Right now every buyer of American kit is feverishly evaluating non-US alternatives.
Seriously, America, this is like Brexit but 1000x. A voluntary decision, taken with gusto, to chop off arms and legs and ears and fingers and whatnot, cut off the deadwood, be light and free, a lone vessel on the ocean of prosperity, free of the burden of the stupid foreigners who are the sole reason why everything was going wrong.
This is top of mind for all European countries that bought the F-35. They are painfully aware of this. So is the US defense industry which will notice softening sales kicking in a few years down the line as European countries are less inclined to buy US arms.
This was predictable though. The markets have already rewarded those who saw this coming.
But if the EU has no 5th gen fighters then they'd have a hard time maintaining Air Superiority against Russia if they manage to mass produce Su-57 or Su-75 and I am betting the Russian can do it before EU can have 5th gen fighters or FCAS.
I'm willing to bet they can do it with possible financial assistance from India (they need 5th gen fighters too) and generic chips from China.
P.S. Many mocked Russian munitions came with chips made by Texas Instruments among others, but thing is those chips are so damn generic you can get that from random shops in Shenzhen.
Not many options for India.
F-35 is also very risky and unclear delivery date, not to mention they also got burned by delayed F414 engines delivery for their Tejas.
With rumours of Pakistan getting J-35, 5th Gen fighters are necessity I guess.
Besides they can force Russian to manufacture them in India like Su-30 MKI.
Sure, but that risk is just something Europe has to eat as punishment for buying F-35 instead of building their own, it doesn't affect the new reality that US aircraft cannot be trusted in wartime.
So far their 5th generation fighter program has been an even worse embarrassement than the T14 Armata.
Their own press photos shows uncovered Philips screws on a supposedly stealth aircraft, and their "loyal wingman" drone used the first opportunity near the frontlines to try to defect.
Thankfully, Russia doesn't really have 5th Gen either. Europe has a lot of solid 4+ gen planes: Rafale, Eurofighter, maybe Gripen. And I'm willing to guess that, especially with better trained pilots, these are potentially better than Russia's assortment.
But there remains a question of quantity and determination.
The surviving Russian pilots fly towards the front line at a high altitude until they get close to the suspected range of Ukrainian air defences, drop glide bombs and then turn around. Sometimes the Ukrainians have snuck an air defence unit closer to the front lines without it being detected and the pilots exit the category of surviving Russian pilots.
I'm not sure how applicable this would be to a confrontation with European countries. Russian fighters will get getting lots of flight hours on CAP as well, but not much combat based on reporting. Both sides are keeping everything inside their own AD bubbles.
I think Russian capabilities depends almost entirely on who the US and China are willing to sell weapons to — Russia has huge corruption problems, arguably this is why they were dumb enough to not only start a war but also why they weren't able to actually pull off a blitzkrieg against Ukraine, so I don't think Russia will be able to combine high volume and high quality for anything any time soon.
EU industrial capabilities may also have issues, but they are (mostly) different ones than Russia faces.
Whatever shit tier RU MIC/performance has been, it has manage to consistently defeat or mitigate what US+EU has thrown against her. Which includes highend gear like PAC3 MSE. Meanwhile half the reason RU had a hard time was due to facing UKR's abundant legacy USSR systems. At this point it's not unreasonable to dismiss everything in EU arsenal as wunderwaffe tier especially without US support. Including F35... which even if US doesn't restrict usage against EU-RU scenario, could still be borderline paperweight without US tier ISR.
People also forget NATO fought a much shitter/temu RU in Yugoslavia where NATO threw everything at even more legacy soviet systems. All of the awacs, prowlers, F117 barely chiped away at 20% of Yugoslav anti air, something like 700 harms were fired and destroyed less than handful of SA6 batteries. Hard to argue EU part of NATO has better military capability than 20 years ago.
IMO there's a strong chance US would heavily restrict/limit F35 operations against RU. Because one shot down F35 by S400 let alone anything shittier completely evaporates narrative around 5th gen (and what that entails for IndoPac). They'd rather see RU hit F35s in hangers with standoff munitions because at least they can point to JP and SKR and say, see, you need to build harden air shelters.
> People also forget NATO fought a much shitter/temu RU in Yugoslavia where NATO threw everything at even more legacy soviet systems. All of the awacs, prowlers, F117 barely chiped away at 20% of Yugoslav anti air, something like 700 harms were fired and destroyed less than handful of SA6 batteries. Hard to argue EU part of NATO has better military capability than 20 years ago
Likewise the reason why Russia couldn't steamroll Ukraine swiftly is because Ukraine anti air is very formidable (using Soviet hardware no less). That is why it is wrong to simply assume Russia is weak.
One problem with the digital age is you can find news to support any view, regardless of how disconnected from reality it may be. And enough people to echo such that one may not realize how ridiculous they sound.
There's pics of UKR javalin calvary too. It's precisely because they're situationally better than tanks in certain combat conditions. For the same reason everyone is zipping around in dirt bikes and golf carts or UKR retiring M1 tanks from frontlines. Look up survivability onion, tanks/armor get detected and destroyed because they're too visible vs modern frontline battlefield recon. If you want to survive, have to move to smaller/more agile platforms to avoid detection in the first place. RU and UKR are both learning and adapting. It's reflection that last 50 years of doctorine is obsolete, aka everything EU military also hedged on. If shit ever hits the fan, NATO maybe donkeying as well.
Still sources like Covert Cabal and others do make me think it isn't only a tactical consideration the russians have made but also a reflection of the fact that they very much do see the end of their stockpile.
I don't think that's true. As an example, Finland and French doctrine are very different. It's easier to test all Euopean nations diffrent doctrine and choose what works best (especially if countries from the Balkans add their grain of salt)
Imho that's where European defense industry (as a whole) is interesting. Because you have 5 competing IFV designs (well, over 15, but really, 5 different design that does different things). You also have multiple tanks (and AMX-10s), as well as a bunch of different drone constructors. Even in gun design you have multiple choices, andh while optics and optrionics are Thales', overall equipements are extremely distributed. Europe might find itself on the backfoot in case of an engagement, but i'm pretty sure it would bounce back quickly.
Yes, France have multiple different doctrines. It's most known one is the "Force de Frappe" [0], but the Legion have one, and if you talk about "doctrine d'emploi" every bit of equipment have one (the AMX-10 necessitate a doctrine d'emploi so different than regular MBT than the whole French cavalry have a different general doctrine than any other mechanized troups)
You really make the best point here. End of the day, the 1986-style WW2++ strategy is dead. Manned air superiority outside of the third world is dead.
The Russian failure is the exemplar. They were re-waging WW2, and they have little more than a lot of cooked tankers to show for it. Now we’re rolling with throwing prisoners into trenches to stop the maneuver warfare, because they can’t maneuver.
The US is probably in as bad of a condition. Given the poor performance of air power in Ukraine and the Trump/Putin driven destruction of world alignment, US naval power is questionable. Aircraft carriers will become ineffective as modern SAMs are sold on the market. Our submarine platforms are old, manufacturing is barely operational, and we’ll probably fire key individuals if we haven’t already.
Aircraft carriers were always a joke in a US vs. Soviet conflict. A carrier will help with third-world enemies that cannot threaten it. However, the Soviet Union had capable submarine forces as well as ship-launched (e.g. from Kirov class cruisers) as well as air-launched anti-ship missiles which in numbers can overwhelm the carriers air defense screen.
In WW3 the role of an aircraft carrier is to launch its airplanes exactly once, before it is sunk.
Let's be fair here. If we rightly mock all the silly *pravda sites, the mules aren't exactly reported in the serious press either.
It seems more likely that mules were used where they make sense: Supplying ammo to a trench deeply in the forest, where mules are the superior "technology". Then that observation was blown out of proportion.
Remember that "the Russians are fighting with shovels" was a slogan in 2022.
Where are you getting this from? There certainly has been some exaggeration online and in the media about the capabilities of western military hardware, especially tanks. But that doesn't mean they were bad, just that they are far from invulnerable. And there are quite a few examples where they saved the soldiers inside when a Russian tank would have tossed their turret.
Patriot works in Ukraine, they even got a few Khinzal. But of course any air defense is limited by available ammo and you need enough of the right kind of air defense in the right places for this to work well. The Ukraine is really limited by the number of available systems and ammunition. And for something like the Shahed drones you need other ways to defend yourself to avoid exhausting your precious ammunition for advanced air defense systems.
Russia also was shown to be nearly unable to intercept Storm Shadow/SCALP EG at the beginning. So the somewhat aging European cruise missiles were able to easily penetrate current Russian air defenses.
> Russia also was shown to be nearly unable to intercept Storm Shadow/SCALP EG at the beginning. So the somewhat aging European cruise missiles were able to easily penetrate current Russian air defenses.
Most likely because they did not have the specs or complete specs for them and how they looked like on radar. There was an article somewhere that I can't find right now where something like this was said: Once a new weapon system is employed against RU or by RU against UA, it takes about two weeks to create countermeasures for it.
I didn't say western hardware bad, but exaggeration leading to RU dismissal and thinking that EU would be able to stomp RU in unrestricted warefare... especially without US assistence in short/medium time frame.
>patriot works
With US ISR (i.e. AWACs) providing early warning, IIRC correctly UKR was salvoing full patriot battery to intercept single kinzhal/zircon tier hypersonics, i.e. entire supply of EU patriot launcher can be overwhelmed by handful of hypersonics.
>storm shadow
Similarly UKR could sneak cruise missiles through RU IADs is because US info share helped plan missions/routes to circumvent RU defenses. Competent (not even super modern) air defense has like almost 100% interception on subsonic targets like cruise missiles, provided the are detected.
The TLDR is hard to say how EU hardware will perform without US force multiplier tier ISR. Which will effect everything from finding targets to hit, hitting targets, and avoid getting hit even with same/better hardware. Which again, is not to say EU is bad... but EU very unlikely to be US level great.
"Hard to argue EU part of NATO has better military capability than 20 years ago."
We are seeing Ukrainians regularly hitting russian redars and air defence. Whatever nato wasn't able to do in hte 90s the Ukrainians are fully capable of doing today, because they are doing it. And with lots of european help. So this is just outdated speculation you're doing.
We are seeing improved _US_ ISR in last 20 years enables UKR to hit RU assets. What UKR is fully capable of doing is follow up predominantly US supplied intel, especially for longer range / standoff strikes.
EU part of NATO has improved ISR (helios, sarlupe, copernicus etc) but nothing rivalling US tactical and strategic capabilities, i.e. as far as I know, there's no EU system that provides all weather real time targetting.
> IMO there's a strong chance US would heavily restrict/limit F35 operations against RU. Because one shot down F35 by S400 let alone anything shittier completely evaporates narrative around 5th gen (and what that entails for IndoPac)
Israel's F-35 have being going in and out of Iran's airspace with impunity, so no, I don't think that is going to be an issue.
The biggest Russian fuckup in this war was to put their elite soldiers in one plane for Hostomel Airport without knowing that Ukraine had SAMs in position and enough intelligence to know this was coming.
After that the Russian "elite" units were elite in name only.
This was in hour 8 of the war and it's worth bearing in mind that this war could have gone very, very differently.
Now you’re assuming quite a bit more than just a handful of troupes surviving. Such as them being able to get to an airport when there’s air defenses in the way. Being able to reinforce those troupes quickly again through air defenses etc.
Within a narrative such as loss of elite troops would definitely have some serious impact. In the context of a war the loss of the aircraft could easily be more significant.
The videos of the Russian troops at Hostomel are on Youtube. As a commenter above mentioned, they were there to allow troop transports to land and eventually be connected to the tank column coming south from Belarus.
Sure that was a plan, but it turns such movements of tanks proved very detrimental to Russia.
It’s easy to fall into the trap of thinking if only X, but war is complicated. It’s possible Russia would have been worse off because they tried to use those VDV soldiers in a plan that disastrously failed. It’s slightly more likely that they would have been a small net benefit, but chances are things would look more or less identical today with or without them.
My guy, the dismissive tone of "it's not an action movie" while backpedaling to "tut tut, sure that might have been their specific plan but have you considered unintended consequences" is too much for me.
Saying doing X wouldn’t have mattered is a perfectly reasonable rebuttal here. Ukraine not using a missile for attacking that aircraft means they could have used it to attack a different aircraft. Similarly Russia got to use all forces in that plan not destroyed with the aircraft in some other plan.
That’s not backpedaling that’s just the inherent complexities involved.
I don't know where you got this myth from. Extermination of elite VDV units was not just one plane shot down.
There were many russian helicopters successfully landing at Hostomel, the area saw heavy fighting for several days until it was under Ukrainian control.
> The Russian Il-76s carrying reinforcements could not land; they were possibly forced to return to Russia.[35]
Rumors of an Il-76 downed close to Vasylkiv did not prove to be true:
> Claims have been made that Ukrainian aircraft shot down two Russian Ilyushin Il-76 aircraft transporting assault troops.[33][124][34] However, The Guardian reports "no convincing public evidence has surfaced about the two downed planes, or about a drop of paratroopers in Vasylkiv".[125]
They have less than 30 airframes, probably 30-40% have some level of operational airworthiness.
The Russians get a lot of glazing on social media about military prowess. The reality is they’re fighting a tiny, poor country, got their asses kicked early on when nobody was really helping Ukraine substantially, mostly by virtue of their own incompetence.
The Russians version of the USAF is their information operations. They’ve helped to nurture right wing shitheads in the US for decades culminating in two freakshow presidential administrations. They’ve done the same in Germany in the former GDR and in the UK with the leave wankers.
I wonder if we'll see a coordinated wave of F-35 cancellations. They must all be aware they are potentially buying bricks. The time to do it, thus, is now - the situation isn't improving while time and money are wasted.
But that's an enormous political escalation.
Or maybe Europeans, as "founding members", are able to support the planes on their own? I doubt it though. The engine alone is US made, ans that alone is probably unmaintainable without their support.
It is not going to happen. There is no european manufacturer or a consortium that can build a similar airplane with comparable capabilities. They can't even match the F-22 which is more than two decades old.
The only way Europe can match Russia/China is to keep buying american made weapons. Maybe in 20-30 years the situation will be different and Europe will have the same capabilities of the US, but until then... buy, baby, buy!
When Putin can't take back Kursk, it seems odd to call Russia a super power.
But yes, agree with you about China.
Putin wants people to think Russia is a super power, when it's instead a corrupted inefficient mafia state. Look at research or startups coming from there (not much) or it's economy - the country is not interesting any longer (Putin has damaged it that much). Except for Putin attacking Ukraine, and his nukes and troll farms.
If Pakistan starts threatening other countries with nuclear war, and tries to invade a neighbor but mostly fails, is it then suddenly a super power?
I wish the EU agreed with you. That would surely mean they would not want to go on a 800 billion Euro spend of my taxpayer money to deter an "irrelevant country".
If it's sustained, then yes. Again, it's mostly important to be less tempting than other areas if we're headed back to a world of great powers and spheres of influence.
FWIW, given everything else that we've seen from Russia in this undeclared(!) war, I'm moderately confident the Russian nukes and delivery mechanisms are sub-par.
(Typing "sub" reminded me of the Kursk nuclear submarine that sank itself…)
It needs only a few to launch successfully to engulf Europe in flames.
So, even with subpar equipment, out of all of the 1700+ launch vehicles a few will still launch.
Some of the P(weapon failure) is constant: from what I hear, a certain fraction of Soviet and US systems (and presumably everyone else's) just don't work.
If that was all it was, then you would be correct.
But: some failures come with age, and require ongoing maintenance to retain function. For example, I expect all the tritium has decayed, and also that in many cases the money that was supposed to get spent replacing the tritium was instead spent on a fancy yacht or a football team or a seat in the UK's House of Lords etc.
And I don't know how good modern anti-missile weapons are, but I would expect them to have improved; conversely, despite Russia's talk about new hypersonic missiles, what they've shown hasn't been very impressive, and they've even used up some of their old nuclear-capable missiles while attacking Ukraine.
I'm happy to be relaxed about this, but only because I have no power — 90% chance some attempted hot war is actually all duds is great for me personally, 10% chance everything burns is unacceptably high for someone running a country.
Russia and China are regional powers and can't project military power very far, excluding nukes. To do that you need a credible blue water navy. China is close though, and definitely projecting its economic strength.
Europe (lets just say EU + UK) could be a superpower. However they lack political unity. And still want big daddy US to do the heavy lifting.
Yes, that's why the U.S. wants to control Arctic trade routes from China to Europe.
The Ukraine war was "successful" in destroying the possibility of railways between the EU and China.
The EU, ever the good vassal, now ramps up the rhetoric against Russia which is exactly what Hegseth wanted in the open.
The EU is still playing the U.S. deep state script and it is very likely that all the Trump pressure and insults are carefully planned political theater.
If the above conjectures are wrong and Trump is serious about peace with Russia, then the EU needs to pivot quickly to China and at least maintain reasonable diplomatic relations with Russia.
> The EU is still playing the U.S. deep state script and it is very likely that all the Trump pressure and insults are carefully planned political theater.
I find that becoming exceedingly unlikely. Trust has been destroyed, there is no easy recovery from that.
So many odd things have been occurring in the past month that I don't know what to believe any longer.
First, ex-neocon Rubio admitted on the Megyn Kelly show that the world is now multi-polar. Even if he believes that, why would he say so unless it's for show.
Then there is Lindsey Graham. In 2016 he gave warlike speeches to the Azov Batallion:
Graham and probably Rubio are still neocons. Trump must be really powerful to keep all this under control.
Then there is the U.S. arms lobby, which is uncannily quiet even though they'll lose a ton of business when NATO becomes irrelevant. Then there are no reactions to Polish nuclear ambitions, which is weird unless the whole thing is scripted.
So there are two theories. Either Trump is carving up the world or he is acting.
Elon Musk threatens to spend millions against any republican who deviates from Trump’s policies. Without that threat, the republicans would speak up against this assault on American interest and values. I wonder more if Elon has been compromised than Trump. Or if Russia threaten to trigger the Kessler syndrome, destroying all of Elon’s aspirations of getting off this rock (I’m still skeptical if he’s telling the truth about that), and instructed him to stop the war.
given the extreme 'benefits' of autonomous weapons (cheap, can be produced in arbitrary numbers, easier logistics, fewer parents mourning their children in your country, vastly easier production), we should expect them to be fielded before they are really ready.
Id agree with ten years to never for a 1:1 100% replacement - but Im not sure that is the required threshold for drones to replace a development budget item for upgrading to an next x-gen manned fighter.
Not to pile on but you say we should buy the F-35 to go toe to toe against Russia…
America is currently doing everything for Russia! If we actually used the F35 against Russia right now Trump would probably immediately do everything in his power to
stop that, just like he’s exerting pressure everywhere else he can in Russias favour
Honestly I’ll personally be buying as little American as possible going forwards
Euro companies need to be moving off companies like Amazon swiftly, they’re under the boot of the new leadership. There’s a few years before even the current Russian leadership can change us rhetoric to be actively hostile to Europe, but it’s coming.
It seems to me Donald is beheld in some way to Vladimir; what's being done now to my eye is too specifically about setting up UA for second RU invasion.
Donald then I think, step by step, is going to ally with Vladimir.
1. US aid to UA stops (done).
2. USA leaves NATO (on the way).
3. US troops in Europe leave or move to Hungary (floated).
4. Hungary is ejected from EU due to Orban obstructing everything he can.
5. Hungary becomes RU satellite state (maybe with many tens of thousand of US troops).
6. USA lifts its sanctions, placing it directly in conflict with Europe.
7. Donald invokes Insurrection Act, military units can now be used for civil policing (this is why top military brass and specifically top military lawyers removed).
8. Europe puts boots on ground and air cover over UA.
9. To "encourage peace", Donald now disables support for US weapon systems being used by Europe in UA. At this point, F-35 is history whether or not EU has dropped them or not.
10. Protests in USA, military used, people die, Donald suspends Constitution "to restore order and combat subversive elements".
11. No more elections. All court cases underway made irrelevant.
Anyone with a working memory of a couple of years remembers people like you who said a variety of excuses to the tune of "it won't be that bad", "you're exaggerating" and "it won't happen like that".
Of course, all of them were wrong. Short of WW3 between Europe and the US, many awful things that were predicted have come true. DT has severely weakened the USA, weakened the stock market, damaged US reputation and trust in the US army, dismantled many departments, put useless shills in most important positions, pulled out of Ukraine, stopped aid to Ukraine, sucked up to Putin, and turned it all into a country that most people in Europe consider a hostile enemy (myself included).
So. For the sake of your fellow citizens, quit the excuses.
The result, and perhaps the definition, of the polarization problem is that every time something terrible happens, the responsible side would rather say "I love suffering, this feels great" than lose face in an imagined argument with the other side.
> 8. Europe puts boots on ground and air cover over UA.
Given the size and battle experience of their armies I think that it's more probable that it's Ukraine that will cover Europe and not viceversa. And if they'll have to flee their country add a 12th point the UA army takes sanctuary in the EU that goes the way of Lebanon in the 70s when another army had to flee there.
Yes. Right now it's the EU which needs UA, and EU knows it; EU military is weak and has no idea how to fight with drones. UA military is strong and knows how to fight with drones.
If UA goes down, then EU goes down, because RU will attack before EU is ready.
This is why I think we see EU direct involvement in UA fighting; needed to keep UA up, and needed to get up to speed with drones.
> If UA goes down, then EU goes down, because RU will attack before EU is ready.
Do you have any numbers or analysis to back this up, please?
A few counterpoints:
- Russia failed to 'take' a relatively unprepared Ukraine, and arguably has only managed the gains it has made because the support (from Biden US and EU) was drip-fed according to the Biden team's strategy.
- Russia is haemorraging fighters and modern fighting machinery in the current war in Ukraine. It's unknown how much longer the loss of life can be sustained without internal unrest. The absence of modern machinery would obviously make an invasion of Europe less likely to succeed.
- While Russia might now be a "war economy" I've seen reports that they can't economically sustain the war for too much longer.
- While the EU certainty needs to invest in defence, some countries are already strong, and would likely fight to protect the collective.
Overall, this suggests that Russia would fail against a united Europe, were they to extend beyond a defeated Ukraine.
While Russia certainly botched the invasion they probably would have taken all of Ukraine by now without so much western support. Ukraine would of course be in a much better position now if that support had been stronger and not been dribbled in.
Russia's economy is teetering and looks very weak now, but much of that is due to sanctions. Sanctions that trump will probably remove soon, for zero concessions. I'm not sure how effective EU sanctions will be on their own. Soon we will be seeing a much stronger Russia, already on a heavy war footing, start swallowing up a much weaker Ukraine. I don't like what might happen after that plays out.
I get that Trump is unpredictable from one moment to the next, and also that (at best) is strongly influenced when he speaks to Putin, but he's been consistently spoken and (just about) acted from anti-war and pro-peace-deal positions.
Wouldn't freeing up Russia through removal of sanctions and a refusal to engage militarily resulting in an escalation in Ukraine and potentially beyond into Europe be seen as a big failure of his position?
Not American, but provided US military has an oath towards the Constitution (and not to whatever the government claims), I doubt _all_ of US army would follow (either internally, either externally) such a brutal reversal of duty as well as alliances.
You mean the _Vichy_ French soldiers? that's quite a different situation than the allied French army :)
And, I was more thinking of the situation on American ground, within the USA and between the USA and Canada. I don't mean it wouldn't happen. I mean that I don't think that would happen with 100% engagement from all US army. The disconnect and reversal of strategy of the US, against its own allies, is too sudden.
Duty is to the Constitution and the Commander in Chief. And alliances are at the discretion of the President. The military will do whatever they are told in terms of who the have to be friends with.
I know. That's the theory and mostly the practice.
Only, ask your military to return against your just previous allies (at your own initiative) among which the one that helped your very nation to fight for its independence, with which you did cross-training and exercises, for the past 80 years... everyone is in for quite a bumpy road.
The solution should probably be to go in and fight Russia immediately.
I think it's foolish to restrict operations to Ukraine though, and feel that the size of Russia is one of its main weaknesses. If there's to be a war, it should involve incursions into the US proper.
Nah, Swedish aerotech already out matches both Russia in terms of production capacity, arguably 6th if you ignore stealth, weapons range and weapons reliability. And already beats China in terms of technology, they're just now producing 5th gen airframes with copied tech, where Sweden isn't just following.
The EU without the US can already produce 5th gen, the selling point of the F35 was 6th gen compatible with 7th gen (NGAD).
Russia is still flying more 4th then 5th gen fighters, because they can't get their bricks off the ground. Why would the EU want to copy the same mistakes of their enemy?
No, because the US could fly them, (assumedly), but doesn't. Where my understanding is Russia can't keep their fleet maintained let alone produce more. You don't use gorilla air tactics and bomb civilian infrastructure if you have other options. Russia is smart enough to know the value of winning hearts and minds, but they don't. Why not? Because they can't is the only reasonable conclusion I've seen
I don't have access to perfect information, but I find the reports that Russia is unable to maintain their entire fleet creditable, and believe and/or trust the experts who confirm this analysis.
As far as I know the US military still has more 4gen jets than 5gen.
Obviously Russia has no 5gen at all (or just a few 5gen Su-57, if we going to name them 5gen).
Anyway, my point is that as of now Russia has no need for gen5 and can't afford it anyway, just like about anyone else except for the US and a few countries that have them but at the same time have to rely on the US anyway.
If you look at the raw specs maybe. Grippen has a specific role which is starting and landing anywhere and being easy to support, both in manpower and materials. You can land a Grippen on any short stretch of paved ground, get it rearmed and ready to fly again in half an hour with 5 people. Whereas higher spec american jets like the F16 need very long, clean and straight runways, lots of support infrastructure, lots of personnel and have a long turnaround time. With the likes of F35 and F22 this is even worse.
As other poster said, Gripen is perfect for a defensive role as a missile launch platform. It's not supposed to go 1:1 with F-35:s, but to counter the Russian air capability - and mostly in a defensive role. F-35:s were really great when they came with larger techno-military-political ecosystem but now the trust in that ecosystem is shattered.
The Rafale has claimed F-22 kills, but also consider that the competition here isn’t a straight up war against the United States but rather against Russia. As we’ve seen in the invasion of Ukraine, they don’t need advanced 6th generation fighters to handily best Russian forces using Soviet-era technology, and drones are FAR more significant in that kind of combat. Even if the F-35 was better at those types of missions, the high cost of the aircraft and support suggest that this might simply accelerate the shift away from human-piloted aircraft.
If your threat model did include a war within former NATO members, the F-35 is the worst possible choice so another way of thinking about this is that they should pick the best option which is actually available. That would mean things like swarm attacks and strikes on the airfields where those stealthy but extremely fragile planes are housed. Even if the public range is significantly low, they’d need a base closer than Greenland to strike European targets.
Europe had no reason to spy on the US before, why shouldn't the EU produce a carbon copy of the F-35? There is already a plant making them in Germany. If the US is tearing up treaties then why can't the EU tear up their promise of not stealing military technology?
What exactly do you think are so special about American made products? The only reason that America’s allies have bought them in the past is because of Pax Americana. That’s about to end if not has ended already.
BAE Systems along with other European arms/aerospace manufacturers are perfectly capable of making competing products.
Which allies fought alongside in every conflict the US participated in? With the exception of the blunders in Iraq and Aghanistan where everybody jumped on the “lets conquer faraway countries” bandwagon.
In Syria the US bombs things at their will, same in Somalia. In all Latin America conflicts the US went at it alone.
Honestly, go and look it up yourself, you’re not engaging in this thread constructively. You’re simply parroting MAGA talking points. I didn’t say “every”, I said “mostly”.
In order to replicate this, you need to invade countries and conquer them to test out your equipment, soldiers discipline and whatnot.
I don't see EU countries starting to invade other countries around the globe to test out weapons systems and battlefield tactics. The US on the other hand, kind of did this continuously since WWW2 (to mention recent history).
Don't forget the F-35 is the best plane for the PREVIOUS war. The current and the NEXT war will be fought with drones. And Ukraine is one of the countries that has the best drone industry.
Maybe we (as a Pole living in Norway) can't have state of the art jets, but in practice don't need them?
We (as the whole eastern block - Scands, Balts, Poland, Romania and Ukraine) should cancel our orders of F-35 and focus on developing our drone and strategic missile industry. And focus on investing, developing and buying from our closest allies - the eastern block.
Not on the countries that don't care because they are either too far from Russia (Spain, Italy) or have vested geopolitical interest in alllying with them (Germany). France and UK might want to join to balance out Germany.
At least that's what I understand from hearing smarter than me discuss the current situation.
Which next war? The type of small, short range drones currently being used in Ukraine and Russia won't be of much use in a major regional conflict with China. Ranges will be orders of magnitude longer and communication links for drone control won't be reliable.
The main reason that Ukraine and Russia have had to rely so heavily on drones is that they had no better alternative. The air forces on both sides are shit with zero (or effectively zero) 5th generation aircraft that can survive in a contested environment. The F-35 was designed for that mission and would at least have a chance.
> The air forces on both sides are shit with zero (or effectively zero)
I wouldn't call Russian AF "shit". The УМПК (JDAM) bombs crushed formidable defense of Avdeevka and now hit AFU hard in Sudja. Ka-52 helicopters stopped counteroffensive a year ago. Surely, sky is contested, but it's still important component that hurts Ukraine very hard.
> have had to rely so heavily on drones is that they had no better alternative
What would be an alternative to wing reconnaissance drones? What can hyper-equipped US armed forces offer as a replacement FPV and fiber-optics FPV attack drones? Yeah they have Reapers and other fancy expensive gear for the first 3-4 weeks of active war, then what?
The Russian air force is shit. They have zero capability to conduct close air support and have been reduced to launching stand-off weapons from within their own air defense coverage. This has some value but it's basically just another form of artillery. US tactical air capabilities are on an entirely different level.
The US has a variety of overlapping reconnaissance capabilities including not just large UAVs but also manned aircraft (including the F-35) and multiple satellite constellations. Over the next few years the priorities in that area should be to accelerate the B-21 Raider program (it will make an excellent recon platform) and develop some sort of prompt satellite launch capability to replace combat losses within hours. There is also a general recognition that we'll have to increase spending or shift budget priorities to build up the industrial capacity necessary to sustain longer conflicts.
Personally I oppose sending troops to the front in Ukraine, but for a different reason than others who oppose it: I believe that to send them to already fortified Russian positions is wasteful.
Consequently I believe that if the EU is to intervene, which I think is a very reasonable thing to do, it should be by imitiating the Russian approach of using aircraft as flying artillery-- i.e. to release missiles etc., against Russian positions in Ukraine, but I also believe that we should attack Russian natural gas pipelines, ammonia plants, nitric acid plants, ammunition plants with long-range weapons. I also believe that it's reasonable to send in ground troops to seize Russian and Belarusian territory in locations where it can be determined that Russia lacks artillery, tanks etc., and to in that way force troop movements, thus depleting the front in Ukraine and allowing Ukraine to basically roll it over.
I believe that this is possible for several reasons, among them that we Europeans are three times as many as the Russians. I believe that it is unlikely to lead to nuclear war because I believe that the Russians are rational and well aware that any nuclear use by them leads to a proportional nuclear use by 'us', whatever that means, and that the number of nuclear weapons in Russian control is irrelevant for the reason that they're gone after an exchange of a mere hundred or so, so that anything beyond that is superfluous.
I see no definite borders for EU expansion other than cultural.
There are some problems with Ukraine, there might be if there's too much corruption and oligarchy type stuff, so I don't want to absorb them immediately-- they need huge reforms, but I don't find them objectionable per se. I think they need to get smarter, get rid of their mafia etc., but it might be possible.
It's critical for the EU to prevent this kind of expansionist warfare on its borders.
Have you seen that Chinese dragon made with drones they showed off during the NYE show? Now imagine them autonomous and every carrying a bomb. Even Phalanx will not help you. Bye bye aircraft carriers.
I've seen it. So what. How will those drones get to the aircraft carrier? Their batteries only last a few minutes, and they barely move much faster than a carrier.
Today. So many things we have seen in the last couple of years have been pure sci-fi a decade ago. Switchblade 600, for example, has a loitering time of 40 minutes and a range of 24 minutes.
> and they barely move much faster than a carrier.
Fly in the direction bow to stern, low above the water. Or just ... loiter in the path of the carrier.
You're really missing the point. Have you ever even been on a boat? The Pacific Ocean is a big place, and carriers don't move in predictable straight lines. Drones aren't going to be able to loiter in place indefinitely just on the hope that a carrier might wander into range.
The Chinese are not stupid. Their A2/AD doctrine is based on large, expensive manned aircraft and fast missiles, not slow and weak little "drones".
Small DIY drones are only useful when no side has air superiority. Once you own the air, you can bomb and support ground troops a lot more efficiently.
I mean, if any other country spent 700+ billion a year on corporate welfare to defence contractors they’d have some impressive tech too.
If nobody wants to buy any of that shit because of the knock-on effects of Trump’s self-sabotage and they start investing elsewhere, then those defence companies will sooner distance themselves from the US as well. Unless they’re in on whatever the administration is cooking up the money is still going to speak louder.
No, thank you we are not idiots. Out fighters are just fine, as long as we don't have to fight US.
BTW you don't seem to understand military well - F22 is much better plane than F35, but abysmally complex to do and expensive, thats why the low numbers. F35 has way too many compromises ie for us navy.
Also, as Ukraine war shows fighter jets are not that important for waging war if situation is more like peer vs peer, and not US blowing shepherds and weddings into pieces. Sure, they lob a bomb or two, sometimes launch a rocket but all from as much distance as possible. What wins such wars these days is artillery, massive amount of infantry and millions of various drones.
We need to pay the money to USA as tribute so its a write-off anyway, but I have low confidence we will ever see working hardware from it. However I bet China would actually prioritise delivery of some new subs if we pivoted to using them as our naval supplier, to win mindshare in the west as an alternative to America or Russia as an arms supplier. and we set up the next 100 years of paying off bigger countries to leave us alone, which honestly worked well enough the last 100 years
Like all things it depends on the terms, in my mind though China would probably be incentivized to give us a good deal - Im sure they would be very amused delivering real hardware while the USA continues to demonstrate their incompetence at shipbuilding. It would also signal that Australia wants to sit out any USA/China war, which might be hard to do politically (which is maybe why Im not PM) but its certainly the position I hope Aus ends up taking should these 2 buffoons start a real blue
Europe can't even maintain some Eurofighter fleets without US support. The Austrian model for example needs a crypto key for secure communications from a US company for every flight.
The US cryptography key is only needed for NATO Link 16 communications, not for regular flight operations. This is totally normal because Austria isn't a full NATO member. They are part of the NATO Partnership for Peace program which allows for limited levels of cooperation.
But right now the fact that there US citizens (apparently civil contractors, not military personell) stationed at austrian air bases to enable some functionality is a big deal. This is a big deal because the wish-wash Austrian Neutrality is crucial to Austrian Identity.
How is it a big deal? If Austria wanted full access to NATO technology then they should have joined NATO. They chose not to, and now they have to accept the consequences of that choice. Can't have your cake and eat it, too.
It's the usual hypocrisy. There never was money for the military, neutrality ever popular and nobody thought about it back when things seemed more stable. Now that things are changing, it's a big deal. Maybe we join Nato, maybe Europe get it's own shit together. We'll see.
There are still doubts as to whether the new Trumpian reality is permanent. Politicians in Europe are still hoping that this is all a bad dream. So I guess the orders will somehow (by delaying payments, inventing some requirements, finding problems in deliveries that have to be endlessly discussed and fixed, ...) be delayed for 4 years. If the next president is still looking as anti-European as Trump, orders will for sure be cancelled.
Still. None of the desired 800B of investment in defense equipment and technology can have US suppliers after the last couple of weeks. Even if the US eventually gets rid of this cancerous development.
As a side thought: it is oft remarked in the defence industry circles how buying local might be more expensive but more of the money stays at home.
Quite apart from any sovereignty arguments, cash spent at home goes to purchase of hopefully local components, materials, all along paying for local salaries, which drives local economies. And this is taxed along the way too, as income tax, VAT and ultimate corporate tax.
I wonder if that's really true to a significant amount, and if so, how much does that matter. Eg if I can buy something for X abroad, or c*X locally, for what value of c is this overall breakeven?
I doubt "until the administration ceases to act insane" is going to be enough. The current administration has proven to be untrustworthy, so nothing they say is going to restore trust in the US. On top of that, what guarantees could the US give that a future Trump 2.0 isn't going to break on their first day?
The problem is systemic: The US doesn't have a functioning democracy. FPTP, gerrymandering, unchecked campaign financing, the electoral college? It just isn't working, and the US is permanently stuck in a dysfunctional two-party system. If that doesn't get fixed (and let's be honest, it won't), the rest of the world won't be trusting the US until it can demonstrate a few decades of continuous trustworthy leadership after Trump is gone.
I think this is overly optimistic. Countries around the world can't build strategies around the US that will only hold when the Democrats are in power. Trump and the Republican party as a whole have thrown reliability out the window. Even if the GOP come to their senses and reject the America First ideology and pop their disinformation bubble the damage has still be done to the character of state. The only option for the US is to hold on to its power by sheer muscle power, but that will only last so long.
Doubts? Maybe officially in PR statements, otherwise you would have to be mad to think this is temporary. Its as temporary as his lifespan. People with actual power are not that stupid anywhere.
I am not holding my breath that he will just walk away in 4 years, why would anybody be so naive? He thinks US constitution is an old toilet paper, its mememe. Look at what happened last time he was supposed to go out.
Trump has been here clearly signaling that a large portion of the US population does not support international military subsidies and Europe has done nearly nothing to prepare. Pushing forward a head-in-the-sand narrative is hugely detrimental to Europe’s independent future and requires a degree of blindness that is absurd
By "military subsidies" you mean US government money subsidizing US defense industry I assume?
Because that is where most of the money ends up when the US "supports" other countries. The US unloads weapons from its stockpiles (that need to be replaced at some point anyway) and then replenish the US stockpiles. This is both a huge injection of funds into US defense industry, and it takes care of the expensive problem of dealing with old ordnance.
US defense industry is going to be busy restocking the US stockpiles for a while longer.
If revenue were to soften before that, the Trump administration can distract from this reality by pumping more money into the industry short term. This may actually push the problem forward in time to the next president if they can keep pumping in enough money to hide the problem. It looks as if they are doing exactly this.
Of course, a few years down the line the defense industry will be in trouble as "consumer trust" is gone, Europe have ramped up their production and revenues will start to plummet.
> There are still doubts as to whether the new Trumpian reality is permanent
We have to assume that the US cannot be trusted as a military ally for at least the next 4 years. In fact, we have to be open to the possibility that they will be willing to be hostile. Including, but not limited to, extortion tactics. That's the hard baseline here.
We also have to be open to the possibility that the US either won't or can't have a proper election in 2028. And even if there is a proper election, that even a "sensible" president will not repair the damage.
What is already permanent is that Europe will never have the same level of trust in the US ever again. Perhaps some of it can grow back over a few decades, but the former level of trust will not return.
We're uniquely suited to not support the F-35. Not unless you swap out the engine for a Safran one, change the avionics for Dassault's, rip out the rest of the electronics for the Thalès stuff and replace the ordnance with MBDA's.
We'd keep the frame, but Serge Dassault and Charles de Gaulle would probably smite any French mechanic coming within 20 feet of a F-35 to do anything but dismantle one for its secrets.
Which is exactly the steps a European power needs to take in order to support an F-35 or similar aircraft. Remove the foreign made equipment you can't support and put your own domestic equipment, or at least put something sourced from the EU on it
On the F-35 program, ability to perform local support isn't so much based on being a "founding member" but rather program partnership level. The only other Level 1 partner is the UK. As Level 2 we have Italy and the Netherlands. All other countries are down at Level 3 (most heavily dependent on US support), except for Israel which is sort of a special case with a unique variant and special rules about local control. Ultimately though, you're correct that the F-35 will quickly turn into a brick for every export customer without active US support.
The other factor is the NATO nuclear sharing arrangement. The F-35A is the only new aircraft certified to carry the US nuclear weapons under that arrangement, so that impacts Belgium, Germany, Italy, and Netherlands. Germany looked into certifying the Eurofighter Typhoon for the nuclear strike mission but decided that they couldn't afford it, and bought the F-35A instead. Of course, if the US pulls back from NATO and ends nuclear sharing then that concern would become moot and some of those countries would be likely to develop their own nuclear weapons.
"Germany looked into certifying the Eurofighter Typhoon for the nuclear strike mission but decided that they couldn't afford it, and bought the F-35A instead"
I remember the story rather like this:
US: "you want to certify your fighter for nuclear devices"
Germany: "yes"
US: "ooh, that will be expensive and takes a loooong time. Don't you want to just buy our F35 instead?"
And germany basically did. With the implicit understanding, to buy a piece of nuclear protection with that. Well, all gone ... so there are really only some voices left, wanting to keep buying the expensive, potentially useless bricks.
Yes, that's basically accurate. Since the end of the Cold War, Germany has always taken the cheapest possible military option in order to fund their precious social programs and treated the military as just another government jobs program. While I think the current US administration's moves to cut off our allies are deeply stupid and the moral equivalent of treason, Germany has only itself to blame for creating such a dependency. Alliances are always temporary and now Germany will have to face reality.
"Germany has always taken the cheapest possible military option "
Not in my understanding. Rather germany always went for the specialized and therefore expensive version (Goldrandlösung) of anything. But sure, parliament says, we are in peace, we don't need so many of those expensive toys. So they rather buyed only limited numbers and created another buerocratic controll gremium.
France could afford a nuclear programm and an aircraft carrier with an equal budget.
So yeah, there are many factors to blame, but I don't think it was because of too little money. Rather too much money with no one sane checking, if it serves really the purpose of defending the country.
Could the UK thus be Europe's Trojan horse of support? If the US can't switch them off (allegedly), can they use their supply chains to support the rest of Europe?
They may lack the scale, but perhaps that can be built up.
The UK doesn't have the supply chains to support the rest of Europe. There are lots of parts on an F-35 that the UK can't make; despite being a Level 1 partner I don't think they have the full technical data package for everything. But neither does the US have the supply chains to support ourselves without the UK, especially for the F-35B model. That's why this whole dispute is so stupid, and hopefully cooler heads will prevail.
Canada’s largest newspaper published an opinion piece [0] calling for the cancellation of F-35 purchases. The article calls out source code availability in its argument.
Europe is developing 6th Gen fighter(s) already though. And yes, Europe produces a 5th Gen fighter. The f35 is made only in USA and Italy, although I share the worries on having a potentially brickable device
5th gen is a nonsense marketing term. It is far less about the plane itself and more about how it integrates into a force. This is why russian figthers are pretty useless: they are not integrated with the rest of the force and they lack coordination. The russians do not even have the ability to discriminate between their own planes and enemy planes when making decisions to launch AA missiles.
While I doubt that it solves all the issue, subcontractors, imported parts and so on, but the Italian F-35s are build be Leonardo in Cameri in Italy. How long would it take BAE, SAAB or Leonardo to un-brick an F-35?
Again, not ideal, but the first F-35 have been delivered an need to be serviced and maintained until they can be replaced,... or maybe just until the next US election.
I think there’s an interesting question about how important updates are: say they unbrick it, how often do you have before there’s some change you’d actually want to have but it’s no longer easily available? This feels like the much higher-stakes version of people trying to jailbreak phones without losing security updates.
Hardware is not the issue. The US strictly controls the software whence many differentiated capabilities of the aircraft come. This includes a lot of secret computer science R&D that no one has access to. Countries were buying it for the advanced software.
I'd expect the original agreements that were put in place--both the ones with the subcontractors as well as the purchase agreements--are quite strict on what you can do with the plane. Trying to reverse engineer software (the policy was that no one gets access to the original source code for the F-35[0], at least back in 2009) is probably a no-go under those agreements.
The original article suggests that Ukraine may end up having to replace the electronic countermeasures hardware to get around this in the future, so I'd expect any attempts to "un-brick"/work around the lack of support will eventually be along those lines, even if it results in some performance degradation.
No matter how they approach this, it's going to be a horrifically difficult and expensive task.
> Trying to reverse engineer software (the policy was that no one gets access to the original source code for the F-35[0], at least back in 2009) is probably a no-go under those agreements.
the UK made access to the source code a condition of purchase, and the technology transfer agreement was signed
in a hypothetical scenario where the US federal government falls under the direct control of a russian asset, I imagine this would end up in our allies hands reasonably quickly
> I'd expect the original agreements that were put in place--both the ones with the subcontractors as well as the purchase agreements--are quite strict on what you can do with the plane. Trying to reverse engineer software (the policy was that no one gets access to the original source code for the F-35[0], at least back in 2009) is probably a no-go under those agreements.
We're talking about Europe being able to protect itself from a potential Russian invasion despite the US bricking their F35s, and your argument is that they'd have to bend or break an agreement?
I don't think that's a big hurdle, in that eventuality.
Next national elections are the midterms in November 2026 with a new house and senate taking over in Jan 2027, 22 months time.
If the American people want to shift track they have the opportunity to actually elect a Congress which will do something.
If not it’s November 2028 for the next presidential election. Trump (if he’s still alive - he’s not exactly young or healthy) won’t be able to stand for a third term unless a constitutional ammendment is past
MAGA is essentially a personality cult. There will be a massive power vacuum once Trump leaves the stage, and I doubt any fraction will be big enough to whip the kind of unwavering loyalty we're seeing today.
The Israelis weren’t given a choice in the matter. The challenge is that parts of the software required for some key capabilities use advanced computer science R&D that is not in the literature.
You can fly the airframe but there is a significant reduction in capability unless you can also produce equivalent algorithms and data processing technology.
The Mossad is great at industrial espionage, and as the US gov alienates and lets “big balls” exfiltrate critical information, they’ll probably see advancements.
Probably don't even need to work that hard. The Saudis got a bunch of nuclear secrets the first round so I am sure F35 info can be brought to Mar a lago.
The cognitive radar stuff is old tech. I don’t think that concept is really considered a differentiated capability beyond being a sophisticated implementation.
Almost by definition, any classified computer science research would be non-obvious.
If cr is old tech any keywords for what is new/current tech?
I’m not sure your second point is true. The vast vast majority of classified information is very boring, or operational like frequencies of radar, etc.
Both sides know the basics, it’s what frequencies the radar comms and aircraft work at that is classified.
There’s very little “OMG this one algorithm changes everything!!”. Unless proven otherwise
That is entirely the point, it is supposed to be surprising. There are fragments of circumstantial evidence for some interesting computer science problems e.g. systems that demonstrably imply transitive closure algorithm performance that can’t be remotely replicated by anything in literature.
The ability of someone to imagine the existence of things they are unaware of has no bearing on their existence. You could say the same of a lot of the classified materials science that underpins a lot of US weaponry hardware for which there is ample circumstantial evidence. No one is going to be talking about it on HN.
"their S-300 systems and Sukhois against their maker"
by "thier" you of course mean every single last operational legacy system from the former soviet block and customers.....so all of those ,ummmm, suppliers, are now realising the worth of the promesary "upgrades" they got for thier systems, plus knowing that even glancing east, is not going to go well, and that central europe now has them....."(insert unpleasant imagery here)"
Trump been at this?, what 50 days?
whole classes of sinecures getting shut down, no end in site
“On 27 May 2006, President George W. Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair announced that "Both governments agree that the UK will have the ability to successfully operate, upgrade, employ, and maintain the Joint Strike Fighter such that the UK retains operational sovereignty over the aircraft." In December 2006, an agreement was signed which met the UK's demands for further participation, i.e., access to software source code and operational sovereignty. The agreement allows "an unbroken British chain of command" for operation of the aircraft.”
I can't forge metal but I feel like my forks in my kitchen are mine because I can operate and maintain them until they fundamentally break. I do think that's ownership
But I agree there's more than one way to view ownership and I can see your point, even if I don't think I agree so long as the UK can truly operate it in every way, including software that might need adapting (like how I might bend my fork's prong back into shape, or out of shape for adaptations)
For forks fine. But military equipment breaks all the time. And the maintenance requirements on things like jets are 4:1 or greater. So having a jet down because a part is missing and not able to be supplied is a real issue.
Since when was the US in the European Union or even near Europe? How is it like Brexit in the slightest? Why is it the US's responsibility to finance and organize the majority of EU's defense?
PS: I'm from and in Europe. I don't get why it is a good or logical thing that the US should be responsible for the majority of "Western" defense on our territory.
Brexit damaged the UK's economy and partnerships. The actions the US keep taking are like that but worse. They are pissing off allies in Europe by doing things like this, they are damaging their own economy and partnerships by threatening and placing tariffs on allies for no real reason.
Because it's been a really good deal for the US.
1. European countries have (for the most part) not had an incentive to build military might, which means they won't be adversaries to the US.
2. This dependency on the US has given the US a lot of soft power in terms of diplomatic pull. In the past, the US could just ask Europe to jump, and Europeans would ask how high.
3. In addition to Europe, it's also kept Russia in check, because it has prevented them from expanding to the west.
It was a win win arrangement of sorts. Europe got to spend less on defense. US won a reliable ally that would not challenge them much, and help enforce worldwide US dominance. Basically a near vassal situation.
How exactly was the US benefiting in this arrangement? Sounds very one sided if the American tax payer is doing the bulk of spending while Europe is freeloading
The US has allies in return for this spending. A block of people who stand against autocrats and with the US.
It also bought a much more peaceful and free world. Not just nice because it is better for people, but also because it gives opportunity for trade.
Note that it might have been possible for the US to convince the rest of NATO to spend more on their defense without losing the faith of their allies. This sure isn't the way to do it.
They’re responsible for honoring their agreements and contracts. How can any European state now trust the F-35s that they’ve purchased or going to purchase? All the trans-Atlantic trust built since 1945. Flushed down the toilet in a few weeks. Trust is difficult to build but easy to destroy.
To be fair, as a true fifth-gen fighter the F-35 absolutely does have capabilities no European one does. It is an impressive piece of hardware, and the US has been selling them for quite reasonable prices.
The US administration agrees with you. It also decided it doesn't want to sell weapons to the Western world anymore, and that it wants to carry the cost of weapons development all itself without relying on exports.
It also wants to forcibly grow competing defense contractors in Europe.
The US is the largest arms dealer in the world and sells ass tons of equipment to the EU. Ain't nobody going to be buying US arms if they think they could be cut off on a whim. Large parts of the US economy are based on arms production and sales, and a large part of the US's non-arms trade is thanks to the US protecting its trade routes and partners. If the US stops protecting its trade, people will stop preferring trade with the US because it will now be vulnerable and near impossible to secure as a smaller nation because it has to cross the largest oceans in the world.
Without much background in the politics, the parallel I see is this:
Group A and Group B build an economic partnership under consensual terms generally favourable to both over a long period of time.
At one point, Group A decides to withdraw due to real or perceived inequality. The timeframe of withdrawal is faster than entering, and is insufficient to unearth the complex network of roots that took generations to plant.
When the trunk is pulled, the pain is felt in vast numbers of small ways that add up. These roots are what contain the vast majority of the surface area after all.
Brexit was about repealing long-term commitments for short-term gain, and a healthy does of FU to closest partners for domestic publicity. Oh and the short term gains never materialised, it was all costs in the end.
I see this as analogous. US is maybe reaping some short term benefits from flipping on its allies, but burning the bridges it very much relies on.
The US was never in the European Union, but has always been the leader of NATO and, since WWII, the "Western world". Trump bringing the US out of those positions is a bigger deal than Brexit, because the UK was never a leader in the EU (because of all the internal opposition to it).
> I don't get why it is a good or logical thing that the US should be responsible for the majority of "Western" defense on our territory.
Read some history (everything geopolitics after the second world war), you should ask yourself why for 76 years that's exactly what the US did (and perhaps why this is the first time that question occurred to you).
It's because the relationship between Europe and the US is not a mutually beneficial one, the US benefited the most from its power and influence over western Europe, and that doesn't just apply to Europe. NATO and the roughly 128 military bases in 58 different countries don't exist because the US somehow likes to subsidize the military spending of these countries for some altruistic purpose, it exists because it strengthens US influence across the world.
That's soft power, and if it fails, it means war (in total 123 military conflicts since WW2). It's a less bloody alternative to make sure the US gets what it wants because its the stronger party in any geopolitical relationship.
That's the logic behind it. The same logic applies to military aid it gives to Egypt and Israel (that Trump continues to give).
Trump and Biden have shown that the US is an unreliable partner, and that it is no longer going to provide security guarantees when it is really needed.
If I was a foreign leader, I would immediately consider building nuclear deterrence of some sort, and find alternatives to US weapons.
Biden's 'minor incursion' remarks, giving Putin the go ahead for round 2 in 2022:
I think you need to reassess your instrumental subgoals, because this isn’t a game you can win by owning the libs: if Trump fucks the US hard enough, your life is still gonna suck even if everyone blames Biden and hates democrats.
There is actually a psychiatric disorder (from an Oliver Sacks book)
where the patient wakes up one day with a terrible conviction that
their own healthy limbs are not theirs, and with an overwhelming urge
to amputate them. Sometimes it's so distressing that amputation is
actually done.
"Body integrity identity disorder (BIID), or body integrity dysphoria, is a mental health condition where you feel that a limb or healthy body part shouldn’t be part of your body."
While I agree with you, I think the problem goes beyond military equipment. There’s a lot of risk now in doing business with America in every field, because it’s so unpredictable. Why get cloud or SaaS from the US if they’re one executive order away from being forced to break the GDPR — or shut off service completely, like Maxar in Ukraine. Why build supply chains through America if the price of raw materials can arbitrarily change with tariffs? Sure, it’s a huge market to sell to, but all of those risks have real costs.
Yes, I agree. There was a view that Trump is at least transactional - that so long as you pay (NATO defense spending target, US weapons etc) he'll have your back,.in a subscription basis. Likewise outside defense I guess.
I'm beginning to think that being somewhat reined in by the Republican establishment in his first term, a weakness that the MAGA-crowd sought to correct, ultimately worked in his favor in protecting him from his poor instincts.
It's like he doesn't understand that trust and reliability have a real, tangible value. That's simply a misjudgment. Maybe he actually believes that America is so exceptionally strong that any sort of cooperation ultimately works against it?
It's terribly sad and depressing frankly. A small part of me still has hope that this is going to end badly, in that it turns into a useful lesson, but not badly enough to cause lasting damage. I might be naive.
We’re only seven weeks in, and the damage so far will probably take a decade to fix. I’m not as optimistic as you about the remaining 201 weeks — if that in fact is the number.
I was thinking the same thing. Europe should build its own cloud. All purchased US goods and services are now a potential target for a match of arm wrestling.
I work in IT. We already have several customers projects (various profiles) that paused all their ongoing projects to _start_ migrating their servers and hosted services away from US-based/owned ones towards EU-based ones.
The Netherlands for instance, who gave Ukraine a batch of F16s _was_ a buyer. Logic still stands, US made anything is worthless if it includes a kill switch that can be toggled any time post-purchase.
They all create export agreements where countries have to seek permission to reexport and more. Usually for political plays.
It's also the same reason the Swiss defense industry is now in collapse. Because they refused to allow re-export of ammo to Ukraine citing Swiss neutrality.
It immediately made all Swiss made ammo worthless for all european countries in event of war. Lol
Apparently the Swiss are still talking of revising their law while their defense industry is crying because nobody wants to buy their shit as European countries want to be able to help other European countries. Especially circles like the Nordic or Baltic regions where the countries are extremely buddy buddy.
How does that even work? Like you can't use Swiss ammo against European nations or what? It just seems to make it literally(not figuratively) worthless.
Sounds like the statement that if an online service is free, you are the product, when in reality the same applies to paying customers as well. You are only exempt if you have full control over it.
It doesn’t matter who owns these planes, the US have shown that they have the power to make them useless and that they cannot be trusted, and that is a dealbreaker when it comes to expensive & important equipment.
Yes, he was basically warning that short termism, and constantly throwing people under the bus, will be bad for American imperialism in the long term.
"Word should be gotten to Nixon that if Thieu meets the same fate as Diem, the word will go out to the nations of the world that it may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal."
Thieu did meet the same fate, well, he wasn't killed, but he was overthrown and lived life in exile as a recluse.
Zelenskyy will almost certainly suffer the same fate.
The agenda that Trump advanced during campaigns was not "cut ourselves off from the rest of the world". Do his supporters really want this? What's the rationale he advances for this stance and the tarrifs?
What would a president who was beholden to Russians do once elected? I mean -- what's the point of provoking Canada, of all countries? Canada as the 51st US state would be the new most populous state and would cause a huge change in US politics. Not to mention it could only arrive through conquest. So why even propose it if not merely to cause a rift?
The agenda was to leave Ukraine and to have Europe pay for its own defence which is what’s happening here. Nothing more, nothing less. Don’t let yourself get manipulated by Reddit-tier arguments.
The agenda is to abandon US allies and let Russia expand however it wants, because that's what Putin wants. Putin wants to erase the Ukrainian cultural identity, which is what Russia has tried to do for centuries.
After many long discussions, I can only conclude it less about the values of the supporters and more about their psychology.
His supporters want whatever he wants, as long as it means that the right people get bullied. There's not much deeper thought than that.
It's very sad to see people that I respected debase their own principles so that they can remain proud Trump supporters. Their identity appears tied to the decision, and I know only one person who had the principles to to respond to any of Trump's actions with "OK these people actually have no clue what they are doing." (Which was in response to their treatment of Zelensky in the Oval Office).
>His supporters want whatever he wants, as long as it means that the right people get bullied.
Yeah, pretty much. Everyone in this thread should be able to craft a Trump line that's easily digestible by his base on this point by now. In this specific case it's "I don't want to give US weapons to anyone who won't act in our (my) national interest on every issue." Once you empower him to decide what is or is not in the US national interest, there's not much you need in the way of convincing. It's only when his policies start hurting his voters individually that they'll maybe start questioning whether what Trump claims is American national interest is actually in their own interest or not.
That's like asking whether a child wants the sugar crash that will come after eating the candy bar. They're not able to see that far ahead. They'll only "get it" when their lives have been made significantly harder, and even then it's not likely they'll be able to attribute their misery to the administration's policies--they could very easily be convinced to blame some minority group or foreign nation.
Not sure about Canada, but Trump's actions will make a lot more sense if you consider that to American rightists, American leftists are a much bigger enemy than Russians. I think the same is true in the opposite direction. These 2 groups can't stand each other and often sabotage the other's efforts. We can put that aside and ask what's best for the world or America, but as long as there is this hatred between the parties in the US, both sides will act primarily against the other.
> to American rightists, American leftists are a much bigger enemy than Russians.
This reminds me of France in the Second World War. My (questionable) understanding is that they were more worried about the enemies at home than the ones across the border.
The supporters are just a rabble bought into a cult of personality. If they know what they think, it doesn’t matter.
The point of all of this is the chaos and destruction of trust in the system. A concept in the early stages of the Russian revolution was that the stage had to be set for a “spark” to light the tinder of the proletariat. Here the Russians had RT, probably fed talking points and material to talk radio and podcast people. Had honeypots seducing strategic politicans and special interests (See Maria Butina and the NRA). Obviously wields influence over Trump.
Once that tinder has been set, the sparks some in the chaos. You have the religious weirdos who think dinosaurs are fake, Elon who believes he’s the protagonist in a sci-fi fantasy, some war-hawks pushing the Artic Dominance thing, and whatever fuckery the gang of oligarchs like Theil, etc have in mind.
Does Europe lessening their desire to buy US-designed and US-made military hardware benefit or harm the US?
Extend this to other areas of commerce. If the US is no longer a reliable trade partner and its allies lessen their economic ties, is that a positive outcome for the US?
A week ago Trump killed the western alliance when he made it clear that allies could not rely on the US. This week he has killed the US weapons export business. Not a single country will trust them now. It would be quite an interesting thing to watch if we didn't have to live here.
Europe has spent trillions on defence since the fall of the Berlin Wall, most of which went to US weapons manufacturers.
What the last decade has shows is relying on external oligarchs for energy and defence is not sensible. The us has encouraged this for a long time. I just hope that Europe actually steps up quickly enough.
It will hurt the us a lot more than Europe, and China will be massively emboldened in the Pacific. It’s a new world order.
Spending among NATO member nations had already started growing considerably since Trump's first term. And a lot of that spending went towards buying US made weapons, though not exclusively.
With this move, any nation will think twice about buying US made weapons. Trump effectively kneecapped the US arms industry by this move.
Even accepting that as true (it’s not — it’s the cost of having soft-power in Europe.) it means that no European, and probably Turkish, Korean, Japanese and Canadian cash will be flowing to the USA defence industry.
It’s “great” in the sense that this will decimate the US military industry (great or “great” depending on your view of American hegemony). China and Europe will be stronger, and America is absolutely finished as a world power.
Weapons procurement expenses has been shooting up in Europe, I do not get why you only talk about the spoken plans and not the actual things that eventually happens after these plan are designed.
Just a few days ago, Leonardo signed a treaty to develop uavs together with Baykar. A month or so ago, Italian government announced the creation of a joint venture between rheinmetall and Leonardo, sharing technologies to Leonardo and producing some of the >1000 ifvs to buy for the italian army in italy and some in Germany
Yeah. What you said has zero relevance. It's not like US is taking away the jets. They are just reducing proactive support because it's a democracy and the people don't want the country to be on the leash of anyone.
It's time for Europe to do its own work on this. As a Finnish guy I know plenty of that, and don't view other European nations as acting very responsible having had their self defense capabilities and believability wither.
> Right now every buyer of American kit is feverishly evaluating non-US alternatives.
I don't know anything about fighter jets but for a lot of other things, Trump could not have done a nicer thing for China. Whatever issues many countries had with China, they are not actively beating most of them in the face. Probably the best years for Xi these are going to be.
This sums up what I've been thinking too - it looks like the USA is sick of being the center of the world and is stepping down from the position right now.
TV series warehouse 13, which houses all the world’s “odd” artifacts. The warehouse was always in the strongest empire through history, it moved itself when world order changes - warehouse 12 was in the U.K. up until the 20th century for example.
The finale had it trying to love itself to China and becoming warehouse 14, but that eventually stopped and American Superiority won over.
Those days seem at an end. The actions Trump had made over the last two months will reverberate for the next two decades at least.
That is good. Don't know why you are saying in mocking way. We should move away from unipolar world. There should be stronger US, Europe, Asia, Africa like everyone. Monopoly is bad.
The Russian army can decide to leave and go to their side of the border at any time. It's more complicated than that (war crimes, reparations, all the people that have been abducted) but I still wonder why this is not being discussed at more often - it is totally clear who is the agressor here.
Beside the fact that it isn't practical, they would need to amend their constitution before they could hold an election during wartime. This is all also ignoring the question begging that the original poster was engaged in with the assumption that holding an election would end the war.
Theoretically, if you exclude the occupied parts from voting, you'd ensure no Yanukovich-like candidate winning.
On the other hand, Trump can always move the goalpost ("Election not held in eastern Oblasts == Sham elections") or even reinforce the view that the eastern oblasts are de facto not part of the Ukrainian state anymore.
And on the knowledge that Russia will certainly conduct strikes on polling stations.
Also Zelensky's popularity has shot up since Trump started aligning with Russia. And the next most likely president is probably even more hawkish towards Russia.
Donald Trump really should leave his fragile ego at the door and continue to support the USA's allies at this time. People forget that it was Zelensky refusing to lie which led to Trumps first impeachment.
At the very least this entire 180 and the attempt to humiliate Zelensky in the White House is Trump wanting to enact some kind of revenge.
At the very worst him praising Putin, threatening to leave Nato, threatening other allies, moving troops out of Germany and into Hungary, et all just reeks of something more.. conspiracy theory or not it's pretty disgusting as someone looking in from the outside.
I do not for a second believe Trump thinks this all up himself. I'm not one for conspiracies, but I'm wondering how large the group using him as a mouthpiece really is.
That's the thing. Trump's actions make no sense unless you view them through the lens that he's driving the agenda of Putin.
Then again, even if a global nuclear war broke out, some of his loyalists would still be convinced that Trump is playing some sort of 3D chess and that it's all going according to his masterful plan.
I used to think this, but now I think something different - isn’t Russia a useful domestic and geopolitical tool? Perhaps the US does not want for Russia either to be too weak or too strong, perhaps they simply want them to be useful.
But would Russia's friendship be more useful than Europe's? I can see the logic behind strengthening ties with Russia to keep them from aligning with China, but Russia has proven itself an unreliable partner in the past, so you have to assume that as soon as Russia sees more benefit in fraternizing with China than the US, they'll turn their coats. The EU has been a pretty loyal vassal, even when disgruntled. But I think we've gone over the tipping point now. The US has shown it can't be trusted upon.
I don’t think they are a partner in the strictest sense, they’re more a useful enemy. Keeping Russia in a certain position - weak enough that they’re not a real threat, strong enough that they can represented as one, means they can be used for domestic and foreign political ends.
This view is the only thing that to me makes sense of what’s happening.
RU has reliably said they would respond to NATO expansion or pulling UKR away from RU influence. RU has also reliably sent gas to EU while responding to efforts by US+EU to swing UKR. RU under Putin is geopolitically reliable, at least in realist sense.
EU are reliable vassals, but they're reliable in the sense that their vassalage doesn't add much to strategic balance, especially vs PRC. EU/NATO bluntly net drain in US security commitments and trade balance. Like EU could have been buying 100s of billions more in US arms and LNG, US looking at the 2T+ trade deficit with EU in last 20 years and wondering if that's worth the hegemon privilege. EU + most US partners think they have a tributary system where vassal supports the hegemon, but it's really an expensive client state system where US pays off vassals. Looking at projected US finances - they can't afford to pay off everyone anymore. Also bluntly, US vassals aren't going to reverse payment flow and become tributaries. If it comes to parity burden share as past US admins has pressured, there's less reason to even be "partners" and more reason for EU to try to be their own pole.
And European leaders drunk on atlanticist koolaid brainwashing them into thinking that they're allies / partners instead of vassals is why they're in this mess to began with. It's always been medievil beneath the veneer.
The problem is this theory has no predictive power. Everything can be a useful domestic and geopolitical tool, and everything might be a better tool if weaker or stronger, and everything might be disposed of in favor of some other tool which is better yet. Further, different leaders may place different values on various tools, or may favor different approaches to acquiring them.
There is literally no observation that could not be viewed as confirming this assumption by a sufficiently generous mind.
Really? So if Russia were not in the position it’s in now, how would the US be able to force European rearmament? If the real adversary were, say, China, but China were far too smart to do anything provocative enough to lead to this response, having another more reckless but ultimately less dangerous enemy that you can contain might be useful, no?
First, there are countless other ways to get Europe to rearm if that was actually the goal. Russia's position at the moment is virtually the same as it was a few months into the invasion, which is strong enough that european powers are scared of escalation but not strong enough that anyone thinks an unprovoked Russian attack on NATO territory is either imminent or inevitable. Making Russia weaker to lower fears of retaliation or letting Russia steam-roll Ukraine would both seem like they would better motivate Europe to quickly rearm instead of pressuring for a ceasefire.
Second, it is not at all clear that was the goal. Note that this is extremely against America's interests. As the major supplier of arms to Europe, America wielded tremendous influence over Europe (as evidenced by TFA) while at the same time ensuring Europe was well armed with weapons that would be easily compatible with the US's own military so that they could be readily called as allies. Europe replacing American systems with others does not mean Europe will be militarily stronger, it only means they will not be reliant on the US for what strength they have.
Third, there is no reason to believe that Europe would not feel compelled to build up military capability against China for exactly the same reason the US does. Nor is there any reason to believe China is too smart not to play into America's hands while Russia apparently is. Further, the US doesn't need Europe to rearm for a war with China - even with massive investment, Europe is not going to have the force projection capabilities to support a total war in the Pacific theater, what America really needs is a coalition of economic allies which will side with it in containing China - a need that is not at all served by antagonizing those very allies.
That's not to say any of your assumptions can't be true, just that it's a lot more assumptions than just "the current American leadership is not working to advance the American hegemony."
Maybe. I also think men like Bannon want to work towards a society not quite unlike The Handmaids Tale. I recently watched the Grab documentary, and seeing how much of the food production and water resources has been sold off to Saudis and China, and it's also has to be of the reasons Putin wants that specific part of Ukraine. It does explain to me why a lot of countries are starting to gear up.
Gonna need you to provide some sources on the 'ties to the Ukrainian government' there mate. I don't think there's any doubt that he spent time in Kyiv and posted videos encouraging people to join the foreign legion and help the fight.
But as far as I'm reading there isn't any indication that he had ties to the government outside of some Russian news outlets blaming Ukraine for the assassination attempt.
Besides, you link to a place that requires log in but were no one wants to be seen anymore because it is run by a I-dont-know-what-to-say and is overrun by russian propaganda.
Trump doesn't care about anyone but himself. The only reason he ran for president again (a job he absolutely hated the first time around) was so he would stay out of jail for the myriad of crimes he committed. Now that he actually got reelected (us Americans can be incredibly dumb) he's doing everything he can to punish everyone he deems was "out to get him".
Also he adores Putin and Xi and is doing what he can to become like them. There's no conspiracy, Trump really is that much of a child.
Also, according to Perun, if Europe collectively raises defense spending to somewhere near 4,5% (I think, check last Sundays episode) it will outspend not only US but US and China together.
Yet Russia has more brigades, more artillery and artillery shells, more nukes. The comment above is right. Europe needs to wake the hell up and increase military production 10X, even if temporarily.
If Russians take Ukraine, they will force their population to attack the next country. Just like it happened with men of Donbass.
lol Russia are barely making progress in Ukraine, and have effectively been in a stalemate since the 2022 invasion - while currently shipping back their wounded vets to the frontline on donkeys. Hadn't it been for Trump, Russia would effectively go bankrupt before being able to cross the Dnipro river.
The only real capability Russia has, are their nuclear weapons and other long-range weapons - and even with the latter, they have been struggling.
FWIW, I worked in the defense industry, and even before the invasion Russia has been viewed as a paper tiger. They're good at coming up with novel ideas and weaponry, but for whatever reason, struggle to successfully get things from the drawing board to operational weapons.
s/are/were barely making progress. The ~20% [1] reduction [2] in total supplies to the ukraine front line lead to the logical prediction that frontline dynamics would be impacted. Early indicators suggest this prediction is materializing. [3].
A front collapse can happen rapidly, as we saw with the russian front line in 2022. Russia, unfortunately, has massive military advantages over Ukraine. Ukraine is basically holding on because the people are fighting for their country, while russians are fighting either for money or to kill/invade.
Russians are slowly creeping in. I've heard ru-bankruptcy narrative for 3 years now, and it's not happening. They can buy lots of stuff with all the oil/gas/metals/minerals/lumber sales.
I'm sceptical. Recent movements in Germany point into the opposite direction or rather a continuation of wishful thinking. Yes, a lot of debt-funded defence investment is coming. They also promised some investment in "infrastructure". At the same time the debt increase will delay reforms that are overdue for 20 years and longer. There were already calls that, now, with all brakes off, we can increase rather than curb spending on the welfare state. As it currently looks, the productivity gap with the US and Asia will widen rather than shrink. A very disappointing development to say the least.
European manufacturing is more productive than US manufacturing. The US productivity advantage comes almost entirely from the US' strong tech (as in software) sector.
Tech (as in software) is what's being cut off to Ukraine, and tech (as in software, MEMS gyros, and GNSS) is how Ukraine keeps blowing up US$3M T-90 tanks with three or four US$500 FPV drones. So I think it's highly relevant to the question of sovereignty.
It's largely kind of an international open-source effort, but there is a lot of crucial hardware that is only available from China, yes. Until this week I think Anduril was in a good position to become an alternative to China in two to four years, but this move strongly undermines their credibility overseas.
(Might be just me but it took a couple reads to understand you don't mean US tanks that cost thee million dollars. For me, USD is the currency code I'm familiar with)
One example is pensions. For demographic reasons the state pension system is underfunded for years, a situation that is projected to become worse. One solution would be to increase contributions which are already sky-high and make working or opening a business a lot less attractive in Germany. Another is to freeze pensions. Guess what happened? Germany's old government increased the contribution level starting in January this year [1]. Additional, a pension raise [2] has recently been announced and the newly-found debt will provide funding for additional benefits for pensioners [3]. It more and more feels like a gerontocracy.
Germany has slightly higher productivity per hour worked than the US. There's a productivity gap between the US and European economies as a whole (which is a relatively recent phenomenon dating back to around 2005), but Germany is quite productive.
What even is masculine/feminine energy? I was making reference to Zuckerberg saying Facebook needed more masculine energy as it seemed to chime with the idea of "manning up." But honestly it feels as disconcerting to see people respond as if this is an actual thing, in as much as it would if HN were to take a sudden interest in astrology.
Today, masculine energy means right wing and feminine or beta energy means left wing.
If you don’t believe me, go read up on the genderfication of politics in the last 10 years. Women are from Venus and men are from mars. There’s no reconciling them.
Why would I read up on this? If I told you politics had been astrolified in the past 10 years and that right wingers were behaving with Leo energy while left wingers were behaving with Gemini energy would you want to look that up or would you recognise the absurdity of it and move on with your life?
Yeah come on. Barroso, Draghi or Scholz were no better. Draghi maybe a bit better, Scholz way worse. But of course why look at facts when you have a simple narrative that allow you to not think.
You don't read books by women? What? Maybe if you did you would understand how big of a role the socio-political effects of European patriarchy had in whatever veracity the rest of your assertions had.
This is all pretty off topic and not the time to get into it but I find what you're saying pretty wild. Of course there's nothing wrong with being a man but it's still a good idea to listen to women's experiences and learn from books they've written. There are all sorts of unfair power structures in the world and it's good to learn about them, especially at this juncture in history, or else we run the risk of making the same mistakes again and again.
Of course I read books by women. I would only encourage you to research if the blood, sweat, and tears of your ancestors are the "socio-political effects of European patriarchy" or just people who build a home that attracts people from all over the world.
The point stands that Europe needs to arm itself. Europe needs to be able to defend itself without the US.
Indeed there is slight toxicity to calling this 'manning up'. Especially towards men, where it signals that men should be strong enough to defend themselves. Which wronly reinforces the idea that capability in violence is a positive trait in men.
Thank you for that understanding and nuanced response. It actually gives me great comfort to see someone communicate so well in today's climate.
I of course agree with the point about Europe and you've beautifully captured the reason why the phrasing gave me an uneasy feeling. The line between the necessary reaction and over-reaction is terrifyingly small and I hope for the best for all of us.
The fact that it demands violence off men. As my very next sentence states.
Demanding that a 'masculine man' is capable of violence is making men ... more violent. Men being too violent is a decently big societal problem. Hence, the idea that men should be able to defend themselves (and others) is harming society.
A man that can protect their family from a criminal or home intruder is harming society? Men with enough balls and sense of duty that join armed forces, so society is able to protect itself, are harming society?
If I was Putin or other adversary of the West, I would pour tons of money into promotion of this self-castrating idea.
They didn't say those things did they? They said "the idea that men should be able to defend themselves (and others) is harming society." The idea that they are duty-bound to these things by their manhood, not that they choose to do so. People should feel free to make their own reasoned choices.
I ging it sad and frankly creepy to think of the many great minds who have added so much to our society being sidelined or pushed down arbitrary funnels in their lives because someone had an obsessive idea that they needed to prove a biological tautology of "having balls" by going down a certain route towards militancy.
That's exactly what "they" said: "the idea that men should be able to defend themselves (and others) is harming society".
"Their" twisted logic is "man defends his family" -> "man gets more violent" -> "man gets too violent" -> "much violence is bad". I'm not sure if it's troll, stupidity or sincere and intentional self-castration.
It's reductive, essentialist and prescriptive and myopic. It's fine for someone to defend themselves but saying that "men should be strong enough" to do so gets quite murky. Would you say Stephen Hawking was less of a man because he was unable to defend himself? Is someone who defends themselves by de-escalating a situation through dialogue less of a man than someone who uses their strength? The above statement implies these things but I certainly don't think they're true.
Toxic is your word and I'm not sure the EU is a "weak sausage." I think it's remarkable that so many people within the EU have been able to co-exist peacefully for so long and work together in developing systems that give them other options than the kinds of violence we saw for so much of the past. Could you really point to Russia and say that they're in a stronger position, that they're a "strong sausage(?)," because their leader exhibits some loosely defined manly ideals?
Stephen Hawking had a condition that he never wanted to have. Nobody would want it for oneself or to be promoted as a "new norm" for society.
> someone who defends themselves by de-escalating a situation through dialogue
If his only _personal_ defense is "through dialogue" then yes, it's a wimp, unless he's a very rare person that can really convince anyone.
> Could you really point to Russia and say that they're in a stronger position
In "Russia vs EU" war EU doesn't have a single chance, despite all fancy tech and gear. The only hope for EU is USA (not anymore), Ukraine and Poland that still have testosterone in their blood.
Where are you from? What did your country do over three years of full scale land war next to you to prepare for the next one? Aside of importing men from other countries to compensate for the lack of domestically grown ones, of course.
I wouldn't equate defending oneself with doing violence to others. Building strong walls harms no one. Even if a sufficiently determined adversary pushes you to the point where the only effective remaining means of defense is to fight back, the ability to resist such oppressors is very much a positive trait in any person. If the only thing preventing you from doing violence is a lack of strength, that's a whole other issue.
The way current masculine norms (as I experience them) expects me to be able to defend myself, is by projecting a capacity for retalitory violence.
I have nothing against this at the level of international relations. I will fight if article 5 is invoked. And on this level, building walls also makes sense.
My issue lies at the personal level. Men on average are too violent at this level, and the masculine ideals are to blame for that.
You mean: European militaries haven’t done their historical norm, which is starting wars that kill horrific numbers of civilians. The only serious militarized power in that side of Eurasia is Russia, and what are they doing? Killing horrific numbers of civilians.
Seems like the reasonable goal would be to embargo Russia until they disarm like the other adults in the region.
Is no one in Europe not skeptical of the increase in defense spending? Things have costs, that money is having to come from somewhere.
Is increasing traditional military spending the way to go in the 21st century? If the decision is left to military leaders,they might spend massive amounts of money preparing to fight yesterday's war.
If you set aside alarmist positions, it may very well possible that Russia has no interests in military conflict with rest of Europe beyond Ukraine.
In that case what is the best thing Europeans could do?
There is danger and risk in military over spending at this juncture, and Europe needs to be level headed about it.
It sounds like you're not keeping up on things. We know where the money is coming from. It's headline news daily in the financial press. What are you talking about? And yes, of course we need to defend ourselves.
Europe has benefited a lot from not having to pour tons of money into defense spending. Europeans will be hurting if their countries suddenly have to shift finances for this.
I think it’s much easier to just hunker down and appease the United States for four years and hope the next administrations are more merciful.
Maybe... but probably not. Having to divert investments from one part of the economy to another is not that much a big problem: Russia has been doing the same and they have an economy of war that works more or less (some say they are on the brink of collapse and yet, they are still there). So, Europe can totally rely way less on the US, they just have to change their priorities, and they'll adapt just as Russia has adapted. Thinking they cannot is really presumptuous, or even comptemptuous (and a lot of people have made the same mistake with Russia by the way). And yet, at the moment, the US think that way, not believing in soft power any more, but only in pure pressure or even blackmail. If history teaches one thing, it is that you always create your own ennemies (Versailles treaty comes to mind).
That is not what is happening. Listen to Ursula. She’s telling you what is happening. Eu countries are being “allowed” to go into debt without triggering eu debt procedures. It won’t be reinvestment. It will be dilution of currency though debt. Something all too familiar to Americans.
Correct. Interestingly enough, it will massively increase the supply of euro bonds, and probably pull in a bunch of cash that goes to US treasuries now.
If there's enough pan European bonds (which there won't be) then the reserve currency status of the dollar could be threatened.
We have opened for €800 billions in investments through the EU.
So, no.
Calling anything "alarmist positions" now is just uninformed; Putin has said Russia wants the USSR territory back, their entire industry is now turned to produce weapons, their schools are "Putin-Jugend", they are currently invested in the first "great war" since WW2.
And the US isn't just getting out of Europe - they have gone full turncoat.
This is an unmitigated disaster for both US (citizens) and EU, and the EU is trying to manage what they can.
I think the parent poster has a point. It's a good idea to pause for a moment and think about this critically: Why would Putin attack the EU? Just because he can? What's the gain?
> destabilisation operations
This might actually start to become more of a self-inflicted wound. The uprise of right-wing parties is already happening in the EU. Mostly voted for by people with less education and less wealth. If we spend more money on defense and less on social security, right-wing parties might get even more traction, which causes further destabilization.
> sabotage
Yes and it sucks. There's actually not much you can do about it, because of how international waters are treated legally. But you think rearming the EU will prevent sabotage in the future? I have my doubts.
The current narrative seems to be "Ukraine is almost an EU member state and if we do not defend Ukraine, the EU will be next". Another view of the situation could be: "Ukraine is a special case and Putin would be very dumb to invade the EU".
The gain is more resources to plunder. You're thinking of Putin from a western democratic mindset as an accountable leader who has to at least pretend to serve the interests of his country. It was also dumb to invade Ukraine if you think in terms of Russian interests. Leaders do lots of dumb things which are incredibly damaging for their country and often are driven purely by self-interest, especially dictators.
Re-arming is unfortunately the only answer to naked aggression from dictators and the US cannot be trusted any more as an ally. Putin has clearly stated his aims - to reconstitute the USSR (and if possible enlarge it) and to defeat the west.
If they succeed in Ukraine then they are free to re-arm. Meanwhile Trump has made it clear that article 5 is worthless, so the Baltics are there for the taking. As much as I'd like to say they can rely on the rest of NATO, I'm really unsure if the UK or France would be willing to sacrifice London or Paris for Tallinn or Vilnius.
I hate to be the guy, but I find myself having to point this out to all of my doom-minded American friends. Yes, Trump is a criminal idiot, but one positive, probably unintended effect is that the world becomes more, in the words of Taleb, anti-fragile. As an American I am thrilled that Europe is becoming more united, more pragmatic, and more self-reliant. Our relationship is not over, it is just changing, and Europe is experiencing a long-needed renaissance.
Of course Europe always had some ability to defend itself, but I think it's clear that some of that ability was outsourced to the US(with reciprocal benefits for the US, but still). Yes, this introduces some redundancy into the Western sphere, but that's a good thing.
The American order that stood for decades was anti-fragile. Everyone outsourced their defense to some reasonable degree, so no one was strong enough to pose an existential threat to anyone else, so we could all afford to be off guard.
Now every actor needs to have the strength to deter all others, which means everyone gets stronger, which means everyone needs even more strength to deter others, or deterrence simply breaks down. We had a multi-polar world in the past, it went terribly and led to massive wars. Now we are returning to that system but with nukes.
England, France, Israel... They all had nukes the entire time. What you are claiming sounds good but does not align with reality. You are overstating both the degree to which things have changed as well as overstating the degree to which the alliances have changed (i.e. Europe is still Europe. Poland won't be arming itself to protect against Germany or France, etc).
It makes the US oligarchs comparatively stronger within the US though, with foreign backing diminished, which is probably the main objective of this circus.
I think everyone is underestimating the changes that are happening. Obviously if Trump wanted a prosperous USA, he wouldn't be isolating it, and destroying the federal government and wrecking scientific research and diplomacy across the world.
but an overall poorer US with a permanent far right government under the control of a small group of rich lunatics is better for those rich lunatics.
I don't really care what he wants, but apparently tens of millions of Americans want isolationism. We have tried to make it clear that this will be an economic disaster, but they won the election and they get to make the decisions. So rich lunatics it is.
Really sorry for Ukraine, though. We knew back in November that this meant certain death for them.
That always fascinates me. I genuinely don't see how anyone could lose money running a business where people just turn up expecting to lose thousands of dollars for very little in return
Trump is really a disgusting human being. I'm not a US citizen but this looks an awful lot like treason -- he is actively helping an enemy of the state.
Ahahaha. It's an "open" forum where? Parent poster got flagged, his post no longer readable (unless a user enabled flagged posts?) and you suggest discussion to them. This HN crowd is sarcastic!!
> while hundreds of thousands get killed or mutilated?
Most of them are russians in uniform, which, as tragic as it is, is a better outcome.
The original invasion force brought tens of thousands of body bags and it is clear they weren't originally meant for russian troops.
If you have any doubt, look up the pre written article that popped on Kremlins website a few days after the full scale invasion about large tragic but unavoidable losses of civilian lives.
Or look at how the convoy that targeted Kyiv contained lots and lots of prison buses and how they brought mobile crematoriums.
It is easy to sit safely here and comment.
If you want to do something better get out and donate and help the fight.
So Russia invaded Chechnya and is now using Chechens to invade Ukraine.
You suggest that Russia takes Ukraine, then uses Ukrainians to invade Moldova?
That is what you are suggesting, right?
Also, my programmers keyboard gives me a very nice peaceful wage. A wage that I partly use to support the Ukrainian defence forces. I suggest everyone to the same: https://savelife.in.ua/en/.
Exactly, sign a fucking peace deal! And it's NOT the first time a peace deal was prevented. There were even fucking peace deals before the Russian invasion.
He is saving American money for American people as was promised. You just don't like the fact that the world is heading towards de-globalisation because of whatever other political belief you have that you aren't sharing like most people here.
I genuinely wish there was an understandable endgame for the USA. The USA seems to be throwing its weight around but I’m not entirely sure to what end. This headline/article is just one area where the US is behaving perplexingly.
I understand that Trump wants Zelenskyy to sign the minerals deal and that implicitly there’s security guarantees. Fine there’s at least a through line. However; by demonstrating that the US is willing to revoke access to this war material during an active shooting war over some ego thing they’re showing allies who’ve invested in the US military equipment that they’re vulnerable to suffer this same fate. Now Europe is turning hard away from US tech.
To some degree this is a good thing, I think, from USA’s POV. Trump has said it’s unfair USA spends the most on NATO and that member states should pay more (how many don’t hit the 2% target). However; the point was to spend their 2% GDP on American armaments. Now Europe is taking their demand and money and investing in domestic military equipment. Which will inevitably beg the question in the coming years if NATO, a US establishment, is to be made redundant?
This US administration can’t seem to have their cake and eat it too. They want money, demand for their goods, but every time they act out they drive away their business partners.
What would you do if you were a team of US oligarchs with connections to the administration and wanted to increase your share of, and power over, the domestic cake?
Tell me it doesn't fit.
Edit: this story just dropped off the main page. Currently sitting at 85 points and 77 comments. It had position 2 or so, now it has position 79.
Laat I think I knew anything it took surprisingly few flags and I think people abuse it all the time to get rid of things they personally don't like. And don't like is a broad category.
The clown in the oval office claimed we wouldn't help them. More Danish men died per capita in middle east because of article 5 than men from the US...
If that’s the case that “NATO as has existed is already over” then maybe it is wise for the USA to pull out. Maybe that’s the endgame for Europe? Europe defends Europe (or gets taken over by Russia I guess), and USA isn’t on the hook for its defense anymore.
If Russia wants the international version of suicide by cop. Invading US soil is the next tier up from invading Russia in winter in military blunders. No one has been stupid enough to try since 1812 when the British navy ruled. And they couldn't achieve any meaningful goals.
Americans all have this attitude that theyre "on the hook" for everyone elses defence as if theyre the white knight defending the world against evil. Its more like the local mob tough guys who have been taking protection money for the last 40 years backed down when a rival gang finally decided to make a move
I'm American, and I don't have that view. So it's clearly not literally true.
So perhaps you mean that it's "mostly" true. Then I'd ask, what evidence do you have to support that? Is there some poll of public opinion you can refer to? That's something we could meaningfully discuss.
Actually, your view is true even if there exists even just one person with your view. In reality what matters is the distribution of views. Furthermore, what matters is the distribution of views by the decision makers because those will be divorced from public distribution and informed by other secret plans or information unknown to public. So in a sense, it doesn't matter whether he is right or you are.
NATO is there to make sure that the dollar is the dominant trading currency.
NATO is the reason why saudis are trading in dollars.
NATO is the reason that the US has credible nuclear deterrents
NATO is why america doesn't need to have a physical colonial empire in europe (otherwise it'd need to subjugate cyprus, and somewhere like saaremaa, and that costs a shit tonne of money)
NATO isn't about playing for defence of europe, its about keeping the USSR and russia far enough away to keep trading routes open.
In 4 years another administration could come in but there's still damaged trust. If something happens in 5, 6 years from now and article 5 kicks in then even if the US comes to help what is there to say they won't suddenly pull out again 2 years into a war when Vance takes charge? The reliability is gone.
I guess you've got to be flexible depending on circumstances. I mean NATO only really got going after Europe elected Hitler and now we have another iffy electoral result to work with.
I think they might have been helped along a little by things like being occupied, becoming economically and militarily reliant on their occupiers and watching all of their leaders face judgement at the Nuremberg Trials.
Things haven't gotten quite so extreme in the US yet but it feels reductive to suggest that they can just have a flip flop election and that will show they "realised the error of their ways" like Germany did post WW2.
I think culturally most of the US is still pro NATO, it's just Trump and friends who are anti. I guess if Vance succeeds him things will be similar but if the dems win they won't.
I'm kind of interested if Russia could become normal if the current regime collapses.
The US has burned trust well past 4 years. This has shown how the US political system enables this. Every 4 years they elect someone who has the power to just toss out everything the previous administration did or committed to. Every 4 years... and the US is so politically divided that it only takes a few percent of opinion change at each election to swing to the other party with polar opposite views. As a result, why would any other country now trust the US in any agreement? (not to mention the large number of agreements they have signed then just abandoned later) Four years is nothing time wise.. barely enough time to get an agreement fully implimented before the US can just say "Nah..." There will be significantly less trust for the US even beyond the Trump era.
Why would another Republican President act any differently than Trump after they see how well that works? A majority of the US either doesn’t care about international affairs or they are actively isolationist.
It would be delusional to think that this can be patched up with a new president, or that any of America's former allies will be willing to wait around twirling their thumbs, hoping that the next time America flips a coin, it turns out better.
The relationship is over. Maybe in 4 years America can start making some initial steps towards patching things up, but even that seems increasingly unlikely at this point.
Does anyone think a country not already involved in a nuclear war would willingly expose itself to being annihilated? NATO works best when all member states are stable, ideologically aligned, and its Article 5 resolve is untested. Here the uncertainty works in its favor. But when NATO expands past deep ideological alignment towards a maximal expansionist strategy, and openly courts states its rival signals as core security interests, NATO becomes something else entirely. When it became a tool for maximally isolating Russia, it undermined its own credibility as a unified security entity. There is a genuine question whether the US would go "all in" to defend eastern european states. The fact that we can credibly ask this question about a NATO member just shows how far it's gone from its initial ideals.
We need to remember the Budapest Memorandum on Security Assurance and not forget that Ukraine was coaxed to give up its nuclear weapons in 1993 by a guarantee of territorial integrity.
Why do we need to remember this agreement that provided zero security guarantees? At most it ensures denuclearization is dead, but frankly speaking, it already was.
Maybe instead we should remember the 2014 Wales Summit that was intended to deter Russian invasion?
Or maybe instead we should consider that right before Russia's invasion in February 2022, Europe collectively dropped their military spending as % of GDP? Possibly since Trump had left office in 2021? Its unfortunate deterrents don't function when you do this...
Actually, maybe what we need to remember is that most of Europes money has been going to Russia even after the invasion? What a strange thing for allies to do right?
It's weird how the United States justified its support in Ukraine as securing the region for its allies while its allies undermined this at every step of the way, do allies usually do that? When I listen to them on TV they seem to care a lot about Ukraine so it's strange...
I think it boils down to the fact that Trump does not understand soft power. Slashing the most powerful and influential aid programme in the world shows that very clearly. The US is as rich as it is because they created an environment of stability (at least on their own territory) and ensuring that there are markets American companies can sell into.
Maybe not so much that as he sees everything as a bargaining chip and any unused chips as a waste. After all, bribery and favors are more or less what soft power is.
> I understand that Trump wants Zelenskyy to sign the minerals deal and that implicitly there’s security guarantees.
I don't think there are any "security guarantees". What could they be?
The "endgame" as far as I understand it: The US wants access to the minerals as a compensation for the money already spent and, perhaps, to restore some of the support currently put on hold (satellite data access). Once the Ukranian resistance is broken, the US and Russia will jointly dictate a peace, gradually install a Russia-friendly regime and split the profit between them. They will happily invite the EU to finance some of the rebuilding of Ukraine that is then mainly performed by US and Russian companies. The US furthermore hopes that by spearheading the lifting of sanctions it will get priority access to some beneficial deals with and within Russia itself.
I think the implicit guarantee is if American business and workers are harvesting minerals then if Russia attacked the USA would have even more incentive to intervene militarily.
That said, I don’t know what more Ukraine would want given the Budapest Memorandum already ties the USA, UK, and Russia to Ukraine’s defense. That’s proven to be a mixed success, as both USA, UK, and other countries have indeed stepped up for Ukraine’s defense.
> if American business and workers are harvesting minerals then if Russia attacked the USA would have even more incentive to intervene militarily
Or Russia just invades while being careful not to damage their buddy's mines. Maybe the US even helps the Russians out once the Ukranian "dictator" is forced to begin fighting in too close proximity to the minerals.
The point is that Russia won't have to attack any more, because Ukraine will already be nothing more than a puppet state after having been forced to sign the kind of peace deal that Putin wants.
There is no such thing as implicit guarantees. The US has shown it is not a trusted country, and as such, we expect that it will also renege any written guarantees.
American businesses and workers operate all over the world. No-one thinks that this means that all these countries will receive military support from the US if they are invaded.
Another relevant detail here is that a lot of the resources included in the deal are in territory that's currently occupied by Russia – which Trump clearly envisions Russia keeping in any peace settlement.
> I understand that Trump wants Zelenskyy to sign the minerals deal and that implicitly there’s security guarantees.
I don't think this is true at all, I think Trump wants Ukraine to be conquered and for Russia to win and for people to stop bothering him about any of it.
Trump blew up whatever nonsense minerals deal there was, and is actively sabotaging the Ukrainian defence efforts via this, and ending intelligence sharing, and apparently leaning on random American companies to stop them selling services to Ukraine, and by providing diplomatic cover and support to Russia.
people haven't seem to have caught on yet - the US has switched sides, it is now part of the Russia bloc.
> point was to spend their 2% GDP on American armaments
Do the NATO agreements specify American armaments? Europe could have spent on European armaments and armies too, just chose not too because they didn't see a reason to.
Europe not buying F35 or whatever hurts US arms industry, but probably not the general strategic position of the US. There's even a credible argument (dont know how credible?) that these arms programs actually undermine security by investing crazy money in outdated / ineffective technology. The dumb part would be not learning from the Ukrainians how to fight a modern war.
US participation in NATO may be made redundant, but Europe's need for a credible collective defense agreement is not going away.
The endgame isn't for the USA, it's for Trump. I don't really know what it is, but I'm pretty certain that to understand his actions, you have to rid yourself of the idea that he's doing it for anybody or anything else than for himself.
But Zelensky came to the white house to sign the deal. If Trump wanted the deal to be signed, it would have been signed. But he chose to gang up on Zelensky.
Somewhat surprisingly they are OK with Ukraine joining the EU [1].
> Ukraine has a sovereign right to join the European Union, but this “sovereignty” does not apply to military alliances, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said.
>Somewhat surprisingly they are OK with Ukraine joining the EU [1].
So this makes sense to me. Basically I think it is US that Russia sees as a threat (because may be US seen Russia as a major threat and wants to break it up).
1. Kremlin says a lot of things so probably they also said Ukraine could join EU. The night before the full scale invasion they claimed they had no intention of attacking Ukraine.
2. Ukraine has the right to join whatever alliance it wants regardless of what russia means.
They very much are not. See the invasion in 2014 when Ukraine was not seeking to join NATO Ukraine tried to join NATO after the Russian invasion in 2014 but was not seeking to join it beforehand. Pro Russian propaganda frequently pretends the timeline was different then they actually was so they can flip cause and effect.
This is a very naive take, I think. When you are responsible for the security of a nation, you can't just remain passive to the potential threats that shows up on your doorstep. I mean, it would be irresponsible his people if Putin did that and trusted NATO/US blindly to not cross the line, one way or another. (I mean, US could always make up some cooked up justification for the attack, like it has done so many times in the past), So if US is putting missiles near Russian border, even if that is on behalf of NATO, I think Putin is bound to do something about it..
I don't understand what part of that is "Russian propoganda"..
The Russian propaganda part is that you act as if Russia is defending, while actually they are invading.
Do the neighbors of France need an alliance against a French invasion? Do the neighbors of Germany need an alliance against a German invasion? Why not?
Publicly available, historic facts do not support the argument that russia's invasion was legally justified under any reasonable interpretation of a "threat". Claiming that they do is the propaganda mentioned above. russia is, in fact, the invader, and Ukraine did not invade russia first.
Also, you should respond to the second part of their post, as it contains a viewpoint that you might find interesting, and a question asked of your own viewpoint. Understanding others' viewpoints is a good foundation for coming to agreement.
> This should be very easy to answer, but no one ever does.
I don't think this is very easy to answer. The fact that people think it should be very easy to answer this, shows how naive they are, because the reason why country x think country y is a threat could include a lot of information and context that is not available to an external observer.
All of that is russian propaganda. Falling for obvious propagnada about NATO danger to Russia is an incredibly naive take
Russia did not invade a NATO country, they invaded Ukraine when it wasn't seeking to join NATO (in 2014 before the invasion, after the invasion they wanted to join NATO but there were too many objecting countries in NATO and it was obvious to everyone that Ukraine wasn't getting in anytime soon and this was just as true in early 2022).
> US could always make up some cooked up justification for the attack, like it has done so many times in the past
Russia has a history with making up justifications to invade and they did in this case.
> So if US is putting missiles near Russian border, even if that is on behalf of NATO, I think Putin is bound to do something about it..
They were not putting missles in the border. In fact until recently nato had minimal forces and no bases next to Russia to try to mollify them. Especially not in Ukraine which again was not in NATO and was not getting any closer to NATO. Russia was not bound to invade Ukraine and it was in fact a pretty dumb move which had obvius consequences of making Russias security much worse and even many Putin's advisors had a hard time believing he would do it.
Without going into the merits of this war, NATO - which was supposedly a defensive alliance - did indeed attack Kosovo in an offensive.
So NATO has demonstrated they can be whatever they want when the right time comes. NATO intervention in Kosovo to “liberate it” is also being used to morally justify Russian’s invasion of eastern Ukraine, since from a Russian standpoint it’s exactly the same scenario and they are “liberating” the Russian population in those Ukrainian territories.
That’s apparently where 200,000-250,000 Serbian refugees were expected to go after the war.
But my point is that NATO is a military alliance, to call it “defensive” is just propaganda as it has shown it can be offensive too. And there is nothing wrong with simply calling it for what it is, I believe countries should be able to form military alliances, but let’s not gaslight ourselves.
This is russian propaganda and it is important to know what it says, to be able to recognize it when you see it elsewhere, from the mouth of an influencer, a politician, a comment on the Web etc.
>Not for Crimea. Not for the Donbas. Nothing like that. This idea that Putin is reconstructing the Russian empire, this is childish propaganda. Excuse me.
>If anyone knows the day-to-day and year-to-year history, this is childish stuff. Childish stuff seems to work better than adult stuff. So no designs at all. The United States decided this man must be overthrown. It’s called a regime change operation.
Sachs is lying about Maidan. Absolute majority of Ukrainians in Western and Central Ukraine supported it, like 80-90%. Millions participated, hundreds of thousands took active part, trying to be at the protests almost every day.the protests lasted for four months, from November to February, which is fairly cold in Ukraine. I was there at the time, yet Sachs just casually drops “I’ve been told they are all paid”, without any evidence.
Surely he didn't mean all the people present there are paid. As far as I understand, when you want some initiate a political change, you pay influencers, and they actually go an convince/gaslight the masses about the need for change.
So all the people who were present there might not be paid, but a lot of prime movers and the require infrastructure might be paid by the interested party.
And the masses are so stupid to do just as they told.
I don’t know what he “meant”, that’s what he said. There was a very clear external event that triggered Maidan, there was another event that made it massive.
The payment of influencers is just as a massive contribution into protests is just a speculation
These bankrupt theories have been debunked long ago. The other comments in reply to yours did that well. The first video is literally Putin speaking, the second one is a list of Kremlin talking points, just with an Indian voice.
The term “NATO expansion” for example, is propaganda. Countries that had suffered under the Russian/Soviet oppression looked for protection when the USSR collapsed and requested to join the alliance.
Russia/USSR been pretty hostile to nations who don't want to join their peaceful and strong brotherhood. Hey they even invaded other communist nations just cause they decide to keep some independence.
If those "unfaithful" countries join NATO this creates problems for Russia to force them to give up their freedom.
And USSR/Russia started a fuss that NATO is a threat for them.
All you’re doing is taking facts and logic that hurts your side and trying to dismiss it with the shallow label of “Russian propaganda”. It’s not actually a response to GP, and it’s not a response to the arguments within his comment and the sources either.
So here Putin says he had no choice but to attack Ukraine because NATO (a defensive treaty) was "expanding" into Ukraine. This is false. Ukraine wanted to be in NATO, but its membership request was rejected. And from the start of the war in 2014, it was never on the table - how would a country in a state of war could even dream of joining NATO (which at the time seemed a stable alliance)?
I know some Russians believe in this explanation, it seems very simple: Russia is not setting up nukes in Cuba so from the same PoV Ukraine should not host missiles hostile to Russia. Seems valid, right? The problem here is that Putin, as he admitted in his retracted victory piece[0], wanted to "solve the Ukrainian problem for the future generations" and basically make Ukraine part of his empire just as he did with Belarus. Ukrainians don't want to be his slaves so they chose to fight.
The second video repeats the same argument: the "NATO's eastward march". Putin says Russia had to start the war in Ukraine to stop NATO from expanding too close (he failed as two more countries joined NATO). But when you dig one "why?" deeper you can understand that NATO is not a self-aware entity that expands and threats, it's an alliance of countries that realize that if Russia attacks them and they are alone, they are in the same situation as Ukraine: alone and doomed to begging for help. Whereas if they stand together, Russia will think twice before attacking them. That's why Putin hates NATO so much: he can't freely conquer the Baltics - he'd have done it already in 2008 or so. So he uses anti-NATO rhetoric that people in Russia buy. Maybe they are really afraid Estonia or Bulgaria attacks Russia? Who knows what's in their heads.
If NATO is threatening Russia, why didn't Russia invade a NATO country? Russia is a classic bully that chooses to attack the weak, this is the only explanation.
Today it's Ukraine and F35s, who and what will it be in a year? I suppose European governments are taking a long hard look at strategic dependencies on the US right now, like the whole
economy running on top of Microsoft and Google and other US-made SaaS. If all of that went dark at once, I honestly don't know how some of the larger companies I know could keep operating. They all have fallbacks for critical infrastructure obviously but those are US-made, too...
About half of the US companies over a certain size run on ERP software from an European vendor. And it is not trivial at all to change that, even if they wanted to.
I feel like this overstates the importance a bit. Sure macOS and Windows can claim to be involved in a great many things but no computer system
running Windows is that important and couldn't be replaced given you have quite a large amount of lead time before the software is inoperable.
I've worked with airgapped Windows XP machines still in operation running scientific instruments.
If you deleted Microsoft and Apple from world it world it would be a Y2K event but the world wouldn't end, it would just be a lot of work.
Aside from life-saving medicine, I was thinking that the un-availability (not 'available with tariffs' but 'we're not selling it to the US anymore') of Ozempic in the US might become a political problem, maybe more so than many other trade-war hits. Maybe it's easy to manufacture it locally but the time-gap until it's up and running might be too much to swallow...
I think having Greenland annexed might also be a problem for the Danish. Europe might subsidize Novo Nordisk's losses, switch to distributing the meds all throughout Europe. And it seems the loss of such a society-transformative drug (and having millions of people gaining back all their lost weight would be a difficult/untenable political position for this administration. Just surprised not to see this much in the current news.
Sibling in thread says there's already an US alternative, anyway.
I don't think that would end up being a political problem. It'd just get spun as the evil communist Europeans trying to destroy America with their traitor liberal collaborators and used as justification for passing the FAT IS FREEDOM Act, which subsidizes butter production and eliminates capital gains tax and the library of Congress.
What’s the motivation, if the Russians have the strong cards in this upcoming peace negotiation the current administration feels the need to weaken the Ukrainian side equipment? Slice of the minerals?
Trump/Musk/Republicans have taken the side of a fascist dictator Putin. Every recent move wrt Ukraine has benefitted Russia. Even if it means betraying democratic allies and decades long alliances.
What encroachment do you mean? There isn't much encroachment other than sabotage. Perhaps some financing of undermining political parties.
There was significant encroachment of eastern Europe, but that has slowed down due to attention going towards the Ukraine war.
The main goal in Ukraine should be to make sure that Russia has as little benefit from their invasion as possible. Luckily this is effectively wholly compatible with Ukrainian goals.
I wish Europe and the US would have just put their foot down and kicked out Russia swiftly and decisively in 2022.
Rather the have adopted the doctrine of "Ukraine can't lose, but Ukraine may not win". Always supplying just enough arms to keep the Ukrainian front from collapsing not to "stir up" Russia.
Doesn't seem like that would have made anything better though. I thought the general consensus was that direct action would have just escalated things?
I watched a video recently that discussed all the grudges against the West/NATO Russia (Putin) has been holding onto since the mids 90s that makes them feel justified now.
Drain Russia in the war. Make them pay for every day they are invading. Make them pay in human lives, make them pay in losy industrial output. Make them pay in economic welfare. Not just on Ukrainian soil.
If at all possible, take back any Ukrainian territory. Reduce whatever gain they got from this invasion. But even if the current line stands, the more Russia can be made to bleed, the less it will think that war can be a net postive for them.
People have different idea but roughly the Ukrainian plan seems to be hold the current lines approximately, destroy Russian assets and work on Russia collapsing economically to the extent they have to pull back a bit like their Afghanistan experience.
I am confused why you ask this of the proponents. The proponents think that Russia is performing horrendous war crimes and must be stopped from encroaching further. We see massacres such as Bucha where Russia had a couple of days and indiscriminately butchered innocent civilians and realized that there is no other way but to keep fighting to stop Russia from taking more territory and lives.
My question is more looking for what changes to the strategy are proposed? Arming Ukraine hasn't stopped Russia from these crimes so far. There's certainly some turning point point where US, or NATO, involvement will be seen as a declaration is war against Russia and it's allies, right?
Another commenter suggest sent a video about this that I'll watch later, I suspect the answer lies there, but thought I'd share with you so you can have some understanding of what someone who sees both side's surface level plans as confusing and problematic .
You realize all the printed money goes towards European and US arms manufacturers and just creates jobs in Europe and the US?
Even the billions in humanitarian support spend in Europe are mostly just housing refugees from Ukraine in Europe thus flows to landlords and supermarkets in Europe.
This war in Ukraine is costing us pennies for each dollar that Russia is wasting in the blood fields of Ukraine.
It doesnt create jobs in US. It is another bulk order of factory line-items for those already ingratiated with a comfy MIC contract. No one benefits except the neo-cons and the ones already with their feet up.
Europe's bill may create jobs in Europe, if it was genuine.
>billions in humanitarian support spend in Europe are mostly just housing refugees from Ukraine in Europe thus flows to landlords and supermarkets in Europe.
I am sure printing money to then distribute to those with real estate property to house migrants is doing well for your housing/immigrant crises.
>This war in Ukraine is costing us pennies for each dollar
Approximately 46 pennies on every dollar that exists has been printed or misspent in the last 5 years.
Now that the state-level propaganda machine is starting to wear down, the world is realizing that America wants America First.
> Approximately 46 pennies on every dollar that exists has been printed or misspent in the last 5 years.
What does this even mean?
And do you realize that most of American GDP prowess in the last 40 years was driven by running a trade deficit and letting the world loan the money back to the US?
Even if it doesn't enter M1 circulation and directly increase monetary supply, it put upwardly increasing inflationary pressure on the dollar by inflating demand artificially.
Increasing M1 alone doesn't necessary lead to inflation. Unless people spend money nothing realky changes. I am also not sure who would care about cash and equivalents when M2 and M3 measures are usually much bigger.
I would look more towards outstanding bonds or GDP to debt ratio. The US has overspent for decades but it worked very well because as world's reserve currency it didn't lead to currency depreciation as any other country would have experienced in a similar situation.
Trump just wants the war to end. Ukraine doesn't want to surrender a chunk of its territory under bad terms, so they won't make a deal. Putin is more than happy to take a deal that means they win. Trump thinks that if he weakens Ukraine then they'll be more willing to take a bad deal. He also doesn't like Ukraine or Zelenskyy, so has no particular desire to do them a favour.
Ukraine already surrendered chunk of its territory few years ago. You think this time it will be different and Russia won't try to take Ukraine again once it rebuilds its military potential?
The difference is that in the future (assuming the mineral deal goes through), there would be US citizens operating mineral franchises on Ukrainian territory. So if Russia harmed them in the future, we would be drawn into an actual war.
Assuming mining those minerals would actually make economic and strategic sense for US companies, considering significant long-term investments require stability. And that a significant US workforce would even be required for that. And that the US administration doesn't just make a bargain with Putin about leaving these mining operations alone while doing whatever the fuck else they want.
There were US citizens and businesses in Ukraine last time. Russia will just go around them like they did then. Having some US businesses will provide zero protection.
> Name one American who would volunteer to fight because a Thai ship got attacked by Yemeni rebels while travelling through an Ethiopian straight to an Egyptian canal.
Apparently, the entire US Navy was okay with that volunteer assignment.
Could Ukraine maneuver around Trump by instead signing a minerals deal with UK+EU? Better to give the $600b (optimistically) to friendly allies. The problem is UK+EU does not have equivalent defense contractors. US gets what it wants as well, by disconnecting from the conflict.
No of course I don't. Russia will certainly try again. Ukraine is absolutely right to not want to do this! I'm just pointing out what Trump's motivation is.
Their economy is in a terrible spot because of the war. International sanctions mean Russia has extreme trouble selling its natural resources or importing necessary products, and what trade it can do it pays a stiff premium for. Its massive defense spending might appear to boost GDP but it's all unproductive and it's driving massive inflation. Then you got oil refineries and other such infrastructure periodically exploding. And true end to the war means an end to all those problems and is the only way for them to avoid their economy collapsing. Of course at the end they'll need to be careful about how they draw down defense spending to avoid recession but they'ed at least be in the drivers seat, as opposed to what they are looking at should the war continue for another 1 to 2 years.
He forces Ukraine to take a bad deal by removing their ability to walk away. That deal involves more revenue for him and ensures that he gets to tell his voters that he kept his promise to end the war. His first impeachment was over trying to extort Ukraine’s assistance in election rigging so the humiliation is an extra bonus.
I'm not sure Denmark is going to cancel our F35 orders. From a security perspective, it's certainly in our interest to pretend this isn't a big deal. And that everything is normal.
But I'm not surprised that our prime minister recently did not leave out the possiblity of hosting nukes on Danish territory.
Given the theatre in the US one could even say we'll need nukes to defend Greenland.
I wouldn't presume to understand the bananas ideas of Trump and his kindergarten kronies, but I imagine they're looking at an inaccurately large landmass on a mercator projection map and hearing about the oil underneath and seeing dollar signs.
On a map, it looks to be bigger than all of North America, although in reality its only about 1/5th of the size of the US.
(although granted that's still a very large area that they probably see as 'up for grabs' since Denmark is small and far away and the US already have airbases there)
People commenting here keep speaking as though Americans all decided to do this. Trump didn't even win the majority of votes of those who voted. And those who voted for him had only the most nebulous idea of what doing this would mean. It meant something like "Those people who never treated us with respect will get what's coming. If they don't love us they will fear us."
This happens all the time. "Russia did X." "The UK just did stupid thing Y." "Why are Germans suddenly authoritarian again?"
There are always lots of people who disagree with the actions of their government. Some governments -- the US government increasingly so -- punish dissent. Russians, for one, have almost no say over what their government does. Americans in general are not making these terrible decisions. Some cabal is, but even the Republicans, who have all the power at the moment, are mostly just knuckling under to decisions they know are terrible.
I know it's tempting to blame and hate people as nations, but I don't think it helps. In fact, it's how we got here in the first place: firebrands telling nitwits that everyone in Europe or New York City or wherever hates them.
Technically you are correct.
But actually the real winners were the extreme vote suppression tactics.
Without them trump would have lost clearly: read the extremely conservative estimates targeted mostly non-trump voters: https://hartmannreport.com/p/trump-lost-vote-suppression-won...
I find it funny how we're making the point that his election doesn't say that much about the aggregate opinion of Americans and you keep missing it.
Yes, he won the popular vote. No, it doesn't mean America is massively behind his project. In fact, it is massively unpopular and its popularity is declining.
> "Russia did X." "The UK just did stupid thing Y." "Why are Germans suddenly authoritarian again?"
This is just the language that is used to refer to the governments as well as the people/culture. It may help to presume that, in most cases, they’re referring to just the governments.
I don’t think that’s the reason. Maybe there’s just too much discussion of the US and Ukraine. It’s understandable, the political situation at the moment is a big topic, it might risk drowning out other topics.
That wasn't the reason I think, rather than some people abusing the flag option to keep anything they don't like off the front page, thinking their personal preferences are more important than what everyone else votes.
Please send a polite mail to dang, he is really helpful.
If time permits, this is a good era to learn guitar if you haven't already. Or some sort of creative brain or muscle hobby where screens aren't the central focus.
There is a simple answer: HN is getting targeted by state-level actors and moderation team is asleep at the wheel, utterly unprepared to act against such a sophisticated threat. Perhaps someone should email dang, that ought to solve it!
Everything nominally related to Trump is getting flagged, even comments. Several unrelated comments of mine went from neutral/positive to flagged suddenly. Salty folks, or maybe coordinated, probably a little of both.
The guidelines don’t completely rule out politics, and in this case the topic is of interest here since it dovetails with other political issues of long-running concern in the HN community: who owns devices with outside service dependencies, right to repair, etc. The question of whether someone who physically controls an ECM pod can configure it feels a lot like the question about whether John Deere can prevent a farmer from configuring their tractor’s software or an IoT vendor can shut down a service without providing an alternative.
One area where this is especially of interest is everyone considering their dependency on U.S. products. If you live in a country under military threat, questions like what happens if the first strike against Canada involved a malicious Chrome or Windows update or holding back a patch for a vulnerability the NSA wants to exploit is quite an interesting problem.
The guidelines seem just vague enough to allow for suppression of topics that the oligarchs are touchy about while appearing reasonable. Tech is inherently political.
Given how pervasive politization has become this would suggest that strict adherence to any "politics is off-topic" rule would necessarily involve making the site permanently read-only.
I suspect it's because this site is mainly targeted towards technology and engineering, but somehow world news keeps making its way in here and people are getting bored of it
"Such is the concern that debate has turned to whether the US maintains secret so-called kill switches that would immobilise aircraft and weapons systems. While never proven, Richard Aboulafia, managing director at consultancy AeroDynamic Advisory, said: “If you postulate the existence of something that can be done with a little bit of software code, it exists.”
In practice, it may not even matter because of how already reliant advanced combat aircraft and other sophisticated weapons — such as anti-missile systems, advanced drones and early warning aircraft — are on US spare parts and software updates."
There you go, finally mainstream press and politicians are mentioning the kill switch.
> small European countries do now have to consider nukes
It wouldn't be all that surprising to see Poland and Finland doing atmospheric tests in the next few months. Given that Ukraine gave up their weapons for a totally vacuous security guarantee it would make sense for them to build bombs too. 2025 could be the year of global nuclear proliferation.
I don't think anyone is dumb enough to restart atmospheric testing. If you want a subsurface test to be public knowledge, there's a pretty good track record of how to do that: invite the press. Pakistan, North Korea, India & others can serve as a good example.
In fact, while most nuclear powers have dabbled in the idea of 'how could we conceal a nuclear test', it seems that only Israel is capable of doing it. That is an argument from the absence of evidence unfortunately.
The point of an atmospheric test wouldn't be to merely say "we have capability" it would be to say "we have capability and we're absolutely not afraid to use it, no matter what the cost." The idea is to demonstrate overwhelming strength and resolve, such that the opponent doesn't dare attack, not to escalate slowly.
For Europe, yes. But on a tangent, for example for Iran it would be desirable to conceal tests until the point you have proven that you can make and deliver nukes.
Not really. For example, everyone considers the UK to be a nuclear power.
Exactly what weapons they have seems to be tied to the deals of the US-UK defense agreements. The UK's development of fission weapons is well documented. The development of thermonuclear is unclear and its not exactly obvious when and how they tested proper thermonuclear weapons.
Pakistan probably had nuclear weapons decades before their official tests. The US even made them one heck of an offer to maintain this policy of uncertainty. Ultimately they would debut very small thermonuclear weapons. They probably can manufacture large scale nuclear weapons into the megaton range. Pakistan probably also has plenty of delivery options. But ultimately their arsenal is mainly just there to deter China or India's territorial expansion. Pakistan can't really threaten other nuclear powers and it seems unlikely that a country like France is just going to launch an invasion of Pakistan. So there isn't really too much reason to bother with more tests. Ambiguity is their ally.
> In fact, while most nuclear powers have dabbled in the idea of 'how could we conceal a nuclear test', it seems that only Israel is capable of doing it.
Only because the US decided to officially look the other way. See "The Vela incident" which was never publicly attributed, but was almost certainly a joint Israel-South Africa test.
I think you're correct but it also hasn't ever been publicly attributed to Israel. It's certainly a nuclear weapon test, but there isn't anything to directly tie it to Israel. "could have been anyone" is a pretty good shield
Not just small European countries, but all European countries that do not have their own nukes, which is all except France. The issue is, they’ll have to leave the Non-Proliferation Treaty for that (except for the UK, I think), and once an otherwise respected country does that, the floodgates would be open in the world. The other problem is that such a decision would be very divisive in the European country’s electorate, and therefore highly problematic on its domestic political front. This is simply not likely to happen.
A more realistic outcome is that French nukes will be stationed in other European countries. But France is also not willing to give up exclusive control over those nukes, and the next French government could very well be far-right, and thus become as unreliable as the current US government. It’s a difficult situation.
Both France and the UK have floated the idea of extending their nuclear umbrella to include other European nations. Both countries operate ICBM carrying submarines so don't have to deploy nukes on anyone's territory.
I wouldn't be surprised if it happens on the fact they could share the cost between nations alone for something they've already paid for.
The UK’s nukes are sourced from the US. If they want to be independent, they’ll have to develop their own.
For other countries, the problem remains that if the UK or France government turns far-right, the other countries may quickly be on their own again, just like what they now fear with the US.
An EU-level control over the nukes seems unlikely, as France (and even more the UK) want to retain their sovereignty over that.
The UK's warheads are UK made by the UK Atomic Weapons Establishment (AWE).
The UK lacks an independant warhead delivery system since the cancellation of the Blue Streak in 1960, and currently uses US missiles for the UK submarines.
The UK was the first country to start a nuclear weapons programme and talked the US into starting the Manhatten project.
Once subsumed by the US project, the UK started again post WWII and developed warheads and bombs tested in Australia. They managed to dust a future UK prime minister with fallout as a child in Adelaide.
Whether there is a kill switch or not is somewhat irrelevant. There is a larger than nonzero chance that there is a kill switch, and the US cannot be trusted anymore. So we have to assume there is a kill switch.
That's basically what the article says. And that even if there isn't a kill switch, these weapons rely on constant updates and cutting those off is effectively a kill switch, even if it wasn't designed as one.
Lack of maintenance parts is just a kill switch with a timer.
Jet Fighters need a lot of maintenance, they are not like cars.
So a kill switch in software is not needed. If the US stops shipping parts, then it is only a matter of time before the Jet Fighters is an expensive paper weight.
F35 is networked heavily, for its sensor fusion and various abilities. It has probably 25 million LOC and is heavily software dependent. It should be viewed somewhat as a closed software product that needs heavy vendor support right from mission planning.
Exactly. There probably is a kill switch (the temptation to add one is just impossible to resist), but it's not even needed. Stop maintenance, and in a matter of days these things can't fly.
With absolutely no military experience, I find this thought process hard to believe. Namely that the existence of backdoors is hard to conceal forever, and that their discovery would do worse damage than what Trump is doing now. Given most administrations seemed interested in maintaining friendship with Europe, I don't see the strategic benefit.
Selling expensive weapons that can never be used against oneself sounds like a pretty significant strategic benefit to me. Are there risks? Sure, but the US could just shrug if exposed. A kill switch seems likely.
Having a kill switch "just in case" really is a strategically logical move. Consider the case of Iran: In the 1960s and 1970s, the US delivered several US-built aircraft to Iran, including F-4s, F-5s, and F-14s, some of the most advanced fighters of that era. After the 1979 revolution, US-Iran relations collapsed. Despite the US cutting off spare parts and maintenance, Iran has been able to keep the aircraft operational to this day (likely through effortful reverse engineering). So now there is an adversary that is armed with equipment you provided. The obvious way to avoid that is to install a kill switch.
> After the 1979 revolution, US-Iran relations collapsed.
Amusing way of putting it, if you ignore the US/UK instigated 1953 coup of Mossadegh and the installation of the Shah who was busy selling out Iran to the western powers, yeah you can assuming US-Iran relations "collapsed". I'd say they collapsed in 1953 and 1979 was the aftermath.
The Economist gives a more nuanced view [1]. Essentially saying the deterrent is independent and if support was pulled by the US that there wouldn’t be a ‘cliff edge’, which would potentially give time to replace.
The UK has produced its own nuclear weapons in the past and has weapons grade processing at Sellafield. There’s ~140 metric tons of separated plutonium stored there.
It is apparently enough material to build tens of thousands of nuclear weapons. Not every warhead has to be a billion megatons to be a deterrent.
> Trident is made by Lockheed Martin, though. Or does the UK have the capacity to perform maintenance and manufacture make spare parts on their own?
The Economist piece spells out that, yes, long term maintenance is problematic, but in the short term nothing will break over night.
With Polaris (the system before Trident) the UK was manufacturing the missiles (effectively under license). It seems unclear whether there's any similar arrangement with Trident.
I guess my main point was that the deterrent is independent (the UK prime minister decides when to fire and can do so without the US sign-off) and there's no cliff-edge where the tech can be disabled by the US. So, with the raw materials ready to go and UK arms manufacturers like BAE Systems perfectly capable of building the tech, the risk to the UK (of being without a nuclear deterrent) is relatively low. Not zero, but low.
I don't know why anyone trusted us post 2016. Even with a sane President it was always clear that we were dangerously unreliable. And even if this insanity ends in four years it will always recur.
No. War is bad for economies. It’s good for firms that produce materiel but on the whole is a net negative. Classic broken window fallacy. Killing your workforce is a drain on economic growth.
I'm wondering if the deal with Trump and Russia is just favours like they find investors for his questionable businesses and he helps them or if they do have kompromat? Apparently in the days they were entertaining him in Moscow it was quite common to provide hookers and film things and given Trump's character it may not have been that hard to get him to go along. He always looks rather embarrassed with Putin.
Also it could explain this stuff which is hard otherwise.
I honestly think Trump is just impressed by Putin. Like he loves the power that Putin wields and likes and wants that. Trump has consistently expressed his admiration of unconstrained power in all forms. It's not just a Putin thing, though I think there is a little extra going on with Putin.
Otherwise, I think what Trump has said about Ukraine is more or less what he believes and wants. He wants there to be peace, quickly, so that he can be known as a peace maker. He wants to be known as the person who can do the undoable. His henchmen repeat it endlessly - "only Donald Trump could bring peace here". He does not care about the details for Ukraine, and he doesn't really care about the details for Europe - he's wanted to cut loose from Europe since the first term.
In addition, there's probably quite a lot of personal apathy towards Zelensky specifically.
Finally it's possible that his China hawks are also shaping his base tendencies to try to deliver a Russia-China split. But I don't think that Trump really believes in that, it's just the people in his admin trying to make something of this situation. And I don't really believe that even a peace favourable to Putin can deliver the type of split that the China hawks might dream of, at least within this term.
"Trump is an alien impersonator trying to destroy humanity from within to make it easier for the aliens to colonize earth"
That is also a probable explanation for what's happening, if you believe in UFOs and aliens.
Sorry, I mean no disrespect.
As a non-american and non-westerner, it's absolutely wild to see what people are willing to believe when it comes to Trump. Surely, there's a more rational and simple explanation for what's going on ?
It doesn't matter what I think or believe. What matters and what we know is that nearly half of America's electorate does not think that these allegations have any merits. The rest are free to believe or speculate whatever they want to.
My personal farfetched alternative theory is the "Earth X" theory.
Earth X was a comic (lol) with one interesting idea — if enough people preceive "A" as "B", "A" becomes "B".
In the case of Trump, he despises the left wing camp for kicking him off Twitter and prosecuting him. As such he takes their nightmares that they believed in term one and makes them real as personal revenge. For an old man, it is no doubt the most satisfying possible end of his life possible.
Far fetched but more realistic than "He's being blackmailed". Do you really believe the man has any shame?
Yes, the 34 felony counts against Trump proven in court beyond a reasonable doubt were about falsifying business records to pay hush money to pron star Stormy Daniels over their sex affair: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stormy_Daniels%E2%80%93Donal...
This is a good point but I was thinking about the context in his second term, not his first. Clearly he knew that, at some level, he was bulletproof in term #2. People literally brought him back after his partisans' actions on Capitol Hill. He's so old that there is no way he ever spends time in jail.
All of these machinations are, to me, an effort to avoid legal prosecution when he thought they could be effective against him. At this point, you could share the supposed piss tape and no one would care.
LOL that was the source? It was a random guy saying he recruited Donald Trump in the 1980s (possibly true), and then a bunch of conjecture based on appearances?
No collaborating evidence? No details on what he recruited Donald Trump for or what they used them for?
Sorry, did you want the Politburo to convene in the graveyard to deliver an official statement? Maybe you're waiting for a really trustworthy Russian ideologue like Putin to examine the KGB records on your behalf?
The story is corroborated by Yuri Shvets and Sergei Zhyrnov. You don't have to listen if the accusation offends you, but the pieces of the puzzle sure point towards kompromat more than glasnost.
The accusation doesn't offend me at all. Please send me the sources for Yuri Shvets and Sergei Zhyrnov (either credible journalists or first hand sources that I can dig through are fine).
I am interested in facts, not propaganda echo chamber discussions.
Well he’s been very vocal about NATO countries increasing their defense contributions. That doesn’t necessarily mean that the US needs to sell all the weapons.
"Trump Tells Europe to Buy American Arms to Keep NATO Strong". [1]
"U.S. President Donald Trump complained Thursday that his country's decades-old security treaty with Japan is nonreciprocal, as he steps up pressure on allies to increase defense spending and buy more American products." [2]
We're not increasing defense spending to appease Trump though. We're increasing defense spending because we realize a need for strategic independence from the US. Because for the comming 4 years, it's obvious that the US won't be a reliable partner, and might even be an adversary.
It makes no sense for us to buy American if we need strategic independence from the US.
Yesssss, I'd rather have those people working in renewable energy or some other future tech, but that industry was broken down as we all remember... So I guess we have to live with armaments for the moment. :-/
Yeah, but EU countries donated weapons like the F-16, which were bought from the US in the first place. So now we have to use another source for those weapon systems and the revenue/jobs won't end up in the US.
If Russia overruns Ukraine (which, I really hope, they won't be able to), their next targets are Moldova, Kazakhstan, Georgia, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia.
Will Europe start a nuclear war over any of these countries being invaded? Doubt it.
I’m talking about rhetoric and deterrence and values. When Putin was building up for war, the US was saying we’d provide money and “defensive” weapons. That’s basically an invitation. It’s saying we won’t do what it takes to win. That’s fine. If we don’t care enough to prevent it, then we can own that and let it happen without millions dying. Or, if we really won’t let that happen, then we can make that the reality and again save millions of lives.
I don’t understand how Europe seems to think that a world war among nuclear powers is the least-risky approach. If we keep fighting someone is going to start using them anyway.
Yes, but he said that in the context of buying American products. He wanted the American economy to benefit from arms sales, not a more independent Europe.
EU is being threatened with tariffs because we’re not buying „enough” things from the US, including among others arms. The „suggestion” has always been to spend that money in the USA.
This isn’t “Europe” pushing for a war, that’s solely Russia. That’s also why this policy reversal is so shocking: until recently, pretty much everyone accepted the post-WWII consensus that the United States helping to stabilize Europe was better for everyone. Trump throwing in with Russia is not only a betrayal of our allies but also dramatically increasing the risk of war since it tells Russia and anyone else so inclined that wars of aggression are viable as long as you make it financially rewarding for him.
No, it’s Europe. Ukraine decided not to join the EU and the West supported a coup via the Maidan Revolution. The extent of that support? I don’t know, but at the very least we were verbally encouraging the violent overthrow of their government.
Sometimes I wonder if he's a secret genius that leverages his own stupidity.
E.g. he might be solely responsible for getting the Liberals reelected in Canada, something that a year ago you would have thought was absolutely impossible. But Trump is so deeply hated in Canada now that every time he mocks Trudeau it makes the Liberals more popular. Liberal support, which before Trump was elected was so low as to make a Conservative election win seem inevitable, has skyrocketed since Trump took office. It's now pretty much a dead heat, and that's before the Liberals have elected their new leader.
So I don't know, maybe he just really, really wanted the Liberals to get reelected and he pulled off the only way to make it happen. Maybe he felt sorry that Canadians seemed so internally divided, so he threatened to annex Canada to unite us.
Or maybe he's a moron that can't even understand cause and effect.
I heard that a lot about pretty much every country politics that "there's something more going on, some conspiracy". But again and again I see that there's nothing hidden, it's all pretty simple and dumb. We just want to overcomplicate things to feel smarter.
Trump reminds me of someone trying to finish the last side of a rubiks cube by undoing every other side in that pursuit by not paying attention to them.
I think he'll continue to be the main cause of constraints to realizing his visions maximally.
For this reason, once we can look back on this time in retrospect, there's a way this plays out where he may just be a horse that ran away. [0]
Just like everything else he’s done, I’m not remotely surprised. I wonder if people realize where this all ends, and are taking appropriate precautions.
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[ 3.7 ms ] story [ 401 ms ] threadSeriously, America, this is like Brexit but 1000x. A voluntary decision, taken with gusto, to chop off arms and legs and ears and fingers and whatnot, cut off the deadwood, be light and free, a lone vessel on the ocean of prosperity, free of the burden of the stupid foreigners who are the sole reason why everything was going wrong.
Hey, at least Ukraine can use their S-300 systems and Sukhois against their maker.
This was predictable though. The markets have already rewarded those who saw this coming.
They can only do that if US provides them with required components
oh wait...
P.S. Many mocked Russian munitions came with chips made by Texas Instruments among others, but thing is those chips are so damn generic you can get that from random shops in Shenzhen.
Their previous orders have still not been delivered since they were sent to the frontlines in Ukraine.
I doubt India will want to repeat that.
With rumours of Pakistan getting J-35, 5th Gen fighters are necessity I guess.
Besides they can force Russian to manufacture them in India like Su-30 MKI.
Their own press photos shows uncovered Philips screws on a supposedly stealth aircraft, and their "loyal wingman" drone used the first opportunity near the frontlines to try to defect.
But there remains a question of quantity and determination.
I'm not sure how applicable this would be to a confrontation with European countries. Russian fighters will get getting lots of flight hours on CAP as well, but not much combat based on reporting. Both sides are keeping everything inside their own AD bubbles.
EU industrial capabilities may also have issues, but they are (mostly) different ones than Russia faces.
Whatever shit tier RU MIC/performance has been, it has manage to consistently defeat or mitigate what US+EU has thrown against her. Which includes highend gear like PAC3 MSE. Meanwhile half the reason RU had a hard time was due to facing UKR's abundant legacy USSR systems. At this point it's not unreasonable to dismiss everything in EU arsenal as wunderwaffe tier especially without US support. Including F35... which even if US doesn't restrict usage against EU-RU scenario, could still be borderline paperweight without US tier ISR.
People also forget NATO fought a much shitter/temu RU in Yugoslavia where NATO threw everything at even more legacy soviet systems. All of the awacs, prowlers, F117 barely chiped away at 20% of Yugoslav anti air, something like 700 harms were fired and destroyed less than handful of SA6 batteries. Hard to argue EU part of NATO has better military capability than 20 years ago.
IMO there's a strong chance US would heavily restrict/limit F35 operations against RU. Because one shot down F35 by S400 let alone anything shittier completely evaporates narrative around 5th gen (and what that entails for IndoPac). They'd rather see RU hit F35s in hangers with standoff munitions because at least they can point to JP and SKR and say, see, you need to build harden air shelters.
Likewise the reason why Russia couldn't steamroll Ukraine swiftly is because Ukraine anti air is very formidable (using Soviet hardware no less). That is why it is wrong to simply assume Russia is weak.
russia is weaker than they have been since 1991, possibly 1950.
There is a reason they are now delivering ammo using mules and actually attempting old school cavalry charges on horseback.
And it it's not because donkeys are better than the armoured, tracked towing tractors or because actual horses are better than tanks.
There's pics of UKR javalin calvary too. It's precisely because they're situationally better than tanks in certain combat conditions. For the same reason everyone is zipping around in dirt bikes and golf carts or UKR retiring M1 tanks from frontlines. Look up survivability onion, tanks/armor get detected and destroyed because they're too visible vs modern frontline battlefield recon. If you want to survive, have to move to smaller/more agile platforms to avoid detection in the first place. RU and UKR are both learning and adapting. It's reflection that last 50 years of doctorine is obsolete, aka everything EU military also hedged on. If shit ever hits the fan, NATO maybe donkeying as well.
Still sources like Covert Cabal and others do make me think it isn't only a tactical consideration the russians have made but also a reflection of the fact that they very much do see the end of their stockpile.
I don't think that's true. As an example, Finland and French doctrine are very different. It's easier to test all Euopean nations diffrent doctrine and choose what works best (especially if countries from the Balkans add their grain of salt)
Imho that's where European defense industry (as a whole) is interesting. Because you have 5 competing IFV designs (well, over 15, but really, 5 different design that does different things). You also have multiple tanks (and AMX-10s), as well as a bunch of different drone constructors. Even in gun design you have multiple choices, andh while optics and optrionics are Thales', overall equipements are extremely distributed. Europe might find itself on the backfoot in case of an engagement, but i'm pretty sure it would bounce back quickly.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Force_de_dissuasion
> There's pics of UKR javalin calvary too. It's precisely because they're situationally better than tanks in certain combat conditions.
It's a war of attrition, both sides are using whatever they can lay their hands on at this point.
The Russian failure is the exemplar. They were re-waging WW2, and they have little more than a lot of cooked tankers to show for it. Now we’re rolling with throwing prisoners into trenches to stop the maneuver warfare, because they can’t maneuver.
The US is probably in as bad of a condition. Given the poor performance of air power in Ukraine and the Trump/Putin driven destruction of world alignment, US naval power is questionable. Aircraft carriers will become ineffective as modern SAMs are sold on the market. Our submarine platforms are old, manufacturing is barely operational, and we’ll probably fire key individuals if we haven’t already.
In WW3 the role of an aircraft carrier is to launch its airplanes exactly once, before it is sunk.
I agree that mules / horses are better in certain situations, and not even considering cost. I believe even US 10th Mountain division still uses them
It seems more likely that mules were used where they make sense: Supplying ammo to a trench deeply in the forest, where mules are the superior "technology". Then that observation was blown out of proportion.
Remember that "the Russians are fighting with shovels" was a slogan in 2022.
Patriot works in Ukraine, they even got a few Khinzal. But of course any air defense is limited by available ammo and you need enough of the right kind of air defense in the right places for this to work well. The Ukraine is really limited by the number of available systems and ammunition. And for something like the Shahed drones you need other ways to defend yourself to avoid exhausting your precious ammunition for advanced air defense systems.
Russia also was shown to be nearly unable to intercept Storm Shadow/SCALP EG at the beginning. So the somewhat aging European cruise missiles were able to easily penetrate current Russian air defenses.
Most likely because they did not have the specs or complete specs for them and how they looked like on radar. There was an article somewhere that I can't find right now where something like this was said: Once a new weapon system is employed against RU or by RU against UA, it takes about two weeks to create countermeasures for it.
>patriot works
With US ISR (i.e. AWACs) providing early warning, IIRC correctly UKR was salvoing full patriot battery to intercept single kinzhal/zircon tier hypersonics, i.e. entire supply of EU patriot launcher can be overwhelmed by handful of hypersonics.
>storm shadow
Similarly UKR could sneak cruise missiles through RU IADs is because US info share helped plan missions/routes to circumvent RU defenses. Competent (not even super modern) air defense has like almost 100% interception on subsonic targets like cruise missiles, provided the are detected.
The TLDR is hard to say how EU hardware will perform without US force multiplier tier ISR. Which will effect everything from finding targets to hit, hitting targets, and avoid getting hit even with same/better hardware. Which again, is not to say EU is bad... but EU very unlikely to be US level great.
We are seeing Ukrainians regularly hitting russian redars and air defence. Whatever nato wasn't able to do in hte 90s the Ukrainians are fully capable of doing today, because they are doing it. And with lots of european help. So this is just outdated speculation you're doing.
EU part of NATO has improved ISR (helios, sarlupe, copernicus etc) but nothing rivalling US tactical and strategic capabilities, i.e. as far as I know, there's no EU system that provides all weather real time targetting.
Israel's F-35 have being going in and out of Iran's airspace with impunity, so no, I don't think that is going to be an issue.
After that the Russian "elite" units were elite in name only.
This was in hour 8 of the war and it's worth bearing in mind that this war could have gone very, very differently.
Within a narrative such as loss of elite troops would definitely have some serious impact. In the context of a war the loss of the aircraft could easily be more significant.
It’s easy to fall into the trap of thinking if only X, but war is complicated. It’s possible Russia would have been worse off because they tried to use those VDV soldiers in a plan that disastrously failed. It’s slightly more likely that they would have been a small net benefit, but chances are things would look more or less identical today with or without them.
Saying doing X wouldn’t have mattered is a perfectly reasonable rebuttal here. Ukraine not using a missile for attacking that aircraft means they could have used it to attack a different aircraft. Similarly Russia got to use all forces in that plan not destroyed with the aircraft in some other plan.
That’s not backpedaling that’s just the inherent complexities involved.
There were many russian helicopters successfully landing at Hostomel, the area saw heavy fighting for several days until it was under Ukrainian control.
> The Russian Il-76s carrying reinforcements could not land; they were possibly forced to return to Russia.[35]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Antonov_Airport
Rumors of an Il-76 downed close to Vasylkiv did not prove to be true:
> Claims have been made that Ukrainian aircraft shot down two Russian Ilyushin Il-76 aircraft transporting assault troops.[33][124][34] However, The Guardian reports "no convincing public evidence has surfaced about the two downed planes, or about a drop of paratroopers in Vasylkiv".[125]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northern_front_of_the_Russian_...
They have less than 30 airframes, probably 30-40% have some level of operational airworthiness.
The Russians get a lot of glazing on social media about military prowess. The reality is they’re fighting a tiny, poor country, got their asses kicked early on when nobody was really helping Ukraine substantially, mostly by virtue of their own incompetence.
The Russians version of the USAF is their information operations. They’ve helped to nurture right wing shitheads in the US for decades culminating in two freakshow presidential administrations. They’ve done the same in Germany in the former GDR and in the UK with the leave wankers.
Or maybe Europeans, as "founding members", are able to support the planes on their own? I doubt it though. The engine alone is US made, ans that alone is probably unmaintainable without their support.
The only way Europe can match Russia/China is to keep buying american made weapons. Maybe in 20-30 years the situation will be different and Europe will have the same capabilities of the US, but until then... buy, baby, buy!
Putin has nukes, apart from that Russia is a pretty irrelevant country.
More like this: Two super powers, and a terror nukes nation.
However, any power able to incinerate large parts of the planet is a bit more than a regional power, in my eyes.
But yes, agree with you about China.
Putin wants people to think Russia is a super power, when it's instead a corrupted inefficient mafia state. Look at research or startups coming from there (not much) or it's economy - the country is not interesting any longer (Putin has damaged it that much). Except for Putin attacking Ukraine, and his nukes and troll farms.
If Pakistan starts threatening other countries with nuclear war, and tries to invade a neighbor but mostly fails, is it then suddenly a super power?
Maybe "terror power" could be a new word
Clearly, it's not irrelevant if it's been able to drive a wedge between the US and Europe like this.
However, any power able to incinerate large parts of the planet is a bit more than a regional power, in my eyes.
(Typing "sub" reminded me of the Kursk nuclear submarine that sank itself…)
Some of the P(weapon failure) is constant: from what I hear, a certain fraction of Soviet and US systems (and presumably everyone else's) just don't work.
If that was all it was, then you would be correct.
But: some failures come with age, and require ongoing maintenance to retain function. For example, I expect all the tritium has decayed, and also that in many cases the money that was supposed to get spent replacing the tritium was instead spent on a fancy yacht or a football team or a seat in the UK's House of Lords etc.
And I don't know how good modern anti-missile weapons are, but I would expect them to have improved; conversely, despite Russia's talk about new hypersonic missiles, what they've shown hasn't been very impressive, and they've even used up some of their old nuclear-capable missiles while attacking Ukraine.
I'm happy to be relaxed about this, but only because I have no power — 90% chance some attempted hot war is actually all duds is great for me personally, 10% chance everything burns is unacceptably high for someone running a country.
Russia and China are regional powers and can't project military power very far, excluding nukes. To do that you need a credible blue water navy. China is close though, and definitely projecting its economic strength.
Europe (lets just say EU + UK) could be a superpower. However they lack political unity. And still want big daddy US to do the heavy lifting.
The Ukraine war was "successful" in destroying the possibility of railways between the EU and China.
The EU, ever the good vassal, now ramps up the rhetoric against Russia which is exactly what Hegseth wanted in the open.
The EU is still playing the U.S. deep state script and it is very likely that all the Trump pressure and insults are carefully planned political theater.
If the above conjectures are wrong and Trump is serious about peace with Russia, then the EU needs to pivot quickly to China and at least maintain reasonable diplomatic relations with Russia.
I find that becoming exceedingly unlikely. Trust has been destroyed, there is no easy recovery from that.
First, ex-neocon Rubio admitted on the Megyn Kelly show that the world is now multi-polar. Even if he believes that, why would he say so unless it's for show.
Then there is Lindsey Graham. In 2016 he gave warlike speeches to the Azov Batallion:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eQ4e1A-LZEA
In 2025 he throws Zelensky under the bus:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=18oqMGLWcRA
Graham and probably Rubio are still neocons. Trump must be really powerful to keep all this under control.
Then there is the U.S. arms lobby, which is uncannily quiet even though they'll lose a ton of business when NATO becomes irrelevant. Then there are no reactions to Polish nuclear ambitions, which is weird unless the whole thing is scripted.
So there are two theories. Either Trump is carving up the world or he is acting.
America is currently doing everything for Russia! If we actually used the F35 against Russia right now Trump would probably immediately do everything in his power to stop that, just like he’s exerting pressure everywhere else he can in Russias favour
Honestly I’ll personally be buying as little American as possible going forwards
To me it looked like Bezos put the boot there himself, he seemed pretty enthusiastic about it.
It seems to me Donald is beheld in some way to Vladimir; what's being done now to my eye is too specifically about setting up UA for second RU invasion.
Donald then I think, step by step, is going to ally with Vladimir.
1. US aid to UA stops (done).
2. USA leaves NATO (on the way).
3. US troops in Europe leave or move to Hungary (floated).
4. Hungary is ejected from EU due to Orban obstructing everything he can.
5. Hungary becomes RU satellite state (maybe with many tens of thousand of US troops).
6. USA lifts its sanctions, placing it directly in conflict with Europe.
7. Donald invokes Insurrection Act, military units can now be used for civil policing (this is why top military brass and specifically top military lawyers removed).
8. Europe puts boots on ground and air cover over UA.
9. To "encourage peace", Donald now disables support for US weapon systems being used by Europe in UA. At this point, F-35 is history whether or not EU has dropped them or not.
10. Protests in USA, military used, people die, Donald suspends Constitution "to restore order and combat subversive elements".
11. No more elections. All court cases underway made irrelevant.
Of course, all of them were wrong. Short of WW3 between Europe and the US, many awful things that were predicted have come true. DT has severely weakened the USA, weakened the stock market, damaged US reputation and trust in the US army, dismantled many departments, put useless shills in most important positions, pulled out of Ukraine, stopped aid to Ukraine, sucked up to Putin, and turned it all into a country that most people in Europe consider a hostile enemy (myself included).
So. For the sake of your fellow citizens, quit the excuses.
Given the size and battle experience of their armies I think that it's more probable that it's Ukraine that will cover Europe and not viceversa. And if they'll have to flee their country add a 12th point the UA army takes sanctuary in the EU that goes the way of Lebanon in the 70s when another army had to flee there.
If UA goes down, then EU goes down, because RU will attack before EU is ready.
This is why I think we see EU direct involvement in UA fighting; needed to keep UA up, and needed to get up to speed with drones.
Do you have any numbers or analysis to back this up, please?
A few counterpoints:
- Russia failed to 'take' a relatively unprepared Ukraine, and arguably has only managed the gains it has made because the support (from Biden US and EU) was drip-fed according to the Biden team's strategy.
- Russia is haemorraging fighters and modern fighting machinery in the current war in Ukraine. It's unknown how much longer the loss of life can be sustained without internal unrest. The absence of modern machinery would obviously make an invasion of Europe less likely to succeed.
- While Russia might now be a "war economy" I've seen reports that they can't economically sustain the war for too much longer.
- While the EU certainty needs to invest in defence, some countries are already strong, and would likely fight to protect the collective.
Overall, this suggests that Russia would fail against a united Europe, were they to extend beyond a defeated Ukraine.
Russia's economy is teetering and looks very weak now, but much of that is due to sanctions. Sanctions that trump will probably remove soon, for zero concessions. I'm not sure how effective EU sanctions will be on their own. Soon we will be seeing a much stronger Russia, already on a heavy war footing, start swallowing up a much weaker Ukraine. I don't like what might happen after that plays out.
But the western support was very small compared to actual western military capability.
Wouldn't freeing up Russia through removal of sanctions and a refusal to engage militarily resulting in an escalation in Ukraine and potentially beyond into Europe be seen as a big failure of his position?
Any suggestions on where in the world will remain relatively stable?
I will be going to UA, to fight with them.
France over-run by Germany. Gestapo at work, with all its horrors.
UK+US land in French North Africa, part of taking Africa from Germany, part in the long run of liberating France from horrors of occupation.
French soldiers fighting, killing and being killed by UK+US troops.
And, I was more thinking of the situation on American ground, within the USA and between the USA and Canada. I don't mean it wouldn't happen. I mean that I don't think that would happen with 100% engagement from all US army. The disconnect and reversal of strategy of the US, against its own allies, is too sudden.
My thought here was that armies can fight with the most brutal oppressors of their very own country, against those who would liberate it.
Only, ask your military to return against your just previous allies (at your own initiative) among which the one that helped your very nation to fight for its independence, with which you did cross-training and exercises, for the past 80 years... everyone is in for quite a bumpy road.
I think it's foolish to restrict operations to Ukraine though, and feel that the size of Russia is one of its main weaknesses. If there's to be a war, it should involve incursions into the US proper.
The EU without the US can already produce 5th gen, the selling point of the F35 was 6th gen compatible with 7th gen (NGAD).
Russia is still flying more 4th then 5th gen fighters, because they can't get their bricks off the ground. Why would the EU want to copy the same mistakes of their enemy?
Just like any other military including the US, no?
I don't have access to perfect information, but I find the reports that Russia is unable to maintain their entire fleet creditable, and believe and/or trust the experts who confirm this analysis.
Obviously Russia has no 5gen at all (or just a few 5gen Su-57, if we going to name them 5gen).
Anyway, my point is that as of now Russia has no need for gen5 and can't afford it anyway, just like about anyone else except for the US and a few countries that have them but at the same time have to rely on the US anyway.
What matters these days is the cost of buying/flying/maintenance, software platform and what missiles they can launch.
Gripen has modular upgradable software, and supports modern Europe-made missiles such as Taurus and Meteor.
For the same reason I consider the F35 a failure.
I expect a crash program to reengineer them has already started if only unofficially.
If your threat model did include a war within former NATO members, the F-35 is the worst possible choice so another way of thinking about this is that they should pick the best option which is actually available. That would mean things like swarm attacks and strikes on the airfields where those stealthy but extremely fragile planes are housed. Even if the public range is significantly low, they’d need a base closer than Greenland to strike European targets.
BAE Systems along with other European arms/aerospace manufacturers are perfectly capable of making competing products.
They are more battle-tested than any other. America has been involved in a war or another pretty much continuously since the end of WWW2.
Not that they’re going to be allies much longer.
In Syria the US bombs things at their will, same in Somalia. In all Latin America conflicts the US went at it alone.
Maybe pay attention to Greece, Korea, Libya, Kosovo, Serbia, Yemen, Syria (1982), Iran, Iraq (twice), Afghanistan, WW1, WW2
The fact that even as we bicker on this forum British and American forces are in Yemen pretty much says everything.
* correction: since 1776
There's no reason this can't be replicated by other rich nations but it won't be cheap or quick.
I don't see EU countries starting to invade other countries around the globe to test out weapons systems and battlefield tactics. The US on the other hand, kind of did this continuously since WWW2 (to mention recent history).
And there are high quality planes like the Rafale that aren't PaaS (Planes as a Service) where the owner can unilaterally stop you from using it.
And no country wants to wake up to a set of bricks when they really need warplanes all of a sudden.
Maybe we (as a Pole living in Norway) can't have state of the art jets, but in practice don't need them?
We (as the whole eastern block - Scands, Balts, Poland, Romania and Ukraine) should cancel our orders of F-35 and focus on developing our drone and strategic missile industry. And focus on investing, developing and buying from our closest allies - the eastern block.
Not on the countries that don't care because they are either too far from Russia (Spain, Italy) or have vested geopolitical interest in alllying with them (Germany). France and UK might want to join to balance out Germany.
At least that's what I understand from hearing smarter than me discuss the current situation.
The main reason that Ukraine and Russia have had to rely so heavily on drones is that they had no better alternative. The air forces on both sides are shit with zero (or effectively zero) 5th generation aircraft that can survive in a contested environment. The F-35 was designed for that mission and would at least have a chance.
I wouldn't call Russian AF "shit". The УМПК (JDAM) bombs crushed formidable defense of Avdeevka and now hit AFU hard in Sudja. Ka-52 helicopters stopped counteroffensive a year ago. Surely, sky is contested, but it's still important component that hurts Ukraine very hard.
> have had to rely so heavily on drones is that they had no better alternative
What would be an alternative to wing reconnaissance drones? What can hyper-equipped US armed forces offer as a replacement FPV and fiber-optics FPV attack drones? Yeah they have Reapers and other fancy expensive gear for the first 3-4 weeks of active war, then what?
The US has a variety of overlapping reconnaissance capabilities including not just large UAVs but also manned aircraft (including the F-35) and multiple satellite constellations. Over the next few years the priorities in that area should be to accelerate the B-21 Raider program (it will make an excellent recon platform) and develop some sort of prompt satellite launch capability to replace combat losses within hours. There is also a general recognition that we'll have to increase spending or shift budget priorities to build up the industrial capacity necessary to sustain longer conflicts.
Define "shit".
Consequently I believe that if the EU is to intervene, which I think is a very reasonable thing to do, it should be by imitiating the Russian approach of using aircraft as flying artillery-- i.e. to release missiles etc., against Russian positions in Ukraine, but I also believe that we should attack Russian natural gas pipelines, ammonia plants, nitric acid plants, ammunition plants with long-range weapons. I also believe that it's reasonable to send in ground troops to seize Russian and Belarusian territory in locations where it can be determined that Russia lacks artillery, tanks etc., and to in that way force troop movements, thus depleting the front in Ukraine and allowing Ukraine to basically roll it over.
I believe that this is possible for several reasons, among them that we Europeans are three times as many as the Russians. I believe that it is unlikely to lead to nuclear war because I believe that the Russians are rational and well aware that any nuclear use by them leads to a proportional nuclear use by 'us', whatever that means, and that the number of nuclear weapons in Russian control is irrelevant for the reason that they're gone after an exchange of a mere hundred or so, so that anything beyond that is superfluous.
Unlike you, I don't think the EU had any business participating in this war.
I wouldn't dismiss a nuclear exchange quite easily.
There are some problems with Ukraine, there might be if there's too much corruption and oligarchy type stuff, so I don't want to absorb them immediately-- they need huge reforms, but I don't find them objectionable per se. I think they need to get smarter, get rid of their mafia etc., but it might be possible.
It's critical for the EU to prevent this kind of expansionist warfare on its borders.
Today. So many things we have seen in the last couple of years have been pure sci-fi a decade ago. Switchblade 600, for example, has a loitering time of 40 minutes and a range of 24 minutes.
> and they barely move much faster than a carrier.
Fly in the direction bow to stern, low above the water. Or just ... loiter in the path of the carrier.
The Chinese are not stupid. Their A2/AD doctrine is based on large, expensive manned aircraft and fast missiles, not slow and weak little "drones".
If nobody wants to buy any of that shit because of the knock-on effects of Trump’s self-sabotage and they start investing elsewhere, then those defence companies will sooner distance themselves from the US as well. Unless they’re in on whatever the administration is cooking up the money is still going to speak louder.
BTW you don't seem to understand military well - F22 is much better plane than F35, but abysmally complex to do and expensive, thats why the low numbers. F35 has way too many compromises ie for us navy.
Also, as Ukraine war shows fighter jets are not that important for waging war if situation is more like peer vs peer, and not US blowing shepherds and weddings into pieces. Sure, they lob a bomb or two, sometimes launch a rocket but all from as much distance as possible. What wins such wars these days is artillery, massive amount of infantry and millions of various drones.
No one would ever trust China, not Vietnam, not anyone unwilling to take orders from them. The terms would be heavy.
But right now the fact that there US citizens (apparently civil contractors, not military personell) stationed at austrian air bases to enable some functionality is a big deal. This is a big deal because the wish-wash Austrian Neutrality is crucial to Austrian Identity.
Quite apart from any sovereignty arguments, cash spent at home goes to purchase of hopefully local components, materials, all along paying for local salaries, which drives local economies. And this is taxed along the way too, as income tax, VAT and ultimate corporate tax.
I wonder if that's really true to a significant amount, and if so, how much does that matter. Eg if I can buy something for X abroad, or c*X locally, for what value of c is this overall breakeven?
(Sadly, sanity of the opposite political party was / is also highly questionable.)
The problem is systemic: The US doesn't have a functioning democracy. FPTP, gerrymandering, unchecked campaign financing, the electoral college? It just isn't working, and the US is permanently stuck in a dysfunctional two-party system. If that doesn't get fixed (and let's be honest, it won't), the rest of the world won't be trusting the US until it can demonstrate a few decades of continuous trustworthy leadership after Trump is gone.
I am not holding my breath that he will just walk away in 4 years, why would anybody be so naive? He thinks US constitution is an old toilet paper, its mememe. Look at what happened last time he was supposed to go out.
Because that is where most of the money ends up when the US "supports" other countries. The US unloads weapons from its stockpiles (that need to be replaced at some point anyway) and then replenish the US stockpiles. This is both a huge injection of funds into US defense industry, and it takes care of the expensive problem of dealing with old ordnance.
US defense industry is going to be busy restocking the US stockpiles for a while longer.
If revenue were to soften before that, the Trump administration can distract from this reality by pumping more money into the industry short term. This may actually push the problem forward in time to the next president if they can keep pumping in enough money to hide the problem. It looks as if they are doing exactly this.
Of course, a few years down the line the defense industry will be in trouble as "consumer trust" is gone, Europe have ramped up their production and revenues will start to plummet.
We have to assume that the US cannot be trusted as a military ally for at least the next 4 years. In fact, we have to be open to the possibility that they will be willing to be hostile. Including, but not limited to, extortion tactics. That's the hard baseline here.
We also have to be open to the possibility that the US either won't or can't have a proper election in 2028. And even if there is a proper election, that even a "sensible" president will not repair the damage.
What is already permanent is that Europe will never have the same level of trust in the US ever again. Perhaps some of it can grow back over a few decades, but the former level of trust will not return.
(Sellier & Bellot and no, it is not French)
We'd keep the frame, but Serge Dassault and Charles de Gaulle would probably smite any French mechanic coming within 20 feet of a F-35 to do anything but dismantle one for its secrets.
The other factor is the NATO nuclear sharing arrangement. The F-35A is the only new aircraft certified to carry the US nuclear weapons under that arrangement, so that impacts Belgium, Germany, Italy, and Netherlands. Germany looked into certifying the Eurofighter Typhoon for the nuclear strike mission but decided that they couldn't afford it, and bought the F-35A instead. Of course, if the US pulls back from NATO and ends nuclear sharing then that concern would become moot and some of those countries would be likely to develop their own nuclear weapons.
I remember the story rather like this:
US: "you want to certify your fighter for nuclear devices"
Germany: "yes"
US: "ooh, that will be expensive and takes a loooong time. Don't you want to just buy our F35 instead?"
And germany basically did. With the implicit understanding, to buy a piece of nuclear protection with that. Well, all gone ... so there are really only some voices left, wanting to keep buying the expensive, potentially useless bricks.
Not in my understanding. Rather germany always went for the specialized and therefore expensive version (Goldrandlösung) of anything. But sure, parliament says, we are in peace, we don't need so many of those expensive toys. So they rather buyed only limited numbers and created another buerocratic controll gremium.
France could afford a nuclear programm and an aircraft carrier with an equal budget.
So yeah, there are many factors to blame, but I don't think it was because of too little money. Rather too much money with no one sane checking, if it serves really the purpose of defending the country.
They may lack the scale, but perhaps that can be built up.
https://ukdefencejournal.org.uk/how-much-of-the-f-35-is-brit...
[0] https://archive.is/2LLkO
Again, not ideal, but the first F-35 have been delivered an need to be serviced and maintained until they can be replaced,... or maybe just until the next US election.
The original article suggests that Ukraine may end up having to replace the electronic countermeasures hardware to get around this in the future, so I'd expect any attempts to "un-brick"/work around the lack of support will eventually be along those lines, even if it results in some performance degradation.
No matter how they approach this, it's going to be a horrifically difficult and expensive task.
0. https://www.reuters.com/article/world/exclusive-us-to-withho...
See my other comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43307996#43309468 Replacing the jammers shouldn't be "horrifically difficult", might still be expensive though.
the UK made access to the source code a condition of purchase, and the technology transfer agreement was signed
in a hypothetical scenario where the US federal government falls under the direct control of a russian asset, I imagine this would end up in our allies hands reasonably quickly
Move a few flags around in a few registers and for all practical purposes it’s stuck.
We're talking about Europe being able to protect itself from a potential Russian invasion despite the US bricking their F35s, and your argument is that they'd have to bend or break an agreement?
I don't think that's a big hurdle, in that eventuality.
(Reminds me a touch of this, though: :) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B3EBs7sCOzo )
If the American people want to shift track they have the opportunity to actually elect a Congress which will do something.
If not it’s November 2028 for the next presidential election. Trump (if he’s still alive - he’s not exactly young or healthy) won’t be able to stand for a third term unless a constitutional ammendment is past
It is not just about Trump.
The question is will it happen soon enough to mitigate some of the damage.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CKNPCk-fd8I
You can fly the airframe but there is a significant reduction in capability unless you can also produce equivalent algorithms and data processing technology.
I’m not aware of any computer science breakthroughs required for the f35.
Almost by definition, any classified computer science research would be non-obvious.
I’m not sure your second point is true. The vast vast majority of classified information is very boring, or operational like frequencies of radar, etc.
Both sides know the basics, it’s what frequencies the radar comms and aircraft work at that is classified.
There’s very little “OMG this one algorithm changes everything!!”. Unless proven otherwise
The ability of someone to imagine the existence of things they are unaware of has no bearing on their existence. You could say the same of a lot of the classified materials science that underpins a lot of US weaponry hardware for which there is ample circumstantial evidence. No one is going to be talking about it on HN.
“On 27 May 2006, President George W. Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair announced that "Both governments agree that the UK will have the ability to successfully operate, upgrade, employ, and maintain the Joint Strike Fighter such that the UK retains operational sovereignty over the aircraft." In December 2006, an agreement was signed which met the UK's demands for further participation, i.e., access to software source code and operational sovereignty. The agreement allows "an unbroken British chain of command" for operation of the aircraft.”
But I agree there's more than one way to view ownership and I can see your point, even if I don't think I agree so long as the UK can truly operate it in every way, including software that might need adapting (like how I might bend my fork's prong back into shape, or out of shape for adaptations)
https://www.czdefence.com/article/europeanisation-of-the-f-3...: “The F-35's manufacturer, Lockheed Martin, states that currently around 25% of the F-35's components are manufactured in Europe.”
That doesn’t say the USA cannot make every part, but I think it’s likely they will have trouble producing some of them.
For example, https://simpleflying.com/how-many-international-parts-us-f-3... states the F35 has Martin Baker ejection seats and the F35B has Rolls-Royce engines.
PS: I'm from and in Europe. I don't get why it is a good or logical thing that the US should be responsible for the majority of "Western" defense on our territory.
Note that it might have been possible for the US to convince the rest of NATO to spend more on their defense without losing the faith of their allies. This sure isn't the way to do it.
It also wants to forcibly grow competing defense contractors in Europe.
Group A and Group B build an economic partnership under consensual terms generally favourable to both over a long period of time.
At one point, Group A decides to withdraw due to real or perceived inequality. The timeframe of withdrawal is faster than entering, and is insufficient to unearth the complex network of roots that took generations to plant.
When the trunk is pulled, the pain is felt in vast numbers of small ways that add up. These roots are what contain the vast majority of the surface area after all.
I see this as analogous. US is maybe reaping some short term benefits from flipping on its allies, but burning the bridges it very much relies on.
This is a common talking point, but I think it is totally wrong. The US didn't finance and organize Europe's defense.
They did spend money on their own defense forces which happen to be best positioned in Europe near the best interest as a superpower.
America spent money against their Russian adversary. This money was always well spent as far as I can see it.
Read some history (everything geopolitics after the second world war), you should ask yourself why for 76 years that's exactly what the US did (and perhaps why this is the first time that question occurred to you).
It's because the relationship between Europe and the US is not a mutually beneficial one, the US benefited the most from its power and influence over western Europe, and that doesn't just apply to Europe. NATO and the roughly 128 military bases in 58 different countries don't exist because the US somehow likes to subsidize the military spending of these countries for some altruistic purpose, it exists because it strengthens US influence across the world.
That's soft power, and if it fails, it means war (in total 123 military conflicts since WW2). It's a less bloody alternative to make sure the US gets what it wants because its the stronger party in any geopolitical relationship.
That's the logic behind it. The same logic applies to military aid it gives to Egypt and Israel (that Trump continues to give).
If I was a foreign leader, I would immediately consider building nuclear deterrence of some sort, and find alternatives to US weapons.
Biden's 'minor incursion' remarks, giving Putin the go ahead for round 2 in 2022:
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2022/01/20/ukra...
This kind of happened to the US.
"Body integrity identity disorder (BIID), or body integrity dysphoria, is a mental health condition where you feel that a limb or healthy body part shouldn’t be part of your body."
https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/diseases/body-integrit...
But that's going up in smoke rather quickly.
I'm beginning to think that being somewhat reined in by the Republican establishment in his first term, a weakness that the MAGA-crowd sought to correct, ultimately worked in his favor in protecting him from his poor instincts.
It's like he doesn't understand that trust and reliability have a real, tangible value. That's simply a misjudgment. Maybe he actually believes that America is so exceptionally strong that any sort of cooperation ultimately works against it?
It's terribly sad and depressing frankly. A small part of me still has hope that this is going to end badly, in that it turns into a useful lesson, but not badly enough to cause lasting damage. I might be naive.
I work in IT. We already have several customers projects (various profiles) that paused all their ongoing projects to _start_ migrating their servers and hosted services away from US-based/owned ones towards EU-based ones.
That's how the rest of the world has been doing business with America, Europe will get used to this too.
They are really busy right now.
Bob.
It's also the same reason the Swiss defense industry is now in collapse. Because they refused to allow re-export of ammo to Ukraine citing Swiss neutrality.
It immediately made all Swiss made ammo worthless for all european countries in event of war. Lol
Apparently the Swiss are still talking of revising their law while their defense industry is crying because nobody wants to buy their shit as European countries want to be able to help other European countries. Especially circles like the Nordic or Baltic regions where the countries are extremely buddy buddy.
https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/foreign-affairs/is-the-swiss-we...
https://breakingdefense.com/2023/03/the-cost-of-neutrality-s...
It doesn’t matter who owns these planes, the US have shown that they have the power to make them useless and that they cannot be trusted, and that is a dealbreaker when it comes to expensive & important equipment.
"Word should be gotten to Nixon that if Thieu meets the same fate as Diem, the word will go out to the nations of the world that it may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal."
Thieu did meet the same fate, well, he wasn't killed, but he was overthrown and lived life in exile as a recluse.
Zelenskyy will almost certainly suffer the same fate.
What would a president who was beholden to Russians do once elected? I mean -- what's the point of provoking Canada, of all countries? Canada as the 51st US state would be the new most populous state and would cause a huge change in US politics. Not to mention it could only arrive through conquest. So why even propose it if not merely to cause a rift?
- https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c7435pnle0go US sides with Russia in UN resolutions on Ukraine (the US rejected a resolution that named Russia as the aggressor).
- https://news.online.ua/en/the-us-is-ending-support-for-ukrai... The US is ending support for Ukrainian F-16
- https://www.reuters.com/world/us-cuts-off-intelligence-shari... US cuts intelligence sharing for Ukraine, adding pressure for Russia peace deal
- https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-03-08/us-vetoes... US Vetoes G-7 Shadow Fleet Task Force Plan
There's a pattern: Trump wants to force a capitulation of Ukraine.
It's just the way it's done, quite childish and not ally-like. Pulling out from EU and UA could've been done in much less 'rug-pulling' style.
The United States was never "in Ukraine" in at all the same way it was in Iraq or Afghanistan. There were never American combat boots on the ground.
After many long discussions, I can only conclude it less about the values of the supporters and more about their psychology.
His supporters want whatever he wants, as long as it means that the right people get bullied. There's not much deeper thought than that.
It's very sad to see people that I respected debase their own principles so that they can remain proud Trump supporters. Their identity appears tied to the decision, and I know only one person who had the principles to to respond to any of Trump's actions with "OK these people actually have no clue what they are doing." (Which was in response to their treatment of Zelensky in the Oval Office).
Yeah, pretty much. Everyone in this thread should be able to craft a Trump line that's easily digestible by his base on this point by now. In this specific case it's "I don't want to give US weapons to anyone who won't act in our (my) national interest on every issue." Once you empower him to decide what is or is not in the US national interest, there's not much you need in the way of convincing. It's only when his policies start hurting his voters individually that they'll maybe start questioning whether what Trump claims is American national interest is actually in their own interest or not.
You probably can’t name 5 things that the Green Party stands for and how they align with Jill Stein.
That's like asking whether a child wants the sugar crash that will come after eating the candy bar. They're not able to see that far ahead. They'll only "get it" when their lives have been made significantly harder, and even then it's not likely they'll be able to attribute their misery to the administration's policies--they could very easily be convinced to blame some minority group or foreign nation.
This reminds me of France in the Second World War. My (questionable) understanding is that they were more worried about the enemies at home than the ones across the border.
The point of all of this is the chaos and destruction of trust in the system. A concept in the early stages of the Russian revolution was that the stage had to be set for a “spark” to light the tinder of the proletariat. Here the Russians had RT, probably fed talking points and material to talk radio and podcast people. Had honeypots seducing strategic politicans and special interests (See Maria Butina and the NRA). Obviously wields influence over Trump.
Once that tinder has been set, the sparks some in the chaos. You have the religious weirdos who think dinosaurs are fake, Elon who believes he’s the protagonist in a sci-fi fantasy, some war-hawks pushing the Artic Dominance thing, and whatever fuckery the gang of oligarchs like Theil, etc have in mind.
they are doing what they should've been doing this whole time?
Extend this to other areas of commerce. If the US is no longer a reliable trade partner and its allies lessen their economic ties, is that a positive outcome for the US?
What the last decade has shows is relying on external oligarchs for energy and defence is not sensible. The us has encouraged this for a long time. I just hope that Europe actually steps up quickly enough.
It will hurt the us a lot more than Europe, and China will be massively emboldened in the Pacific. It’s a new world order.
With this move, any nation will think twice about buying US made weapons. Trump effectively kneecapped the US arms industry by this move.
So much winning, eh?
Just a few days ago, Leonardo signed a treaty to develop uavs together with Baykar. A month or so ago, Italian government announced the creation of a joint venture between rheinmetall and Leonardo, sharing technologies to Leonardo and producing some of the >1000 ifvs to buy for the italian army in italy and some in Germany
Yeah. What you said has zero relevance. It's not like US is taking away the jets. They are just reducing proactive support because it's a democracy and the people don't want the country to be on the leash of anyone.
It's time for Europe to do its own work on this. As a Finnish guy I know plenty of that, and don't view other European nations as acting very responsible having had their self defense capabilities and believability wither.
I don't know anything about fighter jets but for a lot of other things, Trump could not have done a nicer thing for China. Whatever issues many countries had with China, they are not actively beating most of them in the face. Probably the best years for Xi these are going to be.
This sums up what I've been thinking too - it looks like the USA is sick of being the center of the world and is stepping down from the position right now.
I guess this means it's China's moment. :/
The finale had it trying to love itself to China and becoming warehouse 14, but that eventually stopped and American Superiority won over.
Those days seem at an end. The actions Trump had made over the last two months will reverberate for the next two decades at least.
Why is it that Ukraine needs to end the war but not Russia?
On the other hand, Trump can always move the goalpost ("Election not held in eastern Oblasts == Sham elections") or even reinforce the view that the eastern oblasts are de facto not part of the Ukrainian state anymore.
Also Zelensky's popularity has shot up since Trump started aligning with Russia. And the next most likely president is probably even more hawkish towards Russia.
2. Every elected politician in the Verkovna Rada voted in support for Zelensky, including his opponents
3. The only ones who wants an election right now are Putin and his allies
At the very least this entire 180 and the attempt to humiliate Zelensky in the White House is Trump wanting to enact some kind of revenge.
At the very worst him praising Putin, threatening to leave Nato, threatening other allies, moving troops out of Germany and into Hungary, et all just reeks of something more.. conspiracy theory or not it's pretty disgusting as someone looking in from the outside.
Then again, even if a global nuclear war broke out, some of his loyalists would still be convinced that Trump is playing some sort of 3D chess and that it's all going according to his masterful plan.
This view is the only thing that to me makes sense of what’s happening.
EU are reliable vassals, but they're reliable in the sense that their vassalage doesn't add much to strategic balance, especially vs PRC. EU/NATO bluntly net drain in US security commitments and trade balance. Like EU could have been buying 100s of billions more in US arms and LNG, US looking at the 2T+ trade deficit with EU in last 20 years and wondering if that's worth the hegemon privilege. EU + most US partners think they have a tributary system where vassal supports the hegemon, but it's really an expensive client state system where US pays off vassals. Looking at projected US finances - they can't afford to pay off everyone anymore. Also bluntly, US vassals aren't going to reverse payment flow and become tributaries. If it comes to parity burden share as past US admins has pressured, there's less reason to even be "partners" and more reason for EU to try to be their own pole.
There is literally no observation that could not be viewed as confirming this assumption by a sufficiently generous mind.
First, there are countless other ways to get Europe to rearm if that was actually the goal. Russia's position at the moment is virtually the same as it was a few months into the invasion, which is strong enough that european powers are scared of escalation but not strong enough that anyone thinks an unprovoked Russian attack on NATO territory is either imminent or inevitable. Making Russia weaker to lower fears of retaliation or letting Russia steam-roll Ukraine would both seem like they would better motivate Europe to quickly rearm instead of pressuring for a ceasefire.
Second, it is not at all clear that was the goal. Note that this is extremely against America's interests. As the major supplier of arms to Europe, America wielded tremendous influence over Europe (as evidenced by TFA) while at the same time ensuring Europe was well armed with weapons that would be easily compatible with the US's own military so that they could be readily called as allies. Europe replacing American systems with others does not mean Europe will be militarily stronger, it only means they will not be reliant on the US for what strength they have.
Third, there is no reason to believe that Europe would not feel compelled to build up military capability against China for exactly the same reason the US does. Nor is there any reason to believe China is too smart not to play into America's hands while Russia apparently is. Further, the US doesn't need Europe to rearm for a war with China - even with massive investment, Europe is not going to have the force projection capabilities to support a total war in the Pacific theater, what America really needs is a coalition of economic allies which will side with it in containing China - a need that is not at all served by antagonizing those very allies.
That's not to say any of your assumptions can't be true, just that it's a lot more assumptions than just "the current American leadership is not working to advance the American hegemony."
I guess it's worth a try.
Oh man, you should take a look at /r/worldnews, I mean, that really takes the prize when it comes to being a total delusional echo chamber.
But as far as I'm reading there isn't any indication that he had ties to the government outside of some Russian news outlets blaming Ukraine for the assassination attempt.
The guy was actively recruiting for the Ukrainian armed forces.
Ties goes both ways. His were only one way.
Besides, you link to a place that requires log in but were no one wants to be seen anymore because it is run by a I-dont-know-what-to-say and is overrun by russian propaganda.
Also he adores Putin and Xi and is doing what he can to become like them. There's no conspiracy, Trump really is that much of a child.
It worked, didn't it? Every prosecutor just quit soon after Trump was elected.
[citation needed]
Also, according to Perun, if Europe collectively raises defense spending to somewhere near 4,5% (I think, check last Sundays episode) it will outspend not only US but US and China together.
*eg. https://edition.cnn.com/2025/03/09/europe/russia-advances-ku...
If Russians take Ukraine, they will force their population to attack the next country. Just like it happened with men of Donbass.
The only real capability Russia has, are their nuclear weapons and other long-range weapons - and even with the latter, they have been struggling.
FWIW, I worked in the defense industry, and even before the invasion Russia has been viewed as a paper tiger. They're good at coming up with novel ideas and weaponry, but for whatever reason, struggle to successfully get things from the drawing board to operational weapons.
[1] https://abcnews.go.com/International/ukraine-europe-react-sh... Pre freeze: "Malcolm Chalmers, the deputy director-general of the Royal United Services Institute think tank in the U.K., told ABC News that recent estimates indicate the U.S. share of all military hardware sent to the front has fallen to around 20%, with 25% coming from Europe and 55% domestically produced in Ukraine." ; also see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_military_aid_to_Ukrain...
[2] https://eu.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2025/03/04/us-weapo...
[3] https://edition.cnn.com/2025/03/09/europe/russia-advances-ku...
Russians are slowly creeping in. I've heard ru-bankruptcy narrative for 3 years now, and it's not happening. They can buy lots of stuff with all the oil/gas/metals/minerals/lumber sales.
I'm curious: Where can I read more about this? Which parties (and how many) are saying this? Is there any pushback from Merz?
[1] https://www.deutsche-rentenversicherung.de/DRV/DE/Ueber-uns-... [2] https://www.tagesschau.de/inland/innenpolitik/rentensteigeru... [3] https://www.t-online.de/nachrichten/deutschland/innenpolitik...
If you don’t believe me, go read up on the genderfication of politics in the last 10 years. Women are from Venus and men are from mars. There’s no reconciling them.
This is all pretty off topic and not the time to get into it but I find what you're saying pretty wild. Of course there's nothing wrong with being a man but it's still a good idea to listen to women's experiences and learn from books they've written. There are all sorts of unfair power structures in the world and it's good to learn about them, especially at this juncture in history, or else we run the risk of making the same mistakes again and again.
Indeed there is slight toxicity to calling this 'manning up'. Especially towards men, where it signals that men should be strong enough to defend themselves. Which wronly reinforces the idea that capability in violence is a positive trait in men.
I of course agree with the point about Europe and you've beautifully captured the reason why the phrasing gave me an uneasy feeling. The line between the necessary reaction and over-reaction is terrifyingly small and I hope for the best for all of us.
You have too much feminine energy if reading "man up" gives you uneasy feelings. Time to man up.
What's wrong with that, aside that it's missing "themselves and their women and children"?
The whole idea that it's somehow "toxic" made EU the weak sausage that it is now.
Demanding that a 'masculine man' is capable of violence is making men ... more violent. Men being too violent is a decently big societal problem. Hence, the idea that men should be able to defend themselves (and others) is harming society.
If I was Putin or other adversary of the West, I would pour tons of money into promotion of this self-castrating idea.
I ging it sad and frankly creepy to think of the many great minds who have added so much to our society being sidelined or pushed down arbitrary funnels in their lives because someone had an obsessive idea that they needed to prove a biological tautology of "having balls" by going down a certain route towards militancy.
"Their" twisted logic is "man defends his family" -> "man gets more violent" -> "man gets too violent" -> "much violence is bad". I'm not sure if it's troll, stupidity or sincere and intentional self-castration.
What was your point?
Toxic is your word and I'm not sure the EU is a "weak sausage." I think it's remarkable that so many people within the EU have been able to co-exist peacefully for so long and work together in developing systems that give them other options than the kinds of violence we saw for so much of the past. Could you really point to Russia and say that they're in a stronger position, that they're a "strong sausage(?)," because their leader exhibits some loosely defined manly ideals?
> someone who defends themselves by de-escalating a situation through dialogue
If his only _personal_ defense is "through dialogue" then yes, it's a wimp, unless he's a very rare person that can really convince anyone.
> Could you really point to Russia and say that they're in a stronger position
In "Russia vs EU" war EU doesn't have a single chance, despite all fancy tech and gear. The only hope for EU is USA (not anymore), Ukraine and Poland that still have testosterone in their blood.
Where are you from? What did your country do over three years of full scale land war next to you to prepare for the next one? Aside of importing men from other countries to compensate for the lack of domestically grown ones, of course.
I have nothing against this at the level of international relations. I will fight if article 5 is invoked. And on this level, building walls also makes sense.
My issue lies at the personal level. Men on average are too violent at this level, and the masculine ideals are to blame for that.
Seems like the reasonable goal would be to embargo Russia until they disarm like the other adults in the region.
Is increasing traditional military spending the way to go in the 21st century? If the decision is left to military leaders,they might spend massive amounts of money preparing to fight yesterday's war.
If you set aside alarmist positions, it may very well possible that Russia has no interests in military conflict with rest of Europe beyond Ukraine.
In that case what is the best thing Europeans could do?
There is danger and risk in military over spending at this juncture, and Europe needs to be level headed about it.
I think it’s much easier to just hunker down and appease the United States for four years and hope the next administrations are more merciful.
If there's enough pan European bonds (which there won't be) then the reserve currency status of the dollar could be threatened.
I'd say spending so much on American weapons has hurt it's own domestic capabilities if anything.
So, no.
Calling anything "alarmist positions" now is just uninformed; Putin has said Russia wants the USSR territory back, their entire industry is now turned to produce weapons, their schools are "Putin-Jugend", they are currently invested in the first "great war" since WW2.
And the US isn't just getting out of Europe - they have gone full turncoat.
This is an unmitigated disaster for both US (citizens) and EU, and the EU is trying to manage what they can.
Is Europe going to ratchet military spending at Putins's bluff?
Putin’s Russia is already at war with Europe - assassinations, destabilisation operations, sabotage.
> destabilisation operations
This might actually start to become more of a self-inflicted wound. The uprise of right-wing parties is already happening in the EU. Mostly voted for by people with less education and less wealth. If we spend more money on defense and less on social security, right-wing parties might get even more traction, which causes further destabilization.
> sabotage
Yes and it sucks. There's actually not much you can do about it, because of how international waters are treated legally. But you think rearming the EU will prevent sabotage in the future? I have my doubts.
The current narrative seems to be "Ukraine is almost an EU member state and if we do not defend Ukraine, the EU will be next". Another view of the situation could be: "Ukraine is a special case and Putin would be very dumb to invade the EU".
Re-arming is unfortunately the only answer to naked aggression from dictators and the US cannot be trusted any more as an ally. Putin has clearly stated his aims - to reconstitute the USSR (and if possible enlarge it) and to defeat the west.
Europe now stands alone against that.
"Speak softly and carry a big stick" seems to be a better plan for stability while keeping aggressors in check.
Of course Europe always had some ability to defend itself, but I think it's clear that some of that ability was outsourced to the US(with reciprocal benefits for the US, but still). Yes, this introduces some redundancy into the Western sphere, but that's a good thing.
Now every actor needs to have the strength to deter all others, which means everyone gets stronger, which means everyone needs even more strength to deter others, or deterrence simply breaks down. We had a multi-polar world in the past, it went terribly and led to massive wars. Now we are returning to that system but with nukes.
I think everyone is underestimating the changes that are happening. Obviously if Trump wanted a prosperous USA, he wouldn't be isolating it, and destroying the federal government and wrecking scientific research and diplomacy across the world.
but an overall poorer US with a permanent far right government under the control of a small group of rich lunatics is better for those rich lunatics.
Really sorry for Ukraine, though. We knew back in November that this meant certain death for them.
Complete ignorant of strategy, international relations and power dynamics here.
Is it nagging anyone else that the "Forbes Analyst" gets called Aks, Aske and Ax in just 10 lines or it is just me?
Russia a country who's GDP is between Italy and Spain. Surely worth it to antagonize all the other G7 members over Russia.
Most of them are russians in uniform, which, as tragic as it is, is a better outcome.
The original invasion force brought tens of thousands of body bags and it is clear they weren't originally meant for russian troops.
If you have any doubt, look up the pre written article that popped on Kremlins website a few days after the full scale invasion about large tragic but unavoidable losses of civilian lives.
Or look at how the convoy that targeted Kyiv contained lots and lots of prison buses and how they brought mobile crematoriums.
It is easy to sit safely here and comment.
If you want to do something better get out and donate and help the fight.
You suggest that Russia takes Ukraine, then uses Ukrainians to invade Moldova?
That is what you are suggesting, right?
Also, my programmers keyboard gives me a very nice peaceful wage. A wage that I partly use to support the Ukrainian defence forces. I suggest everyone to the same: https://savelife.in.ua/en/.
> endless
It’s a bit interesting to me that I’ve seen this point of view enough to know precisely the propaganda talking points made in Russian media.
But you can explain how the genius Trump placing USA in this group of countries is actually good for USA.
There's a fast way to end the war. The war can end tomorrow. All Russia needs to do is get out of Ukraine. All of it.
Easy to do, simple to achieve. No more Russians need to die.
Russia doesn't need to sign anything. Russia can simply do the right thing and get out of Ukraine.
Then Russia gets to pay reparations and hand over war criminals for trial.
I understand that Trump wants Zelenskyy to sign the minerals deal and that implicitly there’s security guarantees. Fine there’s at least a through line. However; by demonstrating that the US is willing to revoke access to this war material during an active shooting war over some ego thing they’re showing allies who’ve invested in the US military equipment that they’re vulnerable to suffer this same fate. Now Europe is turning hard away from US tech.
To some degree this is a good thing, I think, from USA’s POV. Trump has said it’s unfair USA spends the most on NATO and that member states should pay more (how many don’t hit the 2% target). However; the point was to spend their 2% GDP on American armaments. Now Europe is taking their demand and money and investing in domestic military equipment. Which will inevitably beg the question in the coming years if NATO, a US establishment, is to be made redundant?
This US administration can’t seem to have their cake and eat it too. They want money, demand for their goods, but every time they act out they drive away their business partners.
Tell me it doesn't fit.
Edit: this story just dropped off the main page. Currently sitting at 85 points and 77 comments. It had position 2 or so, now it has position 79.
Look at Russia.
> How are stories ranked? Other factors affecting rank include [...] software which demotes overheated discussions, [...]. [1]
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html
Lots of political flaming and not much else.
Upvote to comment ratio is low and people are likely flagging it too because it’s just world news.
The hyperbole interferes with construction discussion.
Let's not do that here.
...
> Its an accurate generalization
I'm American, and I don't have that view. So it's clearly not literally true.
So perhaps you mean that it's "mostly" true. Then I'd ask, what evidence do you have to support that? Is there some poll of public opinion you can refer to? That's something we could meaningfully discuss.
Here's one for you: https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/vincent-bevins/the-...
We've been discussing whether or not certain views are held by nearly 100% of current Americans.
IIUC, that book focuses on evils done by the US government in 1965. I'm not seeing the connection.
NATO is the reason why saudis are trading in dollars.
NATO is the reason that the US has credible nuclear deterrents
NATO is why america doesn't need to have a physical colonial empire in europe (otherwise it'd need to subjugate cyprus, and somewhere like saaremaa, and that costs a shit tonne of money)
NATO isn't about playing for defence of europe, its about keeping the USSR and russia far enough away to keep trading routes open.
Things haven't gotten quite so extreme in the US yet but it feels reductive to suggest that they can just have a flip flop election and that will show they "realised the error of their ways" like Germany did post WW2.
I'm kind of interested if Russia could become normal if the current regime collapses.
https://digitalcommons.murraystate.edu/scholarsweek/2016/Ger...
The relationship is over. Maybe in 4 years America can start making some initial steps towards patching things up, but even that seems increasingly unlikely at this point.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budapest_Memorandum
Maybe instead we should remember the 2014 Wales Summit that was intended to deter Russian invasion?
- https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_Wales_summit
Or maybe instead we should consider that right before Russia's invasion in February 2022, Europe collectively dropped their military spending as % of GDP? Possibly since Trump had left office in 2021? Its unfortunate deterrents don't function when you do this...
-https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/news_222664.htm
Actually, maybe what we need to remember is that most of Europes money has been going to Russia even after the invasion? What a strange thing for allies to do right?
- https://www.russiafossiltracker.com/
It's weird how the United States justified its support in Ukraine as securing the region for its allies while its allies undermined this at every step of the way, do allies usually do that? When I listen to them on TV they seem to care a lot about Ukraine so it's strange...
In any event, maybe NATO just needs go squeak by four years without an Article 5 invocation to be back to normal.
I don't think there are any "security guarantees". What could they be?
The "endgame" as far as I understand it: The US wants access to the minerals as a compensation for the money already spent and, perhaps, to restore some of the support currently put on hold (satellite data access). Once the Ukranian resistance is broken, the US and Russia will jointly dictate a peace, gradually install a Russia-friendly regime and split the profit between them. They will happily invite the EU to finance some of the rebuilding of Ukraine that is then mainly performed by US and Russian companies. The US furthermore hopes that by spearheading the lifting of sanctions it will get priority access to some beneficial deals with and within Russia itself.
That said, I don’t know what more Ukraine would want given the Budapest Memorandum already ties the USA, UK, and Russia to Ukraine’s defense. That’s proven to be a mixed success, as both USA, UK, and other countries have indeed stepped up for Ukraine’s defense.
Or Russia just invades while being careful not to damage their buddy's mines. Maybe the US even helps the Russians out once the Ukranian "dictator" is forced to begin fighting in too close proximity to the minerals.
Another relevant detail here is that a lot of the resources included in the deal are in territory that's currently occupied by Russia – which Trump clearly envisions Russia keeping in any peace settlement.
I don't think this is true at all, I think Trump wants Ukraine to be conquered and for Russia to win and for people to stop bothering him about any of it.
Trump blew up whatever nonsense minerals deal there was, and is actively sabotaging the Ukrainian defence efforts via this, and ending intelligence sharing, and apparently leaning on random American companies to stop them selling services to Ukraine, and by providing diplomatic cover and support to Russia.
people haven't seem to have caught on yet - the US has switched sides, it is now part of the Russia bloc.
Do the NATO agreements specify American armaments? Europe could have spent on European armaments and armies too, just chose not too because they didn't see a reason to.
Europe not buying F35 or whatever hurts US arms industry, but probably not the general strategic position of the US. There's even a credible argument (dont know how credible?) that these arms programs actually undermine security by investing crazy money in outdated / ineffective technology. The dumb part would be not learning from the Ukrainians how to fight a modern war.
US participation in NATO may be made redundant, but Europe's need for a credible collective defense agreement is not going away.
The threat to putin wasn't Nato om his doorstep but a partially russian speaking country becoming a successful democracy and joining EU.
> Ukraine has a sovereign right to join the European Union, but this “sovereignty” does not apply to military alliances, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said.
https://www.politico.eu/article/dmitrt-peskov-kremlin-ukrain...
So this makes sense to me. Basically I think it is US that Russia sees as a threat (because may be US seen Russia as a major threat and wants to break it up).
2. Ukraine has the right to join whatever alliance it wants regardless of what russia means.
Also Finland just joined and Russia barley registered a complaint.
This is a very naive take, I think. When you are responsible for the security of a nation, you can't just remain passive to the potential threats that shows up on your doorstep. I mean, it would be irresponsible his people if Putin did that and trusted NATO/US blindly to not cross the line, one way or another. (I mean, US could always make up some cooked up justification for the attack, like it has done so many times in the past), So if US is putting missiles near Russian border, even if that is on behalf of NATO, I think Putin is bound to do something about it..
I don't understand what part of that is "Russian propoganda"..
Do the neighbors of France need an alliance against a French invasion? Do the neighbors of Germany need an alliance against a German invasion? Why not?
Also, you should respond to the second part of their post, as it contains a viewpoint that you might find interesting, and a question asked of your own viewpoint. Understanding others' viewpoints is a good foundation for coming to agreement.
Perhaps once a century the answer to this question is “yes”.
What threats specifically? This should be very easy to answer, but no one ever does.
NATO has had missiles at Russia’s border for 70 years, in Turkey, but that never resulted in a US special military operation to Moscow.
I don't think this is very easy to answer. The fact that people think it should be very easy to answer this, shows how naive they are, because the reason why country x think country y is a threat could include a lot of information and context that is not available to an external observer.
The rest of the world has no problem observing and analyzing geopolitical interests.
“The corridors of power are unknowable” isn’t an interesting or useful take.
Russia did not invade a NATO country, they invaded Ukraine when it wasn't seeking to join NATO (in 2014 before the invasion, after the invasion they wanted to join NATO but there were too many objecting countries in NATO and it was obvious to everyone that Ukraine wasn't getting in anytime soon and this was just as true in early 2022).
> US could always make up some cooked up justification for the attack, like it has done so many times in the past
Russia has a history with making up justifications to invade and they did in this case.
> So if US is putting missiles near Russian border, even if that is on behalf of NATO, I think Putin is bound to do something about it..
They were not putting missles in the border. In fact until recently nato had minimal forces and no bases next to Russia to try to mollify them. Especially not in Ukraine which again was not in NATO and was not getting any closer to NATO. Russia was not bound to invade Ukraine and it was in fact a pretty dumb move which had obvius consequences of making Russias security much worse and even many Putin's advisors had a hard time believing he would do it.
So NATO has demonstrated they can be whatever they want when the right time comes. NATO intervention in Kosovo to “liberate it” is also being used to morally justify Russian’s invasion of eastern Ukraine, since from a Russian standpoint it’s exactly the same scenario and they are “liberating” the Russian population in those Ukrainian territories.
But my point is that NATO is a military alliance, to call it “defensive” is just propaganda as it has shown it can be offensive too. And there is nothing wrong with simply calling it for what it is, I believe countries should be able to form military alliances, but let’s not gaslight ourselves.
When we call out propaganda you can listen to us.
Oh yea, here is one guy that does exactly that.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lD_KEFpuIro
Transcript:
https://singjupost.com/transcript-jeffrey-sachs-on-the-geopo...
>Not for Crimea. Not for the Donbas. Nothing like that. This idea that Putin is reconstructing the Russian empire, this is childish propaganda. Excuse me.
>If anyone knows the day-to-day and year-to-year history, this is childish stuff. Childish stuff seems to work better than adult stuff. So no designs at all. The United States decided this man must be overthrown. It’s called a regime change operation.
Just because you can dig up three YouTube links that supports the russian side doesn't mean we should belive them.
That is propaganda
Surely he didn't mean all the people present there are paid. As far as I understand, when you want some initiate a political change, you pay influencers, and they actually go an convince/gaslight the masses about the need for change.
So all the people who were present there might not be paid, but a lot of prime movers and the require infrastructure might be paid by the interested party.
I don’t know what he “meant”, that’s what he said. There was a very clear external event that triggered Maidan, there was another event that made it massive.
The payment of influencers is just as a massive contribution into protests is just a speculation
The term “NATO expansion” for example, is propaganda. Countries that had suffered under the Russian/Soviet oppression looked for protection when the USSR collapsed and requested to join the alliance.
If those "unfaithful" countries join NATO this creates problems for Russia to force them to give up their freedom.
And USSR/Russia started a fuss that NATO is a threat for them.
So here Putin says he had no choice but to attack Ukraine because NATO (a defensive treaty) was "expanding" into Ukraine. This is false. Ukraine wanted to be in NATO, but its membership request was rejected. And from the start of the war in 2014, it was never on the table - how would a country in a state of war could even dream of joining NATO (which at the time seemed a stable alliance)?
I know some Russians believe in this explanation, it seems very simple: Russia is not setting up nukes in Cuba so from the same PoV Ukraine should not host missiles hostile to Russia. Seems valid, right? The problem here is that Putin, as he admitted in his retracted victory piece[0], wanted to "solve the Ukrainian problem for the future generations" and basically make Ukraine part of his empire just as he did with Belarus. Ukrainians don't want to be his slaves so they chose to fight.
[0] https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-60562240
The second video repeats the same argument: the "NATO's eastward march". Putin says Russia had to start the war in Ukraine to stop NATO from expanding too close (he failed as two more countries joined NATO). But when you dig one "why?" deeper you can understand that NATO is not a self-aware entity that expands and threats, it's an alliance of countries that realize that if Russia attacks them and they are alone, they are in the same situation as Ukraine: alone and doomed to begging for help. Whereas if they stand together, Russia will think twice before attacking them. That's why Putin hates NATO so much: he can't freely conquer the Baltics - he'd have done it already in 2008 or so. So he uses anti-NATO rhetoric that people in Russia buy. Maybe they are really afraid Estonia or Bulgaria attacks Russia? Who knows what's in their heads.
Expansion, colonization, power and wealth. Classic
it is a very very dangerous time to be this naive.
Lots of critical things for the US is made exclusively in Europe.
Lots of medicin that people rely on daily would be unavailable if EU/US trade broke down completely.
About half of the US companies over a certain size run on ERP software from an European vendor. And it is not trivial at all to change that, even if they wanted to.
A real untangling of the US and European economies seem both impractical and really inefficient.
I've worked with airgapped Windows XP machines still in operation running scientific instruments.
If you deleted Microsoft and Apple from world it world it would be a Y2K event but the world wouldn't end, it would just be a lot of work.
Sibling in thread says there's already an US alternative, anyway.
It is so shameful and disgusting.
The main goal in Ukraine should be to make sure that Russia has as little benefit from their invasion as possible. Luckily this is effectively wholly compatible with Ukrainian goals.
> The main goal in Ukraine should be to make sure that Russia has as little benefit from their invasion as possible
But how? Is it mostly to prolong the war until Russia gets tired of spending money and resources on it?
Rather the have adopted the doctrine of "Ukraine can't lose, but Ukraine may not win". Always supplying just enough arms to keep the Ukrainian front from collapsing not to "stir up" Russia.
I watched a video recently that discussed all the grudges against the West/NATO Russia (Putin) has been holding onto since the mids 90s that makes them feel justified now.
The only thing left would be nuking. He hasn't dared and likely won't.
He has dared. Empty threats? Maybe... but that's quite the gamble to make.
Edit: To downvoters...
Why?
On the contrary: Should Putin risk everything for some sq km of Ukrainian soil?
History tells us that appeasement is a worse gamble.
If at all possible, take back any Ukrainian territory. Reduce whatever gain they got from this invasion. But even if the current line stands, the more Russia can be made to bleed, the less it will think that war can be a net postive for them.
Anders Puck Nielsen on that https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lNZ56C-f4a8&t=422s That's starting at the Ukrainian plan but it's worth watching the whole vid if you are interested.
Another commenter suggest sent a video about this that I'll watch later, I suspect the answer lies there, but thought I'd share with you so you can have some understanding of what someone who sees both side's surface level plans as confusing and problematic .
Nothing will stop Putin but force.
Russia has no allies, just cronies such as Lukashenko and Russia is de-facto at war with the west. The front line just goes through Ukraine.
Of course, with the US under Trump withdrawing their support we will see what will happen, but currently it is a stalemate.
Even the billions in humanitarian support spend in Europe are mostly just housing refugees from Ukraine in Europe thus flows to landlords and supermarkets in Europe.
This war in Ukraine is costing us pennies for each dollar that Russia is wasting in the blood fields of Ukraine.
Europe's bill may create jobs in Europe, if it was genuine.
I am sure printing money to then distribute to those with real estate property to house migrants is doing well for your housing/immigrant crises. Approximately 46 pennies on every dollar that exists has been printed or misspent in the last 5 years.Now that the state-level propaganda machine is starting to wear down, the world is realizing that America wants America First.
What does this even mean?
And do you realize that most of American GDP prowess in the last 40 years was driven by running a trade deficit and letting the world loan the money back to the US?
Even if it doesn't enter M1 circulation and directly increase monetary supply, it put upwardly increasing inflationary pressure on the dollar by inflating demand artificially.
I would look more towards outstanding bonds or GDP to debt ratio. The US has overspent for decades but it worked very well because as world's reserve currency it didn't lead to currency depreciation as any other country would have experienced in a similar situation.
It is not about a chunk of the territory.
Either we have the spine to defend our allies against unambiguous breaches of international law, or we don't.
Apparently, the entire US Navy was okay with that volunteer assignment.
That is not at all evident. Russia's economy is in a terrible spot, and might collapse entirely without the war ('special military operation') effort.
But I'm not surprised that our prime minister recently did not leave out the possiblity of hosting nukes on Danish territory.
Given the theatre in the US one could even say we'll need nukes to defend Greenland.
Hmm, the US welcome to liberate us from sour tax burden. I suspect the invading force will surrender when they see the liabilities :)
On a map, it looks to be bigger than all of North America, although in reality its only about 1/5th of the size of the US.
(although granted that's still a very large area that they probably see as 'up for grabs' since Denmark is small and far away and the US already have airbases there)
This happens all the time. "Russia did X." "The UK just did stupid thing Y." "Why are Germans suddenly authoritarian again?"
There are always lots of people who disagree with the actions of their government. Some governments -- the US government increasingly so -- punish dissent. Russians, for one, have almost no say over what their government does. Americans in general are not making these terrible decisions. Some cabal is, but even the Republicans, who have all the power at the moment, are mostly just knuckling under to decisions they know are terrible.
I know it's tempting to blame and hate people as nations, but I don't think it helps. In fact, it's how we got here in the first place: firebrands telling nitwits that everyone in Europe or New York City or wherever hates them.
he did win the popular vote this time, unlike last.
It doesn't matter it wasn't 50%. He actually won the popular vote this time.
Yes, he won the popular vote. No, it doesn't mean America is massively behind his project. In fact, it is massively unpopular and its popularity is declining.
This is just the language that is used to refer to the governments as well as the people/culture. It may help to presume that, in most cases, they’re referring to just the governments.
True, but if Americans do not stop it, they own it.
Nobody cares much if you meant to make an accident, you should have been more careful - especially if you run away from the scene.
Please send a polite mail to dang, he is really helpful.
Also, to be fair, Daniel is human and have to sleep sometimes. (I don't know if he is alone but haven't noticed any other active mods for years.)
You're right, probably both. Unfortunately the question alone makes HN have much less utility.
One area where this is especially of interest is everyone considering their dependency on U.S. products. If you live in a country under military threat, questions like what happens if the first strike against Canada involved a malicious Chrome or Windows update or holding back a patch for a vulnerability the NSA wants to exploit is quite an interesting problem.
> Most stories about politics, [...] unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon
The US killing trust in its export of arms is definitely a new phenomenon. It breaks with +80 years of policy.
All startups in SV will now have to consider if they will have an export market at all.
Which non-US companies would now like to be dependent on whatever export restrictions that Trump might make up in the future?
<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23873461>
You can flag here, but the mainstream press has picked up the issue:
"Can the US switch off Europe’s weapons?"
https://www.ft.com/content/1503a69e-13e4-4ee8-9d05-b9ce1f7cc...
"Such is the concern that debate has turned to whether the US maintains secret so-called kill switches that would immobilise aircraft and weapons systems. While never proven, Richard Aboulafia, managing director at consultancy AeroDynamic Advisory, said: “If you postulate the existence of something that can be done with a little bit of software code, it exists.”
In practice, it may not even matter because of how already reliant advanced combat aircraft and other sophisticated weapons — such as anti-missile systems, advanced drones and early warning aircraft — are on US spare parts and software updates."
There you go, finally mainstream press and politicians are mentioning the kill switch.
But retracting support is the nuclear option.
Figuratively, because you can probably one do it once, so you better pick a good reason for doing it.
And literally, because small European countries do now have to consider nukes.
It wouldn't be all that surprising to see Poland and Finland doing atmospheric tests in the next few months. Given that Ukraine gave up their weapons for a totally vacuous security guarantee it would make sense for them to build bombs too. 2025 could be the year of global nuclear proliferation.
In fact, while most nuclear powers have dabbled in the idea of 'how could we conceal a nuclear test', it seems that only Israel is capable of doing it. That is an argument from the absence of evidence unfortunately.
Given the sensitivity of global seismometers, I don't think this is physically possible.
Maybe you could test one on the far side of the moon? :)
Exactly what weapons they have seems to be tied to the deals of the US-UK defense agreements. The UK's development of fission weapons is well documented. The development of thermonuclear is unclear and its not exactly obvious when and how they tested proper thermonuclear weapons.
Pakistan probably had nuclear weapons decades before their official tests. The US even made them one heck of an offer to maintain this policy of uncertainty. Ultimately they would debut very small thermonuclear weapons. They probably can manufacture large scale nuclear weapons into the megaton range. Pakistan probably also has plenty of delivery options. But ultimately their arsenal is mainly just there to deter China or India's territorial expansion. Pakistan can't really threaten other nuclear powers and it seems unlikely that a country like France is just going to launch an invasion of Pakistan. So there isn't really too much reason to bother with more tests. Ambiguity is their ally.
Only because the US decided to officially look the other way. See "The Vela incident" which was never publicly attributed, but was almost certainly a joint Israel-South Africa test.
A more realistic outcome is that French nukes will be stationed in other European countries. But France is also not willing to give up exclusive control over those nukes, and the next French government could very well be far-right, and thus become as unreliable as the current US government. It’s a difficult situation.
I wouldn't be surprised if it happens on the fact they could share the cost between nations alone for something they've already paid for.
For other countries, the problem remains that if the UK or France government turns far-right, the other countries may quickly be on their own again, just like what they now fear with the US.
An EU-level control over the nukes seems unlikely, as France (and even more the UK) want to retain their sovereignty over that.
The UK lacks an independant warhead delivery system since the cancellation of the Blue Streak in 1960, and currently uses US missiles for the UK submarines.
The UK was the first country to start a nuclear weapons programme and talked the US into starting the Manhatten project.
Once subsumed by the US project, the UK started again post WWII and developed warheads and bombs tested in Australia. They managed to dust a future UK prime minister with fallout as a child in Adelaide.
Jet Fighters need a lot of maintenance, they are not like cars.
So a kill switch in software is not needed. If the US stops shipping parts, then it is only a matter of time before the Jet Fighters is an expensive paper weight.
https://www.ft.com/content/1503a69e-13e4-4ee8-9d05-b9ce1f7cc...
Israel uses it's own version of ALIS it co-developed with India and France (forgetting the name - will add once I remember).
The fusion aspect was added because of NATO's Air Force fusion/unified command policy in Europe and MENA before the current administration.
BNET and IAI+Thales+BEL's Datalink
Some of the capabilities, sure -- you're never going to be able to use them if you don't have the things it needs to talk to.
The lack of those things don't turn it into a brick. It's still a highly capable fifth gen LO fighter/bomber without them.
Selling expensive weapons that can never be used against oneself sounds like a pretty significant strategic benefit to me. Are there risks? Sure, but the US could just shrug if exposed. A kill switch seems likely.
Also core routers, interxions, sealines, Level 3 et al.
Amusing way of putting it, if you ignore the US/UK instigated 1953 coup of Mossadegh and the installation of the Shah who was busy selling out Iran to the western powers, yeah you can assuming US-Iran relations "collapsed". I'd say they collapsed in 1953 and 1979 was the aftermath.
"US support to maintain UK's nuclear arsenal is in doubt (theguardian.com)"
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43299011
The UK has produced its own nuclear weapons in the past and has weapons grade processing at Sellafield. There’s ~140 metric tons of separated plutonium stored there.
It is apparently enough material to build tens of thousands of nuclear weapons. Not every warhead has to be a billion megatons to be a deterrent.
[1] https://archive.is/Qz2lI
I guess there would be enough time to switch to French rockets even in the worst case.
The Economist piece spells out that, yes, long term maintenance is problematic, but in the short term nothing will break over night.
With Polaris (the system before Trident) the UK was manufacturing the missiles (effectively under license). It seems unclear whether there's any similar arrangement with Trident.
I guess my main point was that the deterrent is independent (the UK prime minister decides when to fire and can do so without the US sign-off) and there's no cliff-edge where the tech can be disabled by the US. So, with the raw materials ready to go and UK arms manufacturers like BAE Systems perfectly capable of building the tech, the risk to the UK (of being without a nuclear deterrent) is relatively low. Not zero, but low.
Also, stop flagging news articles simply because they are slightly anti-Trump.
Also it could explain this stuff which is hard otherwise.
Otherwise, I think what Trump has said about Ukraine is more or less what he believes and wants. He wants there to be peace, quickly, so that he can be known as a peace maker. He wants to be known as the person who can do the undoable. His henchmen repeat it endlessly - "only Donald Trump could bring peace here". He does not care about the details for Ukraine, and he doesn't really care about the details for Europe - he's wanted to cut loose from Europe since the first term.
In addition, there's probably quite a lot of personal apathy towards Zelensky specifically.
Finally it's possible that his China hawks are also shaping his base tendencies to try to deliver a Russia-China split. But I don't think that Trump really believes in that, it's just the people in his admin trying to make something of this situation. And I don't really believe that even a peace favourable to Putin can deliver the type of split that the China hawks might dream of, at least within this term.
That is also a probable explanation for what's happening, if you believe in UFOs and aliens.
Sorry, I mean no disrespect.
As a non-american and non-westerner, it's absolutely wild to see what people are willing to believe when it comes to Trump. Surely, there's a more rational and simple explanation for what's going on ?
Earth X was a comic (lol) with one interesting idea — if enough people preceive "A" as "B", "A" becomes "B".
In the case of Trump, he despises the left wing camp for kicking him off Twitter and prosecuting him. As such he takes their nightmares that they believed in term one and makes them real as personal revenge. For an old man, it is no doubt the most satisfying possible end of his life possible.
Far fetched but more realistic than "He's being blackmailed". Do you really believe the man has any shame?
If he had no shame, he would have kept the money.
All of these machinations are, to me, an effort to avoid legal prosecution when he thought they could be effective against him. At this point, you could share the supposed piss tape and no one would care.
Thank you for a good laugh.
The story is corroborated by Yuri Shvets and Sergei Zhyrnov. You don't have to listen if the accusation offends you, but the pieces of the puzzle sure point towards kompromat more than glasnost.
I am interested in facts, not propaganda echo chamber discussions.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bH6r8Oq-tu4
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/jan/29/trump-russia...
Or "Alnur Mussayev, former head of Kazakhstan’s security service, who rose up the ranks of the Soviet KGB"? Was US intel funding the KGB?
"U.S. President Donald Trump complained Thursday that his country's decades-old security treaty with Japan is nonreciprocal, as he steps up pressure on allies to increase defense spending and buy more American products." [2]
It's about buying more American weapons.
[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-02-13/trump-tel...
[2] https://english.kyodonews.net/news/2025/03/fd3521d51353-upda...
He's an idiot if he really thinks that his actions will result in this.
European defense stocks are going parabolic right now.
Except it might backfire if Europe understandably decides it must buy European.
- Shares of Starlink’s European rival Eutelsat have tripled. CEO says it can do the job in Ukraine. [1]
- Boost for German economy: Armaments sector picks up former car industry employees [2]
[1] https://www.marketwatch.com/story/shares-of-starlinks-europe... [2] (German only) https://www.n-tv.de/wirtschaft/Ruestungsbranche-sammelt-ehem...
Why do I hear strains of "Spring time for Germany" playing in my head?
Is this really what the US wants?
If Russia overruns Ukraine (which, I really hope, they won't be able to), their next targets are Moldova, Kazakhstan, Georgia, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia.
Will Europe start a nuclear war over any of these countries being invaded? Doubt it.
I don’t understand how Europe seems to think that a world war among nuclear powers is the least-risky approach. If we keep fighting someone is going to start using them anyway.
He has been clear about NATO %'s, very little room for your confusion.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-02-13/trump-tel...
E.g. he might be solely responsible for getting the Liberals reelected in Canada, something that a year ago you would have thought was absolutely impossible. But Trump is so deeply hated in Canada now that every time he mocks Trudeau it makes the Liberals more popular. Liberal support, which before Trump was elected was so low as to make a Conservative election win seem inevitable, has skyrocketed since Trump took office. It's now pretty much a dead heat, and that's before the Liberals have elected their new leader.
So I don't know, maybe he just really, really wanted the Liberals to get reelected and he pulled off the only way to make it happen. Maybe he felt sorry that Canadians seemed so internally divided, so he threatened to annex Canada to unite us.
Or maybe he's a moron that can't even understand cause and effect.
https://338canada.com/polls.htm
I think he'll continue to be the main cause of constraints to realizing his visions maximally.
For this reason, once we can look back on this time in retrospect, there's a way this plays out where he may just be a horse that ran away. [0]
[0]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_old_man_lost_his_horse