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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.
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.
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.
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