Anyone long for "Peace through strength?"
It is only leftists and pollyannas who believe, sincerely, that peace may be achieved through weakness and appeasement. After all (they reason), there really is no bad behavior; there are merely misunderstandings, which people of goodwill should be able to work through...
Perception is often reality.
“the Navy does have one destroyer deployed at Cádiz, Spain.”
Obama and the twenty first century. The Russians could get a hernia laughing. We have devalued our strategic weapons at the same time. Our military is geared to fighting 7th century fanatics and then not given the ROE to do even that.
Don’t worry, the obamanation will draw a red line on his dry erase board if the situation gets tense.
If they persist, he will call them racist and send his soiled panties.
Active Duty ping.
I do not care about me for I shall be dead and gone soon enough. I do care about my children, my grandchildren and the generations currently here and the generations that shall (hopefully) come after. obama has made this world a much more dangerous place and of this there is no doubt or shouldn't be. If obama is prevented, by God, from finishing America, I hold no hope America could survive the 'what difference does it make' hillary. Once more, I'll pray I'm wrong.
“Military Cuts Render NATO Less Formidable as Deterrent to Russia”
All I can says is:
DUH! Ya’ think??
Well, folks can say whatever they like, but some folks are about to find out why it was important for the U. S. to project large overseas.
At the end of the day, attacks on Europe affect us too.
We’re seeing the same stand-offish approach that led into WWII. Then we had to come from behind to make up a very big deficit.
Only time will tell if we’re about to see a repeat.
The other part of the story is Russia has massively rebuilt, reequipped and retrained its Armed Forces since the Soviet collapse. This is a modern, lean and highly professional war machine. The Russians have spent lots of money to make their armed forces capable of fulfilling the tasks set before them and they have learned from their mistakes. This is not the Soviet Army with mediocre equipment, poor training and a reliance on brute force. This is an army capable of sophisticated maneuvers, with highly trained specialist soldiers who can achieve their goals with a minimum of casualties. This is the true meaning of hard power and for Russia’s leaders, the lessons of the German attack in 1941 are clear. A strong Russia cannot be maintained without a robust military capable of defending the country and projecting Russian power in the near abroad. For Russian leaders, everything else is of purely secondary importance. And the the payoff has been spectacularly impressive.
Oh wow - the comments section at this link is turned off.
Why is that?
What the article doesn’t say is that the major NATO players - UK, Germany, France, Spain, Italy, etc. - have cut their own armed forces even more deeply. When the U.S. had 400,000 troops in Europe there were twice as many soldiers from other countries standing next to them. Now the European armed forces are a shadow of their Cold War strength. I can see helping Europe defend against Russian aggression. I can’t see doing it on our own so they don’t have to.