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Comment by RcouF1uZ4gsC | Hacker News Reader

I think part of why Russia looks so inept is because everyone is comparing against the US.

However, the US military has the finest logistic operations in the world.

Also, there is no substitute for fighting an actual enemy. Part of the reason the US (especial Air Force and Naval Aviation) is so good is that they have actually been fighting. From Libya(Reagan), Gulf War I, Serbia, Gulf War II, Afghanistan, Libya (Obama), the US has been fighting quite a bit.

Whenever you are actually fighting an enemy, there is a learning curve. The big question is whether the sanctions and international isolation combined with the Ukrainian resistance will force Russia to back down, before they navigate that.

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I have this sad, but likely true, theory that the U.S. needs to always be involved in a war to stay in practice and iron out the kinks for bigger wars.

I say this as a medium-big supporter of the US military.

The reason US army is always fighting is economic. US dollar is reserve currency of the world and thus US has almost unlimited credit.

But one important element of dollar stability is that carrier group shows up on the doorstep of those getting out of line and shows them errors of their ways. Thus there is a constant need for some pretext to deploy military somewhere.

Do you mean purely for economic reasons or a whole array of reasons and the economics are a part of it?

Securing oil fields and the Persian Gulf is more than money and oil, it’s about securing trade via maritime traffic in the gulf for liberal capitalist democracies worldwide.

And keeping oil access secure is about pure security but also keeping prices low to not disrupt economies.

At least that’s how I understand it.

I think this too. We're really the only big power in the world that has battlehardened soldiers.

In addition, how much were the Iraq and Afghanistan wars about projecting power to Iran? Look on the map and they’re being contained on both sides.

Projects the power that the military will show up.

Russia fought a lot too, Georgia, Chechnya, Syria, Crimea

Murdered a lot of defenseless people is more like it..

I can't recall of a single war in this century that wasn't mostly murdering defenseless people.

> I think part of why Russia looks so inept is because everyone is comparing against the US.

Yeah, we would all like the narrative to be Russian army not working.

But it's also possible that they are just working slowly. And certainly possible that Putin would rather loose conscripts than risk airplanes.

(Honestly, I just hope the madness stops before more people are hurt -- ideally with the Russians going home)

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