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ZorbaTHut  1yr ago (text post)   45009 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 5, 2022

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Russian mobilization wouldn't do much in the short term and it'd do more damage economically and politically in the long term, but in the medium term it's still Russia's best option. The Russian army isn't a spent force by any means. Just look at their defense of Kherson, which has made the Ukrainians bleed severely without much to show for it.

What the Ukrainians have to show for it is not only Kharkiv, where the Russians have lost in days what took them months to conquer when they had their best gear rather than losing it in retreat, but the fact that the Russians in Kherson are in an untenable position of being supplied across a river whose bridges are in artillery range. They can't build up for a breakout, they can't retreat, they're stuck and in an awful position prone to attrition. The Ukrainians don't need to 'show anything' to be winning the Kherson exchange, even setting aside a lack of reliable data to indicate they are 'bleeding severely.'

Diplomatically, mobilization would up the ante and force the West to send even more money and weapons if they want to keep Ukraine in the fight. That's the best chance for Russia to break Western unity especially as gas shortages come to the fore in the winter.

The West is already sending the Ukrainians money and weapons surpassing the annual Russian budget, and unlike the Russian budget it's been far more tailored to the war in Ukraine. Western aid isn't required to keep Ukraine in the fight anymore- they'll keep fighting regardless. Western aid is required to keep Ukraine on the offensive, but a stalemate doesn't imply a Ukrainian surrender.

If Western unity breaks, it doesn't mean that the West stops supplying Ukraine for that, because the West hasn't been united in degrees of support to Ukraine in the first place. 'Western unity' is, and has been, a mirage of different western countries doing different sorts of support. The decisive sorts of support for military resiliance haven't been coming from the countries who will be most affected, and thanks to Russian gas strategy a change of government doesn't re-open the gas network because the gas has to go through... Ukraine.

I'm not saying any of this is guaranteed to happen nor would a mobilization guarantee Russia to "win" in any sense, but it's really their only option to stabilize things without using nukes. The Kharkov push has been a sizeable morale + propaganda win for Ukraine and has signaled to the West that the war can be won beyond a Korea-style stalemate, so there's no reason to stop supporting Ukraine. Russia needs to prevent things like this from happening again if it wants to achieve any of its objectives including breaking Western unity, otherwise it's going to just lose conventionally sometime in 2023 unless Ukraine makes a massive blunder somewhere.

It'll still lose conventionally if it does a general mobilization, just sometime in later 2024, because they don't have the hardware superiority anymore to support infantry maneuver. Advance in areas of extremely favorable numbers and allocation of forces already required a concentration of artillery, armor, and airpower that won't be available to support the mobilized forces, because the hardware isn't going to be generated by mobilizing. The Russians need to win conventionally for a military mobilization to matter.

Nor would nukes stabilize the situation, because the situation is not constrained to Ukraine. A nuclear ultimatum for capitulation to surrender and national subjugation on nuclear grounds is incredibly destabilizing for regional nuclear proliferation, and that is far more dangerous to Russia than actually losing the war in Ukraine.

surpassing the annual Russian budget

Source?

(1) says Ru govt spending was $313.96bn in 2021. Not sure about that data, so here’s bloomberg on monthly revenues from 2021: taking 1.8t rubles as a median ~ $24bn (with $1=75rubles). $24bn x 12 = $288bn per year.

Taken together, the two strands of the programme would bring the total MFA support to Ukraine since the beginning of the war to €7.2 billion, and could reach up to €10 billion once the full package of exceptional MFA to Ukraine becomes operational this year. (src)

Also EU paid $90bn to Russia for fossil fuels since the beginning of war.

These announcements will bring the total U.S. military assistance for Ukraine to approximately $15.2 billion since the beginning of this Administration. (src)

I don’t know how much weapons, training services, etc cost, but it doesn’t seem to add up.

Western aid isn't required to keep Ukraine in the fight anymore

How so? I mean, Ukr soldiers don't have many job options anyway, but delayed or devalued wages would degrade performance by increasing marauding and other "part time" activities. If Ukraine receives cheap supplies/loans, then prices would rise at least somewhere (Europe, Ukraine or both). Ukraine inflation is around 23%. EU has 9.1%. For how long is that pressure sustainable? Ru bathes in commodity surpluses, for now, and I guess it has higher capacity to print money, if needed (although industrial output doesn't scale with the speed of printing press, of course).

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