Posted on 07/25/2014 6:33:20 PM PDT by tcrlaf
As American officials fire off diplomatic salvos at Russia in response to that nation’s purported actual artillery salvos into Ukraine, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said recently that among other actions, the U.S. military is dusting off decades-old plans, just in case.
“We’re looking inside our own readiness models to look at things that we haven’t had to look at for 20 years, frankly, about basing and lines of communication and sea lanes,” Gen. Martin Dempsey, America’s top military officer, said at the Aspen Security Forum Thursday evening. “What the military does when faced with these crises is – our job is preparedness, deterrence and readiness.”
In addition to its own plans, Dempsey said the U.S. military is having “conversations with our NATO allies about increasing their capability and readiness” and that there’s a “very active” ongoing process and debate about how best to provide support to Ukraine.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
Exactly, if we don’t stop what is happening at the border and stop the government from running up debt, there won’t be a US to worry about foreign policy.
And to think there is going to be another WWII type war is absurd. The invention of nukes ended that. Read Martin Van Creveld’s book, The Transformation of War, and you will see just how silly all this posturing is.
This isn't so complicated.
It is a pretty straight forward statement.
"“We’re looking inside our own readiness models to look at things that we haven’t had to look at for 20 years, frankly, about basing and lines of communication and sea lanes,” Gen. Martin Dempsey, America’s top military officer, said at the Aspen Security Forum Thursday evening. “What the military does when faced with these crises is – our job is preparedness, deterrence and readiness.” In addition to its own plans, Dempsey said the U.S. military is having “conversations with our NATO allies about increasing their capability and readiness” and that there’s a “very active” ongoing process and debate about how best to provide support to Ukraine."
Good, I'm glad they are, and glad they said it. He said they haven't had to look so hard at such things in 20 years, now they are looking hard, which means that they perceive a real threat from Russia for the first time in 20 years, and perhaps they are seeing some value in some old elements that might not be totally useless for a complete view.
“Read somewhere here today a large number of Captains are being released again”
My nephew just made the Captain’s List. I hope he won’t have to go through what I did during the Clinton RIF of the Mid-90’s.
Personally I view Putin as more dangerous to us then Khrushchev was by a factor of 2.
Since he benefits from the history of past exchanges with the US, he makes it more difficult for us to deal with him.
From a personality standpoint, Khrushchev was much more prone to being a man of peace, which is what he really wanted, but the power structure in Russia at the time was obsessed with offensive capability to deter the West. His ideas of the liberalization of Russia to have a better relationship with the west was suppressed by the Politburo and they eventually removed him from office.
In Putin's case, he has no formal opposition and can do whatever he wants, when he wants to. He has no person of any stature to oppose any idea that he may come up with.
So the strategy of the US to contain him has to be different.
What it is, I don't know, but I can assume we have begun to employ it.
” He said they haven’t had to look so hard at such things in 20 years”
That’s just not the case.
No melodrama.....what he said was BS.
Son was in during the late 90’s under clinton. Was not a good time even though he wound up as a paper pusher to D.C. Son never made Captain. He went in as a volunteer via enlistment. Son came out nine months before 911. Please tell your Nephew, I Thank Him from my Heart for His Service. Your Nephew is one of the Best of the Best. My Thanks to you also for serving! I never served and I still recognize and know I missed something for not having served.
Yep. They made it a laugh issue, big joke. Romney was dead right.
Voters are morons. Romney was completely accurate when he said 47% of the population is locked into the Rat party for various reasons. Sadly that number is growing.
Liberalism is a mental illness. There’s no learning curve. They continue to make the same errors over and over without learning anything from the experience.
So used to they are to mindless rhetoric, they’ll just keep repeating lies in the direct face of facts.
“Your insurance premiums will go down. The world is more peaceful now. The economy is doing fine.”
One lie after another. Soviet style.
"Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Martin Dempsey, America’s top military officer, said at the Aspen Security Forum", I doubt he was drunk, but thanks for the melodrama.
I was a reservist, and had my dream job, with my name on the door. Decided to can the blue, because of all the B.S.
Looking back, that was a horrible mistake.
OK.....Let me put it as bluntly as I can.
If you are correct in your assertions, even partly correct.
We are screwed.
My assertion is that the Pentagon and NATO better be rebooting as a military force to restrain Russia, with the aim to discouraging it from conquest.
If we are to prevent another Cold War, then containing Russia and preventing it becoming empire again is the goal.
Just for fun. Wing Attack R
http://www.tcm.com/mediaroom/video/719022/Dr-Strangelove-Movie-Clip-Wing-Attack-Plan-R.html
Just for fun. Wing Attack R
http://www.tcm.com/mediaroom/video/719022/Dr-Strangelove-Movie-Clip-Wing-Attack-Plan-R.html
My Son too regretted leaving. Drove cross country with him beginning on the day of his discharge. He expressed regret. Later I understood why, more fully. Serving gets into the bloodstream and when is gone and the real world (as is called) becomes the reality away from the structured reality I could see where there would be regrets for having left the structured reality. My regret is that I did not serve.
You can’t prevent a cold war.
A cold war is a hot war that did not occur for whatever reason.
There should be no need to “reboot” anything. Maybe some targeting changes,,maybe some sub repositioning.
The US military awaits orders from it’s commander and chief and should be prepared for anything...I mean anything at any time.
I took a few minutes and watched some of the video of Dempsey at the conference. What he was doing was laying down a marker for Russia (Putin) to take notice of. He wanted to let the Russian dictator know that the US was NOT war weary and was prepared. he warned the bastage that he might loose control of the situation and he insinuated that the relationship with the US had now changed.
He was sending a message to Russia. He also told Putin in so many words, that if he believes that the US voters are war weary, which may be the case, he wanted to be clear that US military was not and would engage on behalf of Europe.
So the message was not for the forum or for you. It was for Putin, just as I said.
You can’t prevent a cold war.
A cold war is a hot war that did not occur for whatever reason.
There should be no need to “reboot” anything. Maybe some targeting changes,,maybe some sub repositioning.
The US military awaits orders from it’s commander and chief and should be prepared for anything...I mean anything at any time.
I took a few minutes and watched some of the video of Dempsey at the conference. What he was doing was laying down a marker for Russia (Putin) to take notice of. He wanted to let the Russian dictator know that the US was NOT war weary and was prepared. he warned the bastage that he might loose control of the situation and he insinuated that the relationship with the US had now changed.
He was sending a message to Russia. He also told Putin in so many words, that if he believes that the US voters are war weary, which may be the case, he wanted to be clear that US military was not and would engage on behalf of Europe.
So the message was not for the forum or for you. It was for Putin, just as I said.
We never want to see another “Cold War” like we had with the Soviet Union and their massive assault military ready to roll over Western Europe in weeks, and knowing that the death and destruction and masses of Soviet forces would end up with nukes being used, a scenario that was widely recognized as ending life as we know it.
Keeping Russia from reassembling a vast empire and population and resources and a vast military, will prevent a paralyzing stalemate of a Cold War, Russia can be just another annoyed, moderately powerful, isolated nation that is an annoyance, but incapable of creating a Cold War II against the free world, and it’s ex Warsaw Pact nations now in NATO.
NATO seems to have gotten distracted in recent years from it’s primary purpose, and needs to move to accelerate it’s focus on Russia.
As far as Dempsey, you keep saying the obvious like it is some deep hush hush, penetrating insider insight, there is no need to keep being so melodramatic about his speech at the Aspen Security Forum, with U.S. Naval Chief of Operations Adm. Jonathan Greenert, and many more, it was for consumption by everyone interested, I loved the message.
I doubt that this was the big breakthrough, game changing messaging that Russian intelligence was waiting for.
“then containing Russia and preventing it becoming empire again is the goal.”
That is precisely what the “Cold War” accomplished without firing a shot. Unfortunately I doubt we can pull that off twice. The win of the cold war involved a lot of events that all led to Russia’s collapse.
But to think for a second that we are not now on a Cold war footing, would be pretty stupid.
Russia is not a rich country, but neither are we now. The odds are not the same as when Reagan initiated “star wars’ and we ran Russia into the ground trying to keep up.
We also now have a relationship between Russia and china that complicates the matter.
One thing certain....there is much more to come.
Russia was a massive Empire, that is why it was a cold War, it was so incredibly powerful and huge that it threatened the world.
It had at least a half dozen Airborne Divisions, massive numbers of Assault helicopter brigades, massive bridge building capabilities and could overrun Europe within weeks, that is what the Cold War was.
Post Soviet Russia, is no “Cold War”, it is just a country that is unfriendly, UNLESS we let it grow back into empire and become a monster again.
We need to nip this in the bud. Remember NATO is bigger than ever with new nations discussing joining, it even includes most of the Warsaw pact that made the Cold War possible.
Russia isn’t what it was and is not poised to roll over Western Europe anytime soon and we don’t have to allow that future to ever happen again.
We never want to see another “Cold War” like we had with the Soviet Union and their massive assault military ready to roll over Western Europe in weeks, and knowing that the death and destruction and masses of Soviet forces would end up with nukes being used, a scenario that was widely recognized as ending life as we know it.
Keeping Russia from reassembling a vast empire and population and resources and a vast military, will prevent a paralyzing stalemate of a Cold War, Russia can be just another annoyed, moderately powerful, isolated nation that is an annoyance, but incapable of creating a Cold War II against the free world, and it’s ex Warsaw Pact nations now in NATO.
NATO seems to have gotten distracted in recent years from it’s primary purpose, and needs to move to accelerate it’s focus on Russia.
As far as Dempsey, you keep saying the obvious like it is some deep hush hush, penetrating insider insight, there is no need to keep being so melodramatic about his speech at the Aspen Security Forum, with U.S. Naval Chief of Operations Adm. Jonathan Greenert, and many more, it was for consumption by everyone interested, I loved the message.
I doubt that this was the big breakthrough, game changing messaging that Russian intelligence was waiting for.
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