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The day the Europe and world changed – politicalbetting.com
The day the Europe and world changed – politicalbetting.com
Bombshell speech from US secretary of defence:-stark strategic realities prevent US from being primarily focused on the security of Europe.-US troops wont be part of post ceasefire deterrence force in Ukraine-any nato forces that are sent wont have Nato Article 5 protection
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Is this the not much?
Seems more of a restatement of what Trump has been saying for a while.
I think everyone got carried away with the talk about the minerals deal. That was more Zelensky negotiating to keep the weapons supply going than any expectation of US guarantees.
But in any event, the terms of debate are clarified in adjacent of any negotiations. Which at least protects us from an unexpected betrayal.
One area he was absolutely correct on was support for Ukraine.
None of this is new; it has been in Trump's words and the GOP's actions for ages.
Do I do wonder why some intelligent people have tried to sell this line.
Oligarchs and Vulture Capitalists succeed where there is ongoing destruction of norms and the status quo.
https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/lessons-minsk-deal-breaking-cycle-russias-war-ukraine
Europe is a (fairly wealthy) backwater. The main strategic threat is Russia which has been destroyed as a conventional threat thanks to the blithering incompetence of Putin. I really wouldn't fancy Russia's chances against Poland in a conventional war at this point, let alone western Europe. Within 10 years it won't even be close.
The great game has moved on. To be honest, that is not necessarily a bad thing for a continent that has seen far more than its fair share of wars.
It'd require too many painful choices, and the electorate would rather spend more on pensions, the NHS and social welfare and will punish politicians who do anything else.
We have to start spending far more on defence.
I was going to use the sort of language that normally gets you banned from PB.
But his followers have, and it has been taken up by (at best) appeaser shits in the west. Such as Trump, who has mentioned it.
Without the US, probably quadruple the current rate, would be required to build up capability, for decades.
More than 10%
Vanishingly few dramas maintain this quality past 4 or even 5 seasons. The only comparison is probably Grays Anatomy but Outlander has a harder job because it cannot keep churning characters in and out and it has a fiendish time travel scheme to maintain
Chapeau chapeau chapeau
@MacFarlaneNews
Rep Earl Carter (R-GA) introduces legislation “authorizing President Trump to acquire Greenland and renaming it Red, White, and Blueland”
https://t.co/zRsSwhfcf1
Now the US Defence Secretary giving Zelensky terms he clearly can't and won't accept so that conflict continues too. European defence spending still needed to be increased regardless anyway given the US is more focused on containing China and its own borders militarily than protecting NATO Europe
https://www.forbes.com/sites/katharinabuchholz/2023/01/13/advanced-microchip-production-relies-on-taiwan/
https://www.reuters.com/markets/stocks/putin-warns-russia-will-act-if-nato-crosses-its-red-lines-ukraine-2021-11-30/
Putin has spelled it out to us all, including you, me, Trump and Hegseth that he is angling for a Soviet era map of Europe for Greater Russia.
Trying to sell the Hegseth speech as anything other than a capitulation or simple treachery to ones allies is disingenuous contempt.
Does that mean we can get rid of that rather pitiful & expensive sock down the British trousers Trident, or do you think it’s only Faslane that’s preventing Putin from first striking perfidious Albion?
However I don’t really think there’s been a conscious attempt to lead the British public for many years.
*afterall, 'their' suggests the possibility of typos auto-correct
Ruth Deyermond
@ruthdeyermond.bsky.social
This is, first and most importantly, a disaster for Ukraine, but it's also catastrophically bad for European and US security. The US and some in Europe will tell themselves that this is about the US sensibly reprioritising on security. But Putin will see it as capitulation to him.
https://bsky.app/profile/ruthdeyermond.bsky.social/post/3lhyg5wvkp22c
They spit out as many different lines as possible, designed to confuse and appeal to as many people as possible.
We saw this with MH17, where a new line came out of the Kremlin daily, and they were slurped up by idiots and repeated by shills daily - however obviously contradictory those lines were.
On many occasions - e.g. the Carlson 'interview' - he fails to mention NATO expansion as a reason for the war.
Putin is a fascist imperialist. That's all you need to know.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_next_United_Kingdom_general_election#National_poll_results
Farage is weak on this issue, you can call him a Putin appeaser.
The Tories obviously presided over a long period of defence cuts.
All the facts are a-changing. Pity the Gazans
And many of Germanies demands were not unreasonable. I think history judges Versailles to have been overly harsh on the German nation - the war guilt stuff etc. (Not to say that the Germans would not have been equally bad winners - Brest Litovsk shows that. Drang nach osten didn't start in 1933 after all). Remilitarising your own territory? Fine. Actually having an air force and expanded military? Ok. Re-integrating ethnice Germans into the Reich - well self determination ought to apply to all really.
And then in reality appeasement bought time. Time to build spitfire factories and design the Lancaster. And also by failing, it gave the causus belli - Hitler said 1938 was the end and he lied. So now we must fight.
I’d also suggest using Trident is de facto relying on the US nuclear umbrella. Developing our own strategic nukes might be at least coherent (if still bonkers).
Putin had expected to walk around Kyiv being adulated but Biden got there before him but the humiliation that he never recovered from was just before the visit Lloyd Austin ringing up his counterpart in Russia and telling them to pause attacks for the visit of Biden or it would be seen as an attack of war.
And yes - pity the Gazans trapped under a fanatical ruling power in the face of a mighty conquering army. Its 1945 all over again and the Russian Guards are marching on Berlin.
They are both bullshitters of the first order.
We need to let them die and get on with protecting the young. But quid pro quo we need to teach the young WHY Britain and the west and freedom is worth protecting. Send em all back to school and smack some patriotism into them. Toughen them up by sending them for away days to special “watch fat and old people die” camps where they can peer through small Perspex slits into gated enclosures where fat and old people die clutching their fucking PlayStations then comes the mass brutalizing of the lawyers
Grim, ironic, bleak, hideously logical
"Between the tariffs, the idiotic threats to Canadian and Danish sovereignty, the destruction of USAID, and the undermining of NATO, it's hard to see what the Trump administration would have done differently in their first 2 weeks if their aim were to destroy US power and global influence."
Also, it can't be ignored that cancelling the Dreadnought class SSBNs would be an industrial catastrophe. It's taken decades and billions of pounds to build BAE's yard at Barrow into one of the best nuclear submarine production facilities in the world. Killing the Dreadnoughts would destroy all that work and also throw the AUKUS partnership into chaos.
Though deal is obviously a fluid term in the circumstances.
Even as I wrote “we need to send fat and old people to special camps where they die in agony in front of shocked schoolchildren” I thought, hmm, maybe I could have skipped that second session with the kettlebell
The Israelis are upping the heat on the West Bank too, and to a lesser extent in Jerusalem...as NATO sets up shop in Jordan. Can't have a FS that's Gaza-only.
I believe our current system will soon be supseded.
We need a ceasefire in Gaza so we can empty it and build lots of beachfront Trump resorts at the US taxpayer’s and Palestinians’ expense.
We could support Ukraine but we would really need all the minerals in the ground there and all the rebuilding contracts.
Facebook needs to get back in the good books, what’s that you say, a $25million payout to Trump to apologise for banning him? All good now.
US won’t allow NATO protection to any peacekeeping force? Well maybe if NATO states were to buy exclusively US weapons and pay for US intelligence etc etc.
The thing is, Europe has had ages to build its own defence capability but we were all to smug about our welfare states and laughing at the fat uncultured Americans whilst hiding behind them whenever another big boy was out bullying.
It’s lovely that Germany is so perfect, that France has such amazing roads and rail and they get loads of money per child, wonderful how Spain does fuck all but is delightfully developed these days, beautiful public spaces paid for by the state, lovely municipal buy-outs of stadiums at exaggerated values to help football teams. The UK has been able to love sneering how we have “Our NHS”.
Europe needs to start chipping in for British and French carrier groups with money or coordinated support ships and planes and contribute to the nuclear deterrent that they are happy to one day benefit from. Countries should be given responsibilities based on abilities and geography. Ireland needs to stop being a smug self righteous crap hole and arm up.
October 7 made it clear that Hamas, the Gazans, the Palestinians, etc, can never be trusted with a 2 state solution (yes yes, history). They tried to rape murder kidnap and mutilate as many Jews as possible JUST FOR BEING JEWS. And then they boasted “we will do this again and again forever”. Given its history as a state born of the Holocaust, Israel cannot accept this, not now, not any longer
But what can they do about it? The only real answer is to drive the Gazans out of Gaza forever, and who cares how many die, and take over the West Bank and make life so insufferable the Palestinians eventually leave there, as well. Then Israel can have some kind of security within defensible borders (= enormous fences all around)
Trump is giving them a singular opportunity - unique in their history, unlikely to return - to do this. Right now Israel has nukes and Iran does not, so Israel can do this with relative impunity. The Saudis and Qataris etc will moan but do nothing
Ergo, I think it will happen and soon
For the purposes of clarity if i was a young Palestinian I would absolutely loathe Israel, Israelis, Jews - I would be filled with an unquenchable hatred - and for very very understandable reasons
But it is exactly this that means Israel has to act now
As i said: bleak
WTAF are you on about?
Germany would have been ready for war in 1942. Hitler actually jumped the gun and started the war with things like the Panzer 1 in the front like.
U.K. rearmament actually started in 1932. Before Hitler came to power. The trigger was the laying down of the pocket battleships.
The was a steady ramp up from there. A big issue was that weapons are not potatoes. You can’t just announce “we are doubling military spending”. You need to spend money on the it’s for factories to make the machines for factories that build weapons.
A lot of Germany’s rearmament money was wasted on “build stuff for parades now!”.
The UK took the approach of rearming in depth - (re-)building the infrastructure to fight a world war.
So in 1939, we were just getting to the stage of finalising the actual weapon designs for the war that was coming in 1942 (German nav plans made the date obvious).
The Spitfire and Hurricane were stopgaps - the “real” fighters were going to be 400mph+, 2000hp engines, uniform cannon armament. Think Hawker Tempest.
GreenlandRed, White & Bluelandhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dOBhf8f7cXM
America dominates its continent. Canada is its bitch, Mexico is a supplicant
American can retreat into isolation like no other nation on earth, and it will do just fine
Britain is a small damp archipelago off NW Europe, we had no mighty homeland to retreat to
America won’t be a global policeman any more, but they don’t care any more. Maybe China wants the job? Also, America is ahead in crucial technology - only marginally, but still ahead