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US government is stealing money payed by Switzerland for F-35s. Basically Switzerland bought 5 patriot batteries but the USA couldn't deliver so they cancelled

US government is stealing money payed by Switzerland for F-35s. Basically Switzerland bought 5 patriot batteries but the USA couldn't deliver so they cancelled payments. Then the USA took payment for the F-35s and applied that as patriot battery payments then came back and said "sorry our f-35 deal has to be renegotiated and you have to pay 2x the original deal". Switzerland lost about 1.3 billion francs - 1.5B$ - so far. And yet Switzerland is still going through with the deal but just buying half as many planes.

OgsyedIE 17d ago
The least terrible option under the circumstances. Any single European country going in either the pivot-to-armed-independence or pivot-to-alliance-with-China route without the rest of Europe buying in to the move is doomed to failure, even before you consider that a couple EU members are very in favour of the status quo.
- lovich 17d ago
  I wish we had leaders who understood the value of soft power. Oh well, guess we’ve blown up nearly a century of diplomacy to placate some narcissists.
  - Zigurd 17d ago
    The Iran war demonstrates a lack of understanding of the basic arithmetic of hard power. Iran is 3X to 5X Iraq, depending on what dimension of an invasion plan you're thinking of. Failure to gather at least 3X the resources applied to Iraq means certain failure. The vandalization of US soft power mechanisms by Musk and others comes into this too. Nobody else is willing to jump into this mess and get dragged down with us.
    - FloorEgg 17d ago
      I've also been shocked at the abandonment of US soft power. While I see many possibilities for what is really going on (including the left and right narratives, and a few others) what seems most likely is that the previous hegemony power system was built on oil and gas industrial productivity -> military might - hard power - and the world is transitioning to a new hard power paradigm and during these transitions soft power becomes less relevant/important (at least to the hegemony). One could argue soft power would extend a weakening hegemony, but maybe only to a point? Regardless of whatever the US leaders are saying at any given time, it seems to me (as an outsider) that their actual actions, regardless of Democrat/Republican, continually benefit China's long term prosperity. But I only see what I'm shown, and I have no idea what I don't know... So all I can really do is shrug.
      - OgsyedIE 17d ago
        Military might depends either on domestic retention of a skilled machine tools workforce (as Iran has) or the mass import of a skilled foreign machine tools workforce (as Russia did before 2022, their munitions industry was the Siemens corporation's single biggest customer). Look at the example of the failed munitions plant in Texas in the last two years for what happens without either of the above.
        FloorEgg 17d ago
        Do you think it's reasonable to say that since at least around the 1970s, on net, the people running the United States have been consistently trading power for greed?
        OgsyedIE 17d ago
        No, I think that's a hopelessly reductive interpretation that mistakes stupidity for malice. Since arguably the 1940s the people running the United States have been consistently trading power over the domains they consider illegible and confusing for power over the domains they consider tractable and familiar, under elite job market conditions where they are incentivised to know as much as possible about abstract court politics and the manipulation of language and as little as possible about the real world. Even right now, you see the Trump family, the various oligarch families in the cabinet, fiddling the figures, stealing and enabling mass disasters, they are doing what they believe is right and good while having horrific delusions. Two excellent primers on this, albeit with more of a focus on the parallel problem in the EU establishment than the US, are below: https://aurelien2022.substack.com/p/not-getting-it-together https://aurelien2022.substack.com/p/not-getting-it-together https://aurelien2022.substack.com/p/starting-from-zero https://aurelien2022.substack.com/p/starting-from-zero
        grebc 17d ago
        I’d take the re-election of Trump to mean the US isn’t a serious society/people anymore. I don’t say that lightly, and it’s certainly not just the US that has that problem either. Australia, where I live, is infected with it.
- tim333 17d ago
  There's probably a bit of a pivot to European suppliers rather than the US. The gear isn't quite as good but you don't have to worry about Trump issues.
hulitu 17d ago
And it feels good doing it. It is terribly funny to see European countries being so lame. Hit me again, hit me hard.

OgsyedIE 17d ago

The least terrible option under the circumstances. Any single European country going in either the pivot-to-armed-independence or pivot-to-alliance-with-China route without the rest of Europe buying in to the move is doomed to failure, even before you consider that a couple EU members are very in favour of the status quo.

lovich 17d ago
I wish we had leaders who understood the value of soft power. Oh well, guess we’ve blown up nearly a century of diplomacy to placate some narcissists.
- Zigurd 17d ago
  The Iran war demonstrates a lack of understanding of the basic arithmetic of hard power. Iran is 3X to 5X Iraq, depending on what dimension of an invasion plan you're thinking of. Failure to gather at least 3X the resources applied to Iraq means certain failure. The vandalization of US soft power mechanisms by Musk and others comes into this too. Nobody else is willing to jump into this mess and get dragged down with us.
  - FloorEgg 17d ago
    I've also been shocked at the abandonment of US soft power. While I see many possibilities for what is really going on (including the left and right narratives, and a few others) what seems most likely is that the previous hegemony power system was built on oil and gas industrial productivity -> military might - hard power - and the world is transitioning to a new hard power paradigm and during these transitions soft power becomes less relevant/important (at least to the hegemony). One could argue soft power would extend a weakening hegemony, but maybe only to a point? Regardless of whatever the US leaders are saying at any given time, it seems to me (as an outsider) that their actual actions, regardless of Democrat/Republican, continually benefit China's long term prosperity. But I only see what I'm shown, and I have no idea what I don't know... So all I can really do is shrug.
    - OgsyedIE 17d ago
      Military might depends either on domestic retention of a skilled machine tools workforce (as Iran has) or the mass import of a skilled foreign machine tools workforce (as Russia did before 2022, their munitions industry was the Siemens corporation's single biggest customer). Look at the example of the failed munitions plant in Texas in the last two years for what happens without either of the above.
      - FloorEgg 17d ago
        Do you think it's reasonable to say that since at least around the 1970s, on net, the people running the United States have been consistently trading power for greed?
        OgsyedIE 17d ago
        No, I think that's a hopelessly reductive interpretation that mistakes stupidity for malice. Since arguably the 1940s the people running the United States have been consistently trading power over the domains they consider illegible and confusing for power over the domains they consider tractable and familiar, under elite job market conditions where they are incentivised to know as much as possible about abstract court politics and the manipulation of language and as little as possible about the real world. Even right now, you see the Trump family, the various oligarch families in the cabinet, fiddling the figures, stealing and enabling mass disasters, they are doing what they believe is right and good while having horrific delusions. Two excellent primers on this, albeit with more of a focus on the parallel problem in the EU establishment than the US, are below: https://aurelien2022.substack.com/p/not-getting-it-together https://aurelien2022.substack.com/p/not-getting-it-together https://aurelien2022.substack.com/p/starting-from-zero https://aurelien2022.substack.com/p/starting-from-zero
        grebc 17d ago
        I’d take the re-election of Trump to mean the US isn’t a serious society/people anymore. I don’t say that lightly, and it’s certainly not just the US that has that problem either. Australia, where I live, is infected with it.
tim333 17d ago
There's probably a bit of a pivot to European suppliers rather than the US. The gear isn't quite as good but you don't have to worry about Trump issues.

hulitu 17d ago

And it feels good doing it. It is terribly funny to see European countries being so lame. Hit me again, hit me hard.