War

Conditional Collapse

Chill War

Ian Welsh and those types have constantly claimed ridiculous stuff about the war in Ukraine like, “Russia could win in a week if it really tried!”

No. Just no. That’s not how wars work. Especially not that kind of war. That’s a fundamentally ignorant take on the nature of war in general and what is occurring in the region. Russia possibly could have won quickly if they’d not completely misunderstood what sort of conflict they were getting into.

However, no country — not even as one as callous about human life as Russia — tolerates 1,000-2,000 KIA a day for months and years if they could just defeat the enemy if “they really tried.”

Ian Welsh just hates the West and the United States in particular and loves Putin. Everything else he writes and believes springs from that poisoned well. And he understands warfare about as well as a turtle understands astrophysics.

Ka-blam

Chill War

Holy fuck. The targeting and fire control systems on those newer Leopards is pretty great. I still would not want to be in any tank on that battlefield. Or on that battlefield at all. (There is some gore at the end and people definitely die in that video FYI.)

Not Gonna Look

Chill War

It is completely unclear to me that so many in the EU do not understand that if Russia is not defeated in Ukraine, they then will be fighting Russia in their own country soon enough?

Perhaps (most likely) it’s just that they don’t want to understand.

How Do

Chill Clowns, War

It is a 100% false “fact” that in Vietnam (or anywhere else that has been said about) that 90% of soldiers didn’t fire their weapons to kill. Or as sometimes is heard, at all.

I’ve seen this claim trotted out about WWI, WWII, Vietnam, and other conflicts. But it’s made up. It’s just deceit and delusion. I believe where this faux fact comes from is that it takes a lot of ammo downrange to kill any one hostile. Suppressive fire is most of the fire used in every modern war. By design, by the way. In the Afghanistan war, for instance, there were 250,000 rounds fired for every insurgent killed.

This absurd nonsense gets trotted out about various wars depending on what sort of ideological axe is being ground and it’s just lunacy, for a few reasons but the main one is this: when the enemy is on top of you and you’re in small arms range, you’re often fighting for your life. Even the most pacifist and wilting soldier is going to be tossing whatever they have downrange at any target they can plausibly identify.

How do people believe such goofy crap?

‘Lectric

Chill Political Economy, Politics, War

We are planning now what electronics and imported stuff we are going to buy in the next few weeks and months because those sorts of goods are going to get radically more expensive soon or just become unavailable altogether.

So get your gettin’ on from the gettin’ place, people. Soon all of that will be much more expensive or just not available at all, depending on the exact timing of tariffs and war.

Dimon-stration

Chill Prediction, War

Jamie Dimon says World War III may have already begun.

Unusually for him, Jamie Dimon is 100% correct. We are already at war. It’s just so far a low-intensity war1 and we aren’t acting like it yet.

Referencing a Washington Post article, Dimon continued, “World War III has already begun. You already have battles on the ground being coordinated in multiple countries.”

This is accurate. We could forestall a greater conflict now if we wanted to, but no one is even attempting that. We should be doing these things:

1) Evicting Russia and DPRK from Ukraine post-haste.

2) Preventing Israel from further (justified) killing in Gaza and Lebanon.

3) Building up our defense base to be about twice what it is now, concentrating on aerial and naval drones, and much better coordination with our allies.

4) Forcing other NATO members to increase their militaries greatly as we will not be able to fight Russia in Poland and China in the South China Sea at the same time.

5) Reshoring as much industrial production as quickly as we possibly can.

The above is how we prevent WWIII and if that fails, how we make it the least bad catastrophe it can be. Because it’s coming and no one seems to notice or really care.

  1. Well, unless you’re Ukrainian.