He was outfoxed up to 2022. The recovery in 2023 coincided with China fully backing them with dual use machinery and equipment. So I would say BRICS is becoming more and more integrated than we have been lead to believe. Something something land wars in Asia... You're right, if Europe and US viewed Putin as an existential threat to NATO, then they wouldn't be patting themselves on the back that they'll make 2 million artillery shells by end of 2025 while Russia can already make 3 million. Our atrophied manufacturing might belies the rhetoric we've seen for the past 10 years. Putin had his **** in Crimea for how long? Wasn't that the time to take off the sweatpants and put on some worker jeans? It's too late. Trump has been transparent with that ploy, but Russia views this war as an existential threat to its very survival. 40% of its economy is going into wartime manufacturing. Their population curve looks cooked. Inflation and everything else has been pearshaped since 2022. This war has strengthened Russia and China's bonds deeper than ever. Iran is supplying drones and NK is supplying troops. Ironically, if Trump didn't kill Obama's Iran deal out of petty jealousy, there would've been European investment to weaken BRICS dependency with each other. They all understand the realities of the West canceling their SWIFT access on a whim. Bush was able to get Gadafi to give up his nukes program, and Hillary allowing the press to plaster his dead mug on every paper around the world was a wakeup call on how we honor our agreements. China's manufacturing might has been strong enough to kill ours and europe's combined. If you read or grok that paper above, it'll describe how China has been giving them their spare Soviet parts and lower grade industrial machines to build up the generous numbers that Cavoli testified. It should be infuriating and humiliating that a corrupt petrostate oligarchy can reindustrialize a war machine that can outproduce a west with nearly 30% of the world's wealth. Cue the idiot one-line quoters who will reply about quality vs quantity or some meaningless slogan they saw an MSNBC defense expert brag about. We're suffering from a momentum and credibility gap. Biden front loaded a lot of the 2025 spending and supply shipments so Zelensky has some freedom to go at it alone as he's mostly doing by acting up diplomatically. Europe can also stall a bit financially, though their cupboards are bare. "The bottom of the barrel is now visible (2023)" Stopping intel would clip his wings, but those and any future losses are on Trump's watch. Just like Afghanistan, Americans hate military blunders. The way I see it Russia and China are now joined at the hip. Our intent for this war was to humiliate Putin and destroy all ambitions in the West to the point where he would focus eastward. He took the proxy war as an existential crisis and instead gave China the right to settle and farm along their eastern borders. All the Ukraine crops they held went to China. Historically Russia and China haven't gotten along. That's probably why many presidents like Bush and Trump wanted another Nixon pivot. If we really wanted to start something, we should've secured our weapons manufacturing and industrial supply chain. Now, it's more like China using Russia as its proxy to sap the West. They've bulked up CIPS to de-risk from SWIFT. BRICS expanded despite the war to Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, United Arab Emirates, and Indonesia. How the hell did Dubai/UAE join BRICS? Rather than "supporting" China or Russia, the question now is whether we focus our limited war assets on the Russian front or the Pacific front. We only get one choice. People here have severely overestimated our wartime capacity. @Nook do you see the irony of people believing we/NATO can out exhaust Russia while in the tariff thread clown Trump for losing to China's all around manufacturing dominance? We can definitely outspend them, but better watch that treasury rate...
IMO trump was never going to back Ukraine because he likes Putin...as soon as trump won we all knew it was a matter of time........trump will give away the farm in negotiations and claim a success. We could keep giving them our older equipment and ramp up to better tech but without our help I am afraid they are toast which is just sad.......................
The sooner Trump walks away from negotiations, the better off Ukraine will be. But, I don't expect he will walk away. He'll cast Ukraine's refusal to surrender as nefarious and start actively opposing them. Europe needs to recognize that the US is their enemy in this and not only completely replace American contributions to this fight, they need to actively oppose US attempts to force Ukraine to surrender.
Likes is an understatement. He idolizes Putin, and all Putin has to do is stroke that narcissistic fool's ego to get anything he wants. Putin keeps Trump in his pocket, and pulls him out once in awhile when he needs a favor. His little pocket pet will do as he's told with his tongue wagging for a little pat on the head.
Ukraine has overplayed its hand. I'd just walk away now and let Europe fund their losing effort. The problem for the American deep staters is that they know they provoked the war with their NATO expansion efforts... and if Trump walks away, the US diplomats that provoked the war (and offered Ukraine security guarantees) lose all credibility. Too bad, those people (like Jake Sullivan) deserve to be removed from having global influence. GOOD DAY
Do liberals who simply repeat the mainstream media programming consider themselves "high information" people? LMAOOOOO They struggle to identify propaganda when it's coming from their trusted sources. Critical thinking skills are required to discern the difference between truth and propaganda. In fairness, most people who do not manage other people do not have to do a lot of critical thinking. They just do the job they are told to do. So I get the disconnect. GOOD DAY
Does it concern you that the mainstream media has historically served the big government viewpoint and supported Democrats? Do you see how they might be connected? Did you see how USAID was funding them? Have you read about Operation Mockingbird by the CIA? Just curious what it will take to convince you. Certainly a lot of evidence hasn't been enough to do the trick.
I see putin`s little b is calling out Zelensky again and saying this is his fault.......................what a loser that trump is. he will say he tried but Ukraine would not negotiate. I have to wonder what putin has on trump, I have never seen him capitulate this much since his love letters from N Korea
I was thinking the same thing. I fixed his post to make it more realistic. Do liberals Trump defenders who simply repeat the mainstream media, Trump, his Truth Social, and right wing media programming consider themselves "high information" people? LMAOOOOO They struggle to identify propaganda when it's coming from their trusted sources. Critical thinking skills are required to discern the difference between truth and propaganda, but they are too lazy to fact check what they are being told, or ignore the thousands of fact checks that dispute the twisted truth Trump and his right wing echo chambers feed them. You are hilarious. Trump lies compulsively, yet a million fact checks would never convince you that he's a compulsive lying con. You are the perfect example of someone who will never believe anything but what comes out of the mouth of Trump. The saddest part of all is that you think everyone who knows he's making up facts, twisting the truth, and outright lying are the idiots. That's the textbook definition of cult mentality.
FOX news is every part of that MSM too. And it's not just the MSM but literal history. I know you conservatives are trying to rewrite history so y'all dont come off as such jerks but it's all there..... But please..... tell me how the USSR and the current Russia Federation acquired and maintained all that territory? Did they or did they not invade their neighbors? It's almost like when you historically, over hundreds of years, invade your neighbors to create buffer zones and gain resources there will be backlash against it. Your Trumpers don't really do well with cause and effect.
Says the Twitter Boy who actually believes a south african immigrant actually stands for free speech.
Honestly, it has to be something that could get Trump put away, because nothing else makes sense. Trump will protect himself first, and Putin must have something big on Trump. Trump shows more aggression and hate towards American Democrats or than he does Putin. Putin can bomb innocent women and children, commit war crimes, wrongfully imprison or torture innocent people, poison reporters or assassinate those daring to speak against him, and Trump won't dare spew the type hatred towards him as he does against law abiding American citizens he doesn't like.
LOL jorge/texxx/mojoman/conquistador. you just described yourself! look how often your repeat the right wing/fox news talking point about hegseth bringing back the "warrior ethos" (whatever that is). its always projection with the right wingers. also hilarious how you of all people call democrats war mongers and supporters of endless war when you were arguably the biggest supporter here of george w bush and the iraq war.
