Meanwhile NATO is just looking for a nice small curb-stomp war they can fight, to prove their military isn't a paper tiger like Russia's proved to be.
Russia's military "proved to be" a paper tiger (okay) against NATO weapons and strategy, but NATO needs to prove themselves. Do people read the shit they write?
Ugh. My least favourite type of smug liberal. The "We're just itching for the opportunity to murder millions so don't give us that excuse (but we're still morally superior to you despite that.)" kind of guy.
I know we say this all the time, but these fuckers are so goddamn smug, when they literally contribute nothing to global politics. Peak "my dad will beat up your dad" energy even though this guy is probably around 35. It's like they practice being as insufferable as fucking possible.
Watch these guys any time they have to drive through an inner city at night or even the day. They're the type to take one look at a black guy walking down the straight and immediately begin hyperventilating.
Babe, its time for your 4pm regime-change planning session. Get another OAS conference call together so we can talk about overthrowing the Venezuelan government again.
Yes, honey.
prove their military isn't a paper tiger like Russia's proved to be
Russia is a paper tiger and we're curb stomping them but also NATO is desperate to curb stomp someone to show they're not a a paper tiger (like Russia, who we're curb stomping)
I know they weren't even right about the location of the colony, but you can't expect liberals to investigate stuff or look at a map when they're too busy doing colonial apologism.
The first is an independent state since 1966 and a former British colony inhabited by a mix of Indian (indeed Hinduism is the plurality religion), black and native people situated to the west of Suriname and bordering Brazil and Venezuela. It has had a nominally socialist government since even before independence, though I do admittedly not know much about the country's politics.
French Guiana is NOT independent and is part of France. The population is majority black, with a large presence of white Europeans (compared to less than 1% in Guyana) and is largely important for the French/ESA space program. It borders Brazil and Suriname.
The US has given its entire stockpiles of land war weapons to Ukraine. And is giving its entire stockpile of air war weapons to Israel.
The US hasn't given Ukraine or Israel anything but ageing platforms that were ultimately up for retiring in any significant numbers, and most of the aid money "given" to Ukraine has been spend in the US modernising production facilities and working on replacements for the gear that was sent.
What they have given away was never going to see any use in a conflict outside of WWIII. While it would be nice to think they couldn't do anything about Venezuela, they still have thousands of tanks, artillery pieces, fighter aircraft and bombers.
This is not true. I've seen actual US special forces units openly complain about weapons they need to be fully combat effective having been taken literally from their units to be sent to ukraine. It was a popular brand of complaint that was going around early on. Things like the mountain of Javelins that were sent weren't "aging platforms" they were tools actively being used. The conventional artillery ammunition stockpiles in particular would be used in any war that involves ground operations, they used them in iraq, afganistan and they'd use them in any new wars. And they dipped into artillery-based cluster munitions stockpiles because they simply ran out of everything else in my opinion.
"more than 2,000,000 155mm artillery rounds". is serious shit, it's the entire fucking stockpile. You are right in assessing "this wouldn't be used outside of a ww3 scenario" but the point is that the US doesn't want to get into combat without having it there as a backup, as a contingency. It usually operates on the knowledge they have infinite resources it can dip into and not having the stockpiles scares them. US Generals don't want to do shit without knowing they have such resources if things go wrong.
In Israel on the other hand we so far know of more than 5,400 MK84 bombs, 5,000 MK82 bombs, about 1,000 GBU-39 small-diameter bombs, and around 3,000 joint direct attack munitions (JDAM) that convert unguided bombs into precision-guided munitions. We don't know the full extent of things being sent though because there's zero transparency for what is being sent to Israel compared to Ukraine because they requested secrecy for it, not even congress knows.
Yeah cool, but stockpiles are built over years not weeks. Manufacturing happens at a set rate and scaling that manufacturing for sudden replacement is not a small task. US stockpiles won't be back where they were pre-Ukraine for another 5 years and that's assuming they're gonna stop.
Money doesn't make the bombs, labourers in the factories do, and those factories operate at a maximum output based on what they needed before Ukraine happened. Until you expand them their output is limited by that (x bombs per day). And expansion takes time on top of the actual manufacturing itself post-expansion taking yet more time.
In short throwing money at it is only the start of a multi-year process of solving their stockpile problem.
Unrelated tangent: there's a concept in Japanese called "空気を読む" (Kuuki wo yomu) which literally translates as "read the air" but basically means "read the room". I have seen multiple white dudes go on long angry rants on separate occasions about how it's "unfair" that the Japanese are being "so indirect" and "won't just say what they mean". Real bruh shit.
China has a bigger presence than they think. This idiot doesn't know shit about South America. Guyana isn't Belize. It hasn't been a Commonwealth nation for while. Not that they would give enough of a shit to send troops across the Atlantic. And why would France get involved? They couldn't even handle Niger and Mali.
Best case scenario is that you get a repeat of Vietnam with soldiers being murdered in guerrilla warfare right before suffering from Malaria and climate change-induced heat strokes.
Edit: So apparently Guyana IS a Commonwealth nation while choosing to no longer have the Queen remain as head of state.
So this post is massively smug about it... but isn't there a bit of accuracy to it, too? Like, what's to stop the US from ratcheting up the tension so that they have something to distract from Israel and the stagnant Ukrainian front?
I’m sure it could fairly easily be stretched to 6 layered proxie wars and by the time you get to number 7 probably at least one of the previous ones would be wrapping up.
You just gotta go in with that old can do Kissinger attitude!
I figure that ratcheting up tension still requires resources that are being steadily depleted by both ukraine and israel. Consider the various stories about the difficulty of supplying aide to both nations at once, and consider how it would be even harder to have a third straw in the milkshake, so to speak.
It's not impossible the US could do something though, I just think they're genuinely stretched a bit thin right now.
Consider the various stories about the difficulty of supplying aide to both nations at once
True, but also do we know how accurate those stories are? I think it could just be the US is tired of Ukraine and all the whining about not having enough bombs left is just an excuse to calm the Libs down about us not wanting to foot the bill anymore.
Others have said munitions shortages, and while that would be a consideration in a long war the US could definitely degrade Venezuela using existing active stocks. The real problem is more serious.
The US has 9 active carrier strike groups, Due to maintenance, logistics and rotation issues (as well as keeping a home fleet for each ocean), this means it can have 3 carrier groups ready for active operations at any time.
1 has to be in the Pacific for obvious Geopolitical reasons. 2 are chilling off Israel/ The Black Sea, They in theory could get one from Japan or San Diego, but the only real one available is CVN71, which is undergoing sea trials for the F35 and isn't staffed or stocked for deployment. They're fucked unless they want to abandon the gulf (and let Yemen hoist the pirate flag on Israeli shipping.) or Abandon the Mediterranean (and let the Russian Pacific or Baltic fleets reinforce the Black Sea as soon as they can pay off Turkey)
They got nothing unless they have international support either for intervention, or for taking over a role supporting Israel, which is politically untenable.
The real question is if the French (who own the slice next door) lack chill. Bet they've been waiting to try out their shiny pocket carrier.
Bet they’ve been waiting to try out their shiny pocket carrier.
I doubt they will do anything, there's not much anything for them in it, they have unrest at home and they partially stripped their regular army weapons to send them to Ukraine. They didn't do anything against Niger which is much more important to them, so it's even less likely they will move even the Navy to the other side of Atlantic.
what's to stop the US from ratcheting up the tension so that they have something to distract from Israel and the stagnant Ukrainian front?
They gave their entire land war stockpile to Ukraine and are in the process of giving their entire air war stockpile to Israel. What's stopping them is a very real limitation on resources.
I'm no military expert but doesn't the US still have the navy and it's tons of planes and missiles? Considering Venezuela isn't too far of a sail away I'd be concerned about that.
i will never not be mortified by these NAFO people's obsession with war. to them, war is a sports game that you can watch from afar and watch your team win against the team you don't like. they make war sound so trivial or harmless. it's just like matches in the world cup or something for them. it's really disgusting!