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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's continually baffling to me how the majority of this forum thinks that defending your own lands from a hostile foreign invader somehow makes you a puppet. At least this thread isn't as bad as the one yesterday that explicitly called them an American puppet, and when pressed for evidence they produced several articles relating to Boris Johnson, apparently entirely unaware that he was the leader of the UK and not the US
Further, the idea that Ukraine is doomed and should just surrender now to prevent more bloodshed is only ever really advanced in bad faith. It's clear a lot of people on the right hate the woke left so much that they end up hating the entire West for having given birth to wokeness. Instead of specifically targeting the excesses of wokeness, they do the oikophobic thing and say the West itself must be destroyed. Since the invasion made the West seem more unified and righteous, they've been earnestly hoping for a Ukrainian defeat. They post as concern trolls similar to this, claiming they just want to stop the bloodshed of the Ukrainians, who after all are really just misguided mini-Russians.
The eventual resolution of this war is still very much in flux. It's looking more negative than it was post-Kherson, when there had been 3 big pushes liberating land. Now, Ukrainian leadership seems unable or unwilling to resolve the conscription issues, and House Republicans have sabotaged the compromise bill that would have provided aid (and limited immigration) at Trump's behest. That said, more aid could arrive through a different aid package or through Europeans boosting their own efforts. Ukraine could very well be forced to give up land in an eventual peace agreement, but how much and whether they have real security guarantees afterwards is still an open question. I'd go into it more, but this forum isn't particularly great for that so I'd just point anyone interested to the daily threads on /r/credibledefense.
Yeah, that's clearly the most obvious read there. That I'm completely retarded and can't tell the US from the UK. Not an assumption that Boris was acting on US policy goals despite being a UK politician, with the key quote being that he insisted "The West isn't ready for the war to be over yet". When the US is funding 90% of the war, it's a safe assumption to make that Boris was writing a check the US was going to cash, with their tacit approval.
I didn't bother responding to you then because you taking such obvious liberties with my actual claims, but if you are going to sit back and crow about it like it's some sort of victory, fine, you've gotten my attention.
I mean, you also didn't respond to Dean either, who wrote more eloquently than I did about the faults of the position. I'll also note the bolding here wasn't present on the original post.
It's just bad logic that Europe has no agency, that they're all US puppets, and that the US is for some reason sending Boris instead of Blinken or Biden. Was Macron's recent remark about sending troops also a threat that the US was about to intervene with troops of its own?
This isn't true today, and was never true before. If you look at total commitments, the combined EU outweighs the US by quite a lot. You probably would be frustrated with me for making a point like this and say you clearly implied it was for lethal aid, but even that wasn't true either. Poland + the Baltics sent pretty much everything that wasn't nailed down in the first few days, and other European powers like Germany have slowly ramped up their commitments to pick up the slack thereafter. The US remains the largest single source of military aid, but its handily beat by the combined EU today.
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