Based on what I've read about recent proclamations, Ukraine is being left out of the talks and it's bilateral between Russia and US. For those history buffs, that's the same situation that led Ukraine to relinquish its nuclear weapons in the mid-1990s and, it can be argued, left them vulnerable to Russian revisionism. Not a great look considering the amount of Ukranian blood spilled on the battlefields. I hope my reading of that is wrong.
Bleeding out 10,000 Russians takes a week or two (throw in some NorKs as well).
Reminds me of how we left the Afghan government out of our talks with the Taliban. That turned out well.
I honestly don’t have that answer. Trump says he spoke with Zelensky but more importantly, the nexus of this war isn’t US-UR-RU, Europe is deeply involved and will have a seat at the negotiating table regardless of what Trump says. I doubt a Trump/Putin peace talk will get past the Senate.
What happens in UKR will affect a lot of other shit in that area. Hopefully we're not getting ready to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.
I’m not sure the political “we” ever imagined a victory. It was obvious for years before the Ukraine War that NATO countries would never fight to defend Ukraine; and on the eve of the invasion, the Biden administration and every other NATO government refused to give Ukraine a timetable for membership. Yet at the same time, they preserved the public illusion that Ukraine would one day join NATO, while still refusing to negotiate a treaty of neutrality with Moscow.
I'm not serious, but they have to be thinking back to when they did have nukes and gave them up. What if they indeed had them?
Operative word is "federal." So it really depends on how a Guard unit is activated, State or Federal orders.
Not necessarily. If a State/Territory/District were to send Guard to assist another State/Territory/District at that entities' request, they would most likely not be federalized. Similar to sending State Police or other State agencies to other States in support of natural disasters/etc. Just because they are not in their home State does not automatically make them federal. Should the DOD request/activate a Guard unit, then they would be federalized and fall under the auspices of the UCMJ.
I've been told they were "peaceful tourists"....
One huge weakness for the U.S. was lack of artillery, which actually is something I remember an artillery officer had pointed out in an article some years back, saying it could be a major weakness for the U.S. if Russia ever attacked (and this was of course if the Russians demonstrated real capability as well). Artillery capability had been put on the backburner due to the U.S relying on its air power to pound the enemy before sending in ground forces (artillery might be important if the air power is negated due to air defense systems). It also seems no one thought about what if we had to supply an ally with artillery.
JTS11 won't see this, but we've been hearing how the Russian economy is circling the drain for some years now and they still somehow keep soldiering on. I support Ukraine, but the idea that Russia will crack anytime soon might be wishful thinking. It also isn't the Russian economy, it is the Russian-Chinese-North Korean-probably Iranian economy. And Russia unlike most Western countries can self-supply many of the critical resources it needs (oil, gas, lumber, food) plus it has a population culturally attuned to suffering who are poor to begin with.