World News

It's unfortunate that we've configured our world like this, with rival nation states and militaries vying for supremacy. In reality, the conflict is between humans and militarism. Militarism will kill us all, in one way or another.

This is blatant fear mongering, russia can’t even defeat the Ukraine. How the fuck do they manage a second front?

Switzerland been preparing for war since 1648.

If Putin had any desire to conquer Switzerland, all I'll say is good luck. They're:

• Heavily fortified, with hundreds of bunkers dotting the countryside
• Highly mountainous, which would heavily slow down a ground invasion.
• One of the few states to still practice mandatory military service.
• Pretty lax with gun ownership, to the point where citizens have a statutory duty to bear arms in the event of an invasion.
• A substantial player in the banking sector with many oligarchs using their service. Any freeze they'd put on Russian assets would likely go above and beyond what NATO and the EU managed, just because of how synonymous their banks are with the wealthy. They would probably send the Russian economy into freefall long before they could even get anywhere near Zurich.
• Surrounded from all sides by NATO and EU member states, and would likely have plenty of time to prepare their own forces in the unlikely event that Russia mounts a full-scale invasion and takes over the rest of Europe.

Basically: Si vis pacem, para bellum

Tangentially related, he once said: "I had a German tell me one time, he said, the two pillars for us are NATO and the EU. NATO is for life, EU is for quality of life." I wonder how that'll play out in the near future.
EDIT: corrected link.

Make him a present, some winter vacations in Switzerland and some summer ones in Italy. Cool those US guys down, down to the bottom of earth

If anyone is interested in the state of things in Switzerland:

Our defense is in chaos right now. A scandal in our state-owned but public weapons manufacturer just broke a few weeks ago and shortly after the secretary of the departement of defense announced her resignation. We will see if the newly elected one will improve the situation.

The army is generally seen as somewhat of a joke, especially by people who served, which is more than half of all Swiss men. We like to call it a "Pfadiverein" (boy scouts association).

Even with all that, the right wing parties want to give a shitload more money to defense, and cut costs in social spending and foreign aid to compensate. Left of centre the need to improve defense is also accepted, but 1) before the army gets more money, they need to get their shit together and 2) more important than the army itself is integration with the european security Infrastructure (the left parties are also very pro-EU). The centre politicians usually mix blth stances and lean more one or the other way.

Also we still stand to buy fighter jets from the US, and only the left parties are calling to cancel the deal.

Has the USA ever won a war?

As bad as it sounds, if our European leaders can get their head out of their collective US-aligned asses, it could finally be a push to a more cohesive EU-defence policy that is not dependant on US logistics and firepower.

We have allowed ourselves to be way to complacent for far too long.