This is just off of wikipedia, so I’m not sure how up-to-date it is:

3 aircraft carriers 4 landing helicopter docks 12 amphibious transport docks 32 landing ship tanks 33 landing ship mediums 58 destroyers 54 frigates 75 corvettes 150 missile boats 26 submarine chasers 17+ gunboats 36 mine countermeasure vessels 79 submarines 19 replenishment ships 232 auxiliaries

Those corvettes, missile and gun boats could all be considered “small”. The frigates and up are all capable of deep water work further out, independently if necessary. Interestingly, it’s almost a revival of the 19th century French naval doctrine Jeune École, which was typified by a heavy reliance on torpedo boats, with the idea that that would be a cheaper way to operate a navy while still posing a threat to the larger battleships that dominated naval strategy during that period.

It’s certainly more than just a big business. Which is also smart, a large country would want a significant blue water navy if it hopes for influence on the global stage. Even the UK and France have them, and they are much smaller countries. It would just be very illogical for China to ignore blue water capabilities.

Yeah, the problem isn’t the articles you post, those are fine. Trying to misdirect onto that is a strawman. People don’t like you due to how you engage in comment sections with the people that want to talk about those articles.

Yeah, not particularly fun, either. Would be very convenient if you were looking for an excuse to never bother with anything though.

Yeah, exporting some smaller craft is definitely not out of the question. It’s always nice when you can gather up additional buyers for your kit, that way you can leverage additional economies of scale to keep your own costs down. They are building large amounts of naval assets that won’t be suitable for export though. Patrol craft are one thing. Larger seagoing warships are another–most countries simply don’t maintain a very large fleet of them, as they’re very expensive to operate and not broadly useful during peacetime outside of certain niche situations. Since its the type of thing where a few countries would maybe buy a few every few decades, it’s never really going to be a big money maker for anyone.

That’s an interesting insight on moving into Russia’s export market. I hadn’t thought of that, but it actually makes a tremendous amount of sense. lol Aircraft are definitely a hotter export market. They’re just something you want in greater numbers, generally speaking, and have a much broader appeal.

Fair question. Yes I was considering arms suppliers specifically. I’m not sure we can simply include every company that works with the military in any way though, it makes more sense to consider companies that get the majority of their profits from the military-affiliated work.

I would not count Kraft as part of the MIC for instance.

Yeah, that’s an evolution from his earlier style. Note that he often subtly flips it to something personal though. Just pay attention to how often he talks about “you” and “them”. He seldom addresses facts or arguments, instead he addresses people. Individuals and groups.

What frustrates me is there is enough trolling on social media already, we should not be condoning it by simply allowing it here, in what is usually a more mature Lemmy space. We don’t need more internet-ey behavior on the internet, there’s already plenty everywhere.

Regardless of his intentions, it’s very aggravating how many of his clearly combative comments stay up despite “no trolling” being in rule 4.

I frankly do not understand why we have the rule if it is never going to be enforced. Is there question among our mod team about what constitutes trolling?

Looking through the modlog though, the only rule 4 enforcement seems to be low-effort stuff. High-effort trolling appears to be completely welcome in this community, which I just do not understand. But I’m contemplating beginning to take advantage of it. I can piss people off with subtle, passive-aggressive personal digs and logical fallacies while maintaining a veneer of civility too. It’s been a lot of years, but I’m sure it’ll come right back to me.

Anyone genuinely dedicated to a socialist or environmental cause would pretty clearly see the danger posed by a Trump presidency.

Should back those up on punch cards, just to be extra safe. As a bonus, they even make good coasters.

Ah, that makes sense. Yeah, I admit I misjudged you based solely off of the server you’re from, which was rather immature of me. I imagine you’ve probably noticed that .ml has a high population of overt Marxist-Leninist folks on it, and is one of the hubs of leftism on Lemmy. That certainly doesn’t apply to everyone who signed up on it though. lol Centrist does make a lot more sense in hindsight. I doubt you can really call yourself center-right anymore though, in the American scale at least, simply due to how crazy the right has gotten in recent years. That Overton Window jumped like 5 notches rightward on us, and left a lot of people behind. You could be a fairly typical neolib, free-trade, privatization, etc. We have a community of them here on .world, they post a fair bit of news, you might find some like-minded people if you are.

I agree wholeheartedly. The only places I’ve heard that extensively discussed are more serious geostrategic groups. CSIS most prominently. Most of the media plays into the more potentially … dramatic possibilities though. Much better as clickbait I imagine, for us peons.

Regarding navy I’m not so sure. The scale of their fleet build up is very impressive. Generally, naval ships are not exactly a hot export market, especially when you’re considering the larger, more advanced blue water stuff. They’re pretty clearly moving towards global power projection capabilities. This does not necessarily indicate a future of aggression, though, as such a force also has a very important role in securing the sea trade that China relies so heavily on in addition to being a strong tool for diplomatic pressure. Look at how we use ours, after all. Naval power is also the sort of thing that needs to be developed over many years, you can’t just spin up the institutions and knowledge base necessary to effectively deploy to another hemisphere in just a few years, it takes decades. So I see it as a long-term investment and hedge against the future.

Yeah, I’m keeping my fingers crossed. Harris has been fairly successful with small dollar fundraising, so she’s a little more insulated from having to rely on big doner money as a typical politician. She does have room to pivot on Gaza and implement a few tough policies if she can wrangle the legislature. That’s the steepest hurdle though, and she doesn’t have Biden’s half century of experience and saved-up political capital in the Senate. She’ll need to be bolder, I think, but the Byzantine nature of legislative wrangling is getting a bit outside my ken.

I think people tend to misunderstand East Asian cultures in general. There’s a patience present in most of them, that I know anything about anyway, that is less present in West European cultures. Xi seems to exemplify this, and has seemed to be in no rush to make bold moves when they’re unnecessary and carry a significant degree of uncertainty. Where a westerner sees the naval buildup and might be inclined to see it as a massive red flag, I see a man keeping his options open. Having a tool is one thing, it allows flexibility. Using that tool puts you on a course from which you cannot return. I suspect he understands this, so I don’t foresee any immanent attacks on Taiwan. Especially given the rugged Taiwanese geography and having their fabs in such an easy-to-destroy state.

Hawks gonna hawk though. While our MIC isn’t the major power it was in the Cold War era, it does still carry some influence. Though personally I’d be happier if we simply built our own navy up, perhaps in partnership with S Korean industry to help keep costs down, and otherwise adopted Teddy Roosevelts philosophy of “walk softly and carry a big stick”. If a country wishes to partner with us, like the Philippines for instance, that’s one thing, but we don’t need to posture and message so aggressively. Green Berets on Taiwan was a miscalculation, for instance, even if invited imo. Taiwanese soldiers could come here for specialized training if they wished, we didn’t need to deploy there.

And yeah, we’re mostly all different shades of left and/or progressive on here. lol Personally I’m a progressive, and while I tend to take a detail-oriented view instead of trying to keep things exclusively at the much more accessible broad-strokes level, I think the majority of Lemmings all want the same general direction for the world. With some disagreement on how to get there. That’s healthy though.

edit: Oh, and on the racism note … yeah. ~sigh

I’m not too worried, I seldom pay too much attention to small vote tallies, especially in long back-and-forths. Longform discussions of political nuance are also minefields, especially during an election year. lol

Yeah, the tariffs irritate me a good bit. I suspect that foreign policy is largely what is driving them, but that makes me fear that more China-hawkish types are being a little too successful in pushing their opinions. I’m pretty sure they’re just a geopolitical weapon though, as opposed to domestic protection. Trump wanted a trade war, he was seeking to punish China for intellectual property theft, currency manipulation, etc. Not that shit wasn’t happening, but I don’t think trade war was a good answer, nor do I think it’s too late to reverse course instead of doubling down. Global economics aren’t really my strong suit though, so I do have to admit I could be mistaken on something. Still though, I do believe that trade helps secure peace, and peace is the preferable state of affairs. So trade should be encouraged on that alone, not discouraged.

Not just minor differences, higher vs lower taxes is pretty huge. So is business regulation in this era. I have no interest in living in an actual oligarchy, by some actual council of billionaires. What the communists like to claim, but literal and overt, instead of billionaires merely having an outsized degree of influence due to the power of mass media technologies and how money can influence mass perceptions. The perceptions are still what directly controls our government, the necessary middleman between billionaires and govt that prevents them from getting everything they want. At a sufficient degree of wealth and power, they can get rid of that middle man via a transition to a different form of government, which I have no interest in seeing. Reducing their wealth is becoming a necessary precaution, we’ve reached a point on par with the Gilded Age, and we need to deal with our robber barons. Fortunately, we do have candidates and politicians desiring to do this. An unrealized capital gains tax would be a very heavy blow to capital. Biden pushes 35%, Harris is a little weaker at 28%. Both could be higher, but these are significantly better than our current 0%.

It’s funny you mention small business too, Harris just recently started running on a 50k tax credit for new small businesses. Which I think is fair, so long as other taxes can be implemented to cover the shortfall. Really it’s higher taxes that I’m most in favor of though, personally. I dislike how strong the business sector has become in American life, and taxes are a good way to attack that.

And election reform, but that’s the hardest thing to do, since you require a filibuster-proof majority to get even one step anywhere. Probably the only thing harder than fixing immigration. When we have one party driven primarily by slowly vanishing demographics like religious affiliation, they’ve realized democracy is no longer a viable path for them. Consistently losing the popular vote each election is a pretty clear harbinger of things to come, yet they can’t switch their policies because those are core and faith-based, soooo… we’re in deep shit. lol

Don’t let online discourse influence you too much. Our people tend to be fairly content with portions of the leadership, with most people having their favorites and disliking all the others. I never did actually highlight that people’s voices don’t seem to matter, our votes very much choose these people.

You wouldn’t know it here with Lemmy’s natural lean, but the average American is roughly centered on neoliberalism, most Lemmings find that somewhat upsetting and prefer to ignore the fact. Even with Biden being the oldest pres in our history, and with such unpopular things as Gaza on his record, he’s maintained a 30-40% approval rate. That’s a percentage of total Americans that approved of his Presidency. Obama, with slightly more right-leaning policies, was around 50%.

Ultimately, it’s more moderate, suburban parents that pick our leaders. They’re not as excited about change as the more progressive folk you’ll find here, they like stability, decorum, they don’t rush to judgement, they are not overly focused on foreign policy, stuff like that. They do not generally believe the country is in any sort of dire straits, they tend to underestimate global warming, they don’t particularly like people like Greta Thunberg, Just Stop Oil or pro-Palestinian protestors. They do not spend that much time on social media.

On the whole, I’d recommend not listening too much to the rhetoric of politicians or political operatives. Words are cheap, its actions once in office that tell the story. Do they cut taxes for the wealthy? Do they add or remove environmental regulations on business? Do they try to enact policies that will benefit people? The track records do vary tremendously, anyone who says its some uniparty is just spewing propaganda. They’re very, very distinct, both interparty and especially between the parties. You wouldn’t necessarily notice if you just listened to their words though, you do have to watch for actions. They do end up trying to have their cake and eat it too, and are more than willing to rhetorically dance around to try to avoid displeasing as many people as possible. They still have to vote on things though.

They think it’s “smart people’s” fault, and those college educated, holier-than-thou smarty pants folks with their big words and fancy wine-sippin’ need to be punished. I think a lot of them know they’re being misled, they just don’t really care.

They know we hate Trump, and so that’s a good enough indication that he must be the solution. Very simple-minded stuff.

“If I have to create stories so that the American media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people we win, then that’s what I’m going to do.”

Yea, we already knew that JD, thanks.

Very significant. Their coalition is no different from ours, formed of many different factions that don’t agree on a whole lot. They’re just better at taking marching orders and falling in line behind their candidate.

We do have an opportunity to peel away people that aren’t so fond of overt fascism and add to our election tally though, so, I’m not complaining. Even when its a neocon defecting.

In addition to peeling off people that aren’t so eager for dictatorship, we also have an opportunity to peel off genuinely religious people, who actually try to follow Jesus’ message. While most religious people do it more as a club membership, the genuinely devout can be reminded what their lord and savior actually instructed them to do.

Oh, she’s definitely not a lovely person politically, she wants the gop to run things but just doesn’t want fascists to run the gop and do away with democracy.

Currently it’s just an alliance of convenience, much like how we allied with Stalin in WW2. We can go back to fighting with conservatives after the fascist wannabes are beaten in the upcoming election. First things first, priorities are important.

I’ve already said, I don’t give a shit what an IDF officer says. I actually know better than to listen to military messaging. Yes they get weapons from us, but do they have to or are there other ways on planet Earth to get weapons asides buying from the US?

Still waiting for your Egyptian victory.

Perhaps you were talking about Yom Kippur, where if I recall Egypt and one other country (not Hezbollah) launched a surprise attack with the aid of advanced kit from the USSR, gained some ground and then were beaten back?

Quit believing dumb propaganda

Ooh, fascinating. Name me when Hezbollah and Egypt defeated them.

They won several wars in their early history, before getting an advanced air force, on the back of heavy infantry casualties. Again, you have no evidence.

What would a rocket barrage do? Kill tons of Israelis. Would that defeat the IDF somehow? We learned in WW2 that you can level cities, but the country will fight on. What can Iran do asides fire missiles? March through the two countries in the way?

I am not the one living in fantasy. I am not the one just conveniently believing dumb shit spoonfed to me for someone’s political purposes.