I’ve been thinking along the same lines.
Granted, we are getting slanted coverage, and probably don’t know as much about Ukraine military targets that have been hit.
But even so… It seems that Ukraine is hitting some good military targets (including the ship mentioned which I read contained Iranian drones), ammunition dumps, air fields, etc. etc. While Russia seems to be sending over lots of missiles and drones to hit… Apartment buildings and civilian infrastructure. For a while there they seemed to be trying to wreck the power grid (which at least made some kind of sense), but now they seem to be just sending a lot of dumb bombs over to blow up a granny in her apartment.
I’ve said before that internationally speaking Russia is no longer an imperialist power; it’s a nihilist power. Their mindset seems to be:
If we (Russia) can’t have nice things, we’re gonna make sure you won’t have nice things.
All of which makes a nasty sort of sense for a psychopath in charge of a cratering society. Putin staying in power requires the citizens to consider their external situation be more scary and threatening than the internal situation.
Given the depths of internal repression, economic and social gloom etc., that calls for fomenting an especially nasty external situation to overshadow it. While hoping desperately to continue riding the tiger Putin himself has created.
Strategically moronic, yes, but it works to their strengths. They have the native industry to build Big Dumb Bombs essentially without limit, and since they care not a whit about causing civilian casualties, they can continue as they are essentially forever, so long as no one appears who can toss them off their stolen bits of Ukraine.
At that point, if Ukraine loses access to the high-tech weapons they’re being given by the US et al., Russia can just keep grinding until Ukraine is exhausted.
I don’t see that this is a problem.
Russia has 144 million people today, and will have 133 million in 2050.
That’s a decline, but 133 million is still three times the size of Ukraine.
cite: Russia Population (2024) - Worldometer
And they won’t have a problem with military age males in 2044.
In the year 2005 , (today’s 18 year old draftees) , there were 1.4 million babies born
In the year 2022, ( future draftees in 2040), there were 1.3 million babies born. That’s plenty of canon fodder for Putin to keep the war going as long as he wants.
I agree Russia is nihilist in the sense of “I’d rather rule in hell than serve in heaven.” If they can’t rule what they want, they’re perfectly happy to destroy that and everything around it.
But I do believe their imperial ambitions are actually very much intact and distinct. They aim to keep what they currently control, plus reclaim the former USSR territories, plus unite the Slavic parts of the former Byzantine Empire with Moscow as its head and Ukraine as its breadbasket. The secondary aim is to destabilize the current world order that prevents them from exercising unchecked power.
Russians don’t see themselves as beneficiaries of world peace. As they see it, if Russia isn’t in control, then Russia is being persecuted.
That’s why appeasement isn’t an option, and also why peace frankly is impossible until Russia collapses as a functioning state. Every liberal democracy in the world needs to permanently budget the cost of opposing Russia frequently on an ongoing basis, on every part of the influence spectrum from diplomacy to propaganda to direct military action. Russia is in a forever war with everyone who opposes their expansion, and we need to adjust our practices accordingly.
How many of those young men are going to be happy to be cannon fodder, and how many are going to leave the country, like so many Russians already have in the last couple of years?
I’d largely agree with that attitudinally. Russia has been a paranoid expansionist power since the Kievan Rus. And will be for the indefinite long-term future as you say.
Where I’d triangulate slightly off you is that right now in 2023 Russia lacks the capability to be imperialist. So they grudgingly settle for nihilist. Yes, they still have the imperialist desire, but it’s now a frustrated desire. They absolutely thought they could be a successful imperialist in 2022. And most of the rest of the world thought similarly. Both sides have been disabused of that notion. For now. And for awhile yet.
I’m always cautious about wishing for collapse or failed-state status to occur to a nuclear power, and especially a major nuclear power. A nihilist mindset can all too easily become a murder-suicidal mindset once they perceive they are running out of options and will soon be rendered powerless versus the foes they’ve been obsessing over.
Which risk applies separately but similarly to the sitting leader, the sitting leadership cadre, and the public at large.
As you say, every nation of the West needs to put Russian Containment on their annual budget as a distinct and large line item and keep it there every year for probably a century. Just like a city’s public sanitation budget, it’s unglamorous and irksome but it’s also persistently essential.
Probably the same number who are currently “happy” to become canon fodder. or have left the country.
Right now, the Russian army has enough manpower to keep Ukraine from gaining ground, using the draftees born in 2005. And the kids who are today 15 ,16 and 17 years old know what awaits them when they finish high school and get drafted.
I cant understand why those kids and their parents accept their fate , after seeing
how many of their older brothers and friends from school reported for duty and didn’t come back.
Despite Putin’s control of the media inside Russia, they still have access to the internet and should know that the war is not a glorious battle against Nazis.
But I don’t see Russia losing the war due to lack of manpower.
I always had the impression NATO was an alliance of the major powers that generally supported democracy. That’s been stretched somewhat by members like Turkey.
It’s a sound idea. There is more strength and resources between like minded nations.
Including smaller countries brings unique problems.There is the concern a conflict could escalate between two member countries with geopolitical rivalries.
There is also a concern that additional members increases the risk of NATO being pulled into a regional conflict.
Can NATO really defend Poland if the crap hits the fan? Or other nations like Finland that share very long borders with Russia? A invasion by land is easier when there’s a shared border.
Membership decision are way, way above my pay grade. I can only hope the people making them know what they’re doing.
We’ve already seen that invading Ukraine only took a short time of preparation. Russia actually winning that war is costly and problematic.
With the invasion of Ukraine, it really only worked because, at the time, those responsible for defending Ukraine didn’t really believe that it was a real invasion force. They thought it was just “exercises” intended to rattle some sabres and make Russia look tough enough to get some concessions somewhere.
No one will be making that mistake again, any time soon.
And from what we saw of Ukraine, by itself at the time, stopping that invasion in its tracks, had we responded with the full force of NATO, the invasion would have been utterly wiped out in a matter of days. And that’s what will happen if Russia tries to pull the same stunt with Poland, or any other border state. If we see Russia building up assets for an invasion on any border, we’ll move air and ground assets into place to wipe that force out, while positioning naval forces to blockade Russian ports, and send missiles to blow up critical infrastructure.
Given the current state of the Russian military, Finland by itself could probably do a good job at keeping an invasion force at bay. They’d have plenty of warning if men and materials were moved close to their border with Russia.
Didn’t it happen with the conflict between Turkey and Greece over Cyprus? AFAIK Nato does not mix in that kind of conflict. They mediate but it was UN who went in with a peacekeeping force.
Poland seems totally defendable, yes. Not only is it right next to Germany, which has had NATO bases and US forces for decades, but Poland itself maintains a very strong military.
This is a rather important point - Russia’s military wasn’t in great shape to begin with and is far worse now.
And Russia can’t afford to throw its entire fighting-capable population at Ukraine because even if it wins it will have left Russia and its military capabilities profoundly weakened on all fronts for many years to come. Putin would make Pyrrhus look like a military genius if he tried it.
Don’t let Greece off the hook - the Greek junta that ruled from 1967-1974 was a particularly brutal dictatorship.
Founding member Portugal was a dictatorship when the get go, the most enduring in Europe - Salazar was in power from 1932 until his death in 1968 and the authoritarian regime he established lasted until 1974. It went down in a coup that led to a military junta and a string of counter-coups. Democracy didn’t start to stabilize until a year or two later.
As for little countries, Luxembourg was a founding member. Nobody better say shit to Latvia when one of the founding members was mighty Luxembourg which is two thirds the size of dinky little Rhode Island with a population of a little over 600,000. Militarily terrifying Iceland is also a founding member - population ~370,000.
Whatever mealy-mouthed ideals are spouted by people about NATO, the fact of that matter is that it has always been a purely an alliance of convenience. Democracy has never been a requirement and member nation size and military power really aren’t the key considerations.
Ukraine would be eighth in population if it joined NATO, bigger than Poland or Canada. It’s military would be #2 in size, right after the United States and ahead of #3 Turkey. It’s economy…well…less said about that in its current state, the better (but it has plenty of potential once rebuilt). But small and weak by NATO standards it is not. By land area it’s the second-largest country in Europe and it’s certainly “stronger” than NATO members like Denmark or Belgium. It just has the misfortune to be locked into a struggle with the largest country in Europe.
And Iceland points out another consideration: Location matters. Even if a country can’t contribute much in the way of money or military force, having the option to place allied forces on their territory without a lot of hassle makes responding to a new threat much easier. As with the hypothetical threat to Poland or Finland, every major NATO country could position a part of their forces in that theatre in a very short period of time, because all the heavy lifting of negotiating such things has already been done.
Indeed. I erased a comment about geography being important with Luxembourg, but the same reasoning makes Iceland valuable. If we’re talking about containing Russia, nobody makes better sense than Ukraine, which is why Russia is terrified of the idea (somewhat legitimately from the POV of a would-be regional hegemon).
By contrast folks care less about Switzerland because it is at best a mountain redoubt. If you have to seek refuge in the Swiss Alps you’ve already lost.