"We have, of course, the resumption of shipments to Ukraine. The president has been vocal about this," State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce said during a press briefing on July 8.
I think the reason is much simpler and much more selfish, Trump is simply angry Putin is doing so terribly at the war in Ukraine. It is making Trump look weak, so he has to host a UFC tournament to try to restore that rightwing toxic masculinity vibe.
I am not kidding, I think Trump is actually genuinely afraid to be seen as close to Putin based on what Trump is hearing about the strategic position Putin is placing Russian forces into from Trump’s own military staff.
The winds have changed and Trump is a coward. Why the hell would people expect Trump to come to Putin’s aid when Putin looks weak? Trump doesn’t help weak people, he is far too weak himself to do that and retain power.
I like this theory, too. Regardless, I’m on board for whatever stops the killing while maintaining national sovereignty, and I mean that for any and all nations. I hope things get better for the citizens of Russia, too, but I don’t think it should be at the expense of Ukraine either. I just hope the US isn’t just protecting the sale of military equipment and supplies by drawing out the war.
I just hope the US isn’t just protecting the sale of military equipment and supplies by drawing out the war.
I think the US military industrial complex absolutely was, 1000%, but two major things happened recently that don’t give these forces the aperture to sustain the conflict anymore.
1.) Ukraine has reached a steady domestic production of towed and armored self propelled 155mm artillery, they also have a steady supply of shells or at least steady compared to what they had before.
2.) The delivery of the first AH-64 Apaches happened to Poland from the US Military/Boeing, along with the entire process that entails. In a darkly hilarious way, I don’t think even Boeing wanted to deliver these to Poland, but rather delay them being delivered, profit off more fear mongering and sell more expensive military arms (yes, they get much more expensive than an Apache… somehow…).
Apaches and specifically the Longbow system are meant to integrate with combined arms networks of aerial, ground and littoral naval units, the impact of these weapon systems extends much farther out than just the range of the cannons and rockets on them… and Poland will in a few short years have a brutally dangerous fleet of Apache helicopters that Russia will have a much much much harder time pressuring militarily. Neither European militaries or the Russian military have any depth of similar capacity in their heavy attack helicopters if they even have any… as for Ukraine I don’t know… but I just want to emphasize… these aren’t glorified slow ground attack aircraft… that isn’t their point. They are networked sensor and target tracking heavy weapons platforms that also carry human pilots.
These two changes fundamentally change the power balance of the region and make selfish agents far more likely to seek profit from accelerating the end of the war rather than extending it, at the very least it makes other powers far less likely to want to hitch their horses to Russia which only has a good outlook in the nearterm so long as they can sustain a massive offensive that is killing off their own population at a staggering rate… Once that fails… Ukraine has super artillery production, superior drone pilots and drones, superior armor and mechanization, superior training, superior morale…
The rest of the world is looking at the conflict in Ukraine and realizing the time to dally around and profit off the brutal stalemate is over, and if there is money to be made it is in jumping in now and decisively helping Ukraine.
Again, I am sure Trump and other people in the US military industrial complex realize this too, and that is one of the big levers that probably is exerting a fear onto Trump that he will look weak not bandwagoning with the rest of the world’s arms companies of any note in the masculine power rush that comes from being on the winning side…
Unless this is a triple fake and Trump won’t actually send arms to Ukraine (which is still very likely too) I don’t know how to interpret this as anything else. Trump and Putin’s plan (insofar as Trump “plans”) was for this to be much a scarier offensive for Ukraine, Putin has failed to deliver and Trump is mad that messes up his own plans…
ughh it is disgusting honestly, I hope I am wrong… well not about Russia being weaker than the western narrative portrays them as right now, I stand by that and am confident in that conclusion… I am talking about arms companies playing with people’s lives… which is another one of the most awful parts of war, it is a business for some like anything else…
We’re in this mess precisely because things are good for the citizens of Russia though. The world embraced Putin with open arms and boosted the country’s economy, invasion after invasion. Now it’s too late for the sanctions to bear fruit. The Russians, especially the pro-Putin Russians with no direct ties to the West for the sanctions to affect them, live like it’s business as usual.
I wouldn’t be surprised if that was the perception from within Russia, but I also doubt it’s the case empirically and objectively. It was proobably good from 2000 to 2013 under Putin and then Medvedev, who was probably Putin’s puppet president.
But now, their GDP per capita is stagnant, if not in decline while their population is decreasing, and their GINI index is similar to that of the US and China. That’s a really bad combo. I can’t imagine how quality of life would be improving under those conditions.
Having said that, there are better metrics like median salary and median household income both adjusted for purchasing power parity, but I haven’t been able to find graphs for those. In fact it was kind of hard to find consistent economic data in general, which is another concern, but not really evidence of economic problems in and off itself.
I believe they’re living like it’s business as usual, but I’d attribute that to hypernormalization more than improvement in quality of life.
I think the reason is much simpler and much more selfish, Trump is simply angry Putin is doing so terribly at the war in Ukraine. It is making Trump look weak, so he has to host a UFC tournament to try to restore that rightwing toxic masculinity vibe.
I am not kidding, I think Trump is actually genuinely afraid to be seen as close to Putin based on what Trump is hearing about the strategic position Putin is placing Russian forces into from Trump’s own military staff.
The winds have changed and Trump is a coward. Why the hell would people expect Trump to come to Putin’s aid when Putin looks weak? Trump doesn’t help weak people, he is far too weak himself to do that and retain power.
I like this theory, too. Regardless, I’m on board for whatever stops the killing while maintaining national sovereignty, and I mean that for any and all nations. I hope things get better for the citizens of Russia, too, but I don’t think it should be at the expense of Ukraine either. I just hope the US isn’t just protecting the sale of military equipment and supplies by drawing out the war.
I think the US military industrial complex absolutely was, 1000%, but two major things happened recently that don’t give these forces the aperture to sustain the conflict anymore.
1.) Ukraine has reached a steady domestic production of towed and armored self propelled 155mm artillery, they also have a steady supply of shells or at least steady compared to what they had before.
2.) The delivery of the first AH-64 Apaches happened to Poland from the US Military/Boeing, along with the entire process that entails. In a darkly hilarious way, I don’t think even Boeing wanted to deliver these to Poland, but rather delay them being delivered, profit off more fear mongering and sell more expensive military arms (yes, they get much more expensive than an Apache… somehow…).
Apaches and specifically the Longbow system are meant to integrate with combined arms networks of aerial, ground and littoral naval units, the impact of these weapon systems extends much farther out than just the range of the cannons and rockets on them… and Poland will in a few short years have a brutally dangerous fleet of Apache helicopters that Russia will have a much much much harder time pressuring militarily. Neither European militaries or the Russian military have any depth of similar capacity in their heavy attack helicopters if they even have any… as for Ukraine I don’t know… but I just want to emphasize… these aren’t glorified slow ground attack aircraft… that isn’t their point. They are networked sensor and target tracking heavy weapons platforms that also carry human pilots.
These two changes fundamentally change the power balance of the region and make selfish agents far more likely to seek profit from accelerating the end of the war rather than extending it, at the very least it makes other powers far less likely to want to hitch their horses to Russia which only has a good outlook in the nearterm so long as they can sustain a massive offensive that is killing off their own population at a staggering rate… Once that fails… Ukraine has super artillery production, superior drone pilots and drones, superior armor and mechanization, superior training, superior morale…
The rest of the world is looking at the conflict in Ukraine and realizing the time to dally around and profit off the brutal stalemate is over, and if there is money to be made it is in jumping in now and decisively helping Ukraine.
Again, I am sure Trump and other people in the US military industrial complex realize this too, and that is one of the big levers that probably is exerting a fear onto Trump that he will look weak not bandwagoning with the rest of the world’s arms companies of any note in the masculine power rush that comes from being on the winning side…
Unless this is a triple fake and Trump won’t actually send arms to Ukraine (which is still very likely too) I don’t know how to interpret this as anything else. Trump and Putin’s plan (insofar as Trump “plans”) was for this to be much a scarier offensive for Ukraine, Putin has failed to deliver and Trump is mad that messes up his own plans…
ughh it is disgusting honestly, I hope I am wrong… well not about Russia being weaker than the western narrative portrays them as right now, I stand by that and am confident in that conclusion… I am talking about arms companies playing with people’s lives… which is another one of the most awful parts of war, it is a business for some like anything else…
Wow, thank you for the thoughtful and very thorough response. I would very much like for this to be the case. Also, I learned a lot.
We’re in this mess precisely because things are good for the citizens of Russia though. The world embraced Putin with open arms and boosted the country’s economy, invasion after invasion. Now it’s too late for the sanctions to bear fruit. The Russians, especially the pro-Putin Russians with no direct ties to the West for the sanctions to affect them, live like it’s business as usual.
I wouldn’t be surprised if that was the perception from within Russia, but I also doubt it’s the case empirically and objectively. It was proobably good from 2000 to 2013 under Putin and then Medvedev, who was probably Putin’s puppet president.
But now, their GDP per capita is stagnant, if not in decline while their population is decreasing, and their GINI index is similar to that of the US and China. That’s a really bad combo. I can’t imagine how quality of life would be improving under those conditions.
Having said that, there are better metrics like median salary and median household income both adjusted for purchasing power parity, but I haven’t been able to find graphs for those. In fact it was kind of hard to find consistent economic data in general, which is another concern, but not really evidence of economic problems in and off itself.
I believe they’re living like it’s business as usual, but I’d attribute that to hypernormalization more than improvement in quality of life.