1. Ukraine in Nato got us into this mess, any time period will simply reset / postpone the issue.
2. Thats what Ukraine WAS before the US weaponized it 2014-2022
3. "Work towards normalizing trade with Nato countries again"

this 3rd point of yours confuses me. the United States practically invited Russia to invade Ukraine, and used that as a cause belle to impose sanctions on Russia, with the intent of destroying Russia. There are few ppl left that are blaming the destruction of NS on Russia, instead comments and quotes from western leaders suggests it was the West that blew it up. In this regard, when you say Russia should work towards normalizing trade, then they would have to take a step. the west would have to walk a mile.



You are not wrong here, just bear in mind that the US is in Ukraine and therefore Ukraine is not really Iraq.

This post was edited by ferdia on Nov 22 2024 05:37am

https://x.com/BBCSteveR/status/1859237427925409918

Lukashenko talks about being being privy to Putin and US/EU talks with a threat to supply the Houthis with advanced missiles, specifically the Bastion missile system as a response to NATO weapons striking in Russia, exactly what I was talking about being one of Russia's possible retaliatory escalation options
now here's a question- how would Russia get such weapons to the Houthis safely?

North korea has a direct land corridor through russia and to ukraine through friendly china
Going through the caspian and transit iran to the gulf, besides needing iran to play ball at its own peril, puts it in striking range of israel and under mossad's nose. Then you need to sail around the hostile arab states, where the US has been interdicting iranian weapons for the houthis for a while. Its basically been a crapshoot where shipping outpaces naval policing, which works fine enough for smuggling small arms but would be too risky for a major weapons system.
dunno what they'd need to make that viable, using russian stealth submarines as cargo carriers and still risk being a flashing red flag the moment it tries to dock anywhere in yemen?

Keep in mind: Russia is making calculations like this. Putin will feel a need for reciprocal escalation to respond tit for tat with America, but he has to avoid such failures. That's why I think there's a better chance that if Russia takes a big hit, they might go for a nuclear test. Its more easy to control, dramatic and yet doesn't draw blood and risk immediate war.

im really not sure. it all depends on the level of bombing inside of Russia. If they hit something critical i can see Russia doing some scary things.

There's no way you can compare the two situations.

Saddam's (supposedly) massive army didn't stand a chance, were outmatched everywhere and the coalition enjoyed complete air superiority and bombed everything they could see for months and months on end. Iraqi troops on the front line ran out of food because nothing was delivered / could get through anymore and came out with their hands up wherever coalition forces showed up.

Ukraine is being armed by all of NATO plus NATO allies. They receive everything from weapons to satellite data and Star Link capabilities. The West is literally paying the salaries of Ukrainian officials to keep the show running.

The war in Ukraine is nothing like the war in Iraq, drones see everything and the price of every small advance is high because the Ukrainians see every move and can react with artillery and FPV drones over and over again.

Russia is not carpet bombing, which is what Israel did to Gaza, what the US did to Iraq. Russia has engaged in this war quite unusually, almost as if it were not a war but something like, i dont know how to describe it, a special military operation. in fairness Russia has been very impotent (when compared to how the west wages its wars).

This post was edited by ferdia on Nov 22 2024 06:02am

That's true and it's weird that the Russians only used a ~150K invasion force in Jan 2022 but this only proves my point that you cannot compare the two conflicts.

Like I said the coalition bombed the crap out of the Iraqis till they had no more targets to bomb. Only then did they go in using overwhelming ground forces and the Iraqis came out with their hands up I clearly remember this conflict and the daily briefings. CNN was considered a decent news outlet by the way and one of the main Iraq war news sources. How times have changed lol

No NATO is not negotiable for Russians and hence is immediately nonstarter. They will keep fighting for decades to ensure No NATO.

Ya, I can agree with this. The Russians were, at the time, wholly unaware of how drone warfare would make the majority of their Soviet-era stockpiles practically obsolete. The Russians have taken massive losses with their tanks, IFVs and APCs, which makes manoeuvre warfare a grind and then some. Another big factor is Russia still not being able to create air superiority over Ukraine due to a lack of sophisticated asea radars on their birds, so they can't do SEAD missions and knock out Ukrainian AA. These are the two biggest factors that have halted the overall Russian progress.

Russia is quickly starting to gain air superiority and a complete edge in drone warfare, and their land gains are ever increasing, so unless the west starts supplying the Ukrainians with more toys, I don't see a way for them not to buckle under the Russian war machine. Also, never compare European warfare to desert warfare.

Systems are judged in part by the extent to which they allow elite capture and by the resulting damage which (bad) elites effect. Enlightened despotism is by far the most effective and efficient mode of government, but enlightened despots are exceedingly rare (e.g. Lee Kuan Yew). Mediocre leaders make for mediocre states. A challenge for republican forms of government is that there's mostly a trend towards mediocre leaders, the benefit that exceedingly bad ones can rarely effect permanent damage to the institutions of state.

Capitalism in the West is the successor to feudalism, which as a system started to break down in the aftermath of the Bubonic plague. Market demand for labor vastly exceeded supply, and it became impossible for feudal lords to control the movement of labor when the rewards for abandoning the land were so high. In geological terms, it's a volcano that periodically erupts and destroys the land, but as a result of each successive eruption the island grows higher and higher.

Marx imagined that communism was the successor to capitalism, whereby the proletariat throws off the chains of capitalist ownership and seizes the means of production for themselves. In retrospect, he was wrong. Communism failed to challenge capitalism where capitalism was already entrenched, and succeeded only as a successor to feudalism where it was still largely in place (e.g. Imperial Russia, Qing China). Communism and capitalism are separate paths to the same end, industrialization, but whereas capitalism is the volcano (renewal and rebirth), communism is more like a disease which gradually saps its host of any residual vitality and strength.