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Notes -
A Tone-Shift in the Ukraine War
Lately, I've noticed that the tone of the discussion regarding Ukraine both on the Motte and on X has changed considerably. Notably, it seems that people are taking a much more pessimistic view of Ukraine's chances. The default assumption now is that Ukraine will lose the war.
I think a stalemate is still quite possible, but the more optimistic assumptions that Ukraine would regain lost territory (or comically, Crimea) are now a dead letter. So what, exactly, are our leaders thinking? Recently, Macron went off-narrative a bit, suggesting that France could send troops into Ukraine. More ominously, Secretary of State Blinken said that Ukraine will join NATO.
Perhaps Western leaders view this sabre-rattling as good for their electoral chances. And, until recently, the war was seen as a relatively cost-effective way to weaken Russia. (Sadly, this seems to have failed as Russia has freely exported oil to India and China and is making armaments in great numbers).
But what of Ukrainians themselves? Will they tire of being NATO's cat's paw? It's impossible to find good numbers on how many Ukrainian men have been killed so far in this war. It's likely in the hundreds of thousands. Towns and villages throughout the country are devoid of men, as the men (hunted by conscription) either flee, hide, or are sent to the fronts.
User @Sloot shared this nuclear-grade propoganda. While Ukrainian men fight and die in some trench, an increasing number of Ukrainian women are finding new homes (and Tinder dates) in Germany. Concern about female fidelity has always been a prominent feature of wartime propaganda. But, this takes it to a new level, since the women are in a different country, making new, better lives for themselves. How many will ever even return to Ukraine?
Ukrainian men are getting a raw deal in an effort to reconquer lost territory, whose residents probably want to be part of Russia anyway. Why should Ukrainians fight and die for some abstract geopolitical goal of NATO?
Trumps not going to lose this war. He will escalate to deescalate. It’s either going to end up frozen on current lines or American AirPower shreds the Russians.
Bidens been doing his typical Biden shit and screwing things up. He has had approval to send more weapons and has not. His people are afraid of escalation when the only thing Russians know is power.
Russian apologists will say Trump can’t do this. He’s not going to start his next administration losing a war. Winning a war gets all the neocons back on team Trump and kills all the lefts mythology of Trump being a Russian agent. Ukranians can fight the Russians to a standstill which is nothing compared to modern American military hardware and training. Send in some Polish ground forces backed by US air and the wars over in a month.
Trump escalating isn't entirely out of the question given how prone to escalation he was with Iran, but thus far Trump has only indicated that he'd strong-arm Ukraine into essentially surrendering.
He also indicated he would strong arm Russia into peace.
Source on this part? So far I've only seen articles saying he'd force UA to give up land, or else risk getting cut off from all US aid, and maybe other punishments on top. I haven't heard his idea of strong-arming Russia.
He didn’t say he was going full send in the Air Force. But he did promise more arms than they’ve gotten.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/donald-trump-russia-ukraine-war-b2377077.html
Thanks for the link. So he basically said he would... keep doing what Biden was doing, but "bigger" in an unspecified way.
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I’ll say We, as in NATO would be stupid to do it. Putin has nukes and has said repeatedly that NATO in Ukraine is his red line. If Putin is backed into a corner where either option is “lose and die”, the restraining force of gentility just isn’t going to stop him.
When has Putin said he’s going to nuke over Ukraine? Official doctrine is an attack on proper Russia. Tanks rolling to Moscow.
Putin isn’t ending Russian history by starting a nuclear war over some shithole border town in Ukraine.
He annexed Donbas and considers them a part of Russia, which makes any attempt to retake them an attack on Russia proper.
The other thing that I think is dismissed too lightly is that him losing the war is likely to be fatal to him. Russia has a history of killing or deposing rulers who lose wars. If the only way to win in Ukraine is to use nukes then he’s likely to at least think about it.
The he annexed these places thing has already been violated without nuclear war. I believe Kherson was after annexation plus Ukraine has been attacking annexed land for over a year. So no line their for Russian nuclear options.
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Russia officially annexed parts of Ukraine, so under Russian doctrine a US/NATO intervention that aimed to retake Crimea or the other oblasts would be (under Russian thinking) an attack on Russia proper, wouldn't it?
Russian "escalate to deescalate" doctrine would likely involve using tactical, low-yield nuclear weapons on a military target set and then daring NATO to end history by starting a real nuclear war. Or at least that's the theory – who knows what would happen in real life.
I think Trump would try to do what he did when he was in office last time (choke Ukrainian military aid, threaten Putin with insane military escalation) and force a frozen conflict, but that's just a guess.
Given that (as per Western/NATO-aligned sources) the Russians have been shooting down US anti-radiation (IOW, anti-air-defense) and surface-to-surface missiles in Ukraine on the regular, I'm not convinced that an air campaign (which would use munitions we probably have earmarked for a Pacific war) would be an easy and quick fix, even if it was ultimately effective. Similarly the Poles certainly have a very significant military, but (based on a quick glance) they've already donated about a third of their tank inventory (300+) to Ukraine. I can see a world where throwing their remaining 600ish at the Russian army (which IIRC is now about 15% larger than it was at the beginning of the invasion, as per the DoD) results in them getting ground down over the course of several months or years the same way the much larger Ukrainian army has been attrited.
If the annexed territories are ‘officially’ part of Russia, why hasn’t Russia nuked Kiev for invading its sovereign territory?
It’s a bluff, it always was. If NATO tanks roll in from Poland, Russia will choose retreat over nuclear Armageddon.
Because it thinks it can win a conventional war with Kiev (and anyway even if it couldn't Kiev doesn't pose quite the threat NATO does.) War with NATO would be (understatement of the week) a much dicier proposition. It's quite possible that you're right and that they would retreat.
But understand that the idea everyone has from the Cold War about how nuclear war consists of hundreds of ICBM launches isn't necessarily accurate. NATO and the Soviet Union both planned on using tactical nuclear weapons in the event of any large-scale confrontation during the Cold War, and they didn't necessarily think this meant Armageddon, although they were cognizant of the risks. Ships routinely deployed with nuclear weapons meant to be used against individual submarines (probably our only means of catching some of the faster Russian submarines for a time.) These weapons weren't weapons of mass destruction in the city-destroying sense; they were used because their explosive yield (by weight) was needed for certain tactical applications (e.g. ensuring an aircraft carrier was sunk, or that a submarine was caught in the kill zone of a depth charge.)
If NATO tanks roll in from Poland, and Russia decides its conventional forces won't cut it but it wants to stick it out, it most likely will fire a low-yield weapon from tube artillery or a cruise/theatre ballistic missile at NATO troops on the ground or at another military target, e.g. a Polish airbase. These weapons are tremendously destructive, but only in a very localized area (think of it as deleting one bunker, or putting a single airbase out of commission. They wouldn't be especially effective against troops on the ground unless they were in a tight formation.) In the past during US exercises, the US response to this has been to launch their own tactical nuclear weapon in response, not to open the ICBM tubes.
The US is skittish about using nuclear weapons on Russian soil (in one past exercise they retaliated with a nuclear weapon launched on a target inside neutral Belarus) so one possible outcome to all of this is that all nuclear weapons are targeted at conventional Russian/NATO forces inside Ukraine in a "non-escalatory" fashion until one side cries uncle.
TLDR; we could all plausibly live through a nuclear war with hundreds of nuclear detonation without any nuclear Armageddon, or even mass civilian casualties. Life in most of the world would continue on as it had, but there would be thousands and thousands of dead Poles (and thousands more dead Russians.)
Honestly as much as Russia waving the nuclear saber is a visible prospect in light of current stated and anticipated hostilities, we all seem to forget the most likely course of nuclear apocalypse: nuclear armed retards. India and Pakistan could have absolutely nuked the shit out of each other back in 2022 when India accidentally launched a Brahmos at Pakistan and the Pakistanis were too asleep at the wheel to respond. If the Pakistanis were more on the ball, we really would have seen the first nuclear incident since Hiroshima/Nagasaki, all thanks to fucktards inheriting toys from their forebears
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Why should Trump fight at all for a country he knows best as a source of graft for the Bidens?
To turn it into a source of graft for the Trumps? Use the war to indebt the Ukrainians to his family personally.
He would only be spending American money, not his own, and he'd gain a source of graft as well as regain prestige. Furthermore, money would primarily flow from blue constituents to red ones.
Sounds perfect for Trump.
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