I was saying, do you have an idea of how much total armaments NATO produces versus Russia?
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. Therefore, either NATO/USA triggered a proxy war and then withheld munitions deliberately or NATO/USA isn’t producing enough to supply active conflicts. Can you think of a third option?
The 0.4% number is from your source
It’s not the source that’s bad, it’s the way you used it. How do you not understand that?
These are sales, not gifts.
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.
And they are valued at $106 million and $147 million respectively, around 1,000 times smaller than what’s being proposed in the current aid package. And that was still a big deal with stories in the paper and all (the first story notes that it’s the first time Biden did it).
It’s one order of magnitude less than you say (100MM vs 10BN). I’m not sure why the size matters. Are you saying that the President has authorization limits? Can you find them? Are you saying that the press has any real effect on how the USA distributes weapons? That if Biden had given more the press would have been worse and therefore he would have been stopped? What kind of analysis of executive power is that?
You cannot concede a single point lost in the debate
But no, I’m not trying to say you’re wrong in the examples you’re giving or need to send proof for the same examples again
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.”
You could then go on to say how that deindustrialization doesn’t actually matter, but you never actually concede a single point.
If you’re going to say Russia is outproducing the West in terms of weapons, what are the numbers you’re claiming?
Russia is not experiencing scarcity on the front lines. Ukraine is experiencing scarcity on the front lines. That’s it.
You’re also saying Russia’s using them more effectively, which is a different discussion which is a lot more complex which I’ll leave alone for right now.
No. I’m not saying Russia is using each artillery shell more effectively than Ukraine is using each artillery shell. I’m saying Russia’s production is aligned with its needs. Note that currently the only confirmed air-to-air kill of the F-22 in its 20 years of operation is a balloon. The USA spent $74Bn on that production line. The current F-35 program is looking to cost upwards of 1 trillion. Russia doesn’t need to outspend the USA when Russia’s production lines are producing what the Russian military actually needs. The USA’s inflated military budget is going to capitalist production - highest sale price, lowest cost to produce.
Russia has managed to burn through multiple waves of Ukraine’s army, funded to the scale of the entire Russian military, with only a portion of its national force.
What happened in the north of the country?
Russia used only a portion of its national force, lost some battles, and, if you read that Moon of Alabama article I sent you, still managed to destroy so much materiel that Ukraine needed another full army of heavy weaponry to be delivered to even continue fighting.
Let me ask you a question. If some middle eastern countries formed into a bloc, funded and armed by Russia, and NATO invaded that bloc, and then the invasion remained within 100 km of the border for 2 years, would you say that represented NATO “defeating” the mideast bloc? Because we were holding off multiple waves?
What a terribly revealing leading question. Let’s reframe it. If Russia created a transnational nuclear military and stationed nuclear capabilities in each country that joined its bloc, and it was making plans to station net new nuclear capabilities along the same border that it had used multiple times to invade, say Turkey via Bulgaria, and Turkey, a much smaller military than the entire bloc invaded Bulgaria to stop the deployment of nuclear capabilities on its border, and despite Bulgaria throwing its entire military at it backed by this transnational military sending more equipment by dollar than Turkey spends on its national military, and Turkey managed to defeat 3 full militaries worth of materiel using only a portion of its national military, would I say that represented Turkey “defeating” this transnational force?
No. Because the transnational force still stands. What I would say is that Turkey defeated Bulgaria, despite all of the bloc backing, and has demonstrated that the bloc is weak and unreliable.
Particularly what you’re saying about the West being disorganized is true, although I’d much rather have that than a Russia-style “organization.”
You don’t know what Russia-style organization even is. I’m not having this conversation with you about your feelings.
I think Russia is the aggressor, and so I tend to be opposed to what they’re doing in the same way I’m opposed to the US doing it when we’re in the invader role.
Being opposed to what their doing is not the same as debating to deny a fact-based narrative simply because admitting the truth would feel bad.
by testing your big conclusions against big objectively true things, right? That’s why I keep coming back to things like “the invasion’s gone on for 2 years and hasn’t gone much of anywhere yet” and “NATO’s industrial capacity is $X and Russia’s is $Y.” You can’t just contextualize from details only, and then decide whatever you arrived at is true. Sometimes it will be, sometimes not. Surely that makes sense?
We don’t have many objectively true things. Everything is behind a fog of war and through massive propaganda lens. We can establish some objectively true things about that propaganda, though. Many of us who have been following along with USA proxy wars called out that the USA would eventually pull support for Ukraine and that it would look a lot like what’s starting to happen now. Those weren’t guesses, they were retellings of what happened in other USA proxy wars. It’s an observable fact that the history of USA proxy wars and the current Ukraine conflict are following similar story beats. Whether I would call that objective or not is a matter of philosophy.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has gone on for 2 years and what’s happened is that the USA is pulling support, Russia’s economy is stronger than before, Russia’s alliances are stronger than before, Russian public sentiment is stronger than before while USA and Europe are all suffering economically, are losing some of their control over international trade and international politics and international propaganda, and public sentiment in USA and Europe are weaker than before.
I don’t know how you can choose to say that because of some imaginary objective that you think Russia ought to have, like it should take more territory, that therefore it’s failing and none of the other facts matter. 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. You’re not attempting to test against objective facts, you’re cherry picking.