Russian Ukraine shenanigans

[pawnman]

Just now, BashiChuni said:

what's your endgame in ukraine?

We keep feeding them weapons until Russia decides their losses are unsustainable. 

[Lord Ratner]

On 3/7/2023 at 1:04 PM, BashiChuni said:

you willing to take this into WW3?

I'll take this one.

Yes.

 

If the Earth is to descend into a multi-polar world again, in which war is inescapable, then I'll "take" WWIII. But exactly who will be fighting in this scenario you're hyperventilating over?

 

Russia? The country that has wiped out half of their military capacity fighting a third-tier democracy? The country that is drafting the bottom of the bottom of the barrel to fight their failed conquest of a vastly out-gunned neighbor? It's going to be a pretty dull WWIII when one of the three key players can barely invade their neighbor. 

 

China? The belligerent dictatorship that has been almost entirely funded by the West? They might try to take Taiwan, but WWIII? You think the country with the worst demographics on Earth is going to risk conventional war with the West in order to defend the Russian campaign against Ukraine?

 

Or do you just mean that Russia will launch nukes? That's not really WWIII, but if they do in response to losing a pathetic war THEY chose to fight, so be it. That genie was let free 80 years ago. Thinking we wouldn't eventually have to confront the reality of nuclear proliferation was just one of many fairy tales we've been telling ourselves for the past 30 years. Though it would be interesting to see China and India forced into eschewing Russian oil for fear of getting pulled into the inevitable shit-show that will follow a Russian nuclear attack. China already smacked Russia down when they started to rattle the nuke sabre. 

 

We spent decades appeasing the bullshit Russia and China have been pulling, all while funding their countries' growth. Now that they've reached a point where they must split with the West in order to pursue their imperial ambitions, you want to show your belly in the hopes they will be satisfied with your humiliation. They won't. We are in the way of their goals, and they have finally shown their cards.

 

That isolationist nonsense failed spectacularly the last time the world hit an inflection point, and it will fail again. Either way we will be at war if the other near-peer countries decide the risk is worth it. It'll take one hypersonic missile hitting the US to wake up the blind patriotic fury that has accompanied every attack against this country. Personally, I think Ukraine will end up forestalling that inevitable confrontation. But not for more than a decade or so.

 

WWIII indeed. 

Edited March 18, 2023 by Lord Ratner

[BashiChuni]

foolish

[BashiChuni]

2 minutes ago, pawnman said:

We keep feeding them weapons until Russia decides their losses are unsustainable. 

what if russia wins?

[Lawman]

love the tough guy talk
so what's the end game? regime change in russia? that strategy sure paid off for the united states during the last two decades
you willing to take this into WW3?

Again… as obvious that it is you still haven’t watched the provided information that explains why this phase of the war is actually about preventing WWIII, we don’t have to kill Putin to achieve that.

Demonstrating to him (in indirectly China) that wars of conquest will not be accepted by a unified group of western powers is done by what we are currently doing and that we (the west) don’t dither internally to the point of giving into compliant isolationist views that benefit the belligerent party. Putin can always go home and keep his shamble empire. The difference now is he does it without the ability to project or seriously threaten any of his neighbors a large group of which are Article 5 NATO powers which in case of hostilities we would be compelled to act to protect. And likewise Xi now has to look at what happened economically and physically and recalculate if he really thinks his first military foray should be to execute an apposed amphibious operation against an Island armed with all our modern weapons.

Sitting around on our asses, sending thoughts and prayers instead of arms and supplies, and watching him take Ukraine will do nothing but embolden a military which has lost the majority of its conventional arms capability. When they come out for the next war (because this isn’t their first) they won’t hesitate to take the nuclear weapons out the second they miscalculate western resolve, engage in an offense into Poland/Latvia/Lithuania/etc, and suddenly find themselves facing a United NATO conventional force they have no ability to stop. That becomes a far more dangerous scenario than the current one where despite our aid to Ukraine, western leaders up to and including the US president can literally land in the middle western capital of a war zone and disrupt/delay the Russian targeting cycle for fear of widening the conflict.


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[Pooter]

56 minutes ago, Lawman said:

Again… as obvious that it is you still haven’t watched the provided information that explains why this phase of the war is actually about preventing WWIII, we don’t have to kill Putin to achieve that.

Demonstrating to him (in indirectly China) that wars of conquest will not be accepted by a unified group of western powers is done by what we are currently doing and that we (the west) don’t dither internally to the point of giving into compliant isolationist views that benefit the belligerent party. Putin can always go home and keep his shamble empire. The difference now is he does it without the ability to project or seriously threaten any of his neighbors a large group of which are Article 5 NATO powers which in case of hostilities we would be compelled to act to protect. And likewise Xi now has to look at what happened economically and physically and recalculate if he really thinks his first military foray should be to execute an apposed amphibious operation against an Island armed with all our modern weapons.

Sitting around on our asses, sending thoughts and prayers instead of arms and supplies, and watching him take Ukraine will do nothing but embolden a military which has lost the majority of its conventional arms capability. When they come out for the next war (because this isn’t their first) they won’t hesitate to take the nuclear weapons out the second they miscalculate western resolve, engage in an offense into Poland/Latvia/Lithuania/etc, and suddenly find themselves facing a United NATO conventional force they have no ability to stop. That becomes a far more dangerous scenario than the current one where despite our aid to Ukraine, western leaders up to and including the US president can literally land in the middle western capital of a war zone and disrupt/delay the Russian targeting cycle for fear of widening the conflict.


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Good post.  
 

To steel man the other side for a second, I think the big concerns are that we'll get sucked in to another prolonged conflict without a clear goal or end state.. it's kinda what we do. And we're dumping money and weapons in when we have lots of problems that need fixing at home. Seems like we repeat the same interventionist cycle over and over.

Steel man over. 
 

Bottom line here is we are tanking Russias hegemony, Putin's admin, and decimating their military without risking a single US military member's life. To me that is an objectively good trade off, and the fact that it deters China is a great bonus. 
 

And if you think the weapons bill is steep now.. try giving Ukraine to Putin, appeasing him for the next few years and see what the bill is like when he tries his luck on a FSU nato country next. What is it they say about an ounce of prevention..

[BashiChuni]

you guys are focused on the wrong threat.

it was never russia.

it has always been china.

and now china is buying russian oil and gas at a discount

[Lawman]

you guys are focused on the wrong threat.
it was never russia.
it has always been china.
and now china is buying russian oil and gas at a discount

Most of their Siberian wellheads are maintained with western assistance. https://delano.lu/article/russia-depends-on-western-tech

https://cepa.org/article/sanctions-against-russia-are-more-effective-than-skeptics-suggest/

They aren’t being maintained and the Russians are in danger of not having a way to export them with the freeze on insurance and exporting vessels by western nations. (Again results of unified sanctions). They can’t make that difference up with the Chinese which despite volume will never match the peak high end tech that was lost.

We can see Russian industrial accidents from space right now. They’ve been increasing in frequency since this war started. They may export energy as a raw product but they import the technical expertise that allowed them to actually pump it out of the ground. The outcome of a mass exodus of that resource is kinda predictable

And if you’re China right now you have to weigh the idea of being belligerent and triggering massive unified sanctions when you are simultaneously the worlds largest importer of energy and more importantly food. That’s in addition to seeing how your Russian derived tech systems cope when dealing with western weapons.


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[BashiChuni]

so if they depend on western assistance who do you think they will turn to for help? hmmmmmmmmmm

look i hope you guys are right i really do, but based on the foreign policy of the united states post WWII i'm not holding my breath.

ukraine isn't worth starting WW3.

[Lawman]

so if they depend on western assistance who do you think they will turn to for help? hmmmmmmmmmm
look i hope you guys are right i really do, but based on the foreign policy of the united states post WWII i'm not holding my breath.
ukraine isn't worth starting WW3.

See now you’re back to being ignorant or at the very least obtuse.

“Who will they turn to….”

What the hell is that even supposed to mean. If your assertion is they need the west to give them long term sustainment of their economy then that points to the effectiveness of sanctions as a tool of foreign policy. If you are trying to assert that the Chinese will simply step in and laterally equal western tech and expertise or economic consumption you are grossly ignorant of the reality here. Simply put the Chinese can’t do that.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/11/business/china-russia-ukraine-sanctions-economy.html

https://www.cfr.org/in-brief/china-russia-war-ukraine-taiwan-putin-xi

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[BashiChuni]

can we quit the name calling? be better than what you're typing out.

they'll turn to the Chinese. and the Chinese will benefit from buying Russian energy at a discount. keep underestimating your enemies!

[Lawman]

can we quit the name calling? be better than what you're typing out.
they'll turn to the Chinese. and the Chinese will benefit from buying Russian energy at a discount. keep underestimating your enemies!

If you doubled not just the Chinese, but entire Asian consumption of Russian petroleum exports tomorrow it wouldn’t equal half the loss of their European markets.

On top of that they don’t have the capacity to move that same scale of oil into China and wouldn’t even if every proposed pipeline was open (only 1 currently runs out of the Siberian fields). They have to make up all the difference of intake largely in sea transport of oil. Goes back to the whole insurance and financial capital problem.

No simply “turning to the Chinese” isn’t an economically viable solution, neither are the Chinese capable of supporting them with the same level of technical expertise at the scale they need to keep their industry afloat. China makes tech at volume with largely stolen Intellectual property, not at quality. There is a reason the Siberian oil explorations dropped off a cliff after the 2014 invasion of Crimea, and there wasn’t some state run Chinese energy company just waiting in the wings to swing in and gobble up the excess.

And that doesn’t even touch that whole worlds largest importer of food problem, which is an issue if you’re using excess capital to prop up a neighboring power at the same time your industrial labor costs skyrocket and your internal demographics collapse.

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[BashiChuni]

all of what you just typed out may well be correct

to me that's just cornering the wild animal(s) into the corner...both russia and china

proceed with caution...

nation states do desperate things when their economy/resources are threatened. especially nuclear armed ones...a fact many of you take lightly and dismiss

Edited March 8, 2023 by BashiChuni

[Lord Ratner]

10 minutes ago, BashiChuni said:

nation states do desperate things when their economy/resources are threatened. especially nuclear armed ones...a fact many of you take lightly and dismiss

Can you give one example of a nuclear armed country getting desperate and using nukes?

 

I can think of an example where a Russian speaking empire, armed to the gills with nukes, went through an economic collapse and didn't nuke anyone.

 

And of course doesn't rule out of the alternative, but you just made a declarative statement about what desperate, nuclear armed nations do, based on nothing at all.

[Lawman]

all of what you just typed out may well be correct
to me that's just cornering the wild animal(s) into the corner...both russia and china
proceed with caution...
nation states do desperate things when their economy/resources are threatened. especially nuclear armed ones...a fact many of you take lightly and dismiss

“May be”

F it man you’ve been provided no shortage of people and sources demonstrating yes what I’m saying is in fact correct.

https://www.npr.org/2022/04/15/1093121762/russias-oil-drilling-plans-may-be-in-jeopardy-without-the-wests-support

We know what dollar amounts and total volumes that move where because it’s a global financial market. There isn’t some mystery about intake in Europe vs intake in Asia or the fact that the infrastructure just isn’t there. Again these weren’t some Soviet era state secret industries, Shell and Exxon were the ones doing the work for them.


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[BashiChuni]

i can give an example of WWI starting from a regional conflict

Japan starting WWII in search of natural resources

i guess we are about to see what two nuclear armed countries will do when pushed into a corner. lot of tough guy talk coming from you guys

[BashiChuni]

1 minute ago, Lawman said:

“May be”

F it man you’ve been provided no shortage of people and sources demonstrating yes what I’m saying is in fact correct.

https://www.npr.org/2022/04/15/1093121762/russias-oil-drilling-plans-may-be-in-jeopardy-without-the-wests-support

We know what dollar amounts move where because it’s a global financial market. There isn’t some mystery about intake in Europe vs intake in Asia or the fact that the infrastructure just isn’t there. Again these weren’t some Soviet era state secret industries, Shell and Exxon were the ones doing the work for them.


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holy fuck the irony....FROM THE LINK YOU JUST POSTED:

"Russia's oil drilling plans may be in jeopardy without the West's support"

 

so yes....MAY BE

[Lawman]

holy the irony....FROM THE LINK YOU JUST POSTED:
"Russia's oil drilling plans may be in jeopardy without the West's support"
 
so yes....MAY BE

That article was from April of last year.

Do we need to get you a Calendar for when and what sanctions ramped up and how?

Here’s one from January since time appears to be an abstract concept for you
https://thehill.com/policy/equilibrium-sustainability/3808910-european-oil-sanctions-costing-russia-172-million-per-day-report-says/amp/

There are plans to push that as high as 500 million a day in losses. But simultaneous we need more supply output from OPEC or we can upend more fragile economies currently on our side. Having a relatively mild winter in Europe doesn’t hurt and coming into the warmer season sees renewed ability by the Euro sector to keep demand lower.

[BashiChuni]

you know i'll tell ya....the arrogance coming from this officer corps is stunning

we took the 'L' in iraq and afg, but sure let's talk tough to russia and china. you guys wanting to stick our nose in a situation with no clear resolution other than escalation and world war.

totally foolish. and not in the interest of the united states.

[BashiChuni]

19 minutes ago, Lawman said:

That article was from April of last year.

Do we need to get you a Calendar for when and what sanctions ramped up and how?

Here’s one from January since time appears to be an abstract concept for you
https://thehill.com/policy/equilibrium-sustainability/3808910-european-oil-sanctions-costing-russia-172-million-per-day-report-says/amp/

There are plans to push that as high as 500 million a day in losses. But simultaneous we need more supply output from OPEC or we can upend more fragile economies currently on our side. Having a relatively mild winter in Europe doesn’t hurt and coming into the warmer season sees renewed ability by the Euro sector to keep demand lower.

"The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday that the forthcoming penalties on refined products could take a significant economic toll on Moscow"

i'm seeing a lot of "could" and "may" in these articles tough guy

[Lawman]

"The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday that the forthcoming penalties on refined products could take a significant economic toll on Moscow"
i'm seeing a lot of "could" and "may" in these articles tough guy

Well you’re definitively predicting a nuclear war if we continue doing what hasn’t produced one in the year it’s been going on. Or that the Chinese will save them despite seeming to be woefully unaware of all the problems they are facing in the near and far term.

And now you want to make this some Os vs Es nonsense because what? I’m a W anyway, so I’d call out stupidity regardless of it’s rank.


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[Lord Ratner]

1 hour ago, BashiChuni said:

a situation with no clear resolution other than escalation and world war.

Or, you know, Russia going back to their country. That would be pretty clear, and much better for Russia than either escalation or nuclear war.

 

 

[ViperMan]

6 hours ago, BashiChuni said:

what if russia wins?

Do you sincerely think this war would still be raging if Russia could win? Like, for real? Dude, come on. No. This "war" is now about Putin's pride and him being able to save face. Russia ain't winning shit.

Flip the script. 1991. It's taken us a year and a month and we're still not all the way to Baghdad. We've lost a 100,000 troops. Untold more have been maimed. Would you still think our victory was right around the corner if the shoe was on the other foot? It sounds like you would be quite the cheer leader. Victory is right around the corner!

Get real. Putin has lost. I mean holy shit, it hasn't even devolved into a state of insurgency yet. Putin doesn't have a guaranteed victory. It is far more likely that this war ends in a stalemate ala the Korean War.

[Lawman]

Do you sincerely think this war would still be raging if Russia could win? Like, for real? Dude, come on. No. This "war" is now about Putin's pride and him being able to save face. Russia ain't winning shit.
Flip the script. 1991. It's taken us a year and a month and we're still not all the way to Baghdad. We've lost a 100,000 troops. Untold more have been maimed. Would you still think our victory was right around the corner if the shoe was on the other foot? It sounds like you would be quite the cheer leader. Victory is right around the corner!
Get real. Putin has lost. I mean holy shit, it hasn't even devolved into a state of insurgency yet. Putin doesn't have a guaranteed victory. It is far more likely that this war ends in a stalemate ala the Korean War.

I mean there is in fact a way the Russians can win this, and that’s the west pulling back it’s industrial capacity and economic support for the Ukrainians and making this a simple attritional arithmetic.

At that point it’s simply Ukrainian casualties and ammo consumption vs Russian casualties and ammo consumption and last man standing wins. That is still a fight that as bloody as it would go the Russians are more than willing to take as a “win.” This is a society comfortable with casualties to accomplish a means in a way we in the west simply can’t fathom. Same as a 27 million casualty victory sounds insane to us, but they celebrate it in their text books. They also leave out all the ways they were economically propped up to win the great patriotic war by our economic capacity. At one point the Russians were “winning” against the Wehrmacht… in a 6 to 1 exchange in casualties against them.

The Western powers absolutely cannot afford to succumb to the isolation and apathy preached by some and back off on the support because it’s the one thing the Russian don’t have in abundance and can’t simply muscle over. The worst thing going on now is the fight over Bakhmut is sapping combat power the Ukrainians could be using come spring to launch more offensives. The Russians know this which is why they are happy to lob bullet sponges in the form of their prison conscripts because what does that cost them compared to its effect of soaking up useful Ukrainian combat power. Even still Crimea is extremely vulnerable right now in the long term because they are slowly being cut off from logistics. The rail road bridge is gone and the Uke’s now have the ability to range into the region with long range precision fires so the Russians can’t mass logistics even if they had trains they could run forward. If Crimea falls into disarray that could be the negotiation token Zelensky is waiting for to call for a negotiated withdrawal of Russian troops.


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[BashiChuni]

1 hour ago, ViperMan said:

Do you sincerely think this war would still be raging if Russia could win? Like, for real? Dude, come on. No. This "war" is now about Putin's pride and him being able to save face. Russia ain't winning shit.

Flip the script. 1991. It's taken us a year and a month and we're still not all the way to Baghdad. We've lost a 100,000 troops. Untold more have been maimed. Would you still think our victory was right around the corner if the shoe was on the other foot? It sounds like you would be quite the cheer leader. Victory is right around the corner!

Get real. Putin has lost. I mean holy shit, it hasn't even devolved into a state of insurgency yet. Putin doesn't have a guaranteed victory. It is far more likely that this war ends in a stalemate ala the Korean War.

Ok