'They shot all their weapons; they trashed their ships; they ran out of money'

Discussion (9 Comments)Read Original on HackerNews

comrade1234•about 3 hours ago

US government is stealing money payed by Switzerland for F-35s. Basically Switzerland bought 5 patriot batteries but the USA couldn't deliver so they cancelled payments. Then the USA took payment for the F-35s and applied that as patriot battery payments then came back and said "sorry our f-35 deal has to be renegotiated and you have to pay 2x the original deal". Switzerland lost about 1.3 billion francs - 1.5B$ - so far.

And yet Switzerland is still going through with the deal but just buying half as many planes.

OgsyedIE•about 1 hour ago

The least terrible option under the circumstances. Any single European country going in either the pivot-to-armed-independence or pivot-to-alliance-with-China route without the rest of Europe buying in to the move is doomed to failure, even before you consider that a couple EU members are very in favour of the status quo.

lovich•about 1 hour ago

I wish we had leaders who understood the value of soft power.

Oh well, guess we’ve blown up nearly a century of diplomacy to placate some narcissists.

Zigurd•39 minutes ago

The Iran war demonstrates a lack of understanding of the basic arithmetic of hard power. Iran is 3X to 5X Iraq, depending on what dimension of an invasion plan you're thinking of. Failure to gather at least 3X the resources applied to Iraq means certain failure.

The vandalization of US soft power mechanisms by Musk and others comes into this too. Nobody else is willing to jump into this mess and get dragged down with us.

mrobot•about 1 hour ago

Sounds like my recent trip to Oklahoma

'They shot all their weapons; they trashed their ships; they ran out of money'

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Discussion (9 Comments)Read Original on HackerNews