[EU] European Bloc signing deal to integrate its 23 armies

[Slant]

Nobody will match the US simply because the US operates a global defense strategy, whereas Europe only needs to do regional defense. But the US, isolated from most of the human race by two enormous oceans, HAS to do a global defense strategy.

Let's talk about this. Because there are voices saying that it's a self-serving goal. The US doesn't actually HAVE to do global defense. Nobody ever attempted to actually invade the US. The US is one of the countries that is least likely to ever be overrun just like that. But they are targeted by terrorists whenever possible. Why is that? I blame the global defense strategy for that.

Who's your enemy? Russia? Hardly. China? Contrary to your belief, China is actually not expansionist by nature. Their very culture and thinking limits their actions to their immediate surroundings. The expansion China does happens on an economical level. And your global defense strategy does not address that. Quite the opposite, it binds money where it's least helpful for you in the economical battle that the US is... let's say, not winning at the moment.

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It has to happen. Europe will be far better for it. But make no mistake: it's eating a shit sandwich. And it's also going to take decades to do.

We have discussed this before. Licensing seems to be the key here. Factories in Spain can continue to build Spanish tanks. With German blueprints and a procurement contract hammered out by the overlying EU department. If Europe can do one thing, it's logistics. Whether or not those steel plates and electronics go to some village in German or to some village in Spain, it really doesn't matter all that much.

This is the advantage we have over the US. Distance is not an issue here. Detroit or San Francisco, that's a 2 day trip for a truck. In Europe it's more like 8 hours from Germany to Spain for a truck.

[ati87]

The US is a massive outlier in military spending, it's not exactly a goal anyone should be trying to match.

You misunderstand.

The US defense budget is beyond the fact bloated, you don't need to outspend the next 10 countries.

But what can be said about the spending vs the EU that across the board they getting more for there money then the EU is. Part of the problem the EU again has is that you have 20 member each doing their own thing.

We as the EU should be more efficient then this and to achieve this across the board efficiency (not just defense) we need to act like each others partners

[Skroe]

Let's talk about this. Because there are voices saying that it's a self-serving goal. The US doesn't actually HAVE to do global defense. Nobody ever attempted to actually invade the US. The US is one of the countries that is least likely to ever be overrun just like that. But they are targeted by terrorists whenever possible. Why is that? I blame the global defense strategy for that.

The US is at it's foundation a trade power and we have interests to press in Europe, the Middle East and Asia-Pacific. Economics underpins the mutual security relationships' we are at the center of in these regions. Put another way, were a region to fundamentally destabilize, and our trade with that region sizeably contract, that would impact our way of life and is not something we can allow.

Further, we can't forget the lesson of World War II that is and will be taught in every single history class and military leadership session and public policy program at a university in the US, forever. What is that lesson? Historian Tom Ricks put it best: America learned in World War II that spending some amounts of blood and treasure "over there" now will go a long way to preventing to have to spend an absolutely enormous amount of blood and treasure later over there later. Or worse, here.

That's why the United States created the post World War II system. That is why it is the guarantor of it. That's why even AFTER Trump and after Europe does what it does with defense, it will still do this. Because historically the rest of the world has gotten it wrong far more often than they've gotten it right, and institutionally we're designed to prevent it from happening again.

Who's your enemy? Russia? Hardly. China? Contrary to your belief, China is actually not expansionist by nature. Their very culture and thinking limits their actions to their immediate surroundings. The expansion China does happens on an economical level. And your global defense strategy does not address that. Quite the opposite, it binds money where it's least helpful for you in the economical battle that the US is... let's say, not winning at the moment.

China and Russia. And China's actions directly contradict your assertion they are not expansionist. The United States hasn't "expanded" it's territory, properly, in over a hundred years. But in that hundred years, in absence of a classical Empire, it built something new that made it the most powerful and hegemonic country since the Roman Empire.

China want's to replace this system with one where it, rather than the US and its allies, are at the center. We will not allow that to happen. And we will stop them.

Furthermore economically, sure, China's had a good couple of years, mostly due to US misteps. But I strongly believe that the US will enter TPP next decade. And even in absence of that, our deepening regional security ties will place a limit on how far China can economically expand.

Right now the US has three carrier battle groups saling off the coast of North Korea, and seven carriers at sea total right now. You know, for all the talk about what ails America in the age of Trump, I think it's a helpful reminder that no other country on Earth, including China, is remotely close to wielding that much power. Yeah. The situation America is in in the age of Trump sucks. And that can be defined as "politically and geostratically crappier for the US than the 2000s, 1990s and 1980s. And then you hit the 1970s, 1960s and 1950s, and suddenly everything in those time looks (and was) far worse.


We're not going anywhere.

We have discussed this before. Licensing seems to be the key here. Factories in Spain can continue to build Spanish tanks. With German blueprints and a procurement contract hammered out by the overlying EU department. If Europe can do one thing, it's logistics. Whether or not those steel plates and electronics go to some village in German or to some village in Spain, it really doesn't matter all that much.

This is the advantage we have over the US. Distance is not an issue here. Detroit or San Francisco, that's a 2 day trip for a truck. In Europe it's more like 8 hours from Germany to Spain for a truck.

Licencing won't do what you think it will. Let's say all of Europe decides to buy one common warship design. That's probably two ship yards. You go more than that, and suddenly you're paying to keep them open. The same goes with tank factories. We're going to have 28? The largest European Army fields around 350 tanks I believe? All of Europe fields around 2000 or so iirc? The US fields 5000 tanks with another 4000 in pre-positioned storage. And all those tanks were made, at their height at just three plants at a rate of 120 per month.

Which brings us to another issue: a plant or factory or shipyard not producing is a blackhole for tax dollars. The US doesn't need more F/A-18s. But to keep the plant open it buys 12 a year (or one per month).

If Europe is going to go for this, it needs to actually do big buys. Which means the German Army needs to get back up to over 1000 tanks. It means that replacing 12 ships with 6 ships has to stop... it has to be 12 for 12. Even with European defense consolidation, I really question the quantity of its hypothetical purchases. It can't just be an excuse to spend less money. It has to be a way to spend the same amount of money on more for greater capability. Nobody should be the British Army, which has so few of a type of Helicopter, they might as well give them unique names like the Space Shuttle.

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Fuck them both. On topic, We (the US) can't keep being the worlds police.

Sure we can. We just have to choose to do it. Keep in mind "world police" doesn't even mean "fighting wars". That's the minority. It means sending advisors to Poland. It means cross training with the Japanese Navy. It means inviting Thailand to RIMPAC. It means sailing a Destroyer in the South China Sea periodically just to remind them who rules the seas.

There is absolutely no reason we have to stop doing it. We can choose not to. That'd stupid and would unleash a catastrophe in Eurasia that would invariably see the US return, in force, to it, to restore order. Or we can keep doing what we're doing, which is economical, and has been wildly successful for us since World War II.

That's the part that is utterly mindboggling about these types of "world police" statements. The United States has never been richer. And though its power compared to China has declined, its power compared to everyone else is still increasing. This has worked. Even despite enormous mistakes, disasters, recklessness and failures, it has worked to make us strong and make us rich. And you want to cash out?

America World Police will be replaced by China World Police. It won't be fun to live on that planet.

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You misunderstand.

The US defense budget is beyond the fact bloated, you don't need to outspend the next 10 countries.

We absolutely do. That is unless, you want to employ fewer troops ore have them paid less.



People and keeping Aircraft flying and Tanks gassed are expensive, yo. We actually need to spend a good $100-$150 billion a year more, because there is an enormous maitenence backlog.

You want to know one reason why those two ships had accidents this year? Because budget caps have forced those ships to deploy longer, and crews to be smaller. We have destroyers and cruisers that haven't deployed in three-plus years because budget caps, particularly from the 2013 sequester, prevented required maintenance from happening for them to be safe to operate.

The US military is too small. It's currently at 1.3 million active duty troops. It is at this number because, despite civilians ordering the military to engage in more, and more complex types of missions, we do not increase the size of the force to allow them to do it.

At one time, Army deployments lasted 6 months. Now they last 9 months to a year. This is the Army Barack Obama wanted to cut to 420,000 troops from 450,000. It's headed to 490,000. It should be at least 650,000. We say on one hand we're concerned about Troops and PTSD, but then when the time comes to pay what is required to cut their stay down in war zones by a third, we don't do it. Proposals to shrink the size of the Army is legitimately the biggest joke when it comes to "our bloated military" budget there is. It takes advantage of service members. And you know what they do? They just quit, and then go work a contracting job, deploy less and get paid more. The Army has faced a significant talent drain SPECIFICALLY because the force got cut and the people who stayed got over-worked.

Two years ago the Chief of Naval Operations was asked how many ships he'd need if he met 100% of requests. He said 450 ships. We have 278. We'll have 355 around 2047. Yeah.

How about the Air Force? Due to budget cuts pilots have gone down from 200 flight hours per year in 2011 to 120 flight hours per year. Why is that? Because flying an F-16 costs about $24,000 per hour. 200 hours per year is about 4 sorties per week per pilot. The Air Force also faces a shortage of around 1000 pilots because of uncompetitive pay with the private sector. When pilots need to be doing 200 flight hours per year, you don't tell them to make due with 120 so you can cut the budget. You pay for the 200, for all pilots in full.


We need to spend more on the military. A lot more. And it wouldn't be spent much on buying new shit. It would be spent actually maintaining and using the stuff we have, and allowing the services to hire and retain the people it needs, so accidents like earlier this year don't happen again.

[Slant]

The US is at it's foundation a trade power and we have interests to press in Europe, the Middle East and Asia-Pacific. Economics underpins the mutual security relationships' we are at the center of in these regions. Put another way, were a region to fundamentally destabilize, and our trade with that region sizeably contract, that would impact our way of life and is not something we can allow.

Further, we can't forget the lesson of World War II that is and will be taught in every single history class and military leadership session and public policy program at a university in the US, forever. What is that lesson? Historian Tom Ricks put it best: America learned in World War II that spending some amounts of blood and treasure "over there" now will go a long way to preventing to have to spend an absolutely enormous amount of blood and treasure later over there later. Or worse, here.

That's why the United States created the post World War II system. That is why it is the guarantor of it. That's why even AFTER Trump and after Europe does what it does with defense, it will still do this. Because historically the rest of the world has gotten it wrong far more often than they've gotten it right, and institutionally we're designed to prevent it from happening again.

China and Russia. And China's actions directly contradict your assertion they are not expansionist. The United States hasn't "expanded" it's territory, properly, in over a hundred years. But in that hundred years, in absence of a classical Empire, it built something new that made it the most powerful and hegemonic country since the Roman Empire.

China want's to replace this system with one where it, rather than the US and its allies, are at the center. We will not allow that to happen. And we will stop them.

Furthermore economically, sure, China's had a good couple of years, mostly due to US misteps. But I strongly believe that the US will enter TPP next decade. And even in absence of that, our deepening regional security ties will place a limit on how far China can economically expand.

Right now the US has three carrier battle groups saling off the coast of North Korea, and seven carriers at sea total right now. You know, for all the talk about what ails America in the age of Trump, I think it's a helpful reminder that no other country on Earth, including China, is remotely close to wielding that much power. Yeah. The situation America is in in the age of Trump sucks. And that can be defined as "politically and geostratically crappier for the US than the 2000s, 1990s and 1980s. And then you hit the 1970s, 1960s and 1950s, and suddenly everything in those time looks (and was) far worse.


We're not going anywhere.

The US is losing the trade game at the moment. While the US tries to convince everyone that their way is the only way and if you don't like their conditions, you can always take the highway, the EU is hammering out deal after deal. We got Canada, we are about to get Australia. Those are the closest you have in your area of the world, unless you count your 52nd state, Mexico. We've traditionally have had rather good trade relations with China. On more or less equal footing, quite unlike you do I gather...

The US is a trade power, but they're losing the battle without even realising which kind of battle it is. You think TPP is important? It isn't. What's important is that the EU is actually pretty far on the way to becoming the global trade hub as it always has been. If you don't pay close attention to what's going on, you might just be part of TPP while trade passes you by nonetheless.

As for the lessons of WW2. I agree with you. And that whole sentiment was correct. The question is if that kind of thinking may have gotten obsolete after 1990, when the Cold War ended. The US tends to fall back into Cold War ideology whenever they feel unsure. And much of the sabre rattling against Russia and China, as justified as some parts of it may be, is really nothing but a sign of US insecurity. You don't know your role in this new world, so you do what you've done pretty well in the past 70 years, start an arms race (with whom nobody knows at this stage, perhaps Russia, but that's really a heavy weight thrashing a bantam...) and bully people around.

The problem with that is... you've lost your moral high ground. If nowhere else, you've totally blown it out of the water in Iraq. The impotence regarding Syria showed the world that not only does the US have limits, it has limits to which it doesn't agree to. Everyone saw your hawks drooling at the thought of yet another war. But somehow you let ISIS become what they are. A ragtag band of miscreants actually fucked up your image more than Russia ever could.

And the flip side, you are oppressing nations. Again, Iraq. A decade of turmoil and chaos later, they're still only barely something resembling a modern democracy thriving with a booming economy. They're still a shithole dominated by religion and terror attacks. I do not actually blame anyone getting a bit of a grudge on the US in the ME these days. I'm surprised that they don't actually try to hit you more often. But half of them you outright bought (Saudi Arabia and the Emirates) while the other one is suppressed into submission (Iraq, Afghanistan, anyone around Israel). That's not being a "world police", that's being a colonial superpower.

The only difference is, you don't actually exploit those countries like you could. So really, the US is just bullying people around to conform to their views. Which is tragically funny to us Europeans, because by and large, US democratic values aren't what they used to be these days. Strike Trump, you're still ruled bit a rather despicable group of corrupt assholes that couldn't wipe their ass without an aide while the true power actually lies with some select few that can afford to simply buy DC.

To be honest, strike my remark about Iraq... they may actually have a less dysfunctional democracy than the US does right now, including Trump this time.

So no, you do not need to be world police. You do absolutely need to let the world deal with shit itself. The ME needs to go through a rather abrupt (and dare I say violent) phase of evolution to throw off the yoke of religion once and for all. US interference is hindering that process. You are - literally - holding them back by a century or so. Stop that shit.

China is not expansionistic. Never has been, never will be. What you're misinterpreting as "expansion" is actually them going "Yeah, that's China. It was for 2000 years. Just because some villagers decide they don't want to be China anymore doesn't give them the right to take our soil." Now, whether or not something is China or not is up for debate (discuss Taiwan as an example for the other regions). But what is not up for debate is that for Chinese thinking, that is the underlying motivation. They don't want "new" land. They just want to control what they consider China, no more but no less.

Talking about expansionistic China in that context just shows a harsh misunderstanding that can and quite probably will lead to blows eventually. Looking at it from a European point of view. It's SEA and more specifically South China Sea. Which superpower has more "right" to mess around there? China, who is actually having a coastline there? Or the US, who're on the literal other side of the globe, with Japan and a buttload of ocean between their coastline and SEA? The amusing thing is, the US answer is a confident "Ours, of course. We literally own the planet, don't you know?"

Queue Americans literally saying that in this very thread within the next 10 pages. You know it will happen.

[ati87]

We absolutely do. That is unless, you want to employ fewer troops ore have them paid less.



People and keeping Aircraft flying and Tanks gassed are expensive, yo. We actually need to spend a good $100-$150 billion a year more, because there is an enormous maitenence backlog.

You aren't actually countering my point. You are making a few assumptions that everything penny is spend on new equipment is money spend well. Pentagon doesn't want tanks while congress keeps on buying tanks from there own district.

Pentagon says we want 450 ships because of US policy of trying to be actieve in every warzone possible. But nobody is telling the US to invade 2 countries at the same time and then threaten multiply countries.

If I was part of the Pentagon right now I would have a plan or two ready for a possible invasion of Iran and North Korea (thanks to Trump) and hence my logical request for more ships and other equipment. In both cases (but especially with Iran) war is easily avoidable, you don't need to invade Iran because
A they aren't building god dam nuclear weapons
and B there don't try to negatively influence US or Europeaan, sure they aren't playing nice with the Saudi-Arabia but one can argue (Really easily btw) that the SA are the bigger villains.

[Mormolyce]

You misunderstand.

The US defense budget is beyond the fact bloated, you don't need to outspend the next 10 countries.

But what can be said about the spending vs the EU that across the board they getting more for there money then the EU is. Part of the problem the EU again has is that you have 20 member each doing their own thing.

We as the EU should be more efficient then this and to achieve this across the board efficiency (not just defense) we need to act like each others partners

Ah I see what you mean.

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And the US still under-spends, with respect to it's commitments, by at least $100-$150 billion per year.

The US over-commits.

[ati87]

The US over-commits.

He makes a few assumptions.

He forgets that the Pentagon often tells congress we don't want god dam tanks, he ignores this little detail but doesn't ignore the cost associated with those tanks.

[Deleted]

We have discussed this before. Licensing seems to be the key here. Factories in Spain can continue to build Spanish tanks. With German blueprints and a procurement contract hammered out by the overlying EU department. If Europe can do one thing, it's logistics. Whether or not those steel plates and electronics go to some village in German or to some village in Spain, it really doesn't matter all that much.

This is the advantage we have over the US. Distance is not an issue here. Detroit or San Francisco, that's a 2 day trip for a truck. In Europe it's more like 8 hours from Germany to Spain for a truck.

This can mitigate the problem, but in many cases, that's not possible.
To get the sufficient economy of scale, and to avoid unnecessary duplication of production equipment, the only real solution is essentially to take the 29 (IiRC, but the exact number doesn't matter) wharf's building military ships and close, say, 24 of them - those that remain would be made larger, but the others they have to go.
it's not a licencing thing, its expensive building and maintaining the wharf's, and the personnel.

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He makes a few assumptions.

He forgets that the Pentagon often tells congress we don't want god dam tanks, he ignores this little detail but doesn't ignore the cost associated with those tanks.

Well in a hypothetical EU army this wouldn't be a problem, since the tanks would only be made in one or two countries, so there is that at least.

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No, the Aster isn't the right solution. Aster is a fine missile, but it utilizes the PAAMS system (which is kinda Euro-Aegis). In some regards, it's also closer to the US's SM-6 than Patriot.

Patriot isn't just a missile. It's a battery that launches them (actually usually around 6 of them), an antenna vehicle, a control vehicle, a radar and a power plant.

I see what you mean, by the way do you have any opinion on the proposed purchase of Patriot by Sweden?
I have no opinions on the technical specs what so ever, or even the price tag, but in line with last part of of your post, well, i'm off to a rant about Sweden.

So this brings me to your comment. A United EU army won't compete with anyone unless it consolidates its procurement and industrial base to keep recurring costs as low as possible. And yes, $700 billion in recurring costs is low for the US compared to what it could be if it didn't retire some platforms years or even decades early.

This is no trivial thing I'm saying. Europe currently employs 28 different tanks. It needs to be one. There needs to be the Rafale or F-35B for carrier aircraft. There needs to be the Eurofighter for Air Superiority. No other Euro-fighter belongs anywhere. There needs to be one 6000 ton Surface/ASW ship class, not 14 different classes. There needs to be one tanker, one tactical lifter aircraft, one strategic lifter aircraft, one attack helicopter, one scout helicopter, and one air defense missile. So on and so forth.

The problem is, right now, this is not close to how things are, and getting from where we are, to there, is not a matter of waving a magic wand and just doing it. Fundamentally it means the loss of millions of jobs. The US went through this in the early 1990s (see chart below).

This is fundamentally true, and now lets look at this chart:

The astute observer might note that this could be really, really, bad for Sweden - And indeed it might be.
Now why is that?, well Sweden has an outsized defense industry, and as any consolidation of the European defense industry is going to be decided based on political concerns over economical or defense concerns, well, it's going to be brutal.
Now for the rant part, our idiot astute politicians have decided to buy patriot, this is a terrible idea because the alternative was the European SAMPT, and our politicians haven't really understood what they agreed to when they agreed to this particular deal - they are going to need to buy as much goodwill as possible in Europe, they shouldn't buy a single thing from outside the EU for the next decade if they want to protect our defense industry, though on that note they are also opposed to selling weapons to people who might, Use them! - hell we can't sell arms to Iraq because they are presently engaged in armed conflict, the fact that we have troops on the ground supporting them in said armed conflict, well that doesn't matter.
Bah.
rant off.

[Noradin]

I wonder what kind of perspectives a militarily integrated Europe would have on its own history. I mean, for most of their existence, France and Germany were composed of rival feudal states and I feel like the significance of those conflicts has been downplayed. In hindsight, they just look like petty internal squabbling getting in the way of the inevitable unification, rather than serious international wars. I guess this is already starting to happen on a larger scale with Europe as a whole, and seeing how relatively friendly and peaceful Europe has been for the last half century makes you really scratch your head when thinking about just how violent the continent used to be and how people managed to get so fired up to kill each other over tiny plots of land that everybody is happy to share these days.

Germany is entirely composed of rivaling feudal states (which were only limited in their aggression by the rules upheld by the HRE), and then there is Sweden.
I think that if those hostile histories can be overlooked then so can the one between Germany and France, they started out as the same state to begin with.
And the same is true for nearly every other pair of states in Europe: They have common history, but it is not us who wrote it, we should be concerned with the present and future, not with past grievances between our ancestors, we will most likely have family on both sides of most of those anyway.

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The EU? It's less about political power and more about simply saving or making a buttload of money. Oh, and keeping France and Germany busy counting money instead of bashing each other's heads in and dragging everyone else around with them into the abyss of violence.

Nah, it's about generating wealth, not just about making money.
That is why there are all those regulations: Because it is not just about numbers, but about what those numbers mean.

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Fuck them both. On topic, We (the US) can't keep being the worlds police. With Turkey being lead by a radical. To Russia taking over part of the Ukraine without the EU lifting a finger. It's time for the EU to step up.

The EU did quite a bit of finger lifting, and it sure did hurt Russia's economy a lot.

[Skroe]

The US is losing the trade game at the moment. While the US tries to convince everyone that their way is the only way and if you don't like their conditions, you can always take the highway, the EU is hammering out deal after deal. We got Canada, we are about to get Australia. Those are the closest you have in your area of the world, unless you count your 52nd state, Mexico. We've traditionally have had rather good trade relations with China. On more or less equal footing, quite unlike you do I gather...

The last 11 months. It will take a lot more than just 11 months and Donald Trump to permanently knock us out of the globalization game... a game we invented.

You're being hyperbolic.

The US is a trade power, but they're losing the battle without even realising which kind of battle it is. You think TPP is important? It isn't. What's important is that the EU is actually pretty far on the way to becoming the global trade hub as it always has been. If you don't pay close attention to what's going on, you might just be part of TPP while trade passes you by nonetheless.

TPP is dramatically imporant. I'm not sure how you can say it isn't. The EU plays a critical role in the world economy but it's lack of rapid oceanic access to Asia limits that.

As for the lessons of WW2. I agree with you. And that whole sentiment was correct. The question is if that kind of thinking may have gotten obsolete after 1990, when the Cold War ended.

It's not. To be blunt, you... Europe... you "Eurasians"... are not the first generation of of your peoples to think the worst is behind you. Oh maybe not so many or so interconnected, but Eurasia's children or grand children or great grand children will slaughter each other again.

The counter-argument to this usually employed is that economic interdependence will reduce, and eventually eliminate interstate or inter-ethnic conflict. The only way that this is true is if you define active conflict purely as "people killing people". That may be true, now (usually), but economic interdependence has done nothing to reduces the aggression between states. In many cases its actually encouraged it. A death toll will follow. And the reason should be pretty clear: if Iran, Russia or China haven't made abundantly clear the past few years, there are things more important to them than being rich.

So no. It's not obsolete. If anything we're probably in the beginning stages of the next sustained great power competition that will unleash a wave of bloodletting across much of Eurasia and Africa. It is in the nature of people living in Eurasia, which is to say, most of the human race, to dominate their neighbors. America will be loathe to let it hurt us like it did last time.

The US tends to fall back into Cold War ideology whenever they feel unsure.

With good reason. Lest it need saying... piss on moral and cultural relativism. Liberal Democracies are intrinsically morally superior to autocracy, especially the bastardization of our ideas such as "Managed Democracy" or "Authoritarian Capitalism".

For two centuries Europeans have sneered at American moralizing about idealogy. And what was the result? Europe destroyed itself about three times in that time span? It's by contrast tough to argue with our record. Pax Americana - the longest and still enduring period without great power conflict in nearly two thousand years.

If liberal democracy starts getting weak at the knees around the world, it'll come crashing down in a fraction of the time. Or to put it another way, the Freest countries sin the world should be it's most dangerous. China and Russia should actively fear the power of liberal democracies to defend ourselves.

And much of the sabre rattling against Russia and China, as justified as some parts of it may be, is really nothing but a sign of US insecurity.

On the contrary, our allies in the region want us to do more. You may not want us to, personally. But our NATO and Asian-Pacific allies have been clamoring for us to do more against Russia and China, literally for years.

Angela Merkel's speech early in the year about European independence was met by Germany planning to get in on the F-35 to replace the Tornado, and starting to look into buying more US defense hardware. Talk is cheap. Actions mean more.

Europe should be a more equal partner to the US. I've said that. But in terms of practical moves to this? Effectively zero, with none on the horizon. The only thing has changed is that our loser President is giving everyone an awful case of heartburn.

You don't know your role in this new world, so you do what you've done pretty well in the past 70 years, start an arms race (with whom nobody knows at this stage, perhaps Russia, but that's really a heavy weight thrashing a bantam...) and bully people around.

The world hasn't changed remotely. It's a global economy where the US still commands around 30% of it, a global finance sector that together America and Europe dominate, a defense scene that the United States is still hegemonic in. The only thing that's changed is that Donald Trump, because he is a policy idiot, isn't going around weilding human rights and democracy like the sword against authoritarianism it is meant to be. It won't be that way forever.

The problem with that is... you've lost your moral high ground. If nowhere else, you've totally blown it out of the water in Iraq.

I'm the first person to talk of the importance with regards to moral highground when it comes to foreign policy. But equally that must be recognized that this line here is one that's been used against the US again, for almost two centuries. In the 19th century, Europeans said that about our legacy slavery. In the early 20th century, it was Jim Crow. In the mid 20th century, it was civil rights, Vietnam, nuclear weapons testing and support for coups in the developing world. In the 1980s and 1990s it was our relationship with the Arabs.

When exactly have we had the uncontested 'moral high ground'?

The United States does tremendously shitty things sometimes. It will always do tremendously shitty things, and justify it. That's not a pre-requisit to global power. It's a force multiplier no doubt, but the waxing and waning and waxing again of US moral authority is an old story that's only served to enhance our power. Case in point, during the 1970s, the Soviet's propagandized hard over Watergate, showing that even the leader of the free world was deeply hippocritical at the very top of their system with respect for Democracy and rule of law. Many in Europe on the left, still enraged about Vietnam, agreed with them. You know what healed that? Time and changes of government. US moral authority was restored and then some in a decade and a half.

The impotence regarding Syria showed the world that not only does the US have limits, it has limits to which it doesn't agree to.

Impotence? Never mind that the US wiped out ISIS with, how shall we say, rather limited support from our European allies, but in regards to a larger involvement, that was a legitimate political disagreement here at home.

So let me get this right. We rush to War in Iraq. We don't go to war fast enough in Syria. What exactly does "doing it right" look like? This harkens back to a thought I've had since 2003. People around the world forget the relative power to change conditions until the US actually utilizes it power to do so. These talks of "limits"... man, I heard that shit in the 1990s, and it was B.S. then, as Afghanistan and Iraq showed. I heard that in the 2000s, and it was B.S. as Libya showed.

Is it really going to take a war against North Korea to knock that idea dead? The only limits the US has, in this regard, is the ones it sets on itself... to decide the degree to which to commit. Certainly no other countries or set of circumstances impose limits. Or do I need to whip out the old maps showing how every conflict the US has been in since 1995 would lead to World War III, according to someone? Because my personal favorite is how if the US started to bomb Iran, how Russia would come to its rescue.

Everyone saw your hawks drooling at the thought of yet another war. But somehow you let ISIS become what they are. A ragtag band of miscreants actually fucked up your image more than Russia ever could.

That's a weird statement. ISIS fucking our shit up? They became your problem because you people let refugees into Europe when you could have slammed the door.

And the flip side, you are oppressing nations. Again, Iraq. A decade of turmoil and chaos later, they're still only barely something resembling a modern democracy thriving with a booming economy. They're still a shithole dominated by religion and terror attacks. I do not actually blame anyone getting a bit of a grudge on the US in the ME these days. I'm surprised that they don't actually try to hit you more often. But half of them you outright bought (Saudi Arabia and the Emirates) while the other one is suppressed into submission (Iraq, Afghanistan, anyone around Israel). That's not being a "world police", that's being a colonial superpower.

American colonialism would look quite different. The US has to cajole or bribe our "colonies" in your explanation, to do our will or cooperate with us. A true colonial power wouldn't be doing that. It would just demand.

The only difference is, you don't actually exploit those countries like you could. So really, the US is just bullying people around to conform to their views. Which is tragically funny to us Europeans, because by and large, US democratic values aren't what they used to be these days. Strike Trump, you're still ruled bit a rather despicable group of corrupt assholes that couldn't wipe their ass without an aide while the true power actually lies with some select few that can afford to simply buy DC.

Nonsense, and I have proof. Barack Obama. He went from zero to hero from 1998 to 2008, by making the right moves. No power base. Was the dark horse of the 2008 Democratic primary. He became President on the back of genuine people power, something Bill Clinton did in 1992.

Much of what is actually ascribed to as "corruption" or "money in politics" is a lazy excuse to genuine disagreement in America between political agenda. Europeans may not see it like this, but in this country it is a legitimate political opinion that the government should play no role, whatsoever, in regulating the economy. Market fundamentalism is a bit much for many Americans, but when you see regulations on corporations rolled back, understand, many Americans also sincerely believe that is a good thing.

I'm not sure if you know your history with respect to America, but this is a country where, until the founding of the Federal Reserve System in the second decade of the 20th century, this country fought bitterly over the very concept of a Federal Central Bank for over one hundred years. Perhaps only slavery was the more divisive political issue in the 19th century. And those disagreements never have entirely gone away.

To be honest, strike my remark about Iraq... they may actually have a less dysfunctional democracy than the US does right now, including Trump this time.

And that's a deeply unfair statement. The executive branch is certainly dysfunctional due to poor management at the very stop. But our elections are highly dynamic. Even Trump winning and upsetting a would-be political dynasty is symbolic of the political dynanism at play here. And today, Americans are talking regularly about concepts that I think you'd find few other countries talk about on a regular basis, like ethics in government.

We're going to be a much better country on the other side of Trump, just as we were Watergate.

But another statement. "Dysfunctional democracy". You mean perhaps our legislative branch? Again, it is doing EXACTLY what it is designed to do. Consider, states send Representatives and Senators to Washington with the promise of repealing Obamacare. And others send them there, in near equal numbers, to defend Obamacare. Is it any surprise there is gridlock, when 50 states and 325 million people fundamentally disagree?

It's much easier to govern a more centralized and homogeneous 20, 30 or 50 million person European country. But the slowness of our system is a feature, not a bug. Even despite Trump I wouldn't want to trade our system for a more responsive parliamentary democracy.

So no, you do not need to be world police. You do absolutely need to let the world deal with shit itself..

No. Because frankly, we don't trust you people in time to not find new ways to kill each other that will effect us. 70 years of peace does not earn the bulk of humanity that, least of all Europe, with explicitly America's non-involvement with the perpetual European conflict having been, pre-World War I, the single foundation of US foreign policy.

Simply put, you are are not strong enough, even together, to deal with your shit. You never will be. And without us a predator will come for one or some of you. And it will draw all the others in. And eventually us. The lesson of World War II is that Eurasia is now on perpetual probation, and they don't get a chance.

The ME needs to go through a rather abrupt (and dare I say violent) phase of evolution to throw off the yoke of religion once and for all. US interference is hindering that process. You are - literally - holding them back by a century or so. Stop that shit.

This is truly a bizarre comment. You speak of what _you_ want for the Middle East. Not what they want. The people themselves, living there, have been moving closer to religion for most of the past 150 years. This does happen you know, right? Religious revivals. They've waxed and waned in regions throughout the world for millennia. For all we know Europe could be a hub for Christianity in another 200 years. But with respect to the broader Middle East, the religious path it's gone down predates America's involvement there by over a century. Yes. Some Middle Eastern countries dabbled with democracy, or alternatively, with Arab nationalism. Those never had any kind of roots that Westerners would recognize, particularly Arab nationalism. The role of religion however, has been only increasing.

Maybe it will be this way in 50 years. Maybe it will change. But they will decide, and that'll have very little to do with us.

China is not expansionistic. Never has been, never will be. What you're misinterpreting as "expansion" is actually them going "Yeah, that's China. It was for 2000 years. Just because some villagers decide they don't want to be China anymore doesn't give them the right to take our soil." Now, whether or not something is China or not is up for debate (discuss Taiwan as an example for the other regions). But what is not up for debate is that for Chinese thinking, that is the underlying motivation. They don't want "new" land. They just want to control what they consider China, no more but no less.

And the problem is their definition of "what is China" is not the definition. It's actually farcical compared to the other claims.

Would you suggest we just let them have their claim? Like hell.

Talking about expansionistic China in that context just shows a harsh misunderstanding that can and quite probably will lead to blows eventually. Looking at it from a European point of view. It's SEA and more specifically South China Sea. Which superpower has more "right" to mess around there? China, who is actually having a coastline there? Or the US, who're on the literal other side of the globe, with Japan and a buttload of ocean between their coastline and SEA? The amusing thing is, the US answer is a confident "Ours, of course. We literally own the planet, don't you know?"

Of course the United States. You're right, Europe and Americans do have a fundamental difference of opinion. And your opinion is poorly informed, and here's what.

You're from Germany right? Where does the German border end and the American border begin? From the American policy perspective, I'll tell you where. The American border begins approximately one inch outside the German border, and at the threshold of your eyes, brain and ears. The US, in other words, borders 193 countries, not just Mexico and Canada. The US borders 7 billion people.

The concept of a border being a physical thing - the Mexican border, the Canadian border, or the US coastlines is deeply archaic and hasn't been an appropriate or even relvant mode of thinking for many decades. Our border begins where our ideas, interests, influence and economics come in contact with others who are not American. We set our borders so far away because, as history as shown, we can defense-via-offense is the approach that has reaped the strongest rewards for us. We do this with soft-power, which is where our ideas spill and displace other ideas. We do this with economics, where were can exert control (and far more control now than even a decade ago, thanks to how the US has used it). In the case of the SCS, that's even more concrete. A huge percentage of global trade, which the US is deeply effected by, goes through the SCS. As a trade power, we have a direct interest in that not being dominated by China. As such our "virtual border" extends there.

All countries do this, this just don't couch it in such terms. It is really civilians who think that if everybody were left alone to do their own thing, and minded their own plot of land, then all the rationales of conflict would just go away. That's never been the case. It'll never be that case, because that's not how any country operates, which means that their interests and "virtual borders" grinding against each other will create new sources of conflict.


To be honestly, much of what you wrote calls into question the ability of European to be an equal partner to America at all. Being so will require a degree of activism to advance interests, even in a cold blooded manner, that you've expressed an aversion to. People thought the United States was the weird rich democratic cousin across the pond for a hundred years. Then we became a world power and suddenly we're the "World Police" or "Colonial Superpower". A United Europe, with a European Army, will invite exactly the same criticism. Because it, like the United States... like anything that has significant mass, will cause a reaction just by existing, and many people will be outraged by that reaction.

Europe really has two choices. Be mostly harmless, and by extent, mostly ineffectual... our actually wield the tools of power to advance its interests, an deal with the fact that things like that moral authority you're so wedded to... sometimes you're gonna have to look in the mirror and say "we did a shitty thing today".

[Thekri]

We need to spend more on the military. A lot more. And it wouldn't be spent much on buying new shit. It would be spent actually maintaining and using the stuff we have, and allowing the services to hire and retain the people it needs, so accidents like earlier this year don't happen again.

I won't quote the entire massive post, but I agree with a lot of what you said, but not all. I think the US military actually gets about the right amount of money, we don't need more. Getting less is bad, because that means doing without stuff we have now, so keep it about the same. We can dramatically increase capability without spending more money.

You are correct that personnel costs would be hard to reduce, and right now that is about 1/3 of the budget. Maintenance does not need to be nearly as expensive as it is though, much of the cost is a result of our horrendous procurement system. If my unit goes to the field, and breaks a tent leg, we can't just grab another one and fix it for cheap. Instead, the tent leg is part of an overly expensive frame, that is patented uniquely to the manufacturer, and it can't be replaced by Soldiers. So you have to send the entire tent frame to an "FSR" (Field Service Representative) who is an overpaid contractor that drives an F-250 around, tells war stories, and swaps tent legs. This is slow, and horrendously expensive. When you start getting into high tech things it gets much worse. My soldiers could maintain the tracks and chassis of our tanks, but only civilians could maintain the remote gun system, the targeting optics, the stabilization system, the navigation system, and so on. Each of these systems has a separate FSR that works for a different company, and each one costs the army a fortune. In Afghanistan we were operating the only Route Clearance unit in about a 10 province area, we had a dedicated FSR for a mine clearance system that we had exactly two of. This guy was paid $140k a year to maintain two systems that never really broke. If they got blown up, he ordered a new one, he couldn't actually do anything to fix them.

This sort of thing is absolutely rampant, and the giant companies that sell them are masters of the politics of it. They place manufacturing facilities and HQs in key constituencies, they contribute huge amounts of money to political campaigns and they beat the "Patriotism" drum relentlessly on anyone that calls them out for their profiteering. A large part of the current bloat in the military comes from a side effect of the Iraq war, when the military desperately needed every recruit it could get, so it sub-contracted everything. We had huge budgets, little to no accountability, and were entirely focused on operations. The military is trying to clean it up now, but these companies don't let go easily.

[Noradin]

@Slant. I agree with most of your points but regarding China you are wrong. The are expansionist, and from a certain point of view I would even call them "evil"--because the will destroy our morals, values, and way of life if we ever stop working against that. They would do to us exactly as we are trying to do to them: Impose our values on them. Fortunately,both sides have the sense to try to keep this conflict on a reasonable level instead of causing an outright war. That's why I don't call them evil, after all, but they sure are our opponents, not just rivals, and they are expansionist and trying to game our rules.

[Skroe]

I see what you mean, by the way do you have any opinion on the proposed purchase of Patriot by Sweden?
I have no opinions on the technical specs what so ever, or even the price tag, but in line with last part of of your post, well, i'm off to a rant about Sweden.

Well Patriot PAC-3 is a very mature system with a very good record. If Sweden wants to economically buy a system with zero risk that is interoperable with large swathes of NATO, it picked the right system. There are after all, 1100 launchers in US service. The US fired 100 missiles the other day in Europe as if it were nothing. PAC-3 and eventually PAAC-4 will be used in Europe and around the world for decades to come. Not everything the Russians or Chinese or Iranians or North Koreans deploy will need the latest and greatest thing, so even if countries buy more advanced successor systems, their Patriot missile investment won't go to waste. Anther advantage for Sweden, since it's so cost concerned, is that the Patriot industrial base is highly reliable. It's made thousands of missiles, for over two decades. There won't be problems with maintenance or replenishment.


The question is though, with PAC-3 be good enough to defeat the latest Russian tactical ballistic missiles? Right now yes. 15 years from now? Probably not all of them. this is why the US was hesitant with respect to MEADS even though it is more advanced than PAC-3 and was originally going to replace it. It's a half set up or more up, when the US wanted to take a bigger leap forward.

Sweden probably don't need to do something like that... now. But a better model might be for an all EU Army to buy whatever the US eventually builds (or make something very much like it) and deploy it on an all-EU basis (that is, the EU owns it, and decides where it goes, rather than a country and particular armed forces).

This is fundamentally true, and now lets look at this chart:

The astute observer might note that this could be really, really, bad for Sweden - And indeed it might be.
Now why is that?, well Sweden has an outsized defense industry, and as any consolidation of the European defense industry is going to be decided based on political concerns over economical or defense concerns, well, it's going to be brutal.
Now for the rant part, our idiot astute politicians have decided to buy patriot, this is a terrible idea because the alternative was the European SAMPT, and our politicians haven't really understood what they agreed to when they agreed to this particular deal - they are going to need to buy as much goodwill as possible in Europe, they shouldn't buy a single thing from outside the EU for the next decade if they want to protect our defense industry, though on that note they are also opposed to selling weapons to people who might, Use them! - hell we can't sell arms to Iraq because they are presently engaged in armed conflict, the fact that we have troops on the ground supporting them in said armed conflict, well that doesn't matter.
Bah.
rant off.

You hit the nail on the head an a SO IMPORTANT way. The global arms market is critically important. And if Europe is to have a Unified EU military, it has to become a big, aggressive player in it.

Fun fact... aside from a few random examples (like less than 10), the last time the US bought big buy of the F-16 was 1996. Over 20 years ago. Is there a more iconic American fighter in our life time than the F-16? It's as American as apple pie.

Ours are also, kind of shit compared to all the F-16s built since 1996. Oh sure, they have radars and electronics better than almost all the export models. But it lacks core modernized features of the later Block 50/52 Plus, the F-16E and the F-16V. Most US F-16s are Block 30, Block 40 and Block 50. But F-16s also need to get overhauled and parts. So how can we do that when we don't buy F-16s for 20 years? Foreign sales. The export market has kept the F-16 line hot and procluded us from just having to keep the line idle, or shut it down. If, for example, the US exported the F-22 to Japan, chances are, we'd be buying a lot more F-22s right now. But it decided not to do that, so it shut down the line.

If Europe is going to have a consolidated military and a consolidated defense industry supporting it, it will need to eventually put if US-level numbers to keep its production facilities hot.

ANd that shouldn't be too hard. Let's consider why the US, along with a dozen other countries, are buying the F-35 to begin with. Because over the last 30 years they've flown F-16s and a few other aircraft into the dirt. They're old, getting older, and like an old car that's been driven every day for 20 years, things are starting to break. That's true with every country, for everything. Those countries who bought German Leopard 2s a decade ago will need a new tank in 20 years. Maybe there will be a new all-Europe solution by then, that will keep a European facility churning out tanks, even if Europe isn't buying anymore.

The industrial policy questions are just staggering really. The US doesn't even get it entirely right. The F-22 was built in like 40 states I think? All to protect it politically. It also drove up the cost enormously by doing that. Some of that may be natural, but at least it is ONE jet.

Personally I think the US and Europe should partner on an next gen air superiority fighter if it does indeed go into the classic fighter-form direction. But there is a very good chance the next air superiority fighter both sides of the Atlantic produce will look like a relatively big aircraft with an enormous missile load. The 1980s concept as part of the Advanced Tactical Fighter program was called the "missiler". It's day may have finally arrived.

- - - Updated - - -

I won't quote the entire massive post, but I agree with a lot of what you said, but not all. I think the US military actually gets about the right amount of money, we don't need more. Getting less is bad, because that means doing without stuff we have now, so keep it about the same. We can dramatically increase capability without spending more money.

You are correct that personnel costs would be hard to reduce, and right now that is about 1/3 of the budget. Maintenance does not need to be nearly as expensive as it is though, much of the cost is a result of our horrendous procurement system. If my unit goes to the field, and breaks a tent leg, we can't just grab another one and fix it for cheap. Instead, the tent leg is part of an overly expensive frame, that is patented uniquely to the manufacturer, and it can't be replaced by Soldiers. So you have to send the entire tent frame to an "FSR" (Field Service Representative) who is an overpaid contractor that drives an F-250 around, tells war stories, and swaps tent legs. This is slow, and horrendously expensive. When you start getting into high tech things it gets much worse. My soldiers could maintain the tracks and chassis of our tanks, but only civilians could maintain the remote gun system, the targeting optics, the stabilization system, the navigation system, and so on. Each of these systems has a separate FSR that works for a different company, and each one costs the army a fortune. In Afghanistan we were operating the only Route Clearance unit in about a 10 province area, we had a dedicated FSR for a mine clearance system that we had exactly two of. This guy was paid $140k a year to maintain two systems that never really broke. If they got blown up, he ordered a new one, he couldn't actually do anything to fix them.

This sort of thing is absolutely rampant, and the giant companies that sell them are masters of the politics of it. They place manufacturing facilities and HQs in key constituencies, they contribute huge amounts of money to political campaigns and they beat the "Patriotism" drum relentlessly on anyone that calls them out for their profiteering. A large part of the current bloat in the military comes from a side effect of the Iraq war, when the military desperately needed every recruit it could get, so it sub-contracted everything. We had huge budgets, little to no accountability, and were entirely focused on operations. The military is trying to clean it up now, but these companies don't let go easily.

This is an excellent post. It doubles exactly with what I heard from my closest friend (who did two deployments to Afghanistan and is now a BAE Contractor there on his third). I did not realize that things like the remote gun system could only be fixed by civilian contractors though. Is that some kind protection of intellectual property thing, or is it just so specialized that it wouldn't be realistic to train somebody to fix it?

[Deleted]

It's not. To be blunt, you... Europe... you "Eurasians"... are not the first generation of of your peoples to think the worst is behind you. Oh maybe not so many or so interconnected, but Eurasia's children or grand children or great grand children will slaughter each other again.

The counter-argument to this usually employed is that economic interdependence will reduce, and eventually eliminate interstate or inter-ethnic conflict. The only way that this is true is if you define active conflict purely as "people killing people". That may be true, now (usually), but economic interdependence has done nothing to reduces the aggression between states. In many cases its actually encouraged it. A death toll will follow. And the reason should be pretty clear: if Iran, Russia or China haven't made abundantly clear the past few years, there are things more important to them than being rich.

China isn't the EU's problem, nor Iran.
And Russia, well, they will collapse, again, and then the EU will have to do what it does best, Buy it.
That's the Beauty of the EU - Externally it dominates it's neighbors, ENP isn't exactly a co-equal thing.

Europe really has two choices. Be mostly harmless, and by extent, mostly ineffectual... our actually wield the tools of power to advance its interests, an deal with the fact that things like that moral authority you're so wedded to... sometimes you're gonna have to look in the mirror and say "we did a shitty thing today".

This is the biggest problem with an EU army - We would be to loathe to use it when it wouldn't be required, but still a good idea.

This is truly a bizarre comment. You speak of what _you_ want for the Middle East. Not what they want. The people themselves, living there, have been moving closer to religion for most of the past 150 years. This does happen you know, right? Religious revivals. They've waxed and waned in regions throughout the world for millennia. For all we know Europe could be a hub for Christianity in another 200 years. But with respect to the broader Middle East, the religious path it's gone down predates America's involvement there by over a century. Yes. Some Middle Eastern countries dabbled with democracy, or alternatively, with Arab nationalism. Those never had any kind of roots that Westerners would recognize, particularly Arab nationalism. The role of religion however, has been only increasing.

Maybe it will be this way in 50 years. Maybe it will change. But they will decide, and that'll have very little to do with us.

See i think you misunderstood his comment - You can't have ethnically and religiously diverse states that also are highly religious.
Personally i'm sorry to say i'm done with the hellhole - they can slaughter each other in their own 30 years war for all i care, and in that sense, you are holding them back, because after those 30 years they will either agree to stop having religious conflicts, or all the religious minorities will be wiped out - this is a currently ongoing process by the way, just look at Lebanon or Syria.

[Skroe]

You aren't actually countering my point. You are making a few assumptions that everything penny is spend on new equipment is money spend well. Pentagon doesn't want tanks while congress keeps on buying tanks from there own district.

The Pentagon isn't always right. The Pentagon, in trying to live within Budget caps particularly, sometimes prioritizes short term needs over longer term ones. For exactly it's been trying, for the past five years, to lay up 11 of our 22 cruisers, with the promise (pinky swear) to modernize those 11 next decade as the 11 they leave in service now retire. Instead of doing that, after much cajoling by Congress, they're going to see about extending the life of all 22.

Why did the Pentagon do this? Because those 11 cruisers are more expensive to operate than the destroyers in the fleet.

But think about what it was doing: it was proposing to remove 11 highly capable surface warfare and air defense ships, from the fleet, rapidly, at a time it was saying it wanted to expland the fleet by over 70 ships. Like... what?

The Pentagon wanting to shutter the Lima plant for a few years is a bad example, because the Army essentially had no answer to the question of "what happens when we need to re-open the plant in five years". They pretty much said "we'll pay for it then". A plant sitting idle is a black hole.

The US has a similar problem on it's hands. Solid rocket fuel. You know what was the backbone of the Solid Rocket Fuel industry in the US for decades? The Space Shuttle program. Flying four to six times a year... that's eight to twelve solid rocket boosters needing a refueling every flight (they were resuable). That fuel is used for everything from ICBMs and SLBMs to air to air missiles. But the US didn't buy ICBMs in comparable numbers, and all the missiles it buys would never equal a single SRB. The Shuttle's SRBs, in otherwords, were the life blood of the Solid Rocket Fuel industry.

But the shuttle has been retired for years and it's successor is delayed. And even when it does fly, with SRBs it'll fly once, maybe twice a year... not six times. And it's not flying now.

So ATK was bought out by Orbital, which is now being bought by Northrop Grumman. And they're basically being paid to keep in the Solid Fuel industry because the US needs it in contingences and will need it down the road, despite no regular purchasing of solid rockets comparable to the Shuttle SRBs now. What Orbital ATK is pinning its hopes on is the big nuclear modernization round coming seeing 400 ICBMs being bought.

But let's be clear: congress intervened to keep them in the industry. NASA hated the SRBs. When the Shuttle was retired, no thought was given to the the SRB industrial base until way later. In other words, Congress is not always in the wrong.

Pentagon says we want 450 ships because of US policy of trying to be actieve in every warzone possible. But nobody is telling the US to invade 2 countries at the same time and then threaten multiply countries.

Invasions are extremely rare. The US does it what... once every 15 years give or take? The US needs those ships to meet much more day-to-day presence and cross training with allies. You also presume these things can be taken out for a spin like any car. The US, for example, has 11 carriers. That means it has 3 deployed, 3 training to deploy, 2 undergoing light maintenance, and 2 under going heavy maintenance. A carrier undergoing a mid-life overhaul, for example, won't deploy for five years.

450 ships doesn't mean 450 ships at sea at once. It means closer to 150 ships at sea at once. It's a big global ocean for 150 ships. And we've made commitments we must put our taxpayer dollars to honor.

If I was part of the Pentagon right now I would have a plan or two ready for a possible invasion of Iran and North Korea (thanks to Trump) and hence my logical request for more ships and other equipment. In both cases (but especially with Iran) war is easily avoidable, you don't need to invade Iran because
A they aren't building god dam nuclear weapons
and B there don't try to negatively influence US or European, sure they aren't playing nice with the Saudi-Arabia but one can argue (Really easily btw) that the SA are the bigger villains.

This scenario you describe has nothing to do with the demand. Let me offer an example.

Do you know one rationale behind the maligned Littoral Combat Ship? It was that having large, blue water combat ships like 9000 ton Destroyers or 6000 ton Frigates doing Anti-Drug trafficking duty of the coast of Venezuela, or anti-piracy duty off the coast of Somalia, was tremendously wasteful. Because utilizing hugely expensive large surface combat ships for "presence" patrols in lower risk areas, was dumb. A destroyer is comparatively expensive to operate than a ship a fraction of its size, with a fraction of its crew.

Now the LCS is a terrible ship, but the theory isn't intrinsically wrong. Yes, it needs 450 ships... but how many of those have to be the most advanced, biggest surface combat ships? Back in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, large surface combat ships were not nearly the "generalists" that modern ones are. The flight III Arleigh Burke Destroyers will be able to do pretty much everything, including cruiser air defense commander duties in theory. That particular ship being so generalist saw an end to a true next-gen cruiser program, as well as a premature retirement of the OHP-class frigate. In fact, with the Navy considering a new blue-water frigate to replace the OHP-class, one of the arguments against giving it VLS tubes and the Aegis Combat System, is if the Navy is going to do that, then why not just buy more Burke's?

The military can do all this stuff, but it needs to have the funds to buy what it needs to perform the jobs in a cost effective manner. My favorite example is that using a strategic bomber, the B-1 Lancer, to pound ISIS, is shockingly dumb. The US should have been using something it doesn't have, such as the A-29 Super Tucano, to do that, from the start. Because spending $500 per flight hour instead of $70,000 is a good thing.

But the US still needs the B-1 Lancer, the backbone of the bomber fleet, and will for decades to come. Which means where does the money, and pilots, come from for the Tucanos.


Look, in theory, the US could be doing less and not have it's fingers in every pot. In practice, we've been talking about that for 40 years and it's never going to happen. The country has been having a debate, about having that debate, before most of us were born. The "world police" cry is a humble brag. Donald Trump proves embarrassing for the geopolitical equivalent of 5 minutes, and we nationally start fretting about decline relative to China and diminishing influence here and there when legitimately nothing has changed yet other than our ongoing daily national embarrassment.

I will even give you an example of why I'm right about this. Witness Rex Tillerson's reign of error at the State Department. This is something that has had no real impact now, will have an impact soon, and will take years to fix. And if you're in the get-America-out-of-the-World-Police business, Tillerson just did you the biggest favor ever, because an effective State Department is at the very core of an American global agenda. A State Department with a talent drain, will make American internationally weaker, until that is repaired (which to be clear, it will be). But was is the national narrative, especially among liberals? "Rex Tillerson is destroying State!"

As I said. Humble brag. We don't want to be involved in everything, but jee wilickers, we can't just get out of the business!

- - - Updated - - -

China isn't the EU's problem, nor Iran.
And Russia, well, they will collapse, again, and then the EU will have to do what it does best, Buy it.
That's the Beauty of the EU - Externally it dominates it's neighbors, ENP isn't exactly a co-equal thing.

China isn't the EU's problem right now. It might be one day. Maybe not. We'll see. But it is very much America's problem.

Iran is definitely your problem. Their ballistic missile will reach you long before us.

And Russia, as you said, is both of ours problem. But this time, they shouldn't get off as easily as last time. They don't get up again.

This is the biggest problem with an EU army - We would be to loathe to use it when it wouldn't be required, but still a good idea.

Well at risk of being a bit of an American chavenist here, you guys need to be a bit more like us.

The American Superpower is to forget. And the way we forget is we hold elections, shift blame and retcon personal responsibility. The Iraq War for example? A war 77% of Americans supported and re-elected Bush on? Everybody forgets how deep and how long support was (pretty much until Hurricane Katrina). Every miserable thing we nationally felt about the Iraq War was stuck on the Bush Administration and tossed out along with a number of other Republicans in 2008. The American people who supported the war in 2003 because, to be blunt, after 9/11 we wanted to feel strong and lash out after feeling weak... we never had our reckoning. Abu Ghirab? That was the fault of other people.

It's going to be the exact same thing with Donald Trump. Most of the MAGA-hat wearing knuckledraggers are going to forget or retcon their support for President Deplorable in five years. Donald Trump will be the latest President, and not the last, elected by everybody's neighbor... but oh no... not I! "I'm an independent voter!"

This is the opposite of the British Experience. It's almost 2018. Fifteen years later. And I think, at last, they're now just finally done having Iraq War inquiries. These people have been navelgazing about some really terrible fucking policy for 15 years. There's a mature, considerate political system... but that's just ridiculous. And in that time they've pillaged their military forces in some kind of pointless act of contrition. I get a good chuckle when some goddamn Trumpkin talks about the British like it's still 2003. Oh no. They nationally felt so bad about the Iraq War, they decided to militarily neuter themselves.

The EU and the EU Army needs to be more like America and not like the British. The EU will make tremendous mistakes that seems like really good ideas at the time. It will not have anything approaching a perfect record. It needs to be politically mature enough to confront that (more than we are), but also politically mature enough to say "enough", and move on, like us and unlike the British.

There's going to be legitimately no point to this entire enterprise if there is a sixteen nation, three year inquiry every-time an attack helicopter piloted by a German, under the command of Frenchman, and built in Italy, accidentally fires on the wrong thing.

[Mayhem]

Well at risk of being a bit of an American chavenist here, you guys need to be a bit more like us.

Jesus christ please no!

The American Superpower is to forget. And the way we forget is we hold elections, shift blame and retcon personal responsibility. The Iraq War for example? A war 77% of Americans supported and re-elected Bush on? Everybody forgets how deep and how long support was (pretty much until Hurricane Katrina). Every miserable thing we nationally felt about the Iraq War was stuck on the Bush Administration and tossed out along with a number of other Republicans in 2008. The American people who supported the war in 2003 because, to be blunt, after 9/11 we wanted to feel strong and lash out after feeling weak... we never had our reckoning. Abu Ghirab? That was the fault of other people.

Yeah and that's why you keep doing the very same mistakes ever again, because the failures are the fault of "other" people.

It's going to be the exact same thing with Donald Trump. Most of the MAGA-hat wearing knuckledraggers are going to forget or retcon their support for President Deplorable in five years. Donald Trump will be the latest President, and not the last, elected by everybody's neighbor... but oh no... not I! "I'm an independent voter!"

Awesome, let's see who's going to be elected next, maybe a real vegetable this time.

This is the opposite of the British Experience. It's almost 2018. Fifteen years later. And I think, at last, they're now just finally done having Iraq War inquiries. These people have been navelgazing about some really terrible fucking policy for 15 years. There's a mature, considerate political system... but that's just ridiculous. And in that time they've pillaged their military forces in some kind of pointless act of contrition. I get a good chuckle when some goddamn Trumpkin talks about the British like it's still 2003. Oh no. They nationally felt so bad about the Iraq War, they decided to militarily neuter themselves.

Was anyone held responsible for the shit that happened to american soldiers and the lifes of thousands upon thousands foreigners or are you guys happy with "whoops"?

The EU and the EU Army needs to be more like America and not like the British. The EU will make tremendous mistakes that seems like really good ideas at the time. It will not have anything approaching a perfect record. It needs to be politically mature enough to confront that (more than we are), but also politically mature enough to say "enough", and move on, like us and unlike the British.

No, not "enough" and move on, but some actual consequences for fucking up big time.

There's going to be legitimately no point to this entire enterprise if there is a sixteen nation, three year inquiry every-time an attack helicopter piloted by a German, under the command of Frenchman, and built in Italy, accidentally fires on the wrong thing.

Well yeah, something we can agree on.

[Skroe]

Ah I see what you mean.

The US over-commits.

Sure it does. Fair debate right here. The US has been having it for 40 years. Sort of. It's been talking about it without the intent to actually do something about it. Not even a single step. It just keeps adding more commitments.

But that's a policy debate. And a damn good and interesting one. It's pretty clear what I think, but it's one the country desperately needs to have, and may the best side win. Will it have it? Frankly? Nope. I don't think it honestly wants to. As I said in the post above, I honestly think every President who lamented the US "can't be the _____ in the world"... by which I mean every President going back Truman, was making an empty statement that amounts to a humble brag, without the slightest intent of actually singling a desire to change direction.

So let's have that national policy debate.

But that being said, until we have it, we should be paying for our existing commitments, in full, period. I had no conception, about how fucking terrible the American people exploited its troops, until my best friend went on his second deployment to Afghanistan. It is very simple: we deploy 10,000 of them - a paltry number compared to prior military conflicts (including this one), and we take enormous advantage of those who are on contract with the Pentagon, because nationally, we are too cheap to pay for more, and we have been since the start.

General Eric Shinseki was right in 2002/2003 when he was fired for daring to state, against Rumsfeld's reasoning, the US needed a far larger Army to secure Iraq. He was never wrong. The US should not be doing 9 month and 12 month deployments and paying exorbitant sums for contractors in support roles. If it finds itself doing that, as it is now, it needs to expand to the point that it is not. That number, according to think tanks, is 650,000-700,000 troops.

It needs to do that because that is what we committed to now. If we actually have that national policy debate and don't need that 10 years from now, then we don't. But this thing we're doing, where we commit to X, and fund to the tune of 0.75X? It must stop. The policy debate must be the hard part and the budget the easy one. Budget flows from policy. Trying to change policy through budget shenanigans creates bad policy and bad budgets.

- - - Updated - - -

Jesus christ please no!

Sorry.

Yeah and that's why you keep doing the very same mistakes ever again, because the failures are the fault of "other" people.

Same ones? I'd say new ones. Not really the same. Some ryme sure.

Awesome, let's see who's going to be elected next, maybe a real vegetable this time.

Let's not forget. The other side of George W. Bush was Barack Obama. And Europeans had no love for Ronald Reagan and his Pershing II missiles. And the peak of his unpopularity was less than a decade out from Bill Clinton, who Europe liked alot.

But who was Barack Obama in 2005? Joe Biden said this in an interview just yesterday. Aside from his 2004 DNC speech, Obama was basically an unknown 16 months before the 2008 Democratic Primary, just as Bill Clinton was unknown before the 1992 Democratic Primary. The next American President Europe likes and civilized America finds a champion in is out there and entirely unknown right now. Probably some Governor.

People are fickle.

Was anyone held responsible for the shit that happened to american soldiers and the lifes of thousands upon thousands foreigners or are you guys happy with "whoops"?

Yeah. People were held responsible. They were held responsible in the 2006 mid-term election and the 2008 Presidential election. The two elections wiped out a generation of Republicans and destroyed many careers. On top of that even Democrats were held responsible (Hillary's 2008 primary defeat, early retirements). You may have seen in various US political threads some individuals lamenting the lack of term limits in the US? Don't believe it. The people saying that are political imbeciles. The House and Senate have seen enormous and historic political turnover since 2003, due in large part due to the long tail of the Iraq War and also the 2008 Financial Crisis. The term limits those imbeciles suggest? They are often times less than the time some key individuals they'd have liked out at various points ended up serving. To put it another way, there's not a hell of a lot of 12 year senators.

All this is to say, yes, THE people were held responsible for failed policies, in both parties, by elections, as they should be. In fact, the rise of Donald Trump is a direct consequence of that. Had the Iraq War never been launched, it is very likely that Bush-style Republicanism would have continued on and those mid-level people back then would have been leaders today. Bush the war destroyed countless careers as well, which opened the way for the Tea Party movement, and eventually the Trump Alt-Right. The war badly discredited the "Establishment" in the eyes of Republican (and to a lesser degree, Democratic) voters.

That's a pretty severe consequence.

No, not "enough" and move on, but some actual consequences for fucking up big time.

Elections where they lose?

Elections are the way. They are regenerative. And that's the point of Insanity with the United Kingdom in my example. They've had several elections and changes of power since the Iraq War. New Labour was all but wiped out. For whatever reason, they did not use elections as the cathartic and regenerative political act they're supposed to be.

[Macaquerie]

It has nothing to do with humblebragging, it's just that once you get involved in other countries' problems it's kind of hard to disentangle yourself from all that. We gain absolutely nothing from being in Afghanistan right now, arguably at no point in the entire 16 year venture did our presence there make America safer or enhance our prestige on the world stage. It's just that now that we're in, we have no way of getting out without making the problem even worse.

The country can't have a policy debate about being the world police because we're already in too deep to change now. We can't even stop ourselves from making further commitments, because hey we invaded Iraq for extremely flimsy reasons so if we're going to pretend to be consistent, pretty much any unstable region or humanitarian crisis demands immediate American intervention. All of these conflicts are going to demand lots of money which, don't get me wrong, we absolutely should spend because we really don't have much of a choice. But hoping to see any kind of favorable resolution or some glimmer of return on investment is just foolish at this point.

[Deleted]

Iran is definitely your problem. Their ballistic missile will reach you long before us.

Sure, but for good and ill, the EU isn't the great or the little Satan, we are their friends, i'm a bit uncomfortable with this dynamic that is playing out right now, but, well, we still are friends.

And Russia, as you said, is both of ours problem. But this time, they shouldn't get off as easily as last time. They don't get up again.

On this one we differ, they need to be helped to get up again:

Well at risk of being a bit of an American chavenist here, you guys need to be a bit more like us.

A little bit of this is complacency, we don't have to do it - But if push comes to shove, well then i think EU resolve is firmly on shoving harder.

There's going to be legitimately no point to this entire enterprise if there is a sixteen nation, three year inquiry every-time an attack helicopter piloted by a German, under the command of Frenchman, and built in Italy, accidentally fires on the wrong thing.

Yeah especially the Germans are going to have to learn that there is a distinction between unnecessary wars of aggression and necessary wars.
But this fault-line is going to be huge, between the french camp and the German camp, it's going to be a repeat of Marne with words.

[Mayhem]

Sure it does. Fair debate right here. The US has been having it for 40 years. Sort of. It's been talking about it without the intent to actually do something about it. Not even a single step. It just keeps adding more commitments.

But that's a policy debate. And a damn good and interesting one. It's pretty clear what I think, but it's one the country desperately needs to have, and may the best side win. Will it have it? Frankly? Nope. I don't think it honestly wants to. As I said in the post above, I honestly think every President who lamented the US "can't be the _____ in the world"... by which I mean every President going back Truman, was making an empty statement that amounts to a humble brag, without the slightest intent of actually singling a desire to change direction.

So let's have that national policy debate.

But that being said, until we have it, we should be paying for our existing commitments, in full, period. I had no conception, about how fucking terrible the American people exploited its troops, until my best friend went on his second deployment to Afghanistan. It is very simple: we deploy 10,000 of them - a paltry number compared to prior military conflicts (including this one), and we take enormous advantage of those who are on contract with the Pentagon, because nationally, we are too cheap to pay for more, and we have been since the start.

General Eric Shinseki was right in 2002/2003 when he was fired for daring to state, against Rumsfeld's reasoning, the US needed a far larger Army to secure Iraq. He was never wrong. The US should not be doing 9 month and 12 month deployments and paying exorbitant sums for contractors in support roles. If it finds itself doing that, as it is now, it needs to expand to the point that it is not. That number, according to think tanks, is 650,000-700,000 troops.

It needs to do that because that is what we committed to now. If we actually have that national policy debate and don't need that 10 years from now, then we don't. But this thing we're doing, where we commit to X, and fund to the tune of 0.75X? It must stop. The policy debate must be the hard part and the budget the easy one. Budget flows from policy. Trying to change policy through budget shenanigans creates bad policy and bad budgets.

- - - Updated - - -


Sorry.


Same ones? I'd say new ones. Not really the same. Some ryme sure.



Let's not forget. The other side of George W. Bush was Barack Obama. And Europeans had no love for Ronald Reagan and his Pershing II missiles. And the peak of his unpopularity was less than a decade out from Bill Clinton, who Europe liked alot.

But who was Barack Obama in 2005? Joe Biden said this in an interview just yesterday. Aside from his 2004 DNC speech, Obama was basically an unknown 16 months before the 2008 Democratic Primary, just as Bill Clinton was unknown before the 1992 Democratic Primary. The next American President Europe likes and civilized America finds a champion in is out there and entirely unknown right now. Probably some Governor.

People are fickle.




Yeah. People were held responsible. They were held responsible in the 2006 mid-term election and the 2008 Presidential election. The two elections wiped out a generation of Republicans and destroyed many careers. On top of that even Democrats were held responsible (Hillary's 2008 primary defeat, early retirements). You may have seen in various US political threads some individuals lamenting the lack of term limits in the US? Don't believe it. The people saying that are political imbeciles. The House and Senate have seen enormous and historic political turnover since 2003, due in large part due to the long tail of the Iraq War and also the 2008 Financial Crisis. The term limits those imbeciles suggest? They are often times less than the time some key individuals they'd have liked out at various points ended up serving. To put it another way, there's not a hell of a lot of 12 year senators.

All this is to say, yes, THE people were held responsible for failed policies, in both parties, by elections, as they should be. In fact, the rise of Donald Trump is a direct consequence of that. Had the Iraq War never been launched, it is very likely that Bush-style Republicanism would have continued on and those mid-level people back then would have been leaders today. Bush the war destroyed countless careers as well, which opened the way for the Tea Party movement, and eventually the Trump Alt-Right. The war badly discredited the "Establishment" in the eyes of Republican (and to a lesser degree, Democratic) voters.

That's a pretty severe consequence.





Elections where they lose?

Elections are the way. They are regenerative. And that's the point of Insanity with the United Kingdom in my example. They've had several elections and changes of power since the Iraq War. New Labour was all but wiped out. For whatever reason, they did not use elections as the cathartic and regenerative political act they're supposed to be.

Ah i like your "new" style. Anyway, with consequences i meant not political ones, because there are always companies with big beds made out of money to fall back into, but real consquences, like jail or worse.

About the "who was barack obama"-part, just remember, once bush jr. was the crazy and embarrassing one, and then came the donald. Now, maybe you get a democrat again, maybe a better one than obama, do you want to think of anyone who is more embarrassing and crazy than the donald?