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VoxelVexillologist
Multidimensional Radical Centrist
17hr ago
But just generally, the US doesn't need carriers to "win" a Taiwan Strait engagement.
Achieving merely what Ukraine has in the Black Sea would be a victory for Taiwan: area denial to naval and air assets would be a victory, with the potential of blocking significant chunks of commercial traffic to all of China's ports.
faceh
17hr ago
I think you're overly concerned with demographic collapse scenarios and insufficiently concerned with the risk of a resurgence of wars of conquest.
I actually think the former feeds into the latter, so my concern encompasses both.
I'm prepared to defer to Ukraine's wishes on HOW they want to go out. This war has had shockingly little direct impact on my life.
I'm just noting the dismal reality.
Ideally, the Russians have overextended themselves militarily and economically such that some kind of crisis forces the Russians to back off and Ukraine survives.
"Survives" is doing a lot of work here. Check out that population projection. Not enough young people to rebuild and support the older generations = Ukraine has no economic prospects to speak of.
Likewise Russia (the government) probably sees this as an existential crisis, which implies they will NEVER back off unless they run out of men.
and other would-be aggressors are sufficiently deterred from further warmongering then I can only thank the brave Ukrainians and their will to fight for dying on behalf of improved regional security.
Or the aggressors who have been able to stockpile weapons might believe they've got an opening to re-open old conflicts now that the U.S. has stretched itself thin.
One thing is certain, a lot of Ruskies and Ukes have died to develop the absolutely Bleeding edge in drone-based warfare, which has probably changed the face of any conflicts from here on out. And that's BEFORE we've figured out how to have AI guided drones produced en masse.
I have my thoughts on how conflicts will go based on what's been proven to be possible and effective
I also think conflicts have become more likely under current economic and demographic constraints, and that Ukrainian sacrifice isn't doing much to decrease that likelihood because that doesn't change the underlying incentives.
FtSoA
17hr ago
Same exact issue for flinching when Putin talks about nukes.
"Well if he's threatening WWIII I guess we should just let him do what he wants. It's just not worth the risk to confront him."
It's as if a large portion of the American Right has entirely forgotten the lessons of Cold War diplomatic and military strategy. Or very, very obvious game theory re: bluffs and tit for tat.
Yeah it's hard to imagine a situation where giving the egotistical leaders of Russia and China free wins isn't going to empower them and encourage more war.
If you're Putin or Xi and you know America will just walk away bored if you grind out for a few years, then what's the cost of war? Like hell just look at Trump right now, he's giving China high tech AI chips from Nvidia and literally ignoring the law to allow their propaganda site to brainwash teens despite the ban.
Why would Xi have any faith this American apparatus too lazy and scared to even take down Tiktok would actually stick around for long in Taiwan? We're metaphorically bending over and begging for our enemies to fuck us with propaganda and advanced AI capabilities, and yet people are expecting a serious fight when it comes to actual war?
Sure. What do you have in mind?
We need to dramatically increase our advanced missile stocks and production capacities. We should probably just buy ships from e.g. South Korea and Japan, because boy did we fuck up there. We should also make Anduril a very valuable company by having enough autonomous capacities to make the Chinese realize that even if our carrier battle groups can be taken out, Taiwan would effectively be a minefield.
Regardless, this is a semantic discussion: the point is that for China, more US investment in Ukraine is (generally) better, regardless of what that looks like.
No, it's not, because the actual proportion of our commitment of resources matters and you are failing to recognize second-order effects of priming the pump of the defense-industrial complex. As well as the signal of Western resolve and military competence. The best way to deter China is not to have a bunch of missiles in a warehouse. The best way to deter them is making them fear the resolve of the US in defending its friends and allies in the face of risking WWIII.
Since we aren't giving Ukraine any nukes, we have plenty of those laying around. Which is why the question of "will they/won't they" is more important than "just how long will US missile stocks last."
Pasha
Defend Kebab
17hr ago
Both of these things are true in degrees. Humans are obviously capable of learning at least 2/3 languages well given the right social setting and motivation. There are endless examples of this even in the modern world. But they will almost never know all of these languages at a high literary or native-passing level. When multilingual societies exist it’s always with a certain prestige hierarchy of languages.
Typical setup is something like 1 language representing high culture, 1 language for of commerce and 1 is for talking to your grandma. For example an Ottoman Greek of 1890 might read his novels and newspapers in French (always obsessing about having perfect grammar and spelling), do business negotiations and bureaucracy in Turkish (noticeable accent, lacking high vocabulary, but can talk to important men about important things) and in the evening talk to his female relatives in Greek (short sentences, familiar topics, constantly inserting vocabulary from French/Turkish, might struggle to write). This social structure is extremely common in history and is dishonestly presented as proof of how people can be “multilingual”. This man is not a “Greek” yet, he is an “Ottoman Greek”. He sends his sons to the new Greek high school and hopes they will one day read and write their higher ideals purely in Greek instead of Turkish or perhaps even French.
Even the most educated people can typically do high culture in 1-2 languages maximum and any other language acquisition will have to come at some cost. I have in fact lived a short period in Singapore and got to observe a bit how Singlish works. Most people I met who were highly proficient in English (and could code switch to mostly neutral American English) had very limited ability in their parents tongues. As you go lower in social strata you meet more people who juggled 2+ languages daily but weren’t that good in either of them.
FtSoA
17hr ago
I mean... this outcome is almost the precise definition of a Pyhrric victory.
For Russia, yeah. Ukraine has to choose between two bad scenarios for the situation imposed on them--a costly victory or a costly defeat--so they might as well win.
The Ukrainians are intimately aware of the tradeoffs between fighting Russia and being ruled by Russia; I defer to their judgment on that question.
I think you're overly concerned with demographic collapse scenarios and insufficiently concerned with the risk of a resurgence of wars of conquest.
Ideally, the Russians have overextended themselves militarily and economically such that some kind of crisis forces the Russians to back off and Ukraine survives.
But if Russia takes enormous losses in a Pyhrric victory such that they and other would-be aggressors are sufficiently deterred from further warmongering then I can only thank the brave Ukrainians and their will to fight for dying on behalf of improved regional security.
wayfarer
18hr ago
due to fear of torture by Pinochet, then he was a communist
you are claiming that Pinochet regime tortured solely communists, which is a false claim
FtttG
18hr ago
I'm strawberry blonde with 20/20 vision, otherwise right on the money. I'm impressed that you got my age correct: people who see a photo of me or meet me in person often place me a few years younger than I am, whereas people who only read what I've written without seeing what I look like often assume I'm older. I'm something of a young fogey, it seems.
I phrased it poorly. What I mean is, if Alice is accused of having done something bad, and then it's conclusively demonstrated that she didn't do it, the fact that Bob thinks the accusation against her was "plausible" is irrelevant.
Fruck
Lacks all conviction
18hr ago
Do you want to explain what you are talking about? And why a single failure nullifies a career of generally decent reporting?
faceh
18hr ago
I mean they can pivot straight over to Palestine or like a half-dozen other slightly more trivial matters.
They're probably already addled with anxiety and depression, so it'll result in a spike of therapist visits.
I'd guess they keep the Ukraine Flag in their profiles for at least a couple months.
These guys could really use a win, but it sure seems like they won't get one. They've been losing ground on abortion rights, gun control, most of their favored economic policies, climate change, affirmative action... and things ain't going well for either Ukraine or Palestine.
Genuinely hope we don't get more of them setting themselves on fire.
Shrike
18hr ago
Hypothetically, the US could do a lot to increase its military pressure on China re: Taiwan without taking away from Ukraine support at all. Maybe we could try that first?
Sure. What do you have in mind?
Sure, we lit a lot of money and attention on fire
Money and attention counts on my bogging-down meter, at least half-credit. Regardless, this is a semantic discussion: the point is that for China, more US investment in Ukraine is (generally) better, regardless of what that looks like. Obviously there's a sort of "looping back around to being bad" outcome where the US nukes Russia, or switches all its rare earth supply chains to Ukrainian sources, or what have you.
ABigGuy4U
18hr ago
I meant that if all of Ukraine falls you have Poland abutting Russia and Belarus to the east and Russian Kaliningrad to the north.
FtSoA
18hr ago
Look, there's a difference between something not happening and something being impossible. I'm discussing how China would react in a hypothetical.
Hypothetically, the US could do a lot to increase its military pressure on China re: Taiwan without taking away from Ukraine support at all. Maybe we could try that first?
the way one might describe us as being "bogged down" in Afghanistan
We were not even "bogged down" in Afghanistan. As a percentage of our actual military capacities, only a tiny fraction was ever committed to Afghanistan. Sure, we lit a lot of money and attention on fire, but in term of actual combat capacity it was not a big deal to run that occupation. Even with Iraq, it was primarily the Army, and even then not our major units like say armor/artillery (after the initial invasion).
The USAF and USN were either only lightly involved or, by definition, have assets that are very easy to rapidly redeploy.
Vietnam was a much, much larger and costly commitment. One of the very reasons the "forever wars" were "forever" is that it was not that costly to continue indefinitely.
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
18hr ago
If you do an effort post that covers all of the topics you brought up, I'd be inclined to make a donation to whatever Patreon-enabled online cause you're into.
wayfarer
18hr ago
Anything that could stop the conflict without getting Poland encircled.
War in Ukraine would need to go truly badly to end with Russian Germany. Or at least Russian-occupied Czech Republic and Slovakia.
wayfarer
18hr ago
because the Russians would be sitting right on the Polish border
and how it would be supposed to be changing things?
Kaliningrad is a thing, Belarus is effectively absorbed as far as military staging goes.
Elections in Ukraine are cancelled indefinitely with US State Department approval
US State Department is not adding here much, elections are suspended in accordance of Ukrainian constitution on account of having a war
wayfarer
18hr ago
to levels that their drones will be able to strike the whole country
interceptor drones are appearing on larger scale and turning out to be quite useful
were pleasantly surprised that the Russians proved so incompetent at modern maneuver warfare, and the Ukrainians so resilient.
I mean... this outcome is almost the precise definition of a Pyhrric victory.
There is not a long term strategy that results in Ukraine happily returning to status as a decently prosperous second-world country. Not that they were very happy before anyway.
I don't want Russia to 'win,' but look at my comment from just over two years back.
What do these facts allow me to predict? Not much. Other than a long, bloody, conflict which will probably result in a Russian 'victory' but also with Russia ceasing to be any kind of major player in world affairs.
(Russia's victory will be Pyrhrric as well, but will at least advance some of their goals)
Oh, and this comment chain from two years ago about the children being kidnapped (Russia KNOWS it needs more young blood), the Ukrainian demographic collapse, and Ukrainian women fleeing the country.
Even if all the people who fled come back there is no chance of Ukraine repopulating over the short term. And it would take hundreds of billions of dollars of investment to rebuild the country. From whence is all that money actually going to come?
All in all, the best case scenarios for Ukrainian survival (regardless of who rules the territory) were:
#1 Russia never invades.
#2 Russia invades, Kiev falls quickly, the country folds, NATO reinforces every border and contains further aggression.
#3 Russia Invades, makes a mess of it, and decides to keep at it, and the U.S. happily works to prolong the conflict to the tune of hundreds of thousands of lives and billions of dollars of military hardware and aid.
...
...
#45 Russia deploys nukes.
We're deep in scenario 3, and whether Ukraine or Russia 'wins' does nothing to solve the demographic hole that's been blown into both countries.
For a smaller country fighting a larger one, a Pyrrhic victory is in some ways the goal. You either surrender, flee, or say, "Fuck it, everyone loses." If the deal is, "I steal everything from you, and you get to do as I say," you mash the defect button and try to make sure they're miserable. The alternative is your state exists only so long as someone else doesn't want it.
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