No, Ivan, I brought up nuclear aircraft carriers. I said we had eleven of them plus a bunch of lesser aircraft carriers described as amphibious assault ships. I said this to illustrate that our side is so much bigger, multiple times bigger than your side. The NATO countries have a combined GDP of $50 trillion, whereas Russia has a GDP of $5 trillion.
https://www.worldeconomics.com/Thoughts/NATOs-Combined-GDP-is-far-larger-than-Russias.aspx
You, in typical Russian fashion, ignored this unpleasant fact and went off on your own tangent; and, after a while, forget your point of departure.
That said,
—It’s us that has used nuclear weapons on people, twice, not the Russians.
—It’s us that is invoking their use in a non-deterrent manner today. But of course if we do it, it’s OK.
—It’s us that did most the space tests.
—It’s us that did most the surface tests.
—It’s it’s us that is responsible for most of the radiation that was floating out there for a long time and a little bit to this day.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castle_Bravo What was released in the atmosphere was pretty bad, and we could have used a lead tamper. Those retarded, backward, irrational Russians did this in some of their big tests, the most famous of these being Tsar: https://ahf.nuclearmuseum.org/ahf/history/tsar-bomba/
—Just like the Russians, we have a list of nuclear weapons associated accidents and even missing warheads:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1966_Palomares_B-52_crash
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_United_States_Air_Force_nuclear_weapons_incident
https://nationalinterest.org/blog/reboot/us-military-missing-six-nuclear-weapons-180032
—It’s us that withdrew from the Ballistic Missile Treaty.
But I get it, the evil retarded Russians that only fly propeller driven planes, where as soon as you land color disappears, the radio only plays Vangelis’s Conquest of Paradise, where everyone is drunk on Vodka and has a pet bear: https://www.facebook.com/vdpasasapetrovic/videos/-ill-must-go-right-now-to-feed-my-bear-drink-votka-and-play-balalaykaso-cute-fro/299969128903646/
I get it, we are rational, predictable, rock steady in our policies, sticking to every promise ever made and following our own rules, and everything is for “democracy, human rights, sovereignty,” save the world from “WMD (ironic, seeing how we used them, have more deployed than anyone else, the second biggest stockpile, tested more in the atmosphere... and then we want to lecture others and play some moral Godly judge on who else may have them),” and last but not least “terrorism.”
You live in a cliche, a feel-good and over simplified world and the good-guy / bad-guy model you have is outdated. This isn’t the Cold War where you have a large and Powerful Warsaw Pact and Soviet Union poised to invade the West. Today, we’re just struggling over lordship of economically valuable possessions, trying to tear these out from under Russia, and we are no better than the Russians. Economically motivated, offensive, using the same methods/MO, and 100% OK with dictators and human rights violations as long as we get control.
Before we lecture Russia about anything, maybe we should fix Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and do something about all that trade with China (PRC). If you really want to know how nasty we are, you do not need to look far: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-45812399 And we simply look the other way as a US resident, a journalist working for the US media is dismembered (piece by piece) in a fellow NATO country at the order of a price we support and make sure stays in power. For enough money, a single party communist regime which had a one child policy, makes dissidents disappear, has forced abortions, questionable organ harvesting policies, oppresses religion, invaded Tibet and threatens Taiwan gets most favored trade status and our support for their WTO membership even in the same year tanks drive over pro-democracy students on Tienanmen square: https://assets.editorial.aetnd.com/uploads/2018/06/who-was-the-tank-man-of-tiananmen-squares-featured-photo.jpg We are OK with communist China, which executes more people (~8,000 per year) than any other nation on earth, has internment camps with nearly 1 million people in them! Because we care about “human rights, and democracy” so much./sarc When it suits our interests, we arm Islamist types, and that is post 9-11 in Syria.
Today, it’s about a modern form of colonialism, i.e. control of economically valuable areas. Things began to slide that way after 1991 and got much worse post 9-11. You’re not seeing us worry about the plight of people in Madagascar, and when Rwanda had their genocide we sat back and watched as possibly as many as 750,000 people were killed in part by machete. It is not without coincidence that every place we are struggling with the Russians there is an economic interest at stake. You don’t see us trying to push our way into Armenia and fix those problems. You just happen to obfuscate these conflicts with stories about democracy, human rights, sovereignty, WMD or terrorism in order to feel better about yourself, to pretend you’re some “knight in shining silver armor.”
Redmen4ever to Red6:
"No, Ivan, I brought up nuclear aircraft carriers.
I said we had eleven of them plus a bunch of lesser aircraft carriers described as amphibious assault ships.
I said this to illustrate that our side is so much bigger, multiple times bigger than your side." Russia's Cruiser Moskva,
converted to stationary submarine by Ukrainians:
To sharpen your point just a little:
- Outside its submarine force, which is no joke, Russia does not have a serious navy.
Russia's one aircraft carrier spends nearly all of its time in docks being repaired.
Russia's Black Sea Fleet has now been largely converted into stationary submarines by Ukraine's navy yard workers. - By most countries definitions of "aircraft carriers", the US has 20:
- 1 - Ford (+2 more in construction)
- 10 - Nimetzes
- 2 - Americas (+3 more ordered/in construction)
- 7 - Wasps
- In addition, virtually every US Navy surface ship carries some aircraft -- anything which can take off and land vertically, which includes:
- Helicopters on all ships, types depending on ship size (over 160 active ships).
- V-22 Osprey's on larger ships like San Antonios (12+4), Pullers (4+2) and even Harper's Ferrys (10).
- STOVL Harriers and Lightnings in emergencies only on smaller ships.
- The real near-peer threat to the US Navy is not so much Russia as it is China, whose navy already outnumbers ours, is growing at a rate of roughly 30 ships per year, while the US struggles to add even 10 ships per year.
- Yes, no doubt, US qualities outweigh some of China's quantities, but, as VI Lenin is alleged to have remarked, "quantity has a quality all its own".
Vlad the Invader is now testing Marx's theory in Ukraine as, doubtless, will China's Xi-snake in Taiwan, should Vlad prove successful. - Finally, some argue that what matters is not so much numbers of navy warships, but rather numbers of vertical launch system (VLS) cells.
Of those, the US and our allies have around 11,000 on 186 ships, while China has around 3,000 on 41 ships.
Next, on the question of GDP's, I think most people understand there are at least two different ways to calculate GDP, one called "nominal" the other "purchase price parity" (PPP).
Each is useful for certain types of analyses.
I think Purchase Price Parity (PPP) could be more useful for comparing potential military capabilities.
Using PPP then, here is how the world's major economies' GDPs line up in 2024:
- $35 trillion -- China
- +5 trillion -- Russia
- +2 trillion -- Iran
- +~sh*t -- NoKo
=$42 trillion for the new Axis of Evil Dictators
- $29 trillion -- USA
- + 27 trillion -- European Union
- + 10 trillion -- Non-EU NATO allies
- + 17 trillion -- US Pacific allies
- +20 trillion -- Friendly Indo-Pacific non-allies
= $103 trillion for US, US allies and Asian friendlies.
These numbers do not include relatively friendly countries to the US in Central & South America, Africa or the Middle East.
