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PaperclipPerfector  5mo ago (text post)   25754 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 4, 2023

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Since @greyenlightenment suggested a list of topics that weren't getting enough attention in the previous CWR thread, I decided to write a bit about Russia-Ukraine situation.

The summer campaign has ended, and Ukraine has found itself in an unenviable situation. The much-hyped counteroffensive has achieved only marginal gains, but the EU has exhausted its disposable stocks of arms and armor and the US, which has enough disposable firepower to zone rouge a medium-sized country, is a) not a charity and b) kinda getting busy with other stuff.

All this means Ukraine knows it won't be able to conduct further offensive operations and its most important medium-term goal is to not lose. There are multiple ways it can lose:

  • it loses foreign financial support that is keeping its economy afloat, either because
    • it runs out of collateral for the IMF and similar sharks' loans, or because
    • paying Russia off directly becomes a much cheaper option, or because
    • its politicians, who, like Squire Trelawney, don't know when to keep their mouth shut, pick a fight with each other or the EU
  • it runs out of SAMs during the winter and Russia achieves air superiority. I am quite sure there are people in Russia right now trying to come up with the cheapest possible missiles or drones that can't be shot down with tube AA
  • Putin re-elects himself in spring and starts a mass mobilization to extend the frontline. There's a reason why Ukraine started talking about reinforcing their northern border

Having so many ways to lose means the time is ripe for a ceasefire or even peace negotiations, but when your adversary smells blood they won't be satisfied with just what they have. So Ukraine either:

  • tries to agree to a ceasefire and frantically prepares for a resumption of hostilities (and even the biggest patriots of Ukraine won't trust their country not to screw the process up fatally)
  • agrees to significant concessions in exchange for peace (Finlandization at the very least, outright puppeting as the worst-case scenario)
  • or continues to resist, hoping for a black swan that hurts Russia and not them, or at least for a glorious last stand (sure Prague is a prettier city than Warsaw, but Poles know the glory is theirs)

Generally speaking I am in - I want Russia to win in Ukraine mostly because of the prestige the EU and US have put there and because Zelensky is behaving like entitled brat. But any analysis that doesn't include at least couple of paragraphs on the Russian situation, and the challenges in front of them is incomplete.

Do we have any reasons to believe that Russia will be stronger next year or that at least the decline of Ukraine will be faster that the one of Russia (then the artillery theorem comes into play and Ukraine is fucked). That Russian economy won't crash because of the sanctions kicking in? That Russia's military industrial complex will be able to produce enough stuff that goes boom?

Do we have any reasons to believe that Russia will be stronger next year or that at least the decline of Ukraine will be faster that the one of Russia (then the artillery theorem comes into play and Ukraine is fucked).

That Russian economy won't crash because of the sanctions kicking in?

I've spent the last two years waiting for it to crash. It has definitely shrunk, but seems to have stabilized with no new sanctions on the horizon.

That Russia's military industrial complex will be able to produce enough stuff that goes boom?

It can outproduce the EU, since the EU is involved, but Russia is committed.

The biggest problem Russia has to fix if it wants to win is the quality of its officer corps. Until it's fixed it can only do frontal pushes and is incapable even of Uranus-style pincer attacks.

Of course, it can't fix it because it's afraid of its army. Look at what a single former hot dog salesman could do with his PMC. No one at the top wants a general Rohlin, a colonel Vasin or even a major Kvachkov to rise through the ranks.

Caveat: It can outproduce the EU in specific areas that are very important for Somme 2: Ukraine edition but not in other key areas like say, any plane that isn't significantly older than you.

This puts a limit on their ambitions, and REALLY incentivises them to get this done one way or the other before someone donates a 3rd string f16 block 40 NATO airforce from the 90's to Ukraine.

Ah, the coup-proofing problem. Give colonels too much independence, and you need to worry about their loyalty. Select colonels for loyalty, and you need to worry about their competence. Russia isn’t competent or efficient enough to thread that needle, so it just errs on one side rather than the other.

Even selecting for loyalty is iffy - loyalties can change quickly. Better just select for incompetence to be safe.

It works out decently for regimes which can pull it off, like Iran and the USA.

The USA, despite its many policy failures, still has a sufficiently meritocratic officer corps. And Iran, being a theocracy, uses piety instead of personal loyalty, which is much less wavering.

Well yes, because piety, either to the religious establishment joined at the hip to the state or to a set of democratic ideals, allows you to give your officers more independence.

I suspect that the spread of monarchy was a way to route around this problem; the person as an institution is a formidable combination.

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