Comment by roenxi

> You don't need to drag in people off the streets, close your borders, and continually lower the enlistment age

As you said Ukraine’s demographic situation was quite horrible before the war. Very few people in their 20s. Hence the conscription age being 27 earlier in the war. They lowered it to 25 later (which is kind of the inverse of what happened historically in other wars).

Russia had way more manpower, then the cannon fodder from North Korea and the foreign mercenaries. Russia can afford even 1:1.5 or 1:2 casualty rates (of course they have other concerns and seemed to be very politically unwilling to send actual conscripts there and the pool of willing volunteers is not infinite).

When would the real death tolls be revealed? When Ukraine does a census?

They're doing a good job as belligerents against the Philippines.

This is a false equivalence. The United States was not trying to “conquer” those countries in the territorial sense that Russia attempted with Ukraine. Those conflicts were limited political or counterinsurgency objectives fought under strict constraints, often without public support, and with no intention of annexation. Comparing that to a conventional invasion aimed at seizing and absorbing a neighbor’s territory is analytically inaccurate.

US did defeat Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq. And indirectly Syria by supporting the insurgency (and we had bases in that Country). It is also worth noting that the US and South Vietnam had effectively contained the North by 1973. The Paris Peace Accords ended direct US involvement and the North violated those terms two years later when it launched a full-scale conventional invasion. South Vietnam collapsed only after the US withdrew military support. Same with Afghanistan. Iraq is flourishing without Saddam and without war. It toppled Saddam’s regime in weeks, and the country now has an elected government, functioning institutions, and no US occupation. Whatever its internal challenges, Iraq is not a case where the US attempted and failed to annex territory. It demonstrates that these were limited political interventions, not conquest wars.

In March 2022 Russia occupied 27% of Ukraine. They have now lost much of their artillery tanks and then army and now control 19% of Ukraine while their oil refineries blow up, and recently tankers. I'm not sure the conquest is going quite to plan.

Some would dispute the "downward" part there.

Not trying to be the world's policeman would allow tremendous downsizing of the military and its associated expense.

Decoupling and isolation is a very rational response if nuclear proliferation is going to accelerate, in order to avoid having entangling alliances pull the country into a nuclear equivalent of the first World War.

> Russia will conquer Ukraine, any other prediction at this point is absurd.

Are you sure? They are advancing, sure, put look what they paid for to achieve this: 300k dead, 700k wounded, depletion of their souvereign wealth fund, 20%+ inflation, lower oil production and so on.

> Russia will conquer Ukraine

Perhaps the objective isn't to conquer the whole of the Ukraine, but only most of it, leaving the western parts independent.

This seems to be pushed as the right approach wrt the Ukraine in Alexander Dugin's Foundations of Geopolitics, which apparently is used as the source for Russia's current "Eurasianist" geopolitical doctrine:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foundations_of_Geopolitics

Are you expecting Ukraine to ultimately buckle and collapse if the war of logistics continues for long enough?

It doesn't seem like Russia has the will, or potentially the capability, to actually conquer Ukraine rather than squat on some of their land and hope to move their border.

Russia is on the same spiral, but further ahead. They're going down together. The US has some chance of pulling out of the nose dive, but it's slim.

They may or may not take Europe and Ukraine with them.

China is better placed to survive, but has its own structural issues.

>Russia will conquer Ukraine, any other prediction at this point is absurd.

They have been moving across Ukraine at a literal snails pace.

Re: US military quality, it's both. Massively corrupt jobs program on the weapons acquisition side, combined with an incredibly effective devolved leadership structure on the logistics and combat side. Tested frequently over the last few decades. The bet in favor of them is that the weapons corruption gets sorted out once it really needs to be.

> If we're assuming a nuclear war then the US military is comparable to a bunch of other militarys.

What a nonsense. Really, if we're assuming a nuclear war then the remainder of the sentence no longer has any relevance.

Note that even the idiot in the Kremlin has been given reasons enough to consider that one off the table no matter how much he might want it (assuming he still can).

First strike is a non-starter for every sane country, so you better hope that sanity lasts long enough to get to the '.' at the end of your sentences. Because if it does not the best you can hope for is live near ground zero.

> Does the US military even perform to spec? There is clearly a lot of corruption and I've seen it described on HN as a disguised welfare program.

If you're aware of any American gear that has not performed in the last 12 months then maybe you should report it rather than to resort to 'just asking questions'.

So far all of the recipients seem to be fairly happy with the deliveries and most nations would quake in their boots if the USA set their sights on them with intent to punish, bar none, and to suggest otherwise is seriously ignorant.

It's not undermining, it's asserting/showing off their independence. India doesn't want to play for anyone's team, so they play on everyone's team. It's a reminder to all sides that they are not an automatic partner to be taken for granted.

Why are you trying to rephrase something I said to mean something it doesn't? That's not what I said. We're not destroying our relationships and we're not ditching our allies. I think you're too caught up in the politics and rhetoric.

We're not getting rid of our allies, but it's long past time that they invested more in the common defense and it's important that they do, because it could be a valuable contribution to deterring war. Focus less on the soundbites. Yes there's messy dealmaking happening, but there's what's said and then there's what actually ends up happening.

Solar and wind are only okay, but they aren't reliable and subsidizing them mostly benefits China since they are by far the major supplies. Yes, it creates American jobs, but those people could be doing more important jobs without creating a foreign energy infrastructure dependency. I don't think we actually care that Africa has solar panels from China, except that it makes them energy dependent on them and increases foreign trade in Yuan. It's more of a way to create Chinese jobs, which is a huge priority so they end up with an oversupply.

Traditional nuclear has potential, but the costs, extreme complexity and lengthy lead times hurt the scalability. The newer fusion projects are interesting and I'm hopeful, but even if they work they take forever and are hard to replace quickly once they're up. It's more likely that we'll have a variety of all of these things.

There have been advancements in geothermal that are amazing, cheap, quick, less encumbered by supply chain risks and require way less land so we should see that scale out over the coming decades.

We do also have abundant oil which helps to reduce inflation and exporting it can offset some oil instability in the market. Yes, oil is eventually going away and that is why a renewable energy push was important, but a lot of oil remains untouched. The US military could also operate for years on just oil reserves and can get priority access to it. It would make plenty of sense for major countries to set aside oil for strategic and military purposes long after it stops being used for general transportation.

As for Taiwan, it is fair that dependency on exports from China can cause countries to tow the line, but it would mostly be optics with nothing preventing other forms of support. Also, the pain of losing Chinese exports in many ways would be less than the pain of an expanding China that goes unchecked, so I think those influences are only strong up to a threshold.

It counts as an attack, but how close was US to actually being taken over? Usually when you fight a war the real risk is that you cease to exist as a country. I know nothing about war strategy, but seems to me US is in a great position as long as you get along with Canada and Mexico.

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