The end of NATO?

[Lawman]

From Foreign Policy, one possibility of a NATO - Russia conflict:

A Russia-NATO War Would Look Nothing Like Ukraine

Moscow will seek to avoid a full-on war and focus on breaking the bloc’s resolve.

foreignpolicy.com

Neither of the forces fighting in Ukraine are capable of conducting deep shaping in the division/corps battle space.

That said, a whole lot of our NATO partners cannot be adjacent supporting units to add to combat power due to the speed of staff they can achieve. The Brit’s or French can live in the ATO cycle and their ground brigades can keep up, but the Poles, Greeks, or Italians would be well and truly F’d. And unfortunately due to NATO not wanting to call out the lack of capabilities across its formations and staffs or provide a central priorities of effort to each participating partner it’s gonna be crap show if it ever has to work together.

The whole 5:1 advantage in the offense isnt just a numbers game, it’s an ability to wield a guidon that is echelons above what your opponent and coordinate and wield. NATO can’t do that as a whole. Oh, and to conduct the offense you have to have the ammunition and resources to consume which NATO has a real problem with.

 

[taxi1]

I think it runs deeper than that.

The Democrats were slow to come around to gay / lesbian rights. Clinton institutes don't ask / don't tell and signs DOMA into law. Bush largely ignores the issue (and the military starts to follow suit), then Obama runs a campaign where he states he won't touch DOMA. A year or so after taking office, he reverses course and the Democrats suddenly become the champions of LGBQ.

There are many on the Democrat side of the spectrum that feel a bit of guilt that it took until 2009-2012 to support gay rights. And even in Hollywood, which is notoriously progressive / Democrat, you had lines in the 21st century like "paging doctor faggot" (The Hangover) and "you know how I know that you're gay" (40 year old Virgin).

In the early 2010s, "SJWs" start to gain steam using social media as a soap box. Gay jokes disappeared.

Fast forward to today, and transgendered people are lumped in with LGBQ - not because Democrats made it this way, but because of natural social undertones. Ergo, Democrats perceived that anyone sympathetic to gay rights (which, by the way, is ~70% of the population based on polls) is also sympathetic to transgendered rights. Therein lies the critical error - equating a 17 year old 6'0" biological male who wants to play women's soccer with a same-sex couple that wants to get married to get the legal protections afforded to heterosexual couples.

The Democrats also have an issue that their political strategy thinks that every voter bloc will behave like black Americans. Pass a piece of landmark legislation and you get 90%+ of the vote forever. That assumption requires people to ignore a lot of social, cultural, and historical context... but I'd expect nothing less of a party who champions LBJ's legislation despite the fact that he used very racist language to reveal the fact that he had nefarious intentions to increase and consolidate power with it. Didn't quite work out; the Democrats held the Presidency for 4 years between 1969 and 1993... and some of the Republican victories were historic landslides. And I think Obama's fatherly tongue-lashing cost Harris the election... she does, too, since Obama was conspicuously absent from the list of people she thanked for helping her campaign.

Anyway...yes, I agree, this issue affects a very small minority of Americans. But the socio-political undertones explaining why Democrats tilted hard into transgendered rights is much deeper and more complex than that.

This opinion article by Andrew Sullivan really hits its mark. The recent Supreme Court ruling drove home the point. Worth reading the comments section too. Gift article.

In 2024, the Republican Party removed opposition to marriage equality from its platform, and the current Republican Treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, is a married gay man with two children. Gay marriage is backed by around 70 percent of Americans, and discrimination against gay men, lesbians and transgender people is opposed by 80 percent. As civil rights victories go, it doesn’t get more decisive or comprehensive than this.

But a funny thing happened in the wake of these triumphs. Far from celebrating victory, defending the gains, staying vigilant, but winding down as a movement that had achieved its core objectives — including the end of H.I.V. in the United States as an unstoppable plague — gay and lesbian rights groups did the opposite. Swayed by the broader liberal shift to the “social justice” left, they radicalized.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/26/opinion/gay-lesbian-trans-rights.html?unlocked_article_code=1.R08.6DAL.GbDKGi5N9x4f&smid=url-share

I worked with a surprisingly large number of trans military over the last few years. They were all hard, smart workers.

Saw this article today from an Army officer resigning his commission...also a gift article.

The ban on transgender troops is blatantly discriminatory. It has nothing to do with the policy’s stated justification of military readiness. The Department of Defense, when imposing the ban in February, claimed that the “medical, surgical and mental health constraints” on transgender people “are incompatible with the high mental and physical standards necessary for military service.”

This is untrue, and the department should know it. A study from 2016 conducted by the RAND Corporation for the Department of Defense found that military policies in other countries that permit transgender people to serve openly have “no significant effect on cohesion, operational effectiveness or readiness.” The American Psychological Association noted in 2018 that “substantial psychological research” demonstrates that gender dysphoria does not itself prevent people from working at a high level, “including in military service.” Indeed, since 2016, when the Pentagon announced that transgender Americans could serve openly, transgender troops have been deployed to combat zones, provided vital support to combat operations and filled critical roles in the armed forces.

The executive order barring transgender troops is a legal command that provides cover for bigotry. It delivers hate in the guise of a national security issue, dressed up in medicalized language.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/30/opinion/transgender-military-ban-resignation.html?unlocked_article_code=1.S08.f_lm.ZEuio0ll_cUR&smid=url-share

 

[Spekkio]

This opinion article by Andrew Sullivan really hits its mark. The recent Supreme Court ruling drove home the point. Worth reading the comments section too. Gift article.

In 2024, the Republican Party removed opposition to marriage equality from its platform, and the current Republican Treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, is a married gay man with two children. Gay marriage is backed by around 70 percent of Americans, and discrimination against gay men, lesbians and transgender people is opposed by 80 percent. As civil rights victories go, it doesn’t get more decisive or comprehensive than this.

But a funny thing happened in the wake of these triumphs. Far from celebrating victory, defending the gains, staying vigilant, but winding down as a movement that had achieved its core objectives — including the end of H.I.V. in the United States as an unstoppable plague — gay and lesbian rights groups did the opposite. Swayed by the broader liberal shift to the “social justice” left, they radicalized.

I think that his analysis is spot on, particularly the segment about involving children. That's what makes moderates flip from 'whatever you want to do as an adult is none of my business' to 'what the hell are you teaching my children?'

 

[Random8145]

Neither of the forces fighting in Ukraine are capable of conducting deep shaping in the division/corps battle space.

That said, a whole lot of our NATO partners cannot be adjacent supporting units to add to combat power due to the speed of staff they can achieve. The Brit’s or French can live in the ATO cycle and their ground brigades can keep up, but the Poles, Greeks, or Italians would be well and truly F’d. And unfortunately due to NATO not wanting to call out the lack of capabilities across its formations and staffs or provide a central priorities of effort to each participating partner it’s gonna be crap show if it ever has to work together.

The whole 5:1 advantage in the offense isnt just a numbers game, it’s an ability to wield a guidon that is echelons above what your opponent and coordinate and wield. NATO can’t do that as a whole. Oh, and to conduct the offense you have to have the ammunition and resources to consume which NATO has a real problem with.

There was an article I had read some time ago about how after the 2014 Crimean invasion by Putin, the U.S. and NATO began working to replenish and rebuild a lot of capabilities. For example, previously, much of the vehicles and equipment located in Europe were old and leftover from the Cold War, only there for a major emergency if one was to happen. After 2014 however, the U.S. and NATO began replacing all of that equipment with new vehicles and equipment and built a whole new maintenance facility as well. It is part of an emergency plan to basically have all the gear in place so that if Russia tries anything, we could just ship the troops directly to Europe without worrying about getting tanks and so forth from North America over to there. In addition, training was increased, with U.S. armored forces practicing training with the different Baltic states in particular so as to work out well how to work together. And then of course the U.S. also began training up the Ukrainian forces as well.

EDIT: So it is called APS (Army Pre-positioned Stocks). Basically pre-positioned supplies strategically located around the world for rapid deployment of forces. The APS in NATO had been old and outdated prior to 2014. Here are some articles:

LINK

LINK

LINK

LINK

from the fourth link:

When fully stocked with over 5,000 major end items in the weeks and months to come — including hundreds of M1A2 tanks, M2 Bradley fighting vehicles, M109 Paladin self-propelled howitzers and more — the site will serve as one of six active APS-2 worksites in Europe under the mission command of the 405th Army Field Support Brigade.

The Powidz APS-2 worksite can be leveraged by the Army for use by U.S.-based armored brigade combat teams deploying to Europe for training or contingency operations. The site will allow the Army to quickly project combat power to NATO’s eastern flank, drastically reducing the timeline associated with deploying large quantities of equipment from the U.S. to Europe.

So we see new tank and vehicle repair facilities in Germany, Poland, Lithuania, etc...and lots of new armored vehicles, with the soldiers of these countries being trained on the repair and maintenance of these platforms and also doing combat training with U.S. forces. I can't find the original article.

 

[Random8145]

I am a male and a former (quite successful) coach of a women's college sport, so take this with a grain of salt but: I think biological males in women's sports is, for all intents and purposes, a red herring. There are about 500,000 student-athletes (a moniker I abhor) and about 10 of them are estimated to be trans. While it is an issue that deserves a solution, it is nowhere near the most pressing issue in college sports.

Yes, I know that it is extremely rare, but as a political wedge and right wing talking point, it is extremely powerful. Another way to look at it is the left has, thus far ceded a significant amount of political capital on this issue that only affects a handful of individuals. Its not smart risk calculus, which is why the issue should be dropped by the Dems.

The issue is larger and more complex than just being a small number of people, whether small in terms of the numbers of such trans athletes or the numbers of female athletes affected. For one, imagine if a couple of small colleges in rural Tennessee and Mississippi decided to reintroduce a form of segregation against black people. And let's say it was only affecting a very small number of black people, say less than twenty such people. Would that mean it's a non-issue, because the number of people being affected is tiny? Any biological male competing in women's sports is a huge issue for those particular girls/women who have to compete with/against him. Another thing to consider is a certain number of "trans" women (males) are in fact not even really trans but autogynephiles, i.e. men who are sexually aroused by dressing as women and doing so around other women.

The other problem is given the massive intolerance of the Left on the issue, and their infiltration of various schools, universities, corporations, medical organizations, etc...it has become an issue of freedom of speech, freedom of thought, and scientific truth. You can have your career or business destroyed or at least face significant harassment and discrimination if you don't tow the party line. And that aspect of it affects everybody.

The above said, I otherwise fully support trans rights (employment, marriage, etc...) and think it a shame they are being banned from the military right now.

 

[number9]

I didn't say it's a non-issue, I said it's not the most important issue. In fact, it's not even close to the most important issue; for example, it's nowhere near as prevalent as sexual assault is.