[hnthrow90348765]

Well, Russia is destabilizing the US and winning which is why I think we're acting like that. And it seems all of our military and counterintelligence capabilities can't stop it. Too much offense, not enough defense, it seems.

[peppers-ghost]

I'm not even sure it's true Russia is doing this. I think our elected officials might just be really stupid on their own.

[inetknght]

They can be really stupid on their own and it can also be Russia who's got their buttons labeled and is pushing them as needed for the dance recital. Except the recital was 4 years ago.

[hnthrow90348765]

It's going to be difficult to get more of a smoking gun than a plan to drop sanctions and ceasing offensive cyber operations against Russia, as well as the US's lopsided Ukrainian peace deal and pulling financial support for Ukraine.

Russia has no military advantage against ours, so there is no reason to placate them due to a threat of war (nukes excluded here, unless Russia has rapidly outpaced us). The only thing that's left is the relationship between the leaders themselves.

If Trump were truly interested in isolationism, he'd instead have simply pulled support for Ukraine and not offered to be a part of negotiations, but many more things were offered for no obvious gain to us.

[gloosx]

>Russia has no military advantage against ours

Recent battle experience is kind of an advantage.

Russia is running a full-scale war against US and NATO weaponry in Ukraine for three years, studying it and refining its tactics.

What was the last battle for USA? Houthis in Yemen? Few airstrikes and limited engagements.

It is very naive to believe Putin doesn’t want to cripple the US economy or that war is not a real threat. The US is critically dependent on semiconductors, and TSMC is much closer to Russia than to America. Think it through.

[kasey_junk]

The US has perhaps the most battle hardened military in the history of the world. It’s had real combat deployments continually for going on 25 years.

At best you can suggest it would be too allocated to counter insurgency but combined arms battles is the heart of American doctrine and its shown its value in Ukraine not its weakness.

I think there are real questions about US military composition, particularly its navy, but battle experience is not a problem.

[ryandrake]

The US military might be battle-hardened and ready for war, but the US public is not. The public is soft and fragile and totally unready for the sacrifices and losses that come from a serious war where we're not an overwhelming force against a tiny Middle Eastern country. The public will not work together collectively to get through a war. We're not going to put up with rationing programs, collecting scrap metal, Victory Gardens, buying war bonds, and take a detour from our careers to work in factories producing ammunition. Hell, half the public couldn't even deal with stay-at-home during COVID and went out protesting when they couldn't eat at the Olive Garden and buy their khakis for a few weeks. Ain't no way we have the intestinal fortitude to put up with a sustained hot war.

[philistine]

There is no military in the world without nuclear weapons that can put enough of a fight to require the US public to collect scrap metal. If the US goes to war with a nation with nuclear weapons, what's left of the whole planet's gonna be collecting scrap metal for the next 200 years.

[relaxing]

We acted quickly post-9/11, buying duct tape and trash bags and taking off our belts at the airport.

You may be surprised how the public can be united against a human enemy. The success of the Right during COVID was turning the outrage away from the invisible virus and onto the humans forcing them to wear a mask.

[gloosx]

You assume that continuous combat deployments automatically translate to full-scale war readiness, but there's a big difference between counterinsurgency operations and peer-to-peer warfare.

The US military has been engaged in conflicts for decades, but most of them involved fighting non-state actors or weaker conventional forces, not a high-intensity war against an advanced military.

[no_wizard]

Advanced is doing some heavy lifting.

The US military is far a cut above everything else, in terms of tactical readiness, sheer firepower and especially effective size.

We outspend any other nation - China included of which we spend an estimated 2.5 times more than - and we have been in that lead position for decades, not just years.

While yes, US forces haven’t squared off against conventional militaries of any note in some time, the US military has at least been engaged in real conflict. To my recollection the Chinese military have undertaken no significant military campaigns in the last 20+ years and lack the air & sea power to functionally match anything the US military can throw at it by comparison.

Which leaves ground forces, which is both vulnerable to air power and is effectively the numbers game the Chinese can win outright in a protracted war that escalated to that level, and cyber warfare, which the Chinese have proven to be quite adept at but the US military has been aware and developing counter measures against that for a long time as well

This talking conventionally of course.

China being a nuclear power means it would be unlikely to escalate past a certain point if anyone is acting rationally. There’s no reason you want to give another nuclear power a reason to use those weapons, and certainly the US nuclear arsenal is not one anyone wants to see fired either.

So in all likelihood this continues as a Cold War

[kasey_junk]

Russia has proven it’s not a peer is the issue.

Prior to invading Ukraine one might have thought so, but the experience there shows the challenge in thinking that.

Meanwhile the last time the US military deployed to a traditional battlefield the opponent army lasted a matter of months.

Lord willing we’ll never know about these hypotheticals.

[3D30497420]

It would probably depend a lot on the type of conflict. The US would almost certainly have air-superiority, which would have a significant difference. Of course, air-superiority didn't "win" the US wars in Afghanistan or Iraq, but those were more guerilla-style wars with a somewhat (at least) hostile larger population. A US-Russia conflict would probably look pretty different. Or it would just go nuclear, in which case... well, so much for tactics.

[VBprogrammer]

I think you have to be careful about assuming the US would have air superiority. It doesn't take a lot for what, on paper, looks like a superior air force to turn out to be not fit for purpose.

The famous example is the F4 Phantom getting beat in dogfights against the Mig 21 in Vietnam. It was mostly solved by changing the tactics and to improvements to later model aircraft.

Obviously dogfights aren't realistic in the modern age but that is just one of many variables which might lead to an unexpected deficit. Robustness, reliability, repairability, availablity of parts, ability to operate out of unimproved airfields, using poor qualify fuels etc.

[gloosx]

I think future US-Russia conflict will revolve around semiconductors, and you know where it will take place. It would not be possible to just use nukes or airstrike it to the ground, because factories need to stay. Also, a nasty marriage of convenience between China and Russia would work perfectly for the case, what then?

[no_wizard]

And the Russians had to get re-enforcement from North Korea to bolster the bodies they’re losing to a significantly smaller force.

Western military tactics are still working well against Russian commanders, but they being simply larger population wise, can if they’re willing, win a war of attrition simply because the Ukraine doesn’t have the bodies or internal resources to fight forever. It’s the same strategy general Grant used to decisively win the US civil war

Putin really waited out the US election. For reasons I can’t seem to grok Trump wants to ally with the world’s dictators. He’s proven himself a reliable ally to Putin at this point.

Had Trump lost the election I imagine we would see Russia seriously considering or even starting its withdrawal from the conflict.

Back to the military bit again: there is no way the war in the Ukraine is showing anything other than how vulnerable and poorly aged the equipment of the Russian military is and how their tactics have not improved much if any since the 1980s

[brookst]

Can’t be sure, but wow does all of the evidence point that way.

[Cthulhu_]

They can, but they won't because nobody dares to stick their neck out for fear of losing their job. And that's been going on for decades, the slow dismantling (if there ever was any) of job and income security, to the point where the majority of Americans, including federal workers, are only one or two paychecks away from financial ruin. Nobody wants to lose their job.

Of course, if they get fired and there's nothing else for them to do, there will be uprisings.

[JumpCrisscross]

> Nobody wants to lose their job

There is almost zero causality in the U.S. government’s hiring and firing right now. Particularly relating to current conduct.

To the extent anyone has received job protection, it’s by getting politically fired and then seeking court protection.

So no, this is base cowardice and a lack of patriotism. Not rational action.

[hansvm]

> There is almost zero causality in the U.S. government’s hiring and firing right now. Particularly relating to current conduct.

The first firings were all people who knew a guy who knew a guy who wronged Trump. With that kind of retaliatory example, do you not think openly trying to course-correct would result in being fired?

[close04]

As a matter of personal character, the people who would be more likely to stand up and shout or protest vigorously in today’s situation are the people which society generally considers obnoxious and disruptive.

So in each workplace most were already marginalized or learned to hide these traits for their benefit. There are way more people in the ‘flight’ than the ‘fight’ camp.

[bananapub]

Russia is surely involved, but it's pushing on an open door - there's a huge streak of the American right that actually wants this massive catastrophe to befall the US and for the US to become ungovernable and largely ungoverned.

[hedora]

Those people get their news from Russian propaganda outlets.

[bananapub]

no, they don't, this is a very dumb thing to think.

there's a medium sized chunk the American Right, which has now won, who unrelated to Russia or China or whatever actually want the US to become sci-fi dystopia of authoritarian christo-white-nationalism.

[ljm]

To say that Russia is destabilising the US basically takes the agency of the US out of the equation. Makes the US (the so-called greatest country in the world, so-called leaders of the free world) unaccountable for its own actions.

The US is destabilising itself with the help of Russia.

[philistine]

Bingo. Most americans are at the phase where they are trying to absolve themselves of necessary responsibility.

I don't have to pick up a sign to try and defend my country, it's Russia's fault.

I don't have to fight against my president to preserve democracy, it's Russia's fault.

[karmajunkie]

the first amendment has become a national security threat, it would seem…

[iwontberude]

People like to say that Obamas jokes about Trump got him to run. But I wonder if Obama never helped Ukraine keep their democracy if we still would have ours.