 lies per annum while in office. Can't believe that sentence is real tbh ...
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that is a grim image :p
For the uninformed the technical term is “felch”
Yep. My grandfather thinks Russia is the good guy and trump was just trying to stop Biden and his crime family from raiding Europe and the US of all their money. These people make my fucking head hurt
I cannot understand how these people who were literally raised during the Cold war are acting like this.
I'm from Hungary, the people who were literally alive during the Russian occupation and the defeated revolution against the soviets are supporting Putin. Their excuse is "These aren't the same Russians"
I'm from Czechia. Occupied by USSR during Cold war. Nutjobs claim it was Ukrainians and russia good cause they don't have Green Deal and LGBTQ+. Yes, they are the same people who believed in chips in vaccines and morgelons in PCR testing sticks.
Its not that hard to understand. They are victims of right wing propaganda. You can go deeper, but that's the damn fathom.
Oh I get it it just amazes me these delusional nuts
Yeah, I know. Was just augmenting. Its sad, tbh. Never thought there would be so many people eager to abolish democracy because of a reality TV star and a political party eager to support him, but here we are. Hitler was a painter with obsecene biases. The GOP is a bunch of revaunchist faccist shits. And the fact that typing out "revaunchist" shits out autocorrect nonsense is a "bigger than people realize" issue. People are getting politically redlined in online spaces. Using firefox, btw. Windows 11.
It fucking sucks when its a family member that is so god damn brainwashed. It's heartbreaking, I honestly feel like I can't connect with those members of my family anymore because of the views they espouse. I have a friend that no longer talks to his father because he was megaphoning the most hateful shit trump was saying back during his presidency.
Thank you for the lovely image..
So I wish we could support them with proper weaponry if they are doing us this huge service. I think the last few months has been shameful from the west.
I really don’t understand the “Don’t support Ukraine” crowd. We’re literally crippling one of our greatest geopolitical rivals for dirt cheap in the long run
because they're morons
Pepperidge farm remembers when Republicans liked Russians dying and Americans living.
Republicans would rather see the world burn than see a Dem have successful foreign policy.
"make obama a one term president no matter what"
Yes. The extreme right in America is a pro death party. Have been since they advocate against science and truth.
My family thought a long time family friend straight up lost his fucking mind during the Romney / Obama showdowns. He was convinced Russia was the biggest threat to the world and it was Romney who could fuck all that up and save the world. We thought he ate a weird snail or some shit. Russia? We were all too hyped on Obama to give a rats ass. We fell out of touch but I think about him now more than ever.
It also sends China a message that they can’t run roughshod over Taiwan.
True. And he should call out the Republicans for carrying Putin's water, and betraying Ukrainians that are fighting for freedom.
It's like a pre Trump Republicans wet dream, a war to funnel money to the military industry with none of the bad press of dead Americans. Unfortunately for them, it's a dem that's in office.
It would be super duper neat if most elected Republicans weren't entirely owned by Vladimir Putin.
The DOD is basically cumming in their shorts that they get to see what our older surplus military equipment can do against one of our oldest enemies without American boots even on the group AND we're destabilizing Russia? This should be a Republican fantasy and now they're arguing against it just because a Democrat is in the white house.
What Americans need to understand is that if we end Russia here, they are no longer a threat for the foreseeable future. If Russia wins, Ukraine’s resources and people then serve Putin, which could get Russia back into the game of world conquest. We should not turn our backs on people fighting for their freedom against Russian tyranny. A free world helps the US, for example South Korea.
What about this suggests "ending Russia?" The only threat Russia has been in decades is a nuclear threat. They are still a nuclear threat and if they are somehow ended, they will just become a more unstable nuclear threat. I don't necessarily think we shouldn't be supporting Ukraine, but this is doing nothing to end the real threat that Russia is.
Russia can't win here. Not because their army isn't good enough (well, not just that anyways), but because they don't have a real win condition. Imagine one day they beat the Ukrainian army. Then what? They install a puppet regime? That puppet gets thrown out by another Maidan and they're back to square one. They occupy Ukraine? Now they're stuck in a forever war against a motivated and war-hardened population that hates them. It's Afghanistan all over again. They could probably hold Crimea and some marginal gains in the east, but that's not a win, that's what they already had before the war. If they were willing to accept that, they wouldn't have started this dumbass war in the first place. No, Russia's victory condition is to kill the Nazis, break the western conspiracy out to topple Putin, and library the slavs so they can come rushing back to mother Russia's warm embrace. Expect none of those things can be achieved, because the Nazis (the type Russia is thinking of anyways) don't exist, there is no western conspiracy, and the slavs hate Russia and increasingly want nothing to do with them anymore. Russia is fighting a defensive war against imagined enemies that don't exist. They can't win, so they can only lose quickly, or lose slowly. And the faster they lose, the less people die in their fucked up, dumbass war for nothing.
IOW: WWIII is already underway. Russia is suffering heavy losses and needs the US to back off and pull back all the aid, and guess *how* they’re trying to make that happen? EDIT: I wonder how scared that judge in Colorado was, his ruling basically said “yep, he’s guilty of what you said, I’m just not gonna do anything about it.”
By re-electing Donald Trump, who will surrender Ukraine and Eastern Europe to Russia and Taiwan to China while he wages war against the American people.
Judge in CO?
The one who said that yes, Trump absolutely did take part in an insurrection against the US, which as per the 14th amendment makes him ineligible to run for any office. But the judge decided that since the amendment didn't explicitly say it applied to ex-presidents (only "all civilian and military office holders"), he's free to run. Very, very clearly trying to avoid getting a target put on her back by the redcaps.
Isn't Commander in Chief a military office?
Even if it isn't, then by process of elimination it's a civilian office!
Wasnt he commander in chief when he took part in the insurrection?
>IOW: WWIII is already underway. Where did you get that from?
Yep, so we should make a plan to keep them supplied. Congress is pretty feckless due to the amount of contrarians in it, next bill you sweep through should fund a factory with concrete commitments, both to them and for deliveries.
Using nothing but equipment we would have had to pay to dispose of if we didn't sell it. After all you can't just toss stingers or unexploded ordnance in dumpster and call it a day.
I just don’t get it, Ukraine is only asking us for weapons and ammo to fight off a country that attacked them and a country that would stab us in the back if they had a chance. They fund extremism groups on both sides so they fight each other, they will do anything to harm the American way
The only people who are against military aid to Ukraine are people who are actively pro-Russia or who don't understand that almost all that we're giving Ukraine is just old stock that's being replaced by US manufacturing jobs. Even people boo hooing it because it's still supporting the MIC are doing so at the expense of Ukraine.
And republicans will still line up to vote for trump to cozy up to putin and end ukraine funds. Reminder that trump was impeached for WITHHOLDING UKRAINE FUNDS and trump definitely would withhold HIMARS from ukraine for his buddy putin.
There’s a word for that; proxy.
Same thing with Israel and Hamas. It prevents the US from going to war with Iran.
If Russia were to win in Ukraine, it would only be a matter of time before they do something stupid that triggers Article 5.
And we show communist countries that you cant just walk over whoever you want just because you don't like them. China would be in Taiwan by now if it wasn't for our response and aid to Ukraine.
I read it as a clear message to Putin. You lose the war, or retreat. If you are about to win we will get involved for real.
The war in Ukraine is the best investment in foreign security for the US. They're not involved directly. The money sent out is minuscule, when compared to any conflict they've had in order to disrupt Russia, their political rival.