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Russian forces invade Ukraine after Putin orders attack

reuters.com

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Re: Russian forces invade Ukraine after Putin orders attack

#651

Post by adventured »

hotpotamus wrote: post #634
programmarchy wrote: post #626

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the era of industrialization economic size was a proxy for the capability of a state to mobilize its industrial capacity for war. Does that still hold true?

To me, the real question is what's the ROI on intervening to defend Ukraine?

It entirely rests upon how much damage can be inflicted upon Putin's new (10-15 years old, but really just being birthed with this invasion), aggressively expansive Russian Empire.

If you say a lot, then the ROI can be very high.

Russia formally has a new Stalin, a new Tsar, whatever you want to title him with. And the world should act accordingly. Putin will have to kill a lot of people domestically from here on out if he's moving into Empire mode, because the situation will get messy very fast and there will be real domestic opposition and he'll strongly dislike that.

Russia is a leper again.

And besides this, we should be defending the new, fragile democracy in Ukraine, on a moral basis. They're our friends and they want our help.

Re: Russian forces invade Ukraine after Putin orders attack

#652

Post by scotty79 »

neilwilson wrote: post #478
uejfiweun wrote: post #139

Does anyone have any projections for how this war will go? Is the Ukrainian military powerful? Will this turn into a guerilla war, or will it go the way of total war? Or will it result in total capitulation? And another key question. What will Western governments actually do? What if the war gets really bad? Does the West actually have the balls to put real, biting sanctions on the regime? And will this crash the eco…

Sanctions can have no meaningful effect on Russia. Not selling somebody your tomatoes primarily affects your tomato growers who will go bust, not those buying the tomatoes - particularly if they have plenty of tomatoes internally, can easily produce them or can get them from those lovely tomato growers in China in return for oil and gas. There's rather too much faith in the power of the mighty US dollar. Quite a few…

I wish all property of Russian companies outside of Russia were just nationalized by respective countries and all trade with Russia stopped.

Re: Russian forces invade Ukraine after Putin orders attack

#653

Post by tootie »

recon517 wrote: post #593
ycombinete wrote: post #114

In his 1997 book The Grand Chessboard Zbigniew Brzezinski did say that if Europe went to war again it would start in Ukraine. Some choice quotes: “Ukraine, a new and important space on the Eurasian chessboard, is a geopolitical pivot because its very existence as an independent country helps to transform Russia. Without Ukraine, Russia ceases to be a Eurasian empire.” “However, if Moscow regains control over Ukraine,…

So many commentators did not live through post-USSR 90s to completely miss the mentality and culture which shapes Putin's decisions. First, you need to understand values of a person, then their goals, then their methods to achieve the goals. 90s in post-USSR countries were a relatively free environment (from state prosecution) and it naturally selected for individuals which wanted as much power as possible and were w…

I think the Sanctions/No Sanctions debate is mostly moot. North Korea has been in the status of pariah state for decades and hasn't bent an inch. Compare that to China for whom we gladly swept the Tiananman Massacre under the rug, respected their sovereignty, made them a top trading partner and they have also not bent an inch. And we have hosted thousands of Chinese grad students at our universities. They are also watching the events in Ukraine right now and thinking "Why not Taiwan?" Modern dictators have learned very well the propaganda game. "We're rich because our enemies fear us" or "We're poor because our enemies are mistreating us" both work pretty well.

Re: Russian forces invade Ukraine after Putin orders attack

#654

Post by rvba »

rozab wrote: post #559
ycombinete wrote: post #114

In his 1997 book The Grand Chessboard Zbigniew Brzezinski did say that if Europe went to war again it would start in Ukraine. Some choice quotes: “Ukraine, a new and important space on the Eurasian chessboard, is a geopolitical pivot because its very existence as an independent country helps to transform Russia. Without Ukraine, Russia ceases to be a Eurasian empire.” “However, if Moscow regains control over Ukraine,…

The same prediction is made in Dugin's Foundations of Geopolitics . Many of his recommendations have come to pass. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foundations_of_Geopolitics#Con...

For a book that seems to be mentioned so much it is confusing that there is no English translation (apart from machine learning one).

With "unofficial" translations you will never know if the translators didnt censor/change the meaning somehow.

Re: Russian forces invade Ukraine after Putin orders attack

#656

Post by tablespoon »

unersame wrote: post #644

.

> If you follow the news agenda in Russian news agencies you will notice that Putin has placed a lot of blame on the latest negotiations. Apparently no one was willing to negotiate and he went for broke.

Most of Russia's demands were unreasonable nonstarters. IIRC, he demanded NATO pull troops out of some EU countries. Saying "no one was willing to negotiate" is very misleading. It's victim blaming, like saying a mugger was justified in shooting his victim because he wasn't willing to negotiate over the mugger's demand he hand over his cash.

Re: Russian forces invade Ukraine after Putin orders attack

#658

Post by VictorPath »

adventured wrote: post #645
explaingarlic wrote: post #629

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The count of soldiers doesn't matter; you can only fit so many on a battle line anyway and a war in which you run through a full battle line of infantry is so costly that even that insane regime wouldn't go for it. The red army required millions of soldiers because it ran through them so quickly due to their battle doctrine. This conflict will be nothing like World War 2. The size of the economy doesn't so much matte…

It matters at least in the sense that Russia's modest forces are so hyper exposed right now. The US and NATO could trivially cripple Russia's army in the field. They're entirely unprepared for it and they're going to be operating far from their optimal protection (embedded in Russia where defenses are far greater). The question is, when would Putin throw the nuclear card on the table. I'm in favor of the US and NATO…

No post body was provided.

Re: Russian forces invade Ukraine after Putin orders attack

#659

Post by [deleted] »

tablespoon wrote: post #656
unersame wrote: post #644

.

> If you follow the news agenda in Russian news agencies you will notice that Putin has placed a lot of blame on the latest negotiations. Apparently no one was willing to negotiate and he went for broke. Most of Russia's demands were unreasonable nonstarters. IIRC, he demanded NATO pull troops out of some EU countries. Saying "no one was willing to negotiate" is very misleading. It's victim blaming, like saying a mug…

[deleted]

Re: Russian forces invade Ukraine after Putin orders attack

#660

Post by hajile »

explaingarlic wrote: post #629
reddog wrote: post #612

Some economic perspective. The Russian economy is 10x the size of the Ukrainian. The US economy is 14x larger than Russia's. The Canadian economy is larger than Russia's. The combined economy of all of NATO is 25x the size of Russia's. This does not even include Pacific allies like Japan and ANZUS. For historical perspective, when Japan attacked Pearl Harbor the US economy was 7x larger than theirs. At the end of WW2…

The count of soldiers doesn't matter; you can only fit so many on a battle line anyway and a war in which you run through a full battle line of infantry is so costly that even that insane regime wouldn't go for it. The red army required millions of soldiers because it ran through them so quickly due to their battle doctrine. This conflict will be nothing like World War 2. The size of the economy doesn't so much matte…

That economy means we can pump out more ranged weapons than the Russians can. We could literally keep shooting missiles until they ran out of things to block them with and keep shooting until there's nothing left.
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