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PaperclipPerfector  4mo ago (text post)   29105 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 18, 2023

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There’s a long discussion downthread on the possibility/desirability of a truce between Ukraine and Russia. Moral considerations aside, a large number of commentators thought that it would be foolish to sue for peace under pretty much any circumstances because Putin wouldn’t keep to it.

It seems to me that refocusing efforts towards fortifying at/near the current de facto borders would change the calculus by making it much more painful to break a peace. I’m thinking especially wide-ranging minefields. As I understand it, this has made it quite difficult for Ukrainians to advance, could the same be made to work in reverse? And if so, how practical would it be to build up such defences in the current climate with current levels of international assistance?

Fortifications still need men to guard them, they can compliment troops only to a certain extent. The young men are dead, deployed or gone. If the average age of your soldiers is 43 and you have Ukrainian demographics, you're not winning any wars in future because you won't have the soldiers left to fight them.

Furthermore, the Russians aren't stopping until they get the territories they want along with some kind of Finlandization/demilitarization/puppet state (the whole 'Denazification' angle is pretty silly considering Zelensky is Jewish but the meaning shines through). That has been Russia's proclaimed war goal the whole time. Why would they stop and leave the Ukrainians time to recover? The Ukrainians have been fortifying since 2014. They put great effort into fortifying Donbass, which the Russians have slowly been grinding through. Why would the Russians take substantial casualties on these fortifications, push to the point where the Ukrainians are exhausted and even Western media begins to admit that Ukraine is losing the war... and then stop? I suppose Putin might have a moment of weakness and snatch defeat from the jaws of victory but this is a very slim hope.

Ultimately, there's no cheat code to win in war. If you have considerably less manpower, considerably less firepower and the enemy is a highly determined nuclear superpower, then you just lose. It's possible albeit difficult to breach fortifications if you have long-range fires, air superiority, specialized demining equipment... in short if you have an advanced, comprehensive military-industrial base. There's no way to win without being comprehensively stronger. Mines are not a secret superweapon, it's just that the Russians have more of them just like they have more of nearly everything - artillery, tanks, helicopters, aircraft, long-range missiles, drones and men.

All Ukraine had and all they have is a bunch of choices about how they lose.

One way to solve this without mine fields would be if NATO would accept Ukraine as a member conditional on them signing a peace deal. I think from a humanitarian point of view, this would be a much better outcome than continue the slaughter for some more few years if one side runs out of soldiers.

I still have yet to see a better proposal than my piss take on how prince Harry should become grand duke of Kiev in order to bring peace.

Every military effort the Ukrainian government has exerted since 2014 had the justification that no land is to be surrendered to the Moskal under any condition. Constructing elaborate defenses, while cheaper than preparing for offense, still costs money, and every dollar and euro spent on such is one not spent on preparing another counteroffensive which is totally going to succeed, unlike the latest one, and thus sends the rather obvious political message that the government is prepared to de facto surrender land to the Moskal. Obviously the government is reluctant to send such signals, as continued Western aid is dependent on their overt willingness to bleed the Moskal in a protracted war, no matter the cost in lives to their citizenry, if it can even be called such.

I'm sure this isn't without precedent, for example, when the South Korean regime started building defenses in the DMZ after the war, I'm sure there were at least some hardliners openly grumbling about it and promoting an offensive war instead to smoke out the Red menace for good, to the extent a free press even existed, which I imagine was rather limited. And I'm also sure the construction of the Maginot Line wasn't universally popular in France either.

It’s not a bad idea, but it isn’t great either. Putting aside whether or not Ukraine would be willing to permanently lose that land that Russia has taken, The problem is that in modern warfare the offence is a lot more powerful than the defence. Fortifications, such as minefields, create delays and induce costs on the attacker, but they can’t really stop a concentrated, coordinated, and well planned attack. A truce would also allow Russia to restart the conflict at a time and place of their choosing. Fortifying a 600 mile front is far more difficult than breaking through that front on a ten mile frontage.

A truce would also give Ukraine time to lick its wounds and prepare, but the same is true of Russia - and Russia’s army has a lot more low hanging fruit to grasp than Ukraine’s, so a pause would be more valuable for them.

What all this amounts to is that IMO resumption of hostilities is highly likely, minefields or no, but at a great disadvantage to Ukraine compared to the current situation.

Thanks, this is exactly the kind of answer I was looking for, I hadn’t considered offence vs defence asymmetries in this way. Only question is why the Russian defences seem to have held up so well against the Ukrainians given that it’s the same problem in reverse. Ukrainian assault wasn’t sufficiently concentrated, coordinated, and well planned? Or the power disparity is just too big?

A bit of everything I'd say. Concentration of force is probably the most difficult thing for Ukraine right now; They don't have access to the quantity of troops that Russia has. They make up for the disparity with better morale, leadership, and training (in that order) but they are close to fully committed, and if they concentrate for an attack they risk a counterattack on a weaker part of the line. Planning isn't something that Ukraine is bad at by any means, but creating and executing a complex plan is far more difficult when you are actively maneuvering against an enemy which is continuously disrupting your plans and demanding of your resources to stop their plans. Ukraine also doesn't have access to all the combined arms tools that you would ideally want to launch a successful offensive - air cover, precision missiles, massive weight of artillery fire - tools which are not really as important to the defense.

This is why it's so advantageous to choose the time and the place of hostilities. If there is a truce, Russia can take it's sweet time rebuilding it's stockpiles, rebuilding a professional army (the sort you would need to push an offensive), making complex plans and organizing them and drilling their soldiers, and then restart the war when they are good and ready. Ideally with a spot of deception to prevent Ukraine from knowing when and where they will strike. Russia is currently incapable of mounting complex offensive operations, and I'm sure the Ukrainians would like to keep it that way.

WTF are the Ukrainians fighting for? To speak a very slightly different language and pay in funny money rather than funny money? This whole thing is like the Canadians (the actual ones) resisting the Americans...why?

  • -16

Because Ukraine wants to prop up its economy at the expense of German taxpayers, not prop up the Moscow economy at its expense.

To be Poland versus being Belarus.

To be Poland is part of the plan. Putin has said there's no objection to Galicia & Volyn returning to Poland.

Poland is on current trajectory expected to be richer than the UK by 2030. Sort of something a lot of Ukraine would like to be.

If he had the chance he’d take it all. Obviously he’d be willing to concede on Galicia but I don’t think there’s a hard brake on his territorial ambitions at a specific point, he does appear to be an ideological imperialist at least to some extent.

Would he also concede on Transcarpathia returning to Hungary and Bukovina back to Romania?

I read it as Putin would like to take Galicia and subjugate the Ukrainian Greek Catholics like Chechen Muslims, but he’s not willing to fight for it in any way.

Because it's far more appealing to join the western sphere of influence than to remain in Russia's. NATO and the EU offer Ukraine a powerful security guarantee, prosperity and liberty.

A very specific sort of globohomo prosperity and liberty.

I'll bite - in what sense exactly can Russia can considered to be more prosperous than the United States? Please, something more specific and measurable than 'globohomo'.

Paid vacation time and holidays also maternity leave.

Fair enough, though the EU minimum for maternity leave is higher than Russia's.

Asking for US examples and then pointing to the EU is moving the goalpost.

The US is stupidly rich by any metric. Ukraine would gladly accept being US rich.

What does Russia have to offer in return? Dominance by Moscow?

Say what you will about globohomo, you're probably gonna have a fatter wallet by joining it over not.

As opposed to dominance by DC / EU? Isn't that what the money is for, to distract from the globohomo?

Would you prefer to be dominated by Russia or DC?

They're fighting to not be genocided

Why would the Americans resist the Canadians if the situation was reversed?

Many wouldn't, and this number is only going to continue going down the more self-hating colonizer ideology sweeps the nation.

As the world witnesses what is happening to Ukraine, Americans were asked what they would do if they were in the same position as Ukrainians are now: stay and fight or leave the country? A majority (55 percent) say they would stay and fight, while 38 percent say they would leave the country. Republicans say 68 - 25 percent and independents say 57 - 36 percent they would stay and fight, while Democrats say 52 - 40 percent they would leave the country.

...what?

You seem to present an argument that Ukrainians do not have a good reason to fight, because at the end of the day the culture/governance of Russia is not meaningfully different from their current existence. Ignoring for the moment the accuracy of that, you compare this to Canadians resisting Americans, this seems to imply you think such a Canadian resistance is similarly wanting for a reason, because at the end of the day the culture/governance of America would not be meaningfully different. Of course, if this is true, then in theory if the role was reversed, and Canada was to attack America, since the same conditions must necessarily be reciprocal with regards to culture/governance, it would seem America would also lack a good reason to fight.

That is, your argument, as best as I can tell, seems fully reversable for any two nations to which it was applicable. Russians would be similarly foolish for fighting against Ukrainian rule, etc.

What? I thought it was a simple question. If Canada decided it wanted the state Maine or Michigan for itself, would you be asking "WTF are Americans fighting for?"?

The problem is with the current Canadian regime it’s basically wtf would be different? Maine might actually do better as Canadian it would probably become more developed since Americans like to move to warm weather and Canadians can’t. Politically the US/Canada are very similar. The only big difference is Canada is more socialists largely because they don’t have large non-European low IQ populations.

Michigan could take Canada 10/10

If you want to burn down the District of Criminals, do it yourselves this time. No need to involve the Canadians. Plus an all-American DC fire would probably have better music.

That's not what I'm asking about.

Moral considerations aside, a large number of commentators thought that it would be foolish to sue for peace under pretty much any circumstances because Putin wouldn’t keep to it.

People believe what they want to believe - warmongers like to believe war is inevitable because it relieves them from having to seek peace. So now any number of Ukrainians and Russians can be fed into meatgrinders because there's no alternative.

Are you saying that people who distrust Putin are the real warmongers?

Distrust is not what is at issue here. Distrusting Putin is rational. Claiming to be able to read his mind and predict what he might do in five years is not rational.

You can't predict what he'll do, but you can be pretty sure that any promise he makes is not worth the paper it's written on.

Oh, so the war must continue until either every Ukrainian or every Russian is dead. That's what I'm getting here, unless you want to take the opportunity to elaborate.

Not what I've said at all. I haven't commented on the war. The consequence of making any peace deal with a sociopath like Putin is that you have to prepare with strong defenses for his next attack.

So you're saying that even if a peace deal is reached, Putin is definitely, 100% going to attack again? Excuse me, but that sounds a lot like assuming that this war is inevitable.

You seem very determined to read what you want to read, instead of what I've actually written. That's not how things are supposed to go on The Motte.

More comments

Since you say "people", doesn't that mean that it's equally true that peaceniks like to believe the enemy is reasonable because it relieves them from having to continue war?

Yes, I think it's true that peaceniks don't like war and seek to end wars.

One of the issues would be you can’t spend to rebuild Ukraine until you have a permement war ending. That has very real costs. Why spend $300 billion in infrastructure if a lot of it is destroyed when Russia builds up missile supplies. It’s possible Ukraine could harden up some and make defending easier.

If we have a war thread the Houthi Red Sea stuff has a few interesting considerations https://twitter.com/aristos_revenge/status/1736991083471454681?s=46&t=aQ6ajj220jubjU7-o3SuWQ

  1. The US Navy is using million dollar missiles to shoot down cheap drones. As the world changes this will not be affordable in a bigger war. The Ukraine war etc seems to be giving the US military a chance to figure out the technologies of the next war. I am sure out attack drones will be fine but how we defend drones needs to be learned.

  2. The thread above indicates that Suez revenue is 30% of Egypts revenue of $10 billion. I guess the west could write them a check but Egypt has a few stressors going on right now and this is a lot of money to them.

  3. No one has talked about this that I know of but I’ve always been like wtf are we supporting the Saudis doing their stuff in Yemen. I now support them. The Houthi’s probably have some issues doing Irans bidding here because western support against them is no doubt going to increase.

The missile costs thing is irrelevant and not even worth discussing since in an existential scenario they could glass Yemen and be done with it. The many-million-dollar missiles are an act of mercy by a rich country, not a necessity.

It’s not worth discussing in terms of the Houthis. It is an issue in a wider war where our weapon systems now seem to have a big vulnerability.

The US still has pretty extensive domestic manufacturing capability that could be, in extreme circumstances, retooled to build huge volumes of ‘dumb’ weapons. The pentagon’s big supply chain issues with armaments now are that unlike WW2 you can’t just convert a normal car or industrial material or widget factory to make highly complex smart weapons overnight.

People frequently bring up “peace in our time” as if it was the only lesson learned from history when it comes to aggressive policy.

Alfred the Great fought the Danes roughly to a draw and paid them in part to leave. He then fortified Wessex so that when the Danes broke the peace Wessex was in a much better situation to repel the Danes.

That is, suing for peace can be the right play if it permits you to change the calculus of war. If you can delay war to a time when you are relatively better prepared, then do so. Perhaps it encourages more aggression (the lesson of Chamberlain) but if the time is used well it also increases the odds of success (the lesson of Alfred).

The UK was not ready for war in 1938 either. Those who bring up the example are simply bloodthirsty warmongers.

Those who bring up the example are simply bloodthirsty warmongers.

Too antagonistic, don't post like this please.

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