In April, the Estonian government informed the allies that we would be ready to put our skin on the line.

This would mean combat companies of the Scout Battalion on Ukrainian soil.

“In addition to this, there are also training opportunities, staff officers and perhaps, if the Ukrainians need it, a ship,” Tsahkna adds. “Estonia is the most straightforward here.”

How did this decision come about?

Of course, it all started with Donald Trump, the US president’s message that the war must end immediately and Europe must guarantee Ukraine’s security.

The British and French were the first to adapt to this.

“The UK is ready to put its boots on the ground, planes in the air,” British Prime Minister Keir Starmer announced in February. French President Emmanuel Macron promised to stand by its allies.

And then came the great Oval Office disaster.

The same one where Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky tried to talk about security guarantees and the Americans beat him with verbal sticks.

The message had to be sent by Western European leaders. The Americans had to be shown that Europe was taking the matter seriously. And the Ukrainians had to be shown that no matter what happens, Europe has their backs.

That day, March 2, the Coalition of the Willing was announced. Coalition des volontaires.

It’s not a random name. The same name was used for the alliance that went to Iraq at the request of former US President George W. Bush.

But a murmur of suspicion went through Tallinn that evening. Why didn’t Starmer invite any Estonians to the important meeting?

“We realized pretty quickly that if we want to be taken seriously in these discussions at all, we have to have a message,” says Defense Minister Hanno Pevkur.

And what better message than having our skin in the game?

Besides, a coalition of the willing is of little use if no one shows a clear will. Even the British didn’t go much more specific than their “boots on the ground” formulation. Other countries were even more cautious.

“In order for the formation of a coalition to be taken seriously, it was clear that we had to raise the flag,” says Pevkur.

Discussions between the State Chancellery, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and the Ministry of Defense went on for several weeks. And in April, the government, gathered in the basement of Toompea, made a decision: if the guns fall silent and Estonia’s major allies are on board, we are ready to send our company to Ukraine.

At the same time as us, the Lithuanians made a similar promise.

Generals at the map

During the spring, a dozen countries gathered that said they were ready to send their troops to Ukraine. But there were far fewer who talked about specific units.

You can't really blame this. Because there was no agreement yet on what, how, and why to do in Ukraine. Many questions remain unanswered to this day. Yet, the map of Ukraine was rolled out in March and military planning began.

The coalition of the willing has two lines of action. Thus, the staff involved in planning was also split into two.

Some had to figure out how to build up Ukraine's defense forces after the weapons fell silent. That would involve training and a lot of weapons.

Other staff officers had to figure out what a Western military contingent operating on Ukrainian soil could look like. What would be needed to take control of the Black Sea? How and with what forces to control Ukrainian airspace?

What capabilities should the ground forces have? And should they be located in specific sectors of the front where the Russian threat is greater? Or should they be kept somewhere in western Ukraine to respond from there if necessary?

The military personnel of nearly thirty countries met in several countries. The headquarters is led from France.

On the one hand, this is normal military planning. The enemy is known. One can calculate one's own forces. The route of movement and suitable areas are shown in advance on a map.

At the same time, there are a huge number of open questions.

First, no one can say when and under what conditions the guns will fall silent. Will there be a shaky ceasefire between the countries or a more solid peace treaty? Where will the front line be and what will be the situation of the Ukrainian forces by then?

Second, it is not known how many countries are actually willing to contribute and with what kind of forces.

And third, and this is the most important: what is the goal of the operation?

What are we really promising?

Western politicians from Paris to Vilnius repeat the slogan of lasting peace. But there is no consensus among the capitals on what they are prepared to do for it.

What powers, intervention thresholds or rules of use of force will be given to the units framed by the expression “reassurance force”.

It is precisely in this phrase “reassurance force” that Macron and Starmer repeatedly use that there is an important mental trap. It should give Ukrainians courage. The certainty that they are not alone.

And yet it differs from the expression used by Prime Minister Kristen Michal in a press release at the end of April when she promised Ukraine a company. She said “deterrence force”. Deterrence force.

That would be a degree stronger. And it clearly states what message the units stationed in Ukraine should give to Russia. If you attack again, we will kill you.

"Deterrence doesn't cost a penny if Russia thinks that deterrence will not oppose Russia," says Marko Mihkelson, chairman of the Riigikogu's Foreign Affairs Committee.

The promise to resist is a difficult political decision. It means being prepared to shed blood for the freedom of Ukraine. And to lose lives. “I am more than certain that there is no such consensus among the countries of the coalition of the willing at the moment,” says Mihkelson.

Until this certainty is there, it is impossible to answer the questions of how much force will actually secure Ukraine. Is it only those who are currently on the territory of the country? Or are the Western countries prepared for a battalion to be sent to help a company on the ground and a brigade to a battalion in the event of a violation of the peace agreement?

This has not even been seriously discussed yet.

But the planners of the defense forces are not bothered by such ignorance, and the plans have gradually begun to be filled with real forces. Whether it is good or bad, no one is saying. But the countries that are putting specific military units on the table have increased in the past six months.

The Turks have been signaling for some time that they may take control of the Black Sea. The Belgians could help by controlling Ukrainian airspace.

Czech President Petr Pavel has spoken of a willingness in principle. Canada also does not rule out sending troops. “And my feeling is that more countries will come,” says Pevkur.

It all comes down to the US

There was a fair amount of deadlock over the summer. For a long time, there were about a dozen countries that were talking about sending any troops at all.

Behind the hesitation is one of the biggest question marks in the whole undertaking – that same Donald Trump.

“We have always told the Americans that one way or another, the US must be there,” says Pevkur.

And the Americans have always said that their military boots would not set foot on Ukrainian soil.

The operation would be unthinkable without US intelligence and transport aircraft. Their air defense systems and long-range strike force are desperately needed.

A solid rear is just as important.

Even if the US does not send troops to Ukraine, they are expected to promise that if Russia does violate the peace treaty, they will come to the aid of the Europeans. This promise in itself would be more of a deterrent than anything else.

In August, after Trump and Russian dictator Vladimir Putin met in Alaska, things seemed to be moving.

“We managed to get the following concession: the United States can offer Ukraine protection similar to Article 5,” US special envoy Steve Witkoff told reporters.

In some ways, the message was disgusting. The principle of the Coalition of the Willing is that Russia should have no say in whose forces move in Ukraine. Moreover, Russia soon announced that it still did not want Western countries in Ukraine.

On the other hand, it gave Europe hope that the Americans were ready to make concrete promises. “The United States is involved,” Trump said a few days later.

Members of the union BJMF arrived before dawn after learning that Domus Ejendomsservice, black-listed by the labour movement for undercutting wages and refusing to sign a union contract, had been hired by project owner, the business lobby group Dansk Erhverv. The lobbyists, who own the landmark building, had previously denied BJMF access to make routine inspections of the construction site. The blockade lasted four hours and ended only when the lobby group conceded to every union demand: conflict-hit companies will be removed from the site, unions will be allowed to make routine site inspections and main contractors will accept financial responsibility if any subcontractor breaches Danish pay and safety standards.

Carsten Bansholm Hansen, who chairs the BJMF construction section, said the action was necessary to defend the “Danish model” of negotiated wages. “In Denmark, things are supposed to be in order, people must earn a living wage not be subjected to wage dumping. If that principle collapses on a large site like the Stock Exchange, how are we going to enforce it on the smaller ones?”

The 400-year-old Stock Exchange was heavily damaged by a fire in February 2024, in which its iconic dragon spire collapsed. It is now being reconstructed.

Source:

• removedligt aktive blokerer Børsen: “Et prestigebyggeri skal have ordentlige forhold”, Arbejderen, September 23rd 2025

In a keynote address at the Air & Space Forces Association’s Air Space Cyber conference in National Harbor, Maryland, Meink highlighted the service’s lackluster aircraft readiness as one of its major challenges. “We have some of the best aircraft,” Meink said, citing the F-22 and F-35 fighters and the B-2 bomber as examples. The scope of the readiness challenge “surprised me a bit,” Meink said. “I knew there was a readiness challenge,” Meink said. “I didn’t appreciate how significant that readiness challenge was.”

The Air Force’s aircraft readiness rates have steadily trended down for several years, and last year hit a recent low. The fiscal 2024 fleet-wide mission-capable rate — which measures how many aircraft are able to carry out their missions on an average day — hit 62%, meaning nearly four in every 10 aircraft were unable to perform their job at any given time. Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. David Allvin raised alarms about the decline at AFA’s Air Warfare Symposium in March. During that speech, Allvin displayed a chart showing another statistic, aircraft availability, which had declined from 73% in 1994 to 54% in 2024. One major factor driving declining readiness rates, experts agree, is that the Air Force’s planes are decades old — and getting older all the time. Allvin’s chart in March showed that over the past three decades, the average aircraft age in the fleet almost doubled from 17 to nearly 32 years old.

Meink said Monday that the Air Force has “some of the best aircraft” of any military, and praised the F-22 Raptor, F-35 Joint Strike Fighter and the B-2 Spirit bomber. But he pointed to Joint Base Langley-Eustis in Virginia, where F-22s are stationed, as an example of the problems the Air Force is facing. The F-22 is “a phenomenal platform,” Meink said. “But when I go out to Langley and there’s a number of aircraft, nonoperational, sitting around the ramp that aren’t even being worked on because we simply don’t have the parts to do that — that’s a problem, right? We have to fix that.” In an afternoon roundtable with reporters, Meink said maintenance and sustainment have been a major cost driver for the Air Force over the last roughly 15 years. Lawmakers, the administration and top Pentagon leadership are working to help increase the Air Force’s maintenance budget, he said. But with the Air Force’s resources stretched thin, Meink said, it must be efficient and focus maintainers on its top priorities — systems that will be able to survive in a future war’s highly contested airspace.

“If a system is not capable of operating in a contested environment, then we need to be second-guessing and/or thinking about how much money we’re dumping into readiness on those platforms,” Meink said. And as the Air Force retires older, outdated aircraft, Meink said, it will be able to shift skilled maintainers and other resources to planes that will be needed in a future conflict. Meink pointed to Ukraine’s success in using modified quadcopters worth a few thousand dollars to destroy multimillion-dollar Russian drones as an example of the new air warfare environment the U.S. will have to operate in. Meink said the Air Force also must hold its contractors accountable for the reliability of their systems.

the US government holding contractors accountable? lol. lmao

“When we’re getting a part that’s supposed to last 400 hours, and it lasts 100 hours, that’s unacceptable,” Meink said. “We need to work with the government and contractors to make the right investments to improve the serviceability and reliability of our weapon systems and the parts we’re putting in those weapon systems.” William Bailey, who is performing the duties of the assistant Air Force secretary for acquisition, technology and logistics, said the increasing modularity of new aircraft and other in-the-works systems will allow them to be more easily maintained and replaced. Bailey also said the acquisition community plans to conduct a deep dive into the service’s supply chains to identify where “pinch points” are holding up the delivery of vital spare parts. The Air Force must use also advanced data analytic techniques to better understand the state of its weapon systems, Meink said.

Not every rifleman in the U.S. Army rides to battle in beefy Bradley or Stryker armored vehicles—in fact, a growing number of soldiers will soon do so in Chevrolet pickup trucks. So far, the Army is in the process of converting five of these planned Mobile Brigades to fight on foot with the intention of 9–14 units in total. Still, soldiers have to reach the combat zone, so each infantry squad will get an M1301 Infantry Squad Vehicle (ISV) based on Chevy’s Colorado ZR2 Bison. Popular Mechanics anointed the truck the “ultimate mid-sized off-road pickup” in 2018. By foregoing armor; mine protection; weapons; and even a windshield, roof, and doors, the ISV weighs merely 2.5 tons and can seat a nine-man squad (if one of them drives). Soldiers have praised the ISV’s fuel efficiency, air transportability, and ability to negotiate muddy or forested terrain.

However, an Army National Guard officer with over 20 years of experience serving in a unit converting into a Mobile Brigade Combat Team told Popular Mechanics the new Infantry Squad Vehicle’s design is ill-conceived—unable to survive enemy fire, lacking capacity for basic supplies, and pricier than existing, roomier alternatives. But the Pentagon is keen on the new whips. In May, the U.S. Department of Defense canceled most ongoing armored vehicle procurement, including Joint Light Tactical Vehicles (JLTV), Humvees, and Stryker troop carriers, claiming enough had been delivered and that ISVs were the future. Infantry Squad Vehicles may indeed assume other roles, too. The Army has tested air defense lasers on ISVs, while Chevrolet is offering flatbed transport models, a weapons-turret variant, a command-and-control kit, and an electric-propulsion model. ... it retains 90 percent civilian parts—theoretically lowering cost. However, while 2025 civilian ZR2s typically cost $49,000–$60,000, M1301 contracts average well over $330,000 to $370,000 per vehicle delivered. By comparison, recent contracts show costs of $225,000 to $275,000 per Humvee, and $330,000–$400,000 per JLTV. Following initial Infantry Squad Vehicle tests in 2020 and 2021, the Pentagon’s Department of Testing and Evaluation (DOT&E) expressed concerns over high breakdown rates, poor long-range radio performance, uncomfortable seating, and lack of cybersecurity, accessible stowage, firepower, and protection. Accordingly, Chevrolet revised the finalized production model’s engineering, ergonomics, and comms. In 2023, evaluators found the breakdown rate reduced to one incident per 15,000 miles. But DOT&E noted improvements to other cited problems weren’t evaluated, particularly “the [lack of] capability to deliver effective fires, provide reliable communication, and force protection.” But the Army didn’t require those qualities.

That’s why Infantry Squad Vehicles are supposedly meant for delivering infantry just outside combat zones without contacting enemy forces. But if ISVs truly are non-combat vehicles, they’re logistically outperformed by cheaper alternatives in service like LMTV trucks or the M1152 expanded capacity Humvee. Though an M1152 (with limited in-built armor) is 40 percent heavier at 3.5 tons, it matches or outperforms ISVs in key ways when forgoing add-on armor. Despite their non-combat role, ISVs are being attached directly to combat squads much like Bradley or JLTVs with combat capability. That means when the squad dismounts, they must either leave a squadmate in the truck or abandon it. “If the drivers are tied to the vehicles, you have just lost 11 percent of your combat power across the formation,” said the officer, who asked to remain anonymous due to fear of retribution. “If not, [i.e. the trucks are abandoned] how do we evacuate casualties or resupply troops on the line?” He argued non-combat trucks should be pooled in separate logistical platoons so infantry units don’t have personnel tied to vehicles they can’t deploy near the combat zone.

Infantry squad vehicles are also often promoted as being so mobile and stealthy that they’ll evade enemy strikes—again, despite being classed as non-combat vehicles. The Army broadly advocated for similar concepts at the turn of the century—until mines and ambushes in Iraq began killing soldiers in armorless trucks. A soldier famously asked then-Defense Secretary Rumsfeld why troops were forced to “dig through landfills for scrap metal and compromised ballistic glass to uparmor our vehicles.” The Pentagon scrambled to acquire the most heavily protected trucks possible. But the Pentagon now favors unprotected transports again, saying it doesn’t expect to fight another insurgency, but rather plans for scenarios wherein U.S. troops rush to defend its allies from China or Russia. ISV proponents argue trucks transiting through friendly territory won’t face ambushes and mines, and that that long-distance artillery, kamikaze drones, and missiles can defeat light armor. So they argue it’s better for trucks to trade armor for speed to avoid attacks and outrun enemy detection-targeting-firing cycles, or “kill chains.”

The officer didn’t think this theory was realistic. “The ISV cannot outrun or outmaneuver a threat. Every link in the kill chain moves faster than any vehicle on the battlefield,” he said. “You cannot ‘move stealthily’ in a vehicle. Modern sensors are much more capable than our ability to deceive them.” The 2021 evaluators seemingly concurred, reporting that in exercises ISV-equipped rifle companies “did not successfully avoid enemy detection, ambushes, and engagements during a majority of their missions,” were slowed excessively while transiting off-road, and experienced “numerous casualties.” “ISVs would not survive within the 30+ kilometer range of FPV kamikaze drones,” the officer asserted. “They would shred their tires on the artillery shrapnel littering the road leading to the Forward Line of Own Troops. They would spectacularly demine the fields of whatever country we were operating in one device at a time.” (In Ukraine, rocket artillery and drones have been used to sow minefields on supply roads behind the frontline.) And bivouacking the trucks 30 kilometers back would render them useless to the units they’re tied to, he said.

“If the problem is that vehicles get killed easily by drones, I don’t think the answer is packing nine guys into one and trying your luck. We’ve all seen footage of Russians dying in droves driving around in rail buggies and ATVs. Would we be any different?” He observed the loss of just one Infantry Squad Vehicle would overwhelm the capacity of a standard Battalion Aid Station. “That means triage, strain on casualty/medical evaluation, and inability to properly deal with other casualties. And the ISV cannot carry a stretcher without modification [unlike a Humvee].” He believes vehicles near the frontline still require armor and an active protection system that shoot down incoming missiles and drones. “Armor will protect you from fragmentation,” the officer said. Light armor may not prevent vehicle knockouts, he acknowledged, but it still greatly improves passengers’ survival odds.

Still, the officer said he didn’t oppose motorized light infantry broadly. “[Mobile Brigade Combat Team] has far less of a logistical burden, is a better fit for domestic operations [like disaster response], and doesn’t require enormous amounts of money to move to training areas. That said, its ability to be decisive in a maneuver fight is lacking.” He simply felt integration of Infantry Squad Vehicles didn’t make sense, arguing their selection reflected roots in the Special Operations Command and testing by elite airborne units, with little input from regular motorized and mechanized infantry experienced in large-scale conventional motorized operations using available vehicles. “A vehicle that needs modification to hold a stretcher, or carry the basic load and three days of supply is probably not what you want to be looking at for the future of mobile brigades,” the officer said. “We have many vehicles in the inventory that will already accomplish those tasks.”

critical support to US Special Forces ghouls in their heroic effort to mislead the US military into buying a bunch of bullshit that is completely ill-suited for actual war rather than cruising around murdering civilians

Shared peoples

Sharing a border, both have a somewhat sizeable shared populations of their national ethnic groups. However, this is more prevalent in Thailand, where the country has a 5-12% Muslim population (there is conflicting information even between different government sources), mostly concentrated in the Malay-speaking south. This has fueled seperatism due to the Southern provinces being ceded to the Thai kingdom after imperial agreements in the early 20th century. Nowadays the separatism has lessened in militancy but faces a stalled peace process between the separatists, and the military/government. That said, there is still deep resentment and continual securitisation in the Southern provinces, with the endurance of emergency laws that started in 2005. This 'insurgency' has largely been hidden from public media and especially Western media, in which all state and non-state actors seemingly agree to lay low to dissuade foreign interference.

A fun fact is that after the dissolution of the Malayan Communist Party in 1991, past guerrilla members resettled into “peace villages” across Southern Thailand due to Malaysia barring Communist members from re-entering the country. There is some evocative writing there, where chinese migrant labourers who ultimately fought for an egalitarian Malaya forced to reside in a region in which itself was separated from Malaya about 80 years prior.

Southeast Asian developmentalism

Both countries were tailing the main “Asian Tigers” (Taiwan, South Korea, Singapore and Hong Kong), with some level of industrialization and transition towards full industrial capitalism by the early 1990s. This however would see it’s first major cracks in the Asian financial crisis of 1997-8. There has been extensive rhetoric for why Thailand and Malaysia failed to escape the middle-income trap and succumbed to neoliberalism and deindustrialization. Many fall into bourgeois-liberal culturalism or “crony capitalism”/“patronage politics” debates that fails to connect the two countries into the global processes of accumulation, uneven development and imperialism while considering local/national class structures. This neglect is itself a product of neoliberalism, leading to atomized analysis of individualistic policymaking of leaders.

The 1997-8 Asian Financial Crisis

There has been extensive literature on this topic so I won’t elaborate too much on it and urge people to read through the news and literature if they are interested.

Post-crash recovery

I like to highlight this era a bit more, to set the stage of the slowdown but not full crash of the two national economies, unlike that of other countries facing structural adjustment. This is because after the crash, it lead to heightened class-based struggles that were reflected in some rethinking and resistance to the “Washington Consensus” in both countries, highlighted by responses by Thaksin’s and Mahathir’s post-crash administrations. This was through debt moratoriums, targeted low-interest loans for rural populations and improved healthcare access schemes (Thailand), and capital controls, renationalization and greater emphasis on social-based Islamic financial instruments (Malaysia). These policies helped propelled Thai Rak Thai (TRT) and Barisan Nasional (BN) to overwhelming electoral victories in their respective elections in the early to mid 2000s. But as capitalism always does, another resulting cyclical crash occurred globally (the 2008 financial crisis), which was especially detrimental for the export oriented businesses.

Current political-economic developments

Household debt to GDP in Thailand and Malaysia are one of the highest in ASEAN, and generally in the world. This is symptomatic of debt-based financialization and is especially concerning for underdeveloped and semi-industrialized countries. About 65% of Malaysian household debt is due to real estate and 17% from vehicle purchases, compared to Thailand’s 33% (real estate) and 16% (vehicles). Thailand’s debt problem however has increasingly come from credit card and personal loans (18%).

Thailand’s economy is characterised by quite large disparities of urban and rural classes, with the affluent urban middle classes advocating for democratisation against the military aligned national bourgeosie. Other more savvy bourgeois groups also support democratization due to the perceived outdated superstructure of the military. Meanwhile, the rural classes consist mainly of farmers, petty commodity producers and semi-proletarians, with consistent classism by the urbanites of being uneducated and falling for simple rhetoric and vote-buying practices. Although typical of many other economies, what separates Thailand from other semi-industrialised countries is this large gap and continual failure to fully convert into a ‘developed’ capitalist economy via disciplining financial capital for investment in modern industrial sectors. This can clearly be seen in the patterns of urbanization in Thailand compared to other Asian countries.

Malaysia on the other hand face contradictions stemming from the complete proletarianization of the peasantry and other backward classes. The rise of migrant labour consisting of 10-20% of the total population (15-25% of the workforce) and racialization as means to negate class consciousness is representative of this capitalist development. The near immiseration of the countryside and integration into the global economy has lead to a rise in Islamic and petty bourgeois reformist movements that seek to mediate their class interests with international Capital. It has also lead to the rise of the urban poor and the precariat whose livelihoods majorly depends on the whims of property developers, landlords and technology platforms.

Edit: Minor grammar mistakes.

The humanitarian mission trying to break the Israeli blockade on Gaza was the victim of new attacks, which they denounce are for psychological warfare and intimidation. The Global Sumud Flotilla, made up of 50 boats carrying humanitarian aid bound for Gaza, denounced on Tuesday that it was the target of nine drone attacks that targeted five ships, while they were sailing in the Mediterranean Sea south of the Greek island of Crete.

Spanish journalist Néstor Prieto, who is aboard the flotilla, reported that they activated a drone protocol, after about twenty of them began to fly over the flotilla.

Prieto reported that initially, the drones carried out surveillance tasks, carrying out sweeps at different heights. However, shortly after the attacks began, with at least nine impacts documented in videos broadcast on social networks.

The journalist noted that the attacks appear to follow a pattern of psychological warfare, with sound bomb detonations in the air and water, designed to frighten and disable boats, rather than to cause lethal damage.

The most recent of the attacks would have caused damage to the masts of one of the ships, although the information is still confusing due to the effects that the flotilla’s telecommunications are suffering, which force them to constantly change radio channels, according to Prieto.

Explosions, unidentified drones and communications jamming. We are witnessing these psychological operations firsthand, right now, but we will not be intimidated. The lengths to which Israel and its allies will go to prolong the horrors of starvation and Genocide in Gaza are…

— Global Sumud Flotilla Commentary (@GlobalSumudF) September 23, 2025

Although the origin of the drones is unknown at the moment, the pattern of attack points to Israel or related groups, according to the journalist’s report. At 2:27 a.m. local Greek time, drones continued to fly over the boats, including the Al Awda ship.

“Our determination is stronger than ever. These tactics will not deter us from our mission to deliver aid to Gaza and break the illegal siege. Any attempt to intimidate us only reinforces our commitment. We will not be silenced. We will continue sailing,” the participants of the flotilla assured on social networks.

The initiative is part of a global effort to challenge the Israeli siege, denouncing the critical humanitarian situation in Gaza and demanding an end to the genocide.