Sanders mentions cutting waste.

[Xavier_Onassis]

Yeah, right. Putin wants to conquer the entire world.
What a crook!
Peddle that crap somewhere else. I ducked and I covered.  It was all nonsense.

Ben there, done that, it was bullshit then, it is bullshit now.

The US simply has to recognize that Ukraine and the mostly Russian populated parts of Georgia are part of the Russian sphere of influence.
Syria has been a Russian ally for 60 years. It has NEVER been an ally or even on good terms with the US, and won't be, because it is Israel's enemy.

 

[Plane]

   So Putin is building a new fleet of ballistic missile submarines and developing a harder to block ballistic missile, to fight the incursions of insurgents in Syria?

     Perhaps Putin is doing all this major weapon development because President Obama is frightening to him?

[Xavier_Onassis]

The US has dedicated itself to encircling Russia and depriving it of the former Soviet republics.
The idiot Republican candidates in the debates spent a lot of time talking about how they wanted to arm and ally this country with Ukraine.
That would be an error.

Putin was indoctrinated with the same bogus Cold War hokum the military seems to have indoctrinated you with.
The Ukrainians have themselves to blame for the mess their country is in. The US has spent millions trying to provoke Russia over Ukraine.
Money wasted that will only end up costing us even more.

Crimea was never really a part of Ukraine. It never had more than a small minority of Ukrainian citizens.The parts of Georgia Russia annexed were majority Russian as well.

It would be insanity to give NATO membership to either Ukraine or Georgia as one of the Republicans said.

[Plane]

  Don't a lot of the citizens of the captive nations want to get away from Russia?

   I think it is self destructive for Russia to keep them.

[Xavier_Onassis]

Russia is the business of the Russians. If it is bad for the Russians to keep "captive nations", then that is their problem, not ours. The US cannot mold the entire world to its liking and it is a waste of money and effort to even try.

Belarus is the only really  oppressive ex-Soviet nation. It poses no threat to the US or any significant US interest. No matter who runs Ukraine, it is far more important to the Russians Poles and other neighboring countries than to the US.

We have 6% of the world's population. It is absurd to continue this idiotic Cold War fantasy.
Russia has its sphere of influence, Europe has another, China another and the US has more influence that its small population merits. The American government should stop meddling in everyone's business. It does not make one bit of difference to anyone in this country whether China controls ths Spratley Islands

[Plane]

  So you don't like the United Nations?

[Xavier_Onassis]

That has nothing to do with any of this.

How many American lives are the Spratley Islands worth?

[Plane]

Since we have sent a carrier battle group through recently , ten thousand or so .

[Xavier_Onassis]

They were not killed.  Perhaps a few might have caused dirty looks, but I doubt that they were close enough to see them.

The Chinese are not dumb enough to fire on a US warship. They need our markets. What is going on between the US and China is ritual posturing.
It is rather like the border closing ritual at the India-Pakistan border.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NC9NeJh1NhI

But less colorful.  The Ministry of Silly Walks meets the Defense of the Fatherland.

[Plane]

This is a border dispute.

It seems to be worth tens of thousands of Chinese lives so far devoted to the project.

We will probably find it has been worth the extinction of a few fish species as well.

At stake are many tons of first rate food and a few complete oil fields.

Perhaps this will resolve itself , a major storm or tsunami is liable to shatter these sand islands , it is hard to believe that they are safe human habitat.

So the number of Chinese lives this issue is worth?

Pilipino and Japanese and Vietnamese lives?

If the wider issue of freedom of transit of the oceans is considered , we are all involved.

[Xavier_Onassis]

The Chinese can fish without building up these islands. There are no Filipino or Vietnamese living anywhere nearby. Why the Chinese would be more likely to fish a species to extinction than Americans, Filipinos, Vietnamese or anyone else  is a very dubious proposition. If there is oil, the American people would not benefit. No American should be asked to die for ExxonMobil, Shell or Texaco.

[Plane]

With these territorial claims they do plan to prevent the fisheries from being available to any other nations.

Perhaps you do not like fish, but to the Philippines, Japanese, and Vietnamese reduced access to fishing is a big deal.

I was not thinking about overfishing, for  which the Chinese are just as likely to improve the situation by reducing the access to fishing.

The Chinese by building islands of dredged material are covering large areas of reef with sand and mud, killing the reef and very likely already causing some extinctions in reef fish.

[Xavier_Onassis]

The United States and the rest of the world has acted as thought these islands did not exist since forever. Now that the Chinese have found a use for them, the US wants to defend them. And this is not about the damned fish. This is like a playground dispute. Marco Rubio somehow sees this as a reason for war or something. It isn't.

[Plane]

Fish as food is important.

What is the overall effect you would expect for doubling the cost of protein in Japan, Vietnam and the Philippines?

Most of these islands were submerged at high tide, the point of building them up isn't nice beaches.

There is a very important principal of freedom of the seas , which has been important to the USA since we fought the Barbary Pirates rather than pay them a transit fee.

There is incidentally an oil field that might be pretty big, but oil could be shared in the manner that north sea oil is shared between Scotland Norway and England. I don't think that monopolizing the oil is as important as the fishing rights.

[Xavier_Onassis]

Since the islands belong to SOMEBODY and that somebody has territorial limits around the islands, this is NOT a "freedom of the seas" Issue. Bt the way the So has refused to sign the Law of the Seas treaty.

One thing is clear: these islands or whatever they are, are NOT US property. Therefore, US laws will NOT apply if China is shut out of expoitation of the islands. If it is about oil, US companies have made some of the greater oil messes on this planet and are clearly not better than anyone else.

 So if it is about fish, then it mush be because the US thinks Vietnam, the Philippines, Taiwan or whoever will have more strict fishing laws than the Chinese. If the fish are a resource, it makes no sense for any nation to overfish.