Why does it have to be one or the other? Question is somewhat rhetorical; it seems as though the current administration is hell-bent on cozying up to Russia, and I think I know why.
Fuck that.
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Hard Power and Soft Power
- Thread starter taxi1
- Start date
Why does it have to be one or the other? Question is somewhat rhetorical; it seems as though the current administration is hell-bent on cozying up to Russia, and I think I know why.
Fuck that.
It can be both, and it should be. Europe can easily afford to step out of the U.S. defense dollar umbrella and the U.S. can maintain a robust and globe leading military. As for Trump’s cozying up to Putin…you are spot on. Total B.S.
That's deep...
If the question is one of getting Americans to care, there is an example. Whether or not one chooses to see it, that's another question.
"It is easy for you and for me to shrug our shoulders and to say that conflicts taking place thousands of miles from the continental United States, and, indeed, thousands of miles from the whole American Hemisphere, do not seriously affect the Americas-and that all the United States has to do is to ignore them' and go about its own business. Passionately though we may desire detachment, we are forced to realize that every word that comes through the air, every ship that sails the sea, every battle that is fought, does affect the Americana future." FDR, 1939
"The American appeasers ignore the warning to be found in the fate of Austria, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Norway, Belgium, the Netherlands, Denmark, and France. They tell you that the Axis powers are going to win anyway; that all this bloodshed in the world could be saved; that the United States might just as well throw its influence into the scale of a dictated peace, and get the best out of it that we can. They call it a "negotiated peace." Nonsense! Is it a negotiated peace if a gang of outlaws surrounds your community and on threat of extermination makes you pay tribute to save your own skins? Such a dictated peace would be no peace at all. It would be only another armistice, leading to the most gigantic armament race and the most devastating trade wars in all history. And in these contests the Americas would offer the only real resistance to the Axis powers." FDR, 1940
Happy to also copy/paste the notable Mark Twain quote about history if it'd help.
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We should definitely have more nuclear powers on the European continent. More proliferation. Our security guarantees are worth nothing.
You appear to be behind on this conversation, and I don’t think we need to rehash all of it again. So, I’ll summarize…my take is that Trump’s “peace” proposals are bad, bad, bad. I’ll say Trump is a loud mouth on social media. At the same time I believe Europe has a responsibility to defend themselves without a single U.S. dollar be (now read this word carefully) required. We should, and will continue I imagine to aid in Europes defense, but we don’t need to cover the bill. Western Europe has a host of systemic, anti-democratic issues that they are trying hard to disguise as “liberalism” and their contributing to their own defense might help refocus those. As for the Ukraine…it is either time to shit of get off the pot. If the land and people are worth defending then let’s get troops in there, smack the Russians back to their old borders, and make the Ukraine part of NATO. But…the EU doesn’t want that, neither US political party wants that, and neither Biden or Trump seem to want it. So…are we to just let Russia grid Ukraine to dust over four or five more years of unimaginable warfare? I think Trump is completely wrong in his approach to any peace talks but something there has to change.
There is zero worlds where the 8% cuts don’t come from our compensation and from services that benefit our quality of life.
It’s been laid out, they are coming for base services, commissaries, schools, BAH and military healthcare among other cuts.
It's reality, not snark.
I didn't realize that all those carriers, subs, divisions, squadrons and bases in PACOM were oriented towards defending Europe. That's snark.
We do mission assurance assessments for Tier 1, 2 and DCAs for all of the COCOMs. The level of infrastructure degradation and its direct impact on risk to mission is noteworthy. Some organizations act as if they are on Gilligan's Island with an unlimited level of support & services from not only their own base/installation, but from the communities outside the gate. We always try and illuminate the current "realities" of what they're facing if anything goes sideways and how that will impact their MEFs/METs. Always fun
You are either missing my point or purposely obfuscating it. The money we give to NATO is separate from the money we spend on carriers, subs and so on. Build wheat we need, I say! Build them better and stronger…just let Europe join us in that globally strategic goal, not rely on us.
The chow hall (sorry, DFAC) on the army side is entirely unacceptable. Some general walked into the food court at an Exchange and saw a bunch of guys at McDonalds or whatever and said, “This is where soldiers want to eat….not the DFAC.” while thinking….Nice, I can redirect those funds!
We actually contribute only $567 million annually to NATO itself as of 2024, constituting only 15.9% (15.8813% to be exact) of NATO's budget and the exact same amount that Germany contributes. Overall, European countries (excluding Canada, Turkey and the United States) contribute about 72.8% of NATO's total budget.
To argue that the European members of NATO are carrying their share of their own defense simply is not correct. Certainly they (European nations) have amped up their spending since 2014 (by about 18%) but that’s not much when the starting point was -1%. But, these are additions to their OWN defense spending. Each NATO nation needs to spend more than the current $430 billion on their OWN defense rather than rely on the remaining $700 + billion the U.S. spends on its OWN defense - especially if we are honestly contemplating a war with China and Russia (because Russia would take advantage of a Chinese war…by attacking Europe).
Or even BRAC? Been there, done that, and we're still paying the price for that stupidity.