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US, NATO Troops Parade Near Russian Border in Estonia

flogger said:
No it is not. In fact it puts her in breach of almost every bilateral and international agreement she has signed since WW2. NATO is a paper tiger and a shadow of what it once was 25 years ago. It can barely defend itself now much less threaten anybody. Putin knows this too thats why he feels able to get away with what he is doing in Ukraine. He is on an Empire rebuilding mission and other states must be very nervous about who will be next



Unfortunately though his article is wrong on virtually all counts. Here Professor Alexander Motyl (perhaps the Wests leading expert on Ukrainian/Russian relations) comprehensively rebuts his assertions.

The Ukraine crisis according to John J. Mearsheimer: Impeccable Logic, Wrong Facts
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LOL.

That essay basically reads as an elaborate 'nuh-uh'.

Criticizing the supposition that Russia is nervous about a ground invasion- aka Napoleon - is incorrect because Napoleon invaded thru Belarus and not Ukraine? And calling that one of the main factual errors? Really?
 
Threegoofs said:
LOL.

That essay basically reads as an elaborate 'nuh-uh'.

Criticizing the supposition that Russia is nervous about a ground invasion- aka Napoleon - is incorrect because Napoleon invaded thru Belarus and not Ukraine? And calling that one of the main factual errors? Really?
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Belarus was annexed to Russia in 1795 becoming part of Russia before the Napoleonic invasions. Regional borders were much different then

NATO troop levels are a fraction of what they were 25 years ago and the US presence in Europe a token 28,000 from 213,000 in 1990 . Russian forces are currently 850,000 and rising rapidly so just who is a threat to whom ? Putin is talking up a non existent NATO threat in an attempt to justify what he is doing domestically

Discard this guys opinion all you like but he probably knows more on this subject than either of us ,Mearsheimer or just about anyone else in the west for that matter

Alexander J. Motyl (Ph.D., Columbia University, 1984) is professor of political science at Rutgers University-Newark. He served as associate director of the Harriman Institute at Columbia University in 1992-1998. A specialist on Ukraine, Russia, and the USSR, he is the author of six academic books and the editor or co-editor of over fifteen volumes, including The Encyclopedia of Nationalism and The Holodomor Reader: A Sourcebook on the Famine of 1932–1933 in Ukraine. Motyl’s weekly blog on “Ukraine’s Orange Blues” appears on World News Headlines, Essays and Opinion -- World Affairs Journal.
 
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Peter Grimm said:
War. Good God, y'all. What is it good for? Absolutely nothing.
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Listen to me.

Oh, war, I despise.
Cause it means destruction of innocent lives.
War means tears to thousands of mothers eyes
When their sons go off to fight and lose their lives.
 
austrianecon said:
Best of the Best meaning SAS are the ones that Delta Force and Navy Seals (including DevGru) learn from and were born from. Delta is a more complete unit since most of their guys come from Rangers and Green Berets. Seals/ST6 on the other hand are very limited in their abilities. Seals aren't trained from the start in basic infantrymen tactics so when SHTF.. they could never turn from "operator to grunt" when it called for.

Delta is pretty close to SAS standards but not better then them.

Special Operations is a huge facet of the modern military. Long gone are the days of Division size units deploying. Brigade or smaller is the future. Inferior? I never said the whole British Army is better. Just what society deems best of bunch.
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that's a lot of speaking out of the ass right there.

Special operations are good and all for fighting allahu moronbars in the ME.

Even in modern conventional war though, you need armies, divisions, mechanized units, artillery, etc.

Special ops arent some sort of invinsible super men, get that out of your head. A typical special operations soldier is simply an infantryman with more training and perhaps a SCAR-H instead of an M4 and an MK 23 instead of an M9 beretta.
 
Blue_State said:
Listen to me.

Oh, war, I despise.
Cause it means destruction of innocent lives.
War means tears to thousands of mothers eyes
When their sons go off to fight and lose their lives.
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Listen to me. People still elect morons who make us go to war :shrug:
 
austrianecon said:
And I am calling him a closet Nazi. For his comments: Nationalism, deal with it. There are American nationalists, that's a thing.



1? Rangers, Delta, and Green Berets were formed to mimic units the British created. Even CIA is models after MI6. That's be true if it wasn't for the fact the model for Delta Force for selection has been identical to SAS selection since the 70s. They still on a yearly basis have an exchange program where both sides sees what others are doing.




LOL!!!!

Budget size doesn't matter in reality. On the ground they aren't saying "well they cut our budget or our budget is smaller we should just pack up and go home". Bigger military pool (people) but SAS is the most selective Special Operations unit in the world. They will cut you just for just one mistake, they gave a perfection or not at all attitude... and had a big issue with the US Navy Seals (ST6) failure in rescuing Linda Norgrove because the Seal who tossed the nade that killed her had done it previously in other missions.

If you think SAS hasn't be 100% active during the same period you are crazy. SAS was tasked with some of the most dangerous ops during Iraq and Afghanistan because of their ability. Stanley McChrystal and David Patraeus said the same stuff. SAS itself has been active all over the world for a better part of 75 years. Be it WW2, Malayan Emergency, Indonesia–Malaysia confrontation, Dhofar Rebellion (Battle of Mirbat), Northern Ireland which was 30 years of a **** storm, Sierra Leone (recuse of British peace keepers), then all NATO related operations.

So you want to talk about advantages? SAS has 75 years of it.
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Budget size does matter. On the ground they masy ot be complaining of budget cuts, but they'll be complaining that the Americans got all the good gadgets.

Also, that's funny, if the SAS were better why did they fail to capture Bin Laden while Seal team 6, the oh so bad baddies killed the ****er in his friend's house?
 
US Conservative said:
We arent quite there yet, but if it was only lefty media we would be.
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Oh we're there already, and have been for years.

The difference is that our media is owned by complicit corporations that act on the government's behalf. Remember, like when the Bush administration asked the NYT to not publish the information gained by James Risen? And NYT happily went along? Just long enough for Dubya to be re-elected?

Yes, there are many other examples clearly demonstrating the unholy alliance between the government and the Fourth Estate. Many examples of "journalists" sending stories to various agencies of the government prior to publication so that the government can approve or disapprove of the story.
 
Henry David said:
Oh we're there already, and have been for years.

The difference is that our media is owned by complicit corporations that act on the government's behalf. Remember, like when the Bush administration asked the NYT to not publish the information gained by James Risen? And NYT happily went along? Just long enough for Dubya to be re-elected?

Yes, there are many other examples clearly demonstrating the unholy alliance between the government and the Fourth Estate. Many examples of "journalists" sending stories to various agencies of the government prior to publication so that the government can approve or disapprove of the story.
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I know I know. Wouldn't it be so much better for us if our media was state controlled like Russia's
 
flogger said:
I know I know. Wouldn't it be so much better for us if our media was state controlled like Russia's
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The point is that IT IS controlled by the state, already. Sure, it's behind the scenes so the average American has not a clue about it, but that doesn't change that our mainstream media is essentially a propaganda outlet for government messages.

Should we revert to a model like BBC and its state control? I don't know.

Voice of America has been broadcasting for years, so we already have the equivalent of RT or BBC.
 
Henry David said:
The point is that IT IS controlled by the state, already. Sure, it's behind the scenes so the average American has not a clue about it, but that doesn't change that our mainstream media is essentially a propaganda outlet for government messages.

Should we revert to a model like BBC and its state control? I don't know.

Voice of America has been broadcasting for years, so we already have the equivalent of RT or BBC.
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There is a vast gulf between our press freedoms and Russia's as a 10 minute look at RT the hysterical Russian state sponsored TV mouthpiece will confirm.

We don't tend to kill our journalists when they question state policy either

List of journalists killed in Russia - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 
flogger said:
There is a vast gulf between our press freedoms and Russia's as a 10 minute look at RT the hysterical Russian state sponsored TV mouthpiece will confirm.

We don't tend to kill our journalists when they question state policy either

List of journalists killed in Russia - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Holy Cow, I guess I should be vewwy scared, eh? Those nasty mean Russians.

No, we don't kill our journalists, we just imprison them. We just listen in on their phone calls and read their emails.

OMG, I am so afraid of those mean Russians. :roll:
 
Henry David said:
Holy Cow, I guess I should be vewwy scared, eh? Those nasty mean Russians.

No, we don't kill our journalists, we just imprison them. We just listen in on their phone calls and read their emails.

OMG, I am so afraid of those mean Russians. :roll:
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And so you should be. They have a despot at the helm and are rearming hand over fist while the West dithers over its armed aggression. This new Russia is the greatest threat we face in the world today and we ignore or dismiss it at our peril. Forget ISIS they don't have the megatonnage.
 
I'm so glad you approve of my fear, Flogger! :lol:
 
flogger said:
And so you should be. They have a despot at the helm and are rearming hand over fist while the West dithers over its armed aggression. This new Russia is the greatest threat we face in the world today and we ignore or dismiss it at our peril. Forget ISIS they don't have the megatonnage.
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We don't face a Russian threat at all. Ukraine does. Russia isn't invading Poland anytime soon. Or ever.
 
Threegoofs said:
We don't face a Russian threat at all. Ukraine does. Russia isn't invading Poland anytime soon. Or ever.
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The West and Poland supposedly wasn't facing a threat when Hitler annexed the Sudetenland either
 
austrianecon said:
And I am calling him a closet Nazi. For his comments: Nationalism, deal with it. There are American nationalists, that's a thing.



1? Rangers, Delta, and Green Berets were formed to mimic units the British created. Even CIA is models after MI6. That's be true if it wasn't for the fact the model for Delta Force for selection has been identical to SAS selection since the 70s. They still on a yearly basis have an exchange program where both sides sees what others are doing.




LOL!!!!

Budget size doesn't matter in reality. On the ground they aren't saying "well they cut our budget or our budget is smaller we should just pack up and go home". Bigger military pool (people) but SAS is the most selective Special Operations unit in the world. They will cut you just for just one mistake, they gave a perfection or not at all attitude... and had a big issue with the US Navy Seals (ST6) failure in rescuing Linda Norgrove because the Seal who tossed the nade that killed her had done it previously in other missions.

If you think SAS hasn't be 100% active during the same period you are crazy. SAS was tasked with some of the most dangerous ops during Iraq and Afghanistan because of their ability. Stanley McChrystal and David Patraeus said the same stuff. SAS itself has been active all over the world for a better part of 75 years. Be it WW2, Malayan Emergency, Indonesia–Malaysia confrontation, Dhofar Rebellion (Battle of Mirbat), Northern Ireland which was 30 years of a **** storm, Sierra Leone (recuse of British peace keepers), then all NATO related operations.

So you want to talk about advantages? SAS has 75 years of it.
Click to expand...

Budget size absolutely does mafter. The smaller your budget the less money is available for comducting training and good training costs a ton of money. It also allows you to test out new equipment and ways to do things. It also allows you to have a much better support system. Things like that make a huge difference.

Also the bigger the pool you are drawing from the more likely you are to get the perfect candidate. And you got anything to back up that the SAS is the most selective or just your opinion.

Also while you are right that the SAS has been as busy as the rest of our SOF what about the rest of their military. How much combat experience are those new recruites bringing to the SAS when they come over. The majority of huys going over to Delta already have 6 or 7 combat trips if not more along with years working in SOF. All of those things matter. And to continually try and claim that because some of our SOF is based of Brittish SOF they somehow are better is just silly. Who may or may not have been better 40 years ago has zero bearing on who is better now.

Don't get me wrong, I am not saying ours are better than theirs or anything like that. In this day and age the difference between any top teir SOF element is very very small and a competition between them would more than likely come down to who was having a better day.

With that said having worked with SEALs quite a bit I am not a huge fan of how that organization is run.
 
Threegoofs said:
Really? You may want to brush up on your history...
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The policy was called appeasement at the time and you might want to brush up on yours. Hitler claimed he had no further demands in Europe and we were desperate to believe him in order to avoid war. The analogies with what Putin is up to in Ukraine are chilling
 
flogger said:
The policy was called appeasement at the time and you might want to brush up on yours. Hitler claimed he had no further demands in Europe and we were desperate to believe him in order to avoid war. The analogies with what Putin is up to in Ukraine are chilling
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Sure. That's why the UK started a military buildup at that point... Because no one expected conflict.

The analogies are not chilling, unless you like to scare yourself and see Russkies under your bed at night.
 
Threegoofs said:
Sure. That's why the UK started a military buildup at that point... Because no one expected conflict.

The analogies are not chilling, unless you like to scare yourself and see Russkies under your bed at night.
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The Nelsonian quote of "I see no ships" suddenly springs to mind here :(
 
Helix said:
but what do the wartime tax brackets look like? which wars should we participate in? how long will the US occupy and rebuild these nations? and which social safety nets would you cut in order to fund endless war, and by how much?
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All of this would depend on the context of any military actions. I dont need to explain every sparrows fall, the left certainly does not. :2wave:
 
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