Nothing shows how bought out the Republicans are to Russia more than the statement on how they didn’t want to send weapons to perpetuate war. That’s all these assholes want to ever do. The one time they don’t and it’s for daddy Putin. Half the issues with populism in the US seem to stem from the level of destructive populism Russia enjoys.
This is how proxy wars go. The Republicans aren’t bought out by Russia. The USA uses proxies for specific strategic goals. When the goal is achieved or becomes untenable, they cut off the proxy. That’s just how it goes.
To avoid showing voters the realpolitik they need some plausible reasons for cutting off the proxy. Usually it’s a combination of fiscal responsibility noise and isolationist noise. This is no different.
The USA was provoking Russia. Russia got provoked. The USA activated some sleeper cells, those cells got neutralized. The USA wanted to see Russian capabilities, they got what they could, including intel on hypersonic missile performance, but I don’t know if they got what they wanted.
And then multiple fronts got opened up against the West (Niger, Palestine, etc) and threat escalations emerged in unexpected locations (Iranian missiles im Venezuela). And it’s become clear the West can’t produce the war machine it needs for the conflicts that are coming. So, it’s time to cut off the proxy. Russia doesn’t have the means to occupy Ukraine. The USA is not worried about Russian expansion, so there’s no more reason to be there, except of course the rhetorical reasons that were used to mask the proxy nature of the conflict in the first place (russophobia, anti-communism, moral posturing, etc). So, to control the domestic mood, the Republicans get to play their part as dirt bags, make a bunch of rhetorical noise about why we can’t fund them anymore, and psyops adds some Russiagate flavor through networks of influence to mask the reality: the proxy has outlived its usefulness and the USA is cutting them off.
People just keep parroting this nonsense about money being allocated to Ukraine being the problem when the actual problem is lack of industrial capacity in the west to produce weapons and ammunition at the rate they’re being consumed. The west has now largely run through the existing stockpiles, and lacks the capacity to produce more in time. Mainstream western media now openly admits this https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/feb/15/rate-of-russian-military-production-worries-european-war-planners
Allocating more funds for Ukraine isn’t magically going to make stuff like artillery shells appear out of thin air.
Well allocating more funds for Ukraine is kinda the solution. The issue is that, even now, arms spending is not that hot. And the arms industry are “afraid” to scale up production if they don’t have long term contracts. Aka they want to profit as much as they can. So allocating funds and signing large long scale contracts will make the arms industries ramp up their production, solving the ammunition scarcity and so on.
Allocating funds is not the solution when you lack industrial capacity to convert those funds into actual weapons and ammunition. Here’s what actually happens in a scenario where you allocate funds and supply of a commodity is limited:
In October, NATO’s senior military officer, Adm. Rob Bauer, said that the price for one 155mm shell had risen from 2,000 euros ($2,171) at the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion to 8,000 euros ($8,489.60).
Historically the free-market has never attempted to do anything except maximize profit. The way the contracting system works in the Us, you never have to actual produce anything to get paid, all you have to do create a shell company that will produce the thing you are contracted to produce. When the shell company can’t produce the thing, you blame it on the suppliers of the shell company, and then you pocket the contract money. At no point would shells ever be produced.
That’s interesting. In one breath The Guardian is saying money but I guess what you’re showing me is The Guardian indicating it’s more of a production issue. I guess I could read the new link you’re sharing but I’m going to guess it doesn’t really cover how Russia is outpacing the western world.
The whole thesis of the article is basically that western private industry driven industrial complex can’t compete with Russian state driven industry because it’s not profitable for companies to do so. Russia was able to do things like plan for surge capacity and to keep large mothballed factories ready for use even though it didn’t make financial sense to do so. Western military defence contractors are not willing to do this because it affects the bottom line negatively.
Furthermore, as it becomes increasingly evident that Russia is winning the war and the whole thing isn’t going to last that much longer, the companies have zero incentive to invest into building large new facilities that will only be used for a short time.
This war is basically invalidating the whole free market model.
