Joining NATO

[Montana St Alum]

Anyone want to opine on how far east Russia would go if Putin had his way? Worst case.

Reasonable question, and one being asked in a bunch of capitals!

Ukraine didn't have much time to prep and Russian forces haven't had a lot of success. NATO has been prepping for 75 years.

Regarding equipment advantages, every encounter between U.S. (or French and EU equipment) and Russian equipment has been a disaster for those using Russian gear.

NATO forces have a huge advantage in training, and successful employment in combat. French and other NATO forces have a great deal of relatively recent combat experience. U.S. capabilities are off the scale in every conceivable area of comparison. Way back in 1986, I designed the air-to-air training program for all of the west coast Navy fighter squadrons when I was in charge of the FFARP program in VF-126.
The training and equipment now are so far ahead of what we did back then that my program is now kindergarten level, on the short bus! Interoperability, instantaneous combat data sharing, flexibility, personnel quality - really, everything - is now so advanced that Russian forces (people, gear and doctrine) are hopelessly outmatched.


Even standing alone, Poland would slaughter Russian forces. They've been prepping since 2014 and are leading the Europeans in military spending, having committed to 4% of GDP recently. Poland also has a huge amount of information on how Russia might deploy because they were part of the Warsaw Pact.
Russia has a huge (as does China) demographics issue. No kids = no young men available to march into meat grinders and it won't be long before the force structure collapses.

My big concern is that everyone gets backed into a corner and someone pushes the button on a nuke. Has anyone seen the old movie, "The Bedford Incident"? Worth a watch!

[wooley12]

Good insight to capabilities. Opinions seem to vary on whether Putins nuke threats are serious or hot air for a number of reasons. Would your assessment change if most of the Ukraine was taken or given to Russia in a peace deal?. IMO the Bear is always hungry.

Right now we don't seem to be in it to win it and that has led to disaster after disaster.

[Montana St Alum]

Good insight to capabilities. Opinions seem to vary on whether Putins nuke threats are serious or hot air for a number of reasons. Would your assessment change if most of the Ukraine was taken or given to Russia in a peace deal?. IMO the Bear is always hungry.

Right now we don't seem to be in it to win it and that has led to disaster after disaster.

I'm certain of everything, until I'm not.
My assessment (such as it is) assumes Russians taking over all of Ukraine.

Nuke threats are always serious, of course. Unfortunately, the lessons some countries have learned are, "get nukes, and when you do, never give them up!". Gaddafi comes to mind. He gave up on WMDs and then the Obama administration intervened creating a dead Gaddafi and a resulting nightmare in the entire region. Iran took the lesson seriously.

We have a series of treaty obligations such as NATO for a reason. Membership has its advantages and non-membership has its consequences. The Budapest Memorandum was just that, a memorandum - not ratified by the U.S. Senate (another pesky constraint in the constitution).

Washington (with backing by the EU) overthrew the government of Ukraine when they started leaning toward Putin. The level of interference was astonishing and resulted in the overthrow in 2014 - leading to our current situation via a route through Crimea (where our response was to tell Putin to, "cut it out"!).

We need to "show some restraint" to put it in Mick Jagger terms.

You are correct though. You need to be "in it to win it". We seem to love the idea of doing too little, too late. We tend to use "proportional responses" which really does mean that we only do enough to ensure prolonged bloodletting, giving our opponents enough breathing space to respond in kind, rather than collapsing in defeat. That has played out in Ukraine since the war that started in 2014 resumed in 2022. That was Johnson's strategy with "Rolling Thunder". It's the reason a ceasefire with Hamas would be suicidal.

War is hell. That's why we should try not to start them.

Now, how about that China-Taiwan thing?!

Ah, another drunken rant committed to ones and zeros!

[Capercaillie]

How many times did we kidnap 1000's of children to reeducate? None I think.

Who is "we"? I don't think most Americans want to identify themselves with the people who carried out the atrocities described in this book:

Ward Churchill. Kill the Indian, Save the Man: The Genocidal Impact of American Indian Residential Schools.

"Residential schools" (more correctly described as "concentration camps for indigenous children") is an aspect of US history that is very deliberately and effectively omitted from US "public school" indoctrination centers, and American people are continually being misinformed about. There is more awareness of "residential schools" in Canada, partly because the Canadian Reinhard Heydrichs were not as effective in doing their jobs as their counterparts in the US.

Another episode I am aware of is "Operation Babylift," a disgusting PR stunt to abduct ethnic Vietnamese orphans from Saigon in 1975.

NATO forces have a huge advantage in training, and successful employment in combat.

Not only that - the Russian navy has just one, 40-year-old, aircraft carrier that has only ever been deployed in a handful of exercises, and catches fire every time. The idea that the Russian military would "go east" in a special military operation to de-Nazify Alaska, or whatever, is as ridiculous now as it was in the crappy Reagan-era TV movies. Although there are probably lots of Alaskans who would prefer that to another 4 years of the Biden presidency.

[wooley12]

If you want to go back through history we are all related to horrible government behavior. I'd like to keep my eye on what is happening in this war that can be addressed. IME, whataboutism is hand washing.

Now that the weapons flow from the US looks like it has been secured long term, I hear Putin might be open to a ceasefire.

[Montana St Alum]

If you want to go back through history we are all related to horrible government behavior. I'd like to keep my eye on what is happening in this war that can be addressed. IME, whataboutism is hand washing.

Now that the weapons flow from the US looks like it has been secured long term, I hear Putin might be open to a ceasefire.

Yeah. My analogy is imperfect, but when you come back from a mission and analyse how you got shrapnel in your butt, it doesn't do much to go watch "The Bridges at Toko-Ri" to develop lessons learned.

It's best to stay as close to the subject at hand as possible if you want to pick up tips on how to do better next time, or at least come up with new mistakes, rather than repeat the old ones into perpetuity.

[Capercaillie]

One limiting factor on the Russia thing, I wonder if democracy would start to come into play if they started to move strategically beyond that region? Say they went at Finland, or Alaska or the Canadian North. Would at some point their citizens say enough? Or is it a true dictatorship? Hard to know what happens inside the country with the limited media coverage inside (on top of media bans internationally, hell I can't even get the news on Facebook anymore)

That is putting a lot of faith in the people. The Russian government might have to resort to really sophisticated disinformation tricks, like having Colin Powell walk into the Duma to wave around a salt shaker full of white powder.

I'd like to keep my eye on what is happening in this war that can be addressed. IME, whataboutism is hand washing.

If your reaction to current events is something like, "This time, the government and the corporate media are definitely telling the truth about everything, and would never engage in any nefarious activity. Hunter Biden and Joseph Black just happened to be appointed to the Burisma board of directors by coincidence. And those guys with the swastika tattoos that keep disappearing civilians are not really neo-Nazis, that's just Russian propaganda, they are only proud Ukrainian democrats," that is a great example of how effective narrative control, Internet censorship, and media indoctrination in the United States has become.

[wooley12]

Well you sure have the Elites, MSM, Crooked Joe, and Jewish Space lasers all figured out. Bravo.

What is really sad these days, IMO, is that people don't know how to read and interpret the "news". People want to be "Fed" the story.

Anyway. There is a major war going on in Europe that we are a part of that this thread is about if you'd like to add to the discussion. What is Putins end game in you opinion?

[Lhartley]

One limiting factor on the Russia thing, I wonder if democracy would start to come into play if they started to move strategically beyond that region? Say they went at Finland, or Alaska or the Canadian North. Would at some point their citizens say enough? Or

"That is putting a lot of faith in the people. The Russian government might have to resort to really sophisticated disinformation tricks, like having Colin Powell walk into the Duma to wave around a salt shaker full of white powder."

Tbh I really don't have much faith in people after watching whole demographics of people who are supposedly anti war start putting flags in their profiles and start treating geopolitical tiffs like sports matches. It's crazy. Russia I see differently though, not quite as black and white when you're strategically making a move on a region literally full of ethnic Russians and historically Russian land. It's not like American governments making military moves based on resources and disguising it as humanitarian missions. I guess I just don't see Russia moving beyond that region and I don't belive people would support it, I don't feel the threat anyways

[Montana St Alum]

It seems I often read about the idea that America gets into wars to extract resources from victimized countries.


I have heard this sort of thing a lot. I suppose there is a kernel of truth to the emotion, but I don't think it comports with the record, generally.

I'd like to share my perspective.

The U.S. and associated companies didn't "get " resources from fighting in Iraq and in fact no U.S. company is involved in Iraqi oil production, to my knowledge.
https://www.voanews.com/a/chinese-compa ... 08186.html
We also "got" nothing from Afghanistan.
https://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafH ... -NAF_2&f=A

Every time we get involved in wars, we, as a nation, "get" just about nothing.

At the end of WWII after the creation of NATO, the U.S. essentially used its own homeland as a human shield to prevent the USSR from attacking Western Europe. We took the position that the U.S. would defend Europe by threatening the USSR with nuclear antihalation while having our troops at the front to protect Europeans. This opened us up to nuclear retaliation by Moscow. We did this while WE financed rebuilding Europe and handing it back over to Europeans.
(For those in the UK, I'd like to take this opportunity to apologize for SPAM!)
We did the same in Japan and Korea.

Maybe we've done plenty wrong, but I know we've done plenty right.

Tomorrow is Memorial Day in the U.S.
It's a time for remembering those who died and it's not exclusive to the U.S., of course.

“All gave some; some gave all.” - Howard Osterkamp.


I love this letter. I don't love it because it shows U.S. soldiers in a good light. I love it because I love my comrades-in-arms. I have, at least figuratively, "shared a foxhole with them" and we would have died for each other.


Though I don't love them, I at least have an understanding of the opposition. It's a perspective that is difficult to explain, but there it is.

Tomorrow, I'll be thinking of friends I lost in the military. "The real heroes didn't come home."

This is an old story of humanity at its best and worst and has followed us through millennia:

"Go, tell the Spartans, stranger passing by
That here, obedient to their laws, we lie."