191–200 of 734 posts
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>> Is he? Yeah, Biden himself recently said that Putin is a rational actor who grossly miscalculated, because he was basically fed very bad and flawed intel. He may be blustering about nukes now, but the only way he would do that is if Ukraine turns the tables and invades Russia, or something similar.
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Earlier quoted context omitted.
>> Is he? Yeah, Biden himself recently said that Putin is a rational actor who grossly miscalculated, because he was basically fed very bad and flawed intel. He may be blustering about nukes now, but the only way he would do that is if Ukraine turns the tables and invades Russia, or something similar.
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There is nothing irrational about the first two! Crushing HK is a rational necessity if there is a danger of such disobedience spreading to other regions.
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Ukraine is fighting its own fight but it's far from alone.
Yes, but I think America will walk back it's current hawkish defense posture around going head to head with china over Taiwan over the next 10 years. If they get into a fight, I expect the US to supply arms and money but not soldiers or marines. This posture change will keep pace broadly with the American domestic chip fab industry.
This is very obviously true, since China is a nuclear power and has ICBMs as well. We won't be involved in a hot war with them for the same reason we have been avoiding that with Russia.
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Singapore is aligned with the West, trains with/by Australia who are aligned with the US and NZ.
This is true, but they fell VERY quickly when the Japanese showed up. Maybe they'll do it again.
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>> Is he? Yeah, Biden himself recently said that Putin is a rational actor who grossly miscalculated, because he was basically fed very bad and flawed intel. He may be blustering about nukes now, but the only way he would do that is if Ukraine turns the tables and invades Russia, or something similar.
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And tyrants can be exceedingly rational; they just have their own goals that they're working towards, not the goals of some theoretical "perfect democracy".
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The best way for the EU to 'fight' russia would be to not be dependent on it for energy. Russia can also do what it likes because of the constant nuclear threat. Russia has nukes that work, whereas the likes of the UK has a single nuclear sub that occasionally gets stuck on a sand banks. The Russians probably know where it is at all times.
> Russia has nukes that work Does it? Nominally, Russia has roughly the same number of nukes as the US. The US military budget is 700bn/yr and it spends 60bn/yr in maintaining its nuclear weapons. So 60bn/yr is a good estimate for what it costs to maintain a US/Russia-sized nuclear weapons arsenal. Russia spends 60bn/yr on its military in _total_. However much of that goes into maintaining its nuclear arsenal is clea…
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This kind of bluster is a mainstay of Chinese geopolitics. The law was intentionally written in an open-ended way so that the party always gets the final say on what "completely exhausted" should mean. It serves as a propaganda tool internally and a point of leverage externally -- the party never needs to actually act on the threat for it to serve a valuable purpose. With that being said, it's not that simple. Bluste…
> Taiwan's sovereign airspace Well, only 13 countries recognize Taiwan as a sovereign country - such as the 10,000 people of the 21 square kilometer island Naura. Also, Taiwan occupies Kinmen Island in the bay of Xiamen's harbor on the PRC mainland. The island is in the Xiamen harbor and is 10 km from the city of Xiamen. So any PRC planes flying around Xiamen are "violating Taiwan's sovereign airspace" (which almost…
Either way, you probably meant that 13 nations have full and formal diplomatic relationships with Taiwan. Which, btw does not include the US, Japan or any EU nations.
To be perfectly honest, this is still within a 1000km radius circle that encompasses Taiwan, South Korea and Japan. That covers the majority of next-generation fabs that aren't Intel. It's great to legally diversify these fabs, but it does very little to mitigate geopolitical issues that are brewing in and around the east china sea.