FtSoA
18d ago
Ukraine is not a NATO country
Huh. [trump_RBG_meme.jpg]
I don’t find the slippery slope arguments convincing.
Well, given the history of the USSR and Russian Empires, I'd say your priors are improperly calibrated.
It would take an immense investment of manpower for Russia to occupy any other Baltic state and crush the resistance.
Probably. Do you doubt Putin's resolve if he were to decide that was his goal?
But a good chunk of Ukraine is not just Slavic but also descended from the Rus, with a long and recent history of being ruled by Moscow.
Yeah, and the Ukrainians didn't have a great time. Which is why they're trying pretty dang hard to avoid that fate.
If Russia can take it, they will keep it without much trouble
Maybe. I have no idea what the chances of an insurgency would be or not. But it seems relatively high, given the years of conflict before the invasion.
FtSoA
18d ago
Look at what they've done to Iran and the Houthis.
The op against the Houthis was kind of a disaster, right?
With Iran, Trump also done fucked up by not letting the Israelis finish the enemy. I suspect that equilibrium will not last.
Instead what you are ignoring is that the American Right has learned from the past 30 years that if America and/or its Allies are winning a war, the left will start calling American (or other) soldiers, generals, and political leaders war criminals
Yeah, except for the part where I had disagreements with a number of MAGA-pilled individuals who believed that actually Hillary was a hawkish warmonger, basically John McCain in a woman's suit. Vs. Trump, the peacenik. As if liberal interventionists like Hillary were exactly the same as hawkish neocons like McCain.
The Bush Administration was retarded about invading Iraq as a war of choice based on what turned out to be false premises, and then botching the occupations of both Iraq and Afghanistan. Luckily enough, Iraq might just turn out alright in the long run, but Afghanistan is back to being a Taliban paradise.
So until Democrats have approximately the same political power nationally as Republicans currently do in San Fransisco, war is kinda pointless.
You're conflating going to war and diplomatic/military strategies around deterrence. The really nice thing about deterrence, is when you're good at it there's no war. And, if deterrence fails, you've already done the prep work to win the war.
You'll note that all my calls for preparation and intervention in these threads have not been: "The US should take military action against an adversary." I would say we should actually blow the fuck out of the Houthis just for being pirates, let alone allies of Iran.
FtSoA
18d ago
Look, China can do math. All the "resolve" in the world doesn't do us any good without missiles in the warehouse.
We have the USN and USAF and a nuclear triad ready for a full-scale confrontation with North Korea and/or China on any given day and have for decades. We can and should do more on that, but it's not like we don't have a lot of combat power in the region.
Resolve, on the other hand, is trickier. China won't care about escalation risk if they think we don't have the balls to put it all on the line for Taiwan.
If we are confident nuclear madman theory alone is sufficient to deter China, we don't need to do any of the above. But I don't actually think anyone wants to die in nuclear fire for Kiev or Taipei and as such the threat of a nuclear madman is unlikely to be persuasive and, even if persuasive, unlikely to be consistent in a democratic society.
I'd say we need to do both to maximize the chance of deterrence. In the US, we do not democratically launch nuclear weapons. Trump has lost his "madman" edge with respect to China, I think. Not that he couldn't get it back in short order.
But this is why, yes, I think Taiwan is a foregone conclusion if China waits and it's obvious to everyone what cards are on the table and who's bluffing. The Cuban Missile Crisis was about the Soviets parking missiles way closer to the US than we were willing to accept, so we engaged in a bit of brinkmanship and it wasn't a bluff.
But risk it all for Taiwan? For South Korea, in comparison, we have treaty obligations and troops deployed that will act as a tripwire.
FtSoA
18d ago
Or the aggressors who have been able to stockpile weapons might believe they've got an opening to re-open old conflicts now that the U.S. has stretched itself thin.
One thing is certain, a lot of Ruskies and Ukes have died to develop the absolutely Bleeding edge in drone-based warfare, which has probably changed the face of any conflicts from here on out. And that's BEFORE we've figured out how to have AI guided drones produced en masse.
Let's not exaggerate here. The US has in almost no actual way "stretched itself thin" in supporting Ukraine. We have not even significantly altered our force posture. (Which we did for Iran recently.)
The USAF and USN would absolutely demolish their Russian counterparts given their abysmal performance against Ukraine. Tactical drones are nice and all in trench warfare, but good old-fashioned air dominance is even better when you can get it.
That's not to say drones aren't important, they are and will be, but the US military is aware of that, as is Palmer Lucky and his competitors.
I also think conflicts have become more likely under current economic and demographic constraints, and that Ukrainian sacrifice isn't doing much to decrease that likelihood because that doesn't change the underlying incentives.
If wars of conquest (not motivated by ideological commitments that aren't "rational" in the usual sense) are shown to be more costly than they are worth, even in victory, then that's a huge deterrent.
I'd also guess you're very wrong in that age is negatively correlated with aggression and violence, and so older populations would seemingly be less warlike by default.
FtSoA
18d ago
Same exact issue for flinching when Putin talks about nukes.
"Well if he's threatening WWIII I guess we should just let him do what he wants. It's just not worth the risk to confront him."
It's as if a large portion of the American Right has entirely forgotten the lessons of Cold War diplomatic and military strategy. Or very, very obvious game theory re: bluffs and tit for tat.
Sure. What do you have in mind?
We need to dramatically increase our advanced missile stocks and production capacities. We should probably just buy ships from e.g. South Korea and Japan, because boy did we fuck up there. We should also make Anduril a very valuable company by having enough autonomous capacities to make the Chinese realize that even if our carrier battle groups can be taken out, Taiwan would effectively be a minefield.
Regardless, this is a semantic discussion: the point is that for China, more US investment in Ukraine is (generally) better, regardless of what that looks like.
No, it's not, because the actual proportion of our commitment of resources matters and you are failing to recognize second-order effects of priming the pump of the defense-industrial complex. As well as the signal of Western resolve and military competence. The best way to deter China is not to have a bunch of missiles in a warehouse. The best way to deter them is making them fear the resolve of the US in defending its friends and allies in the face of risking WWIII.
Since we aren't giving Ukraine any nukes, we have plenty of those laying around. Which is why the question of "will they/won't they" is more important than "just how long will US missile stocks last."
FtSoA
18d ago
I mean... this outcome is almost the precise definition of a Pyhrric victory.
For Russia, yeah. Ukraine has to choose between two bad scenarios for the situation imposed on them--a costly victory or a costly defeat--so they might as well win.
The Ukrainians are intimately aware of the tradeoffs between fighting Russia and being ruled by Russia; I defer to their judgment on that question.
I think you're overly concerned with demographic collapse scenarios and insufficiently concerned with the risk of a resurgence of wars of conquest.
Ideally, the Russians have overextended themselves militarily and economically such that some kind of crisis forces the Russians to back off and Ukraine survives.
But if Russia takes enormous losses in a Pyhrric victory such that they and other would-be aggressors are sufficiently deterred from further warmongering then I can only thank the brave Ukrainians and their will to fight for dying on behalf of improved regional security.
FtSoA
18d ago
Look, there's a difference between something not happening and something being impossible. I'm discussing how China would react in a hypothetical.
Hypothetically, the US could do a lot to increase its military pressure on China re: Taiwan without taking away from Ukraine support at all. Maybe we could try that first?
the way one might describe us as being "bogged down" in Afghanistan
We were not even "bogged down" in Afghanistan. As a percentage of our actual military capacities, only a tiny fraction was ever committed to Afghanistan. Sure, we lit a lot of money and attention on fire, but in term of actual combat capacity it was not a big deal to run that occupation. Even with Iraq, it was primarily the Army, and even then not our major units like say armor/artillery (after the initial invasion).
The USAF and USN were either only lightly involved or, by definition, have assets that are very easy to rapidly redeploy.
Vietnam was a much, much larger and costly commitment. One of the very reasons the "forever wars" were "forever" is that it was not that costly to continue indefinitely.
FtSoA
18d ago
Please do bear in mind that most people who wanted Ukraine to win thought they were going to lose in weeks/months, and were pleasantly surprised that the Russians proved so incompetent at modern maneuver warfare, and the Ukrainians so resilient. This includes the bulk of Western military/geopolitical analysts.
Ukraine continuing to exist as an independent state at all is a "victory" that many thought very unlikely.
If the Ukrainians deem it in their best interest to accept territorial losses then so be it. They fought way harder than was reasonable to expect when this first started.
FtSoA
18d ago
Don't tell me that tell the Russians that.
But I suspect it's Moldova that has the most to lose from a significant Russian victory in Ukraine.
FtSoA
18d ago
Why not?
Empirical evidence suggests strongly that it keeps not happening, even by people who claim to want it to happen. Furthermore, the Taiwanese themselves (unlike the Ukrainians) are pretty lackluster in their own efforts to build up deterrence to China.
My guess is that it's a foregone conclusion that Taiwan will be absorbed by China in the coming years, similar to Hong Kong, due to everyone recognizing the inevitable and Taiwan and the US being unwilling to go to war over it once China decides to exert significant pressure. Possibly, a future US administration that was very hardline on China might change that calculus, but both parties are pretty antiwar these days.
But if the US has budget X and they can split it between the Pacific and Europe, or just spend it on the Pacific, the latter option is scarier for China
Don't confuse stocks and flows.
That ship has already sailed. The US has been conducting "non-kinetic" military operations in support of Ukraine's war effort for the duration of the war.
We are not, in any meaningful sense of the term, "bogged down" in Ukraine. Notably, our US Navy ships have not sailed to pressure Russia in any significant form (as we did re: Iran). Also, ships can change course if ordered to redirect. As could any of the other military assets in the region. They aren't being permanently committed or destroyed. (Note that we always have some level of military presence countering Russia and conducting ISR.)
FtSoA
18d ago
Putin is not putting forces anywhere near other borders. He’s not issuing threats to anyone else.
Please be serious. Where Putin puts his forces after taking out Ukraine is the concern.
You can argue that the Europeans should shoulder the bulk of their own defense, but you seem to be arguing they are paranoid. I would be concerned were I a Moldovan.
The winners of this are not the Western powers, but the weapons manufacturers who made bank off of that money.
Personally I think that's a win-win since we have lost some key industrial capacities for munitions productions. Those are good factory jobs.
And for all that, we managed to turn a six week war into a two year war that went the way it was always going to go, except with more deaths and more destruction, more ordinance buried under now useless farmland.
Two years, huh? At least get your defeatism timeline right please.
France does ok on agriculture despite having the Iron Harvest.
And as far as the West goes, tensions between the West and BRICS wouldn’t be high at all if we’d simply minded our own business.
Just like Putin minded his?
Anyone pretending "BRICS" is a useful label because it represents an actual coalition is just ignorant about geopolitics. For starters, China and India don't get along very well. Who gives a fuck about Brazil or or South Africa as major geopolitical players?
Ironically, there's a far stronger natural argument for defending Ukraine against Russia than there is for defending a rogue Chinese province from its sovereign government. Given that Trump won't even ban TikTok, how on earth would he commit to a serious loss of life and risk of WWIII to defend an island where we have no formal obligation?
Russians didn’t have a problem with us, China didn’t
After the Cold War, the US and Russia have been at loggerheads way before the Ukraine invasion on a host of geopolitical issues.
Same with China. Issues with North Korea and Taiwan didn't begin yesterday.
Iran only hated us over Israel and really not that much.
What universe do you live in? "Only"? "Really not that much"???????????????????
"Death to America" was just for show then? Shame about all the Americans they've killed over the years. I suppose Trump et al have nothing to worry about from those assassination plots.
FtSoA
18d ago
The US ditching Ukraine to prioritize Taiwan I think would actually spook China.
This is not an actual available option. Please try again. Trump won't even ban TikTok ffs.
The US doubling down on its commitments to Ukraine means fewer weapons in the Pacific
Prime the Pump. If we have munitions capacity issues what better way to fix them.
China would prefer the US bogged down in Ukraine
What on earth does "bogged down" mean here? I'm not arguing we conduct military operations.
FtSoA
18d ago
I don't know why anyone take him seriously after the hilariously manufactured pipeline attack story.
FtSoA
18d ago
I can't think of a worse set of arguments made by proponents of the US letting Ukraine suffer a defeat.
- Putin defeating Ukraine and then being emboldened to threaten small NATO neighbors increases risk of WWIII way more than supporting Ukraine does.
- The US/West failing to sufficiently back Ukraine emboldens China and other would-be aggressors when they do their risk calculations.
FtSoA
22d ago
If they go slowly, nationalistic, actually brave Ukrainians will feed themselves to the grinder till there's no one left. A sudden collapse caused by a major offensive would result in far more troublesome people later.
Well at least you're conceding that Ukrainians do not want to be Russians. Is your take that Putin does not want to conquer Ukraine entirely (whether in the immediate term, or mid-term). Did he ever want to? Grinding the Ukrainians down is time-consuming and expensive just to take a few provinces.
ISW are not serious people.
I don't think that's nearly enough evidence to establish that claim.
At the very least, air defense situation.
I meant more of a "in terms of timeline" sense. "Fast" implies we should see things shift "soon." If the air defense situation is deteriorating for Ukraine, then that is evidence in that direction.
The guy who wrote it served as a combat arms officer for a few decades. It wasn't written by Parsi.
I am aware. But I trust this one guy's analysis a bit less than the consensus by default; particularly if he works for an outfit with a clearly identified agenda with some moron like Parsi in senior management. I'm not a Russia/Ukraine specialist. I am an Iran specialist. And I know Parsi is a moron.
he says he believes Russians have better ISR
Well, that isn't true overall, so long as the Western powers are supporting Ukraine on that front.
You seem to be denying that Ukraine is doing better on anything, even with the typical defender's advantage. But, again, if the Russians are consistently outclassing the Ukrainians in artillery, aircraft, missiles, drones, ISR, manpower, equipment, tactics, loss ratios, etc. then why is the war dragging on like this? This is some Iran-Iraq War shit with more drones and fewer prayers.
Based on initial expectations, Russia's performance has been very embarrassing ever since the initial ham-fisted offensive. I definitely thought Ukraine wasn't going to last long without immense, immediate support from the West.
We're at nearly 3.5 years now. What will things look like at the 4-year mark? I'd guess much the same by default, because I don't know either side's breaking point, or if a ceasefire will be established, or just how much support the West will give Ukraine. The defense-advantaged nature of the battle makes it unlikely either side will make a sustainable major offensive breakthrough at any given point.
FtSoA
23d ago
If Russia’s goal has been to take the secessionist regions, as was their initial claim, the lack of further territorial advances would be expected.
That was very much NOT their initial claim and ignores that whole "drive to take Kiev" campaign debacle.
It's steelclowning to retrocon that "Russia didn't even want to take the whole country in a rapid victory anyway so this is all fine actually."
Russia, even if they're winning and on track to achieve more limited goals, has not been easily winning. If Russia had been consistently inflicting significantly disproportionate losses on Ukraine this whole time the war would have already ended.
Russian military performance has been embarrassing. Their economic performance has not.
FtSoA
23d ago
Ukrainians have suffered drastically higher casualties than Russians
So, in your view, the war has actually been going way better this whole time for Russia than Ukraine in terms of efficiency/losses?
Why then has Russia not made significant territorial gains in so long? I don't understand why the Ukrainians haven't collapsed already if it's so lopsided against them, even when they have a defender's advantage tactically.
Your allegation is that ISW is making it up? How does all this square with identifiable vehicle losses? Why can't Russia establish air superiority?
How many more months need to go on before you think the CSIS analysis is more correct than "Responsible Statecraft's" about the present state of affairs? What is "deteriorating fast" here?
You should read this article by retired US officer, not some 'international relations' pukes.
Funny, that's how I feel about an establishment that employs Trita Parsi at all, let alone as management.
FtSoA
23d ago
Unsustainable budget deficits, endlessly accumulating debt, a very serious political situation, where one party is huffing glue and the other is full of not very competent people now ? It doesn't look good.
Oh I agree. But by comparison, at least, the US hasn't gone off the deep end entirely and I pray e.g. the UK's insanity will help us avoid the same fate.
Without getting into a whole thing on Ukraine vs. Russia and also caveating that the US should not be the primary supporter (Europe should), your overall argument is hilarious to me in that Ukraine has been taking on Russia quite successfully for years now with far lower levels of materiel support than we/Europe could have given them. And one technique is simply having the Europeans give their existing hardware to the Ukrainians ASAP. Gotta prime the defense industrial complex pump.
US forgot to develop an industry capable of either innovating and mass producing useful weapons.
Well the defense tech fellas are trying to fix that.
Honestly, if you squint your eyes a little, once Russians win in Ukraine, them taking over the Baltics becomes a possibility.
At present rates of military progress how long do ya reckon that's gonna take? I agree that Putin would love to reassert the ~level of regional control the USSR once had over its neighbors, but boy is that not going well.
I just don't understand how you take the stance this far on that Russia is clearly going to "win" in the sense of a total Ukrainian defeat.
https://www.csis.org/analysis/russias-battlefield-woes-ukraine
FtSoA
24d ago
the sock-puppeting of civil society, the media manipulation of public opinion in the interest of stability ?
I don't know how much of this I'd sign on for as you've characterized it. As a classic liberal/gray tribe rationalist type, I very much would prefer to see a return to limited government and greater economic freedom on many fronts. But most things aren't plots, and I usually take a very dim view of the MAGA approach, even when I agree there is a problem with Progressive Ideological Capture in any given institution. I'm a bit to Scott's right on several fronts in the Culture War, and I'm less EA-pilled. I generally agree with Garrett Jones about democracy and immigration.
In terms of foreign policy, I also have many gripes with both the Left and MAGA Right. For example, in my view we should use free trade agreements against China. And we should arm Ukraine and Israel to the teeth to unleash on Russian and Iran.
All of this is to say that, even with the faults of "the way liberal democracy functions in practice," we still have it pretty good in the US.
FtSoA
24d ago
Ideology is the mind killer, almost always.
Well, not mine.
I also doubt there are very smart committed liberal hegemonists. I've yet to see a single one. Feel free to provide an example though.
By some definition of "liberal hegemonist" I would fit the bill. But I also believe in the "constrained vision," so that keeps a lid on a lot of wild ideas.
People who believe in the "unconstrained vision" and apply that not only to domestic policy, but to international policy, are bound to do some stupid shit.
But, I do firmly believe that the US is better off if it exists in a world order that is trending towards liberal democracy and capitalism.
I call it "Neoliberal Neorealism."
FtSoA
24d ago
Unless you think they're filling up their Utah data center with cat videos.
That is what would happen if the US IC was doing mass scale domestic surveillance, yes.
The Simpsons teaches us this: https://youtube.com/watch?v=2CVTH3_Bf-I
FtSoA
24d ago
Well, I'd argue "bureaucracy" is an overly narrow conception of what the problem is with "big government."
I don't know how much "revolving door" you think there is, but it's not all that much in my experience in the DoD/IC. Mostly, people leave federal/mil service to become a contractor for more money doing much the same job.
Mostly though, the idea that you can map any given government agency onto a model where it always or by default seeks to maximize its size/budget/power/whatever is empirically false. That is often true, but it's a loose assumption. Or often various subunits of a given agency have ambitious careerists trying to maximize their impact via mission growth, but that is a zero-sum competition by default as the overall agency has a set budget.
Mostly, as someone with a (past) career and professional education in government bureaucracy, I get a bit up in arms about simplistic notions of government bureaucracy because it leads to obvious idiocy like DOGE, instead of actually getting us limited, effective government.
Did I claim they did?
Or are you misreading what I wrote?
Have you not observed various rightwingers very, very concerned about calling that bluff?
I'm not making up a guy to get mad at. Very real thing.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jun/04/ukraine-russia-nuclear-war-fears
https://time.com/7295939/russia-iran-israel-us-war-nuclear-catastrophe-trump-putin-khamenei/
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/12/russia-ukraine-nuclear-war-putin-threat/672491/
No shit. Consider that you're trying to condescend to someone who already knows what you're trying to explain.
Wait, are you a non-American trying to lecture me about how threats and deterrence work? The very nerve.
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