The focal shift from Russia in Europe to China in Asia is less a mechanism for coping with defeat than the pathological reaction of a country that, feeling a gnawing sense of diminishing prowess, can manage to do nothing more than try one final fling at proving to itself that it still has the right stuff — since living without that exalted sense of self is intolerable.

  • emizeko [they/them]
    hexagon
    ·
    1 year ago

    at one point he implies the west has hypersonic missiles, which I don't think is true

    • nat_turner_overdrive [he/him]
      ·
      1 year ago

      Yeah it's extremely not true, but I think some people have a lower bar for the "hyper" moniker for supersonic speeds. The most recent news on the US hypersonic missile program front was shifting the project to some Australian defense company because nobody in the US could get sustained hypersonic flight in testing.

      Meanwhile Russia is doing strikes with a functional hypersonic missile program putin-wink

      • zifnab25 [he/him, any]
        ·
        1 year ago

        Meanwhile Russia is doing strikes with a functional hypersonic missile program

        I've never heard of the Russians deploying hypersonic weapons in US media. Is there a source for this, or are we just assuming based on their ability to penetrate western anti-missile shields?

        Also, Jesus Christ. Imagine investing the last 30 years in anti-missile technology and having it all go straight into the trash bin with a marginal improvement in flight times.

  • daisy
    ·
    1 year ago

    Strange. You'd think the US would be pretty good at dealing with defeat, given how often they've had their ass handed to them after 1945.

  • culpritus [any]
    ·
    1 year ago

    In the crude words of one Moscow official, “a tenant-farmer on Uncle Sam’s global plantation.”

    well that's one way to put it