Republican primary voters most popular issues: This is the way
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Russia lost more as you'd always expect from being the attackers, though the K:D ratio was less favorable than other places once Bakhmut was surrounded on 3 sides.
Ukraine has plenty of manpower & isn't going to lose on manpower grounds. Also it didn't have its best units there anyway. So Russia could keep doing that strategy over & over & it would never really get anywhere. Ukraine isn't going to run out of people.
Only way I see for Russia to win is to focus on the artillery war not infantry battles & win by massively outproducing the West on artillery ammo until Ukraine is too ammo starved to keep up its defenses.
I am skeptical of this as well. Surovkin is unfortunately associated with Prigozhin & thus not favored by Shiogu, who is clearly the winner in this whole debacle. So Shiogu might be using Wagner as an excuse to take out Surovkin. Maybe he will be reassigned out of the war.
Trump was an idiot who didn't know how to put together an Admin & so just picked whoever kissed his ass. DeSantis is different & knows how to build an effective team with no leaks.
Also Nuland started in the Clinton admin & the GWB admin foolishly kept her & promoted her.
Republicans don't want to vote for more money for Ukraine. However, if the Democrats used it as a bargaining chip & said "we will give you $50b more for the Pentagon if you give us $20b for Ukraine" would Republicans cave in & say yes? Very likely.
Question is if even the Democrats want to help Ukraine had enough to be willing to spend political capital on it like that.
This is true & I also don't think Putin would attack NATO. If anything he would attack Georgia or something.
Then I don't get why Ukrainians were complaining about the defense of Bakhmut, and that they were losing men in the meat-grinder for no benefit as the city would fall eventually. A psy-op?
You don't need just people, you need people willing and able to fight. The monumental failures of this failed state will lead its people to not want to fight, and hopefully to turn on the corrupt West for sending them to their deaths for the benefit of the US empire.
It's funny that you support Ukraine and yet have such respect for Surovkin that you think it's 'unfortunate' that he may fall victim to these machinations.
The Ukraine supporters I've seen want Shoigu to remain in place because they think he's incompetent.
I think so. But it remains to be seen how much you can accomplish when swimming against the tide, which is elite power. I don't see DeSantis succeeding in taking on the security state, even if he desired to (and I think he's too smart to even consider it) - as they have six ways to Sunday of getting back at you.
Seems like it's a done deal then. Both parties are in the pockets of the military-industrial complex. I know you deny this, but 800+ billion is not nothing, and it's not even controversial among most Democrats. I've seen your tweets about a China hawk GOP claiming that China secretly spends more, but of course anyone who wants to boost war spending to 10 trillion would say something like that.
Only 1/4 of GOP voted against it last time. Every last Democrat votes for. I don't see that failing. Even if Gaetz and others threatened to remove McCarthy, he'd just make a deal with the Democrats.
Georgia is behaving itself, so I don't expect that either. In his position, I'd attack NATO supplies through countries like Germany and Poland, because they're engaging in hostile acts, and dare the West to end the world over it. But cautious as he is, he's probably not even going to do that, which just makes the West more arrogant and aggressive.
Because the K:D ratio got progressively worse in Bakhmut later on. It was never worse than 1:1 but it was much worse than other sectors, hence the complaints.
I agree Shoigu is incompetent as a general. He is a politician in a uniform. That & his ethnicity [being non-Russian means he could never lead a coup, so he's safer to promote] are why he's risen to the top.
I am not sure Surovkin is a great general, but he had enough common sense to come in & correctly asses the situation then take corrective measures to turn the situation around for Russia in late 2022. You can respect generals on the opposing side even if you're trying to kill them, like Rommel or Yamamoto.
We will see. He's our last hope. If he fails, then the future has no good endings.
Possibly, but we have to take the threat seriously & plan for worst case scenarios.
Public attitudes have massively changed since a year ago when that happened.
Georgia has been pushing to join NATO, though, which is supposedly Russia's big red line.
They'd just respond with conventional air strikes & wipe out your forces quick because NATO ISR & precious weapons are so far superior. They wouldn't use nukes.
NATO knows they have overwhelming convention military superiority over Russia so Eastern Europe is just looking for an excuse to invoke article 5.
Russia isn't going to use nukes. Putin & friends don't want their Dachas nuked.
I hear every sort of K:D claim from 10-1 in favor of Ukraine to 10-1 in favor of Russia. Miraculously, those who support one side or the other always come up with more favorable ratios for their own side. The more objective observers like Mearsheimer claim that there is a 3-1 ratio in favor of Russia, because Russia has more artillery. Is it true? Who the hell knows?
Did you get that idea (about his ethnicity) from Walter Russell Meade or come up with it independently?
True, but you should be cheering if he got taken down due to intrigue, rather than saying 'unfortunately'. Or maybe that was just a turn of phrase.
When even your vaunted optimism fails, there is big trouble.
What is a worse case: China establishing regional hegemony or the US and China getting into a nuclear war and dragging Europe into it?
There's our difference in fundametal assumptions. I don't think public attitudes matter, only elite attitudes do. But if Ukraine aid fails, then I will have to reconsider. If it's close, then I will not reconsider, becuase that's just the "rotating villain" at work. They'll give some people leave to vote no so they can say they TRIED to stop it, but couldn't because democracy n sheeit.
Given the frozen conflicts, the odds of that happening are 0. And the odds of NATO admitting Georgia are also quite small, because there is no way they can even defend Georgia, or retake it if it is overrun. The current Georgian government, not the treasonous foreigner who has been installed as their president, [is quite friendly to Russia (from your POV) or recognizes realities (from my POV).[(https://archive.is/I9cfd)
You just have to kick in the door and the whole rotten structure will collapse, innit? AFAIK, Russia has the best artillery and anti-air in the world. It would be interesting to see NATO try a Retard Strike and lose hundreds of planes, and then receive Kolzhirs in return.
Countries like Germany would probably lose to Ukraine, let alone Russia.
Now just humor this hypothetical, which I'm sure you think is impossible and I think is unlikely. NATO attacks Russia. Russia beats them back, invades and returns Europe to the status quo ante 1989. Will they use nukes then?
They it should dismantle the nukes instead of making massive investments in them.
Mearsheimer is a dumbass & not objective at all.
The best source is Michael Kofman. His best info was I believe that Ukraine was getting 5+:1 in favor in Russia's attacks elsewhere, but in Bakhmut this progressively fell to 3:1 then 2:1 as Bakhmut was progressively getting encircled & thus in an increasingly vulnerable position.
Beat in mind this Ukraine's big K:D advantages come from Russian ATTACKS specifically. The "background killing" of the war favors Russia, not Ukraine, because of the large disparity in artillery fire, but not by a large margin. Less than 2:1 somewhere. Probably in a range around 1.5:1 in Russia's favor. This is so horribly inefficient though that it can't be "scaled up". Russia will never again see the huge advantage it had in May/June 2022 when it was firing 10x-15x what the Ukrainians were.
I didn't get it from anyone specific but I've seen it mentioned several times over the years [Shoigu's big rise was back in 2012]. Obviously he doesn't look Russian so I looked it up when I 1st saw him & honestly it's the obvious conclusion that has happened a number of times throughout history where empires would use "outsiders" in high positions of authority since their legitimacy was owed entirely to their masters. Also the whole concept of eunuchs.
Unfortunately for him. I don't care really either way, but honestly as far as I'm concerned the Ukraine war is over. It's just a bloody stalemate now in a maintenance phase similar to the later Korean War. I want the US role to taper off to the point where we are only helping Ukraine with ISR spotting & artillery ammo, while leaving the rest to Europe, as we shift everything that isn't nailed down to Japan & the Philippines.
Eventually Russia will tire of the war & stop. It might take 1-2 more years and 1-3 more failed offensives. The constantly loss of money & lives will demoralize the Russian leadership & people until something eventually gives way & Putin starts looking for an exit strategy.
It is unlikely that Europe & Ukraine will let Putin keep his new conquests, but I think a peace agreement based on the pre-invasion Feb 2022 borders is a likely result.
Ukraine could surprise with a breakthrough & Russia could surprise with a collapse, but I'd say the odds of that are less then 30%. Most likely defense will continue to dominate thanks to Russia taking its defense industrial base more seriously than Europe.
Liberals responded to Reagan kicking their ass by moderating temporarily, finding their footing in the 90s, then getting progressively more liberal in the 00s until they broke out into full hysteria in 2012-2020.
If history repeats & they moderate again, DeSantis will buy us 8 years of a golden age & perhaps a generation free from wokeness.
If not, the US will fracture into a national divorce of some kind as Americans - including me, relocate to red/blue states on partisan lines. The determining factor is whether the "moderate" neolib Democrats are willing to knife the wokes in the back.
Chinese hegemony over Asia & multiple major, bloody wars as the US & China engage in a Punic-War-style struggle over the future of the world.
Unlike the US, China will use every ounce of leverage it has to crush down the US & anyone else opposed to it, in order to prevent them from ever challenging it again. This is existential so we will have to fight our way out.
The world has never seen anything like this. The Cold War was cold. This will be a hot war, or many hot wars, between nuclear powers. It is not impossible that tactical nuclear weapons will be used, normalized, & thus warfare radically changed into some Fallout-style dystopian shit.
The mediator of the Left elite's power is the media. Think about that. Think about all the power the media has lost since 2016. Times are changing. The media still has power, but its slipping. I don't think liberal elite power will survive a DeSantis administration. DeSantis is their Waterloo, Gettysburg, Saratoga. Trump, while he was a threat, was one they could undermine & defeat over time. Trump did play an important role in exposing them & enabling the next wave to fight them better than he did.
Interesting. I think Europe will actively look for ways to spite Russia once it realizes that Ukraine will not "win" the war by retaking Crimea & such.
Not at all. Russia's paper strength was a joke. NATO SEAD would demolish it. Jamming alone & wild weasel tactics would be enough. Stealth just makes it a joke. Poor Russian troop quality is an ongoing problem that has only gotten worse.
If you think NATO would lose hundreds of planes, you simply are ignorant of the state of the art of NATO SEAD. Just read about it in Gulf Wars 1 & 2. US non-stealth aircraft like F-16s routinely defeated Russian SAM systems kinetically even when ambushed without stealth or jamming.
Russian artillery, while numerous, had laughably obsolete kill chains with a total lack of sophisticated counter-battery radars, shoot & scoot doctrine, & adequate ISR.
Ukraine, even now, is WINNING the counter-battery artillery duels in K:D despite being outgunned, because Ukrainians are trained & equipped to better follow basic NATO artillery doctrines that have been around for 40+ years. Russia has slowly improved its glaring weaknesses, but still remains far, far behind NATO equivalents.
What massive investments? Russian nukes are probably overwhelmingly in a decrepit state except for a small number of newer prestige systems. Paper strength is very important to Russia, though, & it leans heavily on its nukes to pretend it still is a "Great Power".