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Culture War Roundup for the week of December 25, 2023

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Was Russia collecting tax revenues from Crimea and other Ukrainian territories prior to Euromaidan?

If they pull off 20% or so of Ukraine, it will be a net win in both manpower (immediately, even if they lose 100K soldiers) and resources/finances (over a long enough timeline) for Russia. Presumably one has to balance that against notational losses from sanctions – I think it's too early to tell what the long-term impact of that will be (at least for someone of my questionable economic competence).

Having neutral Scandinavian states jump to NATO definitely is an L, but they have nowhere near the military potential of Ukraine.

It's definitely untrue to say that this has happened at no cost to the US; it is significantly depleted US/NATO's capabilities, although I think that probably counts as a W for the United States IF it can get its act together industrially, as a weakened Europe with an angry Russia at the door substantially increases US influence there (or should, anyway). It has also given Russia a lot of insight into some high-end NATO weaponry, but that knife cuts both ways.

(Important caveat that I think is under-appreciated by most people going on about how severe the impact of NATO contributions to Ukraine has been on Western war readiness: US doctrine is more air-centric than Russia's, so emptying out our artillery reserves is compensated for somewhat by the fact that we probably have tens of thousands of JDAMs still in reserve. Sure, we've given some to Ukraine, but they just can't use them enough to significantly deplete our stocks, I don't think.)