Miscellaneous News

plawolf said:

What kool aid have you been drinking to think NATO without America would do any better than Ukraine against Russia? Hell, most of European NATO have already basically cannibalised their own ground forces to supply Ukraine and all that achieved was get all that heavy weapons chewed up by the Russians. And thats the Russians fighting alone without Chinese lethal aid.

NATO’s much vaunted air power is precisely what the Russians have spent their lion share of their air force budget to counter, at the expense of the ground attack capability of its fighters. So NATO getting directly involved would actually suit the Russians much better, since they would be able to openly attack all the NATO recon assets working as part of Ukraine’s kill chain at point blank ranges to boost the effectiveness of Ukraine’s NATO weapons. Something that would actually be impossible for them to do if they were directly engaged formally.

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plawolf said:

Additionally, if NATO fought Russia directly and openly, at a minimum China will provide massive lethal aid to Russia. America would need to fully commit to the European theatre to prevent the Russians steamrolling Western Europe, not the other way around. China would be more than happy to bleed America white in such a scenario acting as Russia’s weapons manufacturing base. It’s basically a worst case scenario loosing strategy for NATO.

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Iron Man said:

The same kool-aid you've been snorting to think Russia barely holding it together against Ukraine's military + NATO weapons but minus NATO planes, troops, and ships could somehow actually BEAT them if NATO decided to go full bore into Ukraine. You do understand that European NATO has by and large NOT committed the bulk of its air forces or ground forces or naval forces against Russia, do you not understand this part? Russia cannot even beat back Ukraine's half-ass mini-air force for fear of getting shot out of the sky by SAMs like what's already been happening. Air superiority is primal to the outcome of any war, and Russia does NOT have it over Ukraine. If NATO moved the bulk of its ground forces into Ukraine including all of its air defense forces, AWACS units, and fighters, you would have to be smoking crack to believe that somehow Russia would get MORE aggressive with its air forces, LOL and even at "point blank" ranges. Russia is even afraid to send the Su-57 into Ukraine for fear of that thing getting shot down and causing a massive PR nightmare. And that's WITHOUT the involvement of the bulk of NATO air and air defense forces.

I like how you have to move the goalposts here to include China when the hypothetical was about NATO vs Russia inside Ukraine. Since you obviously can't win that argument, you now have to add China providing "massive lethal aid" to Russia. Hahahahaha

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iewgnem said:

Yeah honestly China simply doing nothing in the short term is a pretty valid option.
If played right there's a path to China using this to expand dominance from ship-building to shipping operations.

- Ships take years to build, so immediately US policy will just lead to shipping companies reallocating existing ships.
- Then the companies have to make a choice, do they bet US policies will remain by the time their orders gets built.
- Among shipping companies that bet US will retain policy, and place order with Korean and Japaneses yards, those orders will drive up price and delivery time and hurt the competitiveness of those shipping companies both financially and from just the shortage of ships.
- Chinese shipping companies will of course continue to order from Chinese yards.

Then China do the funniest thing and, right as those new orders get built, put a equivalent dock fee on those new orders, in the process not only kill off Korean and Japaneses ship-building but also kill off shipping companies that shifted all their orders to them

The above is advantageous to China, but if China also wants to f* up the US, then instead of taxing non-China built ships, China can tax any ships that carried any cargo or container outbound from US after announcement date, so shipping companies from that point on must separate their fleet into US and non-US fleets and basically make it prohibitively expensive for US to export anything, even via third parties.

Americans are dismantling international norms without understanding those norms are what's protecting them from being torn to shreds by the real king of the jungle.

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Biscuits said:

That's a retarded hypothetical then. It's like asking who would win if every middle eastern country gangbanged Israel BUT US isn't allowed to give any aid and can only watch. Then use that as an example to argue Israel can die anytime just as long as Arabs "commit their forces seriously". No, all your example means is that if you magicked away all of Russia's allies, NATO could successfully attack Russia. No shit, if Russia didn't have allies, they wouldn't pick quarrels with economically much larger NATO to begin with.

Russia's whole security insurance is that if US actually attacks for real, they have guaranteed massive aid.

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4Runner said:

I think I figured out why Trump has been escalating assault on Zelenskyy.

Trump's plan was:
(1) Sing an agreement between US and Ukraine on $500B minerals. Not free because US would have to invest first.
(2) US will send troops to protect the mineral areas as DMZs.
(3) The result would make de facto US military presence in Ukraine.
(4) Russia would have to come to the negotiation table with something they want/need: US withdrawal.
(5) US would have a better bargain than as-is on the ground today.

Trump sent Vance and Bessent to meet or call Zelenskyy. Vance was at MSC and thinking he had a deal with Zelenskyy. Zelenskyy openly contradicted US narrative, which means he would not buy into Trump's "art of deal" on Ukraine peace process. Trump needs a bigly win and thought he would have one with this Ukraine plan, which Zelenskyy refused to cooperate. Trump is done with Zelenskyy.

Joke or conspiracy aside, there is one factor on the ground: I am fairly certain Trump lacks big bargaining chips vis-a-vis Putin. Any agreement that makes Putin an obvious winner will produce very bad optics for Trump in the eyes of the west. There was one legitimate crack and Zelenskyy trashed it because he could not afford that agreement domestically.

A dilema. A quagmire. A conundrum ...... That was the number one reason Trump wanted to meet Xi ASAP ......

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plawolf said:

What kool aid have you been drinking to think NATO without America would do any better than Ukraine against Russia? Hell, most of European NATO have already basically cannibalised their own ground forces to supply Ukraine and all that achieved was get all that heavy weapons chewed up by the Russians. And thats the Russians fighting alone without Chinese lethal aid.

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Iron Man said:

If it's a "retarded hypothetical" then why are you somehow okay with only talking about European NATO fighting Russia inside Ukraine? Hypocrite much? In reality if NATO went in, the US (which is part of NATO) would also go in, but someone decided to nitpick part of my post and blow it up into something else, then have to start adding more hypotheticals when he realized uh oh it's not enough.

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Biscuits said:

I've never said it's only European NATO. If US also goes in, the same problems still apply.

There are pros and cons. If it's just EU, they would likely only be able to stalemate lone Russia and they could even be rolled back once aid starts arriving to Russia in earnest. If US joins in, Russia must retreat to defensive lines, but this means leaving all of Asia, all of middle east open. Plus all of US' naval assets must be focused on the Med/North Sea, where they're easily shot at.

The point is, NATO (either non US or with US) will never go in because of the risk of crossing the Korean war threshold. If Russia is genuinely threatened, there will be an all out East vs West ground war. And this has an even worse prognosis for NATO than a US China naval/air Pacific war.

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