Xi Jinping announces plans to allow Chinese military to undertake 'armed forces operations' abroad

Hawaii and the left coast should be very nervous.

Lock and load!

Well, where will this new Korean War be held?!?

Biden has been schmiered up to his wind pipe by the Chinese so they’ll have smooth sailing.

$40B ain’t chump change. Especially when it’s not our circus and not our monkeys.
That’s $40B of our money

It is chump change. The nation spent ~$75b a year providing occasional fire support against a bunch of part-time insurgents in the Middle East and Afghanistan. Ukraine isn't fighting ISIS or the Taliban. $40b over several years won't go very far in a war where Russia is firing 50,000 artillery shells a day at Ukraine.

Ukraine has now almost completely run out of ammunition for the Soviet-era weapons systems that were the mainstay of its arsenal, and the Eastern European countries that maintained the same systems have run out of surplus supplies to donate, Danylyuk said. Ukraine urgently needs to shift to longer-range and more sophisticated Western systems, but those have only recently been committed, and in insufficient quantities to match Russia’s immense firepower, he said.
Russia is firing as many as 50,000 artillery rounds a day into Ukrainian positions, and the Ukrainians can only hit back with around 5,000 to 6,000 rounds a day, he said. The United States has committed to deliver 220,000 rounds of ammunition — enough to match Russian firepower for around four days.

At US prices ($800 apiece) for dumb 155mm artillery shells, that's $40m a day the Russians are using up, or $14.6b a year, that Ukraine needs to match. Just for artillery shells. What about food for the population of a cratered wartime economy under Russian attack, with rubbled roads and rail lines and destroyed physical plant? What about repair work on damaged infrastructure? Note that a 100lb $800 artillery shell can destroy hundreds of thousands of dollars of physical plant.

It's our circus and our monkeys for the same reason we supplied Russia against Germany in WWII. The risk was that Germany would add Europe to its holdings. Countries at war don't exterminate each other. They add the conquered to their column and use them as footsoldiers for the next campaign.

The conquest and occupation of Ukraine would not only bring Russian troops closer to the EU (~about the same size as the US economy), it would increase Russia's economy and pool of available draftees by 1/3. And Russia is an empire with a 1000-year record of imperial expansion. In the 400 years prior to the 20th century:

The Biden administration's soaring rhetoric re the crumbs it's providing to Ukraine is completely unconnected to reality. In 1973, Nixon mounted Operation Nickel Grass. Here's the Wikipedia blurb:

Operation Nickel Grass was a strategic airlift operation conducted by the United States to deliver weapons and supplies to Israel during the 1973 Yom Kippur War. Over 32 days, the United States Air Force (USAF) Military Airlift Command (MAC) shipped 22,325 tons of tanks, artillery, ammunition and supplies in C-141 Starlifter and C-5 Galaxy transport aircraft between 14 October and 14 November 1973.^[1]^[2]^: 88 The U.S. support helped ensure that the State of Israel survived a coordinated and surprise attack from the Soviet-backed Arab Republic of Egypt and Syrian Arab Republic.^[1]

Note that Israel was fighting a bunch of Arabs it had defeated on multiple occasions - in 1948, 1956 and 1967. Here's what the US provided Israel, in the course of a month:

Consequently, at least 100 F-4 Phantom II fighters were sent to Israel under Nickel Grass,^[13] coming from the 4th Tactical Fighter Wing, the 33d Tactical Fighter Wing and the 57th Fighter Weapons Wing.^[14] They were flown to Lod, where American pilots were swapped for their Israeli counterparts. After the replacement of USAF insignia with IAF insignia if needed, the planes were refueled and ordered to the front, often taking to the air within hours of having arrived. Some aircraft came directly from the USAFE fleet and operated in USAF camouflage,^[8] but with Israeli insignia, thus earning the Israeli nickname "Frog". Nine days after the initial attack, Israel launched counterattacks. Thirty-six A-4 Skyhawks from U.S. stocks, staging from Lajes were refueled by SAC KC-135A tankers from Pease Air Force Base, New Hampshire and U.S. Navy tankers from the USS John F. Kennedy west of the Straits of Gibraltar. They then flew on to the USS Franklin D. Roosevelt southeast of Sicily where they stayed overnight, then continued on to Israel refueling once more from tankers launched from the USS Independence south of Crete.^[15] Twelve C-130E Hercules transports were also transferred to Israel, the first of the type to be delivered to the IAF.^[16]

Whereas Ukraine is fighting a Great Power it has *never* defeated in the modern era. My goal here is to cut through the PR flackery and get at the most likely outcome, given the measly Western support hyped up as Lend Lease* that is a tiny fraction of the real thing. At this moment, it's not looking good for Ukraine. Here's what a Ukrainian official had to say about his nation's artillery, of which there were 1500 pieces (as compared to the 100+ being provided by the West) when war broke out:

“This is an artillery war now,” said Vadym Skibitsky, deputy head of Ukraine’s military intelligence. The frontlines were now where the future would be decided, he told the Guardian, “and we are losing in terms of artillery”.

“Everything now depends on what [the west] gives us,” said Skibitsky. “Ukraine has one artillery piece to 10 to 15 Russian artillery pieces. Our western partners have given us about 10% of what they have.”

Ukraine is using 5,000 to 6,000 artillery rounds a day, according to Skibitsky. “We have almost used up all of our [artillery] ammunition and are now using 155-calibre Nato standard shells,” he said of the ammunition that is fired from artillery pieces.

They are running out of ammo for their 1500 non-NATO caliber artillery pieces. Unless the West starts providing 152mm shells for those artillery pieces, the deluge, in reverse, is about to begin. 100+ 155mm howitzers are not a substitute for 1500 152mm & up howitzers.

Now, if the administration had immediately started taking F-16's out of mothballs and training the Ukrainians on how to fly and operate them in combat, in even a subdued version of Nickel Grass (call it Nickel Dime), Ukrainians would likely be doing a number on the Russian presence in Ukraine instead of retreating, and taking up to 200 KIA a day.

Up to 200 Ukrainian soldiers are being killed every day in Russia's military onslaught, according to an adviser to Ukraine's president - and only more and more advanced Western weaponry will turn back the Russian offensive, reduce the casualties and force Moscow to the negotiating table.

When Nixon kicked off Nickel Grass, he mentioned no dollar amounts. He simply provided large amounts of late model weaponry. This administration keeps talking dollars that sound misleadingly large because it is sending minimal amounts of equipment. The idea that we can send Ukraine less equipment than we sent Israel to defeat its Arab neighbors is simply absurd. Ukraine is less competent than the Israelis. The Russians are more competent than the Arabs.

* Lend Lease was a thing of wonder. The only connection between the current aid to Ukraine and Lend Lease is the destination - Uncle Sam is once again sending aid to Eastern Europe. If even 1,000 tanks had been dispatched to Ukraine, the Russians would be cooling their heels over the border in Russia proper. Over 4 years during WWII, the US provided the following items to the Russians:

400,000 jeeps & trucks
14,000 airplanes
8,000 tractors
13,000 tanks
1.5 million blankets
15 million pairs of army boots
107,000 tons of cotton
2.7 million tons of petrol products
4.5 million tons of food

People talk about blowback in Afghanistan. WWII US aid to the Russians not only helped the Russians win - it literally kept them alive. The Russians repaid that aid by sending copious amounts of equipment to North Korea and North Vietnam, helping to kill a cumulative 100,000 GI's.

Soviet dictator Josef Stalin raised a toast to the Lend-Lease program at the November 1943 Tehran conference with British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt.
"I want to tell you what, from the Russian point of view, the president and the United States have done for victory in this war," Stalin said. "The most important things in this war are the machines.... The United States is a country of machines. Without the machines we received through Lend-Lease, we would have lost the war."
Nikita Khrushchev offered the same opinion.
"If the United States had not helped us, we would not have won the war," he wrote in his memoirs. "One-on-one against Hitler's Germany, we would not have withstood its onslaught and would have lost the war. No one talks about this officially, and Stalin never, I think, left any written traces of his opinion, but I can say that he expressed this view several times in conversations with me."

Excellent analysis, thank you.

“...for the Eunuch kingdoms of Australia and New Zealand...”

Unfortunately, you are right. These once proud, tough countries have deigned to be ruled by the likes of the despicable Jacinda Ardern, and the loathesome Anthony Albanese. But then where does that put us with the ring piece Joe Biden?

$40B ain’t chump change. Especially when it’s not our circus and not our monkeys.
That’s $40B of our money

It is chump change. The nation spent ~$75b a year providing occasional fire support against a bunch of part-time insurgents in the Middle East and Afghanistan. Ukraine isn't fighting ISIS or the Taliban. $40b over several years won't go very far in a war where Russia is firing 50,000 artillery shells a day at Ukraine.

Ukraine has now almost completely run out of ammunition for the Soviet-era weapons systems that were the mainstay of its arsenal, and the Eastern European countries that maintained the same systems have run out of surplus supplies to donate, Danylyuk said. Ukraine urgently needs to shift to longer-range and more sophisticated Western systems, but those have only recently been committed, and in insufficient quantities to match Russia’s immense firepower, he said.
Russia is firing as many as 50,000 artillery rounds a day into Ukrainian positions, and the Ukrainians can only hit back with around 5,000 to 6,000 rounds a day, he said. The United States has committed to deliver 220,000 rounds of ammunition — enough to match Russian firepower for around four days.

At US prices ($800 apiece) for dumb 155mm artillery shells, that's $40m a day the Russians are using up, or $14.6b a year, that Ukraine needs to match. Just for artillery shells. What about food for the population of a cratered wartime economy under Russian attack, with cratered roads and rail lines and destroyed physical plant? What about repair work on damaged infrastructure? Note that a 100lb $800 artillery shell can destroy hundreds of thousands of dollars of physical plant.

It's our circus and our monkeys for the same reason we fought Germany in WWII. The risk was that Germany would add Europe to its holdings. Countries at war don't exterminate each other. They add the conquered to their column and use them as footsoldiers for the next campaign.

The conquest and occupation of Ukraine would not only bring Russian troops closer to the EU (~about the same size as the US economy), it would increase Russia's economy and pool of available draftees by 1/3. And Russia is an empire with a 1000-year record of imperial expansion. In the 400 years prior to the 20th century:

The Biden administration's soaring rhetoric re the crumbs it's providing to Ukraine is completely unconnected to reality. In 1973, Nixon mounted Operation Nickel Grass. Here's the Wikipedia blurb:

Operation Nickel Grass was a strategic airlift operation conducted by the United States to deliver weapons and supplies to Israel during the 1973 Yom Kippur War. Over 32 days, the United States Air Force (USAF) Military Airlift Command (MAC) shipped 22,325 tons of tanks, artillery, ammunition and supplies in C-141 Starlifter and C-5 Galaxy transport aircraft between 14 October and 14 November 1973.^[1]^[2]^: 88 The U.S. support helped ensure that the State of Israel survived a coordinated and surprise attack from the Soviet-backed Arab Republic of Egypt and Syrian Arab Republic.^[1]

Note that Israel was fighting a bunch of Arabs it had defeated on multiple occasions - in 1948, 1956 and 1967. Here's what the US provided Israel, in the course of a month:

Consequently, at least 100 F-4 Phantom II fighters were sent to Israel under Nickel Grass,^[13] coming from the 4th Tactical Fighter Wing, the 33d Tactical Fighter Wing and the 57th Fighter Weapons Wing.^[14] They were flown to Lod, where American pilots were swapped for their Israeli counterparts. After the replacement of USAF insignia with IAF insignia if needed, the planes were refueled and ordered to the front, often taking to the air within hours of having arrived. Some aircraft came directly from the USAFE fleet and operated in USAF camouflage,^[8] but with Israeli insignia, thus earning the Israeli nickname "Frog". Nine days after the initial attack, Israel launched counterattacks. Thirty-six A-4 Skyhawks from U.S. stocks, staging from Lajes were refueled by SAC KC-135A tankers from Pease Air Force Base, New Hampshire and U.S. Navy tankers from the USS John F. Kennedy west of the Straits of Gibraltar. They then flew on to the USS Franklin D. Roosevelt southeast of Sicily where they stayed overnight, then continued on to Israel refueling once more from tankers launched from the USS Independence south of Crete.^[15] Twelve C-130E Hercules transports were also transferred to Israel, the first of the type to be delivered to the IAF.^[16]

Whereas Ukraine is fighting a Great Power it has *never* defeated in the modern era. My goal here is to cut through the PR flackery and get at the most likely outcome, given the measly Western support hyped up as Lend Lease* that is a tiny fraction of the real thing. At this moment, it's not looking good for Ukraine. Here's what a Ukrainian official had to say about his nation's artillery, of which there were 1500 pieces (as compared to the 100+ being provided by the West) when war broke out:

“This is an artillery war now,” said Vadym Skibitsky, deputy head of Ukraine’s military intelligence. The frontlines were now where the future would be decided, he told the Guardian, “and we are losing in terms of artillery”.

“Everything now depends on what [the west] gives us,” said Skibitsky. “Ukraine has one artillery piece to 10 to 15 Russian artillery pieces. Our western partners have given us about 10% of what they have.”

Ukraine is using 5,000 to 6,000 artillery rounds a day, according to Skibitsky. “We have almost used up all of our [artillery] ammunition and are now using 155-calibre Nato standard shells,” he said of the ammunition that is fired from artillery pieces.

They are running out of ammo for their 1500 non-NATO caliber artillery pieces. Unless the West starts providing 152mm shells for those artillery pieces, the deluge, in reverse, is about to begin. 100+ 155mm howitzers are not a substitute for 1500 152mm & up howitzers.

Now, if the administration had immediately started taking F-16's out of mothballs and training the Ukrainians on how to fly and operate them in combat, in even a subdued version of Nickel Grass (call it Nickel Dime), Ukrainians would likely be doing a number on the Russian presence in Ukraine instead of retreating, and taking up to 200 KIA a day.

Up to 200 Ukrainian soldiers are being killed every day in Russia's military onslaught, according to an adviser to Ukraine's president - and only more and more advanced Western weaponry will turn back the Russian offensive, reduce the casualties and force Moscow to the negotiating table.

When Nixon kicked off Nickel Grass, he mentioned no dollar amounts. He simply provided large amounts of late model weaponry. This administration keeps talking dollars that sound misleadingly large because it is sending minimal amounts of equipment. The idea that we can send Ukraine less equipment than we sent Israel to defeat its Arab neighbors is simply absurd. Ukraine is less competent than the Israelis. The Russians are more competent than the Arabs.

* Lend Lease was a thing of wonder. The only connection between the current aid to Ukraine and Lend Lease is the destination - Uncle Sam is once again sending aid to Eastern Europe. If even 1,000 tanks had been dispatched to Ukraine, the Russians would be cooling their heels over the border in Russia proper. Over 4 years during WWII, the US provided the following items to the Russians:

400,000 jeeps & trucks
14,000 airplanes
8,000 tractors
13,000 tanks
1.5 million blankets
15 million pairs of army boots
107,000 tons of cotton
2.7 million tons of petrol products
4.5 million tons of food

People talk about blowback in Afghanistan. WWII US aid to the Russians not only helped the Russians win - it literally kept them alive. The Russians repaid that aid by sending copious amounts of equipment to North Korea and North Vietnam, helping to kill a cumulative 100,000 GI's.

Soviet dictator Josef Stalin raised a toast to the Lend-Lease program at the November 1943 Tehran conference with British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt.
"I want to tell you what, from the Russian point of view, the president and the United States have done for victory in this war," Stalin said. "The most important things in this war are the machines.... The United States is a country of machines. Without the machines we received through Lend-Lease, we would have lost the war."
Nikita Khrushchev offered the same opinion.
"If the United States had not helped us, we would not have won the war," he wrote in his memoirs. "One-on-one against Hitler's Germany, we would not have withstood its onslaught and would have lost the war. No one talks about this officially, and Stalin never, I think, left any written traces of his opinion, but I can say that he expressed this view several times in conversations with me."

Looks like New Zealand P.M. Ardhern is already taking direction from XI.

The Indians handed them their own butts a few months back. The last time the PLA actually went to war they got creamed by the world military powerhouse, Vietnam.

Thanks for the long wall of text.

I just got off of a long day at work, so I won’t be reading neocon stuff. I’m not a Zeeper.

I hope somebody will since you went to the trouble. 😏

[Thanks for the long wall of text.

I just got off of a long day at work, so I won’t be reading neocon stuff. I’m not a Zeeper.

I hope somebody will since you went to the trouble. 😏]

My basic points? It’s not that simple. And wars are expensive. More expensive if you allow your adversary to gain territory and population that he then deploys against you.

That’s what tactical nukes are for. Just sayin’.

Yeah, I know a little bit about wars.

Dayummm.

Well, no one can say you don’t have your ducks in a row.

Excellent info.

I agree - Xi’s got his agenda and i don’t see a lot of push back aside from verbal....and even that’s limited.

Other countries are also sending ammo and weaponry.and revenue...not just the Us. So I wonder what the accumulation really is?

Biden would unlock the gate and invite China to clean our clock

Biden and Harris then Pelosi.....in that order...take your pick if we even have any hope throughout his term. He’s in it til his term ends. Unless we have a great Speaker of the House ‘maybe’....but Harris would be Obama and California’s puppit.

Yep. Badly equipped, no experience, no training, no heart.