Ukraine will go for as long as needed. If needed, if it came to it, the west will just put in foreign volunteers with next gen weapons. The whole thing is basically a trap which convinced russia to use up all its equipment and bleed itself white. When Russia was trying to rig our elections five years ago, no one could dream we could trick them into throwing a whole generation into a meat grinder with basically zero cost to the west.

Russia can't bully neighbors any more, not with how far behind they are. They are about to lose an war to ukraine and in a year or two the whole western border will be NATO. I guess they can try to bully azerbaijan, but, seem to be deterred from trying this in the last few years. If they go after Georgia it would get western weapons to defeat them. I doubt China would permit them to bully kazakhstan or north korea. So, they are outclassed by all neighbors.

There's already an arms race with China though so if India stays with Russian designs it will be increasingly outclassed

Russia itself is going to have to choose sooner than it would like whether to become dependent on China or the West for key systems. The way it is going, they will depend on China as they cannot make modern tanks or aircraft in sufficient numbers - their next gen T-14 tank and Su-57 aircraft are just prototypes and already behind what US and China have in quantity.

For some things though Russian equipment is so far behind that if you want modernity and quality you simply have to shop elsewhere, even if it's not US either

Bonus would be if you could get ChatGPT to make those points

I doubt snark is some difficult hurdle given the other things it can do. Probably they will make whole enembles of personalities tuned to populate astroturf campaigns yes, but also video games, haunted houses, tech support, remote psychotherapy, themed semi automated strip clubs and brothels, you name it

yeah it is offered too easily for stuff where tylenol and/or ibuprofen would be serviceable. But the illicit fentanyl is where the bulk of the body count is coming from this year

if we really want to put brakes on this there has be some consideration that would cause china or mexico to do something, or some direct action against those doing the smuggling

that's no longer the main issue. It was 20 years ago, but now it is a china->mexico->us pipe killing 100k annually

a larger percent of the country is desert and mountain though

There is data on this. It's not really fair to count decolonization as in reality UK and India were always separate countries, linked on a political level into an empire. War costs in the UK took the form of massive debt of 250% of GDP, with really severe austerity for several decades afterwards.

The biggest and longest lasting damage was likely just population loss, which was over 10% in a number of countries, notably Germany, Russia, and all the countries between them.

He's got what the Joker wants : https://youtu.be/6GwGRSzasxo

Not just twitter: crupto advertising spend was endemic and will probably recede now

Ships could also proceed in the 12-mile territorial limit of romania and bulgaria, then reflag under romanian, bulgarian, the turkish flags. Any attack once out of ukrainian waters would be an article 5 violation.

Also apparently there are hundreds of ships. Does russia have hundreds of submarines and backfire bombers ready to be destroyed in the act of sinking a 10k ton romanian flagged ancient grain hauler?

I's suspect that aside from bluster, mines, drones, and sabotage would be the biggest threats

And finally, this all rests on https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montreux_Convention_Regarding_the_Regime_of_the_Straits

It was challenged by the russians in the past and is one reason Turkey is in NATO. With Russia violating all rules of conduct recently, maybe it's time to replace this with the following rules:

1. all military traffic forbidden - for russia

2. all military traffic allowed - for NATO and other black sea states

Especially when combined with eventually evicting russia from syrian naval facilities, it would really improve security in the entire region.

Why not just have romania do the escorting by itself, bolstered by a lot of aircraft

I think so. Lots of private companies are working on it with a goal of being ready within that timeframe

They are controlled from ground stations and by engineers located in the US. Anyway, Musk has lawyers who can explain his actual role to him, before or after the government takes some overt action.

Source?

If he wants to defy US law over use of US assets in a war, there are ways to remove him from control of the company. I'm sure the treasury can cut him a check for the book value of the assets ( not the stock lol). It was done in WW2 in some cases with right wing nuts who had companies or left wing nuts running unions who though it meant they could have their own foreign policy.

Starlink and SpaceX are US companies deeply embedded in US space industry. Their national loyalty is not Musk's decison. Also, the defense production act does not require any declaration of war and was used to deal with covid production needs.

Not at all. The defense production act can compel compliance.

Yeah, we just want to hand out delicious fried food and milkshakes. Resistance is useless.