Dean
11mo ago
Preferring function over form is like preferring an ugly, easy girl over a beautiful but somewhat expensive girl, because she is “functional”.
I believe this is also known as 'not being shallow,' and would be accompanied by less pejorative framings.
The drawbacks of superficial attractiveness are legendary. Like, literally some of the oldest works in the literary canon.
Dean
11mo ago
First, natural gas demand has been much weaker than anticipated since China is weaker. Indeed, there is now a surplus of gas in the world market.Some people claim that "last winter we got lucky", but this doesn't explain how gas storage is at historically high levels. Germany, Europe's biggest gas consumer, has an excellent position going into the autumn.
I thought it was obvious. Germany, Europe's biggest gas consumer for businesses, spent commercially-unviable amounts of money to import gas through the shipping points it had, and told those businesses they weren't going to get what they were used to for commerce and to deal with it. This was surprising to those who thought the Germans wouldn't let the business lobby get gored and so would capitulate to Russian energy blackmail for geopolitical concessions, but is not surprising to those who considered what a non-capitulating Germany would look like.
As DaseindustriesLtd noted, Germany reduced production of its most gas and gas-energy dependent things. In the last day or so, Germany has done the not-at-all managed 'we're in recession now' dance, with a focus on GDP- which the German Stability Programme of last year was directly boosting by, well, stimulating GDP.
Other relevant factors involved the expansion of LNG import infrastructure and the sanctions structure that Germany successfully influenced.
For LNG imports, the Germans basically rented much of the global capacity for floating LNG terminals after the war started last year to bring in the ability to import LNG gas while they started construction on permanent terminals. As they expand import capacity, they will approach dynamics closer to Korea or Japan, where manufacturing is possible on the power of expensive but consistent global sea-based LNG.
The Germans were also successful in the ultimate shaping of Russia sanctions from a 'keep it in Russia' model of sanctions (a probably doomed idea to prevent Russia from exporting anything and getting any money), and instead 'deny Russia profits' model where mechanisms such as price caps and insurance risks were used to keep Russia energy on the market, but less profitable. This was considerably softer, especially for oil vis-a-vis gas, but also the price of not only European cohesion to get any unified position, but also more modest international acceptance (because they are happy to buy Russian oil for cheaper).
Finally, the consequences of energy crisis prediction beyond direct industrial contraction (which has occurred) were that of investment. This remains to be seen, because it's a long-term trend, but the economic data so far doesn't disprove it to any meaningful degree.
Dean
11mo ago
...via the pipelines and LNG facilities, which are long term projects.
As pipeline flows were closed, Russia hit a bottleneck in its shipping capacity by port, because they didn't have the infrastructure to simply take all the pipeline-gas and then push it through ports on top of the usual port-exports. Hence why they filled their storage to capacity and then started cutting production.
The Russian Deputy Prime Minister statement from February was a 25% reduction in gas exports by volume in 2022, blaming the loss of the Nord Stream Pipeline and European customers (who primarily bought via pipelines) shunning it, and stating that the solution was the eastern China route, which is itself a pipeline project.
Were LNG truly fungible in the way RandomRanger describes and sliders1234 contested, that wouldn't have happened. The Russian gas that used to go to Europe wasn't simply put on ships to India to be resold to the Europeans. It just didn't reach the market, beyond whatever surge capacity the Russians had beyond their normal sea-based LNG export capacity.
Rather, the Europeans paid premiums to buy the sea-based LNG that was typically exported for Asia, which has been a market the Russians aren't a major party in.
Dean
11mo ago
Even better, this is the sort of AI duplicity that will be even easier to detect and counter with weaker/non-AI mechanisms. While I don't necessarily go as far as 'all cases need analog filings', that would be a pretty basic mechanism to catching spoofed case-ID numbers. It's not even something that 'well, the AI could hack the record system' can address, because it's relatively trivial to have duplicate record systems in reserve, including analog, to compare/contrast/detect record-manipulation efforts.
This is one of those dynamics where the AI power fantasies of 'well, the AI will cheat the system and fabricate whatever clearance it needs' meets reality to show itself as a power fantasy. When a basic analog-trap would expose you, your ability to accrue unlimited power through the master of the interwebs is, ahem, short lived.
Dean
11mo ago
This isn't a point dependent on ChatGPT, or any other specific example that might be put in italics. It's a point that authentication systems exist, and exist in such various forms that 'the AI singularity will hack everything to get it's way' was never a serious proposition, because authentication systems can, are often already, and can continue to be devised in such ways that 'hacking everything' is not a sufficient, let alone plausible, course to domination.
Being intelligent- even superintelligent- is not a magic wand, even before you get into the dynamics of competition between (super)intelligent functions.
Dean
10mo ago
They lose money, but not necessarily influence, as they can leverage the loss of money for concessions in other areas, such as Chinese access into other infrastructure or concessions to allow Chinese-only installations. And losing money isn't exactly an issue, as a non-trivial part of the belt and road initiative was to find a way to use massive cash reserves that couldn't be productively invested internally and were sitting as American dollars.
Dean
10mo ago
To be fair, you did specify 'major crime,' and the current indictment appears to be deriving from the Mar a Lago raid. That was the one focused on taking classified documents from the administration... which occurred right before Biden was found to have documents in a literal garage from when he was Vice President.
Ultimately, I don't think this is an indictment that will change any opinions, especially given the contrast with Hillary.
Dean
10mo ago
However, why is that a problem for you?
Where do you perceive there is a problem for SlowBoy?
This is a discussion forum. You don't need to have a problem with something to weigh in with an opinion on it. An article was posted for visibility and at least implicitly soliciting opinions on it. Slowboy shared his. When people engaged his opinion, he elaborated back.
Dean
10mo ago
Nobody seems to talk about the RU-UA war here anymore. I guess it's because we're saturated with it everywhere else.
I'd suspect it's less saturation and more that there wasn't much to talk about that wasn't already obvious here. The Russian offensive culmination was largely evident last summer, and the mobilization as it occurred demonstrated it was about defensive padding rather than offensive capability generation. The fate of the Russian winter offensive just kind of underscored that to a degree that even the pro-Russians of the internet couldn't credibly claim a 'Ukrainine is imminently doomed' narrative based on Russia Stronk memes.
The people for whom the expected Russia victory would have been some sort of validation of their world view instead got their noses rubbed in Russian strategic and moral failures, and generally withdrew.
First, it is immediately clear that the Russians are much more prepared this time. The area that Ukraine took back in autumn was barely defended by a rag-tag group of volunteer militias. That was a big lapse by the Russian general command, which also led to the big mobilisation drive. This time is different.
You're either conflating two very different offensives, or ignoring one entirely. Kharkiv was the unexpected success brought about by undermanning. It was undermanned precisely because the majority of Russia's forces were moved to the Kherson region, which was a two-and-a-half month offensive, which was in no way a dynamic of 'rag-tag group of volunteer militias' on the Russian part.
Even pro-UA accounts like Julian Röpcke are conceding that Ukraine is losing lots of armored vehicles with very marginal gains. Western officials like the CIA chief or the US foreign secretary have all pointed out that the aftermath of the offensive will shape upcoming negotiations. Given that Ukraine has little to show for their offensive thus far, this inevitably casts a dark shadow on any prospects for large territorial compromises. Why would the Russians give the Ukrainians something at the negotiating table which they cannot gain on the battlefield?
There are a few points here.
One, you're assuming that the negotiations the offensive will be meaningfully shaping are territorial negotiations. This is very unlikely- Putin's political interests are such that the Russians aren't going to give the Ukrainians territory at the engotiating table which they cannot gain on the battlefield regardless. The negotiations that occur will be for other dynamics on the extension of the war, including Russian blockade or not of food exports, prisoner swaps, investigation access into the dams, repatriation of Ukrainians in Russian territory, and so on.
Two, you're framing this offensive as if it demonstrates the Ukrainian capacity for offense. That's... really not the case, as the Ukrainian capacity is about western backing for capability, and that is still largely in the 'what we have on hand to spare' levels of output. The estimates last year were that it'd take two-to-three years for various forms of industrial spinup to occur, even as the US has only started scratching it's own strategic storage stockpile. The success (or not) of an offensive in the present really has nothing about the capacity for offensive to work in the future, and far more to do with affecting how Ukraine's western backers shape their plans to back Ukraine (and the potential opportunities for those opposed to that to argue that they shouldn't).
Third and final, you're making far too early a judgement on far too little information. The Ukrainian offensive has been underway for about a week. The Kherson offensive, which again is the 'not a rag-tag group of volunteer militia' comparison, was a two-and-a-half-month offensive. I have no reason to doubt your characterization of Julian Ropcke, but I am not clear why you think they are in any sort of authoritative position to make a considered judgement of the current offensive.
Ultimately, the measure of success of this offensive isn't whether armored vehicles are being lost. That's expected regardless, and the reason 'the tanks are burning, the war is lost!' is its own meme. Success will be whether the offensive does enough that Ukraine's backers consider it enough progress to continue backing rather than compelling surrender, which won't be determined for months.
To my mind, the best that Ukraine can hope for now is a stalemate. This war has shown that in the era of ubiquitous ISR capabilities, trying to surprise your enemy is much harder if he's on his toes (which the Russians weren't in the autumn, but they are now). Consequently, offensives are simply far costlier and harder. The Russians had the same problems, which is why capturing Bakhmut took such an absurdly long time.
The nature of the Russian and Ukrainian problems are significantly different. The Russian issue was that they entered the war with the greatest advantage in material capacity they'd have for the entire war, but squandered it out of strategic incompetence and and with it their capacity to conduct meaningful offensives. The Ukrainian issue was that they started the war with the least material and logistic capacity they're liable to have, and are dependent on western backing in scale to generate these capabilities.
The prevalence of ISR aviation really hasn't changed these dynamics. NATO ISR certainly helped the Ukrainians massively, but it would have amounted to just having the finest view to watch the Russian invasion succeed if the Russians had planned the war's opening as a military invasion and not as a military support to an intelligence coup. Meanwhile, rather than use their surveillance capabilities to hit actual tactical or operational targets, the Russians squandered their strategic stockpiles and is now getting hosed by Iran for drones to use as cruise missiles against... still not tactical or operational targets.
For those of us who would want to see a negotiated settlement, the reality is that neither side is running out of money or arms. Russia is spending a moderate amount of money
This is underselling it by more than a little. It is true Russia isn't going to run out of money in the near term, but whether you want to consider direct expenditures or losses in income or opportunity costs or GDP shift or the impacts to Russian industries, the Russians are spending very significant amounts of blood and treasure and much of their cold war inheritance of Soviet stockpiles.
The only way this war ends is if the West tells Ukraine to give in and accept large territorial losses in return for a settlement and possibly security guarantees. Such an outcome would be nearly impossible to sell to Ukraine's domestic public and would almost certainly end the career of whoever was leading the country, including Zelensky. Whatever comes out of this war, I'm not optimistic about Ukraine's long-term prospects.
These seems like a lack of imagination. Other ways the war can end are that the West continues to help Ukraine generate offensive strength for future even more effective offensives in the future. You may think that's unreasonable/impossible, but the success of such a strategy doesn't rest on your concurrence.
Other ways the war could be brought to something other than a diplomatic capitulation to Russian stronk is that the war continues long enough with enough Western aid to Ukraine that the Russian economic-military capacity to meaningfully resist degrades, that Putin passes away and is replaced by someone not as beholden to Putin's legacy-interests, that the Russians do something really stupid that leads to NATO direct intervention, and other variations.
'Russian military defeat is impossible- better to negotiate now while you still have your army for leverage!' has been a theme since the war started. Nothing in the last six months has provided it any more traction than in the first six month. The war will continue, Ukrainian military capabilities will increase, Russian capabilities will decrease, the Western military-industrial expansions will continue, and the Russian national economic base will continue to retract.
Dean
10mo ago
This is probably correct, and also probably why the topic of aircraft got new salience over the last few months. The relevant impact of western aircraft isn't expected to be dogfights over Crimea, but the use of NATO-compatible platforms to fire NATO air-launched missiles.
The NATO artillery ammo toolup was estimated to be 2-to-3 years last year. I wouldn't go so far that this offensive is the only offensive action of the Ukrainians this year, but it's probably going to be the largest one.
Dean
10mo ago
I keep seeing this take in a lot of social media and I really don't think that it has any relation to reality. It isn't a "fairly moderate chunk of the US military budget" but a massive economic imposition and cost upon the rest of the west. Aside from the direct costs of sending money and arms to one of the most corrupt countries in Europe, the indirect costs from rising energy prices, economic disruption, inflation, sanctions, refugees and the like have made this entire affair incredibly expensive.
This conflates a few different topics of wildly different scopes, so I'll focus on the point of energy prices. The energy price rising isn't the consequence of the war, it's the consequence of the Europeans- namely the Germans- refusing energy blackmail. The war was the context of the blackmail, but the capacity for the blackmail was baked into the status quo ante as a result of deliberate central and western European policy choices over the objections / concerns / warnings of US and Eastern European countries. The Russians were always very blatant that they were prioritizing political goals over economic profit with their use of gazprom, and that the German industrial base getting functionally subsidized energy was a means to an end.
The energy costs Europe is experience are the cost of a much delayed structural shift away from a nigh monopoly supplier to more resilient import network infrastructure. This is the epitome of a good cost, and will drastically increase European economic safety over the long term.
For any sort of advocate of European strategic autonomy, this is perhaps the best cost of the entire conflict, and exceptionally well timed as it occurred when there was the US-alliance network to fall back on for sourcing for LNG imports.
If the de-dollarisation that the sanctions regime has spurred continues it could ultimately prove to be one of the most expensive mistakes in US history.
Laconic 'If' applies. De-dollarization has been a thing for literal decades, and continues to be a thing, and will continue to be a thing. The reason it always seems to never happen is epitomized by the Russia-India experience in the rupee trade debacle- the other person has to want your currency, and to want your currency at scale it needs to be a a stable and fungible store of value. It's not enough to offer your own money as loans to buy stuff back from you, as is common with the Chinese yuan projects- the currency has to have value with others.
I am happy to concede that China may yet get some value out of the Yuan as a way to facilitate corruption outside of dollar monitoring systems (which is how, say, Lulu got caught for corruption in Brazil)- but this is independent of the war.
Even then, the cost in materiel matters as well. Western supply chains and reserves have been tapped out to funnel that equipment to Ukraine, and those stocks have been considerably depleted (at least among EU member state militaries).
They are depleted because they were incredibly thin beforehand, due to decades of neglect and under-resourcing and frankly falling behind the tech curve. Again, this is a good cost to pay if you are any sort of advocate for a strategically resilient and autonomous Europe, as the cost was going to come regardless.
With unavoidable costs, timing is key to relative preference, and the Ukraine crisis is about as ideal a time to restock / modernize, as political support is high, support from the current American establishment is high to subsidize modernization costs, and the political costs of emptying out the outdated cold war stock to free up budget / admin capacity for modernization is practically negative.
While that's bad by itself, it becomes even worse when you remember who Russia's biggest ally is - China. The Chinese government is, presumably, sitting back and rubbing their hands together with glee as they watch the west burn vast amounts of military equipment on a pyre. Every bit of kit that gets blown up in the Ukraine or sold onto the black market by some unscrupulous oligarch is a piece of kit that is not going to be used in any prospective defence of Taiwan
...but it was never going to be used in any prospective defense of Taiwan regardless, because water is a thing other than the color blue on a map.
This has been a thing since last year, but it bears repeating: Taiwan is an island. It's not in need of tank columns to drive across the strait. No one is building trench lines in the water. Many of the weapon systems that are very useful in the Ukraine conflict are practically irrelevant in a Taiwan conflict, because even if they were on the island they wouldnt' reach far enough off the island to matter in what really matters in a Taiwan conflict- the ability of the Chinese to maintain a blockade of the island against the US Navy.
In a Taiwan conflict, there will be no Ukraine-style aid packages to fight a major ground war. Only the equipment already on the ground has any relevance, and even then only in so much that it extends the time the Chinese need to maintain a blockade. As long as there is any blockade, no aid package would get through. If there is no blockade, it's because the Americans have beaten back the Chinese navy, and if the Chinese navy isn't there, it's not landing forces.
The Taiwan conflict isn't about ground-force kit, it's about naval assets. Which, notably, have not been sent to Ukraine.
if the US is getting a pretty great deal, you're gonna run out of superlatives when you try to describe the one China is getting.
A white elephant.
The Ukrainian crisis demonstrated that several of the assumptions that might have supported a Chinese attempt to invade Taiwan in the near term were extremely suspect. This included the power of offense versus defense, assumptions of acceptance by the targeted population, the unwillingness of the Europeans to assume costs to diplomatically resist pressure, and inability of the US to do things, and of course the ability of the Russians as allies.
Dean
10mo ago
A Russia--Iran--China axis means that all of Central & Northern Asia is outside US influence as an unbroken landmass. The stan countries are irrelevant and Pakistan is a Chinese vassal state.
You speak this as if it's a bad thing for the Americans, rather than a plus. Central & Northern Asia is just about the least threatening center of gravity for any anti-US coalition, all the more so if you helpfully exclude India from in.
It's fortunate that China is so dependent on sea based trade, because it is thoroughly flanked by US allies in the sea. Effective land based trade needs to be established between Iran, Russia & China. If that's achieved, then between those 3 and indebted B&R nations, China should be able to get dedollarification started quite soon.
'Effective' land-based trade is not the same as 'cost-efficient', and that's always going to come back to the cost of water-based transport vis-a-vis everything else. If China wants to invest huge sums of money on infrastructure to carrying material from the coasts of China up and over and through the hindu kush, they should actively be encouraged to do so. A land-based trade route is a far less economically efficient, and thus slower growth and less throughput, than a sea-based economy.
Dedeollerification doesn't exactly hinge on having land-based trade either. That's a misconception of why the Dollar is useful in trading between states, and why the Chinese yuan isn't a much-sought reserve currency.
Dean
10mo ago
Hlynka needs to feel he's somehow different from the rest of us.
Would you even disagree with that?
Dean
10mo ago
It's not the particular coastline, but the ability to deny support from American carrier groups. Sailing between the continent and the island is a flex, but it's ultimately not where the carrier groups that could shut down an invasion would be.
'Fit in' isn't the same as 'different from,' which seems a bit of a motte and bailey. Who, specifically, is like Hylenka in nature and style, including his defining experiences that he regularly admits to, his personality and style, and his willingness to be direct to the point of offense?
Hlynka's never claimed to be a unique opinion, to my knowledge.
Dean
10mo ago
In comparison to the west though?
Kind of irrelevant to whether Russia is spending moderately to its means. Russia can be profligate, and extremely poor compared to its opponents. This is classic relative and absolute value mixing.
Generous report suggest Russia's spending up to 3% of its GDP on this invasion or around $67b/year.
Generous to Russia, I suppose. Less generous ones go to 5% or more. Russia was already spending an estimated 3.7% of its GDP on the military before the invasion, one of these are really reflective of the extent of economic burden because these are off course just what's counted as military spending, and not domestic economic spending or the effects of sanctions or economic impacts or the spending to address those impacts. Consider how the reported $300b in frozen assets caught at the start of the war- how you categorize that one alone is a question, but that's almost four and a half years of that nominal 3% GDP, and even that doesnt' factor in the recession.
The chain of corruption in Russia's MI complex is mirrored in the west by what we've rebranded as "Cost Disease", so even primarily donating old materiel is comparatively expensive for us. The US alone has sent more than $100b though it's difficult to get a true yearly run rate from the mix of western support and UKR itself.
It is hard, but it's also falling into the absolute versus relative and the category breakdown trap of economic versus military aid... and how military aid is even calculated. Namely, that military aid is as much a posturing show, which frequently doesn't accept that the costs of equipment were already paid for. The cost of sending $1 million in equipment built 10/20 years isn't $1 million to the current year budget, it's the cost of inspection and shipping. Hence why from a budgetary perspective, giving the Ukrainians material due to be decomissioned out of old age is actually a cost saving measure, as otherwise the government would be paying money to dispose of old material which they get to claim at full replacement price regardless of whether they spend any money on actually replacing it.
All procurement systems have their issues, but the they are not all the same, and 'mirrored' mayhaps a poor word suggesting equivalence in sale and impact.
The wallop from sanctions never arrived either, far from it.
I will disagree, partly because the sort of measures the Russians have taken on the domestic economic front certainly don't suggest there was no impact, but rather that substantial intervention was needed to mitigate and obfusicate it in the short term, but also because the people reading what the sanctions would do knew it wasn't a 'wallop' strategy in the first place, but an 'anaconda' strategy mixed with an allied-transition strategy.
To take one well known example of energy exports: the goal of the energy sanctions weren't to keep Russia from exporting anything, or even to cut all of Europe off, but to reduce Russian profits will doing so in a way that kept the western coalition together and developing alternative import infrastructure. Last year people derided this because of the first year spike in Russian energy profits from the summer price increases that covered early volume decline. Low and behold, those grounds of objection have shifted as the European price cap continues to hold, even as the Russians willingly make some reportedly pretty one-sided deals with countries like India within those contexts for what they can get.
I was (and still am) excited about Ukraine's performance in this conflict, but I don't think they have time on their side. The longer this goes on the worse for them.
Very strong disagree. The Russian military is consistently downgrading in its capabilities as the Ukrainians are being increased, and the economic fundamentals between Russia and the NATO-West continue to grow in the favor of those backing Ukraine. The costs of supporting the Ukrainians remain well within the European's financial and political capacity to maintain.
The primary issue remains whether specific patrons in the pro-Ukraine coalition will be willing to continue support, or try to undermine support, and for that I maintain something I posted in the opening months of the war: among the losers of this conflict has been the pro-Russia lobbies across Europe, as the domestic and coalition political dynamics make pro-Russia groups easy targets and just being seen as pro-Russia a political kryptonight.
I think I may not have been clear / been on a tangential point. As a clarification of my previous point, not a rebuttal to this point:
My intended point was that if the Chinese cannot prevent the American carriers from operating on the east side of the coast, or the south, or the north, they do not control the western Straight, because the carriers are still able to do their job of launching planes to target invasion vessels with anti-ship missiles. My assessment is that the Chinese generally believe preventing this is a requirement to go ahead with the invasion in any sort of enduring scenario (ie. anything other than an immediate 'run to the ports and rush over' attempt at a fait accompli). This is why the Chinese anti-access / area-denial weapons, such as the vaunted anti-carrier ballistic missile or threats to guam, are so much further outside the range of the straight itself: they need to be to keep the carriers from operating off the east coast of Taiwan, or long-range bombers from taking off in range to cause unacceptable amounts of trouble.
If the Carrier groups are operating off the east, then these systems have already failed. If these systems have failed, the Chinese won't be attempting to launch more landing craft. If the systems succeeded, then the carriers are not there, and the ability to execute the blockade is maintained. Thus, the general importance is on the ability to maintain the blockade, as a failure to be able to do so means that carrier groups are active in the immediate area, which pre-empts the landing flotilla.
Dean
10mo ago
As I recall, part of the theorizing was that it was because turbine halls were harder to knock out (easier to protect with static / overlapping defenses), and partly because of the theory that it was a deliberate attempt to make Ukraine deplete it's anti-air missile stocks on the missiles.
The Russian missile campaign was really a pretty rapid turn to a one-way UAV campaign, and some of those could get stopped with literal nets. Those would damage a building without knocking out what was inside.
Dean
10mo ago
Would or wouldn't?
I'm fairly sure Sarker's point was that the point of relative spending favors the US.
Dean
10mo ago
I will always think of the places where liqour stores were essential business, but churches and religious services were not.
Dean
10mo ago
I don't think this even qualifies as an argument that needs refuting. This loss of energy was understood to be a consequence of military engagement and so because it was a known consequence it doesn't matter?
Incorrect. The point is not that it doesn't matter- the point is that the causal mechanism is different. Being a result of energy blackmail as opposed to war is a meaningful distinction because the energy cutoffs could occur in non-war contexts as well- as the eastern Europeans had previously experienced in the 2010s, but which Germany dismissed on arguments that Russia had been a consistent supplier to them so the warnings of the Americans were baseless.
The economic problems and energy supply issues caused by provoking hostilities with your main supplier of fossil fuels are in fact caused by provoking hostilities by your main supplier of fossil fuels!
The Europeans did not provoke hostilities, unless you consider the pre-Maidan support by European and especially German economic interests in supporting pro-European Ukrainian groups a form of provocoation.
This isn't happening and Europe is currently undergoing serious economic problems as a result of the lack of fossil fuels. This could indeed be qualified as shift to an import network infrastructure, but the idea that this makes the continent more resilient is farcical. The huge costs associated with importing LNG from the US rather than a pipeline from Russia have no compensating factors, and will continue to act as a drag/tax on the economy as a whole due to the massively important role played by fossil fuels in modern economies. There is going to be less energy, it will be less reliably sourced and it will cost more - this will have a ripple effect through the rest of the economy, and again, I do not think that this is a cost worth paying for the goal of making sure that Kiev can continue to shower the breakaway regions with artillery fire.
That said, the flagrant violation of the sanctions has also contributed - Europe is still using Russian fossil fuels, they're just paying India a premium to do so, and the US doesn't have the stones/capability to sanction India and China. Actually going through with the economic threats and sanctions in a real and serious way, as opposed to paying them lip-service and paying someone else so you can ignore them, would impose such a disastrous political cost that the leaders who did so would be removed from power in short order.
You can't have it both ways: either the Europeans lack fossile fuels, or the Europeans are still using Russian fossile fuels. Choose one argument and stick to it.
Further disagreements on framing include-
-The US isn't the primary supplier of LNG on the markets, it was the Arabs (who the Europeans bought much of the gas that normally went to Asia, especially China)
-The ability for sea-based LNG imports is what makes the energy import more reliable, as it avoids critical dependencies on any particular provider due to maritime LNG's fungible nature
-The fact that the LNG import terminals are actually importing LNG, while the Russians actually did shut down the gas pipelines on pretext, belies the reliability difference
-The German economic difficulties were a market distortion result of the Russians functionally subsidizing the pre-war German energy market for the purpose of the blackmail setup, which was raised
-The Europeans are paying a premium in a technical sense, not a global market sense, where their price for the Russian products benefits from the price caps
-You continue to misunderstand the design purpose of the sanctions, and chest-thumping bravado is not a superior alternative
Recent events and sanctions have given that process rocket-skates and supercharged it. De-dollarization is proceeding far more quickly than it was before the war, and the sanctions regime that was imposed upon Russia has contributed to that. You're right when you talk about the problems associated with not using the current global reserve currency, but the problems associated with staying on the dollar are starting to match or even exceed them.
This is repeating the same claim, not a counter-argument with any falsifiable new claims. The use of non-dollars for transactions is not a new thing. The reasons it is not an at-scale thing over time is due to the dynamics of reserve currency, and the functions which drive reserve currency usage have not changed. Until they do, 'de-dollarization is proceeding far more quickly than it was before' is synonymous with 'the Russians are sanctioned from the dollar, and are trying to make a virtue of a weakness they've been lobbying to have reversed.'
I agree that European militaries were largely jokes, but the supply chain and logistical issues that this affair has exposed are not minor and will take considerable time and investment to fix. Ammunition factories can't be built overnight. Of course, if you're an advocate for a strategically resilient and autonomous Europe you'd have to advocate for getting them out from under the thumb of the USA so this entire affair is meaningless anyway.
Setting aside that Europe is not under the US's thumb, it remains better to identify and start fixing logistical issues before they are needed in another crisis. Either the European logistical issue is not an issue for whatever role they might have in a Taiwan crisis- in which case earlier forced awareness is only going to improve the position- or the European logistical issue were insufficient for a Taiwan crisis- in which avoiding the issue (by avoiding the Ukraine crisis) would have been worse, as any Chinese effort willing to take the risk on an assumption of European strength would have been more likely to succeed as the Taiwanese and Americans might have been assuming a level of support not there.
I'm taking the Rand corporation's word for it - they're as fanatically pro US empire as it is possible to be, and even they are saying that the engagement in Ukraine is tying up resources which could be used in the conflict with China, which is far more important (source: https://www.rand.org/pubs/perspectives/PEA2510-1.html ). Most serious pieces I have seen discussing this topic claim that the conflict is drawing away resources which could be used in China.
This may be a retreat to a bailey, but it's still a bailey to the original claim of which types of resources matter between conflicts. Your RAND article does not claim the weapon kits and systems being sent to Ukraine are the resources that matter in a China conflict, nor does it address the point on how the cost-value of these resources that were already paid for implies costs in the current era.
Setting aside RAND's own contested history and accuracies, the article's claims regarding China (which is mentioned all of 8 times) center around whether Russia is 'completely' subordinated to it by the end. It makes no claim that the Russian level of support to China in a Taiwan conflict has or would change, not least because it doesn't actually identify the sort of resources / support that would be provided, let alone what would change.
The point remains: the types of resources matter. The types that the Europeans are investing into Ukraine are not the type that would matter in a near-term Taiwan scenario. Unless you believe that the resources / economic costs would have been directly substituted into a maritime naval buildup, these are not costs with a Taiwan-relevant opportunity cost, because the Europeans were never a credible military factor in a Taiwan conflict.
Moreover, the idea that this materiel is irrelevant because Taiwan will get blockaded is also meaningless, given that hostilities haven't actually started yet and that equipment could be sent there before they do anyway. Anti-air defences and artillery are absolutely the sort of military equipment that could be useful, and those have definitely been showing up in Ukraine.
But they wouldn't send significant amounts in advance, for the same reason they didn't go to Ukraine in advance despite Ukraine actually being at far more direct and recent threat: a mix of limitations, their economic interests, and the strategic interests of key European leaders uninterested in being involved in the situation and trying to minimize exposure.
This is an argument that assumes a generosity of the Europeans that didn't exist in their own neighborhood. More to the point, this assumes that they would have been more generous in the face of an uncontested Russian invasion on their borders, rather than finding the advance of Russians in their neighborhood a compelling reason to keep their air defense systems defending themselves, and thus tying down potential resources to Taiwan in a functional strategic fixing action.
The Ukrainian crisis demonstrated that several of the assumptions that might have supported a Chinese attempt to invade Taiwan in the near term were extremely suspect.
I think you're wrong but I don't think that there can be an actual resolution of this with words - so instead I'm going to offer a bet. My position is that Russia is absolutely capable as an ally, that western nations are not willing to shoulder the burdens required to prevent the rise of a multipolar world and the US is in fact incapable of achieving their goals. The US failed in Iraq, is failing in Syria, failed in Afghanistan and failed in Vietnam. The recent history of the US empire's military adventurism has been a long litany of defeats, and I see no reason for that to change. If you disagree, I'll give you a chance to put some money on the table - I'm willing to throw 200 USD in monero into escrow for a bet that Ukraine will not retake Crimea and the breakaway republics by the time hostilities cease.
I'll disagree, without betting. Setting aside that it's a poorly structured list in measurable and general claims, I don't bet in general.
This is likely closer to the mark than not. To build on this, the Russian MOD had reportedly been trying to compel Wagner forces in Ukraine to sign enlistment contracts, ie. become normal Russian military soldiers and dismantle Wagner's (and thus Prigozhin's) parallel command structure and organizational autonomy.
Basically, Prigozhin ran Wagner as a semi-independent militia, and his hated rival tried to revoke his independence before allegedly bombing him.
That Wagner is unlikely to succeed in a coup is not the same thing as not producing any consequences (doing anything). The threat of Prigozhin's rebellion isn't in the likely doomed attempt- it's in the second and third order effects of the purges to follow not just against Wagner, but Wagner's allies, and the apathetic sorts of bystanders who didn't oppose them with fervency.
Prigozhin and Wagner aren't politically significant in the sense that 'Prigozhin thought he was a real boss.' Prigozhin is well aware, hence why he went on his antics for publicity, and targetting his feud of the MOD bosses, and the instigation event being Shugoi's alleged attempts to both administratively dismantle Wagner's independence (Soldier contract demands) and potential bombing. Prigozhin likely isn't under delusions that he's 'a real boss'- he's likely under very clear understanding that he was targetted and doomed, and is deciding to go down fighting.
Prigozhin and Wagner are politically significant in that they are representative/rallying points for a key contingent of what you might call 'the non-state nationalism.' Wagner is... I hate to use vague terms live 'Avatar' or 'totem,' but symbollic of the idea of a Russian strength that's not simply the state. Signalling support for Wagner was a way to show your support for Russia as a good nationalist even if you opposed/detested/thought Shugoi and the MOD were incompetent/wrong/ruinous. Being pro-Wagner was a form of acceptable criticism of the regime by people who were fellow travelers. It was a nexus through which anti-Shugoi factions could persist and loosely coordinate.
When Shugoi wins- and I agree that he's likely to win this- he is not going to stop at just Wagner leaders. He's going to go after their allies, which includes not only other disaffected oligarchs (it's own risk to the system if/when a class of greedy opportunists opportunistically move against eachother to take eachother's stuff), but their support networks as well, which includes their media/social presence spheres. And in that, what was previously swarths of officially tolerated opinions- and criticisms- will no longer be tolerated, but officially suppressible.
What this will mean is up for debate, but the reason Wagner was a totem of alternative nationalists was that they didn't want to support the existing national symbol of strength- the MOD-military- in the first place. Removing the alternative doesn't mean people will transfer their favor to the persons/institutions that did so... and is likely to be suppressing them either actively or with open suspicion. Dismantling parts of the oligarchy doesn't mean that only the traitorous parts are subject to being targetted- or that only the traitors will resist and fly back.
This is an event that, even in failure, will change how the war-supporting base view the government fighting the war, and how the oligarchs move against eachother. Either would be significant on their own, and this is before Putin's typical insecurities drive further responses against either group.
Because you're not the sort of nerd who thinks a simulation of you is you for all intents and purposes. It's as much a pre-requisite for the framework as believing is an immortal soul for the popular religious concept of post-death heaven/hell, or in ignoring square-cube law for the rule of cool to find giant robot fights awesome instead of silly.
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