this isn't how it happened

Soviet Union bankrolled both KMT and CCP

in wwii we started sending them supplies and money but they embezzled most of it

russia did the heavy lifting fighting the japanese in china and handed over all the captured japanese weapons to the ccp, the kmt appealed to us to aid them and we initially did a little bit but then decided to cut off aid because as incredibly difficult as it is to believe today, popular support in america was for the ccp and the kmt had shown themselves to be incredibly corrupt and incompetent

you should read this
https://www.marshallfoundation.org/l...948-aid-china/

we gave them some military surplus, notably our 55k marines who secured important regions in china left their equipment behind for the nationalists, but by and large we saw them as a corrupt group that were a lost cause and not worth supporting

we also gave them millions to build airfields previously and were pretty fed up that they embezzled most of that money instead of building airfields

they brother in law of Chiang was in charge of the countries finances and used a bunch of forex schemes to enrich his family and destroy their currency in the process

in 1938 the nationalists killed millions of their own citizens in by artificially flooding a region to slow down the japanese advance, the japanese were only slowed down incrementally but millions of chinese died as a result
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1938_Yellow_River_flood

in 1943 there was more deaths when the kmt confiscated grain from starving farmers
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chines...2%E2%80%931943

that's how utterly terrible and incompetent the kmt was that the average american actually viewed mao favorably, just a few decades later when mao came into power and began his own list of terrible deeds we soon forgot how we'd previously considered him the better option

shoot move communicate get drunk

somehow happened upon this immense disturbing documentary, not even all the way through it myself, but stoned and determined to share it! not so much strategy and theory, but straight reality no chaser.

https://youtu.be/-Vbkz1tfdpg?start=367&

This channel has loads of old war documentaries that are hard to find anywhere else:

https://youtube.com/channel/UCdEZwrLW5LT8otLiD6YQRgw

Juk

If Truman and other Democrats hadn't taken such a political beating for 'losing China' we may have taken the same approach to the South Vietnamese government and saved a lot of trouble.

yup

thx

World Wars aren't really escalations, they are a series of mutual miscalculations leading to inescapable positions.

History books can often give an impression of intent in such scenarios, because they draw fairly sensible lines of causation between events. However, once you start diving into individual accounts and pre-war sources for both the world wars of the 20th century, what you find is that even though there is certainly causation, there is often not much intent - or rather the intent tends to be very different from the outcome.

Politicians and leaders like the give the impression that they are on top of things, because it projects strength. The more uncomfortable and likely reality however, is that all those leaders we see daily in this crisis have very limited control of where the conflict we're currently in leads.

At it's core, war (and political brinkmanship, etc) are really just an example of a "complex dynamic system" and has history has shown; even apparently trivial events can feedback on themselves to blow up into something with wide ranging consequences (aka: "the butterfly effect").

Juk

North Korea just test launched an intercontintental balistic weapon that can reach anywhere in the USA and can be loaded with 6 nuclear warheads.

What's South Korea's play? If they pre-empt as they say they could then what? How would China and the USA react? If South Korea just waits then what?

Is Kim Jung Un really an irrational player?

i think it's cute that you think a country with over 30k foreign troops stationed in 15 different bases within its territory for over 6 decades running is going to be making independent decisions about armed conflict

Earlier, I wrote: "If and when Putin is driven out, there are going to be lots of Javelin Anti Tank weapons and Switchblade Kamikaze drones left everywhere inside Ukraine, in addition to possibly tens and thousands of units of a whole lot of other weapons contributed by NATO. All expensive.

Javelin's are $175,000 per piece. Switchblade Kamikaze's are $6,000 a piece. These things along with grenades, all types of launchers, ammos, rifles will be all over Ukraine.

What's to prevent enterprising Ukrainians from smuggling them to African dictators, the Taliban, drug cartels, etc. and making a quick buck or even starting a world class arms dealing business?"

You might say, these enterprising Ukrainians would be in competition with companies that are already doing them. True. But if these weapons are free, then they could really lower the prices to the ground and win the aftermarket game.

In addition, Zelenskyy is demanding more and more missiles from NATO who would be forced to comply not only for practical purposes but also for PR purposes.

It's looking like Putin, instead of trying to escalate to chemical and tactical nukes, may be planning to de-escalate and try to declare victory and save face by saying he never wanted Ukraine, only the areas near Crimea. If so, the "enterprising Ukrainians" thing I'm talking about here may actually become a real concern?

I'm pretty sure half the AKs in Africa came from old USSR arms stores at the end of the cold war so this isn't that unlikely.

Also Odessa is famous for certain things (hint: it's not the seafood ).

Juk

it's my view this off shoot you are worried about is a complete nothing burger.

The US military budget alone predicated on the idea that America needs to upgrade and change weapons systems, like a Millennial changes their iPhone means, each and every year, the US military dumps more weapons on to the black market thru third party weapons brokers (purposely or not) that this Ukraine thing would be a rounding error. Heck the US probably dumps more military weaponry to US police forces than will be left in Ukraine, due to having so much spill over that they cannot get rid of.

I mean, I understand your concern about rogue weapons but that already happens on such a large scale, I am not sure this rounding error deserves much attention.