Send in the TANKS!!!
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In a way this is a good thing. Countries actually arming and training themselves for war means less NATO control.
I have been arguing exactly that for a while now, and everyone says I am a terrible person for it or something.
I have said for a while, the US should be going to these nations and peoples and telling them "We cant fight every war, and we cant be everywhere, and we cant give you something you must earn. We can open the arsenal, give you access to the means you need. But you must fight for your own freedom."
Seems Ukraine is proving that strategy can work just fine.
It's one of those weird things. During Trump's presidency, this was seen as terrible, now they're doing it during a war.
I mean, it will probably even work even if Ukraine falls in the end. American weapon systems allowed a nation that everyone thought had maybe 2 weeks tops to survive to make it almost a year and still have a conceivable shot of not just surviving, but maybe even winning. It is absolutely no coincidence that now American arms makers are making out their capacity fulfilling orders for nations around the world. And while I [obviously] have severe issues with Biden as a president, he is at least allowing Taiwan to get in some of that action, and they are buying up modern SAM's and Anti-Ship missiles, which I can guarantee you has China sweating nervously (naval landings are already one of the hardest military operations to do, and now their equipment has been shown as a joke thanks to Russia while Taiwan is arming up with army/navy killing American gear).
All we had to do was spend what is effectively pocket-change and allow are industry to do what it was already going to do, and we have utterly destroyed one of our greatest geopolitical rivals. We would be fools to ever set boots on the ground again unless it was in defense of ourselves or a direct ally.
I hadnt heard about this, so I have to ask: Do we know what sort of condition they were in? Because if the Ukrainian forces were mauled, it could indeed be "Had to pull back to sheer quantity of Russians." But if they were still combat effective, it could just be to shorten up supply lines to deal with said Russian horde. After all, from what I have seen the Russians are still suffering extreme losses and attrition around Bakhmut (with some areas being so blasted to hell you could credible get them confused with a WW1 no-mans land photo if you made it black and white), and that is supposed to be the main thrust of the Russian efforts.
Personally, I would give it more 65%-70% the mobilization fails. You cite WW2 as an example of it working, and it did. But you (and a huge amount of people both in the West and in Russia) forget that in WW2, Russia greatly benefitted from American Lend-Lease, especially in.....logistics ("Soviet troops entered Berlin in the back of American trucks, marching on American boots, and riding American trains."- Gregory Zhukov, 1945). Which is rather apropos of modern day woes the Russian army is suffering from. And while it is entirely possible Russia still has some gear left in the tank, the last round of mobilization was met with soldiers being given rusty AK's and them digging T-62's out of deep storage because they were running out of T-72's.