Run-up to WW3

[last_caress]

Well, 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.

I think the calculus is:

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.

[Senseye]

I've been learning a little bit more about the situation, and am starting to see why Putin may be more convinced he can get away with this.

Russia has been building up it's financial reserves and has detached itself from much of western currencies and financial systems. Plus China will support them as much as possible.

Biden and Germany might not have the stomach to suffer the economic costs of sanctions on the home front. Germany especially will suffer without the new Nordstream 2 pipeline and if Ukrainian pipelines get interrupted as well, it might be tough times (read expensive) on the energy front in Western Europe (which will affect global energy prices as well). That rarely plays well to voters. I understand Germany is planning to phase out nuclear energy by end of 2022. Their timing couldn't be worse, and I am sure Putin is aware. Even higher gas prices in the US won't do Biden's already dismal approval ratings any good.

As you mention, if Putin sycophant Trump gets back into power, goodbye to any US sanctions, so Russian can probably last two years under whatever comes to pass.

For now, I will wait and see if Biden's tough talk (well, his teleprompter's tough talk) amounts to anything sanction wise. Like you, I see no one sending in boots on the ground.

[Madrigal]

Yeah, so I'm pissed the analysts were wrong and Biden was right. This was supposed to be the most harebrained option.

Ukraine is basically a nazi playground with a fool for a president who got elected because he played a president on Netflix. Putin using the nazis as an excuse to go after Ukraine's resources and become a force to be reckoned with by the West (after decades of being underestimated as "just a big gas station") is the kind of propaganda nazis in Europe actually need to go mainstream. They're training civilians to fight big bad Russia while the liberal West sits around being dismayed and very disappointed.

I'm interested in what will happen short term though, besides prices shooting up in Europe.

[Catoptric]

I've already predicted:

The nuclear fallout will make New Zealand the only habitable location on earth, and all the Q-Anon Trump supporters will gather in the remote mountains of New Zealand's South Island, and repopulate the globe once fallout settles.

Don't believe me (ye have little faith!)

https://goo.gl/maps/L1fhYBxPrsxmGpQ76 (Trump mural behind the bar in a recent 2021 image)
https://goo.gl/maps/5iYeRSHVcdBa4F7x6 (Rebel flag. . .)
https://goo.gl/maps/ANQDLjFjeAiNwCj1A (Trump, keep America Great)

The future is wop wops. . .

[Madrigal]

Someone has been sending me FB memes through WhatsApp about how there's no attack underway in Ukraine. People really need to gtf off FB.

[aether]

The propaganda war has started in full force.

[Madrigal]

Wordle wasted a chance to use the word 'peace' tonight.

[aether]

Another theater of war that could open up is Latin America…Nicaragua, Venezuela and Cuba allies of Putin. Especially Nicaragua!

[Roger Mexico]

Direct military action by anyone in NATO is presumably off the table (I would hope so, anyway) for obvious nuclear reasons.

Germany is apparently cancelling the Nordstream thing. Biden is talking about sanctions in press conferences, but it will take a few more days before we know the specifics of what that's going to mean in practice. We've been sending expensive missiles and shit to the Ukrainian army for a while now already, and that will presumably continue.

That's about all that can be done.


I don't understand what Putin is thinking here. It'll play well among his domestic supporters in the short term, but if the war turns into a dragged out shitshow (which seems fairly likely) it could turn into something that wrecks his career and legacy a few years from now.


I mean, this is just a guess. I'm certainly no expert on Russian politics, but this is what happened to Bush. (60-ish percent of the country spooged in their pants over how awesome he was for the first few weeks of Operation Iraqi Liberty, but then somewhere around 2005 most of these people suddenly realized that the many people calling it a bad idea in 2002 had been right, and got really, really mad at Bush for "tricking" them.)


The thing about not wanting NATO right on Russia's borders is a real issue, and has been since long before Putin came along--but the idea that starting an actual war over it will make Russia more secure seems utterly absurd.

[aether]

The slavs really hate each other like the Mexicans hate each other, it’s sad.