That’s how you grow bonsai kitties

You seem to be in a weird state where every hostile act that both China and the US carry out is a reason to stop doing business with the US but not with China - unless you want to reassess the starting point where you said the Netherlands needs to leave itself open to pressure from China in this instance, every though that won’t cause dependence on the US, only a shift in balance.

Even with the hostile trump regime, China is still more hostile towards EU states than the US is.

New cold war

Litmus test: who bears responsibility for the war in Ukraine?

Do you think they will completely stop doing business with someone that steals* their shit

*as much as this can be called theft, something which took place in specific non-arbitrary circumstances, rather than the Dutch government just thinking “I quite fancy that”

The UK undertook a similar action earlier this year when British Steel was threatened with going defunct by its Chinese owners. Business between the UK and China did not collapse as a result.

By realistic: China is continually carrying out low-level hostile actions against other nations - cyberattacks, IP theft, currency manipulation, and also this kind of attempt at industrial subordination. It’s realpolitik, which means that if it gets detected and a credible negative response, their reaction won’t be to cut off all trade; it will be to stop doing deals which they only wanted to do as a way of carrying out this kind of manipulation. If it were to cut off all trade, what you’re saying is that Western countries should roll over and accept abusive practices by China so as to avoid being dependent on the abusive USA. It makes no sense.

If you think that China is not actually doing anything that even deserves a response, then feel free to say so, of course.

I’ve only just joined lemmy.ml communities, is it US only or something?

I’m not sure he was thrilled about peanut butter choice, he basically had a breakdown

What is causing “complete dependence on the US” here? Taking over one single Chinese company doesn’t do that.

And chipmaking is dominated by the US, China and Taiwan (which is not immune to influence from the other two parties, lol) so how exactly can one avoid dependency on or the other, except by balancing dependency between the two?

If you really think this means “complete dependence” then explain how.

It is far from clear that dependency on the us is worse than dependency on China. A couple of years ago even suggesting it would be lunacy - it’s only even remotely credible just now.

Thanks for the conversation!

Yeah we’re not actually that far apart, if at all :)

The only way they’re going to engage in violence anyone else is if they can be confident that it won’t incur a response on the order of a NATO counterattack (or even much less). In the mainstream media this is often where the discussion stops, but it’s worth considering how Russia and the West are already engaging in actions that could be seen as acts of war: cyber-attacks, airspace incursions from Russia; boarding ships (and presumably also cyber-attacks and airspace incursions our media just doesn’t talk about) from the West. There are levels of aggression that will not be met with such a full-throated response, and Russia uses those acts to attempt to punish the West for its support of Ukraine already.

The scope exists there for more escalation, and that is where vigilance must be directed.

Do you think this means that German intelligence is wrong here?

“Essentially nowhere” has added up to quite a lot over the last three years since the major successful counteroffensive by Ukraine.

I covered this in my first reply in this conversation.

What you specifically said was “It is, in fact, an extremely effective strategy to slowly cede ground at a cost that is too high for your aggressor to bear” but then ignored the fact that Russia seems extremely willing to bear the cost it is paying.

75% of battlefield kills in Ukraine are made by explosive equipped FPV suicide drones.

Most FPV drone kills are not first strikes against moving troops. They are more often used to to prevent recovery of a disabled vehicle or to finish off someone who’s wounded. There is a first-hand account of this here but if you’re following the war and think back to videos you’ve seen of FPV kills you’ll probably recognise this.

I’m really not sure why you feel this needs any further explanation.

Think of it this way then: if you can explain a phenomenon by a potential adversary as either a conscious choice or a blunder, attributing it to a blunder is risky, because you start to assume that party is incompetent.

Don’t forget the context: I replied to a comment saying that Russia could never threaten another country because it was struggling so much in Ukraine. I don’t mean that it’s “slowly winning” to mean, “I am very confident that, without other changes, Russia will win, but it will just take many years.” I mean that Russia is advancing, able to maintain an effective fighting force and remains a real threat.

There are very real reasons to think that Ukraine’s war against Russia’s oil economy will eventually provide the pressure away from the frontline that forces Russia to capitulate. But we can’t be at all confident of this; economic collapse has, as I mentioned before, been repeatedly predicted and has not yet come to pass. That doesn’t mean it won’t, but it means that confidence about Russia’s inability to threaten violence against other states is dangerously misplaced.

Ukraine’s economy is only able to maintain its effort due to massive support from its allies. But Russia has powerful allies too: it would be a foreign policy loss for China if Russia fails; China wants the same “spheres of influence” thinking that Putin does (and Trump does) to prevail internationally.

If you want to say that Russia’s slow battlefield progress is of little importance to the war in Ukraine I’d be inclined to agree with you, but if you want to stand by the original comment that Russia’s struggles in Ukraine indicate its threats must be toothless I hope I’ve explained why I disagree.

The Russian thirst for poorly trained conscripts cannot be adequately explained by corruption and poor reporting obscuring what’s actually happening. At some point you have to accept the possibility that Putin knows what’s happening and is ok with it.

Sure, it’s possible that Russia hasn’t changed its doctrine in 3 years, but it seems unlikely. Old doctrine is obsolete on a battlefield where all movements are immediately observed and armoured vehicles are more vulnerable due to a proliferation of anti tank weapons.

But throwing cannon fodder at the guns to reveal where they are, then shooting them with something else - that never stops working as long as you have cannon fodder.

I wonder if we’re just arguing over whether this strategy is something deserving of praise, with you thinking that, since I characterise the balance favouring Russia, I think this is strategic genius? In case of that, I don’t; it’s stupid and wasteful. But it’s also working in the sense that it’s gradually pushing Ukraine back.

Russian doctrine relies on punching a hole, moving and exploiting that gap to create a salient and outmanoeuvre your enemy.

According to whom?

According to the actual battlefield, Russian doctrine relies on throwing wave after wave of poorly trained criminals and shanghaied DPR/LPR citizens into the machine guns, artillery and drones of the Ukrainians.

Don’t get me wrong, there are massive weaknesses, and we may see Ukraine exploit them. But we aren’t seeing that translate to battlefield success. Putin hasn’t shown any eagerness to talk peace; only the same old “peace” meaning capitulation. He’s been keen on that since the beginning.

Russia is using WWII equipment

Yeah it’s pretty ridiculous. The outcome is what matters, though.

Ukraine recently retook a big piece of land

I don’t think this is true, and in any case, Russia is still advancing consistently. Go on DeepStateMAP and check the past few months (not every day - just once per month) and you will get the picture: no major breakthroughs, but grinding advancement.

Russia’s economy is on the brink of collapse

It’s been massively weakened by sanctions but a quick google for russian economy "brink of collapse" reveals as many articles predicting this as dispelling the predictions going back at least two years.

Cool! And since “sabotage and treachery” are perfectly capable of dealing great damage to Ukraine and other European nations alike, we should not be gung ho about Russia.

They are slowly gaining ground. If the war stopped today with the front line frozen they would have failed to achieve key objectives but would have succeeded in stealing vast amounts of territory with natural resources, people and industry (whatevers not destroyed), securing a corridor to Crimea, intimidating many small countries, and creating a bigger buffer between Russia proper and unfriendly countries.

Make that your first recruiting slogan. LMAO

Most of your reply is just continuing down this nonsensical fantasy. Are you ok?

You still haven’t replied to the points about European preparedness potential future russian aggression, and have now to top it all conflated casualties and deaths.

Lmao indeed. But I’m guessing you won’t be laughing the next time a cargo ship registered conveniently in the Caribbean “accidentally” causes damage to Western interests. Will you then connect your complacency to what’s happening?

All casualties that Putin doesn’t give a shit about, so why is that important, really? There may come a point where Russia’s high casualty rate has significant domestic impact, but it is not yet. With control of the media, Putin is able to paint a much rosier picture at home, and when his military’s ranks are swollen with convicts and North Koreans, the actual losses are of lower impact to begin with.

To put it another way: if Russia is currently losing, what would you call a state in which Russia stops advancing? What would you call a state in which Ukraine were able to take back - and then hold - territory?

People who talk shit about how Russia is losing, is idiotic and so on, I think still have the mentality most people did in the first months of the invasion, when Russia had just been shown to be a complete paper tiger relative to prior expectations. A war they were supposed to win in a few days is still going, and they haven’t won it yet - a terrible humiliation for Russia. But the fact that they suffered a terrible humiliation, were ridiculously less powerful than most people believed, doesn’t mean they’re losing. “Slowly gaining territory at great cost” is not losing. Achieving a victory for Ukraine means a change from the current state of affairs; they need more weapons and support than they are currently receiving.

You haven’t actually disagreed with any of the potential things I pointed at Russia being able to do, or at Europe’s slow rearmament. Those were the substantive things.

Their state of being unable to handle their neighbour is that they are winning incredibly slowly.

They don’t have the ability to conquer anyone else, but that’s not the only hot conflict that there can be. Drone attacks? Border skirmishes? Missiles “getting lost”?

Europe has also not successfully increased its military production to cope with the increased threat, so much of Europe’s ability to fight back is tied up in Ukraine

Don’t be an antagonistic little child.