Republicans blocking aid for Ukraine ? About time! Of course they probably want to redirect funds to Taiwan.
Biden administration was repeatedly warning Ukraine that Russia was about to invade. Zelensky did not take it seriously. That is why Russia took so much territory in the beginning. Zelensky recovered but he let his hope against war overide very accurate US intelligence he was given which should have lead to Ukraine mobilization much earlier.
2023 Index of Military Strength Army: “Marginal” Air Force: “Weak” Navy: “Weak” Executive Summary of the 2023 Index of U.S. Military Strength
If the US is weak, given those criteria, every other force on either would be below the bottom of the scale. Essentially if you read the index, it is assessing how ready the US would be to fight China and Russia AT THE SAME TIME, across the globe. So this score comes to no surprise from those of us who have been paying attention.
I think its worse than that: it appears to assume that we fight China and Russia at the same time and ALONE, with no allies to help us.
I don't think Europe's economic problems will be as bad as 2008-2010, and it will not last nearly as long. They will bounce back within a year, in my opinion.
Ukraine now has a decisive advantage over Russia in one critical aspect of the war: artillery. Russia was firing 10X as much artillery shells as Ukraine in summer, but now Ukraine is firing an equal number of shells. And the shells they are firing are more accurate, because they have western hardware to fire them. With Western Weapons, Ukraine Is Turning the Tables in an Artillery War
That is simply not true. The Zelensky Administration was taking it very seriously. The preparedness measures they were taking are obvious in retrospect, especially given the planning and competence that clearly went into repelling the Russian first strike. Don’t confuse the air of calm that Zelensky was demonstrating with nonchalance. His intent was to keep a general panic from occurring that would choke the roads even before the war started. You will note that Russian efforts to destroy the Ukrainian Air Force on the ground in the opening moments failed. That isn’t a coincidence. How quickly the Ukrainian legislature passed the measure to conscript all able-bodied males is telling as well; it was ready to go. The quick capture of ground by Russian forces seems to have occurred mostly because Ukraine, like the U.S. and the rest of the world, overestimated Russian tactical and logistical prowess. They started out with an operational design intended to trade space for time and maximize Russian casualties. Note what happened almost the moment the Ukrainians switched to a defensive strategy centered around holding key terrain. The Russian offensives stopped flat in their tracks, requiring a change of operational design of their own. Maybe Zelensky should have gone about some things differently. That’s easy to say in retrospect. On the whole, though, even given Russian general incompetence, I think the Ukrainian government has handled this situation about as well as anyone could have given the best information available. If we want to start challenging decision making after the fact, our government has quite a bit more to answer for. That is not only in terms of what they knew and when they knew it but also why they failed to act in any meaningful way apart from hoping the Russians would not go through with it. And that doesn’t even take into account the jaw-dropping lack of action on our part since the war started.
What causes armies to lose their will to fight? 1. They lose faith in their cause. Check. Russian cause? Get rid of Nazis in Ukraine. With military from a country that has more Nazis than Ukraine. I can't imagine what Russian troops think the cause actually is, but it is certainly not getting rid of Nazis. 2. They lose faith in their leaders. Check. Russia's top leader? Vlad Putin, or little Hitler if you like. Putin doesn't know what he's doing, and neither do Russia's top generals. The best plan they can come up with is drafting anyone with a pulse and putting them in as cannon fodder, and then putting people behind them with orders to shoot anyone who retreats. 3. They lose the backing of the country. Check. The Russian people do not want to be in this war, and they do not want to send their friends and family into the war zone. Hundreds of thousands have escaped from the country. The protests have not gotten too mainstream yet, due to intimidation of secret (and not-so-secret) police. What causes armies to lose the will to fight? Here's what history tells us -- and what Putin may soon find out | CNN
I'm actually quite okay with most of how the Biden administration has handled this crisis. They called it out early enough to evacuate Americans, give Ukraine enough time to brace for invasion and have done just enough not to get American troops directly involved in the conflict. If you think American boots should be on the ground or that America/NATO should be taking part in a no-fly, I'd like to know how and why. Even if Kyiv falls, it's of minor consequence to Washington. After all, Ukraine has had several pro-Moscow leaders since the break-up. Ukraine is a nice buffer state for the West, but it is not the end all, be all. I don't see the rationale for risking a larger-scale conflict with Russia over Ukraine.
There were lots of deterrence measures, short of directly engaging Russia, left on the table both before and since the war has started. I’ve stated several examples on here several times. I don’t have a problem with taking wise measures not to engage the Russians directly and possibly ignite general war. That’s reasonable to me. What is not reasonable to me is telegraphing to the Russians that we will bend over forwards to get out of their way and that there is no circumstance in which we will intervene. For the love of God, we should have at least made it seem like it was possible and give them second thoughts. We also did not start actually warning Ukraine until long after the indicators were building of Russian intentions. I think it was not until we started tracking the movement of medical supplies to the invasion staging points (maybe January?) that we were not telling ourselves, NATO, and Ukraine not to worry, it was all posturing.
Interesting points, for sure. I don’t want to make this about Trump, but do you think he would have handled the invasion differently? I still find it fascinating that Putin did nothing on Ukraine during Trump’s presidency after invading Crimea and the Donbas when Biden was Obama’s point man in 2014. Then he invades when Biden returns to office. I do think Biden has signaled he won’t get in Russia’s way with American troops, but at the same time, the sanctions are about as steep as they could be and the weapons flow into Ukraine has been significant. I’m not sure empty threats would have helped us.
Interesting piece from Shane Gustafson about the deficient state of Russian microelectronics (his word, not mine) industry and manufacturing, and how that is and is not impacted by Western sanctions in prosecuting the war One of the most eye-opening results of the Ukrainian war has been the revelation of the role of foreign electronics in Russian weaponry. Several Western think tanks, notably the UK’s Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), working together with the Ukrainian military, have examined thousands of captured or downed Russian weapons. The findings are startling: every single one contains microelectronic components from leading Western and Asian firms, many of them supplied since the imposition of sanctions following Russia’s occupation of Crimea in 2014. While it is too early to tell whether the same pattern has continued since the February invasion, the study provides dramatic evidence of the long-standing Russian dependence on foreign microelectronics. 22 nanometers turns out to be a crucial Rubicon. Crossing it requires a completely new design concept—3-dimensional chips (called “FinFET”), coupled with “extreme ultraviolet” photolithography equipment, plus a new manufacturing “fab” to match. TSMC, thanks to massive investment starting a decade ago, successfully crossed the 22-nanometer divide, with Samsung right behind, to reach today’s 2- and 3-nanometer chips. This is the cutting-edge technology that will enable the fifth generation of applications, known as “5G.” But without licenses to these new processes, and with no access to the “fabs” that will produce them, the Russians are stuck. “Intel Inside”? In Russia, the Chips are Down
I don’t know that there are any mpregnable militaries in the world. But there are reasons a plenty for the US to be more circumspect about throwing around its weight in the world. And the analysis makes mention that the US hasn’t had to face a peer competitor since WWII. And even then it had considerable help. A shortcoming of the study: the US gets its highest scores in alliances. But that ignores the way in which Russia is picking up alliances at a rapid clip.
Your second point first. You are correct that empty threats would have meant nothing. We should have made no overt threat at all. Once Russian intentions were clear, we should have (we still need to do this by the way) reinforced Eastern Europe with three heavy divisions (not half of a light division), an expeditionary Air Force, and put warships in the Black and Baltic Seas. When Russia demanded our intentions, we give the diplomatic version of whatever a shrug is and say, “Your troop buildups alarm us. No need to worry about us if we have no reason to worry about you.” Even if Russia had still gone through with it, they would have had to keep an enormous reserve out of action to watch over our intentions. Instead of flatly denying we would intervene under any circumstances (which Putin fairly interpreted as a green light), we should have been more ambiguous: “We don’t intend to intervene at this time” or “We hope that does not become necessary.” On the first point, I have no idea what Trump would have or would not have done. That man does not seem to even understand his own mind, so anyone who thinks that they do know is probably lying to themself. I happen to believe that the Afghanistan debacle would not have happened if Trump had remained President, but that is because I had insight into the contingency designed under Trump (which we pointedly did not follow last year) in the event that the Taliban did not keep the negotiated peace. That is outside the scope of this discussion except inasmuch as our strategic defeat in Afghanistan emboldened Putin, which is arguable to an extent. I can tell you this, though. For all of Trump’s leadership and personal flaws, I never believed he was in Putin’s pocket. Not because I would put anything past that man, but if one looks beyond the dumb stuff he would say (admittedly difficult to do) too many of the actions of his administration ran at cross-purposes to Putin’s desires. I would say this, though. If Trump had won the re-election, then had done the following: - Sat on information in the fall of 2021 of the troop buildup on the Don and in Belarus until one month before the invasion. - Delayed three arms shipments between August 2021 and January 2022 only to please Putin - Stopped acting as an obstacle to Nordstream 2 only to please Putin - Failed to not only to reinforce Eastern Europe as described above but also pulled U.S. forces back to reassure Putin - Acted as an obstacle to emergency arms shipments from NATO allies until pressured to stand aside by members of his own party - Continued to buy Russian hydrocarbons until forced to stop by members of his own party - Offered to evacuate the Ukrainian President from his capital and undermine (intentionally or not) Ukrainian confidence in its ability to defend itself - Categorically denied the possibility of intervention and squashed NATO members who publicly argued for its consideration - Failed to mobilize the economy for a long war nearly nine months into the conflict - Failed to remove a National Security Advisor who had repeatedly blundered and given only counsel that seemed to be in Putin’s interest Then I would have to reluctantly agree with those who had said Trump was in Putin’s pocket. I say that not to imply that President Biden is (I don’t think that at all; I think his problem is failure to understand strategic priorities), but to reiterate my growing disappointment in the half-ass actions of this administration to defeat Russia before it learns how to turn this war around.
Side note: looks like Lula is going to squeak out the Brazil election over Bolsonaro. Even under Bolsonaro Brazil was charting its own path with regards to Russia. Lula hates the US a hundred times more than Bolsonaro does.
Tragically, more tense of thousands of dead Ukrainians. And it could have been entirely prevented if the US had accepted that other nations are allowed to have a point of view.
