Seems like you’re the one spreading propaganda here. The only actual analysis of Russian casualties that I’m aware of was done by BBC in collaboration with Mediazona, and they only managed to come up with soldiers 14,093 killed https://meduza.io/en/news/2023/02/13/mediazona-and-bbc-news-russian-publish-further-figures-on-russia-s-losses-in-ukraine

It’s pretty hilarious how you think that just because something was on a front page of Lemmy last week automatically means it’s factual.

They’d basically have to, but US will have two big problems there.

First, it’s going to be hard to convince the public that US actually has to go to a real war over Taiwan. When push comes to shove, people in US just don’t actually care about Taiwan that much. It’s one thing when US government fucks around the globe and there’s no perceptible change at home, it’s quite another to say that US has to go on a war footing because US has to fight over some small island most people in US couldn’t find on a map. I really can’t see that being possible politically, especially in the face of the Ukrainian debacle and a looming recession.

Second, US no longer has end to end domestic supply chains that it controls. Thanks to wonders of globalization, China has become a central piece to many supply chains US economy depends on including military production. This article was recently talking about the scale of the problem for US. In case of an open conflict, US would be immediately cut off from this and it would be an economic disaster. And of course, it’s pretty clear that US has no hope of keeping up with China in terms of actual military production either.

So, any fantasies US politicians might entertain about having a war with China are completely divorced from reality. While this kind of idiotic move might’ve been possible before Ukraine, I expect it’s going to be a a non starter now.

Funnelling tax payer money away from things like social services, infrastructure, healthcare, and education which it’s meant for and into the pockets of the oligarchs who own the military industry is the whole point.

Incredible lack of self awareness there to talk about bullies doing whatever they want. And yeah, as I recall, KMT was in the process of talks with the mainland regarding peaceful reunification in 2014 when US ran the sunflower revolution. The deal was that Taiwan would remain autonomous and have a representative in the mainland government. Basically, it would’ve been effectively maintaining the status quo, but Taiwan would officially renounce any talks of separatism and join the official government.

Given how things are going for US in Ukraine, I think it’s pretty clear that US is in no position to take on China. US can’t even keep up with Russia in terms of industrial production, and China absolutely dwarfs Russia in that regard. The main thing Ukraine showed is that it’s industry and logistics that matter the most in a peer conflict. US would quickly run through its existing stocks trying to take on China, and then it would be completely fucked. Not only that, but as this article shows, a lot of supply chains Pentagon uses are ultimately dependent on China. In case of an open war, US would be cut off from many critical things it needs which would be catastrophic.

It looks like this is all finally starting to sink in for the people in the military and why we’re starting to see articles like this popping up. This article is basically an open admission that if push comes to shove then US will not gamble its military position defending Taiwan. Everybody in Taiwan needs to take note of this, because if they have any delusions that US would provide them with any meaningful aid then they’re absolutely delusional.

I imagine that the Ukraine experience will only harden this position within US military and the MIC. It’s already becoming clear that US military power is much more limited than people thought, and that will affect US weapons sales. Gonna be hard to peddle stuff like Patriot when it’s been shown to be completely ineffectual. US can still say that they haven’t used their most advanced weapons in Ukraine, so those are still viable. However, if they went up against China and got their asses handed to them that would definitively expose that the emperor has no clothes to the whole world. Hence, direct war with China or Russia has to be avoided at all costs.

Finally, it’s not possible to do what they’re doing in Ukraine in Taiwan because it’s an island. The west can pump weapons and supplies into Ukraine via the borders, but China will blockade the ports in Taiwan, and the only option to counter that is direct engagement. So, there’s no possibility to turn that into a proxy war.

The US patriot blew its load of 36 missiles in two minutes and then got hit by a single hypersonic missile and destroyed. US is only able to produce around 150 of these missiles per year at the moment, and each one costs $4.1 million. Anybody capable of doing basic math can see that Patriot is an utter joke of an air defence system.

We could probably get one of the admins to check the logs to see what accounts upvoted.

🫡

Americans don’t care about their proxies.

Absolutely, it’s basically what Parenti describes in Blackshirts and Reds where he talks about ABC leftists. We need solid class based analysis which is ultimately what MLs do.

thanks nice to hear I’m appreciated :)

it’s turning into one of those, we want to decouple… oh no, not like that situations

Yeah, this looks like a start of a disaster for the US. As I recall, China ended up making huge investments into US after buying up a bunch of US bonds in 2008 to bail US out. If all that investment is reversed that’s going to hit hard. It’s also not clear who else would even be in a position to make a similar kind of a bailout this time around.

It’s kind of funny how history rhymes. As I recall, USSR was sanctioned by the west when the great depression hit, and its economy was largely unaffected by the crash because of that, which gave it a lot of legitimacy at the time.

Seems like now we’re looking at a repeat of that happening, except now there’s a whole BRICS economy that’s going its own way. Once the west crashes, that’s basically going to discredit western economic system for the rest of the world.

Ha, on a serious note though, decoupling from the west as quickly as possible is the only rational option for China. Even if the west wasn’t trying to wage an economic war, it’s pretty clear that there’s a repeat of the 2008 crisis looming. Being dependent on the western economic system is a huge liability.

and it’s only gonna get worse

The tragedy of Europe is that all the European left ended up siding with the liberals on the war while the right took an anti war stance. Now as people are increasingly realizing that this war was a disaster for Europe they’re starting to turn on the people who have been cheering it on, and naturally end up funnelling towards the right who took an anti war stance from the start.

This once again demonstrates that spineless big tent leftism does not work. People had to take a principled anti war stance from the start, even when it wasn’t popular to do so. Instead, they chose to be cowards, and now the right is sweeping politics in Europe.

Maybe reality is slowly starting to sink in.

This is a large and telling report from the front near Avdiivka. Correspondents talked with Ukrainians, who reported that in their unit losses since the beginning of the NMD were 200%! At the same time, they complain that with these losses, older people are being recruited into the Armed Forces of Ukraine, and this creates problems with discipline - they say, young people obey orders more easily.

And they also complain about the invulnerability of the Russian Lancets, admitting that they have no idea how to jam and shoot them down. In general, a useful article that clearly does not fit into the recent statements by Zelensky and Sullivan that the Ukrainian counteroffensive is “going according to plan”.

Yeah, and a lot of these people are still around today, so I very much expect great things to come out of this.

I fully expect there’s going to be a narrative collapse once the offensive burns out.