Shrike
5mo ago
Okay, but I don't just get my info from Russia, here – you can go look up the memos where Bill Burns (former CIA director) talks about how Ukraine-into-NATO is a bright red line for Russia. Do you think he's lying too?
Shrike
5mo ago
Yes, this all tracks. I guess I package in "weak state control" as part of my default mental model of a failed state now run by Islamists.
Shrike
5mo ago
the Syrian massacres of Christians came as a surprise to everyone
I don't really think this is true, if you're referring to very recent events. I don't follow Syria very closely but there were people screaming about how they were being run by Literal Team al-Qaeda shortly after Syria fell, so I wasn't particularly surprised to wake up and see that Syrian Christians were being massacred.
In what world does Russia's policy of
- Strenuously insisting for years that Ukraine not join NATO
- Surrounding Ukraine with a massive army and sending a list of demands that includes "no joining NATO" and then finally
- Attacking Ukraine before it can benefit from NATO protections
Come around to prove that Russia doesn't find "Ukraine not joining NATO" important?
Shrike
5mo ago
To sanity check, another article from early 2023 claims 50/year production rates with an additional 60-70/year refurbishment, which does track with the estimated production rates. If we add Abrams to the mix, the M1A2 SEPv3 production rate to satisfy domestic orders is 135 a year, which does not include export orders like the 250 tanks to Poland expected by 2026.
FWIW I think Russia is doing about 100 tanks/month, lumping refurbishment and new builds together. So based on your numbers, it looks like Russia is outproducing us by about 3x (obviously at some point both parties will run out of refurbishments, however.) Even if I am wildly off, it seems likely that Russia is at or above parity with all of the EU and USA in tank production. I believe they are still significantly ahead on shell production as well.
Of course, for context the US has 3000 Abrams sitting in storage IIRC, which tells me that the small numbers of Ukrainian tanks have more to do with US strategic goals and/or the training bottleneck than anything else.
JASSMs
Yes, I was thinking of the European missiles. The US builds a lot of air-launched ordinance. However (unlike, most likely, tanks) that's more likely to be something we will need if we go at it with China.
I'm not familiar with mine-clearing vehicles, but I suspect that they are not that technically difficult to build compared to SPGs and MBTs, and we don't need them in high numbers.
Mine-clearing vehicles of the sort I am talking about are essentially MBTs, just with mine-clearing flails instead of standard armament.
But my main point over here was not adding up NATO and Ukraine's military strength, but their military industry output. The argument is that, by not ceding Ukraine, we get their MIC on our side, as opposed to the other way around.
And I don't reject that argument out of hand, particularly given Ukraine's prewar arms industry. But I do think it's worth asking
- How much of this equipment will be NATO-interoperable postwar? Are the Ukrainians going to have to scrap or convert entire production lines over to NATO-standards?
- Will 30-40% of current output be enough to arm Ukraine and then some, or will it be insufficient for their peacetime rearmament needs? If the latter, then Ukraine now begins to be a defense liability rather than a defense asset.
However one potential upside is that with Ukraine as a potential customer for the US/European arms industry, Western industrial capacity might be spun up sooner.
Shrike
5mo ago
Yes, I think the economic angle is important. As I understand it, Russia made a competing deal that the President of Ukraine was inclined to accept, but he got tossed out on his ear instead in Euromaidan, and subsequently Russia invaded Crimea.
However, Ukraine-can-into-NATO? discussions actually go back to the 1990s, and NATO declared that Ukraine (and Georgia) would become NATO members in 2008 at the Bucharest Summit. It looks like Ukraine did put their aspirations on hold between 2010 and 2014, which is probably where you got the impression that it was a new discussion, but it's not as if the post-2014 discussions were the first anyone had ever heard of it, Putin had been telling anyone who would listen that Russia opposed Ukrainian membership in NATO for decades by the time 2022 rolled around.
Shrike
5mo ago
VERY interesting. Yes, I think that "the West" is just now realizing that perhaps we're locked in here with them, with here being the internet and them being the entire population of China (both as consumers and producers).
Shrike
5mo ago
Well, that's not my claim and not what I think. But to the extent that they are interested in protecting themselves against NATO (and they are) you can't brush off flipping Ukraine to Team NATO as no big deal.
Shrike
5mo ago
Whoops, sorry I missed your edits.
Are you claiming that Russians are simply immune to the effects of economic sanctions (then why do they want those lifted?), and having a sizable portion of their work-force and industrial output being blown up in Ukraine is actually good for their economy?
No. I don't have a very firm opinion about the economic stuff. I think the Russians are probably still making bank by selling natgas and oil at a markup through a third party, so their economy has not been hit as hard by sanctions as you'd think. But I think the Russian economy probably is damaged by the war. It just might not necessarily be catastrophic or notable. To the extent that I have an argument here, it's that people have been saying their economy was on the brink of collapse ever since we first slapped sanctions on them, so I'm inclined to think that instead they will muddle through (even if it's painful) unless I see a very compelling reason why their economy is shot.
My premise is that we (NATO) are not depleting our materiel faster than Russia is.
My premise is that NATO sent Ukraine hundreds of tanks and as far as I know they haven't made hundreds of tanks. They sent Ukraine dozens of high-end cruise missiles, which probably are either out of production or being produced fairly slowly. They sent Ukraine a large portion of EU NATO's mine-clearing vehicles – again, as far as I know they haven't produced any more. Poland, which you mention, is "increasing spending" which means they sent actual tanks they had on hand to Ukraine and bought a lot of fancy US gear that they plan to receive in the future. I'm not saying that's stupid, but I think it means Poland has less equipment now than it did and will have to wait around a bit to receive replacements.
The page actually links to Ukrainian losses as a whole, of which only a fraction is NATO supplied equipment
Just a quick head-count, of about 1,000 tanks, about 180 (nearly 20%) on the list are clearly marked as coming from NATO (that might not count all of the NATO-provided gear since NATO sent Ukraine a lot of old Soviet bloc stuff). It includes 19 M1A1s, and I believe we only sent 31, 8/10 Strv 122s, 39 Leopards out of around 74 provided, etc. So Russia is attritting NATO-provided equipment at a pretty decent rate.
Also, even if this is a problem, the correct solution is to increase NATO's military production, kind of like what EU is doing right now, rather than ceding Ukraine to Russia.
Yes, the EU should be doing this regardless of what happens.
Again, I remind you that Ukraine is producing a significant amount of its own weapons and under no circumstances that NATO + Ukraine vs Russia is worse than NATO vs Russia + Ukraine.
I'd be very interested to know exactly what percentage, because Russia's been shelling the absolute heck out of them for a couple of years. But yes, I've never argued that Ukraine + NATO is weaker as a whole in raw military strength. That's not exactly the arrangement we have, though, the Ukrainians are doing most of the fighting and NATO is arming them.
Shrike
5mo ago
The core of your argument as I understand it is that sending weapons to Ukraine is going to make Russia weaker. Now, on the one hand, this is axiomatically true inasmuch as your weaken any power by killing its people. And I definitely think Ukraine wants everything it can get. So I don't think sending weapons to Ukraine is stupid necessarily.
But on the other hand, it seems very clear that supporting Ukraine is weakening NATO's military capability through irreversible arms transfers and that the war has given Russia the opportunity to strengthen and modernize its armed forces, even as it has taken numerous losses. So I think the basic idea at the core of your argument ("fight them over there so we don't have to fight them over here") is questionable because it appears that Russia's army will be stronger after the war, even if they lose. And, on the other hand, I don't think the odds of Russia attacking NATO are particularly high, so I am not sure we're really fighting them over there to stop us from fighting us over here. (If anything I suspect Russia juicing its armed forces and NATO giving its arms away to Ukraine increases the risks of Russian aggression against NATO, although I still sort of doubt anything comes of it.)
So, unless NATO attacks Russia before they can reconstitute their forces or the weapons transfers are much more effective than NATO's brass foresees, it seems plausible that after a certain point arms transfers might do more harm to NATO than good. This seems less true to me of, say, shells, if we can still produce a surplus, than, say, Patriot interceptors or mine-clearing vehicles.
Of course, on the gripping hand, there's the argument that, basically, NATO has nukes, so it could go bone dry on conventional munitions and it wouldn't really adversely effect their security against Russia. I do think there's something to this argument. But unless I missed something it's not the argument you're making.
How's that for a fair address of the core of your argument, with some extra arguments for your consideration thrown in for good measure?
Shrike
5mo ago
Someone please explain the escalation ladder that leads from NATO and Russian forces in a direct conflict (over Ukraine) to global thermonuclear war.
I actually don't think that is what would happen. I think Russia's nuclear doctrine would work.
Basically, Russia would lob a small atomic munition at Ramstein and Germany would get off the ride. The motivation for doing this is to get their enemies to decide that discretion is the better part of valor, the Russians and French both, as I understand it, have "we will shoot you with a small atomic weapon before we shoot you with a big 'ole one in hopes you see reason" as part of their strategic thinking, and the US and really I think probably everyone but UK also have this ability although they might not necessarily talk about it. Of course failing that, there's also ample motivation on Russia's part for doing so on the grounds that it's an emergency and the nukes are right there behind the "in case of emergency, break glass" glass; failing that, their motivation for doing so is probably "screw you that's why."
Anyway, I don't think Germans want to die for Kyiv. Chastise Germany gently with nuclear fire (worst case scenario), war canceled. You probably don't even have to nuke Germany, you could nuke, like, the Baltic sea, or a random Ukrainian military base just to show that You're Really Serious. That's assuming Germany could be persuaded to buy into "no fly zone over Russia" to begin with.
[Edit to add: this also answers your question about "why would Russia commit suicide over Ukraine" - if you think that nuking the other side will win you the war you don't think you're committing suicide, you think you're winning. If you're wrong, well, regrettable!]
But, to answer your question, the basic idea for how it escalates to WW3 is essentially "US and Russia exchange conventional volleys, Russia decides it's read the room and needs to show people that it's serious so it does a tiny nuclear bomb as a treat and then reminds everyone that it has a comically large number of nukes left, but instead of backing down NATO retaliates in kind and then OH BOY WE'RE NUKING EACH OTHER WITH TACTICAL WEAPONS and then either somebody runs out of tactical nuclear weapons and switches to ICBMs which eventually triggers general conflagration, maybe because the Russians see the ICBM coming and crack all their silos open, or the tactical nuclear exchange wanders too close to Moscow and they decide to take their plutonium ball and go home. Something like that.
But unless something really bad happens (like the Russians see what appears to be a massive US first strike but is actually, idk, Elon having a normal one) I kinda doubt we get there.
Shrike
5mo ago
it is not doing well economically
Hmm. A quick Google tells me they made 3.6% growth last year. That seems...fine. Better than the US, even.
So far, I don't see good evidence that's the case.
How large was the collective NATO artillery park in 2022 versus now? How about tanks? Mines-clearing vehicles?
Why is Germany's military now less ready than it was in 2022, falling to 50% readiness rates? Probably has nothing to do with shipping gear to Ukraine (spoiler: it has something to do with shipping gear to Ukraine).
Shrike
5mo ago
However, long term Russian war fighting capacity is still being degraded due to the accumulating effects of battlefield losses, economic sanctions and their inefficient war economy. The more we can deplete their strategic reserves, cause more casualties, and inflict economic damage, the less of a threat Russia is in the long term, and the more time they'll need to re-organize and re-arm before their next military adventure.
Yes, the Russians have blown through their Soviet-era artillery munitions stockpile. But pull back for a second. When was the American military more capable, 1941 or 1945 after taking a million casualties? Was the US more of a threat over the long term after 1945 or less of one?
Or heck, let's say you think the US isn't a good comparison because we destroyed all of Europe's industry. Fine, let's take Russia - more of a threat in 1941 or 1945 after losing 27 million people? I'm sure that theoretically caused them long term problems but we still had a couple of decades where "nuking Germany repeatedly" was basically our best bet at stopping them.
If we keep supporting Ukraine and it eventually loses in a year or two, that would be suboptimal but still better than forcing Ukraine to capitulate now since it will keep Russia occupied for longer, depleting more of their resources, and they'll need a longer recovery period to reconstitute their strength before they can think about attacking the countries we really care about.
I think this is context-dependent on what we're supporting Ukraine with. If we're supporting them with our own munitions stockpiles and we're sending weapons to Ukraine faster than we can reconstitute them, then we'll be the ones needing a long recovery period. This knife also cuts both ways when it comes to advanced weapons systems, the more of which we supply Ukraine with the less capable they will be if we ever use them against Russia.
Shrike
5mo ago
I mean - it probably isn't. I don't think Vladimir Putin wants to fight NATO. That's part of why he attacked Ukraine before they joined up.
But without copious amounts of American air power I do think that the Russians would tear a hole through NATO EU right now (well assuming away the fact that their hands are full of Ukrainians). The Europeans are just not ready to deal with Russia casually vomiting thousands of drones, mines, and cruise missiles in their direction and then sending a hundred nominally obsolete tanks to do donuts in the rubble. The European cope is that Ukraine's NATO-trained troops are actually retards and that NATO's indigenous ways of knowing modern means of warfighting would carry the day but I think the truth is that we're witnessing fires lap maneuver again and they would get shellacked.
Shrike
5mo ago
Yes, I agree with this assessment, except I would be a little surprised if Russian intelligence had heard of this place. Vance being here would be the least surprising thing in the world.
Shrike
5mo ago
if the US were expanding their borders in the process
Oh okay. So if Russia said "hey we're not expanding our borders, we're turning these oblasts into...Legally Distinct From Russia, er, Novorossiya" that would fly with you? Regime change is fine as long as border change isn't? Because the United States attempted regime change in Cuba, and took direct military action against it (that's what a blockade is). And in fact in a lot of places. And I am not convinced that couping people is Good and Friendly behavior.
Shrike
5mo ago
I believe the current NATO assessment is that Russia's warfighting capacity has increased and that it will be stronger and better-prepared to fight NATO after the hostilities end.
Shrike
5mo ago
That's like saying because the United States objected to nuclear weapons in Cuba, they logically will blockade every country in the world until nuclear weapons are removed from them.
Obviously the presence of a peer competitor anywhere in the world does make you less safe, but if you can't predict that great powers treat their near environs differently than distant ones – and will find some security situations much more tolerable than others – I dunno what to tell you.
(and you don't seem to intend to do anything to avoid it)
Although probably both Vladimir Putin and JD Vance are Motte posters, I am neither, and thus my options for doing anything as regards Russia are pretty much nonexistent.
Shrike
5mo ago
Ukraine can be part of NATO without any change in the threat level for Russia.
Respectfully, this is silly, the border between Ukraine and Russia is (or was) nearly 2,000 km and that's a lot of extra airspace to cover if you're trying to defend against a first strike on either your nuclear assets or your command and control assets. Ukraine also had, I think, the largest non-Russian army in Europe, which meant adding them to NATO represented a much larger conventional threat.
I grant the "nuclear ace in the hole" that Russia has currently is a nice one to have, but will they have it forever? If the US gets a missile defense shield some Russian nuclear weapons might become unreliable as a deterrent.
As I've mentioned elsewhere, I don't think Russia cares about Ukraine merely because of the conventional threat, but it's not serious to say "I have nukes, so my largest and best-armed European neighbor joining a de facto hostile military alliance poses zero threat to my national security." Of course it does. Unless you're suggesting that nuclear-armed states can have no conventional threats at all – in which case neither China or Russia pose a threat to the United States and nothing happening in Ukraine can reasonably bother England or France.
Shrike
5mo ago
I think they're just biding their time and patiently waiting to outgrow the US to the point that the gap in military capability and logistics insofar as it relates to Taiwan will be too obvious for the US to want to defend it. The U.S. is already making moves to secure semiconductor production at home in order to wind down the strategic importance of Taiwan, so the writing is starting to be put on the wall.
Sure, I think this is plausible. I am not convinced that China will make an opening move. But if they do, missile strikes on Japan (to hit fighters and airbases there, and ships in harbor) make sense if you're not willing to wait for a counterpunch.
I’d be interested to read any argument against this scenario.
I've discussed this before a bit on here. I am not firmly convinced the Chinese will take one route or the other, but I think the argument against is that every year that goes by, it might actually grow harder to take the island by force. US anti-ship weapons stockpiles grow deeper and more sophisticated, as we begin to deploy hypersonic missiles and next-generation stealth bombers, and Australia begins to acquire nuclear submarines. Taiwan might begin to focus on area denial weapons instead of prestige equipment such as ships, tanks, and fighter aircraft, and from what I understand every year Taiwanese begin to think of themselves as more "Taiwanese" and less "Chinese." China's potential aging problems have also been discussed. All that being said, I think there might be a window of time where China's chance to retake the island militarily peaks and they might act during that time.
I also think the cheap drone revolution (and AI revolution, to the degree it's applicable) don't help China as much as people think in this scenario. In fact I think they might cut against China. If China can make a million cheap suicide drones per year and has 1,000 ships, then you just need (let's say) 2,000 drones and 2,000 mines to hold off an amphibious attack, and the fact that China can kill a million people with drones, while scary, doesn't get them any closer to successfully invading Taiwan than having nuclear weapons does.
Now, as you say, maybe this will all be moot since China won't invade. But China's chances of coercing Taiwan rise with their chances of being able to successfully invade (whether or not a single shot is fired) so I can see it mattering regardless.
Shrike
5mo ago
Thanks for the thoughtful response.
Of course!
The only scenario in which nukes get exchanged is the result of massive miscommunications in the face of existing tensions or fog of war, and in that scenario the actual tactical considerations like "is the launcher in Romania/Poland/Estonia/etc or is it in Germany" are not relevant anyways. And even then it's not NATO pushing the button, it's the United States directly, so even more a moot point.
I don't think this is true. The threshold for nuclear use is probably lower than people think and does not require miscommunications.
Particularly when discussing tactical nuclear weapons, the location is very important. Russia can't hit the US with ~any of its tactical nuclear arsenal, whereas the entire US tactical nuclear arsenal can be targeted at Russia due to NATO air bases.
I agree that NATO/the US is very unlikely to launch a first strike against Russia, nuclear or otherwise.
my understanding is that it's not an overnight fix kind of thing.
It depends on what exactly was done to the VLS cells to prevent Tomahawks from being loaded in. If the answer is "nothing" then you could stick a Tomahawk in at any point.
Also, didn't the nuclear-variant Tomahawk in question get retired in 2010-2013, says Google?
Yes, but the INF bans conventional intermediate-range weapons as well. China did not subscribe to the INF, which is one of several reasons why it was good the US withdrew.
Russia was and will never be genuinely militarily threatened by anyone
Is this historically true? How long has it been since Russia fought a large conflict to maintain control of their territorial borders? World War Two? Maybe the 1990s...?
Russia wanting the Donbas separatists to win wasn't out of some patriotic desire to help Russian speakers but naked political greed and expansionism.
Is this an either/or? It seems completely wrong, if you pay attention to individual Russians, to think at least some of them aren't emotionally caught up in the cause of the Donbas separatists. If Russia was entirely motivated by greed and expansionism I would have expected them to seize Finland first, as it is smaller and much less armed than Ukraine. (Similarly I would have expected them to have seized Latvia and Estonia in 2003 before they became part of NATO, those countries have essentially zero power to resist a Russian invasion.) But instead they first attacked Ukraine after the government was violently overthrown in 2014. It seems to me that "realpolitik," while present, is probably overstated when modeling Russia's interactions with its neighbors, particularly with Ukraine.
The analogous situation is California leaving the Union during a big break-up and then flirting with a Chinese security alliance. After a revolution overthrows the democratically elected government and replaces it with a Chinese-favorable one, the government of the United States moves to seize its naval bases and a land corridor to ensure they can be resupplied. Local insurgents, with a bit of CIA encouragement, attempt to split some of the northeastern farmland off from California proper, and California, with supplies and training from China, responds by shelling the insurgent's cities for eight years and preparing a large offensive to retake their territory.
Do you think the US government would be entirely motivated by realpolitik in that scenario? Might some other motivations creep in?
If smaller former Warsaw Pact countries want or wanted to form a defensive military alliance to protect against similar NATO "aggression" (it kind of takes genocide to get them going which is a somewhat high bar?) they are free to, and NATO might be unhappy but it won't like, freak out.
Yes, this is CTSO.
OK but if you are Trump and Elon and you want to stay in power it would probably behoove you not to repeat the mistakes of the last guys.
Particularly with Elon. Like – Trump's entire shtick is being "directionally accurate" where he says "look windmills have killed a million birds, literally a million, they are counted as COVID deaths, folks" and only humorless scolds and fact-checkers take that as anything but a joke with a nugget of truth (wind turbines kill a lot of birds!)
But Elon's whole deal as I see it is that he's suppose to be a smart nerdy engineer, and so he should care about precision as part of his PR, or so it seems to me. (I suspect being "directionally correct" works much better in engineering than one might initially think, but you needn't generalize that unnecessarily.)
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