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If Ukraine Wins, Who Loses?
There’s the obvious answers – Putin, the image of Russian might, the Duginist dream of solidifying Russian control over its insolent children.
Who else? The Russian Orthodox Church, for declaring this a holy war? Xi, for his association with a loser whose actions renewed Taiwanese determination to stave off an invasion? The countries that have been buying Russian military gear and now have a rep, however justified, for buying junk? US pundits who backed Russia’s invasion? Renewable energy advocates, suddenly on the back foot because nuclear is a better option than Russian gas? US intelligence agencies that failed to figure out how the Russian forces are ancient and hollowed out by corruption?
You could also note who else wins: the West, for one. Superior armaments and tech, better logistics, the products of a more energetic and innovative culture. I suspect there’s a non-insubstantial intersection between those who are comfy with Russian control of Ukraine and those who would be irritated by a Western win, because the West is decadent and subject to rule from our Davos overlords, and ought not to prevail until it is overhauled and remade.
This is not a thread about whether Ukraine will win, or what victory looks like. Just a question about what shakes out when it is apparent to all that Russia could not prevail.
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That would be a good long term thing for Turkey and NATO.
What do you think Russia’s next gambit is then and do you think it can succeed? My guess would be that they will try to expand south towards Odessa, since this is the one theatre they have had success in. I agree with your assessment about training for Ukraine. It is significant that they are being transitioned to NATO hardware. While it will take a while for them to become proficient with it. It is easier for the broader NATO alliance to keep Ukraine resupplied, so if this becomes a more long term affair that is an important element.
I agree I don’t think Ukraine right now is inclined to let them get away with that much. It remains to be seen if Russia can reorganize enough to start making bigger gains. It also will be interesting to see if Ukraine with NATO hardware can make significant gains in counter attacking the south.
As to whether they should or not that is a more open question from my standpoint. It certainly seems like right now Ukraine has the initiative. This could still change however and Russia has the capability to hurt Ukraine even while losing. I suppose that time will tell whether this is the right move or not from a practical or strategic level. I think morally we can say that Ukraine shouldn’t let them in so far as it would mean Russia has profited from its invasion.
I don’t think it is possible right now. After they have had a chance to train with new equipment and assuming they either receive sophisticate Air Defense capabilities or Air to Air capabilities I think it might be possible.
Should they is a more complicated question. Strategically it make sense plus it is a Ukrainian war aim; however, Crimea is the most pro-Russian region with very little historic connection to Ukraine. It also has tremendous cultural, strategic, and emotional connections to Russia. I don’t know how the average citizen of Crimea views the current war and I don’t know how they would react to a Ukrainian ‘occupation’. I suspect it would be a violent messy affair. If the end game is to use it as a bargaining chip that might make sense. If the end game is to long term bring it into Ukraine by force I am less sanguine on it.
Predictions seem futile. If Putin intends to permanently landlock rump Ukraine (as opposed to using the threat to extract cession of the Donbas and landbridge to Crimea), things get real interesting. Likely he’d also try to occupy the area contiguous with Transdnestria. And that’s the “neonazi” home base (really more paleonazi when contrasted with Putin’s own Wagner Group neonazis). That creates a long shallow front for the Ukrainians to harass.
Even if they could, Russia will go nuclear well before that.
Or perhaps Belarus joins in to put pressure back on Kiev.
I wonder about Belarus joining in. That is certainly an escalation. Belarus isn’t a nuclear power and so might not have the same freedom of movement at Russia has. I assume it would presume itself protected from direct NATO action because of Russia; however, it is not clear to me what actually happens if they get involved. I am assuming it will be messy and I won’t much care for it.
Predictions are so much fun though. Especially because they are unknowable.
I know that Moldova was probably the next target if Ukraine had gone as planned. Likely via Transnistria, because of the convenient narrative there. The question is, does Russia still hold that as a strategy or has their lack of success in Ukraine scaled back their ambitions? I hadn’t considered that southern consolidation strategy creates a longer, and potentially more vulnerable front. That could certainly be a problem especially if Ukraine continues to have access to high tech NATO weaponry.
The right of return will never be agreed to by Israel, no matter what. Because after the Holocaust there is a critical mass of Israeli Jews who are determined to live in a Jewish majority country, be that moral, immoral, whatever. It’s a completely understandable response to trauma, this determination to be dependent on nobody else.
(Israel’s ongoing dependence on the US is….ironic, and possibly troubling?)
Maybe this one.
Not so much this one. Pinochet had already done the coup when Allende was killed (or killed himself….?) It’s hard to see it as anything but proactive mop up of opposition.
Only if you argue that the act of killing Park Chung-Hee caused democracy to break out.
The Rabin assassination is most like the first – sort of – although
in thatthere was nothing else that happened, Israel’s political system continued to function normally, but with Rabin dead so died the possibility of peace. (Personally I think that’s overstated, though it did set peace back significantly. Think of Sadat being killed before signing the accords with Israel – how would that have affected Egypt?)It was probably also deliberate.
Compare that with the Law of Return.
A marriage of convenience, if you will?
Greece and Turkey joined NATO in 1952. Turkey has had four (4) coups since then, Greece has had at least one, but none of that removed them from NATO.
During the cold war there were lots of associations made between democracies and dictatorships. If you go back further, to the Second World War, the US and the UK allied with Stalin’s Soviet Union to defeat the Nazis.
Yes, I think the democracy link with military alliances is tenuous.
One has to be realistic. Sometimes one must form military alliances with unsavory dictators, with Stalin being perhaps the most illustrative.
For example, Americans are forming an alliance with a Putin-like dictator, Joe Biden, in order to drive Putin’s army from Ukraine. Strange bedfellows.
You do realize that you are the sole person keeping this thread alive after more than 1,150 comments, don’t you? Without your input the rest of us would have just pleasantly agreed with each other and called it a wrap after comment #40!
There is chit chat, and then there is conversation.
Once again, I don’t know if you mean that you are chit-chatting or conversing. But I’ve got to say that your dedication to adding to the conversation is extraordinary. Is this how you throw a dinner party?
The Buzz: “Zafar is throwing a dinner party! Block off the month of May.”
I wonder if he is hoping for it to reach 2000.
Or leave town.Did you know that the longest ever English language novel was written, predictably, by an Indian?
Also predictably: about getting married.
’A Suitable Boy’ by Vikram Seth.
I presume you mean Indian “dot,” not Indian “feather.”
Dot. Like me.
Your autobiography?
except i’m unsuitable…
Nonsense. Any good haberdasher will fix you up. Now start writing!
Maybe he gets the reference, but I have doubts.
Mine was just a play on words. Maybe you see more in it than I do. What’s the reference?
You never heard of the still-well-known-I-thought “Black Like Me” by John Howard Griffin?
Yeah, that’s also what I was playing on, but I thought Zafar did that deliberately. I thought you meant my reference to a haberdasher supplying his suitability.
I don’t know if you follow politics here as closely as I do. There was a big political backlash building against Oslo at that time, and Rabin was never a True Believer in it the way Peres and Beilin were. Had Rabin not been murdered, odds were he would have been voted out in the next elections, and it would have been far from.unthinkable for him to have backed off on Oslo, if not slowed it down. Far from being a boon for the Right, the assassination was a disaster. Even people on the moderate Right were afraid to express their opinions publicly. The killer was a nut and the classic “moody loner” type, and the assassination meant that Oslo kept going for a lot longer than it would have otherwise.