Shrike
3mo ago
One of the interesting things about the United States currently is that you can have people who see themselves as rallying against oppressive power by supporting the incumbent President and the nation's various intelligence agencies and the like.
The political divisions in the US of course are imho such that both "sides" have at least some credible basis to perceive themselves as the underdogs (or at least sticking up for the underdog) fighting The Man.
Shrike
3mo ago
This is a good call. I think that tech inching towards the GOP – which as I understand it has to do a lot with the other guys threatening bad/expensive new policies – is pretty under-covered but potentially important.
Maybe part of the reason it's under-covered is that the media has been covering tech as a bunch of reactionaries for some time now, so if they actually start to vote right that's almost less of a story then them dabbling in Uncle Ted Thought or whatever?
Shrike
3mo ago
Which is not a reflection of how ratios have changed since the war began, when the ratios were significantly more in the Russian favor.
We can test that theory trivially with tanks. Russia went in with 1700 and now as 3,500; Ukraine then had 1,000ish(?) and earlier this year was reported to have managed to maintain the number it had when the war began.
If light weapons (drones) are more important, Russia currently has a drone overmatch and it isn't drawing those down from Soviet stockpiles. (From what I can tell both sides are largely just buying from China, which is funny.)
So both in light and heavy weapons it appears Russia still has a 3:1 edge. If I had to guess their edge is much less extreme, possibly even negative, in frontline soldiers, but that hasn't stopped the Russian offensive. I'd be happy to see hard numbers on this, or contrarian takes. But from what I can tell the main Ukrainian advantage over time has been fielding (piecemeal) new Western systems like Storm Shadow, which are often effective (at least for at time) but are also limited in number.
For the purpose of attrition- which is the strategy of both sides- the 'lighter' armaments are considerably more important, particularly as the Russian strategy militarily relies on offensive victory, but the Ukrainian strategy relies on defensive attrition until Russia's production / refurbishment rates burn through the stockpiles.
Well, let's keep in mind that the Ukrainian's stated war aim is to regain Crimea. To achieve their war goal, they will need to constitute a very powerful offensive force. Which cuts back around to your overall point (which is well-taken) that Russia needs to maintain not just parity+ but an overmatch of capability in order to continue its offensive. And if that's true, it implies now that Ukraine needs a 3 - 1 advantage in order to win the war (as per their stated war aims.)
It's not even a long-term advantage, as the western coalition still has many resources it hasn't even begun to meaningfully tap but which it has access to, such as the American boneyards, the pre-position stocks around the war, the South Korean ammo stockpiles, and so on.
We tapped the South Korean stockpiles last year (.3 or .5 million rounds out of an estimated 3.4 million.) I agree that South Korea has a lot more, but I think that counts as a meaningful tap.
I don't understand US thinking on our boneyards, but as near as I can figure for some reason we don't want to tap them. Otherwise we would have sent more M1s.
Ukraine doesn't need military parity with Russia in the near or medium term to win the war.
I agree that this is true if "win the war" is taken to mean "preserving some degree of Ukrainian sovereignty or territory." As per your own statements above, though, I do think they need something like military parity at a minimum to achieve their stated war aims.
Now, I think it's easy to discount Ukrainian stated war aims as something they're never going to get – and that's fair enough! I also think it's quite plausible that (Trump or no Trump, NATO support or no NATO support, however you slice it) that Russia does not achieve all of its war aims. It's fairly typical in war for neither side to "win" to the degree that they wanted to.
Shrike
3mo ago
Note that Ukraine's commander-in-chief does not actually make a position on relative assets
He does on equipment, specifically: "there is a ratio of 1:2 or 1:3 in their favour..."
It's also worth noting that, having made this happen, the same dynamics that make it difficult to occur (entrenched political consensus, established interest groups for the status quo) also make it even more difficult to reverse (not only entrenched political consensus, but the active dismantlement of the pro-Russian interest groups in key economic sectors).
I don't think this is true with regards to heavy armaments – the simple fact that Europe has a finite amount of tanks to donate makes it very easy to stop donating them. I find this more persuasive with economic aid and lighter armaments (small caliber ammunition, etc.) However, economic aid appears to be dwindling from some quarters – Germany is reducing its donations, specifically. So clearly cutting Ukraine a blank or even large check isn't set in stone going forward, although perhaps that's merely a German position (Germany of course being one of the most relevant EU nations!)
what Ukraine has gained since the war started in 2022.
A lot of those figures are public, though – somewhere around 500 new tanks were delivered to Ukraine, for instance, whereas Syrskyi says (if I interpret correctly) that the Russians have gained about 1,800 over even Russian losses. The Ukrainians have not made comparative gains. The advantage is moving towards Russia.
as the Russians have increasingly transitioned from internal-economic stockpiles and production to relying on imports of Iranian drones instead of cruise missiles
The Russians are still using cruise missiles (although the Iranian drones are very good for draining Ukrainian air defense stockpiles) and they are improving the quality of the missiles used. (See e.g. the Kyiv Independent). While I certainly believe that the Russians have brought a lot of less-capable vehicles out of stockpiles (T-62s being the headliner item) the Russians are continuing to develop and iterate their weapons capabilities, and they are continuing to manufacture and iterate new weapons systems. The biggest development is probably the Russian glide bomb, which were neglected in the run-up to the war (a huge Russian L!) but is now being used in numbers.
This period of first-mover advantage is concluding, hence why the Russian strategy this year has been about trying to shape impressions before the American political election season, without regard to sustainability over another 4 year period vis-a-vis achieving a nearer-term ceasefire.
This seems plausible to me wrt Russian motivations, but I've still seen no signs that NATO industry is ready to catch up to Russia in mass production within a relevant timeframe. The United States aspires to get to 100,000 shells a month by 2026. Russia is currently producing 250,000 shells a month. Over the next four-year time period there's every reason to believe they could sustain their production, and many reasons to believe that the US and NATO aren't interested in sending another 500 tanks and can't compete in terms of artillery shell production.
Russia's economy is not fine for all the old reasons that government-war-spending driven growth is anti-reliable over longer times and comes with real opportunity costs. This doesn't mean that Russia is anywhere near about to fail, but it is making future problems progressively worse
This seems reasonable to me. My low-economic-IQ take is that sanctions may have helped Russian cashflow in the short term by raising oil prices. Of course it might have hurt them in other areas (microchip access) but that still can translate as a raw economic boost.
Because the Russian military-industrial production is primarily conversion, the production numbers only stay high as long as there are material inputs to convert. Once those stockpiles go, you either produce from scratch- which the Russians have not demonstrated they are set up to- or you import new inputs for conversion- which there is relatively minimal sourcing for- or your don't produce at all.
Again, publicly-available Western sources consistently attest to Russian shell production superiority, so even if most shells hitting the battlefield right now are conversion, Russia will win the shell production battle in the long run unless the West has either deeper stockpiles or deeper production capability – and it doesn't seem that they do. That isn't the only name of the game, but it's a very important part of it. I think the Russians will have more problems with more advanced items, but they're still making tanks (where they've increased production), aircraft, cruise missiles, etc. China isn't going to stop selling them FPV drones anytime soon. In short, Russian military production has in fact increased, and while I agree that production will never equal the ability to casually drawdown a million shells from inventory, Russia merely needs to produce more than the West is willing to donate and Ukraine is able to build to maintain an advantage. So far they have the edge and appear to be positioned to maintain the edge in artillery production and small drones, and unless the US decides to donate more tanks + APCs in quantity it appears that Russian production (even if it's a paltry dozen a month) of ground vehicles will outstrip Ukrainian production.
In my mind, this doesn't prove you wrong with regards to Russia's motives – they would prefer to win before the new US shell production hits, before the F-16s arrive, etc. They would have preferred to win on Day One, and tried such a strategy, and failed. But if they can maintain superior force generation and weapons production, there's every reason to think they will defeat the Ukrainians in the long run, and there's every reason to think they are superior now, because Syrskyi says they are. If they are superior now, then Ukraine needs a massive influx of foreign aid to reach parity, otherwise – even if Russia is at their peak strength, as you suggest (and you may be correct!) – they will both degrade in strength over time, with Russia retaining its edge, which it's maintained on the ground (as seen in its slow gain of territory) after smashing up the Ukrainian counter-offensive.
Shrike
3mo ago
Hmm, OK, DoD definition of a peer competitor here:
"A peer competitor, as the term is used here, is a state or collection of challengers with the power and motivation to confront the United States on a global scale in a sustained way and to a sufficient level where the ultimate outcome of a conflict is in doubt even if the United States marshals its resources in an effective and timely manner." (Source)
And it seems like in 2017 the DoD considered Russia, China, Iran and North Korea as near-peer. Personally I think there's a huge difference between 2017 North Korea/Iran and China/Russia, but the definition of "collection of challengers" might be doing some of the work there.
I think that Russia, China, Iran and North Korea in 2017 are all look harder than Desert Storm actually was, but I also think that it's easier to say that in hindsight. I definitely don't think it's appropriate to consider Iraq a "near-peer" in the sense Russia is or was, however.
Shrike
3mo ago
I'm sort of disinclined to consider Iraq a near-peer for technological, cultural and economic reasons, but some of that might be hindsight bias. My understanding is that American casualties were far lighter at the time in Desert Storm than anticipated.
Shrike
3mo ago
I think the F-16s will be better against Russian aircraft than the MiG-29s and maybe the Su-27s (if Ukraine has any left) because AMRAAMs but I don't expect that to make a difference in the overall posture of the war. I'm not even sure if Ukraine intends to use them in the counter-air role instead of just replacing the Su-24s in the "Storm Shadow launch platform" role.
Shrike
3mo ago
When was the last time the United States did that in a ground war on the enemy's own territory?
Shrike
3mo ago
The single biggest supplier, yes, the single most important yes, but EU institutions have given more financial aid to Ukraine than the US has given in value of all combined military / financial / humanitarian, and this is without addressing European national contributions.
It is worth noting that the United States applied a lot of pressure to make this happen.
Realism would note that Russia's military edge is ebbing
It is not. As per Ukraine's commander-in-chief:
Syrskyi is Ukraine’s new commander-in-chief. His unenviable task is to defeat a bigger Russian army. Two and half years into Vladimir Putin’s full-scale onslaught, he acknowledges the Russians are much better resourced. They have more of everything: tanks, infantry fighting vehicles, soldiers. Their original 100,000-strong invasion force has grown to 520,000, he said, with a goal by the end of 2024 of 690,000 men. The figures for Ukraine have not been made public.
“When it comes to equipment, there is a ratio of 1:2 or 1:3 in their favour,” he said. Since 2022 the number of Russian tanks has “doubled” – from 1,700 to 3,500. Artillery systems have tripled, and armoured personnel carriers gone up from 4,500 to 8,900. “The enemy has a significant advantage in force and resources,” Syrskyi said. “Therefore, for us, the issue of supply, the issue of quality, is really at the forefront.”
NATO officials are now saying that a Ukrainian victory would not end the Russian threat:
“But we can't be under any illusions,” Cavoli said. “At the end of a conflict in Ukraine, however it concludes, we are going to have a very, very big Russia problem. ...
“We are going to have a situation where Russia is reconstituting its force, is located on the borders of NATO, is led by largely the same people as it is right now, is convinced that we're the adversary, and is very, very angry."
I agree broadly with you on the problems with a ceasefire tomorrow (in part because of the above): if Russia isn't very satisfied with the conclusion, is has every incentive to come back for more.
Minor addendum:
clearly delivered it's intended goals of limiting Russian economic capabilities
I agree that it probably hampered Russian access to certain high-end stuff (microchips) that it needs for war production. But the World Bank upgraded its economic status this year. So it seems like the Russian economy is "fine" (although perhaps they're running an internal house of cards to keep that up somehow and it can't last forever - I don't have any particular reason to believe this, though.)
Shrike
3mo ago
(better weapons compared to what they have today)
We could give them 5th generation aircraft or nukes, but we won't. We gave them top of the line artillery, air-to-surface and surface-to-air weapons, and modern tanks. "There's nothing better to give them" isn't technically true, but it's directionally accurate.
Shrike
3mo ago
Trump threatens to bomb Moscow, simple as!
Nah, probably not this time – this time the call just says "cease-fire?"
Obviously the war would actually stop after a lot of wrangling and haggling and might even start up again but if Trump threatened to cut Ukraine's aid off unless they negotiated they almost certainly would show up, and Russia showed up last time.
Shrike
4mo ago
I think all of this is more or less correct. (I don't think I saw you, specifically, as being particularly distressed about this, I was just reacting to a vibe.) I suppose to me AI is already in the military and there's no closing the barn door now. And I don't think it's dumb to bring AI into the fix.
I do think that an underrated danger is that AI is so good at seeing patterns that it could loop over to being easier to spoof than humans. There is of course the joke about spoofing Terminator with the grocery barcode, but if I wanted to mess up hostile AI image detection software, I would use very specific, distinctive (to AI, not necessarily to humans) camouflage patterns patterns on all of my vehicles for years, ensuring that hostile imagery models were trained to inseparably associate that with my forces - and then repaint every vehicle in wartime. That trick would never work on a human (although there are lots of tricks that do) but it might fool an AI.
My point here isn't that AI is dumb, but merely that it's just as easy to imagine ways they introduce more friction into warfare as remove friction. Moreoever, if intelligence apparatuses are defaulting to filtering all intelligence and data through a few AI models instead of many human minds, it means that a single blindspot or failing is likely to be systemwide, instead of many, many small blindspots scattered across different commands. And if there are hostile AI (or even just smart people) on both sides, they will figure out the patterns in hostile artificial intelligence programs and figure out how to exploit them. (I think the conclusion here is that intel agencies should take a belt-and-suspenders humans-and-AI approach, and developing multiple AI programs to assess intelligence and data might be a good idea.)
One of the things we've seen in Ukraine is that when countermeasures for a high-tech weapons system are developed, the weapons system loses a lot of value very quickly. (This isn't new - World War Two saw a rapid proliferation of new technologies that edged out older warfighting gear - but our development cycles seem longer than they were in the 1940s, which does pose a problem.) I suspect that in a future AI reliant war, we will see similar patterns: when a model becomes obsolete, it will fail catastrophically and operate at a dramatically reduced capacity until it is patched. (Since a lot of the relevant stuff in Ukraine revolves around signal processing and electronic warfare, this future is more or less now.)
In conclusion, I am cautiously optimistic that "AI" can reduce friction and increase strength, but I think the "AI" that is most certain to do that as, really, "targeting computers," and "signal processing software," not necessarily the stuff OpenAI is working on (although I don't count that out). Since I think that multiple powers will be using AI, I think that hostile AI will be adding friction about as fast as friendly AI can reduce is (depending on their parity.) What concerns me about AI use in warfare is the dangers of over-relying on it, both in terms of outsourcing too much brainpower to it, but also in terms of believing that "reducing friction" will save us the need to sharpen the pointy meatspace end of things. At the end of the day, being able to predict what someone is going to do next doesn't matter if you've got an empty gat.
Shrike
4mo ago
Not a call to pick a side particularly, more an attempt to think about cultural dynamics (if possible) before they occur. My model of cultural norms is a sort of "cultural peace" model, where people agree to lay down their metaphorical arms and stop fighting the culture war because it's become troublesome for both sides. (The alternative model of cultural peace seems to be that one side triumphs decisively.)
If the optimal goal is strong cultural free-speech norms, and we take for granted that the prior norm was that "cancellation" was primarily an attack wielded by the left against the right (debatable!) and that the left was not culturally successful at keeping their "own side" from launching cancellation attacks, then it seems like game theory suggests that to achieve the optimal goal one would want
- Right wingers successfully canceling left wingers
- Other right wingers making a principled stand against cancelations in general
Group #1 is needed to make "the left" realize there is a good pragmatic reason to have a principled pro-free-speech stance (presumably since right-wingers have been canceled by left-wingers, they already have good pragmatic incentives for such a norm).
Group #2 is needed to team up with those on "the left" persuaded by Group #1 to write a new cultural peace treaty and cement the pro-free-speech norms across partisan lines.
The fail mode of this on the one side is that one side is very principled and the other side never has to learn principles because they never have any motivation to do so. However, I think the fail mode on the other side (in the theory that I postulate above) is that there will be a failure to coordinate a new peace and instead of reducing cancellations culturally we double them and the culture war heat ticks up a notch.
(This is all a brutal oversimplification and I sort of hate typing something as broadly sweeping as "right/left wingers.")
It also might be worth pointing out that I suppose one could make a principled difference between speech that calls for political violence and speech that...doesn't. There's definitely a slippery slope here (should Marxists be canceled because of their beliefs? what about libertarians?) but it seems like a culture could agree to draw the line at public calls for violence aimed at specific people.
Shrike
4mo ago
Yes, as you can see from my next paragraph, I am deeply skeptical that Lavender (even if it works well, and I suspect it doesn't!) is winning Israel the war.
Shrike
4mo ago
I am a little surprised by the distress over this. The military has been using artificial intelligence for decades. Any self-guiding missile or CIWS is using an artificial intelligence. Not a very bright one, but one programmed to a specific task.
People are talking about weaponizing AI because it's sexy and it sells, but fundamentally it's stuff the military was going to do any way. Let's talk a bit about what people mean when they say they're going to use AI for the military, starting with the Navy's latest stopgap anti-ship missile.
...the LRASM is equipped with a BAE Systems-designed seeker and guidance system, integrating jam-resistant GPS/INS, an imaging infrared (IIR infrared homing) seeker with automatic scene/target matching recognition, a data-link, and passive electronic support measures (ESM) and radar warning receiver sensors. Artificial intelligence software combines these features to locate enemy ships and avoid neutral shipping in crowded areas...Unlike previous radar-only seeker-equipped missiles that went on to hit other vessels if diverted or decoyed, the multi-mode seeker ensures the correct target is hit in a specific area of the ship. An LRASM can find its own target autonomously by using its passive radar homing to locate ships in an area, then using passive measures once on terminal approach. (Wiki source.)
In other words, "artificial intelligence" roughly means "we are using software to feed a lot of data from a lot of different sensors into a microprocessor with some very elaborate decision trees/weighting." This is not different in kind from the software in any modern radar-homing self-guiding missile, it's just more sophisticated. It also isn't doing any independent reasoning! It's a very "smart" guidance system, and that's it. That's the first thing that you should note, which is that when you hear "artificial intelligence" you might be thinking C3PO, but arms manufacturers are happy to slap it onto something with the very limited reasoning of a missile guidance system.
What else would we use AI for? Drones are the big one on everyone's mind, but drones will be using the same sort of guidance software above, except coupled with mission programming. One concern people have, of course, is that the AI IFF software will goof and give it bad ideas, leading to friendly fire - a valid concern, but it likely will be using the same IFF software as the humans. Traditionally IFF failures on the part of humans are pretty common and catastrophic. There are cases where humans performed better than AI - but there are almost certainly cases where the AI would have performed better than the humans, too.
Neither drones nor terminal guidance systems are likely to use anything like GPT-style LLMs/general artificial intelligence, in my mind, because that would be a waste of space and power. Particularly on a missile, the name of the game will be getting the guidance system as small as reasonably possible, not stuffing terabytes of world literature into its shell for no reason.
The final use of AI that comes to mind (and I think the one that comes closest to Skynet etc.) is using it to sift through mountains of data and generate target sets. I think that's where LLMs/GAI might be used, and I think it's the "scariest" in the sense that it's the closest to allowing a real-life panopticon. I think what people are worried about is this targeting center being hooked up to the kill-chain: essentially being allowed to choose targets and carry out the attack. And I agree that this is a concern, although I've never been super worried about the AI going rogue - humans are unaligned enough as it is. But I think part of the problem is that it lure people into a false sense of security, because AI cannot replace the supremacy of politics in war.
And as it turns out, we've seen exactly that in Gaza. The Israelis used an AI to work up a very, very long target list, probably saving them thousands of man-hours. (It turns out that you don't need to worry about giving AI the trigger; if you just give it the data input humans will rubber-stamp its conclusions and carry out the strikes themselves.) And the result, of course, has been that Israel has completely achieved all of its goals in Gaza through overwhelming military force.
Or no, it hasn't, despite Gaza being thousands of times more data-transparent to Israel than (say) the Pacific will be to the United States in a war with China. AI simply won't take the friction out of warfare.
I think this is instructive as to the risks of AI in warfare, which I do think are real - but also not new, because if there is one thing almost as old as war, it is people deluding themselves into mistaking military strength for the capability to achieve political ends.
TLDR; 1) AI isn't new to warfare, and 2) you don't need to give Skynet the launch codes to have AI running your war.
And that's my .02 cents. I'm sure I missed something.
Shrike
4mo ago
Well, this time there's actually some evidence (for example, the notable drop in support among the younger generation for gay marriage since 2018) but I'm not sure that translates over to "incredibly red." However doglatine's point re: the gender divide is well taken.
Shrike
4mo ago
Is this actually true? Seems like there are some small indica that the next generation might be a bit redder than the younguns but by and large the young adult population doesn't seem to be trending incredibly red. I'd be fascinated to read a take otherwise.
(I've 100% seen the "only the reds are having kids" take but it doesn't seem clear that that actually results in red kids.)
Shrike
4mo ago
I think they could: everyone would know that it was about winning the election in 2020, so their base would think it was hilarious. "You ordered it, you eat it" etc.
But who knows. The next-level play on their part in this situation would probably be to try to stall the entire thing until POTUS is irreversibly on the ballot and then go for removal. Right now I don't think they could stall that long on the 25th but give it another 30 days and it looks like they would be able to do some damage that way.
Shrike
4mo ago
Ironically, he could in theory:
- assuming the VP and executive branch heads declare POTUS incompetent,
- POTUS can simply transmit to Congress that he is in fact competent
- VP and executive branch heads now have to reassure Congress that POTUS is in fact incompetent
- Congress now gets to decide the issue. They have to declare by a majority that POTUS is in fact incompetent
- Hilariously they might not (Republicans have majority in the house and might prefer Biden running)
- if POTUS retains seat, all the cabinet heads might roll at this point (which does create some liability for cabinet members at steps 1 and 3).
At least, this is my read of the 25th, but it's past my kid's bedtime, so I might be missing something.
Shrike
4mo ago
I don't think it was a cognitive test, as per your link anyway:
Biden’s remark, according to a person familiar with the president’s schedule, was in reference to a short checkup by a White House physician in the days following the debate due to lingering symptoms from his cold. The exam, that person added, was brief and did not include any major tests.
I also don't think your framing that the governors pressured Biden into it is correct:
President Joe Biden on Wednesday evening told more than 20 Democratic governors in a private meeting that he underwent a medical checkup after last week’s debate and is fine, according to three people with knowledge of the discussion.
The general optics of the meeting, at least as per the Politico article, read much less like governors getting together to influence Biden and much more like Biden summoning a group of governors to influence them and assess/reinforce their loyalty.
Shrike
4mo ago
It would be like a Democrat/Republican voting to remove a Democrat/Republican president, which AFAIK basically never happens in US politics.
I wouldn't say it's that uncommon – both Clinton and Trump (both times) got votes across party lines in their impeachments; Johnson didn't. So 3/4 impeachment attempts in US history were bipartisan.
Shrike
4mo ago
Hmm! Here's the full URL as it's supposed to be: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MKUltra#Revelation
Shrike
4mo ago
If it helps: MKUltra was discovered via FOIA because the CIA missed a spot when cleaning up the crown jewels. Fairly easy IMHO to imagine a world in which it existed only in urban legend and conspiracy myth.
The EU I believe, but NATO...I think the story is more complicated. Germany has just now gotten around to maybe meeting its 2% spending commitment, and (it seems to me) played both sides by buying Russian gas and "buying Ukraine time" in negotiations with Russia until the US forced it to jump onboard the NATO bandwagon after Russia went into Ukraine. Even now I think that Germany is acutely aware that they're going to have to live with Russia permanently and are hedging their bets.
I agree that Germany sees NATO membership as in its interests, but in a paradoxical sort of way I think that "easier, more prosperous life nestled under the pax-Americana security blanket" undermines NATO by creating the free-rider problem (or, more charitably, perception) that allows Trump to, well, argue is a bad deal. On the other hand, if Germany and the other NATO states had actually spent their 2% GDP as recommended since the fall of the Cold War, it seems less likely that they would need American backup: the EU has a larger population and is wealthier than Russia.
But complicating the paradox, a militarily-independent EU is not what is in American interests (we fought a couple wars over there before putting the boot on the German neck and we haven't removed it since). Everything that's happened recently (coincidentally or not!) has been pushing Germany back towards the Pax Americana safety blanket you describe: Nord Stream exploding, yes, but also the US leaning hard on Germany to deplete its own defense stocks while its economy wobbles. Now with the new understanding that, win or lose in Ukraine, the future of Europe is going to involve a very angry Russia with a larger, more experienced military, and with many of Europe's nations having given away significant amounts of their already-too-paltry defense stocks to Russia...well, who are they going to turn to for security and supplies? That's right, the US Army and Lockheed Martin.
At the end of the day, Russia is largely a threat to the United States via its nuclear arsenal. There are only two powers on Earth that can threaten American maritime dominance, and one of them is China. The other is a united Europe, and America has done a good job of preventing that. And Germany, precisely because of their lack of commitment to NATO, has made NATO all the more crucial.
But, in my opinion, if Germany was really committed to NATO in an...honorable sense, I suppose, they would have met their defense spending benchmarks, maintained their military (which is supposed to be in a sad state) and avoided giving the only real NATO adversary economic leverage.
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