OptimisticCynic
14.9K posts
🇸🇪 GEN. CLAESSON: After traveling 3,000 kilometers through Ukraine and meeting with dozens of military leaders, my main conclusion is that it is not a broken country. They are tired, for obvious reasons, but not broken. We must maintain our focus on Ukraine.
English
@anders_aslund Trump is an unreliable enemy as well.
Whatever you are to Trump, he will be unreliable back to you.
English
Yes, the US is a completely unreliable ally as long as Trump is president and that is three more years.
Europe has to build its own complete defense asap.
NXT EU@NXT4EU
Trump is considering moving troops out of Germany. Just do it, stop considering. We don't need the US, we need a more integrated European Defence. A superpower doesn't need another superpower within their borders, especially when they are sometimes openly hostile.
English
@HansMahncke @TrentTelenko Trump starts a war without consulting anyone but Israel.
Despite that, his allies let the US use bases in their countries and even assist with air defense over friendly Gulf nations.
Trump has no plan for next steps, but gets mad at nations who don’t give him a blank check.
English
It’s genuinely hard to understand why this is so difficult for people to grasp, other than sheer Trump derangement. Trump wasn’t invoking NATO’s legal obligations. He was testing whether European countries that the U.S. has protected for over 80 years would do the bare minimum to help secure global sea lanes, which American taxpayers have also been underwriting for decades at no cost to them. In this case, those sea lanes benefit Europe far more than the U.S. and Europe failed the test.
Daniel Hannan@DanielJHannan
NATO members are obliged to support one another if attacked, not to join wars of choice. That stipulation was made at the demand of the US, which also insisted that the commitment be territorially limited. “The treaty does not cover the entire world,” said Dean Acheson. “It applies only to the North Atlantic area.” He made clear that this had been the key American condition. “We deliberately avoided any implication that we were undertaking a global military commitment.” The Senate, worried about being dragged into European colonial wars, had threatened to refuse ratification unless the limitations were explicit. As John Foster Dulles put it: “If it were made global in scope, it would not be acceptable to the United States.” Despite all this, the only time that NATO has gone to war was indeed out of area, at the request of the US after 9/11.
English
@ProfessorPape @MalcolmNance The Vietnam War shows how few troops are required to enter a one-way escalation ladder.
Start with a handful and keep sending them until your political base collapses.
It means watching logistics doesn’t tell you anything about that first step.
English
Another 10,000 Ground Troops preparing for Iran, raising total to 17,000. Stage 3 of Escalation Trap gets closer by the day, even as Sec Rubio says ground forces unnecessary. Track troops and logistics, not rhetoric wsj.com/livecoverage/i…
English
@Billbrowder @ChrisO_wiki Withdraw from NATO and lose access to the air and naval bases that America relies on to fight the President’s war?
Seems insane.
English
Sounds like the table is being set for the US to withdraw from NATO. Not that this wasn’t obvious before, but it’s now being said pretty explicitly
Department of State@StateDept
PRESIDENT TRUMP: NATO wasn’t there for us. We send billions of dollars to them every year to protect them. We would have always been there for them. But based on their actions, I guess we don’t have to be, do we? Why would we be there for them if they’re not there for us?
English
@joni_askola NATO has total control over access to the Baltic Sea and the North Atlantic.
Russia’s export economy would essentially end, the very goal of Ukraine long range strikes.
English
European armies are living in a fantasy.
We do not have even a fraction of the cruise missiles, ballistic missiles, or interceptors needed to survive a high intensity war or actually deter Russia.
We are entirely exposed and relying on empty stockpiles.
We must wake up
English
@Angry_Staffer Very expensive or a great incentive to rebuild America’s industrial base.
English
Oof. An E-3?
That’s not good. We only have around 20 active in the entire fleet.
Between this and the radar systems we’ve lost, this war is getting very expensive from a national security perspective.
The Aviationist@TheAviationist
The Iranian attack on Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi Arabia was apparently bigger than first thought, with reports of damage to multiple refueling aircraft, an E-3 Sentry AWACS, and injuries to at least 10 U.S. troops. Updated report: theaviationist.com/2026/03/27/ira…
English
@JamesSurowiecki NATO saves America money and vastly increases our ability to spend in R and D since we have allies to sell weapons to.
English
We do not spend hundreds of billions of dollars a year on NATO. We spend less than ten billion dollars a year on it.
Trump's implicit claim here is that if we weren't a member of NATO, we would slash our defense budget by hundreds of billions. But that's nonsense. We don't spend almost a trillion dollars a year on defense because of NATO. We do it because the US wants to be able to project its power wherever and whenever it wants.
English
@ProfessorPape @MalcolmNance There us only one thing that will determine if the US enters a ground war:
Trump
And he has multiple ways he could be pulled in:
1) severe loss of American life
2) terrorist attack in the US
3) irreparable damage Gulf oil infrastructure
4) personal humiliation
English
In Iran war: Everyone is watching troop numbers
They’re missing the signal that actually determines whether the U.S. enters a ground war
New: escalationtrap.substack.com/p/the-marine-t…
English
@MalcolmNance Trump just wants to make sure that any Thanksgiving argument between relatives over whether or not Trump is an egomaniac can be settled quickly.
English
@Rep_Stansbury @anders_aslund Vance is so unpopular that this trip is just backstabbing Orban.
English
OK, so let me get this straight—the Vice President of the United States is going to Hungary to actively campaign for an autocrat….k got it.
English
@JewsFightBack The Soviet Union was occupying all of Eastern Europe for a half century, but they gave it back.
English
47 years ago today, Israel gave Egypt the Sinai.
Three times the size of Israel today.
Given up for peace.
Show me another country willing to compromise this much for peace. I’ll wait.
English
@factsforupsc Russians took Tehran and the north half of Iran in 1941 while the British occupied the south.
English
This is How Natural Fortress look like
Iran
Ground invasion is not easy
English
@MalcolmNance The Russian invasion of Ukraine involved more than 150000 Russian soldiers from bases on Russian and Belarusian soil.
Gulf War, 500k Americans plus allies.
So 10k Americans will do what?
English
Your assessment is quite wrong. Strategic deception would not involve 10,000 troops. Where we attack is different but this op is a Go.
Trump is painted himself into a corner. He’s gonna take the leap. And Land in paint.
Ken Klippenstein@kenklippenstein
A conventional ground invasion of Iran is not imminent; military sources tell me that the Pentagon is just trying to scare them using strategic deception: kenklippenstein.com/p/is-a-ground-…
English
@Mylovanov Why not make the reaction to Russia’s current invasion devastating if you want to teach Russia a lesson?
English
Rutte: Ukraine's NATO membership is not on the cards for now. When the war stops, Putin must know the reaction will be devastating if he tries again.
In Paris in January, a coalition of the willing agreed on what Ukraine's security guarantees should look like. 1/
English
@TrashPanda08x We can’t have this because city folk don’t want this coming into their downtown through their single family zoned neighborhoods.
English
We can't have this in the US because a farmer will lose 0.5% of their land and less people would drive which would be bad for oil companies. :(
Li Zexin 李泽欣@XH_Lee23
In China’s Guilin, high-speed trains have become a sightseeing attraction.
English
@IndiaTales7 Israeli mob is the Russian mob is the New York mob.
English
@TrentTelenko Taking shelter in mosques or praying in mosques as their religion calls them to do.
Potato, potato.
English
The US-Israeli air campaign needs to be inflicting 20 times that number a day to collapse Iranian Regime Security Forces control over the Iranian population in ~3 months.
The Iran Watcher 🇮🇷@TheIranWatcher
🚨 Over 200 Basij members reportedly killed in a mosque strike in Mashhad. Reports indicate that Basij and IRGC forces had taken refuge inside Imam Sajjad Mosque during heavy bombardment. This comes amid growing evidence that these forces are using mosques, schools, and other civilian locations as cover, believing they will be shielded from Israeli and U.S. strikes. Mashhad was heavily struck tonight.
English
@MulhollandL0ver The North was also very racially and culturally segregated, and initially the former slaves had hopes of integrating in the South. Reconstruction doesn’t end until 1877, and legalized segregation takes 20 more years to take hold. By the mid 1910s The Great Migration has begun.
English
It’s still pretty perplexing how many freed slaves didn’t migrate North after slavery. And if not then, then definitely during Jim Crow. I would’ve been on the first smoking train to Chicago
Epic Maps 🗺️@theepicmap
USA black population by county
English
@dqveed North Korea is more willing to have a female leader than America?!?
English
If true this would be a huge win for feminism. Women are grossly underrepresented in the dictatorship and authoritarianism fields.
Leading Report@LeadingReport
BREAKING: Kim Jong Un is set to formally name his daughter, Kim Ju Ae, as North Korea’s next leader.
English