I think the calculus is:Senseye wrote: ↑Tue Feb 22, 2022 8:20 amWell, you win some, you lose some.
I am still completely baffled about what Putin hopes to gain from all this. Assuming the EU and/or Biden gains a spine and place some serious economic sanctions on Russia post invasion, that would have to cause Russian some serious pain. Even if they successfully annex the so called disputed regions, it seems hardly worth the effort.
Surely Russian can't conquer and then occupy the entire Ukraine. They couldn't even handle Afghanistan. Also, I assume the EU would kick up a fuss over that, even if Ukraine is not a NATO member.
I'm clearly no expert on the regional politics though.
No one is putting boots on the ground for Ukraine.
Any US backed sanctions have a good chance of disappearing in two years on the 50+% chance he manipulate Trump or another soviet republican bootlicker into the presidency.
I think I saw that they have a substantial cash reserve at the moment, so that can hold them over until the above.
NATO has gotten soft so distant from the cold war.
He can escalate just below the threshold of a unified response, slowly turning up to a boil, ratcheting up the hybrid warfare, which we will be slow to respond to due to novelty.
As a dictator, he has much less to worry about in terms of public opinion/appetite for conflict.
We are seeing the culmination and purpose of the hybrid warfare of the past 10 years (Crimea, Brexit, Trump) etc., a fertile landscape for open aggression. Divide and conquer.
I still believe he is a rational actor so MAD still holds. While I definitely endorse a reasoned response, I don't know why everyone is quaking in their boots. We all have lots of nukes. Russia has a GDP around that of New York. The US economy alone is ~15x the size, conventionally we are better equipped, trained, have better tech and I'd wager on par or better cyber-wise. That's not counting our allies which also boast similar par or overmatch. They should be afraid of us. We are still the 800 lb. gorilla.
I think the danger here is letting him escalate and responding anemically measured as expected. I think we need to go hard with the sanctions, make it hurt now and offer to reduce them with compliance. I advocate making this as painful as possible, supplying arms/support just short of direct conflict unless he attacks NATO. Then we go Al Capone. However I think he is rational enough to know that would galvanize the current herd of cats so think he's unlikely to do so as long as we have an adult as US president. I think this will shake out in the near future with him holding a few eastern regions, hopefully turning out like Afghanistan eventually and bleeding them into collapse.
We should seize this opportunity to strangle them into non-existence statewise as I don't believe they will ever play nice.