As Wretchard points out, everyone now has to revisit their priors on Trump and Russia. Putin was totally opposed to this. 100% of the "Trump/Russia" stuff is now demonstrably proven false. People need to account for how they misread the Trump/Putin relationship before they figure out what they think now, because that whole nexus of thinking was wrong.
Trump fooled everybody. Even me; I thought he'd wait for the carriers to be on station. Nope.
9 comments:
They will just cease to mention it. Memory hole.
I missed the news that Putin was "opposed."
Was that his public stance, or the reality? Remember that Iran-financed terrorists massacred a lot of children in a Russian school several years ago. You can bet that Putin did not forget that.
While I have no way of knowing the secret thoughts of Vladimir Putin, Iran has been a core aspect of Russia's strategy in the Middle East. It was providing significant fire support to their Syrian outpost, which is now lost; and it was providing weapons and support to the Houthis, which were attacking American and European shipping in the Red Sea in reprisal for attacks on Russia's navy in the Black Sea. Russia was directly providing targeting aid to the Houthis, just as we have been to the Ukrainians.
Watching their chief Middle East ally knocked out can't be happy news in Moscow. For one thing, we've learned that Russian 'fifth-generation' air superiority technology is almost worthless; it did nothing to stop Israel from clearing the air defense capabilities from Iran, and nobody ever even saw the B-2s. In a year they went from having a naval base on the Med to having their allies broken or cleared from the region.
we've learned that Russian 'fifth-generation' air superiority technology is almost worthless; it did nothing to stop Israel....
I don't entirely agree with this part; although the rest is spot on.
Maybe Russian 5th generation equipment is almost worthless, maybe it's not. It's hard to pin the failure on the equipment when it's being operated by such poorly trained personnel.
Nobody even saw the B-2s? Maybe they weren't looking, or were looking in the wrong direction (those poorly trained personnel, again), or the IAF had in fact thoroughly attrited the Iranian sensor systems. Aside from that, the stealth bombers can be detected if personnel know how to look and can recognize what they're seeing.
Eric Hines
I’ll grant that user error and incompetence are always factors. All the same, let’s say you were a nonaligned country considering arms purchases for your country’s defense. After observing the success of Russian-made equipment in Iran, would you be more or less likely to buy their gear? You might not choose American, but you could buy French or Chinese or German or Swedish. Why consider Russian after observing this performance?
I was in northern Israel last September, and I was struck by that. People tended to be trilingual. Many Israelis spoke Hebrew, Arabic, and either Russian or English, or all four. The grocery store two blocks down from where I stayed even had a sizable section devoted to Russians. I knew that a large number of Soviet/Russian Jews had made Aliyah, but that brought it home to me.
Sorry, forgot to add that I’m Larry. I’ve been a long time reader. I don’t comment much, but I learn a lot from the posts and the comments, and I’ve always appreciated how everyone in the Hall does it. No keyboard warriors. People discuss, agree, disagree (even forcefully), always thoughtfully and courteously.
After observing the success of Russian-made equipment in Iran....
It would depend on price and who I was fighting/planning on fighting. I don't need the best equipment; I need equipment that's better than my enemy's. Russian arms did quite well in the market after performing poorly in Iraqi hands against the American army.
Of course, no matter who I was buying from, I'd insist on my operators operating the equipment to my testers' satisfaction before any buy. Not being allowed that would be a deal breaker.
Eric Hines
You are welcome, Larry. Please sign your comments so that we can tell you apart from other anonymous commenters. You don’t need to make an account; you can just sign like so:
-Grim
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