That doesn't matter. It is not so much about whether the USA could do this and expect to win, of course they can. Nobody has any doubt about that. It is about gross miscalculation of consequences. Attack Greenland ->attack Denmark, attack Denmark -> Attack the EU.
So you don't attack Greenland. Because that would be wrong.
Unless all that stuff about shining cities on hills was nonsense. Instead of making America great again the US has ceded power to China.
Living in Japan, I meet and talk to Chinese when out drinking. Many of them are almost literally ROFLing about how the US practically just gave away everything they had to China. It's as if the US is playing poker with their cards facing up on the table. Chinese already consider themselves the defacto superpower.
If mainstream media in the US showed this, I bet the politics would look different.
They are pretty happy with having superiority on high tech manufacturing and robotics. You basically cannot manufacture something without using China - even if you try. I don't think they consider the TSMC EUV monopoly a long term threat. Doing good on AI as well, you bet the OSS chinese models causing stock panic in the US makes them laugh.
On the topic of manufacturing outside China, the YouTuber "Smarter Every day" (Destin Sandlin) has a series on manufacturing and feels strongly about manufacturing having moved out of the country. As an experiment he tried to manufacture something without China, but was unable to: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ZTGwcHQfLY
If you want: motors, ESCs, flight controllers and radios those can be sourced from outside of China, and competitively priced too (if you're in Europe, outside you'd still have to add taxes).
As near as I can tell, the vast majority of the parts are made in China. When I look at the few alternatives, they're full of Chinese circuitry. If I look at circuit components, they're all made of Chinese raw materials.
Both Ukraine and Russia are planning to deploy (and use up) several million drones over the next year. Iran just joined them as a major procurer.
While they satisfy the technical requirement of, "there exists an alternative" neither of them is generally available as a viable alternative to China.
I perused the links that you provided in another comment.
How much of these products are sourced from EU materials? Like is the copper in the wires from the EU? Is the wire made in the EU and coated with insulator there too? Are the motors wound in Europe?
The top copper producer in the EU is Poland so that's a possible source of copper. They're pretty far down the list though so it's likely that a large part of the copper is coming from places like Chile (top producer in the world).
Well, we could counter that and say that the whole thread here is exactly about how the US is losing its soft power position and the import situation you are facing is an integral part of that.
And 'some rich guy in the Netherlands' is a nice target for you but I know plenty of people that are in other parts of Europe that seem to have no problem ordering from both of these. You asked for alternatives, you got them. You could have just left it at that but you feel the need to explain why those alternatives are not the alternatives you wanted. What did you expect? A 1-900 number and someone taking your credit card?
You could counter with that or you could read what's actually in this sub-thread.
"Some rich guy in the Netherlands" isn't about being a nice target. You keep saying it works for you but you can't demonstrate any way that works for others.
I can point you to a number of places that sell any number of Chinese drone parts that don't involve a "1-900 number". You can find them on Amazon. Any number of drone vendors sell them through normal sales portals. The manufacturers will ship them directly.
A handful of companies that require a bespoke procurement process and are operating at a tiny fraction of the scale do not have any appreciable impact on the market for drone parts today.
Motor-g doesn't seem to ship outside of Ukraine. That's totally understandable but for anyone outside of Ukraine, they effectively don't exist.
Arctus asks you to contact them just for product info. It seems they just raised 2.6M in seed funding 3 months ago. It's great that there are startups in NL but that's not even close to a replacement for China's scale yet.
Both of these may change the landscape in the future. For now, neither of them is a practical way to get drone parts without China.
> Motor-g doesn't seem to ship outside of Ukraine.
They absolutely do.
> Arctus asks you to contact them just for product info.
You can order as much as you want from them, the price is right and the quality is extremely high.
Indeed, they're not on AliExpress, but that's roughly the difference between being a producer in Europe and in China, and that is precisely the difference that you should be happy with.
Can you show me?
Is this some privileged access that you get as an investor?
Its easy to verify that Motor-g does not ship outside of Ukraine. I just put 4 of their motors in a shopping cart and tried to check out. The drop down menu for destination country has a single option, Ukraine.
Arctus does not list a single price on their website. That's also easy to verify. Every single product on their website only says, "request product data", or "coming soon".
I have both their products quite literally on my desk in front of me.
All I did was mail the manufacturer, asked for a quote, got a mail in return, they sent an invoice, I paid the invoice and they sent me the goods. Just like I would expect.
I think the most interesting takeaway from this video in question is that he tried to buy material from an Indian seller, who promised it was Indian. When the box arrived, it had the name of a Chinese factory on it.
Rhetoric and public support aside, I honestly very much doubt that there will be a solid EU military response. For many countries like Baltic, Eastern Europe and Nordic countries (ironically DK included). US military support means life or death of their countries. I imagine they'd stall response like what Hungary did and hope that Greenland annexed become fait accompli.
> US military support means life or death of their countries.
Meant. They have begun to realize that this has changed and realize that if this were put to the test that the US military would likely not hold up their end of NATO.
What you wrote would have made good sense in 2015, but today it makes a lot less sense and with every passing day that gap is widening. The Baltics have become the voice of reason and ethics in Europe, Poland is much stronger than parties outside of Europe seem to realize, France is always going to be a force to be reckoned with and we have no doubt about where the UK stands, then there are Finland, Sweden and Norway who all are automatically on the side of anything that Denmark is involved in and I wouldn't be surprised at all if Canada would become part of it, because they too have a lot to lose.
There is a good reason why Putin has not risked engaging the EU and that's not just because the United States is still formally part of NATO.
>It is not so much about whether the USA could do this and expect to win, of course they can. Nobody has any doubt about that.
Um, lots of us have doubts about that. The USA couldn't win against Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq; why do you think it could win against Greenland? Greenlanders actually have a lot of guns; and likely most of Europe and Canada would also go to war against the USA.
>"and likely most of Europe and Canada would also go to war against the USA."
Canada and the US share border and almost all meaningful infra of Canada is located in that thin border area. The US can obliterate much of Canada with artillery, various types of missiles, bombs etc. etc. Canada has nothing to counter it with. So no, I doubt Canada is that suicidal (I am Canadian btw).
I'm Danish. There are 56k people in Greenland and almost half of them live in Nuuk. The USA could frankly "take" greenland simply by putting a warship there and saying it was theirs. Not really sure why it was ever on the table though. The USA has basically free reign to expand it's military bases there, aside from the ban on nuclear weapons. Sure it would need approval by both Greenland and Denmark, but up until recently we were frankly more allied with the USA than the EU, and I doubt we've ever really said no before. We even bought the damn f35's despite them being so much more expensive than the alternatives, primarily because our history with the F16's. Which would probably have been a possiblity considering we're now debating whether or not to have french nuclear weapon carrying planes stationed on Danish soil in the fallout of the USA no longer being a trusty NATO ally.
If it was because of resources, then American companies are frankly free to extract them as long as they reach deals with Greenland about it. If the USA had waited a few years for Greenland to gain more independence then it would have been even easier.
Not the parent poster but, while I acknowledge your point on Canada and Europe entering the conflict (and I'd add that the highly motivated Dutch punch well above their weight in intelligence and economic spheres and this whole scenario of US invasion is a Putin dream), when you ask "why do you think it could win...", the 50k population of Greenland is smaller than Granada (100k) and three orders of magnitude smaller than Vietnam/Afghanistan/Iraq (~40m). So I find its insurgency potential hard to compare to those examples you give.
You are really completely clueless, I have no idea why you keep posting comments that contradict your own comments but fine, whatever.
There are four different mutual defense pacts in Europe and there is an umbrella one and they all operate independently of NATO. And then there is NATO, with or without the USA.
I assume the contradiction you refer to is that EU has this clause but it's still not considered a military alliance? Maybe you read the term differently. It doesn't mean it has zero defense dimensions, it's that its mission or capability are not military. That's why NATO is the one a would-be invader needs to worry about wrt military consequences.
In WW2, was there an existing organisation for a coordinated response? In the Korean War? Was NATO the organization that coordinated allies in the Persian Gulf War?
Of course military alliances can be formed after wars start, I'm not saying this couldn't happen in Europe. But it's different to have a military alliance existing responding to a conflict (or better yet preventing the conflict, as the military alliance served as a deterrent).
The US wouldn’t even need to “attack” Greenland. What is there to even attack? 50 Danish soldiers? They could just say “that’s ours”, ignore whatever Europe says, and start doing whatever they wanted to do and instead force the EU to attack American forces or civilian business interests.
I’m not suggesting this is a good idea or anything but there’s a ton of other ways that something like this could play out which involves more difficult ways to counter than you might think.
> Instead of making America great again the US has ceded power to China.
Before this, we (large multinational infra company) were happily using AWS, microsoft and a bunch of other US based companies.
Now we are beginning the migration away, not because its cheaper or better, but because we just don't think that we can trust the contracts we have with them any more.
This isn't a sudden thing, we are not going to do it over night. But we are not renewing multi-million dollar contracts in the coming years for stuff that would have been a no brainer last year.
Actually, in a number of cases EU cloud is cheaper and better.
In terms of "better", spec wise it is not uncommon to get more bang for your buck in the EU cloud, especially around compute.
In terms of "cheaper", that too. AWS, Azure etc. will happily sit there all day nickle and diming you through obscure pricing structures with all sorts of small-print. Good luck, for example, figuring out if you're going to go over your "provisioned IOPS-month" on AWS EBS, whatever the hell that is. And have fun with all the nickle-and-diming on AWS S3. Meanwhile on EU providers a lot of stuff is free that the US providers nickle and dime you for, and the stuff that is charged is done in a manner where you actually CAN forecast your spend.
And then of course there is the real EU sovereignty. Not the fake US-cloud-in-Europe which despite what the US providers salesdroids try to tell you is still subject to CLOUD, PATRIOT and everything else.
It’s interesting how these conversations always start and end with “my company isn’t buying XYZ American cloud provider services” while ignoring other incredibly important products and services that you can’t or are unwilling to boycott. Are you turning in your MacBook Pro and iPhone, or are you putting a bumper sticker on it saying you bought it before you knew America was crazy?
Similarly, while it's great to take a principled stand here (it's yet again interesting how it's always a principled stand against American companies but never others), while you are busy spending time and money migrating away from AWS to a competing product that has worse features and is more expensive as you said, you should hope your competitors are too because if not, they're going to be delivering features faster and more cheaply. Something worth thinking about there.
I don't think Microsoft losing some European contracts is an example of the US ceding power.
> while ignoring other incredibly important products and services that you can’t or are unwilling to boycott.
Its about operational risk.
right now AWS is a key dependency, if that get turns off, we're fucked. we have mixed estate of end user devices, so its hard to turn them all off at once.
If AWS gets "turned off" (the implication being the US is doing some big mean thing against all of Europe) for European countries then something absolutely catastrophic has happened and you're going to be hoping you have heat, electricity, food, and water.
If AWS gets "turned off" your MacBook Pro isn't going to work anymore because obviously the US will just whoops turn that off too! Your Google OS on your Android phone won't work anymore, and if you turn it on bam drone strike! Gotcha! Meta will shut down your WhatsApp, and you'll have to import all of your oil from Russia or something.
I don't think there's anything wrong with European countries or the EU as a whole looking to build more homegrown products and restore their manufacturing capacity - that's what we're looking to do in the US too in various ways and I encourage it. But I do think there's a problem with this fantasy, and indeed it is a fantasy of somehow decoupling from American tech companies or being isolationist or whatever and it's not good for you. We have global supply chains and in those supply chains you're going to have American products whether you like it or not. You can work on building better businesses in the EU and you should, but lay off the grandstanding, otherwise you just sound like the freedom fries enthusiasts.
Nobody would have agreed more with you than me, two years ago. But with Trump, the only thing that is completely clear is that nothing can be safely assumed about the US any longer. The explosion of corruption and corrosion of the legal system screams "liability". Hopefully his power will soon diminish but the damage that has been done, especially to trust, is going to last a lot longer.
Right now if I want to process data in compliance with GDPR, I need to make sure there are sample clauses that provide equivalence in data protection standards.
Those clauses only hold if the US and EU agree that they won't fuck with them.
Personally I have a Lenovo laptop (China) running Ubuntu (UK), on an LG monitor (Korea) with a logitech (Switzerland) mouse on an Ikea (Denmark) desk connected to a Mikrotik (Latvia) router.
I was just going off what you wrote. I buy locally handmade furniture and haven't bought anything from Ikea since college. Anyway, Sweden doesn't build all of this stuff either.
> ARM comes from a long line of UK products?
Again, global supply chains when it's convenient for your argument.
Both my iPhone and MacBook were bought from Apple Switzerland AG and shipped directly from china to me. The money will stay in Europe unless Trump does another tax holiday where American companies can send money back to the USA without paying taxes on it - otherwise it's a pretty hefty tax bill.
First and foremost, Apple is still an American company and even if it isn't repatriating some amount of income because it doesn't want to pay taxes on it American shareholders still get the benefit of the reported cash position. Apple still owns the assets.
Second, the products are manufactured/assembled in a variety of countries including China, Taiwan, and more - US obviously designs the products and all that. But in each step of the way Apple is paying suppliers, suppliers pay other suppliers and so forth and when you finally go to Apple Switzerland AG and buy your MacBook Pro you're just paying the sum total costs of the profit for Apple, each individual supplier, and manufacturer. All that money has left Europe, Apple Switzerland is just charging you the diff on the imported product and what profit margin they want to make. Maybe it's $250 or something, of the supply chain that is pretty much all that stays in Europe, of course subtracting out where European companies are suppliers.
This kind of stuff masked you feel good to say but the UK isn’t going to stop the US if it (somewhat foolishly in my opinion) decided that it was going to take Greenland. Neither is the EU.
No it would be a point of no return. But the "non-kinetic" consequences would go both ways.
It's not an exercise we should entertain, though the EU needs to step up in a very serious way and spend billions of Euros adding new equipment to Greenland to beef up detection and defense.
How will the EU get this arctic warfare equipment to Greenland? If the EU is so ready and willing to use this equipment, maybe they should deploy it to Ukraine instead.
The US literally has bases in Alaska and Greenland and deals with these temperatures regularly.
Sure if the US decides it would like to leave Greenland? It's just depending on who wants what with what influence factors. But if both blocks just decided to put all of their might and resources and politics capital into this the US clearly can just take Greenland and there's nothing the EU can do about it.
You live in a multi-polar world, there are three major power blocks and Europe isn't one of them, though that may change now (we're sick of war, but we're also sick of the threat of war, which one of the two will win out is up for grabs). There is - or rather, was, by now - Russia, China and the USA. Russia is unacceptable for many reasons, China is too clever for its own good in the longer term and the United States was historically our ally.
The United States has thrown away 80 years or so of very carefully and very expensively built up soft power because someone didn't understand the concept (apparently just like you). That doesn't translate into ownership and it doesn't in any way give you control but it ensures that things will, at least most of the times, go your way because of momentum and because it makes sense by default. Just like you may disagree on some stuff with your friends but you're not going to rob their homes, just because you can (and maybe just because they gave you the key to the back door).
You throw that away at your peril and because Russia is in no way capable of capitalizing on that the Chinese are. I wouldn't be surprised at all if in a decade or two the US$ is no longer the reserve currency. It could happen a lot faster than that. The US economy is teetering on the edge of the abyss and if you think that your ability to project power isn't diminished then maybe by the end of the Iran war you'll get it.
The US maximized its post-war power on the 10th of September 2001. Since then it has gone down hill very steadily and the fall rapidly accelerated with Trump. I see no reason to believe this will change, all institutions that were supposed to provide checks and balances have failed. And all China has to do is to look sane in comparison, that's not super hard.
the idea that Russia is a world power but Europe isn't is fairly silly. Europe had 3x the population, 10x the gdp. Russia has a bigger nuclear arsenal, and 5 years ago had more conventional stockpiles, but for all the ammo they had, they weren't able to topple the government of a single post Soviet country with a fairly unpopular leader. Russia is a fairly strong regional power but they're no where near the power that the Soviet Union used to have
> You live in a multi-polar world, there are three major power blocks and Europe isn't one of them, though that may change now (we're sick of war, but we're also sick of the threat of war, which one of the two will win out is up for grabs). There is - or rather, was, by now - Russia, China and the USA. Russia is unacceptable for many reasons, China is too clever for its own good in the longer term and the United States was historically our ally.
We live in a multi-polar world. Sure. But I disagree with your assertion that there are three major power blocks. The US and China are the only two. Europe has a decent sized and advanced economy but it lacks military power and is politically fragmented and always will be. China is building military power but lacks the ability and will to project that power. Manufacturing and economic powerhouse rivaling the United States. No doubt about that.
Russia isn't a pole in this world. As President Obama said back in the 2010s I believe "Russia is a nuclear armed gas station". That was true then, and it's still true today.
> The United States has thrown away 80 years or so of very carefully and very expensively built up soft power because someone didn't understand the concept (apparently just like you).
Well, I don't think this is true for one. And secondly if it takes just a year or so to throw away that power then it was just a matter of time until the EU got mad at the US for doing something and threw it away anyways.
> You throw that away at your peril and because Russia is in no way capable of capitalizing on that the Chinese are.
What soft power is the Chinese capitalizing on? Is it their support for Russia and supplying money, weapons, and equipment for their war in Ukraine? Or is it the soft power they had in Venezuela, Cuba, and Iran that they have just lost because of US military action?
> I wouldn't be surprised at all if in a decade or two the US$ is no longer the reserve currency. It could happen a lot faster than that. The US economy is teetering on the edge of the abyss and if you think that your ability to project power isn't diminished then maybe by the end of the Iran war you'll get it.
The US ability to project power isn't being diminished by the Iran war, only being exercised. Talking heads for some reason think that when you launch an aerial assault against a country that is amassing ballistic missiles, drones (which they build and sell to Russia to go bomb innocent Ukrainians), and more that it should be over within 24 hours and that the enemy shouldn't be able to fight back. It's unrealistic.
Nevermind Iran launching these missiles at civilian targets in countries throughout the Middle East. I get the argument that if you hose a US military base that the base is a target, but there's no excuse for attacking civilian apartment complexes and such.
It also misses the fact that, we've seen this movie before with North Korea. Except if Iran gets a nuclear weapon they also have control over your oil supply and it would kick off a nuclear arms race in the region because Saudi Arabia and others certainly aren't going to let Iran be the only one with nuclear weapons.
These are tough problems to deal with, and from the sidelines it's easy to think about how simple the solution is or point out all the mistakes, but the alternative headline here is the US does nothing, all of these Middle Eastern countries get nuclear bombs, Iran loads up on ballistic missiles, and then who knows exactly what will happen? Do they nuke Israel and Israel nukes them back? Do they extract a toll on oil passing through the Straight of Hormuz like they are as of today declaring they will do?
> For example, one-third of the top 100 mobile games in Japan currently come from China.[20]
China is indeed taking the mobile game world by storm. Go to Akihabara and you will see these huge billboards of Chinese games like Genshin Impact or Honkai Star Rail. China is starting to outplay Japan at their own otaku game.
> Economic power (US will no longer be the world reserve currency).
As a reminder, reserve currencies are just currencies that are held in large amounts by national banks and other important institutions. The USD, like the Euro, Yen, Pound, and others are all reserve currencies.
The USD is the dominant currency, in part because the US is in the Middle East right now doing exactly what it is doing by using the military to enforce trade for oil in USD. But if the US loses that "status" it just.... reverts to being more like the EU? Doesn't seem so bad to me.
There's also pros/cons with being "the reserve currency".
> The power of allies (see Trump begging for help in Hormuz).
See Europe begging for help in Ukraine. I don't think this is a good argument. If 4 years of Trump being mean was all it took to erase all soft power the US ever had, then it never had it in the first place and it wasn't worth caring about.
>If 4 years of Trump being mean was all it took to erase all soft power the US ever had, then it never had it in the first place and it wasn't worth caring about
That's a weird statement. Like all it was were some empty words. The current system, which you don't think is worth caring about, has been exceptionally good for the US. The US is the wealthiest nation in the world. Do you think this is simply because Americans are superior human beings?
Also,
>See Europe begging for help in Ukraine
..what, exactly, are you trying to say here? Other than yes, the US does in fact seem to be siding with Putin in spite of a few attempts at acting neutral.
> The current system, which you don't think is worth caring about, has been exceptionally good for the US.
I'm not against the current system, generally speaking. Critical of it, at times, absolutely. But not against it. Apologies if I gave you the wrong impression there.
> The US is the wealthiest nation in the world. Do you think this is simply because Americans are superior human beings?
I think our culture and policies were superior, and then toss in a gigantic country with access to both oceans, incredible natural resources, and well protected and you have a recipe for an economic and military super power. So it's a combination of things really. I wouldn't be quick to dismiss the cultural attributes though.
> ..what, exactly, are you trying to say here?
Idk, people are making fun of the US "begging for help" against Iran. I'm going to make fun of the EU begging for US help against Ukraine.
> Other than yes, the US does in fact seem to be siding with Putin in spite of a few attempts at acting neutral.
US isn't siding with Putin. China and Iran are though. Or have you forgotten that Iran [1] is building and selling drones to Russia who is using those drones to bomb innocent civilians in Ukraine? Or have you also forgotten that China is supplying Russia with equipment and weaponry, often times under cover to evade sanctions? But sure, saulapremium, it's the US who is siding with Putin and we certainly didn't give Ukraine tens of billions of dollars in support, we certainly didn't rush missiles to Ukraine to help them fight against Russia, nor did we sanction Russia to hell, stop Venezuela from skirting those sanctions, and we can't possibly still providing intelligence and targeting support to Ukraine.
This is what I'm talking about. If all it takes are a few mean words from our idiot president and now all of a sudden it's the US who is siding with Russia, then what are we even doing here? Why should Americans even bother caring about our allies?
You need a recalibration in your understanding of who is doing what here and who the bad guys are.
[1] Iran is also funding militias in the Middle East to try and start wars, today is hanging people for peacefully protesting, killed an estimated 30,000 of its own citizens this year over protests, and when the US attacked its military instead of just targeting military bases, or even the oil infrastructure, Iran is lobbying missiles at apartment complexes, threatening to kill people at amusement parks worldwide, and more.
>and now all of a sudden it's the US who is siding with Russia
No, it's not the mean words that indicate this, it's more the open and obvious siding with Russia that does that. And before you go and collect a list of things that Trump has done which have hurt Putin, let me respond to that right away: The fact that he is a bull in a china shop who hurts everyone, whether they're on his side or not, doesn't change the fact that it's clear to anyone and everyone who's side he is on.
>people are making fun of the US
..nobody made fun. Eupolemos was showing you that you are losing soft power, the thing that you don't see any value in.
“Losing soft power” in this context is “US does something we disagree with”. It’s like my sitting here saying the EU is losing soft power by not taking on Iran and stopping their government from all the bad things they are doing.
> No, it's not the mean words that indicate this, it's more the open and obvious siding with Russia that does that. And before you go and collect a list of things that Trump has done which have hurt Putin, let me respond to that right away: The fact that he is a bull in a china shop who hurts everyone, whether they're on his side or not, doesn't change the fact that it's clear to anyone and everyone who's side he is on.
Trump is a bull in a China shop and still helping Ukraine. But the US is the bad guy and losing soft power while Iran and China help Russia prosecute its unjust war against Ukraine.
Let’s talk about the soft power China is losing by supporting Russia, or Iran for that matter.
You know there was a famous and accurate saying by Winston Churchill that America will always do the right thing after it has exhausted all other options. I think that’s more true of the EU today than it is of the United States.
For the record, I love the US. I grew up watching almost nothing but US movies and TV. I've lived in SF and New York.
We fully agree that the dictatorships are bad, of course they are. And the US is not that, yet. But it sure appears to be flirting with the idea.
The point I am making is not that the US is bad or good, but that it's are losing soft power, and no, that doesn't just mean "doing something we disagree with".
There is an election in my country right now. Key items that parties now profile themselves on are:
* decoupling from US defence tech
* decoupling the public sector from Microsoft and AWS
* decoupling from Visa and Mastercard
Now, even if all of this happens (and it obviously won't just happen as all of those are hard and expensive), my tiny country won't move the needle in any way. But these talking points were completely unimaginable two years ago.
And I see another trend: my peers in the local startup scene are now reconsidering YC and Delaware encorporation as the default for startup creation. Importantly, this is not because of left wing ideology. Most of them, like myself and I think yourself, are somewhat right-leaning in the traditional sense, not MAGA. We all agree that the EU is over regulated and almost detrimental to entrepreneurship. But at this point, betting on the US looks like a liability.
If these trends are similar elsewhere, and I strongly suspect that they are, the long term loss for the US will be significant. It's the kind of effect that we wont see before years have passed and by then, other things will be on the radar, so I doubt that there will ever be a reckoning of this fact. But I don't doubt that it will happen.
It wasn’t even about Greenland, but a distraction from the extent of Trump’s knowledge of Epstein.
Anyway, there’s actually an index for soft power. Eliminating USAID halved that index. China built the highways, hospitals and water treatment instead.
Argentina didn't lose the war because they came with fighter jets, but because their fighter jets were throwing scrap metal at British boats. Had these detonated, the outcome would have been different, and expensive for UK. I don't doubt that F35 are working very well in comparison to the junk Argentina was using.
Argentina only had 6 Exocets. I think the parent is referring to the failure of the fuses in the bombs the Argentinian pilots dropped on British ships.
Using F35 in this situation is like brining in a billion dollar paperweight to the battle.s