This gets to something I've been wondering about, what is the winning condition for Russia now?
Perhaps I'm wrong, but I don't see the ukranians giving in any time soon, they seem determined to fight for every inch. The cost of occupying them is going to be astronomical and tie up their military fighting a guerilla war.
I assume the expectation was that they would invade, the ukranian government would run away and they could impose a puppet government, but that just doesn't look likely now.
I may be very wrong, but I just don't see what the endgame is for Russia that doesnt bleed their economy dry in the process.
Putin doesn't want lose face, so he pumps more money into it than his supporters are okay with and their patience runs out befor Ukraine loses.
His end game would be Ukraine getting leveled, the west being angry and remilitarizing, and he can sell a new cold war for the next decades to keep support.
That would mean sanctions on Russia forever, I don't think their state or military can keep up for that long. How do they want to build any sophisticated war machines without access to high tech technologies? Their current tanks can be fried with just Javelins. Its not China with 1.5 billion people where you have endless sources of fresh young men, Russia is slowly dying on a bad side of demographic curve.
China may provide them some, but that is end of Russia as world power (if that didn't happen already as we can all see).
There are people who would tangibly benefit from a new cold war everywhere, possibly except Ukraine. Imagine how much of a useful distraction it is all around. The only people losing are regular citizens who just want to live and prosper.
...yeah, EU can definitely use this as "motivation" to become "a real thing" with proper integration army and all, closer to an European-federation. I'd personally like this tbh, probably the only way to really be productively competitive against China and US.
But we need to thread carefully here. The other side looks that it might involve non-rational actors. Hopefully they're also incompetent and not very united amongst themselves.
Yes. Could be some solace that current events appear to more or less hand Russia over to Xi, who appeared reasonably rational so far. Of course, medium term this puts China at EU's doorstep, so I would say caution (army, etc.) is more than warranted. What a world.
I was always hoping that Russia would grow closer to EU. That way we would really have a strong union to cope with China, and compete with US.
I'm pretty confident that when Russia would be a real democracy, it would have grown closer to EU. I know some Russians (the same as I know some Ukrainians), and I'm sure they would prefer our countries doing more collaboration.
But now we are all stuck with this KGB-er that still thinks he's living in Soviet days.
It's become very clear by now that the west shouldn't do business with non-democratic countries. We made the mistake with Russia and with China, and our money only makes them stronger. It doesn't push them towards democracy at all.
What would be an objective metric for deciding whom democracies should be allowed to do business with?
If you use e.g. the democracy index, you leave most of Africa (which, remember, is bigger than it may look on a typical map projection) and Middle East, which fare as bad or worse than Russia, to China. Try suggesting that to US corporations or foreign policy lawmakers.
Once more than half of the world gathers behind China due to sanctions, give it time to snowball and soon EU/US/AU may just become unable to compete with Chinese offers, meaning any remaining country will have no economic reason to continue dealing with the Western bloc (except if you threaten them, bribe top officials personally, or do a coup).
The people of Russia and the EU would 100% love this if you were to take away all the propaganda. But this view doesn't seem to be shared by the ruling elites and the US doesn't seem want to want to allow that profits made from "Marshall money" fuel in any way the development of Russia.
And there's also some mindset incompatibility that would need to be resolved first:
Western European countries have actually accelerated their development through fierce competition and even war amongst them... I think this is what in the end lead to the enlightenment and then the industrial revolution. But war was kept in check in a way, it was "war by the rules" sort of with conditions to limit destruction of intellectual and material capital. People died, a lot, but knowledge, tradition and core assets too, were preserved. And "being able to play The Game right" is still a fundamental condition for "joining The West(ern Europe)".
Russia doesn't seem to get how to "be corrupt, but not THAT corrupt" (eg. there's corruption in France and Germany too, but it does NOT undermine the foundations of society - there are soft subtle limits that people learn how to thread around). (+HINT: you can't remove corruption and nepotism 100% without, paradoxically, getting back to 100% corruption and nepotism because you'd need to centralize authoritarian power to fully/absolutely solve corruption. "All or nothing" thinking doesn't work. It's always "pink" or "gray", never red&white or black&white. It's subtleties and mental gymnastics like this that make Western Europe what it is and give its power, this "the hidden soul of Europe" in a way, "discretely weaponizing subtlety and paradox for the purpose of furthering the development of humanity, science and knowledge". And it's stuff you'll not find in any book. It's stuff that people need to figure out by themselves and also let other figure it out by themselves.) Or that "you can only get into a real hot war AFTER you've won at least say ~50% of the `war for peoples' harts`, so that in the event of a victory you can maintain power without having to `break people into submission` by physical or mental violence". Or that there's an unwritten rule between "proportionality of assets and power - you can't hold immense political or military power in your hands if you're not backed by the people holding most assets, and you can't hold assets without having them taken or severely taxed-away if you don't also assume political responsibility and power, even indirectly". And so on and so on and so on...
Russia just doesn't seem to grok the underlying unwritten rules of western civilization...
Neither does eg. China, but they're not expected to either. Russia keeps wanting to "come and play" with Europe, but they just can't get rules of the game / the dance steps. And sure, the rules are in slow but continuous evolution, but that's the thing, figuring them out and then figuring out how to keep figuring them out and keep playing "the good game".
To conclude: you'd need to solve both (1) US opposition and (2) mindset incompatibility, and I think this is REALLY hard (not impossible though), in order to get Russia and Europe together in any meaningful way!
We definitely have this mindset incompatibility already within the EU with Poland and Hungary for example.
But like you say, these things need to evolve, and with older generations dying, a part of their mindset dies along with that. You see young people getting more into the mindset of the west.
> mindset incompatibility already within the EU with Poland and Hungary for example
I think this is more like incompatibility between the "central-continental European cultural area" (+ some "balkanic-European c.e." elements for Hungary) and "west-atlantic-postcolonialist-European c.e." and this is very mild and will go away when current politicians trade seats. Hungarian, Polish, Bulgarian, Romanian etc. people can cooperate well amongst themselves and with eg. Germans or Austrians, if nobody is deliberately stirring hate.
Maybe Poland and Hungary could serve as bridge to Russia to solve the worst incompatibility, that between the mindsets of west-atlantic-postcolonialist-europeans and mindsets of russian-europeans. But I would not have much hopes, these two groups are very incompatible... each would probably find it easier to get along with the Chinese or the Americans that with the other. And there's also eastern European countries like eg. Romania that have better closeness / similarity / affinity to west-atlantic-Europe and the US than to the central-European ones and would rather burn themselves than serve as a bridge to Russia... Europe is complicated...
German (continental) European de-facto-leadership + eastern Europe to be the bridge could work in theory though...
> His end game would be Ukraine getting leveled, the west being angry and remilitarizing, and he can sell a new cold war for the next decades to keep support.
Doubt that is Putin's desired end-game. His entire justification for the invasion was to re-unite what was formerly Great Russia... blasting Ukraine to the stone age runs completely counter to that. He's not Xi Jinping and the Ukrainians are not Tibetans or Uyghurs.
Unfortunately it may be what the future brings as an end-game - justified by "the Nazis of Ukraine forced me to do it" or similar bollocks.
His desired end game would have been to do his "special operation" thing and puppeting Ukraine, but I guess that ship sailed, if it ever even existed outside of Putin's mind...
The end game looks like WW3 in ten years started by the China-Russia-NK alliance using Taiwan as a pretense. The real reason will be the desire to change the order of things, so China is the new capital of the world. I feel like the west is in denial right now, hoping that this far away war will get resolved by itself in a month or so.
> change the order of things, so China is the new capital of the world
Don't be daft. China has long figured out that it's easier to subjugate the West through economical power than military power. Russia has been trying to do both and NK has been stuck with the latter due to its isolationism and pariah status.
China already strongly hinted that they don't have Russia's back in this conflict and they have demonstrated that they view NK more like an underage sibling they have to rein in from time to time.
There's no point in starting WW3 for China because China is already winning. The real rivalry will likely be something most Americans aren't even thinking of: India. For all the posturing, the US heavily depends on China far more than the EU ever depended on Russia.
Superpower 2020 meme aside, the geopolitical implications of a risen India is profound. Within striking range of every significant SLOC for Europe, MENA, east Africa and Asia until arctic shipping becomes viable. Perhaps the biggest strategic blunder in recent human history was carving out antagonistic Pakistan, combined with PRC influenced Myanmar which prevents land access to most of Euroasia. That said, India is reaching terminal demographics as well, and far from getting rich before getting old. And apart from all the QUAD / potential for west alignment, I think any strategic thinker outside of India with half a brain cell will want to keep India down for as long as possible if not bulkanize her.
> China has long figured out that it's easier to subjugate the West through economical power than military power.
And yet they are the world's largest army by headcount and the second largest by budget. They are absolutely going to make use of that power, the question is just when.
> China already strongly hinted that they don't have Russia's back in this conflict
Outwards? Yes. Everything else would be madness.
Inwards? I'd guess that they aren't too unhappy. The US had already begun under Obama to shift their focus away from the Middle East and Europe to focus on China and their expansionism - now with the Ukraine crisis that one way or the other will take many years to resolve, the US will have to split attention and forces between China and whatever Russia is doing.
> And yet they are the world's largest army by headcount and the second largest by budget.
Of course. What's the point of amassing capital if you don't have the firepower to defend its interests? What do you think the US military exists for? Bringing freedom and democracy via drone strikes? Strong militaries are how you subjugate the weak and isolated, strong economies are how you subjugate the powerful and globally connected. But a strong military (or in lieu of that, a nuclear arsenal) also prevents other strong militaries from coming in and taking away your toys.
> US will have to split attention and forces between China and whatever Russia is doing
More importantly, Russia will come out extremely weakened from this war and with the entire West having committed to economic sanctions China will have an unbeatable upper hand as a trading partner. If Russia engages in direct conflict with the West, even better as long as things don't get out of hand.
> The real rivalry will likely be something most Americans aren't even thinking of: India.
You might enjoy this story then, if you haven't read it already ("2034: A Novel of the Next World War", co-authored by James Stavridis, a former supreme NATO commander):
This only makes sense under the framework of "you're negotiating with a country that is overall similar to other (western) countries in thinking/functioning" or worst case with a "authoritarian but rational & calculating regime that has some of the interests of its own people as core driving force" (eg. China).
We might be wrong! Even if Putin fails his successor might be even worse, and there's a weird quasi-religion thing jumping from mind to mind across Russia and not only: https://youtu.be/IAVZ3XsqIL4 (the source is biased but can't think of a better one now).
We might be talking to something closer to a cult, and we are generally bad at dealing with these by applying western negotiation and de-escalation techniques (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waco_siege). We don't want the nuclear equivalent of the Waco massacre! (Also, historically, the last "nation level cult" we've dealt with resulted in a world war, so there's a grim track record here.
Something is weird here and both sides are playing mind-games - captured Russian soldiers look like they're on acid or something, military tactics seem weird and maybe they're targeted to induce reactions that can drive behaviors more than to secure military objectives... s's not right here, this feels like neither Kosovo nor Iraq nor Syria.
We shouldn't try to out-cult a cult, that's how you get WW3. We need to figure out how to DE-BRAINWASH people and get them to negotiate constructively and FAST!*
> I assume the expectation was that they would invade, the ukranian government would run away and they could impose a puppet government
That was absolutely the expectation. Russian state media recently accidentally published an article written before the invasion that was supposed to be an account of their swift victory and Ukraine’s reintegration in to Russia.
I always argue that if the docs would have been detailed enough to clearly express the properties of the implementation, they would be the implementation.
I can see a few winning conditions for Xi. Maybe the most significant reasonably independent country (previously not exclusively West nor CCP aligned) has been almost entirely ejected by the West in a handful of days. And it's not quite North Korea, there are significant resources to be had, as well as territory at the doorstep of both Europe and the US.
As an aside, I wonder if EU/US realized that they are not leaving themselves any options except to maintain the sanctions forever in the event they are not a viable aggression deterrent, which paves the way for Russia to head nowhere else but to become Xi's puppet. Putting tinfoil hat on, I wonder whether any politicians of dubious associations had the time to lobby for this (I recall MI6 discovered a CCP-paid agent in UK lawmaking system just last year).
To answer your question, if Putin is acting in accord with Xi, then there may be some winning conditions for Putin that we do not know about. (As a Russian, I have little doubt that a Venn diagram of winning conditions for Putin and winning conditions for the country as a whole would be two circles.)
there is a fair chance that this cost is a part of the deal he has with his cronies. "you can make bank all you like, as long as you pay me some and when I decide to make a move you're behind me all the way"...
Putin doubling down and still losing seems like a chance. Probably naively, I believe it is a chance for encompassing reforms. For the last Soviet remnants to be flushed out. I suspect almost all Russians below say 40 years of age are just done. They gaze west or onto their smartphones and see what live can be like. Not perfect either, but a huge step up. Yet the reigning elite is too entrenched still, which a decisive, including economical, defeat of Russia in Ukraine might change. Here is to hoping.
(Naturally, the West also has an 'entrenched elite'; it's always greener, yadda yadda. Yet average western life is objectively much better than current Russian)
the official goals are "demilitarization" and "denazification",
As far as demilitarization goes, it seems the Ukrainian fleet, air defenses and bases have been mostly destroyed by stand-off weapons, and an encirclement maneuver is appearing (North and South prongs).
As for "denazification", it would appear most of what Putin calls nazis are concentrated on the border with the Donetsk and Lougansk sectors, in deep positions but with a no man's land behind them (flat and vulnerable to artillery).
The West is winning the media war, but Ukraine is definitely NOT winning the war for now (they mostly cannot counter-attack)
If you could ask all the leaders who have led a nation through a war and kept their position, I suspect nearly none would accept a win condition that means they did not win.
> As far as demilitarization goes, it seems the Ukrainian fleet, air defenses and bases have been mostly destroyed by stand-off weapons, and an encirclement maneuver is appearing (North and South prongs).
But many former civilians were recruited and armed, some airbases are still operational, and drones are wrecking havoc on Russian logistics. The encirclement has been appearing since day one, and has only advanced from the south..
Ukraine cannot win in traditional terms ( counterattack and push back), but they can surely win by crippling enemy morale, dealing devastating and unsustainable losses, and in general making the war too expensive to continue ( let alone a possible occupation). And that's going splendidly!
It may be that Putin's ultimate goal is just to take the south, and actions north and east are mainly to draw resources away from the southern front. Actually holding ground north and east might not be worth the cost, but demolishing them costs much less than it costs Ukraine. Ukrainians will be on the hook for decades to rebuild them, no skin off Vlad's nose.
People in the north will be much more strongly motivated to drive Russians out of the north than to attack holdings in the south, down to the Black Sea.
Only taking the fight into Russian cities would give Putin anything to worry about.
Regarding "denazification": the president of Ukraine is Jewish, Russia just bombed the Holocaust museum in Kyiv, and the pro-Russian people in Donetsk, Luhansk, and Belarus are the Nazis. "Denazification" is total and complete bullshit.
As for the point of the thread: denazification and demilitarization are stated objectives, not win conditions. The US achieved their stated objectives in Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq #2, but failed to achieve the win conditions in Vietnam and Afghanistan. The jury is still out on Iraq #2 but sources say unlikely.
I'm guessing at this point it's dominate Ukraine at any means necessary and ride out sanctions until they start to slacken after countries like Germany, etc need gas and are willing to accept that Ukraine is an extinct country to get it.
And, unfortunately, that just may be what happens. A lot of countries are too lazy with investing in renewables or nuclear and they're in for some very hard times if they need to rely on gas to be shipped in or piped around Ukraine/Russia, so I can imagine sanctions being loosened in under a year for many countries. At least France was smart enough to go for nuclear and can probably hold a moral high ground as long as they want and the US has shown they'll hold grudges for decades (see Cuba and Iran).
Greens (or just governments in power) need to make a choice now politically - do they accept that shale and fracking is a necessary bad to avoid supporting a mad dictator killing thousands of ukranians, or do they think the evil of fracking is worse.
The telegraph had an article a few days ago about how if all fracking was restarted, OPEC was persuaded to flood the market, and consumers took some restrictions (90km/h temporary speed limit in europe for example), we could be off Russian energy by the end of the year.
Question is, is there enough political will to do it.
Warfare is 'the continuation of politics by other means' - it is politics. It ends when there is a political solution that sufficiently reduces the incentive to fight - people are sufficiently satisfied and/or too scared. Political leaders regularly forget this essential - the US went into Iraq, rapidly defeated the Iraqi military, but lacking a political solution they remained for over a decade. The same thing happened in Afghanistan - you can see what happened when the US finally left, almost immediately, sans a political solution. Note that, when political solutions seem unavailable, many invaders tend to persist regardless.
What political solution would eliminate the incentive for Ukrainians to fight? Lots of egocentric attackers think, 'the people will welcome us!' - which is kind of like going into your neighbors house with a gun, taking over, and feeling sure that they will welcome you. But wrapped up in their insulated egos, they still think it: Putin seemed to have thought it about Ukraine.
That fantasy has been dispelled with a vengence; right now it's very hard to imagine the Ukrainians accepting any Russian-backed goverment. Putin's only option might be a fear-based government. If you think that's too difficult, remember that the Soviet Union ruled Ukraine (and other places) in that manner for generations - and that was after taking their food and starving to death a large portion of the population in the 1930s. However, it would permanently brand Russia as brutal dictators. Another alternative is Ukraine's leadership surrenders to reduce civilian suffering - Zelensky is very popular, afaik; would enough Ukrainians follow his lead?
An endpoint for Russia for the war always was and is a return to the negotiation table. They’re far off the course that they expected for that, but they might not be so quick to quit right now because they need to rebound. At the least they need the spirit of Ukraine to be broken more than it is now, and a few days/weeks of shelling/rockets/blasts should probably get them there
If the west is willing to keep the economic sanctions on (and that's a big if). Russia as we knew it is over. There should be a few requirements for removal of sanctions. (in no order)
1) russian denuclearification (due to using the threat of nuclear weapons as an umbrella over a conventional war)
2) agree to remove themselves from UN Security Council as a permanent member (due to invading another sovereign state with basically complete worldwide condemnation, one can try to equate it to US moves, but none of them have been as universally condenmed, so yes, quantity matters in this regard).
3) complete pullback from Ukraine
4) reparations paid to Ukraine.
5) I've even argue to having to give up their european enclave.
if they refuse, they will cease to be effectively an independent state and will simple become a chinese vassal state.
so the Q is, what matters more to Russian pride. being an independent state that can mostly chart one's own destiny, but being a pale remnant of what they once were. Or having fake power but really simply being under the total control of china.
Geez, let's be realistic, no leader would be able to swallow their pride and agree to your points, they'd rather pretend to have some pride left and go to China.
If they agreed to those points, their destiny will be determined by "the West", which may look pure and good compared to Putin, but let's not pretend the US and EU are corruption-free, the rich and corporations also have outsized influence here.
if that's true, then MAD was a pointless/false doctrine. The point of MAD is that people want to live. If the choice is denuke and live one way or use nukes and everyone dies, then MAD was false.
How exactly do you plan to make denuking the only possible choice? With what stick? Starting a nuclear war? Anything short of that isn't big enough.
A million years of sanctions isn't going to be sufficient to accomplish that, especially when China is still available as a trading partner.
It might result in civil unrest, and (incredibly unlikely, but sure, pigs could fly) a coup, but you won't be able to pry the nuclear football out of the fingers of whomever inherits the rubble of the Kremlin. The United States is more likely to give up its nuclear arsenal than Russia is.
You're confusing what you want with what can happen. That's not how geopolitics, negotiations, or questions of power work.
as I said, they will end up being a chinese vassal state othewise. as they will have to jump when china says jump. The Q is what matters more to them, being mostly free to chart their own path, or having nukes but having to follow chinese orders.
Iran is charting their own path fine after rebuilding / structural adjustment of their economy after 10 years of current RU tier sanctions. Iranian economy has become resilient to the point they currently feel like they are negotiating from position of strength at JCPOA. Of course they're still broke as fuck, but they've reached stagnant economic equilibrium which is not broke enough to prevent them from being a major regional player. All things considered RU is much better positioned continue pursuing their own interests, assuming the sanctions hold.
the west hasn't sanctioned Iran in anywhere near the same way as the current Russian sanctions. When trumped tried to take back the deal, Europe somewhat ignored him.
RU sanctions are being compared to Iranian sanctions because they're very comparable, with similar evasion routes - turning east.
> Europe somewhat ignored
And prior to Trump/JCPOA they didn't. Iran experienced several shocks of ramping sanctions for around a decade including by EU that was extremely comprehensive. As in SWIFT tier in practice. RU at least has strategic partner in PRC interested in propping it long term. There's also lots of other large neutral markets that hasn't signalled willingness to ditch RU resources and potentially UKR resources under RU. And again, this is assuming RU sanctions will last during negotiations to end the war, not to mention RU hasn't retaliated meaningfully - it's conceivable RU economy the size of Spain gets crushed to size of Turkey (half) but RU can afflict disproportionate damage in other way, i.e. cyber disruptions that cause economic disruptions which will cause the EU/US to loose in aggregate more than RU.
My question is why would anyone agree to this if they have nuclear weapons? Like, the USA (and Israel) have spent an enormous of effort and money to stop a "rogue" state like Iran from acquiring nuclear capabilities, but it seems that in the last week Russia has seemingly transformed into said rogue state.
Does routinely vaguely threatening nuclear attack as a form of diplomatic extortion qualify? The only other state I can think of that does that is North Korea.
There can always be a revolution. I bet the international community will be a lot more lenient if the new government had the appearance of making russia a functioning democratic state (regardless of whether that was actually the case)
Also continuing sanctions will probably require softening the stance over other places like Iran. If they themselves are savvy enough to catch this windfall history might chart quite an interesting different coarse.
If Iran agreed to give up nukes and stop exporting terrorism (or freedom fighters if one wants to call them that, but I don't see how one can justify bombing jewish community centers in argentina as freedom fighting) then they will quickly have sanctions removed from them.
I'd argue that the russian's overt use of the nuke threat is going to make countries more hardline in the near future on Iran's nuke ambitions.
Devil's advocate here: can we — for the sake of the argument — assume for a sec that what Russia's been saying is true, and that their goal is: not having Nato in Ukraine?
Because if we can — for the sake of the argument — assume that, their winning condition is achieved. Ukraine, being in the middle of a military conflict, won't be admitted to Nato.
I don't think that stopped Turkey (having a territorial dispute with Cyprus) from being admitted.
Also, your interpretation means Russians would have to rely on Nato interpreting their own criterias in a certain way. This may be a reasonable thing for you or me — but I don't think it's a reasonable thing for the Russians, considering all the bad blood between Russia and Nato for the last 70 years.
"winning condition is achieved", hooray, the Putin in your imagination thinks, Ukraine won't be a member of NATO, never mind the cost of economic destruction of Russia?
My imagination has nothing to do with it, but from what I know from history, countries will go to great lengths — sometimes leading to their destruction — when they feel their existence is under a threat.
This is naive thinking at best. This isn't a "smart contract".
The only reason a club has membership rules is to be able to selectively apply them and keep applicants out. Stated slightly differently: a club's membership rules are really just "rejection rules".
If big name members of a club want someone to have membership, then there's all sorts of flexibility that can be found within the scope of the rules, ranging from a narrow relaxed interpretation to creative accounting to outright one-off exceptions.
THe best example that I can think of currently is Greece's membership to the EU, where the EU conveniently just looked the other way despite pretty stark evidence that Greece had cooked their books.
There is zero chance of a country being admitted that has a territorial conflict with russia. But russia is trying to solve this problem right now, so making ukraines medium term admission more feasable.
Russia will absorb Ukraine, and since there is nothing stopping them at the moment probably Moldova and Georgia as well. Lukashenko will give Belarus to Russia.
Once all of these places have been assimilated, they are now all Russia. You can no longer support the citizens of these areas because they will all be Russians.
Russia will continue to isolate themselves and attempt to turn everyone within their borders against the west.
They already practiced cutting themselves off from the entire internet last year, so they likely know how bad things will get.
Russia can sustain itself if it wants because it is so large, so it appears they are attempting to build some sort of enclave at any cost.
> Russia can sustain itself if it wants because it is so large, so it appears they are attempting to build some sort of enclave at any cost.
Likely, though not like they are not dependant from outside world, i.e. they can become soviet union 2.0 with iron curtain 2.0.
Their commercial aviation is dependant on boeing and airbus - no parts for foreseeable future. Big portion of shipping containers will stop coming, banks are restricted and foreign money is pulling out (moscow exchange is closed for the 4th day), etc.
If they take Ukraine they will take Belarus as well.
There is evidence that this is already in the works, for example the article that was published prematurely suggesting Russia has already absorbed Belarus
>Perhaps I'm wrong, but I don't see the ukranians giving in any time soon, they seem determined to fight for every inch. The cost of occupying them is going to be astronomical and tie up their military fighting a guerilla war.
I don't think your wrong, the "official" military will be gone away soon, but then the real struggle begins for russia.
Just look at Afghanistan in 1979, if the west continues to support the guerillas/mudschahidin/freedom-fighters etc.
If Ukrainians don't start to fight each others (like in Chechnya) this is going to be a nightmare for Russia.
Frankly at this point my expectation is that Russia levels the cities it can't capture, kills Zelensky, declares a new puppet government to be in charge and then leads a continuous permawar against the inevitable insurgency.
> This gets to something I've been wondering about, what is the winning condition for Russia now?
Before the invasion? The West is lazy and does nothing. (see Chechnya, Georgia, Ukraine 2014) Now? Unicorns and fairy dust.
Russia is relevant on the world stage for a few reasons:
1. They have a permanent seat on the UN Security Council.
2. They're big bad bullies who give people offers they can't refuse.
3. They're a significant producer of crude oil and natural gas. (they do not have significant capacity to refine crude oil)
They've overplayed their hand regarding #2. Lots of countries are falling over themselves to join NATO and/or the EU. It's been shown that as a world power that their military ... well it sucks. They have a locally significant military, not a global one.
Their best customer for crude oil and natural gas is the EU. The EU is now all-in on relieving themselves of the need to buy any sort of fossil fuels, and especially not from Russia. They can sell crude oil and natural gas to China still, but China doesn't really need those things. They need refined gasoline; but China is as fit to develop those capabilities as Russia is.
They could absolutely crush and subjugate Ukraine by conscripting 200,000 or so more troops, and just lay waste to Ukraine. Carpet bomb and heavy artillery barrages of all population centers. This would accomplish #2, but would completely negate #3.
They could simply say, "oops, our bad," and withdraw all forces and keep #3. It's possible but not particularly likely that the Finnish and Georgian requests to join NATO and the EU respectively would stall and fizzle out.
Perhaps most importantly... there's no outcome that doesn't make Putin look like a fool. He looks like an idiot in every conceivable outcome. The only situation in which Putin does not look like an absolute dunce is if they do Holodomor 2.0 and and scorch the earth of Ukraine, completely alienate themselves from almost the entire Earth, and simply submit themselves to being a ring bearer to China. Putin still looks like a fool in the history books, but until he dies 5-20 years from now he can continue to pretend to be a strongman. Maybe that's good enough for him, I dunno.
They keep the seat on the security council though.
Russia's 2019 military spend was 65 billion USD, or 58.6 billion EUR. Clearly they are not blowing through an entire year's defense budget in three days (that would be over 100x the usual rate of spend!).
Or another sanity-check figure: Russia's entire 2020 GDP would pay for only 67 days of war at this run-rate. In other words, the country is using over 500% of its productive output on the war (a neat trick without any imports!)
For reference, in 1940 the United States spent 1.64% of its GDP on defense. In 1945 it spent 37.19%.
I'm as hopeful as anyone for Ukraine to survive this awful war with her sovereignty intact, but we must be realistic.
Don't forget that the source for that claim is still the ukrainian government. Not exactly the most reliable source when it comes to russian intentions.
Another estimate was a lot less based on the cost of previous operations.
"Firstly, Russian ordnance is generally less sophisticated and cheaper than US kit. Secondly, Russian military vehicles do not use petroleum, but diesel – a fuel that is cheaper and offers a better range.
He also estimated the cost of equipment losses in the first four days of fighting. Ten aircraft, at an average price tag of $30 million per airframe, would cost $300 million. One hundred armored fighting vehicles – troop carriers, infantry fighting vehicles, mobile artillery and tanks – which cost an average of $5 million each, would hit the Russian taxpayer with a $500 million bill.
The source then estimated the daily cost of keeping a Russian soldier – a cheaper fighting man than his US counterpart – in the field to be approximately $1,000. He multiplied that by the upper estimate of Russia’s force level in Ukraine – 200,000 troops.
For one day, that would be $200 million. Over four days, troop maintenance costs would total $800 million.
So the total cost for four days of combat operations in Ukraine would be in the region of $1.6 billion – the source added it could rise to $2 billion. But even that upper range would put daily costs to the Kremlin of its invasion at about $500 million."
Only 500MM per day. Very affordable for a couple of weeks. After 6 months, though, that's a $90 billion accumulated bill. That's not including escalation of costs as everything gets more difficult. Unlike the United States with its US dollar, Russia does not own the reserve currency of the world, so it cannot really afford to wage war at this level of intensity for the next 10 to 20 years that it would need to, in order to hope to achieve its extreme political and military objectives. It's a clearly idiotic
an egregiously costly strategic error.
Although when there is no other trading partner but China left, I bet China's conditions on the deal beats Germany's wildest dreams.
The biggest winner out of this diplomacy mess of the last decades seems to be China. Just like with the 10 year lease China got in Afghanistan from the Taliban.
Why is that in China's interest though? As a casual observer, all I can see right now is Russia messing up China's Belt and Road strategy, in which Ukraine is one of several transit countries towards Europe.
That is a good question with no concrete or simple answer. Apart from they are allies. May be China wants to gain control of Russia as some have stated ( I find that highly unlikely ), or Xi wanted a test and see how Taiwan could be handled.
People must stop using west-based numbers for these calculations, the economy is totally different in the east
* lost equipment costs basically 0 - they are mostly old hand-me-downs, the factories are not producing them anymore, so all the costs are already sunk; also the supply is plenty, so abandoning them is nothing; but let's be generous and say $100k / piece of equipment lost
* airplanes are more expensive, but again, this is old stock, there is plenty of them, and not incurring costs of producing more - let's say 10M per craft
* $1000 / day / soldier - this is absurd. They left the poor blokes in the cold with no fuel, military rations that expired in 1997 for food, and they rob the houses and stores they encounter for necessities; I'd say max $20 / day / soldier, and this is a country that average salary is $500 / month, so paying your soldiers $600/month is above average !
So in total this gets you 14M / day. Let's double that for the upkeep and then round up to 50M / day and you'll get a closer look at what the costs truly are like for Russia.
Basically the military in this invasion costs them spare change. The really costly bit is sanctions - in this context the lost at least 300B so far, with no end in sight. No wonder Putin is pissed.
> lost equipment costs basically 0 - they are mostly old hand-me-downs, the factories are not producing them anymore, so all the costs are already sunk;
Sure, for some legacy capital items, the production costs are sunk. But the cost of not having the equipment isn't. You can pay replacement cost or you can pay the permanent reduction in military capacity cost, but you are paying the cost either way if you lose the equipment.
Unless you are saying the operational value of the equipment is zero, in which case, sure, the loss is zero but then why did you even bring it to war in the first place?
> airplanes are more expensive, but again, this is old stock, there is plenty of them, and not incurring costs of producing more - let's say 10M per craft
If you aren't calculating it at the cost of replacing the capacity provided, you are underestimating the real cost.
Cash flow is a present issue while CAPEX is an issue for the future and can be spread along years. Most of what Russia sent to fight (except the jets and Pantsir AA systems) is stuff they intended to replace in the future and already planned for CAPEX. Thus, if you would apply accounting terms that stuff is already depreciated to 0 even if still has some operational value.
The big question that we want answered is will be Russian forces insolvent? And they can be both financially and operationally insolvent. In the former they don't have cash to pay soldiers and suppliers and thus will have to depreciate their currency even further. In the latter they just don't have enough production capability and stock to cover the war needs for fuel, ammo and rations. Giving the know corruption on the military and government I think the latter is possible at least for a few critical items like MLRS ammo and cruise missiles.
note that what you say is the _lower_ limit, "business as usual" if you can use that phrase.
nothing was usual for the russian army in the first week. now that they're starting to reorganize, it might go back down, but that's assuming logistics will be functioning. this is not a given since the army seems to be corrupt in and out.
Worth to read the article rather just the headline. Few mentions in the article
1) $20B is not the cost right now but expected to be:
"the daily cost of war for Russia is “likely to exceed $20 billion” as the invasion scales.
2) Article mentions also lost of $2.7B from GDP because those killed russian soldier won't be veteran in the future and won't work in private sector etc and won't bring any money to russia economy in the future.
3) Article also mentions other supplies: ammunition, fuel, etc. - they are using a lot of rockets and those are not cheap to build and in comparison to tanks rockets are just 'disposable' products.
The report and your figures are in USD. But the rouble, the currency Russia actually uses to pay for salaries, equipment, etc., has crashed, and we don't even know what was the course when the report's estimations were made.
Furthermore, the losses they've suffered are significant, and most of that equipment is decades old, acquired under Soviet "budgets".
And as many have pointed out, which is really clear from the article. Losing assets is a very significant part of the tally. Which makes me think this is a case of not understanding what the numbers are talking about.
Hence the title such as "Direct losses from military action". Of course these numbers are very different compared to when stuff doesn't get blown up. Not to mention the stuff that is intended to be blown up.
As for running costs, although less obviously different, as you mention, are not a surprise to be orders of magnitude larger during war. Logistics is expensive. War is expensive.
I can’t see the article because the server isn’t happy with all the attention, the headline makes me assume that this is total cost to Russia including e.g. sanctions.
The foreign reserves that were frozen (which I know is different from “seized”) were 2-4 months GDP depending on which estimate I use for how much was frozen.
I’ve not seen any estimate for the economic impact from reduction in trade.
Russia does not normally buy 5 advanced fighter jets every day, so their peace time military budget is not a relevant comparison. The numbers in the article also seem to include future costs that might be ammortized over 50 years or something. So in short: the numbers are just wild guesses, but not nonsensical.
> Clearly they are not blowing through an entire year's defense budget in three days (that would be over 100x the usual rate of spend!).
The figure in the article includes losses; indeed, it speaks of costs, not spending.
Of course losses can obliterate many years of budget, if you're losing permanent assets that took literal decades to build up! Armies don't get rebuilt from scratch every year.
I guess these numbers we see in the west are a matter of perspective eh [1]? Other estimates say it's a calculated low cost ($500M) war.
Has the world gone insane? People in the west are cheering on war escalations as if it's some fun weekend recreational activity. People on HN are posting suggestions to join the ukrainian forces, because I guess all those weapons they bought at walmart need to be put to use somehow.
The West thinks that China isn't on Russias side because they didn't Veto the UN resolution as well, but they're just smart enough to take note of everything that is happening to make sure that they have contingencies of everything that is happening. You'll probably see them further removing reserves from foreign countries, further pushing CIPS across the global south, etc.
Japan has joined the west in sanctioning Belarus. The EU has passed a resolution to ban Russian media outlets(and encryption, not in the same go). Apple Wallet kicked out russian banks, UK is freezing Russian assets, rating agencies have downgraded russia to junk status, all without UN mandate. All the semblance of international law has been thrown out the window. I can't help but ask, if this is what the West is willing to do for Ukraine without joining the EU or NATO what would have happened if it had joined either?
Best case, everyone in the global south will pull out of the wests financial systems over the next couple of the decades further embolstering China and we'll see more non google/apple choice in the smartphone/tech market and governments outside of the west returning to a more cash based society and this will blow over with some collateral damage. Worst case this doesn't just blow over and Russia is backed in such a corner that is in fact no option but full scale war with the west.
I think you guys(especially the europeans) ought to ask your grandparents(if they're still alive) how fun the last world war was, since asking Lybians is out of the question(they're stuck on boats). Iraq which was basically a massacre and destruction of Iraq left thousands in the west traumatized and millions decimated over there. And that's a country that has nowhere near the support nor the military capability russia had.
yup, seems the dominant voice on this on HN thinks the West has a moral advantage (it doesn't, Yemen Libya Guatemala, etc).
Most people don't seem to know the difference between what we are seeing in Ukraine and a real Total War (mass bombardments on cities, every night).
We bombed Serbia back to the stone age (infrastructures and civilians alike), so it must be hard to reconcile that with the current "limited" onslaught in Ukraine.
You've probably missed the footage from Kharkiv and Kyiv. Do take a look around, there's plenty of video, photos, reporting from the ground. Those cities are being bombed indiscriminately, and it's pretty much a total war for the Ukrainians.
> yup, seems the dominant voice on this on HN thinks the West has a moral advantage (it doesn't, Yemen Libya Guatemala, etc
I'm sick of this whataboutism. There's a problem, today, and your response is "fuck 'em, there were other problems before dome by those guys trying to help this time"? Fuck you. Yes, the "west" has the moral high ground here. It didn't when it turned a blind eye to Yemen, and it didn't when it incited chaos in Libya.
"bombed indiscriminately" that is hyperbole, indiscriminate bombing is not taking place or there would not be a city anymore (not that I don't deplore any loss of civilian life)
Look at the footage from Kharkiv and tell me that's not indiscriminate bombing. Hospitals, appartement buildings, schools, kindergartens are being obliterated. In a dense urban environment! They're in the process of destroying the city.
It doesn't matter if the West is on the wrong moral side in some conflicts as you mention because it is clearly on the right moral side regarding Ukraine. Nothing gives Russia the right to wage a war of aggression.
You seem to indicate that just because Russia is threatening Total War, they have the right to conquer Ukraine. They don't! The quicker the world steps up to stop an aggressor like Putin, the less people will die.
But American century of carbon guzzling hedonistic excess is effectively a war of aggression on the climate that we Americans choose to engage in daily.
Absolutely agree. As much as we should have stopped Putin a long time ago, we must stop destroying the world with our climate excesses. Unfortunately it is not only the USA who is to blame, but we all need to pull our weight.
NATO and the EU kept expanding, even though Russia has made its objections many times over, explicitly stating their red lines. Instead of using diplomacy the west just ignored Russia. So the west and particularly the EU and NATO being on the right moral side, I find that questionable. And just as the Russians live in a media bubble, so are we. The war is, here in the west, being portrayed as a very simple thing, Russia bad, west good, Russian imperialism, west defending democracy and liberty. And we humans love simple scenarios like this, black and white. However if you read through the history of Ukraine, EU, NATO and its relationship with Russia you'll notice it's not black and white, it's grey all the way through.
There are no winners here. This is a major setback for the west and Russia regardless of the outcome and who fired the first bullet.
The NATO and the EU didn't keep expanding, the Eastern European countries asked to join. They wanted protection from potential Russian aggression (in retrospect it is obvious how right they were), they wanted prosperity for their citizens.
None of these countries were any threat to Russia. The whole Putin narrative that the West is at fault for this war by encroaching on a Russian sphere of influence is just incoherent bullshit.
I also reject your 'both sides' argument. At least from a German perspective I know that European didn't do things 'against' Russia for the last 15 years that weren't clearly as a response to Russian wrong-doing (East Ukraine, Crimean, Syria). Heck, just one month ago Germany wanted to open another Gas pipeline with Russia.
All the "western media" that give a quick 5+ minutes overview about the conflict also talk about Russias objections of NATO expansion and the history of Ukraine.
But also how the people of Ukraine fought to get closer to the EU.
I can't see how that makes it gray all the way through. There are nuances that we can't ignore, but it seems the people of Ukraine don't want to be under Russian control. Seems clear to me the attack was not .. gray.
NATO(but mostly france, UK and the US) bombed Libya so many times that NATO ran out and Germany had to restock them[1]. Germany is always "kind of" neutral.
The US dropped 27k missiles on 7 countries in 2016 alone.[2]
But that isn't really the point of my post. While Russia did in fact declare war on Ukraine and for whatever reasons or whatever your opinion on that is, the West has effectively declared global war on Russia and it will take a lot of restraint from Russia not respond in kind. And since they can't respond in the same way economically the only option would be actual real war.
This is what happens when you leave diplomacy to a bunch of lawyer bros from Oxford and Harvard who have never had to deal with someone saying no to them.
or you could say that they've collected intelligence on Putin and his inner circle and decided that they can turn it around on him. which seems to be sort of working, but at great cost. we'll see in a couple of weeks when russia starts running out of basic stuff like toilet paper.
either way Putin doesn't seem to be treated as a rational actor anymore. he might still think straight, but he seems to believe in his own propaganda.
Good point (edit: about diplomatic underperformance if not corruption) You dont want these Harvard law types negotiating since they have no motivation [on average] to develop that competence. USA has constructed a legal system that has oligarchial characteristics. In Germany the top law graduates do not automatically earn 3x salary of graduates of average schools who pass same exam with same concrete skills. So developing competence or refinement of professional skill is not strictly necessary for top American legal graduates as the system is designed and regulated such that their firms earn windfall fees and their entry-level salary is way above experienced lawyer averages. Whereas in German system (for example) the fee differential reflects more of a proper free market without such ridiculous features.
There seems to be a pretty tight link between the CDU/CSU and the Uni Bayreuth lawschool though.
There's also the fact that there are a lot of Law professors in Germany that are famous for taking advantage of girls during their studies, because if you don't get a good grade in the law system you're effectively out and because they have lifetime tenure they have nothing to fear.
But I do agree that on the grand scheme of themes Germany is WAY better than the other countries, especially considering the fact that they actually have a lot more parties in their parliament and sometimes actually have diverse opinions on things.
Thanks for insight on German system. In USA, as elsewhere, there is a market for legal services, which of course motivates skill and competence. But the construction of the system (by the elites) is such that there is maybe an upper 5% of services that generate ~10x more revenues -- things like corporate mergers, investment banking, certain torts, etc. This doesn't happen as much in other countries. And you don't get into the premium service club by working 20 years to be a master of the trade -- you get there by simply gaining admission to Harvard Law and passing the bar same as any other lawyer.
And that makes it ok for Russia to bomb innocent Ukranians? What is even the point of bringing up the US and the terrible things their government has done?
Absolutely nothing makes it okay. I think the assertion is that if the USA looked inward and led more by example then that would make the world a better place. Leading by example is always best.
Just these last recent Olympics the Russians couldn't compete under their own flag as punishment for various serious transgressions. But the greatest scandal in the history of Olympic sports by a mile is the American Nassar child abuse scandal. Were we Americans punished and banned from having our flag flown at the Olympics? So maybe next time we don't look the other way on decades of abuse? Nah, Michigan and it's insurers are on the hook for a up to a cool billion and life moves on for us none the wiser.
Edit: we have to show people (non-westerners) there is a better way and not assume it is self-evident! If they are exposed constantly to propaganda on [true] western hypocrisies it makes it so much more difficult for them to believe that the west's liberal order, though imperfect, is not as rotten as the alternatives. So that's why I advocate for Americans to look inward
You don't think many Americans are equally upset about all the things their government does? Bernie Sanders was just on CSPAN talking about the US overthrowing leadership in S. America. Many Americans are fully aware of how messed up their country is.
That being said, anytime anything anywhere bad happens a line of people forms to say “What about America,” as if that somehow absolves others.
Also, the Olympics have been a joke for decades. I don't even understand why countries still waste the time and energy supporting it.
Yes, Americans have strong distaste for some things that are happening but are pretty complacent in the grand scheme of things. We are allowing very high levels of crony or state capitalism.
For example, everyone complains about healthcare, housing, climate, or war and little is accomplished
Plenty of smart kids could be doctors but we have an inefficient, exclusionary training system that lasts 11 years minimum post-secondary. Some inroads are made to improve but way too slowly. At age 18, go to school 36 weeks a year? Kindergarten kids who can barely wipe their butts get more instruction than our adult university students who will be treating our cancers? WTF!
You go to the pharmacy to get a medicine that has been around 80 years and costs $3 in India due to having 20 [legit] suppliers (like tylenol) and there are 1-3 suppliers in the USA and it costs $80. Because FDA is now very Soviet and creates onerous, stonewalling barriers in the name of crony profit.
The FDA did this with the initial COVID testing -- stonewalling on the approval of foreign developed tests -- and it certainly had some element of domestic (crony?) profit motives involved. How many people died? How many?
I mean WTF? I go to WalMart once a week and it seems like every week the TVs are better and cheaper. I can buy gigabytes of RAM from state of the art factories but 80 year-old drugs are as expensive as ever. WTF!
Everyone wants housing to be cheaper except many are either NIMBYs or asset holding boomers who won't make a sacrifice in the name of long-term economic development or equity.
American young men (and women) who could be pridefully building or renovating housing and learning trades are sitting uneducated in their parents basements, obese and depressed at very very high rates.
Same with climate. Many want clean energy as long as it's over-subsidized solar and EVs rather than a community investment in solar, wind, or nuclear that is efficient and fair. Not enough want to foot the bill for some upfront investment that will pay off in the long-run. It's all me me me.
Article 41 explains how the UN Security Council can impose sanctions and encourage other UN Member States to follow suit. There is no obligation for states to sanction another state via the UNSC - sanctions can be imposed by a state without passing through the UNSC.
How would that be possible? I guess the article is vague enough that you can maybe take into account the total cost to Russia not inclusive of military costs but even then, this is incredibly dubious.
They do seem to specify at some point that this is about direct war expenses. Now keep in mind, the total russian military budget is only 60 billion $ per year (!!). At that rate, Russia would be not only be spending their yearly war budget every 3 days, but would also spend more money in a year than the USA did in 20 years in the notoriously expensive war in Afghanistan. Russia hasn't even deployed all of the forces it committed to the invasion, and those weren't a majority of it's armed forces to begin with. Yet they will be spending 5 years of military budget by the second week of war?
It just makes absolutely no sense even if we were to take all the ukrainian figures at face value (regardless of how extremely unreliable they have been, for example we don't have any proof for any of the 27 claimed downed russian aircrafts while we do have footage for pretty much everything else in the war). It's okay to trust the ukrainian side a lot more, but you still have to keep in mind that war propaganda is probably not a good source for a report. Nevermind that even the absolute best case scenario where all ukrainian claims end up being true still do not come even close to being enough to back up the article's claims
The report is so vague, the figures so outlandish and the sources are either terrible or absent that it's hard to even believe that actual researchers have ended up with these conclusions.
I saw another estimate as 500mil/day based on number of soldiers and published costs for iraq war. It could easily be even lower as their soldiers and everything are cheaper and their supply lines are shorter.
Is troop morale likely to be an issue if Russians are worried about their currency and financial situations at home? Would they be getting paid reliably or even in a position to check their accounts?
Let’s say Putin succeeds in capturing and subduing some or all of Ukraine and integrating it into Russia. Who’s going to pay the reconstruction bill? They must have caused a hundred billion dollars worth of damage already, with more to come. How is Russia going to afford to rebuild the smoking ruin they inherit?
Romans did not build roads, they made others build roads for them. Crusaders did not build castles, Palestinians and Turks were made to build castles for them.
That makes sense for manual labor where a soldier can stand over you and make you work, but rebuilding Ukraine will need technology - diggers, cranes, steel, concrete, cables, pipes, electronics, fuel… a soldier can’t just shoot those things into existence.
The Ukrainians will need places to live. Russians will not build those. Ukrainians might be constrained to buy reconstruction services from Russian oligarchs, and to go to work for them, at a (large) net loss.
I recommend this video from a Finnish army intelligence expert & researcher to those trying to understand logic behind Russia's actions. It's in Finnish but English subtitles should be good enough. Really awakening stuff at least for me.
153 comments
[ 7.5 ms ] story [ 154 ms ] threadPerhaps I'm wrong, but I don't see the ukranians giving in any time soon, they seem determined to fight for every inch. The cost of occupying them is going to be astronomical and tie up their military fighting a guerilla war.
I assume the expectation was that they would invade, the ukranian government would run away and they could impose a puppet government, but that just doesn't look likely now.
I may be very wrong, but I just don't see what the endgame is for Russia that doesnt bleed their economy dry in the process.
My hope is:
Putin doesn't want lose face, so he pumps more money into it than his supporters are okay with and their patience runs out befor Ukraine loses.
His end game would be Ukraine getting leveled, the west being angry and remilitarizing, and he can sell a new cold war for the next decades to keep support.
China may provide them some, but that is end of Russia as world power (if that didn't happen already as we can all see).
I'm just saying that this might be a last hope for Putin to keep things going.
But we need to thread carefully here. The other side looks that it might involve non-rational actors. Hopefully they're also incompetent and not very united amongst themselves.
I'm pretty confident that when Russia would be a real democracy, it would have grown closer to EU. I know some Russians (the same as I know some Ukrainians), and I'm sure they would prefer our countries doing more collaboration.
But now we are all stuck with this KGB-er that still thinks he's living in Soviet days.
It's become very clear by now that the west shouldn't do business with non-democratic countries. We made the mistake with Russia and with China, and our money only makes them stronger. It doesn't push them towards democracy at all.
If you use e.g. the democracy index, you leave most of Africa (which, remember, is bigger than it may look on a typical map projection) and Middle East, which fare as bad or worse than Russia, to China. Try suggesting that to US corporations or foreign policy lawmakers.
Once more than half of the world gathers behind China due to sanctions, give it time to snowball and soon EU/US/AU may just become unable to compete with Chinese offers, meaning any remaining country will have no economic reason to continue dealing with the Western bloc (except if you threaten them, bribe top officials personally, or do a coup).
Edited to clarify implications.
But I think we've been a bit too free with sending our money to those kind of states.
The people of Russia and the EU would 100% love this if you were to take away all the propaganda. But this view doesn't seem to be shared by the ruling elites and the US doesn't seem want to want to allow that profits made from "Marshall money" fuel in any way the development of Russia.
And there's also some mindset incompatibility that would need to be resolved first:
Western European countries have actually accelerated their development through fierce competition and even war amongst them... I think this is what in the end lead to the enlightenment and then the industrial revolution. But war was kept in check in a way, it was "war by the rules" sort of with conditions to limit destruction of intellectual and material capital. People died, a lot, but knowledge, tradition and core assets too, were preserved. And "being able to play The Game right" is still a fundamental condition for "joining The West(ern Europe)".
Russia doesn't seem to get how to "be corrupt, but not THAT corrupt" (eg. there's corruption in France and Germany too, but it does NOT undermine the foundations of society - there are soft subtle limits that people learn how to thread around). (+HINT: you can't remove corruption and nepotism 100% without, paradoxically, getting back to 100% corruption and nepotism because you'd need to centralize authoritarian power to fully/absolutely solve corruption. "All or nothing" thinking doesn't work. It's always "pink" or "gray", never red&white or black&white. It's subtleties and mental gymnastics like this that make Western Europe what it is and give its power, this "the hidden soul of Europe" in a way, "discretely weaponizing subtlety and paradox for the purpose of furthering the development of humanity, science and knowledge". And it's stuff you'll not find in any book. It's stuff that people need to figure out by themselves and also let other figure it out by themselves.) Or that "you can only get into a real hot war AFTER you've won at least say ~50% of the `war for peoples' harts`, so that in the event of a victory you can maintain power without having to `break people into submission` by physical or mental violence". Or that there's an unwritten rule between "proportionality of assets and power - you can't hold immense political or military power in your hands if you're not backed by the people holding most assets, and you can't hold assets without having them taken or severely taxed-away if you don't also assume political responsibility and power, even indirectly". And so on and so on and so on...
Russia just doesn't seem to grok the underlying unwritten rules of western civilization...
Neither does eg. China, but they're not expected to either. Russia keeps wanting to "come and play" with Europe, but they just can't get rules of the game / the dance steps. And sure, the rules are in slow but continuous evolution, but that's the thing, figuring them out and then figuring out how to keep figuring them out and keep playing "the good game".
To conclude: you'd need to solve both (1) US opposition and (2) mindset incompatibility, and I think this is REALLY hard (not impossible though), in order to get Russia and Europe together in any meaningful way!
But like you say, these things need to evolve, and with older generations dying, a part of their mindset dies along with that. You see young people getting more into the mindset of the west.
I think this is more like incompatibility between the "central-continental European cultural area" (+ some "balkanic-European c.e." elements for Hungary) and "west-atlantic-postcolonialist-European c.e." and this is very mild and will go away when current politicians trade seats. Hungarian, Polish, Bulgarian, Romanian etc. people can cooperate well amongst themselves and with eg. Germans or Austrians, if nobody is deliberately stirring hate.
Maybe Poland and Hungary could serve as bridge to Russia to solve the worst incompatibility, that between the mindsets of west-atlantic-postcolonialist-europeans and mindsets of russian-europeans. But I would not have much hopes, these two groups are very incompatible... each would probably find it easier to get along with the Chinese or the Americans that with the other. And there's also eastern European countries like eg. Romania that have better closeness / similarity / affinity to west-atlantic-Europe and the US than to the central-European ones and would rather burn themselves than serve as a bridge to Russia... Europe is complicated...
German (continental) European de-facto-leadership + eastern Europe to be the bridge could work in theory though...
Doubt that is Putin's desired end-game. His entire justification for the invasion was to re-unite what was formerly Great Russia... blasting Ukraine to the stone age runs completely counter to that. He's not Xi Jinping and the Ukrainians are not Tibetans or Uyghurs.
Unfortunately it may be what the future brings as an end-game - justified by "the Nazis of Ukraine forced me to do it" or similar bollocks.
His desired end game would have been to do his "special operation" thing and puppeting Ukraine, but I guess that ship sailed, if it ever even existed outside of Putin's mind...
> change the order of things, so China is the new capital of the world
Don't be daft. China has long figured out that it's easier to subjugate the West through economical power than military power. Russia has been trying to do both and NK has been stuck with the latter due to its isolationism and pariah status.
China already strongly hinted that they don't have Russia's back in this conflict and they have demonstrated that they view NK more like an underage sibling they have to rein in from time to time.
There's no point in starting WW3 for China because China is already winning. The real rivalry will likely be something most Americans aren't even thinking of: India. For all the posturing, the US heavily depends on China far more than the EU ever depended on Russia.
Superpower 2020 meme aside, the geopolitical implications of a risen India is profound. Within striking range of every significant SLOC for Europe, MENA, east Africa and Asia until arctic shipping becomes viable. Perhaps the biggest strategic blunder in recent human history was carving out antagonistic Pakistan, combined with PRC influenced Myanmar which prevents land access to most of Euroasia. That said, India is reaching terminal demographics as well, and far from getting rich before getting old. And apart from all the QUAD / potential for west alignment, I think any strategic thinker outside of India with half a brain cell will want to keep India down for as long as possible if not bulkanize her.
And yet they are the world's largest army by headcount and the second largest by budget. They are absolutely going to make use of that power, the question is just when.
> China already strongly hinted that they don't have Russia's back in this conflict
Outwards? Yes. Everything else would be madness.
Inwards? I'd guess that they aren't too unhappy. The US had already begun under Obama to shift their focus away from the Middle East and Europe to focus on China and their expansionism - now with the Ukraine crisis that one way or the other will take many years to resolve, the US will have to split attention and forces between China and whatever Russia is doing.
Of course. What's the point of amassing capital if you don't have the firepower to defend its interests? What do you think the US military exists for? Bringing freedom and democracy via drone strikes? Strong militaries are how you subjugate the weak and isolated, strong economies are how you subjugate the powerful and globally connected. But a strong military (or in lieu of that, a nuclear arsenal) also prevents other strong militaries from coming in and taking away your toys.
> US will have to split attention and forces between China and whatever Russia is doing
More importantly, Russia will come out extremely weakened from this war and with the entire West having committed to economic sanctions China will have an unbeatable upper hand as a trading partner. If Russia engages in direct conflict with the West, even better as long as things don't get out of hand.
You might enjoy this story then, if you haven't read it already ("2034: A Novel of the Next World War", co-authored by James Stavridis, a former supreme NATO commander):
https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/54211065-2034
We might be wrong! Even if Putin fails his successor might be even worse, and there's a weird quasi-religion thing jumping from mind to mind across Russia and not only: https://youtu.be/IAVZ3XsqIL4 (the source is biased but can't think of a better one now).
We might be talking to something closer to a cult, and we are generally bad at dealing with these by applying western negotiation and de-escalation techniques (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waco_siege). We don't want the nuclear equivalent of the Waco massacre! (Also, historically, the last "nation level cult" we've dealt with resulted in a world war, so there's a grim track record here.
Something is weird here and both sides are playing mind-games - captured Russian soldiers look like they're on acid or something, military tactics seem weird and maybe they're targeted to induce reactions that can drive behaviors more than to secure military objectives... s's not right here, this feels like neither Kosovo nor Iraq nor Syria.
We shouldn't try to out-cult a cult, that's how you get WW3. We need to figure out how to DE-BRAINWASH people and get them to negotiate constructively and FAST!*
Sounds unlikely to me, Russia is an oligrarchy, even Putin said so.
The elite isn't that dumb to risk their wealth for some cult.
Damn, we're in a weird timeline here... where russian oligarchs are actually the hope for a better solution :)
That was absolutely the expectation. Russian state media recently accidentally published an article written before the invasion that was supposed to be an account of their swift victory and Ukraine’s reintegration in to Russia.
https://briefs.fourthestate.org/2022/03/01/russian-state-new...
What the end game is now is anyones guess.
As an aside, I wonder if EU/US realized that they are not leaving themselves any options except to maintain the sanctions forever in the event they are not a viable aggression deterrent, which paves the way for Russia to head nowhere else but to become Xi's puppet. Putting tinfoil hat on, I wonder whether any politicians of dubious associations had the time to lobby for this (I recall MI6 discovered a CCP-paid agent in UK lawmaking system just last year).
To answer your question, if Putin is acting in accord with Xi, then there may be some winning conditions for Putin that we do not know about. (As a Russian, I have little doubt that a Venn diagram of winning conditions for Putin and winning conditions for the country as a whole would be two circles.)
(Naturally, the West also has an 'entrenched elite'; it's always greener, yadda yadda. Yet average western life is objectively much better than current Russian)
As far as demilitarization goes, it seems the Ukrainian fleet, air defenses and bases have been mostly destroyed by stand-off weapons, and an encirclement maneuver is appearing (North and South prongs).
As for "denazification", it would appear most of what Putin calls nazis are concentrated on the border with the Donetsk and Lougansk sectors, in deep positions but with a no man's land behind them (flat and vulnerable to artillery).
The West is winning the media war, but Ukraine is definitely NOT winning the war for now (they mostly cannot counter-attack)
But many former civilians were recruited and armed, some airbases are still operational, and drones are wrecking havoc on Russian logistics. The encirclement has been appearing since day one, and has only advanced from the south..
Ukraine cannot win in traditional terms ( counterattack and push back), but they can surely win by crippling enemy morale, dealing devastating and unsustainable losses, and in general making the war too expensive to continue ( let alone a possible occupation). And that's going splendidly!
People in the north will be much more strongly motivated to drive Russians out of the north than to attack holdings in the south, down to the Black Sea.
Only taking the fight into Russian cities would give Putin anything to worry about.
As for the point of the thread: denazification and demilitarization are stated objectives, not win conditions. The US achieved their stated objectives in Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq #2, but failed to achieve the win conditions in Vietnam and Afghanistan. The jury is still out on Iraq #2 but sources say unlikely.
For Russia, there are no win conditions.
And, unfortunately, that just may be what happens. A lot of countries are too lazy with investing in renewables or nuclear and they're in for some very hard times if they need to rely on gas to be shipped in or piped around Ukraine/Russia, so I can imagine sanctions being loosened in under a year for many countries. At least France was smart enough to go for nuclear and can probably hold a moral high ground as long as they want and the US has shown they'll hold grudges for decades (see Cuba and Iran).
The telegraph had an article a few days ago about how if all fracking was restarted, OPEC was persuaded to flood the market, and consumers took some restrictions (90km/h temporary speed limit in europe for example), we could be off Russian energy by the end of the year.
Question is, is there enough political will to do it.
Warfare is 'the continuation of politics by other means' - it is politics. It ends when there is a political solution that sufficiently reduces the incentive to fight - people are sufficiently satisfied and/or too scared. Political leaders regularly forget this essential - the US went into Iraq, rapidly defeated the Iraqi military, but lacking a political solution they remained for over a decade. The same thing happened in Afghanistan - you can see what happened when the US finally left, almost immediately, sans a political solution. Note that, when political solutions seem unavailable, many invaders tend to persist regardless.
What political solution would eliminate the incentive for Ukrainians to fight? Lots of egocentric attackers think, 'the people will welcome us!' - which is kind of like going into your neighbors house with a gun, taking over, and feeling sure that they will welcome you. But wrapped up in their insulated egos, they still think it: Putin seemed to have thought it about Ukraine.
That fantasy has been dispelled with a vengence; right now it's very hard to imagine the Ukrainians accepting any Russian-backed goverment. Putin's only option might be a fear-based government. If you think that's too difficult, remember that the Soviet Union ruled Ukraine (and other places) in that manner for generations - and that was after taking their food and starving to death a large portion of the population in the 1930s. However, it would permanently brand Russia as brutal dictators. Another alternative is Ukraine's leadership surrenders to reduce civilian suffering - Zelensky is very popular, afaik; would enough Ukrainians follow his lead?
1) russian denuclearification (due to using the threat of nuclear weapons as an umbrella over a conventional war)
2) agree to remove themselves from UN Security Council as a permanent member (due to invading another sovereign state with basically complete worldwide condemnation, one can try to equate it to US moves, but none of them have been as universally condenmed, so yes, quantity matters in this regard).
3) complete pullback from Ukraine
4) reparations paid to Ukraine.
5) I've even argue to having to give up their european enclave.
if they refuse, they will cease to be effectively an independent state and will simple become a chinese vassal state.
so the Q is, what matters more to Russian pride. being an independent state that can mostly chart one's own destiny, but being a pale remnant of what they once were. Or having fake power but really simply being under the total control of china.
If they agreed to those points, their destiny will be determined by "the West", which may look pure and good compared to Putin, but let's not pretend the US and EU are corruption-free, the rich and corporations also have outsized influence here.
A million years of sanctions isn't going to be sufficient to accomplish that, especially when China is still available as a trading partner.
It might result in civil unrest, and (incredibly unlikely, but sure, pigs could fly) a coup, but you won't be able to pry the nuclear football out of the fingers of whomever inherits the rubble of the Kremlin. The United States is more likely to give up its nuclear arsenal than Russia is.
You're confusing what you want with what can happen. That's not how geopolitics, negotiations, or questions of power work.
RU sanctions are being compared to Iranian sanctions because they're very comparable, with similar evasion routes - turning east.
> Europe somewhat ignored
And prior to Trump/JCPOA they didn't. Iran experienced several shocks of ramping sanctions for around a decade including by EU that was extremely comprehensive. As in SWIFT tier in practice. RU at least has strategic partner in PRC interested in propping it long term. There's also lots of other large neutral markets that hasn't signalled willingness to ditch RU resources and potentially UKR resources under RU. And again, this is assuming RU sanctions will last during negotiations to end the war, not to mention RU hasn't retaliated meaningfully - it's conceivable RU economy the size of Spain gets crushed to size of Turkey (half) but RU can afflict disproportionate damage in other way, i.e. cyber disruptions that cause economic disruptions which will cause the EU/US to loose in aggregate more than RU.
Also continuing sanctions will probably require softening the stance over other places like Iran. If they themselves are savvy enough to catch this windfall history might chart quite an interesting different coarse.
I'd argue that the russian's overt use of the nuke threat is going to make countries more hardline in the near future on Iran's nuke ambitions.
Member Germany after WW1?
Because if we can — for the sake of the argument — assume that, their winning condition is achieved. Ukraine, being in the middle of a military conflict, won't be admitted to Nato.
https://www.rferl.org/a/1099020.html search for "territorial disputes".
Also, your interpretation means Russians would have to rely on Nato interpreting their own criterias in a certain way. This may be a reasonable thing for you or me — but I don't think it's a reasonable thing for the Russians, considering all the bad blood between Russia and Nato for the last 70 years.
The only reason a club has membership rules is to be able to selectively apply them and keep applicants out. Stated slightly differently: a club's membership rules are really just "rejection rules".
If big name members of a club want someone to have membership, then there's all sorts of flexibility that can be found within the scope of the rules, ranging from a narrow relaxed interpretation to creative accounting to outright one-off exceptions.
THe best example that I can think of currently is Greece's membership to the EU, where the EU conveniently just looked the other way despite pretty stark evidence that Greece had cooked their books.
Russia will absorb Ukraine, and since there is nothing stopping them at the moment probably Moldova and Georgia as well. Lukashenko will give Belarus to Russia.
Once all of these places have been assimilated, they are now all Russia. You can no longer support the citizens of these areas because they will all be Russians.
Russia will continue to isolate themselves and attempt to turn everyone within their borders against the west.
They already practiced cutting themselves off from the entire internet last year, so they likely know how bad things will get.
Russia can sustain itself if it wants because it is so large, so it appears they are attempting to build some sort of enclave at any cost.
Likely, though not like they are not dependant from outside world, i.e. they can become soviet union 2.0 with iron curtain 2.0.
Their commercial aviation is dependant on boeing and airbus - no parts for foreseeable future. Big portion of shipping containers will stop coming, banks are restricted and foreign money is pulling out (moscow exchange is closed for the 4th day), etc.
Good writeup here: https://twitter.com/dmitryopines/status/1499157917399977987?...
They maybe take Ukraine, but russian economy is on borderline collapse I think.
There is evidence that this is already in the works, for example the article that was published prematurely suggesting Russia has already absorbed Belarus
https://www.newsweek.com/state-run-russian-news-site-acciden...
also
https://mobile.twitter.com/VoicesBelarus/status/149896950184...
I don't think your wrong, the "official" military will be gone away soon, but then the real struggle begins for russia.
Just look at Afghanistan in 1979, if the west continues to support the guerillas/mudschahidin/freedom-fighters etc.
If Ukrainians don't start to fight each others (like in Chechnya) this is going to be a nightmare for Russia.
Bit more info:
https://www.brookings.edu/blog/order-from-chaos/2022/02/24/c...
1) Ukraine fails to (independently) develop its recently discovered Black Sea oil/gas reserves, and fails in general to prosper as a democratic nation
2) Europe continues to buy oil/gas from Russia.
Therefore:
The military win condition is "make a mess". The diplomatic win condition is "get as many sanctions lifted as possible".
Before the invasion? The West is lazy and does nothing. (see Chechnya, Georgia, Ukraine 2014) Now? Unicorns and fairy dust.
Russia is relevant on the world stage for a few reasons:
1. They have a permanent seat on the UN Security Council. 2. They're big bad bullies who give people offers they can't refuse. 3. They're a significant producer of crude oil and natural gas. (they do not have significant capacity to refine crude oil)
They've overplayed their hand regarding #2. Lots of countries are falling over themselves to join NATO and/or the EU. It's been shown that as a world power that their military ... well it sucks. They have a locally significant military, not a global one.
Their best customer for crude oil and natural gas is the EU. The EU is now all-in on relieving themselves of the need to buy any sort of fossil fuels, and especially not from Russia. They can sell crude oil and natural gas to China still, but China doesn't really need those things. They need refined gasoline; but China is as fit to develop those capabilities as Russia is.
They could absolutely crush and subjugate Ukraine by conscripting 200,000 or so more troops, and just lay waste to Ukraine. Carpet bomb and heavy artillery barrages of all population centers. This would accomplish #2, but would completely negate #3.
They could simply say, "oops, our bad," and withdraw all forces and keep #3. It's possible but not particularly likely that the Finnish and Georgian requests to join NATO and the EU respectively would stall and fizzle out.
Perhaps most importantly... there's no outcome that doesn't make Putin look like a fool. He looks like an idiot in every conceivable outcome. The only situation in which Putin does not look like an absolute dunce is if they do Holodomor 2.0 and and scorch the earth of Ukraine, completely alienate themselves from almost the entire Earth, and simply submit themselves to being a ring bearer to China. Putin still looks like a fool in the history books, but until he dies 5-20 years from now he can continue to pretend to be a strongman. Maybe that's good enough for him, I dunno.
They keep the seat on the security council though.
What the hell are they meant to do, roll over and die? The problem starts and ends at Russia.
Russia's 2019 military spend was 65 billion USD, or 58.6 billion EUR. Clearly they are not blowing through an entire year's defense budget in three days (that would be over 100x the usual rate of spend!).
Or another sanity-check figure: Russia's entire 2020 GDP would pay for only 67 days of war at this run-rate. In other words, the country is using over 500% of its productive output on the war (a neat trick without any imports!)
For reference, in 1940 the United States spent 1.64% of its GDP on defense. In 1945 it spent 37.19%.
I'm as hopeful as anyone for Ukraine to survive this awful war with her sovereignty intact, but we must be realistic.
https://www.businessinsider.com/ukraine-revealed-secret-batt...
"Firstly, Russian ordnance is generally less sophisticated and cheaper than US kit. Secondly, Russian military vehicles do not use petroleum, but diesel – a fuel that is cheaper and offers a better range.
He also estimated the cost of equipment losses in the first four days of fighting. Ten aircraft, at an average price tag of $30 million per airframe, would cost $300 million. One hundred armored fighting vehicles – troop carriers, infantry fighting vehicles, mobile artillery and tanks – which cost an average of $5 million each, would hit the Russian taxpayer with a $500 million bill.
The source then estimated the daily cost of keeping a Russian soldier – a cheaper fighting man than his US counterpart – in the field to be approximately $1,000. He multiplied that by the upper estimate of Russia’s force level in Ukraine – 200,000 troops.
For one day, that would be $200 million. Over four days, troop maintenance costs would total $800 million.
So the total cost for four days of combat operations in Ukraine would be in the region of $1.6 billion – the source added it could rise to $2 billion. But even that upper range would put daily costs to the Kremlin of its invasion at about $500 million."
https://asiatimes.com/2022/03/russias-low-cost-war-can-endur...
Although when there is no other trading partner but China left, I bet China's conditions on the deal beats Germany's wildest dreams.
The biggest winner out of this diplomacy mess of the last decades seems to be China. Just like with the 10 year lease China got in Afghanistan from the Taliban.
That is a good question with no concrete or simple answer. Apart from they are allies. May be China wants to gain control of Russia as some have stated ( I find that highly unlikely ), or Xi wanted a test and see how Taiwan could be handled.
* lost equipment costs basically 0 - they are mostly old hand-me-downs, the factories are not producing them anymore, so all the costs are already sunk; also the supply is plenty, so abandoning them is nothing; but let's be generous and say $100k / piece of equipment lost
* airplanes are more expensive, but again, this is old stock, there is plenty of them, and not incurring costs of producing more - let's say 10M per craft
* $1000 / day / soldier - this is absurd. They left the poor blokes in the cold with no fuel, military rations that expired in 1997 for food, and they rob the houses and stores they encounter for necessities; I'd say max $20 / day / soldier, and this is a country that average salary is $500 / month, so paying your soldiers $600/month is above average !
So in total this gets you 14M / day. Let's double that for the upkeep and then round up to 50M / day and you'll get a closer look at what the costs truly are like for Russia.
Basically the military in this invasion costs them spare change. The really costly bit is sanctions - in this context the lost at least 300B so far, with no end in sight. No wonder Putin is pissed.
Sure, for some legacy capital items, the production costs are sunk. But the cost of not having the equipment isn't. You can pay replacement cost or you can pay the permanent reduction in military capacity cost, but you are paying the cost either way if you lose the equipment.
Unless you are saying the operational value of the equipment is zero, in which case, sure, the loss is zero but then why did you even bring it to war in the first place?
> airplanes are more expensive, but again, this is old stock, there is plenty of them, and not incurring costs of producing more - let's say 10M per craft
If you aren't calculating it at the cost of replacing the capacity provided, you are underestimating the real cost.
The big question that we want answered is will be Russian forces insolvent? And they can be both financially and operationally insolvent. In the former they don't have cash to pay soldiers and suppliers and thus will have to depreciate their currency even further. In the latter they just don't have enough production capability and stock to cover the war needs for fuel, ammo and rations. Giving the know corruption on the military and government I think the latter is possible at least for a few critical items like MLRS ammo and cruise missiles.
nothing was usual for the russian army in the first week. now that they're starting to reorganize, it might go back down, but that's assuming logistics will be functioning. this is not a given since the army seems to be corrupt in and out.
1) $20B is not the cost right now but expected to be: "the daily cost of war for Russia is “likely to exceed $20 billion” as the invasion scales.
2) Article mentions also lost of $2.7B from GDP because those killed russian soldier won't be veteran in the future and won't work in private sector etc and won't bring any money to russia economy in the future.
3) Article also mentions other supplies: ammunition, fuel, etc. - they are using a lot of rockets and those are not cheap to build and in comparison to tanks rockets are just 'disposable' products.
Furthermore, the losses they've suffered are significant, and most of that equipment is decades old, acquired under Soviet "budgets".
But it isn't particularly hard to imagine a higher spend rate during a large scale active conflict than during peace times.
Hence the title such as "Direct losses from military action". Of course these numbers are very different compared to when stuff doesn't get blown up. Not to mention the stuff that is intended to be blown up.
As for running costs, although less obviously different, as you mention, are not a surprise to be orders of magnitude larger during war. Logistics is expensive. War is expensive.
The foreign reserves that were frozen (which I know is different from “seized”) were 2-4 months GDP depending on which estimate I use for how much was frozen.
I’ve not seen any estimate for the economic impact from reduction in trade.
The figure in the article includes losses; indeed, it speaks of costs, not spending.
Of course losses can obliterate many years of budget, if you're losing permanent assets that took literal decades to build up! Armies don't get rebuilt from scratch every year.
Think of consultancy more of a wellness program instead of substantial help.
I am willing to bet 90% of people will believe that number when it is printed by the press or shared on social media.
It is so sad we live in a world where 99.9% of news are either factually incorrect or completely taken out of context.
Has the world gone insane? People in the west are cheering on war escalations as if it's some fun weekend recreational activity. People on HN are posting suggestions to join the ukrainian forces, because I guess all those weapons they bought at walmart need to be put to use somehow.
The West thinks that China isn't on Russias side because they didn't Veto the UN resolution as well, but they're just smart enough to take note of everything that is happening to make sure that they have contingencies of everything that is happening. You'll probably see them further removing reserves from foreign countries, further pushing CIPS across the global south, etc.
Japan has joined the west in sanctioning Belarus. The EU has passed a resolution to ban Russian media outlets(and encryption, not in the same go). Apple Wallet kicked out russian banks, UK is freezing Russian assets, rating agencies have downgraded russia to junk status, all without UN mandate. All the semblance of international law has been thrown out the window. I can't help but ask, if this is what the West is willing to do for Ukraine without joining the EU or NATO what would have happened if it had joined either?
Best case, everyone in the global south will pull out of the wests financial systems over the next couple of the decades further embolstering China and we'll see more non google/apple choice in the smartphone/tech market and governments outside of the west returning to a more cash based society and this will blow over with some collateral damage. Worst case this doesn't just blow over and Russia is backed in such a corner that is in fact no option but full scale war with the west.
I think you guys(especially the europeans) ought to ask your grandparents(if they're still alive) how fun the last world war was, since asking Lybians is out of the question(they're stuck on boats). Iraq which was basically a massacre and destruction of Iraq left thousands in the west traumatized and millions decimated over there. And that's a country that has nowhere near the support nor the military capability russia had.
[1] https://asiatimes.com/2022/03/russias-low-cost-war-can-endur...
Most people don't seem to know the difference between what we are seeing in Ukraine and a real Total War (mass bombardments on cities, every night).
We bombed Serbia back to the stone age (infrastructures and civilians alike), so it must be hard to reconcile that with the current "limited" onslaught in Ukraine.
> yup, seems the dominant voice on this on HN thinks the West has a moral advantage (it doesn't, Yemen Libya Guatemala, etc
I'm sick of this whataboutism. There's a problem, today, and your response is "fuck 'em, there were other problems before dome by those guys trying to help this time"? Fuck you. Yes, the "west" has the moral high ground here. It didn't when it turned a blind eye to Yemen, and it didn't when it incited chaos in Libya.
You seem to indicate that just because Russia is threatening Total War, they have the right to conquer Ukraine. They don't! The quicker the world steps up to stop an aggressor like Putin, the less people will die.
But American century of carbon guzzling hedonistic excess is effectively a war of aggression on the climate that we Americans choose to engage in daily.
There are no winners here. This is a major setback for the west and Russia regardless of the outcome and who fired the first bullet.
None of these countries were any threat to Russia. The whole Putin narrative that the West is at fault for this war by encroaching on a Russian sphere of influence is just incoherent bullshit.
I also reject your 'both sides' argument. At least from a German perspective I know that European didn't do things 'against' Russia for the last 15 years that weren't clearly as a response to Russian wrong-doing (East Ukraine, Crimean, Syria). Heck, just one month ago Germany wanted to open another Gas pipeline with Russia.
I can't see how that makes it gray all the way through. There are nuances that we can't ignore, but it seems the people of Ukraine don't want to be under Russian control. Seems clear to me the attack was not .. gray.
Bottom line: Nothing the U.S. or did can justify what Russia is doing to Ukraine.
This information was hidden from the public at the time.
The US dropped 27k missiles on 7 countries in 2016 alone.[2]
But that isn't really the point of my post. While Russia did in fact declare war on Ukraine and for whatever reasons or whatever your opinion on that is, the West has effectively declared global war on Russia and it will take a lot of restraint from Russia not respond in kind. And since they can't respond in the same way economically the only option would be actual real war.
This is what happens when you leave diplomacy to a bunch of lawyer bros from Oxford and Harvard who have never had to deal with someone saying no to them.
[1] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-germany-libya-idUSTRE75Q5...
[2] https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/u-s-bombed-iraq-syria-pak...
either way Putin doesn't seem to be treated as a rational actor anymore. he might still think straight, but he seems to believe in his own propaganda.
There's also the fact that there are a lot of Law professors in Germany that are famous for taking advantage of girls during their studies, because if you don't get a good grade in the law system you're effectively out and because they have lifetime tenure they have nothing to fear.
But I do agree that on the grand scheme of themes Germany is WAY better than the other countries, especially considering the fact that they actually have a lot more parties in their parliament and sometimes actually have diverse opinions on things.
Just these last recent Olympics the Russians couldn't compete under their own flag as punishment for various serious transgressions. But the greatest scandal in the history of Olympic sports by a mile is the American Nassar child abuse scandal. Were we Americans punished and banned from having our flag flown at the Olympics? So maybe next time we don't look the other way on decades of abuse? Nah, Michigan and it's insurers are on the hook for a up to a cool billion and life moves on for us none the wiser.
Edit: we have to show people (non-westerners) there is a better way and not assume it is self-evident! If they are exposed constantly to propaganda on [true] western hypocrisies it makes it so much more difficult for them to believe that the west's liberal order, though imperfect, is not as rotten as the alternatives. So that's why I advocate for Americans to look inward
That being said, anytime anything anywhere bad happens a line of people forms to say “What about America,” as if that somehow absolves others.
Also, the Olympics have been a joke for decades. I don't even understand why countries still waste the time and energy supporting it.
For example, everyone complains about healthcare, housing, climate, or war and little is accomplished
Plenty of smart kids could be doctors but we have an inefficient, exclusionary training system that lasts 11 years minimum post-secondary. Some inroads are made to improve but way too slowly. At age 18, go to school 36 weeks a year? Kindergarten kids who can barely wipe their butts get more instruction than our adult university students who will be treating our cancers? WTF!
You go to the pharmacy to get a medicine that has been around 80 years and costs $3 in India due to having 20 [legit] suppliers (like tylenol) and there are 1-3 suppliers in the USA and it costs $80. Because FDA is now very Soviet and creates onerous, stonewalling barriers in the name of crony profit.
The FDA did this with the initial COVID testing -- stonewalling on the approval of foreign developed tests -- and it certainly had some element of domestic (crony?) profit motives involved. How many people died? How many?
I mean WTF? I go to WalMart once a week and it seems like every week the TVs are better and cheaper. I can buy gigabytes of RAM from state of the art factories but 80 year-old drugs are as expensive as ever. WTF!
Everyone wants housing to be cheaper except many are either NIMBYs or asset holding boomers who won't make a sacrifice in the name of long-term economic development or equity.
American young men (and women) who could be pridefully building or renovating housing and learning trades are sitting uneducated in their parents basements, obese and depressed at very very high rates.
Same with climate. Many want clean energy as long as it's over-subsidized solar and EVs rather than a community investment in solar, wind, or nuclear that is efficient and fair. Not enough want to foot the bill for some upfront investment that will pay off in the long-run. It's all me me me.
https://www.un.org/en/about-us/un-charter/full-text
https://aclj.org/united-nations/procedures-to-impose-sanctio...
They do seem to specify at some point that this is about direct war expenses. Now keep in mind, the total russian military budget is only 60 billion $ per year (!!). At that rate, Russia would be not only be spending their yearly war budget every 3 days, but would also spend more money in a year than the USA did in 20 years in the notoriously expensive war in Afghanistan. Russia hasn't even deployed all of the forces it committed to the invasion, and those weren't a majority of it's armed forces to begin with. Yet they will be spending 5 years of military budget by the second week of war?
It just makes absolutely no sense even if we were to take all the ukrainian figures at face value (regardless of how extremely unreliable they have been, for example we don't have any proof for any of the 27 claimed downed russian aircrafts while we do have footage for pretty much everything else in the war). It's okay to trust the ukrainian side a lot more, but you still have to keep in mind that war propaganda is probably not a good source for a report. Nevermind that even the absolute best case scenario where all ukrainian claims end up being true still do not come even close to being enough to back up the article's claims
The report is so vague, the figures so outlandish and the sources are either terrible or absent that it's hard to even believe that actual researchers have ended up with these conclusions.
So, who knows.
Romans did not build roads, they made others build roads for them. Crusaders did not build castles, Palestinians and Turks were made to build castles for them.
Conquerors find ways to extract value.
Maybe it costs $20B/day overall including sanctions, but military spend only should come out at around $2B.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kF9KretXqJw