WASHINGTON — Come 2026, the US Army can begin deploying some of its new, longer-range munitions to Germany under a new agreement the two nations inked ahead of the NATO summit. “The United States will begin episodic deployments of the long-range fires capabilities of its Multi-Domain Task Force [MDTF] in Germany in 2026, as part of planning for enduring stationing of these capabilities in the future,” the White House announced in a statement today.“When fully developed, these conventional long-range fires units will include SM-6, Tomahawk, and developmental hypersonic weapons, which have significantly longer range than current land-based fires in Europe,” it added.
The move comes after Washington withdrew from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty in 2019 and was freed to develop and field ground-launched ballistic and cruise missiles with ranges between 500 kilometers and 5,500 kilometers.
Over the intervening years, the US Army has been working on several new capabilities within those ranges, but as they come online, Washington needs to pen deals with countries like Germany in order for units to deploy with the new weapons. If the plan proceeds as it is now, at least three new Army weapons could be bound for the European nation in 2026 including:
- Lockheed Martin’s Precision Strike Missile (PrSM) initially planned to hit targets within the 500-kilometer range;
- A future Long-Range Hypersonic Weapon (LRHW) designed to hit targets 2,776-kilometers away; and
- A Mid-Range Capability, now known as Typhon, that uses a ground-based launcher to fire Raytheon’s existing SM-6 missiles and Tomahawk to hit targets between the previous two ranges.
So far, Typhon has been the only known weapon deployed abroad and was first done so with soldiers from the 1st Multi-Domain Task Force on a turn out to the Philippines earlier this year. If all goes as planned, the PrSM could be the next of the trio fielded and make it into soldiers hands later this year. However, the service is working to get hypersonic weapon development back on track and it’s not clear when the missile might be ready for use.
Comment: The title is from a BBC article. It makes this action sound like it was something just decided at this NATO summit. This action was in the pipeline long before Putin launched this invasion of Ukraine. This was in the works almost as soon as DoD began seriously developing its doctrine of multi-domain operations and establishing what would be included in a multi-domain task force (MDTF). But even given all that, I can understand why Moscow would be angered. The long range fires capability of the MDTF is a lot more serious than the EW/tracking/targeting function of the MDTF that’s been in Germany since 2021.
This reminds me of all the drama surrounding the deployment of Pershing II missiles to Europe. That tied the Kremlin into knots, too. For a short stint in the Summer of 1983, I was detached from Group to advise Fort Devens and the Seneca Army Depot (SEAD) on the deployment of those missiles. SEAD was beset by the Women’s Encampment for a Future of Peace and Freedom. Not being very enlightened, we referred to them as a big gaggle of witches and lesbians. Once while they were chanting incantations at the perimeter fence, I stood there in my cammies and beret, just me and the witches. I remembered the description offered by Carlos Casteneda of a Yaqui sorcerer incantation in “A Separate Reality.” I did my best interpretation of the movements accompanying that incantation shaking my outstretched hand towards the witches. I must have been close because the witches parted in panic as if I was hitting them with a firehose. I turned and walked away leaving them with the fear of facing a Special Forces sorcerer.
TTG
Interesting X thread on the recent Lancet report which estimated deaths in Gaza at at least 186,000. Ralph Nader said 200,000 months ago and John Mearsheimer estimated it at 250,000 recently in an interview with Andrew Napolitano. This thread says that those estimates are on the low side.
https://x.com/ararmaher/status/1811551555016966588?s=46&t=jXfbX09Tb2BmY-rS_dg5ag
See
https://open.substack.com/pub/mearsheimer/p/the-moral-and-strategic-bankruptcy
https://www.youtube.com/live/vZRw0Dcxs6I
Keith,
Thanks. Ralph Nader has just published a new piece on the genocide — he’s going with 300,000 murdered Palestinian civilians now. I assume you already read about the butchery at Almasi yesterday.
https://nader.org/2024/07/12/the-gaza-genocide-deepens-the-reckoning-begins-for-the-perpetrators/
So the BBC is all in on Biden being president in 2026. I wonder what Mr. Steele will cook up for 2024?
Good question, Fred. But there’s no symmetry between 2016 and this year. Back then he knew he wanted Trump to lose. Now he doesn’t have it so easy. The Trumpenstein monster or the walking, talking vegetable — President Biden? He just needs to see his way to a happy life with Kamala as Potus if Joe leaves this mortal coil during his second term, before he pays an escort service to urinate in a Moscow hotel room bed. Maybe Trump beat him to the punch and owns video tapes of AOC in the sack with Keir Starmer.
F&L,
Tsk Tsk he did what he was paid by Hillary to do. The press was all in on it, just like they were in to coverup the perfect health of Joe Biden.
TTG, El Brujo mas fuerte! Funny story.
Sad that things are returning to Cold War status. Lots of peace groups will blame the west, the MIC and other usual suspects. None will consider Russia’s contribution to the situation. Russian propagandists will reinforce that message in the west.
Peace through strength. In this world of men, it is the only way that has ever worked – though I would have liked to have seen peace through business entanglements tried more with Russia as we have with China.
Remember Matthias Rust who landed a single engine prop plane in Red Square in May 1987?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathias_Rust
You’ll figure out why I mention it. I wonder if the Soviet Brass thanked the ebil capitalist gawd that they has plenty (as in “overkill”) of SS-20s and intermediate range nuclear tipped cruise missiles. It’s not going to be amusing if armed drones are buzzing Moscow. There are significant similarities but glaring differences between then and now. I think we can safely say we have an arms race about to jump off again. Who’s better situated for that?
F&L,
Drones of all sizes and shapes are flying halfway across Russia right now, some the size of Rust’s plane and the Russkies are having a hard time stopping them.
TTG,
and nobody on the other side has managed to land one outside the Pentagon, Whitehall, or the offices of the Atlantic Council (or Victoria the cookie lady’s front yard).
Fred,
Back in 2015, an NGA scientist lost control of his DJI hobby drone and it landed on the White House lawn. He called the Secret Service to warn them. He wasn’t arrested. I think someone flew another small drone towards the White House years later. It’s bound to happen to some government building.
The Pentagon and Whitehall and all (or much) of NATO would retaliate. Pootie prefers to attack hospitalized children who can’t strike back.
TTG,
He wasn’t trying to kill anyone.
Leith,
Russian missiles never miss nor when damage ever fall anywhere other than open fields. They are, checks notes, fired on purpose at children’s hospitals. Just like Assad gassing people like the White Helmets always claimed.
leith,
The US killed over 500,000 children under the age of five in Iraq, and Madeleine Albright went on TV to say “it was totally worth it”.
Fred –
It wasn’t just the White Hats that claimed Assad gassed his own people. France, Germany, Turkey, the UK and the US all said it was highly likely the Ghouta gas attack was carried out by the Syrian Government.
James –
I was against the US invasion of Iraq, as were millions of other Americans. But I note that your 500K figure is much disputed. The following is from Wiki’s International Sanctions Against Iraq page:
“The effects of the sanctions on the civilian population of Iraq have been disputed.[8][9][10][11] Whereas it was widely believed that the sanctions more than doubled the child mortality rate, research following the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq has shown that commonly cited data were doctored by the Saddam Hussein regime and that “there was no major rise in child mortality in Iraq after 1990 and during the period of the sanctions”.[12][13] Nevertheless, sanctions contributed to a significant reduction in Iraq’s per capita national income, especially prior to the introduction of the OFFP.[14] Most UNSC sanctions since the 1990s have been targeted rather than comprehensive, a change partially motivated by concerns that the Iraq sanctions had inflicted disproportionate civilian harm.[15]”
leith,
You make me feel like I am living in a George Orwell novel.
Whoa! The United States Government is getting serious. Action to follow no doubt. Action!
I had a (gay-lay) teacher from my Catholic high school (1980s) who would protest at a General Electric Plant in suburban Philadelphia for anti-nuclear reasons. He would splash blood all over the entrance to the plant. He was probably spreading even more toxic bodily fluids in the bath houses of Philadelphia and Rehoboth Beach.
So ironic. The Womens Encampment for a Future of Peace and Freedom would be on your side TTG, in the current global war against Russia. As would be Julius and Ethel Rosenberg.
Our Cold War struggle against the Evil Empire of the USSR ended 35 years ago. The Commies are on your side with this one. Leave us American patriots out of it.
P S C,
The commies are still the second largest party in Russia. Must be a nostalgia thing.
TTG,
The commies in Russia have morphed into Bernie style democratic socialists who want to tax rich people a bit more and provide more social services. Until recently Russia had a flat tax rate.
So ironic. The Womens Encampment for a Future of Peace and Freedom would be on your side TTG, in the current global war against Russia. As would be Julius and Ethel Rosenberg.
That’s a bit of an odd statement for me if I do not completely misread TTG’s position in what you call the present “global war against Russia”. Help me to understand your irony. Could you please?
What feminist organization today would fit the 1983 Women Encampments protests? And what makes Julius and Ethel’s positions towards Russia in the post-WWII/Cold War period comparable to TTG’s position today?
Im Waiting to See All the New Wunder Waffen…Land..Sea..Air..Big and Tiny…Very Tiny…They have Developed in all the ShopXs..Area Zulu…. Popular Mechs…Photo Teasers…and Majestic. Magic…AI..and PU Places of the World Next…
One Thing has become Obvious over The Last Few Days…Of The NATO..Magic Act..
by…… Joe..The Great Illusionist…He ade All things Chinese Disappear…Including
the 40,000 Drone Operators in Chi/Am Corn Fields..Ignored The Chinese Naval Vessels
off The Alaska Coast..Ignored The Largest Chinese Air Force Intrusion in to
Taiwan Air Space….This Week…But Hooked up With Someone at Nato…Who
Had a Magic…Wuber Pill….That Made Him Look Normal… enough to Sound
Like a Hister….Hiss … Ter.. Oops One Little Problem With Names..and He
has The Energy Today..In. Detroit…To Brag He Will Row With Wade….Wink
Wink…And Finish Strong…One Wunder Pill..at a Time..
Whatever it is you’re on I could use a swig.
I suspect the reason Germany agreed to this has a lot to do with the Kremlin attempt to assassinate Rheinmetall chief, Armin Papperger.
https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/germany-says-it-wont-be-cowed-by-russia-after-reported-plot-kill-rheinmetall-ceo-2024-07-12/
Or perhaps it was the sabotage that burned down Diehl’s Metal Applications manufacturing plant in Berlin by the GRU (or SVR?).
https://www.cnn.com/2024/07/10/europe/russia-shadow-war-nato-intl-latam/index.html?iid=cnn_buildContentRecirc_end_recirc
Leith….Good Call..On Real World…Trigger Points..
For FnL….I like a Double Martini..Straight Up..Enjoy The Swiss Alps….
.Driving a BMW 740 IL…But Miss the Austin Healy 3000 XL..
.and the 1969 Ford Mustang ..Deep Dish Mags..Hurst 4 speed..
and Prefer the PPK… Cheers…
From your link: “A source familiar with the situation confirmed reporting by CNN and others that U.S. intelligence officials warned the German authorities this year that Russia was plotting to assassinate Armin Papperger, the head of Europe’s biggest weapons producer, which has produced artillery shells and military vehicles for Ukraine.”
I’m…. honestly confused about this. Armin Papperger is the CEO of Rheinmetall, he isn’t the dictator of Rheinmetall.
The CEO can be removed by its own board tomorrow, and life goes on for the company – the board goes out and headhunts another CEO.
So I don’t understand why the Russians would want to assassinate Papperger. I fail to understand why that helps the Russians.
Does Armin Papperger hold secrets in his head that no-one else at Rheinmetall has access to? Does he possess superpowers that ordinary run-of-the-mill CEOs lack?
OK, sabotage of a manufacturing plant in Berlin makes some sort of sense. I can understand the logic, even if I don’t approve of the ethics.
But… honestly…. what? Assassinating Armin Papperger would be about as sensible as, oh, I dunno, the Germans assassinating RJ Mitchell in 1937.
YR,
Same reason terrorists commit acts of terror anywhere.
Are all those Muslims really stupid enough to believe that blowing themselves up in the market, or gunning down some concert audience, sawing the head off a journalist here or there is going to create a strategic victory?
I understand that you have an obsession with Muslims.
But did you even follow the link I was referring to? It is reporting an assassination plot by the KREMLIN against the CEO of a munitions conglomerate.
State-sponsored, and therefore intended to further the national security interests of that state.
Or do you believe that “Muslim terrorists” have a mind-control ray that they point at Putin’s head?
leith I don’t agree with your suspicion. … Arbitrary pick from the Reuters article:
Germany also accuses Russia of the murder of an exiled Chechen-Georgian dissident in Berlin’s Tiergarten Park in broad daylight in 2019. The assassin, Vadim Krasikov, is serving a life sentence, and the court ruled that Russia was responsible for state terrorism
The most interesting part of Tucker’s curious Putin interview was the passage where he mentioned a Russian patriotic hero sentenced in Europe. For me, it was the peak of his complacency. The way he talked about matters made me change my mind. Unfortunately, the passage below from the Tucker interview cited by CW is pretty short. No time to look for the larger context:
https://youtu.be/V3J2QB7FrsQ?t=95
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zelimkhan_Khangoshvili#Assassination
LeaNder –
I’m curious what your suspicion is (if any) about why Germany agreed to allow these new long range cruise missiles on her soil? Or if not you, then what is the German press thinking?
And what are the Greens nw saying about this?
Or if not you, then what is the German press thinking?
Ok, people are startled and ask of explanation of someone called Barbarossa by a fellow pilgrim, even his partners in government wonder and ask question, and they are confronted with talk of a supposed deterrence gap. An issue the respective pilgrim actually support.
Personally I feel not threatened now, neither did I as teen/young adult and grown up facing the fearsome Russian threat military experts felt must be approaching via the Fulda Gap any minute now. Exaggerating, of course. 🙂
“now” not “nw”, sorry, I was all thumbs before I had morning coffee.
ok, leith, the whole context is actually quite easy to find. It surfaces as an aside illustrating a central difference to the Evan Gershovich case:
Tucker Carlson (01:51:07):
I appreciate all the time you’ve given us. I’m just going to ask you one last question, and that’s about someone who’s very famous in the United States, probably not here, Evan Gershkovich who’s the Wall Street Journal reporter. He’s 32. He’s been in prison for almost a year. This is a huge story in the United States, and I just want to ask you directly, without getting into the details of it or your version of what happened, if as a sign of your decency, you would be willing to release him to us, and we’ll bring him back to the United States.
Versus Evan Gerskovich who clearly did not work for “Monaco” (!!!) the German assassin is simply a patriot who executed some type of human beast and is not in any way connected to any “special services”. …
Let me tell you a story about a person serving a sentence in an allied country of the U.S. That person, due to patriotic sentiments, eliminated the bandit in one of the European capitals during the events in the Caucasus.
(01:55:41)
Do you know what he was doing? I don’t want to say that, but I will do it anyway. He was laying our soldiers taken prisoner on the road, and then drove his car over their heads. What kind of person is that? Can he even be called human? But there was a patriot who eliminated him in one of the European capitals. Whether he did it of his own volition or not, that is a different question.
https://youtu.be/hYfByTcY49k?t=6590
LeaNder –
You lost me there. I have no clue what Tucker and Gershkovich have to do with Germany accepting long range cruise missiles.
And I don’t believe that Khangoshvili’s assassination four years ag had much to do with it either.
Who is the Barbarossa you mention?
Leith – full title, mini-Barbarossa. Or now, micro-Barbarossa. Chancellor Scholz, still working away industriously on his DIY Morgenthau Plan.
But not the right day for all that. I’m glad your former President Trump survived. Also moved by the security men and women going in full tilt and shielding him at great risk to themselves. Thought that was magnificent.
TTG, the first Tucker Carlson quote should be moved to the end of the citation. No idea why I put it somewhere in the middle of it. Would you be so kind to move it? Thanks.
LeaNder,
Not sure what you mean. If you rewrite the comment, I’ll delete the old one.
Minor esthetic issue TTG, I have no idea why I closed the italics in the middle of the quote of Tucker’s last question in his interview with Putin. Sorry, actually, I shouldn’t have bothered you. Forget it!!!!
My italics end after: He’s been in prison for almost [!before!] “one year”. While they should end, or the tag should be closed after Tucker’s sentence: and we’ll bring him back to the United States at the end of the quote.
leith,
And blame for burning down Germany’s industrial base with sanctions is going to be pinned on????
Diaper Donny!
The once and future president, who just got shot at, did not impose those sanctions. Good luck with beating the drum though.
“Russian Officials Vow Response To US Missile Deployment To Germany”
https://news.antiwar.com/2024/07/11/russian-officials-vow-response-to-us-missile-deployment-to-germany/
“On Thursday, Russian officials reacted strongly and vowed to respond to the US …”
I think this constant desire to increase the threat to Russia is a rotten idea.
Will the Russian response be placing nuclear-capable missiles in Cuba?
All this over Ukraine. How sad.
Just been reading about Wendell Willkie. Re-reading, in fact. James Barr, a superb English historian, in “Lords of the Desert”. Read it not long back but there was some stuff in it I wanted to re-visit.
Apparently Willkie started out as an admirer of the British Empire. Pro-Brit, as it were. Then he went to what was in practice a part of our Empire. Egypt. He was shocked by what he saw.
MacArthur had had the same experience. He had toured other parts of our Empire. By the time he’d finished his tour he too was shocked by the condition of the subject peoples. The comfortable myth that the British Empire served as a means of improving the lot of the “natives” evaporated and he saw it for what it was. An extortion racket. Exploitative. One that, never mind the geopolitics of it all, was morally wrong.
That moral dimension was a powerful component in the displacement of European empires, not just the British, by American pre-dominance.
The displacement itself was quite a scrap. Churchill was conscious of it throughout the second World War and fought a last ditch stand against the Americans in an attempt to retain British control of a large part of the world and in particular the increasingly important Middle East. He lost. The American economist, Hudson, takes up the story from there.
By the end of that war Britain was broke. It owed large debts. Its best chance of paying them off was exporting to the closed market the old system of Imperial Preference gave it. The Americans broke up that system so we Brits were left with debts we could not pay.
So while we were fighting all out and shoulder to shoulder with the Americans in Normandy, and then going on to found NATO with them, there was this constant and often quite vicious under the surface contest between the two allies. I never knew that until recently. Nor, I think, did most in England at that time. This was mostly an under the surface conflict of the political elites and commercial interest groups and had little to do with “us”, the mass of the people thought, as they went about their business of earning a living in the world that was being created for them.
So too today. The West that is being created for us today – my view, a West of increasing system failure and dysfunction – is the product of forces that are largely out of sight. The West of forever wars and failing economies is not a world we chose, or would choose had we the means of choosing.
We can plunge into speculation about those under the surface forces. All can come up with their own identification of those forces and how they operate and interact. We can attach labels to those forces and lose ourselves in a tangle of theory. Or we can eschew attempted analysis and focus on the consequences rather than the causes of that dysfunction. We can examine, as Willkie and others of his time did, the moral dimension.
That examination gives us no solution but it does show in sharpest form the need for solution. It does show that the comfortable assumptions we live by do not work. The current condition of the West cannot be satisfactory if it leads to such horrors as Gaza, or to the nonsensical notion TTG mentions above of placing missiles that could be nuclear near the borders of our enemy. The results must show us our assumptions are defective even though they do not account for why.
So too with our politicians. Willkie – and other Americans looking in from outside – became all too aware that the people we had running the Empire were not fit for purpose. Oblivious to the realities of the time and living in a world of make believe.
It was just before Alamein, Willkie’s time in Egypt. He met with the movers and shakers we had over there.
“I tried to draw out these men … on what they saw in the future …” He drew them out all right – “What I got was Rudyard Kipling, untainted even with the liberalism of Cecil Rhodes … these men, executing policies made in London, had no idea that the world was changing …”
Willkie was meeting men living in a past orthodoxy, that orthodoxy itself faulty. He was simply astonished by how dangerously out of touch they were. When one hears the movers and shakers of the West today, in Washington, Berlin, Paris, London, one is conscious of a similar wonder. These people are shaping our world and they too have no notion of current reality.
We too, the “We the people” of the West. We live comfortably with the double standards of morality the West exemplifies and dutifully vote into office men and women out of touch to a suicidal extent. Martyanov, that caustic observer of our present world, reckons we in the West are thus authors of our own decline. Very uncomfortable man, Martyanov, and the many others similarly examining that now catastrophic decline, but he has to be right.
EO,
I never understood, until now, that you are a utopian.
“The West of forever wars and failing economies is not a world we chose, or would choose had we the means of choosing”
That’s the world we live in. It’s always been that way and always will be. It’s not just the West. It’s the North, the South and the East.
Part of your utopian syndrome involves carrying that old white man’s burden. You think it is on us to create a utopia for us and all the wogs as well.
You’re going to be disappointed for the rest of your life. If you are reincarnated a thousand times, you will die disappointed a thousand times.
Don’t agree, Eric. Nothing’s perfect, nor ever will be. That’s no argument for letting the countries of the West slide further down..
Economies not looking their best. The wars we’ve got ourselves into run by clowns. You don’t have to be “utopian” to reckon the West is screwing up. Merely a realist.
“we in the West are thus authors of our own decline”
There was a Brit you may have heard of, Arnold Toynbee (1889-1975).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arnold_J._Toynbee
From his study of history, he concluded that most civilizations do not die from external attack, but rather in effect commit suicide by making bad decisions.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Study_of_History
He made some powerful enemies by some of his other remarks.
He compared Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians to the Nazi’s treatment of Jews.
Needless to say, this did not go over well in some quarters.
https://www.commentary.org/articles/commentary-bk/toynbees-judgment-of-the-jewswhere-the-historian-misread-history/
It seems fairly clear, to me anyhow,
that this disagreement is the main cause of the subsequent decline in Toynbee’s reputation.
(He made the cover of Time Magazine in 1947
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Time_(magazine)_17_March_1947.jpg )
Now, in 2024, Israel is being accused of genocide.
I wonder if Toynbee would be such a pariah today.
No suspicion, Leith, I simply don’t feel there would be presently a political mood to object to US desires. Like there was concerning the Iraq War. In case you remember? …
But yes, I wondered, do any of those US tools have nuclear warheads?
Concerning myself, with Fred et al. in mind, thanks guys it’s not necessary, I do not feel threatened. But I am sure the Cherry Blossom Kind will already have his troops calculate how high the protection bill should be. 😉
Yes I remember. I was also against our Iraq sojourn, as was Colonel Lang and many others here.
My guess is that the LRHW has or will have a nuke capability. If they launch Tomahawks from the Typhon launcher, those definitely have a nuke warhead capability. Will those be supplied to Germany – who knows? But B61 nuke bombs are already in Germany for use by both USAF F35 and Luftwaffe Tornado.
Who is your Cherry Blossom King?
Eric Newhill….I’m reading all The Debates ..going on..And am Chewing on The Utopia Bone….As LJ Always Said…A “Bone To Chhew On….And Your Comments are Short…
Realistic and Accurate…God Created a Utopia…for Humans and All Life..
The First War..The Long March….Skins..Caves..Fires…T Bone Steaks..Cultivation..Hunter..Gathers…The Knowledge of Evil ..A Makeover..
That Came..With Combustion…All Kinds..Utopia Wars..Like Children and Cartels..
And Then Finally..Out of That British Empire..Growing out Of Rome..Greece..And Combustion..and Gun Powder..and Spices..and Drugs…Came The Worst Utopian
Offenders Of All…..Those Evil Pilgrims..Who Came to America…Sent Lenin to Russia..And Hitler To Germany…And Now Control All Manufacturing And Resources in the World…Geez…That is Just Digging up Dead Bones to Feed to Dogs
And Stupid People who Wear Red Scarfs…Heil With Childish Passion..
As For Israel..Its Her Time for War with Her Enemy…Islamic Ji-Had,,The Prophecy…of the 12Th Iman coming Back With Jesus..to Convert the World to Islam…
Iran leads that JiHafd..They Believe the more Palestenian Martyrs The Better…..
The New World Orders…and Holy Wars…Finalized..Then By Grace…Utopia..
Jim,
The utopia created by God is not on this world. We may enter it when we, as individuals, are ready, when we have walked enough paths and learned to understand and be humbled before God, one by one, not en masse as a society led by a man (or woman).
Russia is basically the old Vikings culture. They are the Vikings that terrorized Europe for centuries. These people do not care about western propaganda and article 5. Hit them deep in Russia and find out.
Putin already said as much. I don’t know why western facade democracy wants to play this game. It’s not even a game. Either show up to the fight or do not. No amount of BS propaganda and super duper weapons on paper will change anything. Gotta show up.
Go get more bodies on the ground or do not. If I were in charge I would draft everyone on western social welfare and everyone rooting for Ukraine online (to include those on this site) and throw them on the frontline. It is time to get off the potty if you want to win this thing. Start the US draft and chunk anyone who took student loan debt payments first. From their anyone posting pro Ukraine comments.
Hahahaha hahahaha …
I’m guessing you weren’t of a conscious age during Vietnam. I can only say that I hope TPTB implement your proposal because the US of A would turn into an absolute ungovernable zoo overnight.
Kyiv had the old Viking culture. Moscow was the tax collector for the Mongols.
Why are there no calls from anyone for NATO member Turkey to supply Ukraine weapons or give them money?
Fred – there were the Bayraktars. And Erdogan let the Mariupol Azov prisoners go. They are now the “12th Special Purpose Brigade of Ukrainian National Guard Azov”, if that’s their title still. Recently freed from the Congress ban on supplying them with weaponry so now respectable. They’re busy up around Kremenya at present and are with their fellows a significant factor in Ukrainian politics. The Russians were decidedly put out when Erdogan failed to keep the Mariupol Azov imprisoned.
So Erdogan’s playing both sides. As ever. Real tangle. Russian naval units guarding his gas pipes while the Ukrainians try to sabotage them. Still getting what value he can from the Western connection but also flirting with Brics, which the other NATO powers don’t like:-
“Last August, Brics announced plans to double its membership, extending invitations to, among others, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Iran and the United Arab Emirates. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has previously expressed interest in joining Brics, but formal discussions had not taken place until now.
“Following the decision by Brics to expand, the Turkish foreign ministry began assessing the potential benefits and costs of membership, according to a Turkish official who spoke to MEE.
‘We don’t see Brics as an alternative to Nato or the EU. However, the stalled accession process to the European Union encourages us to explore other economic platforms’
– Turkish official
“Turkey’s interest in an economic platform led by China and Russia has raised eyebrows in European capitals. A second Turkish official told MEE that Turkey is attracted to Brics because it does not require political or economic commitments or agreements.
“We don’t see Brics as an alternative to Nato or the EU,” the official said. “However, the stalled accession process to the European Union encourages us to explore other economic platforms.”
“The official added that Turkey’s “on-paper allies” often overlook Ankara’s security concerns and deny it advanced weaponry. “We would like to be part of every multilateral platform, even if there is only a slight chance of benefit to us,” the official explained.
“Among others, Hayati Unlu, an academic at Turkey’s National Defense University, argues that Turkey’s interest in Brics should not be seen as a full pivot away from the west. “Turkey wants to develop a network of relationships complementary to its ties with the west to overcome economic difficulties,” he said. ”
https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/why-turkey-wants-join-brics
The Grey Wolves types also have their dreams –
https://www.egypttoday.com/Article/1/91381/Erdogan%E2%80%99s-Ottoman-Empire-revival-dreams-revealed-by-Seljuk-Empire-map
– and there are vague notions around of bringing together the Turkic peoples dotted around in central Asia right up to the Uighurs of Xinjiang: the Chinese were seriously concerned when the Turks fetched in fighters from there to serve as the PBI of the Jihadis in Idlib.
Also at loggerheads with the US over the Kurds. Plus ME superpower dreams.
That’s Erdogan all over. So many fingers in so many pies. Including Germany, where Erdogan enjoys substantial electoral support from his voters there: the German Turks come many of them from Anatolia, his support base. As for the NATO commitment you focus on, the Turks aren’t “real” NATO members anyway. Real NATO members take their orders from Washington. Türkiye doesn’t.
I bet your State Department people stay up at nights analysing the jumble of Turkish commitments and aspirations touched on above. That’s if you still have analysts in State – the Colonel always seemed a little sceptical about that. For me, more interested in the European side of the West’s conflict with Russia, one sentence stands out:-
“A second Turkish official told MEE that Turkey is attracted to Brics because it does not require political or economic commitments or agreements.”
The process of the world splitting into two halves, and the West ending up as the also-ran half, was well under way before the dramatic events of 2022. The Ukrainian war has accelerated that process but such as Boris Johnson, and other Europeans politicians and your own politicians recently, miss the point when they say in terms that the “Hegemony of the West” is dependant upon the outcome of that war.
The failure of the “Hegemony” was an inevitable process, well under way before 2022. That hegemony was a legacy predominance and has for some time failed to accord with current reality. Did we think we in the West could hold the other seven billion in subjection for ever? Our power was based on the imposition of those “political or economic commitments or agreements” that were to our liking and not theirs. We dictated the rules of the “Rules Based International Order” to suit ourselves – but no longer have the clout to enforce that order.
Very gradually, very cautiously, the countries of the other seven billion are rejecting that hegemony. Have been for decades now. We must wait to see whether the new block that is being formed – Brics, SCO, EEU, whatever – holds to the principle some call Westphalian: peaceful trade without using economic or military power to dominate weaker countries. Or whether we are witnessing the formation of a new hegemony yet more powerful and formidable than ever we achieved. Will the new block do what it says on the tin or will it be just another power play?
We must hope it’s the former though only time will tell. But by such as Erdogan, playing fast and loose with both NATO and its opponents, the conflict is viewed as it is viewed by many of the unaligned countries. They’re waiting to see which side comes out on top and will then assure the victor they were with them all along. It’s merely a power play to them, as it is to Boris Johnson and the rest of them, and for a while yet they’ll go with whichever side wins. Westphalia, for them, is merely happy talk.
TTG – wildly off the subject but this came up today. Serves as a footnote. A summary of the Turkish position. Via the ever-helpful aggregator site, ZH.
“As NATO Bids Farewell to Reality, Moscow and Beijing Pursue Win-Win Deals With Türkiye.”
https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2024/07/sco-and-nato-summits-show-how-turkiyes-interests-increasingly-align-with-moscow-and-beijing.html
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/nato-bids-farewell-reality-moscow-and-beijing-pursue-win-win-deals-turkiye
Friends who do business there and in the nearby European countries are quite impressed with the Turks who are working for them or dealing with them. Say they turn up on time and do what they say they’ll do. Not usual in that part of the world.
Underneath all the shouting and arm waving they seem to be pursuing quite a realistic policy. Get what they can from their trade with a declining Europe while keeping the door open for expanding trade elsewhere. And no destabilising nonsense in the meantime.
Still can’t like them very much. They were a key element in our attempt to destabilise Syria. I hope, if you return to the Syrian war, to find out what happened to the Uighurs of Idlib.
EO –
Last time I heard of the Uighurs in Syria was six months ago when they destroyed an SAA tank in northeastern Latakia Province very close to the provincial border with Idlib. But I understand they have a significant presence in Turkey.
This is a huge escalation.
See
https://www.businessinsider.com/us-europe-long-range-weapons-bring-back-cold-war-danger-2024-7
A very bad decision.
Keith Harbaugh,
Is it an escalation? Yes. Was the Russian introduction of long range weapons to the European theater also an escalation? Another yes. The Kremlin shouldn’t have been bragging/threatening about striking European capitols with hypersonic missiles. What did they think was going to happen.