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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?
As others said, this is absurd version of the events at hand. If Ukraine loses this war, they are fucked in the same way Donetsk and Luhansk are fucked now, only worse. It may very well happen that they will end up according to the map that Medvedev shown with Ukraine being what Donetsk/Luhansk was in since 2014 - just a puppet state and source of expendable shock troops for the new Russian Empire. The next move? Putin attacks Moldova with forced conscripts from newly annexed Ukraine thus potentially solving two problems at once by expanding the territory and sending potential rebels into the meatgrinder. He already uses this tactics to some extent by conscripting mostly ethnic minorities and rural population. The same tactics Mao utilized when he sent surrendered Kuomintang soldiers to Korea: win-win scenario for him.
And we are not even talking about a scenario where Putin with his newfound strength may test the article 5 and actually conduct Baltic offensive on Estonia/Latvia/Lithuania. It is not as if NATO will fire nukes in face of conventional assault - so what will they do? Will Spaniards and French and Italians send enough troops to the meatgrinder to save some faraway countries? At worst Putin can always say "my bad, I just want part of Estonia and make peace" and play peacemaker or he can withdraw after testing the waters. It is not as if NATO countries will ever muster courage to actually wage full fledged war with the aim to physically oust Putin from Kremlin when he hides behind nuclear ICBMs and torpedoes. And in the meantime Putin will have enough Ukrainians to send ahead of his barrier troops.
Don't forget, things are never so bad that they cannot get worse.
If NATO, with cca what, 900 million population, GDP (ppp adjusted) maybe 4x of Russia, cannot somehow manage to have conventional forces supremacy in Eastern Europe to prevent Russia from attacking, what use is NATO?
That's almost exactly the disparity in population, GDP between Russia and Ukraine. In any reasonable war, conventional war between Russia and NATO should go far, far better than between Russia and Ukraine alone. After all, the developed West has much better everything. It has rule of law, human rights, less corruption, much better R&D sector, better education. One could go on.
So why am I now hearing this defeatism ? Eastern European countries joined NATO because they were told it'd make them 'safe' against Russia ? Was that just a bluff ?
I'm pretty sure that's what Oppenheimer meant when he said "lot of boys not yet born will owe their life to the bomb". You know well from history how "waging full scale war to oust the despot in Moscow" usually goes. Especially when he has the support of world's biggest industrial power.
I doubt Putin would try to take Baltics unless there's a WW3 going on. There's nothing there, they barely have any forces worth speaking about, it's not defensible at all (or so was the usual expert talk) and all the forces there are just tripwire forces.
What use is NATO if it's unwilling to use nuclear weapons to defend the territory of its members? Was it all a big bluff or what ?
Exactly, and Putin may put this into a test, especially to test how will let's say countries like Portugal or Italy or even Hungary or Slovakia or Finland or Romania react to the situation when their soldiers will return in cardboxes by thousands in peer-to-peer warfare. And we already see the pathetic situation we are in right now - US cannot get a bill of $60 billion passed to support Ukraine, and even that has some Israel support as well as organizational support for European theater inside. And we are still talking about 7% of US military budget and 0.2% of US GDP. And let's not forget that USA and UK actually have some obligations towards Ukraine as part of Budapest memorandum where Ukrainians gave up their nuclear arsenal in exchange for guarantees of territorial integrity from US, UK and Russia. Of course Russian word is as usual not worth the paper it was put onto and US/UK try to weasel out of it by saying it was actually "assurance" and not "guarantee". Anyways even besides that, this is still seems crazy to me - you are supposedly willing to pour trillions of dollars to build up defense against hostile power threatening NATO but you are unable to spend comparatively infinitesimal fraction of money to actually fight it? To me it seems like an invitation for Putin to test the resolve.
Plus the reality check of actual efficacy of all that GDP put into military. Fucking North Korea who is economical dwarf was able to send 3 million shells to Russia. US production is around 30,000 a month so North Korea was able to send years of production to Russia. And we are not even talking about what Russia was able to do since the war started - triple the production of artillery shells to 300,000 a month.
I actually see it as the opposite. The ultimate defeatism is things I reacted to such as "too many Ukrainians are dying, let's give Putin what he wants" or "don't support Ukrainians by 0.2% of GDP when they are in hot war against an actor that threatens NATO, it is too much money that can be spent on social security". So if we care about non-NATO soldiers dying and spending on level of peanunts, then how is NATO going to absorb tens of thousands of their own citizens dying or spending hundreds of billions or even trillions on potential hot war? Will it not be too tempting to again give Putin what he wants and effectively dissolve NATO as a defensive alliance? These two things are related in my eyes and I bet that those new NATO members are watching it in disbelief, they may have been hoodwinked by mushy allies. Also it is not as if this happened for the first time, Czechoslovakia could talk about that a little bit
The terms of the agreement are right there in your link, can you please point to the one you think obligates the US to guarantee the territorial integrity of Ukraine? As far as I can tell this claim is pure /r/worldnews tier cope crossing the line into blatant lying.
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