This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
tl;dr some quick attempts to get inside the mindset at the Kremlin concerning events in the war, in the run-up to Putin's speech expected in a few hours. Everything below could be immediately and awkwardly falsified if he announces some desperate escalation like general mobilisation or a nuclear strike against a Ukrainian military target.
Ever since the Ukrainian successes in the northeastern campaign, I've been trying to get inside the mindset of the Kremlin to figure out what their likely response is.
One thing that is almost certainly true (and easily underestimated) is that they are in their own psychological bubble, and there is no elite team of intelligence operatives whose primary job is to give Putin objective analysis. Human minds don't work that way: we easily form fenced-off epistemic communities that downplay our shameful fears and play up our pride. You can even see this reading the reports of US decision-making throughout the Cold War, when interservice rivalry ran hot and the USAF nuclear strategy advisors were giving opinions based not on what was in humanity's interests or even the USA's, but instead what would get them the most planes and status compared to the army and navy. And of course, you can see it easily on reddit, even getting a rush of ideological whiplash as you flit from one politically aligned sub to another.
(What about people like Girkin? Well, he's a doomer, and an outsider, and his criticisms are mostly quite careful. As far as I've noticed, he talks about the conduct of the war, not the wisdom in initiating it in the first place; or he says that Russia should be more committed, without once questioning whether the war is winnable even with full commitment.)
Given all the above, I think a useful and necessary starting point for understanding Russia's position is to try to imagine what your view would be if Russia's strategic situation was a lot better than you probably currently think it is (this is one reason why contrarian posters are valuable to any subreddit that takes itself intellectually seriously).
What does this involve? Maybe it means you think that Ukrainian morale is weak. Maybe you think that the EU is less united than it appears, and winter will be harder than Europeans are prepared for. Maybe you think that the United States is being opportunistic and will drop Ukraine without looking back when the conflict starts to swing back Russia's way. Above all, you're probably convinced that there won't be another breakthrough like in Kharkiv oblast: that was a one off, heads have rolled, and now discipline and morale have been restored to the troops. Reinforcements are coming in, Iran is sending useful drones, and the forthcoming referenda will encourage a surge of volunteers from the DPR and LPR.
Let's say that you, like Putin, were in the grip of this relative sunny outlook. What would follow from it for your reflections on the wider strategy of the conflict?
Above all, I think you would be aiming to take the long view of things, because the fundamentals are on your side. Forget today's battles and next week's offensives - focus on longer-term military-industrial capacity, and associated active measures in the Russian and foreign populations. You probably don't want to risk a general mobilisation - that might compromise your longer-term war fighting ability - but you want to get as many new volunteers as possible, ideally from less economically active areas of the country. And finally, nuclear weapons wouldn't be on the table; after all, you're winning this war, albeit more slowly and less gloriously than you'd hoped. Why would you risk alienating friends and allies and giving NATO a chance to intervene?
But you might ask, at what point does this Pollyanna-Putin outlook begin to crumble? When does the filter bubble burst, and Putin has his Downfall-style meltdown? When Ukraine liberates Kherson? Lysychansk? Donetsk? Sevastopol? I think the only answer we can give here is that people in general are very bad at facing up to uncomfortable realities, and can keep themselves from accepting painful truths for their entire lives if necessary. Or think of psychologist's Leon Festinger's now famous work on cognitive dissonance on doomsday cults: when the doomsday prophecy fails, people will go to great lengths to avoid accepting that they've been duped. I expect Putin to go out the same way, with his final thoughts being confidence that Russia can still be victorious, even as he has an unfortunate fall from a window.
("What about you doglatine? Why are you so sure that Putin's the one in the filter bubble rather than you?" Answer: Well, I've been trying to make clear predictions throughout this conflict both online and to my circle of geopolitics friends - this post is in that same vein - and I'd say I'm fairly well calibrated so far in terms of events on the ground. Part of the appeal of making explicit predictions is to try to break yourself out of these epistemic lagoons in the first place. All that said, I recognise that of course I'm in a filter bubble, sometimes through deliberate choice (once the novelty value wears off, it's just not fun to consume propaganda you disagree with). But even if my intentions were pure, filter bubbles are all but inescapable. Usually the best you can hope for is to get good at spotting the early signs of a bubble collapse so you can make a clean exit with your life savings and a modicum of your dignity intact. But that's far easier said than done)
In any case, I am curious what others think.
No matter how much Russia underperforms, screws up, or fails against seeming ridiculously favorable odds...
They can mass mobilize a million+men any time it gets heated, while Ukraine is already maxed out (in terms of new troops per week)
they have the old soviet stockpiles that means even as the average equipment regresses decades, they can feed the war machine, whereas the European and even American stockpiles are getting hazardously low.
The Russian economy is actively profiting from the war and global increased scarcity, whereas the Germans are preparing warming centers because they won't be able to keep the lights or heat on.
The collapse of international supply chains if this continues are going to start Arab spring style regime change and civil war throughout the world, which draws the American empire away from Europe and towards Middle eastern deployments, whereas Russia has already secured Assad and its few major allies.
Ukraine's GDP was 3k per capita before the war, Russia's was 10k. As the Eurozone economy collapses and shortages hit the world, the Average Ukrainian's standard of living is going to collapse even if their government has properly managed their food stores so they won't starve (which who knows?)
Russia has already conquered all the territories it geostrategically needed. It has Donetsk and Luhansk, it has Crimea, it has its land border, it controls Kherson and the mouth of the Dnipro river... Those are its victory territories. Those are its bare minimum victory territories... but that's it. If the borders never move Russia has secured everything it strategically needed from this war.
.
Winter is not going to favour the Ukrainians... Russia is already in place and has its supply lines. Russia does not have to pull off big maneuvers to win. And the economies Russia is intimately tied to aren't going to collapse and fall to riot and rebellion this winter.
Ukraine just made a big deal of taking 1000 square kms... Russia has taken hundreds of thousands of square kilometers, and the lines have barely moved in 5 months. Unless the Russians mutiny and break, which is very very unlikely...the lines are likely to stay there til next spring at the earliest... all drawing out the war is doing is killing 10s of thousands of Ukrainians a month, and ensuring that the inevitable global humanitarian crisis is all the worse.
there should have been a negotiated end to this war months ago, and the European countries should be pushing Ukraine to cede and accept their loss... not egg them so their constituents can freeze (probably to death in the case of the elderly), global famines can wrack the world, and more Ukrainians can die under Russian artillery... and all to prop up America's hegemony, not even their own empires.
This seems weakly false to me.
Here's an interesting article about how "soviet stockpile" is a myth because equipment, including dumb ammunition, can expire and needs regular servicing, something that Russia hasn't been doing much of until recently: https://archive.ph/4FYzG Also, a CredibleDefense thread that adds some details, including counterpoints, to these claims: https://old.reddit.com/r/CredibleDefense/comments/x2uhp1/a_farewell_to_arms_by_year_end_russia_will_be/.
I would also be careful about putting much faith in outdated equipment. The way I think of it is that equipment is configured to fighting certain specific kinds of conflicts. So in aggregate, it gives the tactician certain features like speed, time in field, etc. and it would seem to me that old equipment geared toward a 1970's style all-out war w/ NATO would not do well in what's happening in Ukraine right now. More concretely, I would imagine 70's-era tanks to fair quite poorly against modern man-portable anti-armor weapons and tactics. Even more so when we're talking about modern comms equipment.
There's a small counterpoint to be made here using the example of the Millennium Challenge: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennium_Challenge_2002
In a gist, it was a US military exercise that basically pitted a high-tech player against a low-tech player and the low-tech player won on such a staggering scale that they had to reset the exercise. That said, I'm not sure if Russia is capable of deploy an effective low-tech strategy: to my armchair general knowledge, I can't think of an instance when Russia didn't fight using massive force.
More options
Context Copy link
So that Russia will repeat the same year or decade later? Even German politicians noticed flaw in this idea.
Yeah, because Russia is famous for its great logistics.
[citation needed]
Yeah, because tanks kept 20 years in Siberian mud are so useful. To be clear, some stockpiles are useful but this 12 000 tank count is a deranged fantasy.
More options
Context Copy link
How long do you think it would take to draft, organize, train, equip and deploy those million men? It strikes me the lead time on successful mobilization across Russia is probably something like the length of the war up to this time. What moves do Russia's enemies make during that time?
More options
Context Copy link
Russia will never outproduce the West.
China, or at least some Chinese analysts see Russia as defending their western border. Seeing as it's the most industrial country in the world, with some serious long-term planning, it's quite possible they have large conventional weapons in reserve and some production capacity.
Were Russia to fall and be decolonised, the sparsely populated Siberian Republics would end up just being bought by the West. What would prevent US army in Germany from being relocated to northern China border ? That's where the security threat is now, it'd make perfect sense.
So they don't want to let that happen.
More options
Context Copy link
The West has not even started to massively expand its production capacity, and our peace time production capacity is order of magnitude too low to keep up. By the time we get on that, it might be all over.
The West is no longer the place where things are built, where factories pop up, where you can find tens of millions of people who know how to operate a bridgeport, lathe, or a rivet gun. It’s no longer in our DNA. We outsource that shit to China.
I think many westerners look at the achievements of their grandparents and great grandparents, and believe that we could do the same. We can’t. We would need to change our entire culture, and we won’t do that in a matter of months. My hope is that the current predicament at least causes our society to get on that path and start to grow serious. Might be the only way to recover from current degeneracy.
It appears the US has about 400,000 civilian machinists; 1.8 million assemblers and fabricators; 428,000 welders, cutters, solderers, or brazers, and 1 million metal and plastic machine workers. This isn't "tens of millions" but it's not nothing either.
Do you really think the US would be as nimble organisation-wise as back in the 1940s, and be able to transition to arms manufacturing in a couple of years ?
The US is already making tons of weapons. The US is the world's largest arms exporter, responsible for 37% of the world arms trade and delivering weapons to 96 different countries since 2016. The civilian sector makes almost 10 million firearms per year. Military production is also quite high, since equipment does wear out, and the military is constantly replacing old equipment with upgraded versions. Sending 20 MLRS systems to Ukraine was seen as a big deal, but the US makes 9,000 rockets for those launchers every year, and those rockets are soon to be obsoleted by the ER GMLRS.
Counterpoint.
Even Russia is probably getting low on ammunition and they were making far, far more per year and stockpiling in anticipation of a conflict.
US never planned for something like this:
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
It doesn't have to be as nimble as the 1940s, it just has to be better at doing so than Russia, with vastly more resources than Russia.
You are forgetting who is the pre-eminent industrial power in the world.
Hint: it's not the US.
China produces more, measured in terms of manufacturing output in dollar terms, but there's not a huge gap:
https://www.brookings.edu/research/global-manufacturing-scorecard-how-the-us-compares-to-18-other-nations/
Russia is similar to countries like Turkey and Spain.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
When you look around at everything with a weld on it, 428,000 seems like such a tiny number, doesn't it?
Was just thinking that about the 200k HVAC techs who would collapse civilization if they all went on summer holiday at once.
It's probably not enough to churn out millions of AR-15s, sure, but it's enough to build something. Perhaps at least build tools to make other things with.
The US civilian sector produced over 2.4 million AR-15s and AKs in 2020.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Production is irrelevant when the time to produce the stocks is measured in years, and the rate of consumption is measured in months.
The US cannot keep the supply of Javelins or any other matteriel flowing to Ukraine at anywhere near the rate this war is consuming them. Russia's crappy soviet stockpiles are decades behind the times and half have been plundered... but 50ish% of them are there.
To take just Javellins, the US had given 1/3rd of its total stock of Javelins to Ukraine by April and most of that's been consumed or been sold off to the highest bidder by now.
The US has almost certainly crossed the 50% mark by this point.... that's it. The supply is not going to reach that peak again during this war and the US is almost certainly hoarding most of the remain stock for themselves given they just witnessed how fast that supply is consumed in any real conflict.
The history of WWII stands in direct rebuke to this thesis
Any reason you left off the second part of that clause:
WW2 no one was consuming materiel at rates vastly in excess of what even US production kicked out. The allies had to bomb german factories to get them falling into shortages, they weren't consuming 30% of global stock in the first 5 months of Barbarossa.
More options
Context Copy link
It's not your grandmother's country these days.
Irrelevant, the claim being made is still demonstrably false
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Manufacturing was close to 25% of the US economy in that era, it's 10% today (and far more narrowly focused on a smaller number of high margin industries rather than low value businesses like assembly that are pretty important if a nation wants to convert to building weapon systems). GM could quickly make diesel engines and jeeps or tanks, Intel can't convert to missiles or something similar nearly as quickly.
Dunno if that's a good analogy. Intel probably can't switch to building whole missiles, sure, but they probably can build the electronics for guiding said missile.
More options
Context Copy link
10% of US manufacturing capacity is still an order of magnitude more than what the Russians got.
Sure, but they already have a gigantic stockpile of old weapons, they don't have to match manufacturing.
Most likely most of that "gigantic stockpile" is fictional or doesn't work.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Not saying the US wouldn't beat Russia in raw steel output, but the number isn't "% of manufacturing capacity", it "% of GDP that goes to manufacturing", which, if this whole affair has taught me anything, is a silly number.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I think you, like some of our mutual acquaintances, have been putting too much stock in the Russians With Attitude Podcast without adding the requisite pound of salt.
I don't listen to RWA. I just pay attention to the relevant ratios, who's consistently shown to be full of it, and what get leaked or admitted.
none of even the serious pro-Ukraine people expect them to win the fight. Peter Zeihan is a full on neo-con and he keeps talking about pushing Kherson and cutting off the water and Electricity supply to Crimea, that that'd be a bargaining chip, or taking out the bridge at the Kerch strait and cutting off rail supply... but neither of those seem to be materializing, and it seems more likely Russia would just retaliate against Ukrainian civilian infrastructure. And aside from that, he's just "Ya Ukraine is outperforming... really showing bravery, too bad the default is they'll probably lose"
And every neo-con or belicose commentator is like this once you ignore the high energy announcements and get into their analysis and predictions its "Ya no its exciting they could pull off this crazy dramatic campaign we've never seen signs of them doing and it would change everything ever... but odds are they won't and they'll get ground down and lose everything slowly and painfully... but hey we still bleed Russia and stop the Germans from pivoting to them, so a US geostrategic victory"
Every time, as soon as you dig into one of these more serious commentators that stake their influence on major us intellectuals taking them seriously, they'll spend ten minutes hedging, praising the UKrainians bravery, lay out some absurd tele-lazer snipe Zelensky could do if he levels up his mech to 5 stars... and then they say "But they need something like that, because as is they're going be ground down militarily and economically until they collapse"
Zelensky admitted 200-500 deaths a day, that's probably 1000-1500 total casualties once you include wounded. That's not sustainable. Their squads that go around black bagging people for the front are going to become predictable and conscripts will dry up. Especially in a corrupt country where gdp is 3k per person, everything runs on bribery, and perhaps even a majority of America's 100 billion went to just paying people off.
We should not expect the Ukrainian commanders to be much different than the Afghan allies the US was funding and training for 20 years... Right now they're getting those black bagged conscripts to the front, because the money hasn't dried up yet... after a winter of economic decline and the US has gotten distracted by an election cycle, another current thing, and congress and the senate are gridlocked across multiple parties, and no one can pass a Ukraine funding bill without someone attaching funding for abortion for illegal immigrant's ar-15s...
US clients have never not been like this. Vietnam collapsed the second US funding and backing started to wane, ditto Iraq, ditto Afghanistan... Hell the US almost lost Berlin to the soviets.
.
US backed regional wars are a very specific genre just like slasher movies or romantic comedies There is a formula, a very simple formula.
The enemy is always on the run... except none of the "Dangerous" regions ever seem to become safe regions, and there are a shocking number of offensives that get uncomfortable. The allies are always great brave men fighting for their homeland and the best anywhere in the world... but their budgets are never trackable and they seem to be oddly overlapped with organized crime... hey is that oppium? Hey are those neo-nazi tattoos? America's allies are always winning and training and get really professional and buttoned up...yet they never seem to stop being dependent on attached mercenaries and special force... and seem to always have bad luck maintaining any initiative,
and finally The enemy is always laughably incompetent, loses every battle, and can't do even basic stuff the US expects of its worse units...and yet somehow they win the war.
.
.
The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results... well the US kinda learned... they aren't sending their own conscripts to this Vietnam... just blowing incredible amounts propping up an ARVN force they know isn't sustainable... so instead of years and administrations before the whole thing fails, Ukraine has months and a midterm.
.
America wins every invasion, and cia coup... for the same reason it loses every complex local enabled patronage war... the US in constitutionally incapable of addapting its meta tactics. Its winning formula are winning and they work, and they don't get changed... and the second a US invasion gets repelled it might literally be the end of the world, but until the end of the world every US invasion will be a cakewalk. And likewise every US backed local military force, militia and insurgency they arm and train are going to be primarily interested in scamming the American tax payer, because hell that's what the American contractors are there to do and the US isn't going to adapt tactics even if you're caught scamming them.
That people can still fall for this Afghan National Army bull... I swear some of the articles about female fighters were just search and replace and they forgot to take out the sentence about face coverings.
Its a formula. Its a very simple formula.
The republic of Korea, Israel, the Croats first and then the Kosovars too for good measure, literal fucking Greece, all of south America sans Venezuela I guess and Cuba(lol).
If you want to write at length about a topic, get it right. No amount of edgy style and substance is going to cover up how thoroughly wrong you are to those who read what you are actually saying. Shame on you.
ROK collapsed and almost started WW3, Israel scams the American taxpayer endlessly and wags the dog more than should be theoretically possible, Croats and Kosovars committed their own ethnic cleansing and had no real geostrategic value anyway, and as for Greece and South America: I said the US is very successful at CIA coups... empowering the locals to put an end to insurgencies and fighting groups vastly less so given the continued survival of FARC and Marxist insurgencies in the vein of Shining Path.
also Greek civil war doesn't count since it was still in the British field of influence and Suez hadn't marked the end of empire yet.
Yes, things went poorly in Korea. Then the Americans got serious and made it into an immensely good opposite to what you're saying.
Israel doesn't count because.. Money? Moving the goalposts is no good argument either.
Yes, the Balkans saw a bunch of ethnic cleansing happen. No American ostensibly cares, and I don't know how it's relevant for any strategic reason.
The Greeks got a cool $400 million in American 'military aid' for their war. 'Doesn't count,' my ass.
And finally, if the shining path and the FARC are signs that America's enemies are succeeding, I'd hate to know what their failures look like. Their leaders die, their people get vaingloriously shot and forgotten about, and they seem to achieve nothing at all. If this is your grand theory about a 'very simple formula', it makes being an American ally look pretty good indeed.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
So many words, and so little truth and substance. Everything verifiable in your post about the war is a lie, and others are just inane ramblings.
Zelensky said that? You got a source for it? The max I remember was 50-100 a day during the most intense fighting when Ukraine was pursuing a ridiculous no-step-back strategy in Sievierodonesk. Considerable casualties for sure but 4 times less than your lies. That difficult period lasted about a month.
You got a source for the black bagging squads? If this is common occurrence responsible for any appreciable amount of conscripts then we'd have hundreds of telegram videos as proof.
Yeah? Who are those credible commentators you are referring to? Michael Kofman? Dara Massicot? It's easy to make up shit when it's unspecific.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-61742736
This Zelensky Aide puts it at 200 dead and 500 more injured.
RT cites one of Zelenksy's main negotiators as putting it at the 200-500 mark:
https://www.rt.com/news/557262-ukraine-daily-military-casualties/
And here's the Axios story if you don't trust RT citations:
https://www.axios.com/2022/06/15/ukraine-1000-casualties-day-donbas-arakhamia
And here's the video of Ukrainian forces conscripting people off the streets at gunpoint:
https://twitter.com/ivan_8848/status/1556566862846169088?s=20&t=6Cp7CVwajUHcXaPalKx9zA
"RT"
Are you serious?
Lavrov in March was claiming that Russia has not attacked Ukraine.
Even official count of shot down aircraft provided by Ukrainian propaganda is more credible.
Reading comprehension is important.
I provided two sources with the exact same data
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
So, not Zelensky, and not 200-500 deaths with 1000-1500 total casualties? Your sources support none of your initial claims, but you still post them as if they do. How would you feel if I claimed Putin verified 20k dead Russian soldiers but had to walkback to Shoigu saying 6k dead Russian soldiers? Would you think I was being intellectually honest? The same applies here.
On the topic of forceful conscription, it's just a single video of soldiers bullying civilians without context. Your initial claim is that an appreciable amount of the 700k mobilized forces were pressganged off the streets, so the evidentiary standard needs to be higher.
Did you even read the axios piece? https://www.axios.com/2022/06/15/ukraine-1000-casualties-day-donbas-arakhamia
200-500 dead per day and 1000 tatal casualties per day in the donbass alone. Per the ukrainian negotiator working directly for Zelensky.
Sorry I don't know the Ukrainian term for their whitehouse so used Zelensky to stand in for the Office and Senior leadership. A normal linguistic convention for world leaders if you ever attributed anything to Biden or trump that came from Jen Psaki or Sean Spicer.
Sorry i was trying to let you save face by giving you multiple sources the most face saving of which dips down in the direction of your estimate... but lets be real Ukrainain officials have been lying about every operational detail then openly admitting they were lying at every point in this war... so I'm going to take the higher number that even they admitted.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
You say "none of even the serious pro-Ukraine people expect them to win the fight." and I ask define "win". The Fins "lost" the winter war by all official accounts, but that's not how history remembers it.
You talk about "high energy announcements" I ask who, when, where? Because the way I remember it is guy's like you Shakesneer, Cimafra, AlphanumericSprawl Et Al predicting Kiev's collapse and Moscow's inevitable victory "any day now" for 7 months now while at the same time I was getting derided for suggesting that any Russian incursion into western Ukraine would likely end in a bloodbath. You might disagree but I'm feeling pretty validated in my priors, where as yours appear to have been thoroughly falsified.
Ditto so called the claims of so-called "intellectuals"
Continuing, 200 - 500 deaths out of 1.5 million or so aint nothing, but it aint exactly something either. Yet somehow Zelensky admitting after the fact that that the ISW's initial estimates of Ukrainain casualties in the first few weeks of the war (despite those estimates being substantially higher than the official tally) were largely accurate is somehow supposed to to prove the Russia partisan's claims that that the ISW is hopelessly biased in favor of Ukraine. I don't see it.
You say
and I reply that the first statement is a patent falsehood, I get that as a Canadian and as a pot-smoker you have difficulty with long term memory so I will remind you that back in March the city limits of both Kiev and Kharkiv were under immediate threat not so much any more. as for the latter statement it is trivially true because all offensives get uncomfortable.
Hey, leave us pot smokers out of it.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
You really should, Ukrainians are not like Afghanis, or if they are, they're closer to the Taliban.
Oh well.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Can they? I think they can't actually mobilize all those men. And if they could, they'd just be turning them into cannon fodder.
Ancient equipment which hasn't been maintained and quite possibly exists only on paper (long since sold for scrap to feather someone's nest) isn't going to help them
The Germans are of course idiots, but it's hard to see how Russia is benefiting.
International supply chains will not collapse over Russia and Ukraine. Aside from Europe's natural gas. If they'd execute a few Greens for treason they could probably solve that problem, but they won't.
Yes, war does that. But what else can they do, surrender? That's not better.
Russia holds important territory now, but they can't just declare victory and stop as long as the Ukranians can fight.
The trick is finding one which doesn't mean "We take Eastern Ukraine now, and the rest later". At this point I think it's off the table until Russia is exhausted or Ukraine is thoroughly beaten.
Fairly certain I’ve seen data that Russia no longer has a trade surplus since their not selling gas anymore and oil prices fell.
And that’s besides long term issues that Europe won’t trust Russia as an energy supplier or that Russia isn’t getting the imports they need to run their economy.
Also not sure how useful 1940’s tanks are today. Not many cars work from then. And they would be going up against HiMars and Javelins. Could be just canon fodder which I’m not sure how many Russians are willing to be.
Is that kind of analysis super relevant in a world where we're talking about mass mobilization of infantry? Russia feeds itself, if it can do that and produce weapons, the current account and living standards are kind of irrelevant if the government retains control.
That's like saying that the flammability of material is kind of irrelevant if it does not ignite.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More than you'd think.
The reports I read on sustained warfare recently penned by French generals were surprisingly glowing of that old tech actually, if you can bring in the numbers and the industry to make the parts.
The basic scenario they have for a WW3 would be everyone blowing up all their fancy modern equipment in the first year or so (or not using them out of fear of destruction like the dreadnoughts of WW1 which is functionally the same) and then reverting back to primitive but reliable equipment that's about 40s levels of tech once the satellite communications and fancy gizmoes all run out.
Now this isn't WW3 so the parameters are not exactly the same, but Ukraine is in a situation that still makes large amounts of shit armor useful: for logistical reasons the West mostly gave them light equipment and they are running out of the complex weapon systems and vehicles by their own account.
Another thing to consider is how vulnerable armor has become on the modern battlefield. The people now clamoring that the tank is dead and we should ditch it for light vehicles and artillery may be going too far, but modern ATGMs (which is just what the Ukies have been given) do make the difference between modern and not so modern tanks less relevant. If your modern tank blows up all the same, you'd rather have two not so modern tanks.
I don't share your doubts that throwing a ton of troops with mediocre equipment as target practice to the western wunderwaffen would be acceptable to the Russians. This is what Russia does and has always done, after all. And it worked out for them so many times that it might actually be the right call.
All in all, I think people are overselling the materiel angle here. Manpower is a much more constraining factor in my opinion.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
They can force conscript, if Putin's willing to pay the costs he's gone to significant expense to avoid to date, but a major issue is that the Russians already cannibalized their mobilization and training infrastructure. The units whose job it is/would be to train new arrivals have already had their cadres raided to fill in at places like Kherson, and some reports of mobilized reservist training are of 1 week refresher before going to the front.
So, yes, probably cannon fodder, especially as the systems they would be meant to give mass to- and which in turn force-multiply them- have been extremely degraded, and the Russian supply system hasn't fixed its fundamental dependence on rail.
The crux of mobilization is that it would have been far more effective far earlier, when Russia still had its higher-tech precision strike capabilities and hadn't lost modernized tanks number in the multiple european nations. Even if mothball reserves still exist /work / get refurbished, they're at this point to replace superior equipment that already failed, even as Ukrainian capabilities have grown.
The argument generally rests on Russia's record oil import dollars from the energy price jump, while ignoring different metrics like the GDP slump or impacts to various non-oil industries like the airline sector (uh, not good) or vehicle manufacturing (97% car production decline in May 22 compared to May 21), on top of the implications of hundreds of thousands range of emmigration.
The general argument is that thanks to the fuck-off money the other impacts don't matter, and that the Europeans will cave and go back to buying Russian gas long-term instead of completing the gas import terminal projects, thus giving Russia a bumper crop of energy sales instead of functionally increasing the room temperature by burning down the house.
Supply chains no, food chains maybe, but the assumption to be challenged is why Assad would be stable in a food-insecure region, and how insecurity in the middle east actually benefits Russia beyond 'oil price stronk' arguments that resolve economic health to oil prices and assumptions that the US response to a Middle Eastern humanitarian crisis won't be to just sell the oil-rich countries more food at higher prices.
There isn't enough exports worldwide.
EU imports from RU were the size of the LNG spot market.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Every war in history has ended in a negotiated settlement in which the winner keeps the territory and prizes they took. The exceptions are things like Troy, Carthage, and Berlin... and the Ukrainians aren't making it to Moscow.
The most likely scenario if Ukraine doesn't negotiate is this continues until America stops funding them, and Europes economic aid stops working... at which point they collapse, Russsia takes vastly more, and they become a warlord run failed state for the next several decades.
Wars are either won in the maneuver or the economics and logistics... the maneuvering has stopped and Ukraine's economic position is only going to get worse. America isn't going to give them another hundred billion dollars, perhaps even a majority of that disappeared into bribes, and what's left of their economy is going to collapse in the next 6 months.
Russia taking its land corridor and the republics, and crimmea now, and then Ukraine getting a few years to actually have an economy, rearm, and ideally set u psome trade ties so they aren't on constant edge with russia is a massively better idea than them fighting til they collapse on some lie Europe told them about an EU membership they were never going to give a country with nothing to offer and a GDP below 5k per capita (ask the Turks about that one)
Meta: I hope we can maintain norms that downvotes aren't for mere disagreement. This thread has some heavily downvoted comments that as far as I can tell aren't arguing in bad faith, breaking rules, or violating other norms. This is one such comment, there are many others.
More options
Context Copy link
The opening premise is false and thus the rest of the argument is false.
More options
Context Copy link
The UCDP Conflict Termination dataset (link, paper) has this data:
Most wars fizzle into low-level unresolved stalemates without formal concessions or recognitions. Only half or so of interstate conflicts end in a ceasefire or peace agreements (typically the former).
In suggesting a negotiated solution, one should also be aware of the statistics and factors regardings the durability of peace agreements, and particularly the tensions over incompatible interpretations of Minsk II that failed to be resolved in the Normandy format talks that initiated this conflict.
So a negotiated settlement or a defacto settlement which saves face by not signing a paper. the point remains: there is no way you magically get lost territory back by wishing, and unless you keep escalating til you lose everything you have to accept your enemy controls what they control.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Certainly not. Troy, Carthage, and Berlin are not the only wars where one side was vanquished. There have been many successful wars of conquest.
America can fund them at these levels (tens of billions, not hundreds) indefinitely. There's no point in them negotiating until they can be assured it means more than "we'll take what we have now and the rest later". And there is another option -- the Russian invasion and occupation force collapses and Ukraine drives them out of the country. It is not a foregone conclusion that Russia wins.
Russia has made it clear that Ukraine is not a legitimate entity to them. If the war were somehow to stop now, it would be Russia which would take a few years to re-arm and re-group and then take the rest of Ukraine.
That seems highly unlikely given how poorly the war has gone so far, and could be prevented simply by inviting Ukraine into NATO.
What does that have to do with anything?
More options
Context Copy link
No it is not, but it's important to remember that there a sizable contingent of Red Diaper Babies amongst the "Gray Tribe" who's belief in Materialism, IE a rational world ruled by inductive reason, requires the Russians to win.
Why is this?
Why are the Red Diaper Babies amongst the Gray Tribe? chock it up the the academic mindset and the shit I'm always going on about Hobbes vs Rousseau.
Why is it important? It isn't in the grand scheme of things, but it does explain why rationalists in general and mottezens in particular seem to skew pro-Putin and pro-CCP despite their ostensibly libertarian backgrounds.
you are aware my Seniors thesis was on Hobbes and I'm a biological determinist?(completely antithetical to Russeau)
.
.
Note: I don't "Identify" as a biological determinist... I am a biological determinist. My biology is deterministically making my mind process the sum of all available evidence and conclude biologically deterministic conclusions.
.
.
Ps. For those of you wondering how one could be a Hobbesian and a libertarian, Royalist in the 17th century would be think they naturally follow. Most absolutists hated Hobbes and described Leviathan as a "Rebel's Catechism" (Ie. Justification for almost all rebellion)
To give just one example Hobbesian analysis preclude conscription, or atleast allows that armed rebellion against conscription is justified and logical, unless the person being conscripted is in immediate danger of an opposing force (such as a besieged city or alien invasion)
More options
Context Copy link
I meant more "why does Materialism imply support for Russia?"
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link