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Culture War Roundup for the week of May 20, 2024

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RAND reports (rather than commentary) are decent, they're long form ebook analytical things rather than short-term news. I'm most interested in the big picture rather than little villages being captured or recaptured. Mariupol, Kherson, those are important places that well-educated people can point to on a zoomed-out map. Who'd ever heard of Bakhmut before the war? Let alone all those other places where people are talking about the salt mine or the slag pit...

https://www.rand.org/pubs.html?q=ukraine+war&content_type_s=Report&rows=24

I think Mearsheimer was also a good thinker generally, he predicted this whole war back in 2014, that Russia would move to wreck Ukraine but lacked the strength to conquer the whole country. Mearsheimer is a very high level thinker, I don't think he knows or cares about the little towns on the map either and his writing does lack the ground level detail you may be looking for. However, I think he's useful because he gets things right. He was also one of the original opponents of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, putting him head and shoulders above much of the West's top brass: https://mearsheimer.substack.com/p/the-darkness-ahead-where-the-ukraine

In his famous 201 lecture Mearshimer predicted that it would be too stupid for Russia to invade Ukraine because it would look bad for Russia. Mearshimer did not consider Russia to be militarily capable of accomolishing a fait accompli, and thus ruled out Russian hostility as a given. In fact if you look up Mearshimers work prior to the 2022 war, Mearshimer keeps banging on that the USA should focus against China and that securing Russia as an ally was - and still is - of paramount importance. I view his hostility to Ukraine as part of his larger crusade against perceived misplaced priorities of the state department combined with an extremely ruthless calculus of relative power focus: it is inefficient to support weak corrupt states in Russias proximate orbit and it is better to husband resources if not spending it to bribe/secure Russias allegiance.

Mearshimers military analysis is, unfortunately, severely lacking. In his rush to get the west (really just USA) to refocus against China, he emphasizes that Russia is winning and in the face of such inevitability the west should stop wasting time. His sources for Russian inevitable victory are ridiculous retards like Scott Ritter, ArmchairW, BigSerge and fucking moonofalabama. It is an echo chamber of 'russia stronk!' vatniks that stand in contrast to the nafo chuds, and unfortunately for Mearshimer the inevitable victory of Russia is neither evident nor imminent. The longer Russia stumbles over its slow grind in Ukraines east, the more time is wasted on debating artillery shells instead of nuking Chinas island chain airbases.

Mearsheimer's argument is not complex:

  1. Russia has more manpower
  2. Russia has more firepower
  3. Therefore Russia will win an attritional conflict in Ukraine

Unlike 'experts' like General Petraeus or Ben Hodges, Mearsheimer actually gets things right. Back in mid-2023 when he wrote that article everyone was hyping the Ukrainian counteroffensive, it promptly sank like a stone because they lacked the mass and firepower to beat the Russians. The war has continued according to Mearsheimer's prognosis. There's no magic trick to achieve victory, you just need mass and firepower. The Russians have it, the Ukrainians have much less. By the way, in 2014 he wrote that while Russia wasn't eager to get immersed in Ukraine and they lacked the power to easily conquer the country. However, Russia would devastate and wreck Ukraine if we continued leading them down the primrose path: https://www.mearsheimer.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Why-the-Ukraine-Crisis-Is.pdf

Lo and behold, he's been proven totally correct on Russian capabilities (they certainly haven't easily conquered the country) and on causal logic, if we keep immersing ourselves in Ukraine Russia will have a very bad reaction and wreck the country.

Imagine calling these guys ridiculous retards with severely lacking analysis and then watching as they're proven right for making the most obvious, straightforward arguments imaginable.

And why should we nuke China's island bases? Our strategy is clearly defensive, it's far easier to present the war to third parties and voters as defensive if we're not the ones attacking. A nuclear first strike against essentially peripheral targets is certainly an interesting proposal, however I'm not quite sure it advances our position.

Unlike 'experts' like General Petraeus or Ben Hodges, Mearsheimer actually gets things right.

If you ignore the things Mearsheimer actually got wrong and ignore things that Petraeus or Hodges actually got right, this would indeed be a compelling line of argument. But if we don't, it's not, and little more than cherry picking.

The war's progression defied multiple of Mearsheimer's prognosis, starting from whether it would start, to how it would last. Other parts of Mearsheimer's prognosis that have been born out- like Ukraine being wrecked- were never contested in the first place. Even the tools of prognosis have repeatedly been exposed as lacking- the crux of Mearsheimer's analysis on inevitable attrition has rested on artillery advantage, even as the late/post-23 trends have demonstrated that the artillery was far more circumstantial, while he's regularly made arguments on capabilities (such as Russia eviscerating Ukrainian air defenses) that have been more than a little overreaching. There's a reason that Russia's turn to airpower has hinged on glide bombs from the ranges they have.

You like to appeal back to 2014 for Mearsheimer, but I see no reason not to go further to the 1990's- as early as 1992- when Mearsheimer was on record advocating for nuclear proliferation to the Germans and Japanese, aka historic Russian strategic rivals, which would have brought permanent nuclear presence to the border of the Russian sphere of influence that Mearsheimer called for respecting... which has been part of the nominal cassus belli for Russian intervention on grounds of proximate nuclear threat.

In other words, Mearsheimer has been advocating crossing contemporary Russian narratives of security red lines for about as long as the Soviet Union's been dead. He's just done it in different forms, but not forms that would escape a revanchist narrative of malign activity of western encroachment.

Mearsheimer is as deserving as the 'expert' title as anyone else, and unsurprisingly not any more impressive outside his field of actual expertise than anyone else. People just tend to forget his field of expertise is international relations theory as a political scientist, not international relations in action, or in policy, or anything particularly to do with the military in general, or as any kind of analyst of the countries he opines on.

And why should we

I tend not to ask, but what nationality are you for the 'we'?

For whatever reason- admittedly perhaps conflating you with someone else- I thought you presented yourself as a German in the past, or at least European, which wouldn't make sense in this more recent context unless the 'we' is rather expansive. And in the inverse, there are enough Europeans on this forum that 'we' would also be awkward in this context.

advocating for nuclear proliferation to the Germans and Japanese

The US already had nuclear weapons based in Germany and Japan in the Cold War and still has them based in Turkey. Nuclearization isn't a major change like NATO expansion eastwards towards Georgia and Ukraine, it only alters deterrence logic for those countries themselves. A nuclear Japan could be useful in countering China (another area where Mearsheimer was a decade or so ahead of the curve). Anyway, nuclear threat from Japan and Germany is less than from Turkey and far less than from Ukraine or the Baltics.

The war's progression defied multiple of Mearsheimer's prognosis, starting from whether it would start, to how it would last.

Mearsheimer did not say that a Russo-Ukrainian war wouldn't start, he described the conditions under which it would start if US/NATO foreign policy wasn't changed. He described the limitations of Russian power and the difficulties of occupying a whole country. He says that Russia will withstand considerable pain to pursue its security (this was before sanction-proofing) and that it will devastate Ukraine if the West doesn't change its policy, that logically implies war. Where did he say that Russia wouldn't go to war with Ukraine?

He even foresaw the war back in 1992, advocating that Ukraine should acquire nuclear weapons since the West was hardly likely to extend nuclear deterrence to Ukraine. He raises Crimea, mixed populations and nationalism on either side, control of the Black Sea Fleet, the fact that the Russians are always going to be stronger conventionally, historical antipathy... all factors we're dealing with decades later! He thought the Ukrainians would be less willing to bow to US pressure than they were, yet surely his predictive value is high.

https://www.mearsheimer.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Mearsheimer-Case-for-Ukrainian-Nuclear-Deterrent.pdf

Meanwhile, what have all the talented NATO Ukraine hands and generals gotten us? Hodges seemed to think the Ukrainian counteroffensive was a great idea and would succeed, despite being a telegraphed attack into a fortified and well-prepared enemy who has air superiority. Petraeus was in the same camp! What were they thinking?

https://www.newsweek.com/ukraine-breakthrough-could-come-weeks-former-us-general-says-1823389

And then there's the whole 'Putin's Russia is so weak that we can head them off by giving Ukraine more arms but so strong that he'll invade NATO if he wins' camp that is so well-represented in think tanks and media output, especially ISW. Which is it?

I maintain that Mearsheimer has been far more useful on the course of this war than the credentialed experts who seem to be hyping Ukraine.

nationality

Australian, we do show up for even the silliest US wars and will presumably be called in against China. What is the point of AUKUS if not to tie our fates together?

The US already had nuclear weapons based in Germany and Japan in the Cold War and still has them based in Turkey. Nuclearization isn't a major change like NATO expansion eastwards towards Georgia and Ukraine, it only alters deterrence logic for those countries themselves.

Okay, I believe the Australian claim off this alone, definitely not a European-attuned perspective.

Mearsheimer did not say that a Russo-Ukrainian war wouldn't start, he described the conditions under which it would start if US/NATO foreign policy wasn't changed. He described the limitations of Russian power and the difficulties of occupying a whole country.

You can try to argue that Mearsheimer didn't deny a different war would start, but the war Mearsheimer argued against on grounds of Russian limitations- that Russia wouldn't try to conquer all of Ukraine- is precisely the kind of war Russia launched. It failed, Russia was incompetent, but it is an illustration of Mearsheimer not actually recognizing or acknowledging Russian divergences from his predictions, and the later retreat to semantics of what degree of invasion is / is not conquest of all of Ukraine.

Basic motte and bailey.

He even foresaw the war back in 1992, advocating that Ukraine should acquire nuclear weapons since the West was hardly likely to extend nuclear deterrence to Ukraine. He raises Crimea, mixed populations and nationalism on either side, control of the Black Sea Fleet, the fact that the Russians are always going to be stronger conventionally, historical antipathy... all factors we're dealing with decades later! He thought the Ukrainians would be less willing to bow to US pressure than they were, yet surely his predictive value is high.

Not really, and this goes back to the point of Mearsheimer's limitations outside of his field, in this part how the Europeans view nuclear proliferation.

Setting aside the contextual inaccuracy- Ukraine wasn't in a position to acquire nuclear weapons in 1992, it was in a position to negotiate away the nuclear weapons it had already inherited by 1996, this is ignoring what Russia wanted in this context, and why, and how such a policy pursued by Mearsheimer could be reflected in the current Putin-imperialist zeitgeist, as well as what doing such a policy would have naturally lead to in terms of American involvement with Ukraine.

Mearsheimer was not someone who was advocating foreign policy prescriptions that actually recognized and respected Russian security concerns for their own sake. Mearsheimer is someone who is selective in which security concerns he recognizes as valid, and treats them as transactional devices while downplaying or ignoring the relevance of security concerns he doesn't recognize the validity of. Nuclear proliferation is one of these blind spots.

Put another way, Mearsheimer is someone who believes in great powers dividing spheres of influence and horse-trading power blocks, without realizing he's less an Bismark and more of a Wilhelm at coalition building.

Meanwhile, what have all the talented NATO Ukraine hands and generals gotten us?

A Ukraine that continues to exist more than two years after nearly all observers thought the state would collapse in two weeks, a Russia that having destroyed its modernized force is in the process of face-tanking its reactivated Soviet stocks while humiliating its pre-war martial reputation, a NATO with a significantly stronger Baltic position and significantly greater available manpower and material capacity, European defense recapitalization as a policy consensus, and the strongest constituent member support for NATO in the last quarter century, and for the EU since before the 2009 Financial Crisis. This is without other things like the changes to the international arms market via displacing Russia, the value of discrediting territorial irridentalist wars of aggression, the confluence of the US and Europeans against China as a second-order effect of China's alignment with Russia, and so on.

I'm surprised you walked into that cluster.

Also, misuse of 'us', since you're not in NATO not part of the NATO constituency interests.

Hodges seemed to think the Ukrainian counteroffensive was a great idea and would succeed,

Come now, as a native English speaker, you know the difference between could and would.

Your source is a newsweek article where Hodges doesn't say he believes the Ukrainian counteroffensive was a great idea and would succeed. It says Hodges says a breakthrough could happen, after Hodges says he ('we' in a context including himself) didn't know the accurate situation to make a conclusion.

despite being a telegraphed attack into a fortified and well-prepared enemy who has air superiority. Petraeus was in the same camp! What were they thinking?

Probably, among other things, that the Russians didn't have air superiority, which their tactics over the last years have validated given their reliance to behind-the-lines glide bombing, and that there's no such thing in major wars as a non-telegraphed offensive thanks to the satellite imagery easily available of buildup. These words do not mean what you appear to think they mean.

Otherwise, the question doesn't really make sense unless you didn't mean it. The answer is directly in the article: an offensive gain southward that went far enough could expand direct fires coverage to the E-W routes of the Crimean land bridge, complicating the Russian position in Crimea substantially.

By your ! and ? and emotional tone, I suspect you feel this was obviously a bad idea. It's less clear what you think was actually the cost incurred, the chances of success, or what you'd concede were the benefits possible.

And then there's the whole 'Putin's Russia is so weak that we can head them off by giving Ukraine more arms but so strong that he'll invade NATO if he wins' camp that is so well-represented in think tanks and media output, especially ISW. Which is it?

E+U > R > E

Both. There's no contradiction unless you reject the Europeans a right to their own perspective of their relative power versus Russia.

Russia can have more military power than Europe, but not more than Ukraine with European support. If Russia were to compel / achieve a victory over Ukraine, then depending on the form it could take those forces locked down in Ukraine and move them to other potential areas. If a Russian victory meant that the Russians could move through Ukraine to the Balkans, a Russian intervention wouldn't even trigger NATO depending on the country.

I maintain that Mearsheimer has been far more useful on the course of this war than the credentialed experts who seem to be hyping Ukraine.

Okay, but it's a silly maintenance. The guy's a goober you'd be lambasting had he had his way based on your past history of other American impositions, which he is by no means opposed to, which makes the utility far more of a stopped clock dynamic than I think you recognize.

Mearsheimer is not a person who's a fan of restrained American conduct for its own sake. In another era, he'd be an overt American imperialist. Much of the media around him in the last years is basic university tenure politics of old professors protecting their original thesis that are the basis of their reputation.

Australian, we do show up for even the silliest US wars and will presumably be called in against China.

Depends on if you think that's a silly one. Mearsheimer doesn't, except in so much that his views of the Russian sphere of interest was transactional to get them on board for a land war in Asia.

It is a reach bordering on consensus building for you to use 'us' or 'we' to make common position with Americans or Europeans on things the Australians aren't immediate party to and which you do not share common views of, such as NATO, so I will be noting that more often going forward.

What is the point of AUKUS if not to tie our fates together?

The post-Brexit British capitalizing on Australian disgruntlement with the French military arms deal tendencies which were weakening Australia's ability to contribute/support a US-based anti-China coalition without French support despite increasing divergences in the French and Australian government perspectives on China, after the French spent several years having a shadow-feud with the British over the execution of Brexit.

Also, long-term technology transfer.

Russia wouldn't try to conquer all of Ukraine- is precisely the kind of war Russia launched.

No, Russia did not aim to conquer all of Ukraine with the thunder run to Kiev, fielding maybe 200-300,000 men in all theatres. They hoped the Ukrainian state would disintegrate and that they could install a new government.

Put another way, Mearsheimer is someone who believes in great powers dividing spheres of influence and horse-trading power blocks, without realizing he's less an Bismark and more of a Wilhelm at coalition building.

That's an interesting choice of words. The US has, in marked contrast to Mearsheimer's proposals, created a coalition of Russia, China and Iran! Wilhelm was a strategic genius compared to what passes for American leadership. Was it truly impossible to pass up on inviting such mighty powers as the Baltic States, Georgia and Ukraine into NATO, was it absolutely necessary to antagonize a great power with thousands of hydrogen bombs? Apparently so!

a NATO with a significantly stronger Baltic position and significantly greater available manpower and material capacity

Significantly? Finland and Sweden make up maybe 5% of NATO's military potential. This war has already been pretty disastrous for the West.

The effectiveness of sanctions has been greatly undermined. Russia and China are working together more and more. Europe has taken a massive hit to their economy, suffering at least a trillion dollars in damage. Apparently they had to spend 700 billion in subsidies to reduce the pain by 2023: https://www.eeas.europa.eu/eeas/singapore-speech-hrvp-borrell-shangri-la-dialogue_en

Most importantly, Western stockpiles of key weapons have been greatly diminished. Western military industrial capabilities have been revealed to be shockingly weak. What good is our spending if Russia, Iran and North Korea are outproducing us in munitions? ATGMs, MANPADs, artillery shells are all important and would be needed for war with China, especially if it escalates beyond Taiwan, into Korea and elsewhere. Stockpiles have been greatly diminished for Ukraine and cannot be quickly refilled.

A multi-year period of vulnerability is opened up right as the threat from China becomes most acute. I expect some sneer about Australian bias for Asia but let's be realistic - China is the primary threat. Ukraine is not a key node of the world economy like East Asia.

Furthermore, the war is not going well for Ukraine.

Australia not in NATO

10/10 for quibbling, we still showed up to Afghanistan and Iraq. We'd almost certainly join America in any war, unlike a good chunk of NATO. We're helping in Ukraine with Wedgetails, we sent over some Bushmasters. Australia is absolutely a party to this war. Furthermore, I am also Western and have a legitimate stake in the affairs of matters that concern the West, such as the conflict with Russia and China.

Probably, among other things, that the Russians didn't have air superiority

It's interesting that you seem to think that the extensive use of Russian helicopter gunships and drones don't show air superiority. Apparently dropping glide bombs doesn't count as air superiority either. I'm sure that reassures the poor troops on the ground dealing with FABs!

If you use some niche definition of air superiority like 'controlling the airspace directly above the grey zone so much that your aircraft can fly at all altitudes unmolested by AA' then sure, I guess the Russians don't have air superiority. Though that definition sounds rather more like air dominance. In practical terms if you're being bombed by enemy aircraft much more than your aircraft are bombing the enemy, then you don't have air superiority. In practical terms, why would the Russians fly any closer than needed to an enemy with plentiful SAMs, Manpads and so on? Do they need to be firing their cannons before they have air superiority? The practical definition is the superior definition because it actually matters and is relevant to the substance on the ground. The Russians can use air power to bomb/ATGM the Ukrainians, not with impunity but with considerable effect. That's why normal people and even such revered institutions as the Atlantic Council agreed that Russia had air superiority.

https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/ukrainealert/it-is-still-far-too-early-to-write-off-ukraines-counteroffensive/

What is the point of these perverse language games?

By your ! and ? and emotional tone, I suspect you feel this was obviously a bad idea. It's less clear what you think was actually the cost incurred, the chances of success, or what you'd concede were the benefits possible.

Chance of success was negligible, they were relying on 'and then a miracle happens' like the Ardennes offensive. The goal was as you say, to sever the land bridge and threaten Crimea, just like how the Germans wanted to split up the Allied armies and repeat 1940. That makes sense. But the goal was not achievable against a well-prepared enemy with superior resources. The Ukrainians should have recognized this and refrained from attacking a superior force with what they had available.

I think it is tragic that enormous costs are being incurred in pursuit of delusional and undesirable goals.

Russia can have more military power than Europe, but not more than Ukraine with European support. If Russia were to compel / achieve a victory over Ukraine, then depending on the form it could take those forces locked down in Ukraine and move them to other potential areas. If a Russian victory meant that the Russians could move through Ukraine to the Balkans, a Russian intervention wouldn't even trigger NATO depending on the country

I'm lost for words. Europe, which contains two nuclear powers, is weaker than Ukraine with European support? Europe, with thousands of aircraft, is weaker than Ukraine which might get a few F-16s to supplement a handful of remaining Soviet aircraft? Didn't you just say the Russians were a worn-out husk?

The Russians somehow move into the Balkans? Through Romania or Hungary, NATO members that decide that the Warsaw Pact was underrated and lobby to rejoin? Russia invades Moldova, another huge and valuable territory of enormous import to world affairs? Or do they teleport across into Serbia to enjoy the unique strategic advantages of total encirclement by a hostile alliance bloc? I'd say 'These words do not mean what you appear to think they mean.' But I can't even conceive of what they might mean.

No, Russia did not aim to conquer all of Ukraine with the thunder run to Kiev, fielding maybe 200-300,000 men in all theatres. They hoped the Ukrainian state would disintegrate and that they could install a new government.

Yes. This is the retreat to the semantic bailey that I noted before.

That the Russians thought they only needed 200-300,000 men in all theaters to overthrow the Ukrainian government, rearrange borders, and establish a compliant state that would implement the Russian kill-lists on pro-western influencer persons was incompetent, but that is what they thought they needed for what they tried to do. That the Russians were incompetent does not negate the intent, which is the Mearsheimer argument on basis of intent as indicated by size failed, and why his maintenance of the position has evolved into the semantic retreat that simultaneously tries to ignore intent and then quibble on the back end what conquest entails if it does succeed.

That's an interesting choice of words. The US has, in marked contrast to Mearsheimer's proposals, created a coalition of Russia, China and Iran!

This goes back to the point that it's not a contrast, but simply a non-falsifiable assertion that can politely ignore that Mearsheimer's proposals also created a basis for a coalition of Russia, China, and Iran, and the factors within the leadership of Russia, China, and Iran that would exist regardless (and because) of Mearsheimer's proposals.

It's also another example of Mearsheimer's tendency to slide into hyperagent / hypoagent faming bias, which is another of Mearsheimer's common failings in international affairs. The US creates conditions, other actors have conditions imposed by the US, their own leader's actions are a consequence of American agency, and so on.

Very sophmoric, and Mearsheimer's inexperience in international affairs and unfamiliarity with how other actors make decisions shows in this field.

Wilhelm was a strategic genius compared to what passes for American leadership.

This is another one of those claims where it's evident you aren't really party to the cultural touchpoint for the reference, and thus miss the metaphor.

I'll skip forward a bit because basically everything between is old hat at this point that's been hashed a dozen hundred times at this point, just to point to a thing I think makes the general point better for the audience.

If you use some niche definition of air superiority like 'controlling the airspace directly above the grey zone so much that your aircraft can fly at all altitudes unmolested by AA' then sure, I guess the Russians don't have air superiority. Though that definition sounds rather more like air dominance. In practical terms if you're being bombed by enemy aircraft much more than your aircraft are bombing the enemy, then you don't have air superiority. In practical terms, why would the Russians fly any closer than needed to an enemy with plentiful SAMs, Manpads and so on? Do they need to be firing their cannons before they have air superiority? The practical definition is the superior definition because it actually matters and is relevant to the substance on the ground. The Russians can use air power to bomb/ATGM the Ukrainians, not with impunity but with considerable effect. That's why normal people and even such revered institutions as the Atlantic Council agreed that Russia had air superiority.

What is the point of these perverse language games?

The point of perverse languages games is as you just demonstrated: to claim the connotations of a state of affairs described by a descriptive doctrinal ('niche') definition, when the conditions to meet that state aren't being met, by substituting a watered down ('practical') definition that can be retreated to if challenged but otherwise can be used to claim the authority / argumentative advantage of the stronger descriptive definition.

In other words, a banal motte-and-bailey argument.

The motte is that a Ukrainian offensive was obviously a non-starter idea because the Russians were [controlling the airspace directly above the grey zone so much that their aircraft can fly at all altitudes unmolested by AA], the bailey is that Russians could apply enough air power from a distance and didn't need to be closer to have effects, and the discrepancy is that the conditions implied by being able to fly over the enemy unmolested are not the same conditions if you refuse to fly over the enemy because they still have plentiful SAMs, MANPADs, and so on.

This discrepancy matters, because the difference between those two states is what determines the viability of limited offensives. After all, it's not like Russia suddenly or just recently in 2023 gained the superior air position, regardless of whether you call it air superiority or air dominance- there had been two separate major Ukrainian successes that occurred despite the same general match of airpower.

I'm lost for words. Europe, which contains two nuclear powers, is weaker than Ukraine with European support? Europe, with thousands of aircraft, is weaker than Ukraine which might get a few F-16s to supplement a handful of remaining Soviet aircraft?

Your loss of words is forgivable, given your evident lack of familiarity with the European capabilities, or the degree of European military support to Ukraine.

Yes, the Europeans, with their thousands of planes, lack the land force to match what Ukraine has fielded in a conflict which has demonstrated there is no substitute for land force volume. Much like Russia, the investment in their aircraft and nuclear weapons do not, in fact, automatically translate to land force capability, and unlike the Ukrainians the Europeans have not been investing for the better part of the last decade into how to generate a large standing ground army. Doing so now would be long, difficult, politically disruptive, economically expensive in the midst of major military recapitalization, and quite likely to be unfeasible in terms of scope and effectiveness in the near term.

As such, the Europeans could try to prioritize all resources into generating a large, cohesive, land force by the time the Russians finish the Ukraine War, or they could funnel resources to empower the already large, cohesive land force so the Russians can't finish the Ukraine War.

It doesn't matter whether E > U or U >E, but rather if E < R, and U < R, but E + U > R.

Didn't you just say the Russians were a worn-out husk?

I think we could both CTRL-F the previous arguments to find out if I did, or if you just attempted a perverse language game for a strawman that reverses a position in the previous post.

Mearsheimer's proposals also created a basis for a coalition of Russia, China, and Iran

No, Mearsheimer proposed competition with China and rapprochement with Russia and Iran, or at least not going out of our way to antagonize them.

The US creates conditions, other actors have conditions imposed by the US

Have you actually read Mearsheimer's books or journal articles? If so, you clearly haven't understood them. At no point does he say this. He has a structural model of international relations where the great powers act according to various motivations. This is pretty basic undergraduate-level stuff.

there had been two separate major Ukrainian successes that occurred despite the same general match of airpower.

Kherson and the other counteroffensives in 2022 were successful because the Russian army was barely there or decided to withdraw, assessing that it was too risky to be potentially cut off behind a river. The differences between the 2022 pre-mobilization Russian army, spread more widely across unfortified or difficult-to-defend land and the situation in 2023 are considerable.

The point of perverse languages games is as you just demonstrated: to claim the connotations of a state of affairs described by a descriptive doctrinal ('niche') definition, when the conditions to meet that state aren't being met, by substituting a watered down ('practical') definition that can be retreated to if challenged but otherwise can be used to claim the authority / argumentative advantage of the stronger descriptive definition.

You need to understand that Russia possessed air superiority and that air superiority is NOT the sole determinant of battles (I think I understand why US struggles so much with COIN with this mindset). Attacking an absent enemy with air superiority is one thing, a fortified and numerous enemy with air superiority is something totally different.

I'm especially staggered that you spend a paragraph lambasting me for motte and bailey and then admit the Russians had the 'superior air position' through the whole war. You just invented a synonym for air superiority that perfectly undermines both your motte-and-bailey argument and your 'Russia didn't have air superiority' point. Wake up! You're defending positions so silly even the Atlantic Council has written them off.

Yes, the Europeans, with their thousands of planes, lack the land force

No, they don't. Between Britain, France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Poland and Turkey... they can muster a larger army than Ukraine with active troops alone, let alone reservists (or disabled draftees). They are much stronger than Ukraine. This isn't a debate, you're just wrong. Check wikipedia if you like, it's pretty obvious how much larger the European NATO armies are than Ukraine's.

if you just attempted a perverse language game for a strawman that reverses a position in the previous post.

a Russia that having destroyed its modernized force is in the process of face-tanking its reactivated Soviet stocks while humiliating its pre-war martial reputation

Sounds pretty worn out to me. But I'm sure you can conjure up some elaborate meaning where worn-out means something totally different. And of course you can create some fantasy world where the face-tanked, unmodern (but not worn out!) Soviet stocks are capable of struggling with Ukraine but would beat Europe's far larger and better militaries.

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