Stranger
I’m not as worried about Syria as I am about North Korea.
In Syria Trump really just wants to take out ISIS which pretty much everyone in the world (except ISIS) thinks agrees a good idea. His action against Assad was an emotional reaction to what he saw on television. Assad misjudged the Trump administrations loose talk about not caring if Assad remains in charge of Syria as a carte blanche invitation to do what they wanted. Now he’s going to put a moratorium on the use of chemical weapons, and wipe out the civilian opposition the old fashioned way with barrel bombs. Trump can declare victory and Russia and Assad can continue the mopping up.
North Korea is more problematic. In spite of what one might think Kim Jong Un is not crazy. His belligerent provocations, are mostly there for domestic consumption since appearing to be a strong man on the world stage is part of what helps to keep him in power. He needs to be seen as a tough guy for reasons of survival. Most foreign policy experts recognize this an treat them accordingly.
The Problem is that Trump also needs to be seen as a tough guy, not particularly for political reasons, but primarily for his own ego. So rather than letting the provocations go, Trump may take them personally and attempt to one up Kim. Which will make Kim further escalate to save face. Eventually Trump may reach the conclusion that he has to take some real action to put that twerp in his place, and figure that if he wanted to the US military could stem roll over North Korea in under a month and put an end to the issue once and for all.
I don’t think that this would lead to WW3, as I doubt that China would want to risk out and out confrontation with its #1 trading partner (#2 if you count the EU). But with his back to the wall Kim, would strike out against everyone near by with with his whole arsenal of nuclear, chemical and artillery, devastating large sections of South Korea and possibly Japan. Unfortunately, given Trump’s America First view of the world he may not care.
I’ve heard this before, especially as it relates to the Ukraine. What is the end game for them? People in the western part of the country HATE Russia, while some in the east are more pro Russian. How about they separate east and west Ukraine in some referendum vote and let one side go join the police state and the other be more allied with the west.
Would that still be intolerable to Russia/Russians? And if so why? Why do you want to force people that have ZERO interest in being associated with you to join them?
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/china-moves-150000-troops-medical-10199100
Well this is more cause for concern. There is an American carrier group already on its way to NK. Now China is getting involved.
Lets be realistic here. The carrier group is not “on it’s way to NK”, it’s going to patrol in waters near the Korean peninsula. This is something that has happened many times before and US carriers have been involved in exercises with South Korea many times.
The Carl Vinson was in South Korea in march for the annual Foal Eagle US-South Korea war games:
Your link actually says “it has been claimed.” Do you have a real cite?
Not necessarily.
Weren’t Syria’s Chemical Weapons Destroyed? It’s Complicated
Even at the time inspectors couldn’t get to two of the factories that had produced them. Their “declared” stocks were shipped off for destruction but that leaves the possibility they hid some.
Of course they could have made more. Only one terrorist group has been successful at making a nerve agent - Aum Shinrikyo manufactured the Sarin used in their 1995 attack. Still that proved what’s possible for a small group with enough money. Syria is a nation with a chemical industry and people experienced making chemical agents. It’s not nearly as hard for them to make a hidden factory and fire up the next batch.
Theres a bunch of news stories on this but they all seem to be citing a claim in a South Korean news paper. Meanwhile apparently the DOD claims there is no evidence of large scale troop movements on the NK-China border:
Now Trump may very well do something stupid and start a hot war on the Korean peninsula that gets China involved, but we’re not there yet… (so far…)
You realize that doesn’t make sense right? that isn’t what the bully does, it’s what you do to the bully.
Bully keeps hitting people, you hit bully in face with 12 pound sledge hammer, bully learns the lesson of consequences.
And eating meals through a straw.
I disagree, you overhyped Putin’s toughness. I think he is not stupid nor is he the genius he made out to be. But he pragmatic.
He did not launch any aggressive moves against Turkey when they shot down their fighter plane. I don’t see why it would be in his or Russia’s interest to do anything that warrant American retaliation.
Putin as said himself that THE United States is the sole superpower in the world. That the American military’s prowess is unmatched.
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-russia-forum-putin-usa-idUSKCN0Z31G4
Your scenarios does not benefit Russia or even Trump.
Still the refugee crisis DID HAPPEN despite the Obama administration NOT attacking Assad’s military and Russian bases. You put the cart before the horse. Also the refugee crisis that is gigantic came from Syria under Assad and not Libya post Gaddafi.
People like you amaze me, that some how we taking out Syria’s airforce will cause more refugees, when the crisis happen DESPITE us not attacking Syria. So you seem to blame Hillary for something that she did not cause, like the refugee crisis. Most refugees actually flee areas bombed by Assad, NOT ISIS.
So yes taking out the son of bitchs airforce can actually mitigate the refugee crisis.
Again your mindset amazes me. I hear variations like how Syria will become unstable and a breeding ground for terrorism if strike Assad or take him out of power. When in reality Syria IS breeding ground for terrorists, biggest source of refugees, head choppers galore, and Assad happily using chemical weapons despite Russia assuring us that it was all destroyed.
I can’t see how worse Syria can get. Some seem to hold that things will get better as long as Assad is in power and Putin is backing him, when in reality it’s not getting better. Isis is losing territory in Syria and Iraq, but that’s because of the U.S and not the Assad/Putin /Khamenei trio’s efforts.
Some how Trump destroying 15 or 20 planes is the end of the world and horrible and will cause hundreds of thousands to flee? Please.
Please explain why Syria with its regime intact has more death, destruction and refugees than Libya after Muammar “Halloween mask” Gaddafi was put in his grave and his sons out of power and in prison?
Libya and Syria illustrate how regimes staying intact does not mean it’s better than when regimes are overthrown.
So. The Russians are strapped for cash recently. Is there at least a chance a nuclear war wouldn’t, well, kill everyone? Can they keep their ballistic missile submarines at sea? If the USA fired first with everything it had, could it suppress enough of the Russian missiles to have some cities left when both sides run out of warheads?
Unlike the US Navy, which sends “boomers” (ballistic missile submarines) on “deterrence patrols” in both the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, the Soviet Union and now Russian Federation keep their boomers typically limited to patrols in the Barrents Sea, in part because they have much shorter patrol durations but also because their best approach to the US is over the North Pole where they don’t have to cross the SOSUS lines, whereas fast attacks on the Russian Federation can be readily made from Pacific and Atlantic patrol zones using depressed trajectories and the US subs are traditionally better at evading detection, although the oft-repeated Clancyism that Ohio-class submarines have never been tracked is not strictly true. The US could not reasonably hope to take out all Russian missile submarines, nor could it assuredly knock out Russian road and rail mobile ICBMs.
On the other side, while the US ballistic missile fleet has been substantially reduced to over a thousand Minuteman launchers, many carrying three Mk 12A RVs to less than five hundred LGM-30G ‘Minuteman III’ launchers mostly carrying single Mk 21 vehicles, and the 10 RV LGM-118A ‘Peacekeeper’ long removed from service, the response capability of the STRATCOM ICBM fleet is still considerable not withstanding the delayed response ability of B-2 ‘Stealth Bomber’ and the Fleet Ballistic Missile (UGM-133 ‘Trident II’ system).
In a shooting war, terrible things would happen, and both nations and their primary allies would essentially be reduced to pre-Industrial levels of technology and population, notwithstanding the residual radiation, pollution, and climatic effects of such an exchange. An deliberate nuclear attack would be an act of international murder-suicide.
Stranger
The thesis put forth here is not “we are closer to World War now than we were last year”. The thesis is “we are on the brink of World War”. I’m not sure that anyone is arguing much against Point #1. Are you arguing in favor of Point #2? That is, we should expect WWIII to begin within a short period of time. When I think of being “on the brink of war”, I think of something that will happen within months, not years.
Given how completely volatile and erratic this administration has been so far, I can’t even hazard a credible guess as to how far they’ll take whatever rhetoric they’re spouting on any particular day or how they’ll react to their first genuine international crisis. (The North Korean missile launch was “interesting” but certainly didn’t justify a panic meeting tha was witnessed at Trump’s Margo-Largo lair, and the Syrian chemical gas attack was another one of many that didn’t demand the kind of immediate executive action that Trump ordered. Neither were crises in the sense of requiring immediate and measured response to prevent them from becoming further inflamed.). I sincerely hope that the administration settles down into some kind of order and Trump whiles away his days Twittering his tiny thumbs away at celebrities and political opponents, the competent adults take over policy and negotiation, and Steven Bannon is slurped back into the Upside Down through whatever demonhole he crawled up out of. But thus far I have seen nothing that gives me confidence that this parade of clowns, imbeciles, and agitators won’t try to suppress a fire by tossing gasoline on it, and then be so outraged that it singes their elbrows that they start flinging dynamite at it, all while Sean Spicer assures us that this is completely normal and we just need to stop asking so many questions. I don’t think anyone actually thinks they’re on “the brink of war” in a conflict they don’t control until the shooting starts.
Stranger
That may be the most disturbing element to come out of this. North Korea has launched missiles and Syria has used poison gas in the past. These are problems we’ve developed plans for. This was like a level one practice crisis.
What happens the first time Trump has to face a new crisis that hasn’t happened before and has to create policies and plans from scratch?
And that is going to happen. There has been volatility before in the post-Cold War environment, of course, but the conflicts have been regional and never threatened to spill across to one another. Since the Arab Spring, the Russian incursions into the Ukraine and annexation of Crimea, and the widespread rise of xenophobic nationalism in Europe, we’re seeing conflicts that reinforce each other and make peoples and leaders tend to distrust arguments for cooperation and restraint, which is exactly the canvas that continental and global wars are painted upon. If I’m wrong, please fucking tell me I’m wrong, 'cause I don’t want to see this any more than I want to see Theresa May doing a strip tease. But fuck me sideways if everybody involved (except, ironically, the Germans) doesn’t seem to be doing every damned thing to reenact their favorite scenes from WWII with a 21 Century plot twist.
Stranger
I dunno. Xi seems to have his head on straight, he is showing up everywhere with bags of cash and engineers to build stuff. ;). The US has not yet quite understood just how big a deal One Belt One Road is going to be. A train just left China for the UK. This is almost as big a paradigm shift as Vasco Da Gama discovering the Cape of Good Hope. Most World Trade is already not between the US and Europe but between the Far East and everyone else.
As for Trump, lets face it the mistake was made 22 years ago when Bill Clinton decided to expand NATO. The trouble with making Allies right and left is that their problems become your problems. The relative peace over the past 30 or so years in Europe and Asia has been since both Russia and China have been beset by troubles, and that period is ending with both asserting their influence. The US finds itself forced to defend E Europe a place with a myriad of hatreds and rivalries that make the Mid East look like a mild disagreement and its only going to get worse. Russia is a continent spanning Great power; its going to act like one.
The UniPolar moment is for now at least, over.
Neither Ukraine nor other problematic countries on Russia’s southern border are in NATO. Only three new countries were admitted to NATO under Clinton; since then countries like Latvia and Romania have joined, but I don’t see the “myriad of hatreds and rivalries,” though I suppose the Russian Bear would be happy to gobble up some of its neighbors.
Do you blame WWII on Britain and France, for signing a pact with Poland?
The Khmer Rouge have disappeared, along with the Red Brigades. The red group I find most dangerous today is the Red-colored Party that’s taken over in Washington, D.C.
I feel as if 2/3 of my life has been spent on the brink of WWIII.
They’ll have to bring back PE so kids will be lithe enough to “duck and cover”.
(There’s a “cuck and cover” joke here somewhere, but I can’t find it.)
This song came on the other day, and I had a good giggle. Jello really can just recycle so much Reagan/Thatcher-era stuff right now.
Also, I see your DK and raise you some Afrika Bambaataa and John Lydon.