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A fragmented Europe where EU companies have to fight each other over a minor part of the market since the US companies, with the gigantic economies of scales afforded by their own domestic market, will always be more competitive is a Europe were all countries, including the most independent-minded, have to rely on the US for the continued maintenance of their military capabilities, and that means it's a Europe that will continue to favor US geopolitical interests over European geopolitical interests. The idea of a Europe that starts to build up its own capabilities at a continental level is therefore unacceptable to the US. America doesn't want an equal partner, because an equal partner would be a rival.
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Dec 9, 2019 17:19
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Cat Mattress posted:European geopolitical interests
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Dec 9, 2019 17:50
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Cat Mattress posted:
The US has had near peer allies in the past. Notably the UK before they cut way back.
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Dec 9, 2019 17:52
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To come back to the discussion on percentage of GDP spent on defense, the Netherlands has included in pension payments and Marechausse (basicly customs/military police) as defense spending in order to pump up it's number and appease Trump. Neither of which really stops Ivan. That said, the previous article on Canadian spending comes close to acting like Canada is doing better than (20 times smaller population) Estonia because it spends more in absolute amount, which is just as dumb as treating the percentage as holy. There has to be some taking into account of a nation's size and economy when determining if they're doing their share in a alliance.
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Dec 9, 2019 18:22
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Rent-A-Cop posted:Alsace was, is, and always will be an integral part of the Vaterland! More like when the USA go around saying "hey, wanna give me some appearance of legitimacy for my plan to turn a random Middle Eastern country into a massive training ground for terrorists that will then blow up targets in Europe for the next three or four decades?" and then the UK, Poland, and some others immediately jump aboard going "that's swell, it looks like it's gonna be really great to earn some brownie points for you by loving up our neighborhood". European geopolitical interests are a stable MENA and a non-hostile Russia. American geopolitical interests are an unstable Middle East and an antagonistic Russia.
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Dec 9, 2019 18:31
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Cat Mattress posted:
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Dec 9, 2019 18:37
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Give the Estonians one nuke with a range sufficient to reach Moscow, then they can look at how much they value not being part of Russia and not being vaporized, respectively and take it from there.
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Dec 9, 2019 18:39
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Cat Mattress posted:American geopolitical interests are an unstable Middle East Think you're going to have to unpack this a little
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Dec 9, 2019 18:44
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Cat Mattress posted:American geopolitical interests are an unstable Middle East and an antagonistic Russia. It is true that poor US foreign policy has contributed to these problems, but they are neither intended by, desired by, beneficial to, or solely the result of the US' interests.
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Dec 9, 2019 19:00
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StandardVC10 posted:Think you're going to have to unpack this a little Why exactly do you believe the USA are the staunchest allies of the Saudi monarchy? What was the bargain made with the Sunni petromonarchies so that they only accept US dollar for their oil, allowing the US to become a global trade hegemon?
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Dec 9, 2019 19:11
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Cat Mattress posted:Why exactly do you believe the USA are the staunchest allies of the Saudi monarchy? What was the bargain made with the Sunni petromonarchies so that they only accept US dollar for their oil, allowing the US to become a global trade hegemon?
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Dec 9, 2019 19:14
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Cat Mattress posted:Why exactly do you believe the USA are the staunchest allies of the Saudi monarchy? What was the bargain made with the Sunni petromonarchies so that they only accept US dollar for their oil, allowing the US to become a global trade hegemon? The US loves the Saudi Monarchy because they love cheap energy. I'd slow my roll just a bit on the global trade hegemon via currency deals; at the end of World War 2, the US was 50% of global GDP. Assuming basic competence, the US was going to be a economic powerhouse long after that. Thank you for the good replies on my question, peeps. Clearly, this is a deep issue. Slightly offside to that article I posted, it irked me that the 2% figure was "politically unfeasible" and "Canada's hilariously poo poo procurement system is an issue." The latter could be reformed, and the former is clearly untrue in the face of how much uncollected tax revenue Canada gives up. It's politically unfeasible insofar as the 0.1% and above would pay slightly more tax, and that's not really the same thing as suggesting it'd be Cold War deficits or worse.
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Dec 9, 2019 19:38
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Rent-A-Cop posted:This is a weird read of history. And besides, how does trashing the neighborhood to the benefit of their (and our) Iranian adversaries make any sense in that context anyway?
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Dec 9, 2019 19:39
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Rent-A-Cop posted:This is a weird read of history. It's weird how one can read a history of the US destabilizing an area into seeing the interests for the US in a destabilized area. Captain von Trapp posted:And besides, how does trashing the neighborhood to the benefit of their (and our) Iranian adversaries make any sense in that context anyway? The more they need help, the less they can refuse US demands.
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Dec 9, 2019 19:46
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Whoa. I thought US foreign policy was being dictated by morons for the better part of two decades. As it turns out we've really been led by mustache twirling, genius super villains and this was their plan all along.
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Dec 9, 2019 19:54
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Cat Mattress posted:It's weird how one can read a history of the US destabilizing an area into seeing the interests for the US in a destabilized area. You are Howard Zinn and I claim my five pounds.
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Dec 9, 2019 19:54
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Cat Mattress posted:It's weird how one can read a history of the US destabilizing an area into seeing the interests for the US in a destabilized area. And not, you know, that it is an incompetent clusterfuck of crony capitalism, ego, and, insane Christian dominionism that has resulted in a completely predictable dumpster fire.
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Dec 9, 2019 20:00
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Cat Mattress posted:The more they need help, the less they can refuse US demands. That's not now this works. That's not how any of this works. Mob goon: *burns Bob's Burgers down* Mob goon: You'd better pay us, Bob, or your restaurant might burn down! Bob: 
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Dec 9, 2019 20:04
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Cat Mattress posted:More like when the USA go around saying "hey, wanna give me some appearance of legitimacy for my plan to turn a random Middle Eastern country into a massive training ground for terrorists that will then blow up targets in Europe for the next three or four decades?" and then the UK, Poland, and some others immediately jump aboard going "that's swell, it looks like it's gonna be really great to earn some brownie points for you by loving up our neighborhood". What's it like being a living Klein bottle?
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Dec 9, 2019 20:45
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aphid_licker posted:Give the Estonians one nuke with a range sufficient to reach Moscow, then they can look at how much they value not being part of Russia and not being vaporized, respectively and take it from there. Perfect, European defence is solved
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Dec 9, 2019 21:15
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aphid_licker posted:Give the Estonians one nuke with a range sufficient to reach Moscow, then they can look at how much they value not being part of Russia and not being vaporized, respectively and take it from there. Wouldn't that just result in Russian units doing anything and everything in their power to neutralize that one nuke?
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Dec 9, 2019 21:16
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Nebakenezzer posted:Assuming basic competence I'm starting to believe you shouldn't do this
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Dec 9, 2019 21:32
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bewbies posted:I wrote a puff piece on the Su-57 that you guys might like. This is an unedited draft so forgive any typos or bad english. I thought this was a good read, and of interest to everybody ITT you have a heading where you ask if the Indians were 'savvy or gullible', I just bring it up in case that's like saying China is inscrutable or similar Also, the Su-57 has a lot of parallels with Russian navy problems. Not only is there this horrible 15 year period of rust out and brain drain, you then have to rebuild your industry to a modern standard you never really had in the good ol' days, while taking all sorts of new technological risks. Sprinkle in lots of graft and qualification falsification, man. Oh, and then you have the size of the Russian economy vs. the size of the old Soviet Empire. Put it this way: right now by GDP, Russia is ~11th-12th, ahead of Spain but behind Italy, Canada, or Brazil. Imagine Italy having a fleet of boomer subs, an air force entirely indigenous developed that includes strategic bombers and a small ecosystem of helicopters, and an ambition to commission a fleet of battle-cruisers?
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Dec 9, 2019 23:46
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Cyrano4747 posted:[ I don't disagree with anything, but I would like to point out that most of this is already the case. Mr Luxury Yacht posted:While it's nice in theory I've always assumed a unified EU military would require way more spending than most members currently need to pay to make up important gaps, but also brings up the sticky question of who effectively gets to lead it, Germany or France. Europe pissed away its best chance at a unified military when Germany capitulated. Godholio fucked around with this message at 02:06 on Dec 10, 2019 |
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Dec 10, 2019 02:04
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The descriptions I'm seeing of US foreign policy here are incoherent. As someone else pointed out it's combination moustache-twirling villains and comically inept morons, with some weird neo-crusader iconography jumping in here and there. As best I can tell the three goals of US foreign policy over the last few decades have been, in order of priority, 1. Preventing Islamic terorrism 2. Stopping WMD proliferation 3/4. (about equal) Containing Russia/Containing China 5. Maintaining global trade routes (piracy and so on) 6. (way below 5) Deposing dictators and promoting democracy Virtually all of our foreign adventures and interventions and so on are from these six things. Of course our success on these things has been, uh, mixed. We didn't invade Iraq for the oil. We didn't do it out of some sort of weird Christian brouhaha. We did it because of 1., 2., and 6. That's it. It's not complicated; there are no conspiracies. The world is a lot less interesting and a lot less competent than we wish it was.
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Dec 10, 2019 02:05
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Hauldren Collider posted:The descriptions I'm seeing of US foreign policy here are incoherent. As someone else pointed out it's combination moustache-twirling villains and comically inept morons, with some weird neo-crusader iconography jumping in here and there. Except that Iraq had nothing to do with 1 and 2 only if you ignored all the intelligence you had been provided... So it's not merely less competent than we wish but if we take the US leadership at face value they are a bunch of blithering morons who shouldn't be in charge of a set of park wardens let alone the most powerful military in the world.
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Dec 10, 2019 02:34
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Conspiracy theories notwithstanding, we did actually invade Iraq because of WMDs. And we stayed there in large part because of Al Qaeda in Iraq. 1 and 2. I'm not here to argue the strategic wisdom of going into Iraq. Just, it is actually the reason we went there. US foreign policy is not that mysterious.
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Dec 10, 2019 02:40
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Hauldren Collider posted:Conspiracy theories notwithstanding, we did actually invade Iraq because of WMDs. And we stayed there in large part because of Al Qaeda in Iraq. 1 and 2. I'm not here to argue the strategic wisdom of going into Iraq. Just, it is actually the reason we went there. US foreign policy is not that mysterious. Uuuuuh you might want to read up on the Iraqi WMD situation in 2002/2003.
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Dec 10, 2019 03:02
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we went there for something that did not exist and stayed for something we created
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Dec 10, 2019 03:44
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At least one forum poster tried to take the fight to Syria too!
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Dec 10, 2019 03:48
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goatsestretchgoals posted:At least one forum poster tried to take the fight to Syria too! The fact he not only didn't immediately die, but survived getting captured by the Syrian Army and being tortured in a prison camp before being released and returned to the US is still the wildest story this forum has ever produced.
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Dec 10, 2019 03:54
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Whoops I was talking about the GiP poster who set up a roadblock a few hundred meters into Syria during Iraq part two. So uh, at least two forums posters.
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Dec 10, 2019 03:57
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Don Gato posted:The fact he not only didn't immediately die, but survived getting captured by the Syrian Army and being tortured in a prison camp before being released and returned to the US is still the wildest story this forum has ever produced. I'd say it's a toss up between that and Sean Smith.
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Dec 10, 2019 03:59
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Don Gato posted:The fact he not only didn't immediately die, but survived getting captured by the Syrian Army and being tortured in a prison camp before being released and returned to the US is still the wildest story this forum has ever produced. Caro survived?!  Where is that article?
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Dec 10, 2019 04:29
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Don Gato posted:The fact he not only didn't immediately die, but survived getting captured by the Syrian Army and being tortured in a prison camp before being released and returned to the US is still the wildest story this forum has ever produced. I can't be the only one who wants to pull on this thread a little  e: OK that was a lot easier to find info on with a username. https://www.gq-magazine.co.uk/article/syria-isis-kevin-dawes https://www.bellingcat.com/news/mena/2016/04/08/interview-with-kevin-dawes-on-his-time-in-libya/ Guest2553 fucked around with this message at 04:34 on Dec 10, 2019 |
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Dec 10, 2019 04:31
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https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/american-kevin-dawes-released-in-damascus-after-going-missing-in-2012-a6975316.html
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Dec 10, 2019 04:35
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https://abcnews.go.com/International/american-kevin-dawes-released-syrian-detention-us-officials/story?id=38253312
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Dec 10, 2019 04:37
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I will be absolutely God damned. I remember him asking really intense questions about helmets and poo poo.
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Dec 10, 2019 04:48
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It was definitely wild hearing he was alive. I'd 100% given up on him. Being a mentally unhealthy US war tourist is not great way to survive 4 years of capture. Hopefully he got some real good treatment when he got back. He had real problems BEFORE four years of hell. I haven't seen poo poo past him returning which is probably a good sign honestly.
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Dec 10, 2019 04:49
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Caro's life is like a movie, but I'm glad that he hasn't showed up on the forum again since it really wasn't helping him mentally. goatsestretchgoals posted:Whoops I was talking about the GiP poster who set up a roadblock a few hundred meters into Syria during Iraq part two. I'm not going to lie, I actually have no idea who this is since I don't really go into GIP 
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Dec 10, 2019 06:45
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