Yeah, Taiwan's defense minister thinks China will feel comfortable attacking in 2025. Xi is laying low with provocative moves until he gets his appointment for life and his Congress sets his next five year agenda. Their current support will be to stress test leaks in the current financial system and their version of SWIFT, CIPS. They'll work out the kinks and weaknesses before becoming a full on regional rival. As for why China would break the status quo, it mostly goes back to their economy. They've done the Japan thing, building worthless bridges and roads 2-3x over, and they aren't seeing real economic gains because they don't want to unlock their consumer base without tight controls. There's regional and local bureaucracy that hampers reform, and their real estate market is bloated and wrecked because of it. Also, their demographics are shifting, so they probably need a sharp pivot or clean reset soon because the current working order isn't sustainable. War is always good for resets.
How is he risking a world war? This invasion has been a big joke. The US does it once a decade and the world has been fine.
China looks weak and ridiculous having made a bad bet. Xi has been stumbling around making bad moves for a year plus now. This is why you shouldn't have a "president for life" ever
Romney is very impressive here. Certainly more impressive than any other "Republican" I've heard since John McCain died.
Hmmm... Bandwagoner or a former Asst. Sec. of the Navy? https://www.defensenews.com/opinion...three-a-10-aircraft-squadrons-to-ukraine-now/ Zelenskyy is right in requesting air power support. It is necessary to slow or stop the oncoming juggernaut of Russian armored forces. The United States has the most effective weapon for this role — the U.S. Air Force’s A-10 aircraft. It is available since the service wants to retire most of the 30-year-old fleet. The airplane was designed to operate in Europe from ill-prepared facilities. Pilot retraining is minimal. All that is needed is painting Ukrainian insignia and delivering the aircraft. This could be done in days. Everett Pyatt is a former assistant secretary of the U.S. Navy for shipbuilding and logistics. https://cepa.org/six-ways-to-help-ukraine-survive-right-now/ Provide US A-10 ground-attack aircraft – currently scheduled to be mothballed – to Ukraine as Excess Defense Articles. Thanks to prior military exchange programs, Ukraine already has a small number of pilots trained to fly the A-10. If spare parts and maintenance are required, use part of the US $1bn funding to allow Ukraine to hire private contractors, rather than involving US personnel directly. By: Philip Breedlove, a former Air Force general and head of US European Command, and Kurt Volker, the US Special Representative for Ukraine Negotiations from 2017 to 2019
90% of a 200k invasion force is still lethal. I am back to doom scrolling and have lost hope for Ukraine to hold off for this next onslaught.
mitt Romney had me when he said that republicans have morons on their team. This dude gets it. I don’t even have to agree with all of his policies to know this is the kind of leadership the country needs. Romney for the 2024 Republican nomination.
1. How many A-10's does the Navy have or ever had? Forget appeal to authority though. No link for number of trained pilots? link to to mothball? Here is a link to they won't be mothballed https://taskandpurpose.com/military-tech/air-force-a-10-warthog-funding/ Three squadrons? so ~50 aircraft with no runways left in your country? Genius. At least the mig-29 Poland wanted to send has anti-FOD functionality for use on makeshift runways. Handwaving the fact Ukraine has no weapons to mount to the A-10? Oh just use the 1 billion we have and send in a crew for all ~50 aircraft. Genius. Getting three squadrons, parts, the weapons and ammo they need to even be effective a ground crew, runways to land should prove to be no logistical problem at all.
I disagree with Romney about a host of other issues, but in this case he is making sense. Right now, an enormous percentage of Russian military power is inside Ukraine and bogged down. Much of their "smart" missiles have been used, they are having severe logistics problems getting supplies to the 40-50% of their entire major armored combat power that is now inside Ukraine, with a large percentage of the troops involved being conscripts who don't know why they are where they are, and have figured out that they've been lied to. It's a cockup of galactic proportions. So they appear to have fallen back on what they've done before. Flatten cities with massed artillery fire and massed "dumb" missiles. Destroy the infrastructure that took decades to create, leaving the civilians without electricity, without water, without food - all the while attacking the large multistory apartment complexes where so many live that were built during the Soviet era, and that are still easy to be seen not only in Ukraine, but in cities across Eastern Europe, not to mention Russia. If the innocent civilians are in them, tough luck. If they are not, their homes have been destroyed and they are left with essentially nothing but slowly starving, even dehydration, while they are trying not to die from exposure during the winter. That Putin's attack is during the winter is no accident. Meanwhile, Putin and his mouthpieces literally laugh at the immense quantity of evidence proving they are doing this and being shown all over the world, proclaim it "lies, fake news" (sound familiar?), and do their best to keep the truth from the Russian people. Putin is guilty of crimes against humanity on a scale not seen since World War Two. He is a monster.
Why is it that Poland doesn't want to send them, NATO doesn't want to send them or being involved, and nor does the Pentagon want to do it. Why are they all pushing back?
Romney should run. I think he could beat Trump and Biden. He would get alot of Independents. The Problem is the Republican Party is batshit crazy. Romney is sane.
