Digital feudalism… I suppose that does make it easier to call up large armies of peasant levies when you need to wage an information war.

Also just fear of going out of business by alienating any potential customers. When your revenues have been steadily dropping for decades now and it’s starting to look like you’re going the way of Kodak, it becomes more tempting to pander to the middle and try to avoid pissing as many people off as possible. This in turn means you can’t speak the truth anymore.

It’s the “I know you are, but what am I?” defense. A real elementary school classic.

I think he’s going to go down in history as one of the most successful civilian wartime leaders, ever. I truly cannot even begin to imagine how much he has had to learn on the job, and it has certainly taken years off his lifespan. Pictures of him now vs pictures of him pre-war could almost be a father and his son. But his sheer effectiveness at rallying his people and the world has been nothing short of legendary.

“I need ammo, not a ride” is fully equivalent to “We will fight on the beaches”. So far I consider him in that same tier as the titans of history. This, I think, is what historical figures look like when you’re living alongside them, certainly mired in propaganda and debate, but with a certain shine that is hard to deny.

Just call it the Russo-Ukrainian War. It’s the formal English language name we seem to have settled on, and is unbiased and objective, just listing the two main participants.

That’s a region. It’s also not what you said, you said rust bowl. You know bowls and belts are different things, right? Belts hold your pants up, bowls are dishes you eat food out of.

You read too much bullshit. The US is the second-largest manufacturer on the planet, after China. We have quite a lot of industry still. Nor was “rust bowl” ever a term, which you’d know if you were an American.

If Russian production is so plentiful, where are all the T-90s? Seems to me a major producer of materiel wouldn’t be needing to field its T-64’s in a modern conflict.

… remember the Rust Bowl? lol You should do your homework a little better.

Now I will agree that it takes years, absolutely. Not decades though, which is what you said earlier. Also, fortunately, the process of scaling up armaments production was already started, about two years ago.

Scratch? No, not even close. A reduction and an elimination are not the same thing.

Decade? Probably not, unless you’re trying to spin up domestic production from nothing.

Few years maybe. Depends who you buy them from and how developed their industry is. S Korea does a lot of artillery production. US has its fair share if you want jets. Everyone’s got small arms, trucks, stuff like that.

You see, weapons do not grow on trees. Instead, you need to allocate resources, to either construct them yourself, or purchase them from other people who do. This is usually done with money.

Don’t forget what eventually becomes necessary to retain domestic control.

They’re not liberals, they don’t stomach the idea that the populace could choose something else if they prove themselves unable to deliver on their promises. Liberals get around this by embracing change, giving people the option to change the status quo if they wish. Even to the point of discarding liberalism itself.

Authoritarians don’t believe in that option though.

Not quite as shitty as it looks, for him. Not sure if anybody told Trump yet, but the richest Ukrainian mineral resource deposits are all in the east, under the territory occupied by the Russians.

Old news, but still very cool.

Of course. But the principle remains that if your allies do not want to participate in your military action, they are not required to.

It’s the people in charge of that country that make the decision of how they want to respond to your Article Five invocation, based on their own values and priorities. That freedom of choice is fundamental to NATO.

such action as it deems necessary

That’s a key phrase.

Pariah, possibly, but I don’t think a party like the AfD would particularly care about pariah status. I’ll also remind you that Article 5 has been triggered once, by George W Bush after 9/11. He then wanted to invade Iraq, and did not receive the full support of NATO members.

It’s just not that simple, unfortunately.

This is actually not true.

Article Five states that an attack on one becomes an attack on all. This wording is very specific, and they wrote it with this wording intentionally, to get people to be willing to agree to join.

It does not require counterattacks or declarations of war, merely that you consider an attack on a member an attack on you.

How do people respond to different sorts of attacks? How can they theoretically respond if they so choose? These are the kinds of games being played in Putin’s head.

I think they’re just reading the room. If he goes full-on authoritarian, do your shareholders benefit more from you getting in his way or licking his boots?

His first term there was a sense that he might shake things up, but they would eventually return to some semblance of balance of power. This second term, people still wonder deep down whether Trump might try to pull a S Korean style martial law declaration at some point, and perhaps meet greater success.

Anything that throws more sand into the gears of western allies is to the benefit of a rival. Make people more afraid, make anything more expensive, more inconvenient, etc etc, until we throw our own countries into chaos.