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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.
Published in General
It does, but then you think about what triggered those missiles (the threat of NATO expansion).
If NATO could announce tomorrow morning that Finnland and Sweden were now part of NATO that’s one thing.
If Croatia can block or delay the expansion of NATO (as any NATO member can) it starts looking like less of a realistically good idea for Finnland.
Rumours are swirling in Moscow that a number of former generals and KGB officials are preparing to oust Russia’s president Vladimir Putin and plan to end the war in Ukraine, which is increasingly seen across Russia as a strategic mistake.
I don’t think it’s accurate to say that Putin ordered the invasion of Ukraine because it was worried that Ukraine would join NATO.
It’s more accurate, in my opinion, to say that Putin did not like the idea of a budding liberal democracy that looked West towards Europe for inspiration on Russia’s border.
After all, Putin is an authoritarian who poisons people who say bad things about him. The Ukraine/European/American model, where people are allowed to talk trash against their leaders if they disagree with their policies, isn’t something that Putin wants right next to his country.
It’s similar to why the leader of China does not like a liberal democracy like Taiwan not far off from them.
Taiwan makes China look bad by comparison. People in Taiwan can criticize their government and even run for political office to try to change policy. In China if you criticize the government you end up in prison, perhaps with your organs removed.
So, you can see that dictatorships don’t really like the example, the influence, that liberal democracies give to people. What if the people of Russia started thinking that their country should be more like Ukraine or even France or Sweden or the United States? Putin doesn’t want those kind of thoughts. Neither do the leaders of China.
So, NATO is only one part of the equation. Taiwan isn’t part of NATO. Yet China would love to engage in “unification” with Taiwan.
Not true. Nobody guaranteed Ukraine’s security.
What happens then?
Putin was triggered? Oh, poor baby!
Nuts to that. Putin is trying to reestablish Greater Russia and will use any excuse (or no excuse at all) to achieve it.
The fact is that Ukraine’s tactics so far most closely resemble that of Finland in 1939-40. Ultimately, the Soviets did wear the Finns down, but they paid an enormous price in terms of casualties.
Better to melt it down and cast some new testicles.
That might be true if Ukraine was a budding liberal democracy, but it wasn’t.
Remember: opposition parties banned, opposition supporting media closed down, opposition leader under house arrest, draconian language laws suppressing the formal use of the first language of about a third of the population, right wing political street violence ignored and accepted if not actually encouraged and utilised, NO attempt made to negotiate an outcome with the seceding East – at the cost of 14,000 deaths since 2014.
And all this continued, even after Zelensky is elected on a platform of making peace with Russia.
I’d say the threat to Russia from this open-ness was limited if at all present.
China’s two red lines with Taiwan are:
Beyond that there is some verbage but Taiwan invests in China, and China makes a lot of money for Taiwan.
Taiwan’s free press has zero impact in China.
A lot of people in Russia already think their country should be more like France or Sweden or the US. A corrupt democracy in name, kleptocracy next door is unlikely to make much of a difference – especially as it has a bad rep re Russian language and ethnic equality, and seems to be increasingly aligned with forces that the Soviet Union defeated in the Great Patriotic War. (Actually arguably this is the case with the Azov movement.)
Russian forces are expelled from Ukraine. Maybe Putin is given early retirement and the new leadership is more interested in spending Russia’s resources on improving the material well being of the Russian people rather than on slaughtering Ukrainians.
That second part is wildly optimistic. But the first part is a possibility, maybe. We’ll see.
I could be wrong on this. I’m not a military expert.
But the nations supporting Ukraine have a combined GDP of over 30 trillion dollars.
Russia has a GDP of about 1.5 trillion (before the economic sanctions from the North America, the UK and the European Union and Japan).
So, it would seem to be that the longer the Russia-Ukraine war goes on, the more Ukraine gets stronger relative to Russia. It’s not clear how Russia is going to be able to replace the weapons that are getting destroyed in this war. Nearly every day one or more European countries announce more weapons transfers to Ukraine.
When Finland faced off against the Soviet Union, I don’t think Finland much support at all from other countries, though it was technically allied with Nazi Germany.
Would be nice if our leadership was more interested in improving American lives instead of slaughtering Ukrainians.
Yeeeeah, that would be something, but I’m skeptical. Just because it would be great! For a moment, anyway. What follows is a dice toss.
It’s hard to back off the Z narrative on the 9th; it would be a complete reversal, an Orwellian rewrite. Russia is not at war with Ukraine. Russia has ever been at war with Ukraine. If Putin’s on the stage, and he’s committed to the bit, then it’s a declaration of war and mobilization, which will be another example of Russian failure. They’re just not set up for anymore.
Globalism might be the big loser, though some people think it might be just the opposite. Too close to call at this point.
Not to be disrespectful, but you seem to think that every country should just shrivel up into the fetal position when threatened by Russia instead of standing up and fighting for their own survival. I wouldn’t want to live like that, constantly cowering in fear.
Sure they guaranteed security. What was the whole point of their deal for Ukraine to give up nuclear weapons? So they could more easily be invaded?
I guess the language in that agreement, the Budapest Memorandum (I think it’s called), where Ukraine agreed to give up the Soviet nuclear weapons that were located within its borders, had weak language. Even at the time the leader of Ukraine indicated that he didn’t the language was clear enough.
But Ukraine needed economic assistance from the west. So, Ukraine went ahead and gave up their nukes.
No offence taken, but I believe a country’s leaders have a duty to treat their citizens lives as precious, and if that means being realistic about the odds (and aid) then that’s what they should do. Even if it isn’t photogenic Hollywood material. If Zelensky could have bargained and saved Ukrainian lives that’s what he should have done. Lining the country up to be the Russians’ next Afghanistan may be good for US foreign policy, but I can’t see how it’s good for Ukrainians.
Absolutely right.
It seems that the people of Ukraine wanted Zelensky to act as he did.
The Ukrainians know Putin’s way of operating pretty well. So, they probably knew that bargaining with Putin was for suckers.
We don’t know that @heavywater – only Government friendly media remains to pump out one narrative. Opposition aligned media has been shut down, along with opposition parties banned. If everybody agreed with Zelensky I think there would have been no need for that.
I think if you look at the history of Ukraine over the past 15 years you can see that the Ukrainians are willing to do whatever it takes to be free of Putin grasp.
Think of how negotiations with Hitler turned out. Eventually Hitler waged war against your country, agreement or no agreement.
So, I think it is very likely that Zelensky’s decision to stay and fight was enormously popular among Ukrainians.
Even opposition members of the Ukrainian parliament are saying, “We agree with Zelensky on this.”
I actually think that if a country’s leaders treat their citizens’ lives and freedom as precious and you also have a clear-eyed understanding of how Putin operates, you wouldn’t want to make concessions to Putin in the hopes of gaining peace.
Putin seems to be following the example of Vladimir Lenin (the other Vladimir).
“You probe with bayonets: if you find mush, you push. If you find steel, you withdraw.”
Zelensky and the Ukrainians are presenting steel to Putin and Putin’s military has been forced to withdraw from the cities/towns surrounding Kyiv.
Many errors-opposition parties aren’t banned— remember Zelensky was an “insurgent “ candidate- not the establishment candidate. It is true after the recent Russian invasion, parties with ties to Russia were banned- am entirely reasonable step, much like the German-American Bund in the US in 1941.
Putin clearly feared the color revolutions and didn’t relish a western oriented Slavic country with a growing economy and political freedom on his border. Furthermore, many Ukrainians have Russian relatives- so it would be increasingly difficult to hide the different trajectories of the two societies. Ukraine was on the upswing while Russia was sliding back into a authoritarian police state with a corrupt ruling oligarchy.
Ukraine was far from perfect, but had made major gains over the last few years-much of it in response to the Russian incursion in 2014 ( as well as the Maidan revolution). These strides are clearly reflected in the dramatically improved performance of the Ukrainian military. Militaries, in many ways, reflect their societies- the contrast with 2014 is startling. A few little green men coupled with local thugs seized considerable parts of Ukraine before. Putin was foolishly counting on a similar outcome this time- but he discounted the changes in Ukraine over the last 8 years. This time it is the massive Russian corruption that is evident- troops with rotten equipment& poor food, led by officers who tolerate rape & expect murder. The contrast couldn’t be more obvious.
Poland and Sweden are co-hosting a donors’ conference designed to raise money for more aid to Ukraine.
Also, on the military front: A comparison between NATO artillery in Ukraine and Russian artillery.
The Russians are using old Soviet TOS-1 multiple rocket launchers, which have a range of 2.2 miles and D-30 howitzers, which have a range of 13.6 miles and 2S19 self-propelled howitzers, which have a range of 18 miles.
But the Ukrainians now have the American M777 towed howitzer, which has a range of 24.9 miles and the French Caesar self-propelled howitzer, which has a range of 28.6 miles.
This is where, as the battles continue, with Ukraine being re-supplied by countries with a combined GDP of around 30 trillion dollars and with Russia’s GDP of about 1.5 trillion prior to the implementation of sanctions, it seems that the balance of conventional (but not nuclear) forces will favor Ukraine.
If this is not the case, I’d be interested to learn why not.
Stop me if you’ve heard this before, but once upon a time, there was a backwards, bucolic collection of colonies who stood up to a far more advanced mother country. The mother country possessed the world’s most professional army and the world’s largest navy and still the bumpkins managed to convince them to go home and leave the colonies alone.
Repeat after me:
Appeasement doesn’t work.
Appeasement doesn’t work.
Appeasement doesn’t work.
Winston Churchill:
“An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile — hoping it will eat him last.”
@mimac – they’ve been banning political parties since 2015. I’m not convinced that Ukraine was on a good trajectory. Look at how they were dealing with Donbas. 14,000 dead since 2014. Why not negotiate?
@heavywater – these countries might well have a combined GDP of 30 trillion compared to Russia’s 1.5 – the question is: will they find supporting Ukraine worth a recession? I suspect they won’t, not to mention the price of energy come the winter. Russia, for a variety of reasons, is all in. Also – the weapons they’re providing to Ukraine are for insurgency, not victory. They’re throwing Ukrainians under a bus to achieve what?
And the colonies then had a civil war. Which is sort of where Ukraine is heading – if we’re going to stretch the metaphor.
Edited to add: or comparison.
Zafar, I think most Americans see it like this:
And:
-Patrick Henry, to the Virginia Convention, 23 March 1775. You can read the whole thing here.
I’m not sure they see it right Mr Dawg. It seems like a lot of projection going on.
(I’m doubtless guilty of this myself too, so no judgement.)