17 Sep 2023

(quote)
That war that's taking place right now in Zaporizhzhia, in Kherson, in Luhansk,
in Donetsk: It's a war that NATO cannot fight. And now the world knows it. NATO
is a paper tiger. The world knows it's a paper tiger. They know the United
States cannot meet its stated desire to reinforce Europe in a fashion. Ukraine
has lost 400,000 men in battle, 40,000 to 50,000 in the last several weeks. It
took America ten years to lose 58,000 in Vietnam and that broke our back. Can
you imagine a situation where the United States military was asked to sacrifice
40,000 men in two weeks? Can you imagine a situation when any European army was
asked to sacrifice 40,000 men in two weeks? The fact of the matter is: We can't
win a war today in Europe. We're not number one anymore. We're not number two
anymore. We might be number three.

But this is a reality. It's not just in Europe that we can't prevail. It's in
the Pacific. Don't believe me, believe Lieutenant General Samuel Clinton
Hinote. He was the deputy chief of staff of the United States Air Force. He just
recently retired. But his job was strategy. And what he did for the last four
years is war-game every potential scenario of conflict between the United Sates
and China in the Pacific. And he recently, before his retirement, went to the
Pentagon and went to the White House, and said the following: Cease and desist
your policies that push us to a potential military confrontation with
China. Because if it does become a kinetic fight between the United States and
China, there is no scenario in which we win. We lose every single time. And
there is nothing we can do in the immediate future to change that outcome. We
have to change the way we interface with China.

That's why Tony Blinken went to China in July. You remember that trip? He went -
he had to go through thirty Chinese officials before he got to Xi Jinping - for
a thirty-minute lesson in humility. The reason why he had to go there is because
the United States had to hit pause on its China policy: Stop the path towards
confrontation. We had just had a situation in the Strait of Taiwan where an
American ship was almost rammed by a Chinese ship. And the Pentagon said, "If
they do hit us, what do we do? Sink them?" And now the scenarios begin: If we
sink them they retaliate, we retaliate, how does it end? Well, General Samuel
Clinton Hinote said that it ends only one way every time: America loses.

This is the reality today. We lose because we don't have the capacity. But
before Ukraine nobody understood that. Nobody believed that. Everybody believed
that America was the supreme military power in the world. Today, the blinders
have come off. Economically, we're number two. Maybe we can maintain that
position, maybe not. Militarily, we're number three. And who knows where we'll
go with that. Because our military is a broken system. We spent hundreds of
billions of dollars on a system that produces nothing beneficial to the defense
of the United State. Let alone the defense of its allies. How can you spend $900
billion a year and say we can't fight and prevail in a land war in Europe
against the Russian army that spends $68 billion a year? It's because our system
is broken. But that's another question.

Ukraine has changed everything. Before Ukraine, America was number one, at least
perception-wise. After Ukraine, American is number two economically, number
three militarily, and this is a reality that the world is accepting. It's not
Scott Ritter saying this in a closed community to oil and gas executives. It's
Scott Ritter saying this while the rest of the world acknowledges this. Russia
knows this. Russia no longer fears the American military. It's not that they
want to go to war against the America military, but Russia knows its
capabilities. It's been tested. China knows this, as well.
(/quote)
-- Cont'd at https://thefloutist.substack.com/p/ukraine-before-and-after