>> Poland was the first country to make a remarkable peaceful transition from a bankrupt, failed Soviet satellite state.
In what sense? Czechia is richer per capita. Almost all of the former Soviet satellite states in eastern Europe have had largely peaceful (since 1991) sustained economic growth. The exceptions are exactly those countries which continue to have Russian troops occupying portions, namely Belarus, Ukraine, and Moldova.
Until someone calls your bluff, perhaps accidentally, and realizes much of the nuclear saber-rattling was just that. Of course, since it wasn't entirely a bluff, this is the easiest way to get a nuclear war going. (Get a country with nukes but limited conventional capabilities into a brinksmanship contest.)
Due Process is being denied to US citizens, who are being removed from the country without the opportunity for them or their parents to consult an attorney.
Well we certainly do agree that artillery will not be the primary weapon of choice in any naval war!
I do appreciate your point of view, but I maintain that in a lengthy land war with a near peer, missile stockpiles would run low and 4th gen fighters would be unable to contest enemy airspace. Of course, the caveat is that the US would very much like to avoid any such conflict via either diplomacy or a decisive first few weeks of combat. And the hope is that 5th gen fighters would evade air defenses. Even so, US doctrine calls for being capable of fighting prolonged land wars on multiple fronts.
It’s disingenuous to claim without citation that the US does not anticipate using artillery as one (of many) primary weapons in a land conflict against a near-peer adversary. The fact that thr US hasn’t had such a conflict since at least Vietnam (and arguably Korea) not withstanding.
Artillery has proved decisive in every conflict with static lines in the last 100 years. Sure, hopefully air supremacy would overwhelm your opponent and prevent a static conflict, but no air force has ever established supremacy in a conflict with saturated strategic air defenses. Perhaps the US air forces could, but this capability is untested. Sadam and Yugoslavia were limited to tactical air defenses in relatively small numbers compared with modern day Russia or China.
In short, artillery remains important, which is why US artillery shell production is up an order of magnitude over the last 3 years, and will continue to rise.
Atomic weapons emerged slightly before the first craft to leave the Earth’s atmosphere, but we’re still nowhere near interstellar travel. On the other hand, the difficulty of space travel is largely a function of the escape velocity, which is dependent on the gravitational pull of your planet and solar system (both of which are variable).
One issue with your claim though is that once you have interstellar flight, you certainly have weapons of mass destruction. Even crashing a coke-can sized meteor into the Earth at 1% of the speed of light would cause major destruction.
The author does not even attempt to analyze the safety impact of removing the second stair. The only evidence they provide is that Western Europe has fewer fire deaths than the US. Which suggests that perhaps the US should be increasing fire safety standards rather than removing them…
This only emphasizes the need for NATO to reinvest in radar-guided anti-aircraft guns. Frankly, it's a bit troubling that the Europeans have been so slow to respond to the war in Ukraine (e.g., EU artillery shell production still vastly lags Russia's despite the Russian economy being the size of Italy's). With the US looking more and more like an unreliable security partner in the region, the time for the Europeans to revamp their military industrial complex was yesterday.
Oops! Definitely. It actually looks to have been a clever use of irony. The internet is such a hard place to be clever though, in that people tend to take things at face value.
Venezuela’s (relatively sudden) refusal to honor its treaty obligations that admit the land is owned by Guyana is obviously due to oil greed.
Guyana has almost no military, but the Venezuelan military doesn’t really have any offensive capabilities that the US cant easily deter. The US actually appears to be a stabilizing force in this case; if the US committed to non-intervention, it would make sense for Venezuela to invade immediately.
As is, the strategic balance is not in favor of Venezuela attempting to annex the land by force.
In what sense? Czechia is richer per capita. Almost all of the former Soviet satellite states in eastern Europe have had largely peaceful (since 1991) sustained economic growth. The exceptions are exactly those countries which continue to have Russian troops occupying portions, namely Belarus, Ukraine, and Moldova.