The War in Europe

Let us note that despite the title you say nothing about Ukraine or the war. Which is another example of the problem.

I was heading in that direction! Yes, I realized that I had not mentioned Ukraine in the post but was too lazy to change the title. Besides, mass riots are wars between people and other people. Rioting is a form of civil conflict. It is far from a peaceful protest.Peoples stuff gets destroyed through missile strikes or through the herd mentality of rioters. And why didn't these people protest and riot in the countries that they came from? Why come over to the neighbors house and ruin it?

This thread, The War in Europe, is about the Ukraine war. A discussion about civil riots in France should take place in a different thread.--Percy

Looks like Turkey has finally agreed to letting Sweden into NATO.NATO also put Ukraine on the waiting list, but without a date.I'm not sure the new G7 'long term security package' is exactly what Zelensky had in mind either but he has to appear grateful.G7 to announce long-term Ukraine security package at Nato summit - BBC News

An opinion piece in today's Post (NATO’s most vulnerable front-line states face a rising Russian threat) has a lot to say about the Russian threat to the Baltic states. It says NATO is ill prepared to defend them:

quote:

---

On paper, that commitment has been ironclad since the U.S.-led alliance extended its collective security umbrella guarantee to Latvia and its sister Baltic states, Lithuania and Estonia, almost 20 years ago. In practice, fulfilling that promise would be a nightmare, given the current lack of resources and the rising threat of Russian aggression, which has mounted exponentially. Neither Washington nor its European allies are ready.

---

The Baltic states understand how fragile their independence is:

quote:

---

The Baltic states — colonized by imperial Russia, then subjugated by the Soviet Union for much of the 20th century — have been warning for years that Putin would not be content to live within Russia’s existing borders. They were ignored in Washington, London, Paris and Berlin.

---

For those who believe that Russian encroachments onto NATO territory would be met with overwhelming force there is this example:

quote:

---

The outlook was no more heartening when I visited Lielvarde Air Base in Latvia, where a small fleet of U.S. Blackhawk helicopters trains to ferry combat troops to the front to repel invaders. It depends on a supply line so flimsy that spare rotor blades take up to three weeks to arrive from U.S. factories. “In a crisis we’d be grounded in a week or two,” Lt. Col. Lukas B. Berg of the U.S. 3rd Infantry Division, the helicopter task force commander, told me.

---

Despite the strength of NATO, it's strength is in the core, not the outer regions, as emphasized in the column's closing paragraph:

quote:

---

Nonetheless, Cavoli and his successors have their work cut out, and the urgency is clear. Without renewed resolve from Washington and major European capitals, the Kremlin is likely to regard NATO’s front-line states as tempting targets, and soft ones.

---

Experts don't believe Russia fears NATO and think it is looking to pluck the low hanging fruit when opportunities present themselves. If Russia defeats and either absorbs Ukraine or turns it into a puppet state it only makes things worse for NATO, much worse, especially for those NATO countries bordering Russia. A Ukrainian defeat would put Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania Hungary, Slovakia and Moldova on the NATO front lines facing Russia. That's why Ukraine victory is vital at all costs, something a sizable segment of the Republican party doesn't seem to understand, which is hard to fathom given that for well over a century the Republicans were the party with the most foreign policy savvy.--Percy

I've been doing that more lately. The BBC is my usual go to site, but I also listen to Al Jazeera. NBC News with Lester Holt is another one I watch occasionally.
So here are two stories that I found on the BBC that gave me a better perspective of the troubling expansion of global conflicts.
Ukraine war: Russia goes back to prisons to feed its war machineAdopting the practice of recruiting prisoners as did the now disbanded Wagner Group, (led by Yevgeny Prigozhin - until he and other Wagner group commanders died in a plane crash in August 2023) Russian military is using ex-prisoners to fill the gaps in its defenses (and offenses).

BBC:

---

Storm-Z detachments are reportedly often treated as an expendable force thrown into battle - with little consideration for the lives of their servicemen.
There are also indications that members of other army units can be sent to Storm-Z detachments as punishment for violations such as insubordination or drunkenness.

---

War is a nasty business and Putin is heartless. If he treats his own people as badly as he is doing, imagine how he thinks of treating the United States and Israel someday.
Russia has resumed nuclear testing, a sure sign of saber rattling.On a final note, lest the world thinks that two wars are not enough, South China Sea: Biden says the US will defend the Philippines if China attacks I have no critique regarding Biden's assertive foreign policy stance in all three areas of contention, but can our economy handle paying all of this money funding other people's wars?Do we have other options or are we going to get sucked into playing global cop as inflation goes up and our aging population counts on Social Security? That's for sure.
​

War is good business. We built our industrial base, a global commercial empire, the space program, and a large middle class on wars ... fought in other places. Lots of money in war. We thrive on it.If world peace arrives, we'll probably go broke.

If you put this about how ruthless Putin is: Together with this about fighting other people's wars: Then the response is that the magnitude of the threat means that these aren't other people's wars. They might not be taking place on our own territory, but they are our wars, too. Concerning countries like Ukraine, like the Philippines, like Israel, and like many more, the forces of authoritarianism take one step closer to our own shores each time one of these countries falls. The cost is not the important consideration. Where are very survival as a nation is at stake we must be prepared to pay any price.--Percy

Double post

By 5:20 in the morning of November 11, 1918, all signatures were affixed to the Armistice that would put an end to active fighting in World War One(Peace was actually not ratified until January 10th, 1920). The Armistice called for the cessation of all hostilities at 11 am. This has been called "the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month". 2,738 soldiers died that last day almost all after the signatures were affixed.
With the Armistice the slaughter of a generation of men in Europe had finally came to an end. Almost a whole generation of men from the United Kingdom, France, and Germany were wiped out, but now, finally, there was peace. The war to end all wars was over. Europe was utterly and totally transformed. The repercussions would totally alter and end the Russian Empire. The chaos we see today in the Mideast can be traced to and to some extent be blamed on the war and its aftermath. But there was peace. The guns were silent. People could sleep without fear of a sudden, tragic, violent death. The doughboys could return to their homes in the US. A chance was now to be had to right wrongs, deal with inequities, and make a brighter future for all coming generations.
This was not to be. In 20 years, when the next generation of cannon fodder was prepped, young men and women entered the meat grinder of war again.
But for a moment, a brief moment, let's put all that aside and celebrate "the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month" when, after 4 years of savagery and slaughter, the guns were finally silent. Maybe if only for a brief period of time, but at that time, they were silent.

Can the United States remake the world in our own image? Is global Democracy even an ideal? It won't solve all of the problems. I DO agree that there are "forces" of authoritarianism seeking to overthrow the West.Looking at BBC reports on Ukraine:
Ukraine war: Marines gain riverbank foothold but front lines barely moveMany now say that Ukraine cannot win.

BBC:

---

The (Ukraine) Marines have spoken of gaining a foothold on "several bridgeheads" on the left bank, as they try to push the Russians back in a bid to protect civilians on the opposite side of the river from constant Russian shelling. The few hundred soldiers are outnumbered and surrounded in three directions, yet have managed to dig in for the best part of a month. This isn't the thousands needed to potentially liberate swathes of territory which Kyiv so desperately wants to do.

​

The front line has barely moved for a year and Ukraine finds itself in a tricky cycle. It needs Western help to deliver battlefield progress, but it also needs battlefield progress to convince Western helpers.

---

As long as Russia keeps feeding its army with new blood, Ukraine will continue to be involved in a war of attrition and one in which they are unlikely to win.

I think we will go broke anyway. We have spent so much money on wars that did nothing (such as Afghanistan)
and are now being seen as the instigator of wars we don't even fight in, but only support financially.My latest financial apologists all predict a major change in the economy set to hit around March of 2024. Let's hope they are full of hot air!

As reported by many news outlets yesterday, With Russian economy far from collapse, U.S. opts for tougher punishment. In other words, more sanctions.As pointed out several times in this thread, sanctions don't work. That we still have a range of sanction options available to us is one of the reasons. All the many sanctions we've added since the initial round means that we are always leaving many sanction options on the table.One other reason sanctions don't work is that the target always finds other trading partners or relies more on domestic sources. Another reason, at least when dictators are involved, is that there are paltry political costs from a suffering citizenry. And executing political opponents works marvelously for squashing opposition.We weren't serious enough in providing military aid at the outset of the war to give Ukraine sufficient advantage within its own borders. Military aid was far too slow in ramping up (and still is), in the early stages usually because of unsubstantiated fears that arming Ukraine too strongly would incite Russia to go nuclear. All we accomplished was guaranteeing a longterm stalemate resulting in greater suffering.Fun fact that many might already know: Ukraine was prepared to take out Russia's Black Sea fleet using StarLink communications provided by Elon Musk, but Musk, citing a fear that Russia would go nuclear, blocked StarLink from working anywhere near Russian ports or fleets.--Percy

That's not how it works.War is big business. As long as it's conducted somewhere else, war means immense wealth and power to the right people. The billions of dollars sent to Ukraine largely return to U.S. producers of munitions and other war materiel. Our misguided wars in southeast Asia had the knock-on effect of hastening the growth of Japan, Korea, and other allies: That's what empires do for armed vassal states.I smile when I see references to the Post-War Boom -- there was no post-war. An existential world war was downsized to a sustainable operation with maximized returns.Nothing moves money around like war, but war also has great utility in social and political management. Congress lards the budget with more than the military requests, then directs that bacon to bases and factories in key voting districts. More jobs, more money; more votes, more money; more war, more money. Nothing shores up political support at home like a good enemy.War may offer the best return on otherwise idle youth, always a volatile political demographic. No doubt Putin is delighted to empty his prisons and literally dragoon the unemployed to throw into Ukraine with little to no training. Boost the ranks, lower prison rolls and costs, remove a poor and restive set: win-win-win.You worry that proxy wars will break the bank. They make us rich. They break our souls.But all that has been business as usual for a long time. Putin sabotaged the global forever-war economy with the invasion of Ukraine: he wants all the markets. If we fail to stop Putin in Ukraine, we will have to stop him somewhere closer. Money will be the least of our worries.Bringing the war home is a very bad business.

If Putin beats us, it will be through dethroning the dollar itself. Apart from nuclear and hypersonic missles, he has no weapons with which to defeat us.