Quote (Black XistenZ @ Apr 13 2022 08:31am)
You've regressed to the flawed binary you were already postulating a month ago.
You still/again base your argument on the unproven premise that this conflict is hopeless for Ukraine and that their total defeat is an inevitable conclusion.
This is not true. Crimea, the Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts, Mariupol and the land stripe between them along the Asow Sea are gone - but everything else is still up in the air!
The range of possible outcomes goes from the Russian offense in Donbass failing completely to Russia steamrolling all of Ukraine to the east of the Dnieper and forcing Ukraine to accept a dictated peace.
If Ukraine had listened to your reasoning, half the women in Kyiv would be pregnant right now from the Russian soldiers who ran a train on them. :rolleyes:
And the women of Mariupol would be alive. Russia's response to its initial shock and awe strategy getting stonewalled has been to bring in the guy who barrel bombed the Syrians into the dirt. The same slow war of attrition and annihilation they fought to suppress the Chechens. Lets be generous and say that Ukraine's best outcome involves holding onto the west, and Kiev being spared destruction simply by Russia's unwillingness to flatten it despite their ample capability. In the best case scenario, you have a severely deficient western aligned West Ukraine that's had several population centers obliterated, tens or hundreds of thousands dead and millions displaced, and Russia holds their east and
most of the natural resources. That dubious measure of sovereignty- exchanging Russian oligarchs for CIA masters- comes at a high price, and without any promise of long term security or development. In the worst case, Russia turns Kiev into a smoking ruin filled with millions of charred corpses and we sing ballads to the bravery of those who fought to the bitter end and died in hopeless struggle.
Now I've used a few lenses for this conflict. For American self-interest, we're driving a wedge into geopolitics that alienates our allies and unites our enemies and undermines our global economic stranglehold. But for the self-interest of the Ukrainian people, I think its pretty ridiculous to maintain the western jingoistic farce that our democratic ideals are worth having child soldiers march to their slaughter hand in hand with nazis.