Quote (bogie160 @ 6 Feb 2023 17:59)
I agree with this. We need to see what happens through the rest of 2023. If the Biden peace overture story (coming out of Switzerland) is correct, Ukraine refused on the grounds that they would not countenance the loss of territory, and Russia refused because "we're going to win anyway". It's important that Ukraine is able to survive the upcoming Russian offensive, but it's equally important that the West starts to clearly articulate conditions to Ukraine on the future end to the war. Right now, the West has given the entirety of that authority to the Ukrainian government, which is understandably hardline. Crimea should be off the table.
Yup, that's what I've been saying to the "peace talks now"-faction all along: as long as both sides are still confident in their respective victory, negotations will never take place with an open mind and a genuine willingness to compromise.
Regarding the conditions on a future end to the war: I believe UA's western allies have communicated the limits of their support quite clearly behind closed doors, the problem is just that articulating any kind of upper limit on our willingness to support Ukraine would be interpreted as a sign of weakness and discord by Russia and embolden them. Strategically, leaving them in the dark about the West's "pain threshold" is smart.
Quote (ofthevoid @ 6 Feb 2023 20:15)
I'd gladly be wrong for the rest of my life for this war to be over but it's pretty obvious providing more weapons is not a deterrent in any way, in fact quiet the opposite with Russia mobilizing another 300-500k, putting their military industrial complex in overdrive. You really think 6 months from now if they are losing they won't field another 500k? At that point the war has too much sunk cost and the only way for the leadership to survive is to go all in which could mean millions mobilized and overwhelm Ukraine men-wise or just pull the nuke trump card.
The point of providing weapons to Ukraine is not deterrence, it's to enable Ukraine to defend itself and fight back. The goal isn't for the Russians to stop this war because they deem it too risky, the goal is for them to stop because they realize they cannot achieve their primary objectives anymore, and that any minor gains they might still be able to brute-force would come at an outsized, unjustifiable cost. To be clear: we are not at this point yet, far from it. Maybe we'll get to this point
if the upcoming Russian offense fizzles out.
The rest of your post is the usual "Russia cannot possibly lose"-argument that's been debated back and forth in this thread. (Of course the term 'lose' has to be understood here as "failing in its quest to conquer and subjugate Ukraine", not in the sense of "Putin's naked, dead body being dragged across Moscow's Red Square by Ukranian tanks".)
This post was edited by Black XistenZ on Feb 6 2023 03:34pm