We should have given Ukraine more weapons earlier, says ex-NATO chief
politico.eu
politico.eu
Putin would of course cry wolf with his nuclear weapons, but the provocation would still be so limited that it would be hard to justify such a major move.
Putin is demanding that everyone stand by the sidelines and allow him to abuse people. It’s like a schoolyard bully who threatens bystanders into tacitly supporting their actions through their inaction. China is watching this closely and it’s clear that if a bully wants to abuse someone all they need to do is make threats and the West will demonstrate cowardice and allow the bully to do whatever they please. The West should grow a pair and slap that shit down with extreme prejudice. If we don’t do it now it will just enable other bullies to test the meekness of the West.
The way to deal with someone who abuses people is to take their power away, not act meekly, which just empowers them.
Direct engagement with NATO would almost surely guarantee massive loss to Putin, possibly leading to his fall. He would have very little to lose in that scenario, and so nuclear war would not be impossible.
But I'll bite, Afghan withdrawal was always going to be messy so don't get your "the USA doesn't want you to know about this secret that only I know because it came to me in a dream".
>humiliated in Syria
USA is still there and most likely will be there for a while unless Trump gets elected.
>Russian weapons production is 6 bazillion times more than lichtenstein
And yet they lose all this bazillion of weapons to a ratio of at least 1:2 in Ukraine's favor[1] [1]https://github.com/leedrake5/Russia-Ukraine
And as they say it's not the quantity of weapons but the effectiveness of the weapon that is the determining factor, hence why NATO focus on quality as their doctrine is different than the USSR strategy that Russia is now forced to rely on.
>countries shouldn't have independence they should roll over to the bigger imperialist
Truly the peak thinking of 1800s geopolitics, I assume then that you're in favor of colonialism too?
Do you think European NATO countries would push troops in or will it depend on the US to make the first move?
Absolutely.
Pre-2022, it was largely US, Canada, UK, and Turkiye taking unilateral action in helping Ukraine rebuild military capacity, along with Poroshenko's reforms.
The rest of NATO remained aloof of Ukraine until 2022
Germany especially did too little by placing irrationally high expectations about Poroshenko's ability to reform Ukraine [0] while ignoring the strides he made in building administrative capacity within Ukraine [1].
Furthermore, it might be heresy on HN/Reddit, but Zelensky's administration is extremely lackluster (even before the war began), and most of the recent missteps that Ukraine has done recently are due to Zelensky and his cabinet (eg. UKR-PL relations being lead by a UKR AgBusiness oligarch, politicization of upper levels of the military administration, active procurement corruption scandals, not arresting Ihor Kolomoisky until arm-twisted by the US, Pandora Papers).
Once this war is over, Ukraine will need to work hard to build it's institutions. They have the capacity, but it will require having to finally end the oligarch model, which will be extremely difficult politically.
If it does not, it will stagnate like Serbia and BH - which is something the oligarchs might gladly accept.
[0] - https://www.dw.com/en/poroshenkos-promises-merkels-disappoin...
[1] - https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/ukrainealert/how-histo...
I personally don’t believe the millions of Ukrainians who have left are going to return.
Secondly how does the Ukraine military recruit new young troops when the prospects of victory are so slim and Ukraine is slowly being ground down and losing territory.
That said, either option is political suicide in both Ukraine and Russia.
> Secondly how does the Ukraine military recruit new young troops when the prospects of victory are so slim and Ukraine is slowly being ground down and losing territory
Big picture, borders have remained consistent and there aren't going to be significant changes one way or the other.
It's become a stalemate.
Russia or Ukraine can mobilize and mobilize, but both sides are too dug in to have a significant impact one way or the other.
This is how an A2AD war will be fought.
I wasn't familiar with this acronym, so just putting this here for others like me - A2/AD(Anti-access/area_denial) is the strategy of preventing your opponent from entering an operational area and maneuvering within it[0].
But you're ignoring a 3rd option: a working cease fire with no change in positions of forces on the ground -- but no recognition of Russia's sovereignty claims either. A classic frozen conflict, in other words. The latter option is getting some discussion among Ukrainians. It is a minority position, but it's perfectly possible discuss it as an option.
It also doesn't have to be a permanent arrangement: Sooner or later Putin will expire or become enfeebled, and the RF will likely enter a period of stagnation and instability. Which will open the door for a possible resolution to the question of final borders and positions of forces.
Perhaps something along the lines of what Croatia did to Serbia in 1995 (but at a much larger scale -- perhaps not retaking all of the occupied territories at once, but it may suffice to reclaim a large enough chunk to persuade whoever is running the RF by the point see that the writing is on the wall, and that the time is up on their optional colonial project):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Storm
Assuming it isn't resolved by diplomatic means somehow (possible, but unlikely).
1. Do the Ukrainian get to be a self determining people? Are the free to join any alliance or economic group that will have them? Are they the ones who get to decide how much land they will trade for this?
2. What does the outcome tell other would be invaders? Does the Western alliance defend their ideals or cave to using force to take what you want?
One cannot evaluate the end game of Ukraine independent of the other global hot points in the Middle East and Asia. The autocrats have formed an alliance and seek to undermine democracy wherever and whenever they can.
As for point two: Yes it is also massively in the interest of democracies, that Ukraine wins and Europe is strengthened.
I think Stoltenberg summed up it up nicely in (2)
>So supporting Ukraine is not only the morally right thing to do. It is also in our own security interest.
(1) Queue Russian non-sense about Maidan being a western coup.
If you live in a real world then a country with 10-100 times less military/economic power has no chance of not being dismantled with 10s of millions dead in the aftermath, and a few individuals become even richer exploiting the remains.
The US has always had to contend with the risk of coming up too hard and collapsing Russia. No one wants rogue generals with nuclear armed ICMB.
Putin’s 15th degree of chess is where it all is revealed as strategic genius.
The US invaded on March 20th. Iraq's head of state was captured on April 9th.
Russia isn't even close to having the same problems that America encountered after its obscenely successful invasion. When/if they do actually have to occupy Ukraine and sustain insurgency, it's going to be an absolute nightmare for decades.
Russia mustered all the might it could in an attempted shock and awe campaign against Kiev, the problem is that Russia is a 3rd world country that acts like it's not because it 1) used to be a 3rd world empire and 2) it has nukes. Russia and its military have been thoroughly gutted by decades of kleptocracy.
Largely out of the entirely unsupported belief, which you seem to share, that Putin could easily unleash huge reserves of untapped offensive potential any moment he wanted to (aside from nukes, which are of course completely useless for what he's trying to do in Ukraine).
The simple fact is, though, he just doesn't have that capacity. If he had it, he would have certainly made use of it by now, now nearly 3 years in. It's simply preposterous to suggest he's sitting on some massive potential, but hasn't been using it yet for some mysterious reason.
Guys... he's just a dictator like all the others through history: fundamentally confused by an information environment of his own making, undermined by systemic corruption and a culture of distrust, and dangerously delusional in his ambitions.
He's just a complete loser, and his clowncar of an invasion is an extension of that fundamental loserness.