Quote Originally Posted by Seamus Fermanagh View Post
I have asserted on these threads before and I still maintain...

Putin is old-school in many ways. He will stop when he knows you are willing to bleed to stop him. If NATO mobilizes and positions to intervene, THAT will tell him it is time to stop.
One can't help but observe that if such a mobilization were feasible in the first place, the fact might have laid a prohibitive threshold for escalation in Ukraine as a proximate concern. As Putin surely understands, one doesn't gin up a maximal response on the fly.

Quote Originally Posted by spmetla View Post
I'm not advocating bluffing as you only lose even bigger that way. I'd be more for sending in troops to help defend Kiev if the Russians cross the frontier together with a massive support of airpower to deny the Russians air dominance, of at least the Ukrainian interior. Sending in troops to try and defend Ukraine's frontier would be a lost cause but the moment US/NATO troops are there supporting Ukraine's sovereignty the calculus for Putin would change.
To save Ukraine you have to be willing to fight for it to prevent a war. Though in today's political climate I see that in the choice of "Why die for Danzig?" most of Europe favors appeasement.
Right, it wasn't in the cards and no US admin would make this a priority. Not that I think they should, beyond emphasizing that the fall of Putin's government will become the formal policy of the US government should he invade. To build on my comment to Seamus, Russia has been conditioning its military capabilities and the political ground for this eventuality for 8 years, not including historical predispositions. Sending thousands of soldiers into a foreign land with whatever heavy equipment is on hand to offer assistance without coordination or preparation would make them little more than a sacrificial gesture to be cynically exploited toward greater future entanglement. And this observation doesn't even support a retroactive argument for much closer defense coordination with Ukraine since 2014, since that would have brought up Putin's timetable and shortened his opposition's, if attributing him the absolute will to dictate matters in Ukraine by force.

It's a good article but the smaller more survivable items would need to be alongside the larger 'legacy' items to work. The 'opportunity cost' for China to actually establish a foothold and gain air superiority needs to be high enough and capable enough to allow the US, Japan, and UK/AUS to actually get support to them. If Taiwan can't hold long enough for its allies to muster strength before a PRC landing I can't see any scenario in which the US would try to land and retake Taiwan.
Once they achieve a foothold there is no opportunity cost for the PLA surely; almost by definition those legacy systems will have been thoroughly degraded at that stage, large (physically and logistically) and relatively exposed as they are. You're looking at this from a ground combat level, and as noted in the articles DoD takes the asymmetric view (even if they won't break the habit of enabling the most lucrative arms deals yet). Assuming some level of allied intervention in wartime, Taiwan's only logical option is to deny China any force concentrations on the main island by all means until help arrives. If Taiwan had to choose between zero tanks or zero missile boats, which would leave it less capable of self-defense? There's at least an argument for the F16s providing a few weeks' cover for total mobilization under interdiction, but other prestige systems...

Yup and I fully support these being investigated and it would be nice if for once the Officers making those decisions finally faced repercussions. The US is certainly too nonchalant about the lives of others. I get guys on the ground in 'heat of the moment' making poor decisions but those in the air-conditioned HQs approving these decisions should suffer some consequences.
Decisions like those may be tactical successes but certainly strategic failures as guys in the heat of the moment don't realize the 2nd and 3rd order effects. Pilots don't casually drop bombs, someone in some HQ gave them the okay, it is never just pilot and observer decision making, even with SOF involved.
It's impressive how components or individuals of the US military can veer from obtusely hidebound to wantonly genocidal in the same theaters and time periods.