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fatherboxx)
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I bet we see a lot fewer generals getting swapped out for other generals, too. People aren't going to accept removal.
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Jun 28, 2023 17:49
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Cpt_Obvious posted:Russian, meanwhile, is shouldering this war on it's own dime. It's buying a few drones from Iran or whatever, but this is largely a Russian enterprise with Russian tanks and artillery and a seemingly bottomless supply of shells. The basic mechanic of this war has been roughly a century of accumulated Russian and Soviet hardware going up against NATO's spare change drawer / leftovers pile, and losing. Russia is now actively running out of that accumulated century's worth of hardware, and they have very limited ability to replace it, because they aren't the USSR any more. That is not good for Russia. This war has already functionally broken them as a military power. The only question left now is how hard the collapse is when it hits them.
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Jun 28, 2023 18:21
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Bug Squash posted:I think there is a real element of this. From my reading of history, during WW2 and subsequent years it wasn't uncommon for 30 year olds to be in charge of fairly important functions. Our expectation of people needing to be 60+ to have any real power is a function of an aging society and consolidation of power by older people. Yeah, when there's an actual labor shortage because of a war, positions open up. It's even a theme in Hamilton!
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Jun 30, 2023 13:14
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Somaen posted:Having empathy and solidarity is good, because in different historical/future circumstances you might be in.tge same position of people on the receiving end of the injustice, and then there will be someone in the world to help you or at the very least to tell your story More directly, it's extremely important to disincentivize wars of territorial aggression, period. They're destabilizing. With Russia particularly, because Russia is a nuclear power, it makes sense to intervene *early* to stop even small scale brinksmanship, so that Russian leadership doesn't start thinking they can push further, push against an actual NATO boundary, etc. The potential consequences of unchecked Russian power are too severe to allow them to act with impunity. Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 00:03 on Jul 1, 2023 |
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Jun 30, 2023 23:58
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Lars! posted:Power cycle theory says that countries start wars when they are either a growing power or a shrinking power and their leaders perceive other countries as not giving them their due respect.The biggest critique I can think of is that growing or declining powers don't always start wars with other perceived peers, but it's a convenient, hand-wavey explanation for why several wars have started, including WWI, WWII, and the current Russian war in Ukraine. As a handwave it seems to make more sense than "realism," which at least in its current incarnation seems to manifest as a general theory of "Russia is gonna do poo poo, so everyone else has to let them," an argument that seems to fall apart once it's pointed out that the same logic can then be applied to America / NATO and to a greater extent, so maybe Russia needs to just let NATO do what it wants. e.g.,  As a political theory -- that is, a reductio ad absurdum that betrays the speaker doesn't actually understand much of what actually drives great power politics, because "Realism" in this context is getting used to mean either simply a post-hoc justification for whatever just happened (because whatever just happened was "realistic") or else it's of limited predictive use (because nations are led by individuals who are of limited knowledge and limited rationality and who often act in their own individual self-interest, not that of the State collectively). It's possible to argue that the initial Russian invasion of Ukraine made sense in a rational, "realistic" analysis of great power politics -- Russia defending its "sphere of influence", etc. But once the war was clearly lost -- as happened after the first few weeks -- it's just been a year long excercise in Russia throwing away it's national strength in service of Putin's personal grip on power. Whatever's driving this hasn't been "realism" since some time in April or May of last year.
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Jul 3, 2023 14:55
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tractor fanatic posted:America does do all kinds of poo poo, and the rest of the world does let us. Right, but if (as Mearsheimer and others present their case) such "realism" is all the justification Russia needs, and other countries should therefore just let Russia do what it wants, expecting such as the price of "realism" ... then the same can be said in turn about America, and it would be similarly impossible to criticize America for similar actions . .. . and in the specific case of Ukraine, such analysis would mean that Russia should just withdraw and let NATO do what it wants. It's circular reasoning that doesn't complete the circle. There's no way to justify or excuse Russia's actions in Ukraine under a rubric of "Realism" that doesn't inevitably also destroy that justification once it is proven that Russia is not the biggest kid in the international playground any more, but rather one of the smallest. If we're being "realistic," then rather than other nations bowing to Russia, Russia "should" simply roll over and expose its soft belly meat, and be happy that NATO is not being any more aggressive than it is. A system of international analysis that intends to posit "shoulds" needs something more than just "the strong do what they will, the weak suffer what they must." You can be descriptive with that kind of analysis but you can't be usefully prescriptive. Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 16:26 on Jul 3, 2023 |
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Jul 3, 2023 16:21
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MikeC posted:This has been addressed multiple times by now going back to the first iteration of this thread. The position advanced since the SU fell was that eastward expansion of a certain military alliance will produce pushback. Either don't do it or get ready to deal with the pushback and an adversarial Russia. It has never been about 'letting Russia do poo poo'. Rappaport posted:. . . . If by "pushback" we mean Russia wanting to restore the imperial borders, which by their own propaganda seems to be the idea with the genocidal war in Ukraine, then is it not rational for smaller actors to pursue friendship elsewhere? And, not to put a too fine point to it, but rationally acting Finland joined NATO after about 70 years of playing buddy with Russia for practical reasons (our president J.K. Paasikivi, who was a very angry man, once exclaimed "Go home and look at a map" when someone questioned his logic about being nice with Russia), so Russia defending their sphere of influence seems to have failed miserably, not only in Ukraine but with your alluded-to military alliance approaching eastward. Yeah, exactly -- it's pretty clear at this point that "Adversarial Russia" was going to happen either way regardless; Russia's been assassinating people in foreign countries, interfering with foreign elections, etc. etc. etc., rolling all the way forward into invading sovereign states and trying to replace their governments. Maybe Russia should have thought about the potential pushback from everyone else before it started poo poo. Yet somehow in this "realistic" analysis "pushback" is always something other countries just have to expect from Russia but never something Russia should itself fear.
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Jul 3, 2023 16:36
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tractor fanatic posted:The "shoulds" here come with a perspective, and the realist argument is that confrontation with Russia does not serve American interests. America "should" make peace with Russia so that it can concentrate all its resources and alliances towards its long term confrontation with China. The problem with this analysis is that America has a lot more invested in its partnership with Europe and the EU than it does with any ally who is in any sort of direct or indirect conflict with China, Taiwan included. The long term conflict with China is theoretical while the current conflict with Russia is actual. Maybe Russia *should* have tried to make peace with America, NATO, and the EU so that it didn't end up becoming a Chinese vassal state. But, here we are. Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 16:46 on Jul 3, 2023 |
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Jul 3, 2023 16:42
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MikeC posted:It has been explained many times, that Realism specifically strips out justification of actions. Realism does not condone actions on the moral plane. This is either impossible or circular to the point of futility. On the one hand, the statement "realistically, Russia was going to push back against Ukrainian independence, and that's just the price Ukraine had to expect for trying to leave the Russian sphere of influence" is going to be construed by anyone who hears it as moral justification for Russia's actions -- that is, the "Ukraine just got what they should have expected for being uppity" defense -- or, if it's just an a-moral statement of logic, it's a useless statement because it's just as easily reversible -- "Russia should have expected NATO to push against its sphere of influence and maybe learned to accept that it isn't a major power any more and can't throw its weight around without getting pushback." Either the "shoulds" are trying to draw a moral equivalence (which is invalid for reasons explained above) or they're just logical terms that cancel each other and drop out and we're left with "Russia is weak and NATO is strong, deal with it" which somehow never seems to be the argument Mearsheimer and his like are making.
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Jul 3, 2023 17:42
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BillsPhoenix posted:If Russia doesn't care about joining the western economy - and there is a lot of evidence for this - why is the invasion insane? It wasn't insane initially. Continuing it appears irrational from the point of view of a hypothesized "Russian State" but from the POV of Putin individually any number of potential rationales exist. As others have said, 'rational" analysis is sort of useless here except in a post-hoc descriptive sense.
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Jul 3, 2023 17:59
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One big hole for the "rational" or " realist" analysis is explaining why Russia is continuing to attack civilian and cultural targets. See, e.g., https://twitter.com/ngumenyuk/status/1675624998973714433?s=20
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Jul 3, 2023 18:18
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Staluigi posted:Nobody who launched this war in the way russia did gets to be considered rational, straight up Unfortunately this is one of the big holes in "rational actor" theory generally: a rational idiot is still an idiot and most people, objectively speaking, are some kind or other of idiot some or all of the time. See, e.g., Ben Carson's opinions on everything other than neurosurgery. Same issue arises in economics, law, etc., pretty much anywhere the adjective "rational" rears its head and spouts a theory.
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Jul 3, 2023 19:08
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you could put it underground maybe?
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Jul 5, 2023 15:01
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Yeah, the Ukrainians are the ones breaking all the rules here! Sure! That sounds right! Let's go with that, comrade!
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Jul 6, 2023 12:20
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I have yet to see anything that indicates Ukraine wants to stop fighting or is interested in any kind of peace as long as Russia is occupying their land. At this point If they ran out of bullets I suspect the Ukrainians would keep fighting with sticks and stones and their bare hands. NATO would probably have to actively intervene to stop them.
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Jul 6, 2023 23:19
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We probably shouldn't give Ukraine nuclear weapons.
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Jul 8, 2023 00:08
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Edit: nebermind I'm posting too hard
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Jul 9, 2023 18:38
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They aren't going to capture anyone who died broke with estate data.
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Jul 10, 2023 10:08
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fatherboxx posted:Every dead soldier gets a very significant payout for relatives to claim I don't think convict soldiers / anyone who went into Wagner get that.
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Jul 10, 2023 13:19
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Putin's remaining gamble is that he can outlast western election cycles, wait till support for Ukraine is withdrawn, and then force a relative win. It's not much of a hand but he's playing the cards he's been dealt.
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Jul 12, 2023 13:25
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Note that Russia isn't exactly advancing. They do seem to be slowly losing ground. My guess is the fighting continues until both sides want it to stop.
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Jul 13, 2023 02:48
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Mooseontheloose posted:[ur. It's not a mistake. Isn't no labels funded by right wing billionaires? They know what they're doing. It's just vote splitting under a different flag.
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Jul 17, 2023 16:21
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Mid-Life Crisis posted:Why would attacking the bridge (in a crippling manner) not happen until now? Was it not strategically important because the front is so far away? Were they not able to do it (range/risk)? Maybe they’ve tried and this is the first to slip through what was formerly effective defense? I saw someone mention they didn’t have approval to use long range missile provided by the west until now? Maximize the headache being peak travel season? They seem to like attacking the bridge on symbolic dates. This is the mh17 anniversary.
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Jul 17, 2023 17:20
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daslog posted:At the risk of getting probated again, I've been reflecting on our previous discussion and settle on a position that I can be comfortable with. I strongly believe that if the USA is going to fund what can potentially be another forever war, then we need to be willing to pay for it up front and not take on more debt. Such a tax would be an objective good regardless but we don't need it to fund Ukraine. The costs involved in subsidizing Ukraine are relatively trivial compared to our overall defense budget. We're just sending them all the stuff we were about to throw away and replace anyway. edit:  https://www.cfr.org/article/how-much-aid-has-us-sent-ukraine-here-are-six-charts It's just not that much relative to what we're already spending anyway. Most of this stuff if we cut the military budget it would just go rust in military junkyards anyway. It's like giving them our hand-me-downs; there's little real cost to it because we already bought it years ago and aren't using it. Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 16:34 on Aug 8, 2023 |
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Aug 8, 2023 16:26
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mlmp08 posted:That's not true for a sizeable amount of the donated equipment. Eh, even then, "sizeable amount" is doing a fair bit of heavy lifting. At the end of the day, spending on Ukraine is a drop in the budget bucket for us -- roughly just under ten percent of our annual military spending, according to the chart above. Which was budgeted anyway and was going to get spent anyway. Yes there's new spending in the mix too and replacement costs and so forth but let's not pretend that the US military budget was going to go down if Ukraine hadn't happened. The money still would have been spent in some dumb and useless and wasteful way anyway, probably just exploding mounds of dirt on training ranges if nothing else. At least this way our spending is doing some kind of good. The important thing is to realize that what we're spending on Ukraine is, functionally, a sunk cost we were paying anyway. It's not going to drain our coffers any significantly greater fraction than just existing with our current government was doing already anyway.
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Aug 8, 2023 18:21
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daslog posted:If I'm reading the right, you don't like my proposal because it requires that we raise taxes to pay for the cost? No, he's saying that if we don't spend money on Ukraine now, we'll have to spend a lot more later when Putin invades a NATO nation or does something similar because he thinks he can get away with after we folded in Ukraine. I don't think anyone is responding to your "raise taxes" proposal because everyone here is in favor of raising taxes on billionaires anyway regardless of what we do in Ukraine. You might as well be saying "I support Ukraine spending but only if Biden legalizes marijuana first." Ok, yes, that would also be a good thing, but one isn't really a limiting factor on the other.
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Aug 8, 2023 19:03
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KillHour posted:Making rules that things have to be funded by dedicated taxes is equivalent to making a rule not to do it because the tax requirement would kill any potential spending dead. The American public won't even agree to increase taxes to save social security. And conversely, would I like a rule that America has to fund its military entirely by a tax on billionaires? I mean, sure, sounds great. But we don't live in a universe where that's possible, so asking for it as a condition of funding Ukraine is just "i think America should not fund Ukraine" with extra steps. If you think we shouldn't fund Ukraine, just own that position.
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Aug 8, 2023 19:09
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mlmp08 posted:So both these things cannot be true at once. The spending on replenishing and replacing equipment sent to Ukraine cannot have both been budgeted anyway and was going to be spent anwyay and also be new spending. . . . Both things absolutely can be true at once? There is a lot of money that was going to be spent anyway, and there is also some new spending. It's not a binary discussion. The question that has to be asked though is -- how much new spending was there going to be anyway? What was the expected rate at which American military spending was going to go up, and how is that different from the amounts budgeted for Ukrainian war spending? There's a graph here of how much U.S. Military spending has increased every year since the 1960's: https://www.macrotrends.net/countri...%20from%202018. The overall takeaway is that the raw dollar amount of U.S. military spending has been trending upwards consistently over time, whereas military spending has been trending downwards as a percent of U.S. GDP over time. It was probably going to keep going up whether or not Ukraine happened, and the additional spending happening specifically because of Ukraine and not just because "number gotta go up!" is a relatively trivial amount in the overall budget totals. It only goes up to 2022, but from what I'm reading, the overall military budget increase from 2022-23 is roughly a 4% increase, smaller than we've seen in recent budget years anyway. Yes, these are big numbers either way -- "$billions" as you say -- but "$billions" are the figures our military budget is denominated in anyway. Normally, hundreds of $billions. When you're throwing around $800 billion plus a year, a few extra billions here and there barely moves the decimal point. Is the military budget too big? Yes. Should we, all else being equal, cut the military budget? Yes. Is the amount spent on Ukraine a significant fraction of our overall military budget? No. Handwringing over "the cost of the war in Ukraine, oh no the cost" is just "$DEBT$" under a different flag. Whenever people are afraid to attack an obviously good government program they start handwringing over "but at what cost!?!?", because the numbers always sound big and scary. The federal budget was, what, over six trillion last year? We can afford to support Ukraine out of our spare change, and we should. Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 19:34 on Aug 8, 2023 |
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Aug 8, 2023 19:30
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evilweasel posted:also there's probably literally no more cost-effective part of that $800b military budget than the part going to ukraine, if we need to reduce the deficit by whatever amount we're spending in ukraine there's a million better places in the military budget to cut Arguably the first time the military budget has done any concrete, measurable good since, what, World War Two, apart from whatever social good is gained from the GI bill and subsidizing local jobs at military bases?
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Aug 8, 2023 19:38
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mlmp08 posted:Are you suggesting that if there wasn't a crisis in Ukraine . . . From the most recent data I can find, quote:The President’s FY 2023 budget request for DoD is $773 billion. This budget represents a quote:U.S. military spending/defense budget for 2021 was $800.67B, a 2.86% increase from 2020. U.S. military spending/defense budget for 2020 was $778.40B, a 6% increase from 2019. U.S. military spending/defense budget for 2019 was $734.34B, a 7.6% increase from 2018. https://comptroller.defense.gov/Portals/45/Documents/defbudget/FY2023/FY2023_Budget_Request_Overview_Book.pdf https://www.macrotrends.net/countri...%20from%202018. The military budget has gone up in raw dollar terms by about three to eight percent every year for the past few years, anyway. It looks like the budget for this year is going up by about four percent, which is still on that trendline. The funding for Ukraine is just not a significant addition to that torrent. mlmp08 posted:
I think you're making an error of scale and an error of focus. You're holding up a glass of water and going "do you see how many billions of atoms of water are in this glass!!" while standing in front of Niagara. Is it vaguely interesting to talk about the number of atoms in the glass? Sure. But more importantly pretending that it's a lot of water is just kinda shortsighted and silly. Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 19:50 on Aug 8, 2023 |
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Aug 8, 2023 19:45
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mlmp08 posted:You are trying to turn the discussion in an entirely different direction. I pointed out the basic, objective fact that new spending is passed to support Ukraine which was never planned for nor forecast. There are new military programs enacted every year; there are old programs retired every year. That's all normal. The military budget in real terms goes up -- within a roughly predictable, expected range -- every year. It's on a trendline. You can talk about "new spending" if you want but the amount spent on Ukraine is not a significant departure from the amount we were spending anyway; it's all in line with the general trend of the U.S. military budget (up in dollar value amounts, down in GDP percentage). If you look at the overall budget numbers, the amount spent on Ukraine does not represent a significant difference from the amounts we would have probably spent anyway. Military spending in 2022-2023 by the US is on the trendline, not an outlier. Arguing about whether or not a given specific individual program was expected or not is silly and has never been my argument; my argument has been that the amounts involved in our support for Ukraine are relatively trivial given the scale of our overall budget.
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Aug 8, 2023 20:01
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mlmp08 posted:Yes, that is precisely the combination of new laws as well as modifications to US code to permit executive branch drawdowns and spending that I am talking about. Ok, but . . . why? Relative to the overall budget the amounts are absolutely trivial, and it makes you look like you're making a "but at what cost?!?!" argument about support for Ukraine. Why should we care about the cost of support for Ukraine? It's a relatively miniscule bill, and it's for a good cause. mlmp08 posted:
By how much? Like, what's the actual math here? By how much, if any, is Ukraine spending pushing our general military spending increases off of trendline? Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 20:19 on Aug 8, 2023 |
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Aug 8, 2023 20:14
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mlmp08 posted:In fact, the US government has decided to invest heavily in the defense of Ukraine. (emphasis added) I bolded the word "heavily" because I think that's the core of our disagreement here. Relative to our overall spending, the U.S. government is not investing heavily at all in Ukraine. As a percentage of GDP, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Slovakia, Denmark, Norway, Finland, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, and the Czech Republic are all spending more on Ukraine support than America is. (chart here: https://www.cfr.org/article/how-much-aid-has-us-sent-ukraine-here-are-six-charts) America's donations have been, relatively speaking, pocket change out of an absolutely massive budget. It hasn't been a heavy investment at all, but rather a relatively trivial one.
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Aug 8, 2023 20:22
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WarpedLichen posted:
Yeah, that's actually a fair critique of my position, agreed. My argument could be rephrased -- only a little uncharitably -- as "look, you know they were going to find a war to spend this money on somewhere anyway, at least this is a relatively good cause and our involvement is relatively minimal." Which while probably true is also probably unfalsifiable.
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Aug 8, 2023 20:36
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Ynglaur posted:The GWOT really poisoned people's perceptions, didn't it. I apologize for forgetting the great work of the Engineer Corps. ^_^ Past that yeah I did try to specify "concrete." There's lots of abstract good having a military does but it's hard to quantify things like "deterrent effect" in a concrete way.
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Aug 8, 2023 20:51
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Gravitas Shortfall posted:yeah but it leads to bad optics 
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Aug 9, 2023 17:31
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bird food bathtub posted:I must be a big dumb dumb. How is a series of smoke generators helpful for a miles long bridge? I can't see it being realistic to hope to conceal the entire thing and bridges are not what I would consider highly mobile. Look, obviously Putin placed a gigantic array of smoke generators the entire miles-long length of the bridge They are just only activating those generators in the precise areas Ukraine attacked with missiles to save smoke pellets as is only wise Also they are wisely arresting anyone who might photograph the smoke generating areas because they need to ensure the enemy does not know their attacks failed In conclusion, believing everything the Russian media states is very intelligent
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Aug 13, 2023 17:38
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daslog posted:I'm a pragmatist. The idealist in me thinks that a bullet in Putin's brain is what should happen. Until putin is out of the picture I doubt any other resolution is possible. Neither side wants to stop fighting and neither side is seeking any sort of peace agreement. Ukraine would rather fight the Somme over again for years than accept a mere partial victory, and the same is true of Putin.
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Aug 15, 2023 23:15
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Any conclusions to be drawn from Robotyne? I'm seeing lots of heartwarming pictures on the Twitters but little strategic analysis.
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Aug 22, 2023 12:13
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| # ¿ May 21, 2024 06:46 |
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Orthanc6 posted:On the issue of this being an overt assassination, Prigozhin did after all commit literal treason. If he had been killed during the coup-lite I don't think anyone would have batted an eye, this is only weird because it took this long. The funny thing is this just means that the next coup leader won't back down when his coup starts actually working
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Aug 23, 2023 18:39
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