Oh, we actually agree about something in the Ukraine thread.
Maybe they could if Russia was willing to accept a ceasefire. The only thing stopping the election is the ongoing fighting.
Ukraine
- Thread starter Silvanus
- Start date
Not really; elections are typically suspended during wartime (same as in most countries, for quite understandable reasons), and Ukraine is under a protracted invasion. Even the opposition have agreed one shouldn't be run now. It's a bit much to expect people to evade the daily firebombing of their homes and neighbourhoods to go to the polls, and it's especially rich for Putin-- who has allowed no free vote for 25 years-- to be suggesting it.
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It's a pretty easy conclusion to come to. It is beyond clear that US weapons have been gifts all along. Trump's insistence on being 'paid back' for previous aid insults everyone's intelligence.
When was the last time someone did deploy aircraft carriers against anyone with a reasonably functioning air force / navy, though? The Falklands, maybe?
I would say so, yes.
Although with a caveat that the US had aircraft carriers deployed for the Gulf War and Iraq invasion, but I don't think they were meaningfully exposed in the same way given the plentiful land-based forces and (in the latter conflict) severely depleted opposition.
Russia's SVR agency published a very... interesting screed yesterday.
Mostly I find it quite amusing for them to talk about the European 'predisposition' to dictatorship and totalitarianism, given that Russia has existed under an almost-uninterrupted string of dictatorships, apart from (arguably) a brief stint in the 90s.
Hm. The SVR sees a kindred spirit in the White House's current occupant, or at least believes it can curry favour and prompt him to allow a carve-up of Eastern Europe between the dominant military hegemons.SVR said:
Mostly I find it quite amusing for them to talk about the European 'predisposition' to dictatorship and totalitarianism, given that Russia has existed under an almost-uninterrupted string of dictatorships, apart from (arguably) a brief stint in the 90s.
The French revolution and Crimean war are a tad on the old side, odd to bring those up rather than more modern things, even if they have to make them up out of nowhere.
I love bombers. They're big and cool and often some of the most striking aircraft designs, but I think they have long since reached the point of being extremely questionable from a cost/effectiveness standpoint. The vast majority of the time, whatever you would want a bomber to do could be done by a much smaller aircraft armed with a cruise missile for a tiny fraction of the cost. We know the successor to storm shadow will have a stealth variant, for example, which would presumably fit this bill (although I don't know if it will be nuclear-capable).
While bombers can reach incredibly long ranges they also aren't a great solution for projecting power around the world as they can only reach those ranges with in-flight refuelling. Having a super fancy stealth bomber isn't much good if it's dependent on extremely unstealthy and vulnerable tankers pre-positioned along its flight path.
Fielding a full-sized modern aircraft carrier is kind of an achievement in and of itself and I think there is an open question about how well a less technologically advanced air force, no matter how large and well trained, would deal with 5th generation fighters like the F-35. The main issue, I suspect, is that aircraft carriers themselves are a lot more vulnerable than they used to be and, to be honest, I'm not actually sure there's all that much that can be done to make it better. There is really no other way to get significant amounts of aircraft to somewhere far away from any friendly ground bases.
I don't think they were designed to single-handedly fight some kind of hypothetical conflict in the Pacific against China, for example, but rather to provide options if something like the Falklands War were to happen again. Essentially, a conflict in which the enemy is much weaker overall but can potentially bring more of its force to bear in the region where the conflict takes place.
The peacemaker?
apnews.com
Steve Witkoff has gone from spotting Trump cash at a deli to helping him navigate Ukraine and Gaza
Trump special envoy Steve Witkoff has arrived in Moscow for high-level talks. That's according to a U.S. official familiar with the matter who was not authorized to comment publicly.
apnews.com
Trump, Rubio threaten to walk away from Ukraine-Russia peace talks
"It’s not our war," Secretary of State Marco Rubio said, after talks with European allies in Paris.
abcnews.go.com
Funnilly enough, Rubio is right, it's not the USA's war.Trump, Rubio threaten to walk away from Ukraine-Russia peace talks
"It’s not our war," Secretary of State Marco Rubio said, after talks with European allies in Paris.
But then that's already reflected in the fact that the grand total of US troops deployed in battle since the war started stands at zero, which makes Rubio's statement strangely pointless.
Except perhaps for the fact that the USA appears to be preparing the ground to throw Ukraine under the bus.
World War II wasn't America's war, either... until suddenly it was. How eager is Trump to see another Pearl Harbor on his watch?
The US government is well aware of that for better or for worse. The real question is what happens when dynamic people stop coming to the US, and the US loses some of what makes it great.
That ia a month old and we all know that Russia rejected Trumps ceasefire.The peacemaker?
Steve Witkoff has gone from spotting Trump cash at a deli to helping him navigate Ukraine and Gaza
Trump special envoy Steve Witkoff has arrived in Moscow for high-level talks. That's according to a U.S. official familiar with the matter who was not authorized to comment publicly.
And Wittkoff has not achieved anything else either. His blatant pro-Russia stance has not made him any friends in Europe nor even made Putin more agreeable.
It only has conformed for Putin that the US and Trump is toothless.
And in the middle East he even has less profile.
Trump's characterisation of the Russia-Ukraine war wildly overstates US involvement. This is deliberate. The intent is to portray the war as a severe burden on the USA, and thus justify Trump gouging Ukraine to an absurd degree or abandoning Ukraine to its fate. That's the context they use the term "our war". It's the same sort of thing as when they keep reinforcing Putin's messaging about Russia being a nuclear power: it's magnifying the sense of risk to scare Americans into giving up Ukraine.
The sale Macy's had for the one year anniversary of Pearl Harbour brought in their highest profits for one day. Though I don't see the US being attacked any time soon by a major military power.
Someone should point out to the Russians that Nazi Germany's biggest ally during the invasions of Poland and France....was Soviet Russia. They directly schemed with the Nazi's to start WW2 in order to get Poland, and they made a non aggression pact that ensured Germany could bring its full weight to bear against France. Even with France so drastically under performing its dubious that the war would have escalated as much as it did if Hitler had to keep vast forces behind to guard their eastern flank.
Just like WW1 Russia might not have been the primary instigator(in that case it being Serbia/Austria) but they were not far behind and have vast amount of blood on their hands in how the war started.
I suppose that while its pathetic and often results in gibberish its fairly logical Russia so often falsifies and propagandize history . After all what does Russia have in its history that it can possibly be proud of? All they ever build were backwards, tyrannical and war mongering failed states, that never gained much prosperity despite violently leeching off all its neighbors.
Its hard to think of another state that was so consistently backwards, so consistently on the wrong side of history and so eternally unwilling to provide for its population. If my state was such a perpetual hellhole I'd probably try to hide it too.
Just like WW1 Russia might not have been the primary instigator(in that case it being Serbia/Austria) but they were not far behind and have vast amount of blood on their hands in how the war started.
I suppose that while its pathetic and often results in gibberish its fairly logical Russia so often falsifies and propagandize history . After all what does Russia have in its history that it can possibly be proud of? All they ever build were backwards, tyrannical and war mongering failed states, that never gained much prosperity despite violently leeching off all its neighbors.
Its hard to think of another state that was so consistently backwards, so consistently on the wrong side of history and so eternally unwilling to provide for its population. If my state was such a perpetual hellhole I'd probably try to hide it too.
Oh, there are arguments to be made against that. Sure, the USSR made a non-aggression pact, but then one reason the Nazis were popular is that they were expected to destroy the communists (and not without reason for that expectation). If things had gone differently, we could be saying that the West was complicit in the Germans declaring war on the Soviets to start WW3.
Having said that, what the Soviets of the 1940s did hardly excuses what the Russians of the 2020s are doing.
He got Iran to the table on the Middle East and isn't arrogant like many democratic party diplomats, and I don't think peace in Europe is a goal of the US. I think it's more likely to get Russia distracted in Europe, so they don't send their military to the far east and Arctic, which threatens US interests more. The worst case scenario is Russia takes 1/4 of Poland, but then gets pushed back, granted that isn't very pleasant, but Russia isn't getting to, for example, Germany, it's not realistic. Again, that's assuming the US abandons NATO.