The CW on sex is, the more you talk about it, the less you are getting. apply that principle to biden's and blikin's foreign policy. The more they talk about deterrence, the less there is and the less safe the world becomes. It's sobering to think that only a nuclear exchange will make the left realize how dangerous their worldview is.
What? A whack-a-mole approach to inserting ourselves militarily into every conflict that comes up across the globe is not a viable national strategy? Who knew? Evolution of military electronics has led to a leveling of the playing field in many ways in terms of readily available precision guided weapons to many more countries than ever before. Add in the rapid evolution of inexpensive hardware (e.g., drones) into new forms of precision guided weapons (produced in unimaginable quantities and which are logisitically sustainable) that are punching well above their weight class. Flowing from this is the realization that evolving asymmetric warfare tactics are exceedingly difficult to deal with and can have a profound impacts on the achieving one's strategic objectives & they also contribute greatly to a country's citizenry's diminishing desire to stay in the fight for the long haul. And as logistics profoundly influences military outcomes, the state of one's military industrial capacity is inextricably linked to logistics. Take a sledgehammer to one's industrical capacity and you also shed countless highly skilled workers that take decades to re-establish. Taken in whole, U.S. foreign policy over the last 2 decades resembles a pattern of whack-a-mole military activism and producing results that fall far short of what was promised... and our adversaries are keenly aware of this.
I am no expert in international relations, but I realized 20 years ago that globalization was a disastrously stupid policy for the western world, led by the United States. Globalization has devastated our abilities in all advanced western countries to produce what we need at an essential level.
Biden and company yammer on about climate change being the biggest existential threat to the US. In fact there are several more immediate threats that the administration's war on fossil fuel energy is exacerbating. If we maximized drilling and fracking and otherwise ended the pursuit of a green new deal, we would be better able to address the immediate serious threats we face.
Sadly, we need to remind ourselves that electing people more interested in a "new world order", never defining what they mean by the term, gave us a "so nothing" foreign policy when our adversaries decided to take a firm hand in doing the redefining.
Obama stood by while Russia took Crimea by military force from Ukraine. Joe Biden stood by while Russia moved into north and eastern parts of Ukraine, again by military force.
Is there really any wonder why rogue barbarians like Hamas think that they can get away with attacking the Israeli's?
Yes, there are all these people standing around using the excuse that "mistakes were made" (unforced errors in reality), not reading the room, and not coming up with solutions on a timely enough basis to even keep the status quo.
Our adversaries are going to take advantage of Joe Biden's lack of a coherent...and publicly supported...foreign policy throughout the election season. Just as Jimmy Carter was hobbled by the events he was facing and a serious challenge from a powerful US senator, Joe Biden will be challenged.
Jimmy Carter, at least, had all of his marbles, something that cannot be said about Joe.
This hit piece by Grafstein is uninformed fear mongering. There is no verifiable evidence by anyone including this journalist that Americas war making capabilities are stretched thin. Doves of his ilk will always ere on the side of do nothing and criticize from afar any effort to check up our global adversaries unless the whites of their eyes can be seen.
J. D. is a very impressive guy. Nixon wrote a great book defining the usage of our power and our direct and indirect threats. Ukraine has no bearing on our security directly. The Russians have acted as they always do to lengthen the distance their enemies have to go to Moscow. We should have negotiated a settlement years ago. Israel is a different story given our Jewish community here and our good intentions and pro-democratic backing of the Zionists in establishing the state of Israel. We have to back Israel and convince Islam to make peace- easy peasy. We have blindly given the store away to the Chinese and it may be too late to recover the chips and munitions industries that are essential to our survival...kinda stupid of us- thanks to both Rs and Ds. We need to get all these little junior geniuses to get to work- building shit right now. We're screwed.
"Figures like Biden, Haley, and Pence insist that supporting Ukraine is critical to deter the Chinese from invading Taiwan."
Isn't this entirely backwards? Support for Ukraine has an inverse relationship to our efforts to defend Taiwan.
Said another way, given finite resources and sluggish efforts to replace those assets, weapons and ammo sent to Ukraine are, by definition, unavailable to defend Israel and Taiwan.
China must be tickled pink to see us dumping dollars and weapons in Ukraine. It would seem a great ploy by China/Putin to bleed the US... prior to China taking Taiwan.
If the US formally accepts that Taiwan is a part of China then Taiwan is none of our business. Ukraine never was any of our business. Israel has been a steadfast ally in the middle east and is most certainly a democracy unlike Taiwan and Ukraine. It is in our National Interests to support a rational, strategic and effective response to the Hamas atrocities with a clearly defined objective. Sadly, clearly defined objectives don’t exist in American foreign policy. And when it comes to a projection of American strength, that ship sailed w/ our disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan, another place in the world that was none of our business.
We aren't a bottomless bucket in terms of materiel and supplies. Zelensky's demands for more, more, more have depleted our supplies. Our European partners need to step up and protect their interests allowing us to protect our interests which, funnily enough, they won't acknowledge and are truly also theirs. Having worked in defense for a period, it will take time to get production going. We don't have the luxury of time, stringing things out as Biden did in Ukraine will be detrimental to achieving victory in the Middle East.
I don’t know, but I suspect that when the leaders or high officials of Russia, China and Iran have been meeting over the past years it’s probably not to exchange cooking recipes.
While not widely publicized, a several billions of the aid to Israel request (reportedly somewhere between $10-14 billion, a vagueness that is telling in itself) is not for arms or armaments but is slated to upgrade our munitions manufacturing capabilities. While needed for our military, it’s unclear why the funds are not, at a minimum, divided up between the Israel and Ukraine requests.
In any event, the US should not have to be the main player in Ukraine which is fundamentally a European issue in which Germany, the UK and France should take the lead, with former Warsaw Pact countries assisting.
The US is properly involved in the Middle East as no other Western country has the force projection ability we do. Once the carrier strike forces are both on station and the THAADs in place, whether the war expands regionally will be up to one and only one country: Iran. Admittedly, their plan to weaken and demoralizing Israel is backfiring spectacularly. Their options are bleak. It either consents meekly to the total loss of its Hamas asset or it orders Hezbollah into action, risking not only its loss to but, in the tradition of the Argentine junta of the ‘80s in the Falklands and the Greek colonels of the ‘70 in Cyprus, its hold on power.
In our side, if Iran acts and our Navy stands down, then our deterrence power disappears with it. Anything is possible with Iran’s “end times” Shi’a Twelvers rulers, but I suppose we will soon test Obama’s theory that Iran is rational and its antisemitism no more than an organizing principle (in itself a bizarre formulation for a country where much of the population still views Israel kindly and has express its disinterest in suffering for Palestine).
As for China, we do have motivated Allie’s, principally in Australia, Japan and South Korea with The Philippines to a lesser extent. At least, the burden may be shared. Importantly, the Chinese military has not been tested since its brief war with Vietnam in the late ‘70s in which it acquitted itself rather poorly. So while China may have nice, shiny equipment, its leadership and troops are entirely untested. An amphibious assault across the strait is an incredibly complex military operation. Would China risk it as a XI vanity project? Time will tell.
Overall, the old Roman adage retains its force, “si pacem velle, para bellum” (if you seek peace, prepare for war). Deterrence beats a shooting war, but if a shooting war begins at least we are prepared.
The author has not considered the possibility of the US dramatically increasing its production and stockpiling of munitions and weapons. It will serve America well should we be engaged in conflict. It will serve America well should we desire to avoid direct conflict by sending supplies to our allies.
America has ample resources for this effort if we prioritize them. I would certainly be quicker to support higher taxes for those purposes than to feed the university DEI and intersectionality beast.
Like get rid of the trillion dollars for EV/climate subsidies and put it back in improving our national security capabilities - last I check, the idea was for our central government to worry about security, not climate and education...
We should step back from Ukraine including financially and leave it to our European allies take the lead and stop expecting us to take the heat for them.
Since 1945, America does war in half-measures. That's the problem. That's why there are so many ticks in the L column. It can be done. You just have to make a real effort.
The CW on sex is, the more you talk about it, the less you are getting. apply that principle to biden's and blikin's foreign policy. The more they talk about deterrence, the less there is and the less safe the world becomes. It's sobering to think that only a nuclear exchange will make the left realize how dangerous their worldview is.
Unfortunately, completely accurate.
What? A whack-a-mole approach to inserting ourselves militarily into every conflict that comes up across the globe is not a viable national strategy? Who knew? Evolution of military electronics has led to a leveling of the playing field in many ways in terms of readily available precision guided weapons to many more countries than ever before. Add in the rapid evolution of inexpensive hardware (e.g., drones) into new forms of precision guided weapons (produced in unimaginable quantities and which are logisitically sustainable) that are punching well above their weight class. Flowing from this is the realization that evolving asymmetric warfare tactics are exceedingly difficult to deal with and can have a profound impacts on the achieving one's strategic objectives & they also contribute greatly to a country's citizenry's diminishing desire to stay in the fight for the long haul. And as logistics profoundly influences military outcomes, the state of one's military industrial capacity is inextricably linked to logistics. Take a sledgehammer to one's industrical capacity and you also shed countless highly skilled workers that take decades to re-establish. Taken in whole, U.S. foreign policy over the last 2 decades resembles a pattern of whack-a-mole military activism and producing results that fall far short of what was promised... and our adversaries are keenly aware of this.
I am no expert in international relations, but I realized 20 years ago that globalization was a disastrously stupid policy for the western world, led by the United States. Globalization has devastated our abilities in all advanced western countries to produce what we need at an essential level.
Biden and company yammer on about climate change being the biggest existential threat to the US. In fact there are several more immediate threats that the administration's war on fossil fuel energy is exacerbating. If we maximized drilling and fracking and otherwise ended the pursuit of a green new deal, we would be better able to address the immediate serious threats we face.
And we squandered our strategic oil reserve to keep Joe Biden in power.
Sadly, we need to remind ourselves that electing people more interested in a "new world order", never defining what they mean by the term, gave us a "so nothing" foreign policy when our adversaries decided to take a firm hand in doing the redefining.
Obama stood by while Russia took Crimea by military force from Ukraine. Joe Biden stood by while Russia moved into north and eastern parts of Ukraine, again by military force.
Is there really any wonder why rogue barbarians like Hamas think that they can get away with attacking the Israeli's?
Yes, there are all these people standing around using the excuse that "mistakes were made" (unforced errors in reality), not reading the room, and not coming up with solutions on a timely enough basis to even keep the status quo.
Our adversaries are going to take advantage of Joe Biden's lack of a coherent...and publicly supported...foreign policy throughout the election season. Just as Jimmy Carter was hobbled by the events he was facing and a serious challenge from a powerful US senator, Joe Biden will be challenged.
Jimmy Carter, at least, had all of his marbles, something that cannot be said about Joe.
This hit piece by Grafstein is uninformed fear mongering. There is no verifiable evidence by anyone including this journalist that Americas war making capabilities are stretched thin. Doves of his ilk will always ere on the side of do nothing and criticize from afar any effort to check up our global adversaries unless the whites of their eyes can be seen.
J. D. is a very impressive guy. Nixon wrote a great book defining the usage of our power and our direct and indirect threats. Ukraine has no bearing on our security directly. The Russians have acted as they always do to lengthen the distance their enemies have to go to Moscow. We should have negotiated a settlement years ago. Israel is a different story given our Jewish community here and our good intentions and pro-democratic backing of the Zionists in establishing the state of Israel. We have to back Israel and convince Islam to make peace- easy peasy. We have blindly given the store away to the Chinese and it may be too late to recover the chips and munitions industries that are essential to our survival...kinda stupid of us- thanks to both Rs and Ds. We need to get all these little junior geniuses to get to work- building shit right now. We're screwed.
JD Vance wouldn’t know a good foreign policy position if it sat on his face. Nothing impressive about a windsock with no original ideas.
At least he served in the military. More than any of our presidents for the last two decades.
"Figures like Biden, Haley, and Pence insist that supporting Ukraine is critical to deter the Chinese from invading Taiwan."
Isn't this entirely backwards? Support for Ukraine has an inverse relationship to our efforts to defend Taiwan.
Said another way, given finite resources and sluggish efforts to replace those assets, weapons and ammo sent to Ukraine are, by definition, unavailable to defend Israel and Taiwan.
China must be tickled pink to see us dumping dollars and weapons in Ukraine. It would seem a great ploy by China/Putin to bleed the US... prior to China taking Taiwan.
If the US formally accepts that Taiwan is a part of China then Taiwan is none of our business. Ukraine never was any of our business. Israel has been a steadfast ally in the middle east and is most certainly a democracy unlike Taiwan and Ukraine. It is in our National Interests to support a rational, strategic and effective response to the Hamas atrocities with a clearly defined objective. Sadly, clearly defined objectives don’t exist in American foreign policy. And when it comes to a projection of American strength, that ship sailed w/ our disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan, another place in the world that was none of our business.
America is a nation based on warfare. Warfare is the business of America. I suppose that might be true of any hegemon.
The greatest illusion, is that we run our own affairs, poppycock, like a leaf on a stream we go wither we go.
We aren't a bottomless bucket in terms of materiel and supplies. Zelensky's demands for more, more, more have depleted our supplies. Our European partners need to step up and protect their interests allowing us to protect our interests which, funnily enough, they won't acknowledge and are truly also theirs. Having worked in defense for a period, it will take time to get production going. We don't have the luxury of time, stringing things out as Biden did in Ukraine will be detrimental to achieving victory in the Middle East.
I don’t know, but I suspect that when the leaders or high officials of Russia, China and Iran have been meeting over the past years it’s probably not to exchange cooking recipes.
While not widely publicized, a several billions of the aid to Israel request (reportedly somewhere between $10-14 billion, a vagueness that is telling in itself) is not for arms or armaments but is slated to upgrade our munitions manufacturing capabilities. While needed for our military, it’s unclear why the funds are not, at a minimum, divided up between the Israel and Ukraine requests.
In any event, the US should not have to be the main player in Ukraine which is fundamentally a European issue in which Germany, the UK and France should take the lead, with former Warsaw Pact countries assisting.
The US is properly involved in the Middle East as no other Western country has the force projection ability we do. Once the carrier strike forces are both on station and the THAADs in place, whether the war expands regionally will be up to one and only one country: Iran. Admittedly, their plan to weaken and demoralizing Israel is backfiring spectacularly. Their options are bleak. It either consents meekly to the total loss of its Hamas asset or it orders Hezbollah into action, risking not only its loss to but, in the tradition of the Argentine junta of the ‘80s in the Falklands and the Greek colonels of the ‘70 in Cyprus, its hold on power.
In our side, if Iran acts and our Navy stands down, then our deterrence power disappears with it. Anything is possible with Iran’s “end times” Shi’a Twelvers rulers, but I suppose we will soon test Obama’s theory that Iran is rational and its antisemitism no more than an organizing principle (in itself a bizarre formulation for a country where much of the population still views Israel kindly and has express its disinterest in suffering for Palestine).
As for China, we do have motivated Allie’s, principally in Australia, Japan and South Korea with The Philippines to a lesser extent. At least, the burden may be shared. Importantly, the Chinese military has not been tested since its brief war with Vietnam in the late ‘70s in which it acquitted itself rather poorly. So while China may have nice, shiny equipment, its leadership and troops are entirely untested. An amphibious assault across the strait is an incredibly complex military operation. Would China risk it as a XI vanity project? Time will tell.
Overall, the old Roman adage retains its force, “si pacem velle, para bellum” (if you seek peace, prepare for war). Deterrence beats a shooting war, but if a shooting war begins at least we are prepared.
The author has not considered the possibility of the US dramatically increasing its production and stockpiling of munitions and weapons. It will serve America well should we be engaged in conflict. It will serve America well should we desire to avoid direct conflict by sending supplies to our allies.
America has ample resources for this effort if we prioritize them. I would certainly be quicker to support higher taxes for those purposes than to feed the university DEI and intersectionality beast.
Like get rid of the trillion dollars for EV/climate subsidies and put it back in improving our national security capabilities - last I check, the idea was for our central government to worry about security, not climate and education...
We should step back from Ukraine including financially and leave it to our European allies take the lead and stop expecting us to take the heat for them.
Since 1945, America does war in half-measures. That's the problem. That's why there are so many ticks in the L column. It can be done. You just have to make a real effort.