Francis Fukuyama: Preparing for Defeat
americanpurpose.com
americanpurpose.com
https://meduza.io/en/feature/2022/03/12/has-russia-s-invasio...
Apparently, according to Meduza we are only seeing the bright side of things - the news we want to hear. The battlefront has several other shock surprises if you look at the Ukrainian losses. It seems bleeding heavily on both sides unfortunately.
I remember in the 90s when we were thinking about notification schemes to prove we were still alive and would post daily keepalive posts to show we were still alive. That wasn’t much fun so we didn’t keep doing it for long.
I know you were probably joking, but this is such a common pattern in proposed crypto use cases:
1) Collect some data
2) ??
3) The blockchain has magically ensured the data is true!
This is a real war. People are getting bombed. No one has the time for monitoring EKG bands. Evacuation is looking bad already. This is not a video game where you monitor player's health stats. Instead of apologizing you are simply doubling down on your crazy remarks.
By the way, this thread is not developed for emotional or entertainment but technology purpose, they are NGOs to refer to fortunately for the first; and only NGO online security is not really off-topic here.
[0] https://www.peopleinneed.net/what-we-do/humanitarian-aid-and...
Makes me wonder how insensitive one has to be to make a terribly casual dismissal of the current calamity & dangers to thousands of Ukrainians. Some people have a reserved section in hell for belittling or condescending human suffering.
While that is truly horrible, it does not affect victory. Insurgencies fighting for their homes can absorb enormous losses, invaders cannot. (Anyone fighting or their homes can - look at the damage taken by Japan, Russia, Germany, etc. in WWII - Japan suffered two nuclear bombs and still didn't surrender until they thought Russia might invade.) Look at US wars against insurgencies in Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq: The attrition was enormously one-sided, and it didn't make a difference. You can't win a war of attrition against an insurgency, afaik, unless you essentially kill everyone (and even Putin won't do that).
It was expected that Ukraine would be reduced to an insurgency within a few days. The fact that they are still fighting military-to-military and with significant success is an enormous bonus. In the end, they may have to fight as an insurgency but the cost to Russia is expected to be much too high.
That’s more or less what I’m saying here.
But they have only one echelon which didn't get any objectives. Given the bad logistics and attrition it needs to take the cities or the war is lost. And even if they take the cities the subsequent insurgency can still kick them out of the country.
Putin simply did not bring enough troops, hoping that either Ukraine would collapse or that the expensive weaponry (cruise missiles, jets, attack helicopters, modernized tanks) would be much more effective than it is. Soviet doctrine talks about requiring 3:1 or even 5:1 advantage against entrenched adversaries, but they have brought about parity, with Ukraine rapidly getting more volunteers and Western gear in the defensible cities.
I've read 5:1 or 10:1 as general military theory.
We’ve got to find some way to get these people supplies!
Editing to add below here as I can't seem to reply to your reply.
I agree my wording wasn't clear, apologies. I meant apparently in the sense of that is what western media writes. I don't know enough about it personally to have an informed opinion of what the truth is.
https://www.scribblemaps.com/maps/view/The-War-in-Ukraine/09...
Keep in mind the war started 3 weeks ago. The americans didn't even reach Baghdad 3 weeks into their invasion of Iraq in 2003. It's just all reminiscent of the Armenia-Azerbaïdjan war in 2020 in terms of "false social media driven hopes". If we want to help the ukrainians, downplaying the russian threat is like the total opposite of what we need.
But in relative and military terms, they are doing extraordinarily well and have a very good chance to win, maybe without even having to fight a long insurgency. That's incredible given the odds.
Not every war is the same; the comparison with Iraq is meaningless.
> The americans didn't even reach Baghdad 3 weeks into their invasion of Iraq in 2003.
Is that really true?
Obviously, not every war is the same but the ukrainian army is much stronger than the iraqi army in 2003 (it was in shambles after the 1991 defeat). The American also were much more liberal on their use of airstrikes in urban areas and in general were a lot more competent, so that really makes the comparison fair imo. Obviously I don't know if the russians reached their goals, but they are very far from being exhausted too
The ukrainian army has been doing probably as good of a job as it could have, but what is really surprising me is that Russia did not get another chechen moment either. They are after all a mid tier, barely reorganized army fighting a NATO trained military.
I think there are 2 mildly contradicting conclusions imo: how good nato training and support has been considering how much better the ukrainian army has become compared to 6 years ago... but also that the russian army has improved a lot.
Now for some, this war might really have shattered their impression of the Russian army... but I think that's just because they haven't been paying attention to their abysmal performances in the post-soviet Era. Just compare the rag tag group of completely disorganized soldiers barely able to capture Georgia to what is now an actual fighting force.
That's not saying much, but again I think it's important to highlight how weak and unfit the russian army has been before, though they sure knew how to project an image of supposed soviet-like strength.
That's accurate enough for what I meant.
> The American also were much more liberal on their use of airstrikes in urban areas
That's only true because Russia is shooting missiles (including from planes) and artillery, and keeping their planes away from Ukrainian anti-air defenses. Russia has been attacking civilian areas indiscriminately, by all reports, and I remember nothing like that from the US invasion of Iraq (there was hardly time - the US swept in relatively easily). Also, the US used precision guided weapons, which do far less 'unintended' damage.
> Just compare the rag tag group of completely disorganized soldiers barely able to capture Georgia to what is now an actual fighting force.
In reaction to the Georgia invasion, Russia invested in a major reform of their military. It hasn't worked well. Corruption, in particular, is hard to overcome, and non-democracies have a much more difficult time with it.
I don't think Ukraine is going to settle for anything that leaves them unprotected. Maybe they'll exchange eastern and coastal land for the ability to join NATO and the EU.
That if someone really wants to understand where we are with all those Libya, Syria, Iraq, ... Ukraine.
And how and when this one really started: https://youtu.be/ppD_bhWODDc
As of Francis Fukuyama predictions...
I am Ukrainian by myself. With family spread over West Ukraine and Russia East. Note: Russia is the second country after Ukraine where Ukrainians leave.
There is a concept of "for the Motherland" and there are many as Russians as Ukrainians who still consider joined Russia and Ukraine as a common motherland and those predictions are completely out of touch in this respect.
https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/stephen-kotkin-putin-...
The argument is that they wouldn’t be so aggressive because they wouldn’t feel threatened. There was a great argument that I read on HN explaining why Ukraine being NATO-friendly was causing massive problems for Russia - the gist of it was that they could project significant more power right at their doorstep.
In a recent interview Mearsheimer said that even if Ukraine wants to join NATO and NATO wants them to join, in reality Russia has a kind of veto power, no matter if that may seem immoral and unfair.
I appreciate Mearsheimer's perspective, but for a self professed "realist", I find it strange that he talks a lot about "ideology" and very little about "oil".
At the end of the day all of those conflicts are conflicts over the control of fossil fuels. I have a hard time taking any analysis seriously that doesn't focus on this primary issue.
In reality Russia is a small, poor, and mostly irrelevant state, mainly getting airtime because it has nukes. Without the nukes it would be taken as seriously as other countries of its economic clout, like Australia. Which is to say, not taken seriously at all.
I think any metric (e.g. GDP) that reduces this multidimensional situation to "mostly irrelevant" is probably saying more about the metric than about the reality on the ground.
It doesnt work that way. Russia is not irrelevant, but almost-irrelevant. It can be cut off from the global economy without disastrous results
The Hacker News guidelines page[0] is a pretty incredible document. One of the smallest but most central insights in it is "Please don't comment on whether someone read an article. 'Did you even read the article? It mentions that' can be shortened to "The article mentions that."
Unlike most sites, HN is very intentional about optimizing everything in the site for quality of discussion, not for outrage and conflict and dismissal. Everything about how the Karma system works here and the way audiences react to posts differently here than on Reddit ties back to that goal (HN isn't interested in page views or ad revenues, it wants to be interesting to smart people so they stick around and participate).
Again, following the advice in the HN guidelines I will "assume the best interpretation" of your comment and say yes, I and others are quite comfortable generalizing from a specific quote that happens to mention how to respond to comments about a post to understand how that recommendation would apply to comments about other articles and topics without needing that to be explicitly spelled out, and yes I've read quite a number of works by Fukuyama though in my opinion "The end of history" is far from his best work. I've personally found "The origins of political order" to be much more thought provoking.
Nonetheless, the book's thesis is hard to reckon with:
> What we may be witnessing is not just the end of the Cold War, or the passing of a particular period of post-war history, but the end of history as such … That is, the end point of mankind's ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government.
And it is always possible that Putin himself has not read (or, like so many of us, merely misunderstood) Fukuyama's work as well.
> 1. Russia is heading for an outright defeat in Ukraine.
LOL
Think flight from the country, brain drain, economic meltdown, loss of 3 generals in one fortnight, Ukraine being flooded with weapons, equipment loss, major logistical failures, the loss of the information war...
An outright defeat is now a possibility.
> unipolar world
What does that mean in the context of Fukuyama's thesis?
Afghanistan and Ukraine are different countries. I don't think people in Ukraine can tolerate the life of Afghani people. They are not used to luxury and were indoctrinated with radical religious views. They were following terrorism, although I don't think they were terrorists as portrayed by the media. Ukraine people are modern and they understand the value of life. And, even if they resist Russian and start to act like a terrorist, the EU won't support them in long run. There is no place in the EU for terrorism or radical beliefs.
Chechnya was about suppressing separatism / national security.
Ukraine is also about national security, but a rung up from Chechnya because Moscow is concerned about a hostile military empire putting hypersonics there. Cuban Missile Crisis but even more extreme (imagine if Cuban extremists were shelling and killing Cuban Americans in Florida and ethnically cleansing the minor islands of "Americanism").
2. NATO doesn't have hypersonic missiles. Russia has hypersonic missiles.
3. Why does Russia get to bolster their security by ravaging their democratic neighbours? Seems like zero-sum type behaviour. Maybe Russia should try making friends and stop using violence and threats.
[edit] Here I thought the invasion happened because Ukraine was a neo-Nazi state, in spite of their president being Jewish and having defeated his rival who was the incumbent in the last election. I also thought that it was because Ukraine isn't a real country, and Russia should have the same borders as it had in 1916 (which would include Poland and Lithuania). Hmmm. Seems the war was intended to wipe Ukraine (a democratic country) off the map and restore the Russian empire. You seem like an apologist for imperialism. And people are dying for no reason because of Putin and his war of conquest.
> 2. NATO doesn't have hypersonic missiles. Russia has hypersonic missiles.
I don't know much about this one but wouldn't any NATO member having hypersonic missiles mean that NATO has them?
2. With this logic NATO doesn't have anything. The power of NATO comes from its member. And, it is a conglomerate of powerful nations?
3. Because it considers itself as a bear. Why does the US invade other countries in name of democracy and freedom? It is all strategic interest. Why does China care about the small island? Why does China get anxious when the US tries to shrug off its hegemony by making new nato like groups, supply arms, and ammunition.
Geopolitics is a very complex topic. Again, I am not trying to justify any war crimes. I am just giving my opinion. I hope peace will prevail soon.
It doesn't.
It invades countries for other purposes (that is, both the overt and any covert purposes of the invasions are not “democracy and freedom” except occasionally in the sense of addressing a foreign threat to American democracy and freedom or that of an American ally threatened by the country invaded), but sometimes does something notionally aimed at democracy and/or freedom for the people once there, which may notionally be either justified as a moral act given that some governance must be established or as an instrumental means of achieving the invasions overt purpose (often it's sold both ways.)
China could do something similar. Nobody has any interest in invading China or Russia. They don't because they have ambitions for power.
> If we look at history NATO, it is not a defensive alliance. It is a mostly defensive alliance.
When has it attacked anyone?
> Why does China get anxious when the US tries to shrug off its hegemony by making new nato like groups, supply arms, and ammunition.
Those countries join willingly, and in fact there is a line to get in the door (e.g., in NATO, Georgia and Ukraine). That's different than hegemony.
LOL, are you serious?
Russia is capturing a lot of the Ukrainian coastline/ocean access, including the access to the natural gas deposits discovered in the black sea.
I don't buy that. Russia is already bordered by three NATO countries. One more wouldn't make a difference. And no one is planning on invading Russia due to the world's largest nuke stockpile.
This seems more about Putin's ambitions to restore the Russian empire and be Tsar of all the Russias. He's not the most straightforward fellow in saying what he's really up to. I think this is as much about national security as it is about a special operation to counter neo nazis.
Characterizing Ukraine as "practically Estonia" does not reflect any understanding of geopolitics. I don't even know where to begin in addressing that knowledge gap.
It managed to build a secular Afghanistan state which was able to survive past the fall of USSR and will only collapse around 1993. The USA has left with people falling off its airplanes and the state has collapsed in two weeks I believe.
https://www.reddit.com/r/ukraine/comments/taood7/uncanny_pre...
Most people have a meme-level understanding of him and no idea what he has really said. This is relevant today as the pile-on of negative comments on his credibility are based on this meme-level understanding.
Now I'm expecting him to write: "The End of the End of the End of History".
Edit - to the downvoters: after the central powers were defeated in WW1 some hefty penalties were levied on Germany in the treaty of Versailles. The idea was that they needed to be punished heavily otherwise they'd be tempted to rebuild and enter into another conflict that would consume Europe. Obviously that did not work.
While a majority of states voted to condemn the invasion, the countries that voted to let it happen represent a majority of the world's population (it wasn't just India and China; there was widespread support in Africa, for example).
Useless in a practical sense, in this particular case, yes. It's not at all surprising.
Specifically the problem is due to simultaneous issues (a) only the Security Council can commit armed forces to enforce resolutions (b) Security Council resolutions need concurrence of its permanent members (U.S., U.K., France, China, Russia), i.e. this what is often referred to as a veto (c) one of the permanent members is violating the charter in a fundamental manner, and certainly will not vote to enforce the charter on itself.
Should there no longer be permanent members of the Security Council? Perhaps. It is likely to change? Nope.
Killing all the people you came to liberate is a tough PR sell.
Capture is one thing. Holding on is another. According to latest estimates, RU has already invested the lion share of its military assets (not army men) in the Ukraine invasion. And they're doing badly. There will be attrition & guerrila warfare if boots stay on Ukrainian soil. They dont have an economy like US/UK to back this up well. They're bleeding under sanctions. Economy is falling as fast as when USSR collapsed. No major foreign trade possible (except the Southern hemisphere countries, China & India) & companies are pulling out. Mass unemployment & currency devaluation will likely follow. The world opinion is not sympathetic to Russia. It is a lose-lose.
As of now the Russians are fighting for the sake of one man's inflated ego of building the 'Historic Russia'. The Ukrainians may or may not win this offensive, but they have showed remarkable heroism & solidarity to keep the country fighting.
They will find appropriate politicians or in some cases warlords for each region, in most cases they will fight among each other to gain power.
This is not WW2 where you need a soldier to stand around every other corner, we’re much more sophisticated now.
It only makes sense if they only planned to bomb Ukraine into handing over Donetsk, Lukhansk, recognising the loss of Crimea, and agreeing not to join NATO.
From this perspective, it's hard for Russia to loose. A destroyed Ukraine won't fight for their lost territories and won't be accepted into the EU or NATO.
Instead Russia faces huge economic penalties and stronger Ukraine-EU links are much more likely even if full membership doesn’t happen.
Yes, MiGs, like all manned fighters, are as relevant today in the age of the drone as battleships were during WWII (and arguably the Japanese did us a favor at Pearl Harbor by definitively discrediting the battleship die-hard dead wood in the Navy).
But what's the endgame after the endgame? A "Marshall Plan" for Ukraine is a likely possibility. But a Marshall Plan for Russia, who will need it almost as much? Unlikely.
It all looks very much like one of the "proxy wars" of the cold war era, only Russia forgot to do it by proxy this time.
If so, these escalation steps should be kept in reserve as much as possible, and not deployed carelessly. The Russians have not exactly been restraining themselves thus far, but they could nonetheless be doing a lot worse and being able to deter them without triggering WWIII in the process is kinda important.
General attitude of in Russian army except maybe some strategic stuff is fuck everything coupled with rampant corruption, theft and all encompassing decay. I am not sure China has the same problem and would not count on them being incompetent.
>"Putin will not survive the defeat of his army. He gets support because he is perceived to be a strongman; what does he have to offer once he demonstrates incompetence and is stripped of his coercive power"
I think he knows this well and am I afraid that if he sees the end this abomination of human would engineer something that would lead to a WWIII with all the consequences. I hope he gets eliminated before reaching this stage.
Thankful for this, cooler heads prevailed. Despite relentless pressure coming from the news media and twitter demanding that we escalate.
> 7. Putin will not survive the defeat of his army. He gets support because he is perceived to be a strongman; what does he have to offer once he demonstrates incompetence and is stripped of his coercive power?
The way I see it, he's a mafia boss with everyone under him (the military, the police) under his control. It feels like everyone under him is dedicated to the "Make Russia Great Again" cause. If someone takes him out, the new guy will still be a strongman with a big army and nukes, so what's the point? If someone takes him out and offers peace, US/EU/NATO will want a huge armistice (a bit like Germany after WW2) before they'd restore the economic relationship, and if the new guy accepts that sort of conquering, there'll be plenty of people from the "Long Live Russia" side ready to take him out.
A better analysis: https://www.ft.com/content/503fb110-f91e-4bed-b6dc-0d09582dd...
1) I can see the Russians being bogged down indefinitely, but outright defeat in the manner Fukuyama suggests requires either a counteroffensive or mass mutiny.
Ukrainian forces have proven they could defend and execute ambushes, but there haven't been many successful counterattacks, and no large scale counterattacks - and I guess they are right not to try. If the Ukrainians get the timing wrong and Russians aren't entirely out of ammo, they get cut down by Russian artillery, which is one thing the Russians seem to have an endless supply of.
2) Strategic counterattack requires heavy weapons, the weapons Fukuyama suggests not giving Ukraine with a very silly reason ('narratives' are less important than giving weapons the Ukrainians need). I suspect he lets his feelings towards the current US administration get in the way - Ukrainian generals are better suited to know what they need and we should listen.
3) There will be no effect on the fortunes of populists all over the world. The reasons that led to their original success are local and still exist. Also frankly the record of non-populist politicians regarding Putin is less than stellar. For example, if history went a bit differently and the US did not pressure France, Putin would be attacking using Mistral ships sold by France.
1. The Russian military (aided if needed by mercenaries) is bringing entire cities to the ground in the south of Ukraine, and just buying times before leveling substantial parts of Kyiv. Source : the news. Painting that as a "military defeat in the making for Russia" is just insane propaganda.
2. There is a perfectly "acceptable" diplomatic compromise, where Ukraine is split into roughly east/west of the river, buffer puppet states protect Russian border, and Ukraine is free to join EU - except Ukraine does not have all the eastern mines anymore, and is basically another poor country that northern Europe is going to refuse people from. The compromise is "acceptable" by everyone except Ukrainian gouvernement, of course - but it's astonishing what having the rest of the world urge you to bail (before the winter gets cold) can do.
3. Putin will stay in power as long as his health and / or close guard of oligarchs permits. As long as gas and oil remains sold to EU, he only has to fear about the former - which we know nothing about, and I'm tired of hearing people speculate about.
4. Eric Zemmour and Marine Le Pen dropped a couple points in the poll - thankfully for them, the elections are in an eternity of four weeks, so this will not prevent one of them to be on the 2nd round. None of them is planning on winning anyway (baring a last minute scandal for the president), financially getting their 15% each will ensure the success of their campaigns - so business is going fairly according to plan.
5. I think I vaguely remember this author of the post saying things about the end of history after the wall fell - so as assume we could both be wrong in the end, right ?
West Ukraine is not even all that poor, they have a legacy of good institutions as part of the European West and their human capital has a lot of potential. Like many middle-income countries (including Russia itself) they're hobbled by bad policy, but joining the EU would encourage them to fix this.
Yes. It wasn't a city, but when the Allies bombed the Italian hillside monastery of Monte Cassino [0] in 1944, it left a pile of rubble that the Germans managed to hold for another three months.
If you don't rubbleise a city, they are horrendous to assault. Most battle tanks (western and Russian) can't elevate their main guns high enough to take out attackers in a nearby multi-story towerblock (the 'urban canyon'), some military comms systems and GPS lose signals, defenders can use subways to transit, etc etc.
Ultimately it’s going to be a slow rolling atrocity, and there’s no way to know what next week will look like.
"What we may be witnessing is not just the end of the Cold War, or the passing of a particular period of postwar history, but the end of history as such: that is, the end point of mankind's ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Fukuyama#The_End_of_Hi...
It's acceptable to everyone except the people actually hurt by it. A common problem.
That being said, even with the largest possible definition of "populist", he hardly qualifies.
The most likely outcome of this election round (president + assembly) is a macron presidency with an "official" right-wing coalition of macron's party with the most "centrist" part of the right wing. Very run of the mill stuff. And populists keeping their job as "yelling from the side".
Then again, "eternity of one month".
After all, the latter spent billions of dollars and decades of effort tearing down the Budapest Memo, and they weren't going to easily return to that status quo.
This is also blindingly obvious in the fact that the Overton window here in USA ranges from "no fly zone! WW3! Hoo-rah!" to "we will merely arm the Ukrainian civilians with Javelins" -- surrender and life-saving compromise isn't even on the table. What would the Kagans get out of that?!
Russia got sanctioned since 2014 exactly for that.
Russian invasion of Donetsk and Luhansk regions of Ukraine.
Ironically, since most people living there are Russians, it's Russians killing Russians in Ukraine in the name of Putin's delusions.
By Putin’s own words, he considered Minsk agreement as a capitulation for Ukraine. But Ukraine did’t want to capitulate, and instead took the time to rebuilt its army. For any Ukrainian it was obvious that Russia will invade soon to try to finish what it started.
And, even though the "splitting and surviving" compromise seems almost inevitable to me, I have no idea how long it will take.
And I can't blame all parties (Russia / Ukraine / EU / NATO) for trying to "buy time" and reach the négociation table in the best possible situation.
I can imagine Putin would have preferred rolling over Kyiv, then negociate. But now all he has to do is bomb, turn kyev into "Alep on Dniepr", and wait it out.
Europe has six months of warmer weather to wait it out, before gas reserves become a problem again.
I don't if Biden will prefer entering midterms with or without a war abroad ? Can't say it will really bother him more than whatever domestic "October suprise" comes up.
Again, i don't know. But I would not book an Airbnb for a barbecue in eastern Europe this summer, If I were you.
(On the other hand, if you're into Nordics or Baltics, visit finland and Estonia NOW, they're next in line.)
2007 MSC
Yeah, sure, Finland is fine, as soon as Putin would laid a hand on it, there would be a strong response from... Oh, wait no one.
But Estonia, yeah, sure, NATO would jump to trigger WWWIII over Tallin. I can already picture Joe Biden explaining to US voters why they'll have to deal with a nuclear war because of the Baltics. Also, that the Baltics exist.
And yes, in this situation I fear NATO membership would prove worthless to Baltics.
Turns out there is a "winning move" : being the only one to play.
Russia just conducted strikes in the area of Lviv.
Are you aware that the USA and its "allies" have orchestrated a Coup d'etat in Ukraine? Are you aware of the "F*ck EU" phone call in which Nuland moves people in Ukrainian politics like peons on the chessboard? Are you aware of real Nazis being part of government and security aparatus in Ukraine? Are you aware of Odessa, where dozens of pro-Russian people were burned alive by those same Nazis? Are you aware that Zelensky threatened to make atomic weapons at the Munich Security Conference mid February 2022? Are you aware of the complicity of Biden and his family in this (Hunter and his board seat at Burisma), not to speak of VP Biden blackmailing Ukrainians to fire their attorney general for probing Burisma or they'd get no money from (I think) MMF?
This is just a small selection of past events, not to mention new ones.
All this is not an isolated, Russia/Ukraine (both predominantly Orthodox Christian), issue. The collective West is causing death and destruction in the Muslim world for at least 30 years, as well. Furthermore, Snowden and Wikileaks documents have revealed a part of corruption in the US political and intelligence system. And there was no war waged by the West that wasn't supported by the Western media. Speaking of Fukuyama: He is a neocon, part of the cabal whose ideology has caused millions of dead and displaced people, their property destroyed. Their ideology has immensely weakened the US with meaningless and costly wars. And you still listen to him instead to shun him.
You look ridiculous to the World Outside of the West (~6 billion people) with your "we stand with Ukraine", with how you cancel and sanction everything Russian, how you moralize. Business model of the West for centuries is robbery and enslavement, who rises against it gets bombs on his head (hint: that are those in the World Outside the West). USA is literally built on the genocide of the Natives and the susequent landgrab! That West led by that USA is now condemning Russia for not wanting Nazis with nuclear weapons at her doorstep - imagine that!
Do you really don't get all this or do you act out of pure self interest (Russia is a too rich country to have all those riches/resources only for itself)?
You mean that thing in 2014 where a few Ukrainians protested a thing the president did that they didn't like, and in response the president of Ukraine promptly fled the country never to return?
Meanwhile the current president has the entire Russian Army bearing down on him and hasn't left.
Some "coup".
The truth is, all "Evil West" whataboutism aside, Russia is weak and corrupt and cannot bend Ukraine to its will. Too bad.
Yanukovych was no doubt corrupt, but Ukraine after 2014 is so squeaky clean? And, the "entire Russian Army" is after the Comedian Zelensky? Are you serious?
You obviously don't know a squat about Russia. Otherwise, you wouldn't write "Russia is weak and corrupt and cannot bend Ukraine to its will". Too bad.
For example, if China were to, say, start rolling across Siberia, besides moving the mother of all bowel movements, there's absolutely no way in my mind Russia could stop a complete Chinese defeat.
In fact, if China did invade Russia, they could do so to "stop a raving mad man" and I dare say be cheered on by many in the west. China could...almost redeem a piece of itself. That would start a nuclear war, however, because Putin would simply press the button..but it's fodder for thought how China could play a role.
He's even trying to recruit African mercenaries:
Enforcing a "no fly zone" means that NATO would have to get involved in order to gain air supremacy, potentially supported by boots on the ground . It would be the Libyan playbook, which hasn't worked all that well for NATO.
2 Russia still has nukes.
I'm puzzled why more attention isn't focused on Russia's progress in the south and naval superiority. They clearly want Ukraine and the world to accept its annexation of Crimea and bolstering the zone around it is shaping up to be a point of negotiation, as they made clear in one of Putin's demands about a week ago (that was rejected).
Regarding Taiwan restoring conscription: They never got rid of it, but basically reduced it from 2 years to 4 months with lots of exceptions. It's amazing they don't follow the model of Israel and South Korea, considering the PRC menace, constant posturing, and aggressive territory grabs in the South China Sea.
They will when they see their gas and food bills. Everyone is hawk in social networks and enjoys its moral justice, but for many workers in Europe these sanctions mean closing their businesses and increasing paychecks. Of course everyone can say that Ukraine has right to join NATO, but how much are you ready to pay for this right?
For most of people these events are only important when they are all over [social] media. Most of the people who call for immediate beginning of WW3 will forget about it when media will start the Next Big Story(China? US elections?).
How many of enraged US citizens can show Ukraine on the map? Who was in the context of Russo-Ukrainian relationships month ago? When the wartime propaganda is over, people will find a way to collaborate.
I'm skeptical - if millions of minds can by synchronized upon an idea in the first place, I don't see why the same techniques necessarily can't be used to synchronize them upon a new idea. I mean, is this not fundamentally how "reality" works: mass synchronization of minds by training them with data (information)?
I’m sure Russia believes that they could be deployed inside of Ukraine in order to force an end to the Ukrainian resistance and the west would continue to remain on the sidelines to avert escalation to the end of the world.
A total defeat/humiliation of Russia without nukes flying seems like a remote possibility. Putin realizes that defeat signals the end of his regime and likely the Russian Federation as constructed today, just like the Russo-Japanese war led to the end of the Russian Empire and Afghanistan war led to the end of the USSR.
Right now there lacks Sun Tzu’s “golden bridge” across which Russia could retreat in dignity.
We can hope that a mutiny will happen but it’s by no means guaranteed.
I love this story and I want it to be true.
But I am not sure we know that much.
From what we can gather, not everything is going perfectly for Putin, but it could take years or even decades before we can clearly see who are the winners.
The two subpoints with which I agree are that the NATO decision on the MiGs was wise, and that neither Russia nor Ukraine can climb down from their positions.
My expectation is that of a long hot/cold standoff, eventual splitting of Ukraine, and gradual North Koreanification of Russia with Putin at the helm.
Which would still be pretty effective in preserving the current international order. If it becomes exceedingly clear that threatening your neighbors militarily means turning your country into a new North Korea at best even if you have nukes, that will deter future leaders from trying the same.
(The nukes part is very important because the only thing keeping the current non-proliferation equilibrium in place, at least among developed countries, is an understanding that nukes are only useful to defend against other nukes. Russia's overt threats in the context of this "operation" would otherwise put that equilibrium at serious risk.)
I don't begrudge someone for being wrong; anyone doing anything worthwhile is going to be wrong and make errors sometimes. But I get the impression that this guy just wants to act like his garbage "end of history" thing never happened.
Then COVID came and I had my first RIF, ever. I was told weeks in advance so I could prepare my documentation and handoff. Even though I really liked that job promotions were limited and I was getting restless.
I think the Russian collapse will be like what scientists call a phase transition: a semblance of stability one day, a complete breakdown one (literal) day later. Ukraine will end up holding more than 100k POWs. The only negotiations will Russia will be about reparations. I hope they don’t settle for anything less than one trillion.
If he's deposed or killed, we probably have a very different Russia the next day.
But so are the hungry and scared soldiers in the field. Putin is not able to supply almost 200k soldiers, most of whom are already tens of kilometers away from the border. There will be some supply trucks coming, but if it's only 80% of what's needed rather than 100% (or better yet 120%), then soon, very soon, people on the front line will start running out of stuff that keeps them in fighting condition. And here you have so many points of failure: water, food, munitions, fuel come to mind. You run out of one of these, you stop fighting, simple as that.
But a new regime that makes peace and stays within Russian borders would be likely.
This line makes me significantly question the author's competence (as if knowing he was the author of The End of History before going into it didn't already negatively color my expectations). Russia has a permanent veto on the security council, of course it's going to be useless. Anything that goes against the interests of one of the veto members will always get vetoed and he's acting like this is some kind of surprising disappointment.
Also MiGs somehow wouldn't help stop artillery and rockets? Has the man never heard of bombs? Mind you I don't think NATO should get involved, but supplying more jets and missiles to bomb Russian artillery positions would absolutely help.