Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:
Ukraine and Kazakhstan border on Russia. They are all mobilizing troops along the borders.
Secretary of State Blinken says NATO never promised not to admit new members, and that the United States is fully committed to defending the principles NATO stands for. The US has moved an aircraft carrier group into position in preparation to defend those principles.
China and Taiwan both agree there is only one China; they disagree whether the mainland or the island is the wayward province which should be ruled by the other. Lesko Brandon said the United States will defend Taiwan if China moves against it.
Defense experts argue over whether Brandon should get the US involved in a two-front war, or only one land war in Asia.
I ask why the United States is promising to go to war against Russia and China at all? What is our vital national interest in Ukraine? How many Americans should die for Kazakhstan? We already have hyperinflation caused by dumping Covid money into the economy – how will we pay for a war against China?
The United States played World Policeman for a century. It’s time to end the farce. We should solve our problems at home before attempting to solve problems elsewhere.
Joe Doakes
I don’t know about you, but I’m half expecting a whole lot of government push on the patriotism of supporting the war effort. Just like our victorious vaccination drive.
Ha! Typical DemoCommie incompetence. Kick out soldiers, sailors and airmen that won’t take the jabs, then start a two front war. Brilliant!
I always thought our best defense against these aggressive states was a President that was “a little bit crazy,” like Reagan’s “the bombs drop in 5 minutes.” But now we have a President that’s crazy in exactly the opposite way, predictably ineffective. You can’t tell when he is joking, not because you don’t know for sure, but because you DO know he is either lying or confused. He couldn’t lead a war out of a paper bag.
The preferred deployment for the kind of armed forces the libs want is inward. It is a trivial truth that leftist regimes use their army to control their own people. Those kinds of armed forces are set up quite differently from armies intended to be used against other nations. You can this happening now; the political beliefs of officers and enlisted men are being subject to monitoring and control to a greater extent than ever before — and we are at peace. All of the armed forces are now under the control of a “Diversity Equity and Inclusion” regime that closely resemble the “political officers” routinely used in dictatorships.
So, the question remains, what do you do in a Munich moment?
War between nuclear powers is not an option, but “Peace in our lifetime” is never possible.
May I suggest one option?
If China invades Taiwan, we cut off all trade with China, stop all travel to China, block all communications with and expel all Chinese citizens. We further more cut off trade and travel to any county who does not do the same to China.
Same with Russia, except add the additional kicker of seizing all their assets.
Gosh, it might even bring a few high paying factory jobs back to the Midwest.
If Russia re-absorbed Ukraine, that wouldn’t be a huge disaster–to make Ukraine a real country with a coherent government that men will fight for will take a lot of doing–but given the amount of technology that requires manufacturing in Taiwan, an invasion of Taiwan could be an outright disaster for the free world. That noted, the scuttlebutt on Taiwan is that it’s not entirely clear that they’ll fight well for their own freedom–so we might infer that there as well, making them a country “worth fighting for” is going to take some doing as well.
To hop on a soap-box I’ve used often, this is one big reason that we really need a revenue tariff (along with a big cut in income taxes) to make sure we have good reasons to make some of these things here. Diplomacy gets a lot tougher when constraint of supply chains means that dozens of countries can grab us by the n**s by restricting key exports or preventing trade.
Can’t wait until CNN broadcasts the beach landing of Brandon’s elite tranny SEALS and the taking of Hong Kong’s shopping district.
They’ll overwhelm the Chicoms with their fabulous skills.
With TMSC bringing its new chip factory online in AZ some of the danger of Chicom invasion is mitigated but TMSC makes upwards of 89% of the most sophisticated chips in the world and 59% of chips overall. Taiwan falling into chicom hands would mean any embargo we might mount would be very shortlived.
Exactly, Pig Bodine.
Seems obvious, in retrospect, that a global economy would mean the end of political independence for the US.
May I suggest one option?
Sounds awesome! But then you get hit with reality of just about everything being outsourced to China, Bllions of $s in US-companies owned assets in China including trade secrets and knowhow and China owning US debt and controlling rare earth production and all of a sudden your opinon does not sound so sound.
I don’t know about you, but I’m half expecting a whole lot of government push on the patriotism of supporting the war effort. Just like our victorious vaccination drive.
Remember those plucky scrap-metal drives in WWII where the children of the Greatest Generation would organize in their neighborhoods to support the war effort? Today the poster children will be going around, collecting scrap bits of liberty and rights hidden in the garages and basements.
If Chicoms decide to take Taiwan any resistance on the part of the US govt will be knocked on its ass by the fierce opposition mounted by Chicom allies; Disney, Dell, Apple, MS, Amazon, FB, Google, etc
I would characterize this as a ‘dose of reality. The good news is that we now have a President who seeks to contain Putin, not to emulate him.
So, Diplomat Emery, how many American boys and girls must die until that Political Advantage you’ve got such a hard-on for, starts to decompose? And while you’re at it, can you explain the goals – or even just one goal – of US intervention in Ukraine?
One other thought regarding Ukraine is that if the U.S. does not make an aggressive war with Ukraine painful for Russia, China will see that as carte blanche for Taiwan. That said, if Ukrainians don’t care about freedom from Russia, I don’t know how you make it painful for the Russians.
Obviously, ChiCom bot boy Emery, forgets that Trump had the strictest sanctions against Russia, since Reagan. And, dip shit, remind us who it was that shut down the Keystone pipeline, then lifted the sanction on Russia’s, putting all our European allies at Putin’s mercy. Then, his totally incompetent Energy bitch begs OPEC to increase production, because her boss’s regime looked bad. Stick it, ChiCom!
lifted the sanction on Russia’s, putting all our European allies at Putin’s mercy
Our allies? You mean the Germans. They couldn’t wait – hell, they were begging to sign up for Putin-gas. And then when they effed up the order and Russia cut ’em off. Then they whined to Pedo Joe and we sent convoys of LNG tankers to make up the difference. Now they can go back to being the ungrateful assholes they’ve always been.
… sorry, sorry, sorry. I was wrong. It’s all way more effed up than I knew. I mean, I got some of the players right but not their roles. ZeroHedge to the rescue:
EU NatGas Rally Continues Amid Russian Shipment Plunge; More LNG Tankers Come To Rescue.
Yes, to (most) all of our ungrateful so-called allies. But the links in that article worthwhile too.
The part of Ukrainian society that is pro NATO and pro Western in general is the educated elite.
Most of the USSR’s armament manufacturing, especially missiles and drones and nukes, was done in Ukraine. For a short period of time, in 1992, Ukraine was the 4th largest nuclear power in the world. Then it gave up its nukes in return for the US and Europe guaranteeing Ukrainians territorial integrity.
That, it appears, was a mistake on the part of the Ukrainians.
A lot of the EU promises made to support Ukraine economically were broken. The Ukrainians are literally making washing machines in factories that used to produce cruise missiles. The EU won’t buy them. Russia is a poor nation. Ukraine is poorer, per capita income in Ukraine is a fraction of what it is in Russia.
Americans have happy, warm feelings about NATO. Thanks to decades of Soviet propaganda, many of the former satellite states of the USSR see NATO as a hostile force that will make their nations subservient to non-Slavs in Berlin and Paris.
I’ve heard that many students of current affairs want to write their PhD thesis on the success of economic and political sanctions against regimes that behave badly. They give up because sanctions can’t be shown to have actually changed the behavior of these regimes.
FWIW the capstone of my degree program was a paper on the prospects of the Ukrainian space industry. While writing it I used as one of my background sources a Ukrainian young lady I was working with, born and raised in Kiev.
IMHO, Like the Russians, the Ukrainians are a people who highly value academic and technical skills in the sciences and the arts, and like the Russians, they are simply terrible at self governance.
Very interesting, MP. What little I know-have experience with in this regard matches what you write.
Most central European countries have the experience of being invaded multiple times over the last century, many of them of course living under the fascist occupation of the Soviet Union for many decades. Most countries through forming the EU, developing strong economic ties and facing their collective pasts honestly have moved beyond the need for conflict in Europe or the notion of ‘Sphere’s of influence’. It seems Russia is unable to accept the world has moved on and when confronted with a country like Ukraine moving further from its orbit it responds with violence. I agree we need to understand Russia’s motivations, but this should be reciprocal and I don’t see many Russians reflecting upon why exactly it is they’re treated with such suspicion by Western countries (especially Eastern Europeans).
The center of Ukraine sits at about the 49th parallel, the border between the US and Canada, but Ukraine has a climate similar to the climate of Missourr. Ukraine has about the size and population of Texas with a GDP of about 1/10 of the GDP of Texas.
Despite its much smaller physical size, Ukraine has about 30% of the population of Russia. The war between Russia and USSR is nasty, with credible accusations of war crimes and torture levied by both sides.
I totally agree that these are the consequences for a complete trade embargo on China, what don’t see is why we shouldn’t do it. All I see are benefits to reversing twenty years of horrendously bad policy.
So when do we do it?
When Japan is invaded?
Or do we wait for California?
Good God!
Let’s contrast and compare:
Obama/Biden
– Snoozed through the Russian invasion of Crimea.
– Sent socks instead of arms to the Ukrainians.
– Allowed NATO countries to renege on their defense spending commitments.
– Greenlit Russian pipelines to Europe.
– Cripples US oil production, thus strengthening the Russian (oil dependent) economy.
– Said nasty things about Putin while kissing his ass.
Trump
– Sent anti-tank weapons to the Ukraine.
– Sent offensive weapons to Poland.
– Demanded Germany and other NATO countries honor their defense spending commitments.
– Opposed Russian gas imports to Europe.
– Ramped up US oil production to the point of energy independence, thus depressing the price of oil and damaging the Russian economy.
– Said polite things to Putin while kicking him in the balls.
The part of Ukrainian society that is pro NATO and pro Western in general is the educated elite.
They are not going to be the ones fighting. Fighting will be done by the ultranationalist fascists. The elite will be hoarded into a schoolhouse and burned alive – because that’s how they roll.
30 years ago, German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt characterized the Soviet Union as being “Upper Volta (Burkina Faso) with missiles.” In terms of Russian life expectancy, GDP, Covid response, etc. that retort appears to me to remain true of Russia. Russian standards of living include:
• 30% of Russians having no access to toilet facilities (according to the Russian Statistical Agency)
• minimum Russian wage of USD 171 per month (in comparison the minimum wage in Ukraine is USD 240, in Estonia USD 740)
• 20 million Russians living beyond the poverty line (even according to the Russian official standards i.e. on less than USD 150 per month).
I would gratefully be interested in any factual, evidence-based rebuttal
Emery, one can concede everything you say about Russia, and what I remember is that people without toilets and income in Vietnam imposed Communism on their neighbors in Laos and Cambodia, with a death toll of millions. Chinese enforcers of the Cultural Revolution, as well as Soviet enforcers of Stalin’s purges, killed close to a hundred million people all told.
You’re approaching the matter as you would in determining whether the U.S. had a chance of defeating Japan in 1942, but the past 80 years have taught us that you can do atrocities on a budget.
Ultimately, the cost of “conquering” and occupying Ukraine may be the main deterrent to a Russian invasion. The Russian controlled regions in the Donbass and Crimea have collapsed economically and require huge subsidies from Russia to keep their populations from starvation. Their population is about 4 million.
An occupation of Ukraine would cause the collapse of its fragile economy sustaining 43 million people. Russia is already bleeding $3 to 4 billion a year subsidizing current occupations. Preventing the bulk of Ukraine falling into penury will call for at least another $30 billion (20% of Ukraine’s GDP). The total annual subsidies to all of Ukraine would be 20% of the Russian federal budget. The military costs of occupation would be additional. That is not sustainable for more than a year or so.
Russia’s Achilles heel is its economy. For all Putin’s strutting on the global stage he runs an economy half the size of the UK and slightly smaller than South Korea. He doesn’t have the economic capacity for sustained large scale occupations and wars.
Russia can only afford its huge army by conscription of 400,000 young men a year, who are paid nothing. As the Soviet Union found out to its cost in Afghanistan (and the US in Vietnam) conducting a large scale war of conquest, seemingly pointlessly, is not sustainable when conscript casualties mount. Even the battle for Chechnya almost foundered as Russian mothers protested the loss of their sons.
Russia has sustained its foreign adventures by using proxies and a few special forces. Its conscripts haven’t been tested since Chechnya, a war it was losing until it was able to bribe Kadyrov to switch sides.
I’m puzzled by all the claims Putin is negotiating from a position of strength. If you have to mobilize a 100,000 men to make your point then surely that means he’s exhausted every other option and has to resort to a bluff, the most desperate act in gambling. The truth is Putin has boxed himself into a tight corner without allies or advocates and he’s supposed to be the master strategist.
Regarding the bleed on Russia’s economy, it’s worth noting that it didn’t stop them from spending something like $50 billion on the Sochi Olympics. You’re approaching Russia as if they’re making sane decisions, and Sochi seems to counter that claim. For that matter, Putin’s habit of murdering rivals with polonium (found in large quantities only in Russia) is another “tell” that the thinking cap is not on straight.
Putin might find himself at the wrong end of another quagmire, yes, but let’s not underestimate the degree to which desperate fools can sacrifice human life.
In our X-Country ski community—we marveled at the new technologies used to make and sustain the “snow” in Sochi. Ironically Russia hired an American team to make it happen.
An Olympian Snow Endeavor in Sochi
https://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/04/science/an-olympian-snow-endeavor-in-sochi.html