Comment by bildung 3 days ago
> 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.
Yeah, it wouldn't be a bad bet to wager this is going to be a Pyrrhic victory for Russia.
> 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 is a totalitarian dictatorship led by the communist Putin. As if communist dictators care. Look at North Korea, it's just the results of an unremarkable year.
I think literally nobody knows the price either side is paying right now. And I do mean literally, including Trump, Putin, and Zelensky. The fog of war applies to participants, let alone outsiders who are basing our views on figures and claims that obviously going to be driven heavily by propaganda.
But beyond this, I don't think this war is about Ukraine anymore than a war in Taiwan will be about Taiwan. It's little more than a proxy for hegemony in both cases. Russia did not want NATO parked in their Achille's heel of the Ukrainian flatlands. NATO did, and we pushed forward against endless threats of it being a redline, essentially as a means of indirectly imposing our will on Russia and establishing a hierarchy of dominance.
And similarly, for those that don't the Taiwan-China history - the Mao led Chinese revolution was a success. The existing government of mainland China fled to Taiwan where they brutally oppressed the locals, in an era known as the 'white terror' [1], and established power through 40 years of martial law. And of course we backed them, solely to use them as a weapon against China, because geopolitics.
This is why these wars are so important for the participants. The US couldn't care less about Ukraine, but withdrawing without ruining our ability to militarily threaten other peer or near peer countries is difficult. And similarly the last thing Russia needs is more land, but if they never act on claims of red lines, then they can never expect their interests to be considered in the case of a conflict in interests between them and the West.
I don't agree on the Russia Ukraine motivations. Ukraine is not part of NATO and was not going to become part of NATO. There were already two NATO countries bordering Russia near Moscow and St P if NATO had wanted to invade which they had no thoughts of doing. Russia lies constantly on this stuff. I think they basically regarded Ukraine their land as part of the Russian empire they were restoring.
It's not about immediate intentions, but about strategic options. Imagine Russia decided to form a military alliance with Mexico with the expected intention of deploying weapons on the Mexican border. If Mexico agreed to this, it would take approximately 0 seconds before the US invaded them under some whimsical pretext (drug gangs probably) and overthrew their government to prevent this. In fact this is, more or less, what the Cuban Missile Crisis was where we were willing to bring the world to the brink of nuclear annihilation over it, and that was an even lighter weight version of this event since there isn't even a land route from Cuba to the US obviously!
But in this scenario would you think Russia deploying weapons in Mexico is a precursor to them invading? Or that the US would be worried about that? Obviously not. Neither was Cuba. But it gives an adversarial power a tremendous strategic edge, while you get less than nothing out of it since it reduces your 'power' in the relative strategic balance of countries.
> Imagine Russia decided to form a military alliance with Mexico with the expected intention of deploying weapons on the Mexican border.
> In fact this is, more or less, what the Cuban Missile Crisis was
See this photo: https://www.jetphotos.com/photo/11312641
It is a Soviet-built MIG-23 fighter jet carrying Cuban insignia. MIG-23 first flew 5 years after the missile crisis and the first batch was delivered to Cuba in 1978.
> It's not about immediate intentions, but about strategic options. Imagine Russia decided to form a military alliance with Mexico with the expected intention of deploying weapons on the Mexican border.
The problem with pretending this analogy is relevant as a justification (or at least an "other people would have one the same thing" argument, which isn't really a justification to start with) of the Russian invasion of Ukraine (besides the fact that it relies on dubious assumptions about a counterfactual) is that the only reason Ukraine resumed its long-abandoned pursuit of relations with NATO was a direct result of the invasion by Russia in 2014.
I still think Ukraine wasn't primarily about Russia's military security though. I mean the US/Nato could stick missiles in Estonia if they wanted.
It may have been about political security. If Ukraine which is basically at least part Russian had become a prosperous democracy on Russia's doorstep it would make it harder for Putin to justify his autocracy. In fact that one may come to pass.
> Imagine Russia decided to form a military alliance with Mexico ... it would take approximately 0 seconds before the US invaded them
Not this shit again. It's always the identical boring talking points from the Moscow trolls.
> military alliance with Mexico
Ukraine never did that.
> it would take approximately 0 seconds before the US invaded
Very unlikely.
Also Mexico wasn’t never exactly that aligned diplomatically and politically with the US to begin with.
Russia on the other hand views that it has some inherent right to subjugate and dominate all of their neighbors and turn them into puppet states if not outright annex them.
> In fact this is, more or less, what the Cuban Missile Crisis
In fact this is outright drivel. The US hardly viewed Russia as their actual opponent before 2014-22. Remember Romney- Obama debate (and Obama generally bending over backwards to appease Putin most of the time).
> Russia did not want NATO parked in their Achille's heel of the Ukrainian flatlands
Russia (i.e. Putin but also Russians in general) wanted to rebuild their empire from the beginning. Anything else is just an excuse.
> interests between them and the West
Of course this conflict has been mostly one sides till the 2014, with Obama and Merkel bending over backwards to appease Putin.
Also the implication that Russia has some God given right over dominion of half of Eastern Europe is a bit appealing..
> our will on Russia and establishing a hierarchy of dominance.
That is a very Ruso-Imperialist mindset. A society pretty permanently stuck in the 1800s politically and psychologically… e.g. Germany, France, Britain were somehow able to step over their ambitions and are doing relatively fine (even without having millions of foreigners subjugate)
> In all honesty, would you hold that argument if Mexico decides to host Russian or Chinese troops?
Ukraine wasn't hosting foreign troops (except Russian troops, some of whom were were the spearhead of the invasion) when the Russo-Ukrainian war started with the Russian invasion in 2014.
(They did start hosting some that were involved in training and advisory assignments after the war started and before the major escalation in 2022, but those can hardly justify the war which started with the 2014 invasion.)
Unfortunately, yes. USA is doing everything but openly support Russia at this point too. It could have been different if Ukraine got proper support, but instead it is being undermined.
Europe could do more, but at least most states dont play for Russia (Hungary and Slovakia excepted).