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[RedKing]

Doesn't necessarily mean "We will blot you out from the sky", but does seem to indicate they'll be treated as potential hostiles.

[Hanslanda]

Thanks Trump supporters! We needed a good war with a fucking superpower.

[Strife26]

Thanks Trump supporters! We needed a good war with a fucking superpower.

Yep. We're now at war with Russia, who is a superpower.

[Criptfeind]

What a shitty war.

[Powder Miner]

I'm going to continue my stance that a war between the Russians and the United States wild serve the interests of neither and cause both (but mostly Russia) very real damage, and that they both know this, and that there is not going to be a war with Russia.

No one takes the Chinese threats over the South China Sea seriously here, so why does everyone get hysterical whenever we and the Russians rattle a saber or two at each other?

[Hanslanda]

Because of enough nuclear warheads to turn three or more continents into featureless craters.

Also, I was engaging in hyperbole, something I suspect Trump supporters... Well. Support and voted for.

[Frumple]

I think mostly because for most of that, trump was not POTUS. Also I don't remember much of us actually sinking/shooting down stuff over that mess.

In any case, so far as domestic news goes, it looks like we finally get to put to rest which of the political parties has the worse IT cockups. Behold! Apparently someone the RNC was working with managed to stick 1.1 terabytes of voter information in an unsecured file on a publicly accessible cloud server. Approximately every registered voter in the country has been potentially compromised :V

Thanks Trumpama! Or RNC. Same difference.

[RedKing]

On the contrary, I think lots of people take Chinese saber-rattling in the South China Sea pretty seriously. Because it's mostly saber-rattling against countries that don't have a snowball's chance in hell against the PLA (Vietnam, Phillipines, etc.)

The US is only involved in the sense of those countries looking to us and saying "You got our back, right? If we go punch this fucker in the nose, you're totally gonna bail us out, right? RIGHT?"

Duterte made the judgement call that Obama in no way had his back, so he pivoted and started buddying up to Beijing. Now that 45 is his new bestie, it'll be interesting to see if he gets belligerent with China again. Or if he decides that America can only be counted on as long as 45's attention span and plays it cool instead.



This, on the other hand, is saber-rattling directly between major powers. Which means it's simultaneously less of a concern and more of a concern. Less likely to lead to shooting, but way more destabilizing if it *does* lead to shooting.

[Powder Miner]

Because of enough nuclear warheads to turn three or more continents into featureless craters.

Also, I was engaging in hyperbole, something I suspect Trump supporters... Well. Support and voted for

China has a couple of hundred warheads; nowhere near Russia tier, but, eh... enough.

I see the point you're making RedKing, but I do recall some direct Chinese threats towards US ships, which would pretty much be the same level of saberrattling as between El Putino and the US.

[sluissa]

I'm going to continue my stance that a war between the Russians and the United States wild serve the interests of neither and cause both (but mostly Russia) very real damage, and that they both know this, and that there is not going to be a war with Russia.

No one takes the Chinese threats over the South China Sea seriously here, so why does everyone get hysterical whenever we and the Russians rattle a saber or two at each other?

The problem with that is there are serious and competing US and Russian interests in the middle east. Not likely enough for a real full scale war to break out, but plenty for another Soviet-Afghan war level of interaction. Which is pretty close to what we have happening already with Russia giving overt support to a non-popular but beneficial to them government and the US giving mostly indirect support to "rebels" of various sorts. Notably this sort of interaction has a lot of historical doom and gloom attached to it, so I have no idea why we continue this path other than maybe "nobody can think of anything better." Probably won't escalate to another Korea or Vietnam, but I wouldn't be surprised if it became an even more overt conflict of some sort.

[Powder Miner]

I do think you have a more valid concern, sluissa, but the reason I'm not 100% concerned myself is that sending in troops to Syria would be very unpopular, something Trump has to realize as he's criticized Obama for many of the same things he's doing now, and because trump has actually shown knowledge in a couple of his tweets (can't remember which; we went over it in my IR class last quarter) of the effect war would have on his popularity.

[TempAcc]

From what I've read so far, the SU-22 showed up some hours AFTER the US coalition had contacted russia in order to prevent the assault from every happening, after the doing a show of force with some jets after the SDF retreated after it took casualties from the attack by assad's forces. The bomber was shot down by a coalition super hornet while it dropped bombs in SDF territory, apparently 2 miles north of the deconfliction zone set up by Russia and Assad.

It does give an excuse for Russia and specially Assad to go around barking, but from the little we know, there's no real reason to condemn the downing of the SU-22. I mean, it was bombing SDF territory, which is basically asking to be shot down.

[Frumple]

I do think you have a more valid concern, sluissa, but the reason I'm not 100% concerned myself is that sending in troops to Syria would be very unpopular, something Trump has to realize as he's criticized Obama for many of the same things he's doing now, and because trump has actually shown knowledge in a couple of his tweets (can't remember which; we went over it in my IR class last quarter) of the effect war would have on his popularity.

I'd be more comforted by that note if the GOP senatecritters weren't doing what they are with the AHCA, honestly. The claim they, trump included, really care about popularity is ringing a little hollow at the mo'.

E: ... also, the claim the trump realizing he's doing something he's criticized others for stopping him from doing it is a rather incredibly bad joke. That's applicable to just about everything he does, and it doesn't seem to be slowing him down much.

[Powder Miner]

Kurdish territory, to be specific. Though my view on the Syrian Kurds is much less positive than the Iraqi Kurds.

@Frumple:
You've got a lot more people supporting the AHCA than you do sending troops to Syria (shoo Lindsey Graham) - the AHCA has been the wet dream of the entire republican party for years now, but Syria has not.

[Frumple]

I mean... you can say that, and it was probably true last year, even. But are you really comfortable with thinking the RNC et al aren't going to look at the approval pivot that came with the missile attack and decide the odds are good?