its easy to look good and competent when the money flowing in and youre uncontested

Do u rly think 92k troops is enough to invade ukraine lol?

When russia invaded Georgia they had more than that even

Russia is flexing their muscles but they're not going to invade that's just ridiculous

Theres a theory out there that as the chinese economy grows and the american public becomes more and more isolationist, washington is getting more and more scared that europe will just start looking east and will ditch american foreign policy

So they're trying to amp up the only industry america dominates there (the security industry) to keep europe tied to their hip. So theorically the goal here would be to destabilize an european country to create free ground for other european far right white supremacist groups to train and and then bring back home their experience. Eventually when the problem gets bad enough the americans will deploy all over europe to "save them from terrorists" and get a competitive edge in that continent due to this.

Kinda like how France destabilized West Africa by turning Lybia into a failed state to then offer security services there (Sahel operation) which led them to basically get all the profitable contracts there afterwards. Or how the arab states became even bigger b****es to the americans once Iraq was turned into a failed state.

eh, i've heard this before and this makes sense on a kind of narrative level but it doesn't make as much sense economically if you look at actual numbers in exports and similar. While the US is by far the biggest arms exporter in the world, the actual skew of who is buying weapons doesn't really line up necessarily with who the US's western sphere of influence includes. The biggest US arms importers are virtually all middle eastern, I think Saudi Arabia is the biggest arms importer to a degree of something like 400%, and then after that it's like UAE, Iraq, Australia, and Israel. Europe (and eastern europe especially) in general does not actually buy much from the US, and even in situational scenarios (recently i think they bought something like maybe $200M in arms) - this is fractional compared to even the low-end of the highest exports; Australia purchases something like $5B yearly and Saudi Arabia buys something like $14B yearly. Middle eastern, north african, and oceanic purchases of US arms have steadily gone up over time - in fact as more middle eastern countries recognize Israel due to US involvement, they actually inversely begin to buy more arms from the US (the opposite of what you'd think), giving an actual economic incentive to continue pro-Israel diplomacy there - Qatar being an example of this, but more recently Sudan & the UAE; there really isn't an incentive to force Europe to do this because the current setup is not only sustaining but has essentially only multiplicatively grown over the past decade anyway - it's anything but failing or isolationist. Plus, if you look at the actual breakdown of what the US does actually export as well, it's actually kind of surprising what the export economy primarily consists of - arms do not actually play as much of a role in the general economy as you'd really think they do given how much we talk about the US arms economy; it's more like the arms sector is a very small government-connected group which profits + retains money as a quasi-governmental force (due to corruption obviously). But because of how small it is, in turn, it doesn't actually generate as much of a % of the US export economy as you'd think - cultural/technological & necessity exports make up the highest sectors by a large margin and they only continue to grow as well. It's the domestic economy which has gotten increasingly bitter and bleak in the US, not the international one.

The top 10 is SA, Australia, UAE, South Korea, Iraq, Japan, Singapore, Turkey, UK and Taiwan.

How do these countries not fall under US sphere of influence?

i think you misread what i said, i said "US's western sphere of influence" not "US's global sphere of influence"; i was saying that european countries influenced by the US aren't the primary importer of arms, it's countries in other regional US-influenced spheres (because his post was in regards to US operations in europe specifically)

If we're talking about where the percentage of US exports go to for sure, but the West still overwhelmingly imports their weapons from the US

I don't buy the theory of the US using a rise in white supremacist terrorism in Europe as a way to gain more control in Europe tho

You're misunderstanding what security means here. Security is not only weapons sales, it's world class logistic capabilities, accurate and useful intel, the political will to shed blood, etc. The US dominates worldwide in this sector, it's the largest security exporter by a mile since it has complete control of the maritime trade routes, a bazillion bases stacked everywhere and a military budget unlike any other.

Here's the thing though: the security business is pretty much always unprofitable. Your vassals and protectorates (this is Europe) usually do not pay you enough to cover the costs of such a large army so your citizens pay for it through taxes. It does however give you great leverage over the political system of a country and allows you to manipulate them into making you rich (profitable contracts, trade deals, control of their foreign policy, etc.). This is what empires have always done: subsidize military budget through taxes on your people --> export security to smaller weaker countries at a loss --> take control of their political system --> cut favorable deals with the vassals to enrich yourself.

A good example is America's relations with Saudi Arabia and friends. Ultimately the military bases and political cost really makes it unprofitable to stay there because a few billions in weapons sale just doesnt cut it and the taxpayer pays like crazy for this. But yet because of their presence there, the arabs agreed to sell their petrol in USD which gives basically an endless low interest money supply to the US.

Since Europe now has more options (with China rising), it really isn't as attached economically to the US. So the theory here is that the US is artificially creating a demand in security (failed state in the east where every european far right group could find weapons and military training) in that continent that only the US can provide supply which will give additional political leverage over european countries and this will result in keeping Europe economically aligned with the US ($$$). Btw this is exactly what the french have been doing in West Africa since they started becoming less competitive against the chinese there (around the late 2000's)

I was just talking in pure economics that the most profitable partners aren't the european ones, they're asian/oceanic & middle-eastern, and those partners have only ramped up purchases, so there's no reason to try milk more purchases from the european market which is already so minimal

I mean there's definitely an increase of amrs sales to Western Europe though, even if it isn't the biggest market for the US, the Netherlands has seen a yearly increase in weapon imports almost every year, half of those times an increase of 200-600%

i get what you're saying but I still disagree with you largely on this theory because it doesn't make much sense outside of theoretical narrative - like it does make sense on paper but the practicalities just don't support that.

The US-Europe relationship doesn't really follow the logic you're saying in reality and the US doesn't need to create artificial chaos to inflate their influence there, much less their economic sector. I can go into detail on this but you can probably find a more accurate rendition on the front page of a search engine; it's something which has been long talked about on both spectrums of right and left outside of the obvious oblivious or malignant moderate which dominates american politics otherwise.

The SA-US stuff is also a pretty big oversimplification, that's not really a good example of this either imo. You'd really need to break down the nuances in US private & public sector and also overlapping or otherwise interfering goals. SA is also far more complex than say, the US relationship with the Austalia or something, of which would be far easier to make that sort of argument. Putting SA in this category would be like putting Israel in this category - there's far more of a mutuality of cross-beneficial influence there than there is some form of inflated vassal influence.

I understand what you're saying and like I said, it makes sense in practicality, but it just doesn't really hold up under scrutiny of either economic or political a***ysis. The actual practicality of how the US has acted both in terms of government as well as in terms of biggest private sector actors doesn't really support this. Obviously this strategy has happened before, but I don't think it's applicable to the US in terms of global strategy.

A lot of that is just because of NATO though presumably (same with Turkey's spike in arms buying)? Iirc the first real recent market spike of NATO arms buying in the 2010s happened because of Libya & Syria rather than because of anything specific to Europe itself. A lot of this isn't even just the US - Turkey has benefited like crazy from US influence abroad, Turkey basically just piggybacks on top of it and then does their own nationbuilding after the US destroys the country. They're doing it now in Libya & Afghanistan and also have been trying in North Syria & North Iraq for years now too. I bring it up in terms of NATO because honestly it's not as skewed toward sole US influence as people like to make it seem. "US influence" is at any time more of a metric for the desires of high corporate and quasi-economic unelected officials.
The desires of elected/appointed officials very often in recent history do not match the private sector unless they get lobbied - great examples of this include warmongers like John Bolton saying the US needs to "nuke China"; like obviously every major business in the US does not want this outside of like the military company that Bolton is invested in. You have this large push and pull between the more or less nationless corporatocracy of which is american in spirit alone vs the actual american-specific military complex, and honestly i'd say it's why the latter gets away with going after countries no one gives a s*** economically about vs real actual "tensions" globally. It's why all the warmongering goes so far in the middle east but falls flat in China/Taiwan - the military complex doesn't have to worry about essentially fighting off the influence of its owners as well.

also when our so called "meritocratic leaders" can get on twitter 7 days a week and tweet the dumbest s*** youve ever seen

You're about to potentially get invaded with that deep d***ings op

Might wanna call your local ambassador

See if them niggas can get you to a refugee camp

You can meet a random Iranian named Bahk-Tel

Tell him you had to leave the country and now you're stuck here eating beans

And you can't come back until you get the all clear signal from your government because you in grave, very serious danger

You awake the next night on your hay bedding Bahk-Tel managed to makeshift together in 90 seconds

Knowing that we invaded and found you via gps, triangulation, assimilation and you GON GET DIS D*** OP I AM GOING TO GET MINES YOU WONT HIDE IT FROM ME

Fr though Pootin should stop tho. It's not cool. Someone should tell him.

@op

Go back to like page 3 or 4 and I directly acknowledged him

I'm an IR student I've read his work

I'm not saying you don't know about him lol I'm just wondering what your thoughts are on his perspective on how the West caused this whole crisis.

Also in your post where you do acknowledge his work you still confuse his stance with somehow being anti-Ukraine in some sense.

The most anti-Ukraine thing you could do is to push them further into a conflict with Russia that would totally destroy them.

It's so funny how people call you pro-Russian or accuse you of defending Russian imperialism really for no reason at all lol. Like nobody in their right mind is saying that Russia shoulda invade Ukraine or that it should use install a pro-Russian government through a coup (like the US did in 2014).

But all these people who advocate for Ukraine becoming part of NATO or don't acknowledge how the West caused this whole crisis won't recognize themselves as pro-US, even though they're literally advocating for the expansion of a Western military alliance lmao. Gotta escape that cognitive dissonance somehow I guess

In a personal capacity I agree nato expansion has provoked russia

On the moral level I believe ukraine should be allowed to do as it pleases, including joining nato, but I acknowledge if this wasn't on the table then this crisis probably wouldn't be a thing

I have no real wish for ukraine to join nato, but at the same time they should still get to choose orientation. Perhaps eu membership without nato

Ukraine can try to join NATO and the US can vote against that, that would not violate Ukrainian sovereignty in any capacity.

Kinda looks like you're defending Russian imperialism here buddy

Does Ukraine being able to do as it pleases include constant shelling of Russian civilian positions in the Donbas during a cease fire?

Does it include the banning of Russian language in schools which is the native language of 1/3rd of people living in Ukraine?

Does it include having a military that glorifies Nazism and teaches Ukrainians that Russians are bugs who must be exterminated?