Well, the people in the Pentagon aren't dummies either. My guess is by now they have fully realized Russia's plans to take it as slowly as it needs to in order to avoid an insurgency. Perhaps the Pentagon even understood this before the war fully got underway. If we can conceive of these ideas, so can they. — Tzeentch

Yes, maybe we're overthinking their overthinking, but ammunition is just so basic to war fighting that it's difficult to believe it's just been overlooked.

If they knew Russia was going for a 'bite-sized chunks' approach, then they don't have to do much in order for Ukraine to hold out for a long time, since it's already baked into the Russian strategy. I imagine the pacification of the occupied areas may take months, perhaps even years. — Tzeentch

In military terms I completely agree, but running out of ammunition has the political risk of collapse of the Zelensky regime with someone willing to negotiate with Russia.

So, maybe if that happens it's fine, just one way to exit, throw Zelensky under the bus, blame the Ukrainians for not being "plucky" enough to pull a victory out of a hat in dire circumstances.

Likewise, if the only meaningful policy priority was simply to separate Europe from Russian resources, commit Europe to American LNG, then that's obviously happened both with blowing up Nord Stream as well as getting the Europeans to put out a warrant for Putin's arrest. It would take decades for a Russian-European rapprochement to happen, Europe "got over" the transition from Russian resources, so maybe the war is just on zombie mode until it ends one way or another, no reason to escalate further with Russia as mission accomplished.

I don't want to toot my own horn, but the advance on Kiev having been a dual-purpose operation is a theory I've been sharing here for close to a year now. (And I still believe it is true, so we're in agreement there). — Tzeentch

Yes, it's pretty obvious that taking the land bridge was plan B for Ukraine not capitulating or negotiating, but lot's of people had this position since the first weeks of the war when Ukraine didn't capitulate. @Isaac and myself, and @ssu also agreed Russian generals had such a backup plan (but debate remained on how likely they thought they would need it as well as the FSB and Kremlin's evaluation, which honestly I'm sure how likely they thought Ukrainian capitulation and, more importantly, if they would have not invaded if they thought the current situation would happen; odds don't really matter if you're committed anyways).

My guess is that the situation is a lot more dire than western sources are letting on, and that even copious amounts of ammunition would not make any significant difference on the battlefield.

A lot of folks seem to believe the Ukrainian forces have "ground the Russians to a halt", but I think that's wrong. — Tzeentch

I agree. The narrative has moved from "Ukraine is winning" to "stalemate" as a transition to "Ukraine is losing".

However, even if copious amounts of ammunition now won't make that much of a difference, ammunition production has long lead times, so you would have had to have worked out this point in the war at the start of the war in order to decide not to ramp up ammunition production because it doesn't matter. The decision was made over a year ago, not today. And there's basically no military scenario where less ammunition is as good or better than more ammunition.

So credit to pentagon analysts who worked out Ukrainian sustainment is simply impossible beyond a certain point and so just no reason to produce more ammunition.

However, this contradicts the apparent policy to prop up Ukraine as long as possible without ever negotiating. Indeed, even if you did plan to negotiate you'd want more ammunition to increase your leverage, both in terms of terrain held at the ceasefire as well as the credible potential to be able to keep fighting. "We've run out of ammunition so now we want to negotiate," is not a good negotiation position.

So, there's no obvious answer to this "run low on ammunition policy", but certainly it was thought out, not some accident, at least by Pentagon top brass who obviously understand things like "rounds down range" is important to keep doing insofar as the war continues.

I've thought of a few possibilities, however:

1. It's part of the drip feed arms calibration to send equipment but then kneecap ammunition. If you don't want the Ukrainians to have any chance at all of defeating the Russians in Ukraine you control the ammunition they have and ensure they simply never have enough ammunition to sustain an offensive all the way to the Azov sea to cut off Crimea (which, to remind everyone, Russia would likely result to nuclear weapons if that were to occur; at the least, pentagon planners would make their decision based on that assumption). In return for this favour, perhaps Russia keeps an apparent stalemate that looks nice in the Western news (for example not open up another front on the rest of the thousand kilometres of border, which is all technically "the front"). Evidence for this is that obviously the policy is to drip feed arms, so the answer to "why not more ammunition?" may simply be the same as "why not tanks and fighter jets from day one?"

2. The decision to continue fighting is purely political for short term PR reasons and makes no military sense, pentagon top brass are simply undermining the White house's policy, by "forgetting" to produce more ammunition. The white house is full of myopic idiots led by someone with Alzheimer's, focused on the news cycle who don't understand anything about war fighting so we'll just go ahead and bake in a Ukrainian defeat from the get-go, ensure they can't do something too stupid by taking away the means. Evidence for this would be pentagon top brass literally stating Ukraine achieved all it could reasonably achieve militarily and it would be good to negotiate.

The pentagon does just do its own thing every once in a while, like the time it had its jihadist equipped and trained forces fight the CIA's jihadist equipped and trained forces in Syria.

3. Every war planning scenario in which Russia does not collapse internally results in Ukraine simply being unable to sustain the war effort under attrition conditions, and for "reasons" playing this out is a better option than negotiation. For example, it may simply have been a bet on Russian internal collapse, and if that doesn't happen then unfortunately it's just going to be tough watching the Ukrainian military get totally destroyed and Ukrainian society fall apart. However, I very much doubt pentagon war planners actually want to bet on Russian internal collapse, and managing the ammunition is a war planners thing. So this sort of turns into scenario 2 in that maybe the white house was willing to bet Ukraine on an internal Russian collapse, but the pentagon didn't really support this strategy whole heartedly.

4. Shit happens. Nothing is ever organised 100% efficiently. Can't exclude this option entirely when it comes to military affairs. The argument against this is just that "how much ammunition do we need if the war goes to X date" is a pretty simple calculation to make. It's difficult to believe it's just an oversight, and given the lead times required if you calculate you'll need to produce more of anything at all in a war you want to get that capacity online as soon as possible so it's there when you need it.

This was likely their plan from the start, since the threat of a Ukrainian insurgency was ever-present, and taking too much territory that they couldn't effectively control and pacify would be a guarantee for such an insurgency to materialize. — Tzeentch

I agree that there was never a plan to occupy more territory than the Russian speaking regions they currently have, but I'd also agree with @ssu that plan A was a negotiated resolution with Kiev. The purpose of encircling Kiev to bring the war to the capital and put the diplomatic pressure for a negotiation, and if not, then it occupies the large majority of Ukrainian forces (i.e. is also a giant fixing operation, as the capital is always the priority) while the Southern regions are occupied and pacified.

If the West refuses, either because the US strongarms the EU, or because the EU remains ignorant, likely more Russian aggression will follow. Though even then it remains to be seen whether their aim is to take all of Ukraine, or only those areas which are strategically relevant - it's even possible that what they hold now is all they intend to take. — Tzeentch

Agreed.

Note that the US doesn't care about instability in Eastern Europe - it in fact believes it to be instrumental to their goals among which are unity and remilitarization of Europe. Ironically, Europe seems to be the key to peace. — Tzeentch

Also agreed, but the only problem in this logic is that if the goal is to prop-up Ukraine indefinitely you wouldn't plan on running into a ammunition problem. So could also just be that there's not really a clear overall plan. The support to Ukraine is delivered primarily through NATO, so maybe the US can't just show up and declare their purpose of keeping Eastern Europe unstable indefinitely; so lot's of different plans and ideas happen simultaneously, which, in the end, keep planning incoherent and things unstable.

This is something I have to degree with. The objective seems to prevent Russia from gaining an all out victory, but Ukraine not having the ability to defeat the Russians. — ssu

Yes we agree on this point.

I think in basic military terms it's certainly possible, as even if lines collapse in Donbas, Ukraine has lot's of fall back positions including a giant river.

Russia would need another go at Kiev for a chance at all out victory, which certainly doesn't feel likely but who knows.

The only problem with this theory is exactly what you mention next:

And likely after this year, it will be far harder for Ukraine to succeed as Russia will likely get it's wartime manufacturing running.

This war is simply a conventional war and the Western military industry isn't geared up or willing to commit to a war. It's been optimized to fight basically "colonial wars" with very costly weapon systems with low production quantities. Not to increase production on a huge scale. The only huge commitments we have seen are investments in the energy sector to replace the Russian exports. There actually for example Germany could act rather quickly. — ssu

While it seems clear the goal is to prop up Ukraine and never negotiate, the commitment to that long term seems low, as ramping up production of munitions doesn't happen and sooner the better and simply maintaining the status quo on the front requires constant supply of munitions.

There's report now of batteries simply running out of shells and having no resupply for days, and very little when it comes in. One counter narrative is the shells are being saved for the big counter offensive, which I guess is possible but is still not a good position to be in.

It seems to just be taken for granted by Western powers that they can't produce all that many shells.

This whole running low of ammunition is honestly a confusing part of the situation. It doesn't seem possible as an oversight, and that it's industrially impossible for the entire West to produce more shells seems implausible, and if it's a deliberate decision then it's difficult to make sense of. If it's policy, then my best guess is that it was calculated that Ukraine simply cannot sustain their operation beyond a certain date (in terms of casualties and all sorts of other supplies such as AA missiles) and there was therefore no use in increasing production of shells. Or then maybe it's all a ruse.

The fact is that Soviet Union lost the Afghan war, just as the US lost Vietnam and Afghanistan. That they withdrew (with Soviet Union in a less humiliating way than the US from Afghanistan) doesn't change the reality. Neither Moscow or Washington DC were in peril. — ssu

Yes, I agree these are not good parallels for the reasons you state. Empires withdraw when their reasons for the invasion in the first place was expecting an easy time and picking low-hanging fruit, but even then can easily be literally decades later.

The biggest long conventional war was the Iraq-Iran war, but neither side was significantly more powerful than the other.

If you would consider the Arab-Israeli conflict also a proxy war, there's the example of winning in direct military terms. But then both sides could be argued as being proxies. — ssu

I think what's more dissimilar as a parallel is that the Arab countries were not large industrial nations and entered into a trench-attrition phase of warfare. Maybe it is a somewhat a parallel of the first phase of the Ukraine war, in stopping the encirclement of Kiev, that a smaller force can put up a fierce defence.

In addition to there being no close parallel, there's also the drones and missiles. The Western media seems to assume that it's essentially WWI style stalemate, because there are trenches, but I'm not sure that's a good assumption is my basic point with this reflection. It could be, but I also think it's also entirely plausible that Ukraine reaches a point of exhaustion and things start to unravel quickly; the main argument for this would be that Russia works out effective use of all it's capabilities and Ukrainians simply can't deal with it at some point. It is the learning curves on different capabilities that may simply arrive at some overwhelming synergy; especially if Ukraine also runs out / low on shells and AA missiles.

It seems it will have little impact on the war maybe now Russians have confidence and confirmation to retreat. — invicta

The summary from the BBC is possibly the dumbest true statements I have ever read in my entire life.

It seems it will have little impact on the war maybe now Russians have confidence and confirmation to retreat. — invicta

I'm not sure what you mean here.

Putin if he doesn’t feel the noose tightening round his neck will at least change it for a looser fitting noose for now. — invicta

Think about where this sentiment comes from, because there is zero evidence Putin is under any domestic pressure or then oligarch pressure at all. Since the start of the war, Putin's popularity has increased, and pretty much all his notable critics within Russia are criticise him for not winning the war hard enough, not mobilising soon and big enough, not using nuclear weapons already etc.

Throughout this whole conflict Western media has developed a representation of the average Russian as some sort of mythological reflection of our own feelings about the war, basically to the point of assuming Russians think Russia is the enemy because we think Russia is the enemy. This is really far from any reality we have any evidence for.

Putin would be in danger if there was some total collapse of the Russian military in Ukraine. This was maybe-sort-of-possible had the West organised some sort of heavy weapons surprise (and a lot more heavy weapons than they have given even up to now) in Ukraine (also taking advantage of the initial impact of sanctions pressure / disruption to society) last year, but the weapons drip feed policy ensured there was zero chance of that, because that's not the goal.

To continue my military analysis, which, to remind everyone, so far been pretty accurate: such as

1. Predicting Ukraine would not be able to compete on the battlefield without armour (the whole javelins and other shoulder launch missile will defeat euphoria was has proven to be completely delusional for the reasons I expounded on),

2. That Russian morale would not just randomly collapse leading to being routed out of Ukraine, based on the idea Russians have internalised Western beliefs and feelings about the war (why would they?)

3. Most importantly, Western policy is to drip feed weapons into Ukraine enough to prop up the Ukrainian military but remotely not enough to threaten Russian defeat in Ukraine, much less on Russian soil.

4. The Russian military and high command is not incompetent and will just randomly lose due to bad decision making.

5. Ukraine does not have the force capabilities to cut the land bridge (which is the critical strategic step, and offences elsewhere, such as Kherson and Kharkiv, only mattered if they led to cutting the land bridge, which they didn't). And the reason to predict Ukraine doesn't have the force capabilities is the simple symmetry between Russian and Ukrainian problems on the battlefield ... just a lot worse because Ukraine lacks entirely whole categories of capabilities. I.e. the only reasonable prediction would be that Ukrainian offences result in the exact same stall as Russian offensives did.

As well as other predictions such as sanctions wouldn't collapse the Russian economy (even islands can withstand far worse sanctions).

All predictions vehemently argued against by US policy proponents, on this forum and elsewhere, to justify the US policy position at various times. For, at the start of the war, no one wanted to escalate into a full scale war we have now where tanks and planes and so on need to be poured into Ukraine, so it was essential to believe that Javelins and other man portable arms (and the "pluckiness" @Isaac definitely found the right word for) could somehow defeat Russia in military terms ... and since that wasn't really believable that it doesn't matter because sanctions will collapse the Russian government, and if that didn't happen then morale will be so low of these Russian soldiers doing something the West disapproves of and is wagging their fingers about that they'll just give-up on mass.

All entirely delusional beliefs at the time, and it's good to remind ourselves of why they were necessary: negotiated peace was the only rational option for flesh and blood Ukrainians (not some heroic mythological amorphous mass of willpower, without any distinguishing personalities having any worth or consideration, ready and willing to sacrifice themselves for a Western WWII nostalgic trip down heroes lane), and Russias offer of giving up claim to Crimea and independent Donbas was obviously far, far better option that a long and total war in Ukraine. No one really disputed that, which is why the only way to make the policy rational was with the idea victory would be easy.

Now that a diplomatic resolution is no longer even an idea (which people should remember that it was at the start of the war and for months, even the most ardent pro-US talking heads would discuss the idea of a negotiated resolution and the different talks that happened at various points), we are in the classic scenario (since a while) of the costs being so high for each side that neither can compromise.

A entire year after supplying tanks would have made a major difference (at the start of the war obviously) the West has finally supplied some tanks. My prediction on this is too little too late. If hundreds of Western tanks, with well tankers having trained in the West since the start of the war, joined the Ukrainian offensives last the summer, maybe that would have been a big difference, actually cut the land bridge for example.

Tanks supplied now, at best, will maintain Ukrainian lines (in the sense of keeping the slow pace of defeat, hopefully to a crawl). Certainly, far from irrelevant, but 100% inline with drip feed theory: prop up the Ukrainian military so they don't lose outright but don't supply or do anything that may actually seriously threaten the Russians.

In other words, Western tanks at best are keeping Ukrainian force capability from attritting further, but there's zero reason to believe such equipment now actually increases Ukrainian strength compared to last summer. At best, I would argue, Ukrainians have a similar force than they had last summer ... and I would argue this at-best scenario is unlikely and what is likely is the attrition is starting to have an impact (not only in terms of casualties, equipment and ammunition, but there's starting to be reports of Ukrainian drone operators saying Russians are starting to perfect their anti-drone processes).

Compare this to the Russian side of having called up hundreds of thousands of troops that were not in theatre last year, build out significant defensive structures along the entire line in multiple layers, that weren't there last year, and all the learning of capabilities (that the Ukrainians don't have at all) such as anti-drone electronic and other capabilities, their standoff strike capabilities (ballistic and cruise missiles and glide bombs) as well as artillery tactics.

I.e. in terms of learning there is only even potential parity in capabilities Ukraine also has in similar quantity, such as infantry, but in capabilities Ukraine basically lacks entirely they do no learning at all and in areas where they have far less quantity (or then running out of ammunition) the learning they have done is not as significant.

Which is why the "Russians are incompetent" theory was so essential, as even if Russian capabilities weren't optimally deployed at the start of the war (which for sure was not optimal, which is a difficult standard to achieve, though obviously by now neither incompetently deployed), the more the war continues the more Russians would learn to deploy those capabilities effectively. People had this idea that if Russians fell into an Javelin based ambush or something similar once ... they would just continue to do that forever.

What we have seen instead of not-learning-from-damage, again entirely predictably, is the Russians learning from damage (whether they are "mistakes" given the context and information at the time or just the nature of fighting a war that sometimes your enemy wins here and there, doesn't matter in terms of learning to avoid damage in the future), such as consolidating their lines rather than expose weak points to being overrun by surprise attack or then special forces penetration of sparsely defended areas etc., moving to standoff strikes rather than expose planes and helicopters to shoulder fired missiles and other AA systems, and basically just attritting the Ukrainians with a massive artillery advantage.

Currently the direction isn't good with the slow fall of Bahkmut and from my interpretation of the West's actions is scrambling to try to at least arrest Russian advances, that an actual stalemate is the best case scenario for NATO (that the Western media keeps on repeating it's already a stalemate because this is Western policy, to just have a stalemate); however, what's currently happening is not a stalemate and it's anyone's guess how long Ukraine can maintain slowly losing before a complete collapse of command structure.

The world has never had a long war of this kind (WWI and WWII are really totally different situations, and there are few parallels with any of the post-WWII US wars or even Chechnya, which is arguably closest) so I would argue there are no historical parallels to base on in terms of evaluating military end-points. Frozen conflict is what happened in places like Korea, but the Korean war was a very different political and military scenario and totally different terrain.

However, generally speaking, when a small proxy force is propped up to fight a larger force, the larger force either leaves, the proxy force loses, or there's a negotiated peace (favouring the larger force). There are few, if any, examples of the proxy force simply winning in direct military terms, and in the case of the larger force leaving (Soviets in Afghanistan or US in Vietnam ... or US in Afghanistan) usually terrain and logistics favour guerrilla and insurgency tactics and the value of the land to the larger power is relatively low, quickly becoming a pride thing rather than making any military sense to continue fighting, none of which is the case in Ukraine.

Because everyone is just standing in line to attack Belarus. :D
What's the play here? — jorndoe

Most of what politicians say is for their domestic audience.

Belarus has been supporting Russia, so naturally the question arises of what Russia will do for Belarus.

Even if Lukashenko is a dictator, he still has to worry about PR and if he gets formal security commitments from Russia it makes him look like a more competent statesman (which is the image he wants).

And Russia's troops are already there, it looks good to have allies for the Russian audience, and signing these sorts of papers cost nothing, so it's an easy PR win. Maybe not so significant in the grand scheme of things, but at least easy.

No one was standing in line to invade Finland either and Finland is not about to open up a second front with Russia to help Ukraine, but Finland joining NATO played well with domestic audiences in the West.

Of course, one can argue in both cases that who knows what will happen in the future, but that's not what actually drives these sorts of processes. If long term thinking was relevant, we wouldn't have things like climate change.

That’s what I asked you because that is what Tzeench claimed “the western world under US leadership has been the most destructive force on Earth since WWII” and that is how you interpreted it: “The one that causes most death and misery”. — neomac

@Tzeentch's claim here is pretty easy to support.

We are literally in a 6th mass extinction event heading towards civilisational collapse that is entirely due to US policy and acquiescence of their fellow Western acolytes, not to mention pollution of various other forms as well as neo-colonialism and US imperialism (however "soft" you want to call it -- being smothered by a pillow can have the exact same end result as being stabbed in the chest).

Now, if you want to argue that the Soviet Union, China and India weren't and aren't any better and would have done equally bad or worse things (and did and do their best to help destroy the planet as second and third fiddles) had they been the dominant super power and setting the terms of world trade, I'd have no problem agreeing to that.

But the reality is that the dominant power since WWII setting most economic policies on the planet (what and how things are produced) has been the US, and the consequence has been destruction on a hitherto unimaginable scale.

Unsustainability literally equates to destruction, that's what it means: destroying the ecosystems we require for survival, not to mention a host of other species.

And global unsustainability has been a Western choice, championed by the US and supported by their vassals. The policies for sustainability are pretty easy and known since the 60s (public transport, renewable energy, less meat eating, sustainable fishing, strict care what chemicals are allowed in the environment and how much, and farming in ways compatible with biodiversity and soil protection) and since the 60s the policies critical to sustainability could have been easily implemented to create a smooth transition.

The War on Terror, and now this conflict with Russia and China, are sideshows to the main event.

Which, as I've mentioned before, is the counter argument to your actual position:

Sure, here I restate it again and bolden it: The end game for NATO/US involvement in this war doesn’t need to be to stop Russia or overturn its regime. But to inflict as much enduring damage as possible to Russian power (in terms of its economic system, its system of alliance, its capacity of military projection outside its borders, its its technology supply, its military and geopolitical status) to the point it is not longer perceived as a non-negligible geopolitical threat to the West. Outrageous right?! — neomac

The West has no moral high ground. I wish it did, but it doesn't and so there is no justification to "inflict as much enduring damage as possible to Russian power" because there is no moral superiority. Our system is no better than the Russian system and arguably far worse (if only due to scale). Russian imperialism is a pretty banal reflection of our own imperialism, far from being in some different and worse category, and is far less destructive for the reasons @Isaac has outlined in some detail (mainly as it's regional and not global).

The West is not a responsible steward of global affairs and so there is simply not much moral differentiation that justifies sacrificing so many Ukrainians for the US policy of inflicting enduring damage on Russia, as you eloquently put it, which is debatable if that's even happening.

Unfortunately, the time of a diplomatic resolution that could have been easily negotiated is now long past and the conflict will likely continue until either the collapse of the Ukrainian military or then the conflict slowly freezing, neither side having the appetite or even capability for a major offensive.

My guess is that the conflict will slowly freeze, with lines not only far worse for Ukraine than Russia's offer at the start of the war but also without any actual end to the war there will be little repatriation of Ukrainians that left and likewise little reconstruction.

And notice how the BBC doesn't tell us which Filipino YouTube celebrity was running the show.

What are they hiding?

It's first of all important to remind ourselves of how exactly these leaks happened:

The documents were initially posted on a small private chat group of the Discord social media platform called Thug Shaker Central, with around two dozen members.

Some of these files were then shared on a public chat group, the earliest of these we've been able to identify appeared on 1 March.

More were placed there over the following days, and later shared more widely on other channels.

These channels aren't about politics or military intelligence, they're for players of the computer game Minecraft and another for fans of a Filipino YouTube celebrity.

In one of the channels, after a brief argument about Minecraft and the war in Ukraine, a user says "here, have some leaked documents" and posts several screenshots. — BBC

You see, when you join Thug Shaker Central you're not just joining any ol' sleeze den internet forum: You enter into a sacred pact with your fellow Thug Shakers to step up or shut up and if a fellow Thug throws down some jive turkey Minecraft nonsense like the crass newb that he is you don't hesitate one single fraction of a second to uno reverse that shit with some highly classified information that would embarrass your entire country and risk decades in prison if it got randomly spammed on the internet. But when your this deep in shaking the thug out of life that you're literally in the centre of it, you don't look back, you not only double down with your classified information to win the debate on the nuances of Minecraft mechanics but you do it like it ain't even nothing to you breaking the Espionage act. Just a Tuesday.

Absolute fucking legend.

As for the leaks themselves, what's gotten most of the attention has been transcripts of South Korean and Israeli officials discussing sensitive topics, presumably not knowing the NSA's in the room with them writing down everything they say, and also a bunch of information about Ukrainian force strength, equipment, casualties etc.

The CIA quickly came out and with their own uno reverse of all that shit, showed everyone who's the master, saying the docs were altered and the Russian casualty figures were actually the Ukrainian casualties and vice-versa. Basically a 10 to 1 ratio, so big if true either way (but since Russia fires about 7-10 times more shells and has all sorts of capabilities Ukraine doesn't have at all, and most casualties in this sort of warfare are due to artillery it's, at the very least, really difficult to imagine Russia suffering 10x casualties ... and a lot more plausible Ukraine is, though who knows and who knows what the methodology of these US intelligence estimates even was, without which estimates don't mean all that much).

But I don't know, for my part I'm not one to question Thug Shaker Central. Their word is their bond. No cap.

And to be honest, if you're leaking secret military intelligence information to win a Minecraft debate I'm pretty sure you have no time to alter the documents, you're in a situation that requires cat like reflexes.

What did Russia think would happen? — RogueAI

Finland joining NATO is not some sort of Ukrainian victory and only matters to Russia insofar as Russia was planning to invade Finland, which is exceedingly unlikely. Finland is in no way part of Russia's sphere of influence, which is what the conflict in Ukraine and Georgia et al. is about.

Probably not that they would become a satellite of China, but that's the reality. — frank

Reliance on China has radically increased, that's for sure, but Russia is not suddenly a vassal state of China all of a sudden. This can of course change in the future, but China has such a dependence on importing resources of all kinds, which is only projected to increase, that this remains a powerful economic bargaining chip for Russia. If China can't practically invade Russia due to nuclear weapons (exact same problem NATO is happening in the current dispute ... that nuclear blackmail does in fact work pretty well) and also Russia continues to trade with India, Russia maintains plenty of leverage. Not as much leverage as continuing to trade with Europe, but significant leverage nonetheless.

Russia has also become a power broker in the Middle East and expanded influence in Africa, that is also sensitive to China's interests.

However, the fact that surviving sanctions was very dependent on China for a first phase is the reason Putin needed Xi's approval for the plan. Dependence now is certainly less than a year ago, but could increase going forward but could also decrease.

However, making Russia so reliant on China is not in the Wests interest, has decreased Russias relative power on the world stage for sure, but has significantly increased China's. Keep in mind creating power blocks is not a linear process but a non-linear one, perhaps not exponential, but the synergy of power blocks is greater than the sum of its parts. Making China and Russia a power block is a radical increase in that blocks power, not just adding Russian power to China's power. That Russia may have less leverage that China within the block is of no relevance if the concern is China in the first place as a "near peer competitor".

Yeah. There's actually many differences between Ukraine and Afghanistan, if you haven't noticed. You can see from the examples of the Baltic states and East Europe that these countries can get their act up after the disasterous Marxism-Leninism they had to endure. Ukrainians have that chance too. — ssu

Oh, I see ... what's happening in Afghanistan right now is the Afghanis fault?

We (NATO) had our hearts in the right place and did all we could but just, shcucks, if it wasn't for them darm Afghanis and their inability to get their act up after the disastrous Taliban they had to endure that we financed to fight Maxist-Leninism terrible influence getting into the region ... wait, what? Where are we going with this?

Their other option is Putin's rule. Which actually many in the east now have to suffer. The Ukrainians are defending themselves and fighting this war. You would want them to stop? — ssu

I spent some time explaining that "Ukrainians" aren't some amorphous general will power goo.

Now, if Ukrainians weren't forced to fight, weren't deprived of their right to "vote with their feet", then I would agree that it is indeed "Ukrainians" fighting. And that would be meaningful, I could not deny it. However, that's not the case, and I so I have no idea how many Ukrainians fighting actually want to fight and how many are coerced to.

So that's definitely one issue.

However, the on-top of that issue is the West's undeniable policy of drip feeding arms to Ukraine. There is no other thesis tenable. And the only possible motive for the drip feed arms policy is the goal to not defeat Russia on the battlefield. Otherwise, we'd be throwing every weapons system we could into the fight from day 1. We don't. We hum and haw for literally months, all the while Ukrainians are dying with sub-optimal equipment, and then finally ... ok, you can have one. But not more!! Then the cycle repeats with the next weapons system. Each one heralded as some sort of victory in itself that we're "finally" sending artillery, or rockets, or killer drones, or APC's, or now tanks.

But victory against who? The West defeating itself in its first decision not to send those arms with a second decision (months later) to send those arms?

Insofar as we are sending arms, out policy is to sacrifice Ukrainians for our purposes.

The drip feed arms policy proves beyond any reasonable doubt that our purpose is not to defeat the Russians nor the welfare of Ukraine.

If you say "Bah, Putin! Must be fought! Ukraine be damned" you can make that argument. In principle I have no problem sacrificing any number of humans for a worthy cause. But the cause has to worthy, of greatness commensurate with the sacrifice being asked. So, I'm all ears.

What I have issue with (first of many) is the idea our policies are designed to benefit Ukrainians ... and when that can't be supported: Ukrainians want to fight! What else do you want!

Of course Ukraine can lose the war. So then the aggressor would be victorious. Then we have a huge diaspora of Ukrainians living in the West, the country in shambles and a very tense situation in Europe. — ssu

If you're arguing that propping up the Ukrainian government serves our Western European purpose of having less "diaspora", as you put it, hanging around, again, you can make that argument, but it's not an argument from the point of view of Ukrainian wellfair.

However, the question was, considering we agree Ukraine can lose the war, would the sacrifice until now and until defeat be worth it in the event of a loss?

Wrong.

They can. Just like the Afghan National Army voted with it's feet when the Taliban launched their final offensive. The Ukrainians didn't react as they did to the occupation of Crimea. That is a fact you cannot deny. — ssu

I'm not following you.

The question is about voting with one's feet about the war effort and being able to leave Ukraine. The "voting with your feet" expression has always included the context that it's legal to leave, you can leave in a legal sense.

Afghanistan is the perfect example of this. The bloated army rampant corruption and a totally wasteful administration that basically had trouble to operate anywhere else than in Kabul, was totally out of it's budget limitations on what Afghanistan itself could finance. Corruption was rampant, thanks to the West. — ssu

Why would it be different in Ukraine?

This created huge scandals and nobody basically cared about them. — ssu

Why would this be different in Ukraine?

Yet I think there is the possibility that Ukraine can transform itself just like the Baltic States or Poland has. — ssu

Is the mere possibility worth any cost to Ukrainian lives and welfare in the meantime.

This is @Isaac's question.

And this question ignores entirely the possibility of Ukraine losing the war and we don't even get to the part your talking about.

Policy is about cost-benefit and outcomes.

If the outcomes you wish for aren't probable ... does just somehow justify the policy anyways?

Even worse, if the wished for outcomes are not probable does that justify forcing Ukrainian men into a war in which Ukrainians are unlikely to benefit?

For, the fallback argument of "well, maybe it will be a disaster for Ukraine, that's possible too, but Ukrainians want to fight!! So we should send them the weapons regardless of the likely outcomes!!" has to then deal with the fact most "Ukraine" as some sort of abstracted willpower doesn't exist; individual Ukrainians want to fight or not, and if their freedom of movement is forcibly taken away and they can't "vote with their feet" (all of a sudden when it comes to war ... that's no longer a thing conservatives like to say) and are then forced into fighting ... that doesn't fit the definition of "wanting" to me.

War is a logic of sacrificing: sacrificing people's lives, sacrificing people's homes, sacrificing the present and future mental wellbeing of children, and so on, at some point the proponents of war must, at the least, outline the sacrifice (of others) and why it's worthwhile (to themselves).

Simply avoiding the issue is war fever denialism.

That might be true. In my view some form of violent conflict in the Pacific is simply inevitable, whether nations want it or not. — Tzeentch

I would be inclined to agree with you.

However, simply because such a conflict is inevitable does not mean the US plans to actually fight in it. They may accept they can't do anything with sufficient changes in relative China-US power but also new military technologies.

Taiwan is 100 miles from the Chinese coast.

We can get into the details, but at some point China is able to concentrate enough force (above and under the sea) in this area for an amphibious landing as well as effectively blockade Taiwan while effectively denying the airspace with lots and lots of missiles and being able to sink US carriers (again, enough missiles will eventually do the job).

Playing this scenario out, could the US "do" a lot with their own standoff missiles, submarines and so on. Certainly, but as long as China can establish a bridgehead on Taiwan it would be a similar situation as to Ukraine but a lot worse as there would be no way to resupply Taiwan for a long proxy war.

So, very quickly the choice is to wage full scale war with China which the US has no way of actually winning. Of course, China can't cross the Pacific and invade the US either, so it would just rapidly transition to a standoff. The economic clout of China would then be a big problem as you may simply not be able to stop enough countries trading with China with their own ships, even if such a situation was desired by US neocons to begin with (cutting off their own corporations from China, and potentially South-East-Asia supply chains entirely).

Taiwan and Korea are obvious flashpoints, almost guaranteed to boil over if the US is going to make any effort at maintaining its influence, which I'm assuming it will. — Tzeentch

The problem is China is playing the long game. There's no preemptive strike that the US can do vis-a-vis Taiwan. As for Korea I doubt North Korea would actually attack South Korea nor China have any ambition to invade North/South Korea.

At least for the foreseeable future, it's really just Taiwan, that the globe mostly already accepts the "one China policy" so unless Taiwan prevents China from establishing a bridgehead in a conflict, largely under their own power and motivation (which arguably it could do for most of the last decades), but if that changes and China simply conquered Taiwan, business would likely just continue as normal globally.

This was tried by the US, but Russia rejected it, because they feared ending up as de facto US vassals like Europe. — Tzeentch

Being actual friends is different to offering subjugation as a vassal state.

Had the US made actual friends, or at least not enemies, with Russia then it would be in a much better position to focus on the Pacific.

The problem for the US is that nations have caught onto its strategy of keeping Eurasia divided, which it does in order to avoid a peer competitor from rising. (theories by Mackinder, Brzezinski, Wolfowitz, etc.) — Tzeentch

I wouldn't say they've caught on, more that they can now do something about it given arctic shipping as well as better rail systems.

Both Russia and China seem to be aware of this, which is why their unlikely alliance has taken form, and why it is unlikely to change while the US remains the world's dominant superpower. — Tzeentch

Agreed.

The only power on the Eurasian continent that seems unaware of how the cookie crumbles is Europe. — Tzeentch

Also agreed.

The US no longer has the power to subjugate new countries, not even Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria, so all it can do is tighten its grip on existing vassals.

However, fundamentally, in my view, the war in Ukraine is about the Euro.

A peaceful Europe would have the economic size, stability, jurisprudence, to become a flight to safety from the dollar and the US empire could become irrelevant overnight.

If you can't fix your shit you can at least fuckup all the alternatives.

Europe is experiencing inflation mainly due to the war and being cutoff from Russian gas ... US has no such excuse, so imagine the consequences of significant inflation in the US but not only low inflation in Europe but no way for the European policy makers to cause inflation even if they tried. Imagine if the only way to keep pace with US inflation was to, I don't know, just decide to cut off Russian natural gas supplies all of a sudden.

How have we made an enemy "for no reason"? — ssu

When you :

1. Move military infrastructure closer to someone, such as alliances and missiles
2. Constantly refer to them as a rival / competitor, literally use the word enemy on occasion, needs to be contained etc.
3. blame them as a matter of course for all sorts events with no or scant evidence, hacking, murders, somehow affecting the 2016 election result with 200 000 dollars of facebook advertisement.
4. Bomb their friends and allies and threaten their interests (Syria).
5. Then support people openly preaching their destruction such as the Nazi groups in Ukraine (suddenly when Ukrainian Nazi's say Russia doesn't have a right to exist and they want to basically wipe it off the map, that's now ok in polite society).

You make someone your enemy.

Now, the apologetics for these policies are that Russia really is our enemy so we should be constantly moving military infrastructure closer to them, expanding our anti-Russia alliances, blaming them for things without evidence (as even if they didn't do it, serves as useful propaganda to keep the heat on and "we know" they do similar things anyways as they're bad), attack anyone that is a friend or ally of Russia, and support anyone who is against Russia regardless of their politics (enemy of my enemy is my friend, and definitely Nazi's are an enemy of Russians).

What I have simply pointed out is that if Russia did not start out as our enemy in the late 90s, then the West has chosen a path that makes Russia our enemy, and if they weren't to begin with, then those choices are basically for nothing (of course, not exactly nothing, other interests will be served, but I hope you get my point).

A common theme that seems to be lost on the apologisers for Western policy vis-a-vis Russia is confusing rights with threats and results.

For example, does NATO have a "right" to offer membership to other countries to join their club, sure.

Likewise, do other countries have a "right" to join the club, again sure.

Do countries have a "right" to buildup military infrastructure and capabilities. Yeah, why not.

However, can the result of exercising such rights lead to tensions and wars the nominal purpose of those actions was to avoid in the first place. That's what history teaches us.

Just because something is a right does not mean it is a good idea. Most people on this forum have the right to hang themselves, or starve themselves, or run into a wall, or quit their job, or bring all their possessions to the dump, right now. Even assuming all rights are perfectly clear and can't be questioned, rights are insufficient to justify action.

As you build up your military alliance and infrastructure you by definition threaten people not-in-your-club. Other parties are going to make decisions based on the reality that you really are threatening them.

Putin chose to annex territory from Ukraine when Ukraine was suffering from a revolution. Then last year he went all in to annex a lot more with the plan to install a puppet government. To sideline the "Make Russia Great again" and just to think this is only reactionary development to the West is simply ignorant of the facts. If Russia wanted to stop US spreading it's control, it could do so just like it did in Central Asia. Just by waiting and not being openly hostile to the countries (like annexing territories). Imagine how different the World would be without Putin annexing Crimea in 2014. Europe wouldn't be rearming, likely it would have continued to disarm itself and there would be far more friends of Russia than now. The whole idea of an European country invading another would seem as pure fantasy. — ssu

The difference with Crimea is that it's a big naval base for the Russians.

Your idea that just waiting would reduce Western influence in Ukraine is bizarre.

Likewise, if the situation was not described as a "Ukraine was suffering from a revolution" but rather the US orchestrated a coup, then again the analysis may change.

Now, if you're basically saying if Russia rolled over and just accepted US hegemony, Europe too, and maybe even if US stopped its Imperial projects and gave up its hundreds of bases around the world, things would be safer and better. I totally agree. But insofar as that's not likely going to happen any time soon, then the question is one of navigating hostile tensions.

And plan to "defeat the baddies"? Why is this such a problem? — ssu

The problem, as has been discussed for hundreds of pages on this very forum, is there is no plan to defeat Russia.

There's not even a remotely honest attempt.

Western policy is to drip feed weapons into Ukraine to keep Ukraine from losing outright but also make an actual defeat of Russian forces in Ukraine exceedingly unlikely.

We now have Western tanks (after being told for a whole year that was a "no-no, of course we can't send tanks, don't be foolish"), a hodgepodge of different tanks and different systems and rounds, logistical nightmare, only some tanks etc.

Obviously this doesn't change much, at best only slows the degradation of Ukrainian forces.

And potentially counter productive as now Russia has the symbol of Western hostility on the battlefield. Insofar as Russian tanks were against old Soviet tanks, I'm sure the irony was not lost on many Russians.

So, Western tanks are unlikely to be a "game changer" this late in the game, and already the West is now talking about fighter aircraft (as tanks are meant to be deployed) ... again not our "best stuff", but maybe old systems lying around etc. without any realistic plan to put that in action.

However, tanks, aircraft, all sorts of missiles, could have been provided en-mass from the very beginning of the war when Ukrainian forces were at their peak relative strength (numbers, training, moral) with Russian forces, the land Russian took in the early stages of the war was the least defended (now there's sophisticated defensive ground works all along the front), not to mention the chaotic impact of sanctions and starting a full scale war that Russia needed to deal with domestically at the time as well.

That's when you want to throw in weapons that can tip the balance ... if your goal is to "defeat the Russians".

However, any plan that actually sets about to determine how to coherently defeat the Russians immediately runs into the problem that it depends on the Russians refraining from the use of Nuclear weapons even in the context of a embarrassing defeat of conventional forces.

The only military solution to this problem is a full scale strategic first strike against Russia, which even American Imperialists, neocons and deep-statists have cold feet about (otherwise they would have already done it at some point in the last 70 years).

So, the logical consequence of accept Russia can't be defeated in military terms is that the only military option available is calibrate just harm to Russia to be harmful ... but not so harmful as to risk actual defeat in Ukraine.

In terms of American hegemony or even some rose glasses view of the West's mission on earth, maybe it makes sense, but it's a policy that is in it's nature sacrificing Ukrainians on the battlefield and Ukrainian welfare generally speaking knowing the promised assistance of "whatever it takes to win" is a lie (to manipulate Ukrainians to carry out our policies for our objectives) and will never come.

One can argue that sacrificing Ukraine to harm Russia or slow Russia down is a morally acceptable. Great plans require great sacrifice. My position on this I've made clear is that it's not morally acceptable to me as I would not accept the argument from someone else that I sacrifice for their morality when they are not willing to do the same when they have the same opportunity. Indeed, by definition asking others to sacrifice for one's own cause implies that universal morality you were talking about ... but if it's universal then they should definitely be doing the same thing.

But if we ask any other Western nation why they aren't fighting the Russians right now ... what's the answer? Oh, well, that would be too dangerous and not make any sense.

Why would the answer be different for Ukrainians?

And if it's different not because of some universal project to "fight the baddies" but only the fact it's there country that got invaded and so their business ... then why is it our business?

Fight, or don't fight. What is it to me?

NATO could have exercised its "rights" anytime and offered Ukraine to join, which Ukraine certainly would have exercised its right to join and then exercised its right to invite foreign troops in to help fight a common enemy ... why all of a sudden these rights not exercised?

Oh, it would "inconvenient" for the West as there is no viable plan to "defeat" the Russians, not by NATO, much less by Ukraine on their own.

How about the treaty of Portsmouth of 1905?

How about the peace of Riga 1921?

How about the treaty of Brest-Litovsk 1918?

I could go on, but in all above Russia / Soviet Union existed afterwards, and was OK accepting peace terms that it originally wasn't ready to submit. And was defeated or fought to a stand still on the battlefield. So what on Earth is the problem??? History shows clearly that when faced with a disaster on the battlefield, Russia will bow down in wars of aggression that it itself has started.

It's a bit different if you are trying to take Moscow as a foreing invader... — ssu

WWI is in no way comparable to what is happening now, likewise fighting Japan (which is an Island), and certainly the peace of Riga 1921 following disastrous losses in WWI and the creation of the Soviet Union is not comparable.

We could get into the details of why these aren't comparable situations in the slightest in simple relative power terms.

Was any one of your examples the resolution of a proxy war?

But the biggest difference, in any case, is nuclear weapons which did not exist in 1921, 1918 or 1905.

My view has been that the outcome of the Ukraine war is not all that relevant to the United States, and that their intent has been to drive a wedge between Europe and Russia, and to remilitarize Europe. — Tzeentch

I completely agree the primary goal is to drive a wedge between Russia and Europe.

I'd also agree a secondary goal is to remilitarize Europe.

However, I disagree it's vis-a-vis war with China.

Remilitarizing Europe brings in mad arms contractor cash, so is just a bonus in the situation.

The US cannot win a war with China and there are too many corporate inconveniences to such a war.

Furthermore, if you actually wanted to fight a war with China you'd be super friendly to Russia so that their nuclear submarines and so on aren't a factor and likewise reduce the likelihood of a two front war as much as possible. What you would want is to start your war with China and Russia is in the position that it's not its business.

Europe has no military relevance in the Pacific and that can't change in a reasonable time frame in any case and trading with China is by sea which would be blockaded in such a scenario, which the US could do so what Europe's policy would be (like usual) doesn't matter.

Rather, precisely because the US has no appetite for war with China, the writing is on the wall for the US empire and the US dollar.

With this war in Ukraine, and separating Europe from Russian resources, the US is destroying the viability of the Euro as a alternative to the dollar. Russia and China can do their own thing but you'd never get "the world" switching to Renminbi or Rubbles or any combination of BRICS moneys.

The best bet for the US dollar is a fractured world and totally subservient Europe.

One thing you learn in the corporate world: it's always about the money.

I see no reason that would not continue to be the case.

Right, this argument is basically that the only thing important to us is to influence our own governments and since we aren't nationals of foreign countries, it's needless to talk about them, think about them at all and hence we can totally disregard them. — ssu

I use pretty clear language that it's a primary responsibility what we actually have power over.

As for Russia, our Western governments (in Europe by deferring to the US to set the policy and accepting a position essentially of irrelevancy on the issue) refer to Russia as our rival / enemy, constantly talk of "containing" Russia, move missile bases closer to Russia on obviously spurious purposes and then stage a coup, get "there man" in power, build up military assets in Ukraine, arm Nazi groups (violating our own Western laws we had to pass because the optics were so bad) ...

And then Russia (our stated enemy) attacks our "ally-but-not" Ukraine.

What do you expect to happen?

If Russia's so "bad" ok well that would explain why their our enemy, but why would we expect anything other than bad things from our enemy?

If Russia isn't so bad, Putin not literally equivalent to Hitler, then clearly we've made an enemy for no reason and have brought about the destruction of Ukraine for no purpose while, especially in Europe, harming our own interests in the process.

Now, I've consistently asked that, ok, assuming Russia is so bad, what's the actual plan to "defeat" the baddies?

How can the drip feed of arms to keep Ukraine on life support but with zero chances of winning on military terms helping Ukraine?

Suddenly we're sending tanks ... so all those apologists for the drip feed policy that bent over backwards and got themselves into so many knots to explain that we "cant' send tanks" for reason or then tanks wouldn't actually be useful, Ukraine doesn't need them, for more reasons etc. turn out to be totally wrong.

We can send tanks, and we are ... but why now? Because, once again, we level up the arms support only when that is not actually an escalation in actual power terms.

In the time the West has been discussing sending Tanks, the Russians have consolidated their lines, built up sophisticated defences, called up hundreds of thousands of additional troops. Not only have the Ukrainians lost significant number of tanks and tank crews in inferior tanks during this time, but providing tanks now still represents long lead times of training and building out the supply chain and maintenance skills, which are significant training and logistical challenges in peace time.

The problem with this thinking is that it leads simplistic navel gazing where absolutely everything evolves around in the end the US and everyone else is either a pawn or a victim of the Superpower. And people thinking like this don't understand just how condescending they are toward others and how it leads to faulty conclusions. — ssu

Actual criticism and holding our governments to account, is literally the opposite of navel gazing.

Navel gazing would be the just assuming the policy can't be criticised, can't be changed, and then just despondently muttering "chucks" as Russia wins the war and totally destroys Ukraine. That's navel gazing.

Navel gazing is just declaring the war is just, the Western policies just, Russia is bad, and therefore we are not responsible for the outcome of pouring in billions of Euros of weapons. If it's counter productive to Ukrainian welfare ... well our hearts were in the right place and we have nice navels we were checking out ... all those single or widowed Ukrainian woman too that we can now integrate into our society's to boost the labour pool and the birthrate, we've had out eye keenly on those navels too.

Now, is there a pathway to Ukrainian "victory"? No one in this discussion nor any where else have described it, and that's simply in conventional means. Russia can completely destroy Ukraine with nuclear weapons on a few minutes notice. Is that a good thing? Obviously not. But they can and it's just reality we have to deal with.

A reality that is the actual reason for the drip feed arms support policy: go to far, actually place Russian forces in a position of "losing", and not only the cost-benefit to the use of nuclear weapons changes but there's also the justification (to Russians and their partners). Would there be "enough" justification? Who knows, it would be a big gamble but so too would be simply losing the war in conventional terms (which I do not dispute that Nato has the power to do, and even through Ukraine as a proxy at least at the start of the war--it maybe simply not feasible now as the drip feed policy has been successful), but what we definitely do know is that Western policy has been not to find out what Russia would do if nuclear weapons was the only military resort to salvage the situation, how effective Russian nuclear weapons would be, and how ordinary Russians and Russia's partners would react to the use of nuclear weapons. NATO could find out the answers to these questions, but chooses not to.

But what's then the result? Ukraine loses the war in the most destructive mode possible short of nuclear weapons.

Is this good for Ukrainians? Even Zelensky doesn't make that argument, but that Ukraine is fighting for "Western values" and Europes interest, not Ukrainians.

First of all, to have a good understanding of international relations, politics and the overall international situation is by itself a valuable thing. It's worth wile discussing by itself. Not to discuss Russia and it's actions, because we don't have a way to influence the country, is a quite absurd idea. — ssu

We obviously have been discussing Russias actions, so it's not clear where this idea comes from. Your issue is that I don't support Western policies.

As for simply morally evaluating Russias actions in themselves, I've made it clear that I'd take interest in that subject after the war is over and the imperative to determine what we actually do now no longer takes precedence over philosophical speculation. However, I've invited people who care to make the argument so that I could just review it and agree with it and made my position clear that an argument condemning Russia's invasion would either need to likewise condemn US/NATO invasion of Iraq, Afghanistan, and intervention in Libya and Syria or then explain what's different. US felt Iraq was a threat to national security, invaded, caused the deaths of over a million Iraqis, turns out the evidence was fabricated; well, if this is moral nevertheless, certainly Russia's actions are far more moral considering no one disputes the bio labs in Ukraine and, regardless of their true nature and purpose, certainly actual labs that exist are more threatening than labs that don't exist at all (again, a fact no one now disputes about Iraq).

However, ok, let's say someone does the actual work of supporting their position (based on a moral condemnation of Russia rather than the US is simply looking out for the US's interest in maintaining their hegemonic status, which so far is the only actual argument that tries to justify the US's policy: it's in their hegemonic interest to so) ... well, what do we do about it? Why is supplying arms to Ukraine in a drip feed manner without any chance of victory a reasonable policy even assuming the "West good / Russia bad" suppositions?

And if for you this thing, the war in Ukraine, is something comparable to being a political activist or caring about Uganda, the war in Ukraine is quite real for me as it has had effects on my life with the Finnish military training on an intensity never seen even during the Cold War. And I've never seen the Russian border here so empty of any traffic. — ssu

The reason to mention Uganda and Saudi Arabia and so on, is to point out the duplicitous and self serving nature of this "What about Russia!" argument. The policy of our Western governments is that what nation states do is not our concern insofar as they serve our interests.

Why would I care about the West's moral evaluation of Russia if the West doesn't apply that standard when it's inconvenient?

So everyone that opposes Western governments is put on a pedestal and hailed, because they oppose Western governments and their actions are "understood". Right. — ssu

We've gone through this a nearly a hundred times now. We live under Western government, our votes and protesting affect most directly Western governments, our "power", as little as it is, is in the West and we are therefore first and foremost responsible to try to manage Western governments as best as we can. In addition to this power we are responsible for, by virtue of living in the West we understand the West better and so are more able to provide constructive criticism as well as more effective planning.

Of course, this is not some iron clad law, if I felt a calling to become a political activist of some sort in Uganda or China or Russia or Saudi Arabia or Uzbekistan wherever, I could go do that, but if your carry the thought experiment out it would require a long learning curve to be of any effect.

Now, there can be arguments for and against such a course of action. The for would be that bringing foreign knowledge and connections can help "shake things up", especially if there are no other white saviours in the region then there is certainly a white saviour optimum quota to get things done anywhere. In economic terms the addition of a new category of resource, in this case the resource of being white and Western, may have outsized impact at the start of the diminishing returns curve.

However, the argument against such a course of action is that first of all white Westerner backpackers and do-gooders are pretty much everywhere nowadays and there are few "Last Samurai" unrealised gains out there, and, perhaps more importantly, the West, despite there being plenty of unsavoury places elsewhere, nevertheless remains the major power centre of the world and affecting policy here has a larger affect on global governance policies, not only in terms of global issues like climate change and biodiversity collapse but also enlightening the national policies of the savages.

Through leading by example / bombing the right people, naturally.

The US and Russia are reluctant to offer a clear definition of "victory" and "loss". — neomac

We're not talking about their definition, we're talking about whatever definition proponents of the idea "Russia must be defeated" or "Russia can't be allowed to get a victory" in various forms for whatever reasons.

Of course, the goal posts can be moved around within the framework of these proponents of the position or then any other discussion.

It should the authors of statements like "Russia must be stopped" in various forms or "a Russian victory in Ukraine must be prevented because it would encourage more 'rule breaking' or nuclear proliferation etc." to very precisely define what they mean "stopped" or "victory", otherwise they are of course setting themselves up to just move the goal posts later.

To me, if at the end of this war, Ukraine remains a sovereign non-pro-Russian non-Russified non-demilitarised country (even without Crimea), NATO members will increase in number and military capacity at the expense of Russian security, the overall Russian military projection capacity and reputation will be significantly decreased, the Russian propaganda machine in the West wrecked, and Russian economy impoverished & decoupled from the West long enough (whatever else being equal like the Rest relative neutrality), then Russia has much more likely lost its strategic power competition against the US and the power status it wanted so badly to be acknowledged by the West. So it doesn’t matter if Russia keeps Crimea&Donbas and sells this as a victory against the US/NATO/West to the Russians. Anyways, I’m not sure that the West is ready to leave Crimea to Russia, neither that the Russia nuclear threat is enough deterrent for all annexed regions (including Crimea). Besides this year is going to be decisive also for the future presidential elections, in Russia before the US. So there are domestic politics incentives pressing for a resolution of this war. We will see. — neomac

Of course, that this is or will happen is debatable and we are of course debating it.

But, for the subject at hand, it's easy to say as long as Russia is sufficiently harmed then the war is worth it, but at what cost to Ukraine is worthwhile to achieving these goals that are not analogues or close proxies but have only abstract connection to Ukrainian welfare?

If you're willing to say "if Ukraine has lost 100 000, then that's worth it for the harm to Russia so far, and another 1, 2, 3, hundred thousand dead would be worth it" then say so, rather than complain it's emotional blackmail. You are only considering the harm to Russia and not the harm to Ukraine, for you position to be coherent you must either state unlimited harm to Ukraine is worthwhile to achieve limited harm to Russia or then there must be somewhere you draw the line: 500 000 KIA, a million?

And, "they haven't / won't lose that much!" is not an answer to this question. You are free to say 100 000 KIA would be worth it, but no more, and then argue Ukraine has only lost some 15 000 or whatever the Ukrainian government number is and there's a ways to go before you'd consider the idea the harm to Ukraine is disproportionate to you objective. You are free to place the number much higher or then at simply then simply all Ukrainians dead would be in principle acceptable to you if Russia is harmed in the way you describe. Certainly, I think we'd all agree that all Ukrainians dying is unlikely, but it is either the morally acceptable sacrifice to achieve your goals in your framework and "anything goes" or then there must be a line somewhere between tolerable and intolerable losses for these military objectives. No military objective is worth unlimited losses to achieve (in this case it the losses are limited to Ukraine, not unlimited to all NATO, which you are not advocating getting involved; of course, by the same logic Ukraine cannot rationally accept unlimited losses to achieve NATO's objective, so it is necessary to manipulate them to do so, if the cause be just).

Why would countries have sent Ukraine weaponry back in 2008? — Count Timothy von Icarus

Do you not know the basic facts of the discussion?

Georgia and Ukraine had hoped to join the NATO Membership Action Plan,[3] but, while welcoming the two countries’s aspirations for membership and agreeing that "these countries will become members of NATO", the NATO members decided to review their request in December 2008.

So, if "these countries will become members of NATO" why not in 2008? And if not and declaring so may significantly increase tensions with Russia and send events towards this current war but for [insert reasons] Ukraine won't be allowed to join NATO before the reason for it (not being invaded) actually happens ... but, because we're nice, we'll send arms, then, yeah, why not start the training on all the potential weapons systems Ukraine may need in 2008.
— 2008 Bucharest summit - Wikipedia

It had a pro-Russian government through 2014, and there was a path towards soft "annexation" ala Belarus for Russia. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Ukraine did not have a government that was pro-Russian, or then Wikipedia is way off in stating "Ukraine had hoped to join the NATO Membership Action Plan" and Ukraine would have made it super clear this wasn't the case, they didn't want an invitation to join NATO, certainly don't want NATO to declare they'll be joining someday, they're pro-Russian!

Ukraine had a government until 2014 that was non-delusional enough to strike some sort of balance between Russia and the West, and played successfully one against the other (successfully getting a good deal from Russia to maintain the status quo, which was far preferable to Ukraine than the current war, which was an obvious risk in trying to spur Russia completely to anyone with a modicum of realism).

Define "Russian victory" and provide evidence from Russian officials in support of it. — neomac

It's the Atlantic article arguing that a Russian victory must be prevented to avoid nuclear proliferation.

It is the people who are proponents of this position that must explain how they actually prevent a Russian victory so as (for completely non-sensical proposed reasons) prevent further nuclear proliferation, or then proponents of the general position of:

In any case, the way they have been bombarding Ukraine is completely unconscionable and must be prevented, thwarted or stopped by any means necessary. — Wayfarer

To explain what means are included in the "any means necessary" and how these means actually "stop" Russia (i.e. avoid a Russian victory).

Of course, proponents of this position that realise there is very little chances of evicting Russia from all the former Ukrainian territory and then that actually ending the war and Russia saying "yep, defeated" are free to move the goal posts around and explain how Russia "winning" some things (like the land bridge to Crimea) isn't really "winning" because they could have won even more things.

My own position is that the situation should be resolved by negotiation, in which case no side will be completely victorious but some compromise worked out.

However, in simple military terms complete victory would be one side forcing the unconditional surrender of the other side; allies were definitely victorious in WWII.

If Russia ends up in the long run with more territory but does not actually defeat Ukraine then it's up for debate if the price paid for the land was worth it overall, certainly not an outright victory over Ukraine, but of course Ukraine would have paid orders of magnitude, possibly 2 or 3, higher price and didn't win anything. If the "strategic defeat" concept proves true (which now seems extremely unlikely as Russia seems to have transitioned their economy successfully) then perhaps it's a "win" for NATO, loss of some sort for Russia (not great, not terrible), and a clear immense and unmitigated loss for Ukraine

... but any journalist who can, with a straight face, argue that the best way to reduce the risk of nuclear conflict is to provoke a nuclear power, has lost any right to be taken seriously.

... but then it's The Atlantic, so ... — Isaac

It's truly bizarre.

It's basically kindergarten level of analysis.

You might be interested to look at historical analyses of US Lend Lease aid to the UK, and later the USSR. The aid was critical, more so to the UK, eventually supplying a large proportion of all UK material and a substantial proportion of food as well. — Count Timothy von Icarus

The difference is that:

- The Nazi's did not have nuclear weapons that could strike the US, which severely limited military options to "lose slowly"
- US administration intended to join the war and were looking for pretext and did join the war (so not hypocrites)
- The UK, Empire + Common Wealth, and the Soviet Union could plausibly defeat the Nazi's, obviously even easier with the US directly involved, so it was not supporting a lost cause. And by "defeat" in the context of WWII meant actual defeat of Nazi Germany which was not only possible but did in fact happen.

It's hard to argue that the US was "drip feeding" the Brits or Soviets. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Where do I argue the US drip fed arms to the UK or Soviet Union in WWII.

Did the US severely limit the kinds of weapons it would deliver to the UK or Soviet Union?

There's a drip feed of weapons to Ukraine because of cold hard facts.

Are you seriously trying to argue that because the US named both programs the same thing they must therefore be the same thing?

The quickest way to get vehicles out would be to set up maintenance facilities in Poland and have them staffed by NATO personnel. — Count Timothy von Icarus

No, the quickest way was a year ago when the war started to start solving these problems in the event "whatever support Ukraine needs" requires Western tanks, or even anytime since 2008 when it was first declared that Ukraine would be joining NATO eventually ... one day ... maybe ...

It makes sense to stockpile some stuff in Poland and not to turn it over yet, as the material can be neatly laid out in warehouses without fear of Russian missile attacks — Count Timothy von Icarus

Maybe a reason Russia is keeping the fight in South-East Ukraine 1000 km from Poland.

Point being, people underestimate how long this stuff takes. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Maybe people on the internet who don't have a clue about anything underestimate how long things take, but that's not my case (the person who explained all the lead times required) and it is not the case of NATO decision makers. No one involved underestimates the time things take, and NATO was fully aware that it would take significant logistics and training to introduce Western MBT into Ukraine, and they were and are completely cognisant that not preparing that months in advance and only "getting around to it" when Ukraine is in desperate need is setting Ukraine up for failure. Now they are severely tank-deficient and this will severely limit their ability to defend, not to speak of launching any counter offensives to relieve pressure or at least get some victories somewhere for propaganda purposes.

Furthermore, anyone with a pencil and paper could have worked out that this moment in the war would come as it's simply impossible that Ukraine would have basically a 4-1 tank attrition ratio in their favour required to simply stay par with Russia: therefore, Ukraine is going to run out of tanks and will need more ... and Russia isn't going to supply them their tanks and old soviet stuff lying around is both limited in quantity and quality, therefore, ipso facto, the only option will be Western tanks and if the idea is for Ukraine to "win" the logistics and training for that eventuality would need to be carried out at or before the "how long this stuff takes".

If the prior Lend Lease is any indication, peak flows won't start until late 2023 or later. — Count Timothy von Icarus

The two situations are not remotely comparable.

Both the UK and the Soviet Union had their own war industries and the US had to first ramp up production for it's own defensive purposes as well as deal with U-boats in the Atlantic. It was not the case that the UK and Soviet Union essentially depended 100% on the US for arms, funds, and material and the US was preparing to enter the war itself (so needed to prepare that).

In this situation the Ukraine military and government is kept on life support by continuous Western aid and has essentially zero war material generating capacity of its own.

Therefore, if you want Ukraine to "win" you need to do things very differently than in WWII and send massive amounts of material before and at the start of the war and all the systems necessary to be effective, since if there are no other armies that are going to enter the war and it has to be all "Ukraine" then you need to maximise the force multiplication of their original professional force: tanks, planes, artillery, helicopters, air defence, missiles and vehicles of all kinds, and while we're at it some submarines and torpedoes, and then rationalise the logistics and training as you go.

If you actually had as a goal Ukrainian "victory" you wouldn't have these months long deliberations about the next weapon system when the previous weapon systems failed to produce "victory", you'd supply directly everything Ukraine can use to force multiple in the present and train out-of-country on every weapons system that Ukraine may require in the future. That is what "winning" through Ukraine as a proxy force would look like.

Now, if you say "well, if NATO did that then Russia would just start using nuclear weapons, so they can't" then you are simply saying that NATO's policy is to not let Russia lose.

For, it wouldn't matter to Russia how they lose in their calculation to use nuclear weapons, just that they are actually losing; there is no "the fair way" to supply Ukraine in a way that produces victory but Russia says, "well, that's fair, you got us, played by the rules so we won't use nuclear weapons but accept defeat".

And that is the dynamic at play here. If NATO policy was "nuclear weapons be damned, glory to Ukraine!" then they would have been sending and training on every weapons system Ukraine does or might need since the start of the war or even before.

Well said.

↪boethius Perhaps it is no coincidence that Germany ousted their last defense minister and appointed a new one yesterday. — Tzeentch

Definitely, the only reason for this is to change policy and not need to deal with journalists bringing up previous statements all the time.

Nevertheless, Germany may still capitulate on their current policy, or then the change of ministers is to increase their negotiation position with a more credible threat that they may not do as they're told, and get concessions elsewhere.

However, considering the embarrassment of Leopard 2's being all destroyed in Ukraine, which not only can't be excluded but maybe the likely scenario (from the German perspective who knows this system best), it may simply be impossible for Germany to undermine themselves to that extent simply to be a good student of the US and no other practical reason.

Left as it is, the situation is actually a really great advertisement for German arms, as the American position is essentially: Well, German tanks are better than our tanks in an actual war, so yeah, take that Germany, fuck you.

There maybe little need to risk this recommendation from the Pentagon for a primary military export by sending them to be destroyed in Ukraine.

KYIV/BERLIN, Jan 19 (Reuters) - Ukraine pleaded on Thursday for the West to finally send it heavy tanks as the defence chiefs of the United States and Germany headed for a showdown over weapons Kyiv says could decide the fate of the war.

[...]

A German government source said Berlin would lift its objections if Washington sends its own Abrams tanks. U.S. officials say the Abrams is inappropriate for Ukraine, because it runs on turbine engines that use too much fuel for Kyiv's strained logistics system to keep them supplied at the front.

Poland and Finland have already said they would send Leopards if Germany lifts its veto, and other countries have indicated they are ready to do so as well. Britain added to the pressure by breaking the taboo on heavy tanks last week, offering a squadron from its fleet of Challengers, though far fewer of these are available than Leopards.

Germany has been reluctant to send offensive weapons that could be seen as escalating the conflict. Many of its Western allies say that concern is misplaced, with Russia showing no sign of backing away from its onslaught against Ukraine.

Colin Kahl, the Pentagon's top policy adviser, said on Wednesday Abrams tanks were not likely to be included in Washington's next massive $2 billion military aid package, which will be headlined by Stryker and Bradley armoured vehicles. — U.S., Germany head for showdown over tanks for Ukraine - Reuters

For those wondering about the tank situation. According to the article "U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin was in Germany on Thursday to meet new Defence Minister Boris Pistorius, shortly after Pistorius was sworn into office," but I'm not sure if that means today or then next Thursday, so unclear when we'll find out if Germany "sticks to its guns" so to speak or capitulates.

Although I'm highly skeptical Western tanks would be enough to "defeat Russia", enough of them would help create a stalemate, which I think is what US is aiming at currently; calibrate the drip feed into a stalemate.

What I expect is on people's minds is that simply maybe not enough and a massive fleet of Western tanks being destroyed in Ukraine would be a major embarrassment. It cannot simply be assumed

The Greatest Nuclear Threat we face is a Russian Victory, The Atlantic.
— Wayfarer
:up: — neomac

Again, how do you actually prevent a Russian victory?

Sanctions haven't worked, international fighters haven't worked, the great Ukrainian offensive hasn't worked, the drip feed of new weapons systems hasn't worked, and there is likely no air defence even possible for defending the Ukrainian electricity grid.

If the real threat is Russian victory, how is that actually prevented?

If you can answer this question, then feel free to move onto the next question of likely the only situation in which Russia uses nuclear weapons is ... losing and not winning, and how would Russia using nuclear weapons to avoid limited defeat (likely successfully) in Ukraine (and also now there's a major power clearly willing to use nuclear weapons) somehow put other nations off building their own nuclear weapons?

This argument is nonsense built on-top of nonsense.

To continue my analysis of the military situation, the UK, and I believe Poland as well, sending main battle tanks and the US sending Bradleys now is a pretty good evidence for the drip feed arms supply theory, which is that military support for Ukraine is calibrated to not let Russia lose; now that Russia is gaining ground again, suddenly the next military system is all the talk and needs to be supplied.

Germany has taken the common sense position that they'll supply main battle tanks if the US supplies main battle tanks. Totally reasonable, someone asking you to do A, and who can also do A, should be willing to also do A if they want you to do A.

Otherwise, the argument structure that you should do something I'm equally capable, but not willing to do myself, is called manipulation.

It's unclear which and how many Western tanks will be supplied to Ukraine, but what is clear is that if the will to "help Ukraine" was genuine these tanks could been supplied from the beginning, or, at minimum, Ukrainian tank brigades trained on these systems since February (or even before) in the event Ukraine loses a significant part of their entire tank fleet as well as all the other soviet equipment that could be scrounged here and there.

We can also safely conclude that all the reasoning provided before for not supplying Western main battle tanks was completely spurious and lies (which was in any case obvious), if suddenly the story is changing now.

As for the effectiveness of Western tanks themselves, this is now very much sub-optimal conditions. Lot's of experienced Ukrainian tank crews have been lost who could have made use of the Western systems.

In addition to the attrition of tank personnel, there's the logistical challenges. Of course, this could have been easily mitigated by fielding just one Western tank company since the start of the war to work out logistical issues in case it turns out that "anything Ukraine needs" includes Western tanks.

The complexity and maintenance of Western tanks is the major practical problem in suddenly fielding them, and it's very unclear how effective they can be in the remaining skillset and when they'll be effective. Operating tanks takes a considerable amount of skill, even starting with just manoeuvring without getting stuck, and tanks are of limited supply so it's not a case where people can just be thrown into it and we'll just assume the survivors learn something.

It's definitely an open question, even with proper training, how effective Western tanks would be against Russian tanks. Russian tank doctrine is more smaller tanks; with one less crew that also helps permit more tanks. What sort of proficiency Ukraine will have with these tanks is anyone's guess.

However, Western tanks will also remain vulnerable to drone and air power. If the Western tanks are effective against other ground units, this will increase Russian motivation to engage certainly a lot of drones but also their attack helicopters. Artillery may not be so effective destroying Western tanks but may damage them (a problem amplified if they are difficult to repair) as well as of course suppress and degrade supporting infantry and other vehicles. Electronic warfare seems to have become pretty effectively employed by the Russians.

On the offensive, both ATGM's (which the Russians also have) and mines are an additional problem.

To summarise, Western tanks at this stage maybe very late in the game, too late to have a major impact; certainly better than nothing but now fielded in sub optimal conditions, and the requirement of air power and electronic warfare to support the tanks remains, which likely we'll start to hear about if Western tanks start to lose against Russian combined arms or just tank-on-tank engagements (whether because Russian tank doctrine is good enough or just Russian tank crews are far more experienced at this point).

On the political side, there's a major symbolic element to the supply of Western tanks, definitely gives the impression this is NATO's war.

In terms of narrative for Russia they can credibly say they destroyed Ukrainian war fighting capacity and are now even more directly against NATO than before. Why this matters is first on the international scene of countries friendly to Russia it undermines the narrative of Russian incompetence in dealing with the much smaller Ukrainian army; it's difficult to continue to say Russia has underperformed if the West needs to send in Western tanks and difficult to continue to say that it's actually Russia that has lost a significant amount of tanks and not Ukraine. The supply of Western tanks, in itself, boosts Russian "strength" perception, which is what matters most to countries friendly to Russia.

Domestically, the supply of Western tanks simply confirms the Kremlin's narrative that they are actually fighting NATO and not Ukraine. This narrative is important in terms of increasing toleration for losses. If we compare the current scenario to one in which Ukraine was not helped at all by the West and the current front lines is 100% Ukrainian military achievement, it would indeed be a completely military debacle for Russia (an argument that the West continues to make regardless of the facts, but this only plays to a Western audience). The counter argument of course to Russian military debacle is that they are fighting NATO, which is out to get them, and therefore it's a harder fight requiring more sacrifice. Western tanks is a sort of step change in the symbolism of this argument; Russia can credibly say domestically and to their international audience that they defeated Ukraine and are now battling NATO tanks.

The optics of Western tanks being destroyed in Ukraine may also undermine support in the West for the war, lead to self-reflection of Western omnipotence as it maybe the end of the drip-feed escalation ladder, so if that doesn't work ... then maybe best to compromise.

That the move maybe underwhelming militarily and also counter-effective politically, is potentially a good explanation of why Germany is getting cold feat and the US just flat out says they won't deliver their tanks.

The UK committing 10 Challenger 2 tanks is, my guess, was meant to just break the taboo and get other countries, mainly Germany, to commit significantly more Leopard 2 tanks. Only 10 tanks was selected as a mitigation factor in the event they are all destroyed ... they can then say "well it was only 10 and no one else sent any tanks so what-are-you-going-to-do, don't blame the Challenger, blame Germany". Will be interesting to see if these tanks even get to Ukraine and fielded if there's not a deluge of other Western tanks.

Argues that Putin's success would entail uncontrollable nuclear proliferation, whilst his defeat will deflate the attraction of nuclear weapons. — Wayfarer

Even if true for some reason, that somehow Russian defeat would make other states look at nuclear weapons and not be as "attracted" to that sleek cold steel, what's the plan to actually "defeat" Russia?

Because if there's no effective plan, then even in the context of this idea there's nothing effective to do. So, failing a first option that is unworkable, the next option that is feasible and would actually reduce nuclear proliferation is the major powers getting together and resolving the conflict and continuing to cooperate to reduce nuclear proliferation.

This has been the deal since the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, that the major powers will reduce their nuclear stockpiles, lower nuclear tensions and be generally more reasonable, and in exchange the non-nuclear powers will not seek nuclear weapons.

The country that eroded this deal was first and foremost the United States in invading Iraq and bombing Libya (countries that gave up their WMD programs to be "reasonable" parties to the WMD deal, which signalled to everyone else that the deal isn't honest but the US may attack you anyways for being a more reasonable global citizen: more reasonable than a dictator with plenty of WMD stockpiles), and the country that started to pull out of the non-proliferation deals is the US, and the country that kept baiting advancing its nuclear umbrella all the way up to to thousands of kilometres of Russian border for over 2 decades is the US.

The cause of nuclear proliferation since the non-proliferation global status quo is definitely the United States.

What the part of the world that finds nuclear weapons attractive learns from this conflict is that (Russian) nuclear weapons is an effective defence against US actions: Russia with nuclear weapons has deterred a no-fly zone whereas Libya without nuclear weapons got no-fly-zoned to rubble (with the insane logic that anything that could potentially support indirectly something that could fly is any imaginative wary whatsoever, is a legitimate no-fly-zone target, which is 1984 level nonsense).

No. It argues that "If nuclear threats or the actual use of nuclear weapons leads to the defeat of Ukraine..." — Isaac

The argument is completely nonsensical; all non-nuclear nations that might develop nuclear weapons would be for deterrence purposes, and mainly from the United States and not Russia or China or other neighbour's, they would not look at nuclear weapons as a means to expand their territory.

Thousands of nuclear weapons and the means to deliver them are required to threaten the entire planet.

In any case, the way they have been bombarding Ukraine is completely unconscionable and must be prevented, thwarted or stopped by any means necessary. — Wayfarer

You do realise any means necessary includes nuclear weapons?

Or are you just talking virtue signalling nonsense to y'a boyz?

As far as smug self-righteousness goes, it is difficult to surpass its glory when you dismiss the will to defend oneself as a slavish pursuit of an ideology. — Paine

Defending a nation state is not self defence, the nation state exists only ideologically.

If the cost of the defence far exceeds whatever the purported benefits in well being to the majority of people are, then it is indeed a slavish pursuit of an ideology.

You are free to argue that the cost to Ukraine so far is worth it and overall "defending" Ukrainian interest, likewise baiting the war in the first place by continuously asserting the joining of NATO ... without ever joining NATO and NATO explicitly telling Zelensky that the "door would remain open" but they would never be allowed to join.

Even more absurd, when the war started it was all about defending Ukraine's "right" to join NATO, as all parties pretty much agreed that Ukrainian neutrality would end the war and so reasoning to reject that was needed by the parties pushing war. You cannot be more ideologically motivated than fighting and dying for a hypothetical right to join an organisation that won't let you ever join in practice.

What did you just write?! If the “concept” (intention or extension) of “legitimate grievance” needs to be negotiated then you yourself can not claim as a fact that those I listed are “legitimate grievances”: main parties didn’t negotiate anywhere what “legitimate grievances” Russia may be acknowledged to have. — neomac

Unfortunately your reading comprehension is so low we need here a dictionary intervention.

My constituents have a legitimate grievance, and it must be addressed tonight.

People caught in this way have a legitimate grievance against the tax regulations in this sense.

The system would then be clogged, making it impossible for those with a legitimate grievance to have their case heard promptly.

I think all of us feel that one of the most important things is that nobody should have a legitimate grievance.

I realise that there is a war on and that things are difficult in regard to borrowing, but this is a legitimate grievance.

Both claimed a legitimate grievance against those who stood in the way of a thorough-going conversion and justified violence in terms of divinely sanctioned retribution.

Those absent parent groups who campaigned so loudly against the child support scheme can no longer claim legitimate grievance.

Does this term as it is used at present prevent a person who has a legitimate grievance against that diplomatic agent from taking proceedings?

No attempt has been made to meet this real and legitimate grievance felt by tens of thousands of work people.

The attainment of contentment, or if contentment be too strong a word, the absence of a legitimate grievance, is a big step towards efficiency.

We hope also to get rid of some legitimate grievance which exists with regard to ready-made clothing. — Cambridge Dictionary

The banks should not be handed a legitimate grievance that would justify their failure to lend. -Times, Sunday Times

Politicians have responded by recognising tax avoidance as a legitimate grievance and are attempting to tackle it. -Times, Sunday Times

You have a legitimate grievance against words ending in. -Times, Sunday Times

Any employee who saw goalposts moving thus would have a legitimate grievance. - Times, Sunday Times

The people were satisfied with the administration, and they had no legitimate grievance against it. - Retrieved from Wikipedia — Collins Dictionary

"Legitimate grievance" is a mainly legal expression to make the distinction with a "grievance" that may or may not be legitimate.

For there to be a grievance, someone need only to complain about something, which could be anything, no matter how unreasonable.

For example, an executive may come into the CEO's office and say that there's a problem with a client and they received a letter with a long list of grievances.

The CEO may then reply "are there legitimate grievances?"

The question is not about whether the client feels their grievances are legitimate, but what this executive thinks. The answer will be the executives opinion about the merit of the grievances.

Legitimate grievance is a concept utilised on one side of the negotiation table to discuss the list of grievances on the other side.

In the context of business, if I'm the CEO and you an executive in the firm, and we agree this client has legitimate grievances, it means we believe the client would have a strong case to sue us, so we should be nice and try to solve the problem. If we concluded there was no legitimate grievances it means we think we can tell this client to take a hike. Of course, that remains our opinion and others may disagree or then we may disagree with each other.

In non-legal contexts (like the police promised coffee but that could not give rise to a law suite), or then the war (which has no legal authority to resolve it), the concept of legitimate grievance simply expresses what you think does actually need to be resolved in some way for the other side to do what you want. The police may have no legal compulsion to get a murderer a cup of coffee, but they may feel this grievance is indeed legitimate, they did say they would do that, and so they should comply if they want the murderer to keep talking.

Legitimate grievances is what you discuss on your side about the other side, trying to determine or guess what's actually important to the other side that your side is willing to do. The police may recognise the murderer's grievance of being arrested and no longer free is heart-felt and the murderer rather not be in prison; so, sure, it's a grievance but the police are unlikely to view it as a legitimate one, whereas coffee perhaps they can do.

So, when I say, for example, Nazi's in Ukraine is a legitimate grievance, it's expressing my opinion that we in the West should also not want Nazi's in Ukraine.

For a negotiation to conclude, there is rarely an agreement on what are all the legitimate grievances but the end result is simply the terms of the agreement.

The whole point of settling (for example in business) is often to be able to avoid ever needing to recognise the grievance was legitimate, and substituting money for the explicit recognition and potential legal public relations consequences if the matter went further. "We recognise no wrongdoing" is a typical phrase of any settlement between a corporation and the government. Of course, the whole reason they are settling is because, internally, they see the grievances in question are indeed legitimate and they have indeed done wrong.

So, now that (hopefully) you know what words mean, you are free to argue that Nazi's in Ukraine is not a legitimate grievance, or the oppression of Russian language speakers, or NATO missiles in the baltic, or indeed Russia has no legitimate grievances of any kind.

You are also free to argue that these may very well be legitimate grievances, but Ukraine has many more legitimate grievances, etc.

And, if you want the war to continue, for instance to maximise the damage on Russia, then it simply doesn't matter what may or may not be legitimate grievances for anyone: the war continues and feelings don't matter.

However, it's when you want to negotiate a settlement that the other side may accept, then it is necessary to consider things from their point of view and what grievances they have and which are legitimate (according to yourself).

A successful negotiation will parse everyone's legitimate grievances (at least satisfactorily enough for all parties to agree to it) and everyone's leverage (at least satisfactorily enough that no party feels they have enough leverage to demand more, as otherwise they would demand more and the negotiation continues).

Negotiation is not some absolute moral question, it is likely the moral issues remain unresolved and all parties feel the most wronged.

Negotiation is about arriving at agreements, which requires considering the perspective of the counter-party and how they see the world and what they would see as potentially resolving the situation and preferable to further conflict.

The majority of European "leadership" is an ideologically driven bunch inspired by the likes of Klaus Schwab. Authoritarian to the core, they'll jump on every crisis opportunity to further their personal agenda and tighten the reigns on the population of Europe.

Crises give governments extraordinary powers, and they are currently using those to pass all sorts of far-reaching legislation, from attempts at forced vaccinations during covid, to mass-surveillance, digital IDs and digital currencies. Notice the common thread - control, control, control. — Tzeentch

Although I agree with the basics, they still require economic strength to pursue their personal and legislative agendas, which for decades has involved the "realpolitik" move of accessing Russian resources.

If it was purely ideological driven they would have broken with Russia a long time ago, not made new pipelines and so on. There's been clear disagreement with the US on policy for decades, clear motivation to stay on friendly terms with Russia and trade. It would not be plausible that EU leaders build up dependence on Russia just to have a crisis and push through their agendas.

I would completely agree when it comes to Boris Johnson, but there weren't other European leaders joining him in Kiev to convince Zelensky to keep fighting.

In other words, it's difficult to interpret European leaders, apart from Boris and maybe Poland, as being motivated to cause the war to happen and escalate it, there's just also a complete lack of evidence of any motivation to prevent the war, or pressure a peace settlement once it started.

Additionally, we now get mixed messages from these same leaders about the war now.

Rather, it seems to me the central European leaders really did have a mentality of scolded school children.

Ah ok, I haven't been following the conversation for a couple of weeks.

It is truly a bizarre transformation of it being totally normal to criticise US foreign policy, this entire last century, to any criticism is now pro-Putin. Likewise, for the arms industry, and not just in the US but also in Europe, who don't benefit from the war and it's purely ideological and informed by propaganda ... which, ok, most people view the world that way, but European leaders one would assume have a more sophisticated view of the world and would be pushing propaganda due to some underlying motivation. Motivation of the US is pretty clear, but it's really hard to interpret European leadership's motivation in this and come up with a different interpretation to: they're both really dumb and don't really understand anything and / or then just cowards in the face of social media pressure.

As long as I can be pro-US while disagreeing with their foreign policy many/most times, and still not pro-Putin. — creativesoul

I believe this is the point @Isaac is making. Criticism of US foreign policy isn't "pro-Putin".

To me other notions to clarify are those of “victory” and “loss”. They may have a meaning on the battlefield — neomac

They definitely do have meaning on the battlefield, but I understand since Ukraine isn't achieving these "victories" as of late you've made up some different meanings for victory to cope with that.

Anyhow such geopolitical victory doesn’t depend just on Russian means, resolution, or escalation threats, but also on Western cohesion, resolution and vision in addressing the Russian security and economic challenge. This will also be an example also for other authoritarian regimes, like China. And an important premise to repair or rebuild more convenient relationships between the West and the Rest in the interest of everybody. — neomac

You are just completely delusional. The West does not represent the "interest of everybody" and is not seeking, in this war or any other policy dimension, solutions that are in the "interest of everybody".

Even more bizarre, you don't hesitate to just flat out say US's actions are justified due to their hegemonic position (and just ignore the fact that if Russia wins, then they are the hegemon, and therefore justified in your framework, in the region).

Here the problems I see:
First, you seem asking me to solve an equation whose form and variables are unknown. What does “lose” for Ukraine mean in quantifiable terms? What’s the likelihood of loss and win and how did you calculate it? What’s the time range you are considering? What’s the cost threshold that if exceeded will make the cost unreasonably high? What quantifiable parameters would make you consider a Western plan a “‘coherent workable’ plan to actually ‘beat’ Russia”? — neomac

These are your problems, not mine. I don't care about beating Russia.

I'm not a Russophobe. I didn't live in fear of Russia before this war, I don't live in fear of Russia now. I do fear US escalating the conflict to essentially accidental nuclear war, but this is a fear of the international dynamic that's been put in place, mostly by the US "meddling" in Ukrainian elections and internal affairs.

My position in this debate is that a negotiated peace is preferable to more war, Zelensky is an idiot, but the West (US / EU) easily has the leverage to negotiate a resolution to the conflict and just ignore the fact Zelensky is an idiot.

And, "loss for Ukraine in quantifiable terms" is easy to define: tens of thousands, or even hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians dead, economy wrecked, massive emigration, and not even achieving anything further on the battle field since last spring but forced to accept Russia control over it's current occupied territory, maybe more. This would definitely be a loss for Ukraine.

Now, if you want to wax whimsically that even if Ukraine loses the war Russia is harmed "enough" geopolitically and there's some Western geopolitical victory of some sort, then even if that were true, Ukraine gets no benefit, so the end result is using the Ukrainians for our own geopolitical ambitions: aka. sacrificing Ukraine to harm Russia.

I am entirely willing to sacrifice an entire country in war campaign, wars take sacrifice, I am the kind of person who would not hesitate to sit down and write an "equation" concluding millions, or hundreds of millions of people must be sacrificed for what I believe to be right (if it makes sense of course), but I am only willing in a war in which I am actually fighting in and my own country takes losses in the country being sacrificed. This was the old way: "you want us to make a fanatical stand to slow down and attrit the enemy, you get your fucking asses fucking here and do some dying too, otherwise we're suing for peace or straight up surrendering and not damaging our country for nothing".

For example, the UK wanted France to resist Nazi invasion, and so sent an expeditionary force to help with that. It's common sense.

Without that, we are not "allied" with Ukraine, we are cynically manipulating and exploiting them for entirely different geopolitical reasons (in the case of Europe, self-defeating geo-political reasons) with minimum risk to our own soldiers lives and so minimum cause to sit down and really reflect on what are doing and the consequences of our leaders decisions.

Here you are no longer delving into hypothetical thoughts, you clearly state as a matter of fact “war is totally provoked”, “these are definitely Nazi institutions with enormous power and influence in Ukraine”, “The rights of Russian speaking minorities that, fact of the matter is, Ukraine started oppressing”, “There have been war crimes also by the Ukrainians”. — neomac

These are just facts. I don't claim these are hypotheticals.

And you count them as “legitimate grievance”. Besides since you talk about “entirely justified grievance” and “in total contradiction to the West's ‘values and policies’” (unquestionable proof of Western hypocrisy right?), the gap between “legitimate grievance” and “justified grievance” seems now bridged by the reference to Western shared rules. You look pretty convinced about all this. — neomac

Yes, these totally factual things, documented by our own the Western media (before they got the memo that these subjects were off limits), and are legitimate grievances.

Legitimate grievance does not mean "justified". It's a concept you need to negotiate with people.

For example, a murderer, who's just confessed to a murder, could have a legitimate grievance that the police didn't bring him his coffee as they said they would.

Now, if the police don't want anything more from the murderer and seeing as coffee isn't a right, no one recorded the promise of coffee anyways and even if they did there's no damages or relevance to the confession and legal process etc., they could just walk away and say fuck the murderer and his coffee, I ain't doing shit for this sack of crap. So, the coffee remains a legitimate grievance of the murderer but in the grand scheme of moral things a broken promise of coffee is in no way comparable to murder and there's no legal consequence to breaching this contract.

However, let's say the police want the murderer to keep talking: where's the body? Who else was involved? What was the motivation? etc.

Now, the murderer says "I won't talk more until I get my coffee". I'm pretty sure any detective on the planet would get this murderer a coffee, even if they don't really want to be nice to the murderer. Why? It's a legitimate grievance that needs to be resolved in order to agree on a cooperative action to keep conversing about the murder.

Had the murderer said "I'll talk more, but police are wearing the colour blue, and I hate blue, and to compensate that I want to be let go, all charges dropped etc." doubtful any detective would view this a legitimate grievance reasonable and reasonable demand to resolve this grievance, to continue the conversation.

So, back the Russian and Ukrainian war. If you don't want to negotiate with Russia then there is no need to reflect on their legitimate grievances. However, if you do want to negotiate (want to convince the other party you're dealing with to do something using mere words) then resolving legitimate grievances (in one way or the other) is an essential part of the negotiation process.

The reason the word "legitimate" appears instead of just saying "grievance" is because in a negotiation people start high and settle lower; so, first off, there maybe a whole list of grievances and perhaps many are just padding the negotiation position and aren't really thought of as legitimate by the party presenting them (things they plan to let go of in basically horse trading). Likewise, some grievances maybe authentically felt by the counter-party, but our own side views them as illegitimate and will never satisfy them; but maybe it's possible to come to an agreement anyways if there remains overall enough "compensation" for letting go of the grievances. For example, right now Turkey is making all sorts of demands on Sweden to join NATO, and maybe they will "stick to their guns" or maybe they are just trying to maximise purely economic compensation (NATO: solve our inflation problem if you want Sweden) and so just throwing out these other grievances as it would be "impolite" for Turkey to directly say what they are actually after; so, if that were the case, the grievances are purely nominal and Turkey will just say whatever until their implied economic demands are met (and not by Sweden, but the the EU and US who could solve their inflation problem).

Of course, you can argue that Russia's grievances don't matter, even if some are true, as there is no reason to negotiate.

However, if you want to negotiate, they it's necessary to reflect on how the counter-party views things and what issues need to be resolved (for them, not for you) in order to reach an agreement (you negotiate with "the other" not yourself). Of course, it is the same for Russia negotiating with Ukraine and the West, and a successful negotiation is going to adequately resolve the grievances in the context of the other important factor which is leverage. The more leverage you have in a negotiation the more of your grievances you can seek to have resolved and the less grievances of the counter-party you need to care about. For example, perhaps 2 nuclear bombs being dropped on Japan for no military reason is a legitimate grievance, but they lost the war and had no leverage so the US could and did ignore that little detail.

Of course, if your goal is:

Sure, here I restate it again and bolden it: The end game for NATO/US involvement in this war doesn’t need to be to stop Russia or overturn its regime. But to inflict as much enduring damage as possible to Russian power (in terms of its economic system, its system of alliance, its capacity of military projection outside its borders, its its technology supply, its military and geopolitical status) to the point it is not longer perceived as a non-negligible geopolitical threat to the West. Outrageous right?! Yet if the endgame was stopping Russia, the quickest effective way would be for the West to force Ukraine to surrender to all Russian demands, or not even start a “proxy war” against Russia in the first place, right?! But that’s neither the Western endgame nor the Ukrainians’. So YES concern for the Ukrainian welfare is LITERALLY and REASONABLY compatible with not stopping Russia if that means Ukrainian surrender.
As always, I’m responsible for what I write, not for what you understand. — neomac

Then there is no reason to want Ukraine to negotiate with Russia, but rather it's better to just spread propaganda to increase the will for Ukrainians to fight even if they don't "stop" Russia and their country is completely wrecked as well as increase motivation of the West to supply arms and so on.

So, it's understandable that you are unable to follow any conversation about the steps of negotiating a resolution to the conflict, as you do not want the conflict to end until "as much enduring damage" is inflicted on Russia.

And again, "not stopping the Russians" includes an immensely costly the war for the Ukrainians and then simply losing the war. This is not compatible with Ukrainian welfare. Even in a losing position, one party to a war still has the leverage of being able to inflict more damage and can use that to get more concessions than total military defeat.

And if you want some analysis of equally credible people who say Ukraine is "winning" in some sense (but maybe at a great cost), this is also excellent analysis:



So feel free to argue something or then just point to whoever in all this analysis you agree with, so others can do the work of arguing on your behalf.

You keep making rebuttals to arguments I am not making. — Paine

Ah, I see, you're just virtue signalling that you've found the extreme-right association after 420 pages.

Ok, well, if you want to make an argument rather than say nothing at all, the main reference in the Russia will win or then the actually trying to change that result will likely escalate into nuclear weapons being used in Ukraine is Mearsheimer:



Above is his speech in Romania, which at the time there was not insignificant cancel culture going around that "he talked to in Romania! He talked to Orban!

Is he not credible with is paltry professorship? Or is extreme right? If so why?

If you have no interest in arguing his points, what's your basis of that?

If you are interested in arguing his points, what's your argument with them?

Predicting Ukraine will win when they won't, is not "pro Ukraine" it's just wrong if Ukraine doesn't win. If you think Ukraine will win, ok, why, how, when?

You put words into my mouth. — Paine

This is just a general point, I don't say you made any predictions. I'm contrasting this "extreme right" of yours with the mainstream media.

The key word in an "if" statement is "if". So, just say you're not predicting Ukraine will win, and, to that extent, agree with the extreme right voices you reference that there is no reason to believe Ukraine will win, you certainly aren't predicting that.

However, insofar as your not predicting anything but just "extreme-right-reference-shaming" me obviously the alternative you have in mind is the mainstream corporate news (since, on this particular topic, the extreme left also doesn't like the Nazi's in Ukraine). However, if the mainstream media makes terrible predictions that don't come true on a topic, why would I increase my confidence in their analysis of that topic? Why wouldn't I see what others, so called "contrarions", have to say?

How would you guess that from my life of work? What is your life of work? — Paine

I don't care about your life work.

What I do know is that I post one video of a break down of a video that Forbs references (so vetted to some degree by a major organisation), with pretty much the bare minimum of analysis (such as the difference between a german army symbol and a Nazi symbol) that one would expect from a journalist, that Forbs doesn't do. The content of the video you can evaluate for yourself, if they're not Nazi saluting but just saying hello and the symbols are "ancient runes" or whatever and totally coincidence the Nazi's used them too, go ahead and argue that.

However, what does it matter that the bare minimum editing work was done by the New Atlas guy, and if Forbs isn't going to do it ... well why not the New Atlas guy?

But, even the Forbs article just gives rise to problematic questions, such as where did the Nazi's go? In this narrative that these groups "were Nazis ... but not anymore" ok, that would be great to know, but who (that is not a Nazi) does the dirty work of purging a Nazi organisation of undesirables? What was the motivation, what was their method of internal-de-nazification, when did this occur, where are these Nazis now that we know were there then ... but not anymore?

However, for you, just associating the person who did the bare minimum journalist work on the issue with the extreme right, and not even explaining what's so extreme right about him (and is Trump extreme right? ... isn't he just mainstream right as a a literal President? which pretty much anyone on the American right is going to defend, so is the idea we can't listen to what any republican says ever?). Otherwise, usually the "extreme right" accusation was people like Nazi's, which obviously the New Atlas guys doesn't like (and we have that in common, so why wouldn't I agree with him on this issue that Nazi's are bad, and Nazi symbols on NATO military equipment isn't a good look for NATO ... why would it be a good look?).

What makes you a fanatic of cancel culture is your idea that you can just start a circle jerk of "extreme right" if even the slightest association can be made with any reference whatsoever and certainly you believe that to be critical thinking.

Now, multiple your fanaticism by literally hundreds of millions of people with various bot farms as force multipliers forming an online mob that can get people fired, maybe you just like to participate in the virtue-signally, but certainly you could empathise with someone who's job would be on the line if they said something "controversial", such as, despite apparent short term success, and even if it really is success, Ukraine may not be able to "defeat" Russia in the war, may choose simply not to make that point.