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So been following recent developments and I wanted to pose a few questions:

1) How did the West ever think Russia and China were a threat? It’s not like the Russian army hadn’t been observed in the field or that the technology was unknown. Both sides were known factors and surely analysts would at least be close to the mark?

2) Could an enemy of the United States use similar tactics as Ukraine to achieve a similar outcome? What are the factors that would prevent this occurring?

3) Does China not providing any real or serious assistance to Russia prove that it’s either not serious about challenging the US or is significantly weaker than we assumed?

4) Does this show that Nuclear Weapons are irrelevant? If a country is losing tens of thousands of soldiers, if not hundreds and the other side doesn’t have any nuclear weapons or guarantees; surely that means the weapons have no value. The possibility of Kyiv being destroyed hasn’t had any material impact on the war.

5) Since the US has settled the European theatre and China has stepped down in Asia, does this mean the US will try to turn its attention to Turkey, Syria and Iran?

1) Depends on what you mean by 'a threat'.

Russia has fallen a long way from the height of their power as the Soviet Union, but still have plenty of combat power. It looks like the big thing they've lost is tactical logistics. They're still very rail-based in their strategic logistics as well, which has it's own strengths and weaknesses. On the defensive, a rail-based logistics system can work very well if they can keep western air power from tearing up the rail lines too badly... which is part of why Russia has always invested so much in SAM systems.

At any rate, Ukraine is holding it's own for several reasons.

a) Russia expected a walkover, so didn't fully mobilize it's own combat logistics.
b) Once Ukraine fully activated it's reserves it has more personnel in theater than Russia, because...
c) Thus far Russia has been unable to fully activate it's own reserves for political reasons.
d) The West has put a LOT of support into Ukraine, which means
e) Russia has wound up holding back a lot of it's available combat just in case the west goes on the offensive, especially Poland and Finland who can, for at least a short period, achieve local force superiority near their own borders. They may even still be seriously worried about Germany, even if recent events have shown the Bundeswehr as a major military force are a bit of a paper tiger.

At any rate, nuclear weapons are still nuclear weapons. Yes, we can wreck them even more thoroughly than they can wreck us. That doesn't mean we wouldn't be wrecked in a nuclear exchange. As I understand the numbers, we'd be doing very well to have any towns bigger than 10K population still standing, and even there fallout and economic collapse would kill most who survived the initial exchange.

2) Well, what did you think happened in Afghanistan? Yep, defensive military tactics and even irregular warfare work just fine against America, especially if America lacks the political and popular will to go full-bore... which is usually the case anymore.

3) Call it more prudence than anything else. Remember, we still do a LOT of trade with China, and in a very real sense that trade is what's holding the Chinese economy up. It's DEFINITELY the major source of funding for the ongoing Chinese military buildup. And let's face it, buying cheap oil and gas from Russia helps Russia every bit as much as it helps China.

I expect China has been looking at the Ukraine/Russia war as something of a dress rehearsal for their own plan to retake Taiwan... and now that they've seen just how badly that can go I imagine they're re-evaluating the forces they'd need to take Taiwan successfully and survive American economic - and possibly even military - reprisals.

And now that Japan is seriously rearming, that also has to impact their willingness to overtly help Russia.

4) Not entirely irrelevant.

Nukes are a deterrent, but only remain a deterrent so long as you don't use them. Once you start tossing nukes around, EVERYONE gets wrecked... including you. So in the end, nukes become a defense of last resort - "If you invade us, we'll blow up the world so we ALL lose!"

This is probably the ONLY thing that has kept Polish land forces and NATO air power out of Ukraine.

5) Good question. News at 5.

I expect what it'll ultimately boil down to is, do any of them feel froggy enough to jump and risk American intervention? Unlike Afghanistan, those three are a lot more developed and have a lot more to lose to an American air campaign. Of course, the flip side is all three are better developed and can put up quite a bit more conventional fight than Afghanistan could...

6) Take all this with the appropriate amount of salt. I'm an interested amateur observer, not even a expert, much less any sort of insider.

Yea. What russia would gain from using nukes? It's basically lose-lose to use them as nukes would get nukes tossed back.

Top of that illegal by russian law to use them here and as history shows using nukes is hard. 2 times soviets had situation that actually called using nukes but soldiers refused. once russia had same situation but Jeltsin said "no".

If you think value of nukes is　using them whenever conventional forces fail...lol.

Consider this: nukes have already had huge impact to this war. Without them west would have sent armies in direct combat with russia driving them back to russia. Only q then would they take out whole russia while at it. Conventional war they could though costs lives so west might settle for ukraine(crimea included) free. But nukes scares west too much. While using them while west stays in ukraine would still break russian law it would be pushing it.


As for russia threat...well generally their equipment is up to task. Issue is more of how to use and logistics and those aren't as easy to see from distance when they aren't used.

As for china it's balancing act. West is bigger market than russia so total trade war would be bad for china though would hurt west more than trade war with russia does. But china looks at long　term and trade war that hurts them too isn't helping at becoming superpower.

And russia getting hurt becoming lapdog to china due to needing them does help china.

tneva82 wrote:


As for china it's balancing act. West is bigger market than russia so total trade war would be bad for china though would hurt west more than trade war with russia does. But china looks at long　term and trade war that hurts them too isn't helping at becoming superpower.

And russia getting hurt becoming lapdog to china due to needing them does help china.

Kinda confused about how Russia's situation even "proves" anything about China. They're not joined at the hip, they haven't had great cooperation since the 1950s and fought several border conflicts since.

Honestly, they're doing exactly what a semi-interested third party would do - sit back and buy up cheap Russian oil, keep trading with the US and waiting to see if they can grab a nice chunk of the Russian far east when they're at their lowest.

Not sending PLA troops to the front line in Ukraine isn't "weak", it's rational.

 Totalwar1402 wrote:
So been following recent developments and I wanted to pose a few questions:

1) How did the West ever think Russia and China were a threat? It’s not like the Russian army hadn’t been observed in the field or that the technology was unknown. Both sides were known factors and surely analysts would at least be close to the mark?

As far as Russia goes, I think there’s an element of overestimating how well they’d implemented their various reforms and the availability of their new equipment. It now seems like a lot of it was just propaganda (and possibly even internal propaganda to cover up corruption and/or incompetence from a leader who is likely to have you thrown out of a window if you haven’t performed).

I would be very hesitant about translating those lessons on to China, everything I’ve seen is that they are deadly serious about their rearmament and restructuring programmes.

2) Could an enemy of the United States use similar tactics as Ukraine to achieve a similar outcome? What are the factors that would prevent this occurring?

As pointed out earlier, twenty years of basically minimal progress in both Iraq and Afghanistan shows that these style of tactics can and have been used against US (& other western forces) to great effect.

3) Does China not providing any real or serious assistance to Russia prove that it’s either not serious about challenging the US or is significantly weaker than we assumed?

Quite the opposite IMHO; they are watching this like a hawk, to understand how the West might react if they make a play for Taiwan. I think they are trying to avoid being dragged into a war with the West before they are ready (see point 1 about still upgrading) and are also probably gambling on this draining the West’s reserves (military, financial and political), making their eventual move easier.

4) Does this show that Nuclear Weapons are irrelevant? If a country is losing tens of thousands of soldiers, if not hundreds and the other side doesn’t have any nuclear weapons or guarantees; surely that means the weapons have no value. The possibility of Kyiv being destroyed hasn’t had any material impact on the war.

No, this actually shows that deterrence works (for better or worse). Russia’s nuclear arsenal is the only reason we are not more actively involved than we are and our potential response to a nuclear escalation is probably the only reason that Russia haven’t started lobbing tactical nuclear warheads around.

5) Since the US has settled the European theatre and China has stepped down in Asia, does this mean the US will try to turn its attention to Turkey, Syria and Iran?

I don’t see any evidence that China have “stepped down” in Asia, they’re just playing it very cool. I think the US is going to be focused on internal matters much more than foreign affairs for the foreseeable future, apart from obvious threats requiring a response (like this one).

It looks like the big thing they've lost is tactical logistics.

You assume they ever had it to begin with. Tactically, operationally, and strategically the Soviet Union of the Cold War era relied on the same logistical means and methods that Russia is currently using. In depth analysis of Cold War era Soviet military structure has long shown that they lacked the logistical tail needed to deploy or support more than a small fraction of their available combat power at any given time. They've always been a case of "lots of cool toys that they don't know how to use".

which is part of why Russia has always invested so much in SAM systems.

which, as we have learned through various conflicts, seemed to stop keeping pace with western capability somewhere around 20-30 years ago.

e) Russia has wound up holding back a lot of it's available combat just in case the west goes on the offensive, especially Poland and Finland who can, for at least a short period, achieve local force superiority near their own borders. They may even still be seriously worried about Germany, even if recent events have shown the Bundeswehr as a major military force are a bit of a paper tiger.

Not really true. Russia has pulled almost all available land and air combat power from the Western, Southern, Northern, and a substantial portion of the Central military district into Ukraine. It actually pulled most of its forces off the Finnish border not long after Finland applied for NATO membership, and likewise they have reduced their forces on the border of the Baltics along with some units from Kaliningrad. In terms of its remaining ground combat capability, all they really have left is the Eastern military district (where ~55k Russian troops are currently playing war with Chinese and Indian troops in joint drills) and the recently formed "3rd Army Corps" of pensioners, prisoners, invalids, and children being fitted out with whatever barely-functional leftovers the Russian military can pull from Soviet-era stocks.

1) How did the West ever think Russia and China were a threat? It’s not like the Russian army hadn’t been observed in the field or that the technology was unknown. Both sides were known factors and surely analysts would at least be close to the mark?

Well, theres a lot more risk in underestimating an enemy than there are in overestimating an enemy, so its better to overestimate than to underestimate. Besides that though, a lot of this is tied to the "military-industrial complex" boogeyman - there are lots of people who get paid big bucks through government grants to study, research, and analyze major American geopolitical threats. These people have made entire careers and livelihoods basically researching and writing about Russia and Russian military capability with the expectation that Russia (and China) was Americas #1 strategic and geo-political foe and main military threat. Going back to how its better to overestimate than underestimate - these guys have incentive to overestimate because A) - if they underestimate and then Russia demonstrates greater capability the analysts reputation is basically shot, whereas if they overestimate and they come in under expectation theres never a shortage of excuses you can use to justify why, and B) - if they produce a report that says "these guys are limper than a wet noodle and don't pose any sort of danger to us" then that funding is going to dry up and they'll be out of a job until someone identifies another worthwhile threat for the government to blow millions annually on studying.

2) Could an enemy of the United States use similar tactics as Ukraine to achieve a similar outcome? What are the factors that would prevent this occurring?

Doubtful. Whats going on now is less about what Ukraine is doing and more about what Russia is/isn't doing or has done wrong. Ukraine is also getting a lot of assistance, intelligence, training, and advice from, amongst other places, the US - something that a US opponent would not have the luxury of. The way to defeat the US military is to defeat it politically, the playbook for that looks a lot more like what happened in Vietnam and Afghanistan rather than anything Ukraine is doing now, as the US military has otherwise basically been military superior on every battlefield it has fought on for the past 60 or so years.

3) Does China not providing any real or serious assistance to Russia prove that it’s either not serious about challenging the US or is significantly weaker than we assumed?

Column A/Column B? China has more to lose by assisting Russia than it has to gain by doing so at this point. Its definitely a very calculated move on their part to provide limited or negligible support. My read of the situation was that China overestimated Russias power (and likely its own as a result, as much of their military technology, hardware, training, and doctrine is still modeled after Russias though in the past 20 years they've pulled more and more from western sources, its all still built on what is essentially a Russian backbone/skeleton/frame) and underestimated Western resolve. I believe the expectation was that China would basically run interference for Russia while they went into Ukraine, and then Russia would run interference for China while China went into Taiwan. Russia very quickly and obviously shat the bed and underperformed going into Ukraine, and you could basically see Chinese support for Russia evaporate in real time through the first few weeks of the current invasion as it became obvious that Russia could not be a reliable partner and would be unable to truly provide any sort of meaningful assistance to China in its own ambitions. I think theres a tacit admission there that China understands that the geo-political situation is not as favorable to it (or Russias) cause as they initially believed (turns out NATO is very much still alive and arguably stronger than ever despite the premature eulogies), that Western resolve is much stronger than they anticipated, that the US and Biden are not as politically weak and unmotivated as they assumed, etc. I think the fact that the US/NATO didn't step into a quagmire by sending forces into Ukraine was also a big factor in things - that would have been a potential green light for China to go if a significant portion of American and western combat power was tied down fighting Russia and thus unable to conventionally challenge China in its own backyard. I think they have also had the realization that despite their various modernizations and technological advances, the Chinese military is not a near-peer to the US in terms of true capability and that US/Western tech and doctrine still far outclasses them - like Russia, they have some cool toys, but they don't have the logistical tail or organizational culture needed to effectively use those toys.

4) Does this show that Nuclear Weapons are irrelevant? If a country is losing tens of thousands of soldiers, if not hundreds and the other side doesn’t have any nuclear weapons or guarantees; surely that means the weapons have no value. The possibility of Kyiv being destroyed hasn’t had any material impact on the war.

Nope. Based on recent events, I have my doubts as to what degree Russian nuclear capability actually remains intact (though thats a hypothesis better left untested), but the truth of the matter is that Russia is well aware that its own employment of nuclear weapons is a serious red line that they cannot cross and which will only make the situation worse for themselves. A nuclear power is losing a conventional war because other nuclear powers are backing the conventional power and threatening nuclear retaliation if they cross the nuclear threshold - the US and other NATO members have basically stated that any nuclear incident in Ukraine will be seen as cause to trigger Article 5, as the prevailing winds basically put most of NATO within the fallout zone of a nuclear strike or power plant incident in Ukraine.

In the past Russia may have been under the illusion that their considerable investment into anti-aircraft and missile defense systems would allow it to get the better of the US in a nuclear exchange, but the events of the last few months have demonstrated that Russian air and missile defenses are basically incapable of countering many western (and Ukrainian) air and missile systems and that western air and missile systems are capable of defeating Russian defenses. Likewise, recent events have demonstrated that certain western defensive systems are more than a match for Russian capabilities. In short - 6 months ago Russian leadership may have believed that their hardware gave them an effective umbrella against American nuclear strikes and that their weapon systems could bypass whatever meager missile defenses the US and western powers might have in place to try to protect themselves with, but now I think Russian leadership has a clear view that in the event of a nuclear exchange the majority of western bombs and missiles would find their targets with unerring accuracy, while the vast majority of Russias own nuclear weapons would be lucky to even make it off the ground.

5) Since the US has settled the European theatre and China has stepped down in Asia, does this mean the US will try to turn its attention to Turkey, Syria and Iran?

Considering Turkey is ostensibly a US ally and fellow NATO member? I don't really see much happening there unless their recent threats of invading fellow NATO-member Greece turn out to be more than just empty words.

In general, I don't think the US has any public or political appetite to involve itself with the middle east again anytime soon and despite saber rattling and alarmism from certain quarters there really is no need to. Syria is effectively a backwater embroiled in its own little civil war, whatever potential risks to US interests there are effectively being checked by special forces, US/Western friendly militias and warlords, Israeli strikes, and US over-the-horizon capabilities. Iran is also no doubt clearly aware at this point that US military power could end their entire regime in the blink of an eye if push came to shove, especially now that Russia is basically a spent and hollow force - if anything I think they come back to the negotiating table and try to cut a deal to have sanctions lifted. If the US did do something so monumentally stupid as to distract itself with unnecessary conflicts in the Middle East, that would just give China room to play fuckfuck games again - nobody with any actual power in the US is currently dumb enough to not realize that.

Regarding point 2, a nation fighting America might have a harder time soliciting billions of dollars and weapons from america...

tneva82 wrote:
As for russia threat...well generally their equipment is up to task.

No, it really isn't. The war has revealed that the most cutting edge Russian missile defense systems and radars are incapable of tracking/targeting/intercepting a number of US/western/Ukrainian made drones and missile systems (such as HIMARS, the Turkish built Bayraktars which are reported to basically be invisible to all Russian ground-based radar systems currently in use), and whatever was used to strike the Crimean airbases and to sink the Moskva). Likewise it has demonstrated the extreme vulnerability of Russian tanks and armored vehicles to western-built anti-tank systems (conversely, events in the middle east have demonstrated that American tanks are significantly more surivvable against even the most advanced Russian anti-tank systems, as well as certain western-built systems when captured equipment was used against American-built tanks). Then theres the fact that Russian electronics countermeasure systems *in Ukraine* have been unable to defeat Western electronic jamming being conducted from aircraft flying on the edge of Polish and Romanian airspace, thus necessitating heavy use of unsecured and unencrypted communications systems. And the fact that Russian artillery is being outgunned by NATO artillery being supplied to Ukraine, as the western systems are longer range and orders of magnitude more accurate than any of the systems Russia is using. Then theres the fact that Russian air-launched "precision"-guided cruise missiles have a failure rate between 20-60% depending on type (thats *before* you get to the fact that Ukraine is reportedly successfully intercepting somewhere between 40-70% of all missile strikes). And lets not even get into the multiple reported (and in some cases confirmed on video) incidences of Russian missile systems doing a 180 shortly after launch to destroy their own launchers.

@chaos0xomega

Thank you, that answers most of it. I wasn’t aware that Article 5 was implicitly being used to extend the US nuclear umbrella over Ukraine.

Yeah I watched a military history visualised where they had a guy on who was a military analyst insisting that “oh they don’t lie to increase the budget you silly silly people; we’re professionals!” Like, as if public officials and departments don’t do that all the time. If they do it for schools and the NHS you can be dam sure the military does it.


I had a few other questions:

1) Are sanctions likely to continue after Russia is driven out of Ukraine?

2) Is the inflationary and cost of living crisis likely to continue? Yes there’s other things feeding that monster but he could do with less food.

3) How significant do you think the social consequences will be of this?

4) Who is going to pay for rebuilding Ukraine and how are they going to get that money?

5) Not withstanding whether 40 million more Slavs join it or not, do you think the EU is going to be increasingly dominated by countries like Poland or are France/Germany still indispensable.

 Totalwar1402 wrote:
1) Are sanctions likely to continue after Russia is driven out of Ukraine?

It's a political question, but probably. Nobody really likes Russia and we have a strong incentive to deter them from attempting another genocide in the future. If/when sanctions are lifted it will probably require Russia to pay reparations to Ukraine, demonstrate good behavior for a while, cut back their military, etc, and earn their freedom.

(Unless of course Russia succeeds in their election interference efforts and gets their paid pro-Russia officials into power, at which point the sanctions and military aid to Ukraine end.)

2) Is the inflationary and cost of living crisis likely to continue? Yes there’s other things feeding that monster but he could do with less food.

Probably. Cutting off trade is huge and it's only going to get worse as pre-war stockpiles run out.

3) How significant do you think the social consequences will be of this?

Define "social consequences"? That's an incredibly broad question, as-is there's no real answer besides "probably significant because major wars are usually significant".

4) Who is going to pay for rebuilding Ukraine and how are they going to get that money?

Who knows. There may or may not be any funding for rebuilding Ukraine. Military aid serves the primary purpose of keeping the defense contractor money faucet open, there's much less of a clear benefit to civilian aid funding so it depends much more on complicated political questions.

5) Not withstanding whether 40 million more Slavs join it or not, do you think the EU is going to be increasingly dominated by countries like Poland or are France/Germany still indispensable.

(Pre-war Ukraine is right about where Hungary is.)

 Totalwar1402 wrote:
@chaos0xomega

Thank you, that answers most of it. I wasn’t aware that Article 5 was implicitly being used to extend the US nuclear umbrella over Ukraine.

Yeah I watched a military history visualised where they had a guy on who was a military analyst insisting that “oh they don’t lie to increase the budget you silly silly people; we’re professionals!” Like, as if public officials and departments don’t do that all the time. If they do it for schools and the NHS you can be dam sure the military does it.


I had a few other questions:

1) Are sanctions likely to continue after Russia is driven out of Ukraine?

2) Is the inflationary and cost of living crisis likely to continue? Yes there’s other things feeding that monster but he could do with less food.

3) How significant do you think the social consequences will be of this?

4) Who is going to pay for rebuilding Ukraine and how are they going to get that money?

5) Not withstanding whether 40 million more Slavs join it or not, do you think the EU is going to be increasingly dominated by countries like Poland or are France/Germany still indispensable.

very complicated questions, all of them, but in short

1) yes, at least for some time past The end of conflict. even if they were stopped tomorrow, The EU is forging ahead with its plans to ween off russian energy, which would significantly affect Russian government income in the medium term as it would need to establish a LOT of new infrastructure to support trade to other nations....and they already cant maintain thier infrastructure without western components.

2) again, yes, as you point out, its not being driven solely by the high energy costs the war has created, but those don't help. the effects of the energy shortage/high prices are unevenly distributed anyway, its a much bigger driver of problems here in europe than it is in america or china, for example.

3) impossible to say. the EU and NATO are arguably closer and more united than they have been in decades, with the threat that lead to their creation being made "real" again, but longer term, theirs so many variables you might as well ask the stars for a an answer.

4) well, ultimately form western taxpayers in the form of loans or other aid, be it bi-lateral agreements, a 21st centry Marshall plan, or some UN lead initiative.

5) unlikely, as the economic power (and thus funding) still lies with the larger western members. Im pretty sure France and Germany pay more in than the rest of them combined at this point.

Post 2022/09/10 13:59:01 Subject: Questions about the Ukraine War
So been following recent developments and I wanted to pose a few questions:

1) How did the West ever think Russia and China were a threat? It’s not like the Russian army hadn’t been observed in the field or that the technology was unknown. Both sides were known factors and surely analysts would at least be close to the mark?

2) Could an enemy of the United States use similar tactics as Ukraine to achieve a similar outcome? What are the factors that would prevent this occurring?

3) Does China not providing any real or serious assistance to Russia prove that it’s either not serious about challenging the US or is significantly weaker than we assumed?

4) Does this show that Nuclear Weapons are irrelevant? If a country is losing tens of thousands of soldiers, if not hundreds and the other side doesn’t have any nuclear weapons or guarantees; surely that means the weapons have no value. The possibility of Kyiv being destroyed hasn’t had any material impact on the war.

5) Since the US has settled the European theatre and China has stepped down in Asia, does this mean the US will try to turn its attention to Turkey, Syria and Iran?

short answers again:

1) the west appears to have been a bit too willing to "drink the kool aid", as it were. The russian defence industry is a lot less open than the western one, so we knew of many of thier advanced projects form marketing & propaganda efforts, but it wasnt completely clear to what degree they'd been able to actually roll out these new systems. based on the equipment seen in and destroyed in ukraine, the answer is "not much". The forces that attacked were overwhelmingly equipped with stuff that had cold war lineage, had been patchily upgraded, and was clearly badly maintained while in depots. It appears that previous exercises were the russains showed greater capability were mainly pulled off by a mix of smoke, mirrors, and careful pre-planning to avoid public slip ups, which works fine when you control both sides of a fight but falls apart when the ukranians didnt co-operate.

the scale of the western intelligence failure seems to have only been matched by the scale of the Russian intelligence failure. Assuming the generals of the Russian army are rational beings and the plan they attempted in February was one they thought would work, then its clear the russians expected only light or near-zero resistance to the initial thrusts on Kiev. The apparent plan was a rapid thrust on the capital, supported by airborune drops to secure a forward airhead (a tactic the russians have used repeatedly in the past, such as during the initial invasion of Afghanistan), which would overwhelm the ukrainians before they could rally or the west could enact sanctions, install a puppet government and present the west with a fait accompli and say "you really want to wreck your own economies over a already settled matter?". That only works if the population doesn't hate your guts and will grimly suffer in order to resist you, which is exactly what happened, so either the Russian agents on the ground completely mis-read the Ukrainians, or someone was editing thier reports before they got to the kremlin.

2) unlikely, the US wouldn't go about this the way the Russians attempted to, so the responses would need to be different to account for that.

3) China IS serious about becoming a peer to the USA, but that doesnt mean they want to fight a war with them today. far better to let your regional rival and potential ally exhuast himself, and quietly take notes on how US equipment preforms in battle, then give russia just enough support to keep the regime alive but in your debt.

4) Nukes are only relevant when the survival of the owning state is in question. Russia, like most nuclear powers, actually publishes its doctrine on nuclear weapon use publically (the logic being that knowing where the red lines are helps prevent opponents form crossing them, thus achieving deterrence). Of the use cases outlined in that policy, none of them even vaguely apply to the current "special military operation" in Ukraine, as they are all based around the preservation of the Russian state. Its also worht pointing out the nuclear weapons taboo is in full effect, and any nation that broke it would be severely punished, to discourage the others. Effectively, the existence of the nukes keeps the West form actively intervening, gulf war 1 style, but doesnt help russia beyond that.

5)not a clue. certianly, their are moves to get the iran nuclear deal going again and to open up iranian oil for export. but time will tell how that plays out. certianly i dont think thiers much appetite in DC for yet ANOTHER middle eastern intervention.

xerxeskingofking wrote:
certianly i dont think thiers much appetite in DC for yet ANOTHER middle eastern intervention.

And why would there be? Ukraine is the perfect war for the US. Lots of money is being handed out to defense contractors (with generous kickbacks to the representatives on their payroll) but no American lives are at risk so there's no bad PR. Aside from a handful of fringe politicians like MTG failing to understand the rules of the game and whining about it on twitter it's a nice quiet money faucet, and nobody listens to the fringe except the fringe. Most voters barely even know there's a war going on and that's exactly how the defense industry likes it.