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PaperclipPerfector  8mo ago (text post)   30063 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 26, 2024

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We're sitting on a > 48 hour interval with no top level posts which might be some kind of record. It's been awhile since we talked about Ukraine, so here we go..

It would seem that Ukraine is still slowly losing a war of attrition. Of course, the big news is Ukraine's incursion into Kursk, in which they managed to capture some Russian territory after catching the Russians with their pants down. Coupled with that, Ukraine has also been mounting more long-range attacks against Russian oil infrastructure. Neither of these actions is really what Ukraine's western allies want to see, but what can they do? Ukraine's best bet may to escalate in order to draw in more Western support without which they will collapse. But it's looking quite grim. Germany has vowed to stop new aid.

https://www.politico.eu/article/germany-halt-new-ukraine-military-aid-report-war-russia/

In response to Kursk and the oil infrastructure attacks, Russia has attacked Ukraine's energy grid.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/russia-strikes-ukraines-power-grid-in-most-massive-attack-of-war/ar-AA1pt39P

What many people don't realize is that the Ukraine/Russia conflict has been in many ways quite limited. Life goes on in the cities. Casualties have largely been limited to combatants. The longer things go on, the more this might change. People in Kiev are now facing the real possibility of a winter without heat and electricity.

Here in the West, people's enthusiasm for the war seems to be waning as the news cycle covers newer, shinier topics. But the war grinds on and every day men die at the front.

Edit: As usual, the cure to a stale front page is to post about Ukraine which inspires another post on a different topic moments later.

So, anyone have a read on what a realistic ceasefire deal looks like? Does one exist? Is anyone serious mooting one around in the world of think tanks?

Ukraine's winning scenarios have run out at this point. The abortive and telegraphed offensive ate up too much time and material for them to win in any conventional sense. Prigozhin might have been the Black Swan they needed, but he pussied out. The Russian economy is showing no signs of collapse. Some point to a Wunderwaffen or to some chart that shows NATO production coming online at a faster pace from 2025 onward, but I doubt that will make a material difference. Ukraine is basically hoping for a Russian collapse as a result of some as-yet-unknown cause, which is not impossible, but not much of a strategy.

Russia's odds of winning much more than what they have so far seem longer still. They're hoping Ukraine just gives up, but that might be longer odds than a Russian collapse, as Ukrainian psychopathic nationalism seems more systemic rather than oriented around a single individual.

Neither side is going to win the kind of victory that will make good their losses. So how is a ceasefire outlined that will deliver a lasting peace?

I still haven't come up with a better idea than putting Harry and Meghhan on the throne in Kiev.

I don't think there's any peace deal that doesn't result in some combination of territorial gains for Russia and robust security guarantees for Ukraine, which might take the form of NATO membership. This is obviously not what either side really wants, but Russia cannot force Ukraine to accept vassalization, and Ukraine cannot force Russia to release the territory they have taken.

Does one exist? Is anyone serious mooting one around in the world of think tanks?

I saw one discussed by William Spaniel. Though I have no other reference by which to determine whether the authors are "serious people", it seemed that Spaniel, who is definitely no Trump/right/conservative/whatever shill, seemed to think it was at least in the land of plausibility.

William Spaniel is a good theoretician, and I fondly endorse him for anyone who wants some good-faith game-theory considerations or framings of the conflict (or other contemporary geopolitical topics, which he uses as examples for game theory implications rather than speaking from an advocacy position).

The limitations of it- which he does note- is the lack of clear buy-in from necessary participants (including Trump, let alone Putin, or the Europeans). It also- which he does not note- works from a presumption of American-centricism (which he does not dwell on because it's not important to this argument on theory).

Both countries are stuck in a dollar auction of a war with predictable results: neither side can win it, only lose less. So, unless something causes the other side to fold, they'll just keep upping the ante.

The only realistic ceasefire is freezing the line of actual control in exchange for foreign aid to both countries.

The only realistic ceasefire is freezing the line of actual control in exchange for foreign aid to both countries.

Seems good for them but sucks for everyone providing the aid. Let them fight.

Russia isn't asking for a handout and stopping the aid to Ukraine would be enough to stop the war.

Ukraine seems to be more and more desperate for peace. They seem to have given up on making gains in the primary theatre in the east and gone after Kursk instead, looking to use it as a bargaining tool for the short-term.

However it takes two to tango and the Russians have repeatedly indicated they're not interesting in negotiating until the goals of the SMO are achieved. Presumably this means annexing all of their claimed provinces, demilitarizing the country and installing some kind of new government in Ukraine for the 'denazification' angle. I expect this to happen. When a great power is fully committed to defeating a middle power, there's not going to be a ceasefire, they'll win. Everyone agrees the Russians have more POWs than Ukraine, presumably they must have inflicted more casualties. They do have more firepower and more manpower.

Possibly there's some kind of contingency where NATO troops enter should the Ukrainian army disintegrate, as Macron has threatened. At that point, everything is up in the air. Then this war would truly become like Korea, where we have two great powers at war.

I think this is highly unlikely. Ukraine currently has sovereignty and still about 80% of it's claimed territory. There's no reason for them to give that up for nothing, not while they can still fight and launch effective offensives. If Russia wants all Ukraine, it's going to have to get it the hard way.

Everyone agrees the Russians have more POWs than Ukraine, presumably they must have inflicted more casualties.

Western claims that Russians are losing way more people than Ukrainians. Can you point to something contradictory?

The Russians have a lot more heavy weapons. If they expend more munitions, they should be inflicting more damage. Most casualties in conventional war come from artillery and the Russians have a lot more guns and shells than Ukraine. They also have more drones.

https://foreignpolicy.com/2024/04/23/ukraine-war-artillery-shortage-production-military-aid-bill/

Consider the state of long range bombing - Ukraine has damaged some Russian oil refineries and occasionally damages some buildings in Moscow. Russia routinely fires massive volleys of missiles at Ukrainian power generation, causing rolling blackouts and large-scale destruction of grid infrastructure. There are no such blackouts in Russia.

Ukraine has been drafting intensively, there are many, many videos of Ukrainian men being dragged struggling into vans for the front. One man, Ruslan Kubay, was drafted despite having no hands, which was subsequently reversed. People are drowning as they try to flee the country. People have been fleeing Russia too but not to such a great extent, more for business reasons and (legitimate) fear of conscription. However, Russia has mostly been filling its front line by promising generous bonus, they have not been forcibly conscripting. A much larger proportion of the country has fled Ukraine than Russia, I suspect that they have made a logical decision.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/jun/29/i-am-not-made-for-war-the-men-fleeing-ukraine-to-evade-conscription

I was probably wrong to say that there were more prisoners held by Russia, I can't find any independent proof of that. Nevertheless, the Russians have demonstrated more capacity to inflict damage than Ukraine has, while Ukraine seems much more desperate than Russia. Furthermore, I think it's unwise to trust Western military estimates or any military estimates for that matter - they lied all the way through Afghanistan and Iraq.

While I do agree that Western estimates aren't to be trusted, Russia hasn't given us any casualty numbers to compare (other than a claim of 5,000 or so made fairly early on in the war). In war, truth is the first casualty, and we aren't going to get any reliable numbers until after the war is over. Or maybe never, given the wildly varying estimates you can still see for many historical conflicts.

So, anyone have a read on what a realistic ceasefire deal looks like? Does one exist? Is anyone serious mooting one around in the world of think tanks?

'Realistic' by who's standard?

One of the many issues of a ceasefire is that it hinges on people making realistic demands to people who can deliver on them. To date, the Russians haven't indicated either, creating a tangle of un-deliverable expectations to people who can't deliver them.

As a result, non-Russian ceasefire chatter inevitably requires assuming the Russians will selectively drop various declared conditions, with which conditions the Russians will drop changing based on the biases of the speculator.

Ukraine's winning scenarios have run out at this point. The abortive and telegraphed offensive ate up too much time and material for them to win in any conventional sense. Prigozhin might have been the Black Swan they needed, but he pussied out. The Russian economy is showing no signs of collapse. Some point to a Wunderwaffen or to some chart that shows NATO production coming online at a faster pace from 2025 onward, but I doubt that will make a material difference. Ukraine is basically hoping for a Russian collapse as a result of some as-yet-unknown cause, which is not impossible, but not much of a strategy.

That's certainly a take. Alternatively, Ukraine is no more on the edge of collapse than it has been constantly claimed to be since 2022 and in some respects considerably further away, 2024 has been generally unsurprising and consistent with forecasts made in 2023 bar a far greater expansion in Western comfort in Ukrainian weapon use against the Russians, no one who was unsurprised at Russia not collapsing in 2022-2023 was expecting it to collapse in 2024-2025 either, and the Russian manpower strategy is showing its limits even under the 'just pay more' paradigm.

As a result, absent some collapse of the Ukrainian nation-state (possibly some sort of mass exodus from a power grid collapse, as seems to be a reoccuring Russian point in the witners), the Ukrainians remain on track to continue the many-year process of attriting the Russian's Soviet Inheritance that serves as the military-economic center of gravity of Russia's ability to field larger armies and pose a strategic offensive threat.

Russia's odds of winning much more than what they have so far seem longer still. They're hoping Ukraine just gives up, but that might be longer odds than a Russian collapse, as Ukrainian psychopathic nationalism seems more systemic rather than oriented around a single individual.

Russia's strategy is not that Ukraine gives up, it is that the Americans stop supporting the Ukrainians and push the Europeans to stop supporting the Ukrainians until the Ukrainian state lacks the economic and military capacity to resist.

Calling Ukrainian nationalism pschopathic seems rather shallow as a pejorative goes, particularly given the lack of equivalent for Russia despite Russia' various policies in the war to date.

Neither side is going to win the kind of victory that will make good their losses. So how is a ceasefire outlined that will deliver a lasting peace?

Lasting ceasefires hinge on some combination of a belief in the other party's intentions, and an evaluation of their capabilities. Due to Putin's lack of credibility, a ceasefire acceptable to the Ukrainians and Europeans will be built on Russia's loss of long-term capabilities vis-a-vis the Europeans, who both want Russia to lose the Soviet inheritance and to build their own military production capability so that post-war Russia can't out-arm them.

This is not the structure Putin has in mind at this time, however- Putin almost certainly believes the Americans are the hyperagent whose decision will be decisive, that the Soviet stocks are so indefinite that they are functionally infinite, that if he can de facto control the de jure territory of the separatists oblasts then he can compel western parties to accept the Russian annexation of those regions, and that as part of a peace deal Russia can economically re-connect with Europe and end the various sanction regimes / get back the frozen war chest assets.

This is unlikely to happen, but Putin is also a strategic procrastinator, and absent a critical disaster is likely to keep delaying any decision on EU-acceptable concessions in hopes that one more election cycle in the US / Germany / EU may do the trick.

As a result, the war will likely continue for years more, easily beyond 2026. Putin is likely to try for some sort of negotiations in 2025 with the new US president regardless who wins. It will probably fail due to the difference in the politically acceptable positions between what Putin is willing to offer and what the US/west would be able to legislatively deliver, but he will then hold out hope that the 2026 mid-terms might shape the US president's position. It would be the end of the 2026 campaign season before the results were realized, and by 2027 the prospects of the next cycles will offer the next excuse to procrastinate.

That's certainly a take. Alternatively, Ukraine is no more on the edge of collapse...

Nowhere did I say Ukraine is one the edge of collapse, I actually said the opposite in the next section. I think we're past the point where we can reasonably expect a Ukrainian collapse and Russian surge into Kiev, (almost) regardless of levels of Western aid flowing into Ukraine.

But I also don't see a realistic scenario in which Ukrainian forces retake any significant amount of territory from the Russians, absent a complete Russian collapse. Which doesn't seem likely.

Neither side can win a victory, at this point, that will justify the costs paid.

Sure there is. Survival of the Ukrainian nation, not only in this war but in the prospects of the next.

The invasion of 2022 was the third continuation war in a decade launched by Russia against Ukraine, and done on the basis including the belief that there was no Ukrainian nation and that the Ukrainians should be disabused of this by conquest, systemic killings, and re-russification of the rest. This was, has been, and remains, in a very real sense, an existential struggle of which the current moment of Russian inability to deliver upon its intent was not guaranteed and cannot be guaranteed in the future absent further changes to the Russian belief and capabilities. That includes not only the belief and capability of Russia's ability to prevail in this war, but the potential to prevail in a fourth continuation war- a prospect that the Russians have already signalled an intent to prepare for via their demands in the 2022 ceasefire talks, when Russian demands included levels of Ukrainian disarmament that would have left Ukraine with fewer tanks than they've since lost in this war.

You say that we're past the point that we can reasonably expect a Ukrainian collapse regardless of levels of Western aid flowing into Ukraine, and many others will frankly disagree. You may disagree with that, but that justification remains, and in any utilitarian 'worth the costs' comparison existential risk is the categorical trump card.

Russia's strategy is not that Ukraine gives up, it is that the Americans stop supporting the Ukrainians and push the Europeans to stop supporting the Ukrainians until the Ukrainian state lacks the economic and military capacity to resist.

I'm not sure they're entirely relying on normal weariness on the West's part; I do wonder if they aren't subtly pushing the PRC and DPRK to start shit in the Far East to pull the West's resources away (and/or destroy chunks of those resources, if there's a nuclear exchange).

They aren't, for much the same reason that Russia has been not-so-privately lobbying Iran to not expand the current conflict with Israel: if the people currently selling Russia war material get into their own major wars, they are going to stop selling material to Russia, and if Russia is seen as part/party to these broader conflicts, then Russia's ability to try and disengage from Ukraine next year via a negotiated cease fire goes down.

There's also the point that there's no particular interest for the Chinese or North Koreans to to start a war for Russia's interest rather than their own. North Korea, for example, is presumably making bank selling munitions to the Russians.

Interesting. Would you mind giving me some further reading on the "not-so-privately lobbying Iran" point?

The Guardian has an article titled Putin reportedly calls for Iran to limit damage in any retaliation against Israel as a starting point. Rand published a think-piece earlier this year titled Why Russia Doesn't Want War Between Israel and Iran. Stimson has a piece on how Russia Benefits from Continued But Calibrated Israel-Iran Hostilities.

It's not a single article or even group of articles, and it's been a dynamic that has evolved over years, so it's less recommendations of specific readings and more on topics.

Key points are on the foundations of the current Russia-Iranian good relations (it's the sale of war material from Russia to Iran in exchange for technology / other goodies), the evolution of Russia's relations with Israel over the same period (Russia has shifted from a relative neutrality to a default alignment to Iranian positions vis-a-vis Israel, but not pro-Iran vis-a-vis other regional arab states), the various shuttle diplomacy the key actors like Shoigu to the Iranians earlier this month (a Security Council rather than diplomatic VIP indicating security-focused engagement in the context of the Israel assassination of the Hamas leader in Iran), the Russian diplomatic / information framings and implied recommendations around the time (condemning the assassinations, but various 'Anonymous Sources' allusions offering suspected motive that the assassination was to scuttle peace and draw the US into military action, i.e. to resist the assassinations Iran should not complete the scuttlign and draw the US into military action), and the under-whelming Iranian response and similar Russian leadups in not just this incident, but earlier ones (demonstrating successful lobbying in general against more powerful retaliations).

You can find some academic / think tank papers on Russia relations / interests in the Middle East as well. Rand had one in the last few years on Russia's interests given that it's preoccupied in Ukraine. There's also a general history of reading into Russia's tradition as a geopolitical spoiler in which Russia wants to be part of the negotiation for resolving any conflict, as a way to build influence / interests, but the flip side is that if Russia can't profit / can't get involved to profit, it doesn't want there to be the sort of conflicts that move things forward in ways that might leave it out.

For not-so-private lobbying in general, the Russians have a diplomatic narrative trope in that when unclear actors do something to someone else that Russia is seeking to influence, they often hypothesize a motive that just so happens to be what the Russians want the party to not do. This creates narrative structures like 'This was totally bad and done by Bad People and I'm on your side, and I'm not going to tell you to not do the thing you might want to do just because I don't want you to do it, I'm just gonna say that the people who did this to you want you to do the thing I'm not going to tell you not to do, and so if you do it you're playing into the Bad People's hands.' It's not a uniquely Russian trope, or omnipresent, but it's familiar enough in the same way that certain commentary tropes can be distinctly European or American.

While I don't agree with your overall point, I think you had a valuable insight here.

Lasting ceasefires hinge on some combination of a belief in the other party's intentions, and an evaluation of their capabilities. Due to Putin's lack of credibility, a ceasefire acceptable to the Ukrainians and Europeans will be built on Russia's loss of long-term capabilities vis-a-vis the Europeans, who both want Russia to lose the Soviet inheritance and to build their own military production capability so that post-war Russia can't out-arm them.

There's not going to be a ceasefire because neither side's bare minimum terms are acceptable to the others - there's no way Putin can offer a deal that the west would accept without being immediately couped by someone under him. At the same time, the west can't make any deals either - their credibility also isn't that great, and there's nothing they can offer which would be worth the continued existence of a hostile and belligerent Ukraine on Russia's border.

Its not about whether the "the west" will accept it its about whether Ukraine will accept it.

If it's not equivalent to "Ukraine ceases to exist as a nation" or worse, then "the west" can put sufficient pressure on Ukraine to accept it.

The problem here is the Russian progress in the east. Once Kramantorsk falls, the line gets much harder to defend, and the chances of a rapid collapse of everything east of the Dnieper gets a lot higher. Also, this is an industrial war, not a low intensity police action like the two Afghanistan wars. Barring a Korean War-style partial armistice, one of the sides is going to get too heemed to continue, sooner rather than later.

The problem here is the Russian progress in the east. Once Kramantorsk falls, the line gets much harder to defend, and the chances of a rapid collapse of everything east of the Dnieper gets a lot higher.

Rapid as in, what, another century?

This is a funny misreading of the map and the progression of the last year of the war, but still a misreading. Setting aside that the Ukrainian collapse cascade trope has been trotted out for every significant urban area since the start of the war, the fundamentals of why Russian progress has been limited to marginal advances in very narrow parts of the east remain. Marginal advances over time add up, but there's a reason you need regional zoom-in maps rather than the early-war whole-of-country maps of the frontline to see an appreciable difference between the end of 2022 and current 2024. It's the same reason the Russians characterize their advances as 'significant' or 'consistent' more often than 'large'- large implies a lot of territory, when what has actually changed hands in 2024 is very small compared to metrics like, say, what the Russians achieved in early 2022, or the even larger breakthroughs that would be needed to reach the Dnieper. The 2022 meme of Russia's imminent encirclement of Ukraine's eastern forces comes to mind- and note how many of the main cities you've heard about in the last year or two are in that snapshot.

And these Russian fundamentals rely on things that are limitations as well. The Russians have been relying on overwhelming artillery overmatch since mid-2022, but don't have the logistics or mobility means to push that artillery fast. The Russians have made a policy-level decision to rely on volunteer/contract soldiers rather than mass mobilization to carry on the offense, but the ever-increasing signing bonuses are indicative of a military not meeting its recruitment goals for what it thinks it needs, and it's highly doubtful they could continue this sort of personnel expenditure for years more. The level of equipment for the units the Russians do have are indicative that the limiting factor of the Russians now is their equipment rather than manpower to fit the kit, which mitigates much of the utility of a mass conscription for numbers alone but also demonstrates a retrograde from mobility warfare given that the equipment is more and more earlier cold-war standard.

These limiting factors do not mean 'Russia will be unable to fight,' but rather that even as Russia chooses to fight, that doesn't mean it has the capabilities- militarily, politically, structurally, manpower- to do any sort of 'everything to the east bank of the Dnieper' breakthrough.

Also, this is an industrial war, not a low intensity police action like the two Afghanistan wars. Barring a Korean War-style partial armistice, one of the sides is going to get too heemed to continue, sooner rather than later.

Later rather than sooner, given what both sides have demonstrated their ability / willingness to mobilize, and at current industrial trajectories the Russians at maximum relative advantage have been unable to threaten the sort of gains made in the opening months of 2022, let alone destroy the Ukraine coalition's industrial base.

As an industrial base argument, Russia isn't against Ukraine, it's against Ukraine and the West, and there is a large difference between 'Russia's economy is not failing and will not for years' and 'Russia's economy is doing well and doing better at sustaining the war indefinitely than the west.'

One of the many issues of a ceasefire is that it hinges on people making realistic demands to people who can deliver on them.

While I respect (though disagree with) the idea that we can't possibly talk to unreliable partners, this doesn't seem to be a position of the U.S. government.

The US has been brokering ceasefire talks between Israel and Hamas literally every week for the last few months. Hamas is the least trustworthy partner I can possibly think of. They will immediately turn around and start rearming and launching terrorist campaigns the second the ink is dry.

So it would seem the US government views this war as a good war.

Thats kind of the point though isnt it? It doesnt mater how manny talks the US brokers if niether HAMAS nor the IDF are going to take them seriously.

If 'views this as a good war' is synonymous with 'the Russians maintain that the pre-emptive Ukrainian withdrawal from the Russian-claimed oblasts is the precondition for talks,' sure, but that's more than a little silly.

But would be fair, if you were trying to be unfair. Many appeals for ceasefire are unserious, as demonstrated by your own example. The US has not been brokering ceasefire talks between Israel and Hamas literally every week- the US has (and other regional actors have) been going through the kubuki theater of pretending to have ceasefire talks that neither involved party are actually interested in, which everyone involved in knows is not going to deliver, and everyone already knew this before the first dozen times Hamas walked away from one sort of condition or Israel walked away from another.

However, because Hamas claims to be interested in talks, and does not have blatantly non-starter preconditions for said talks, said talks occur even though no one expects anything from them. Russia's conditions for equivalent public talks, however, amount to a Ukrainian withdrawal regardless of the result of the talks.

This isn't a matter of the US government views. It's a matter that the US government isn't the hyperagent, and that the views of the other parties matter as well- and if a party is making unreasonable demands to even have ceasefire talks, let alone demands within the ceasefire talks, the preferences of the US government are not going to bend everyone else to make concessions to the unreasonable party for the sake of ceasefire talks.

Which, going to post you replied to, is the point that realistic talks are far away: the Russian positions are not realistic by the standards of less-silly people.

I think it's quite obvious that both sides stated positions aren't their actual final positions for the hypothetical peace treaty if it was signed right now. They just have no reason to downgrade their stated goals before any negotiations.

Isn't Ukraine, symmetrically, still demanding Russia's withdrawal from the territories it has successfully captured as a precondition? The problem with this war is that neither side is actually even close to being exhausted, so they don't see a point in taking about negotiations except as an opportunity for games and posturing.

Have western elites ever been able to formulate a war plan?

Afghanistan was a war without a goal after the first few months. There wasn't much more than slogans as war aims and no real negotiations could be made. Taliban are pure evil, are motivated by nothing but evil, have no legitimate concerns or demands. Those who fight the taliban may rape children and sell drugs but they are still the good guys.

Iraq was mission accomplished without a real plan.

The plan in Ukraine seems to be built entirely on slogans, an extreme sense of moralism in which the western elites are seen as a self evident good and Putin as a completely illegitimate evil.

The people running the west are effectively campaign staff addicted to social media. There is no serious group of people to negotiate with. There is no plan. There is just slogans and polling data on what will yield the most traction as well as whatever the donors are pushing for. Nobody is going to have a serious conversation about eastern Europe's security architecture. Nobody is going to have a sensible discussion about what can be achieved. There will just be virtue signalling on twitter.

Politicians will be allowed to say all sorts of crazy slogans such as "we need to bring down Putin!" and no journalist will ask follow up questions.

We have another forever war with no plan, budget, war aims or leaders that will be held responsible. A war lead by people who will never go any where near the front themselves and who are more interested in the perception of the war than the war itself.

Wars like that don't tend to end with nice treaties.

I mean welcome to decline era Western politics. We have cookies. It’s been my frustration on all levels of modern western politics and one of the things that draws me to Moldbug. We’ve been so dominant on all fronts throughout the period from the 1960s to the 2010s that we really didn’t have to take political issues seriously (as in being practical and focused on real facts and real political goals) for most of the last century. I’m convinced that most politicians have no idea how to actually identify, study, and solve problems in the real world. And now that we have given away most of our manufacturing base to other countries, reduced our education system to basically a joke, haven’t modernized any infrastructure really (given the state of the roads, we aren’t really maintaining infrastructure either). We run on slogans and propaganda while our nation crumbles around us. Is it any wonder that the West truly believes that wars can be fought and won on the basis of “well, Russia was big mean by invading, therefore they’re destined to fail, and the plucky Ukrainian military run by a former comedian can win a war against a former KGB agent.”

The setup for this war is the worst of all worlds. A vibe based conflict with a nuclear power in which we have no plan to win, no strategy, no strategic reason to think that Ukraine itself is value to anyone (it’s an agricultural country, and mostly exports gains).

I’m convinced that most politicians have no idea how to actually identify, study, and solve problems in the real world.

I don't think they ever should or did. Since you mention Moldbug, it's not like the King was meant to personally be an expert in infrastructure or coinage or agriculture. A few were, no doubt, but I think the job of politicians is largely to select the right folks to advise him, to choose wisely amongst their counsels and to mediate accountability to the public will.

the plucky Ukrainian military run by a former comedian can win a war against a former KGB agent

And yet.

The idea wasn’t that the King would literally know how to do everything. The idea was that the king would have full control over the state and thus could set a vision or set of visions for what success looks like. And while the King might not know all the details, they’d have their entire youth up until taking the throne to learn how to actually run a state. But having full control, knowing the basics of how things work, and having a vision of what he wants the state to look like by the end of his reign gives him a leg up to actually getting those things done. It’s a lot easier to get the administrative system to approve more nuclear plants if the king knows that nuclear is fairly safe, provides a lot of energy, etc. and with a vision of better energy independence and efficiency and a plan to get there, chances are you’ll get there.

Modern democracy encourages people to learn how to run for office with very little knowledge of how to run things once they actually get there. I think democracy does work most of the time, I just think good statecraft is much more important to a functioning state than the details of how the decisions are made. We lack this in both parties. It’s a campaign of clowns with no serious ideas about how the United States should move into the twenty first century. Our foreign policy is based mostly on vibes. Our plan for education is basically to bandage over the failures of universities and do nothing to improve K-12. Our infrastructure plan appears to be “fix potholes”. Health care is still a mess. And general health is terrible as Americans are pretty much obese at this point.

Ah ok, phrased this way I agree with the sentiment. I must have misread your previous post.

I think I was a bit unclear. But the criticism of the west that always stuck with me was Xi Diengpeng saying that we are an unserious people. To be honest, he’s absolutely right about our leadership. And I think Moldbug is right in his diagnosis of the problem even if I think absolute monarchy is probably not a solution. If you read about how statesmen of the past thought about governance, it’s not anything like what we talk about in governance. You can read the Republic and the Laws and Cicero is talking about laws being aimed at the common good. Confucius talks about rulers and ministers having a duty to study and understand the issues. It was seen as an art and a science of making the state prosperous and powerful. I just don’t see those kinds of serious pragmatic leaders coming forward.

Some of this is just incentives. The person who can win the election is the one who can pander best. The ones who can promise what sounds good on TV as a sound bite of less than 10 seconds. If you are drawn to solving problems and fixing things, then I can’t imagine the need to go on TV and give interviews where you do your best to give non answers for an hour. You’d probably rather build a business or financial empire or rocket ships or something.

I think what you're describing resides within the civil service. Even Confucius understood that the Emperor is not likely to be the sharpest crayon on every topic and has to rely on ministers and advisors. The art of statecraft that he has to learn is very much more about how to lead that service, keep them in check and point them in the right direction. The art and science of how to actually do things is somewhat less useful at this.

Maybe what I mean is that governance is a meta-skill. And I think modern leaders are failing at it because they are optimized too much on electioneering (as you say), but I think I differ a bit in that I want them to be serious people about employing and empowering the right folks while curbing abuses of a civil service that has been left to fend for itself because the folks that are meant to be overseeing it are AWOL.

You’d probably rather build a business or financial empire or rocket ships or something.

Boy do I have a good story for you that I need to create as a top level post.

Change "Western" to American and there's no way to view this other than a colossal victory for the elites who planned it.

They have massively bled a once powerful enemy at a cost of zero lives and with economic damage entirely concentrated in Europe, which has the added bonus of pushing European states into greater reliance on American natural resources, and the destruction of the nordstream pipelines will prevent any quick recovery in economic relations. They have perhaps permanently cut off diplomatic ties between Europe and Russia, driving Europe further towards America and bringing yet more nations into NATO, further encircling Russia.

Other than the fantasy scenarios of liberal Russians rising up to remove Putin and fully embrace the West, what more could the US military want to achieve?

Change "Western" to American and there's no way to view this other than a colossal victory for the elites who planned it.

What did they win? A client state much bigger in France that is going to be an endless black hole for resources? They have the worst demographic pyramid in recorded history and infrastructure in shambles. They have a military 2.5 the USMC that is going to have to be rebuilt and retrained from ruins once this is over at an enormous cost. Propping up Afghanistan was pricey, this is just next level.

Empires don't fall because they get steamrolled, they fall because they have too many issues going on at the same time. Project Ukraine managed not only to send interest rate soaring while the US pays its interest with new loans, it also became a big black hole for weapons. As for Russia they have managed to ramp up arms production several times over.

The US isn't going to be able to handle a militarized Russia, colonial projects in the middle east and trying to defend Taiwan.

The best the US could hope for is learning what the Romans did at setting up sensible and easily defensible borders.

You don't understand the US government - they like spending money. The prospect of pouring ten trillion dollars into a Ukraine-shaped hole in the ground gives them unimaginable pleasure, just as it pleases them to squander billions of dollars on missiles to destroy antique Russian tanks. Americans don't want to be rich, though they are - they want to feel rich.

What did they win? A client state much bigger in France that is going to be an endless black hole for resources? They have the worst demographic pyramid in recorded history and infrastructure in shambles. They have a military 2.5 the USMC that is going to have to be rebuilt and retrained from ruins once this is over at an enormous cost. Propping up Afghanistan was pricey, this is just next level.

Why does any of this matter to the US? Sounds like a Ukraine problem. Maybe if Russia had actually achieved any military objectives, instead of being embarrassed over and over.

Empires don't fall because they get steamrolled, they fall because they have too many issues going on at the same time. Project Ukraine managed not only to send interest rate soaring while the US pays its interest with new loans, it also became a big black hole for weapons. As for Russia they have managed to ramp up arms production several times over.

The influences on international finance hit the globe equally, this isn't just a US issue. Forget about interest and arms production and just look at the economies. The US remains a hegemon with unparalleled economic power; if they wanted they could sink Russia in materiel but what would be the point when they're already achieving their aims? Russia is already militarized and is failing to make any noticeable headway in, as you say, a next-level Afghanistan. It's a funny comparison actually, since Ukraine sinking the Russians just as Afghanistan did looks quite likely.

Why does any of this matter to the US? Sounds like a Ukraine problem. Maybe if Russia had actually achieved any military objectives, instead of being embarrassed over and over.

Your province your problem unless you are starting to let the empire fall apart. If you don't rebuild their massive military your empire has nothing defending that front.

The influences on international finance hit the globe equally

Except much of the world doesn''t sanction Russia and many countries are buying products for bellow the rate sold in the west.

The US remains a hegemon with unparalleled economic power;

China has more manufacturing capacity than the US by a long shot and BRICS has a higher GDP by PPP than G7. China alone outcompetes NATO when it comes to military ship building.

if they wanted they could sink Russia in materiel but what would be the point when they're already achieving their aims?

The point is that they can't find Russia, colonize the middle east and fight China.

Russia is already militarized and is failing to make any noticeable headway in, as you say, a next-level Afghanistan.

They managed to create a giant resource sink for NATO that is going to be impossible to fill with other commitments. For example Ukraine is consuming SAM at a far higher rate than they are produced. Meanwhile China has the most advanced missiles in the world and is producing them at the highest rate.

I don't disagree with the take on who geopolitically benefits, but I'm to this day still surprised by how many of those developments described occurred over US opposition rather than as a result of US design.

If the NATO-expansionist wings had had their way, if there was a Ukraine War in the first place, it would be one with the US lives being lost in great numbers.

If the American warnings of the dangers of Russian energy dependence had been heeded, Europe could have built the LNG import terminals years or even decades in advance and had long-term stable contracts from globally distributed providers rather than relying on the US and American-influencable allies to surge export capacity to unanticipated demand.

If the American pivot from Europea and the Middle East to Asia had gone forth as desired, the Europeans would likely have disengaged to prioritize economic interests over a conflict they had no military capacity to contribute to, allowing Russia a premium opportunity to divide the European-American alliance at a time fewer and fewer Americans saw a moral remain invested.

I guess this is just the nature of a democracy. To the extent that there was a consistent long term strategy involving Russia and Ukraine, it would have come from Generals/DoD/CIA/etc. Senators, Congressmen, think tanks and the like might all have their own opinions without necessarily having any power to influence strategy, which can give the appearance of confusion, particularly compared to authoritarian and very foreign nations like Russia and China. This is perhaps the steelman of the "deep state", in that it allows democracies to execute long term strategic plans even in the face of changing opposition and a multitude of opinions.

The problems with Europe is just a reflection of having to manage a coalition of nations instead of just one. America ultimately cannot force European countries to align with their objectives.

You make it sound like a failure but this all sounds like a success from the perspective of US policymakers. Europe is the way they want them - poor, dependent. Russians are dying. They get to spend lots of money. What exactly is the problem?

My original comment was suggesting that this was a policy success for the US, sorry if that wasn't clear

I agree with the later, but would disagree(?) that there was a consistent long-term strategy involving Russia and Ukraine.

From my perspective of having watched EU eastern expansion from the 2000s onward, Ukraine has been far less a US-strategy point and more a context of German post-cold-war strategy that reached a point the Americans supported but the Germans were unprepared / unwilling to lead, and then it transitioned into an American national security premise post-2014 Crimea invasion when Russia interjected a military rather than economic-political issue.

It's generally forgotten / glossed over now, but post-Cold War Germany not only had a major focus on re-integrating Eastern Germany, but all of Eastern Europe. Germany took relatively systemic efforts to execute influence-expanding investments across the region, ranging from the overwhelming ownership of Polish media to Baltic incorporation into German supply chains to Russian energy. These efforts were general and broad, aligned with the European (and especially French) efforts at trying to integrate eastern europe and even Russia into the European Union economize zone (where Russia was a potential counter-balance to the Americans), and Ukraine was not exempted even as it was fertile soil. While the Americans generally supported the Europeans in EU expansion (for a variety of reasons, from the ideological benefits of spreading democracy to the willing to economic interest to strategy in watering down German/French influence over the EU), the cultural dynamics of EU-positivity and democratic liberalism that sparked Maidan was fundamentally EU, and German, driven and funded.

The strategic handoff came with that while the Germans were interest in the eastern expansion in general, they weren't interested in doing so at the expense of their Russian economic relations under Merkel, and so Putin made Russia EU/Eurasian Union alignment a massive issue, Germany entered a strategic paralysis as the factors it had encouraged and sympathized and in some cases funded grew, but the government's interest was not to lead. So the Germans didn't, and without the Germans who had been the institutional leaders the EUropeans floundered, and into that western power vacuum stepped the US. Many forget now due to the Nuland conspiracy theory that Nuland debating opposition members for inclusion into Yanukovich's government after his invitation for such was proof of a coup against Yanukovich, but Nuland's infamous transcript was initially a scandal for its impolitic language on the Europeans.

The transitions have faded with time and popular memory, but US/western military interest in Ukraine was never a consistent interest, and in many respects quite late. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 90s, you had the Clinton Era in the 90s where there was no particular interet beyond nuclear proliferation, you had the Bush era in which NATO expansion was an interest as a part of general NATO expansion sympathies but Bush was decisively curtailed by the 2006 European vetos, and then you had the Obama era in which Ukrainian NATO was not a topic of pursuit. US military aid / training / assistance to Ukraine only started after the occupation of Crimea and the Russian intervention after the failed Nova Russia campaign, which was also the first time the Ukrainian body politic started to come to a military security consensus on Russia being the threat.

A lot of this probably comes down to how you would define "Long-term" and "consistent". I would imagine that military aims for Ukraine were practically non-existent up until 2014, with the ousting of Yanukovich and invasion of Crimea opening up the possibility. Most likely, Euromaiden was led by CIA and CIA linked assets, but any further military goals coming from that would be opportunistic. Could you call this a consistent strategy? And 2014 means <10 year, is this long-term?

I think if you're talking long-term and consistent, then it would be the aim of expanding NATO membership to fully encircle Russia. Ukraine would just be one part of this, up until the relatively recent events brought it much more to the fore.

Have western elites ever been able to formulate a war plan?

I think Dwight D Eisenhower and Golda Myer would both like a word.

They have both been dead for about 50 years now so that might be difficult.

Have western elites ever been able to formulate a war plan?

I would argue that western, and especially American, elites have been "winning" everything ever since the end of WW2. We have the richest country the world has ever seen, which is also blessed with an enormous amount of land and natural resources. We also control a huge amount of the world's most valuable IP. We don't need to "win a war" like the Mongolians or the Romans did, where we invade some far-off land to take their resources. We already have everything we could possibly want right here at home. "Winning" just means maintaining the status quo, basically, and they've done an amazing job at that. Nobody really cares whether Russia or Ukraine controls the Donbas region, they just want to prevent a nuclear WW3.

We already have everything we could possibly want right here at home.

We are blessed with natural resources but we are extremely dependent on Chinese manufacturing. We make very little of what we consume. Hell, we even send fish that are caught in American waters to Asia for processing.

True, but that seems to mostly benefit us. It certainly benefits the elites anyway, even if some old factory workers lose their jobs. What are we supposed to do about it, invade China to get their manufacturing? "Free trade" is an ideal that both parties have been pushing very hard ever since WW2.

Western elites don’t give two shits about Ukraine’s sovereignty. The war in Ukraine from a western perspective is based on the idea that 1) Russia is an enemy and 2) it’s much cheaper for Ukrainian Nazis to kill Russians than to potentially have to do it ourselves. That’s not the kind of war that needs a ‘plan’. It just needs a checkbook and some CIA operatives.

No doubt Germany would like the war to end, but they don’t call the shots. For sure Poland wants to keep the Russian losses coming.

The issue is that they hyped it up so massively that there is no easy way of pulling out. They lost Afghanistan in 2021, now they have spent three years talking up Ukraine and have wasted enormous resources on it and are losing. Not only has the cost been in the trillions counting the inflation, higher interest rates, and higher energy prices. But the US is constrained in weapons manufacturing. NATO suffers from a lack of hardware, old hardware and low production rates. At the worst possible time a sizeable portion of the stockpiles have been shipped off to Ukraine.

To make matters worse the US will have to reconstitute a military about 30% of the size of the US military. It simply isn't sustainable.

I’m starting to believe that they honestly didn’t expect Russia to go for it. They thought they could just keep slowly boiling the frog and by 2030 Ukraine would safely be in NATO and Russia wouldn’t be able to do anything other than cope and seeth or start World War III. After Russia did go for it, I think the State Department backup plan is just to turn Ukraine into a disposable speed bump to keep the Russians out of anything important. Like the Baltic States. Or Poland.

Have western elites ever been able to formulate a war plan?

I can definitely think of a few wars won by Western powers. Unless your claim is that those wars weren't run by elites?

For all it's overwhelming firepower, the U.S. seems to have very few clean victories in the post-WWII error.

The Gulf War is of course the notable exception. But that success was responsible for our subsequent debacles in the Middle East so it has to be counted as a strategic failure even so.

Nearly every post-WWII conflict has been a miserable failure because, when the stakes are low, the US or its allies are not willing to commit horrific acts of violence like they did in Tokyo and Dresden. So we invade and and try to convince the people to like us which works about as well as you can expect.

Even now, we're not really trying to win in Ukraine because that would result in a nuclear war.

...

I guess Grenada was a good war...

That’s what happens when you gerrymander the definition of a victory to exclude everything we’ve achieved! Might as well say we didn’t really win WWII because we only got half of Germany, didn’t win the Civil War because today’s politics still align vaguely North vs. South, and must not have won the Revolutionary War, since it was really just inviting the War of 1812.

We’ve proven ourselves very good at dismantling state-level resistance. This discourages enemies from picking such fights. Between that dynamic, economic dependence, and the Big Red Button, we managed spend the rest of the 20th century achieving policy goals without state-on-state warfare. Europe couldn’t go twenty-five years without a continent-spanning war. Now it’s been three times that. When deterrence works, it’s almost as if nothing happened at all. When it doesn’t, you see the long tail of problems too thorny to solve with our considerable toolbox. And even then, what’s the damage? Four to five thousand deaths in the entire Iraq war, half that of the Battle of the Bulge alone.

I think you’re also mistaken to treat the civilian firebombings as decisive. Germany maintained a will to fight long after we made it quite miserable for them. What they couldn’t maintain were trucks and aircraft and all the other necessities of modern war. There’s a better case for Japan, but I’d argue the nuclear advantage deserves special consideration.

Conversely, we’ve still shown a distressing willingness to 1) commit war crimes and 2) level entire regions. Neither of those won Vietnam, because resistance in Vietnam was not organized along the same principles as Germany or Japan. That’s the same reason invading and occupying didn’t work like it did after WWII.

If you disagree, then what actions do you think the U.S. should have taken to win in Afghanistan? In Vietnam? I don’t believe finding larger population centers to bomb would have brought us any closer to our strategic goals.

In Afghanistan, the US should have not invaded Iraq. It's as a result of divided attention that OBL escaped to Pakistan. Once OBL was captured and executed, government should have been left in the hands of the various Talibans. AQ was the enemy, not the rest of the country.

If you disagree, then what actions do you think the U.S. should have taken to win in Afghanistan? In Vietnam?

This should be obvious.

None.

Afghanistan and Vietnam were immoral conflicts because the price of victory was too high. We should have simply done nothing. (Or, at most, limited intelligence actions similar to what Israel does).

Sanctions would have been enough to deal with the Ukrainian situation. Instead we're going to have 1 million dead Ukrainians and 5-10 million displaced and we're still going to lose most likely. Even a victory condition now ends with Ukraine permanently de-peopled. With friends like these...

Yes, you made it very clear last time we talked about this.

I’m asking why you think another Dresden or Tokyo would improve the situation.

It wouldn’t. Sometimes you just have to take the L.

For all it's overwhelming firepower, the U.S. seems to have very few clean victories in the post-WWII error.

Is this to imply that WW2 was a clean victory?

WW2- which saw the rise of a US-enabled strategic competitor who would dominate not only half of Europe but win China, a shattering of the global order which led to decades of peasant rebellions and revolutionary ideology, a demonstration and rush for weapons of mass destruction, major militarization and social upheaval that resulted from the macroeconomic disruptions?

Is 'clean' a reasonable frame here, or is it an unreasonable standard that's dismissing victories that are very rarely clean even when done by the most competent of people?

Good point. Wars are almost always negative for all parties.

And bad ceasefires can lead to worse. C'est la vie.

I’m struggling to think of examples of bad cease fires.

People die and are replaced by other people.

What's the most recent you can think of that actually resulted in a strategic victory? Especially ones that involved another GP.

In my book you get the First Gulf War, a successful limited defensive operation, and that's about it. Then you have to go back almost a century to WW2.

The Cold War?

Obviously, that’s not total industrial war, either. The planet hasn’t seen such a conflict since the development of nuclear weapons. War has changed, and “limited defensive operations” are always preferable to all-in ideological struggles for the fate of continents. That’s why Russia is chipping away at Ukraine rather than lunging for the Fulda Gap.

I don't think the West won the Cold War so much as the Soviets elites just committed suicide for unrelated reasons that surprised even the CIA.

You can make a good argument it was a propaganda or economic win I suppose.

Though probably the former since the West completely fumbled the Russian economy right after being given control. Lest the 90s were intentional destruction which I don't believe.

Soviets elites just committed suicide for unrelated reasons

Soviet elites saw that grocery stores for average Americans were better and gave more choice than even shops for Soviet nomenklatura. No, seriously this. USSR economics and life expectancy were stangating for about since early 1960ths

I was about to say the Ukraine War, but then you said it had to involve another Great Power.

Cheek aside, this is just categorical gerrymandering. It's a subjective answer which hinges on the conception of a great power is (it would be definitionally impossible for western elites to win a great strategic victory against great powers if all the great powers are on the same team), what a strategic victory entails, and then adding a qualifier of power disparities that basically applies to no one (the Russians / Chinese haven't been in a war against a great power since WW2 either) but is treated as a mark of failure to only some (the lack of a victory over a GP is evidence of western elite failure) even though the same metric could be used as evidence of competence / succession (western elites successfully accomplished goals without needing a direct GP war).

(the Russians / Chinese haven't been in a war against a great power since WW2 either)

Technically, the USA, the USSR and the PRC have all been in a war against a great power since WWII - the Korean War, in which the USA directly fought the USSR and PRC (the USSR's combat forces pretended to be Chinese, but they still fought). Of course, nobody really won that one, and it's only slightly more recent.

If there is something I hate it's people who try to avoid answering real questions by showing how it's possible to game the answer.

I don't care if you're clever enough to make untrue things appear true Protagoras, what I care about is if Western Elites can produce strategic results when genuinely challenged.

Then stop trying to make true things appear untrue by introducing weasel words or dismissing challenges as genuine, Antigoras.

In the answer you hate on grounds of avoiding answering a real question, you had a real answer in Ukraine- a country with no right to be able to resist what a few years ago was believed to be a top-3-in-the world army. This was a war which started in the context of a Russian attempt to push back NATO and deepen Germany energy dependence... which has seen NATO expand and close a previously competitive theater, seen the Europeans execute real and expensive energy transition, and maintain a multi-national coalition of backers by parties that half a decade ago were actively selling arms to the Russians.

Is this to be dismissed because the Americans or Europeans aren't directly involved? Because Russia is not a great power? Because, three years after a three day special military operation, there may be some less-than-maximally-desirable ceasefire conditions for a country that demonstrated the military advantage of American aid against far stronger parties?

Strategic challenges aren't necessarily military threats either, so tying one to the other is begging the conclusion. You may take it for granted that ISIS's caliphate was crushed / the Korean DMZ is boring / that Iran limits itself to asymmetric and proxy groups rather than direct expansion / that the South China Sea remains a place of coast guard disputes rather than gunboat diplomacy, but these are all strategic challenges well beyond the capacity of most states, and these are all places where the status quo is an example of strategic results being achieved. In some of our lives, Iran in living memory had a very real expansionist potential of directly annexing parts of Iraq on co-religionist grounds- and now it's 'just' competing with the US for influence over local politicians.

Because, three years after a three day special military operation, there may be some less-than-maximally-desirable ceasefire conditions for a country that demonstrated the military advantage of American aid against far stronger parties?

I don't know how you can complain about weasel words and deliver this whopper in the same post... Less than maximally desirable ceasefire conditions? Has the war situation developed not necessarily to Ukraine's advantage? I recall you saying things like 'oh the April '22 ceasefire talks were a dead end since the Ukrainians couldn't accept the demilitarization/no NATO terms'.

What kind of ceasefire terms are they looking at now, compared to then? How much more lost land are they looking at? How much of the country has left, never to return?

The military advantage of American aid is that you lose hundreds of thousands of men in a meatgrinder, get your whole country intensively bombed and depopulated and finally lose more land than you would've without it? And the biggest gamechanger, the most important weapon in Ukraine's arsenal is the DJI Mavic and other Chinese drones/electronic parts?

The sanctions on Russia have had no significant impact on military capacity or state stability. In fact Russia, Iran and North Korea have somehow managed to outproduce the West in munitions while China has both a qualitative and quantitative lead in drones. US ISR has been pretty effective but that's about it.

The US goal has been clear, to restore Ukraine's pre-2014 borders and prop up the old world order by bringing Ukraine into NATO. This clearly hasn't worked. Ukraine's borders and territorial control are looking pretty patchy. The mirage of NATO membership is as distant as ever. The war situation is not reassuring for not-quite-treaty allies of the US. Reframing the goal to 'at least things haven't yet gotten catastrophically worse' is not sufficient, especially since the disasters are nearly all self-inflicted.

The DMZ was fairly calm before the whole Axis of Evil/pre-emptive strike idea which was rooted in misplaced conceptions of American strength. Iran's influence was limited and there were opportunities to work with them before the US started hacking away at MENA, rooted in misplaced conceptions of American strength. Now there are a host of Iraqi militias fighting for Iran, they've achieved something close to Sun Tzu's ideal of perfection in turning a major enemy into an ally without fighting. We did that for them, at great expense.

How could ISIS have emerged if Saddam wasn't dethroned and Syria wasn't destabilized?

Russia's military threat was minimal before the 'all of Russia's neighbours should be brought into NATO' policy, rooted in misplaced conceptions of American strength. There was a moment where Russia was cooperating with us on anti-terrorism and energy but that was thrown away.

China would be vastly easier to deal with if it weren't for all the other crises and about 15 years where naval modernization was on the backburner compared to fooling around in MENA and now Europe. And it's still happening. China may well orchestrate some disaster in the Middle East before they move, knowing the US will pull carrier groups away to defend their highest priority, Israel.

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I don't like using ongoing conflicts to judge the competence of leaders because the consequences of actions can take a while to play out. And people always seem to blinders on about the present.

You could have held the same triumph for Afghanistan in the 00s for instance. Some did, and we all know how that ended.

The only question that matter strategically speaking is whether or not the West is in a better position than before this war. Your listings of tactical victories are irrelevant.

I find success difficult to argue in terms of stockpiles, economic stability, political stability and diplomatic standing. If I had to pick between the western alliance before or after this war to fight China over Taiwan, I pick before every time.

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Indeed, but western elites die and are replaced by other western elites. So, the question "have western elites ever" clearly isn't limited to current year plus nine.

Calling the Gulf war a defensive war is kind of funny once you realize it required sending troops to the other side of the planet and ended with coalition forces stomping the Iraqi military and rolling up to 150 miles away from Baghdad. Doubly so in the context of discussing another "limited defensive operation".

It's a logistical achievement for sure, and Schwarzkopf was no moron. But it's not exactly a total war. My point is that it's not a great example of a genuine strategic challenge because:

  1. It's a joint operation between GPs against a minor state with a decent military
  2. It didn't change the balance of the region too significantly

If the coalition toppled Saddam and replaced him with a regime loyal to the West we wouldn't be having this conversation. Instead I'd be praising the continued skill of the West at building friends out of enemies in the continuity of what happened in Japan.

But that's not what happened. The Americans had to come mop it up years later and fucked that up really bad.

I don't think you can really say that the coalition consisted of GPs. Britain and France were hardly GPs in the 90s, to say nothing of Saudi and Egypt. Iraq also had a huge military and actually outnumbered coalition forces in terms of troops, tanks, etc.

I'll just dispute that. 1991 Britain and France were still some of the best equipped and trained militaries in the world. And we're only talking military power.

Iraq had a large conscript army with decent Soviet equipment. But they were no North Korea.

It's no shame, but It was not a fair fight. The main difficulty was force projection. Which is something that I'll gladly concede the West has gotten scarily good at.

It’s an existential gamble, but Ukraine has the brainpower to develop nukes without external help (and their uranium deposits are west of the Dnieper).

I always have thought that there are couple of nukes buried very deep down under Kiev and probably some other capitals during Stalin time designed to make a big holes in the ground and sink a big part of the capital cities in the non Russian USSR republics. And in that case Moscow will just blow them up.

IIRC there’s still 50 or 60 nuclear warheads from Soviet stockpiles that went missing at the end of the Cold War and are still unaccounted for. I suspect Ukraine might have a few of those, but I have no evidence.

Anything that old would have died a long time ago. Detonator explosives have a shelf life, even if you're not using a fancy modern design whose tritium needs to be topped up periodically.

And until the late 60s (early 70s?) everyone assumed the war would start on the west German border and move west from there. Eastern European cities would get flattened by western theatre nukes hitting their depots and rail yards.

I could see some nuclear mines buried under west Berlin though.

Brainpower sure. But I don't think they could refine enough uranium under Russia's nose.

Or indeed under NATOs nose, who happens to be paying all their bills at the moment.

I’m not sure how realistic it is, but I think a border along the Dniepro River is at least going to be a reasonably defensible border.

So, anyone have a read on what a realistic ceasefire deal looks like? Does one exist? Is anyone serious mooting one around in the world of think tanks?

No, because this is a war in which the rest of the world benefits from the suffering.

The U.S. regime is apparently quite happy with how the war is going, as Ukrainians and Russians kill each in roughly equal numbers, exhausting themselves over thin strips of economically useless territory. China is happy as well, having gained a resource rich ally at no cost, and cementing themselves as the second pole around which the world revolves.

The leaders of the countries involved are no better. Zelensky and Putin are happy to prosecute the war until the last man. The world cheers as Ukrainian and Russian soldiers die, are maimed, and are captured and sometimes tortured.

By contrast, there are Hamas/Israel peace talks literally every week, with Blinken cheerleading every development as a cease-fire right around the corner.

Trump winning the election is probably the only hope for peace at this point.

The US is trying to sustain a global empire in which its share of GDP has gone from 50+% after WWII to 17% and falling. The US is overstretched and in a situation in which the US is running from one crisis to another. US military recruitment is way down. The age of equipment is higher than ever and the manufacturing base in a poor state.

The US is now sustaining a force the size of the force in Vietnam at the war's peak for a multi year war far more intense than Vietnam. Ukraine is consuming SAMs and SAM systems at a much higher rate than they are produced. The US army trains 60k recruits a year. Japan trains 10k. Ukraine is going to have to train many tens of thousands per year for the next decade or two, both for this war and for the next. Germany about 200 tanks, Ukraine has lost around a thousand. Comparing the size of the Ukrainian army to NATO militaries shows how Ukraine absolutely dwarfs the UK or Germany. Sustaining, training arming and then reconstituting this massive military is going to be an endless black hole for resources for several decades.

Meanwhile the US is stuck with a bunch of conflicts in the middle east and is trying to outcompete the world's manufacturing super power in an arms race.

Russia doesn't have to defeat the US, they just need to make it impossible for the US to handle all the problems at the same time.

The US wanted to pull out of Afghanistan, regime change Russia and focus on China. Now they are stuck in a massive war against a Russia that is ramping up arms production by several hundred percent, they are sustaining a large force in the middle east and the pivot to Asia isn't really happening.

The USA is able to maintain this level of investment in Ukraine while keeping a large force on station in the Middle East. Russia is throwing everything it has at that one theater.

No doubt the USA is stretched fairly thin, but it has the ability to maintain a much bigger force on multiple stations compared to the competition.

Even the thinness of the US is questionable. What, specifically, is being thinned out here? The naval power that would go to the Pacific in a China war? The armies not swarming into the middle east's latest conflagration, and with minimal use in a China conflict?

There are absolutely limits to what the US military can do... but in a very real sense, the Ukraine War is freeing up large parts of the US military, because one of the main missions of the US Army and Airforce is to fight the Russians in Europe. That's, uh, not necessary as long as the Russians are committed to Ukraine. And depending on how much longer it continues, quite possibly not necessary for several years afterwards, even as the military-industrial expansion justified on grounds of helping Ukraine can be utilized in other ways.

In military-economic terms, Ukraine is a very cost-effective fixing action- something that is the antithesis of an overextension.

Strongly agree.

America is not more overextended by the Ukraine war than Russia is, and “War against Russian-led forces in Eastern Europe specifically” was the stated design purpose of decades of generations of American equipment development, military organization, and even internal (and external) propaganda.

On an even longer timeline, it's unclear that a pivot to Asia was ever going to be effective. Simply look at the demographics of South Korea, Japan, and Taiwan, the key first island chain in America's Pacific strategy. It's unclear that all three, or even any three will exist as we know them within the next 30-50 years. That's not to say that China doesn't have its own demographic problems to solve, but starting with 1 billion people means that China has a much longer timeline than Japan, Korea, Taiwan, or the US combined. Take Japan, for example. Notably, Japan has been opening up its historically xenophobic immigration policy in a desperate attempt to stop the demographic collapse they are in the midst of (Daimyo Abe sheds a single tear). By definition, this allows more Chinese influence within the country. This is pure conjecture, but it seems that in 30-50 years, we will see a Japan that not only doesn't see a point in helping contain Chinese power, but will be a main arm in China's power projection.

Ironically, America's cultural exports, which was a large part of what won them the Cold War, sowed the seeds for its eventual destruction.

In 30 years, specifically in the 2050s, the world will look with envy on Japan for their plummeting population coinciding so perfectly with the Age of Simulacra. The foreigners they bring in for their current economic-demographic concerns will be kicked out and they'll begin their cruise toward post-scarcity civilization. A few western nations will adopt mass use of automata, the ones most affected by the wars in Europe might be forced to, the others will argue over the legality of automata and where allowed flourish, and where prohibited languish and fade away. China meanwhile will be working on their population problem, as they'll need to shrink their population by >1 billion, in <100 years, without total collapse. I think it'll be easy for the CCP, but I think the reality of that problem will put a halt to everything else. At least unless western hegemony finally and totally collapses, in which case China will just take Africa.

Yes it’s quite sad really, importing hundreds of millions into the west less than twenty years before the end of wage labor.

Not 20 years, but simulacra will be in their spread to ubiquity in the 2040s. The largest western nations need too much downsizing and too much conditioning for a rapid shift. While by the 2050s we certainly could automate something like 80% of labor, with population projections putting the US over 400 million by then we're not socially equipped for more than 300 million people becoming suddenly permanently unemployable. With controls implemented by 2060, projections assuming a minimum halving effect means by the mid-2100s the US will reach a stable population, this despite post-scarcity conditions being probably common in western nations including the US by 2110.

Any economist who doesn't account for >90% of human labor becoming obsolete by 2100 is either hopelessly ignorant or using economics as a cover for politicking. Because of automation, there is no economic argument behind any effort to increase the population of any country. We need to already be shrinking, the faster (peacefully!) the better.

Okay, I laughed. And if this were Reddit, I'd do a RemindMe 30 years.

Instead, I'll politely disagree that a region with the better part of a millennia of ethno-cultural bad blood and resistance to Chinese ethno-chauvinism is going to see a conversion to being the arms of Chinese power projection on the basis of... a rather unique reading on demographic endurance.

30 years later, you mind find bot reminding you on deleted post in deleted subreddit on reddit being gone at all.

Neither side is going to win the kind of victory that will make good their losses.

Neither Russia nor Finland (another nation of psychopathic nationalism, at least as it pertains to the Russians) really won the Winter War. Finland lost 9% of its territory, kill-death ratio 1:4 in the Finns' favor.

Complications: not currently in the middle of WW2, Putin isn't Stalin (and Soviets of 1930s aren't Russians of 2020s), Ukraine has Western aid, Ukraine isn't Finland, Ukraine more strategically important (Crimea), winters are warmer.

Sorry, I'm not sure what point you are making. Are you saying that a Finlandization plan is the structure for a peace deal between Ukraine and Russia?

I don't think they have a plan, but I think that's what it's going to come down to.

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