How the weak can win – A primer on protracted war
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Just having a safe place to decompress between fighting makes a huge difference. Militaries need to be on constant alert where resistance forces can train and plain in safety. It also takes a lot of manpower to defend a border and those people can’t then be directly useful in the fighting. Russia could setup barricades, minefields etc, but that stuff take time, effort and resources to setup.
But if the population is friendly to the insurgents, couldn't they hide there after an operation?
It seems like the border with an insurgent-friendly country would be mainly useful for supply, training, etc. IIRC, the Taliban had a kind of "fighting season" where their fighters would migrate into Afghanistan from Pakistan, then return months later. It wasn't hit and run from border outposts.
I mean if it wasn't for Russia having and threatening with nukes I would applaud NATO getting involved; the various air forces of NATO countries would make quick work of the very exposed supply lines of the Russian invaders. So far, Russia has not shown much military dominance or strategy. But it can't be allowed to escalate due to the threat of nukes.
Edit: And how much will you give up to avoid a Nuclear War. Assuming the other side is not rational and can't be trusted to protect their existence in a MAD scenario.
Maybe Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania are not worth "the world being destroyed".
Where does it stop.
I think it's a bit of a practical trade off. I'm in London and while it's tempting to do a UK/US no fly zone I'm don't especially want the risk of an off his trolly Putin nuking here. But maybe we could slip some planes and missiles to Ukraine - depending on what we can get away with.
They could maybe win against Sweden alone, since it's largely demilitarized, but they don't actually have a border, and I don't know why Finland wouldn't get involved.
PS: Finland also does conscription, so there's like a million fins who could be called up if a war broke out, and they'd all have training.
But he miscalculated the Ukraine resistance.
So chances are that
1. He has to pause after Ukraine, giving NATO time to level up. Leading to a new cold war.
2. If he wouldn't pause, at least he would be weakened by the Ukraine war.
Why would you think that?
- The collapse of the CCCP and Warsaw Pact was a catastrophe
- Peter The Great was great, and Russia should be extended to its old imperial borders
I'm not aware that he's expressed the desire to go to war with NATO. But I do believe that subjugating Ukraine is a prerequisite to occupying the Baltic states. In particular Kaliningrad, Russia's only ice-free Baltic naval base, is connected to Russia by a long, narrow landbridge, which is very vulnerable, being protected largely by treaty commitments.
Defending that landbridge with purely military force would imply aggression against Lithuania or Poland (or both), and both countries are in NATO.
"Russian proposals for visa-free travel between the EU and Kaliningrad have so far been rejected by the EU. Travel arrangements, based on the Facilitated Transit Document (FTD) and Facilitated Rail Transit Document (FRTD) have been made."
So it looks like you're right, and I'm wrong - it's not a proper corridor.
The only thing that gives me hope in this situation are the strong sanctions enacted against Russia, which may result in regime change (but will cause a lot of pain to ordinary people before they do so).
This is unprecedented and may trigger complete economic collapse.
This is the part that I’m gobsmacked by. Simply by uttering the phrase “this is an existential threat to the nation” gives Putin a legalistic means to change nuclear first strike terms to any conventional war response. The “eastward expansion” narrative doesn’t hold up to any scrutiny. He’s displayed no compunction killing political rivals up to now, so why the sudden squeamishness killing far-right Ukrainian leaders (who, let’s face it, are indeed bona fide Nazi-admiring fascists)? That’s certainly far cheaper in political capital and easier than an invasion.
Oh yes it can be:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Arc_Light#Operations...
They don’t have the troops to counter civilian resistance either. I read an article about hostile army : civilian population ratios in recent conflicts. Russia is off by an order of magnitude and Ukraine has a history almost as bad as Afghanistan. Russia really thought they would be greeted as liberators.
Even if they did, they won't now. And that only means more bad news as then they wouldn't mind a Syria in their backyard as the only thing that's worse than that, in their eyes, is NATO in their backyard.
> ...history almost as bad as Afghanistan.
I don't know what history you are alluding to, but after advent of Islam in Central Asia, Afghanistan was a dominant power in the region, with its rule firmly established in South Asia for a century or two. Afghanistan's recent "bad history" is courtesy of Soviet and American invasions.
I mean there's been at least three assassination attempts at Zelensky in the past week, one by Chechens and two by a paramilitary group that, while supported by Russia, is not actually represented or (formally) under order by them. Plausible deniability.
That is mentioned explicitly:
>> in all of these cases, outside support, particularly the provision of weapons and safe bases, was crucial for the success of the protracted war strategy
It's seems like it is easier to point out how Afghanistan and Vietnam were able to draw out a long-term protracted war and out-will a democracy that (to a degree) follows the changing will of the people. It's especially easier given the lack of threat to the mainland that can be manufactured.
But what about against a neighboring oligarchy like Russia? How do you out-will the singular authoritarian leader and/or his small group of oligarchs?
Edit: some folks have mentioned several, so let me be more specific: guerrilla wars to expel an invading power. This would exclude several attempted Marxist revolutions, but good points made about Chechnya, as well as Northern Ireland and Kenya which failed to expel colonial powers.
I can think of one, and unfortunately it was the Russians who won it, but Ukraine is much bigger and better equipped.
Because failed ones don't last long enough to be remembered. There was a guerrilla insurgency in Iraq after Saddam's government fell, for example, which folded pretty quick.
In general, the more likely reason is that most people tend to be resolutely incurious about foreign politics. There are, IIRC, 150-ish ongoing armed conflicts in the world right now (and this count is far lower than it was 50 years ago!). I suspect that even reasonably well-read Westerners would struggle to identify even a dozen of them. So people selectively remember the ones that involved the major powers (e.g., Afghanistan, Iraq, Vietnam) while completely ignoring ones that don't (so, how about that rebellion in Aceh that failed...).
But the point of this is that unpopular occupation forces trying to impose their will never really works in anything even remotely like the long-run. The only times it can work is when a genuinely popular (and not artificially propped up) leader is able to find common ground with the "enemy". For instance one of the best decisions we made after WW2 was with the leader of Japan, Emperor Hirohito. We actively avoided not only attacking him, but did not try him for war crimes, and let him retain control of the country after the war. He chose to lead Japan in a different direction following their defeat, and everybody came out all the better for it. It's very likely that had we executed him, or installed a puppet, that Japan's relation with the west would be radically different today.
The Emperor of Japan was part of a very old, very well established monarchy; his legitimacy in the office of Monarch far outweighed that of Saddam's in the office of Tyrant.
Palestine?
When your reliable supply lines are all flights, costs will seriously mount up.
Plus, they had stingers. They could raid and retreat essentially forever.
Modern Western countries haven't had much of a history of successful insurgencies. Hungary and Czechoslovakia were both invaded by the USSR (along with Warsaw Pact allies), and it didn't result in an insurgency. We shouldn't exclude WWII either, since that was the last time many of Western nations were invaded by outside powers. The resistance movements never seriously threatened Axis rule in Western Europe.
Everyone seems to be expecting a large Afghan style insurgency, but I think it's far from certain that it will happen.
The thing is, if the Ukrainian is really again a Russian regime, and it sounds like they do (if because I'm not them can't speak for them), then Russia has already lost. In time, whatever puppet state that it creates, will fall. America learnt this lesson too many times, most recently in Afghanistan.
The name John Mearsheimer has come up recently and I think one of the key points in his theory is solid: nationalism triumphs everything else, be it America branded liberalism, or communism.
When he says "nationalism", it's actually not what we often think, in his theory it's used in the narrow sense that is the need to determine one's own country's destiny, as opposed to having to obey a foreign power.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_in_Afghanistan_(2001%E2%80...
Result: Taliban Victory
It was a defeat, no matter what coat of paint you put on it.
I don't know if there's the same cultural will in Ukraine to absorb that kind of pummeling.
=> Cunningham's Law (a submission earlier this week) playing out nicely in the replies.
If the Russian people are unhappy enough, regimes change from within. We can see that with some of the Russian soldiers surrendering.send me to Ukraine? OK, I'll just surrender so I don't have to fight and die for a bogus cause.
Anecdotally, there's been an HN commenter around who claims to be Russian and who buys Putin's line that something had to be done about NATO. Apparently they are not alone:
https://www.cnn.com/2022/03/03/europe/russia-reaction-war-uk...
> But Arina's mother sees it completely differently: "My mom believes everything she sees on TV," Arina says.
> "She believes that it was a necessary measure by Putin because there are weapons surrounding the country...there's a threat from the West, which is why Putin is doing this."
Sanctions may be indiscriminate, but not as indiscriminate nor as final as shelling apartment buildings. There seems to be a significant slice of the Russian population who are entirely too content with the current state of affairs, and who need to be woken up to the ungodly horror being unleashed in their name.
Maybe a rapid decline in quality of life will be enough to turn things around in Russia. Or maybe just enough people are so used to struggles there that nothing will change. North Koreans went through decades of wars and invasions—the people there haven’t known that life can be better, so they don’t feel a reason to revolt. People in Russia who were alive during pre-Putin era struggles most likely do really see him as lifting the country to a higher level. The possibility for Russia becoming a new NK-style state isn’t completely impossible.
[1] https://akarlin.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/life-expectan...
The end of the USSR is widely considered a humanitarian catastrophe because after the economy colapsed, people had no food, no medicines, no order, it was a wild west for several years (my wife was there, she tells me all about it)... where the hell did you "learn" that people's lives improved after the USSR fell??
Unfortunately, we have to resort to economic pain, which is quite grim even if it's not having your leg blown off and your home reduced to rubble: businesses ruined, working class populations impoverished, massive uncertainty...
It's also not guaranteed to work, as aggressors and oppressors are adept at wallowing in self-pity and inventing victimization narratives.
What's changed for me is that I've come to believe that the Russian population is a bit more at fault here for buying Putin's bullshit.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/03/03/putin-will-live-...
Sadly paywalled.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Ym9e7ot4t-JVBDqtK0m4n6iYPqd...
Hopefully that makes a difference. I do think it's smart to do everything we can to sanction Russia's rich. Those people have power. They're the ones backing Putin. If they start to feel the pinch, feel that the party is getting ruined because of Putin's mood and his thirst for power, they might do something about it.
Thus, over time, you can gradually create a bubble, lie by lie. I remember the early 00s - freedom of press wasn't gone overnight, they went after the more popular stuff first, and then gradually it became more and more marginalized, with the last vestiges being swiped away only now. But with every independent TV channel or newspaper erased, more and more people ended up in the bubble.
How? The oligarchs had a head's up regarding the start of the war and no doubt took measures to secure their wealth abroad and even get dual citizenship so the west can't touch them.
Well yes, sure, if we're talking about some dumb corrupt politician who blew his illicit gains frivolously on luxuries, out in the open, the second he landed on piles of cash, then yes, same how we have lottery winners who lose everything in a year and crypto speculators who also were left holding the bag, etc.
My point is that stupid and financially irresponsible people are easily parted with their money, especially if it's from illicit gains and have no knowledge how to launder it or invest it, but I can assure you that the smart money took enough timely precautions to keep their dirty wealth intact.
We all hope that, but it's not been effective for north korea and basically everywhere else. Waiting 70 years as for the Soviet does not seem an ideal outcome.
Most despotic leaders are not well liked by the people. There are so few examples of the people rising up to depose a despot. I actually can't even think of one that would apply in this situation.
He is probably insulated with layers of old Soviet/KGB true believers/cronies.
Somehow the common person is going to penetrate that? I just don't see it.
Are you sure? This is not at all obvious to me.
Apart from when the US got the UK and France to kneel and kiss the ring in 1956 with Suez when hav sanctions worked? Grenada? North Korea and Iran have been under crippling sanctions for a long time. It leads to plenty of civilian suffering but there’s not much record of success in forcing governments to do what the sanctioners want.
They don’t have to topple the government to be effective.
That said, I do think there’s not enough public recognition of how hostile and damaging sanctions are to innocent normal people.
Not just Trump, but the entire Republican Party and its voter base. And not for no reason: the reason is that it's easier to keep Iran as a public punching bag than try to deal with real and far more difficult strategic problems like North Korea, Russia, or China, all three of which seized the opportunity to pursue their strategic goals while the U.S. was distracted in Iraq and Afghanistan. Iran took that opportunity, too--the wars provided both the impetus and the time to pursue a nuclear program.
I'm curious, what strategic goals did North Korea, Russia, and China achieve during that time that the US should have dealt with, and what could be have done that we haven't already?
That's one opinion.
I think people on both sides are calling the others shortsighted.
For example, what enforcement is there after the 10 year period expires? They weren't forced to forfeit or destroy their Arak facility. This means they could just start using it again.
In my view, the deal could be beneficial, but could also end poorly. The deal doesn't seem to embrace a systems thinking mindset of how all the pieces fit together. The downside is that if we allow the economy to expand and for Iran to accumulate resources during a 10 year period, then reimposing the sanctions will be less impactful (we can only hope that the people would be upset enough to pressure them goverment). In theory, the deal will benefit Iran in the power dynamics, and only benefit us if they decide to follow through in the long term. So the outcome is almost completely at the discretion of Iran, and provides them guaranteed benefit, with no guarantee to the others.
In my general experience, focusing on a single issue, or component of an issue, is the way we come to short sighted solutions. This doesn't mean that we can't do things in an iterative fashion, but we need to have a plan and vision for how that policy will work long term in relation to a variety of other policies and potential events. I don't see that type of strategic thinking with this agreement, and that's even ignoring the terrorist ties.
[Edit] Also, I don't think the Russian people have the power to overthrow their rulers. Russia is quite good at repressing dissent. My guess would be that any leadership change in Russia would come about because military leadership decided it had to happen.
This would be likely the worst possible outcome for Ukraine, but it's sadly feasible. The main difference is that world didn't really care about a bunch of Muslims in an unpronounceable city (Grozny) in what was legally Russian territory, while for Ukraine they do seem willing to stand up a bit more.
Chechnya population in 1992 was about 800,000. Ukraine has a population of 41,000,000.
Chechnya did not receive military or humanitarian aid, and if it did, it was not as substantial as what Ukraine is receiving now. Ukrainian allies are supplying fuel, food, vehicles, weapons, training, volunteers, humanitarian aid, intelligence, etc.
Russia back then was not sanctioned economically to the extent we see today or kicked out of the banking system. For example, the Soviet Union had banks in the SWIFT system. Now, Russia has been completely isolated: Russian companies cannot do business internationally due to being unable to transfer money or process payments, the value of Russian company stocks has gone to zero, their stock exchange ceased operations (temporarily), their population are doing bank runs, their currency is worth nothing and its economy is expected to collapse soon.
And, unlike Russian equipment where most of the equipment spending has been diverted to corrupt endeavors, Ukrainian military equipment works. Most Russian military equipment now doesn't meet their own specifications.
It's not "modern", but it is functional.
> Now, Russia has been completely isolated: Russian companies cannot do business internationally due to being unable to transfer money or process payments, the value of Russian company stocks has gone to zero, their stock exchange ceased operations (temporarily), their population are doing bank runs, their currency is worth nothing and its economy is expected to collapse soon.
Russian companies can do business with the world outside the "West", notably China, which is already a voracious consumer of Russian raw materials. The stocks that crashed to zero are the ones listed in Western stock exchanges, not the ones in Russia itself. Yes, the currency has halved, but it has done so many, many times before since 1990. So while the economy will certainly take a beating, it's not going to "collapse" entirely.
1. Water flow through the North Crimean Canal is restored.
2. Kyiv is surrounded from all directions. Ukranian president dies in combat.
3. Odessa is surrounded from the north, then the Russian navy attacks it from the Black sea. Population is forced to evacuate.
4. Donetsk and Luhansk become fully annexed by Russia.
5. Kharkiv is surrounded from all directions.
6. Russian economy collapses. Putin's key supporters turn against him and stage a coup.
7. Ukraine negotiates a ceasefire, then joins the European Union.
8. Unless Ukraine signed a peace treaty granting territory to Russia, Russia will be forced to give up all annexed territories.
It's always possible, but Russia started the war by recognizing their independence from Ukraine. This is the kind of thing that would happen after the war concluded ("we held a referendum and they decided to rejoin Russia"); it'd be kind of strange during a war the purpose of which is to grant them independence.
That presupposes that he joins the armed forces; at the moment, he is a non-combatant. If he is shot, that would make him a victim of assassination, not a combat casualty.
> Ukraine negotiates a ceasefire, then joins the European Union.
Wooh! Just join! It takes a while to join the EU. Ask Turkey.
That said, I sadly doubt Ukraine will survive this ordeal.
I happen to believe that Russia has over-reached itself rather badly; they aren't administering any of the territory they've got troops in, including the single city they've overrun (it's being administered by the incumbent mayor). Most of their supply columns seem to be bogged down, either by resistance or by mud. The best troops they have are paras in the south, and mercenaries around Kiev. Both groups have so far failed to achieve their objectives. The rest seem to be demoralised conscripts.
You use conscripts and mercenaries as cannon-fodder at the front of your attack; I imagine Russia will bring up better equipped and trained troops once they have suppressed Ukrainian air defences, and can provide close air support.
I think it's going to be long and nasty.
In Ukraine, once the supply lines are cut, the main cities may fall. Once one city falls, the invaders will move on to other cities and start an avalanche effect.
Well, not if Russian and Ukrainian diplomats can get it together and see this conflict to a amicable conclusion. Ceasefire has to be top priority for the Ukrainian diplomats (as in, liberally accept conditions that stops the war). Whatever the new arrangement for the two countries look like will also probably take weeks, if not months, to draft up and agree to.
With their risky foreign policy, NATO dared Russia, and they called their bluff on it. It is time to accept that Russia didn't hesitate, and it'd be very prudent to move to limit the damage instead. That is, NATO should refrain from making matters worse by feeding the war, as it were, by arming Ukraine's civilians and sanctioning Russian business interests, among other things.
China isn't siding with NATO, and so far, India hasn't too (it may not, since in the century gone by, Russia has bailed out India in multiple wars against CENTO / US-aided Pakistan).
In sum, this is a dangerous enough situation to escalate any further as the West has done, even if without sending its military.
Yes, Russia’s economy is being severely crippled. But you exaggerate the extent significantly.
Source: SWIFT itself. https://www.swift.com/news-events/news/message-swift-communi...
Thus, Kadyrov - except back then it was Ahmad Kadyrov; Ramzan is his son and successor. As the Chief Mufti of Chechnya, he was one of the most powerful figures in the traditionalist camp, and one with the most to lose from Salafism gaining ground (traditional Chechen Islam is Sufi).
Ahmad Kadyrov was all in with the rebels during the first Chechen war, officially declaring it a jihad in his capacity as a mufti. Ramzan boasted of "killing his first Russian at 16" at the time. But by 1999, the Kadyrov clan decided that Salafis are more dangerous than Russians, and switched allegiance.
That is why Russia could install that puppet government relatively easily - because they had considerable local support: not just the Kadyrov clan, but numerous others aligned with it. Ukraine also has many potential collaborators, but mostly in the East, and they are already mostly in the separatist militias. I expect that Russia will recruit from those for its occupation administration.
Chechnya didn't have direct NATO border nations and supply lines.
I don't believe this to be the normal massive asymmetric difference in firepower if NATO arms the Ukrainians enough. IF they are given sufficient drones, I believe Ukraine could actually have a firepower and battlefield advantage.
Now, I don't know for sure NATO is going to commit to such supply. I think they'll be a bit more reserved, but the more weaponry Russia use, the more NATO will supply Ukraine. NATO may decided to supply just enough to bog down Russia but not hand Ukraine a rapid victory.
I 100% believe NATO could equip Ukraine with enough weapons for certain victory. It now comes down to whether NATO does that.
Missiles: https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidhambling/2022/03/03/ukrain...
Turkey is supplying new drones. I bet there are more on the way. Stingers and Polish MANPADS are being supplied.
These are the publicly announced numbers. Those numbers tell me NATO will supply ample weaponry.
Ukraine is a nation of 40,000,000 people. And they appear spoiling for a fight. How many of those would train to fight? 2 million? 5 million? 10 million? If Ukraine gets 1 million volunteers and full arms support from the West, Russia is doomed.
I'll be interested to see if female fighting units start getting news like in Kurdistan. If that happens, Russia is in deep trouble.
There’s also a gigantic diaspora: I had no idea I knew so many Ukrainians. Also the amount of posts on LinkedIn where people point out some portion of their dev team is in Ukraine, and now some Product Manager in Spokane is all in on supporting Ukraine because his front-end guy is in a bunker
Those are two very different fronts. How grim.
Also curious to know how many unofficial troops from NATO countries show up. Russia’s neighbours aren’t fans, and bored Slav, Baltic, and Scandi kids who did military service and wanna be heroes showing up in great numbers isn’t outside the realm of possibility
That's about two infantry divisions - not to be sneezed at.
And he emphasized: They are BADASSES. Apparently they were winning the war with Russia until Russia cut a "Red Wedding" deal with the non-muslim contingent of the Chechen resistance. I believe Chechens were in ISIS/Syria and were basically the most effective soldiers.
As you said this could become a perverse version of ISIS: a call to arms to anyone that wants a piece of Russia, from bored teenagers to other conflict regions.
Maybe it's been sufficiently long that those soldiers have finally aged out, or maybe they haven't.
If Ukraine/NATO really is offering 45000 Euros in bitcoin per Russia soldier that surrenders for POW status, then they would probably provide pay to experienced anti-Russia fighters.
If you are a -stan with issues with Russia, then this is a golden opportunity: a possible "death blow" to Russia militarily and economically, possibly cause regime change, and possibly destroy any appetite for war by oligarchs and people in Russia.
If you read a bit more of ACOUP, it's clear that the only path to a "rapid victory" is a set battle against the Russian armed forces, resulting in a decisive defeat for Russia. Even with copious supplies from the west, Ukraine simply couldn't do that. Even if NATO decided to pile in with divisions and air-cover, a rapid victory seems unlikely.
The Turkish drones seem to be wreaking havoc on Russia already.
Ukraine is 20 times larger. It is impossible for the Russian forces to hold by force, the population should agree to it or a puppet regime ia installed that is accepted by the population.
Now holding the east part, that seems reasonably easy, and to me it's clearly the end goal, the rest is just putting yourself inal a strong negotiating stance.
We know he hates to look weak, so if he "settles" for eastern Ukraine after saying that, he's going to look weak.
Judging from what Putin has actually said, the end-goal is much more expansive than that. I believed that a couple of weeks ago; but recent comments to the effect that Ukraine is a bogus state have changed my mind.
Kadyrov is totally uncontrollable, makes outrageous criminal statements, yet the Kremlin can't do anything to him because he has a very big private army. Chechen operatives act all over the country and are basically untouchable, kidnapping people even from the police custody without repercussions.
I don't think Ukraine benefits from the same natural advantage, what with its paved roads that easily grant passage to forty-mile-long Russian convoys
A much better defensive route is probably mandatory militery training of all able citizens. Eventually, most professional armies are in the size of million at most and only 100,000 or so get deployed. If you have a million citizens with militery training, you are way harder to beat.
The protracted Afghanistan war was "recent times", and likely involved technology that we civilians still don't know exists yet. Creating a larger standing militia is just trying to fight toe-to-toe against a superpower with more power, which still won't be enough to win in a quick decision.
If anything, utilization of improved surveillance should be prioritized more by the smaller force, to be more effective.
If Russia ‘wins’, they still will probably lose (due to protracted guerrila activity draining them economically).
Afghanistan never got won, even with all the wiz bang technology. The US just got tired of paying.
But Putin might win, the way his brain works - how happy he'd be, with more land, even if it's barren and flat and no people
It’s only thing to pull the string on an artillery piece you think is nominally pointed at an enemy, it’s another to round up men, women, and children and machine gun them into a ditch over and over - especially when you’re stated goal is ‘denazification’.
Like what? After a war everything is bombed, destroyed or polluted. Iraq didnt even have running water. Economy was in ruins. Its not the dark ages any more, microchips are more valuable than gold and even oil needs serious infrastructure.
Every war is extremely expensive - for the amount if money spent in iraq US could have bought every homeless person a penthouse. On the moon.
Shelling nuclear power plants, for example [1].
The expensive part of modern warfare is precision. Abandon one's soul, dial up the yield and razing a nation becomes quick work. Ancient armies wiped out civilizations with less firepower than a CVN. They were simply unconcerned with being brutal.
[1] https://www.reuters.com/markets/europe/top-wrap-1-europes-la...
(1) the ruling power will eventually control all communication and remove any free speech.
You think people can trade child porn online because we allow them too? Anyone building a illegal operation ( i.e. a resistance ) knows that you can make anything carry information. Even IF they find what you are using to transmit it, that doesn't mean they can read whats in it.
(2) they will constantly find and kill leaders through electronic means which are now amazingly effective.
You are overestimating the Russian tech by a mile. And you are overestimating the ability to automate this process by another mile.
The Russians will eventually torture people for information on others. That is exactly how it happens in the past.
A guerilla will be spectacularly effective, even today. But it will be extremely bloody if the Russians decide that is okay.
in recent conflicts this has proven to either not be very effective (islamist groups such as Al Qaeda or ISIS), or actually make the situation worse (killing a Mexican cartel head usually just results in more chaos as factions vie for supremacy and upstarts try to muscle in). and at this point, most guerilla operations of this type usually assume their leader is going to die at some point and prepare accordingly.
As for control of all communication - it's impossible to control country of 45 million people with 150 000 soldiers. Or 250 000 soldiers for that matter. Russia haven't even entered western (mountainous) Ukraine yet, and they probably won't try much. So media can be broadcasted from there, there's also internet. It won't be easy.
As for the number of soldiers - the armies actually fighting are similar in size. Russia has advantage in hardware (especially unguided artillery and air force), not in soldiers.
However, history is full of examples where this did not happen:
Examples include:
* The European conquest of the Americas (especially North America)
* The Boer War (British Empire vs Afrikaaners)
* Julius Caesar's Conquest of Gaul
* Mughal Conquest of (northern) India
* British Raj (and Sepoy Rebellion)
* US War in the Philippines
* Roman Conquest of Asia Minor
* Turkish Conquest of Asia Minor from Byzantine Empire
* Anglo Saxon Conquest of England
Basically, if a power is both more powerful militarily, can get their supply lines correct, and has the political will to see it through for the long term, it can be done.
Creating a self sustaining Democracy? Hell no crazy that was ever the goal.
But completely obliterating terrorists threats, without worrying about damage or creating a self governed country? i think that could have been achieved. Though at pretty big humanitarian consequences.
Which it seems like Russia doesn't care much about since the first definition of winning seems to have failed already.
And the Soviet army at that time (which judging by ukraine was maybe better than Russia now despite worse tech?) doesn't even come close to the unimaginably grossly powerful weapons & military we have in the US (just using colorful language, my personal belief is on the whole beneficial even though causes plenty of pain and suffering).
> The term "Celtic Holocaust" was popularized by the podcaster Dan Carlin in a 2017 podcast, in which he made the case that the Roman Republic's actions during the Gallic Wars constituted a genocide. Of the 3,000,000 Celts who inhabited ancient Gaul, one million of them were massacred, while another million were enslaved; this signifies that Gaul lost two-thirds of its population in a case of bellum romanum ("war in the style of the Romans", or total war).
In fact pretty much any Roman conquest involved a lot of slaughter and enslaving a large portion of th eremaining able population.
Another example: the Mongols [2]:
> Ancient sources described Genghis Khan's conquests as wholesale destruction on an unprecedented scale in certain geographical regions, causing great demographic changes in Asia. According to the works of the Iranian historian Rashid al-Din (1247–1318), the Mongols killed more than 700,000 people in Merv and more than 1,000,000 in Nishapur. The total population of Persia may have dropped from 2,500,000 to 250,000 as a result of mass extermination and famine.
[1]: https://historica.fandom.com/wiki/Celtic_genocide
[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Destruction_under_the_Mongol_E...
They know at some point a treaty will be signed so it’s whatever they can compromise is the end goal. This would only take a few months at most if that’s all they care about (that and punishing western movement as a side gain).
Do they though? Looking at Putin's actions, I wouldn't be so sure.
The west had tons of local support in Syria but Russia just had to prop up the state and local military long enough to ‘win’ that war. That’s all the west has to do to ‘win’ in Ukraine.
To me it only makes logical sense for Russia to be feigning a full state takeover like a chess match, with a dual goal of just maintaining Baltic coast and punishing Ukrainians for Euromadien. Otherwise they are crazy and dumb, which they are regardless given their now near total economic isolation, but there has to be some logic here beyond some shortsighted George Bush style ‘regime change’ strategy.
Do you mean Black Sea or I’m not understanding this point
Yes ofc, those cities were smashed for the state. Russia and Assad are allied.
I agree, this whole belief that they are fixing history (from a russian perspective) and forcing Ukraine to be Russian again seems to be a bit of a pretext.
They have huge reserves of Oil and Gas in Crimea, this would have guaranteed many more years of Gazprom cash cow for Russia. The problem is Crimea does not have it's own water supply it depends on mainland Ukraine, this is why I think they first focused on securing Cherson and Marioepol.
This is probably the part they want to keep after negotiations, they just miscalculated expecting that the international response would have a been a shoulder shrug similar to South Ossetia in the Georgian war of 2008.
For Russia it is about protection.
If say Russia would be able to permanently place "security-troops" on the east-bank of the Denjepr it would have reduced its "Ukranian flank" by 50% in length. If the west remains NATO-free, perfect from their standpoint.
From looking at former election results, the eastern bank as well as the southern steppe, would be relatively safe for permamently stationed Russian troops.
* Cede territory early and retreat to defensible positions
* Let the enemy rush in and attack their stretched supply lines from the flanks
* Let the people know you are still fighting and not defeated
* Prepare the people to fight a long guerrilla war
* When the enemy spreads out to take too much territory too quickly, counter attack
I really don't understand the Russian military strategy. Their strategy of taking slivers of territory seemed to be working in Georgia and Crimea. They could have taken Donetsk and Luhansk with little effort and much less worldwide condemnation. Then started the bribery, disinfo, threats, "security" offer process all over again in the next territory.
But driving full force to Kyiv seems like exactly what a much weaker army would want you to do.
The Ukrainians will look bad if they attack the Russian citizens that are now occupying them, and the Russian army doesn’t need to convince the local population to join them but instead they can encourage them to evacuate and give them safe passage into the EU.
Eventually the country will be more and more Russian and most of the world will forget about the Ukrainians. We’re just in the initial “rough” stages where it’s the new news item and countries not actually involved in the conflict aren’t bored yet. Once they reach a stable position, they can just wait them out while occupying the majority of the country.
Not anymore, with their economy collapsed.
EDIT: Turns out it's the opposite — Chechnya has far fewer ethnic Russians than it used to. It's now less than 2% ethnic Russian.
https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/odr/left-behind-russian-lif...
> According to official figures, in 1979 over 30% of the population of Soviet Chechnya were ethnic Russians. By 1989 the figure had fallen, although not by much – they still made up 25% of the population. In 2002, however, less than four percent of residents were Russian, and by 2010 Chechnya was losing its Russian population faster than any other North Caucasus republic. It was, effectively, a mono-ethnic member of the Russian Federation.
Otherwise you have a South Africa situation where a minority rules over a majority and it’s just a matter of time before the majority takes back power.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chechnya#Post-war_reconstructi...
> [...] Russia installed a pro-Russian Chechen regime. In 2003, a referendum was held on a constitution that reintegrated Chechnya within Russia but provided limited autonomy. According to the Chechen government, the referendum passed with 95.5% of the votes and almost 80% turnout. The Economist was skeptical of the results, arguing that "few outside the Kremlin regard the referendum as fair".
Moving pepple out of their houses into bombed out cuties wont be popular. Nothing like it was attempted in the last 3-4 generations.
I'm the opposite, I really don't understand what people aren't seeing regarding the Russian strategy. People seem to think the Ukraine invasion should look exactly like the Iraq invasion and be over within 2 weeks with Putin in front of a "Mission Accomplished" sign.
We all know that wouldn't accomplish anything. The Ukrainian population would still resist Russian government whether or not Kyiv falls quickly and Zelenskyy is ousted. The Euromaidan forces that ousted the last Russian puppet will still be there. While you could argue Iraq was a boondoogle because removing Saddam left a giant power vacuum, arguably the removal of Zelenskyy wouldn't change anything about Ukraine.
This isn't the Iraq playbook. This is the Chechnya playbook. And that playbook is much more horrifying.
I thought about it and this is the best explanation I could come up with basis the info we have right now https://twitter.com/elSidCampeador/status/149942182647656038...
Also, I thought they staged troops in Belarus and started one portion of the invasion from there because it was closest to Kyiv.
I know they’re invading from all directions, but there’s a symbolism to Kyiv as Ukraine’s capital and I read somewhere that Russia wanted to capture it with the intent of demoralizing Ukrainians.
They might even want to cut the country in half, but at any rate they have been advancing really swiftly from Crimea. IIRC they are still advancing there faster than the Americans were advancing in Iraq back in 2003.
They are also going for encirclement of areas they can't capture east of the river, breaking out of a modern siege is also really hard.
Russian strategy would be to encircle the cities and Ukrainian forces, demand surrender or shell otherwise.
For the common man and woman in Ukraine this is the best scenario for a quick exit from this senseless war. Too bad politicians (and armchair geopoliticians) do not see it.
Not seventy years ago Russia was almost destroyed by the West, with the lost of forty million lives. For Russia the danger comes from the West and the fact that we the West think ourselves to be all enlightened doesn't change that. I don't want to justify Russia's behavior in any way, but imagine if you will, for one second, that Russia starts arming one of the sides in the Mexican Drug War with high-tech weaponry and tries to convince the Mexican government to join some Warsaw pact alliance. The USA would not tolerate this for one day. Russia has tolerated this for over a decade. Since 2004 the West has been doing whatever the fuck they want in Eastern Europe and expected Russia to just take it on the chin. Now Russia has reacted and there was much astonishment. The West have been wiping their feet on a basic tenet of geopolitics, namely that the regional superpower calls the shots within their sphere of influence. Now the results are in and guess what? The West is STILL not taking this seriously, further escalating the conflict by arming Ukraine to the teeth. President Biden laughing at the idea of nuclear war like Dr. Hibbert from the Simpsons. Clown world is truly here.
The rest of your analogy is also weak. We haven’t armed one side in a drug war (eh?) NATO membership has not even been realistically on the table. As for the West “doing whatever they want”, can you give some examples? My impression was that eastern European countries were keen to join the EU, not that this was imposed on them. And once in, they have very much forged their own path, often to the great discomfort of Western Europeans (eg in Hungary, Poland).
Ok and if you look at the last 30 years, which "side" has been to most aggressive in attacking and subjugating foreign nations? "Oh but when we do it, it's for good reasons." Then the West is genuinely surprised that other blocs like South America or the Mid East are not jumping on the great anti-Russia train by default. What is wrong with those people?
However, I see a lot of ingenuine surprise over, like, right-next country accepting refugees from country just across the border. The very same people who would cry hypocrisy of the refugees were not accepted (you demand surrounding countries in other conflicts to accept refugees).
I see a lot of blaming America for Russian actions, in Ukraine and of Russian actions in Syria too.
> The vote on the “Aggression against Ukraine” resolution was 141-5, with 35 abstentions.
> Only Belarus, Syria, North Korea and Eritrea joined Russia in opposing the measure, (...)
https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-vladimir-putin-uni...
No Western country wants to invade Russia, and hasn't wanted to for 30 years at the least. There's nothing to gain, it would be much too costly in terms of money, resources, and human lives. Russia is much more useful as a trading partner – Germany alone, for example, imports more than 50% of its natural gas from Russia.
Ironically, Russia is doing its best to destroy this mutually beneficial partnership, in favor of building protection against a completely imaginary threat.
> Since 2004 the West has been doing whatever the fuck they want in Eastern Europe and expected Russia to just take it on the chin. Now Russia has reacted and there was much astonishment. The West have been wiping their feet on a basic tenet of geopolitics, namely that the regional superpower calls the shots within their sphere of influence.
That describes imperialist behavior down to a T. "Their sphere of influence"?! Come on. Ukraine is a sovereign country. If they want to join NATO (a purely defense alliance, by the way), then that's their business.
It's a purely defensive alliance that, somehow, keeps expanding to the East.
It keeps expanding, because countries further east wants protection from Russia aggression too. There is nothing contra intuitive or shocking about it. Presence of large aggressor in the region makes other countries want to enter the aliance. Duh.
edit: I guess this is a bad analogy given the status of domestic violence in Russia.
No, it's NATO's business and they get to decide whether Ukraine joining will make being a NATO state safer, or less safe. My money is on "less safe".
These are equivalent to "annexation in a few months" and Ukraine knows it. If they accept those terms, they know they lost and are accepting annexation, but keeping face publically.
The question is of course how it plans to mitigate it. Leveling of cities is one option, lets hope there are others
There seem to be two choices in my simplistic view. One is to continue current, which is ‘encouraging’ Ukraine, applying sanctions and largely letting Putin do what he wants, as well as really bending over to broker a peace deal grossly advantageous to Russia. The second choice is to be more aggressive, including military escalation (although not a direct conflict) and turning the screw as far as it will go with weaponising the global economy (this would involve deals with China and India so they don’t help Russia, and taking a lot of collateral damage). In the latter case, the idea will be that with an increasingly mad and aggressive and isolated leader, who frequently threatens what amounts to killing everyone in the world, Putin will be deposed. Hardly guaranteed, unless there is credible knowledge that someone is ready and has the necessary support to oust Putin.
Maybe the first option is better, considering the existential threats. But maybe this is just deferring the problem to next time.
Force him into China's fold. North Korea, for all its madness, isn't rolling tanks into its neighbor.
Russia and China tolerate NK, so NK has no reason to fight a much larger, friendly neighbor.
Between North and South Korea is the DMZ, a 4km wide mine field. If your tanks somehow get past that you have 28k US troops waiting for you.
If the border was flat, unguarded wheat fields, I’m sure NK would have tried at some point. They don’t lack the will, just the ability.
In Ukraine, Russia had the will and the ability.
You can see a lot of parallel with the current Ukraine situation.
Especially the first QA
Question: Under what conditions do you think China can defeat and destroy the forces of Japan?
Answer: Three conditions are required: first, the establishment of an anti-Japanese united front in China; second, the formation of an international anti-Japanese united front; third, the rise of the revolutionary movement of the people in Japan and the Japanese colonies. From the standpoint of the Chinese people, the unity of the people of China is the most important of the three conditions.
Condition 2 is true right now, while I am not sure about condition 1 in Eastern Ukraine and condition 3 will be true if Russian citizen fed up with all the sanctions I guess.
Who thinks it would have been possible without very tangible support of USSR next door? Can you even call CCP-backed-by-USSR "weak"?
(And also the fuel trains.)
1. Kill everyone.
2. Convince everyone. Or enough to support you instead so that guerillas fizzle out or are actively outed by local population.
3. Leave.
Any other options?
What does 2. look like in a warzone? I mean, the West was in Afghanistan for 20 years and as a civilian many miles away I couldn't say I saw 2. reported on.
Following Russia's annexation of Crimea in 2014, here's what should've happened:
1. The US should've formally and explicitly abandoned the effort to bring Ukraine into NATO;
2. Ukraine should've adopted a policy of official neutrality;
3. Ukraine should've abandoned efforts against minority language rights, a particularly sensitive issue with primarily-Russian speaking people in eastern Ukraine;
4. Ukraine should've restructured its military into a defensive army, which is to say that it should be largely decentralized and trained in insurgency tactics. The idea of this is to make the cost of invasion so high as to dissuade anyone from trying. This is essentially the Swiss model [1]. This would mean acquiring appropriate weapons: small arms, mobile artillery, Stringer missiles, that sort of thing. An advantage of this is that a defensive army is relatively cheap; and
5. Just like Russia performed military exercises every year on Ukraine's borders (as an aside, the media never mentioned that Russia in fact did this every 12-15 months for years), Ukraine should've planned for a Russian invasion with their own exercises. This means training for and practicing things taking out key bridges;
6. Ukraine should've fortified chokepoints that Russia could use to invade. This would particularly include the narrow land bridge to Crimea.
This is part of the sheer recklessness of US foreign policy as we egged Ukraine on with empty promises of standing behind them when there was absolutely no possibility we'd put boots on the ground in the case of a Russian invasion. We didn't start the fire but we sure left a lot of fuel lying around. And Ukraine is paying a bloody price.
The best thing Ukraine could've done post-annexation is brought in Hezbollah as consultants on military organization and insurgency tactics. And no, I'm not even joking when I say that.
The Swiss model worked because the mountains act as both a defensive fortification and because Switzerland is of limited strategic value (low benefit, high cost). An effective defensive model for a nation like Ukraine would be Israel. Nuclear weapons to ensure escalation dominance. A strong air force with the ability delete any air or ground forces preemptively before they even cross the border. A heavy investment in strategic level area denial and air defense: cruise missiles, missile shields, patriot missile batteries. You want to maximize the range to ensure that an invader has no areas of safety.
An insurgency with small arms and MANPADs can be effective but only because the insurgents are willing to pay a much higher cost than the invaders. Soldiers in insurgencies expect to die at a ratio of 10:1 and that is considered winning. Insurgencies are what you do when your conventional strategy fails. Starting an insurgency is choosing a horrific sacrifice for your nation. Insurgencies don't prevent invaders from destroying your cities, from killing your family and burning everything of value. Even with that terrible cost many insurgencies still fail.
You know what is better? Advanced tanks and attack helicopters operating under SAM umbrellas that allow you to win a conventional war at your borders. The best deterrent is conventional military dominance backed up by the US nuclear arsenal. The easiest and cheapest way to achieve that is NATO membership. This war is a result of Ukraine not being given NATO membership.
I've seen this claim a lot. IMHO it's overblown. Switzerland is mountainous in parts. Here's a topographical map [1]. You'll see that it has a lot of flat parts. The border between Geneva and France isn't a natural border of any kind. Also looking a population map [2] and you'll see those mountainous areas are largely uninhabited.
But Ukraine isn't free from geography either. It has a giant river running through the middle of it.
What an insurgency needs to bloody an invader isn't mountains, it's cover. Cities are a given here. Urban warfare is a nightmare for invaders. And forests have played a significant role in warfare since ancient times.
> A strong air force
Ukraine cannot possibly hope to have an air force to defeat Russia's. Airplanes are expensive. Infrastructure such as fuel tanks, airports and landing strips are easy to bomb. You know what's cheap and effective? Anti-aircraft weapons and SAMs (particularly mobile SAMs), the kind of thing Russia can't effectively order air strikes or artillery fire against like they can against fixed installations.
> Insurgencies are what you do when your conventional strategy fails.
If you're facing Russia, your conventional strategy is going to fail. As good as it is that Ukraine has denied Russia thier wildlly optimistic quick victory and that Russia has suffered casulaties likely in the thousands, we shouldn't fool ourselves into believing Ukraine can defeat the Russian Army conventionally.
> The easiest and cheapest way to achieve that is NATO membership.
That's the quickest way to World War Three.
One shocking thing to me about this this whole crisis (beyond the actual invasion of course) is how many Ameribrained people there even on HN. The US would never accept Chinese or Russian military bases in Canada or Mexico (and nearly started a nuclear war about Russian missiles in Cuba) but can't see how Russia might have the exact same strategic concerns. Or people who raise the idea of self-determination but have no answer as to why that shouldn't apply to Palestine or Cyrpus. Or they cannot conceive of a world where another country doesn't view the US as benign even though that's clearly how China, Russia, the Middle East and possibly even India at this point see the US.
It just goes to show how pervasive American exceptionalism is.
[1]: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Switzerland_topograp...
[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Switzerland#/m...
Cuba's an interesting case. Note that the USA didn't invade and subjugate Cuba. (There was the Bay of Pigs, but that wasn't the US military and isn't comparable to Russia in Ukraine.) And NATO hasn't positioned nukes in the newer NATO members.
The argument that Ukrainians can't have self-determination because, say, some parts of Cyprus don't have it, is simply ludicrous.
So this is the Ameribrain in action. I've asked this same question many times and this is one of the common responses: not to answer the question but to reject it as being so ridiculous it's not worth discussing. In doing so, such responders admit the obvious: the US would never accept it.
But this isn't just theory. We have direct historical precedent in Cuba where the US almost started World War Three over the USSR doing the exact same thing the US had already done in Turkey.
> The USA doesn't interfere in Mexican elections.
This is so laughably untrue. The US has long influenced Mexico's elections and domestic policy over things like the drug trade, foreign aid and such.
Beyond elections, Texas used to be part of Mexico.
Yet the US did not invade Cuba and the US choose a blockade over an invasion during the Cuba missile crisis. Even with the bay of pigs the US choose against direct military intervention and merely armed and supported Cuban rebels. This is direct contradiction of your claim.
This war has nothing to do with bases and everything to do with Putin's dream of a slavic ethno-nationalist super state. The Russia government has said as much, as had Putin in the past. Note that Ukraine doesn't even have US bases on its territory and was not even going have bases for the foreseeable future. Your argument here has no legs to stand on.
> This is so laughably untrue. The US has long influenced Mexico's elections and domestic policy over things like the drug trade, foreign aid and such.
You are moving the goal posts. Not one saying the US does not use diplomacy and soft power to attempt to influence the policies of other nations. We are talking about a war of aggression waged against a democracy by means of total war including the indiscriminate shelling of cities and population centers. Total war is very different from Russia merely supporting a coup, backing a candidate in an election, or arming rebel forces.
Saying "What about the US" is not the trump card you think it is. Attempting to wash away the blood Russia is spilling by saying the US would do that same is admitting Russia's guilt. Terrible crimes like this are not excused because someone else did them as well. Not one would accept the murder defense that sure Alice murdered Bob, but Eve also murdered Carol. If the US launched a total war against Mexico because Mexico was going to sign an economic agreement with China or offered a China a military base, I, and I suspect you as well, would be strongly against such a war.
Finally what the US does or does not do is not at issue here because Russia is not invading the US, Russia is invading Ukraine! Would Ukraine invade Belarus if Belarus had Russian military bases? No, because Belarus has Russian bases and Ukraine did not invade Belarus.
> So this is the Ameribrain in action.
Using insulting terminology like this both harms your ability to communicate your argument and harms this forum. Please don't do that here.
I looked at your map and I am aware of the alps. Even a small amount of mountains can present serious problems for a military invasion and we are talking about the Swiss Alps. That is, one of the most impassable geographic boundaries in Europe. I am surprised I have to say this, the Swiss Alps are a massive defensive benefit to Switzerland.
> Also looking a population map [2] and you'll see those mountainous areas are largely uninhabited.
I think you have misunderstood the benefit of mountains to Swiss defense. People don't need to live in the mountains. Rather the mountains provide bottlenecks and choke points that prevent an attacker from leveraging their numerical advantage. Mountain roads often force the use of narrow columns which are vulnerable to ambush or barricades. Mountains provide excellent vantage points to shell roads and bottlenecks. Mountains provide some protection against airpower.
That that being said, Switzerland is not impossible to invade. During the early stages of a conflict like WW2 the cost of invasion is greater than the benefit, but it Germany had defeated the Soviet Union a successful Swiss invasion would be likely. Moving troops through Switzerland is slow so taking it to open a second front in the early stages of a war against say France doesn't provide much benefit.
> The border between Geneva and France isn't a natural border of any kind.
I agree Geneva which is only 4 miles from France and it does not have much geographic protection. If Switzerland is attacked by the French, they will capture Geneva. That doesn't mean that mountains do not provide Switzerland a massive defensive benefit especially to threats from the North or East.
> The US would never accept Chinese or Russian military bases in Canada or Mexico (and nearly started a nuclear war about Russian missiles in Cuba) but can't see how Russia might have the exact same strategic concerns.
Europe accepts Kaliningrad a Russian military base on occupied German land. The US has yet to invade Cuba.
The purpose of the invasion Ukraine as stated by the Russian government in a victory statement they accidentally published is not mostly not about NATO, if anything the invasion of Ukraine increases NATOs power. Rather the invasion is about the creation of Slavic ethno-nationalist super state [0]. The Russian government statement says in part:
"Russia is restoring its unity - the tragedy of 1991, this terrible catastrophe in our history, its unnatural dislocation, has been overcome. Yes, at a great cost, yes, through the tragic events of a virtual civil war, because now brothers, separated by belonging to the Russian and Ukrainian armies, are still shooting at each other, but there will be no more Ukraine as anti-Russia. Russia is restoring its historical fullness, gathering the Russian world, the Russian people together - in its entirety of Great Russians, Belarusians and Little Russians. If we had abandoned this, if we had allowed the temporary division to take hold for centuries, then we would not only betray the memory of our ancestors" [0]
It goes on to say that NATO is only a secondary concern, the primary concern is one of blood and soil:
"Vladimir Putin has assumed, without a drop of exaggeration, a historic responsibility by deciding not to leave the solution of the Ukrainian question to future generations. After all, the need to solve it would always remain the main problem for Russia - for two key reasons. And the issue of national security, that is, the creation of anti-Russia from Ukraine and an outpost for the West to put pressure on us, is only the second most important among them.
The first would always be the complex of a divided people, the complex of national humiliation - when the Russian house first lost part of its foundation (Kiev), and then was forced to come to terms with the existence of two states, not one, but two peoples. That is, either to abandon their history, agreeing with the insane versions that "only Ukraine is the real Russia," or to gnash one's teeth helplessly, remembering the times when "we lost Ukraine." [0]
This article aligns which many of the things which Putin has been saying for years so it seems that it credibly represents the reasons for the invasion in Putin's mind. Putin is chasing an imperial dream. He wants glory for himself and a legacy.
[0]: "The offensive of Russia and the new world", Russian Agency of International Information, - https://web.archive.org/web/20220226051154/https://ria.ru/20... translation--> https://web-archive-org.translate.goog/web/20220226051154/ht...
Maybe China and India can win such wars with their huge populations that would allow them to completely alter the demographics of a country.
We’re not too far away from these weaponised AIs.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Native_American_disease_and_ep...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_smallpox#Epidemics_...
> After first contacts with Europeans and Africans, some believe that the death of 90–95% of the native population of the New World was caused by Old World diseases. It is suspected that smallpox was the chief culprit and responsible for killing nearly all of the native inhabitants of the Americas.
/s
I saw a lot of common bits to how immigrant integration as I experienced in the US (granted, immigration usually implies consent where being conquered doesn't): the cultural divide between children and parents, new national identities, etc.
Also, the weak just do not command a lot of wealth and might. It's not that they are stupid or indifferent; they can be incessant, ultimately effecting serious changes against the will of the mighty.