It doesn’t take any particular genius to see it, and you’re right it’s not new. The moderators already yell at me for too much editorial anaysis, but it’s a good point you’re making. The threat is internal, not external. Creating situations for potential coup plotters to expose themselves to early is a good way to root them out.
Good and sober hypothesis, though I would question if he would define “is this good for me” in such cerebral terms as a ‘public miliary split’. He’s never had any problem personally undermining NATO, and this is his CIA Director flying right to the heart of Mordor without Trump mentioning it - you have to assume therefore it is urgent and backed by whoever is managing Trump’s foreign policy agenda while he fills his diaper with fresh mud. Ratcliffe’s public politics might seem reasonable, but - he has a boss. Trump has never been shy about criticizing even cabinet members when they step out of line.
Splintering Article 5 while Trump can still override american support of it would have many repercussions and it’s not at ALL assured that any of these would be net positive for Trump and Pootz. Nor does it help Trump save face in Iran. There isn’t much time left before his hand is forced in the midterms.
On balance - a russian invasion of NATO sure doesn’t look like it HELPS make Trump look strong or create net new votes. Seems like an ally with presumptive american protetion getting invaded would have the opposite effect and would energize anti-trump voters who have even the basest concern for geopolitics. But - that’s thinking with Trump interests in mind. Putin’s situation is way, way further down the Desperation Highway.
Of course he can always escalate. But so can Ukraine and it’s backers. There’s plenty of moves left to make.
that’s a very good point, but that doesn’t alter the absurdity of it, nor the clear menace to private enterprise. I mean - what you’d WANT the “government” to say in a case like this is that we will help protect you. Not ‘we’re going to take your shit if you don’t provide your OWN air defesne’.
My first reaction was how incredibly dumb this is to say to them. It clearly says that “we can’t stop the drone attacks”, and they’re just shifting accountability or preparing to hollow out the country and steal everything. But then what? The russian army’s air defense is SUPPOSED to be protecting strategic assets like refineries now, and they’re not doing it.
Even if you just accepted the state stealing everything as an inevitability…how’s that going to work out for the new ‘owners’? Refineries are large, fixed, hard to defend targets and Ukraine is getting better at attacking, not worse.
It’s really, really hard to understand the russian mindset. The closest i can come is that despite wearing suits, they are much closer to fur-clad, pre-medieval barbarian beasts in practice. The organzing principle of society is “do as I say, or I will kill you”. Thievery is expected as the norm, according to your station in life. Rules don’t matter, only power does. Empathy is weaknes, and the individual and collective attitude of a russian is that they only care about the 1 square foot of ground they are standing on, and nothing else matters. In this situation, even though the fairly rational, 21st century reaction westerners exepct would be “hey, these attacks on our industry are bad. We should do our best to make them stop”…Russia’s ACTUAL reaction is “hey, stopping these attacks would be hard to do. Let’s put the blame on the victims, and then steal their shit”.
Rabid hyenas.
It also highlights in huge block letters that these are not people you can negotiate with. The state exists to be plundered. The government says not only are we not going to protect you, but we are going to seize all of your assets. Doing this at the large end of the economy with WB & OZON sends a pretty clear message down the chain - if you have anything of value, get it out now.
You’re getting the point - this illustrates how Russia is nothing but a crime syndicate from top to bottom. Thievery is not only not frowned upon - it’s expected. There’s a russian saying that “The man who doesn’t steal, steals from his family”.
It’s incredible that business exists at all. At least for now.
Exactly. Combat effectiveness matters way more than raw numbers. These reluctant conscripts who’ve been smart enough to avoid being drawn into the war so far will have less training, less leadership, less protection, less hardware support and less equipment than the batches that came before them. Which all means that they will simply die faster, and with greater public outcry.
Even if they did recruit the full half million - that’s about a year’s worth of casualties and based on line movement the last couple of years, means maybe 1-2 more mid-sized towns captured. Is it worth killing the entire population of Regina to occupy a destroyed Estevan? (Prarie canadian reference there). But you’re right - the real men in boots that they can generate from this is probably way way less than they want with their fairly arbitrary 500k target. The guys smart enough to avoid being drawn into the army since 2022 aren’t going to suddenly become effective assault forces in the next 2-6 months.
Belarus is in my view totally irrelevant and always has been. Their army is tiny, and fourth rate compared even to the Russian army. It’s mission is intenral repression, not foreign intervention. If they sent an expeditionary force, they’d be wiped out in a month and nothing would guarantee Lukashenko getting the Gaddhafi Bayonet Enema treatment faster.
No doubt you’re right, the one thing you can count on is that life inside Russia will get shittier and shittier. It’s really hard to grasp on a near term basis what a complete disastrous self-own this entire war has been for them. A historic self-own on a par maybe only with the Persian Empire being completely destoyed by misadventure into Macedon and trying to show upstart Alexander who the real Big Dog of the age was.
Thank you. The real pivot of this war is that Russia simply cannot stop Ukraine from making and deploying drones. Nobody has any counter for them.
Russia is dependent on pushing men into places they don’t belong and then calling that land theirs. You know - a policy of Infestation. But, like garden pests, Ukraine will get them all eventually, as long as they can continue to deploy drones - which seems to be a lot more infinite than Russia’s ability to push fresh meat into the grinder.
The territory isn’t worth very much if it is nothing more than a drone killzone. Pretty hard to occupy, settle and generate economic activity when you’re under constant, personalized bombardment.
The most realistic de-escalation is not a ceasefire per se, but probably a joint exclusion zone larger than the practical operating space of fiber optic drones. Like, 100km or more buffer zone. This isn’t a new concept - when the Romans were expanding, they would create a large de-populated dead zone between their boundaries and that of the neighbors. Anyone and anything caught in the zone was killed - the thinking being that they could avoid a large army build up to invade their borders if the real, habitable border was many, many miles back from yours.
An exclusion zone like this is a major loss for Russia. They are fighting a war of territorial conquest, and retreating back to where they were is the same as a major strategic defeat. But the alternative is to keep bleeding and expending resources to gain less and less uncontrollable Ukrainian land. They don’t have any good choices left. The smart thing for Russia to have done, other than stay home in the first place, would have been in 2023 to fall back to Luhansk and their portion of Donetsk and keep Crimea logistically intact. But - they’re stupid and greedy, so…here we are.
All fair, but your thoughts please on this:
RE: 1 - Time is worth more than fake legitimacy. And troops need some ramp up time, even with barest minimal training, it takes time logistically to outfit and transport even the greenest conscripts. If you need troops today, they needed to enter the pipeline 6 months ago. Waiting for a sham election to legitimize troops you need today doesn’t make any sense, even in Russian thinking.
RE: 2 - The ‘current pace’ is quagmire. Russian territorial gains are near or below net zero at this point, and the next waves of men will have less equipment and hardware support than the last ones did. Capability matters as much as raw numbers do. What even is a theory of victory at this point?
RE: 3 - Infiltration - understood that it looks like progress in a war where not much else is going well for you. But it’s also not compatible with their war aims. The purpose of this war is conquest - and infiltration might work to probe defenses against an enemy that a) can fall back and b) gives a damn about the lives of it’s men. But infiltration is not a good strategy for occupation.
Just look at the american experience in Vietnam, Iraq or Afghanistan. Fine - if you can push your forces into territory, great. But if the other side doesn’t stop killing them with drones, snipers, counter assaults, IED’s and assassinations, then you can’t pacfiy that territory and can’t get any gains from it. Eventually, you have to leave. The only tactic Russia seems able to execute isn’t compatible with their strategic war aims - which is conquest of territory and regime change. If Ukraine keeps killing every russian within 30km of the front, there’s not much point to holding the ground.
There’s a lot of whinging nay-sayers who say Ukraine is “losing” becuase they don’t realistically have the means to push the Russians out of Crimea and the Donbas. This badly misses the point of ukraine’s strategy. They aren’t trying to push the russians out. They’re trying to make staying impossible.
I don’t think the average Russian is a mindless tank mine runner. They may not value life, even their own. But the ones who have managed to stay out of the war so far are not likely to be quickly turned into idelogical missiles who will bum rush a defensive position with a brick of C4 up their ass to clear the way for the Blyatniks behind them.
I think all Putin is doing is buying time, and that the #1 thing he worries about today isn’t winning the war - it’s in spotting a coup at home before it happens.
Interesting. I haven’t done any homework on Georgia re: why major EU powers would even care. Georgia doesn’t seem to have any particular geopolitical or economic significance, nor a history of EU alliances that would suggest it’s a high priority for them to help repatriate Ossetia & Abkhazia.
You’re thinking about it in terms of a probable military outcome. I think almost all serious minded people expect that this would result in russia getting their heads kicked in. Quickly.
But what I’m suggesting is a brief, murky invasion into the Baltics where the actual military outcome is irrelevant. Yes, they’ll lose. But they’re losing now. We already know that Russia doesn’t give a shit about their losses. The goal of such an invasion isn’t to win - it’s purely to have Trump play his last part in declining to get invovled, and therefore causing a theoretical crisis within NATO about the sanctity of Article 5, and cause more chaos inside the U.S. itself.
And for the record - I don’t think that would have the impact Russia wants. I think some European states would act unilaterally, especially Finland, Poland and maybe Romania. All those states bordering Russia or it’s proxies have much more skin in the game of keeping russia where they are instead of waiting for them to be cheek-to-cheek with their territory.
Russia hopes this is a NATO-breaking move. But frankly, I think everyone in NATO leadership understands what Trump is, and that he will never honor an Article 5 call. But - that they have plans to act without him, and will look to repair the historic NATO relationship after he croaks. Trying to get Trump to honor any commitment is like shooting rubber bands at the stars.
Interesting war gaming. How would they get to Georgia? I don’t see Turkey or Armenia allowing a ground invasion thorugh their territory, and a naval invasion from the Black Sea seems like a non-starter. Also - Rostov would mean in invasion of sovreign russian territory. That’s a pretty big matzo ball right there. Think it’s more likely that eurpoe sinks a bunch of the Baltic fleet and starts flying patrols for a no-fly zone/drone interception before they start thinking about an actual invasion of Russia.
Dangerous to underestimate him, or expect that he will take his SMO lessons and act in a more restrained manner. He has always historically escalated things rather than scaling back. Assessing him as not knowing shit might mean the risk of another stupid invasion is MORE rather than less likely.
No doubt. Poland is a non-starter not least of which because of Poland’s strength, but that it would endanger Kaliningrad and even Belarus. If they DID invade anywhere in the Baltics though, Poland might unilaterally provide military support even if the rest of NATO wavers. And what hasn’t really been considered much either is the Finnish response. The Finns have a more truculent and sober view of the threat. It’s not crazy to consider that in case of a Baltic invasion, both Finland and Poland might decide to unilaterally exceed whatever response NATO decided on. The threat to them is MUCH more immediate than it is to the rest of the alliance. I don’t think the current state of the Russian Army could handle fighting EITHER the Finns or Poles in addition to Ukraine. Dangerous time.
True - but you’re thinking logically and as though he wants to objectively win militarily. As in, invade and take & hold ground.
I’m suggesting a scenario where the goal isn’t to seize the baltics, but rather to just prove that Trump won’t honor Article 5 and therefore trigger a crisis within NATO & the U.S. and call that a victory. Even though all of Trump’s shittiness is likely to be walked back under future presidencies, the damage that such a move can do to NATO & America in the limited window they have to be assured Trump won’t intervene to help an ally might be a basis for a worthwhile offramp for the war. They could delude themselves into saying “we proved America is a bad ally and eroded NATO unity”. As in, hoping that substitues for the fact that they have achieved nothing in Ukraine and made a permanent, capable enemy on their borders.
I frankly hope so, as the implementation of any form of no-fly zone in eastern Ukraine is the end of russia’s effective assault capabilities. Their entire war plan is 1) Small squad creeping infiltration 2) indiscriminate drone attacks 3) missile terror attacks. A no-fly zone greatly mitigates 2 & 3 and makes 1 even less effective than it is now.