This is just another example of the depth of issues caused by allowing production and mechanical know how to apathy. We literally have to build up the generational knowledge again from nearly nothing.
which in turn caused a cascade of mergers in defense contractors and the retirement of much this production and mechanical know-how. I think you are incorrectly conflating this transition period with the offshoring knowledge decay.
The alternative is to raise taxes or tariffs to pay for keeping unneeded production lines active, which means hardworking Americans in the rest of the country take home or keep less money. Which might sometimes be the right tradeoff for national security, but you only ever really know in hindsight.
Nobody was predicting a major European land war.
> The alternative is to raise taxes or tariffs to pay for keeping unneeded production lines active, which means hardworking Americans in the rest of the country take home or keep less money. Which might sometimes be the right tradeoff for national security, but you only ever really know in hindsight.
The parent wasn’t talking narrowly about keeping defense supply chains maintained (although that’s probably a good idea) but about maintaining our manufacturing industry in general so we have the equipment and experience to build. This requires a policy shift, but an eminently sensible one for reasons besides military policy: we (the US) should reduce our dependence on a reliably oppressive dictatorship (particularly with respect to critical supply chains like defense) and bring those jobs and ingenuity back home (or at least to friendly shores).
To wit, middle class Americans would bring home more money (although not so much for the American managerial class, which has enriched itself by outsourcing American middle class jobs), but there would be less cheap, disposable plastic junk on our shelves—things would cost more but they would last longer and we would repair our goods rather than disposing of them.
Apart from reasons of global and national security, economy, etc, why should we allow products on American markets that were made with labor and environmental conditions that we would never tolerate here? Why should we be complicit?
There was a post that hit the front page recently about how the us airforce paid $50k for an airplane trashcan. It costs that much not because the raw materials + direct labor to create it cost that much, but instead because you have to pay for the 30+ people involved to restart that product line again for a super small batch.
This is the thing, you don't actually have to pay to get "a" suitable trashcan. You do have to pay to get that exact one and be able to prove it. Certifications, approvals and so on carry significant costs. And significant benefits, like making aviation extremely safe, and standardisation allowing interchangeability and cooperation.
When the system ossifies over time, plenty of people are more than happy to simply follow the rules in their silos rather than think about whether there's a better way. And, indeed, this sometimes is the best way rather than doing something clever, expedient and inventive that gets your name included in a NTSB report in 15 years' time.
I don’t think that entirely accurate. Mearshiemer is one prominent example. Nuland being another.
He has been entirely wrong about Ukraine for years but still people pretend that no, actually he was right for some vague reason that has little basis in reality.
And lately he's resorting using "Moon of Alabama" (newspaper run by a religious cult) as if it was a legitimate citation, because his ego won't allow him to back down from his wild statements. Why does anyone take this guy as an authority?
I think you confused them with someone else, Moon of Alabama is just an anonymous pro-Russian blogger:
>The editor and the person who runs the blog are anonymous, and the about page states that “Bernhard started and still runs the site, and you can reach the current administrator of this site by emailing Bernhard
>In this update, we find that Moon of Alabama has become sympathetic toward Russia and the war in Ukraine, often citing misinformation ... Generally, Moon of Alabama is a pro-Russian conspiracy website.
https://mearsheimer.substack.com/p/the-darkness-ahead-where-...
My take is that Mearsheimer triggers cognitive dissonance.
https://adamtooze.substack.com/p/chartbook-95-is-ukraine-the...
This isn't to say that Ukraine can't defend itself from Russia, or that the invasion was good, but a simple recognition that there were things that led to this situation that were unforced.
The point of NATO has been said to "Keep the Americans in, the Germans down, and the Soviets out" [of Europe]. Post-1991, there is no need for it and it has mainly been used to provoke and bomb other countries such as Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Yugoslavia, and now Ukraine/Russia. Arms manufacturers are kissing their freshly printed dollar bills and thanking our economic system for their great fortune.
Russia requested that nato would leave all the eastern european countries that had joined, Poland, Baltics, Czechia, etc. Then russia could also start invading us after it had taken Ukraine.
Russia was mot interested in diplomacy, they just wanted Ukraine one way or other.
1. There was no 2014 coup in Ukraine, there was a change in president (ratified by parliament) because the first guy (Putin's stooge) had the police kill protestors. This predictably provoked riots, but a riot isn't a coup and indeed the government wasn't overthrown.
2. The invasion was never about NATO; this was just one in a litany of obvious propagandist justifications and it has no more credibility than any of the others ("de-Nazifying Ukraine" and "defending ethnic Russians against genocide"). To wit, if Russia was genuinely motivated by NATO encroachment why would he, after years of NATO weapons, personnel, and doctrine being turned away from Russia and toward the middle east, would it do the very fucking thing designed to flood Russia's doorstep with NATO weapons, personnel, and member states?
3. The idea that there has been no need for NATO since 1991 (because Russia hasn't been particularly aggressive) is a non-sequitur--Russia hasn't been particularly aggressive since 1991 because of NATO.
4. NATO has not been used to provoke conflicts with anyone.
5. NATO didn't provoke an attack in Afghanistan; Afghanistan aided and abetted an attack on a NATO member state. Recall NATO is a defensive alliance.
6. NATO wasn't involved in Iraq; various member states were involved.
7. NATO bombing in Libya was implementing a UN Security Council resolution (recall that China and Russia have UNSC veto rights which they declined to exercise).
8. NATO did intervene to halt an ethnic cleansing campaign in Yugoslavia. They found a loophole in International Law that allowed them to intervene legally.
9. NATO had no role in the Ukraine/Russia conflict except to provide Ukraine with the weapons, training, intelligence, etc necessary to defend itself. Russia is the unambiguous aggressor.
10. "The point of NATO has been said to..." this is not evidence, it's baseless rhetoric. I promise
If taxes are raised then yes hardworking Americans in the rest of the country take home or keep less money.
If tariffs are raised then it's not hardworking Americans that take home or keep less money. It's people who import things that can and should be built locally instead.
Better to keep the money in the USA instead of sending it overseas; better to pay Americans to build the things instead of paying people who are already rich to get richer.
Well, it's the customers that suffer due to higher tariff-induced prices. And if prices are kept the same and the company takes the hit, workers get hit by the lack of new investment the company now can't afford to make.
Indeed? Except the customers are also getting paid better because they now have jobs instead of shipping those jobs overseas.
In a true emergency, we could find replacement parts by spending money on design, and we could machine shop the actual production.
That isnt what is happening here. This is a case of being frugal, not changing the design, and reassembling the assembly line as if nothing happened over the last few decades.
No one is spending money on design here and it shows. No one wants to spend money on machine shopping these, it shows.
Makes sense too, 30 months max isnt so bad when you have a stockpile, you are going to be making some during pre-production, and its not an emergency.
I've seen some amazing things happen when emergencies happen. Prototype/Machine Shops will boggle your mind, but they make you pay.
Disclaimer: I didn't work with the military, so I imagine there is some 'top secret' access that makes all of this worse.