Comments by "nrusimha11" (@nrusimha11) on "Why military power is more for asserting political will, not just about controlling territory" video.

What's true for politics is true for war too, mostly. It's the size of the economy (the fuel in the tank) and level of technological advancement (the smarts in the tanks) that determines win on loss. The 'west' is a monolith and there was no way Russia was going to match them in either resource or tech in Ukraine, and neither is China anywhere close to matching them. Tactics only come into play for adversaries with comparable sized economies and war tech. (To be honest, there is a hefty dose of hindsight in that opinion).
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To all the comments in chorus to, 'we are like this only', down below: having a carrier is not about taking it to offensive war with another country. India has vast coasts on either side. It is about having a piece of land out in the ocean hundreds of miles away from your own cities, from where aircraft carrying all kinds of weapons can be launched when your real land needs to be defended. Last I checked, India has not exactly been sitting on its haunches with respect to development of missiles either.
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May I add to Gen. Naravane's point from a wider angle lens: land is not just about direct ownership, i.e., a country's own landmass. And political will is not just about making a point, like Clint Eastwood or Amitabh Bacchan in the movies. It is more hard-nosed. It is about which column a piece of land (i.e. a country) will fall into - our side, or the other side. In that sense, when America promises to defend Taiwan, it is promising to defend land in its column (and a massive contributor to world GDP). Loss of land, once removed, were what the existential anxieties of the 'west' were about with communist expansion toward Europe, and of Russia about 'western' expansion toward Russia.
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