Do any European countries have much LNG import capacity? Can the current LNG market absorb a spike in demand? It’s not like we can just start shunting our excess gas to Europe. We don’t yet have the infrastructure.
You reflect my thoughts on this whole affair pretty closely. Though I still don’t see the technological gap between the two sides as huge as you seem to think. Russia has some mighty impressive latest generation weapons of its own that might surprise more than a few.
When one of your arguments shows signs of intelligence, someone might make an intelligent response to it.
As to the idea that we should bomb Russia and destroy it’s military, I hope adher is just speaking in hypotheticals. That would be an insanely stupid thing to do over something that has virtually nothing to do with US interests.
I’m not disputing the wisdom, or lack of it, of trying to kick off World War Three over the Crimea, but you realise Russia’s air force was effectively grounded by the Georgians, right, in the Russo-Georgian war? Iraq and Afghanistan regular forces never came anywhere close to putting up any sort of resistance against the US and its allies during the respective invasions.
Errrr… Come again? The Georgians shot down a couple of planes. The VVS (or whatever it us called these days) absolutely pummeled the Georguans and their infrastructure.
Not going off on this tangent as it’s been discussed to death here. But surely you jest?
Let’s just say the end result of both invasions didn’t exactly turn out anywhere close to what the US wanted. In Iraq alone the US lost close to 5,000 men and suffered literally countless wounded (of which most would be dead if not for today’s rapid field triage & evacuation/treatment advances) – and you suggest they never met “any kind of resistance”? Makes one wonder what would have happened if they had.
We know what they’re spending on that arsenal, so US military planners have a fairly good idea of what’s in it. For now, we have stealthy aircraft and they don’t, so an air war would be over in a matter of days or weeks (as long as we don’t have to enter Russian territory and have adequate staging facilities).
Oh well, if so many of you appear to be sure it would be such a cakewalk, I’d take Nike’s advice and “Just do it.”
Who am I to bring down America’s hyper-inflated ego anyway?
ETA: It’s not as simple a formulas as knowing their defense spending – lots to do with what they do with it. The US has squndered a lot of funds on dead-end/failed porjects. Have the Russians too? Do you know for sure?
Lumping those two wars together is a common over-simplification for muddying up the non-justified basis for one of them. One was justified and one was not. But your apparent conclusion that the USA *“just had your asses handed to you – and your allies – by two Third World backwater tribal nations.” *is quite odd and misplaced.
Not saying that Iraq was legally or morally in any way justified but what happened does not suggest the US Military or military/industrial complex got it’s ass handed to it by a third world backwater tribal nation.
I agree that no one here should think we and NATO could crush the Russian military some kind of conventional war. There is no way that could be done. But there is no reason to think that that the past decades of fighting in those two separate conflicts means that readiness for a conventional war has been reduced in any significant measure.
It always comes down to this sort of pissing contest, doesn’t it?
Things are very far from being sorted out in this matter (between Ukraine and Russia) but it seems the least worst of all possible situations so far. No shot has been fired in anger by either side. Both sides appeare to be going about this grim business with the full understanding of realpolitik of who really wants what and where there is room for compromise. But the farther west you go, the less skin in the game, the more shrill rhetoric and posturing you hear.
Here’s the thing, Putin knows he can’t hang on to all of Ukraine. But he does not want to give up strategic areas like Crimea. So he’ll take what he needs and let the rest go to EU, if the EU will still wants what’s left. In a way this makes things easier for western of Ukrainia as well because a significant population of it’s own citizens wants to remain aligned with Russia. There’s a price Ukrainia must pay for breaking off Russian ties. Putin has named the price. Ukraine is showing willingness to pay it by not responding aggressively to the Russian occupation (thus far). I hope cooler heads (than John Kerry’s*) will prevail.
Though I can understand the US and the west making noise about this. Ukraine breaking off whole (with Crimea intact) might help diminish Russias strategic and military advantage on the Black Sea and access to the Med. Precious little chance Russia would let that happen but why not kick and scream and threaten international sanctions. Beats doing nothing at all.
And unfortunately, having stealthy aircraft is going to mean jack all. The Russians are not going to engage F22’s in the air. They are going to fire volleys of missiles at the bases where they are stationed in Europe.