Quote Originally Posted by wm View Post
I think we are in violent agreement except for your "By the way." As far as I know, Renatus and Vegetius are the same guy, namely Publius Flavius Vegetius Renatus. What are your sources for a different guy "generations before Vegetius"?
Damn, it's late here and I got fooled by the different estimates about the time of origin of this treatise, sorry. I even read that overlength complaint about how the forefathers were so much more disciplined, better trained and so on twice and still got this wrong...

Quote Originally Posted by JMA View Post
You can blog as much as you like but the simple truth is that the US and the EU have been tested by the 'inferior' Russians and have been found wanting. So you don't have an argument.
We haven't been tested. They're playing games in their backyard, which we didn't even bother to declare to be our backyard so far.
Nothing resembling a united European defence has been tested since Lepanto 1571 (at sea) or Wien 1683 (on land).

The Ukraine is in the geographical Europe, but it's not in the institutional Europe; it's neither EU nor associated nor NATO. Eurovision Song Contest; I think they participate in that. And European sports championships. Can't remember them participating in European football competitions, though.
An attack on them is not an attack on Germany, France, UK, Poland, Romania, Italy, Spain, ...

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You're working on the assumption that "security policy" matters, that is the messing around with military strength in various places. The folks who mistake the small European air tanker capacities for a defence weakness make the same mistake.

"security policy" isn't "defence policy". "security policy" is messing around, while "defence policy" is about securing oneself and one's allies (the actual ones, which signed and ratified an alliance treaty).

Our defences were never tested. We prove to be relatively disinterested in playing games abroad, sure - but that's no "defence" failure or "defence" weakness by a long shot. In fact, it would be a failure if we wasted more resources on preparing for and playing such games than we already do.


Look at the Americans; they fool around a lot, spend insanely every year on their baseline military budget, spend insanely most these years on additional mil budgets, and what do they get?
An economy that's failing them, thousands dead, ten thousands crippled, trillions wasted on a pointless war (one of several), avoidable hostility in much of the world, a distraction from challenges at home.
And then they go on and whine how they foot the bill that almost nobody else wants to exist in the first place. And they complain about how everybody else didn't go nuts as much as they did and paid as insanely as they did on what's largely unnecessary government consumption.

So our defence was not tested; at most our motivation to fool around in East Europe was tested. Just as the Americans' motivation to fool around in Russia's periphery was tested during the South Ossetia conflict.

Fact is, Western "security policy" folks have become too greedy and moved to too many places. Some fools took them seriously and actually believed that Westerners were (even) more into the messing around hobby than they actually are. But Americans wanted Georgia as a make-believe part of a faux coalition and as auxiliary troops providers. they never intended to actually help Georgia.
Nor are West Europeans fans of the idea of going to war with Russia over a non-allied petty territory such as the Crimea where about 90% of the population prefer Russia over the Ukraine. We did low-level messing around with support for some pro-Western/pro-"democracy" political movements there, and that's about it.

The Russians are merely calling some bluffs at times.