The thing that continues to shock me is what a lose-lose this appears to be for Russia. This is their Mike Tyson/Buster Douglas moment. For those who don't follow boxing, Tyson was a feared heavyweight who had a devistating knock out punch. People fighting him were on the defense, trying not to immediately get knocked out. He fought Buster Douglas as a 'get ready' fight; Douglas, who wasn't ranked very high and had little to lose, went toe-to-toe with Tyson and knocked him out. Tyson went on to win again, but was never quite regarded the same way afterwards -- he wasn't unbeatable.
Russia is still a dangerous country. But, man -- Putin was supposed to be a 4D chessmaster at strategy. How could he play his hand so badly? One wonders if one of the lessons China's Xi will take is how to be an autocratic leader yet continue to get good, rational advice from your team. Because this looks like nobody was willing to tell Putin that this was a terrible idea -- and that's always a huge risk for autocrats.
Every building he knocks down in Ukraine, he's going to have to pay to rebuild.....and his economy is all but gone. I wonder how long it will be until other Russians decide this "adventure" has run its course? I think we may all be surprised by how short that time period is.
Have to agree with you there, Tony F. I was firmly convinced that Putin didn't intend to invade Ukraine, and was just messing with the West's collective mind. Look how wrong you can be.
Even if Russia wins this terrible war, they'll have one heck of a time trying to occupy Ukraine. I just don't see the upside for them, which is why this invasion is so baffling. There's just no rational explanation for this.
Which is what most observers have been saying these past few days: Putin has gone bonkers.
Good column, and a great primer for the millions who do not know this history. My wife and I visited (unified) Germany in October of 1998, not quite a decade after the fall of the wall. We stayed for an evening with older family friends near Munich and visited with friends in Heidelberg. As part of former West Germany, the experience was largely equivalent to our own experience in Canada - modern, open, free, progressive. Travelling by train around the country and crossing into (former) East Germany was like going through a time warp. Modern farms and related equipment were instantly replaced with decrepitude - 40 year old trucks and tractors, ramshackle farm buildings, and generally terrible crops compared to the (former) western crops we had observed out the train windows. Arriving in Berlin was the largest shock. The wall still existed in some places, and the debate at the time among Berliners was if it should be eradicated completely, or portions of it retained as a warning to future generations. Arriving at Potsdamer Platz south of the Brandenburg Gates and the Reichstag was jarring, as money from the west was pouring into the area and bringing it into modernity. Individual former West Berliners were of mixed feelings toward their relatively new former East German compatriots. Some said they needed time, others noted they were lazy and entitled after living for decades under communism. What they all shared, as you point out, was the shame of their Nazi and militaristic past. 'Never again' was a universal sentiment at the time. All Germans we encountered during that trip would be considered pacifists. The friendships we've maintained since 1998 reaffirmed that shame-fueled pacifism as a core element of the German national character. I share your astonishment at the sudden German initiative to rearm themselves. I'm not against it, just shocked with the instantaneous sea change in the German national character and leadership.
This is so interesting. We had a exchange student in 1999 from the formerly East Berlin. When he received a care package from home, it was filled with loose pasta instead of styrofoam. I thought it was a green alternative and started to sweep it into the green bin when he exclaimed - we must save this! Turns out pasta had been a rare commodity in East Berlin so he could not imagine heaving it. His Dad was in astrophysics & his Mom was a Doctor -so they were well off.
I visited Germany May of 2000. Your post bring backs memories... sections of the Wall, Checkpoint Charlie. And at the time part East Berlin close to the Wall had been transformed into a cool night club area; the streets were very clean but it seemed they were trying to preserve the desolate character.... grey buildings, plain streetscapes, almost no colour. Was strange; I thought this won't last, novel but almost depressing.
(Of course once inside the bars was a fun atmosphere, if still minimalist decor.)
I still have the conference swag from the 2000 "National Defense Industrial Association" in Vancouver, where James F. O'Bryon at the Pentagon's "Live Fire Testing" office asked me to give the after-dinner speech. (I'd written a celebrated article on Risk Management and The Titanic that went viral during the movie's year in 1997.)
It was the first time they'd done a conference on "foreign soil", Vancouver being a 10-minute drive over the border, (they must have felt courageous), and the theme was foreign sales. Understand, while the room was about 20% uniforms, it was the defense salesmen at the conference, talking sales. I remember the one European speech, where the 3-star said "If you think it's hard selling your stuff to 'Fortress Europe', try being a European selling to "Fortress America". The room went silent, as everybody contemplated the almost-heretical notion of an American tax dollar being spent on European arms.
Modern military do not exist to win wars, I mean, obviously: they can't beat goatherds in 20 years of trying. They can *destroy* entire nations, in an afternoon, but that isn't war; the purpose of war is to control, and profit, not erase. The modern military exists to sell arms to frightened people. The 2000 NDIA conference was there to lament that expenditures had stopped rising, causing that "hollowing out" of the forces, because, Clinton dropped defense spending by 2% over 8 years.
Our defense industry is deeply corrupt and massively inefficient. When Chuck Spinney and Pierre Frey made themselves pariahs in the 1980s with their $400 hammer and $600 toilet-seat examples, they were trying to highlight that every single military component had similar levels of overcharge. The $100M fighter would cost an efficient industry about $8M to build. This doesn't just lead to overcharges, but to underperformance: the warriors can't trust the equipment.
Russia can't win a war, either, because their defense industry is the most corrupt in their country. Think about THAT for a moment. Even more corrupt than ours. They're bogged down because their stuff keeps breaking, I'll bet.
The whole "war" farce is a game, like boxing compared to actual martial arts: only certain blows and holds are allowed. NO NUKES! If nobody's using nukes, it's not an actual war, just a pantomime. Russia could "win" tomorrow, by dropping a little 1-kilotonne anywhere and televising the results, threatening Kiev with mass casualties. (Nobody in history was more brave and stoic than the Japanese.) If they had the balls to take the risk, and they don't. I doubt the generals would accept the order.
So, what's the plan, NATO? You going to arm up and fight pretend wars, WW2-types, with Russia, without nukes, like a boxing match with no blows below the belt? No. Nobody's going to do that. They're celebrating not because anybody imagines Germany joining the Avengers, but because they're a huge new market.
The game is to frighten people, sell them "arms that don't work for enemies that don't exist" (Ivan Selin, 1960s), and never fight actually, *really*, fight, because that would be the end of the world.
One can imagine an arms industry to provide for the only wars that can still be fought. We still have desperate fights, by non-nuclear powers, insurgent against dominating nuclear powers, that are allowed to oppress them - because nobody can oppose a nuclear power.
America couldn't build those weapons, the last such wars were against such insurgents, or they'd have awesome weapons to slip in to Ukraine. The Ukrainians now find themselves pathetically making Molotovs. Those rockets we're sending are just the thing that still can be useful: something you can hand to anybody, and that anybody can blow up a $5M tank that your nuclear opponent paid $50M for. It's a big upgrade from Baghdad's old-shells and garage-door-opener IEDs...and those worked very well. We need to make cheap, lightweight, EZ-use, fire-and-forget weapons for civilians, and be ready to distribute them to civilians that are being oppressed. That's modern war. Those are the only wars of my whole lifetime; the last conventional one between armies and artillery and armor, was Korea.
But ... that strategy is too cheap, for the arms industry. I'm not sure what scenario the fabulists will conjure, where Germany would use an F35 (if they can get one to stay in the air), but I know the salesmen are polishing up their Guccis.
The list price for a new Boeing 737 is $90-100 million. The airplane is bigger in size than a modern fighter aircraft, but far less complex. When you start talking about an efficient industry building a fighter aircraft for $8 million, it tells me you don't have a clue of what you're talking about.
I'm speaking of the Blitzfighter, propounded by Col. James Burton - the predecessor of my aquaintance Jim O'Bryon; Burton founded the "Live Fire Testing" office, and that founding cost him his career, the notion of *testing* equipment being so heretical.
The Blitzfighter was a replacement for the A10 Warthog, which clocked in at about $45M in today's money. The F16, price varies upwards from $16M, was designed by the same bunch: Pierre Sprey, John Boyd, Harry Hillaker. It was the first jet to cost less and weigh less than its predecessor (F15), and the last; the Pentagon loathed it for the sin of cheapness.
Your Boeing comparison is meaningless because a fighter doesn't have to carry 200 people or weigh 50 tonnes. A modern fighter does not need almost any electronics; 80% of kills are done by eyeball in close air support. The A10 and the never-to-see-daylight Blitzfighter, which could have landed on dirt airstrips and followed the flow of land battle, do close air support, which the Air Force hates, it makes them into servants of some lieutenant on the ground. They cancelled the A10, have no meaningful close air-support machine in future, save for the near-useless F35. But the American Army are afraid and furious, they love the A10 protecting the troops.
(Oh, as for the F35 & F22 job of fighting MIGs at 30,000 feet: hasn't been a dogfight in 50 years; all possible combatants have nukes, and no such scenario is seriously imagined.)
Canada's best move with air is to BUY a bunch of old A10s from the Americans and keep them running. That would let their Air Force get rid of the hated machine, but let their Army still have it for protection, just call Canada, as long as we go along with some illegal war against insurgents. It would resolve one of their biggest interservice fights. And I'm sure their Air Force would let them go for $8M; and their Army would pay us another $8M to keep them flying.
Your mention of Boeing raises a funny point, though: the same article noted that when Boeing was taken over, the rigid separation between "military" and "civilian" aircraft development was degraded, and the military-side failures started to happen in civilian designs: the loss of hundreds of lives due to bad design of the 737MAX are routine in military production, as with the deadly Osprey helicopter. The book is Andrew Cockburn's "The Spoils of War", and the best chapter was run in Harpers:
So, you're citing a 50 year old analysis that was flawed at the time and has been proven repeatedly incorrect since. Those simple/low cost/high numbers platforms are not survivable and not capable of doing the mission. The A-10 fleet got shot to hell in Desert Storm - the concept of low altitude close air support turned out to be near-suicidal against a military equipped with AAA systems. The USAF already knew that, of course - they'd abandoned low level attack after huge losses for the same reason in Vietnam. What's worked better is "tank plinking" with smart munitions from medium altitude. The troops on the ground love the A-10 because it seems intimidating, but that aircraft just can't survive against enemy fighters and its big cannon requires close engagement that's too exposed to AAA.
Then there's the F-16: the design rapidly got more complex to make it survivable and add useable capability (turns out that radar-guided BVR missiles are kind of essential, contra the fighter mafia), and the aircraft itself has turned into a low-end tactical attack aircraft. It doesn't have the range or payload to do much, and ended up being something of an afterthought in the Gulf War, Afghanistan, and Iraq. Instead, it was the heavy deep strike aircraft like the F-111 and F-15E that turned out to be useful.
As far as comparisons between fighters and commercial passenger aircraft, it's pretty obvious you don't have any background in engineering. Airliners are big, but their systems aren't that complicated. The cost of an aircraft scales more with the complexity of the system than the physical size. The more compact that system has to be, the more expensive it gets as well.
No, it can't survive enemy fighters. The enemy fighters can't survive the ground based missiles, though, not any more. But do provide us with the geopolitical scenario where we'd face fighters that can kill A10s, but the owners don't have nukes.
All planes were tarted up with electronic crap over the decades; it made money.
The 50-year-old analysis is not inappropriate, since the still-not-in-service F35 was based on the same material, design started in 1985. Or you could read this 2015 article:
...on how the successes of the A10 against IS challenged, again, the plans to scrap it.
But, hey, let's settle this like men, with those "fighters" that fight each other. You take a billion dollars worth of F35s. I'll take a billion dollars of F16s. How do you like your odds?
Hmm - exercises at Red Flag established that such a bet would be easy money for me. This isn’t surprising given that you can’t even get basic facts correct. The F-35 has been in service for 6 years. Development started with the DARPA-based JAST project in 1996. What you call “electronic crap” are the sensors needed to get inside an enemy’s Observe-Orient-Decide-Act loop, and that sort of advantage is why air-to-air engagements over the past 30 years have gone to the side equipped with that tech.
Ah! The OODA loop - invented by John Boyd for his "Patterns of Force" lectures that won over Dick Cheney. Actually just four years since combat mission #1:
From the book I'm recommending: "The Marines sent just six of them on their first deployment to the Middle East, and over several months managed to fly, on average, just one sortie per plane every three days."
Red Flag is a highly-controlled environment. War is not. You can't beat a troop of boy scouts if you can't get the plane in the air.
All US tests are highly-controlled environments. That's what "The Pentagon Wars" was about, they hate to test and ruin a good program with facts. A typical American test was explained by Malcolm Gladwell in "Blink" as "Paul van Riper's Big Victory", where a Marine general wiped out a US fleet in the "Millenium Challenge" wargame, with a few zodiacs and shoulder-launched weapons. So they re-started the game with new rules so that the US could win.
...The Millenium Challenge is now lionized for predicting the war in Iraq..save the part about the US couldn't re-start it with new rules forcing their opponents to lose.
So, spare me the Red Flag outcome; I'm unable to trust any test conceived by the USAF...not after they spent two decades devising "tests" to prove that an F15 could beat an F16, which it mostly could not.
Well, the biggest hole in that argument is the fact that the A10 is not a fighter, its role is to attack targets on the ground and requires friendly air superiority to operate effectively.
Well, even people are called "fighters", so I think a plane can be, if it shoots them. Yes, the military terminology is fighters, bombers, close-air-support, etc. but I simply dismiss the whole "fighter" class of aircraft from consideration; they only exist to fight each other; even "Top Gun" had to come up with a ludicrous circumstance so two could face off...and that was a movie 35 years ago. Nobody should ever buy another.
"Friendly air superiority" is vastly more cheaply provided by ground-based missiles, for a few decades now. You may have noticed the lack of Russian airpower this last week, whereas Iraq had no power plants left after weeks of aerial bombardment in 2003.
I got interested in the topic after giving the speech in 2000, and listening, around the conference, to some of the most-tortured arguments for military spending, where you had to believe in very unlikely scenarios ("rogue state" with one nuclear missile, which it promptly launches, suicidally...only remaining scenario for a "Star Wars" success by then - $9B/year on it; Obama lowered it to $8B/year, so $170B spent since that conversation).
So I got to reading. Not books by peaceniks, what do they know. Books from inside the military establishment, where they are very tired of dying because the overpriced equipment also fails a lot.
"The Pentagon Wars" is not just a fantastic book from deep inside the weapons-procurement establishment, but a movie. With Kelsey Grammar and Carey Elwes, because the only way to make a movie about that very serious non-fiction book was as a comedy. No, really. I did this blog post on it, where you can also find out about the Andrew Cockburn book...and the bizarre fact about the Cockburn family.
The flaw in the yearning for a peaceful, law-based international system is not that it isn't possible, it's just that it's only possible within a group of similarly-minded liberal democratic states. The authoritarian states don't hold the same values, and are pleased to engage with liberal democracies and play by their rules to the extent that it benefits them. Military spending is indeed money that could be better spent elsewhere, but it's not the fault of the democracies - it's the fault of the authoritarians.
Great piece Matt. I also noticed how well received Germany’s policy changes were amongst allies and the European community. I can’t help but think it is time. The “delight” you speak of and the positive reinforcement the Germans are receiving on this decision is a signal that Germany’s neighbours trust again. Even France seems to be ok with it - unheard of! It is well earned and in these uncertain times, that is a good thing.
The Berlin Wall fell; 9/11 occurred - I feel as if I am living through the third historic realignment of our times. A thoughtful article prompts thoughtful reader reaction.- I appreciate the shared perspectives.
The irony is thick. Putin's attack on Ukraine has, in eight days, reversed the damage to unity of NATO and other democracies that the former US President took four years to inflict.
Awesome Matt! Glad that you did that history lesson on Germany in the summer. We have to really focus now that plastic drinking straws and grocery bags aren't the biggest existential threat to our existence.
I was reading about the atrocities that were committed in Ukraine during the Second World War and the slaughter of many Jewish people. The Germans and Russian were united as one against all other nations. That was until the Germans betrayed Russia over the want of Ukraine and its fertile land. The Germans began to invade Russia which turned them into great enemies. We all know how that story ended with Russia taking part of Germany as the victor. The Canadian's, British, and American's, returned all Russian's who had found refuge in Germany during the Revolution where Stalin's evil was placed upon his own people. By returning all those who were in Germany they had sentenced them to death for being traitors and most were killed or thrown in the gulag for abandoning Russia. That was a real eye opener for me.
When the war had ended many of the Nazi's and their sympathizers remained in Ukraine and through them many new groups of Nazi fascist train and have become part of the militia in the Ukraine. They aided in the overthrow of the last leader which later, Velinsky was elected to lead Ukraine. Velinsky wanted Ukraine to become part of NATO to which Putin was greatly opposed. We all know Biden was deeply invested in Ukraine and Hunter was working for one of the oil companies. With all of the actions and interference from other countries within NATO that have a distaste for Russia, they basically egged Putin to invade and then seemed surprised when he did. Biden's State of the Union Address was nothing short of inflaming and encouraging more of the same.
From Hilary Clinton who was angry at Wiki Leaks and the information released to the American people sharing the lies that were told on the Iraq war, she thought Trump was involved. He wasn't, but in an attempt to discredit Trump, she with the help of others, invented the Russian and Trump collusion that supposedly won him the election. Again all lies to discredit Trump and their enemy Russia, as the Durham Report plainly stated its findings. It was Hilary who broke all laws to spy on Trumps campaign by lying to the FBI about the collusion. So when people hear one story from the mainstream media with no counter to it, I suggest they be cautious and look to see if there is another side as well. I am not on either side be it Russia or Ukraine, its the people who are harmed by the fighting that I care about. That seems to get forgotten in the entire mess because everything is so polarized and politically charged in todays world. Truth is often difficult to discern and the mainstream media has not aided in any of it. Repeating the same one sided story and not allowing all the facts to come out. It always leaves me wondering what is the truth and what is politically motivated propaganda. Its very difficult to tell as its all paid for and pushed by the same people.
One of the finest pieces of pure imaginary fiction I've read in months. Tucker Carlson would be proud to hear his stories retold. "Truth is often difficult to discern". That is crystal clear.
Yes, it most surely is hard to discern misinformation from truth. Was it not CBC that reported that the Truckers Convoy was another collusion with the Russians. I mean you really can’t make that stuff up, right? Lol
Not that I ever heard and I followed it closely. With white supremacist's absolutely. having found a link, which the CBC put out a clarification on, the reporter asked the Minister questions about whether the Russians might be involved. Isn't it a reporter's job to ask questions?
You only heard that there were no WSs. That doesn't mean there were none. And people who can point out to you the other side of the story, often with examples of WS blathering you don't believe. That weird pounce you make about CBC simply asking a question implies that you have already made your mind up.
I always thought the "collusion" notion was silly, as no spy would trust him with a secret. But all the western intelligence agencies, not just the CIA and FBI, concluded that Russia, as a state-sponsored project, sought to affect the outcome of the 2016 election, in Trump's favour. There was no collusion because they didn't need his permission, much less help.
My own take was that Russia was not so much for Trump as against Hillary, whom Putin loathed. You could have run a mailbox against Hillary, and it would have gained similar Russian "support".
I think, ironically, that Comey may have delivered the worst shot when he brought up the nonsense about her emails 3 days before the election. we'll agree to disagree about whether there was collusion. The Senate Intelligence Committee said it was very likely.
And who was in the senate intelligence Committee? The point I was making is you do not hear the other side of the story. You only ever hear one on the news. Which is my point. It’s no longer news because they pick the winner and the loser for you, without you even having to look into it.
The Senate Intelligence Committee was actually GOP controlled at the time. As for putting up a YouTube video from FOX News, with all due respect, is little more than Trump's version of Joe Goebbels propaganda network. It has never held up to fact-checking but is notorious for not reporting anything about the January 6th investigation. Tucker Carlson went so far as to use hyperbole as a defence in a lawsuit. FOX's lawyers stated "'general tenor' of the show should then inform a viewer that [Carlson] is not 'stating actual facts about the topics he discusses and is instead engaging in 'exaggeration' and 'non-literal commentary.' So I didn't watch it as they aren't a source of anything worthwhile.
I completely disagree that the news only presents one side of a story. In this day and age, fact-checking everything is virtually always required to some degree. I find it incredibly ironic that you would say that and hold up FOX news as a source.
Just because you do not like a different opinion you don’t have to go all Democrat or CNN on me. We get enough of that from our CBC. I am not a Trump fan, I was just pointing out that you don’t see any of it on the mainstream news. You only ever hear one side. That is not news it’s propaganda. Which was my point. News is about facts and that includes both sides of the facts, not just the side your cheering for. The politicization of everything is what created this war in the first place. Which again was my point. Thanks for solidifying it with your politicized reply.
News IS about facts. Virtually everything in your post has been disproven; especially that nonsense about Biden and Ukraine. What you actually posted was propaganda.
This war was created solely but Putin's questionable belief that Ukraine should be part of Russia, and he decided to make that happen. It will cost him his job, and quite possibly his life.
It’s long but super interesting. Like I say it’s always nice to have a different perspective on everything. The more you know the better you can analyze things and come to your own conclusions. It’s better than having the news tell you what your conclusion should be.
I am NOT watching a YouTube video as source material. YouTube is, at best, a source of opinions. More often than not, it's misinformation.
To suggest that what is happening now is the west's fault ignores who started the invasion. There has already been much discussion in these threads about Russia's concerns. Those are also opinions. But the one undeniable fact is that Russia invaded a sovereign nation in an unprovoked attack.....the same thing Hitler did in 1939, and 1941. Whether it could have been avoided....well, we're back to opinions.
What news? You can not call news media that is paid millions of bail out money to keep them alive, news. It is called Government sponsored propaganda or state funded news. Spare me please! News? now that is worthy of a grand chuckle.
Who is paying the media millions? No one is paying the TV media a cent in Canada. Print media did get government support. What you haven't addressed is that there are no reputable sources to support your original post.
Matt - Another great article. If it's OK I'm posting a Substack link to Michael Shellenberger's article about Germany's (+ Europe's) high dependency on Russia's oil&gas and how Russian anticipated this by building more nuclear power plants for their own use to export more oil&gas.
Clearly a good summary of the changes in Europe. Ya its scary if you know history but understandable and hopefully Canada will note this and do the same.
I keep coming back to the flaw in an autocratic system when the autocrat goes completely crackers destroying everything in sight and everyone is left, given the available roles in the autocratic system, to gawk slack jawed as mere helpless spectators.
Democracies for all their flaws, which we discuss interminably, have the built-in capacity to refresh and renew even if the process can appear overly partisan and messy.
It remains unclear how the autocrat and his circle can be 'reassigned' to other duties and change the dangerous course the autocrat has set without wholesale revolution in the streets.
We just had our mini-revolt in Ottawa, and while it remains to be seen what comes of it, the various points of significant opposition remain largely focused on the next election cycle not a military adventure endangering everyone around them.
I believe, as Canadians, we only have vague knowledge of the transfer of German land after WW2. The connection you make between these events and later geopolitical developments suggests we should be more aware!
I wonder when the Trudeau government will announce its decision to double the defence budget, buy new submarines, new fighters and credible anti-aircraft defence units for the army? You know, as a response to the inspiration offered by Germany's decisions...
Oh, and what about a real foreign policy (as opposed to "do whatever self-interested big business firms want us to do in order to help them sell stuff abroad")?
I suppose that will depend on when the Official Opposition starts to question its "conservatism" (Conservatives aren't supposed to rally around law breakers) and gets serious about their own role as c-o-n-s-t-r-u-c-t-i-v-e critics of government policy.
Or maybe the NDP and the BQ will suddenly come to see that in the world as it is (as opposed to the one they fantasize about), having a capable military and a credible diplomatic policy would actually take us closer to greater sovereignty, security and credibility.
I find it hard to believe that the Russians didn't know what sanctions are. That leaves either: 1) Putin is past his BB date, 2) the alternative to not invading Ukraine was worse, or 3) the big game of replacing U.S. dominance has begun.
Oops. #2 should have been "the alternative of not invading"
U.S. & friends have been trying to isolate Russia from the rest of Europe for economical, geopolitical and arms-dealing reasons, and Russia may have decided that if isolation is inevitable, then it's better to be isolated with Ukraine than without it.
The thing that continues to shock me is what a lose-lose this appears to be for Russia. This is their Mike Tyson/Buster Douglas moment. For those who don't follow boxing, Tyson was a feared heavyweight who had a devistating knock out punch. People fighting him were on the defense, trying not to immediately get knocked out. He fought Buster Douglas as a 'get ready' fight; Douglas, who wasn't ranked very high and had little to lose, went toe-to-toe with Tyson and knocked him out. Tyson went on to win again, but was never quite regarded the same way afterwards -- he wasn't unbeatable.
Russia is still a dangerous country. But, man -- Putin was supposed to be a 4D chessmaster at strategy. How could he play his hand so badly? One wonders if one of the lessons China's Xi will take is how to be an autocratic leader yet continue to get good, rational advice from your team. Because this looks like nobody was willing to tell Putin that this was a terrible idea -- and that's always a huge risk for autocrats.
Every building he knocks down in Ukraine, he's going to have to pay to rebuild.....and his economy is all but gone. I wonder how long it will be until other Russians decide this "adventure" has run its course? I think we may all be surprised by how short that time period is.
If there's no ceasefire by close of business Sunday, I foresee rotating general strikes in Russia.
One can hope.
Have to agree with you there, Tony F. I was firmly convinced that Putin didn't intend to invade Ukraine, and was just messing with the West's collective mind. Look how wrong you can be.
Even if Russia wins this terrible war, they'll have one heck of a time trying to occupy Ukraine. I just don't see the upside for them, which is why this invasion is so baffling. There's just no rational explanation for this.
Which is what most observers have been saying these past few days: Putin has gone bonkers.
Good column, and a great primer for the millions who do not know this history. My wife and I visited (unified) Germany in October of 1998, not quite a decade after the fall of the wall. We stayed for an evening with older family friends near Munich and visited with friends in Heidelberg. As part of former West Germany, the experience was largely equivalent to our own experience in Canada - modern, open, free, progressive. Travelling by train around the country and crossing into (former) East Germany was like going through a time warp. Modern farms and related equipment were instantly replaced with decrepitude - 40 year old trucks and tractors, ramshackle farm buildings, and generally terrible crops compared to the (former) western crops we had observed out the train windows. Arriving in Berlin was the largest shock. The wall still existed in some places, and the debate at the time among Berliners was if it should be eradicated completely, or portions of it retained as a warning to future generations. Arriving at Potsdamer Platz south of the Brandenburg Gates and the Reichstag was jarring, as money from the west was pouring into the area and bringing it into modernity. Individual former West Berliners were of mixed feelings toward their relatively new former East German compatriots. Some said they needed time, others noted they were lazy and entitled after living for decades under communism. What they all shared, as you point out, was the shame of their Nazi and militaristic past. 'Never again' was a universal sentiment at the time. All Germans we encountered during that trip would be considered pacifists. The friendships we've maintained since 1998 reaffirmed that shame-fueled pacifism as a core element of the German national character. I share your astonishment at the sudden German initiative to rearm themselves. I'm not against it, just shocked with the instantaneous sea change in the German national character and leadership.
This is so interesting. We had a exchange student in 1999 from the formerly East Berlin. When he received a care package from home, it was filled with loose pasta instead of styrofoam. I thought it was a green alternative and started to sweep it into the green bin when he exclaimed - we must save this! Turns out pasta had been a rare commodity in East Berlin so he could not imagine heaving it. His Dad was in astrophysics & his Mom was a Doctor -so they were well off.
I visited Germany May of 2000. Your post bring backs memories... sections of the Wall, Checkpoint Charlie. And at the time part East Berlin close to the Wall had been transformed into a cool night club area; the streets were very clean but it seemed they were trying to preserve the desolate character.... grey buildings, plain streetscapes, almost no colour. Was strange; I thought this won't last, novel but almost depressing.
(Of course once inside the bars was a fun atmosphere, if still minimalist decor.)
I still have the conference swag from the 2000 "National Defense Industrial Association" in Vancouver, where James F. O'Bryon at the Pentagon's "Live Fire Testing" office asked me to give the after-dinner speech. (I'd written a celebrated article on Risk Management and The Titanic that went viral during the movie's year in 1997.)
It was the first time they'd done a conference on "foreign soil", Vancouver being a 10-minute drive over the border, (they must have felt courageous), and the theme was foreign sales. Understand, while the room was about 20% uniforms, it was the defense salesmen at the conference, talking sales. I remember the one European speech, where the 3-star said "If you think it's hard selling your stuff to 'Fortress Europe', try being a European selling to "Fortress America". The room went silent, as everybody contemplated the almost-heretical notion of an American tax dollar being spent on European arms.
Modern military do not exist to win wars, I mean, obviously: they can't beat goatherds in 20 years of trying. They can *destroy* entire nations, in an afternoon, but that isn't war; the purpose of war is to control, and profit, not erase. The modern military exists to sell arms to frightened people. The 2000 NDIA conference was there to lament that expenditures had stopped rising, causing that "hollowing out" of the forces, because, Clinton dropped defense spending by 2% over 8 years.
Our defense industry is deeply corrupt and massively inefficient. When Chuck Spinney and Pierre Frey made themselves pariahs in the 1980s with their $400 hammer and $600 toilet-seat examples, they were trying to highlight that every single military component had similar levels of overcharge. The $100M fighter would cost an efficient industry about $8M to build. This doesn't just lead to overcharges, but to underperformance: the warriors can't trust the equipment.
Russia can't win a war, either, because their defense industry is the most corrupt in their country. Think about THAT for a moment. Even more corrupt than ours. They're bogged down because their stuff keeps breaking, I'll bet.
The whole "war" farce is a game, like boxing compared to actual martial arts: only certain blows and holds are allowed. NO NUKES! If nobody's using nukes, it's not an actual war, just a pantomime. Russia could "win" tomorrow, by dropping a little 1-kilotonne anywhere and televising the results, threatening Kiev with mass casualties. (Nobody in history was more brave and stoic than the Japanese.) If they had the balls to take the risk, and they don't. I doubt the generals would accept the order.
So, what's the plan, NATO? You going to arm up and fight pretend wars, WW2-types, with Russia, without nukes, like a boxing match with no blows below the belt? No. Nobody's going to do that. They're celebrating not because anybody imagines Germany joining the Avengers, but because they're a huge new market.
The game is to frighten people, sell them "arms that don't work for enemies that don't exist" (Ivan Selin, 1960s), and never fight actually, *really*, fight, because that would be the end of the world.
One can imagine an arms industry to provide for the only wars that can still be fought. We still have desperate fights, by non-nuclear powers, insurgent against dominating nuclear powers, that are allowed to oppress them - because nobody can oppose a nuclear power.
America couldn't build those weapons, the last such wars were against such insurgents, or they'd have awesome weapons to slip in to Ukraine. The Ukrainians now find themselves pathetically making Molotovs. Those rockets we're sending are just the thing that still can be useful: something you can hand to anybody, and that anybody can blow up a $5M tank that your nuclear opponent paid $50M for. It's a big upgrade from Baghdad's old-shells and garage-door-opener IEDs...and those worked very well. We need to make cheap, lightweight, EZ-use, fire-and-forget weapons for civilians, and be ready to distribute them to civilians that are being oppressed. That's modern war. Those are the only wars of my whole lifetime; the last conventional one between armies and artillery and armor, was Korea.
But ... that strategy is too cheap, for the arms industry. I'm not sure what scenario the fabulists will conjure, where Germany would use an F35 (if they can get one to stay in the air), but I know the salesmen are polishing up their Guccis.
The list price for a new Boeing 737 is $90-100 million. The airplane is bigger in size than a modern fighter aircraft, but far less complex. When you start talking about an efficient industry building a fighter aircraft for $8 million, it tells me you don't have a clue of what you're talking about.
I'm speaking of the Blitzfighter, propounded by Col. James Burton - the predecessor of my aquaintance Jim O'Bryon; Burton founded the "Live Fire Testing" office, and that founding cost him his career, the notion of *testing* equipment being so heretical.
The Blitzfighter was a replacement for the A10 Warthog, which clocked in at about $45M in today's money. The F16, price varies upwards from $16M, was designed by the same bunch: Pierre Sprey, John Boyd, Harry Hillaker. It was the first jet to cost less and weigh less than its predecessor (F15), and the last; the Pentagon loathed it for the sin of cheapness.
Your Boeing comparison is meaningless because a fighter doesn't have to carry 200 people or weigh 50 tonnes. A modern fighter does not need almost any electronics; 80% of kills are done by eyeball in close air support. The A10 and the never-to-see-daylight Blitzfighter, which could have landed on dirt airstrips and followed the flow of land battle, do close air support, which the Air Force hates, it makes them into servants of some lieutenant on the ground. They cancelled the A10, have no meaningful close air-support machine in future, save for the near-useless F35. But the American Army are afraid and furious, they love the A10 protecting the troops.
(Oh, as for the F35 & F22 job of fighting MIGs at 30,000 feet: hasn't been a dogfight in 50 years; all possible combatants have nukes, and no such scenario is seriously imagined.)
Canada's best move with air is to BUY a bunch of old A10s from the Americans and keep them running. That would let their Air Force get rid of the hated machine, but let their Army still have it for protection, just call Canada, as long as we go along with some illegal war against insurgents. It would resolve one of their biggest interservice fights. And I'm sure their Air Force would let them go for $8M; and their Army would pay us another $8M to keep them flying.
Your mention of Boeing raises a funny point, though: the same article noted that when Boeing was taken over, the rigid separation between "military" and "civilian" aircraft development was degraded, and the military-side failures started to happen in civilian designs: the loss of hundreds of lives due to bad design of the 737MAX are routine in military production, as with the deadly Osprey helicopter. The book is Andrew Cockburn's "The Spoils of War", and the best chapter was run in Harpers:
https://harpers.org/archive/2019/06/the-pentagon-syndrome/
...and Burton's "The Pentagon Wars" is back in print, still relevant after 30 years.
So, you're citing a 50 year old analysis that was flawed at the time and has been proven repeatedly incorrect since. Those simple/low cost/high numbers platforms are not survivable and not capable of doing the mission. The A-10 fleet got shot to hell in Desert Storm - the concept of low altitude close air support turned out to be near-suicidal against a military equipped with AAA systems. The USAF already knew that, of course - they'd abandoned low level attack after huge losses for the same reason in Vietnam. What's worked better is "tank plinking" with smart munitions from medium altitude. The troops on the ground love the A-10 because it seems intimidating, but that aircraft just can't survive against enemy fighters and its big cannon requires close engagement that's too exposed to AAA.
Then there's the F-16: the design rapidly got more complex to make it survivable and add useable capability (turns out that radar-guided BVR missiles are kind of essential, contra the fighter mafia), and the aircraft itself has turned into a low-end tactical attack aircraft. It doesn't have the range or payload to do much, and ended up being something of an afterthought in the Gulf War, Afghanistan, and Iraq. Instead, it was the heavy deep strike aircraft like the F-111 and F-15E that turned out to be useful.
As far as comparisons between fighters and commercial passenger aircraft, it's pretty obvious you don't have any background in engineering. Airliners are big, but their systems aren't that complicated. The cost of an aircraft scales more with the complexity of the system than the physical size. The more compact that system has to be, the more expensive it gets as well.
No, it can't survive enemy fighters. The enemy fighters can't survive the ground based missiles, though, not any more. But do provide us with the geopolitical scenario where we'd face fighters that can kill A10s, but the owners don't have nukes.
All planes were tarted up with electronic crap over the decades; it made money.
The 50-year-old analysis is not inappropriate, since the still-not-in-service F35 was based on the same material, design started in 1985. Or you could read this 2015 article:
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/a-10s-success-fighting-islamic-state-challenges-plans-to-scrap-it
...on how the successes of the A10 against IS challenged, again, the plans to scrap it.
But, hey, let's settle this like men, with those "fighters" that fight each other. You take a billion dollars worth of F35s. I'll take a billion dollars of F16s. How do you like your odds?
Hmm - exercises at Red Flag established that such a bet would be easy money for me. This isn’t surprising given that you can’t even get basic facts correct. The F-35 has been in service for 6 years. Development started with the DARPA-based JAST project in 1996. What you call “electronic crap” are the sensors needed to get inside an enemy’s Observe-Orient-Decide-Act loop, and that sort of advantage is why air-to-air engagements over the past 30 years have gone to the side equipped with that tech.
Ah! The OODA loop - invented by John Boyd for his "Patterns of Force" lectures that won over Dick Cheney. Actually just four years since combat mission #1:
https://news.yahoo.com/us-f-35-fighters-fly-first-ever-combat-164551915.html ... they missed the wars.
From the book I'm recommending: "The Marines sent just six of them on their first deployment to the Middle East, and over several months managed to fly, on average, just one sortie per plane every three days."
Red Flag is a highly-controlled environment. War is not. You can't beat a troop of boy scouts if you can't get the plane in the air.
All US tests are highly-controlled environments. That's what "The Pentagon Wars" was about, they hate to test and ruin a good program with facts. A typical American test was explained by Malcolm Gladwell in "Blink" as "Paul van Riper's Big Victory", where a Marine general wiped out a US fleet in the "Millenium Challenge" wargame, with a few zodiacs and shoulder-launched weapons. So they re-started the game with new rules so that the US could win.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennium_Challenge_2002
...The Millenium Challenge is now lionized for predicting the war in Iraq..save the part about the US couldn't re-start it with new rules forcing their opponents to lose.
So, spare me the Red Flag outcome; I'm unable to trust any test conceived by the USAF...not after they spent two decades devising "tests" to prove that an F15 could beat an F16, which it mostly could not.
Well, the biggest hole in that argument is the fact that the A10 is not a fighter, its role is to attack targets on the ground and requires friendly air superiority to operate effectively.
Well, even people are called "fighters", so I think a plane can be, if it shoots them. Yes, the military terminology is fighters, bombers, close-air-support, etc. but I simply dismiss the whole "fighter" class of aircraft from consideration; they only exist to fight each other; even "Top Gun" had to come up with a ludicrous circumstance so two could face off...and that was a movie 35 years ago. Nobody should ever buy another.
"Friendly air superiority" is vastly more cheaply provided by ground-based missiles, for a few decades now. You may have noticed the lack of Russian airpower this last week, whereas Iraq had no power plants left after weeks of aerial bombardment in 2003.
Thanks for your comments, sir. Very interesting to a civilian observer such as, well, me.
I got interested in the topic after giving the speech in 2000, and listening, around the conference, to some of the most-tortured arguments for military spending, where you had to believe in very unlikely scenarios ("rogue state" with one nuclear missile, which it promptly launches, suicidally...only remaining scenario for a "Star Wars" success by then - $9B/year on it; Obama lowered it to $8B/year, so $170B spent since that conversation).
So I got to reading. Not books by peaceniks, what do they know. Books from inside the military establishment, where they are very tired of dying because the overpriced equipment also fails a lot.
"The Pentagon Wars" is not just a fantastic book from deep inside the weapons-procurement establishment, but a movie. With Kelsey Grammar and Carey Elwes, because the only way to make a movie about that very serious non-fiction book was as a comedy. No, really. I did this blog post on it, where you can also find out about the Andrew Cockburn book...and the bizarre fact about the Cockburn family.
http://brander.ca/blog/military_killed_the_grandparents.html
The flaw in the yearning for a peaceful, law-based international system is not that it isn't possible, it's just that it's only possible within a group of similarly-minded liberal democratic states. The authoritarian states don't hold the same values, and are pleased to engage with liberal democracies and play by their rules to the extent that it benefits them. Military spending is indeed money that could be better spent elsewhere, but it's not the fault of the democracies - it's the fault of the authoritarians.
Great piece Matt. I also noticed how well received Germany’s policy changes were amongst allies and the European community. I can’t help but think it is time. The “delight” you speak of and the positive reinforcement the Germans are receiving on this decision is a signal that Germany’s neighbours trust again. Even France seems to be ok with it - unheard of! It is well earned and in these uncertain times, that is a good thing.
The Berlin Wall fell; 9/11 occurred - I feel as if I am living through the third historic realignment of our times. A thoughtful article prompts thoughtful reader reaction.- I appreciate the shared perspectives.
Yes, although I could have done without the fighter jet debate.
The irony is thick. Putin's attack on Ukraine has, in eight days, reversed the damage to unity of NATO and other democracies that the former US President took four years to inflict.
Awesome Matt! Glad that you did that history lesson on Germany in the summer. We have to really focus now that plastic drinking straws and grocery bags aren't the biggest existential threat to our existence.
Thank you for the history lesson.
I was reading about the atrocities that were committed in Ukraine during the Second World War and the slaughter of many Jewish people. The Germans and Russian were united as one against all other nations. That was until the Germans betrayed Russia over the want of Ukraine and its fertile land. The Germans began to invade Russia which turned them into great enemies. We all know how that story ended with Russia taking part of Germany as the victor. The Canadian's, British, and American's, returned all Russian's who had found refuge in Germany during the Revolution where Stalin's evil was placed upon his own people. By returning all those who were in Germany they had sentenced them to death for being traitors and most were killed or thrown in the gulag for abandoning Russia. That was a real eye opener for me.
When the war had ended many of the Nazi's and their sympathizers remained in Ukraine and through them many new groups of Nazi fascist train and have become part of the militia in the Ukraine. They aided in the overthrow of the last leader which later, Velinsky was elected to lead Ukraine. Velinsky wanted Ukraine to become part of NATO to which Putin was greatly opposed. We all know Biden was deeply invested in Ukraine and Hunter was working for one of the oil companies. With all of the actions and interference from other countries within NATO that have a distaste for Russia, they basically egged Putin to invade and then seemed surprised when he did. Biden's State of the Union Address was nothing short of inflaming and encouraging more of the same.
From Hilary Clinton who was angry at Wiki Leaks and the information released to the American people sharing the lies that were told on the Iraq war, she thought Trump was involved. He wasn't, but in an attempt to discredit Trump, she with the help of others, invented the Russian and Trump collusion that supposedly won him the election. Again all lies to discredit Trump and their enemy Russia, as the Durham Report plainly stated its findings. It was Hilary who broke all laws to spy on Trumps campaign by lying to the FBI about the collusion. So when people hear one story from the mainstream media with no counter to it, I suggest they be cautious and look to see if there is another side as well. I am not on either side be it Russia or Ukraine, its the people who are harmed by the fighting that I care about. That seems to get forgotten in the entire mess because everything is so polarized and politically charged in todays world. Truth is often difficult to discern and the mainstream media has not aided in any of it. Repeating the same one sided story and not allowing all the facts to come out. It always leaves me wondering what is the truth and what is politically motivated propaganda. Its very difficult to tell as its all paid for and pushed by the same people.
One of the finest pieces of pure imaginary fiction I've read in months. Tucker Carlson would be proud to hear his stories retold. "Truth is often difficult to discern". That is crystal clear.
https://youtu.be/MY3JsqVR_04
Yes, it most surely is hard to discern misinformation from truth. Was it not CBC that reported that the Truckers Convoy was another collusion with the Russians. I mean you really can’t make that stuff up, right? Lol
Not that I ever heard and I followed it closely. With white supremacist's absolutely. having found a link, which the CBC put out a clarification on, the reporter asked the Minister questions about whether the Russians might be involved. Isn't it a reporter's job to ask questions?
There was zero white supremacy in the truckers convoy. Again because you only heard one side of the story. It’s why I say it’s propaganda not news.
Explain organiser Pat King
Please do as I have not been introduced to him, and apparently you know everything about him so please indulge me.
You only heard that there were no WSs. That doesn't mean there were none. And people who can point out to you the other side of the story, often with examples of WS blathering you don't believe. That weird pounce you make about CBC simply asking a question implies that you have already made your mind up.
I always thought the "collusion" notion was silly, as no spy would trust him with a secret. But all the western intelligence agencies, not just the CIA and FBI, concluded that Russia, as a state-sponsored project, sought to affect the outcome of the 2016 election, in Trump's favour. There was no collusion because they didn't need his permission, much less help.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_interference_in_the_2016_United_States_elections
My own take was that Russia was not so much for Trump as against Hillary, whom Putin loathed. You could have run a mailbox against Hillary, and it would have gained similar Russian "support".
I think, ironically, that Comey may have delivered the worst shot when he brought up the nonsense about her emails 3 days before the election. we'll agree to disagree about whether there was collusion. The Senate Intelligence Committee said it was very likely.
And who was in the senate intelligence Committee? The point I was making is you do not hear the other side of the story. You only ever hear one on the news. Which is my point. It’s no longer news because they pick the winner and the loser for you, without you even having to look into it.
The Senate Intelligence Committee was actually GOP controlled at the time. As for putting up a YouTube video from FOX News, with all due respect, is little more than Trump's version of Joe Goebbels propaganda network. It has never held up to fact-checking but is notorious for not reporting anything about the January 6th investigation. Tucker Carlson went so far as to use hyperbole as a defence in a lawsuit. FOX's lawyers stated "'general tenor' of the show should then inform a viewer that [Carlson] is not 'stating actual facts about the topics he discusses and is instead engaging in 'exaggeration' and 'non-literal commentary.' So I didn't watch it as they aren't a source of anything worthwhile.
I completely disagree that the news only presents one side of a story. In this day and age, fact-checking everything is virtually always required to some degree. I find it incredibly ironic that you would say that and hold up FOX news as a source.
https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/sites/default/files/documents/report_volume5.pdf
https://www.npr.org/2020/09/29/917747123/you-literally-cant-believe-the-facts-tucker-carlson-tells-you-so-say-fox-s-lawye
https://www.npr.org/2020/08/18/903512647/senate-report-former-trump-aide-paul-manafort-shared-campaign-info-with-russia
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2020/09/judge-rules-fox-news-tucker-carlson-not-source-of-news-defamation-suit-mcdougal-trump.html
Putin thrived under Trump. If Trump was still president, the global response would be a fraction of what is has been; largely because of Biden.
https://youtu.be/b5RAuKeniLU
I'm sorry, there was valuable prostate information too.
Fox—Bad entertainment.
Just because you do not like a different opinion you don’t have to go all Democrat or CNN on me. We get enough of that from our CBC. I am not a Trump fan, I was just pointing out that you don’t see any of it on the mainstream news. You only ever hear one side. That is not news it’s propaganda. Which was my point. News is about facts and that includes both sides of the facts, not just the side your cheering for. The politicization of everything is what created this war in the first place. Which again was my point. Thanks for solidifying it with your politicized reply.
News IS about facts. Virtually everything in your post has been disproven; especially that nonsense about Biden and Ukraine. What you actually posted was propaganda.
This war was created solely but Putin's questionable belief that Ukraine should be part of Russia, and he decided to make that happen. It will cost him his job, and quite possibly his life.
https://youtu.be/JrMiSQAGOS4
It was a fabulous lecture. It might be the roadmap to the endgame. But it doesn't matter much now with Ukraine being laid waste.
Agree with that one hundred percent. It’s devastating.
It’s long but super interesting. Like I say it’s always nice to have a different perspective on everything. The more you know the better you can analyze things and come to your own conclusions. It’s better than having the news tell you what your conclusion should be.
I am NOT watching a YouTube video as source material. YouTube is, at best, a source of opinions. More often than not, it's misinformation.
To suggest that what is happening now is the west's fault ignores who started the invasion. There has already been much discussion in these threads about Russia's concerns. Those are also opinions. But the one undeniable fact is that Russia invaded a sovereign nation in an unprovoked attack.....the same thing Hitler did in 1939, and 1941. Whether it could have been avoided....well, we're back to opinions.
Your being fooled, not me.
What news? You can not call news media that is paid millions of bail out money to keep them alive, news. It is called Government sponsored propaganda or state funded news. Spare me please! News? now that is worthy of a grand chuckle.
Who is paying the media millions? No one is paying the TV media a cent in Canada. Print media did get government support. What you haven't addressed is that there are no reputable sources to support your original post.
https://www.canadaland.com/canadian-media-liberals-trudeau-government-funding-covid-cbc-erin-otoole/
Or we can say: “Never argue with an idiot. They will drag you down to their level and beat you with experience.” —Mark Twain
I could not agree more. https://youtu.be/JrMiSQAGOS4
Wow your brilliant. https://youtu.be/JrMiSQAGOS4
Matt - Another great article. If it's OK I'm posting a Substack link to Michael Shellenberger's article about Germany's (+ Europe's) high dependency on Russia's oil&gas and how Russian anticipated this by building more nuclear power plants for their own use to export more oil&gas.
https://bariweiss.substack.com/p/the-wests-green-delusions-empowered?s=r
Clearly a good summary of the changes in Europe. Ya its scary if you know history but understandable and hopefully Canada will note this and do the same.
I keep coming back to the flaw in an autocratic system when the autocrat goes completely crackers destroying everything in sight and everyone is left, given the available roles in the autocratic system, to gawk slack jawed as mere helpless spectators.
Democracies for all their flaws, which we discuss interminably, have the built-in capacity to refresh and renew even if the process can appear overly partisan and messy.
It remains unclear how the autocrat and his circle can be 'reassigned' to other duties and change the dangerous course the autocrat has set without wholesale revolution in the streets.
We just had our mini-revolt in Ottawa, and while it remains to be seen what comes of it, the various points of significant opposition remain largely focused on the next election cycle not a military adventure endangering everyone around them.
I believe, as Canadians, we only have vague knowledge of the transfer of German land after WW2. The connection you make between these events and later geopolitical developments suggests we should be more aware!
I wonder when the Trudeau government will announce its decision to double the defence budget, buy new submarines, new fighters and credible anti-aircraft defence units for the army? You know, as a response to the inspiration offered by Germany's decisions...
Oh, and what about a real foreign policy (as opposed to "do whatever self-interested big business firms want us to do in order to help them sell stuff abroad")?
I suppose that will depend on when the Official Opposition starts to question its "conservatism" (Conservatives aren't supposed to rally around law breakers) and gets serious about their own role as c-o-n-s-t-r-u-c-t-i-v-e critics of government policy.
Or maybe the NDP and the BQ will suddenly come to see that in the world as it is (as opposed to the one they fantasize about), having a capable military and a credible diplomatic policy would actually take us closer to greater sovereignty, security and credibility.
There I go, day dreaming again.
I find it hard to believe that the Russians didn't know what sanctions are. That leaves either: 1) Putin is past his BB date, 2) the alternative to not invading Ukraine was worse, or 3) the big game of replacing U.S. dominance has begun.
1 and 3 seem reasonable, in a most unreasonable situation.
Oops. #2 should have been "the alternative of not invading"
U.S. & friends have been trying to isolate Russia from the rest of Europe for economical, geopolitical and arms-dealing reasons, and Russia may have decided that if isolation is inevitable, then it's better to be isolated with Ukraine than without it.