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For Russia, yeah. Ukraine has to choose between two bad scenarios for the situation imposed on them--a costly victory or a costly defeat--so they might as well win.
The Ukrainians are intimately aware of the tradeoffs between fighting Russia and being ruled by Russia; I defer to their judgment on that question.
I think you're overly concerned with demographic collapse scenarios and insufficiently concerned with the risk of a resurgence of wars of conquest.
Ideally, the Russians have overextended themselves militarily and economically such that some kind of crisis forces the Russians to back off and Ukraine survives.
But if Russia takes enormous losses in a Pyhrric victory such that they and other would-be aggressors are sufficiently deterred from further warmongering then I can only thank the brave Ukrainians and their will to fight for dying on behalf of improved regional security.
I actually think the former feeds into the latter, so my concern encompasses both.
I'm prepared to defer to Ukraine's wishes on HOW they want to go out. This war has had shockingly little direct impact on my life.
I'm just noting the dismal reality.
"Survives" is doing a lot of work here. Check out that population projection. Not enough young people to rebuild and support the older generations = Ukraine has no economic prospects to speak of.
Likewise Russia (the government) probably sees this as an existential crisis, which implies they will NEVER back off unless they run out of men.
Or the aggressors who have been able to stockpile weapons might believe they've got an opening to re-open old conflicts now that the U.S. has stretched itself thin.
One thing is certain, a lot of Ruskies and Ukes have died to develop the absolutely Bleeding edge in drone-based warfare, which has probably changed the face of any conflicts from here on out. And that's BEFORE we've figured out how to have AI guided drones produced en masse.
I have my thoughts on how conflicts will go based on what's been proven to be possible and effective
I also think conflicts have become more likely under current economic and demographic constraints, and that Ukrainian sacrifice isn't doing much to decrease that likelihood because that doesn't change the underlying incentives.
Let's not exaggerate here. The US has in almost no actual way "stretched itself thin" in supporting Ukraine. We have not even significantly altered our force posture. (Which we did for Iran recently.)
The USAF and USN would absolutely demolish their Russian counterparts given their abysmal performance against Ukraine. Tactical drones are nice and all in trench warfare, but good old-fashioned air dominance is even better when you can get it.
That's not to say drones aren't important, they are and will be, but the US military is aware of that, as is Palmer Lucky and his competitors.
If wars of conquest (not motivated by ideological commitments that aren't "rational" in the usual sense) are shown to be more costly than they are worth, even in victory, then that's a huge deterrent.
I'd also guess you're very wrong in that age is negatively correlated with aggression and violence, and so older populations would seemingly be less warlike by default.
I keep reading stories like this:
https://responsiblestatecraft.org/us-stockpiles-missiles/
https://foreignpolicy.com/2024/05/21/united-states-defense-pentagon-military-industrial-base-ammunition/
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jul/08/us-pentagon-military-plans-patriot-missile-interceptor
Now, granted, there is only one possible opponent on the world stage we could maybe be concerned about challenging the U.S. directly.
But I think it's pretty obvious that the U.S. is less able to intervene in various conflicts than it would be in the world where the Ukraine war didn't pop off.
Some places are going to notice that.
Right.
And seeing that both you and your potential opponent are in a demographic spiral, the 'costs' of doing so shift. This is the problem as I see it, we have not seen this particular phenomenon in the modern era: governments hitting economic crises that they will only expect to worsen as their populations collapse, and getting desperate enough to try and seize territory and resources to stave off disaster.
The point is more that countries will run out of young, male citizens to man their military force. If your country is composed mostly of the old and infirm... you'll look pretty vulnerable to your neighbors whose population pyramid is slightly more favorable.
This is likely the primary impetus for Russia invading Ukraine at all.
Oh, and having a country made up of the old and infirm means you aren't as productive, so you can't produce as many weapons nor can you afford to purchase as many weapons. Non-nuclear states are going to have a hard time keeping neighbors at bay, potentially.
So I worry that we will simultaneously see economic crises that provide the impetus for wars to seize territory, and demographics crises that make certain countries more vulnerable to such attacks.
ALL OF THIS whilst the U.S. is increasingly less able to intervene in places that flare up.
Yes, there are certain munitions that are hard to replace fast enough, and both Ukraine and Israel have needed them.
Guess what though? In a shooting war with North Korea or China we're gonna need a lot more e.g. interceptors than what has been used so far, and so if anything we should be grateful for the stress testing of our stockpiles and supply chains.
Well, yes. However, given that Russia, our #2 main rival, is having its military trashed pretty hard it's not like we aren't getting a pretty great ROI.
One would think that a rational person responding to the risk of population collapse would not start and maintain a bloody war killing off and maiming working-age males.
I'm sorry but I really can't take Peter Zeihan seriously at all. Russia invaded Ukraine in 2014 and 2022 because it views the risk of Ukraine becoming aligned with the West economically, politically, and militarily to be too serious a threat to its interests of regional dominance.
Makes you wonder why we were willing to commit so much materiel to Afghanistan for so long if we care about maintaining military strength for larger enemies.
Keeping the U.S. locked in Afghanistan gave our enemies pretty solid ROI too, and we have virtually nought to show for it now.
I dunno, seems like the actual winning move would be to encourage Europe to build up enough force to deter Russia directly. Certainly less taxing on our reserves.
Why were we concerned about Russia's military at all for such purposes? What threat did they pose to the U.S.'s interests outside of our need to reassure allies we're still top dog?
Now we've got an ongoing commitment to sustain a conflict that isn't going to pay off much for us unless the Ukrainians pull off an increasingly unlikely win.
And to the extent people expect Ukraine to functionally bounce back if peace is established, surely the same could be expected of Russia.
I guess that, unless the actual strategic objective is to bring Russia to heel and then absorb it into the larger Western Coalition that is culturally liberal and directionally opposed to China becoming a global superpower (which I'm not inherently worried about either), what exactly do we think we're doing here that's worth so many deaths.
That doesn't really address the point that any invasion by Russia relies on sufficient manpower, and by absolute definition, with declining birth rates, their manpower will only decrease if they wait.
The timing is the issue, not the motivation itself.
I've yet to see anyone explain why the point that "declining demographics = economic stagnation = less globalized world = greater conflicts everywhere" doesn't follow, logically, other than us being in very uncertain times in general.
Come on. Please, just think for five seconds.
What did we actually have in Afghanistan? How much of it was remotely relevant to confronting "larger enemies"? Spoiler:Very little.
Actually the Iranians in particular hated it. But also it was a very cheap military engagement as these things go.
You can argue that the US should give up caring much about Europe and leave NATO and let Russia do whatever it wants, but that's not the world we actually live in.
Technically, we've had a commitment for decades. But also even if Ukraine loses you're failing to consider the counterfactual where Putin just took over in weeks. That would be worse.
Stopping Putin from conquering his neighbors at will? Preserving norms of liberalism and Western mutual support against aggression?
You're leaving out the side of equation where Ukraine is also facing demographic challenges. It's a symmetrical problem.
That's a matter of perspective, for sure. Fewer deaths overall, and I don't see how it makes Russia so much stronger that U.S. hegemony is threatened (more than it already is).
I do NOT like bringing back 'War of Territorial Conquest' as a feature of global diplomacy again, but Russia made that call unilaterally.
If the 'norm' for 'support against aggression' is to just pump money and weapons into any force fighting against someone we don't like, I'd be able to offhand point out like half a dozen examples of where we did that and it directly backfired or blew over into unforeseen, possibly worse consequences.
Afghanistan, of course, being one of those, that instantly folded as soon as we removed our presence. Call it 'cheap' if you want, it was never sustainable, I'd straight up say almost every dollar we pumped in there (to say nothing of U.S. lives) has gone to waste.
I worry about the same here, with one of the foreseeable consequences being Ukraine's utter collapse on the population level.
Its a very ill defined way to run things, outside of explicit treaty agreements like NATO. "If the U.S. State Department thinks you're aggressing against your neighbor they will pump said neighbor's combat capabilities up to even out the odds, but otherwise won't intervene" is like "if we see someone being stabbed by a mugger, we'll toss the victim a knife (and maybe a stab-proof jacket) and cheer them on from the side."
We're STILL not officially at war with Russia, so on the political level, it is genuinely unclear what our true objective for participating in this conflict is.
Yes, and its sharpening the impact of the conflict. The people being lost each day aren't being replaced, they can't be retrieved, every loss is irreversible.
I guess it depends on which one you view as the 'worse' issue. As stated, I see demographic collapse as likely to trigger more and more conflicts going forward.
Ukraine can do what it wants with the population it has. I don't begrudge them the urge to fight off an aggressor in the least. But if its really such a great moral and strategic goal, its strange that the U.S., with the least to lose in this situation, is the one that is continuing to make the largest investments.
Focus less on "U.S. hegemony" and more on "Russian domination of its neighbors." Most of the time, successful conquerors like to run up the score, not just find satisfaction.
Easy to ignore the counterfactuals of not doing that.
Afghanistan was an ongoing occupation. We had, as you point out, a presence. It has almost nothing in common with our support to Ukraine.
Come on. You think the State Department is what matters here??? Also, there are plenty of conflicts where we do not intervene in material ways.
Do you know anything about the Cold War? Were we ever at officially with war with Russia?
The true objective is helping the Ukrainians defend themselves to impose costs on Russia and support the security of the region. Simple.
"Largest" "investments"? Of what kind? Have you adjusted for per capita at all?
What's strange is that we and the Europeans didn't give Ukraine way more support way faster. Embarrassing how much it took to convince some countries that actually Russia is a threat.
I don't think this follows, but it's clearly a self-correcting problem.
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