re: Rubio: US Military bases in Europe are useless if we can't use them when we need them

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Again, the net good of diplomacy is that with direct talks, the ultimate positions of governments are made clear.

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You can’t be this dumb.

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Netanyahu's (who apparently used a powerpoint to convince Trump of the ease of regime change

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Link?

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the comparison of intelligence reports outside the Five Eyes network, and clear positions statements would have helped.

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Whom are you referring to? Ne specific.

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As doing this properly, which the US didn't do, would have required a coalition.

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What coalition?

If by coalition you mean our European “Allie’s” you mean those whom are more than willing to stab us in the back, then okay.

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Instead we did the worst version of this operation

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How so?

This is unknown at this time.

Your autism has the same arrogant stench as SFP’s.

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we are going to end up with something worse than if he had done nothing at all.

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Yup, autism based arrogance.


Stick to medicine.

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Glad we dropped the nonsensical Chamberlain line though

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Or…on point.

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That was exceedingly dumb.

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On your part - yes.

He was an abject failure. The alignment that occurred was going to happen no matter what. Ditto the timeframe. As for the British military being unprepared, ALL unseasoned troops are.

But please, tell me about YOUR experience in the military.

On a final note, for someone to be in a coalition, there has to be some semblance of like mindedness.

You are dumb to trust Europe.

They are no longer “Western” at their core.

As noted previously, Europe is a dying old man. It is the Ottoman Empire…part 2.

Australia, Canada and New Zealand are pretty much CCP vassal states.


At this point, the U.S. goes it alone.

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Nah, I am 100% sure you don't understand diplomacy nor the lead-up to WWII.

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Autism blended with arrogance.

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I'm begging you to read a book at this point.

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1? 10? 100? More? Done!

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The UK and France needed a casus belli to enter into a direct engagement

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Incorrect. Wanted - yes. Needed - no.

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It's like you are purposely removing cause and effect to make a point you don't even understand.

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The irony!

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It was the view of the British government that the UK could not thwart Germany's ambitions in Continental Europe in 1938.

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Factions of the government. Why are you stating it as being unanimous in viewpoint.

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Of course you won't know this

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Two instances of autistic arrogance! Awesome!

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Do you think somehow that the UK would have been better off declaring war (which was incredibly unpopular among the British public) in 1938?

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An actual question - yay!

No. However, whenever they went into battle, they were going to struggle. It is the nature of war.

BRW - you didn’t answer my question: Which branch of the U.S. military did you serve in?

It seemed like a simple question.

Why ignore it?

Other questions:

How many times have you been to Europe?

Australia / New Zealand?

Canada?

I would imagine that, given your condescending responses, it must have been frequent.

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Factions of the government. Why are you stating it as being unanimous in viewpoint.

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I believe that was the recommendation of the Chief of Staffs committee, which was made up of the most senior members of the UK's armed forces advising the civilian government. As in, it was the view point of the group that was in charge of each individual branch of the UK's armed forces. What were the 'other' factions viewpoint on whether the UK could reasonably thwart German ambitions in Europe?

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BRW - you didn’t answer my question: Which branch of the U.S. military did you serve in?

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None, which matters little in this regard.

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How many times have you been to Europe?

Australia / New Zealand?

Canada?

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Buddy, I have Canadian-British heritage on my father's side, as he was the child of British immigrants to Canada. I think he still collects a pension from Canada, although it might be very small. We went to Europe almost yearly until the pandemic. Only been to Australia and New Zealand once though.

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I would imagine that, given your condescending responses, it must have been frequent.

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No idea how traveling to the Anglophile world contributes to the bog-standard Atlanticism I've regularly espoused, which has been the dominant and central foreign policy of the US for more than a century now. There has been no cogent argument against that that has been put forward by anyone other than 'I don't like or trust Europeans.' If we are entering a state of affairs where no alliance can be trusted (going both ways) then the cost of the externalities is going to be so great that no securing of resources will pay for it.

If I can't use the bases or airspace I have paid billions of dollars to lease while protecting your underpaying asses why the frick should I continue this agreement?

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Just as Putin ordered…

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Stonehenge

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2016 called and wants its bullshite conspiracy theory back

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Cool. What proof do you have that the decision was unanimous?

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I'm sure I can find your answer if I went into the archival data but we can also look at UK interests, which were more oriented around protecting access to colonial possession in Asia through free transit through the Mediterranean, which is why they retained control of Gibraltar. And there is some question as to whether the Anglophone world understood Hitler's commitment to lebensraum, as I think the only copies of Mein Kampf in English at the time were an abridged copy published in 1933. The first full translation made it to London in November 1938, being smuggled out of Berlin by the original translator's wife and wasn't published until 1939. If that information was not widespread in the UK ruling class, it is understandable (and unfortunate) that the Munich Agreement left Britain in a vulnerable situation except in the case that Hitler actually meant what he said when he suggested he would stop with Czechoslovakia.

The other reality is that support for 'appeasement' was widespread and that Chamberlain had inherited that policy, in a broad sense, from British rapprochement attempts with Germany stemming from earlier efforts such as the Anglo-German Naval Agreement, which the UK and the Germans interpreted in entirely opposite ways. Regardless, given that British power had always been oriented around the seas, fighting a land war in Central and Eastern Europe was quite possibly the scenario for which they were least prepared. Certain events such as the Turkish War of Independence had turned out differently, then the UK might have had a beachhead from which they could reasonably resist German aspirations in Europe.

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You acted as though you knew about military service. I just wanted to see if you actually were man enough to sign up.

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Where did I suggest I knew anything about military service? I don't think I've ever insinuated anything such in anything I've ever written about geopolitics. My interest is strictly geopolitics.

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Europe has been a leech that has grown fat off of America.

The relationship was parasitic.

Europe has shown that they are unreliable.

As far left as they have gone, this is unsurprising.

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Well firstly, the long-held policy of the US was that there should be no power in Continental Europe who could ever challenge the Anglo-American alliance, and that played out in spades since the end of the last world war. It was the specific policy of the US to make sure that Europe was a junior partner. Even after the fall of the USSR, the Bush I and Clinton administrations were concerned about the potential of a unified Germany to again dominate the continent to the detriment of American interests. Indeed, the term 'peace dividend' was used by the American administration to encourage the transfer of spending from military and defense to other sectors. That continued long after American policy changed after 9/11, and it effectively continued until the Russian Invasion of Ukraine in 2022, as in this case, it was the Germans led by Merkel who were the 'Chamberlain' in this scenario, believing until the end that they could affect change in Russia through trade.

That said, the American alliance with Western Europe has survived several open socialist governments who still aligned themselves with the US despite having ideological factions that aligned themselves with the USSR. The ideological lines in terms of political economy still favor the US-led world order, with the fault lines developing from the handling of social issues rather than economics. I feel those fault lines are transient rather than structural, and thus are easier to discuss and change.

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So not in the last 5-6 years…got it.

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I didn't say I haven't been since the pandemic. I've been to Europe last in 2024 for my honeymoon.

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Well, other than an abject abandonment by our supposed allies

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Nah, the capricious nature of Trump's method means he'll have this impression regardless. He's used to the private sector where things get done immediately, which is the exact opposite from the way the alliance makes decisions.