new Cold War?

[Versus]

Versus,

Don't fool yourself, UK and France never abandoned their projection force capabilities. Yes, they dropped the budgets, but never really dropped the ball. Neither did US. What we will see now is huge activity around us. Hope we would keep cool heads and swim well.

Per your philosophical point, NATO had issues to cope with it, but never stopped to enlarge or to endanger their existence. US was ready to foot the bill and now will tell the others "Told ya?! Your turn".

Every time when "there is a huge activity" around us, we loose a million people and that makes me depressed. I am sick of us being a soccer ball during the football match.

[Versus]

I think its probably because 10,000 of those are secret forces, such as 1-st Beuracratic Ministeriat of Waste Brigade, 3rd Eu Mechanized deputy division of cost control, and 4th Air Wing of Politically Corrupt Waste brigade.

Yea, something like that.

[chanjyj]

Versus,

Don't fool yourself, UK and France never abandoned their projection force capabilities. Yes, they dropped the budgets, but never really dropped the ball. Neither did US. What we will see now is huge activity around us. Hope we would keep cool heads and swim well.

Per your philosophical point, NATO had issues to cope with it, but never stopped to enlarge or to endanger their existence. US was ready to foot the bill and now will tell the others "Told ya?! Your turn".

Dok, the UK's "force projection" capability is pathetic at this point in time; yes, they do have a token ability but that's it. Period. Budget cuts have taken a severe toll.

[Doktor]

Dok, the UK's "force projection" capability is pathetic at this point in time; yes, they do have a token ability but that's it. Period. Budget cuts have taken a severe toll.

Thing is they still have a base to rebuild the capability. Especially together with France and the all weather ally - US. However they never really cut the option, the only problem is funding. If there is a will, there is a way. Bet there is a lot of brain cells burning going on at DODs in the Western hemisphere as we speak.

[Versus]

Thing is they still have a base to rebuild the capability. Especially together with France and the all weather ally - US. However they never really cut the option, the only problem is funding. If there is a will, there is a way. Bet there is a lot of brain cells burning going on at DODs in the Western hemisphere as we speak.

Yep, but they are not the only ones, there is a lot of thinking in our area as well and that doesn't bode well for both of us.

[Doktor]

Yep, but they are not the only ones, there is a lot of thinking in our area as well and that doesn't bode well for both of us.

Dude, we are surrounded. Nothing to worry about, we can shoot in any direction we want.

[Officer of Engineers]

Dok, the UK's "force projection" capability is pathetic at this point in time; yes, they do have a token ability but that's it. Period. Budget cuts have taken a severe toll.

Vis-a-vi the rest of the world? Let's see. Five major military expeditions (Kuwait, Somalia, Kosovo, Afghanistan, Iraq) since 1990, two minor ones (Somali pirates, Libya) and almost another small one (Syria).

If these were budget cuts, the rest of the world should be so lucky.

[Doktor]

Colonel,

It's easy for the Brits to move on European turf and in the surrounding areas. The missions you listed are mostly close to home and with backup from her other allies. My impression is that should the Brits do something on their own it wouldn't look as impressive as it looks from your post.

[Officer of Engineers]

Coalition Warfare are the primary keywords in ABCA defence documents. There is no doubt that first A stands for America and for good reason. There is also no doubt that the BCA of ABCA is what make ABCA much stronger than America alone.

The BCA of the alliance aims to be force multipliers to the main A.

[GVChamp]

Where I come from, grow a pair means grow up. What we've seen from Russia is adolescent whining about how nobody likes them, all the while stealing and looting anything they think they can get their hands on. Damn straight they're going to be surrounded by NATO, let's call it neighbourhood watch cause the burglars have moved in next door.

Okay, but what does enlarging NATO do for us? I understand the Russians aren't exactly the most polite people in the world and do not act the way we would like them to act. That's fine. Neither does China. Neither does India. Neither does Pakistan. Neither does North Korea. Neither does Israel. Neither does Turkey. Neither does...
What we need to do is set a clear set of objectives we want to accomplish in the world and structure our policy around that. We can't just yell at everyone we don't like and try to isolate everyone because we'll only end up isolating ourselves.
So how big of a deal is it that Russia annexed Crimea? To you anyways?

And yes, yes I get the Hitler references, but I am not at all convinced they are the same. The inter-war architects believed that the post-WWI borders were open for debate and Locarno implicitly validated that. It wasn't dictators who agreed to that, but democratically elected representatives from the world's most progressive nations. They never would have agreed to the notion that Ukraine's borders are invioable and if Ukraine insisted on holding to Crimea they would have acknowledged Russia's right to take Crimea in exchange for no further threats, especially since Russia has no ability to take the Dardanelles. Hitler's violation was taking the non-German parts of Czecholovkia after an already agreed-upon land division. There is just no evidence that Putin is of the same caliber. He certainly didn't take all of Georgia.

[Officer of Engineers]

Okay, but what does enlarging NATO do for us?

Stablizing Eastern Europe from more Yugoslavias and creating more refugee crisis that made that Civil War look like a picnic.

Frankly if Georgia was part of NATO, she would not have had that South Ossetia mess. She would not have been allowed to launch an operation against peacekeepers.

[cdude]

China.

Another winner is WAB. I would guess the traffice to WAB in the past 2 weeks have been sky high.

But yes, I hope this time around China can play much better than the last cold war. We had an idiot in power for most of it. At some point he decided it's a good idea to be enemy of both sides of the iron curtain.


Not many countries could manage to do that.

[Versus]

Dude, we are surrounded. Nothing to worry about, we can shoot in any direction we want.

Yay, lets build bigger guns! And lots of them...So, my guess is that Bosnia needs to be dealt first,with revision of Dayton agreement aka unification (which is the fancy word for ethnic cleansing of Bosnian Serbs) and than move to catering Albanians desire fore Greater Albania. Than there are Bulgarians too. Hmmm, things are starting to get logical frame...Definitely , we need bigger guns. Especially after sadistic tweets like this.

[MrSecond]

Russia wants war!

[Goatboy]

Hitler's violation was taking the non-German parts of Czecholovkia after an already agreed-upon land division. There is just no evidence that Putin is of the same caliber. He certainly didn't take all of Georgia.

The fact that Russia took anything at all, that it used its military might to forcibly rip away and annex a Belgium sized piece of a neighbor's sovereign territory, shows enough of Putin's "caliber" to justify an expansion of NATO to every nation on Russia's doorstep. Great Powers anywhere, but especially in Europe, are not supposed to behave this way, especially in Europe in the 21st century for Christ sakes. My GOD what a violation, what a precedent. And I don't care what the percentage is of ethnic Russians in Crimea that worship Putin. Russia can't do what it did, nor should the West ever deal with Russia as a responsible partner again.

Czechoslovakia circa 1938 is far too distant a time to draw too many comparisons about what's appropriate or not.