No. of Recommendations: 0
Biden needed to keep Netanyahu on a shorter lease. The Middle East "street" knows that American taxpayers fully-funded the Gaza Genocide.
Will Biden's "legacy" survive the next 30+ days?
intercst
No. of Recommendations: 4
WWIII will not come from the middle east. Israel can handle it pretty much by themselves at this point, though we do provide some logistical and fire support.
No, the real source(s) will be Russia escalating, or China escalating. Either or both are possible. Even likely. While their activities in the northern Philippine islands is making most of the news, the Chinese did just attack a Vietnamese vessel operating in internationally recognized Vietnamese waters. They are just very lucky we don't have a defense treaty with Vietnam like we do with the Philippines, and we'd likely be forced to send a battle group to Vietnamese waters.
I'm reading a piece now from the NYT regarding a report that was published about this very topic. Given how quickly war can happen today, we need to beef-up our military NOW. A "Pearl Harbor" event would leave us lacking, and we might lose before we could even respond. The Japanese couldn't mount a significant stand-off assault (I don't count their balloons, which were largely ineffective). Even DPRK today probably could. China definitely could.
We showed a lot of weakness during the convict's administration, with the convict actually admiring Putin and Xi. He was (and is) an isolationist, and they all knew it. We can't be isolationists, or a lot of democracies around the globe will be in peril. And anti-democracy will potentially rule as much of the globe as democracy does. Maybe more. That would be bad for us, and everyone else.
No. of Recommendations: 10
Given how quickly war can happen today, we need to beef-up our military NOW.
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In the last couple of days, a story came out about a USN oiler ship operating along the USS Abraham Lincoln that had an "allision" event after hitting something fixed in the water. The ship is being towed to a nearby port for inspection but the ship is not going to be quickly turned around and put back into operation. And here's the kicker. It's the only oiler available in that region. The USS Abraham Lincoln is a nuclear vessel so it won't have any issues but the fighters on board and suporting ships do need fuel to run their missions.
Procurement plans in each of the military branches seem to be completely out of sync not only with the state and readiness of our current gear but lessons we should be learning from current wars. Any attempt to rectify these gaps will highlight other issues with the American economy and our governmental and corporate priorities. We should make more of the specialized steel used in military gear. We need more shipbuilding capacity (military and merchant). We need to be capable of manufacturing the complicated chips required in modern weaponry rather than relying on a TSMC plant in Taiwan that could be gobbled up by China.
These shortfalls are not going to be closed in 3-5 years. That's bad but it is also an indication that the problem requires a much more strategic spending and timing plan to build up these capabilities in a sensible order. We need to start thinking about the supply chain for these capabilities and smoothing demand to provide more consistent incentives for firms to build up the capabilities required to make some of these specialized goods. Firms will be very reluctant to invest in this space if the spending plan could change up or down 50% every two years when Congress or the White House changes hands.
WTH
No. of Recommendations: 6
The Middle East "street" knows that American taxpayers fully-funded the Gaza Genocide.
I've no idea the actual percentages, but many Americans understand it is not genocide. We understand what genocide is and is not.
It's a sadly misused term.
