The nuke rattling can also backfire. Russia's Western neighbors don't host nukes (as best we know), surely that would have included Ukraine, had they become a NATO member. On the other hand, Russia's nuke placements are on neighbors' doorsteps. And Russia bulging seems likely to carry such weaponry along, or threaten to, which might elicit a reaction; after all, not everyone airs nuclear threats. — jorndoe

NATO in Ukraine presents 2 entirely real security problems to Russia.

First, is forward operating bases and missile bases in Ukraine, which we've seen happen in the Baltics despite the theory being they would be part of NATO but not host forward operating bases ... apparently Iran was such a big threat from that exact direction that missile bases needed to be there regardless.

So, even if NATO stated it would not forward deploy to Ukraine, you can't assume that would hold in the future.

Second, more importantly, long borders with NATO simply create a more volatile situation. Once Ukraine is in NATO it could stage a false flag, if no the Azov or Right Sector today then some more extreme organisation tomorrow. It may not be clear "who started it" etc. It's simply a security headache that any random altercation along a thousand kilometre border could immediately escalate to nuclear war. Not only can you legitimately fear a Ukrainian false flag, you can also fear either a mistake or then false flag of your own troops starting a nuclear war on purpose or by mistake. If fighting suddenly erupts, it may not even be clear to the leaders of any state involved of why, who, what is happening. Each side may interpret events as the other side making some pre-emptive move as the prelude to some military plan sparking a series of escalations.

It's essentially common sense for both Russia and NATO to want to minimise common borders to a manageable amount (the current borders are very small and not really any strategic threat either way: you can't invade Russia through North Norway and the baltic states don't have large enough militaries to be worried about ... and hundreds of thousands of NATO troops would be noticed).

It's also entirely reasonable position for Russia to invade Ukraine preemptively to avoid the far more volatile situation of NATO bordering Russia along hundreds of kilometres and (more importantly) a large country with a large population.

Why people with any sort of strategic military education at all (such as @ssu) argue that sure NATO was talking about allowing Ukraine to join but that everyone knew that wouldn't happen, that the threat was empty, and therefor Russia should not have reacted to an empty threat.

The problem with that argument is that if people are talking about doing something, even if it seems an empty threat tomorrow, if the situation changes and there's a moment of weakness they will likely seize the opportunity, so it is logical to react when you have the capacity to do so.

Now, NATO could have, instead of talking trash, just gone and done it: fly to Ukraine in 2008 or 2014 or anytime since, have everything pre-approved, and sign the documents overnight and "poof" NATOed.

Of course, that is and was never a remote possibility because NATO, including the US, simply doesn't care enough about Ukraine to expend any real political capital in Ukraine's interest. And no, supplying arms is not spending political capital but building up your political capital by doing the arms industry bidding.

NATO in Ukraine also presents a domestic political problem that people feel the unsafe with their arch nemesis that continuously calls them their enemy on their door step.

Western analysis seems to start from the premise that all Russians think like Westerners and actually want the West to conquer their territory or then just fuck them up generally speaking. We'll be welcomed as liberators!

Stop changing the subject. — Olivier5

This was literally the point you were responding to with:

It is not incompatible with imperialism. — Olivier5

A point (Russian incompetence) that Ukrainian partisans have been asserting since the start of the war, and we just had a long exchange about it with many participants here, going into quite a bit of battle field minutia.

It's also a absolutely central point, as the "Russian incompetence" theory justifies war without a plan, since it's only if your opponent will defeat themselves that you don't need an actual plan other than to wait for that to happen, which is quite explicitly Ukrainian war strategy most of the time.

The annexion of Crimea, Dombass and Kherson are evidence of imperialist ambitions. We are not talking of just beating Ukraine into Belarusian-type submission here, but of land and people grab. — Olivier5

I see we agree that Russia has executed effectively on some critical Imperial aims.

The question I have been addressing is what can be done about it.

As I mention above, the available military outcomes are:

1. NATO goes to war with Russia to implement by force the West's moral judgements, which maximises the risk of nuclear war, or
2. Ukraine imposes its will on Russia by force
3. Russia imposes its will on Ukraine by force
4. The war goes on forever — boethius

I argue that 1, 2, and 4 are unlikely compared to 3 as well as not necessarily being in the interest of Ukraine even it was feasible (forever war in particular), and diplomatic resolution is superior to testing which of the 4 military outcomes by further warfare.

A smaller state demonstrating a will to fight and a high cost of winning a war to a larger state is classic asymmetric strategy in war theory ... but not to then try to conquer the larger invading state but to resolve the conflict diplomatically on favourable terms.

Again, the cases people like to mention, in particular Finland, were not battlefield "victories" but fighting to a better diplomatic agreement (that involved "losing", giving up 20% of Finnish territory, and owing war reparations to the Soviet Union ... yet where are people's tears for this outcome in the real world or then arguing Finland should not have settled but kept fighting until they defeated the Soviet Union?).

The US didn't annex parts of Cuba nor obtained Cuban neutrality/Cuban demilitarization/regime change. And US reaction was against an actual nuclear threat. — neomac

Not only is your premise here false, you don't even bother to understand the argument.

The point is that "doing something about it" (risking your own troops) is a corollary to "caring about it".

Ukrainian partisans seem to take it for granted that of course NATO can talk about Ukraine joining NATO for over a decade but never actually let Ukraine join NATO.

If it was clear to everyone in the West that Ukraine would never join NATO ... then talking about it, giving some little NATO crumbs of equipment and training and so on, has no moral justification, it is purely a provocation to start a war.

For example, nukes in Cuba was really believed by the US administration to be a problem morally required to deal with.

So, what did they do?

They put their own sailors in harms way and made the ultimatum to the Soviets that if they wanted to keep their nukes in Cuba, then it would be war.

Same could be done in Ukraine any day since 2008, or even before.

It's not done. Why? Because "Ukraine sovereignty" is not legitimately believed to be a goal with any real moral merit or commitment, rather a the Ukrainians belief and willingness to fight a losing battle, is a US opportunity.

Now, even if I believed Russia was some legitimate threat to Finland and the rest of the EU if Ukraine fell! I would still oppose bleeding the Russians with Ukrainian lives knowing there is no benefit to Ukraine for doing so over a negotiate settlement, requiring compromise, yes, but compromise is better than fighting for someone else's war game. Especially when there's no respawn ... and your enemy is in fact not a noob, despite the people wanting you to fight irrationally making that assurance.

It is not incompatible with imperialism. — Olivier5

Russian military incompetence is completely incompatible with the notion that Russian imperialism is something we should worry about. Ukraine will win on the battlefield, Russia for sure could successfully attack more countries and more certainly not NATO, and that's that.

Otherwise, what you're saying is that the mere imperialism requires only the mere intention to build empire and no actual means and that anyone who's the target of someone intention for empire building should be given tens of billions of Euro's of arms and economic support. For instance, if I personally have the intention to expand my empire to the adjacent homes in the area, they should all get tens billions of Euros of arms and assistance, because I do intend to expand my empire. Obviously, that argument makes no sense as I have no actual means to subjugate my neighbourhood into a system of vassal tribute.

You can't have it both ways:

1. Arms, intelligence and financial support to Ukraine is justified despite no discernible pathway to victory because Russian forces, despite being superior in strength in nearly every metric, is incompetent and they'll just randomly fall apart one day.

2. Arms, intelligence and financial support to Ukraine is justified as Russia is on a imperial expansion mission far beyond the borders of Ukraine and therefore we want to damage Russia's army regardless of the Ukrainian lives spent and even if Ukraine can't actually win because far from being incompetent, Russia is executing the war in a ruthless efficient way: nearly surround Kiev to shell to the ground Ukraine war producing industry and also fix forces while the south is occupied (nearly 20% of Ukraine and something the Russians can feasibly hold onto with limited force), then attrit the Ukrainians all summer in a giant cauldron in the South using only professional forces and the Donbas malitias and loads of artillery, bait the Ukrainians into disastrous offensives that exhaust their reserves, followed by a limited mobilisation and destruction of the Ukrainian power grid to "get the job done" once economic and political blow-back affects start hitting the West (like 3 UK PM's in 2 months, or whatever it is, move to the far right in Italy, massive protests in various EU countries). Look at these ruthless Imperialists!!! Quick, quick, throw some more Ukrainian bodies to slow down the Russian war machine.

More importantly, regardless of the argument, what would follow from a legitimate belief Russian Imperialism was a problem morally required to deal with, would be the conclusion that NATO soldiers go and standup to this Imperialism.

Saying something is a problem for me ... but not enough that I take any real personal risk to deal with it, is the same as saying it's not a problem for me, rather just an opportunity for others to suffer a cost for my benefit if they're gullible enough to believe my arguments but not look at my actions.

The international diplomatic "dove" position is not based on an underestimation of the horrors of war.

The attitude is more that of Hector in the movie Troy:

Hector: Tell me little brother, have you ever killed a man?

US policy hawks: No

Hector: Ever seen a man die in combat?

US policy hawks: No

Hector: I've killed men and I've heard them dying and I've watched them dying and there's nothing glorious about it.

So what did the West get wrong with Russia? I think our former prime minister describes it well: — ssu

This analysis by the former Finnish PM is just so amazingly shallow and dumb.

For example, he says he was right about Finland joining NATO and his "mistake" was not pushing for that hard enough while in office.

... But is Finland under attack? Would Finland joining NATO have stopped the Ukraine war somehow?

Did he advocate Ukraine joining NATO at the time ... or even now?

Moreover, he was literally physically there in Georgia negotiating with the Russians ... but fails to mention Russia invading only after NATO declared Georgia and Ukraine would be joining NATO, eventually.

He also says the "Doves were wrong" about economic integration, but fails to mention the 2022 war in Ukraine only happening after Nord Stream 2 was not licensed.

Maybe if that economic integration project went ahead, and Germany and the EU pretended it would for 10 years (why else would Russia and a bunch of Western contractors build it?), the war would have been avoided.

Maybe the doves were right, but the hawks under Biden, once in power, wanted this war and ended the doves peace-and-cooperation strategy to avoid war ... and what do we get? A war.

Hawks then run around, like this arrogant piece of Finnish shit, saying they were right?

But what were their Hawkish policies that would have avoided war? Nukes in Ukraine?

If you yell after the fact "haha I was right about the war happening" you need to actually point to what your alternative plan would have been that would have avoided the war. All the Finnish PM can point to is Finland could have joined NATO ... but would that have affected Russia attacking Ukraine.

Of course, if he made the logical link of Hawks were right and therefore NATO should have let Ukraine join, he'd have to square that with Ukraine wanting to join, requesting to join, begging to join, putting it in their constitution (whereas Finland was quite content not being in NATO and never made any request), but NATO not letting Ukraine in the club. Well, if it's obvious that NATO wouldn't have let Ukraine in any time before 2022 nor today ... nor ever, what's the hawk's great idea that would have avoided war?

Arm Ukraine? Even Blinken pointed out that arming Ukraine isn't a good plan as whatever capacity is built up in Ukraine, Russia will just double it, or quadruple it (and, the sub-text, feel threatened and therefore more likely to attack). Arming Ukraine and teasing "NATO partnership and NATO one day" is the primrose path to the destruction of Ukraine, as Mearsheimer puts it. Made them feel big and tough and therefore no need to negotiate in a level headed and compromising way with Russia.

What was the hawkish alternative plan to this exact scenario?

The Finnish PM does not even address any of the key facts or what hawks would have done differently to avoid war in Ukraine.

He's also just delusional about who's he's even criticising. The Dove's position he lambasts is not that Russia is not a military threat and therefore we had no fear of war all these years.

Rather, the Dove's position is precisely because Russia is a military threat and we should fear war, therefore we should be ever vigilant and diligent in diplomatic and economic cooperation arrangements that maintain the peace.

Knee jerk total sanctions was the hawks wet dream, but what did that accomplish? Did Russia collapse economically or was simply the costs of total war preemptively removed so that there is far less incentive to keep or return to peace?

Indeed, US policy hawks called central bank sanctions their "nuclear option" for decades, how they could effectively destroy Russia ... Russia then spends a decade preparing for this threat US policy hawks literally can't stop talking about.

Did the dove's plan really fail?

Or did the hawks finally get to do their insane plans and this is the result.

This is the proof of imperial ambitions, which you have conveniently decided to ignore because it undermines your narrative... — Olivier5

This is not "proof" of Imperial ambitions, as @Mikie describes above.

What you point to can also be explained by: NATO (an anti-Russian alliance) gets closer to Russia, who views an anti-Russian alliance as a threat, threat in a general sense and also specific threat to their naval base in Crimea, and when NATO starts to get too close, too threatening Russia preemptively acts to secure it's "national interest" (the same concept the US keeps going on about for decades to justify all of it's interventions around the world).

And this expanding towards Russia (that geopolitical experts that managed the end of the cold war, say will invariably lead to a war in Ukraine) is then mixed in with 8 years of Ukraine shelling ethnic-Russians in the Donbas.

So the idea that this war was somehow just completely unprovoked by US, NATO and Ukraine, is simply absurd.

Of course, provocation doesn't determine moral justification, but it is incompatible with the "pure imperialism" or "crazy" or whatever narrative imparted to Russia.

Why getting the narrative plausibly correct is important, is that some basic sense of reality is required to make good decisions; in this case reach a diplomatic resolution to the war.

For, either

1. NATO goes to war with Russia to implement by force the West's moral judgements, which maximises the risk of nuclear war, or
2. Ukraine imposes its will on Russia by force
3. Russia imposes its will on Ukraine by force
4. The war goes on forever

The justification for provoking Russia for 8 years by shelling the Donbas and doing nothing about Nazi's the West's own media would go and report on all the time, and the fanatical total war fighting including handing out small arms to civilians (which only get them killed) was number 1, that US / NATO would intervene with a no-fly zone. Zelensky and co. and a good part of the whole of social media seemed to genuinely believe that would happen. And now that Russia seems to be turning the tide, suddenly the 101'st US airborn is being talked up as doing exercises on Ukraine's border and may need to intervene (according to Patreus) ... why would there be this talk if option 2 was feasible?

And when it comes to option 2, in thousands of comments (over 7000 I believe) in this conversation, there has never been a single remotely plausible proposal of how Ukraine can "win" with pure military means.

Indeed, for months Ukrainian partisans were justifying the fighting because it would increase Ukraine's negotiating position ... and that was even Ukraine and Zelensky's justification from time to time, but where was the peace proposal to go along with that idea? Russia entirely withdraw from Ukraine, even Crimea!!

When it comes to 3, Russia does have the means to simply win. So if options 1 and 2 aren't happening, and 4 is unlikely, then the current Western strategy likely result is simply option 3.

However, how is Russia winning a good way to fight Russian Imperialism?

As for option 4. This might be "bad for Russia", for sure, but how is it good for Ukraine?

Although I have my doubts option 4 can be maintained forever, certainly war can be dragged on a maximum amount of time by bankrolling and arming Ukraine as much as possible, even if they are losing. But how's that good for Ukrainians anyways? Considering the lives and economic destruction it entails.

What's the alternative to these military resolutions?

Negotiated peace.

But if you want a negotiated peace, then Russia is going to get a lot of what it wants, easy to yell as a Westerner safe in their living room "Boohoohooo! Russia need to be punished for their Imperialism!" ... but how many Ukrainian lives are worth it to make that point? How many Ukrainian lives are worth it to make that point and Ukraine still lose the war?

Which is the core of my position: if NATO wants to punish Russia for its actions, it should spent NATO lives to do it. If we won't, then it's not our business and Ukraine can fight if it wants to with its own means, and if it can't win then it should sue for as good a peace as it can.

For, the idea there's some moral imperative to send arms is not only absurd, but also hypocritical.

If it's a moral imperative then we should be sending all the arms! Are we? No.

Even worse, NATO opens and lowers the arms and training and funding taps as it suits them, and won't hesitate to shut things down if it becomes politically expedient (just throw some shade on Ukraine, suddenly things aren't so clear, time to stop sending money into a money pit in Ukraine and spend it domestically, duty to own citizens and Ukraine state has duty to theirs and all that).

So, it's not a coherent moral position to begin with and hypocritical from start to finish.

Now, we could debate spending NATO lives to "show Russia" ... but we aren't because everyone knows no one in NATO gives a fuck about Ukraine beyond an expedient tool for US policy.

Additionally, the "Russian Imperialism" land grabbing left and right, makes zero coherent sense with the Russian military incompetence narrative, which is even less sensical than the "we support Ukraine by not actually supporting Ukraine but just sending weapons", with a nice insane "we can't negotiate as it's not our war, and Zelensky won't negotiate with Russia, as he shouldn't!, but will take every inch of territory back ... but also it's Putin that refuses to negotiate!"

Ok, the argument is the Ukrainians can take care of business themselves if we just send enough weapons.

But is that happening?

We've been told since September Russian lines are collapsing ... yet they're still there. We've been told since the start of the war that Russian economy and society will disintegrate and therefore no actual battle plan is required beyond sending more people to die.

Which is the heart of the matter. Whatever intentions you place on Putin, the question is what to do about it. Wars happen. Most wars are resolved by some diplomatic resolution.

What you are talking about is at best a propaganda battle (which you are deeply engaged in, by the way, given the way you are caricaturing it), not the central geo-political question. Propaganda is just one tool of the geopolitical game, with costs, limits and unintended consequences. — neomac

It is not "at best a propaganda battle" for various reasons.

First (as has already been discussed several times), whether something is used for propaganda or not is independent of whether it actually happened or not or whether it's arguably true or not.

Second, and to reiterate the point I was making that, as predicted, you seem genuinely incapable of understanding, even if our Western purported facts and moral opinions are absolutely "true" (this was the premise of my argument, that we Westerners have the truth) it's still important, even under these conditions of being ultimate arbiters of truth, to understand how other people elsewhere see things, even if it's not true, for the purposes of decision making.

For example, the West genuinely seemed to believe that the massive sanctions (that US policy-wonks kept calling "the nuclear option" for years) would destroy the Russian economy as the whole world would follow them. It seemed of genuine surprise to the US and European administrations that nearly the entire rest of the world noped out on those sanctions and the Russian economy was not destroyed.

Western politicians and western media then just basically ignored the issue.

What I am describing here is a failure in analysis even assuming that the West is good and just and the policies morally and politically sound. Failing to see that there's a "rest of the world" (in the words of Josep Borrell, High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy), a rest of the world (a "jungle" if you will) that does not have the truth and so acts differently is a basic failure of analysis, which leads to sub-optimal decision making and inefficient tending the Western "garden" and clearing of the "jungle" in the rest of the world.

Now, if could be that Western politicians and media are just so naively innocent, so unitarily focused on the sublime truth and justice they contain, that they simply can't form in their heads people holding different opinions.

Or, it could be that these alternative opinions out there in the "jungle" are actively ignored because the Western political and media simply have no good arguments supporting their belief to be ultimate avatars of the truth and justice.

So, either way, there is a failure to understand key facts about the world and the situation, which presumably leads to worse rather than better decision making.

Relevance is a relative term. Relevance to what, and for whom? — Olivier5

Relevance to the current geopolitical situation we're discussing.

I was reacting to your statement that:

Fixed. Morality and geopolitics don't mix well. — Olivier5

Which was in response to my statement:

The central geo-political question of this war is the challenge to Western moral leadership. — boethius

I then explain that on the fundamentals, morality is very much related to geopolitics; both in terms of seeking geopolitical dominance or protection "no holds bar" is a moral system, but also there's examples of genuine moral indignation shaping geopolitical decisions and geopolitical institutions.

Fixed. Morality and geopolitics don't mix well. — Olivier5

I agree that the war crimes debate doesn't have all that much relevance. Even to the extent war crimes accusations are the justification for escalation or doubling down on the war effort (on both sides) I would still argue that the policy is chosen beforehand and the war crimes just fit (or are crafted) into that pre-existing policy.

However, I disagree on the fundamentals. Wanting geopolitical dominance is still an ethical system. "Realpolitik" is still a moral code, it just deviates from the Western self-image, as either a standalone ethical system or then justified by the need to defend the docile "way of life" of the tender ignorant citizen through unsavoury, albeit "necessary", means.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, moral condemnation also has strong geopolitical affects, such as the a significant amount of the post-WWII institutional framework influenced by condemnation of the NAZI genocide.

Indeed, the European support for the war in Ukraine is entirely moral condemnation based and in contradiction to any realpolitik view of the situation by most European countries.

I deny that greasing a bullet is a war crime. — Olivier5

Oh! Really? You're saying there would need to be an impartial investigation and trial to really have some solid sense of what is and is not a crime and who's guilty of it? Interesting.

Really? That's all you could come up with in terms of Ukrainian war crimes??? No torture, no rapping, no murder of civilians, but the purely symbolic act of greasing a bullet... — Olivier5

There's plenty of these allegations as well. But the bullets in lard was self-posted, and a clear war crime that no one denies.

For example, using a civilian truck as a bomb is a clear war crime and act of terrorism (making the driver a witting or unwitting suicide bomber), but Ukraine is ambiguous about it, sometimes saying Russia attacked their own bridge.

If there's a case where the accused side is denying it, then you do actually need some plausibly impartial investigation and trial to say a "crime" has been committed and who's guilty of it, at least in the Western "freedom" ideology of innocent until proven guilty.

For example, if it wasn't a tuck bomb but a missile and the truck a military target, then no crime! If it wasn't the Ukrainians after all (which even with Ukrainian officials celebrating it and making a stamp, even explicitly taking credit, it's always possible that those officials don't actually know what happened, just happy about it and assume it was Ukraine and a great victory), then the Ukrainians aren't guilty. How to claim to know such things without even a plausibly impartial investigation of anything?

Can war crimes be staged by one intelligence service against another?

Definitely, that's what many in the West has been saying, at least speculating, about the Nord Stream attacks, that Russia blew it up themselves.

Of course, if you go on international television and say you'll shut down Nord Stream 2 one way or another, you have ways of doing that ... as a bluff, well then you're just really stupid to set yourself up to being framed if, for some reason, Putin really did want to blow up those pipes.

War crimes should of course be investigated and anyone guilty held to account.

But to have any credibility, the West would need to first investigate war crimes in Afghanistan and Iraq and go after, especially, the torturers, but chooses not to. Why expect anyone else to do differently?

And, to be clear, I don't put it past the Russian Intelligence to have blown up Nord Stream or even their own bridge.

Likewise, I don't put it past the Ukrainian Intelligence to fake Bucha and just go around calling entirely legal graves of mostly Ukrainian caused civilian casualties "mass graves" of Russian attacks.

The Rest of the World - from China, India, Euro-Asia, most of Africa and South America - is naturally not only enjoying this rare moment of schadenfreude as Russia's ongoing impudence threatens to humiliate NATO, but if the leaders of these countries are at all cognisant of their own best interests, they cannot help but speculate whether there is here a rare opportunity to not only humiliate the oppressor but perhaps even force the hegemon's shackles to be permanently loosened. — yebiga

This is one of the things Westerners are for the most part oblivious to, but genuinely seem to be incapable of understanding it even when it's explained.

Is Russia bullying Ukraine ... or has NATO been trying to bully Russia these past decades?

Is Ukraine standing up to Russia ... or is Russia standing up to NATO?

Is Russia humiliated because they didn't win in 3 days against a military waging continuous war in Donbas, supplied and trained and advised by NATO with US intelligence? Or is Russia humiliating NATO by taking Crimea and then taking the land bridge to Crimea and surviving sanctions and building an alternative payment system?

Westerners will immediately reject these questions as essentially illegitimate.

However, even if we somehow knew the answers in absolute terms without needing to reason to them or overcome criticism, the questions are still relevant in understanding the world in that not everyone may agree with our absolute truth of the matter, and if they disagree they may act in inconvenient ways.

For the West, this war is an highly emotional one because white people are being attacked in a context where other brown people wars can result in mass starvation and children starving to death and the West couldn't care less, but for the non-white world that seems hypocritical.

Now, Westerners may rebuttal that they don't give a shit if non-whites find them hypocritical, but that may also be seen as hypocritical, as white countries definitely expect non-white countries (aka. the "jungle" that is "the rest of the world" in the words of EU foreign minister Josep Borrell) to, at minimum, listen to their point of view (as the EU is a "garden" and therefore the gardeners know how to "cleanse" the "jungle").

The central geo-political question of this war is the challenge to Western moral leadership.

A I've mentioned before, the "rest of the word" ("well you know what I mean" also according Josep Borrell) world is ideologically much closer to Putin than they are Western idealism (of course, in practical terms, the West is also closer to Putin than it is its own ideology).

Umm...just who is saying that the Russian army is competent and very effective? :roll: — ssu

The claim was

This was not the issue under contention.
— boethius

OK, at least with this you agree. Yet you continue... — ssu

I honestly don't understand how saying "This was not the issue under contention" is construed as an agreement.

apokrisis's hypothesis is that no analysis and no expert is credible, other than the Russian military is incompetent.

Incompetence is a pretty high threshold and you can of course be competent and still fail, especially in a negative sum game such as war.

Even higher threshold is claiming "all credible analysis" agrees with your position.
— boethius
Umm...just who is saying that the Russian army is competent and very effective? :roll: — ssu

Obviously I don't agree that "all credible analysis" agrees with @apokrisis's position.

However, I also don't agree with the position that the Russian military is incompetent.

You then point out anecdotal evidence that is basically only filtered and published by Ukrainian Intelligence, who we may suspect of not only providing a biased view but also fabricating evidence entirely.

So quality of evidence to come to any conclusions at all is dubious.

A war is a bloody fight, the Western media is basically only showing one fighter in a boxing match. (Even assuming what we are seeing is accurate) we black eyes, sweat, cuts, bruises accumulate on one fighter. Obviously, to conclude the fighter we get to see is losing because they're hurting more and more is non-sensical. The key question is obviously "how's the other fighter doing?"

Which we don't really know. How sustainable are Ukrainian operations is a big question mark.

If mobilisation is bad for Russia ... what would make us believe 7 rounds of mobilisation is good for Ukraine? If Russia not having total air superiority is bad ... does Ukraine have air superiority? Most importantly, if Russia is taking casualties, is Ukraine taking any less.

This kind of long conventional war is very much a statistical game of attrition. Seeing something "bad" happen to the Russians can only be evaluated with the full context (which we don't have). For example, if we see a Russian casualty our opinion would be very influenced if we knew how many Ukrainian casualties were caused before this Russian became a casualty.

As for discipline and crimes. Again, discipline is a statistical game and breakdown of discipline is pretty normal for a military, what matters is how much which we don't have much insight into.

As for war crimes, that has nothing much to do with military competence. US committed a lot of war crimes, including torture, in Afghanistan and Iraq but we don't say the US army is therefore incompetent. And, as much as people absolutely hate to hear how "crime" works in the Western "rules based system" we're apparently defending in Ukraine, we do actually need some plausibly impartial investigation and trial before declaring a war crime; just taking Ukrainian intelligence at their word isn't a system of justice. Ukrainians also have plenty of evidence of committing war crimes, dipping bullets in lard and all and posting to their social media. Again, if war crimes (according to us) mattered in terms of military competence, we'd still need some statistics that Russians are committing more than Ukrainians; which, is information we don't really have as war crimes maybe kept secret.

First this doesn't prove my point wrong. Secondly, you are comparing a political struggle within a democratic regime to a war between Russia and Ukraine critical for the World Order. It's a bit of a stretch. — neomac

To put 's question another way.

What is the price you are willing to pay, in Ukrainian lives, for Ukrainian "liberation" of the 5 annexed territories?

What price are you willing to pay, in Ukrainian lives, and Ukraine still lose the war?

Let's say Ukrainian military is in a position where they could easily defend the rest of Ukraine or could commit to all-in-offensives to liberate the occupied territory at the risk of exhausting their forces and total defeat.

What is your risk tolerance for a failed re-conquest of the annexed territories resulting in the even worse outcome of the complete fall of most or all of Ukraine into Russian control?

You seem to be arguing that Ukrainians fighting more, regardless of outcomes, is a humanitarian accomplishment.

If Zelensky sued for peace in the early stages of the war, say the first days, and basically Ukraine lost Russian occupied Donbas and Crimea and the war ended, are you willing to argue that would have been against human rights on Zelensky's part?

You seem to have disassociated the costs of your proposal from the imagined benefits (even if they are really there, which I find debatable for the same reasons as @Isaac, certainly not some guarantee, but that's simply an added risk for continued fighting--that the fight is for nothing human rights wise even in victory--but I'd be willing to agree that risk is lower than a straight-up loss to the Russians).

1. Sending China a clear message regarding its future territorial claims. — Deus

So to send a "message" to country A requires attacking country B? with nuclear weapons?

Why not just blowup a non-nuclear armed country. Same message, no risk.

2. The re-alignment of Middle Eastern oil producing counties back into western views if not neutrality. — Deus

Ah yes, stabilise the market with nuclear war. Classic econ-101.

3. Reduced inflation for the us / Europe citizen. — Deus

How would taking a major commodities producer (not just of oil and gas but all sorts of stuff) into nuclear war ... reduce inflation?

As for the rest of your post I do not know enough about western military capabilities to fully address your points but I’d like to think we lead the way in the techno/military capabilities — Deus

If I understand you correctly, you like to just assume your ideas of invasion and glorious victory have no consequences if they were to be implemented ... due to simple innate superiority?

Can't quite put my finger on it, but ... seems I've heard that kind of thinking before; definitely rings a bell anyways.

Very easy and surgical attack on important Russian targets/military infrastructure. Loss of American lives ? Minimal … — Deus

With nuclear weapons or without nuclear weapons? You do realise Russia has significant military infrastructure that's hardened against even nuclear attack.

The only problem is of course the age old one. The nukes. — Deus

Ah yes, the age ol' debate about them rusty nukes that goes all the way back to Thales.

Without fully knowing the extent of your enemies capability to strike back even after such important targets are taken out then it does sound naive although my prediction would be not that great. — Deus

It definitely does sound naive.

The Russian nuclear triad is designed to survive a first strike all out nuclear attack with considerable infrastructure built up during the soviet union.

A single RS-28 Sarmat (Satan II) ICBM can deploy up to 15 nuclear warheads and also deploy multiple decoys (not that the US has demonstrated it can even shoot down hypersonic missiles in space or reentry).

Obviously if you believe that everything Russia does is incompetent you may also be naive enough to believe these missiles don't work.

However, sending rockets into space is something the Russians are simply pretty competent at, with Soyuz launches having no failures in 120 launches. There would be no reason to assume the successful tests of Russian ICBMs's (that the US tracks each time) is not another indication of competence in this domain.

Obviously the risk is very high ... as you seem to note yourself; again, what benefit to US citizens or even the current US administration to carry out a first strike?

If you're talking conventional strike, why would that be any more effective than the Ukrainian current use of Himars or the constant Russian use of missiles of all types against Ukraine? How do you think Russia would retaliate? Why would a bunch of cruise missiles bring Russia to the point surrender anyways?

The thing about smart mother fuckers is that sometimes, they sound like crazy mother fuckers to stupid mother fuckers...

Some quote by some guy — Deus

That's definitely a true idiom, I can see it as bright as light of the sun: right in front of my eyes.

But let's not digress, you were explaining how the USA should invade and conquer Russia.

How would they practically do that? How much do you think it would cost in American lives? Why would it be worth it for from an American perspective (citizen or the administration).

Most importantly, is there a political faction in the US government that you feel will lead the charge on this with the right arguments? I.e. it is even remotely politically feasible.

That was before the war, before Zelensky even. But Russia is going down into absolute autocracy, all the while Ukraine's evolution is positive. — Olivier5

Positive according to who? Ukrainian intelligence.

Ukraine literally banned the second largest political party.

That's a far worse direction than Russia.

Vexler explaining why “competence” is such a touchy word for Putin and his rule by information autocracy…. — apokrisis

Again, you say you agree with Kofman ... who does not come to the conclusion the Russian army is incompetent, but indeed competent enough even make progress despite 3 to 1 or more numerical disadvantage.

Where is Kofman in the referenced interview agreeing with your "incompetence" claim.

Note that I summarised his view as that Putin’s political war aims were incompetent because the Russian forces lacked the structural competence to execute them. Then on top of that, there was the incompetent execution due to poor preparation, systemic corruption, low morale, normalised sloppiness, etc, etc. — apokrisis

Where does he state that?

↪boethius A lot of blah, blah, blah. Then a careful silence on your wild misrepresentation of Kofman’s analysis. — apokrisis

Silence?

... or doing the actual work of transcribing and citing Kofman to support my claim.

Feel free to rebut Kofman's central evaluation of the current war situation, which is exactly the same as mine: things depend on Ukraine's ability to sustain their offensives, which is far from clear.

What we can deduce from this basic fact is that, on the short term, if Ukraine cannot sustain it's offensives then Russian "humiliation" will stop and then reverse, so whatever social media ground was gained in wildly exaggerating the war ending nature of these recent offensives will be likewise reversed in Russia's favour.

Longer term, there's a lot of questions of sustainment on both sides, which Kofman is pretty clean he doesn't know the answer to.

Indeed, citing someone who cautions the military analysis community to be "humble in coming to big conclusions" is, if you had a bit of that comprehension you're talking about, in direct contradiction in supporting the position the pretty immense conclusion of "Russian military is incompetent".

Thanks for posting that Kofman interview which flatly contradicts your talking points. That you could hear it as saying the opposite makes me quite worried about your comprehension skills. — apokrisis

Did you listen to the interview?

At no point does Kofman describe the Russian military as incompetent and so bound to lose on the battlefield. He brings up things they did well, things they did less well, achievements and losses.

Of course, things need to be compared to the state of the Ukrainian military, which the interviewer gets to and Kofman's response is as follows:

I focus primarily on the Russian military.

And let’s be honest, for those of us who follow this war, definitely engage in some pragmatic self censorship while looking at the Ukrainian military. I just want to put those cards on the table and be frank about it.

I think the Ukrainian military definitely enjoys a man power advantage, and likely has several hundreds thousand personnel that are mobilised and armed and at this point, ok. That allows the Ukrainian military to rotate troops on the front and introduce fresh troops.

It doesn’t translate necessarily into a huge advantage in correlation of forces as folks might assume, and as you can tell looking at the battlefield, it doesn’t feel like in most parts of the front as if Ukraine has a 3 to 1 or even more advantage over Russian forces as manpower would confer.

For a couple of reasons.

First, Russia still enjoys a fires advantage in artillery and that makes it hard to concentrate forces, on the Ukrainian side. That has been how the Russian military was able to make progress even though they did not have an advantage in troops, per se, they consistently had an advantage in fires up until June, and they could concentrate fires and they could achieve localised advantage, and that’s how they were making progress in the Donbas.

Ok, so second, Ukraine is generating additional units and brigades but it also has to recover from degradation of force quality. Why? In a major conventional war you’re going to lose your best equipment and your best people early on. Right. A lot of your best units are going to be heavy in the fighting and their going to get attrition, right, so Ukrainian military has also faced degradation of quality and that’s why you have the British effort to conduct training and other countries looking to add unit training on top of individual training and trying to fix what is kind of the long pole in the tent, which is, umm, maintaining quality of the force and allowing Ukraine to regenerate or reconstitute its military as the war goes on.

Cause the longer the war goes, the more outcomes hinge on sustainability. Who’s able to reconstitute better, which military comes back better than it was before, which military is able to replace its losses.

Beyond that, I don’t have a lot of details. I don’t know anybody that does. It’s actually very hard to look there. Let’s be frank. I think we know a lot more about what’s happening in the Russian military than the Ukraine military, and that’s been the case consistently, not just during this war, but well before the war. — Michael Kofman interview

Notice how this basic observation of Ukraine numerical superiority not translating into force advantage ... is exactly what @Tzeentch already pointed out:

Further, the fact that they managed to go on the offensive while outnumbered implies that they are not incompetent. To state as much would be a harsh insult to the Ukrainian military. After all, if the Russians are so incompetent then why weren't the Ukrainian forces able to defend against them when they had a numerical superiority on the battlefield? — Tzeentch

Kofman then goes onto to describe Russia has been able to scale it's reconnaissance strike complex (long range missiles and planes) from what it could do in smaller scale in Syria, but has been effective in reconnaissance fire missions (artillery and multiple rockets).

He then describes reconnaissance strikes as something really difficult to do, and that Russia can do, just not as effectively as their capabilities would in principle allow ... not something that if you can't do that makes you incompetent.

What is described throughout the interview is strengths and weaknesses, and of course challenges the Russian's face are the same as Ukraine, so the question is who does better.

And also, to be frank, the more we’ve learned about the beginning of the war, right, the early phases, the more it becomes clear that actually there was quite a bit of capabilities used that we didn’t know about early on. Electronic warfare for example that has proved rather effective for the Russian military and continues to be so, ah, various, ah, attempts to fragment Ukrainian command and control. Employment of offensive cyber means. There’s an impression that some of these capabilities that some of these capabilities were the dog that didn’t bark early on in the more And I just want to say folks should be very careful with that assumption, because I think a lot of what’s going to come out over time increasingly will show that that’s not exactly true. That actually these capabilities used much more than assumed early on and have been used more throughout the war.

And it’s always a challenge, the early takes are often if not wrong based on very incomplete information. And, you I like to annoy people and tell them look, we’re six months into the war just remember we’re still arguing about what happened in World War One.

So be very cautious on how much you consume, and over consume, the current information available about how this war has gone and why. So there as a community we need to be more humble in coming to big conclusions. — apokrisis

Again, you can accept that the Russian military is competent, can conquer and hold onto 20% of Ukrainian territory, but still ultimately "lose", in whatever definition of loss we're going with.

Kofman does place the long term advantage "slightly" with Ukraine, but only insofar as Western support keeps pace.

If you remember my central hypothesis: NATO could support Ukraine enough to win on the battle field, but chooses not to. The weapons drip-feed hypothesis is my central position.

Ukraine is recovering it's territory, not losing more. It's fighting a conventional war against Russia and not fighting a hit-and-run insurgency. Oryx that counts the destroyed/damaged/captured tanks can come up to numbers of 1300 tanks lost simply tells a lot. It speaks of a military failure that you cannot just deny. — ssu

This was not the issue under contention.

Yep. It should be no contest. But then Russian incompetence, as all the credible analysis says… — apokrisis

@apokrisis's hypothesis is that no analysis and no expert is credible, other than the Russian military is incompetent.

Incompetence is a pretty high threshold and you can of course be competent and still fail, especially in a negative sum game such as war.

Even higher threshold is claiming "all credible analysis" agrees with your position.

So yes, in such a debate, citing a ex-US military colonel who works for a "think tank" and wildly speculating on the state of the Russian military back in April, is, at the least, not a credible source to support the idea all credible analysis agrees with your position.

But before anything can be done - anyone who disagrees with the sanctioned global agenda is cancelled. Once the heretics are silenced - the work will commence - Promise!

This is all of course a vulgar exaggeration and its author should be immediately dismissed as denier of climate change, most likely a Trump and or Putin supporter and very probably racist, misogynist, homo and trans-phobic. — yebiga

Are you implying fossil fuel lobbies are just wise ol' heretics suffering the gravest of political persecutions for their views?

I fail to follow where you're going with this passage.

Yep. It should be no contest. But then Russian incompetence, as all the credible analysis says… — apokrisis

That you honestly believe ex-US officers, in this case not even a ex-general!, working for "think tanks" is for sure not feeding you bullshit and represent an agenda, is worrisome.

Joel Rayburn, a retired Army colonel and former U.S. special envoy for Syria, who is now a fellow at New America, a think tank in Washington, D.C. — Is the Russian military a paper tiger, New Yorker

You really want to compare this guy to Michael Kofman.

Who, if you watch the interview I posted, mentions there was a lot of capabilities said to be missing, that the Russians did use successfully at the start of the war, but it was not reported at the time.

Of course, some operations were successful and some not successful, as you'd expect in any major war.

But on the subject of experts, he's another interesting interview:



But I'm going to guess not as "credible" in your book because he disagrees with some of your points?

I really enjoy your analysis.

Our Western political leaders are in the habit of elevating one foreign leader after another as the latest reincarnation of Hitler. In just the last 2 decades we've had five of these Doctor Evil types: Saddam, Gaddafi, Kim Jong-un, Trump and now Putin. Popular Western Culture can accept criticism of its imperial colonial past but is not so comfortable discussing and arguably blind to its current geo-political excesses. — yebiga

Bringing up the repetitive nature of these little sagas: always a new Hitler, always some sort of existential threat (if not physically some vague "way of life"), and violence always being the answer (and to question the use of violence ... is somehow actually pro-violence), spot on.

However, I would disagree on one point:

You can't because from a purely ecological lens the extinction of humans is a boon. And in that case the sooner we are all gone the better. — yebiga

As some sort of proposed definition, humans are one species among many so, as such, simply adding to biodiversity.

However, in practical terms of today, any plausible scenario where we actually go extinct is one where we bring the vast majority of the biosphere with us. "Everyone kill themselves" is not a practical political project: so how that would happen is nuclear war, extreme climate chaos, life competing AI (likely all three at once).

Most importantly, sustainability as an engineering project is fairly easy to do while helping increase global biodiversity (planting trees) and cleaning up our waste. We are not in some dilemma that solving our problems are simply impossible from a physical perspective, and we need to therefore accept unpleasant conclusions (such as it would in fact be better if we all kill ourselves).

Our problems are political, and history demonstrates political systems can change rapidly.

It’s hard to follow the logic of your reasoning. First you start with “let us say you wanted to preserve Western preeminence” as if the sake of your argument is to see how to achieve that goal more effectively than simply by supplying weapons to Ukraine, but then you conclude with “making peace with the Russians” for Europeans (to grant economic prosperity independently from the US?) and “realise its ecocidal corrupt mania” for America (namely, giving up on their hegemonic role?), neither of which ensures Western preeminence. — neomac

I think you follow the logic pretty well.

To make a long story short, "peace" is the basis of US power: you play by America's rules and you can go about your business in peace, maybe a lot of poverty, but at least peacefully. The war in Ukraine upsets this essentially "protection money" system.

European prosperity is part of this global economic system the US manages: if you play by the US's rules then you can play with Europe too. If you destroy European prosperity, the US economy is not large enough and not globally integrated enough to remotely absorb economic activity that is left hanging: they will go to China.

The EU is a massive part of the global economy and geologically positioned as essentially a cross-roads of all major parts: North America, Asia, Middle-East and Africa.

Without Europe, America is far away from everything and does not have the economic pull required to maintain preeminence, and would just become less and less relevant with things happening that the US can't do anything about.

It's when you add America and Europe together, in addition to the satellite "Western" countries in the East (mainly Japan, South Korea and Australia), that you have the economic pull to bring nations into the system by their own accord.

If you bitch slap Europe hard enough, people go elsewhere.

Sure, bitch slapping Europe feels good and is one way to express the power you have right now. But it's also the indication of deeper mental problems.

However, since I had time this morning, I also wrote a long version:

I am challenging the hypothesis that supplying arms to Ukraine is good for "the West", both Europe and even the United States; that supporting the current war is in fact counter productive to Western preeminence.

It certainly benefits short term profits and capital gains of fossil fuel and arms donors to the US administration, but I am not defining "the West" as synonymous with such an interest, and that the Ukraine war is also counter productive to US power (which there was debate about at the start of the war even in US neocon circles, that a complete schism with Russia and placing it permanently as commodity supplier to the Chinese was actually bad for the US; for there were "Imperial analysts", whatever you want to call them, that were in favour of a diplomatic solution simply on the grounds it is better for US power to maintain the status quo, that Ukraine is far away and unimportant and not worth the geopolitical headache, was essentially their view; there's lot's of specific reasons for such a conclusion, but it can be summarised as simply instability generally favours upstart movers and shakers, rather than the incumbent).

Western preeminence is not primarily based on military strength. The United States does not conquer and then integrate administratively the conquered regions into their imperial system, such as most past empires: the British and other European empires, Roman, Persian, Mongolian, Inca, etc.

For example, West Germany and Japan are not the 51st and 52nd states of the USA even after surrendering and the US being essentially in full administrative control for a time, as that is simply incompatible with US governance and culture; however, united Germany and Japan today are certainly part of the "US system", but it would an exaggeration to call them vassal states. US control over it's "allies" is not total and if, say, Japan did something the US didn't like (for example not join all the sanctions against Russia), there is essentially no option for the USA to just re-conquer Japan and administer its economic policies to its liking (even if it had the power to do so).

In other words, the situation is complicated. United States position in the world certainly does have a military component, but could not be maintained with that military power; if states generally speaking start moving away from US preferred policies and towards, say, Chinese preferred policies, there is little the US can do about it militarily. Indeed, not only can the US not implement its will on the world by force, but trying to do so is corrosive to US power.

The actual basis of US power is being a "fair and honest broker" (obviously not actually honest or fair, but fair enough) for access to the global economic system and "protection". The US system is stable if the price it extracts for this "service" is in some way justifiable for most states most of the time.

It is a classic mafioso type relationship at its heart: pay me ... let's call it a "tax" ... as the big boss of bosses, and you won't have to deal with the local street thugs that could mess with you: capiche.

The Ukraine proxy war is in fundamental contradiction to this way of "doing business".

For, before this war (started in 2014), Russia was not really "breaking any rules", but playing by the rules to access the Western economic system. The US support of Ukraine is essentially the big mafia boss suddenly deciding to support their nephews criminal career and letting them do whatever crime they want in the neighbourhood; as the big shop keeper on the street who's been paying protection money and playing by the rules imposed on them, this wasn't the deal. The deal is: play by the rules and I won't have to deal with local thugs messing with my shit.

Had the US, post 2014, come in and brokered (and enforced) a peace deal, the system would have been restored to balance. Russia loses its influence in Kiev, but gets Crimea and at least part of Donbas, symbolic recognition of Russian language in Ukraine. This would have been the US playing its role as "global don" competently: there's some local issue somewhere, better to sort it out than it potentially explode into some big mess to deal with: you will accept this piece of the pie, and you will accept this other piece of the pie.

However, there's an internal contradiction with this "peace brokering" basis of US power, which is the American military industrial complex does not want peace, but neither can it conquer the world so it's utility to US power is very much secondary to these more complicated economic and diplomatic considerations. The "diplomatic" industry, however, doesn't produce profits. The solution to the contradiction since WWII was, first, the cold war and to "top off" the profits, second, to simply wage continuous war on small countries that are not integral to the global economic system.

WIth the end of the cold war, the war on smaller powers way of making money became the only game in town, so the war on terror is invented. 20 years of profits without it really mattering all that much to the system as a whole.

It is simply not a coincidence that the months after the war on terror officially came to an end, simply exhausted it's profit making potential and there was just no one else to bomb, that this new "cold war" erupted.

But it is not a new cold war, rather this war in Ukraine is simply based on the fabrication of Russia as an enemy since it was realised the blessed war on terror will inevitably end. Essentially as soon as the writing was on the wall, Putin became the new boogey man, butt of jokes and constantly calling him a tyrant and so on. But why Russia? There's plenty of mid-level regional powers that have far worse democratic credentials. It's just lazy writing basically to concoct an enemy to focus on as soon as the war on terror no longer brings in truck loads of cash. First phase was stoking nuclear tensions, ending various treaties, new weapons programs (because they are profitable), moving missiles closer to Russia.

Long story short, a very profitable endeavour transitioning Russia the new "other" after muslims were squeezed dry.

The problem is that war profiteering, while corrosive to US power, is only compatible with it if it's against small and already fairly isolated countries that are not integral to the world economy. Russia was and is completely integral to the world economy.

The situation is more akin to a mafia don making life difficult for a casino operator in Vegas, not really for any particular reason but just emotional outburst and "because I can", fuelled by hubris, arrogance and cocaine. A mafioso can get angry with any random small pizza shop and have the pizza shop owner dragged out to the alley and killed, no reason and no one cares about it (just a mafioso doing his angry killing thing), but more powerful "businessmen" have options to defend themselves. Mess with a casino owner, even with more capacity for violence right now, and they start to think of what they can do about it. Show enough "lack of respect" and maybe he goes and starts talking to other casino owners, that what's happened to him can happen to them, and, together, if they stop paying the protection money then and stop the drug and prostitute sales in their hotels, there's nothing really the head honcho, for now, can do about it (especially if there's another organisation competing on the global scene that is more "reasonable" to deal with).

That's basically the situation, US may not "like" the Russians, but they were a good actor in America's global economic system: fuelling the NATO war machine by providing commodities and energy that could have added value transformations in Europe, that is far more profitable than the raw materials.

In other words, the US "broke the deal" to provide stability in exchange for doing business in their system: using their "laundry services" for example.

The reason is simply the arms and fossil industry profits are so massive that such interest can overwhelm the entire analytical capacity of the US intelligence community (you only get "nuance" in US strategic thinking when arms and oil interests are in some sort of competition, but if they coincide there is no other possible policy).

So, even focusing on the United States, the war in Ukraine is not beneficial to Western preeminence; however, it's unlikely the US administration could do anything to endanger a single dollar of arms and fossil profits, regardless of what US politicians think (that doesn't really matter much).

However, Europe has far more to lose from this war and also far more leverage, so they could follow their own interest and essentially force a peace. This would also be good for American Imperialism, and "Western preeminence" as understood essentially to mean US and Europe.

The problem is that, as Blinken just recently "said the quiet part out loud", blowing up the Nord Stream pipeline is a "big opportunity" ... for who? Well, for the US administration as defined as simply the sales reps of the US fossil and arms industries. There is no analytical depth further than that, and Americans would throw a hissy fit if Europe tried to lower their energy costs and a myriad of domestic political issues (and thus US fossil industry profits) through pursuing any sort of peace. American diplomats would be literally writhing on the floor screeching and screaming. However, it would be for their own good.

American cognitive abilities to manage their empire have essentially collapsed, so Europe would need to dust off the ol' Imperial boots to co-manage the Western system.

Of course, this is assuming Western preeminence is worth preserving. On this question, Europe has been leading the world in ecological policy (what gives rise to tensions with US administrative donors and therefore US administration wanting to punish Europe to express that frustration). So again, if Europe took co-management of the Western economic system and pushed it in a more ecological direction, then I think that would be overall a good thing.

If they wouldn't do that anyways, then maybe the theory that only authoritarian states can respond to existential crisis with "what needs to be done" is correct and perhaps all the authoritarians getting together in a club is better odds. I wouldn't want that to be true, letting the ecological crisis unfold over 60 years while knowing about it, the war on drugs, the war on terror, financial collapse, covid policies and then this entirely (and easily) prevented war in Ukraine, aren't exactly good advertisements for Western global management.

There's also the question of how democratic is the West really ... really as much as we like to believe? Debatable.

The rail line is extremely important to Russian logistics. Russian supplies depend on rail. — ssu

The whole point of the land bridge to Crimea was that there's not a single point of failure in logistics to Crimea that the actual bridge represented.

The Crimea bridge can also be repaired.

Perhaps more significantly, this invites retaliation against critical civilian infrastructure in Ukraine.

It's possible Russia simply lacks the capacity to destroy Ukrainian bridges of the Dnieper, for example, but if it has the capacity but has chosen not to do so, then tit-fot-tat is pretty usual justification for more violence. Basic point being Ukrainian forces in South-East Ukraine are more bridge dependent than is Russia, which is now directly connected.

What kind of actual evidence are you looking for? — neomac

Again with switching the burden of proof. The claim, mentioned many times here on this forum and for months in Western media, is that Finland and Sweden joining NATO is some major strategic blow to Russia. If people want to support this claim, they should have evidence for it.

How come you ask me for actual evidence when you content yourself to hypothesize future scenarios? — neomac

I've posted lot's of evidence in the course of this discussion to support the claims I've been making. However, if someone makes an unsupported claim then it is quite usual to ask the evidence for it.

How come you say "never say never" — neomac

Obviously because something no one expects may happen in the future, maybe Finnish politics radically changes and becomes convinced invading Russia is necessary or there is some calamity and a general free-for-all.

one line later you write "If you assume Finland will never actually invade Russia" — neomac

Because people maybe assuming that. It both may describe what people in the Kremlin and NATO for that matter actually think, but it's also simply another way to express risk.

For example: assuming this water is not poison then it may satiate my thirst. Now, if there's evidence the water is poison then what follows would be weighing the probabilities and consequences. If there's no evidence the water is poison then it is simply a true statement but nothing really to evaluate risk on; sure, it "could be poison" even if I have zero reason to believe that, but I'm assuming it's not and so I drink. Likewise, if the Kremlin is assuming that Finland in NATO doesn't change the security situation (as Finland is a stable country unlikely to invade Russia or change it's current defence policies much anyways) then it may explain that the Kremlin has taken little action over it.

"negative" press is shitty justification then: a "special operation" shouldn't have required such a mobilization, and how calling Russian general idiots or claiming — neomac

Why would Russia mobilise if press was fantastic?

and how calling Russian general idiots or claiming "Moscow should consider the use of low-intensity nuclear weapons in Ukraine given the recent setbacks it has suffered on the battlefield", can justify throwing in there more Russian soldiers in the battlefield is hardly understandable. — neomac

Obviously they are doing so and obviously they are justifying doing so due to the recent setbacks resulting in bad press people can see.

I'm describing a factual chain of events.

OK then take your time to quantify the "likelihood" of all your ifs in your previous couple of comments. — neomac

Again, the burden of proof is on people, here and elsewhere, claiming that these recent Ukrainian offensives resulting in positive press coverage in the West and usually focusing on the key word "humiliation" to describe Russia, is something that matters.

When a claim is made without supporting evidence, outlining the alternatives is a good way to try to either solicit the evidence (why they think their proposal is more likely) or then highlight that the proposal has no supporting evidence at all.

Furthermore, in these sorts of events it does not follow that we can assume each possibility is equally likely. When it comes to nation states, they are fairly resilient to collapse (actually rarely happens) and do not have a tendency to spontaneously collapse, in particular due to bad foreign press. So there's a fairly high burden of proof if you want to argue that things are different than usual, and bad Western press and social media really may bring down the Russian state somehow.

So, what I find likely is that the negative press at the moment does not matter much, the war is not waged on social media, and if the Ukrainian offensive is not sustainable then successful Russian offensives later will once again swing the mood-pendulum in another direction. Of course, the war maybe far from over even then.

All right. Now that the toy is broken, what would be the best course of action by the West according to your possible future scenarios? What is their likelihood? What are your actual evidences to support them? — neomac

For myself, I cafe little for nation states, my view of nationalism is that it is an ersatz sense of identity for the lost and bewildered, frightened and alone.

Indeed, the bigger the country one feels apart of the more lonely you can be as the larger a void can be filled.

However, let us say you wanted to preserve Western preeminence, which is what I understand your "what would be the best course of action by the West":

A few basic facts are required to understand first.

To start, the entire premise that buying Russian gas is financing "Russia's war machine" is a simplistic view of things. The foundational assumption of "liberalism" is that economic exchange reduces the reasons for and intensity of war; and assumption that seems to have been demonstrated in the war being intimately connected to the Nord Stream pipelines, and severe sanctions causing a complete diplomatic schism leading to global economic schism.

So, in starting to wage economic war (reason to prevent Germany from approving Nord Stream 2 being US can sell EU gas now with fracking and LNG), rebuking economic exchange as a foundation of peace (at least between the major nations that can defend their interests to some extent in the system), we are in fact witnessing, I would argue, the cannibalisation of the values and premises the Western way of doing things is based on.

Russia has options: it can sell to China. However, it is the West that talked itself into a rhetorical corner by making parallels to WWII and a "fight on the beaches and so on" and "never surrender" in that it's simply not remotely that kind of conflict ideologically, politically, economically or militarily.

In military terms, we can't go and "defeat the Hitler/Putin" even if the entire West thought it was justified due to nuclear weapons, and Russia is not actually presenting any serious risk of invading "the West" anyways and whatever Russians believe on average or Putin represents it is not some ideology that like Naziism that challenges our own mental comforts in the West.

Economically, Russian commodities being sold to Europe is called "added value" being created in Europe, where you want to be in the value chain and essentially guaranteeing European economic dominance over Russia. Again, the US has some donors that gain short term by destroying European prosperity both in terms of war profiteering and capital gains but also in severely undermining European policies that are less destructive / profitable.

Which is the key thing to understand, that "the West" is not some monolithic entity, and US and European interests can differ and this way of ensuring US dominance in Europe is a bad thing for the whole Western enterprise. There are different political structures with different interests.

So, what should the US do? Realise its ecocidal corrupt mania is destroying the planet and placing us all in danger, including Ukrainians (far more than Russia currently is; it's unclear to me why a project that has the known consequences of potentially destroying civilisation as a whole gets a "free pass" on the genocidal mania spectrum).

What should Europe do? Ukraine of course can fight the Russians if they want, it is Ukrainian business at the end of the day. There is simply zero European interest served by pouring arms into the situation, or letting arms traverse European territory, nor any European interest served by creating this schism and antagonism with Russia.

European policies should be the same as with respect to US bombing some random place: nobody cares.

Of course, morally, neither the US nor Russia "should" extort smaller countries by force, but they both do, and after decades of the US justifying everything it does as "in our national interest! National security!" it's not suddenly a change of heart and on some purely altruistic mission in supplying arms to Ukraine.

The Churchillian propaganda overwhelmed European political discourse, but it was not in European interest to simply believe on face value. It "sounds good" to "standup to a bully" ... but if you aren't actually about to go standup to the bully and put troops in Ukraine and match your rhetoric with actions, then it is propaganda having those unintended consequences that you mention.

Now, that does not mean abandon Ukrainians (even though I think that's entirely morally acceptable: you get yourself into a war ... defending your "agency", well, go ahead and use that agency to get yourself our, go "win the war"; I do not see how it's my business as a non-Ukrainian and where I live having no interest in a war with Russia: and, to be clear, "support" without the "fighting with" part is not an alliance, the West is not "allied" with Ukraine, why Zelensky had to say "de facto" alliance in making a "rapid application" to NATO only to then be immediately humiliated by a "yeah, no" with love, from NATO).

Even if morally acceptable to stop sending arms and support to Ukraine (there is no moral principle that obliges arms shipments, and it's a truly tours-de-force of US propaganda, in service of the arms industry, to make that now some sort of moral imperative), it is not necessarily politically expedient.

What would be politically expedient is making peace with the Russians by forcing a compromise. Europe has significant leverage with both Ukraine (both negative leverage in both stop arms shipments, but block and interdict arms shipments from the US, as well as positive leverage like EU membership) and of course leverage with Russia (sanctions, stop arms shipments to Ukraine and so on). It's also in the interests of actual Ukrainians compared to more total war because it plays well on Tictoc.

For any politician who is not a complete coward, peace is not so difficult to achieve. Of course, social media will bitch about it, but then life goes on.

As I stated in my last reply to you, NATO expansion in general is an issue to Russia. How could it not be? It is essentially an anti-Russian alliance. — Tzeentch

It's amazing how people can fail to grasp this basic fact.

However correct, your argument is far from being conclusive for 2 strong reasons: — neomac

I never said it was conclusive. I literally state in my argument that "never say never" there's just no actual evidence now that Finland and Sweden in NATO matters.

If you assume Finland will never actually invade Russia, host nuclear missiles, or host a NATO invasion force, then Finland in NATO is easily a net positive for the Kremlin and it just as easily plays as a security threat for Russia (thousands of kilometres of border with NATO) as it does in the West ... without actually being a threat requiring any investment to deal with than what is already there.

Things can change, but the blow to Russian national pride hurts now in this world, not in possible future world. — neomac

People do plan ahead you know. In these recent offensives there are material and troops costs to Ukraine and territory gained and large propaganda value. If the costs in material and troops are high enough, then the propaganda value is tolerable.

The "negative" press also served as justification for Russian partial mobilisation. Of course, that has a political cost but will have a military benefit.

We'll see how things play out. My assumption is Russia's basic plan is to see what affect the winter has on both Ukraine and the EU in terms of appetite for more war; the severity of the winter will also be a major factor.

Propaganda is not for free, it has its material and human costs and its unintended consequences. So I wouldn’t bet much on Russian masterminding Western propaganda at this scale of confrontation on a world stage. — neomac

What's with this obsession with any explanation of Russia actions other than "irrational" means the idea is some mastermind genius level ploy.

And if your only argument is propaganda has unintended propaganda ... all we hear from Ukraine is propaganda, what they want us to see, only negative things about Russia and very little transparency about their own losses, logistics problems, capability limitations, and so on.

You don't need to be a "mastermind" to know that when your opponent is running their mouth and talking shit and making promises they can't keep, that if you know the situation will reveres itself that there's no reason to talk back. It is even more embarrassing later for the party talking shite, and a confidence builder to your own crew to just say nothing, if of course things do indeed reverse later.

Honestly, I feel a lot of people say they've gone to basic "school of the street", but that sort of scholarship often seems to be lacking in these kinds of conversations.

The more Russians are mobilized to the war or flee from Russia and sactions+economic recession bite, the more Putin’s last word risks to fade away (inside and outside his circle), if military performance on the battle field proves to be as poor as it was so far. — neomac

Sure, we'll see what happens. A lot of people who leave in a panic return, a lot of people keep working at a distance, and a lot of services can be done at distance nowadays.

I'm honestly not convinced about these economic factors being all that significant. Russia state gets most of its revenue from fossil fuels, not taxing a tech based economic base.

Your speculation has some merits, — neomac

It's not speculation, it's literally what was happening during the summer as Russia took key towns and made gains, even Western media was forced to describe this as "winning".

Now Ukraine has taken ground, it's euphoric Ukraine is "winning", but if the tides turn again, may take time, but reluctantly Western media can't deny facts on the ground indefinitely.

but in so far as it’s a broad and one-sided prospect of possible future scenarios not only it has little chance to weigh in the decision process of Western governments, but it should not weigh even in the decision process of ordinary people, precisely because the lesson for anti-Western forces (Russian and beyond) would be that broadly assessed possible future threats (no matter how likely) would be enough to persuade Western general public to recoil and question their governments’ decisions. — neomac

I'm not sure what you thought I was arguing, but my point was simply that all the negative press today can turn positive tomorrow if gains start to reverse. That a lot hinges on whether recent Ukrainian gains are sustainable or not. If Ukrainians gains aren't sustainable then they burn out, the front stabilises as a consequence.

As a general principle, however, definitely decisions should be based on what's likely to happen in the future. I fail to understand how that wouldn't apply here. I drink water because it's likely to keep me alive (in the future), and I avoid falling off high structures as it's likely to get me killed (in the future), even putting aside exceptions, the basic decision making process is what's likely to happen in the future.

Putin and China are questioning the West-backed world order. The West must respond to that threat with determination. That’s why Putin unilateral aggression must fail in a way however that is instrumental to the West-backed world order. If this war is not just between Russia and Ukraine, then it’s not even just between the US and Russia, it’s between whoever wants to weigh in in establishing the new world order, either by backing the US or by backing Russia. — neomac

We agree that with the premise that Putin and China are questioning the West-backed world order.

However, it is of course up to debate what the West "must do".

In my view, the US / NATO actions (even if Russia retreats) are already a disaster for their geopolitical position.

The US, and the West in general, post-WWII, were (in my opinion) a very much soft power based imperialism centred around "peace keeping".

Brokering a deal with the Russias would have maintained that soft-power privileged position and the soft-power leverage over Russia in gas revenues, and the prosperity of America's "partners".

Everything Western media points to as "bad for Russia" and "good for NATO" is extremely simplistic view of things.

Geopolitically, my view of things, is this action by Russia is rearguard action for China's rise as a economic and geopolitical equal to the US (obviously with different strengths and weaknesses), and in such a scenario having Europe as a relevant and going concern with economic ties (aka. leverage) to Russia is a major difference to the current situation.

The US, at the end of the day, is not a conquering based Empire and its military is therefore nearly by definition not the basis of US imperialism.

US power was based on maintaining the global economic framework, and fracturing the global economic system (in my view) is a blow to American power that is foolish to underestimate.

I wasn’t talking about anonymous keyboard warriors of course. I meant credible public sources. — apokrisis

So by "everyone" you actually mean "not-everyone".

The two ain’t exactly mutually exclusive. Indeed they are evidence that a kleptocracy now getting sentimental about lost imperial promise is a generally incompetent structural setting. — apokrisis

The point was that successfully invading, occupying, pacifying 20%, and defending of Ukraine is not military incompetence. Even if Russian losses were greater, that would be expected in an offensive operation.

The domestic political and geopolitical wisdom and ultimate outcome is a different matter. However, Russia has not collapsed internally, has survived sanctions, and has maintained its "friendships" so I fail to see any incompetence on those levels either.

Of course, competence does not necessitate victory. Two competent attorney's can go head-to-head or two competent football teams or two competent mountain goats, and one side still may win and the other may lose.

That is true. And it is also true that the degree of military incompetence was a surprise to these same analysts. Indeed a happy bonus from a hawkish US perspective as it created the chance to mire Russia in its own backyard Afghanistan. — apokrisis

Can you cite any of these analysts claiming Russia military is incompetent?

From what I've read, Western analysts were surprised that Russia did not employ Western shock and awe tactics and blowup Ukrainian civilian infrastructure on day one, in particular the power and communications and keep those turned off, as that's what NATO would do, nor did Russia "take the gloves off" even after it was clear Ukraine would not capitulate.



Here's an interview of Michael Kofman, a pretty respected analyst of the Russian military.

He gives a slight edge to Ukraine on the long term war prospects, but that is contingent on continued Western support (economic, arms, intelligence etc.). Likewise, basic view of the current situation is exactly the same as mine, that what matters in these recent offensives is sustainability.

Putin’s ineptitude looks to be delivering the US’s every defence policy wish. NATO expanded overnight. — apokrisis

The expansion of NATO is a "wish" in order to sell more arms for the US arms industry.

More members has both pros and cons. Being a consensus driven organisation even a few dissenting members can cause serious problems (as a tool of US foreign policy).

The fact we're discussing NATO expansion ... when Finland Sweden aren't even in NATO yet, due to Turkey using it as leverage, underscores this point.

As for what Russia clearly actually cares about, Ukraine in NATO, even Zelensky has admitted NATO told him that would never happen, but there would be a public position that the door is open ... but the private position is never.

Russian oil gone. Putinism destined to die the death of a thousand cuts. — apokrisis

Russian oil is not gone, it's going to China and India and decrease in any flows has been mostly compensated by increased in increase in price.

All they have to avoid now is nuclear escalation and the US finally wins biggly in a proxy war. — apokrisis

For sure, in terms of relative power dynamic with their main geopolitical competitor (Europe) US has won, but this may turn out to be at the cost of helping other competitors such as China, if not also Russia in the long term as well.

European economic turmoil increases Russia's regional influence, not decrease it.

But the Russian collapse is delivering more tanks and ammo to the Ukrainians in a few weeks than the west supplied in seven months. Of course the quality isn’t so great. But you know. Russian incompetence. — apokrisis

Stop for a moment to reflect on what that would mean if it was even true.

If relatively small gains on a small and least defended regions of the front have resupplied Ukraine with more ammunition and tanks than it has gotten from the West in 7 months, it would stand to reason that what Russia has on the entire front, rear area and reserves is several orders of magnitude greater and Ukraine is doomed in any sort of war of attrition.

If Western zeal and support cannot match what Russia leaves behind no relatively small areas of the front, that is a not a "good thing" for Ukraine.

What is your source for this? — Paine

Ah yes, forgot to mention plausibly independent source, so not Ukrainian or Western Intelligence.

Starts by noting:

Nobody really knows how many combatants or civilians have died, and claims of casualties by government officials — who may sometimes be exaggerating or lowballing their figures for public relations reasons — are all but impossible to verify. — At 100 Days, Russia-Ukraine War by the Numbers, VOA

Or,

The number of soldiers dying is sensitive information and shapes the story of how the war is going for both sides, Gavin Crowden, of casualty-recording organisation Every Casualty Counts, says. — War in Ukraine: Can we say how many people have died?,BBC

But independent analysis often focuses on Zelensky's own admission:

Zelenskyy said this week that 60 to 100 Ukrainian soldiers are dying in combat every day, with about 500 more wounded. — At 100 Days, Russia-Ukraine War by the Numbers, VOA

Which seems just a base line, "everyday", kind of thing, without any fierce battles happening.

At one point he mentioned 200 dying.

Per month 60 KIA per day is 1800 per month, 100 per day is 3000, and 200 KIA per day would be 6000 per month. 500 wounded per day is 15 000 wounded per month.

If this range is indicative of the 7 months of the war, places Ukrainian KIA at 12 600 to 42 000 KIA, and 105 000 wounded.

Of course, Zelensky's comment could be a lie to inflate Ukrainian KIA and casualties, but it's difficult to find a justification for that. Honestly seemed a moment of candour, perhaps regret at the loss of life and frustration with NATO (which he expresses from time to time, and Western media simply ignores).

Considering the immense artillery and air power advantage Russia has is not really in question and fairly easy to confirm, these numbers are easy to believe and it's difficult to come up with a mechanism Russian casualties would be anywhere close. And that doesn't really seem in dispute. That was even the Western narrative for months, that Russian fires 10 times more artillery shells than Ukraine.

Again, "incompetence" is the only possible basis for believing that you fire 10x more shells, conduct hundreds of bombing sorties a day / night, but not only fail to match casualties but actually suffer more.

And usually that's not really proposed. The proposed major source of Russian KIA and casualties is the Northern offensive, which I fully believe was Russias highest losses. However, during the same time Russia completely encircled and destroyed or captured the garrison of Mariupol as well as significant troops that fell back to Mariupol. Ukraine conducted a lot of harassment and ambushes, but they had no operation like encircling an entire Russian army group and its fairly standard military theory that encirclement is easily an order of magnitude higher loss than retreat.

Retreat sounds bad, but it's far better to retreat than find yourself encircled and besieged.

And if you want something "Western Media", the Washington Post report on casualties in these recent offensives if not bleak, certainly doesn't give the impression Russian's are suffering more losses in these engagements:

A clear picture of Ukraine’s losses could not be independently assessed.

Denys, sitting upright on his hospital bed, said almost every member of his 120-person unit was injured, though only two were killed.

A 25-year-old soldier being treated for shrapnel wounds said that, within his unit of 100 soldiers, seven were killed and 20 injured. Ihor, the platoon commander, said 16 of the 32 men under his command were injured and one was killed.

[...]

“We lost five people for every one they did,” said Ihor, a 30-year-old platoon commander who injured his back when the tank he was riding in crashed into a ditch.

[..]

Russian tanks emerged from newly built cement fortifications to blast infantry with large-caliber artillery, the wounded Ukrainian soldiers said. The vehicles would then shrink back beneath the concrete shelters, shielded from mortar and rocket fire.

Counter-battery radar systems automatically detected and located Ukrainians who were targeting the Russians with projectiles, unleashing a barrage of artillery fire in response.

Russian hacking tools hijacked the drones of Ukrainian operators, who saw their aircraft drift away helplessly behind enemy lines. — Wounded Ukrainian soldiers reveal steep toll of Kherson offensive - Washington Post

Also, notice that Ukraine advances are measured in square kilometres but Russian advances simply in kilometres, which obviously is a massive numerical difference in appearance.

Where the kilometres (for example to an objective) are significant is that you need to multiple your losses per kilometre by the amount of kilometres you need to go to reach all the key military objectives.

Ukraine has simply not gone all that far and the reported casualties are immense. It's of course possible that it's some kind of giant ruse, but I think that's unlikely because the reports of Hospitals filling up all the way to neighbouring countries would be difficult to fake and there's also no reason to believe advancing through artillery, missiles, rockets, mortars, mine fields, and air strikes could possibly be low-casualty for Ukraine (a successful fake casualty operation was the UK reporting high casualties in the wrong locations of German V2 strikes which would encourage more strikes wildly off target that did little damage, but these were special circumstances where Germany had little to no human intelligence on the ground and were relying on UK newspapers to correct their fire; so, does happen, but in this case seems unlikely reports of Ukrainian high casualties are part of a deceptive operation).

And, precisely because any rational analysis concludes the cost to Ukraine of trying to retake all the territory is simply unsustainable, that it must be assumed that Russia will somehow militarily, economically, politically collapse somehow in order to justify continued warfare without any realistic diplomatic position.

↪boethius Are you claiming the Russian army has been competent??? — RogueAI

As I've responded above to @apokrisis, Western media simply relaying anything "Ukrainian intelligence" says is not a basis of evaluating Russian military performance.

Russia has conquered, occupied, pacified, and defended strategically important territory for 7 months now while inflicting, by any count I've seen, several factors more casualties on Ukraine than suffering itself.

That's clearly military competence.

Large scale warfare is largely a statistical thing. In WWII tank survivability once in battle was measured in minutes and so quick were tanks destroyed that all sides downgraded the quality of their tank builds because they simply didn't last long enough for durability of most mechanical parts to matter.

Russia has definitely lost a lot of tanks, but so too Ukraine. However, we're now at a point in the war where Ukraine has lost all of its initial tank stock and is now nearing critical depletion of all the Soviet tanks NATO could scrounge up and send.

Which is why there's been a lot of talk in both the media, but more importantly Ukraine asking for tanks and US saying "no", of sending Western tanks to Ukraine. A recent US press briefing about the latest arms package, simply answers to this question about tanks that it would be so problematic to integrate Western tanks as to be counter productive.

However, my thesis from the start of the war has been Ukraine cannot mount successful offensives without armour (at the time heavy weapons were a no-no so the theory was Ukraine could "win" with only small arms and shoulder mounted missiles) has definitely proven true in these recent offensives, where Ukraine has used significant tank forces.

Of course, they're also losing tanks. If it's simply impossible to resupply those soviet tanks because they aren't being built anymore, then the war will return to slow moving fronts where Russia leverages its artillery, air power advantage and, seems now, drone advantage.

If the situation is simply Ukraine cannot possibly sustain these attacks to accomplish and hold any major strategic objective, then Russia's response of tactical retreat is a perfectly competent one.

Of course, losses still happen in a tactical retreat, just not as much as the force your tactically retreating from, which Western media and all sorts of indicators seem to say Ukraine losses are significant.

Who says that? — apokrisis

You are saying that, insofar as you've been supporting Ukraine's choices to fight while having zero diplomatic position.

More importantly, Zelensky is saying that most of the time, and recently in literally declaring he will "not negotiate" with Putin.

Everyone agree about the surprising degree of Russian incompetence, but who says that is the reason not to negotiate. — apokrisis

Everyone? You're literally debating right now the issue with 3 other interlocutors who disagree.

And, read the analysis the paper I cited (published December 2021):

Literally the first paragraph states:

A full-scale Russian invasion of unoccupied Ukraine would be by far the largest, boldest, and riskiest military operation Moscow has launched since the 1979 invasion of Afghanistan. It would be far more complex than the US wars against Iraq in 1991 or 2003. It would be a marked departure from the approaches Putin has relied on since 2015, and a major step-change in his willingness to use Russian conventional military power overtly. It would cost Russia enormous sums of money and likely many thousands of casualties and destroyed vehicles and aircraft. Even in victory, such an invasion would impose on Russian President Vladimir Putin the requirement to reconstruct Ukraine and then establish a new government and security forces there more suitable for his objectives.

So it's not a surprise Russia has suffered serious losses in such an ambitious undertaking as "Sub-COA 1c: Create a Land Bridge from Rostov to Crimea".

That is not a sign of military incompetence. The issue of whether it was politically wise, or the task is even doable are separate questions to that of military incompetence.

Looking at the anecdotal minutia is of literal analytical significance. Ukraine fronts have crumbled many times as well ... and currently Russia holds far more territory of Ukraine than vice-versa.

"Shit happens" and to evaluate any particular battle we need to know exact casualties and losses on each side. Simply taking territory is not "winning" if the costs are unsustainable, the offensives burn our and the tide turns the other way only with far less capability to defend than before the offensives.

Obviously, both sides want to both hide and deceive the other about losses.

What we can analyse is major strategic locations that we are sure both sides are equally committed to.

For example, we know Russia is committed to Kherson because it is a major city and bridge head over the Dnieper river, which is a major strategic advantage to have forcing Ukrainians to commit sizeable force to defend any offensive coming from there. To what extent there's an advantage of controlling both sides of the river I don't know, but if nothing else is a buffer Ukraine must deal with if it wants to create a bridge head of its own and retake the canal.

We know Russia is committed to the land bridge to Crimea.

And we know Russia is committed to holding Crimea itself.

Currently, only Kherson is being threatened, fighting not even at the city yet, and, notably, Russia can still lose West of the Dnieper and still maintain the canal (I assume; maybe there are complicating engineering details I haven't heard about).

So, Russia successfully accomplishing what Western analysts viewed as an ambitious plan of "Sub-COA 1c: Create a Land Bridge from Rostov to Crimea" is clearly competent military planning and execution.

In terms of air power, incompetence would be Ukraine currently having air superiority, supremacy or even comparable effectiveness (even within an order of magnitude).

Incompetence would have been a failure to even exit Crimea because Ukraine was competent and blew up the bridges and heavily defended any bridging attempts, or failed to successfully siege Mariupol, or failed to take Kherson.

If you read the analysis cited, what actual experts believed before the war was that an invasion would be costly, involving thousands KIA and significant armour and airframe losses.

Creating the comparison standard that Ukraine was some small essentially unarmed country in no way prepared for an invasion and should have fallen in a few days, is a Western media myth.

Ukraine is huge and distance itself is a significant strategic obstacle for full scale invasion, compared to a small country, and Ukraine has been fighting a war since 2014 and completed several steps of NATO partnership, arms and training and military and intelligence "advice".

Furthermore, NATO has needed to pour in billions of Euros of arms and economic aid in addition to essentially full US intelligence support (systems that are that are worth tens of billions if not hundreds of billions), simply to keep Ukraine "in the fight".

Once you pour in tens of billions of arms, intelligence and training, in addition to Ukraine being a large country with a smaller, but not tiny, population willing to fight, the Russian military performance is far from incompetent.

Of course, competence does not imply ultimate victory.

Sure, your meth dealer doesn't "want you to die" but that's not exactly the same as caring about you.

Your argument is so under water that all I can hear is the bubbling. — apokrisis

It's honestly bizarre your insistence on Russian military incompetence.

What I find most interesting about the incompetence narrative is that's it's needed to support the idea there should not be any negotiation strategy (unlike every other example provided of a smaller country fighting larger ones: most Finland and Isreal ... the list maybe small for a reason that's worth reflecting on).

However, although debating specific battles maybe fruitful, as has already pointed out deception is involved in warfare.

A better consideration for such a debate I think is simply the progress of the war to date:



Does not look to me like the advance of an incompetent military.

Nor recent losses some sort of total disaster.

Furthermore, what the Russian military has done was predicted as a "good move" before the war, which I posted citations from 6 months ago:

Zelensky is now seen as a hero the world over and quite probably in Ukraine as well. Good job Vlad!
— Olivier5

If you bother to read the context, the article predicts Russia is unlikely to undertake a full scale invasion - and if so, super limited incursions such as only in Dombas - and in that context the Russian buildup or then very limited incursions is to undermine Zelenskyy.

However, what the article gets right is:

The operation to establish a land bridge from Rostov to Crimea is likely the most attractive to Putin in this respect. It solves a real problem for him by giving him control of the Dnepr-Crimea canal ,which he badly needs to get fresh water to occupied Crimea. It would do fearful damage to the Ukrainian economy by disrupting key transportation routes from eastern Ukraine to the west. He could halt operations upon obtaining an important gain, such as seizing the canal and the area around it or after taking the strategic city of Mariupol just beyond the boundary of occupied Donbas.
— PUTIN’S MILITARY OPTIONS

Likewise, article also gets right:
Likely Ukrainian Initial Responses to Full-Scale Invasion

"The Ukrainian military will almost certainly fight against such an invasion, for which it is now preparing.19 Whatever doubts and reservations military personnel might have about their leaders or their prospects, the appearance of enemy mechanized columns driving into one’s country tends to concentrate thought and galvanize initial resistance. It collapses complexities and creates binary choices. Military officers and personnel are conditioned to choose to fight in such circumstances, and usually do, at least at first. There is no reason to think the Ukrainian military will perform differently in this case."
— PUTIN’S MILITARY OPTIONS

However, what the article gets wrong is that a full scale invasion for the purposes - not of occupation and dealing with insurgency in major cities - but for securing the land bridge and solve "a real problem", is one way to do it.

That being said, the article does go over the possibility of multiple parallel incursions, what it calls "Course of Actions subordinate to Course of Action I" (sub-COA's; COA I is the full scale invasion).

"But he might also execute several of these sub-COAs on their own to achieve independent objectives without intending to go all the way to full-scale invasion. We will consider the major sub-COAs here ordered by the likelihood we assess for each and laying out the separate objectives each might pursue beyond setting conditions for the full-scale invasion."
— PUTIN’S MILITARY OPTIONS

So, correct analysis after all, only fails to mention the Russians could choose to have so many of the parallel "sub-COA's" that it appears to be a full scale invasion, but it's not.

The reason for doing so is more-or-less presented in the article, in that Western reaction is likely to be fairly strong (at least sanction wise) and a limited incursion to test Ukrainian and Western resolve and then pulling back has a lot of drawbacks (but the article mistakingly concludes that's more likely than major incursions anyways).

As for Zelenskyy, what would major incursions cause?

"It would cause panic and crisis in Kyiv and drive Zelensky to plead for NATO help that would be unlikely to come"
— PUTIN’S MILITARY OPTIONS

Correct. — boethius

Now, you may say Zelensky did plead for NATO help and has gotten NATO help ... but this is debatable. What Zelensky was pleading for at that time was a no fly zone, which didn't come.

Rather, events seem very consistent with my drip feed hypothesis, that Ukraine gets just enough support from NATO to not lose outright but not enough to seriously threaten Russia's objectives or cause Russia to actually escalate to nuclear weapons.

Or as I usually put it:

Dude, the whole current war is precisely because NATO isn't Ukraine's friend ... or it would be in Ukraine right now shoulder to shoulder, protecting its "friend".

Saying NATO arms dealing with Ukraine is "friendship" is like saying your meth dealer dealing you meth is "friendship".

Maybe you need the meth, but big mistake thinking your meth dealer's your friend. That's how suicides happen. Public service announcement everyone. — boethius

Well Indian, Chinese, Russian, and anti-Capitalist should be happy then. The US and the Western American-led oppression of the rest of the World is on a path of self-destruction. That's why they should absolutely continue to support Ukraine to fight Russia. — neomac

This is why I say it's a "call me in 300 years" thing. How history will ultimately view this war is anyone's guess.

All I know for certain about how history ultimately cares about things, is rarely as much as the people living it at the time, wars in particular.

For myself, I empathise with the people suffering now and I would rather see people harmed in their pride by the trenchant words of compromise than be harmed in their bodies and souls.

In particular the children of Ukraine who I do not believe will grow up to care about the war, but why global society (most of all us Westerners) allowed environmental catastrophe to unfold.

The argument that this war is finally the "kick in the arse" Europe needed to transition to renewables all along, is not a good argument, it simply establishes we have been led by traitors to European citizens and all of humanity and all life all this time.

And if it was a good argument, then if Putin's actions makes such good things to happen, that would simply make Putin a good man.