If something this crazy is in the cards, then maybe the next step for the Europeans should be something like dissolving NATO and forming a new alliance with China. China might be evil, but at least they haven’t gone crazy. Yet.
Do you really think Trump wants all those shithole countries with their criminals and people who don’t speak American?
Because Russia already badly upside down in their age demographics with massive constriction starting at the collapse of the Soviet Union, and while the formal fertility rate reported by the Federal State Statistics Service of Russia (ROSSTAT) is 1.5 children per couple, the real rate assessed by the Federal Reserve Economic Data (FRED) is 1.4 (and dropped as low as less than 1.2 in the late ‘Nineties), and has dropped precipitously since 2016. The ‘advantage’ that Russia has is early mortality (mean death age for men is just above 65, while for women it is 74) so there is less per capita burden of retirees than other nations such as Japan and South Korea that have similar trends, but Russia is facing a population of reduction by as much as half by 2100, and a ‘mushroom’ profile with multiple retirees per working person long before that, notwithstanding how many young men have been lost from the ‘fertility pool’ in this military misadventurism in Ukraine. From the Atlantic Council:
The demographic consequences from the Russian war against Ukraine, like those from World War II and the health, birth rate and life expectancy impact from Russia’s protracted transition in the 1990s, will echo for generations. Russia’s population will decline for the rest of the twenty-first century, and ethnic Russians will be a smaller proportion of that population. The ethnic and religious groups that embrace the “traditional family values” Putin favors are predominantly non-Russian.
United Nations scenarios project Russia’s population in 2100 to be between 74 million and 112 million compared with the current 146 million. The most recent UN projections are for the world’s population to decline by about 20 percent by 2100. The estimate for Russia is a decline of 25 to 50 percent.
While Russia is hardly unique in facing declining birth rates and an aging population, high adult mortality, and infertility among both men and women*, increasingly limited immigration and continuing brain drain make Russia’s situation particularly challenging.** Population size is determined by a combination of natural factors—birth rates and life expectancy, along with the emigration-immigration balance. Putin’s war on Ukraine has undermined all the potential sources of population growth.*
It is a problem for Russia because while it is a democracy in name only, it is unbeknownst to many a vast multi-ethnic state in which the minority Slavs have exerted control over the many oblasts, krais, okrugs, and quasi-independent republics of the Federation comprising a multitude of ethnicities through threat and sometimes use of military force. Without the ability to populate and arm a military sufficient to enforce control, the Russian Federation would almost certainly fracture, and a large amount of mineral resources with it.
Stranger
Did you read about Vance’s speech in Europe today? We absolutely have struck a deal with Putin.
I’ve said before, the Western democracies need to form an anti-American coalition that includes China, Iran, jihadist and anyone else who wants to stop America.
Well, that’s a proverbial deal with the devil (as many countries that bought into China’s “Belt and Road Initiative” have discovered) but certainly the genuine democracies of Europe need to coalesce on a ‘third way’ strategy that isn’t predicated on American leadership or plans with anticipation that the United States will even be an ally of convenience.
Stranger
Everyone here assume that the Baltic states are next. But there are much ‘safer’ targets from Putin’s POV:
Moldova, Georgia, perhaps Armenia. Not NATO members (what little that seems to be worth at this point), weak and ripe for the taking. My armchair general’s WAG is that he’ll gobble up those (with aid from Belarus regarding Moldova) while he’s trying to re-build a force that can take on NATO.
Side note 1:
If NATO is fractured, maybe we can get rid of Türkiye, which only value was as a convenient place for bases south of the USSR.
Side note 2:
Please learn the difference between the Balkans and the Baltics.
Not the most reliable source. But if this is true, holy fuck we are at this stage what four weeks into Trump’s term…
The US Congressional delegation in Munich offered Zelenskyy to sign a document on the transfer of 50% of Ukraine’s future mineral resources. The Ukrainian president politely declined the offer.
With whose army? North Korea’s?
2026 does seem a little aggressive given how depleted Russia’s military is now.
That’s unbelievable. It was widely thought Vance would lay out – and perhaps reassure allies – about the future status of Ukraine. Instead it was a speech entirely about anti-woke.
And good on CNN for pointing out that, though he criticized things like an election being cancelled in Romania last year, strangely there was no criticism of countries like Russia and Belarus that barely bother to pretend to have open elections.
I agree Russia will also abrogate the treaty. But it’s also clear Ukraine won’t be getting any war-winning amounts of material support at this point.
My point is not that Ukraine should permanently accept the status quo, but rather do what Russia would do - take a break, re-arm, wait for conditions to change, then attack at the right time. If we all agree that Russia is likely to overreach in areas other than Ukraine, this may present an opening for Ukraine to seize the initiative again.
I don’t think Ukraine should ever permanently accept Russian conquest. But for the moment they have no initiative or advantage and may be better served letting Russia overextend itself elsewhere.
We had to ally with Stalin to stop the Nazis.
I’ve no doubt Putin and Trump will tell Ukraine they must disarm to get peace. Putin has insisted on that over and over.
Hell, maybe in part.
They couldn’t possibly take on Poland or Finland anytime soon, but they could roll over Estonia. Estonia has a tiny army and no space to trade.
Estonia has NATO forces in it, but will they stay? Presumably Trump will pull out the Americans there.
If Russia was willing to accept current lines, with Ukraine allowed to rearm, helped by any continued Western military aid economic aid friendly nations may give, that would be a reasonable deal for Ukraine.
For that reason, I very much doubt Russia will take such an offer. Russia will insist on a deal where, when it breaks down, they will have a better chance of victory than they did in 2022.
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Sure it is true:
For U.S. Aid, Trump Wants Half of Ukraine’s Rare Minerals
The threat is confirmed by too many sources not to believe it. The four hour deadline is just coming from one source, so maybe that was, oh, say six hours.
This next outstanding link explains why Trump’s ultimatum is so shameful:
As I say above this is giving Trump too much credit by comparing him to Chamberlain. A better comparison is the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact 
In its treatment of Zelenskyy, it’s more reminiscent of how Hitler treated the Czech President in March 1939
Back when this first started, we had a thread asking about what we saw as the likely ending of this war. This is pretty much what I predicted. A few years of mostly stalemate, at which point someone would push for a ceasefire at whatever the current de facto borders were. Followed by a few years of re-building. And then probably a new war. Now that it’s clear Trump is about to abandon Ukraine almost entirely, the odds of this have gone up significantly.
This is why I rather doubt Russia attacks NATO (if by attack we mean some sort of military invasion/incursion). What is more likely is more of what Russia is already doing - cutting undersea cables, cyberwarfare, disrupting the flow of energy, efforts aimed at polarizing and politically destabilizing the West, etc.