Ukraine War Part 7: Delete your army

[Werthead]

8 minutes ago, Kalibuster said:

If putin has banked Ukraine as his legacy then there really is no offramp. It is only whether the rest of the world can contest it successfully. 

I think the other way around. I don't see Putin accepting a military defeat or a defeat brought about by external factors. It will escalate, perhaps recklessly dangerously to the point of blowing cities to pieces with, if not tactical nukes, then MOABS, thermobarics or just the entire conventional ordinance in the Russian inventory.

I do see him accepting a "victory" that grants him the things he says he wants (recognition of Crimea, non-NATO membership). If he really wanted more - the complete coastal strip, splitting the country in three, complete regime change - well, he never really said that, so he can sell getting what he's asked for (however heavily caveated) as a win.

To put it in the simplest terms, Putin went into this really wanting Ukraine back in Russia's orbit, permanently. The West wanted Ukraine to carry down its NATO/EU-leaning trajectory. Putin said he wanted Ukraine's neutrality. If the conflict ends with Ukraine not being in either camp, but retaining neutrality and independence (even if on the lowdown they're getting EU help and more NATO weapons), then that's Putin getting what he said he wanted all along.

I understand emotionally people wanting Russia to get its arse kicked by Ukraine, thrown out of the country unceremoniously and the day afterwards Ukraine is welcomed into the EU and NATO simultaneously whilst the Pope canonises Zalensky and squadrons of F-35s with the Ukrainian flag fly overhead and Putin is reduced to cursing from the sidelines, but I don't think that situation will never happen. I think Putin really would flatten half the country first.

[Werthead]

Russian retaliation! They're banning certain commodity exports. That's a bit less severe than expected.

Of course, Russian slamming down the gas cuts off a huge chunk of their income, which might be why they chose not to do that at this point. This will also hurt them in the long run, but not an immediate retaliatory measure.

[Maithanet]

4 minutes ago, Werthead said:

Russian retaliation! They're banning certain commodity exports. That's a bit less severe than expected.

Of course, Russian slamming down the gas cuts off a huge chunk of their income, which might be why they chose not to do that at this point. This will also hurt them in the long run, but not an immediate retaliatory measure.

I'm not sure Russia has much interest in shutting off more revenue streams right now.  They have few enough left as it is. 

Economically we are in something of uncharted territory.  Nobody really knows how far down Russia's economy will fall, but indications are that every week will be worse than the one before for...many months. 

[IheartIheartTesla]

Regarding the MiGs, the idea is for Slovakia and Bulgaria to do the same with their jets. Most analysts are skeptical about their efficacy as a game changer (although Zelensky et al seem to think it will make a big difference); but with the renewed assault on Kyiv 24-96 hours away every little bit should help.

[polishgenius]

40 minutes ago, Werthead said:

simultaneously whilst the Pope canonises Zalensky

 

I'm not sure the Pope canonising the Jewish leader of a mostly Orthodox nation would be the thing to do to end a war. 

[IheartIheartTesla]

2 hours ago, Fez said:

Economically, it's smaller than pretty much all the other sanctions that have occurred. But symbolically this is maybe the biggest. McDonalds opening in Pushkin Square in 1990 was basically *the* sign that the times were a-changing.

PepsiCo is also shutting down sales of its beverage brands, but will still continue selling baby food/formula and dairy products. The other companies that have bailed out of Russia can be considered to be selling non-essential commodities, but cant argue with their decision to keep having formula available - although I'm not sure if Russian companies can fill the void themselves (probably not).

[Zorral]

The WaPo this AM reported that only Starbucks, McDonalds and Coke as global brands were holding out against leaving.  Guess they changed their minds.

[Zorral]

45 minutes ago, Maithanet said:

Nobody really knows how far down Russia's economy will fall, but indications are that every week will be worse than the one before for...many months. 

One of the investment - market analysts said yesterday in his newsletter, "Once long ago we got a global economy and the market boomed.  Ten days ago that global economy went away, probably forever."

[Zorral]

1 hour ago, Werthead said:

I understand emotionally people wanting Russia to get its arse kicked by Ukraine, thrown out of the country unceremoniously and the day afterwards Ukraine is welcomed into the EU and NATO simultaneously whilst the Pope canonises Zalensky and squadrons of F-35s with the Ukrainian flag fly overhead and Putin is reduced to cursing from the sidelines, but I don't think that situation will never happen. I think Putin really would flatten half the country first.

I'm not sure what to think, but I sure as heck would rather that we did not chance the bolded.  Of course that's something Putin counts on the world thinking too.

[Fez]

1 hour ago, Werthead said:

I think Putin really would flatten half the country first.

I think if Putin launches a nuke, NATO declares war. It's the one thing that cannot ever be allowed to be normalized at all.

[Werthead]

6 minutes ago, Fez said:

I think if Putin launches a nuke, NATO declares war. It's the one thing that cannot ever be allowed to be normalized at all.

Then Putin launches all his nukes and we don't really need to worry about it, or anything else, ever again.

I believe Russia will only resort to a full-scale nuclear strike if it faces an existential threat. It knows it will lose a conventional war with NATO if fought to the bitter end, so ergo it will have to deploy its nuclear arsenal in some fashion. A conventional-only Russia-NATO war might be possible if Russia launches a direct attack on NATO territory (although it would brown trousers day for every day of its duration), but not if Russia itself is attacked with any view to regime change or neutralisation.

Russia's doctrine of warfare over the last few decades does allow for a conventional war with an enemy even if both are nuclear-equipped, but there is a massive, multi-highlighted red line drawn through an invasion of Russia by conventional forces, or attacks on its nuclear facilities.

I do believe that Putin is fully capable of lobbing a tactical battlefield nuke and then effectively daring the outside world to do something about it. He does seem to genuinely feel he'd rather blow up the world rather than let Russia be defeated on home soil. You'd hope he wouldn't risk it if he loses an external adventure in Ukraine, but it's hard to tell, especially if the wilder rumours about him having a terminal disease are true (even if it isn't, he might assume he doesn't he long left so what the hell?). However, he's certainly capable of levelling Ukrainian cities without resorting to nukes, maybe almost out of just spite.

[Fez]

Just now, Werthead said:

Then Putin launches all his nukes and we don't really need to worry about it, or anything else, ever again.

I believe Russia will only resort to a full-scale nuclear strike if it faces an existential threat. It knows it will lose a conventional war with NATO if fought to the bitter end, so ergo it will have to deploy its nuclear arsenal in some fashion. A conventional-only Russia-NATO war might be possible if Russia launches a direct attack on NATO territory (although it would brown trousers day for every day of its duration), but not if Russia itself is attacked with any view to regime change or neutralisation.

Russia's doctrine of warfare over the last few decades does allow for a conventional war with an enemy even if both are nuclear-equipped, but there is a massive, multi-highlighted red line drawn through an invasion of Russia by conventional forces, or attacks on its nuclear facilities.

I agree with that. I still think any nukes launched by anybody is genie-out-of-the-bottle time and we're all dead in a few days except for folks in the southern hemisphere who just need to ride out nuclear winter.

[JGP]

19 minutes ago, Werthead said:

Then Putin launches all his nukes and we don't really need to worry about it, or anything else, ever again.

I believe Russia will only resort to a full-scale nuclear strike if it faces an existential threat. It knows it will lose a conventional war with NATO if fought to the bitter end, so ergo it will have to deploy its nuclear arsenal in some fashion. A conventional-only Russia-NATO war might be possible if Russia launches a direct attack on NATO territory (although it would brown trousers day for every day of its duration), but not if Russia itself is attacked with any view to regime change or neutralisation.

Russia's doctrine of warfare over the last few decades does allow for a conventional war with an enemy even if both are nuclear-equipped, but there is a massive, multi-highlighted red line drawn through an invasion of Russia by conventional forces, or attacks on its nuclear facilities.

I mean, you seem pretty convinced you're right about this stuff Wert, so if you are-- would Putin launch nukes [he doesn't have a Red Button, there are many hands* that order has to pass through] if NATO at length decided to intervene in Ukraine alone? Your reasoning suggests that Putin not doing so would be in the higher range of probability than otherwise. 

 

hands* that those orders would pass through, there are a few historical precedents [though not, perhaps, from heads of state] where orders to fire were actually ignored

 

edit: hands, including Russian hands btw, iirc

edit deux: i hate my phone

[Kalbear]

@Werthead - you misunderstand me. I agree that continuation of this is going to cause escalation. What i dont see is how there is going to be a limited success value for putin. He had a goal - we saw what it was, dividing Ukraine up into 3 pieces, obliteration of the country, etc. 

The worry I have is that he doesn't want a win to parade back - he wants the thing he wants. And in that case there is no middle ground. He gets what he wants fully or is stopped from getting it. 

I dearly hope that is not the case.

[Corvinus85]

26 minutes ago, Fez said:

I think if Putin launches a nuke, NATO declares war. It's the one thing that cannot ever be allowed to be normalized at all.

No, then NATO declares its own special operation.

But seriously, I don't know what NATO would be willing to do. Considering how isolated Russia is becoming not sure what else they could do short of a military intervention. Maybe start trying to find sympathetic Russian who are willing and able to change the regime and secretly support them with everything they can.

But it's possible NATO will decide to intervene only in Ukraine and drive the Russian forces back. But that would likely still lead to a nuclear escalation.

[Zorral]

14 minutes ago, Werthead said:

I believe Russia will only resort to a full-scale nuclear strike if it faces an existential threat.

One of the Pussy Riot grrrlz sez he's insane and will not behave sanely, no matter how negotiated with, right to and including his own Russians.

In the meantime, here's another Russian weighing in on Putin's character.

I Was Wrong About Putin
When U.S. intelligence started saying that Russia would invade Ukraine, I didn’t believe it.
By Sergei Dobrynin

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/03/putin-russian-political-deterioration/626966/

An interesting account of how Russians thought about Putin taking over -- he promised stability, which is what overwhelmingly Russians wanted. Some though, warned this guy was nothing but bad news

Quote

 

.... Arsenyev put down his beer and said (in Russian, of course): “This man, Putin, will bring this country to hell. I know this for sure. It is the worst thing that could ever happen to us.”

“Why?” I asked.

“He is a Chekist,” he said, meaning an agent of the secret police. “Once a Chekist, always a Chekist. He is pure evil.” ....

 

The Russians overwhelmingly voted him in, "in maybe the only honest election Russia ever has had."  "Stability is the word used over and over -- and then came 2011, and destabilization began in everything, just starting with science technology, and it's only gotten worse ever since.

Sure has been a long time since I saw anywhere, "Chekist."

[Werthead]

5 minutes ago, JEORDHl said:

I mean, you seem pretty convinced you're right about this stuff Wert, so if you are-- would Putin launch nukes [he doesn't have a Red Button, there are many hands* that order has to pass through] if NATO at length decided to intervene in Ukraine alone? You're reasoning suggests that Putin not doing so would be in the higher range of probability than otherwise. 

hands* that those orders would pass through, there are a few historical precedents [though not, perhaps, from heads of state] where orders to fire were actually ignored

I said last year that Putin was bluffing to get concessions and wouldn't invade, so yeah, don't entirely take me to trust on that. I'm basing this on way too many years of studying the Cold War and American and Russian politics at college.

I honestly don't know what Russia would do if NATO intervened in Ukraine. I don't think the Russians know what they would do. We can only trust in what Putin has said, that a no-fly zone could lead to a nuclear escalation, and very obviously a ground intervention goes far beyond that.

I do know that it would be incredibly dangerous ground, at least as dangerous, if not far moreso, than the Cuban Missile Crisis, and it should be avoided if at all possible.

Quote

The worry I have is that he doesn't want a win to parade back - he wants the thing he wants. And in that case there is no middle ground. He gets what he wants fully or is stopped from getting it. 

I think there are several signs against this. I think the first is that he drew a red line in Syria and threatened dire reprisals if Trump stepped over it and Trump stepped right over it and Putin did absolutely nothing. He either talked himself down or was talked in from the ledge. So there is some evidence that Putin can bluff and, when his bluff is called, back down. However, the stakes there were vastly less than here. Putin is not madly in love with the Syrian adventure and there are signs he tried to pull out at different times but was basically told each time that Assad's regime would fall without him so gritted his teeth and stayed put.

I also think that Putin is very much concerned with his own survival - the long desks are not something you do if you're super-nihilistic - so committing personal suicide-by-nuke is probably not high up on his priority list (which is why, if he is suffering from some kind of illness, that calculation might drop). I do think he is a gambler and I do think there is a possibility that maybe he had in mind Trump pulling the US out of NATO and then using hypersonic nukes to take out Western Europe and then basically calling the bluff of British and French second strike subs (maybe even accepting the losses of retaliatory strikes if they were not guaranteed to devastate Russia completely), but even that would be an absurd risk to his personal safety to take.

I don't think Putin is senile or mad, but he is clearly more willing to take risks then he was. I have seen some (maybe wild) speculation that maybe Putin has actually accepted that nothing can be done about climate change and the human race is headed for extinction, so he is willing to risk that extinction happening a few decades earlier if it potentially gives him a way of etching his legacy for at least another couple of generations.

[Werthead]

All of that said, let's calm down and get in from the ledge Right now, Russia is definitely not thinking in those terms. It's focusing on winning a breakthrough victory in Ukraine, possibly on a massive final push on Kyiv, and at a certain point (hopefully before the assault) I suspect will pause and allow for negotiations, and what settlement it will agree to and what Ukraine will agree to remains to be seen. The best way out of this for everyone is for a negotiated settlement on terms that allow a free and independent Ukraine to continue to exist with most of Russia's stated aims also achieved, or so they can say or sell. If that also gives an ally or quasi-friendly neutral like China or Israel or Turkey a huge diplomatic victory for negotiating a peace, then whatever.

I know that sounds like appeasing Putin or letting him off the hook, but it really isn't (when he could have taken the whole country probably as easily as he'd expected if he'd done this in 2014, and it probably angers him that he didn't), if it means him not getting the whole country or even a significant slice of it, and it means an end to the killing of civilians ASAP.

[Kalbear]

What the actual

 

[JGP]

7 minutes ago, Kalibuster said:

What the actual

 

Folded with a good hand. The Biden admin blows at cards.

 

edit: like, they didn't have to say anything