The USA could take on the whole world in a conventional war and it would be a close call. The F 35 is selling like hot cakes because by the time it has been detected it has already launched its missiles and run away. They have the EagleEX in production which is a brilliant upgrade with massive payload and range capacity. The Navy is unrivalled and the their Navy Air Force is by far the best in the world.
Conservatives still haven't got the memo. The public want more than this bombastic partisan rhetoric that is driven propagandistic motivations rather than being honest. I'm really sick of that.
Steve do you see this as all about bluffing do you? The Americans have lost the arms race against Russia, and they will surely be the weaker power within 500 km of the Chinese coast. Thats something that the Americans have to know before they try and push their weight around.
You should never bluff. The Americans are being ripped apart. Their defence contractors are bloated welfare queens. They haven't practiced joint force operations in the field since the Reagan era. The Americans monopolised their economy after 2008 and now they can't get anything done. They are no longer a net energy exporter. Everyone knows that they have run down their ammunition AND their strategic oil reserve. They just lost to Afghanistan. So they have to be a bit more like Britain after Suez and get real about their limitations.
Either they fix their problems, and get rid of the coup government while they are at it, or they need to just stay home and have a nice cup of tea. Or they will get their ass kicked. Its not Ronald Reagan running things any more.
"The USA could take on the whole world in a conventional war and it would be a close call."
Well then why did they lose Afghanistan, get into a stalemate in Syria, and after a coup and 8 years of preparation lose this proxy war in Ukraine?
They don't have a healthy manufacturing sector. They don't produce a lot of steel. The are net energy importers again since the coup. They don't have a healthy small business sector. They are running a three trillion dollar deficit I think.
So they've got no ticker. They can't see the job through any more.
"the F 35 is selling like hot cakes because by the time it has been detected it has already launched its missiles and run away."
Maybe thats right. But my understanding is that its such an overengineered fancy pants piece of work that its too expensive to put at risk and it costs about 25000 dollars an hour to operate. Its not good enough to have the best flautist or the greatest French Horn player. The whole orchestra has to work together and most of all they have to be able to pump out platforms and munitions like sausages. And they cannot do it. Because every time they want something they have to write up a separate contract for the welfare queens, rather than have continuous production of useful stuff, in factory towns, with working class communities doing factory people stuff within their own citadel.
See how Russia has gotten help with drones. But mostly its been their steel, their platforms, their artillery shells. Pumping out production and getting it to the front, as if they have tens of thousands of diesel mechanics.
The Americans don't have that kind of economy any more. We can see how they will get badly beaten, because they are running this global war in Eastern Ukraine and their proxies are getting their ass kicked.
"Seems an unhelpful thing to claim at a time of Chinese sabre rattling over Taiwan..."
I can't for the life of me make sense of this. Clearly when you are about to get into a fight, you need to not be deluded as to your ability too fight. Otherwise there is going to be a lot of damage done.
How do you think these major and tragic debacles happen? Its when people think like you. Or fail to think like you fail to think.
Well then why did they lose Afghanistan, get into a stalemate in Syria, and after a coup and 8 years of preparation lose this proxy war in Ukraine?
No invaders win in Afghanistan. Occupying countries is a dumb idea. Russia has a vastly superior military to Ukraine yet is stalled. Syria was a lost cause, the West has at long last learned that sticking our noses in other countries troubles doesn't work.
The US could defend itself from the world but it can't occupy the world with military power. Occupation doesn't work anymore. It's why I think a lot of noise about the China threat is silly but more importantly hypocritical. The USA occupies Guam, invaded the Philippines and Hawaii so I find it remarkable that everyone is arguing China is doing something extraordinary. On a GDP and population basis its military build up isn't that exceptional and given the history of how various nations have treated China in the past can we blame for being prepared?
Ukraine is winning because of US and European supplied weapons that Russia cannot counter. Ukraine also has the advantage of Elon Musk using Starlink to provide targeting data. That, combined with new types of artillery and HIMARS, makes life very difficult for Russia. The other big problem Russia has is that its military is a mess of corruption and aging equipment. They don't even have enough targeting pods for their ground attack aircraft.
"No invaders win in Afghanistan. Occupying countries is a dumb idea. Russia has a vastly superior military to Ukraine yet is stalled."
Yes when an empire decides its going to degrade itself and collapse it shoots straight through to Afghanistan. It doesn't muck about. But Russia is fighting THE ENTIRE AMERICAN MILITARY ALLIANCE. They are all trying to fight Russia. With America calling the shots. Ukraine is the jewel in the crown of their alliance military, they stole Ukraine in 2014 and spent 8 years preparing for this war and no Russia isn't stalled. Its systematically beating these guys up.
The superpower wars are all global wars. Thats why Vietnam beat the US. Because China, Russia and the American deep state were helping. In Syria that was a global war also. And even though Nato and Israel obviously had the best logistics in that region, Russia and Iran still stopped a total takeover. They stopped the Americans setting up a caliphate with the American/Israeli terrorist organisations as well. That the Russians could hold that ground, when its Israel and US who held the best logistical position and were willing to create these terrorist outfits ... that should have been a big warning sign that the US was in disarray.
And why wouldn't it be? Deficit spending will ruin any position eventually. No matter how good that position is.
Ukraine is only winning on TV. Ukraine is being beaten senseless and thats with Russia fighting with one hand tied behind its back. They are being beaten so badly that we should implement polygamy for a generation to soak up all their women.
There is no need to gain ground more quickly then some kind of natural rate when you are fighting in your Brer Rabbit Briar patch. Russia has a corps of railway people and rail-lines with a different gauge then anyone else. They are supreme anywhere near where those railway lines end. Thats their best fighting territory and there is no great need to roll over everyone to get from A to B if people will come to you to get killed and lose all their equipment.
If Nato burns all their whoop-ass up in East Ukraine when Russia does push forward, they will not have a Syrian-style insurgency to worry about and they will meet with little resistance. These are intelligent people with a good decision-making process. So they are fighting in the East more or less "aerobically" ...... They aren't having a budget deficit, no trade deficit, only one brief operational pause and they are not sacrificing men extravagantly. So they have ticker. And they will continue to beat up on the entire American alliance structure, until they can move to claim the Dnieper river system, and the Black Sea coast without being in danger all the time.
Then they will likely set up a marvellous manufacturing complex which takes in the Caspian particularly, but the Black Sea also. The sort of manufacturing power these Caspian countries will be able to produce, at least within a few miles of that overall river system, will be an amazing thing. Because manufacturing power can really get going when its networked factory to factory to factory to factory without much in the way of transport cost in between. So the Caspian sea is an idyllic site for manufacturing buildup. And if they control the Black Sea coast effectively, with Turkey becoming more or less subservient, and the Dnieper river system, then you will get all this wealth creation.
The good thing is that they are likely to shut out these private equity firms like Black Rock, whose business model is to wreck everything.
Now lets go over Hi-Mars so that we can see why the US cannot win a modern war with Russia in Western Europe or China in China. Forget Musk. Thats just window-dressing to hide that the US is running the war .... badly.
So Hi-Mars, deadly accurate they say, Not powerful but long-range and you can move the truck really fast. So you can constantly hit without being hit, like Tommy Hearns using his jab against me right?
So its a perfect weapon to win this war with. If you could have saturation night-time stealth raids and Hi-mars on the day shift .... Surely you could turn the tables. So how many Hi-Mars they send? 6000? 600? I think it was 6 wasn't it? or 8?
You see a weapons system isn't much good unless you can then socialise it and then manufacture them on a continuous basis, cheaper and cheaper every month until you have so many of them you don't know where to put them all. Its great to have an F-35. But they had the B2. Why didn't they have so many B2's that they needed massive storage complexes just to house them all? In the end they should have been able to put out a B2 for a couple of million bucks each. Its only steel, carbon, silicon and some sliver. So why not just churn out one B2 are another?
But the Americans cannot do that. Because they have been taken over by finance parasites and an ideology that confuses free enterprise undertakings and communist undertakings and uses the logic of one when the logic of the other is required.
This is why we can't do good infrastructure any more. We get a great idea like the NBN ..... optical fibre is a winner for centuries since its just made out of dirt. So we invite in Rothschild and Merril Lynch? They don't know if they are doing something communist so what were we doing inviting in finance overhead? Well the Americans can't do war because they keep everything in the hands of welfare queens.
See this is my general bugbear as a former libertarian extremist. Maybe in 2006 I was one of the most well-known libertarians in ozblogistan. So I thought if we CAN do it with free enterprise we should. But thats not right. The business form I think is almost totally useless and getting in the way is the big corporation with political power.
Fisheries need to be hunter-gatherer. Actually communist habitat production combined with enlightened hunter-gathering. Don't throw the small ones back. Throw the big breeders back. And any trawler that disturbs habitat is out of the question. But if you have enough communist habitat eventually the fish will almost be jumping onto your boat.
Competitive small business is excellent, and particularly if the owners aspire to vertical rather than horizontal integration. The tax system should be mostly just land tax with a threshold for each human being. But you need a transition for that and you should be thinking 50+ years.
Welfare should be almost pure transfer payment.
Infrastructure should be pure communist at the top and yet outsourcing to sole traders who only get a portion of their revenue from the government. They shouldn't be totally government. So then almost everyone can get on that government teat. Almost all these firms should get access to interest free loans to improve their productivity.
Finance should be mostly communist.
If you get the business forms right in every sector, you can really kick ass. Ayn Rand and Karl Marx both .... they get a few good ideas and they push them way too far. But if we get it right there will be plenty of work for everyone and a good life to be had. Plus we can be hard to invade.
"The US could defend itself from the world but it can't occupy the world with military power. "
Imagine its 1988. The Americans still have that small business ecology that absolutely transformed the world, with new technology and ideas, in the recovery from the Volker monetary depression. They have that glorious military, that Reagan built with the goal of getting a much safer international security environment. In his heart he was doing it for the Russian people as well, even as his successors polluted his excellent vision.
So its 1988 and and the entire world tries to beat the Americans and Canadians, fighting only on the territory of ALASKA. It wouldn't even be a competition. The Americans were practicing daily joint force operations. Reagan and the Catholics were practicing withering propaganda warfare against the communists. The creativity and innovative spirit of the American economy was a thing of truth and beauty, even though dark clouds were building.
It wouldn't even be a fair fight. Its very hard to see the rest of the world even making it ashore. The entire world would get smashed ten times over fighting only in Alaska. The Americans wouldn't even break a sweat.
So with this extremist comparison in mind, and now that the Ukraine armed forces has its spine basically broken, can you now see the insanity of trying to fight Russia so close to just where their train lines end??????
These Russians don't only have an artillery advantage. They have total artillery supremacy and total munitions factory production supremacy. Not as supreme as World War II US but at least comparable. At least we can talk about it in the same sentence.
We are the terrorist side. We need to suck up to these guys and say sorry. Give them the river systems for 50 years in exchange for peace. Because if we don't do some serious bowing and scraping pretty soon they will take these same places by force in any case, with no known expiry date.
Bojo is on the way out. Draghi is smart and trying to resign. The male of the species finds it pretty easy to deal with the concept of death in wartime. The loss of any kind of power, paternity or prospects is harder to accept. But we accept death in war for the most part.
But the Russian widows that Nato has produced didn't deserve that. When the defence secretary tells them straight that the plan is not to come to a good outcome, and a peaceful defence architecture, but rather to impoverish Russia and kill Russians.
If the current leadership can't apologise to the Russian widows for what they did then they have to go. Yes I wish that was a requirement for Yemen, Syria and Libya as well BUT THIS IS RUSSIA and they are the leading military power, so this is BUSINESS.
War is just a shot away. Love is just a kiss away. I would direct our apologies to the Russian widows and the daughters, who have lost fathers, brothers uncles and so forth.
If you can't do the job, step down and let someone who can do the job take over. Its about that serious. Give me shelter. And lets end this new hunger war and energy deprivation while we are at it.
I'm listening to expert military commentary with regards to this Chinese problem and it does seem that the Chinese have a fatal weakness vis a vis the Americans with submarines. It seems if they go very far away from the shore they are opening themselves up to a serious attrition of their navy from the excellent American subs. At the same time trying to smash China, actually on the mainland, despite these stealth bombers, is a real fools errand. The Americans could do damage but they wouldn't have the staying power. At least thats the way it looks to me.
I think they will both back off. The Democrats are pretending that they are not up to their eyeballs in grift with the communist party. They've made this demonstration and thats a pretty effective decoy. Its not over yet since the Chinese may take a small Taiwanese island, rather than try and conquer Taiwan per se. Thats maybe a reasonable move, not exposing their navy to too much danger but just making a point. I don't know what they will do. In this case I think its better for both sides to back right off, whereas normally speaking if you go for your gun you better use it even in a low risk manner.
China should just focus on advance purchases of Russian gear. Let Russia smash Nato at another venue and just sit tight. So maybe in this one case tickling their sidearm, and not using it, was kind of acceptable.
The older Chinese subs are target practice for both USA and Japanese subs. The Soryu class are excellent conventional subs that have the potential to do enormous damage to the Chinese navy. Combined with the US subs, China navy will quickly be decimated. The latter models of the China subs are apparently much better but that won't save them. China doesn't have blue water capability and won't for many years. I don't think that is their goal.
At the same time trying to smash China, actually on the mainland, despite these stealth bombers, is a real fools errand. The Americans could do damage but they wouldn't have the staying power. At least thats the way it looks to me.
That's exactly correct. The Chinese coastline is peppered with what is believed to be the broad equivalent of the Soviet S400 surface to air missiles facilities. The F 22 and F 35 are very well protected from other fighter radars but ground based radars have differing frequencies which while not allowing targeting will detect that those fighters are in the area. That's not so much a problem for the F 22 but for the F 35 that could be a serious problem because modern Chinese interceptors once launched, if they get within ~30-40kms of those fighters, will be able to detect and have targeting capability. The ground based systems can do that probably at much longer ranges. We don't really know but it would be suicide for the US to attempt attacking the Chinese mainland.
I think a lot of the ranting out of Australia and the USA about the China threat is stupid. China can't realistically invade Australia, not a ghost of a chance of doing that. At best it can launch a few missiles our way but it's Navy and air can't project power all the way to Aus without leaving themselves hopelessly exposed to counter attack.
Forget about the Russian military Graeme. It is in a woeful state. Russia has long prepared for a massive tank war on the huge European plain but in these days it's unrealistic to conduct wars like that unless there is near complete air superiority and Russia has no chance of achieving that. It's a shame in way because they have great airframes but the avionics, engines, and pilot training are so far behind others it probably would be the equivalent of the Mariana Turkey Shoot.
"I think a lot of the ranting out of Australia and the USA about the China threat is stupid. China can't realistically invade Australia, not a ghost of a chance of doing that."
Well maybe now its stupid. Lets say its outdated. Its just a threat that needed to be covered. And its like we have kind of covered it somewhat. But just a few years ago China was making all these subversive inroads and bullying everyone. It feels to me like they created the needed reaction, and we finally adapted to it. I've been waiting for the last 15 years for us to cover that threat, and now I think its covered so I'm kind of happy.
Lets drill down a bit further though.....
"China can't realistically invade Australia, not a ghost of a chance of doing that."
1. Not before taking control of surrounding islands. 2. Not in any circumstances so long as the Americans are helping us with submarine supremacy.
But the Americans are falling to pieces, and cannot be relied on. So someone wasn't paying attention when they made so many inroads into the Solomon Islands.
"Forget about the Russian military Graeme. It is in a woeful state."
Now thats where I must disagree. Perhaps in absolute terms you may be right. But they don't face any competition. I've not seen anything like it and if I was 5000 years old I'd say that I hadn't seen anything like it since the 1600's when little Holland became hegemonic for a few decades.
Ukraine was Nato's Gold Standard ground force. Specialising, and only trained in, defensive warfare. I was listening to one of their guys today and they simply weren't trained in offensive warfare. We shouldn't have contrived to get all these guys killed because we could have used their help and their skills. Sure they have done great in keeping the Russians advance to a snails pace. But they will be smashed just the same, and once they are smashed NATO is a spineless paper tiger.
15 comments:
He is such a tucker
The USA could take on the whole world in a conventional war and it would be a close call. The F 35 is selling like hot cakes because by the time it has been detected it has already launched its missiles and run away. They have the EagleEX in production which is a brilliant upgrade with massive payload and range capacity. The Navy is unrivalled and the their Navy Air Force is by far the best in the world.
Conservatives still haven't got the memo. The public want more than this bombastic partisan rhetoric that is driven propagandistic motivations rather than being honest. I'm really sick of that.
Steve do you see this as all about bluffing do you? The Americans have lost the arms race against Russia, and they will surely be the weaker power within 500 km of the Chinese coast. Thats something that the Americans have to know before they try and push their weight around.
You should never bluff. The Americans are being ripped apart. Their defence contractors are bloated welfare queens. They haven't practiced joint force operations in the field since the Reagan era. The Americans monopolised their economy after 2008 and now they can't get anything done. They are no longer a net energy exporter. Everyone knows that they have run down their ammunition AND their strategic oil reserve. They just lost to Afghanistan. So they have to be a bit more like Britain after Suez and get real about their limitations.
Either they fix their problems, and get rid of the coup government while they are at it, or they need to just stay home and have a nice cup of tea. Or they will get their ass kicked. Its not Ronald Reagan running things any more.
"The USA could take on the whole world in a conventional war and it would be a close call."
Well then why did they lose Afghanistan, get into a stalemate in Syria, and after a coup and 8 years of preparation lose this proxy war in Ukraine?
They don't have a healthy manufacturing sector. They don't produce a lot of steel. The are net energy importers again since the coup. They don't have a healthy small business sector. They are running a three trillion dollar deficit I think.
So they've got no ticker. They can't see the job through any more.
"the F 35 is selling like hot cakes because by the time it has been detected it has already launched its missiles and run away."
Maybe thats right. But my understanding is that its such an overengineered fancy pants piece of work that its too expensive to put at risk and it costs about 25000 dollars an hour to operate. Its not good enough to have the best flautist or the greatest French Horn player. The whole orchestra has to work together and most of all they have to be able to pump out platforms and munitions like sausages. And they cannot do it. Because every time they want something they have to write up a separate contract for the welfare queens, rather than have continuous production of useful stuff, in factory towns, with working class communities doing factory people stuff within their own citadel.
See how Russia has gotten help with drones. But mostly its been their steel, their platforms, their artillery shells. Pumping out production and getting it to the front, as if they have tens of thousands of diesel mechanics.
The Americans don't have that kind of economy any more. We can see how they will get badly beaten, because they are running this global war in Eastern Ukraine and their proxies are getting their ass kicked.
"Seems an unhelpful thing to claim at a time of Chinese sabre rattling over Taiwan..."
I can't for the life of me make sense of this. Clearly when you are about to get into a fight, you need to not be deluded as to your ability too fight. Otherwise there is going to be a lot of damage done.
How do you think these major and tragic debacles happen? Its when people think like you. Or fail to think like you fail to think.
Well then why did they lose Afghanistan, get into a stalemate in Syria, and after a coup and 8 years of preparation lose this proxy war in Ukraine?
No invaders win in Afghanistan. Occupying countries is a dumb idea. Russia has a vastly superior military to Ukraine yet is stalled. Syria was a lost cause, the West has at long last learned that sticking our noses in other countries troubles doesn't work.
The US could defend itself from the world but it can't occupy the world with military power. Occupation doesn't work anymore. It's why I think a lot of noise about the China threat is silly but more importantly hypocritical. The USA occupies Guam, invaded the Philippines and Hawaii so I find it remarkable that everyone is arguing China is doing something extraordinary. On a GDP and population basis its military build up isn't that exceptional and given the history of how various nations have treated China in the past can we blame for being prepared?
Ukraine is winning because of US and European supplied weapons that Russia cannot counter. Ukraine also has the advantage of Elon Musk using Starlink to provide targeting data. That, combined with new types of artillery and HIMARS, makes life very difficult for Russia. The other big problem Russia has is that its military is a mess of corruption and aging equipment. They don't even have enough targeting pods for their ground attack aircraft.
"No invaders win in Afghanistan. Occupying countries is a dumb idea. Russia has a vastly superior military to Ukraine yet is stalled."
Yes when an empire decides its going to degrade itself and collapse it shoots straight through to Afghanistan. It doesn't muck about. But Russia is fighting THE ENTIRE AMERICAN MILITARY ALLIANCE. They are all trying to fight Russia. With America calling the shots. Ukraine is the jewel in the crown of their alliance military, they stole Ukraine in 2014 and spent 8 years preparing for this war and no Russia isn't stalled. Its systematically beating these guys up.
The superpower wars are all global wars. Thats why Vietnam beat the US. Because China, Russia and the American deep state were helping. In Syria that was a global war also. And even though Nato and Israel obviously had the best logistics in that region, Russia and Iran still stopped a total takeover. They stopped the Americans setting up a caliphate with the American/Israeli terrorist organisations as well. That the Russians could hold that ground, when its Israel and US who held the best logistical position and were willing to create these terrorist outfits ... that should have been a big warning sign that the US was in disarray.
And why wouldn't it be? Deficit spending will ruin any position eventually. No matter how good that position is.
"Ukraine is winning "
Ukraine is only winning on TV. Ukraine is being beaten senseless and thats with Russia fighting with one hand tied behind its back. They are being beaten so badly that we should implement polygamy for a generation to soak up all their women.
There is no need to gain ground more quickly then some kind of natural rate when you are fighting in your Brer Rabbit Briar patch. Russia has a corps of railway people and rail-lines with a different gauge then anyone else. They are supreme anywhere near where those railway lines end. Thats their best fighting territory and there is no great need to roll over everyone to get from A to B if people will come to you to get killed and lose all their equipment.
If Nato burns all their whoop-ass up in East Ukraine when Russia does push forward, they will not have a Syrian-style insurgency to worry about and they will meet with little resistance. These are intelligent people with a good decision-making process. So they are fighting in the East more or less "aerobically" ...... They aren't having a budget deficit, no trade deficit, only one brief operational pause and they are not sacrificing men extravagantly. So they have ticker. And they will continue to beat up on the entire American alliance structure, until they can move to claim the Dnieper river system, and the Black Sea coast without being in danger all the time.
Then they will likely set up a marvellous manufacturing complex which takes in the Caspian particularly, but the Black Sea also. The sort of manufacturing power these Caspian countries will be able to produce, at least within a few miles of that overall river system, will be an amazing thing. Because manufacturing power can really get going when its networked factory to factory to factory to factory without much in the way of transport cost in between. So the Caspian sea is an idyllic site for manufacturing buildup. And if they control the Black Sea coast effectively, with Turkey becoming more or less subservient, and the Dnieper river system, then you will get all this wealth creation.
The good thing is that they are likely to shut out these private equity firms like Black Rock, whose business model is to wreck everything.
Now lets go over Hi-Mars so that we can see why the US cannot win a modern war with Russia in Western Europe or China in China. Forget Musk. Thats just window-dressing to hide that the US is running the war .... badly.
So Hi-Mars, deadly accurate they say, Not powerful but long-range and you can move the truck really fast. So you can constantly hit without being hit, like Tommy Hearns using his jab against me right?
So its a perfect weapon to win this war with. If you could have saturation night-time stealth raids and Hi-mars on the day shift .... Surely you could turn the tables. So how many Hi-Mars they send? 6000? 600? I think it was 6 wasn't it? or 8?
You see a weapons system isn't much good unless you can then socialise it and then manufacture them on a continuous basis, cheaper and cheaper every month until you have so many of them you don't know where to put them all. Its great to have an F-35. But they had the B2. Why didn't they have so many B2's that they needed massive storage complexes just to house them all? In the end they should have been able to put out a B2 for a couple of million bucks each. Its only steel, carbon, silicon and some sliver. So why not just churn out one B2 are another?
But the Americans cannot do that. Because they have been taken over by finance parasites and an ideology that confuses free enterprise undertakings and communist undertakings and uses the logic of one when the logic of the other is required.
This is why we can't do good infrastructure any more. We get a great idea like the NBN ..... optical fibre is a winner for centuries since its just made out of dirt. So we invite in Rothschild and Merril Lynch? They don't know if they are doing something communist so what were we doing inviting in finance overhead? Well the Americans can't do war because they keep everything in the hands of welfare queens.
See this is my general bugbear as a former libertarian extremist. Maybe in 2006 I was one of the most well-known libertarians in ozblogistan. So I thought if we CAN do it with free enterprise we should. But thats not right. The business form I think is almost totally useless and getting in the way is the big corporation with political power.
Fisheries need to be hunter-gatherer. Actually communist habitat production combined with enlightened hunter-gathering. Don't throw the small ones back. Throw the big breeders back. And any trawler that disturbs habitat is out of the question. But if you have enough communist habitat eventually the fish will almost be jumping onto your boat.
Competitive small business is excellent, and particularly if the owners aspire to vertical rather than horizontal integration. The tax system should be mostly just land tax with a threshold for each human being. But you need a transition for that and you should be thinking 50+ years.
Welfare should be almost pure transfer payment.
Infrastructure should be pure communist at the top and yet outsourcing to sole traders who only get a portion of their revenue from the government. They shouldn't be totally government. So then almost everyone can get on that government teat. Almost all these firms should get access to interest free loans to improve their productivity.
Finance should be mostly communist.
If you get the business forms right in every sector, you can really kick ass. Ayn Rand and Karl Marx both .... they get a few good ideas and they push them way too far. But if we get it right there will be plenty of work for everyone and a good life to be had. Plus we can be hard to invade.
"The US could defend itself from the world but it can't occupy the world with military power. "
Imagine its 1988. The Americans still have that small business ecology that absolutely transformed the world, with new technology and ideas, in the recovery from the Volker monetary depression. They have that glorious military, that Reagan built with the goal of getting a much safer international security environment. In his heart he was doing it for the Russian people as well, even as his successors polluted his excellent vision.
So its 1988 and and the entire world tries to beat the Americans and Canadians, fighting only on the territory of ALASKA. It wouldn't even be a competition. The Americans were practicing daily joint force operations. Reagan and the Catholics were practicing withering propaganda warfare against the communists. The creativity and innovative spirit of the American economy was a thing of truth and beauty, even though dark clouds were building.
It wouldn't even be a fair fight. Its very hard to see the rest of the world even making it ashore. The entire world would get smashed ten times over fighting only in Alaska. The Americans wouldn't even break a sweat.
So with this extremist comparison in mind, and now that the Ukraine armed forces has its spine basically broken, can you now see the insanity of trying to fight Russia so close to just where their train lines end??????
These Russians don't only have an artillery advantage. They have total artillery supremacy and total munitions factory production supremacy. Not as supreme as World War II US but at least comparable. At least we can talk about it in the same sentence.
We are the terrorist side. We need to suck up to these guys and say sorry. Give them the river systems for 50 years in exchange for peace. Because if we don't do some serious bowing and scraping pretty soon they will take these same places by force in any case, with no known expiry date.
Bojo is on the way out. Draghi is smart and trying to resign. The male of the species finds it pretty easy to deal with the concept of death in wartime. The loss of any kind of power, paternity or prospects is harder to accept. But we accept death in war for the most part.
But the Russian widows that Nato has produced didn't deserve that. When the defence secretary tells them straight that the plan is not to come to a good outcome, and a peaceful defence architecture, but rather to impoverish Russia and kill Russians.
If the current leadership can't apologise to the Russian widows for what they did then they have to go. Yes I wish that was a requirement for Yemen, Syria and Libya as well BUT THIS IS RUSSIA and they are the leading military power, so this is BUSINESS.
War is just a shot away. Love is just a kiss away. I would direct our apologies to the Russian widows and the daughters, who have lost fathers, brothers uncles and so forth.
If you can't do the job, step down and let someone who can do the job take over. Its about that serious. Give me shelter. And lets end this new hunger war and energy deprivation while we are at it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8kl6q_9qZOs
I'm listening to expert military commentary with regards to this Chinese problem and it does seem that the Chinese have a fatal weakness vis a vis the Americans with submarines. It seems if they go very far away from the shore they are opening themselves up to a serious attrition of their navy from the excellent American subs. At the same time trying to smash China, actually on the mainland, despite these stealth bombers, is a real fools errand. The Americans could do damage but they wouldn't have the staying power. At least thats the way it looks to me.
I think they will both back off. The Democrats are pretending that they are not up to their eyeballs in grift with the communist party. They've made this demonstration and thats a pretty effective decoy. Its not over yet since the Chinese may take a small Taiwanese island, rather than try and conquer Taiwan per se. Thats maybe a reasonable move, not exposing their navy to too much danger but just making a point. I don't know what they will do. In this case I think its better for both sides to back right off, whereas normally speaking if you go for your gun you better use it even in a low risk manner.
China should just focus on advance purchases of Russian gear. Let Russia smash Nato at another venue and just sit tight. So maybe in this one case tickling their sidearm, and not using it, was kind of acceptable.
Good points Graeme.
The older Chinese subs are target practice for both USA and Japanese subs. The Soryu class are excellent conventional subs that have the potential to do enormous damage to the Chinese navy. Combined with the US subs, China navy will quickly be decimated. The latter models of the China subs are apparently much better but that won't save them. China doesn't have blue water capability and won't for many years. I don't think that is their goal.
At the same time trying to smash China, actually on the mainland, despite these stealth bombers, is a real fools errand. The Americans could do damage but they wouldn't have the staying power. At least thats the way it looks to me.
That's exactly correct. The Chinese coastline is peppered with what is believed to be the broad equivalent of the Soviet S400 surface to air missiles facilities. The F 22 and F 35 are very well protected from other fighter radars but ground based radars have differing frequencies which while not allowing targeting will detect that those fighters are in the area. That's not so much a problem for the F 22 but for the F 35 that could be a serious problem because modern Chinese interceptors once launched, if they get within ~30-40kms of those fighters, will be able to detect and have targeting capability. The ground based systems can do that probably at much longer ranges. We don't really know but it would be suicide for the US to attempt attacking the Chinese mainland.
I think a lot of the ranting out of Australia and the USA about the China threat is stupid. China can't realistically invade Australia, not a ghost of a chance of doing that. At best it can launch a few missiles our way but it's Navy and air can't project power all the way to Aus without leaving themselves hopelessly exposed to counter attack.
Forget about the Russian military Graeme. It is in a woeful state. Russia has long prepared for a massive tank war on the huge European plain but in these days it's unrealistic to conduct wars like that unless there is near complete air superiority and Russia has no chance of achieving that. It's a shame in way because they have great airframes but the avionics, engines, and pilot training are so far behind others it probably would be the equivalent of the Mariana Turkey Shoot.
"I think a lot of the ranting out of Australia and the USA about the China threat is stupid. China can't realistically invade Australia, not a ghost of a chance of doing that."
Well maybe now its stupid. Lets say its outdated. Its just a threat that needed to be covered. And its like we have kind of covered it somewhat. But just a few years ago China was making all these subversive inroads and bullying everyone. It feels to me like they created the needed reaction, and we finally adapted to it. I've been waiting for the last 15 years for us to cover that threat, and now I think its covered so I'm kind of happy.
Lets drill down a bit further though.....
"China can't realistically invade Australia, not a ghost of a chance of doing that."
1. Not before taking control of surrounding islands. 2. Not in any circumstances so long as the Americans are helping us with submarine supremacy.
But the Americans are falling to pieces, and cannot be relied on. So someone wasn't paying attention when they made so many inroads into the Solomon Islands.
"Forget about the Russian military Graeme. It is in a woeful state."
Now thats where I must disagree. Perhaps in absolute terms you may be right. But they don't face any competition. I've not seen anything like it and if I was 5000 years old I'd say that I hadn't seen anything like it since the 1600's when little Holland became hegemonic for a few decades.
Ukraine was Nato's Gold Standard ground force. Specialising, and only trained in, defensive warfare. I was listening to one of their guys today and they simply weren't trained in offensive warfare. We shouldn't have contrived to get all these guys killed because we could have used their help and their skills. Sure they have done great in keeping the Russians advance to a snails pace. But they will be smashed just the same, and once they are smashed NATO is a spineless paper tiger.
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