I mean US is aggressor state, so has experience in invading other countries. If they wanted to invade China they would have some experience in doing so. I just hope EU leaders won’t follow them this time.
The US does not have any more experience in defeating near-peer militaries in a defensive position, as the last time it attempted (and failed) to do so was against China.
Iraq and Afghanistan may very well be more detrimental than useful. They made the US military focus on aspects of warfare that aren't relevant to a near peer conflict, and unlearning that is a difficult task that's currently consuming a lot of resources.
USAmerica now only has experience fighting against much weaker opponents. Almost everyone who remembers WW2 is dead.
When confronted with slightly more competent weak opponents (e.g. Taliban), the US military performs far more poorly. This poor performance worsens sharply as enemy
competence scales.
Full-scale war with near-peer or peer adversaries? USA is SOL.
But aside from the loud-mouthed war hawks or perma-doomers on YouTube, I don't think anyone in the US or China (or Russia,
for that matter) with decision-making power really has the appetite for direct open conflict, since it means the end of all things.
> When confronted with slightly more competent weak opponents (e.g. Taliban), the US military performs far more poorly. This poor performance worsens sharply as enemy competence scales.
Russia and America have fought albeit slightly indirectly.
US soldiers engaged Wagner in Syria in the Battle of Khasham.
Rough outcome of this battle.
US / SDF side - 1 wounded
Wagner / Syrian government side - 50 - 100 dead. upto 200 wounded.
> What is your point? That soldiers die if you shell them?
My point is that the following paragraph doesn't exactly hold up if you consider Wagner to be "slight more competent weak opponents" which I would.
> When confronted with slightly more competent weak opponents (e.g. Taliban), the US military performs far more poorly. This poor performance worsens sharply as enemy competence scales.
Due to historical reasons there are several people on the boat who actually own 90% of all the fish in the ocean. If you catch a fish, you pay them 90% of the value of the fish.
Interesting, I had many friends who got more positive and playful after they got older, got married and stopped giving a fuck how they interact with others. As I can see now it’s the older cohort that wants to socialize at the office not the young folks.
I'm not positive we're disagreeing here, just sharing my personal thoughts. I definitely quit caring what people thought long ago, though, that part is true.
I find the younger generation antisocial to detriment, but maybe that's the old guy talking. So I think a lot of the folks missing it are of my ilk. Kinda how some guys miss playing high school football and such. I didn't, so my 'glory days' were in the office, and I admit as much.
I agree but if you want to see even higher doses of racism just change India with China and there will be a lot more here. unfortunately the media created extremely hostile environment toward non white countries that are slowly catching up and surpassing western technology
I think we used to be at the forefront but since 2-3 years China gained a lot of ground in terms of high tech Green energy products. They might as well have surpassed us in few fields.
Speaking as someone who voted for them: I have never been more let down by anyone as much as the Green Party in my life.
They act like neocons nowadays basically.
Same here. It all feels like Jürgen Trittin's lifework, deciding end of nuclear in early 2000s, was prioritized higher than climate change. Everyday I'm looking at the energy mix, I'm getting very angry that they decided to bet everything on being able to grow renewables in never-before-manner; that in a situation of an almost recession, a lack of workers, government paralysis due to over-bureaucratic processes, et al. It's so stupid, it makes me wanna leave the country.
Edit: And though I'm pro delivering weapons to Ukraine, I was deeply disgusted by their socialmedia marketing ("free the leopards").
I don't think so. Lack of workers means you cannot e.g. produce all the goods you want to produce. This will result in less goods being sold -> recession. So basically the lack of workers could be understood as a potential to grow but if you cannot satisfy the demand for workers it will have the opposite effect.
I am not an economist so it might be totally wrong but that is my understanding.
I'm embarrassed to admit that I once believed their anti nuclear hysteria, because the media portrayed this as the only rational position. Reading non German sources quickly cured that delusion.
CDU/CSU is the new AfD.
SPD is the new CDU/CSU.
Greens are the new SPD.
FDP are the fiscally conservative socially whatever-we-think our-voters-like-that-day-ism. As usual.
Left are... a mess, please get rid of Wagenknecht and the remainder of the pro-russia tankie wing.
Everything is going wrong in German politics. The current progressive coalition just announced a law that affects me personally very much (our self-id law) and it's such a bad compromise, it legitimizes every fear - real, imagined or performative - right wingers have about trans people, conflicts with existing anti-discrimination policy and makes the legal standing for every trans person (and presumably cis people who don't look "normal" enough) worse, the only good thing they did was eliminate the meaningless hurdles that were mostly monetary anyway (nobody "failed" the prior way to officially change your documents; people just didn't do it for fear of being retraumatized or for lack of funds). I am legitimately so done with politics in this country that I'm considering moving to Spain or Iceland.
Friedrich Merz (the populist, far more aligned with CSU) and Armin Laschet (the less than competent and charismatic chancellor candidate) happened. But mostly Merkel leaving happened.
Merkel was extremely popular with the voter base. Not letting her run again was considered an extremely bad take in the CDU/CSU. So she was chancellor for 16 years. She is a consensus seeking politician without too much hard convictions, but being in coalition meant that a lot of her work put her pretty far left within her party (in absolutes, probably slightly right center; she still voted against gay marriage).
The new CDU/CSU lives mostly in the opposition and the only voters they have left to molilize have run off to the AfD, being unhappy with Merkel (and a lot of them have simply died). Most Merkel voters moved on to SPD or even Greens; the only thing that kept them with the party was Merkel as a person.
Well, if you want environmental politic, they are, by far, the least worst party. I vote for them even though I fundamentally disagree on their position on nuclear. This is called making compromises, it's painful, but it's the grown up thing to do.
FDP has climate nagationists on their payroll. Only the far left die Linke has actually a better environmental programme than the green but their position (Schwarzer, Wagenknecht...) on the Ukraine war showed they just exited reality a while back...
It's a sad state to have to vote for the "least worse", but I think it's been like that for while, I just didn't want to see it...
Is this well educated labour force the part of the voter base of the two biggest parties across the pond? if yes then I wish the very best to the manufacturing trials there.
We already have seen the quality of Us manufacturing recently with Tesla cars. The times that made in America was synonymous with good quality are long gone.
We make pretty good Hondas and Toyotas, though. My household has a 20 year old Camry from Kentucky that starts practically every time you crank it (except when the battery is too old).
As a general rule, the quality of manufacturing output has far less to do with the workers, and more to do with the procedures that they're made to follow.
If you put people in a situation where they can only produce crap, then that's what you'll get.
It’s possible that I’m a victim of propaganda and it’s possible you are. The way to determine who is more likely to have fallen for propaganda is to compare respective beliefs against known facts. It is indisputable that Chinese hackers have stolen U.S. technology secrets and that China prevents/restricts who can operate there much more so than the U.S. Given this and China’s overt human rights violations on a grand scale in the western part of the country it’s clear that a conflict exists as a clash of both culture and national security.
I know it’s a concept that is hard to grasp for CCP followers to understand but it is possible to criticize the CCP and past American actions. The U.S. is not a saint. Neither is China.
> guess what, in 2002 pretty much everyone was enthusiastically on board (as instructed!)
mmm, no. In 2002 "everyone" pretty much agreed that invading Iraq was a bad idea. People only went along with it after it happened to "show support for the troops." Or have you forgotten the "Hate Bush, love the troops" bumper stickers?
> willingness to engage in a war the US and Taiwan might very well lose (badly) with Americans dying
Based on Russia's performance in Ukraine and China's military might seemingly less than Russia's I doubt the US Navy has a tough time keeping China out of Taiwan, let alone the entire military might of the US
I recommend looking up the Battle of the Chosin Resevoir....worst military defeat ever suffered by the US (worse than Bastogne imho), the Chinese didn't even have one gun per soldier...some didn't have boots...they DEMOLISHED the best equipped army in the world (and this was during Korea when the US military was the unquestioned top dog)
and btw if you are going to go look at casualty counts, don't bother, its well understood that the Chinese lost ten men for every US soldier killed...they still won
Hard to definitively claim victory for either side in the battle you mention. The Chinese outnumbered the US 4 to 1 and still got blasted, the Chinese unit was out of commission for months following the battle while the US forces maintained unit integrity.
In the years since the gulf between capabilities has grown, and especially seeing how Russia can't crush Ukraine using castoff NATO gear China will be wise to not poke the bear.
