Ukraine War | Zelensky seeks NATO guarantees for unoccupied Ukraine for peace

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ronjon said:
We're protecting our markets, not our territory. You're correct that no on is going to invade the US.

Russia is inherently aggressive and while it might be Ukraine today, they'll keep going. Or would have if we didn't prop up Ukraine's defensive capabilities. Eventually that would have come to a head. We kicked that problem down the road by decades for a fraction of our overall military budget, and not even a blip compared to our GDP.

We also need Taiwan to remain independent, at least until chip manufacturing can be domesticated or otherwise protected from rival countries. Imagine what would happen if we lost our ready supply to chips. The stock market would collapse.
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Heck yeah we should spend $100B or $200B every few decades to neuter Russia. Heck yeah we can sell arms to the 21st largest economy in the world to make a Chinese invasion impossible.

Don't conflate that with spending $900B every single year on our defense. Its more than the next nine countries combined and 6 of those are our allies. Its way too much money and doesn't serve any purpose beyond getting politicians reelected.
 
ronjon said:
We're protecting our markets, not our territory. You're correct that no on is going to invade the US.

Russia is inherently aggressive and while it might be Ukraine today, they'll keep going. Or would have if we didn't prop up Ukraine's defensive capabilities. Eventually that would have come to a head. We kicked that problem down the road by decades for a fraction of our overall military budget, and not even a blip compared to our GDP.

We also need Taiwan to remain independent, at least until chip manufacturing can be domesticated or otherwise protected from rival countries. Imagine what would happen if we lost our ready supply to chips. The stock market would collapse.
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I'll add that your statement about Russia will keep going doesn't seem grounded in facts. They didn't keep going in Georgia. They stopped after taking two provinces and it wasn't because Georgia's army stopped them.

And they can't keep going in Ukraine and it was because Ukraine stopped them. That's the formula for Russia and China: Spend a fraction of your yearly defense budget every 20 years and your adversaries will destroy themselves without spending our blood and less of our treasure.
 
gtyellowjacket said:
I'll add that your statement about Russia will keep going doesn't seem grounded in facts. They didn't keep going in Georgia. They stopped after taking two provinces and it wasn't because Georgia's army stopped them.

And they can't keep going in Ukraine and it was because Ukraine stopped them. That's the formula for Russia and China: Spend a fraction of your yearly defense budget every 20 years and your adversaries will destroy themselves without spending our blood and less of our treasure.
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We're in 100% agreement on the second point. I think we're doing what we should, though we should allow for more freedom for Ukraine to use ATACMS against military targets in Russia.

As to the first point there (really in your follow up on the historical basis comment).

There are hundreds of years of history that says Russia is an imperial country.
en.wikipedia.org

Russian Empire - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org

After the dissolution of the Russian Empire, it was reformed as the Soviet Union 25 years later.

After the fall of the Soviet Union, we now have Russian leadership calling for the reformation of the borders of the Soviet Union. It is certainly not a fact that they would do so, but if they had rolled through Ukraine in a week, it's not a fact that they wouldn't.

And again it's about markets, we want eastern Europe to face west more. We don't want those countries dependent on Russian oil and Chinese technology.
 
ronjon said:
We're in 100% agreement on the second point. I think we're doing what we should, though we should allow for more freedom for Ukraine to use ATACMS against military targets in Russia.

As to the first point there (really in your follow up on the historical basis comment).

There are hundreds of years of history that says Russia is an imperial country.
en.wikipedia.org

Russian Empire - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org

After the dissolution of the Russian Empire, it was reformed as the Soviet Union 25 years later.

After the fall of the Soviet Union, we now have Russian leadership calling for the reformation of the borders of the Soviet Union. It is certainly not a fact that they would do so, but if they had rolled through Ukraine in a week, it's not a fact that they wouldn't.

And again it's about markets, we want eastern Europe to face west more. We don't want those countries dependent on Russian oil and Chinese technology.
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I mean if we go back 100's of years, every country in the area (and the US) is expansionist. I don't think that history is very indicative.

As to your point about markets, I'm not sure what that means. We sell plenty in Russia and Ukraine or we did before sanctions. The West collectively sells even more. What does defending against Russia have to do with markets?

And of course all that is dwarfed by what we sell to China. If its really about markets, why are we spending so much money to fight the owner of our third largest export market?
 
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gtyellowjacket said:
Heck yeah we should spend $100B or $200B every few decades to neuter Russia. Heck yeah we can sell arms to the 21st largest economy in the world to make a Chinese invasion impossible.

Don't conflate that with spending $900B every single year on our defense. Its more than the next nine countries combined and 6 of those are our allies. Its way too much money and doesn't serve any purpose beyond getting politicians reelected.
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Wrong. We are using missiles that were produced 20 years ago. Even if we want to just restock our inventories, how do u think we are going to do so? You think those factories are going to just sit idle until the need comes up? Do u think the equipment will never break down? Do u think the expertise won't retire?
 
tonman said:
Wrong. We are using missiles that were produced 20 years ago. Even if we want to just restock our inventories, how do u think we are going to do so? You think those factories are going to just sit idle until the need comes up? Do u think the equipment will never break down? Do u think the expertise won't retire?
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I think it can be done much more cheaply while needing to engage in less parts of the world.
 
gtyellowjacket said:
I think it can be done much more cheaply while needing to engage in less parts of the world.
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It's economics. We are not mass producing these weapons. We're not using them up each year unless we're in constant wars. We're paying for the ability to have these weapon systems for a specified life. Otherwise you end up using North Korean artillery and Iranian drones.

A hammer cost $400 because we're not making hammers for home depot and the hammer has to meet spec. Because if the hammer doesn't work as intended, people may die.
 
gtyellowjacket said:
. . .. Don't conflate that with spending $900B every single year on our defense. Its more than the next nine countries combined and 6 of those are our allies. Its way too much money and doesn't serve any purpose beyond getting politicians reelected.
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Yeah, but let's see what tune you are singing when the ALIENS! in their fancy UFO's come for our women. When the USA! smacks those ALIENS! back from whence they came and women all over the world turn their adoring eyes to AMERICAN MEN in gratitude for being saved from the Aliens' breeding farms, you'll think every single penny was well spent and well worth it.
 
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tonman said:
It's economics. We are not mass producing these weapons. We're not using them up each year unless we're in constant wars. We're paying for the ability to have these weapon systems for a specified life. Otherwise you end up using North Korean artillery and Iranian drones.

A hammer cost $400 because we're not making hammers for home depot and the hammer has to meet spec. Because if the hammer doesn't work as intended, people may die.
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The reason the hammer is $400 is actually a funny story. TLDR, it was a weird accounting issue. The government was buying a bunch of spare parts, one of which was a hammer. The accounting department spread the cost of r&d and some other stuff evenly across all the spare parts so the hammer got the same markup as a jet engine.

The myth of the $600 hammer

The myth of the $600 hammer
www.govexec.com www.govexec.com

And again, spending more than the next nine countries, six of whom are our allies, makes no sense. Is the UK using North Korean or Iranian weapons?
 
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05C40 said:
Yeah, but let's see what tune you are singing when the ALIENS in their fancy UFO's come for our women. When the USA! smacks those ALIENS back from whence they came and women all over the world turn their adoring eyes to AMERICAN MEN in gratitude for being saved from the Aliens' breeding farms, you'll think every single penny was well spent and well worth it.
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That's ridiculous. If aliens do come down and start stealing our women, all we need to do is recruit our inexhaustible supply of drunk crop dusters and utilize our computer programmers to create a computer virus that can cripple the computers of an interstellar race but somehow can't transfer from Windows to Mac operating systems. If we were able to do that in the '90s, I pity the foolish aliens that would try to steal our women 25 years later.

Alcoholic general aviation pilots and a few computer programmers are a whole lot cheaper than what we spend on checking a bunch of Russians who can't fight their way 300 mi closer to us and our third largest trading partner who can't cross the Taiwan straits.
 
gtyellowjacket said:
That's ridiculous. If aliens do come down and start stealing our women, all we need to do is recruit our inexhaustible supply of drunk crop dusters and utilize our computer programmers to create a computer virus that can cripple the computers of an interstellar race but somehow can't transfer from Windows to Mac operating systems. If we were able to do that in the '90s, I pity the foolish aliens that would try to steal our women 25 years later.

Alcoholic general aviation pilots and a few computer programmers are a whole lot cheaper than what we spend on checking a bunch of Russians who can't fight their way 300 mi closer to us and our third largest trading partner who can't cross the Taiwan straits.
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But your way the drunk crop dusters and computer programmers are the ones who get all the women, not US taxpayers in general.
 
05C40 said:
But your way the drunkncrop dusters and computer programmers are the ones who get all the women, not US taxpayers in general.
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As a computer programmer, I can assure you that your fears are unfounded.

I can't speak for crop dusters. Those fly boys seem to get all the chicks.
 
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Politically, it'll be very difficult to cut the military budget. It'll mean cutting bases and factories which are the primary revenue generator for some areas. I agree we do need to cut back military spending if we actually want to balance our budget (along with tax increases, so a double whammy for those politicians).
 
ronjon said:
Politically, it'll be very difficult to cut the military budget. It'll mean cutting bases and factories which are the primary revenue generator for some areas. I agree we do need to cut back military spending if we actually want to balance our budget (along with tax increases, so a double whammy for those politicians).
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Agreed. And if you cut the budget, you also have to cut the missions. My goal would not be to ask our military to do more with less, but to scale back the number of overseas commitments and scale back the cost.
 
gtyellowjacket said:
If aliens do come down and start stealing our women
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Genesis chapter 6:

When human beings began to grow numerous on the earth and daughters were born to them, the sons of God saw how beautiful the daughters of human beings were, and so they took for their wives whomever they pleased... The Nephilim appeared on earth in those days, as well as later, after the sons of God had intercourse with the daughters of human beings, who bore them sons. They were the heroes of old, the men of renown.
 
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