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The big point here would be China, but since China isn't overtly sending arms to Russia it's a non-factor for this analysis. NATO or even just the EU completely trounce Russia + Iran + NK in terms of manufacturing output, but the problem is political will. You're correct that most people in the West don't really see the war as all that important, which is why the will isn't there.
The arguments saying Ukraine will run out of people are just as silly as the Western articles that predicted that Russia would run out of tanks or missiles. Both types of analyses ignore the fact that new people/tanks/missiles are maturing/convalescing or being produced constantly. There's certainly an argument to be made that Ukraine digging deeper into it's manpower pool will lead to problems in force quality, like how Russia could become production-constrained in terms of certain types of equipment. But this will simply be a force-(de)multiplier that interacts with other strengths and weaknesses. It's silly to think it will be decisive by itself. Most casualty estimates from credible sources have actually been fairly low for a conventional war that's been going on for nearly 2 years.
Incorrect. Military manufacturing takes time to spin up, and the factories that could be converted into arms and materiel factories were moved to China and various other nations. Do you know what the difference in naval manufacturing ability between China and the US is? China has 232 times the shipbuilding capacity of the USA. The numbers for various other capabilities are starkly different as well, and this is a problem because ammunition factories take time to start up and you need to train people to work at them as well. Political will makes a difference, but it doesn't matter how much political will there is - you can't convert a manufacturing facility into an arms/ammunition factory when it was sold off to China ten years ago and the town that used to support it is now full of fentanyl zombies, nor can you build a new one in two seconds instead of a year no matter how hard you vote.
There's a big difference between people and ammunition - people take a lot longer to make. If you get started right now, it takes at least 18 years and 9 months to produce a human being, and there are some pretty severe bottlenecks in the process as well (like the number of fertile women). But moreover, there's a bigger difference between those two claims, which is evidence. The Russians are still shooting shells and raining down artillery - but the Ukraine is currently failing to meet mobilisation girls and there's video evidence of women being sent to the frontlines, along with photos of teenaged boys going through military training. Casualty numbers are hard to come by, but the ones I've seen certainly match up with the Ukraine being forced to send women into the field.
On your first point, most of what you're saying is true, but again it must be said that China isn't overtly supporting Russia by sending weapons. If it was, the war would be a completely different ball game. Comparing just NATO countries to Russia (and NK + Iran), the overall manufacturing potential is still overwhelmingly in favor of NATO despite deindustrialization. Political will is the utter decisive factor here, as factories indeed take time to be converted to warmaking potential, but it's been almost 2 years now and quite little progress has been made since there's a distinct lack of urgency.
They're not getting started right now though. Humans don't just start reproducing when a war breaks out, it's a continuous pipeline. Your comment on the 18 years thing is like you're implying there wasn't a single person in Ukraine under the age of 18 when the war broke out, but that's obviously not what you're saying since that's just totally goofy. I really don't know what point you're trying to make here.
Most casualty estimates I've seen are around 150-200K for the Ukrainian side, which is nowhere close to using up all the men in Ukraine. You could double it AND factor in a huge Ukrainian population loss from refugees, and it still wouldn't come close. There have been corruption issues in the Ukrainian mobilization pipeline since the war began, so the anecdotes about women or septuagenarians being kidnapped and being put into uniform are likely that, plus some degree of issues regarding force quality as I mentioned earlier. Mobilization wasn't exactly pretty on the Russian side when they had their big drive, even though they were pulling from a population 4x the size.
Implying a black and white picture of Ukraine being on the verge of having all its military-aged men being dead simply isn't credible.
In terms of ammunition and military supplies, Russia seems to have a clear advantage in the current conflict. Just to be clear, I'm of the opinion that starting this conflict with Russia was a terrible misstep on the part of the west, and the consequences of Western defeat are going to be nasty.
The point was about how any interventions designed to produce more people are going to take a very long time to bear fruit, and the personnel situation really can't be fixed at this point in time.
I don't think we're going to get credible or accurate information about the exact casualty numbers out of Ukraine - there's too much incentive to lie for everybody involved in the process. But every single other indicator we see shows Ukraine having serious recruiting issues, failing to meet mobilisation targets and sending women to the front - which are all things that would not be happening if they had a healthy pool of recruits and lots of manpower.
In terms of ammo and military supplies, yes Russia seems to have the advantage... because the West doesn't see Ukraine as a sufficiently galvanizing issue to make serious commitments. I think we're basically in agreement here.
On the other statement, we're in direct disagreement. I think the West, especially the US, could afford to lose most of Ukraine at relatively little cost. On the other hand, Russia's (really, Putin's) decision to invade has turned Russia's already bleak future even more unpromising.
Exact numbers are impossible obviously, although estimates are probably reasonable within an uncertainty band. I'd be surprised if Ukraine's casualties were greater than 175% of the estimates the US makes, for instance. US intelligence has been quite good in the war so far, correctly predicting that Russia could indeed invade when most European intelligence thought it was needless US warmongering.
Ukraine's manpower anecdotes are indicative of problems specifically of its recruiting pipeline being corrupt and leaky. I feel like you're doing a motte and bailey here of implying force quality issues (which are legitimate, and exacerbated by casualties) will become a decisive factor when Ukraine effectively runs out of men to hold the frontline (a goofy idea that won't happen).
I don't think the West is actually capable of spinning up their weapons and arms manufacturing capacities in time for it to be relevant. Even if the political will appeared overnight, there's a big lead time which would prevent this from being relevant on any timescale that would help Ukraine before Russia wins.
The problem is not that the west would lose Ukraine - the problem is that this would demonstrate that it is possible to stand against the hegemon and succeed. The sanctions which failed to destroy the Russian economy have succeeded in convincing the rest of the world that de-dollarisation is a great idea, and that trend has picked up speed since the conflict went hot. I agree that the Ukraine is largely worthless to the West at large, but the symbolic value of the US being defeated by Russia in an actual armed conflict would be extremely significant.
This conflict was instigated by the west - I don't think Russia particularly wanted this war, but they weren't given a realistic choice. They're not going to agree to any peace negotiations now either, seeing as how it has since come out that the Minsk accords were explicitly made in bad faith (well, that and the fact that they're currently winning and have no incentive to stop).
I will agree to this with a bit of hesitation - actual classified estimates that are meant for people on the inside would likely be more accurate, but anything released for public consumption deserves a more sceptical eye. I don't think the US is incapable of finding this out, but is motivated to paint an optimistic picture for the Ukrainians.
There are far too many stories for this to be a matter of "anecdotes". Conscription efforts are failing to meet 10% of their goals, and when you have to amend your conscription rules to allow more disabled and mentally ill people into the army that's a sign of serious crisis. You don't fire the head of every single regional recruitment centre if you don't have serious, systemic problems that go beyond the level of "anecdotes". Furthermore, knowing that the pipeline is corrupt and leaky doesn't actually fix the problem - and I don't think they have the time and resources to spare in order to fix it right now.
That's an understandable reading of my position and I wasn't as clear as I should have been - mea culpa. To state my position more clearly, I think that Ukraine's current manpower issues are severe enough that there is no realistic path to victory for them moving forward. They have lost too many experienced soldiers and their current training efforts aren't capable of producing enough qualified soldiers in time to make a difference. Right now, they don't even have a realistic hope of obtaining any concessions from Russia - all they can do is slow down the Russian advance and hope for some kind of eucatastrophe.
WW1 occurred over 4 years, WW2 occurred over less from the USSR/USA's perspective, the sides which produced an overwhelming amount of equipment (esp. the USA). Sure there's a spin-up time, but it's measured in years, not decades, assuming there's political will.
It's nonsense to think the West was the primary antagonist here, especially after Russia's invasion of Georgia effectively killed the Budapest Memo. Russia seized Crimea in 2014, but even after that the West was largely content to leave Ukraine in limbo. It was Russia who threw the dice in 2022. It's their troops who are invading. Saying the West is the primary instigator of this conflict is like saying the UK started WW2 in Europe, or that the USA started WW2 in the Pacific.
Also, Minsk died in large part due to Russia not following it.
This is just availability bias. You're likely plugged into the pro Russian information sphere, which will signal-boost any possible problem with Ukraine's recruitment to maximum effect, like how BLM did the same for police killing unarmed black men, which happened but all the stories made people thought thousands of cases happened per year. Extrapolating anecdotal stories to broader implications on population levels is extremely fraught.
This is indeed a far less ridiculous case than the one it seemed like you were implying, although I still disagree. I can see the population math preventing Ukraine from doing the "head-on, faceplant into the teeth of enemy defences" style of warfare that Russia's using to take tiny slivers of land. At least, not without other factors like supply bottlenecks in Kherson. It could still win fairly handily if the West really geared up for a war economy and treated this like Russia was attacking the West broadly and that Ukrainian soldiers just happened to be in the way. Ukraine could also win from a black swan event that toppled Putin and caused chaos in Russian leadership, which looks unlikely until it isn't.
Although I'm personally becoming more pessimistic about Ukraine's chances given the lack of urgency in the West. A negotiated settlement where Russia keeps most of what it currently occupies looks increasingly likely.
Agreed! I just don't think Ukraine has years left. The US is also going to have a bit more trouble now than it did in WW2 due to the rampant amounts of corruption in the MIC, as well as the DEI requirements currently being foisted on the military and their contractors - selecting for diversity over competence means you're going to have competence problems, and US contractors don't have a choice in the matter.
Russia's borders haven't moved nearly as much as NATO's have. I personally believe the reports that NATO promised Russia not to expand to their borders, but I know a lot of people don't - so instead I'll just say that I view this conflict as starting during the Maidan protests, and the US was deeply involved with those, helping to "midwife" a new regime that was more compatible with their goals. Talking about this conflict as being a war of Russian aggression feels the exact same to me as talking about how the Iraq war was justified by Saddam's WMD program, or how the Vietnamese started the war with the (imaginary) Gulf of Tonkin incident.
Please give me a source that doesn't just call people who aren't even communists "tankies" and uses stupid terms like "gasminsking". But none of that matters because we actually have a recording of Francois Hollande admitting in what he thought was a private conversation that the entire point was to let Ukraine arm up and prepare for war. If Russia wanted this war from the beginning, why wouldn't they simply attack then?
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Wrong. The severity of the factual stories that have come out of the current situation reach far beyond the level of anecdote. Regions failing to meet 10% of their recruiting targets and the heads of every single regional recruiting group being fired are simply not things that happen when the situation is perfectly fine. Reduced standards for recruits are another - that's not an anecdote, that's official policy that covers the entirety of the country. Conscripting women, which is another official policy and not simply a matter of anecdotes, is a gigantic, flashing neon sign that the situation is desperate. Look at Ukraine's demographics right now - do you think they would be throwing any fertile women into the meatgrinder if they had any choice in the matter at all? If you want to make the argument that they're just really stupid and incompetent rather than desperate, I don't think that changes the impact on their chances of success.
No, Ukraine doesn't win in that scenario. In that scenario the Ukraine is reduced to a series of radioactive craters and future biologists get to talk about the Holocene extinction event (assuming any humans survive the resulting nuclear winter). Ukraine doesn't win if this becomes an all out war of Russia vs the West - the entire world loses.
I think the most likely outcome of the conflict is that the breakaway republics get subsumed back into Russia, and Ukraine gets reduced to a basketcase rump state. They've taken on vast amounts of debt, are going to have huge economic problems due to the existing corruption, have already started undergoing a demographic crisis thanks to the war/emigration and have also had huge swathes of productive infrastructure destroyed by the conflict. Russia is no doubt going to saddle them with a puppet/caretaker regime that makes sure to throw in regular tribute payments to Russia to boot. They would have been better off suing for peace earlier and simply accepting that Russia gets to keep Crimea and the breakaway republics - but that's just not an option anymore.
DEI is bad generally, but it's not even close to being decisive here. The problem was the US let its DIB atrophy during the 90s to 2010s, and the US had a massive turn away from manufacturing towards service jobs.
Besides Victoria Nuland and John McCain visiting during the events, the Maidan was almost entirely a grassroots Ukrainian movement. Every time I've pointed this out the pro-RU side has retorted with unfalsifiable narratives of the CIA being behind everything, effectively saying nothing in the world ever happens without the CIA having a hand in it. If that's the way you're going then we'll have to agree to disagree.
It's easier than that: whichever side has their troops on the land of the other side is the aggressor. The US was definitely the aggressor in Iraq + Afghanistan, and Russia is certainly the aggressor now.
Again, this is evidence of Ukraine's recruiting being corrupt, and possible issues regarding manpower quality, but not of a total lack of men to hold guns. It's not like Russia doesn't have recruiting issues of its own.
Escalating the conflict is strongly against Russia's interest up until both sides launch all their nukes at each other, which is just bad for everyone.
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