Can’t really do that. You’ll notice one thing the Allies did not do after WW-II was asset-stripping the occupied territories. Very much an historical anomaly; victors rarely are that restrained.
No, the Allies were not 100% rainbows & unicorns from 1945 to ~1955 when the former Axis countries were pretty well recovered politically & economically. But that was probably the high-water mark within all the recorded history of statecraft for wise and long-term enlightened self-interest applied for the collective human good.
One only needs to look at how the Soviets acted in their part of occupied Europe and how well that endeared them to the local populace and to their way of government.
So we have within the last century two examples of what to do and what not to do. Not difficult for a person to make the intellectual and honest choice. Hard for a batch of national governments of various capacities and temperaments to avoid the temptation to make the emotional and greedy corrupt choice.
Yes, the US used nuclear weapons. That is how the world learned how horrible they are. But it’s largely irrelevant for this discussion because it’s Ukraine that is at war with Russia, not the US.
Maybe if Ukraine had not given up their nuclear weapons they would not be facing invasion today.
I’ll suggest “we were going to” is a bit of an overstatement.
Yes, absolutely, it was one plan formally put forward by an influential member of the uppermost echelons of US power while the war was still in progress. It was also comprehensively not done when the time came. Smarter / cooler heads prevailed. Morgenthau’s clarion call for a counter pogrom / Holocaust against the German people was rejected.
In an alternate timeline the US may well have executed the Morgenthau plan instead of the Marshall Plan. But we didn’t. We didn’t even start to. Even the UK, which reasonably had far more reason to want to exact revenge, rather than mere defeat, upon Germany saw the Morgenthau Plan as the dastardly ravings of a racist nutbag.
I would suggest that Operation Paperclip would be a better example than the Morgenthau Plan…
In respect of the Ukraine War in general and this thread in particular, most Western commentators don’t seem to realise the degree of ethnic conflict driving the war, there are strong resemblances between this war and the Kosovo war.
This came close to a pogrom. It wasn’t just the occupying Nazi soldiers who were expelled, but ethnic Germans who had lived there for generations in some cases. Forced to leave with whatever they could carry and everything left behind was seized by the state. Karma’s a bitch!
Czechoslavakia had been hung out to dry from the start, so their anger and need for revenge is understandable.
One option for Russian reparation payments is simply to transfer all the Russian funds currently frozen in Western nations to rebuild Ukraine rather than return them to Russia. This will likely require legislation on a country-by-country basis, as well as possibly a UN resolution, but would be much more likely than any attempt to get money out of Russia itself.
I look at the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. It lasted from 1979-89. It ended primarily because the Soviet economy was beginning to collapse.
I expect a similar outcome in Ukraine. Russia’s economy will be a big factor in the decision to leave . It may be 5 years or 10 years. This war is more personal for Russia. They see Ukraine as an extension of Russia.
The question is who blinks first? Will NATO continue supplying Ukraine 5 years from now? Maybe Putin loses power and the next Russian leader ends the war?
That’s really the hardest question. The Russians can sustain a half-assed meatgrinder a la Chechnya or Afghanistan for a very long time. Not nearly the intensity of what they’re up to now, but just enough to be continuous vandalism to Ukraine and enough that if not countered at the point of contact, it will slowly roll forward across Ukrainian territory.
When will the West’s interest wane? Which other expensive problems, military or otherwise, will crop up in the next 5-10 years? Hurricanes, famines, earthquakes, pandemics, political upheaval, Islamic unrest, China, recession, AI, AGW, etc.???
Putin wins after a fashion if he creates a “frozen conflict” here. And some of the frozen conflicts out there warm up to rather slushy conflicts rather frequently.
I don’t see a ‘frozen’ conflict, because Ukraine can very inexpensively harass the Russians in the Donbas forever with drones. Russians are dying just trying to hold those areas. If the Russians declare the ‘special operation’ over and the Donbas to be theirs and announce that they are freezing in place and consolidating and aren’t taking more territory, it won’t matter. Ukrainians can simply fly drones over the Donbas all day and night long and kill any Russian soldier they see.
How do you hold territory in a world where the enemy can rain death down on you for a few bucks? Some of the drones they are using aren’t worth more than a couple of hundred dollars, dropping surplus grenades that exist in the millions. They can launch hundreds of sorties per day indefinitely and not even notice the cost.
Wars that end without a peace signing are bound to convert into wars of low-level attrition by drone, I think. I don’t know how Russia sustains that (or for that matter, any other aggressive country that tries to take and hold territory from another that has at least a reasonable technical base).
Ukraine might not have the military capability to drive Russia out of Crimea and the Donbas. But they can make it very, very expensive to stay there. And now that they are getting long range missiles from Britain, they can hit any Russian target in Ukraine, including Crimea.
How is it the Ukrainians can use cheap drones but the Russians can’t?
How is it that the Abkhazians, Chechnyans, Moldovans, and Transnistrians can’t, or at least haven’t been?
Even the cheap stuff costs money. You’re right that cheap drone harassing warfare is something new and cost effective.
But folks have been firing even cheaper harassing artillery at 2am now for about a hundred years without noticeably reducing attempted wars of conquest and without driving stalled invaders back to the status quo ante lines.
Why will it be expensive?
The only expense to Russia is losing soldiers. But that is totally irrelevant , because Russia is proud to kill its own soldiers. Their only purpose is to be canon fodder, or to get shot in the back by other Russian soldiers from the blocking brigades. .
.Russia can keep this war going for decades.
The West has already provided the maximum amount of aid they are willing to give, and much of that was given grudgingly.
Western support for Ukraine will fade within a year, and will disappear completely when Trump is re-elected two years from now…
Russia is winning this war now, and will continue to win for the next 10 years…
They won’t conquer Kiev, but they will destroy the Ukrainian economy…
Meanwhile. for the average Russian, life goes on as normal in Moscow.
I’m surprised defense contractors haven’t been lobbying harder for their arms to be used by Ukraine. It’s the best publicity and advertising possible. HIMARS has done wonders for its PR image.
Where are the Russian drones? Much of what Ukraine is using is more or less off the shelf. The Chinese - Russia’s “buddies” - make them. Why isn’t Russia using these? Why doesn’t Wagner use them?
Of course, we’re talking about a country that doesn’t supply adequate anything to their troops, be it guns, ammo, clothing, food, water, medicine…
The wildcard I see is Ukranian manpower and morale. Yes, I know they’re very fired-up and brave, as well as well-trained and well-equipped. But their pool of manpower is a lot smaller than Russia’s, and it’s also suffered losses as has the population. The equipment doesn’t matter much if there aren’t enough hands and hearts willing to operate it. This is why both sides are playing a grinding game in Bakhmut.
Western cheerleading media is never going to tell us how close the Ukranian armed forces and citizenry are to their point of exhaustion. I hope that point isn’t close at hand, but the truth is that the public has no way of knowing how close the portrayed reality is to the reality on the ground.
If Ukraine starts to regain territory, morale should absolutely soar. Nothing builds morale like success. And in my understanding, Ukraine hasn’t come close to exhausting the country’s fighting age manpower.
One could certainly hope so, but one would have to ask why they didn’t roll all the way to Donetsk and Crimea after the inspiring victories at Kharkiv and Kherson. Why? Because Ukraine couldn’t mass enough people and resources to overpower RF. That’s just math. If they had the numbers and gear, they wouldn’t have stopped.
UA now has better armored vehicles and will get some longer ranged missiles. But the much-vaunted HIMARS ammo is being rationed because consumption doesn’t match production. And they’ve had some deep personnel losses as well.
It’s going to come down to whether improved equipment, smart leadership, and smart strategy can yield enough decisive gains before the point of exhaustion. I’m hopeful it will work out, but we (the public) have no real way of knowing the precarity of that equation. As I said, if it were all favorable, this thing would have been won last October.
You base that on… what? I’m curious about your reasoning on this.
Funny, I heard that about the Western support about a year ago and yet the support is still there.
Also, Trump getting elected to anything is far from a done deal. A lot of people despise him. I’m not sure Putin will be willing to help him out again between being preoccupied with a war that’s going badly for him and not wanting to support a loser who couldn’t win an election and couldn’t pull off a coup to stay in power.
Sure, sure - that’s why 200,000+ military age men fled the country rather than be fed into the meat grinder. There’s also these:
13% inflation
rising food prices
shortages of certain types of food
feminine hygiene products up 30%,
exodus of companies from Russia, contributing to rising unemployment (McDonald’s alone employed 60,000+ Russians, as just one example)
shortages of medications
travel restrictions - good luck getting a foreign holiday, and increased demand on internal holiday destinations means rising prices there, too
Yeah, I think the average Russian, even in Moscow, is noticing.
But wait! you say - the West is having issues, too! Well, sure - there are always issues if you look for them. Let’s compare, say, the US
fewer shortages of goods at the stores as supply lines recover from covid
feminine hygiene products holding steady, except in areas where they’re now being provided free
Companies are not deserting the US
the US health care “system” is still jacked up, but the rest of the West is largely unchanged. The problem isn’t that the medicine isn’t on the shelf, as is happening in many parts of Russia, the price is the issue but it’s obtainable if you can raise the funds. Also, much easier for folks in the US to travel to Canada or Mexico to get their drugs than it is for Russians to travel for that purpose.
an American passport is just as useful now as it was 5 years ago
Russians are definitely worse off a year into this morass and while Putin’s clamp down on information is making it harder for Russians to know the truth I’m pretty sure it’s still trickling in. Also, very hard to hide rising food prices and a lack of medicine on the shelf. Also, where did all the young men go? Sure, some to the front, but the rest of them?
On the other hand, the Ukrainians also have a willingness to use women as well as men, and don’t exclude people based on things like sexual orientation which helps. You can’t just say “Ukraine has X number of men of military age” because there are substantial numbers of women involved - 15% of Ukraine’s active military are women.
Meanwhile, Russia seems to have as many young men fleeing the country as actually being fed into the meat grinder every time there’s a call up.
I also suspect Ukraine is getting more foreign volunteers than Russia is.
So the manpower question is a bit more complicated than it first appears.
I’m not so sure about that. There’s something to be said for not over extending one’s military. Operation Overlord - the D-Day invasion of Europe - certainly had the gear and the men but the date was changed multiple times for a variety of reasons (at one point it was supposed to occur in early May rather than June, for example). There are a lot of variables to consider, from supply lines to weather. Especially in Eastern Europe weather is still a big variable.