Comments by "David Ford" (@davidford3115) on "VisualPolitik EN" channel.

  1. The phrase "setting up for failure" comes to mind. NATO teaches the Ukrainians combined arms, and they fails to provide them the critical air component of that system. Fortunately, the Ukrainians have taken the elements they CAN use and have hybridized it with their Warsaw-Soviet system into something that is surprisingly effective and given the west something to consider going forward.
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  2. Indeed. Sacrificing the future for the present. There is a reason why previous generations to the Boomers were content to go without so that the next generation could live comfortably and thrive. Those in power and those retiring should be focused on child-rearing instead of their own comfort.
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  3.  @jamaicansunitedforchange5745  When nations like China and France heavily subsidize their industry, they are NOT participating in "Free trade". When your training partner is using back door tariffs like Value Added Tax to imported products at the shelves instead of the port is NOT free Trade, it is cheating.
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  4.  @HgHg-yp6ft  Battle of Tsushima. And considering the sad state of the Russian military today (Moskva and Admiral Kuznetsov), I am thinking that a repeat of that battle would occur if Japan decided to retake the Kurils.
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  5. Isn't that what George S. Patton said to do? "Rehabilitate the Germans to fight the Soviets"?
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  6. The problem isn't the Cold War mentality. The problem is that the politicians can't think outside of the box. John F. Kennedy was a Cold War president who COULD be creative and imaginative. Most of those in DC lack that critical skill.
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  7. I trust the Japanese a hell of a lot more than the Chinese. Michael Pillsbury dug into Deng Xiaoping's 100 year plan to defeat the West. Buying up debt was one of the top priorities. As for the Japanese, their national Constitution and relative lack of standing forces means they are heavily dependent on the US for their protection. If America is strong, they are safe. If America succeeds, they succeed. The Japanese have a vested interest in seeing the US remain strong. The Chinese only want leverage over us.
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  8.  @danielch6662  You got that bass ackwards. Taiwan is NOT the Donbas. For one, the Donbas has a land border with Russia. Taiwan does not. Secondly, the Chinese military's tussles with the Indian military have shown that they are just as unruly and unprofessional as the Russian military.
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  9. "Peace" as in complete submission under the bootheel of a tyrant.
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  10. Most of them still keenly remember their time as Warsaw Pact nations. That "mutual defense" was simply a pretext for Soviet occupation. It is amazing how the Putin apologists conveniently ignore that dirty little detail.
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  11.  @iche9373  Indeed. A Tale of two peoples. One who wouldn't fight for their country, another that has.
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  12. Yeah, I really wish the members of ASEAN would temporarily set their disputes aside and present a united front against China. The Vietnamese need to invite the Indonesians, Malaysians, and Filipinos to joint-base and operate in the Parcels. Likewise, the Filipinos need to invite their neighbors into the northern Islands on their side that are NOT in dispute so as to push the Chinese out of the are at the northern most location. Cut off the supply lines to the southern Islands and they will wither on the vine.
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  13. Forgive me but what border dispute does Japan have with South Korea? If you are referring to the Dokodo/Takeshima dispute, that is a rather minor spat over a few rocks that barely rise above sea level at high tide. I do agree with most of your other points. Only observation I will make is that the rural areas of Japan are not particularly conducive to building large factors and the like. 75% of the country is steep mountainous terrain which is why the population is concentrated on the Kanto Plain around Tokyo as well as the other lowland metro areas.
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  14. Yeah, nobody wants to talk about what scholars have known since antiquity: the strength of the nation comes from the integrity of the family as Confucius observed.
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  15.  @angelogarcia2189  Not entirely accurate. The DoD lost focus on what the mission was: to capture Bin Laden. Once that was achieved, all other considerations were secondary and nominally irrelevant.
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  16. Yeah, he seems to forget that Georgia had petitioned to join NATO before the Russian invasion in 2008. There is some discussion that the whole reason for the insurgency in South Ossetia was to give Putin a pretext to prevent Georgian ascension. In the process of nuking the application (can't have border disputes), Putin got a mostly compliant client government in Tiblisi. Me thinks that Putin's success in Georgia encouraged him to act first in Crimea, then in Donbas as the DNR/LNR folks followed the exact same playbook as Ossetia.
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  17.  @danilolabbate  Actually, his comment is on point. Chinese historically have been the great merchants of Asia, traveling between Dutch Indonesia, India, the Horn of Africa and parts unknown to trade goods. it is why the diaspora Chinese population has always been in better economic and financial status than mainland Chinese since the end of the conflict between the KMT and the CCP.
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  18. Good for them. I hope they continue to wisely leverage what they have to get out from under foreign creditors.
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  19. Immigration only works as a solution if assimilation is mandatory. Without assimilation, you get countries within a country which is what the Nordic countries are experiencing with their refugee/asylum populations or France and its Harams (Islamic no-go zones).
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  20.  @ArchonLicht  I do. Inflation is when the cost of bread or milk next week is 25-50% more expensive than it is today. Yes, I saw that crap in Guatemala and Chile in the 90s. We are very much on that path.
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  21.  @zilari3662  Actually, as an American, i trust the Japanese with Nukes. They know firsthand the cost of engaging in a nuclear arms exchange and so I have every faith that they would not cross that bridge unless their existential existence is on the line. WW2 showed that while the US COULD wipe the Japanese off the map, we did not once they laid down their arms. Indeed, the US was VERY magnanimous in victory, much to the shock and surprise of the Japanese who were told we would devastate the country during the short occupation. so long as they harbor no ill will towards the US, that existential threat that might trigger a nuclear armed Japan would never be crossed by the US. Hence, the US would see no threat from Japan having nukes.
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  22. Well, he also wears facial hair which makes him look older and more distinguished.
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  23.  @nid-jk2vx  I don't disagree that the US had made bad choices with regards to Pakistan. But if you are not willing to bury the past, then it WILL come back to hurt you in the future.
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  24. I suspect that trying to make them remain one unified country is also a part of the dysfunction. If the Serbia majority areas want to be annexed by Serbia, let them. If the Croat dominated areas want to be a part of Croatia, let them. And let the Bosnian Muslim areas be their own independent states if they so choose. This idea that it has to be one nation is based on 18th century chauvinism.
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  25. Indeed. Why does it HAVE to be one country? Why can it not partition down into smaller independent states? Why does San Marino, Luxembourg, Liechtenstein, and Andorra get to be independent nations, but the small areas of Bosnia do not?
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  26. Same here. The Korean Tiger is not to be taken lightly. I for one welcome the competition.
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  27. You can vote your way into socialism, but you have to fight your way out of it.
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  28. You are still thinking of it from a Western market base philosophy. Yes, China wants a market, but you are foolish if you think they care about the workforce in Africa. There is a reason why many countries have ended their contracts with China and have banned the importation of any goods. When the Chinese flood local African economies with goods, it bankrupts local businesses INCREASING unemployment. The infrastructure projects actually do very little to jumpstart and economy, merely facilitate an already existing one. And most of the ones China builds is so it is easier to extract resources from those countries and transport them to ports to be shipped to China.
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  29.  @kristiansandsmark2048  Considering that they are unaccountable and unelected, that means they are answerable to nobody but themselves, no different than a dictatorship. Until those agencies are punished for their failures, we will continue to be plagued by incompetence and corruption.
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  30. Hence why the Baltic states so quickly clamored to join NATO. Even the Latvian foreign minister has come out and said they would have been invaded and recolonized by Russia if not for NATO ascension.
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  31.  @jdw-616  You are assuming Putin's nukes don't detonate in the silo like they did on K-129 instead of launching like they are supposed to. Considering the state of both the Moskva and the Admiral Kuznetsov, I seriously doubt the competency of the Russian Nuclear Forces. Also, you trying to use scripture to push a political message is a blasphemy. It is exactly what the Carpenter of Nazareth and the Baptizer on the Jordan both critizised when they spoke of the corrupt bread of Caiaphas and Herod Antipas. "But about that day or hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father." -Matthew 24:36
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  32. Screaming "racist!" just means you have no counterargument to refute. It is tacit acknowledgement that the people you disagree with are correct and you know it.
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  33. @Kam If indeed the rising tide did lift all boats, you would have a point. The problem is, free trade doesn't benefit everyone, it only benefits a few transnational businesses. The local regional and small-time operations suffer while the mega-corporations squeeze them out of the market.
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  34.  @thomasgrabkowski8283  That is not a solution if they are not assimilating. There is a word for that, one that I think the Germans are quite familiar with.
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  35.  @thatisme3thatisme38  Their "Self Defense Force" is neutered by their Constitution. They got a lot of flak for simply providing air refueling support out of Diego Garcia for allied operations in Afghanistan. Much like the Taiwanese military, the JSDF does NOT have the actual combat experience to say they can effectively wage war. In that regard, the South Korean military has a leg up over Japan considering all of the skirmishes that have taken place across the DMZ.
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  36. If the Serbians in Bosnia want to be annexed by Serbia, let them. If the Croats in Bosnia want to be annexed by Croatia, let them. And allow the Bosnian Muslims to live in their own independent nation-states just like San Marino, Luxembourg, Liechtenstein, and Andorra.
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  37. Blind leading the blind.
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  38. The Russian invasion of South Ossetia shares many similarities to Russian actions in the Donbas. Considering that Georgia had applied for NATO ascension before the invasion, it makes you wonder.
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  39. Legalizing it doesn't solve your problems, it just shuffles the deck chairs around. Trading one set of problems for an entirely new set isn't working the problem, it is an attempt to cover up the problem.
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  40. I too look forward to the day that Japan and South Korea can let bygones be bygones and stand united against the Dragon pretending to be a Panda. And I also agree with you that just because the West has become decadent on its largess doesn't mean it is weak. Though it remains to be seen how long that lasts with the current leadership of the West.
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  41. How about you actually debate the points instead of making an emotional outburst?
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  42.  @user-ob3ss1tkas  Molotov-Ribbentrop Alliance was only possible because they are cut from the same cloth. How quickly people (except Poles) forget the Pact of Blood.
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  43.  @Homer-OJ-Simpson  That tends to happen in time of war. It's hard on the furniture, and hard on the people.
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  44. Agreed. The Chinese having watched how the European powers bungled in Africa have chosen to be more subtle in their approach to colonization.
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  45.  @nishantmaderna6295  Old biases die hard. You may have papered it over for the foreign audience to see, but internally when nobody is watching, those old bigotries reveal themselves. Some of us see what goes on when you think nobody is watching.
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  46. Pakistan has been playing both the West and China for fools. It was the Pakistanis who supported the Taliban the whole time, even sheltering Osama Bin Laden and Ayman Zawahiri. I do agree that India has tried to play the same role they always have since WW2 as the neutral third world power. I give them credit for being consistent. The more interesting and I would say laudable action is ripping of Russia by demanding a 30% discount on oil. Allies don't exploit their friends like that.
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  47.  @Kongajinken  Actually, he would. Putin never invaded Ukraine while Trump was in office. As for China, they have been in an economic war with the US since the 90s, but Trump's economic policies were actually making Americans once again competitive against China. Trump gave us the best economy since the John F. Kennedy tax cuts, and that is irrefutable.
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  48. Indeed. People quickly forget the lessons of the Munich Conference.
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  49. "Republics degrade into democracies, and democracies invariably degenerate into despotisms," -Alexander Frasier Tytler quoting Aristotle.
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  50.  @mutegikimathi6258  If the West "milking the continent dry" as you put it is bad, then your excusing China doing the exact same thing is hypocrisy. The issue isn't bad ideas or differing opinions, it is the contraction and inconsistency that is at issue. You may THINK that China wants the population to grow its own wealth, but that is the exact same argument used by EUROPEAN colonialist during the mad scramble for Africa. If that was a lie then, it is a lie now, regardless if it was someone from Europe or East Asia that said it. And no, I an NOT kidding. Infrastructure by itself doesn't create anything. It will not spontaneously create a thriving economy if there was not anything there to begin with. The claim that "if you build it, they will come" is a myth perpetuated by those who love centralized planning, but lack any understanding about the invisible hand of the market or how economics actually work beyond a chalk board theory.
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