Greetings, and welcome to the World Affairs Board!
The World Affairs Board is the premier forum for the discussion of the pressing geopolitical issues of our time. Topics include military and defense developments, international terrorism, insurgency & COIN doctrine, international security and policing, weapons proliferation, and military technological development.
Our membership includes many from military, defense, academic, and government backgrounds with expert knowledge on a wide range of topics. Registration is fast, simple and absolutely free so why not register a World Affairs Board account and join our community today?
USN's resurrection of 2nd Fleet means the threat perception has now been shifted back to Russia. FONA is just flag waving. A single destroyer can do that, daring the Chinese to act with consequences. ASW screens requires far more assets and by default, gets far less attention.
Ok but why did you say the shift the pacific is dead ? nothing has been withdrawn yet
You could say he isn't doubling down in that theatre but no pull out is there
I'll preface these remarks with the observation that Trump is successful in the sense that he has managed to turn himself into a huge celebrity & a brand. He has leveraged that to make money & obtain status. That doesn't make him a business genius, but it is a talent and he has monetized it.
I'm betting that your friends have fallen prey to a couple of very American ideas.
One is an obsession with celebrity. America pretty much invented mass celebrity culture. Other nations have run with that ball, but it seeps deep into US consciousness. The tendency to conflate fame with general worth or ability and the tendency to assign unearned importance to celebrities has been around in the US since before any of us were born. Trump is a logical outcome of that phenomenon & the assumption that he is more capable than he is goes along with that.
The other is an almost pathological belief in an incredibly shallow concept of 'meritocracy'. Old World societies have an understanding that many people with money & social position have done nothing to earn it (even if they don't always act like they understand that). Despite the fact that America now has less social mobility than many of those societies, there remains an implicit assumption in America that 'class' doesn't exist and money or position (or lack thereof) is somehow based on merit.
marry those two trends and you have people who are predisposed to believe that a rich guy like Trump with a flair for self promotion must be a great businessman. Talking about his inherited advantage is 'class warfare', 'politics of envy' and an attack on achievement.
This comes down to out & out tribalism. That isn't an issue limited to the GOP, but it seems to be worse there. There are just too many people who drown themselves in voices telling them what they want to hear. They indulge their most base emotions & turn off their critical capacities. Often this is a cynical exercise, though sadly not often enough. Thus you have the frankly unhinged idea that Trump is some sort of genius 'family man', in spite of a mountain of uncontested evidence to the contrary.
It also leads to the bizarre spectacle of self proclaimed patriots cheering for Russians accused of trying to manipulate a US election while denouncing a decorated military veteran & lifelong servant of the American people as some sort of enemy of the nation. This comes pretty close to mass mental illness - the sort that in a nation with fewer constitutional safeguards could lead to some very dark places. The wholesale bulldozing of anything resembling acceptable standards in the name of partisanship is scary to watch even at this distance.
When this is all over those words will be just as true. I'm sure there have been one or two people less suited to being POTUS, but not many more than that.
So ? what is there is operational and serves the purpose
You seem to imply that a shift towards Russia automatically entails a dimunition in the Pacific
Freedom of Navigation Ops vs ASW screens. Two totally different levels of resource committements. The Pacific requires us to wave the flag. The Atlantic requires us to hunt Russian sharks without giving away that we are hunting them.
No. I work for the biggest marketing & market research entity in the world, but I've never had a role remotely relating to marketing. Doesn't interest me.
My background is in history & what Americans quaintly call 'political science'. I read, think & try to pay attention. Sometimes it works out, sometimes it don't. ;-)
Bigfella
Didn't want to flood the thread with a full re-post of what you said, but I have to compliment you on your very insightful comments.
Like!
“He was the most prodigious personification of all human inferiorities. He was an utterly incapable, unadapted, irresponsible, psychopathic personality, full of empty, infantile fantasies, but cursed with the keen intuition of a rat or a guttersnipe. He represented the shadow, the inferior part of everybody’s personality, in an overwhelming degree, and this was another reason why they fell for him.”
Freedom of Navigation Ops vs ASW screens. Two totally different levels of resource committements. The Pacific requires us to wave the flag. The Atlantic requires us to hunt Russian sharks without giving away that we are hunting them.
Fine but were ASW screen present in the pacific earlier and no longer there today. When did the minus-ing take place in the Pacific if at all
It also leads to the bizarre spectacle of self proclaimed patriots cheering for Russians accused of trying to manipulate a US election while denouncing a decorated military veteran & lifelong servant of the American people as some sort of enemy of the nation. This comes pretty close to mass mental illness - the sort that in a nation with fewer constitutional safeguards could lead to some very dark places. The wholesale bulldozing of anything resembling acceptable standards in the name of partisanship is scary to watch even at this distance.
I thought at first you were talking about Flynn, but on closer reading I think you are talking about Kerry. Kerry has been in conservative cross hairs since Vietnam and is only slightly less despised by Vietnam vets than Fonda.
When this is all over those words will be just as true. I'm sure there have been one or two people less suited to being POTUS, but not many more than that.
Maybe only one.... Hillary Rodham Clinton. Had the Dems put up anyone else except maybe Crazy Bernie they would have won. Instead they put up the only person in the country involved with politics who was worse than Trump. He is the lesser of two evils, still evil, but lesser. His only redeeming features as president is his policies and judicial picks so far. I didn't vote for him, but if he stays on track with deregulation, originalist judges and gets the border wall he will be a two term president.
I thought at first you were talking about Flynn, but on closer reading I think you are talking about Kerry. Kerry has been in conservative cross hairs since Vietnam and is only slightly less despised by Vietnam vets than Fonda.
pretty sure he's talking about McCain.
deregulation, originalist judges and gets the border wall
pretty sure he didn't swing a bunch of Dems in Ohio and Wisconsin on that...pretty sure it was the whole i'm-going-to-win-the-trade-war-and-guarantee-no-cuts-to-SS/Medicare/Medicaid thing.
There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that "My ignorance is just as good as your knowledge."- Isaac Asimov
I thought at first you were talking about Flynn, but on closer reading I think you are talking about Kerry. Kerry has been in conservative cross hairs since Vietnam and is only slightly less despised by Vietnam vets than Fonda.
I was actually talking about Mueller, though the fact that there is a list of decorated veterans & lifelong public servants who GOP supporters treat worse than Russian spies says something about the sickness nestled deep in US politics right now.
Maybe only one.... Hillary Rodham Clinton. Had the Dems put up anyone else except maybe Crazy Bernie they would have won. Instead they put up the only person in the country involved with politics who was worse than Trump. He is the lesser of two evils, still evil, but lesser. His only redeeming features as president is his policies and judicial picks so far. I didn't vote for him, but if he stays on track with deregulation, originalist judges and gets the border wall he will be a two term president.
Sorry, should have made it plain I was talking about people who actually won elections. There have been worse Presidents than Trump based on his performance thus far, but very, very few.The levels of chaos are what you would usually expect from the dying days of a disintegrating administration, not the first days of a new one. Personally his behavior before & during is close to being unique, and not for any good reasons.
No. I work for the biggest marketing & market research entity in the world, but I've never had a role remotely relating to marketing. Doesn't interest me.
My background is in history & what Americans quaintly call 'political science'. I read, think & try to pay attention. Sometimes it works out, sometimes it don't. ;-)
As i read around it seems the US wants to unify its easy & west fleets under one command. Up to recently the West fleet has pretty much taken on a life of its own
There is a re-org under way at the administrative level. It's not meant to effect readiness but there will be unintended consequences i suppose slowing response time as now there is an extra level to go through with PACOM that wasn't there earlier
Comment