Your friend Jim George thinks you'd be a great addition to Ricochet, so we'd like to offer you a special deal: You can become a member for no initial charge for one month!
Ricochet is a community of like-minded people who enjoy writing about and discussing politics (usually of the center-right nature), culture, sports, history, and just about every other topic under the sun in a fully moderated environment. We’re so sure you’ll like Ricochet, we’ll let you join and get your first month for free. Kick the tires: read the always eclectic member feed, write some posts, join discussions, participate in a live chat or two, and listen to a few of our over 50 (free) podcasts on every conceivable topic, hosted by some of the biggest names on the right, for 30 days on us. We’re confident you’re gonna love it.
NATO’s credibilty:
If NATO lacks credibility why would anybody want to join it?
Is NATO good for all its members or not? I guess is the question. Is it worth it?
Doesn’t the COC forbid conspiracy theories?
Why should we fight for Montenegro is actually a useful question. It’s been well answered by Matthew Continetti. I actually sort of agree with the President on NATO in substance, though certainly not in style. An alliance like this only works if the all the members are willing and capable of fighting. There has to be a better way of getting the other member nations to engage and contribute.
Anything stated in my post or in Jimmy Dore’s podcast is vetted by actual news articles.
Example: Trump ends clandestine funding for ISIS?
Citation: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/19/world/middleeast/cia-arming-syrian-rebels.html
Did my comment fail to mention diplomacy? I don’t think that it did, I mentioned our alliances for example. My response did not miss, nor dismiss, DIME.
But given that you mentioned the President’s National Security Strategy can you link it? And can you explain why, if it is good, is a result of the President’s intellect, and not his administration, because Trump has taken several steps in policy that are to the USA’s detriment across the DIME standard–like tariff wars, sinking TPP, complimenting rogue regimes, criticizing the USA, and our allies flippantly.
Care to explain how Assad was elected? Care to also explain why a supposedly popularly supported and elected President would experience a Civil War, that managed to sweep through his nation with ease and required foreign intervention to protect him?
See OP. Read the NSS and you will see President Trump’s fingerprints all over it.
Trade agreements are another way to transfer the sovereignty of the American citizen away to the Banking cabal that attempts to rule all. Same thing with the idea of ending tariffs.
Trade agreements as they currently exist, are odious due to the fact that they exist for all eternity. There is very little in the way of pulling out of one. They establish such wasteful silliness as assessing the state of Calif some 800 millions of dollars ruled to be the “damages” to a Canadian firm when by 1999, the “R”s in this state got our governor to ban the noxious toxin MTBE. Yes, according to NAFTA, we had to pay for the fact that we would no longer be using or purchasing a toxin!
BTW, having China produce the steel that the American military needs is certainly not a way to bolster an ability to settle disputes through fighting a conventional war rather than a nuclear war. When the diplomacy fails in some future Cuban missile styled crisis, we certainly can’t posture for a conventional war if we have to beg our enemies for steel, can we?
Part of the challenge is sorting out what “military spending” and “military capability” means. The 2 percent GDP formula includes a stipulation that 20 percent of the 2 percent is to be spent on equipment. Why? So the 2 percent is not just sucked up in a jobs and pension program like a crooked public union scheme. However, beating the drum for 20th Century heavy mechanized forces will not provide real security, as Putin has moved on to a different kind of warfare, rendering tank brigades largely irrelevant. I’ll post separately on the potential of transportation infrastructure development to provide more defense bang for the buck.
The National Security Strategy is typical Republican foreign policy with a few Trumpist rhetorical changes. That is not the sign of Trump’s fingerprints over it. I don’t see any “bigly” or “pulling our troops out of Korea or Germany” or any other campaign promises. The only consistent part in it is Trump’s desire for tariffs under the “reciprocal” trade clause.
The examples I mentioned before do contradict with a majority of what is pointed out in the NSS. Just as one example the NSS mentions supporting US values abroad and opposing regimes hostile to those values, Trump has repeatedly complimented dictators for their opposition to our values in public. It’s your average establishment republicans, the administration, that is doing the yeoman’s work while Trump blusters away and contradicts it the majority of the time.
Kudos to those serving in the administration for their work, but not to the president.
Do you have evidence that the USA is dependent on Chinese steel? How much steel is purchased for consumption by the USA that is Chinese made? How much steel of the steel consumed in the USA is USA made? Answer those questions and then see if the USA is dependent on China.
I’m sorry your perspective, both of the NSS and of news, is so slanted. Your claims about the NSS are simply not so.
There it is. The argument of bad faith. Please, quote where the NSS reveals Trump’s preferred policy statements from during the campaign trumping typical Republican foreign policy dogma? Please cite the differences between it and Bush II NSSs.
You are asserting something you have not proven.
There is no doubt the Russians would prefer to use less conventional military means to pursue their strategic objectives. However, the Russians retain a tank force of over 20,000 vehicles. Given the paucity of money and maintenance capabilities, how many would be mission capable is open to debate. Still, the idea that 4G Warfare, or whatever we are calling it this week, has made mobile armored ground forces largely irrelevant, is misreading the situation.
The WWI discussion is interesting, but misses some of the complexity.
The existence of Germany’s Schlieffen plan does not conclusively demonstrate German aggression. Competent armies have contingency plans. I imagine that we have many of them.
My personal view is that the Russians get insufficient blame for starting WWI. The entire Balkan region was a mess, principally due to the decline of the Ottoman Empire. Both Austria-Hungary and Russia had imperial ambitions in the area.
Serbia gave Austria-Hungary ample provocation for war. Russia came to the defense of Serbia. Not literally, as Russian armies couldn’t directly reach Serbia, but in the most meaningful way — by mobilizing its army. The military and transportation technology of the time made early mobilization critical. This had been demonstrated by Germany in the Franco-Prussian War (1870).
Here is the key timeline, all in 1914 — starting 104 years ago tomorrow:
Germany attacked Belgium because it was the only viable route to France. Conflict between Germany and Russia would automatically obligate France to come to Russia’s aid, which France did. Germany knew that it would be facing a two-front war, and the German military leaders believed that their best chance was an overwhelming attack on France to knock it out of the war, before Russian forces could be brought to bear against Germany. Remember that Russian forces had the farthest to go to reach the battlefield, and the least advanced transportation system.
Germany’s plan to defeat France rapidly was not crazy. It was successful in 1870 and 1940.
There were significant leaders inside Germany who advocated war, and were eager to use the Austria-Serbia conflict as a pretext for war. But there were others in opposition. The German ultimatum of July 30 to Russia certainly suggests a last-ditch effort to stop war.
Here are a few sources: Wikipedia timeline; Wikipedia on the July Crisis; This Day in History.
I doubt that the attack on Belgium actually caused Britain to enter the war. It was certainly used for propaganda purposes, but I think that Britain’s true motivation was the strategy that it had followed for about 800 years: oppose the strongest Continental power. At the time, that was Germany. Britain’s principal goal was to prevent the emergence of any single dominant Continental power.
On the Montenegro question, the obvious answer has already been given: to preserve the viability and credibility of NATO.
Why do we need NATO? Well, what was the point? Ismay said it best: “to keep the Soviet Union out, the Americans in, and the Germans down.” Ismay was a British lord, Churchill’s personal military adviser during WWII, and the first Secretary General of NATO.
Substitute “Russia” for “the Soviet Union” and you have today’s rationale for NATO.
For over 100 years, the greatest danger to the US has been the establishment of European hegemony by a single nation. Perhaps this risk is now second to the danger of a rising China, perhaps not. Either way, a European hegemon is a major risk.
There are only two nations with the capability of dominating much of the European continent. Germany and Russia.
NATO keeps Germany “down” by: (1) placing significant US forces in Germany itself, and (2) convincing Germany that it doesn’t need an extremely strong military to defend itself against the Russian threat. What would Germany do in the absence of NATO? I can’t speak for Germany, but I know what I would do in their place: create a very strong military and a large nuclear arsenal. Germany could do this in a very short period of time, and everything would work.
NATO keeps Russia “out” with the threat of coordinated defense by the entire continent, plus the US.
I think that it is naive to believe that this sort of military threat is not necessary to preserve the peace. Human nature does not change. We are never more than a catastrophe and a heartbeat away from savagery.
Although your post is an excellent one, and I agree with much of what you state, I need to point out the following:
Although the eastern area of Europe, especially environs about Serbia, was a complete shambles, often unification doesn’t lead to peace. Just 18 years after WWI’s end, both Look and Life magazine heralded Herr Hitler’s unification of not only Germany but Austria to boot. The USA was hardly opposed to the man’s desire to “liberate” Czechoslovokia either.
And yet despite all the unity, we still ended up with a war that took the lives of 50 million people.
…but the existence of many, many documents from that time DO conclusively demonstrate that the German government (from the top to at least the middle to upper ranks) were just waiting for an excuse to fire up a major offensive conflict.
Note, for example, that while they had spent a lot of time and effort in creating and preparing for offensive wars (mostly variations of the Schlieffen Plan), they hardly nodded at the idea of a defensive war on either front.
And military experts weighing in on The War’s time frame all felt that it would be over quickly, as it would be fought by cavalry.
A rather “Duh” assessment of what actually happened.
Whilst straying far from the OP, I will note that, despite the detailed timetables for troop movements, the German General Staff’s logistics plan was fatally flawed. A large volume of nitrogen, needed for replenishing munitions , had gone into fertilizer, and was on rail sidings ready for download. It would have gone onto German farm fields, but a German patriot, a young, prominent industrialist spotted the strategic oversight and had orders issued to secure the rail cars and redirect them to munitions plants. Walther Rathenau was ethnically Jewish, but pronounced himself to be of “German faith,” meaning a sort of civic religion. This proud nationalist was murdered by ultra-nationalists in 1922.
Germany could not fight a defensive war. They had neither the space nor the forces. Their only realistic option was to quickly defeat either France or Russia, first. With the exception of Britain, every major power in Europe had an offensive plan. This is not to say the Germans weren’t wrong. It’s pretty well established that the Kaiser could have chosen to pull back Austria, instead he backed them.
Don’t forget, the general presumption of all the belligerents was the troops would be “home before the leaves fall”.
This is a great argument for NATO in 1985. The reality is the Germans reduced their forces by over 70% since 1990. The percentage of GDP spent on defense is half of what’s it was in 1989. Half in an economy that has grown massively in the past 30 years. I have no problem with our NATO participation. I do when we pay a disproportionate share at a time when Euope’s Great powers use our defense dollars as a subsidy.
The General Staff’s road march tables proved to be inaccurate. There was insufficient road space for the forces allocated to the Belgian arm. Not to mention that staff war games identified a shortfall of 3 army corps dedicated to the offensive.