How Does the War in Ukraine End?

originally posted by: BedevereTheWise

The sanctions certainly do have an effect on the Russian economy.

What's not clear is the political effect within Russia. Are ordinary russians going to continue to accept declining living standards, we don't really know how secure Putins grip on power really is.

They have been removed from the world market now. Ruble has lost about 50% of its value and isn't stopping anytime soon. Even China has stopped accepting the Ruble, so it is a dead currency like it was under USSR.

originally posted by: Vermilion

ATTEMPTED ASSASSINATION OF TUCKER CARLSON: A man has just been arrested in Moscow, accused of being paid by Ukrainian intelligence to plant an explosive device on Tucker Carlson's vehicle and assassinate the prominent American journalist while he was there to interview Putin.
twitter.com...
Simon was a White House journalist.
Do you think this speeds things up one way or the other?

No, what is speeding thing up is certain elections in the US and the UK because the ones that poked the bear and the ones keeping the fire stoked are the ones in power now and if the opposition get into power it will show the complete duplicitousness of the now ruling parties. So they have a get out of jail card to get a peace deal before the elections.

originally posted by: crayzeed

originally posted by: Vermilion

ATTEMPTED ASSASSINATION OF TUCKER CARLSON: A man has just been arrested in Moscow, accused of being paid by Ukrainian intelligence to plant an explosive device on Tucker Carlson's vehicle and assassinate the prominent American journalist while he was there to interview Putin.
twitter.com...
Simon was a White House journalist.
Do you think this speeds things up one way or the other?

No, what is speeding thing up is certain elections in the US and the UK because the ones that poked the bear and the ones keeping the fire stoked are the ones in power now and if the opposition get into power it will show the complete duplicitousness of the now ruling parties. So they have a get out of jail card to get a peace deal before the elections.

I don’t think they can stop their greed.
They need those Ukraine grift dollars.
What better way to get that money than Ukraine trying to frame Russia for killing an American journalist?

a reply to: YourFaceAgain

With a Mushroom Cloud Over Kiev .

Badly?

For everyone?

originally posted by: Xtrozero

until we sanction China...

I know this is only one part of your post and I'm sorry to nitpick, but I dunno if that's the win some people think it is. There's a reason Trump never went all-in on his sanctions war with China. Because China wins that.

But their economy is dependent on all the cheap crap we buy from them, right?

Yeah, but like I said earlier in the thread, authoritarian governments take longer to respond to pressure from their populace. If we got into a full-blown sanctions and trade war with China, the US economy isn't gonna escape unscathed. Lots of businesses and what little manufacturing we do here are dependent on cheap supplies from China. And our public are addicted to cheap bobbles from China.

If that flow all of a sudden shuts off, suddenly we're losing jobs in the businesses that will be affected by it, AND people can't get their cheap goods and have to buy more expensive stuff made here or in Europe.

The ripples from that are gonna threaten an American president and Congress's reelection chances a lot faster than the Chinese economic downturn is gonna threaten Xi's hold on power over there.

The Chinese people also have another advantage that we used to have and no longer do, thanks to the Left: National pride.

(Worth noting that if people held on to the anger and realization they had for the 2 weeks in early 2020 when people realized how stupid it was that we were so dependent on China, and we actually went full-steam ahead on a reshoring of a lot of our manufacturing in the last 3 years, we might be better able to withstand such a sanctions and trade war with China.)

originally posted by: Zanti Misfit
a reply to: YourFaceAgain

With a Mushroom Cloud Over Kiev .

I don’t think Putin would do it, and it would be an incredibly far stretch even the biggest vodka drinking hardliner would go that far.

Could you imagine the global backlash of a country getting nuked after fighting a defensive war?

I’m not even sure we should have nuked Japan… but at least they attacked us first.

Ultimately, (and I'm not being glib, though it might seem so), It will end when it ends.

Aiding and assisting as USA has done already fuels a much bigger fire and adds a much higher level of risk, for no real gain to us. It's sad, but, like, it'll go the way it goes. If they lose they lose.

With that said, this administration will almost certainly get their way as they usually do,
and they want to send a lot more aid to Ukraine and Israel.

In all probability, it will become a very very deep money hole and TPTB will want to incite to keep those conflicts going as long as possible to maximize their profits.

Don't make the mistake of believing your leaders actually want wars to end.
They really don't.
If they did, they'd stop helping both sides of most conflicts, and try to keep everyone fighting with sticks and stones to limit bloodshed.

originally posted by: CriticalStinker

originally posted by: Zanti Misfit
a reply to: YourFaceAgain

With a Mushroom Cloud Over Kiev .

I don’t think Putin would do it, and it would be an incredibly far stretch even the biggest vodka drinking hardliner would go that far.

Could you imagine the global backlash of a country getting nuked after fighting a defensive war?

I talked about this in the other thread I linked to in my OP, the one I wrote in 2022. If the official narrative that Putin has gone mad and is determined to restore the Soviet empire and if this fails he's gonna be toppled (which means he'd be killed) then he would've been dropping nukes already, at least tactical nuclear weapons.

The official narrative is bull#. I may not know what the real truth is for sure, I just know what we're being sold isn't the truth. If it was it'd be the first war that the public was kept in the loop on the truth. We usually don't learn what was really going on until years later.

a reply to: YourFaceAgain

To be fair, that’s what people thought would happen if the USSR fell.

Suddenly, people we were told were as bad as Nazis showed their humanity.

I always try to refrain from hyperbole, I don’t see Putin in the same light as Hitler. I don’t think he would do such a thing, nor do I think most people assuming the role would. They know they’d either wipe out humanity or deprive them of any hope in the near future.

That’s not to say I think what they’re doing is right. Hell I wouldn’t even say us using Ukraine as a proxy is “right”.

It’s all nuanced and messy.

But I do wonder what Russia would have done next if they flipped Ukraine in a couple of weeks like they thought. It could have emboldened them to do more (I doubt towards NATO countries, but it still could have put the world in a completely different level of fear).

originally posted by: YourFaceAgain

originally posted by: Xtrozero

until we sanction China...

I know this is only one part of your post and I'm sorry to nitpick, but I dunno if that's the win some people think it is. There's a reason Trump never went all-in on his sanctions war with China. Because China wins that.

But their economy is dependent on all the cheap crap we buy from them, right?

Yeah, but like I said earlier in the thread, authoritarian governments take longer to respond to pressure from their populace. If we got into a full-blown sanctions and trade war with China, the US economy isn't gonna escape unscathed. Lots of businesses and what little manufacturing we do here are dependent on cheap supplies from China. And our public are addicted to cheap bobbles from China.

If that flow all of a sudden shuts off, suddenly we're losing jobs in the businesses that will be affected by it, AND people can't get their cheap goods and have to buy more expensive stuff made here or in Europe.

The ripples from that are gonna threaten an American president and Congress's reelection chances a lot faster than the Chinese economic downturn is gonna threaten Xi's hold on power over there.

I don't know how old you are but Japan in the 70s was China, then Korea was China, and then it moved on to China. That move was based on cost and as the cost in a once cheap marketplace reaches a level then the market looks for the next China to go to. China has reached that level where they are no longer the cheap market, especially to ship everything halfway around the world. China has also been very hard on foreign companies and most have left and their economy is in shambles.

Recently Mexico has passed China in exports to the US, and we learned a good lesson during the pandemic that we can't rely on China just as the EU has 100% moved away from Russian energy so we will move away from China for economic, security, and locational reasons.

China is also backing away from Russia too as they have big concerns with US sanctions if they stay connected too much.
But the big one is over 50 major manufacturing companies have pulled out of China and no new ones are moving in.

This is from Forbes

"Three decades ago, U.S. producers began manufacturing and sourcing in China for one reason: costs. The trade war brought a second dimension more fully into the equation―risk―as tariffs and the threat of disrupted China imports prompted companies to weigh surety of supply more fully alongside costs. COVID-19 brings a third dimension more fully into the mix­, and arguably to the fore: resilience―the ability to foresee and adapt to unforeseen systemic shocks,"

The main beneficiaries of this are the smaller Southeast Asian nations, led by Vietnam. And thanks to the passing of the U.S. Mexico Canada Agreement, Mexico, for all its problems with drug cartels, has become a favorite spot for sourcing.

This is not new either, back in 2020 80 million Chinese came to Work to find the doors locked. It is worse today as they came off of small farms 30 years ago to prosper and those farms are gone so they have nowhere to go, and no work. China is in a world of hurt without the US doing a damn thing, their real estate market collapsed too, and upwards of 20 trillion is gone. Their stock market is also dying today.

originally posted by: Zanti Misfit

With a Mushroom Cloud Over Kiev .

I think Putin knows if he did that he is dead.

a reply to: CriticalStinker

I agree it's much more nuanced than most people realize, as evidenced by the simplistic 8th grade level comments I got earlier in the thread.

In international relations there's something called the Rational Actor model. People often mistake it for meaning what they would consider rational, so they see a leader do something they disagree with and say that leader is no longer a rational actor or has "gone crazy" in common language. This weirdly includes some analysts and commentators whose literal job it is to understand these things... they're the people who got Cs in class and went on to graduate with that degree without even understanding some of the most basic concepts of the field because college has been so dumbed down. But I bet they wrote great essays about white supremacism.

In reality, a rational actor is a leader who makes decisions based on their own calculus in what they think are their own best interests. Obviously those decisions, that calculus, and those self interests may not always align with what Western leaders think is rational. That doesn't make the leader in question irrational.

And even when the leader makes a decision that decidedly works out against them, they may still be a rational actor. A good example is Saddam invading Kuwait. He didn't do that and wind up getting his militaryy decimated by the coalition because he was crazy. He made a calculation that the West probably wouldn't do anything to respond except with sanctions. (That is almost what happened. If it wasn't for Thatcher, he may have gotten away with it. She really riled up Bush to take military action, and once the US and UK were on board suddenly the rest of the West found their balls.) He was wrong, not crazy. If he was crazy, he would've used chemical weapons against the coalition, which probably would've resulted in a full-on coalition invasion and conquering of Iraq in 1991. But he was still a rational actor and understood that, so he refrained from doing that and held onto power for another 12 years.

The same applies here. While Putin has made mistakes, all signs are that he's still a rational actor, so it's safe to conclude he's not gonna be popping nukes anytime soon unless provoked with an existential threat. Losing the war in Ukraine isn't an existential threat. He's not gonna use nukes over it.

a reply to: YourFaceAgain

What we don't know is how accurate or rational the information being given to Putin is.

If the information he is given is inaccurate or fabricated then his decisions will reflect that.

How far he is willing to go is based on the perceived threat, not the real one

originally posted by: BedevereTheWise
a reply to: YourFaceAgain

What we don't know is how accurate or rational the information being given to Putin is.

If the information he is given is inaccurate or fabricated then his decisions will reflect that.

How far he is willing to go is based on the perceived threat, not the real one

Of course there is that element. Although I don't think that's as huge a problem as people think, and here's why.

I remember early in the war people were insisting well maybe he invaded because his advisors just tell him what he wants to hear and they told him Russia was gonna clean house. Their argument was that if you don't tell a dictator what he wants to hear he might have you killed.

There's a serious flaw with that thinking. Compare these two scenarios.

Scenario A: You tell a dictator what he doesn't wanna hear, that his military isn't as strong as he thinks and/or his target country isn't gonna be receptive to his rule.

Scenario B: (This was what we were being told happen in the early weeks of the war.) You tell a dictator his military is gonna take said country in a week or two and the country's citizens will be thrilled to submit to his rule. As a result, the dictator launches an invasion that turns into a disaster for him, embarrasses him on the international stage, and seriously degrades his military, leaving him more vulnerable.

Scenario B is much more likely to get you killed. So while there may sometimes be incentives to give him bad intel, it's much more in the advisors' best interest to give him accurate intel and advice that helps him make rational decisions.