Trump Slams NATO, Floats Russia Nuke Deal in European Interview

[Skroe]

This is nonsense.

When red army went to hell n stopped getting monies for years, armed forces suffered, navy army air-force, everyone except for nuclear forces that NEVER stopped getting monies.
Even if Russia like in ur fantasies got reduced to 90's economy, nuclear forces still would get their cash.

You're wrong and here's why.

Why doesn't Russia spend $700 billion on defense like this US does? Taxes. The US ability to raise revenue to pay for things - defense spending not even being nearly the biggest thing - comes from US wealth. From US wealth, the Federal Government cause raise a lot of money to pay for things.

By contrast Russia, a middle income country, does not have the tax base to pay for something as lavish as the US defense budget. It has to extract revenue out of a $2 trillion economy while the US extracts it out of a $17 trillion.

Now during the Soviet Union, there were no income taxes in the traditional sense and the state set wages and costs for everything. This allowed the Soviet Union to grow it's military power far beyond what would have been possible were it a capitalist country because unlike the US which paying for every Sub almost a customer, with the expectation that the contractor would be operating at a profit, the Soviet Union was basically cradle-to-the-grave making everything itself. This kept things cheap, especially with labor costs so low.

Now fast foward to the 1990s. The Russian Federation now has a Western-style taxation system. Government revenues are extracted from the economy along Western lines. Large sections of the defense industrial complex are privatized and now must operate at a profit (still true, even though some were renationalized and unified, such as United Aircraft). This means that those rock-bottom costs the Soviets used to support 30,000 warheads and a huge navy no longer existed. Everything had to be paid for, just like in the West.

Russia could not afford it. It STILL can't afford it. Its inheritence from the Soviet Union, which didn't have to pay for cost of ownership, suddenly got tremendously expensive.

You may call it nonsense. But Russian leaders don't. They never have. Not for 25 years. Take something like the Angara space launch vehicle. Angara was envisioned in the late 1980s / early 1990s. It flew for the first time last year, delayed over 20 years. It is basically a Russian Atlas V (a US rocket) analog. It uses similar engines and similar design principles. GOOD DESIGNS. But Atlas V (along with Delta IV) were designed in the 1980s and 1990s to replace dozens of different US rockets that were manufactured since the dawn of the space age, to reduce costs for government space launch by reducing the number of supported platforms. This is ALSO the driving goal behind Angara. Angara was envisioned to use a common core to replace all Soyuz and all Proton rockets one day. Because supporting just Angara will allow money to be reallocated to paying for other things that it flies, rather than supporting multiple, duplicate systems.

Angara
Borei
Bulava
S-300/S-400
Armata

All of these represent the exact same idea - doing what the US did in the 1990s when it rapidly retired thousands of legacy aircraft, missiles, hundreds of ships and weapons, even if, as was the case with many of them, they could have served for another 20 years. Because paying for 4 destroyer classes (for example) in a lower threat environment, is undesirable when you have the opportunity to pay for one.

The US was eager to cut nuclear arms in the 1990s and 2000s, to shake itself loose of warheads and rockets dating to the 1960s and replace it with modern designs in a small number of economical families. That task is largely complete.

Russia, which is poorer, was less able to do that as the US was doing it, and remains in a position where its finances make that even more desirable.

Yes, the Rocket Forces got money in the 1990s and 2000s. But it wasn't close to enough to support it's Soviet inheritance, which was why Russia was so eager to cut. And today, it's not enough to both support the inheritance AND modernize.

The US should not engage in any nuclear deals with Russia (and it wont... it wont pass congress) because they need it a hell of a lot more than we do. Russia has to cut, to pay for modernization. We do not.

[Bodymass]

I'd agree with Trump in saying that NATO is obsolete because there was no reason for its continued existence after the Cold War ended, other than to be used as a tool to continually intimidate Russia.

https://www.theguardian.com/commenti...itary-conflict

[caervek]

Because supporting just Angara will allow money to be reallocated to paying for other things that it flies, rather than supporting multiple, duplicate systems.

They could have focused on their space shuttles, had they not sat in their hangers rotting since the fall of the USSR (apart from the one that got crushed when it's rotting hanger collapsed) due to lack of funding haha.

[Deleted]

Indeed. War with Russia? Not going to happen.

Do what we can to Make Russia a Big Breadline Again? I'd say that's something most any patriotic American can get behind. After all, these people are our adversaries, not our friends. They will never be our friends. We should never delude ourselves into thinking that is going to be the case.

I don't want them to know atomic fire. That's ridiculous. I want them to know hunger. That's something we could help arrange if we pull the right levers.

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*bows* Just got done with my deadline and caffeinated as hell!

You know what hungry people tend to do when they know who is pushing for their hunger? Best case scenario a conventional war. Sanctions are sanctions and do whatever they do. Actively trying to make a country starve will be seen differently however and will most likely end in a "Fuck off or we'll starve but we'll make sure that you're not cold. With nukes.".

When it's a country that doesn't particularly matter in terms of populace or weaponry what you suggest might work(based on US interventions up till now no one really cares how many people die in third world countries) but when that country has nukes you might need to put a bit more thought into your actions. It doesn't matter if most nukes miss. All it takes is a couple to fuck shit up, especially if countries other than US & Russia get involved.

[Skroe]

You do understand Trump will be replacing heads of those same agencies, do you?

And you do realize not only the institutional resistance, least of all from Congress, but ALSO the fact that Trump is not leading a political transformation in this country? In 4-8 years he'll be gone. And he's so unique, he isn't something that'll be enduring to either party. Again, there is no votes in America in beign pro-Russian.

Witness how, 8 years after the dawn of the Age of Obama, the Trump Presidency is set to repudiate large parts of his legacy. You care to bet that's gonna heppn when his successors take office? I realize in your country, an authoritarian regime ruled by a war criminal as his property, the fact that your next government can have different policies is an alien idea. Not in America. Here, Trump will be different from Obama, who was different from Bush, who was different from Clinton. And it will be so with his successors.

Again with Russia - it pissed off too many Americans in a way we won't forgive or forget. Anything you think you "get" with Trump - and by the way, your own leaders are pouring cold water on that idea - won't be enduring, because anti-Russian sentiment is hardcoded into America's political DNA. And rightly so I feel. You people deserve that level of hostility and malice from us.

[koontakent]

I was going to say that the role of "angry, white trash twat from the backwater cultural wasteland that is Australia" was filled by Mormolyce, but since that insipid cunt got himself banned, I guess you do have a niche around here.

I try my hardest, but don't white trash people normally run around screaming to kill anything that doesn't drink beer?

[Skroe]

They could have focused on their space shuttles, had they not sat in their hangers rotting since the fall of the USSR (apart from the one that got crushed when it's rotting hanger collapsed) due to lack of funding haha.

Funny story about that. Do you know why the Soviet Shuttle Existed? Because the Soviet Leadership in the late 1970s / Early 1980s was sure... and I mean like as sure as they know the sun will rise in the morning... that the REAL purpose of the US Space Shuttle was to be an orbital bomber. That while the US may use it for peaceful missions, it's Air Force mission set (it was planned to also be an Air Force asset and launch from Vandenberg... it never happened due to Challenger) was to carry nuclear weapons into space and avoid Soviet early warning systems by bombing them from above.

The purpose behind the Soviet Shuttle was, initially, to get their own dual use orbital bomber.

In truth of course, the Space Shuttle was never intended for that. Its shape was wrong. Its orbit was wrong. Its size was wrong. Of course, if the US wanted to do orbital bombardment, it could have done it on disposable space launch vehicles and existing satellite buses. By the mid 1980s the Soviets became more convinced that the Space Shuttle was indeed, just a Civilian Space vehicle whose military role was a distant second. However the Soviet Shuttle Program continued, albeit somewhat demilitarized.

The Shuttles themselves (commonly, though incorrectly called "Buran") were something of a bust, but the Energia launcher was important. The RD-170 engines deisgned to power it were subsequently redesigned in the early 1990s by a joint US-Russian team (to keep Russian engineers on the job and from being poached by China, Libya, Iraq, Iran, North Korea, Pakistan and Syria) and became the RD-180 used in the American Atlas V, the RD-191 used in Angara, the RD-151 used by South Korea, and several other variants.

Funny thing about the RD-180 though. Though a joint US-Russian yeam designed it, the metallurgy of the combustion chamber is only known to Russian engineers who manufacture it. I like telling this story because it's an excellent example of industrial know-how... unwritten standards and procedures that emerge organically on the production floor and known by the staff who work on such a program for many years, make the entire thing possible. While the US company Aerojet has the designs for the RD-180, they can't just manufacture it because they say that it would take 5 years and $1 billion to reverse engineer some of the technology, specifically the metalurgical composition. In the end it is just cheaper to design an whole new engine (which they have, called the AR-1, which is similar)

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You know what hungry people tend to do when they know who is pushing for their hunger? Best case scenario a conventional war. Sanctions are sanctions and do whatever they do. Actively trying to make a country starve will be seen differently however and will most likely end in a "Fuck off or we'll starve but we'll make sure that you're not cold. With nukes.".

When it's a country that doesn't particularly matter in terms of populace or weaponry what you suggest might work(based on US interventions up till now no one really cares how many people die in third world countries) but when that country has nukes you might need to put a bit more thought into your actions. It doesn't matter if most nukes miss. All it takes is a couple to fuck shit up, especially if countries other than US & Russia get involved.

You know what I say to that? It's a calculated risk.

With respect to Russia's actions, we now know how far they are willing to go to mess with us. I say, let's find out how far we're willing to go. Trump is right about one thing (and he's long been right). The United States has pulled its punches for far too long. The time for that is over. Let's remind Russia why they are not our peer.

New Russian Sanctions are coming. But I'm still wanting the holy grail of them all: tossing Russia out of Swift (Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication) and seizing Russian's assets in America.

[Independent voter]

Congress has most of the power in the US. Trump has power over the executive branch, he has already appointed secretaries of the major departments, however those secretaries each have hundreds of subordinates who are ultimately responsible for enacting orders, Trump orders the secretary to do something, the secretary turns around and orders his subordinates to enact Trump's wishes.

The amount of leeway subordinates have is tremendous, they can make or break a proposal just by dragging their feet or rearranging their "todo" list.

[Deleted]

https://www.bloomberg.com/politics/a...rman-interview

This is the beginning of the fall of the US as a superpower. You've completely lost it now. Not even Bush Junior was this ignorant. And at least he was a puppet to his countries own interests, not to someone else's. You're quickly losing everything.

[Slant]

Which also applies to Merkel and other Westerners who support mass third world migration.

Some might say Merkel is responsible that Europe is stable after having weathered a global financial crisis and two countries on the brink of collapse (Don't forget Ireland). But that's just propaganda, I'm sure...

[Deleted]

I like how many of his reporters praise his attempts to control the media's reporting on him while thinking China's media control is sinful.

But hey, I guess it's totally difference since instead of using the media to control public opinion he's just doing it directly and calling the media out whenever they try to get him to explain wtf he's doing.

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I've been saying for months I pity those recent US dramas based around politics and the White House. Their writers could never have come up with anything like the recent debacle.

US hypocricy at its best.

[Skroe]

1: No European country is going to look like Libya in the next 20 years that's simply impossible, stuff like that simply doesn't happen here.

A bit hyperbole on my part, but you get my point. What I want from Russia, and I will continue to want, is the exact opposite of peaceful co-existent. Everything short of war. Let us besiege them, so to speak. The US has so many levers of power. We must use them for a change, to defend ourselves, against a mortal threat.

2: Even if the hacking allegations against Russia are true, I very much doubt that the information leak on Clinton/Democrats altered the result of your election. I would guess most of the people who felt negatively about her/them on election day felt so already.

I disagree. First and foremost, pre-dating this particular controversy, it's been rigorously researched that most undecided voters settle on their final votes within the last two weeks of the election. And what happened in the last two weeks of this election?

The election was so close, in so few places, that it certainly had an impact.

Furthermore regardless of the success rate... EVEN IF YOU'RE RIGHT, and Russia "changed nothing", the very act of attempting to interfere is enough to make my point valid. The success of Russia's attempt is besides the point. Even them trying demands, we make them bay a brutal price.

3: Seriously though, you wish ruin and destruction on a country just because your intelligence agencies say they did something bad but refuse to offer any evidence? Have a million dead Iraqis taught you nothing?

Russians are not Americans and not our allies. I don't care what happens to them. I'm not some "we're all in this together" global humanist. This is the terrible irony of Trump. "America First". "Western Values". In the right context, with the right policy, it is in some ways things i've been advocating for for much of my adult life. How many times have I said we should drag China kicking and screaming before an arbitration panel in the WTO and actually use our levers of power for a change, rather than just keep turning the other cheek? Trump has been correct about things like that, for years.

But then Trump got tied up in racism. Fascism. Sexism. Authoritarianism. Conspiracy Theories. The list goes on. That's why I so vigorously oppose someone who, in the broad strokes, also stands for some things I agree with. Trump is not my President. Trump, had he never insulted the disabled, demeaned women, made buddy buddy with our mortal enemy Vladmir Putin, embraced a kind of crypto-racism, could have been the antidote we needed to Obama's cosmopolitanism.

Is it clear now why I don't care what befalls Russians? They're not Americans. They're not our brothers and sisters in the free world. They are our enemies. We should work to undermine and beat our enemies, especially when they engage in aggression, as Russia has.

This is, by the way, also the fallacy of Vladmir Putin's entire world view. It's been said he wants to overturn the post-1945 world order and return to the Great Power system of the 19th century. Does he not realize that under such a system, Americas unleashed, as it were, would likely make him and Russians long for the a rules based international order? Or to put it another way, has HE learned nothing from that time America invaded Iraq, a popular war among Americans at the time, and dared Russia to do something about it? Because under his vision of the world, Russia may be a predator, but the US unbound would be a super predator. And Russia again would still be the net loser.

[Slant]

is she a conservative by chance? or is she still mad that Sanders didnt get the nomination (someone who didnt like russia for his oligarchs)

Clueless is what she is, you should hear her talk about Europe. It's like another planet to her...

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And maybe if peace is finally settled on, Israel.

Was that on purpose? Very unfortunate phrasing, that is...

[Skroe]

This is the beginning of the fall of the US as a superpower. You've completely lost it now. Not even Bush Junior was this ignorant. And at least he was a puppet to his countries own interests, not to someone else's. You're quickly losing everything.

I'm as anti-Trump as anybody, but if Trump gets his 350 ship Naval fleet (he will, it's popular policy, but it won't be ready for years) among other things, and you combine that with our enduring economic strength - we're pretty much the only engine of the world economy at the moment, two of the most significant pillars of our claim to superpower will be enriched?

Of course the third claim is our expansive system of international alliances and global basing. But decision on the status and funding levels of those is not up to Trump.

Of course, the rise of Trump and the Trumpkins hurts our reputation as a liberal democracy. Without a doubt, a body blow to America's reputation. But I look at it like this. That legacy, of which we're just the custodians, was built over many presidencies, many wars, many disasters and many sacrifices. Nothing Trump can do can undo that for all time. It falls to us Americans to show to the world how free peoples can strangle authoritarianism in its crib before it takes root. As the saying goes "It's easy to be a saint in Paradise". Americans have been patting ourselves on the back over our democratic credentials for decades, despite deeply flawed electoral procedures, money overflowing politics and institutional racism. Well we are not in paradise anymore, and our patting ourselves on the back hasn't amounted to spit as of late. So it falls to us to live, fight and re-affirm those democratic credentials.

We can choose to lament Trump. Or we can choose to view him as a challenge to who we are as a people at our must fundamental level, join the battle, and kick his ass. If we fight well and when we win, on the other side, that back patting we do can be backed up by personal life experience, and not just priding ourselves on the inheritance paid for by our fore-bearers sacrifices.

Trump doesn't stand a chance.

[Deleted]

No. This is how peace loving people see it not the Russians. NATO is used from the USA for their own geopolitical goals. NATO needs to disappear. A unified EU army would be more than enough to protect the continent and if needed more powerful than the American.

Even then the optimal solution would be UNSC to play the world police. Remove veto powers, have a 80% voting rule on the decisions and let the whole world decide on what action should be taken.

Fuck that shit, I don't want my eastern europe ruled by germany! Nor by Russia or US.

[Skroe]

Clueless is what she is, you should hear her talk about Europe. It's like another planet to her...

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Was that on purpose? Very unfortunate phrasing, that is...

HAHAHA I didn't even realize. Oh that's great.

Frankly I feel kind of... whats the word... going through the motions including Israel in there. But really, I don't want to touch anything Israel/Palestine, as a country, with a 10 foot pole.

There is no "winning" on that issue for anyone. I'm not sure how Obama didn't burst into laughter when John Kerry came up to him and said "Hey Barack, ya know, if it's fine with you, I want to spent the next 14 months trying to draw up a final peace treaty between the Israelis and Palestinians, even if neither want it or are ready for it yet".

If I were Obama, I would have told him "sure, just after you pry Tibet out of Chinese hands"

[Kiri]

Did anyone mention Trump's renewed vigor for Twitter btw? He said in that interview that he would continue to use it happily as president to talk about 'fake news'.

[Skroe]

Did anyone mention Trump's renewed vigor for Twitter btw? He said in that interview that he would continue to use it happily as president to talk about 'fake news'.

I hope he keeps using it. I hope he tweets every damn day.

Trump will not be destroyed by one thing. It will be a lot of things. The thing that will do him in will be bad, but it will be compounded by a lot of just-as-bad.

Trump''s been President-elect for nine weeks, and I've already lost count of the number of unforced errors he has committed. He has blown huge amounts of political capital and goodwill on absolutely nothing.

His tweeting is ultimately self destructive, and I hope he keeps at it. Eventually he'll tweet something that has horrific consequences, either for his administration, some individual or some norm, and it'll big a big step forward to his eventual removal from office.

Let's just keep in mind - the President Elect is going to be sworn in in six days, and he spent yesterday ranting about Saturday Night Live taking the easiest shots in the world at him by making some facile Pee jokes. Trump's twitter account is a gift to his enemies.

[caervek]

Funny story about that. Do you know why the Soviet Shuttle Existed? Because the Soviet Leadership in the late 1970s / Early 1980s was sure... and I mean like as sure as they know the sun will rise in the morning... that the REAL purpose of the US Space Shuttle was to be an orbital bomber.

Yup, and if you think they were wrong you are crazy. There is simply no way that possibility didn't occur to the US military, and play a part in the green lighting of the project. The military advantage the US got from the shuttle was unfathomable.

[Slant]

HAHAHA I didn't even realize. Oh that's great.

Frankly I feel kind of... whats the word... going through the motions including Israel in there. But really, I don't want to touch anything Israel/Palestine, as a country, with a 10 foot pole.

There is no "winning" on that issue for anyone. I'm not sure how Obama didn't burst into laughter when John Kerry came up to him and said "Hey Barack, ya know, if it's fine with you, I want to spent the next 14 months trying to draw up a final peace treaty between the Israelis and Palestinians, even if neither want it or are ready for it yet".

If I were Obama, I would have told him "sure, just after you pry Tibet out of Chinese hands"

I know what you mean. I think whoever solves the gordic knot of Israel/Palestine truly deserves a peace nobel prize. It would solve so many problems, imagine the Arabic world finally settling their grudge with Israel. It would be a power shift more dramatic than the uprising of IS and could spark off some real progress down there.

On the other hand, it might not. Some people just want to fight and don't know how to peace...