I don’t. I am using front-line armament scarcity as an indicator. It’s entirely possible that NATO/USA is not sending what it’s producing in an effort to mask its production numbers from foreign intelligence. I find that unlikely.
I assert that NATO/USA is not sending what it produces, yes, although the reasons I’m asserting are different reasons.
Would you be open to researching the question of what is NATO’s total production of, say, artillery shells, vs. Russia’s? Surely you can see that knowing the answer to that question would be a good way of approaching the question we’re debating about, right? Or no?
All arms transfers from the USA are sales. There are no gifts. It’s part of how the USA financially traps its “allies”. Show me an example of the USA giving weapons to anyone for free.
The Ukraine aid packages are not sales. I already sent a link breaking down the structure of the aid; here’s another one, a little out of date, that frequently uses the word “donated” or otherwise makes it clear that they’re not sales. Where would Ukraine even get $100 billion? That’s more than half their GDP and about 20 times their military budget.
In a lot of cases, what you’re saying is true, yes (including about using sales to people in tight spots to trap people into economic dependency). If you’re going to claim the arms to Ukraine are sales though, do you have a source?
That has no bearing on what concession means. Conceding a point is to say “OK, you’re correct 0.4% is of total GDP for 2022Q4 and isn’t indicative of the amount of deindustrialization happening in Germany. I was unaware of the automotive survey, of the reduced order volume, and the reduced electricity consumption. Those are valid points that indicate an active deindustrialization.”
I don’t think it’s fair to say that I’m not conceding anything. Here are some examples:
“Particularly what you’re saying about the West being disorganized is true”
“I actually agree with you that Russia is achieving its actual objectives.”
“I would also say that what you’re saying about the grim situation for the Ukrainians right now is accurate in the short term.”
As for the specific case, I’ll generally concede to you the factual parameters of what’s happening in Germany. I wouldn’t agree that Germany “has deindustrialized” past tense, but more to the point, I just don’t see that a downturn in the German economy does, ipso facto, mean that Russia can outproduce NATO. That’s not me refusing to “concede” anything you’re presenting. I’m just disagreeing with how you’re applying it. And, to a lesser extent, with the quantitative scope of the problem in Germany – but honestly that’s just immaterial. If you want to demonstrate that Russia can outproduce the West, just show the production levels in Russia and in the West. Any number of bullet points about Germany, going down by 0.2% or 2% or 100%, doesn’t change that sum-total objective summary. Right?
Russia is not experiencing scarcity on the front lines.
I literally sent you some articles talking about Russian scarcity on the front lines. I don’t think that news stories about scarcity on the front lines mean much in terms of how much overall scarcity exists – I specifically made the point that, we need to look at what the total numbers are, not just assemble clashing anecdotes and then argue from there. But yes, if you consider that proof, I’ve sent you proof.
It’s one order of magnitude less than you say (100MM vs 10BN).
I’ve sent multiple sources breaking down the aid. It’s roughly $60B to Ukraine, $100B in the whole package. And yes, Biden’s authority for gifts of $100B is very different from his authority for sales of $100M.
You can keep pointing to the same dollar values I’m pointing to and drawing the conclusion that the dollar values mean that one side is faring better than the other, but you’re ignoring literally all the other facts.
I’m gonna be honest: It’s starting to feel like this is less productive with us going in circles again. I literally acknowledged, yes, dollar values aren’t a good way to measure this, and moved completely away from talking about armaments supply-capacity in dollars in my most recent message for that reason (and mentioned more than once that I was doing that, and why.)
What facts am I ignoring, exactly? Help me understand.
You’re correct. I was mistaken on this. The USA not only gave military aid without debt, it also chose to pay interest on some of Ukraine’s military debt.
I assert that NATO/USA is not sending what it produces, yes, although the reasons I’m asserting are different reasons.
They started a proxy war and then didn’t provide them the munitions they needed to win. They could have done it because of intelligence concerns. Every other reason I can think of is a form of scarcity and underproduction. What options am I missing?
I don’t think it’s fair to say that I’m not conceding anything
Your examples are retellings of my words, fashioned to be closer to your position than mine. I didn’t say the West is disorganized, I said that production for profit doesn’t lead to strategically aligned outcomes. I didn’t really make any claims about the grim situation for Ukrainians, but even if I did you tempered it with your own assertion of temporal constraint. This is not concession. This is weaseling.
I wouldn’t agree that Germany “has deindustrialized” past tense
Germany is deindustrializing. The process has already begun and has been proceeding for over a year. Current profit-driven investment behaviors do not appear to change. For Germany to reverse this trend, they would need to do something that would look eerily similar to what the Third Reich did.
I literally sent you some articles talking about Russian scarcity on the front lines.
You sent sources from 2022, in the early days of the war, from primarily USA propaganda sources. Note that Russians weren’t sending out diplomats to ask for more munitions the way Ukraine was doing. You can say you sent sources, I deny those sources are accurate.
And yes, Biden’s authority for gifts of $100B is very different from his authority for sales of $100M.
the Biden administration has been able to continue supplying Ukraine with weapons and munitions even without new aid through a lesser-known executive power called the Presidential Drawdown Authority, or PDA.
In May 2022, Congress passed legislation to increase the drawdown authority’s cap to $11 billion for the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30, 2022. That was a major increase from the $100 million that had been allocated each year since the drawdown authority’s establishment. Congress increased the cap to $14.5 billion for fiscal 2023.
According to the Congressional Research Service and Defense Department data, the Biden administration has used the drawdown authority 50 times since August 2021, authorizing around $25.2 billion worth of military assistance to Ukraine.
So Biden has authority through this one program for $14.5Bn.
What facts am I ignoring, exactly? Help me understand.
Ukraine is short on supplies despite everyone knowing that they’ve been needing to ramp production for 2 years https://archive.is/Q6CKG
Despite the article saying that it’s Congress and the Republicans holding up military aid, we see above that since 2022 all of NATO was struggling to muster the munitions required, so the money doesn’t really, does it? Even with the money and more expensive weapons, Ukraine is literally raiding public places and fielding completely unprepared soldiers because their entire military has been mostly destroyed.
In any conflict with the USA, especially in Eastern Europe, the USA has networks of partisans, terrorists, and irregulars embedded in the region. The USA, through NATO, conceived and executed Operation Galdio to organize clandestine armies of people who fought against the USSR (Nazis and their sympathizers), funded them, armed them, protected them, and trained them (the West elevated many Nazis to leadership positions in NATO). Those networks are expensive and they are valuable. The USA has been managing these networks as they evolve into different forms as the political landscape changes. It is not a mistake that the 2014 Euromaidan “event” saw a revival of Bandera worship and the normalization of Banderites. Bandera and the OUN were assets of Operation Gladio.
So when multiple uprisings happen on Russia’s border during this conflict in Ukraine, we cannot simply look at that fact in isolation but rather see it as something connected to history, specifically, these uprisings were, more likely than not, USA/NATO assets attempting to open multiple fronts against Russia. They all failed. This is critically important to note, because it means that assets were activated but did not achieve their objectives. This is incredibly costly. But more than that, it represents a failure of intelligence on the USA/NATO part. They wasted their assets on a bet and they lost.
So then we see Wagner group say that they aren’t really needed in Ukraine anymore and Africa is their next stop. Think about that fact. The largest contingent of Russian mercenaries are no longer needed to prosecute the conflict in Ukraine. If Russia were struggling to achieve it’s objectives, would Russia pull out so many trained and effective soldiers? Instead, Russia deployed them to Africa. What happened next?
Niger happened next. The resulting movement has broken the economic and military stranglehold that a NATO country had over one of its neocolonies. France lost big, and they pulled their military out. What happened next?
Palestine Oct 7 happened next.
US military bases in Iraq started to get bombed.
Yemen blockaded the Red Sea.
At each step, the USA has been seen to be reacting, only now sending new troops to Iraq after weeks of bombings. Almost like they didn’t see it coming.
The evidence seems to be that the USA and NATO are losing the intelligence war. They are reacting. The biggest combined military force in the entire history of the world, with full-blown duplication of every single phone call and data transmission over cables they own, including transatlantic cables, satellite communications, and cellular networks, that infiltrated Seimens and wiretapped every single embassy on the planet, that has established deep intelligence capabilities and data sharing across The Five Eyes - they all appear to be reacting to things they did not foresee.
Could this be a rope-a-dope strategy? Maybe? Maybe 2024 is the year that the USA/NATO suddenly finds their munitions stockpiles, unveils their hidden underground weapons manufacturing plants, or releases their top secret super weapon at exactly the right places and exactly the right times. But it looks a lot like military intelligence failures, production failures, diplomacy failures, and economic failures. The only thing that seems to have gotten stronger is domestic police repression and domestic propaganda.
You’re missing it all, it seems. You think of each thing in isolation. You think each conflict is David vs Goliath and Goliath is just slow and lumbering but eventually the giant will win because of course he will. You don’t see that most of the positive news about Ukraine is propaganda, that even that propaganda cannot ignore the failings, but has to couch it in narrative that Russia is also doing terribly and if only we send another $100Bn of weapons it’ll turn the tide. You think finding a spreadsheet with exact numbers of artillery shells is not only possible, but will provide more information than the information we already have, which is supplies have been strained for years and the largest military bloc in the history of the world is scrambling to react to the conditions on the ground that their massive intelligence apparatus failed to predict and plan for.
Yes, we’re going around in circles because you keep trying to hang on to a shred of hope that this isn’t right by claiming I’m not being objective enough for you, that the entire argument boils down to quantity of shells on a manifest, and if we can’t find it (which we can’t) then you’ll be able to hold on to that shred of hope.
Yes, we’re going around in circles because you keep trying to hang on to a shred of hope that this isn’t right by claiming I’m not being objective enough for you, that the entire argument boils down to quantity of shells on a manifest, and if we can’t find it (which we can’t) then you’ll be able to hold on to that shred of hope.
I think we have a fundamental disconnect in how to approach this debate, then. I checked and it actually wasn’t too hard to find ballpark numbers in open sources. But, if you’re explicitly saying that you’re not into the idea of looking at data on the overall picture and instead want to just construct narratives, then I’m not into that. The simple reason being that it can go on forever with the two of us just yelling our narratives at each other.
I also note that once we get into objectively verifiable things (the order of magnitude of aid packages, the nature of American aid to Ukraine), you all of a sudden turn out to have been wrong about some pretty relevant-to-the-debate things you were previously real confident about telling me what’s what about. It makes me not want to suddenly put a ton of trust into the more complex or far-reaching narratives you’re constructing (no matter how firmly you’re willing to tell them to me.)
The early stages were enjoyable and I actually learned some things but I think the discussion has run its course. Cheers and all the best.
I assert that NATO/USA is not sending what it produces, yes, although the reasons I’m asserting are different reasons.
Would you be open to researching the question of what is NATO’s total production of, say, artillery shells, vs. Russia’s? Surely you can see that knowing the answer to that question would be a good way of approaching the question we’re debating about, right? Or no?
The Ukraine aid packages are not sales. I already sent a link breaking down the structure of the aid; here’s another one, a little out of date, that frequently uses the word “donated” or otherwise makes it clear that they’re not sales. Where would Ukraine even get $100 billion? That’s more than half their GDP and about 20 times their military budget.
In a lot of cases, what you’re saying is true, yes (including about using sales to people in tight spots to trap people into economic dependency). If you’re going to claim the arms to Ukraine are sales though, do you have a source?
I don’t think it’s fair to say that I’m not conceding anything. Here are some examples:
“Particularly what you’re saying about the West being disorganized is true”
“I actually agree with you that Russia is achieving its actual objectives.”
“I would also say that what you’re saying about the grim situation for the Ukrainians right now is accurate in the short term.”
As for the specific case, I’ll generally concede to you the factual parameters of what’s happening in Germany. I wouldn’t agree that Germany “has deindustrialized” past tense, but more to the point, I just don’t see that a downturn in the German economy does, ipso facto, mean that Russia can outproduce NATO. That’s not me refusing to “concede” anything you’re presenting. I’m just disagreeing with how you’re applying it. And, to a lesser extent, with the quantitative scope of the problem in Germany – but honestly that’s just immaterial. If you want to demonstrate that Russia can outproduce the West, just show the production levels in Russia and in the West. Any number of bullet points about Germany, going down by 0.2% or 2% or 100%, doesn’t change that sum-total objective summary. Right?
I literally sent you some articles talking about Russian scarcity on the front lines. I don’t think that news stories about scarcity on the front lines mean much in terms of how much overall scarcity exists – I specifically made the point that, we need to look at what the total numbers are, not just assemble clashing anecdotes and then argue from there. But yes, if you consider that proof, I’ve sent you proof.
I’ve sent multiple sources breaking down the aid. It’s roughly $60B to Ukraine, $100B in the whole package. And yes, Biden’s authority for gifts of $100B is very different from his authority for sales of $100M.
I’m gonna be honest: It’s starting to feel like this is less productive with us going in circles again. I literally acknowledged, yes, dollar values aren’t a good way to measure this, and moved completely away from talking about armaments supply-capacity in dollars in my most recent message for that reason (and mentioned more than once that I was doing that, and why.)
What facts am I ignoring, exactly? Help me understand.
You’re correct. I was mistaken on this. The USA not only gave military aid without debt, it also chose to pay interest on some of Ukraine’s military debt.
They started a proxy war and then didn’t provide them the munitions they needed to win. They could have done it because of intelligence concerns. Every other reason I can think of is a form of scarcity and underproduction. What options am I missing?
Your examples are retellings of my words, fashioned to be closer to your position than mine. I didn’t say the West is disorganized, I said that production for profit doesn’t lead to strategically aligned outcomes. I didn’t really make any claims about the grim situation for Ukrainians, but even if I did you tempered it with your own assertion of temporal constraint. This is not concession. This is weaseling.
Germany is deindustrializing. The process has already begun and has been proceeding for over a year. Current profit-driven investment behaviors do not appear to change. For Germany to reverse this trend, they would need to do something that would look eerily similar to what the Third Reich did.
You sent sources from 2022, in the early days of the war, from primarily USA propaganda sources. Note that Russians weren’t sending out diplomats to ask for more munitions the way Ukraine was doing. You can say you sent sources, I deny those sources are accurate.
https://www.military.com/daily-news/2023/11/08/not-so-secret-fund-thats-bolstering-ukraine-military-aid-presidential-drawdown-authority.html
So Biden has authority through this one program for $14.5Bn.
Ukraine is struggling to field soldiers. They are literally raiding gyms and conscripting people on the spot. The results are brutal, with some units experiencing 70% death rates.
https://www.economist.com/europe/2023/12/17/ukraines-army-is-struggling-to-find-good-recruits
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/15/world/europe/ukraine-military-recruitment.html
The USA has been experiencing production challenges since 2022.
https://www.cnn.com/2022/11/17/politics/us-weapon-stocks-ukraine/index.html
The combined productive forces and stockpiles of all of NATO are struggling to supply Ukraine.
https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/17/politics/us-weapons-factories-ukraine-ammunition/index.html
https://www.cnn.com/2023/07/18/politics/ukraine-critical-ammo-shortage-us-nato-grapple/index.html
Ukraine is short on supplies despite everyone knowing that they’ve been needing to ramp production for 2 years
https://archive.is/Q6CKG
Despite the article saying that it’s Congress and the Republicans holding up military aid, we see above that since 2022 all of NATO was struggling to muster the munitions required, so the money doesn’t really, does it? Even with the money and more expensive weapons, Ukraine is literally raiding public places and fielding completely unprepared soldiers because their entire military has been mostly destroyed.
Any attempt at Ukraine producing weapons practically anywhere in the country, Russia is able to destroy with hypersonic missiles that are difficult for Ukraine to counter
https://www.france24.com/en/europe/20240113-russia-claims-to-have-struck-ukrainian-military-industrial-complex
In any conflict with the USA, especially in Eastern Europe, the USA has networks of partisans, terrorists, and irregulars embedded in the region. The USA, through NATO, conceived and executed Operation Galdio to organize clandestine armies of people who fought against the USSR (Nazis and their sympathizers), funded them, armed them, protected them, and trained them (the West elevated many Nazis to leadership positions in NATO). Those networks are expensive and they are valuable. The USA has been managing these networks as they evolve into different forms as the political landscape changes. It is not a mistake that the 2014 Euromaidan “event” saw a revival of Bandera worship and the normalization of Banderites. Bandera and the OUN were assets of Operation Gladio.
So when multiple uprisings happen on Russia’s border during this conflict in Ukraine, we cannot simply look at that fact in isolation but rather see it as something connected to history, specifically, these uprisings were, more likely than not, USA/NATO assets attempting to open multiple fronts against Russia. They all failed. This is critically important to note, because it means that assets were activated but did not achieve their objectives. This is incredibly costly. But more than that, it represents a failure of intelligence on the USA/NATO part. They wasted their assets on a bet and they lost.
So then we see Wagner group say that they aren’t really needed in Ukraine anymore and Africa is their next stop. Think about that fact. The largest contingent of Russian mercenaries are no longer needed to prosecute the conflict in Ukraine. If Russia were struggling to achieve it’s objectives, would Russia pull out so many trained and effective soldiers? Instead, Russia deployed them to Africa. What happened next?
Niger happened next. The resulting movement has broken the economic and military stranglehold that a NATO country had over one of its neocolonies. France lost big, and they pulled their military out. What happened next?
Palestine Oct 7 happened next.
US military bases in Iraq started to get bombed.
Yemen blockaded the Red Sea.
At each step, the USA has been seen to be reacting, only now sending new troops to Iraq after weeks of bombings. Almost like they didn’t see it coming.
The evidence seems to be that the USA and NATO are losing the intelligence war. They are reacting. The biggest combined military force in the entire history of the world, with full-blown duplication of every single phone call and data transmission over cables they own, including transatlantic cables, satellite communications, and cellular networks, that infiltrated Seimens and wiretapped every single embassy on the planet, that has established deep intelligence capabilities and data sharing across The Five Eyes - they all appear to be reacting to things they did not foresee.
Could this be a rope-a-dope strategy? Maybe? Maybe 2024 is the year that the USA/NATO suddenly finds their munitions stockpiles, unveils their hidden underground weapons manufacturing plants, or releases their top secret super weapon at exactly the right places and exactly the right times. But it looks a lot like military intelligence failures, production failures, diplomacy failures, and economic failures. The only thing that seems to have gotten stronger is domestic police repression and domestic propaganda.
You’re missing it all, it seems. You think of each thing in isolation. You think each conflict is David vs Goliath and Goliath is just slow and lumbering but eventually the giant will win because of course he will. You don’t see that most of the positive news about Ukraine is propaganda, that even that propaganda cannot ignore the failings, but has to couch it in narrative that Russia is also doing terribly and if only we send another $100Bn of weapons it’ll turn the tide. You think finding a spreadsheet with exact numbers of artillery shells is not only possible, but will provide more information than the information we already have, which is supplies have been strained for years and the largest military bloc in the history of the world is scrambling to react to the conditions on the ground that their massive intelligence apparatus failed to predict and plan for.
Yes, we’re going around in circles because you keep trying to hang on to a shred of hope that this isn’t right by claiming I’m not being objective enough for you, that the entire argument boils down to quantity of shells on a manifest, and if we can’t find it (which we can’t) then you’ll be able to hold on to that shred of hope.
Let it go already.
I think we have a fundamental disconnect in how to approach this debate, then. I checked and it actually wasn’t too hard to find ballpark numbers in open sources. But, if you’re explicitly saying that you’re not into the idea of looking at data on the overall picture and instead want to just construct narratives, then I’m not into that. The simple reason being that it can go on forever with the two of us just yelling our narratives at each other.
I also note that once we get into objectively verifiable things (the order of magnitude of aid packages, the nature of American aid to Ukraine), you all of a sudden turn out to have been wrong about some pretty relevant-to-the-debate things you were previously real confident about telling me what’s what about. It makes me not want to suddenly put a ton of trust into the more complex or far-reaching narratives you’re constructing (no matter how firmly you’re willing to tell them to me.)
The early stages were enjoyable and I actually learned some things but I think the discussion has run its course. Cheers and all the best.