wish that UEFA would remove Russia from the playoffs for the World Cup and the remaining teams in European competitions.
Agree that sanctions are surprisingly not all that strong. The firm I worked for was told that our project in Russia is going ahead yesterday, which it absolutely shouldn’t.
It’s one thing to win a war, but it’s another thing to occupy. I think Russia is going to get a rude awakening when they see an asymmetric war during occupation, particularly if Europe and the US is united to put their economy in a vice grip. You’d think their experience in Chechnya would have drilled that into their heads.
Definitely a worry though. Did the US send more troops to Lithuania and Poland last week?
Sanctions need to include seizure of foreign homes and real estate in London, Paris, Vancouver, etc. let’s see how the oligarchs react when they lose their investments and vacation homes.
DOD is moving towards getting more processing plants in the US. Know they partnered with MP Materials to build/reconfigure the mine they have at the California/Nevada border.
the overall sentiment is correct though - we need to build our capabilities of both extracting and processing rare earths in the US. There’s actually a bunch of fun research going into this, including leaching coal ash to collect rare earths within those deposits.
Estonia and Latvia are both in NATO. A war there essentially turns into WW3. Moldova would be the next step as Russia already supports a breakaway region there.
Finland would probably be next, but it is hard for me to imagine them not joining NATO now.