Originally Posted by
NutLoose
You yourself mentioned the possibilty of pulling US troops out of a region
We pulled tens of thousands out of Europe after the wall came down. We pulled thousands out of Korea in the early 00's. There was a reason for that.
But they didn't and the arguing amongst politicians in all countries as to the next move is costing lives and showing the west as being weak and telling everyone, hold out against western power for a couple of years and they will start to fold their hand.
All of your hand wringing is
water under the bridge and the consequences - don't disagree with you on that point - of a couple of decades of failed policy. That's great stuff for JB, Uncle Fred's thread has some great discussion on that (including some of your inputs) but I don't see it as on topic for this thread.
Personally I think this all cracked off with Russia's excursion into Georgia while the west was diverted elsewhere, and our lack of support and action to help the Georgian people, that signalled to Putin he could get away with such actions.
Are you referring to 2008? That's not on topic for this thread either.
The recent news of ammo shortages in and around Bakhmut are also being fused with the changes in generals at the top levels.
That's actually normal. (Flag officers / general officers changing).
In WW II, a whole lot of generals in the US Army got relieved or reassigned after certain times and events.
Within the last two years, Mr Putin has fired --
this is on topic -- a considerable number of Russian generals based on their inability to do what he felt was needed. (And likely for other reasons). It's been in the news, and I think you've linked to a number of the news stories on that.
Objectively speaking (the RUSI critiques on the Operation Level stuff is very good) a number of them dropped the ball during the first month of this "special military operation" which is both good news and bad news.
Good news? Ukraine didn't get overrun and conquered.
Bad news? The remainder of them did just well enough that the war is still on going on Ukrainian territory, Ukraine has lost substantial amounts of land, and (for example) lost important urban centers like Mariupol (pre war population around 300,000 or so) ...and the butcher's bill keeps going up.