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Culture War Roundup for the week of January 16, 2023

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From 2015 to 2022 Donbass situation for Ukraine was more like Afghanistan war for America than anything. But you could say this yes. Still before 2014 Ukraine already was poorer than its neighbors.

Like the Afghanistan war, if it was happening across the entire West Coast, and it was led by people who wanted to join China, and China had a large border with the US, and China had a large military base on Staten Island, and the US was very inferior to China in conventional military terms, and the US had given up its nuclear weapons, and there was a large risk of China intervening if things went too well for America, and China was providing military/financial support for the Taliban.

So not very like the Afghanistan war for America, and certainly not more like that than anything else. Under those circumstances, I would expect investment and confidence in the USA to be low. When you're over a barrel, people tend not to trust that you have their back.

If by neighbours you mean nearby ex-USSR states, there were three of them: Belarus, Moldova, and Russia. Ukraine had roughly similar conditions and GDP per capita to Moldova. It had worse GDP per capita than Russia, which was less corrupt/better run/more stable than Ukraine + has a lot of natural resources per capita, and Belarus, which is less corrupt/better run/more stable than Ukraine + economically supported by Russia. Remember, Ukraine had a major revolution in 2005, plus a very messy 9 years after that, and e.g. Leonid Kravchuk's control was never comparable to Yeltsin, Putin, or Lukashenko. Ukraine has always no more than a few bad decisions away from civil war and possible Russian intervention to e.g. safeguard Crimea in a Ukrainian civil war.