A while back Trump was praising himself for the increased spending by NATO countries that has happened during and after his time in office. Just to make sure he got a lot of air time, he threw in a gratuitous comment about how he would not defend and in fact encourage Russia to attack NATO countries that did not pay their fair sure. Predictably, this worked like a charm and all the shrieking Karens went around talking about what a bad man he was and how horribly irresponsible he was.

All they accomplished by all this caterwauling was to further convince the poorer economic classes that Trump was their man. All your working class people heard in all that screeching was a defense of NATO free riding on the poor working class taxpayer. And why should they pay for the defense of those effete snobs when the border is wide open and food prices are sky high?

Those attacking Trump fell right into a trap. Even the supporters of NATO acknowledge that many NATO members have been free loading off of the US. The dwindling military abilities of most NATO members has been a serious concern for serious military thinkers in the West for a long time now. And what has American’s feckless leadership class done about the issue all this time?

Contrary to Trump, I think the improvement on this front (slight as it has been) has more to do with Putin then Trump. But this quibbling about small details is not a productive way to counter Trump. Especially when any fair-minded review of recent history will show that while serving as president Trump brought more attention and pressure to bear on this issue than any other President in the post cold-war era. I think he did this mostly because his strategy is the find the weak points in the ruling classes that shun him and hammer them for all they are worth then him having an particular strategic concerns. Nonetheless, the fact remains that he did more on the issue then his contemporaries.

The below video gives a pretty fair overview of the situation including quoting Trump in all his glory….

Regardless of what you think about the above facts, those running around outraged by what Trump has said are doing nothing to improve the national discourse. But those running around being outraged by the ruling class are not doing any better either. All too often their arguments boil down to simply repeating that the ruling class is stupid and corrupt and trying to imply that all the problems with the world would be so much better as long as their messiah was made president. What is missing is people trying to explain the issues and facts involved. What is missing is people arguing about an issue instead of personalities. And that is where Republican Representative Mike Turner has taken steps to improve the situation. Continue reading →

Below are three minor points relating to the war in Ukraine. The first is noting the surprising effectiveness of Ukraine recent drone campaign. The second is discussing the latest Ukrainian political drama. And the last point is observing experience in Ukraine suggests that maybe the US Marine war gamers had good insights into the future of conventional warfare.

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It annoys me when people bounce around from thinking Ukraine is losing to thinking that Ukraine is winning based on short term factors. But my last post on the “One New Aspect of Warfare That The War In Ukraine Has Revealed” could have appeared to fall into the same trap of group think and going with the prevailing winds. Currently it is quite fashionable to be pessimistic about Ukraine’s chances due to short term issues and my post on long range fires (a military term I am appropriating and using to cover more systems then the US military typically does) could be seen as contributing to it. So to correct that unbalance let me elaborate on a throwaway line in my last post where I said “The West can easily give the long range tools to Ukraine to cause Russia a lot of pain but then they have to worry about Russia going to nukes.”

In absolute terms, the Russian strategic position is extremely weak. To be sure, if you measure Ukraine alone against Russia, Russia has the advantage. But Ukraine was a basket case before Russia invaded so saying they have the advantage does not mean much. I predicated that Russia would fall apart years back and nothing that has occurred since then has caused me to think that prediction was wrong. It remains one of my biggest fears.

People who are gloomy about the future of the West as I am often seem to fall into the trap of thinking that the West’s enemies are better off. But that just goes to show how much their view of the world is based on mood affiliation and not on facts. Some enemies of the West are worst off then the West is and Russia is certainly in this category. One of my biggest fears in the near term is what the collapse of Russia would mean for me and those I care about. In this fear, the ruling class of the West and I have a lot in common and that is why they don’t really want to see Ukraine win.

I am not going to go into detail in this post about all the long time term factors that make me expect the collapse of the Russian state (although I will note that in Russia’s case it is even worse than the lack of babies). Instead, I want to make a simple point about how the logic of my post about the new nature of long term precision fires means that Russia is a hair’s breadth from losing this war overnight. The only thing that is keeping them in the game is the West’s fear of their nuclear weapons. But West’s calculations about what they can get away with are constantly changing. All that has to happen is for their perspective to change slightly and Russia will have face the choice of complete collapse or getting out the big bombs.
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