Transnational Thursday is a thread for people to discuss international news, foreign policy or international relations history. Feel free as well to drop in with coverage of countries you’re interested in, talk about ongoing dynamics like the wars in Israel or Ukraine, or even just whatever you’re reading.
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Notes -
What is the general consensus about the war in Ukraine? I had a sense things were going very badly until I read Anders' post here:
https://woodfromeden.substack.com/p/world-war-2-could-learn-something
The argument is that the situation was always awful, but if you compare what happened in Ukraine to the Nazi invasions of Czechoslovakia and Poland, things went far better because of the semi-illegibility of everybody's strategy against Russia:
"For Ukraine it is of course a catastrophe to be invaded by Russia and an even worse catastrophe to capitulate after a long and ruinous defense. Just as it was an unmitigated disaster for Poland to be invaded and occupied by Germany in 1939.
But for the world the only thing that matters is that the aggressor loses more from military action than they gain. This is certainly true for the Ukraine War. The war might have been a disaster for Ukraine, but it is also a disaster for Russia. Even if the Russians eke out a win in the end they will be weaker at the war's end than at its start. Not only does this limit Russia's abilities to invade other countries, it also serves as a signal to other potential aggressors to think twice before they act.
This is undoubtedly a win for the international community."
That Substack article’s conclusions are only valid if you assume Ukraine is going to basically get out of this with their country intact, and if you take the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense casualty statistics at face value. The causality statistics that haven’t moved or updated since June 2022. There’s a good chance the Ukrainian army is being bled white and will soon face a 1918 German style collapse that will allow Russia to take all the territory east of Dnieper river, and possibly more. What would happen if that occurs, I don’t know. It’s possible that Russia has also taken very heavy casualties and that the war will have sufficiently deterred them from taking further aggressive action against Poland or the Baltic states, but that’s not guaranteed. If Russia’s casualties are much lower than advertised we are probably in for a rough ride.
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