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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?
It was always the case that Ukraine was losing this conflict. The vibe shifting now isn't anyone having their minds changed, it's the raw reality of the situation overwhelming jingoism, propaganda, and russophobia. The only aspect that opponents of western support in the conflict had missed was how brutal and slow and generally ineffective contemporary war looks like today.
The neocon hype cycle:
A new Hitler is launched. Saddam, Osama, Gadaffi, Putin, Ho Chi Minh is this evil person motivated by evil who wants to destroy the world because it is evil! We have to act now before the new cartoon villain kills us all! Nobody wants to talk about the lead up to the conflicts and the very real grievances the next Hitler has. His motivations are by default nothing but his cartoonish evil and his arguments don't have to be discussed.
Freedom fries and hype. We will take Berlin next week! Mission accomplished! People are waving their flags and hyping up the military operation that is quickly and surgically remove the new Hitler thanks to the new wunderwaffen. This war isn't like all the previous disasters, we are going to win cheap and fast!
A plan designed by politicians rather than generals is launched. We aren't actually going to have a war time economy and do what it takes to win the war in Ukraine. We weren't actually going to build a military base in every valley in Afghanistan, we weren't actually going to nation build Libya. We want the cheap discount option that is easy to swallow. Ukrainian soldiers can be trained in six weeks. Not because they can learn a year's worth of material in six weeks but because it is a nicer option than the alternative.
People start acting for the sake of acting. There is no goal in Afghanistan, nobody knows what winning looks like. But we have some spare stuff lying around so we can donate that to the Afghan national army. Do they need it? Do theyhave a plan for how it is going to be used? What will eventually replace it? Who cares, people who ask those questions are terrorist lovers listening to the Dixie Chicks.
The misadventure goes way over budget, hundreds of thousands of people die and we get flooded with migrants. Now people don't want to talk about it anymore.
Years pass and people start denying that they ever supported that war. However, have you heard of the next Hitler! They may have lied about every previous war, but this new Hitler they are being completely honest about. We have to kill him, the media that told us Iraq has WMDs and the Afghan army has 300 000 soldiers says this guy eats babies!
You left out the part where once the obvious disaster becomes visible, we clearly recognize that shit is fucked up, but we need to keep sinking resources into the problem because otherwise The Bad Guys Win. Sure, all our efforts up to this point have been squandered when they weren't actively counterproductive, but you don't want to lose, do you? That's quitter talk!
...I appreciate that this, and the post it's replying to, sounds uncharitable, but at some point on the intersection of human failure, incompetence, and hubris, the charity simply runs out. I watched corpses flap in the slipstream of evacuating US aircraft when Afghanistan collapsed, after TWENTY FUCKING YEARS of this bullshit. We've got the documents now that lay out how there never was a plan, how no one involved who mattered in any way was even attempting to win in any meaningful sense, at any point, ever. At some point, you need some basic level of confidence that the people you're talking to are capable of basic pattern recognition.
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