Ron DeSantis on Ukraine

What would be your strategy if conflict with Russia was inevitable in the near future?

 

The price of aiding Ukraine against Russia.

https://www.cnn.com/2023/03/14/politics/us-drone-russian-jet-black-sea/index.html

Russia is testing us. Unless people think it's just coincidental that a U.S. intelligence drone operating in the Black Sea has nothing to do with the war in Ukraine.

 

So you believe retreating from a bully is a good strategy?

 

Romania and Poland are NATO now. The troops should stay. Its totally different than Ukraine which is not NATO.
I have often wondered why Putin didn't pop a small, high altitude nuke in Ukraine. If done properly it would have no effect on anything NATO but might just scare the Ukrainians into submission.

 

Putin is backed into a corner.

Russia's economy is far worse than Rostat's falsified figures show, more than 100,000 Russians have died fighting for territories that are worth practically nothing and the state has sunk staggering amounts of money into this war.

Russia is on the verge of bankruptcy.

The objective is to bring Putin to negotiate in conditions where he is as weak as possible.

They already know that.

No NATO country intends to send troops to Ukraine.

 

It doesn't, but we can't afford to either. The Ukrainians will probably not be successful at completing their counter offensives, and the Russians will continue to pour resources there because they can't afford to lose it. Leaving it to a war of attrition, one in which the West will bleed out greatly. 'Who we are', will soon be a bankrupted nation but hey we stuck on our principles and our guts. The exact same way the UK lost its influence on the world stage.

The battle of Europe, is one that goes back centuries and tried as we might, we were unable to stop the European Wars. Let's not compound it by once again moving into the theater.

The Chinese will be aggressive regardless of whether Russia succeeds or not, what Russo-China really doesn't want to see, is for us to become laser focused on US objectives and to reassert our claims to a free(mainly US-led) Pacific and an open Pacific.

Stop thinking of the international community, it's done way less for us then we've done for them.

 

So the Pacific was acting up as soon as 2014(arguably as soon as 2012, Obama's second term) and it was then that Obama and Defense Sec. Gates realized the US vulnerability to our Pacific, and that is why we armed the Japanese and that development has gone rather well, as a crucial deterrent to Chinese aggression. Truth be told, if Russia is going to march over European lands there's very little militarily we can do to stop them at least initially because our forces are scattered, and not really concentrated in the 'Nato lands' as such. I think a US mistake(that led to the creation of the Muhajeeden) was our unwillingness to accept the USSR/Russia prominence in Eurasia.

(And controversial hot take is that if we were that concerned about a prominent Russian dominance in Europe, we should have allied with Imperial Japan in WWII, and convinced Imperial Japan with US Support to strike at the USSR. Since there'd be no nukes involved, we had the rare opportunity to turn Russia into North Korea. But that's long passed us by obviously)

Now if Napoleon/Hitler have shown us anything, we're just going to have to live with it. Our foreign policy objective in Europe should be to find an agreed settlement between the Eurasian powerhouse and the European countries on its border.

We can still do something about China. China has far fewer reported nukes than the Russians. Their maritime power is still isolated(but they are growing it, in an attempt to force their way out.)

Let's not repeat the same mistake we did with Russia. i would build a military alliance with all of the aggrieved nations in Asia. The goal of which would be to drastically reduce Chinese land mass, and turn them more into an British-esque island country. If we could empower several 'sister Republics'(Napoleon-style), we could eliminate the threat China poses to the US and to the Pacific and our allies in that region.

The big mistake after the fall of the USSR, was not immediately doing the same to China.

 

You mean like the same imperialistic ambitions of the US that initiated a coup in Ukraine and then installed a US friendly leadership? That same corruption?

 

You mean doing just fine with the US and Europe sending 100's of billions of aid and weapons? Do you think they would be doing fine without nearly a quarter of the US military budget?

 

Draining our war stocks and spending billions defending Ukraine's borders while leaving our own wide open makes no sense at all.

 

Polish and Romanian troops can occupy those positions. US troops have no business being there, because they're in close of proximity to the battlefield.

 

We aren't engaged, hence it wouldn't be a retreat. It's a redeployment.

There are plenty of German, French, Polish, Romanian and British troops to engage the Russians, before sending US troops into the fray.

 

NATO troops belong anywhere in NATO. "Close" only counts with horseshoes.

 

Pacifist mindset is not uncommon, so yes, many believe in letting bullies be bullies.

We used to house 300 000+ troops in Europe, and now we are down to fraction of that (less than 2000 in Poland) and they still complain.

 

I don’t understand your point in relation to mine. Ukraine has our weapons and are kicking their ass, therefore we can’t kick Russias ass with our guns? We still have money and weapons. Our own.

what a bizarrely irrelevant post.

 

We have fewer every day as the disappear into the Ukrainian morass.

 

Whoever told you weapons are a zero-sum game you need to fire them

 

You don't just run down to Wal Mart and pick up some F-16's. It takes YEARS to build them. I spent decades in defense acquisition after I got out of uniform. Today's sophisticated weapons take a LOT OF TIME to replenish.

 

Withdrawing from those countries would be retreating.

 

Well, we have not invaded Ukrainian nor Russia.

As for your question, on Afghanistan, absolutely. On Iraq, no. Afghanistan openly harbored and fostered a terrorism network that lead to the death of over 3,000 people. You are *******n right I approved of the US invading Afghanistan.

 

So rather than increase production capacity while letting Ukraine kick Russias ass for us, you’d rather just sit on our stockpiles so that if a hot war breaks out we’ll have lousy production capacity and Americans dying.

great plan.

like I said. Your points are bizzarre.

 

So we should cower to Putin and kowtow to his imperialism?

 

Most gear has been purchased directly from defense industry and sent to Ukraine, while some were drawn from US Military arsenal. Some other things like AK-47 rounds isn't even commonly used by US military. We sent them 100 million of those because we had them in Europe. The stuff sent from US arsenal is being replenished by huge new contracts with the defense industry (who couldn't be happier). Old stuff out, and new stuff in, so the line "we have nothing left to fight with" is just fear mongering from pseudo-con propagandists.

 

Bizarrely irrelevant is your inability to see the true situation. We are exhausting our own military supply, only to have Ukraine hold ground. You, thinking they are kicking Russia's ass is what is more bizarre. Ukrainians have a staggering loss of life and will continue while Western nations continue to push the conflict versus pushing for peace. Let me ask you this? How many Ukrainian lives are you willing to sacrifice to satisfy your hate for Putin?

 

You do not understand at all how long it takes to "increase production capacity". Contracting takes many months, long lead items can take years. Have you ever been to the production facilities where F-16's are made? It takes about a year or more to get the long lead components and other raw materials together. Then they go into one end of a mile and a half long building. About a year and a half later an F-16 comes out the other end. Throwing money at it cannot make it happen any faster. Javelins and Stingers have some extremely long lead items required for their seeker heads. You can't just get this stuff delivered overnight.

We are depleting our war stocks. We have already dipped into our POMCUS stocks (stuff already stored in Europe for our Soldiers to link up with in case of war).