The General US Politics Thread

Also it's not that France lacks the industrial capacity to make its own rifles. It's that the last rifle Nexter came out with was shit.

They why can't they just produce the 416 under license?

No, Garcon is correct. Germany literally cannot deploy its army because it lacks any transport capability. That includes both airlift and sealift. And, considering the majority of its tanks and attack aircraft are out of commission (only 1/3 of both are even functional) and over 75% of officer positions are unfilled I doubt they could even defend themselves.

As far as France not being able to make rifles, it's not that they can't design them but rather they lack the industrial capacity to produce enough rifles to arm their military. They can't produce ammo either, which is even more worrying.

Edited by archonspeaks on Jul 10th 2018 at 3:22:11 AM

Because HK hates the idea of letting other people make their stuff.

If this were true Asia would be speaking Japanese... we had thr better carriers, aircraft, pilots, naval air tactics, even torpedos.... but the reality is it is not.

Sadly(though thankful for Asia) actual war is just throwing amorphous blobs of force at eachother, every thing else... tech, weapons, even aircraft are just considered multipliers, because you CANT win without bulk in the first place.

The problem is Europe IS the political consequences in Ukraine, they are not for thrmselfs... they kind of can't be because if you capture them they no longer mater.

And I doubt China will stand up for the EU, so if we remove amercia there is none.

It appears Schumer has decided that Kavanaugh's appointment to the Supreme Court is a hill worth dying on.

Chuck Schumer: "I will oppose [Brett Kavanaugh] with everything I've got." The Senate minority leader said Kavanaugh's potential opposition to Roe v. Wade and the Affordable Care Act is "far against what the American people want. When they learn this, they're going to oppose the nominee."

Edited by MarqFJA on Jul 10th 2018 at 1:27:23 PM

Speaking of the ability to produce weapons, well, the US and Russia are the biggest weapon exporters, but are followed by Germany (yes, Germany, yes, I know, it's hypocritical), France and the UK. So if there were an akute need, there are actually a bunch of weapons in the respective countries.

Germany is especially good when it comes to tanks (the Leopard is particularly popular), transport vehicles (here the Fuchs is a great success) and, somewhat ironically, ships (the MEKO is very popular because it can be adjusted to the need of the customer). And with Airbus, France, Germany and the UK have the ability to build their own air force, too.

Interesting strategy.

I think it's worth it, this way they can clearly show that they made a good faith effort to fight it thus gaining points at-least with the base if not the public as a whole. Which either way should be useful come midterms.

The Leopard is a fine tank.

Too bad 2/3rds of the ones the German ground forces have are completely inoperable.

The fact that Germany's defense industry is reliably robust while their military itself reliably sucks is a clear indicator they have institutional issues.

Edited by archonspeaks on Jul 10th 2018 at 3:33:43 AM

Really, a lot of the Republican base are unenthusiastic about this guy at best, and swing voters who lean conservative probably won't care too much. Ergo, I can't see the Democrats losing that many potential voters (or driving a hostile turnout) by opposing this confirmation.

Can we please shift the military-centric talk to the Military Thread and focus on US politics, please?

This is US politics, because it's about NATO commitments.... AKA one of the largest things the US does abroad that Trump wants to fuck up, but is suprisingly broken clocked on a problem.

Also Swan... and Garcon really.

Capacity to produce doesn't matter, modern war is faught with what you bring in... you can't bulk up or produce more once it starts, the tempo is too high and the equipment too conplex.

Edited by Imca on Jul 10th 2018 at 3:38:40 AM

Well, I wasn't bringing it up because I thought that it is a matter of seconds to weaponize an army, but because the notion was voiced that the European countries don't even produce their own weapons. They do. In fact, the US itself imports a lot of their equipment from the EU.

The US in general needs to get out of this mindset that the NATO is a one-sided arrangement in which the US is hovering like some lion over the poor defenceless European states. That is just a pile of nonsense. It is an arrangement largely designed to protect the interests of the US (peace in its most important markets, no direct challenger on the European continent outside of Russia, and strategic important bases, allies which help the US out) and which requires the other members to trust that the US won't attack them on a whim.

No we don't. Any and all foreign designs are produced inside the US. We force them build a factory here so we don't have to import anything.

FN makes a huge chunk of our rifles now but every one of them is made in the US.

Also I'm sorry but that is exactly the arrangement right now. The EU is not capable of defending itself in a symmetrical conflict against Russia.

They literally no longer have the industrial or military capacity to do so. It's a huge fucking problem.

Edited by LeGarcon on Jul 10th 2018 at 7:04:42 AM

The sense I'm getting is that if Trump quit NATO on a whim or otherwise left Europe without US protection, Russia could outright invade Europe and no one could or would realistically stop them, and the US still being there is the only reason why they haven't done so yet.

So why is Russia relying on cyberwarfare, interfering with elections, and misinformation campaigns rather than invasions like Georgia and Ukraine if Europe isn't able to stop or restrain them?

Edited by Raptorslash on Jul 10th 2018 at 7:25:39 AM

Because nukes are an object that exists and while they could win a conventional conflict an extended occupation is still an enormous undertaking for any nation no matter how powerful. Also they did invade and destroy Ukraine and Georgia.

And the US isn't a puppet state of Russia yet so they still need to design their equipment and doctrines around a conflict with us, hence the electronic warfare developments.

Edited by LeGarcon on Jul 10th 2018 at 7:30:56 AM

Firstly because the discussion has been about a conventional war, IIRC France has nuclear weapons and thus a Russian launched invasion would possibly lead to a nuclear response. Furthermore even if nukes don't get involved the cost Russia would have to pay for such an invasion would be horrible and they know it, there's a reason they didn't conquer all of Ukraine.

Indirect methods are cheaper and significantly more deniable, thus are the optimal means of attack for a state with their capabilities.

Edited by Fourthspartan56 on Jul 10th 2018 at 7:30:07 AM

As you’re refusing to provide a source for your absurd claim that the Royal Navy is non-operational I’m going to have to just ignore you. Honestly Garcon I expect better from you, making absurd claims and refusing to back them up with any facts isn’t normally your style.

That’s the point you’re making, but it’s not the claim Trump has made that people are defending here.

It would if it was what Trump was saying, but he’s not saying that.

Trump isn’t saying that Europe needs to maintain its defensive forces better so that it can be part of a global system of security management, he’s saying that we need to pay the US protection money because it’s the only thing keeping Europe safe from Russian tanks rolling into Paris.

NATO members need to look more at their ability to meet global security commitments and promote a more peaceful world outside of Europe. That’s fine, but what Trump is talking about (and people here are agreeing with him on) is the military security of Europe itself, which is fine with or without the US (the economic security of Europe without the US’s commitment to ensuring peace in global sea lanes may not be fine, but that’s not what anyone other than you are talking about).

Except non of that’s what I’m talking about, what I’m talking about is war as both a political and military struggle, why Japan lost is becuse it failed in those areas, it was economically isolated to the point fo having to pick a fight with the US, it lacked the military size and capability to properly subjugate more than a small part of China. And that’s with the huge advantages of a self-contained economy and a population willing to suffer massive casualties in pursuit of imaginary glory. Two things that modern Russia does not have.

Becuse the premise is wrong and Europe is able to stop them.

It’s not able to stop them via rolling a column of tanks into Poland, but it’s sitll able to stop them. Though both MAD but also economic conequences (Russia’s GDP is largely reliant on exports, including lots of exports to the EU), political conequences (Putin won’t last long if the oligarchies get their foreign funds seized and the population are cut off from luxury goods) and the massive difficult of waging a large scale war in the modern era (the US couldn’t win a protracted war against the various Iraqi insurgencies via raw military force, Russia trying to occupy all of Estern Europe within suffering unacceptable casualties is an impossibility).

The Swiss were able to stop the Nazis from invading Switzerland during world war 2, they wern’t a tactically superior force, but they were still a strong enough force to keep themselves secure from Nazi aggression. This is not exactly the same but it is similar.

Edited by Silasw on Jul 10th 2018 at 11:44:02 AM

I was responding to Swan’s initial point. He claimed that the US contributes nothing towards NATO and Europe, and implied that Europe’s military establishment would be fine on its own. That’s outright false.

Yeah. It's not that Europe's military is particularly good (it's overly reliant on US logistical support - see the comment on airlifting anything German - when it really should be able to operate independently) Russia couldn't maintain a war with Europe without collapsing in on itself.

Still, Europe could definitely use more ability to operate jointly in terms of regional security and expeditionary capability. Right now the only European country that does much independent international firefighting is France (see: Mali) and Europe as a whole has no real provision for that sort of thing. You rely on the US to lead any intervention, which I think is a problem (admittedly a political problem more than a military problem) - I would like to see Europe at least able to police the Mediterranean, or to admit Ukraine to their security umbrella and evict Russia.

Yeah Swan is just wrong on that, I suspect it’s because for her she’s used to listening to the news about NATO in Afghanistan, Bosnia and Libya. Nobody talks about what NATO does at sea, especially in Germany where NATO isn’t particularly popular (because commiting violence so as to prevent greater violence is aparently a bad thing now).

Sadly the distance that the UK is putting between itself and Europe is going to hurt things further, at least in the short term, we’d have been the perfect nation to lead a European naval integration, if we could actually get our ships in line the EU would have open fo the most powerful navies on the planet and could do a lot of anti-piracy and anti-drug operations solo.

Expeditionary capability is always going to be a long shot though, because Germany is deeply ideologically opposed to using military force to help people, even people who ask us to help them.

Edited by Silasw on Jul 10th 2018 at 12:05:03 PM

Trump's Presidency is a train wreck in slow motion.

Except it feels so terribly fast.

If you want to argue that Europe needs to revamp its armies, that's fine. If you want to argue that Putin could conquer all of Europe in an afternoon, you've been swallowing either Putinist or Trumpist propaganda whole.

What we seem to be seeing here is a form of Russophobia. Not "unreasonable hatred or suspicion of Russia" as it is often used to mean (especially by Russian sympathizers) but rather "an unrealistic fear of Russian military capabilities." Neither the Russian economy nor the Russian military could sustain a protracted war with with Western Europe, and such a war would be, by definition, protracted, if for no other reason than the space involved.

Putin cannot roll tanks through Paris. Not without ruining his own economy, wrecking his military, and, likely, getting himself nuked (French nuclear policy in the Cold War called for a nuclear attack on Soviet formations if they beat the Germans; this sort of thinking, so far as I know, is still prevalent in French strategic circles). Realistically, he cannot even roll tanks through Berlin without sending his country into a depression.

Again, if you want to say that "Western Europe should increase its military spending" that's fine. But fantasies about the Russians defeating all of NATO, by themselves, without it being the most Pyrrhic of victories? Those need to stop.

The Queen Elizabeth has no aircraft as it can only use the F-35 and thus cannot be counted as being operational.

Both Albion class are on the chopping block. Which means the Royal Navy will lose all of it's amphibious capabilities.

Only six Daring class destroyers exist all of which have reported significant problems with their engines in warm waters and are all going to require extensive refits to be able to operate in such areas.

Within the next decade all currently serving Duke class frigates are expected to be decommissioned with no seen replacement.

And as the Vanguard class submarines are a strategic nuclear asset they cannot be counted as valid fleet assets as in any hypothetical conflict with Russia they'll be hidden away in order to ensure England has nuclear retaliation capabilities.

The argument is that without banking on MAD or on the fragility of the Russian economy the EU cannot fight Russia in a symmetrical conflict without the US.

Edited by LeGarcon on Jul 10th 2018 at 8:11:22 AM