I’d like it to be true, but I don’t see how Russia loses this “outright”
Putin has successfully made the war existential. Therefore Russian defeat in Ukraine is the conquest of Russia. That cannot happen because Russian is a great power WITH NUKES. Even if Putin is toppled no replacement will be allowed to negotiate “surrender”
This is Korean War 2.0. Quagmire and Armistice beckons, eventually
Pretty much. Apart from anything else, Russia has an almost limitless supply of cannon fodder.
It all ends with partition along a line of control as per Kashmir, with neither side recognising the territory held by the other de jure, but an accommodation being reached de facto. The 80% of Ukraine that remains unoccupied will then be pumped so full of cash and weapons that the cost of trying to resume the war of conquest at some point in the future will be too steep for Putin or his successors to stomach.
This state having been reached, the key challenge will then be to maintain a degree of unity with respect to the ostracism of Russia. Fundamentally, this is a fascist state with a fascist leadership and an overwhelmingly fascist-sympathising population: the existence of a handful of doomed internal dissidents and Pussy Riot does nothing to alter the fact that most Russians back both Putin and his imperial ambitions to the hilt. There will have to be a lot of determined diplomacy to prevent potential backsliders like Italy and Germany from trying to resume antebellum positions on trade and appeasement.
"Russia has an almost limitless supply of cannon fodder."
I'm far from convinced that's the case. Look at the Second World War: Germany had over 700,000 men in the Caucus in January 1943; the Soviets had a million. And that was just one front for both. The Ukraine war might be the largest land war we've seen for some years, but it's tiny compared to past wars.
Russia is, and wants to remain, a modern society. The modern world requires so many more skilled people than war did 80 years ago: there are loads of jobs that simply did not exist, but are critical to society and to war. We can't just send the Bevan Boys in to perform them as it takes years to learn the skills.
Then there are the demographic issues mentioned below.
The same also applies to Ukraine, as it happens.
I think this is spot on.
The pool of "talent" for Russia to draw upon is:
Men, aged 17 to 30, in decent physical shape, who don't have important jobs that are required for the war effort, and who haven't fled the country.
Russia's population pyramid is narrowest in the 20-24 (i.e. the prime fighting age) segment.
And a significant chunk of that group has already been called up, has been killed or injured, has fled, or is otherwise unsuitable for fighting.
The Russians have been enlisting prisoners, people who are HIV+ or have tuberculosis. These are not the actions of a country with unlimited cannon fodder.
And even if they did have another million men (which is half the number of Russian men in their early twenties), if they are unsupported, unsupplied, barely trained, and attacking entrenched defenders with Western weapons, then it's not going to end well for them.
At some point, the flow of shells dries up. At some point, too many artillery pieces have been destroyed by HIMARS or just by the warping of barrels from constant firing. At some point, going to the front is considered such a death sentence, that people would fancy their chances fighting the internal police.
At some point, waging offensive war no longer becomes an option for the Russians. Now, it may be they can then defend their positions in a long war of attrition and frozen fronts. Or it may be that long range artillery makes those dug in positions far from Russia and far from working railheads impossible to supply.
And then the war stops, one way or another.
And at that point Putin (or his even madder successor) drops a test nuke over the Black Sea and says Peace Now
Then what? We would agree to a peace, at that point. Probably something like Korea
For your preferred outcome to play out you must assume that Russian will NEVER use nukes even when faced with humiliating defeat. A very very dangerous assumption
It's not my "preferred outcome", I'm just pointing out the fallacy of the "Russia has unlimited resources to throw into the conflict" brigade, of which you are a member.
Russia does not have unlimited resources.
The fact is we're all guessing, and at times we've all been wrong. If I tally my beliefs vs what actually happened:
- I expected the invasion and wasn't surprised by that - I thought Ukraine would be overrun in days and was surprised by their resilience - When Russia withdrew from Kiev I expected stalemate but actually Russia went on to capture Severodonetsk - I was surprised like most by the rapid Ukrainian advances in the NE but not surprised when Kherson fell - But then unpleasantly surprised at how Russia fought back and started to advance again in the East
Now most people expect stalemate but a few expect a successful Ukrainian offensive in spring. It's really too difficult to tell.
It is very unpredictable. I don't know what will happen and don't know what is for the best (which I define as the course that minimises human suffering).
Curiously, PB.com is full of people who do know what will happen and are very convinced that they are right.
Perhaps a little waspish. this is a betting site and we explore things from the point of view of the probabilities.
FWIW I have earned my modest living through analyzing the politics, economics and businesses (and history) of the Central and Eastern Euopean region for the past thirty five years, and I do speak some of the languages. Also, of course I have been largely based in Tallinn for the past decade. Perhaps I may sound more assertive in my conclusions than my more academic colleagues would permit themselves, but on the other hand I am paid to have an opinion.
While the short character limit does not permit too many caveats in exploring what is a very complicated situation, you are right to remind me that I maybe don´t show enough of my working to explain myself properly.
I respect your knowledge on Eastern Europe. (I have many friends in Russia & Ukraine, and I have visited Russia often. My closest friend is a Russian Jew).
In fact, I think you are on surer ground talking about Eastern Europe than Scotland & Wales -- far away countries of which you know nothing.
I have emphasised elsewhere that this war is unpredictable & should be assessed via probabilities. I tried to give likely outcomes & probabilities here
For my money, while the overall consensus continues to be for a long-running grind, there are enough straws in the wind to entertain the prospect of a possible “early” (ie 2023) Russian collapse.
I do find the Archbishop of Canterbury’s argument compelling. No-one wins long term by humiliating Russia. Defeat is humiliation enough.
I do favour a return to 1991 borders, but I can see a decent case for the resumption of the Kharkiv Pact allowing for Russian naval in Sebastopol, a commitment by Ukraine not to join NATO, and perhaps even some special status for Crimea and the Donbas, along the lines of Northern Ireland for example.
Long-term, our policy should aim to bring Russia into Western economic, political, and defence structures.
There's a contradiction between saying we shouldn't humiliate Russia but bring it into Western structures, because from the perspective of Russians like Putin, that's precisely the scenario they regard as humiliating.
Do they regard being brought into European structures as humiliating, or just US-dominated ones? In many ways it would be desirable for the EU to form closer links with Russia itself - the influence on Russia could be democratising, economically-diversifying and pacifying, whilst Russia could provide access to its space programme, and massive energy supplies. This would be undesirable for the US, because it could result in a serious rival power bloc to the US. But not necessarily undesirable for the EU, or the UK - indeed as an outcome it would be a lot better than the de facto colonisation of Russia by China. At the moment, the prospect is far away, and the US (of course helped by Russia's own brutish actions) has successfully driven a wedge between Russia and Western Europe that has benefited its own foreign policy aims.
For my money, while the overall consensus continues to be for a long-running grind, there are enough straws in the wind to entertain the prospect of a possible “early” (ie 2023) Russian collapse.
I do find the Archbishop of Canterbury’s argument compelling. No-one wins long term by humiliating Russia. Defeat is humiliation enough.
I do favour a return to 1991 borders, but I can see a decent case for the resumption of the Kharkiv Pact allowing for Russian naval in Sebastopol, a commitment by Ukraine not to join NATO, and perhaps even some special status for Crimea and the Donbas, along the lines of Northern Ireland for example.
Long-term, our policy should aim to bring Russia into Western economic, political, and defence structures.
There's a contradiction between saying we shouldn't humiliate Russia but bring it into Western structures, because from the perspective of Russians like Putin, that's precisely the scenario they regard as humiliating.
From Putin’s perspective.
Anyway, the West is hopefully broader than necessitating Russia sign up to trans marriage and affirmative action or whatever. It needs to be a broad enough concept that a future Russia can indeed onboard.
Whatever Russia’s history of despotism, it also remains a country that has made a profound contribution to Western art, literature, music, and indeed ideas of how to organise society.
For my money, while the overall consensus continues to be for a long-running grind, there are enough straws in the wind to entertain the prospect of a possible “early” (ie 2023) Russian collapse.
I do find the Archbishop of Canterbury’s argument compelling. No-one wins long term by humiliating Russia. Defeat is humiliation enough.
I do favour a return to 1991 borders, but I can see a decent case for the resumption of the Kharkiv Pact allowing for Russian naval in Sebastopol, a commitment by Ukraine not to join NATO, and perhaps even some special status for Crimea and the Donbas, along the lines of Northern Ireland for example.
Long-term, our policy should aim to bring Russia into Western economic, political, and defence structures.
There's a contradiction between saying we shouldn't humiliate Russia but bring it into Western structures, because from the perspective of Russians like Putin, that's precisely the scenario they regard as humiliating.
That's a good point. Putin talks a lot about there being such a thing as a "Russian World," where men are men and rape and plunder with total impunity, without having to worry about warped Western notions such as human rights. The notion that he, his underlings or the bulk of his people want to move into any kind of common sphere with us is laughable.
I’d like it to be true, but I don’t see how Russia loses this “outright”
Putin has successfully made the war existential. Therefore Russian defeat in Ukraine is the conquest of Russia. That cannot happen because Russian is a great power WITH NUKES. Even if Putin is toppled no replacement will be allowed to negotiate “surrender”
This is Korean War 2.0. Quagmire and Armistice beckons, eventually
Pretty much. Apart from anything else, Russia has an almost limitless supply of cannon fodder.
It all ends with partition along a line of control as per Kashmir, with neither side recognising the territory held by the other de jure, but an accommodation being reached de facto. The 80% of Ukraine that remains unoccupied will then be pumped so full of cash and weapons that the cost of trying to resume the war of conquest at some point in the future will be too steep for Putin or his successors to stomach.
This state having been reached, the key challenge will then be to maintain a degree of unity with respect to the ostracism of Russia. Fundamentally, this is a fascist state with a fascist leadership and an overwhelmingly fascist-sympathising population: the existence of a handful of doomed internal dissidents and Pussy Riot does nothing to alter the fact that most Russians back both Putin and his imperial ambitions to the hilt. There will have to be a lot of determined diplomacy to prevent potential backsliders like Italy and Germany from trying to resume antebellum positions on trade and appeasement.
"Russia has an almost limitless supply of cannon fodder."
I'm far from convinced that's the case. Look at the Second World War: Germany had over 700,000 men in the Caucus in January 1943; the Soviets had a million. And that was just one front for both. The Ukraine war might be the largest land war we've seen for some years, but it's tiny compared to past wars.
Russia is, and wants to remain, a modern society. The modern world requires so many more skilled people than war did 80 years ago: there are loads of jobs that simply did not exist, but are critical to society and to war. We can't just send the Bevan Boys in to perform them as it takes years to learn the skills.
Then there are the demographic issues mentioned below.
The same also applies to Ukraine, as it happens.
I think this is spot on.
The pool of "talent" for Russia to draw upon is:
Men, aged 17 to 30, in decent physical shape, who don't have important jobs that are required for the war effort, and who haven't fled the country.
Russia's population pyramid is narrowest in the 20-24 (i.e. the prime fighting age) segment.
And a significant chunk of that group has already been called up, has been killed or injured, has fled, or is otherwise unsuitable for fighting.
The Russians have been enlisting prisoners, people who are HIV+ or have tuberculosis. These are not the actions of a country with unlimited cannon fodder.
And even if they did have another million men (which is half the number of Russian men in their early twenties), if they are unsupported, unsupplied, barely trained, and attacking entrenched defenders with Western weapons, then it's not going to end well for them.
At some point, the flow of shells dries up. At some point, too many artillery pieces have been destroyed by HIMARS or just by the warping of barrels from constant firing. At some point, going to the front is considered such a death sentence, that people would fancy their chances fighting the internal police.
At some point, waging offensive war no longer becomes an option for the Russians. Now, it may be they can then defend their positions in a long war of attrition and frozen fronts. Or it may be that long range artillery makes those dug in positions far from Russia and far from working railheads impossible to supply.
And then the war stops, one way or another.
And at that point Putin (or his even madder successor) drops a test nuke over the Black Sea and says Peace Now
Then what? We would agree to a peace, at that point. Probably something like Korea
For your preferred outcome to play out you must assume that Russian will NEVER use nukes even when faced with humiliating defeat. A very very dangerous assumption
It's not my "preferred outcome", I'm just pointing out the fallacy of the "Russia has unlimited resources to throw into the conflict" brigade, of which you are a member.
Russia does not have unlimited resources.
The fact is we're all guessing, and at times we've all been wrong. If I tally my beliefs vs what actually happened:
- I expected the invasion and wasn't surprised by that - I thought Ukraine would be overrun in days and was surprised by their resilience - When Russia withdrew from Kiev I expected stalemate but actually Russia went on to capture Severodonetsk - I was surprised like most by the rapid Ukrainian advances in the NE but not surprised when Kherson fell - But then unpleasantly surprised at how Russia fought back and started to advance again in the East
Now most people expect stalemate but a few expect a successful Ukrainian offensive in spring. It's really too difficult to tell.
It is very unpredictable. I don't know what will happen and don't know what is for the best (which I define as the course that minimises human suffering).
Curiously, PB.com is full of people who do know what will happen and are very convinced that they are right.
Is it ? Most express the same uncertainty about outcomes as you; they just disagree about actions. Topping appears also to have the habit of lumping together everyone who disagrees with him as a PB armchair general.
On the bright side, it does appear from the piece that superior intelligence information makes the US a great deal better at judging the probabilities of outcomes in Ukraine than the rest of us - including most European leaders.
For my money, while the overall consensus continues to be for a long-running grind, there are enough straws in the wind to entertain the prospect of a possible “early” (ie 2023) Russian collapse.
I do find the Archbishop of Canterbury’s argument compelling. No-one wins long term by humiliating Russia. Defeat is humiliation enough.
I do favour a return to 1991 borders, but I can see a decent case for the resumption of the Kharkiv Pact allowing for Russian naval in Sebastopol, a commitment by Ukraine not to join NATO, and perhaps even some special status for Crimea and the Donbas, along the lines of Northern Ireland for example.
Long-term, our policy should aim to bring Russia into Western economic, political, and defence structures.
There's a contradiction between saying we shouldn't humiliate Russia but bring it into Western structures, because from the perspective of Russians like Putin, that's precisely the scenario they regard as humiliating.
Do they regard being brought into European structures as humiliating, or just US-dominated ones? In many ways it would be desirable for the EU to form closer links with Russia itself - the influence on Russia could be democratising, economically-diversifying and pacifying, whilst Russia could provide access to its space programme, and massive energy supplies. This would be undesirable for the US, because it could result in a serious rival power bloc to the US. But not necessarily undesirable for the EU, or the UK - indeed as an outcome it would be a lot better than the de facto colonisation of Russia by China. At the moment, the prospect is far away, and the US (of course helped by Russia's own brutish actions) has successfully driven a wedge between Russia and Western Europe that has benefited its own foreign policy aims.
I think the idea of the EU seriously rivalling the US in another stretch again, but the general thinking here is reasonable and very switched on UK policymakers should be considering it.
In a way, the UK-Ukraine relationship could be the kernel of something like this.
(I have previously suggested that Ukraine’s joining NATO is not appropriate at this current moment, but entry into the Commonwealth is not a useless idea).
For my money, while the overall consensus continues to be for a long-running grind, there are enough straws in the wind to entertain the prospect of a possible “early” (ie 2023) Russian collapse.
I do find the Archbishop of Canterbury’s argument compelling. No-one wins long term by humiliating Russia. Defeat is humiliation enough.
I do favour a return to 1991 borders, but I can see a decent case for the resumption of the Kharkiv Pact allowing for Russian naval in Sebastopol, a commitment by Ukraine not to join NATO, and perhaps even some special status for Crimea and the Donbas, along the lines of Northern Ireland for example.
Long-term, our policy should aim to bring Russia into Western economic, political, and defence structures.
There's a contradiction between saying we shouldn't humiliate Russia but bring it into Western structures, because from the perspective of Russians like Putin, that's precisely the scenario they regard as humiliating.
Do they regard being brought into European structures as humiliating, or just US-dominated ones? In many ways it would be desirable for the EU to form closer links with Russia itself - the influence on Russia could be democratising, economically-diversifying and pacifying, whilst Russia could provide access to its space programme, and massive energy supplies. This would be undesirable for the US, because it could result in a serious rival power bloc to the US. But not necessarily undesirable for the EU, or the UK - indeed as an outcome it would be a lot better than the de facto colonisation of Russia by China. At the moment, the prospect is far away, and the US (of course helped by Russia's own brutish actions) has successfully driven a wedge between Russia and Western Europe that has benefited its own foreign policy aims.
The desire to bring China into the fold to be a moderating and democratizing influence has been shown to be complete bollocks, and it would be with Russia too. After the experience of the last year, it is crazy to recreate a dependence on Russia energy.
The West needs to go in the opposite direction, and make access to Western markets and institutions dependent on democratization.
For my money, while the overall consensus continues to be for a long-running grind, there are enough straws in the wind to entertain the prospect of a possible “early” (ie 2023) Russian collapse.
I do find the Archbishop of Canterbury’s argument compelling. No-one wins long term by humiliating Russia. Defeat is humiliation enough.
I do favour a return to 1991 borders, but I can see a decent case for the resumption of the Kharkiv Pact allowing for Russian naval in Sebastopol, a commitment by Ukraine not to join NATO, and perhaps even some special status for Crimea and the Donbas, along the lines of Northern Ireland for example.
Long-term, our policy should aim to bring Russia into Western economic, political, and defence structures.
There's a contradiction between saying we shouldn't humiliate Russia but bring it into Western structures, because from the perspective of Russians like Putin, that's precisely the scenario they regard as humiliating.
Do they regard being brought into European structures as humiliating, or just US-dominated ones? In many ways it would be desirable for the EU to form closer links with Russia itself - the influence on Russia could be democratising, economically-diversifying and pacifying, whilst Russia could provide access to its space programme, and massive energy supplies. This would be undesirable for the US, because it could result in a serious rival power bloc to the US. But not necessarily undesirable for the EU, or the UK - indeed as an outcome it would be a lot better than the de facto colonisation of Russia by China. At the moment, the prospect is far away, and the US (of course helped by Russia's own brutish actions) has successfully driven a wedge between Russia and Western Europe that has benefited its own foreign policy aims.
The desire to bring China into the fold to be a moderating and democratizing influence has been shown to be complete bollocks, and it would be with Russia too. After the experience of the last year, it is crazy to recreate a dependence on Russia energy.
The West needs to go in the opposite direction, and make access to Western markets and institutions dependent on democratization.
China is big enough and wealthy enough to entertain its own hegemonic notions.
Russia, after Ukraine, not so much.
Admittedly, and judging by the histories of Britain and France, Russia is unlikely to reach this conclusion alone without sophisticated overtures from the West.
We can also expect China to want to flatter Russian imperial nostalgia while all the while essentially grabbing its assets and using it for various diplomatic puppetry.
Russia’s governance model for centuries has been “strong men surrounding an autocrat” with a strong dose of Orthodox Christianity exceptionalism thrown in. The labels may have changed from aristocrat to oligarch and tsar to president, but the model is essentially the same.
It is the legacy of the Russian lands being united by Muscovy, and not Kiev or Novgorod. Russian culture is a criminal Muscovite one, built out of autocratic, Mongol-style rule. Russia can only be brought in from the cold if it abandons its current mentality and creates a new one in rejection of it, as Germany did after 1945.
More likely is that the Russian Empire breaks up, as Ukraine succeeds a la Poland or Czechia, and some regions want to recreate the success free of Moscow's dominance.
For my money, while the overall consensus continues to be for a long-running grind, there are enough straws in the wind to entertain the prospect of a possible “early” (ie 2023) Russian collapse.
I do find the Archbishop of Canterbury’s argument compelling. No-one wins long term by humiliating Russia. Defeat is humiliation enough.
I do favour a return to 1991 borders, but I can see a decent case for the resumption of the Kharkiv Pact allowing for Russian naval in Sebastopol, a commitment by Ukraine not to join NATO, and perhaps even some special status for Crimea and the Donbas, along the lines of Northern Ireland for example.
Long-term, our policy should aim to bring Russia into Western economic, political, and defence structures.
There's a contradiction between saying we shouldn't humiliate Russia but bring it into Western structures, because from the perspective of Russians like Putin, that's precisely the scenario they regard as humiliating.
Do they regard being brought into European structures as humiliating, or just US-dominated ones? In many ways it would be desirable for the EU to form closer links with Russia itself - the influence on Russia could be democratising, economically-diversifying and pacifying, whilst Russia could provide access to its space programme, and massive energy supplies. This would be undesirable for the US, because it could result in a serious rival power bloc to the US. But not necessarily undesirable for the EU, or the UK - indeed as an outcome it would be a lot better than the de facto colonisation of Russia by China. At the moment, the prospect is far away, and the US (of course helped by Russia's own brutish actions) has successfully driven a wedge between Russia and Western Europe that has benefited its own foreign policy aims.
I think the idea of the EU seriously rivalling the US in another stretch again, but the general thinking here is reasonable and very switched on UK policymakers should be considering it.
In a way, the UK-Ukraine relationship could be the kernel of something like this.
(I have previously suggested that Ukraine’s joining NATO is not appropriate at this current moment, but entry into the Commonwealth is not a useless idea).
Bringing Russia into the EU would not change russia in the least, look at hungary to see why
I'm not wholly pessimistic on Russia's future. Samuel Huntington's Clash Of Civilisations posited an Orthodox christian civilisation centred on Russia in the 21st century. I think it is safe to say that one is dead in the water. Other orthodox countries have turned westwards, so why not Russia?
Russia is a resource economy and so it has attained a reasonable standard of living without really modernising its economy. It still mourns the loss of its superpower status. But what about the younger generation? Many of the most enterprising have left but we know from the polls that the post soviet generation are much less brainwashed/likely to support the war and get their information online rather than through the television. Part of Putin's motivation in undermining and eventually invading Ukraine was a fear that a westward facing Ukraine would lead to similar pressure in Russia. Such fears suggest that the idea is not without credence.
For my money, while the overall consensus continues to be for a long-running grind, there are enough straws in the wind to entertain the prospect of a possible “early” (ie 2023) Russian collapse.
I do find the Archbishop of Canterbury’s argument compelling. No-one wins long term by humiliating Russia. Defeat is humiliation enough.
I do favour a return to 1991 borders, but I can see a decent case for the resumption of the Kharkiv Pact allowing for Russian naval in Sebastopol, a commitment by Ukraine not to join NATO, and perhaps even some special status for Crimea and the Donbas, along the lines of Northern Ireland for example.
Long-term, our policy should aim to bring Russia into Western economic, political, and defence structures.
There's a contradiction between saying we shouldn't humiliate Russia but bring it into Western structures, because from the perspective of Russians like Putin, that's precisely the scenario they regard as humiliating.
Do they regard being brought into European structures as humiliating, or just US-dominated ones? In many ways it would be desirable for the EU to form closer links with Russia itself - the influence on Russia could be democratising, economically-diversifying and pacifying, whilst Russia could provide access to its space programme, and massive energy supplies. This would be undesirable for the US, because it could result in a serious rival power bloc to the US. But not necessarily undesirable for the EU, or the UK - indeed as an outcome it would be a lot better than the de facto colonisation of Russia by China. At the moment, the prospect is far away, and the US (of course helped by Russia's own brutish actions) has successfully driven a wedge between Russia and Western Europe that has benefited its own foreign policy aims.
I think the idea of the EU seriously rivalling the US in another stretch again, but the general thinking here is reasonable and very switched on UK policymakers should be considering it.
In a way, the UK-Ukraine relationship could be the kernel of something like this.
(I have previously suggested that Ukraine’s joining NATO is not appropriate at this current moment, but entry into the Commonwealth is not a useless idea).
Bringing Russia into the EU would not change russia in the least, look at hungary to see why
Or I could look at Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Czechia, the Baltics, even Ukraine. I could also look at Spain, Portugal and Greece.
For my money, while the overall consensus continues to be for a long-running grind, there are enough straws in the wind to entertain the prospect of a possible “early” (ie 2023) Russian collapse.
I do find the Archbishop of Canterbury’s argument compelling. No-one wins long term by humiliating Russia. Defeat is humiliation enough.
I do favour a return to 1991 borders, but I can see a decent case for the resumption of the Kharkiv Pact allowing for Russian naval in Sebastopol, a commitment by Ukraine not to join NATO, and perhaps even some special status for Crimea and the Donbas, along the lines of Northern Ireland for example.
Long-term, our policy should aim to bring Russia into Western economic, political, and defence structures.
There's a contradiction between saying we shouldn't humiliate Russia but bring it into Western structures, because from the perspective of Russians like Putin, that's precisely the scenario they regard as humiliating.
Do they regard being brought into European structures as humiliating, or just US-dominated ones? In many ways it would be desirable for the EU to form closer links with Russia itself - the influence on Russia could be democratising, economically-diversifying and pacifying, whilst Russia could provide access to its space programme, and massive energy supplies. This would be undesirable for the US, because it could result in a serious rival power bloc to the US. But not necessarily undesirable for the EU, or the UK - indeed as an outcome it would be a lot better than the de facto colonisation of Russia by China. At the moment, the prospect is far away, and the US (of course helped by Russia's own brutish actions) has successfully driven a wedge between Russia and Western Europe that has benefited its own foreign policy aims.
I think the idea of the EU seriously rivalling the US in another stretch again, but the general thinking here is reasonable and very switched on UK policymakers should be considering it.
In a way, the UK-Ukraine relationship could be the kernel of something like this.
(I have previously suggested that Ukraine’s joining NATO is not appropriate at this current moment, but entry into the Commonwealth is not a useless idea).
Bringing Russia into the EU would not change russia in the least, look at hungary to see why
Or I could look at Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Czechia, the Baltics, even Ukraine. I could also look at Spain, Portugal and Greece.
None of those named country were more or less a mafia state and none of them compared to Russia in their imperialist drives except maybe japan. We had to nuke Japan before it saw sense and joined the western world, is that your suggestion maybe?
For my money, while the overall consensus continues to be for a long-running grind, there are enough straws in the wind to entertain the prospect of a possible “early” (ie 2023) Russian collapse.
I do find the Archbishop of Canterbury’s argument compelling. No-one wins long term by humiliating Russia. Defeat is humiliation enough.
I do favour a return to 1991 borders, but I can see a decent case for the resumption of the Kharkiv Pact allowing for Russian naval in Sebastopol, a commitment by Ukraine not to join NATO, and perhaps even some special status for Crimea and the Donbas, along the lines of Northern Ireland for example.
Long-term, our policy should aim to bring Russia into Western economic, political, and defence structures.
There's a contradiction between saying we shouldn't humiliate Russia but bring it into Western structures, because from the perspective of Russians like Putin, that's precisely the scenario they regard as humiliating.
Do they regard being brought into European structures as humiliating, or just US-dominated ones? In many ways it would be desirable for the EU to form closer links with Russia itself - the influence on Russia could be democratising, economically-diversifying and pacifying, whilst Russia could provide access to its space programme, and massive energy supplies. This would be undesirable for the US, because it could result in a serious rival power bloc to the US. But not necessarily undesirable for the EU, or the UK - indeed as an outcome it would be a lot better than the de facto colonisation of Russia by China. At the moment, the prospect is far away, and the US (of course helped by Russia's own brutish actions) has successfully driven a wedge between Russia and Western Europe that has benefited its own foreign policy aims.
The desire to bring China into the fold to be a moderating and democratizing influence has been shown to be complete bollocks, and it would be with Russia too. After the experience of the last year, it is crazy to recreate a dependence on Russia energy.
The West needs to go in the opposite direction, and make access to Western markets and institutions dependent on democratization.
China is big enough and wealthy enough to entertain its own hegemonic notions.
Russia, after Ukraine, not so much.
Admittedly, and judging by the histories of Britain and France, Russia is unlikely to reach this conclusion alone without sophisticated overtures from the West.
We can also expect China to want to flatter Russian imperial nostalgia while all the while essentially grabbing its assets and using it for various diplomatic puppetry.
Russia's land mass and history will be enough for it to entertain hegemonic notions, regardless of defeat in Ukraine. That is why the most likely path to healthy democratic normalcy is via break-up. If Ukraine and then Belarus become regular European democracies, places like Kaliningrad and Cossackia may look at them with envy.
For my money, while the overall consensus continues to be for a long-running grind, there are enough straws in the wind to entertain the prospect of a possible “early” (ie 2023) Russian collapse.
I do find the Archbishop of Canterbury’s argument compelling. No-one wins long term by humiliating Russia. Defeat is humiliation enough.
I do favour a return to 1991 borders, but I can see a decent case for the resumption of the Kharkiv Pact allowing for Russian naval in Sebastopol, a commitment by Ukraine not to join NATO, and perhaps even some special status for Crimea and the Donbas, along the lines of Northern Ireland for example.
Long-term, our policy should aim to bring Russia into Western economic, political, and defence structures.
There's a contradiction between saying we shouldn't humiliate Russia but bring it into Western structures, because from the perspective of Russians like Putin, that's precisely the scenario they regard as humiliating.
Do they regard being brought into European structures as humiliating, or just US-dominated ones? In many ways it would be desirable for the EU to form closer links with Russia itself - the influence on Russia could be democratising, economically-diversifying and pacifying, whilst Russia could provide access to its space programme, and massive energy supplies. This would be undesirable for the US, because it could result in a serious rival power bloc to the US. But not necessarily undesirable for the EU, or the UK - indeed as an outcome it would be a lot better than the de facto colonisation of Russia by China. At the moment, the prospect is far away, and the US (of course helped by Russia's own brutish actions) has successfully driven a wedge between Russia and Western Europe that has benefited its own foreign policy aims.
I think the idea of the EU seriously rivalling the US in another stretch again, but the general thinking here is reasonable and very switched on UK policymakers should be considering it.
In a way, the UK-Ukraine relationship could be the kernel of something like this.
(I have previously suggested that Ukraine’s joining NATO is not appropriate at this current moment, but entry into the Commonwealth is not a useless idea).
If you desire a negotiated peace, then Ukraine membership of NATO is possibly the only security guarantee they will accept. And they desire membership of the EU (which up was in quite a big way how this all kicked off). I’m not sure the Commonwealth would mean much to them.
Long-term, our policy should aim to bring Russia into Western economic, political, and defence structures.
In which century is this going to happen, if at all? I'm entirely confident that none of us will live to see it.
I don’t believe in some kind of Russian essentialism that says it must remain an eternal enemy.
I’m not saying such a policy must necessarily succeed, but neither do I think it sensible to watch it slip into an unstable satellite of China’s.
1. Russia has been a despotism for almost its entire history, save for an interlude of about a decade at the end of the Cold War. The experiment was unstable and quickly extinguished by the emergence of a new dictatorship. 2. Fascist Germany - leaving aside the fact that it had vastly greater potential for fruitful development in the first place - could be rescued by defeat and occupation. No such remedy exists for Fascist Russia. It will just go on, same as it ever was. It's irredeemable.
There exists no possibility of friendship with an adversary such as that. The best that can be managed is some form of detente, and that in turn can only be achieved through effective containment. A less toxic relationship can be achieved, but only once it is demonstrated to the Russians that we are both unwilling to be bullied by them and too strong to be overcome, brute force being the only language that the Russian ruling class understands and respects.
With all due respect, you could probably substitute "Japan at the end of World War 2" for "Russia". And yet they have successfully entered the brotherhood of nations.
I grant you that that required significant investment - in particular occupation - but I don't believe that countries and people are not capable of change.
Long-term, our policy should aim to bring Russia into Western economic, political, and defence structures.
In which century is this going to happen, if at all? I'm entirely confident that none of us will live to see it.
I don’t believe in some kind of Russian essentialism that says it must remain an eternal enemy.
I’m not saying such a policy must necessarily succeed, but neither do I think it sensible to watch it slip into an unstable satellite of China’s.
1. Russia has been a despotism for almost its entire history, save for an interlude of about a decade at the end of the Cold War. The experiment was unstable and quickly extinguished by the emergence of a new dictatorship. 2. Fascist Germany - leaving aside the fact that it had vastly greater potential for fruitful development in the first place - could be rescued by defeat and occupation. No such remedy exists for Fascist Russia. It will just go on, same as it ever was. It's irredeemable.
There exists no possibility of friendship with an adversary such as that. The best that can be managed is some form of detente, and that in turn can only be achieved through effective containment. A less toxic relationship can be achieved, but only once it is demonstrated to the Russians that we are both unwilling to be bullied by them and too strong to be overcome, brute force being the only language that the Russian ruling class understands and respects.
With all due respect, you could probably substitute "Japan at the end of World War 2" for "Russia". And yet they have successfully entered the brotherhood of nations.
I grant you that that required significant investment - in particular occupation - but I don't believe that countries and people are not capable of change.
I’d like it to be true, but I don’t see how Russia loses this “outright”
Putin has successfully made the war existential. Therefore Russian defeat in Ukraine is the conquest of Russia. That cannot happen because Russian is a great power WITH NUKES. Even if Putin is toppled no replacement will be allowed to negotiate “surrender”
This is Korean War 2.0. Quagmire and Armistice beckons, eventually
Pretty much. Apart from anything else, Russia has an almost limitless supply of cannon fodder.
It all ends with partition along a line of control as per Kashmir, with neither side recognising the territory held by the other de jure, but an accommodation being reached de facto. The 80% of Ukraine that remains unoccupied will then be pumped so full of cash and weapons that the cost of trying to resume the war of conquest at some point in the future will be too steep for Putin or his successors to stomach.
This state having been reached, the key challenge will then be to maintain a degree of unity with respect to the ostracism of Russia. Fundamentally, this is a fascist state with a fascist leadership and an overwhelmingly fascist-sympathising population: the existence of a handful of doomed internal dissidents and Pussy Riot does nothing to alter the fact that most Russians back both Putin and his imperial ambitions to the hilt. There will have to be a lot of determined diplomacy to prevent potential backsliders like Italy and Germany from trying to resume antebellum positions on trade and appeasement.
"Russia has an almost limitless supply of cannon fodder."
I'm far from convinced that's the case. Look at the Second World War: Germany had over 700,000 men in the Caucus in January 1943; the Soviets had a million. And that was just one front for both. The Ukraine war might be the largest land war we've seen for some years, but it's tiny compared to past wars.
Russia is, and wants to remain, a modern society. The modern world requires so many more skilled people than war did 80 years ago: there are loads of jobs that simply did not exist, but are critical to society and to war. We can't just send the Bevan Boys in to perform them as it takes years to learn the skills.
Then there are the demographic issues mentioned below.
The same also applies to Ukraine, as it happens.
I think this is spot on.
The pool of "talent" for Russia to draw upon is:
Men, aged 17 to 30, in decent physical shape, who don't have important jobs that are required for the war effort, and who haven't fled the country.
Russia's population pyramid is narrowest in the 20-24 (i.e. the prime fighting age) segment.
And a significant chunk of that group has already been called up, has been killed or injured, has fled, or is otherwise unsuitable for fighting.
The Russians have been enlisting prisoners, people who are HIV+ or have tuberculosis. These are not the actions of a country with unlimited cannon fodder.
And even if they did have another million men (which is half the number of Russian men in their early twenties), if they are unsupported, unsupplied, barely trained, and attacking entrenched defenders with Western weapons, then it's not going to end well for them.
At some point, the flow of shells dries up. At some point, too many artillery pieces have been destroyed by HIMARS or just by the warping of barrels from constant firing. At some point, going to the front is considered such a death sentence, that people would fancy their chances fighting the internal police.
At some point, waging offensive war no longer becomes an option for the Russians. Now, it may be they can then defend their positions in a long war of attrition and frozen fronts. Or it may be that long range artillery makes those dug in positions far from Russia and far from working railheads impossible to supply.
And then the war stops, one way or another.
And at that point Putin (or his even madder successor) drops a test nuke over the Black Sea and says Peace Now
Then what? We would agree to a peace, at that point. Probably something like Korea
For your preferred outcome to play out you must assume that Russian will NEVER use nukes even when faced with humiliating defeat. A very very dangerous assumption
It's not my "preferred outcome", I'm just pointing out the fallacy of the "Russia has unlimited resources to throw into the conflict" brigade, of which you are a member.
Russia does not have unlimited resources.
The fact is we're all guessing, and at times we've all been wrong. If I tally my beliefs vs what actually happened:
- I expected the invasion and wasn't surprised by that - I thought Ukraine would be overrun in days and was surprised by their resilience - When Russia withdrew from Kiev I expected stalemate but actually Russia went on to capture Severodonetsk - I was surprised like most by the rapid Ukrainian advances in the NE but not surprised when Kherson fell - But then unpleasantly surprised at how Russia fought back and started to advance again in the East
Now most people expect stalemate but a few expect a successful Ukrainian offensive in spring. It's really too difficult to tell.
It is very unpredictable. I don't know what will happen and don't know what is for the best (which I define as the course that minimises human suffering).
Curiously, PB.com is full of people who do know what will happen and are very convinced that they are right.
Is it ? Most express the same uncertainty about outcomes as you; they just disagree about actions. Topping appears also to have the habit of lumping together everyone who disagrees with him as a PB armchair general.
On the bright side, it does appear from the piece that superior intelligence information makes the US a great deal better at judging the probabilities of outcomes in Ukraine than the rest of us - including most European leaders.
Topping appears also to have the habit of lumping together everyone who disagrees with him as a PB armchair general.
Fair enough, surely.
I would have said that @TOPPING and @Dura_Ace are the only ones amongst us who have experienced actual fighting.
If you have fought in a war, you do bring rather different insights to the table.
So, I kinda weight their views more than someone who has only seen active service from the Morrisons in Cambourne.
I’d like it to be true, but I don’t see how Russia loses this “outright”
Putin has successfully made the war existential. Therefore Russian defeat in Ukraine is the conquest of Russia. That cannot happen because Russian is a great power WITH NUKES. Even if Putin is toppled no replacement will be allowed to negotiate “surrender”
This is Korean War 2.0. Quagmire and Armistice beckons, eventually
Pretty much. Apart from anything else, Russia has an almost limitless supply of cannon fodder.
It all ends with partition along a line of control as per Kashmir, with neither side recognising the territory held by the other de jure, but an accommodation being reached de facto. The 80% of Ukraine that remains unoccupied will then be pumped so full of cash and weapons that the cost of trying to resume the war of conquest at some point in the future will be too steep for Putin or his successors to stomach.
This state having been reached, the key challenge will then be to maintain a degree of unity with respect to the ostracism of Russia. Fundamentally, this is a fascist state with a fascist leadership and an overwhelmingly fascist-sympathising population: the existence of a handful of doomed internal dissidents and Pussy Riot does nothing to alter the fact that most Russians back both Putin and his imperial ambitions to the hilt. There will have to be a lot of determined diplomacy to prevent potential backsliders like Italy and Germany from trying to resume antebellum positions on trade and appeasement.
"Russia has an almost limitless supply of cannon fodder."
I'm far from convinced that's the case. Look at the Second World War: Germany had over 700,000 men in the Caucus in January 1943; the Soviets had a million. And that was just one front for both. The Ukraine war might be the largest land war we've seen for some years, but it's tiny compared to past wars.
Russia is, and wants to remain, a modern society. The modern world requires so many more skilled people than war did 80 years ago: there are loads of jobs that simply did not exist, but are critical to society and to war. We can't just send the Bevan Boys in to perform them as it takes years to learn the skills.
Then there are the demographic issues mentioned below.
The same also applies to Ukraine, as it happens.
I think this is spot on.
The pool of "talent" for Russia to draw upon is:
Men, aged 17 to 30, in decent physical shape, who don't have important jobs that are required for the war effort, and who haven't fled the country.
Russia's population pyramid is narrowest in the 20-24 (i.e. the prime fighting age) segment.
And a significant chunk of that group has already been called up, has been killed or injured, has fled, or is otherwise unsuitable for fighting.
The Russians have been enlisting prisoners, people who are HIV+ or have tuberculosis. These are not the actions of a country with unlimited cannon fodder.
And even if they did have another million men (which is half the number of Russian men in their early twenties), if they are unsupported, unsupplied, barely trained, and attacking entrenched defenders with Western weapons, then it's not going to end well for them.
At some point, the flow of shells dries up. At some point, too many artillery pieces have been destroyed by HIMARS or just by the warping of barrels from constant firing. At some point, going to the front is considered such a death sentence, that people would fancy their chances fighting the internal police.
At some point, waging offensive war no longer becomes an option for the Russians. Now, it may be they can then defend their positions in a long war of attrition and frozen fronts. Or it may be that long range artillery makes those dug in positions far from Russia and far from working railheads impossible to supply.
And then the war stops, one way or another.
And at that point Putin (or his even madder successor) drops a test nuke over the Black Sea and says Peace Now
Then what? We would agree to a peace, at that point. Probably something like Korea
For your preferred outcome to play out you must assume that Russian will NEVER use nukes even when faced with humiliating defeat. A very very dangerous assumption
It's not my "preferred outcome", I'm just pointing out the fallacy of the "Russia has unlimited resources to throw into the conflict" brigade, of which you are a member.
Russia does not have unlimited resources.
The fact is we're all guessing, and at times we've all been wrong. If I tally my beliefs vs what actually happened:
- I expected the invasion and wasn't surprised by that - I thought Ukraine would be overrun in days and was surprised by their resilience - When Russia withdrew from Kiev I expected stalemate but actually Russia went on to capture Severodonetsk - I was surprised like most by the rapid Ukrainian advances in the NE but not surprised when Kherson fell - But then unpleasantly surprised at how Russia fought back and started to advance again in the East
Now most people expect stalemate but a few expect a successful Ukrainian offensive in spring. It's really too difficult to tell.
It is very unpredictable. I don't know what will happen and don't know what is for the best (which I define as the course that minimises human suffering).
Curiously, PB.com is full of people who do know what will happen and are very convinced that they are right.
Is it ? Most express the same uncertainty about outcomes as you; they just disagree about actions. Topping appears also to have the habit of lumping together everyone who disagrees with him as a PB armchair general.
On the bright side, it does appear from the piece that superior intelligence information makes the US a great deal better at judging the probabilities of outcomes in Ukraine than the rest of us - including most European leaders.
Topping appears also to have the habit of lumping together everyone who disagrees with him as a PB armchair general.
Fair enough, surely.
Well, I would have said that @TOPPING and @Dura_Ace are the only ones amongst us who have experienced actual fighting.
If you have fought in a war, you do bring rather different insight to the table.
So, I kinda weight their views more than someone who has only seen active service from the Morrisons in Cambourne.
The only ones that make it public at least which is not the same thing
Why do Russian trolls always do the dot dot dot thing…is it some kind of Russian social media artefact…or did Pushkin and Tolstoy employ it…it’s quite a giveaway.
see also a lack of caps.
still no arguments. Do you think you are worth the money you are paid with such poor reasoning skills that you have....did you get your job through nepotism
Bold rhetoric for a newbie. You might want to ease yourself in a bit more gently.
Why do Russian trolls always do the dot dot dot thing…is it some kind of Russian social media artefact…or did Pushkin and Tolstoy employ it…it’s quite a giveaway.
see also a lack of caps.
still no arguments. Do you think you are worth the money you are paid with such poor reasoning skills that you have....did you get your job through nepotism
Bold rhetoric for a newbie. You might want to ease yourself in a bit more gently.
He thinks he is on comment is free or btl daily mail where folk are more credulous
I’d like it to be true, but I don’t see how Russia loses this “outright”
Putin has successfully made the war existential. Therefore Russian defeat in Ukraine is the conquest of Russia. That cannot happen because Russian is a great power WITH NUKES. Even if Putin is toppled no replacement will be allowed to negotiate “surrender”
This is Korean War 2.0. Quagmire and Armistice beckons, eventually
Pretty much. Apart from anything else, Russia has an almost limitless supply of cannon fodder.
It all ends with partition along a line of control as per Kashmir, with neither side recognising the territory held by the other de jure, but an accommodation being reached de facto. The 80% of Ukraine that remains unoccupied will then be pumped so full of cash and weapons that the cost of trying to resume the war of conquest at some point in the future will be too steep for Putin or his successors to stomach.
This state having been reached, the key challenge will then be to maintain a degree of unity with respect to the ostracism of Russia. Fundamentally, this is a fascist state with a fascist leadership and an overwhelmingly fascist-sympathising population: the existence of a handful of doomed internal dissidents and Pussy Riot does nothing to alter the fact that most Russians back both Putin and his imperial ambitions to the hilt. There will have to be a lot of determined diplomacy to prevent potential backsliders like Italy and Germany from trying to resume antebellum positions on trade and appeasement.
"Russia has an almost limitless supply of cannon fodder."
I'm far from convinced that's the case. Look at the Second World War: Germany had over 700,000 men in the Caucus in January 1943; the Soviets had a million. And that was just one front for both. The Ukraine war might be the largest land war we've seen for some years, but it's tiny compared to past wars.
Russia is, and wants to remain, a modern society. The modern world requires so many more skilled people than war did 80 years ago: there are loads of jobs that simply did not exist, but are critical to society and to war. We can't just send the Bevan Boys in to perform them as it takes years to learn the skills.
Then there are the demographic issues mentioned below.
The same also applies to Ukraine, as it happens.
I think this is spot on.
The pool of "talent" for Russia to draw upon is:
Men, aged 17 to 30, in decent physical shape, who don't have important jobs that are required for the war effort, and who haven't fled the country.
Russia's population pyramid is narrowest in the 20-24 (i.e. the prime fighting age) segment.
And a significant chunk of that group has already been called up, has been killed or injured, has fled, or is otherwise unsuitable for fighting.
The Russians have been enlisting prisoners, people who are HIV+ or have tuberculosis. These are not the actions of a country with unlimited cannon fodder.
And even if they did have another million men (which is half the number of Russian men in their early twenties), if they are unsupported, unsupplied, barely trained, and attacking entrenched defenders with Western weapons, then it's not going to end well for them.
At some point, the flow of shells dries up. At some point, too many artillery pieces have been destroyed by HIMARS or just by the warping of barrels from constant firing. At some point, going to the front is considered such a death sentence, that people would fancy their chances fighting the internal police.
At some point, waging offensive war no longer becomes an option for the Russians. Now, it may be they can then defend their positions in a long war of attrition and frozen fronts. Or it may be that long range artillery makes those dug in positions far from Russia and far from working railheads impossible to supply.
And then the war stops, one way or another.
And at that point Putin (or his even madder successor) drops a test nuke over the Black Sea and says Peace Now
Then what? We would agree to a peace, at that point. Probably something like Korea
For your preferred outcome to play out you must assume that Russian will NEVER use nukes even when faced with humiliating defeat. A very very dangerous assumption
It's not my "preferred outcome", I'm just pointing out the fallacy of the "Russia has unlimited resources to throw into the conflict" brigade, of which you are a member.
Russia does not have unlimited resources.
The fact is we're all guessing, and at times we've all been wrong. If I tally my beliefs vs what actually happened:
- I expected the invasion and wasn't surprised by that - I thought Ukraine would be overrun in days and was surprised by their resilience - When Russia withdrew from Kiev I expected stalemate but actually Russia went on to capture Severodonetsk - I was surprised like most by the rapid Ukrainian advances in the NE but not surprised when Kherson fell - But then unpleasantly surprised at how Russia fought back and started to advance again in the East
Now most people expect stalemate but a few expect a successful Ukrainian offensive in spring. It's really too difficult to tell.
It is very unpredictable. I don't know what will happen and don't know what is for the best (which I define as the course that minimises human suffering).
Curiously, PB.com is full of people who do know what will happen and are very convinced that they are right.
Is it ? Most express the same uncertainty about outcomes as you; they just disagree about actions. Topping appears also to have the habit of lumping together everyone who disagrees with him as a PB armchair general.
On the bright side, it does appear from the piece that superior intelligence information makes the US a great deal better at judging the probabilities of outcomes in Ukraine than the rest of us - including most European leaders.
Topping appears also to have the habit of lumping together everyone who disagrees with him as a PB armchair general.
Fair enough, surely.
Well, I would have said that @TOPPING and @Dura_Ace are the only ones amongst us who have experienced actual fighting.
If you have fought in a war, you do bring rather different insight to the table.
So, I kinda weight their views more than someone who has only seen active service from the Morrisons in Cambourne.
The only ones that make it public at least which is not the same thing
An opportunity for the armchairs to state they have practical experience, no?
I’d like it to be true, but I don’t see how Russia loses this “outright”
Putin has successfully made the war existential. Therefore Russian defeat in Ukraine is the conquest of Russia. That cannot happen because Russian is a great power WITH NUKES. Even if Putin is toppled no replacement will be allowed to negotiate “surrender”
This is Korean War 2.0. Quagmire and Armistice beckons, eventually
Pretty much. Apart from anything else, Russia has an almost limitless supply of cannon fodder.
It all ends with partition along a line of control as per Kashmir, with neither side recognising the territory held by the other de jure, but an accommodation being reached de facto. The 80% of Ukraine that remains unoccupied will then be pumped so full of cash and weapons that the cost of trying to resume the war of conquest at some point in the future will be too steep for Putin or his successors to stomach.
This state having been reached, the key challenge will then be to maintain a degree of unity with respect to the ostracism of Russia. Fundamentally, this is a fascist state with a fascist leadership and an overwhelmingly fascist-sympathising population: the existence of a handful of doomed internal dissidents and Pussy Riot does nothing to alter the fact that most Russians back both Putin and his imperial ambitions to the hilt. There will have to be a lot of determined diplomacy to prevent potential backsliders like Italy and Germany from trying to resume antebellum positions on trade and appeasement.
"Russia has an almost limitless supply of cannon fodder."
I'm far from convinced that's the case. Look at the Second World War: Germany had over 700,000 men in the Caucus in January 1943; the Soviets had a million. And that was just one front for both. The Ukraine war might be the largest land war we've seen for some years, but it's tiny compared to past wars.
Russia is, and wants to remain, a modern society. The modern world requires so many more skilled people than war did 80 years ago: there are loads of jobs that simply did not exist, but are critical to society and to war. We can't just send the Bevan Boys in to perform them as it takes years to learn the skills.
Then there are the demographic issues mentioned below.
The same also applies to Ukraine, as it happens.
I think this is spot on.
The pool of "talent" for Russia to draw upon is:
Men, aged 17 to 30, in decent physical shape, who don't have important jobs that are required for the war effort, and who haven't fled the country.
Russia's population pyramid is narrowest in the 20-24 (i.e. the prime fighting age) segment.
And a significant chunk of that group has already been called up, has been killed or injured, has fled, or is otherwise unsuitable for fighting.
The Russians have been enlisting prisoners, people who are HIV+ or have tuberculosis. These are not the actions of a country with unlimited cannon fodder.
And even if they did have another million men (which is half the number of Russian men in their early twenties), if they are unsupported, unsupplied, barely trained, and attacking entrenched defenders with Western weapons, then it's not going to end well for them.
At some point, the flow of shells dries up. At some point, too many artillery pieces have been destroyed by HIMARS or just by the warping of barrels from constant firing. At some point, going to the front is considered such a death sentence, that people would fancy their chances fighting the internal police.
At some point, waging offensive war no longer becomes an option for the Russians. Now, it may be they can then defend their positions in a long war of attrition and frozen fronts. Or it may be that long range artillery makes those dug in positions far from Russia and far from working railheads impossible to supply.
And then the war stops, one way or another.
And at that point Putin (or his even madder successor) drops a test nuke over the Black Sea and says Peace Now
Then what? We would agree to a peace, at that point. Probably something like Korea
For your preferred outcome to play out you must assume that Russian will NEVER use nukes even when faced with humiliating defeat. A very very dangerous assumption
It's not my "preferred outcome", I'm just pointing out the fallacy of the "Russia has unlimited resources to throw into the conflict" brigade, of which you are a member.
Russia does not have unlimited resources.
The fact is we're all guessing, and at times we've all been wrong. If I tally my beliefs vs what actually happened:
- I expected the invasion and wasn't surprised by that - I thought Ukraine would be overrun in days and was surprised by their resilience - When Russia withdrew from Kiev I expected stalemate but actually Russia went on to capture Severodonetsk - I was surprised like most by the rapid Ukrainian advances in the NE but not surprised when Kherson fell - But then unpleasantly surprised at how Russia fought back and started to advance again in the East
Now most people expect stalemate but a few expect a successful Ukrainian offensive in spring. It's really too difficult to tell.
It is very unpredictable. I don't know what will happen and don't know what is for the best (which I define as the course that minimises human suffering).
Curiously, PB.com is full of people who do know what will happen and are very convinced that they are right.
Is it ? Most express the same uncertainty about outcomes as you; they just disagree about actions. Topping appears also to have the habit of lumping together everyone who disagrees with him as a PB armchair general.
On the bright side, it does appear from the piece that superior intelligence information makes the US a great deal better at judging the probabilities of outcomes in Ukraine than the rest of us - including most European leaders.
Topping appears also to have the habit of lumping together everyone who disagrees with him as a PB armchair general.
Fair enough, surely.
Well, I would have said that @TOPPING and @Dura_Ace are the only ones amongst us who have experienced actual fighting.
If you have fought in a war, you do bring rather different insight to the table.
So, I kinda weight their views more than someone who has only seen active service from the Morrisons in Cambourne.
The only ones that make it public at least which is not the same thing
An opportunity for the armchairs to state they have practical experience, no?
If they don't want to why should they to satisfy your curiousity. Dura Ace in particular has been wrong about so many things so far....remember his "NLAW's are useless" . I dont find them anymore credible than any other poster frankly
For my money, while the overall consensus continues to be for a long-running grind, there are enough straws in the wind to entertain the prospect of a possible “early” (ie 2023) Russian collapse.
I do find the Archbishop of Canterbury’s argument compelling. No-one wins long term by humiliating Russia. Defeat is humiliation enough.
I do favour a return to 1991 borders, but I can see a decent case for the resumption of the Kharkiv Pact allowing for Russian naval in Sebastopol, a commitment by Ukraine not to join NATO, and perhaps even some special status for Crimea and the Donbas, along the lines of Northern Ireland for example.
Long-term, our policy should aim to bring Russia into Western economic, political, and defence structures.
There's a contradiction between saying we shouldn't humiliate Russia but bring it into Western structures, because from the perspective of Russians like Putin, that's precisely the scenario they regard as humiliating.
Do they regard being brought into European structures as humiliating, or just US-dominated ones? In many ways it would be desirable for the EU to form closer links with Russia itself - the influence on Russia could be democratising, economically-diversifying and pacifying, whilst Russia could provide access to its space programme, and massive energy supplies. This would be undesirable for the US, because it could result in a serious rival power bloc to the US. But not necessarily undesirable for the EU, or the UK - indeed as an outcome it would be a lot better than the de facto colonisation of Russia by China. At the moment, the prospect is far away, and the US (of course helped by Russia's own brutish actions) has successfully driven a wedge between Russia and Western Europe that has benefited its own foreign policy aims.
I think the idea of the EU seriously rivalling the US in another stretch again, but the general thinking here is reasonable and very switched on UK policymakers should be considering it.
In a way, the UK-Ukraine relationship could be the kernel of something like this.
(I have previously suggested that Ukraine’s joining NATO is not appropriate at this current moment, but entry into the Commonwealth is not a useless idea).
If you desire a negotiated peace, then Ukraine membership of NATO is possibly the only security guarantee they will accept. And they desire membership of the EU (which up was in quite a big way how this all kicked off). I’m not sure the Commonwealth would mean much to them.
I don’t think Ukraine joining NATO currently makes sense from either NATO or Russian perspective. Sure it makes sense unto Ukraine itself. I don’t see it as necessary for a negotiated peace. Let’s see.
I think Ukraine is too poor to join EU at present. Also, too corrupt. Sure, it can and has entered a process of membership but there’s a lot of work to do.
I don’t pretend that the Commonwealth is hugely meaningful, but it a very modest way it might be a way to underpin UK and other countries’ support for Ukraine’s judicial systems, also higher education linkages. And it provides Ukraine, again modestly, with another window on the world. Also, the French would hate it.
For my money, while the overall consensus continues to be for a long-running grind, there are enough straws in the wind to entertain the prospect of a possible “early” (ie 2023) Russian collapse.
I do find the Archbishop of Canterbury’s argument compelling. No-one wins long term by humiliating Russia. Defeat is humiliation enough.
I do favour a return to 1991 borders, but I can see a decent case for the resumption of the Kharkiv Pact allowing for Russian naval in Sebastopol, a commitment by Ukraine not to join NATO, and perhaps even some special status for Crimea and the Donbas, along the lines of Northern Ireland for example.
Long-term, our policy should aim to bring Russia into Western economic, political, and defence structures.
There's a contradiction between saying we shouldn't humiliate Russia but bring it into Western structures, because from the perspective of Russians like Putin, that's precisely the scenario they regard as humiliating.
Do they regard being brought into European structures as humiliating, or just US-dominated ones? In many ways it would be desirable for the EU to form closer links with Russia itself - the influence on Russia could be democratising, economically-diversifying and pacifying, whilst Russia could provide access to its space programme, and massive energy supplies. This would be undesirable for the US, because it could result in a serious rival power bloc to the US. But not necessarily undesirable for the EU, or the UK - indeed as an outcome it would be a lot better than the de facto colonisation of Russia by China. At the moment, the prospect is far away, and the US (of course helped by Russia's own brutish actions) has successfully driven a wedge between Russia and Western Europe that has benefited its own foreign policy aims.
The desire to bring China into the fold to be a moderating and democratizing influence has been shown to be complete bollocks, and it would be with Russia too. After the experience of the last year, it is crazy to recreate a dependence on Russia energy.
The West needs to go in the opposite direction, and make access to Western markets and institutions dependent on democratization.
China is big enough and wealthy enough to entertain its own hegemonic notions.
Russia, after Ukraine, not so much.
Admittedly, and judging by the histories of Britain and France, Russia is unlikely to reach this conclusion alone without sophisticated overtures from the West.
We can also expect China to want to flatter Russian imperial nostalgia while all the while essentially grabbing its assets and using it for various diplomatic puppetry.
Russia's land mass and history will be enough for it to entertain hegemonic notions, regardless of defeat in Ukraine. That is why the most likely path to healthy democratic normalcy is via break-up. If Ukraine and then Belarus become regular European democracies, places like Kaliningrad and Cossackia may look at them with envy.
Russia's superpower status was a relatively short lived thing. Prior to 1945 it was one of 7 or 8 great powers. When Putin was 8 years old the Soviets put the first man in space. They were the second biggest economy in the world. For Russians under 40 (and male life expectancy is only 70) it isn't a world they recognise.
Long-term, our policy should aim to bring Russia into Western economic, political, and defence structures.
In which century is this going to happen, if at all? I'm entirely confident that none of us will live to see it.
I don’t believe in some kind of Russian essentialism that says it must remain an eternal enemy.
I’m not saying such a policy must necessarily succeed, but neither do I think it sensible to watch it slip into an unstable satellite of China’s.
1. Russia has been a despotism for almost its entire history, save for an interlude of about a decade at the end of the Cold War. The experiment was unstable and quickly extinguished by the emergence of a new dictatorship. 2. Fascist Germany - leaving aside the fact that it had vastly greater potential for fruitful development in the first place - could be rescued by defeat and occupation. No such remedy exists for Fascist Russia. It will just go on, same as it ever was. It's irredeemable.
There exists no possibility of friendship with an adversary such as that. The best that can be managed is some form of detente, and that in turn can only be achieved through effective containment. A less toxic relationship can be achieved, but only once it is demonstrated to the Russians that we are both unwilling to be bullied by them and too strong to be overcome, brute force being the only language that the Russian ruling class understands and respects.
With all due respect, you could probably substitute "Japan at the end of World War 2" for "Russia". And yet they have successfully entered the brotherhood of nations.
I grant you that that required significant investment - in particular occupation - but I don't believe that countries and people are not capable of change.
A successful conquest was a necessary element in the reform of both Germany and Japan. Nothing would've changed if either had been fought to a draw, they would just have brooded and re-armed, ending in a Cold War as the opposing camps eventually developed nuclear weapons. Russia won't change because it has no desire or capacity for self-reform, and there exists no viable means to force it to do so.
I’d like it to be true, but I don’t see how Russia loses this “outright”
Putin has successfully made the war existential. Therefore Russian defeat in Ukraine is the conquest of Russia. That cannot happen because Russian is a great power WITH NUKES. Even if Putin is toppled no replacement will be allowed to negotiate “surrender”
This is Korean War 2.0. Quagmire and Armistice beckons, eventually
Pretty much. Apart from anything else, Russia has an almost limitless supply of cannon fodder.
It all ends with partition along a line of control as per Kashmir, with neither side recognising the territory held by the other de jure, but an accommodation being reached de facto. The 80% of Ukraine that remains unoccupied will then be pumped so full of cash and weapons that the cost of trying to resume the war of conquest at some point in the future will be too steep for Putin or his successors to stomach.
This state having been reached, the key challenge will then be to maintain a degree of unity with respect to the ostracism of Russia. Fundamentally, this is a fascist state with a fascist leadership and an overwhelmingly fascist-sympathising population: the existence of a handful of doomed internal dissidents and Pussy Riot does nothing to alter the fact that most Russians back both Putin and his imperial ambitions to the hilt. There will have to be a lot of determined diplomacy to prevent potential backsliders like Italy and Germany from trying to resume antebellum positions on trade and appeasement.
"Russia has an almost limitless supply of cannon fodder."
I'm far from convinced that's the case. Look at the Second World War: Germany had over 700,000 men in the Caucus in January 1943; the Soviets had a million. And that was just one front for both. The Ukraine war might be the largest land war we've seen for some years, but it's tiny compared to past wars.
Russia is, and wants to remain, a modern society. The modern world requires so many more skilled people than war did 80 years ago: there are loads of jobs that simply did not exist, but are critical to society and to war. We can't just send the Bevan Boys in to perform them as it takes years to learn the skills.
Then there are the demographic issues mentioned below.
The same also applies to Ukraine, as it happens.
I think this is spot on.
The pool of "talent" for Russia to draw upon is:
Men, aged 17 to 30, in decent physical shape, who don't have important jobs that are required for the war effort, and who haven't fled the country.
Russia's population pyramid is narrowest in the 20-24 (i.e. the prime fighting age) segment.
And a significant chunk of that group has already been called up, has been killed or injured, has fled, or is otherwise unsuitable for fighting.
The Russians have been enlisting prisoners, people who are HIV+ or have tuberculosis. These are not the actions of a country with unlimited cannon fodder.
And even if they did have another million men (which is half the number of Russian men in their early twenties), if they are unsupported, unsupplied, barely trained, and attacking entrenched defenders with Western weapons, then it's not going to end well for them.
At some point, the flow of shells dries up. At some point, too many artillery pieces have been destroyed by HIMARS or just by the warping of barrels from constant firing. At some point, going to the front is considered such a death sentence, that people would fancy their chances fighting the internal police.
At some point, waging offensive war no longer becomes an option for the Russians. Now, it may be they can then defend their positions in a long war of attrition and frozen fronts. Or it may be that long range artillery makes those dug in positions far from Russia and far from working railheads impossible to supply.
And then the war stops, one way or another.
And at that point Putin (or his even madder successor) drops a test nuke over the Black Sea and says Peace Now
Then what? We would agree to a peace, at that point. Probably something like Korea
For your preferred outcome to play out you must assume that Russian will NEVER use nukes even when faced with humiliating defeat. A very very dangerous assumption
It's not my "preferred outcome", I'm just pointing out the fallacy of the "Russia has unlimited resources to throw into the conflict" brigade, of which you are a member.
Russia does not have unlimited resources.
The fact is we're all guessing, and at times we've all been wrong. If I tally my beliefs vs what actually happened:
- I expected the invasion and wasn't surprised by that - I thought Ukraine would be overrun in days and was surprised by their resilience - When Russia withdrew from Kiev I expected stalemate but actually Russia went on to capture Severodonetsk - I was surprised like most by the rapid Ukrainian advances in the NE but not surprised when Kherson fell - But then unpleasantly surprised at how Russia fought back and started to advance again in the East
Now most people expect stalemate but a few expect a successful Ukrainian offensive in spring. It's really too difficult to tell.
It is very unpredictable. I don't know what will happen and don't know what is for the best (which I define as the course that minimises human suffering).
Curiously, PB.com is full of people who do know what will happen and are very convinced that they are right.
Is it ? Most express the same uncertainty about outcomes as you; they just disagree about actions. Topping appears also to have the habit of lumping together everyone who disagrees with him as a PB armchair general.
On the bright side, it does appear from the piece that superior intelligence information makes the US a great deal better at judging the probabilities of outcomes in Ukraine than the rest of us - including most European leaders.
Topping appears also to have the habit of lumping together everyone who disagrees with him as a PB armchair general.
Fair enough, surely.
I would have said that @TOPPING and @Dura_Ace are the only ones amongst us who have experienced actual fighting.
If you have fought in a war, you do bring rather different insights to the table.
So, I kinda weight their views more than someone who has only seen active service from the Morrisons in Cambourne.
And yet give little apparent weight to the views of others have also experienced fighting, and who have proved rather closer to the mark in their predictions.
I’d like it to be true, but I don’t see how Russia loses this “outright”
Putin has successfully made the war existential. Therefore Russian defeat in Ukraine is the conquest of Russia. That cannot happen because Russian is a great power WITH NUKES. Even if Putin is toppled no replacement will be allowed to negotiate “surrender”
This is Korean War 2.0. Quagmire and Armistice beckons, eventually
Pretty much. Apart from anything else, Russia has an almost limitless supply of cannon fodder.
It all ends with partition along a line of control as per Kashmir, with neither side recognising the territory held by the other de jure, but an accommodation being reached de facto. The 80% of Ukraine that remains unoccupied will then be pumped so full of cash and weapons that the cost of trying to resume the war of conquest at some point in the future will be too steep for Putin or his successors to stomach.
This state having been reached, the key challenge will then be to maintain a degree of unity with respect to the ostracism of Russia. Fundamentally, this is a fascist state with a fascist leadership and an overwhelmingly fascist-sympathising population: the existence of a handful of doomed internal dissidents and Pussy Riot does nothing to alter the fact that most Russians back both Putin and his imperial ambitions to the hilt. There will have to be a lot of determined diplomacy to prevent potential backsliders like Italy and Germany from trying to resume antebellum positions on trade and appeasement.
"Russia has an almost limitless supply of cannon fodder."
I'm far from convinced that's the case. Look at the Second World War: Germany had over 700,000 men in the Caucus in January 1943; the Soviets had a million. And that was just one front for both. The Ukraine war might be the largest land war we've seen for some years, but it's tiny compared to past wars.
Russia is, and wants to remain, a modern society. The modern world requires so many more skilled people than war did 80 years ago: there are loads of jobs that simply did not exist, but are critical to society and to war. We can't just send the Bevan Boys in to perform them as it takes years to learn the skills.
Then there are the demographic issues mentioned below.
The same also applies to Ukraine, as it happens.
I think this is spot on.
The pool of "talent" for Russia to draw upon is:
Men, aged 17 to 30, in decent physical shape, who don't have important jobs that are required for the war effort, and who haven't fled the country.
Russia's population pyramid is narrowest in the 20-24 (i.e. the prime fighting age) segment.
And a significant chunk of that group has already been called up, has been killed or injured, has fled, or is otherwise unsuitable for fighting.
The Russians have been enlisting prisoners, people who are HIV+ or have tuberculosis. These are not the actions of a country with unlimited cannon fodder.
And even if they did have another million men (which is half the number of Russian men in their early twenties), if they are unsupported, unsupplied, barely trained, and attacking entrenched defenders with Western weapons, then it's not going to end well for them.
At some point, the flow of shells dries up. At some point, too many artillery pieces have been destroyed by HIMARS or just by the warping of barrels from constant firing. At some point, going to the front is considered such a death sentence, that people would fancy their chances fighting the internal police.
At some point, waging offensive war no longer becomes an option for the Russians. Now, it may be they can then defend their positions in a long war of attrition and frozen fronts. Or it may be that long range artillery makes those dug in positions far from Russia and far from working railheads impossible to supply.
And then the war stops, one way or another.
And at that point Putin (or his even madder successor) drops a test nuke over the Black Sea and says Peace Now
Then what? We would agree to a peace, at that point. Probably something like Korea
For your preferred outcome to play out you must assume that Russian will NEVER use nukes even when faced with humiliating defeat. A very very dangerous assumption
It's not my "preferred outcome", I'm just pointing out the fallacy of the "Russia has unlimited resources to throw into the conflict" brigade, of which you are a member.
Russia does not have unlimited resources.
The fact is we're all guessing, and at times we've all been wrong. If I tally my beliefs vs what actually happened:
- I expected the invasion and wasn't surprised by that - I thought Ukraine would be overrun in days and was surprised by their resilience - When Russia withdrew from Kiev I expected stalemate but actually Russia went on to capture Severodonetsk - I was surprised like most by the rapid Ukrainian advances in the NE but not surprised when Kherson fell - But then unpleasantly surprised at how Russia fought back and started to advance again in the East
Now most people expect stalemate but a few expect a successful Ukrainian offensive in spring. It's really too difficult to tell.
It is very unpredictable. I don't know what will happen and don't know what is for the best (which I define as the course that minimises human suffering).
Curiously, PB.com is full of people who do know what will happen and are very convinced that they are right.
Is it ? Most express the same uncertainty about outcomes as you; they just disagree about actions. Topping appears also to have the habit of lumping together everyone who disagrees with him as a PB armchair general.
On the bright side, it does appear from the piece that superior intelligence information makes the US a great deal better at judging the probabilities of outcomes in Ukraine than the rest of us - including most European leaders.
Topping appears also to have the habit of lumping together everyone who disagrees with him as a PB armchair general.
Fair enough, surely.
Well, I would have said that @TOPPING and @Dura_Ace are the only ones amongst us who have experienced actual fighting.
If you have fought in a war, you do bring rather different insight to the table.
So, I kinda weight their views more than someone who has only seen active service from the Morrisons in Cambourne.
The only ones that make it public at least which is not the same thing
And of course, it would depend how relevant one’s military experience is to the war in Ukraine.
Most British soldiers’ experience of war since Korea has been counter-insurgency, or fairly limited conventional fighting.
For my money, while the overall consensus continues to be for a long-running grind, there are enough straws in the wind to entertain the prospect of a possible “early” (ie 2023) Russian collapse.
I do find the Archbishop of Canterbury’s argument compelling. No-one wins long term by humiliating Russia. Defeat is humiliation enough.
I do favour a return to 1991 borders, but I can see a decent case for the resumption of the Kharkiv Pact allowing for Russian naval in Sebastopol, a commitment by Ukraine not to join NATO, and perhaps even some special status for Crimea and the Donbas, along the lines of Northern Ireland for example.
Long-term, our policy should aim to bring Russia into Western economic, political, and defence structures.
There's a contradiction between saying we shouldn't humiliate Russia but bring it into Western structures, because from the perspective of Russians like Putin, that's precisely the scenario they regard as humiliating.
Do they regard being brought into European structures as humiliating, or just US-dominated ones? In many ways it would be desirable for the EU to form closer links with Russia itself - the influence on Russia could be democratising, economically-diversifying and pacifying, whilst Russia could provide access to its space programme, and massive energy supplies. This would be undesirable for the US, because it could result in a serious rival power bloc to the US. But not necessarily undesirable for the EU, or the UK - indeed as an outcome it would be a lot better than the de facto colonisation of Russia by China. At the moment, the prospect is far away, and the US (of course helped by Russia's own brutish actions) has successfully driven a wedge between Russia and Western Europe that has benefited its own foreign policy aims.
I think the idea of the EU seriously rivalling the US in another stretch again, but the general thinking here is reasonable and very switched on UK policymakers should be considering it.
In a way, the UK-Ukraine relationship could be the kernel of something like this.
(I have previously suggested that Ukraine’s joining NATO is not appropriate at this current moment, but entry into the Commonwealth is not a useless idea).
If you desire a negotiated peace, then Ukraine membership of NATO is possibly the only security guarantee they will accept. And they desire membership of the EU (which up was in quite a big way how this all kicked off). I’m not sure the Commonwealth would mean much to them.
Isn't South Africa in the commonwealth? And IIRC South Africa is very much on Russia's side in this?
For my money, while the overall consensus continues to be for a long-running grind, there are enough straws in the wind to entertain the prospect of a possible “early” (ie 2023) Russian collapse.
I do find the Archbishop of Canterbury’s argument compelling. No-one wins long term by humiliating Russia. Defeat is humiliation enough.
I do favour a return to 1991 borders, but I can see a decent case for the resumption of the Kharkiv Pact allowing for Russian naval in Sebastopol, a commitment by Ukraine not to join NATO, and perhaps even some special status for Crimea and the Donbas, along the lines of Northern Ireland for example.
Long-term, our policy should aim to bring Russia into Western economic, political, and defence structures.
There's a contradiction between saying we shouldn't humiliate Russia but bring it into Western structures, because from the perspective of Russians like Putin, that's precisely the scenario they regard as humiliating.
Do they regard being brought into European structures as humiliating, or just US-dominated ones? In many ways it would be desirable for the EU to form closer links with Russia itself - the influence on Russia could be democratising, economically-diversifying and pacifying, whilst Russia could provide access to its space programme, and massive energy supplies. This would be undesirable for the US, because it could result in a serious rival power bloc to the US. But not necessarily undesirable for the EU, or the UK - indeed as an outcome it would be a lot better than the de facto colonisation of Russia by China. At the moment, the prospect is far away, and the US (of course helped by Russia's own brutish actions) has successfully driven a wedge between Russia and Western Europe that has benefited its own foreign policy aims.
The desire to bring China into the fold to be a moderating and democratizing influence has been shown to be complete bollocks, and it would be with Russia too. After the experience of the last year, it is crazy to recreate a dependence on Russia energy.
The West needs to go in the opposite direction, and make access to Western markets and institutions dependent on democratization.
I am as against the pathetic obeisance to China whilst they stole our IP as you are. I am against that approach in any of our foreign relations.
Between Russia and the EU I would see a more formal relationship developing. I don't want the UK involved, but I do see it as desirable for a powerful European bloc to emerge that is not the USA. The UK has always striven for balance of powers; the hegemonic power of one is toxic - when it happens, you get things like GOF research and Covid, and very little possibility of meaningful redress.
For my money, while the overall consensus continues to be for a long-running grind, there are enough straws in the wind to entertain the prospect of a possible “early” (ie 2023) Russian collapse.
I do find the Archbishop of Canterbury’s argument compelling. No-one wins long term by humiliating Russia. Defeat is humiliation enough.
I do favour a return to 1991 borders, but I can see a decent case for the resumption of the Kharkiv Pact allowing for Russian naval in Sebastopol, a commitment by Ukraine not to join NATO, and perhaps even some special status for Crimea and the Donbas, along the lines of Northern Ireland for example.
Long-term, our policy should aim to bring Russia into Western economic, political, and defence structures.
There's a contradiction between saying we shouldn't humiliate Russia but bring it into Western structures, because from the perspective of Russians like Putin, that's precisely the scenario they regard as humiliating.
Do they regard being brought into European structures as humiliating, or just US-dominated ones? In many ways it would be desirable for the EU to form closer links with Russia itself - the influence on Russia could be democratising, economically-diversifying and pacifying, whilst Russia could provide access to its space programme, and massive energy supplies. This would be undesirable for the US, because it could result in a serious rival power bloc to the US. But not necessarily undesirable for the EU, or the UK - indeed as an outcome it would be a lot better than the de facto colonisation of Russia by China. At the moment, the prospect is far away, and the US (of course helped by Russia's own brutish actions) has successfully driven a wedge between Russia and Western Europe that has benefited its own foreign policy aims.
I think the idea of the EU seriously rivalling the US in another stretch again, but the general thinking here is reasonable and very switched on UK policymakers should be considering it.
In a way, the UK-Ukraine relationship could be the kernel of something like this.
(I have previously suggested that Ukraine’s joining NATO is not appropriate at this current moment, but entry into the Commonwealth is not a useless idea).
If you desire a negotiated peace, then Ukraine membership of NATO is possibly the only security guarantee they will accept. And they desire membership of the EU (which up was in quite a big way how this all kicked off). I’m not sure the Commonwealth would mean much to them.
Isn't South Africa in the commonwealth? And IIRC South Africa is very much on Russia's side in this?
Very much is an exaggeration.
Anyway the Commonwealth is obviously not a geopolitical bloc. At present it’s difficult to see what use it has, although I can see benefit in a club for non-USA led democracies sharing legal, democratic, and educational practices.
For my money, while the overall consensus continues to be for a long-running grind, there are enough straws in the wind to entertain the prospect of a possible “early” (ie 2023) Russian collapse.
I do find the Archbishop of Canterbury’s argument compelling. No-one wins long term by humiliating Russia. Defeat is humiliation enough.
I do favour a return to 1991 borders, but I can see a decent case for the resumption of the Kharkiv Pact allowing for Russian naval in Sebastopol, a commitment by Ukraine not to join NATO, and perhaps even some special status for Crimea and the Donbas, along the lines of Northern Ireland for example.
Long-term, our policy should aim to bring Russia into Western economic, political, and defence structures.
There's a contradiction between saying we shouldn't humiliate Russia but bring it into Western structures, because from the perspective of Russians like Putin, that's precisely the scenario they regard as humiliating.
Do they regard being brought into European structures as humiliating, or just US-dominated ones? In many ways it would be desirable for the EU to form closer links with Russia itself - the influence on Russia could be democratising, economically-diversifying and pacifying, whilst Russia could provide access to its space programme, and massive energy supplies. This would be undesirable for the US, because it could result in a serious rival power bloc to the US. But not necessarily undesirable for the EU, or the UK - indeed as an outcome it would be a lot better than the de facto colonisation of Russia by China. At the moment, the prospect is far away, and the US (of course helped by Russia's own brutish actions) has successfully driven a wedge between Russia and Western Europe that has benefited its own foreign policy aims.
I think the idea of the EU seriously rivalling the US in another stretch again, but the general thinking here is reasonable and very switched on UK policymakers should be considering it.
In a way, the UK-Ukraine relationship could be the kernel of something like this.
(I have previously suggested that Ukraine’s joining NATO is not appropriate at this current moment, but entry into the Commonwealth is not a useless idea).
If you desire a negotiated peace, then Ukraine membership of NATO is possibly the only security guarantee they will accept. And they desire membership of the EU (which up was in quite a big way how this all kicked off). I’m not sure the Commonwealth would mean much to them.
Isn't South Africa in the commonwealth? And IIRC South Africa is very much on Russia's side in this?
For my money, while the overall consensus continues to be for a long-running grind, there are enough straws in the wind to entertain the prospect of a possible “early” (ie 2023) Russian collapse.
I do find the Archbishop of Canterbury’s argument compelling. No-one wins long term by humiliating Russia. Defeat is humiliation enough.
I do favour a return to 1991 borders, but I can see a decent case for the resumption of the Kharkiv Pact allowing for Russian naval in Sebastopol, a commitment by Ukraine not to join NATO, and perhaps even some special status for Crimea and the Donbas, along the lines of Northern Ireland for example.
Long-term, our policy should aim to bring Russia into Western economic, political, and defence structures.
There's a contradiction between saying we shouldn't humiliate Russia but bring it into Western structures, because from the perspective of Russians like Putin, that's precisely the scenario they regard as humiliating.
Do they regard being brought into European structures as humiliating, or just US-dominated ones? In many ways it would be desirable for the EU to form closer links with Russia itself - the influence on Russia could be democratising, economically-diversifying and pacifying, whilst Russia could provide access to its space programme, and massive energy supplies. This would be undesirable for the US, because it could result in a serious rival power bloc to the US. But not necessarily undesirable for the EU, or the UK - indeed as an outcome it would be a lot better than the de facto colonisation of Russia by China. At the moment, the prospect is far away, and the US (of course helped by Russia's own brutish actions) has successfully driven a wedge between Russia and Western Europe that has benefited its own foreign policy aims.
I think the idea of the EU seriously rivalling the US in another stretch again, but the general thinking here is reasonable and very switched on UK policymakers should be considering it.
In a way, the UK-Ukraine relationship could be the kernel of something like this.
(I have previously suggested that Ukraine’s joining NATO is not appropriate at this current moment, but entry into the Commonwealth is not a useless idea).
If you desire a negotiated peace, then Ukraine membership of NATO is possibly the only security guarantee they will accept. And they desire membership of the EU (which up was in quite a big way how this all kicked off). I’m not sure the Commonwealth would mean much to them.
NATO membership for Ukraine is dead in the water, if I'm correct and this ends with a Kashmiri solution - a ceasefire, where Russia holds onto its gains but both sides continue to make further claims against each other, i.e. a permanently frozen conflict. It could be achieved as part of a grand bargain, in which Ukraine lets Putin keep his conquests in exchange for a treaty in which Russia concedes Ukrainian strategic autonomy, and NATO then admits Ukraine (Russian promises obviously being worthless, but membership of NATO being priceless, as the Baltic States have discovered.) But somehow I don't see Ukraine ever conceding all that territory.
For my money, while the overall consensus continues to be for a long-running grind, there are enough straws in the wind to entertain the prospect of a possible “early” (ie 2023) Russian collapse.
I do find the Archbishop of Canterbury’s argument compelling. No-one wins long term by humiliating Russia. Defeat is humiliation enough.
I do favour a return to 1991 borders, but I can see a decent case for the resumption of the Kharkiv Pact allowing for Russian naval in Sebastopol, a commitment by Ukraine not to join NATO, and perhaps even some special status for Crimea and the Donbas, along the lines of Northern Ireland for example.
Long-term, our policy should aim to bring Russia into Western economic, political, and defence structures.
There's a contradiction between saying we shouldn't humiliate Russia but bring it into Western structures, because from the perspective of Russians like Putin, that's precisely the scenario they regard as humiliating.
Do they regard being brought into European structures as humiliating, or just US-dominated ones? In many ways it would be desirable for the EU to form closer links with Russia itself - the influence on Russia could be democratising, economically-diversifying and pacifying, whilst Russia could provide access to its space programme, and massive energy supplies. This would be undesirable for the US, because it could result in a serious rival power bloc to the US. But not necessarily undesirable for the EU, or the UK - indeed as an outcome it would be a lot better than the de facto colonisation of Russia by China. At the moment, the prospect is far away, and the US (of course helped by Russia's own brutish actions) has successfully driven a wedge between Russia and Western Europe that has benefited its own foreign policy aims.
I think the idea of the EU seriously rivalling the US in another stretch again, but the general thinking here is reasonable and very switched on UK policymakers should be considering it.
In a way, the UK-Ukraine relationship could be the kernel of something like this.
(I have previously suggested that Ukraine’s joining NATO is not appropriate at this current moment, but entry into the Commonwealth is not a useless idea).
If you desire a negotiated peace, then Ukraine membership of NATO is possibly the only security guarantee they will accept. And they desire membership of the EU (which up was in quite a big way how this all kicked off). I’m not sure the Commonwealth would mean much to them.
NATO membership for Ukraine is dead in the water, if I'm correct and this ends with a Kashmiri solution - a ceasefire, where Russia holds onto its gains but both sides continue to make further claims against each other, i.e. a permanently frozen conflict. It could be achieved as part of a grand bargain, in which Ukraine lets Putin keep his conquests in exchange for a treaty in which Russia concedes Ukrainian strategic autonomy, and NATO then admits Ukraine (Russian promises obviously being worthless, but membership of NATO being priceless, as the Baltic States have discovered.) But somehow I don't see Ukraine ever conceding all that territory.
I don't think that Putin would sign a treaty with Ukraine that allows them to join NATO with Russian consent.
That would be far too humiliating for the Greater Russian Nationalists - a wall against their expansionism that would be way, way too close.
I’d like it to be true, but I don’t see how Russia loses this “outright”
Putin has successfully made the war existential. Therefore Russian defeat in Ukraine is the conquest of Russia. That cannot happen because Russian is a great power WITH NUKES. Even if Putin is toppled no replacement will be allowed to negotiate “surrender”
This is Korean War 2.0. Quagmire and Armistice beckons, eventually
Pretty much. Apart from anything else, Russia has an almost limitless supply of cannon fodder.
It all ends with partition along a line of control as per Kashmir, with neither side recognising the territory held by the other de jure, but an accommodation being reached de facto. The 80% of Ukraine that remains unoccupied will then be pumped so full of cash and weapons that the cost of trying to resume the war of conquest at some point in the future will be too steep for Putin or his successors to stomach.
This state having been reached, the key challenge will then be to maintain a degree of unity with respect to the ostracism of Russia. Fundamentally, this is a fascist state with a fascist leadership and an overwhelmingly fascist-sympathising population: the existence of a handful of doomed internal dissidents and Pussy Riot does nothing to alter the fact that most Russians back both Putin and his imperial ambitions to the hilt. There will have to be a lot of determined diplomacy to prevent potential backsliders like Italy and Germany from trying to resume antebellum positions on trade and appeasement.
"Russia has an almost limitless supply of cannon fodder."
I'm far from convinced that's the case. Look at the Second World War: Germany had over 700,000 men in the Caucus in January 1943; the Soviets had a million. And that was just one front for both. The Ukraine war might be the largest land war we've seen for some years, but it's tiny compared to past wars.
Russia is, and wants to remain, a modern society. The modern world requires so many more skilled people than war did 80 years ago: there are loads of jobs that simply did not exist, but are critical to society and to war. We can't just send the Bevan Boys in to perform them as it takes years to learn the skills.
Then there are the demographic issues mentioned below.
The same also applies to Ukraine, as it happens.
I think this is spot on.
The pool of "talent" for Russia to draw upon is:
Men, aged 17 to 30, in decent physical shape, who don't have important jobs that are required for the war effort, and who haven't fled the country.
Russia's population pyramid is narrowest in the 20-24 (i.e. the prime fighting age) segment.
And a significant chunk of that group has already been called up, has been killed or injured, has fled, or is otherwise unsuitable for fighting.
The Russians have been enlisting prisoners, people who are HIV+ or have tuberculosis. These are not the actions of a country with unlimited cannon fodder.
And even if they did have another million men (which is half the number of Russian men in their early twenties), if they are unsupported, unsupplied, barely trained, and attacking entrenched defenders with Western weapons, then it's not going to end well for them.
At some point, the flow of shells dries up. At some point, too many artillery pieces have been destroyed by HIMARS or just by the warping of barrels from constant firing. At some point, going to the front is considered such a death sentence, that people would fancy their chances fighting the internal police.
At some point, waging offensive war no longer becomes an option for the Russians. Now, it may be they can then defend their positions in a long war of attrition and frozen fronts. Or it may be that long range artillery makes those dug in positions far from Russia and far from working railheads impossible to supply.
And then the war stops, one way or another.
And at that point Putin (or his even madder successor) drops a test nuke over the Black Sea and says Peace Now
Then what? We would agree to a peace, at that point. Probably something like Korea
For your preferred outcome to play out you must assume that Russian will NEVER use nukes even when faced with humiliating defeat. A very very dangerous assumption
It's not my "preferred outcome", I'm just pointing out the fallacy of the "Russia has unlimited resources to throw into the conflict" brigade, of which you are a member.
Russia does not have unlimited resources.
The fact is we're all guessing, and at times we've all been wrong. If I tally my beliefs vs what actually happened:
- I expected the invasion and wasn't surprised by that - I thought Ukraine would be overrun in days and was surprised by their resilience - When Russia withdrew from Kiev I expected stalemate but actually Russia went on to capture Severodonetsk - I was surprised like most by the rapid Ukrainian advances in the NE but not surprised when Kherson fell - But then unpleasantly surprised at how Russia fought back and started to advance again in the East
Now most people expect stalemate but a few expect a successful Ukrainian offensive in spring. It's really too difficult to tell.
It is very unpredictable. I don't know what will happen and don't know what is for the best (which I define as the course that minimises human suffering).
Curiously, PB.com is full of people who do know what will happen and are very convinced that they are right.
Is it ? Most express the same uncertainty about outcomes as you; they just disagree about actions. Topping appears also to have the habit of lumping together everyone who disagrees with him as a PB armchair general.
On the bright side, it does appear from the piece that superior intelligence information makes the US a great deal better at judging the probabilities of outcomes in Ukraine than the rest of us - including most European leaders.
Topping appears also to have the habit of lumping together everyone who disagrees with him as a PB armchair general.
Fair enough, surely.
Well, I would have said that @TOPPING and @Dura_Ace are the only ones amongst us who have experienced actual fighting.
If you have fought in a war, you do bring rather different insight to the table.
So, I kinda weight their views more than someone who has only seen active service from the Morrisons in Cambourne.
The only ones that make it public at least which is not the same thing
And of course, it would depend how relevant one’s military experience is to the war in Ukraine.
Most British soldiers’ experience of war since Korea has been counter-insurgency, or fairly limited conventional fighting.
This is war on a much bigger scale.
There's a lot of Battle-hardened Prince Harrys.
The BBC are running a documentary about the QE aircraft carrier - it's mostly a cruise ship.
Our armed forces would be completely hopeless if we had to fight a war, and their deaths would buy us a tiny window of time such that those who can fight well will have a chance to do so. There is nothing at all in British military history that suggests we have ever been well prepared.
Russia’s governance model for centuries has been “strong men surrounding an autocrat” with a strong dose of Orthodox Christianity exceptionalism thrown in. The labels may have changed from aristocrat to oligarch and tsar to president, but the model is essentially the same.
It is the legacy of the Russian lands being united by Muscovy, and not Kiev or Novgorod. Russian culture is a criminal Muscovite one, built out of autocratic, Mongol-style rule. Russia can only be brought in from the cold if it abandons its current mentality and creates a new one in rejection of it, as Germany did after 1945.
More likely is that the Russian Empire breaks up, as Ukraine succeeds a la Poland or Czechia, and some regions want to recreate the success free of Moscow's dominance.
So is Russia right to see this as a battle for its own survival then? Putin is always described as a paranoid nutjob, but yet the long term plan for Russia from most US commentators, foreign policy wonks, and politicians (clearly the ones influencing your posts at any rate) always lead to the break up of Russia. And this is all well before the current conflict.
For my money, while the overall consensus continues to be for a long-running grind, there are enough straws in the wind to entertain the prospect of a possible “early” (ie 2023) Russian collapse.
I do find the Archbishop of Canterbury’s argument compelling. No-one wins long term by humiliating Russia. Defeat is humiliation enough.
I do favour a return to 1991 borders, but I can see a decent case for the resumption of the Kharkiv Pact allowing for Russian naval in Sebastopol, a commitment by Ukraine not to join NATO, and perhaps even some special status for Crimea and the Donbas, along the lines of Northern Ireland for example.
Long-term, our policy should aim to bring Russia into Western economic, political, and defence structures.
There's a contradiction between saying we shouldn't humiliate Russia but bring it into Western structures, because from the perspective of Russians like Putin, that's precisely the scenario they regard as humiliating.
Do they regard being brought into European structures as humiliating, or just US-dominated ones? In many ways it would be desirable for the EU to form closer links with Russia itself - the influence on Russia could be democratising, economically-diversifying and pacifying, whilst Russia could provide access to its space programme, and massive energy supplies. This would be undesirable for the US, because it could result in a serious rival power bloc to the US. But not necessarily undesirable for the EU, or the UK - indeed as an outcome it would be a lot better than the de facto colonisation of Russia by China. At the moment, the prospect is far away, and the US (of course helped by Russia's own brutish actions) has successfully driven a wedge between Russia and Western Europe that has benefited its own foreign policy aims.
I think the idea of the EU seriously rivalling the US in another stretch again, but the general thinking here is reasonable and very switched on UK policymakers should be considering it.
In a way, the UK-Ukraine relationship could be the kernel of something like this.
(I have previously suggested that Ukraine’s joining NATO is not appropriate at this current moment, but entry into the Commonwealth is not a useless idea).
If you desire a negotiated peace, then Ukraine membership of NATO is possibly the only security guarantee they will accept. And they desire membership of the EU (which up was in quite a big way how this all kicked off). I’m not sure the Commonwealth would mean much to them.
Isn't South Africa in the commonwealth? And IIRC South Africa is very much on Russia's side in this?
In yesterday’s UN vote, Commonwealth members Bangladesh, Gabon, India, Mozambique, Namibia, Pakistan, South Africa, Sri Lanka, Togo, and Uganda all abstained. I think it’s safe to say the Commonwealth idea would for now be a non starter.
For my money, while the overall consensus continues to be for a long-running grind, there are enough straws in the wind to entertain the prospect of a possible “early” (ie 2023) Russian collapse.
I do find the Archbishop of Canterbury’s argument compelling. No-one wins long term by humiliating Russia. Defeat is humiliation enough.
I do favour a return to 1991 borders, but I can see a decent case for the resumption of the Kharkiv Pact allowing for Russian naval in Sebastopol, a commitment by Ukraine not to join NATO, and perhaps even some special status for Crimea and the Donbas, along the lines of Northern Ireland for example.
Long-term, our policy should aim to bring Russia into Western economic, political, and defence structures.
There's a contradiction between saying we shouldn't humiliate Russia but bring it into Western structures, because from the perspective of Russians like Putin, that's precisely the scenario they regard as humiliating.
Do they regard being brought into European structures as humiliating, or just US-dominated ones? In many ways it would be desirable for the EU to form closer links with Russia itself - the influence on Russia could be democratising, economically-diversifying and pacifying, whilst Russia could provide access to its space programme, and massive energy supplies. This would be undesirable for the US, because it could result in a serious rival power bloc to the US. But not necessarily undesirable for the EU, or the UK - indeed as an outcome it would be a lot better than the de facto colonisation of Russia by China. At the moment, the prospect is far away, and the US (of course helped by Russia's own brutish actions) has successfully driven a wedge between Russia and Western Europe that has benefited its own foreign policy aims.
I think the idea of the EU seriously rivalling the US in another stretch again, but the general thinking here is reasonable and very switched on UK policymakers should be considering it.
In a way, the UK-Ukraine relationship could be the kernel of something like this.
(I have previously suggested that Ukraine’s joining NATO is not appropriate at this current moment, but entry into the Commonwealth is not a useless idea).
If you desire a negotiated peace, then Ukraine membership of NATO is possibly the only security guarantee they will accept. And they desire membership of the EU (which up was in quite a big way how this all kicked off). I’m not sure the Commonwealth would mean much to them.
NATO membership for Ukraine is dead in the water, if I'm correct and this ends with a Kashmiri solution - a ceasefire, where Russia holds onto its gains but both sides continue to make further claims against each other, i.e. a permanently frozen conflict. It could be achieved as part of a grand bargain, in which Ukraine lets Putin keep his conquests in exchange for a treaty in which Russia concedes Ukrainian strategic autonomy, and NATO then admits Ukraine (Russian promises obviously being worthless, but membership of NATO being priceless, as the Baltic States have discovered.) But somehow I don't see Ukraine ever conceding all that territory.
Then, as I said, there will likely be no negotiated peace. At best it will be a frozen conflict - a European Panmunjeom.
But that only came about with permanent US bases on Korean soil.
Russia’s governance model for centuries has been “strong men surrounding an autocrat” with a strong dose of Orthodox Christianity exceptionalism thrown in. The labels may have changed from aristocrat to oligarch and tsar to president, but the model is essentially the same.
It is the legacy of the Russian lands being united by Muscovy, and not Kiev or Novgorod. Russian culture is a criminal Muscovite one, built out of autocratic, Mongol-style rule. Russia can only be brought in from the cold if it abandons its current mentality and creates a new one in rejection of it, as Germany did after 1945.
More likely is that the Russian Empire breaks up, as Ukraine succeeds a la Poland or Czechia, and some regions want to recreate the success free of Moscow's dominance.
So is Russia right to see this as a battle for its own survival then? Putin is always described as a paranoid nutjob, but yet the long term plan for Russia from most US commentators, foreign policy wonks, and politicians (clearly the ones influencing your posts at any rate) always lead to the break up of Russia. And this is all well before the current conflict.
I think the best outcome for the world (including those within the current borders of Russia) is a break up of the Russian empire. But the west lacks any means to make this happen. So the war isn'tvreally existential for Russia.
Russia’s governance model for centuries has been “strong men surrounding an autocrat” with a strong dose of Orthodox Christianity exceptionalism thrown in. The labels may have changed from aristocrat to oligarch and tsar to president, but the model is essentially the same.
It is the legacy of the Russian lands being united by Muscovy, and not Kiev or Novgorod. Russian culture is a criminal Muscovite one, built out of autocratic, Mongol-style rule. Russia can only be brought in from the cold if it abandons its current mentality and creates a new one in rejection of it, as Germany did after 1945.
More likely is that the Russian Empire breaks up, as Ukraine succeeds a la Poland or Czechia, and some regions want to recreate the success free of Moscow's dominance.
So is Russia right to see this as a battle for its own survival then? Putin is always described as a paranoid nutjob, but yet the long term plan for Russia from most US commentators, foreign policy wonks, and politicians (clearly the ones influencing your posts at any rate) always lead to the break up of Russia.
What’s your evidence for that ? It very clearly isn’t the policy or desire of the current administration.
For my money, while the overall consensus continues to be for a long-running grind, there are enough straws in the wind to entertain the prospect of a possible “early” (ie 2023) Russian collapse.
I do find the Archbishop of Canterbury’s argument compelling. No-one wins long term by humiliating Russia. Defeat is humiliation enough.
I do favour a return to 1991 borders, but I can see a decent case for the resumption of the Kharkiv Pact allowing for Russian naval in Sebastopol, a commitment by Ukraine not to join NATO, and perhaps even some special status for Crimea and the Donbas, along the lines of Northern Ireland for example.
Long-term, our policy should aim to bring Russia into Western economic, political, and defence structures.
There's a contradiction between saying we shouldn't humiliate Russia but bring it into Western structures, because from the perspective of Russians like Putin, that's precisely the scenario they regard as humiliating.
Do they regard being brought into European structures as humiliating, or just US-dominated ones? In many ways it would be desirable for the EU to form closer links with Russia itself - the influence on Russia could be democratising, economically-diversifying and pacifying, whilst Russia could provide access to its space programme, and massive energy supplies. This would be undesirable for the US, because it could result in a serious rival power bloc to the US. But not necessarily undesirable for the EU, or the UK - indeed as an outcome it would be a lot better than the de facto colonisation of Russia by China. At the moment, the prospect is far away, and the US (of course helped by Russia's own brutish actions) has successfully driven a wedge between Russia and Western Europe that has benefited its own foreign policy aims.
I think the idea of the EU seriously rivalling the US in another stretch again, but the general thinking here is reasonable and very switched on UK policymakers should be considering it.
In a way, the UK-Ukraine relationship could be the kernel of something like this.
(I have previously suggested that Ukraine’s joining NATO is not appropriate at this current moment, but entry into the Commonwealth is not a useless idea).
If you desire a negotiated peace, then Ukraine membership of NATO is possibly the only security guarantee they will accept. And they desire membership of the EU (which up was in quite a big way how this all kicked off). I’m not sure the Commonwealth would mean much to them.
Isn't South Africa in the commonwealth? And IIRC South Africa is very much on Russia's side in this?
South Africa is neutral, like India on most UN votes on the Ukraine War. Albeit Nigeria tends to vote with NATO and western nations.
The only countries which consistently vote with Russia are North Korea, Syria and Belarus, Eritrea, Mali and Nicaragua
Forbes is in theory the most dangerous opponent for Unionists, but a very large number of peers don’t want her, and that in itself so destabilising that I struggle to see her being successful even if she wins.
Neither Humza nor Regan look very impressive from afar.
I theorise that the electorate at large would probably prefer Forbes, SNP voters themselves are probably decently split between each of the three candidates, and SNP MSPs would prefer Humza.
At a risk of being a Scotspert, no outcome here looks good. A Sturgeon post 24 is surely possible.
Didn’t Ash LOOK the part today! Her top was fantastic.
The problems begin when she tries to answer questions. When it reaches point she is stuck for answer she goes “Look-“ and everything stops. That’s normally about 14 seconds into the interview.
For my money, while the overall consensus continues to be for a long-running grind, there are enough straws in the wind to entertain the prospect of a possible “early” (ie 2023) Russian collapse.
I do find the Archbishop of Canterbury’s argument compelling. No-one wins long term by humiliating Russia. Defeat is humiliation enough.
I do favour a return to 1991 borders, but I can see a decent case for the resumption of the Kharkiv Pact allowing for Russian naval in Sebastopol, a commitment by Ukraine not to join NATO, and perhaps even some special status for Crimea and the Donbas, along the lines of Northern Ireland for example.
Long-term, our policy should aim to bring Russia into Western economic, political, and defence structures.
There's a contradiction between saying we shouldn't humiliate Russia but bring it into Western structures, because from the perspective of Russians like Putin, that's precisely the scenario they regard as humiliating.
Do they regard being brought into European structures as humiliating, or just US-dominated ones? In many ways it would be desirable for the EU to form closer links with Russia itself - the influence on Russia could be democratising, economically-diversifying and pacifying, whilst Russia could provide access to its space programme, and massive energy supplies. This would be undesirable for the US, because it could result in a serious rival power bloc to the US. But not necessarily undesirable for the EU, or the UK - indeed as an outcome it would be a lot better than the de facto colonisation of Russia by China. At the moment, the prospect is far away, and the US (of course helped by Russia's own brutish actions) has successfully driven a wedge between Russia and Western Europe that has benefited its own foreign policy aims.
I think the idea of the EU seriously rivalling the US in another stretch again, but the general thinking here is reasonable and very switched on UK policymakers should be considering it.
In a way, the UK-Ukraine relationship could be the kernel of something like this.
(I have previously suggested that Ukraine’s joining NATO is not appropriate at this current moment, but entry into the Commonwealth is not a useless idea).
If you desire a negotiated peace, then Ukraine membership of NATO is possibly the only security guarantee they will accept. And they desire membership of the EU (which up was in quite a big way how this all kicked off). I’m not sure the Commonwealth would mean much to them.
Isn't South Africa in the commonwealth? And IIRC South Africa is very much on Russia's side in this?
South Africa is neutral, like India on most UN votes on the Ukraine War. Albeit Nigeria tends to vote with NATO and western nations.
The only countries which consistently vote with Russia are North Korea, Syria and Belarus, Eritrea, Mali and Nicaragua
But SA has been on exercises with the Russians, no?
For my money, while the overall consensus continues to be for a long-running grind, there are enough straws in the wind to entertain the prospect of a possible “early” (ie 2023) Russian collapse.
I do find the Archbishop of Canterbury’s argument compelling. No-one wins long term by humiliating Russia. Defeat is humiliation enough.
I do favour a return to 1991 borders, but I can see a decent case for the resumption of the Kharkiv Pact allowing for Russian naval in Sebastopol, a commitment by Ukraine not to join NATO, and perhaps even some special status for Crimea and the Donbas, along the lines of Northern Ireland for example.
Long-term, our policy should aim to bring Russia into Western economic, political, and defence structures.
There's a contradiction between saying we shouldn't humiliate Russia but bring it into Western structures, because from the perspective of Russians like Putin, that's precisely the scenario they regard as humiliating.
Do they regard being brought into European structures as humiliating, or just US-dominated ones? In many ways it would be desirable for the EU to form closer links with Russia itself - the influence on Russia could be democratising, economically-diversifying and pacifying, whilst Russia could provide access to its space programme, and massive energy supplies. This would be undesirable for the US, because it could result in a serious rival power bloc to the US. But not necessarily undesirable for the EU, or the UK - indeed as an outcome it would be a lot better than the de facto colonisation of Russia by China. At the moment, the prospect is far away, and the US (of course helped by Russia's own brutish actions) has successfully driven a wedge between Russia and Western Europe that has benefited its own foreign policy aims.
I think the idea of the EU seriously rivalling the US in another stretch again, but the general thinking here is reasonable and very switched on UK policymakers should be considering it.
In a way, the UK-Ukraine relationship could be the kernel of something like this.
(I have previously suggested that Ukraine’s joining NATO is not appropriate at this current moment, but entry into the Commonwealth is not a useless idea).
If you desire a negotiated peace, then Ukraine membership of NATO is possibly the only security guarantee they will accept. And they desire membership of the EU (which up was in quite a big way how this all kicked off). I’m not sure the Commonwealth would mean much to them.
Isn't South Africa in the commonwealth? And IIRC South Africa is very much on Russia's side in this?
South Africa is neutral, like India on most UN votes on the Ukraine War. Albeit Nigeria tends to vote with NATO and western nations.
The only countries which consistently vote with Russia are North Korea, Syria and Belarus
Iran too, although they're so much better than to be voting with Russia. Venezuela it seems, and there must be another.
This debate reinforces the fact that Fukuyama was right: there is no coherent alternative vision for economics and political organisation that threatens capitalistic liberal democracy.
Many vassal states and autocracies have populations that yearn to join the Western world. Millions year round travel hundreds of miles and endure untold indignities to make a new life in Europe or the US. No Western populations yearn to be more like Russia, or more like China, or Syria or Venezuela or Iran.
Immigration flows (real or attempted) are a great proxy for economic and cultural success. The more people banging on the door, the more successful the country - and the more able to pick the brightest and best to keep growing the economy.
Forbes is in theory the most dangerous opponent for Unionists, but a very large number of peers don’t want her, and that in itself so destabilising that I struggle to see her being successful even if she wins.
Neither Humza nor Regan look very impressive from afar.
I theorise that the electorate at large would probably prefer Forbes, SNP voters themselves are probably decently split between each of the three candidates, and SNP MSPs would prefer Humza.
At a risk of being a Scotspert, no outcome here looks good. A Sturgeon post 24 is surely possible.
Didn’t Ash LOOK the part today! Her top was fantastic.
The problems begin when she tries to answer questions. When it reaches point she is stuck for answer she goes “Look-“ and everything stops. That’s normally about 14 seconds into the interview.
For my money, while the overall consensus continues to be for a long-running grind, there are enough straws in the wind to entertain the prospect of a possible “early” (ie 2023) Russian collapse.
I do find the Archbishop of Canterbury’s argument compelling. No-one wins long term by humiliating Russia. Defeat is humiliation enough.
I do favour a return to 1991 borders, but I can see a decent case for the resumption of the Kharkiv Pact allowing for Russian naval in Sebastopol, a commitment by Ukraine not to join NATO, and perhaps even some special status for Crimea and the Donbas, along the lines of Northern Ireland for example.
Long-term, our policy should aim to bring Russia into Western economic, political, and defence structures.
There's a contradiction between saying we shouldn't humiliate Russia but bring it into Western structures, because from the perspective of Russians like Putin, that's precisely the scenario they regard as humiliating.
Do they regard being brought into European structures as humiliating, or just US-dominated ones? In many ways it would be desirable for the EU to form closer links with Russia itself - the influence on Russia could be democratising, economically-diversifying and pacifying, whilst Russia could provide access to its space programme, and massive energy supplies. This would be undesirable for the US, because it could result in a serious rival power bloc to the US. But not necessarily undesirable for the EU, or the UK - indeed as an outcome it would be a lot better than the de facto colonisation of Russia by China. At the moment, the prospect is far away, and the US (of course helped by Russia's own brutish actions) has successfully driven a wedge between Russia and Western Europe that has benefited its own foreign policy aims.
I think the idea of the EU seriously rivalling the US in another stretch again, but the general thinking here is reasonable and very switched on UK policymakers should be considering it.
In a way, the UK-Ukraine relationship could be the kernel of something like this.
(I have previously suggested that Ukraine’s joining NATO is not appropriate at this current moment, but entry into the Commonwealth is not a useless idea).
If you desire a negotiated peace, then Ukraine membership of NATO is possibly the only security guarantee they will accept. And they desire membership of the EU (which up was in quite a big way how this all kicked off). I’m not sure the Commonwealth would mean much to them.
Isn't South Africa in the commonwealth? And IIRC South Africa is very much on Russia's side in this?
South Africa is neutral, like India on most UN votes on the Ukraine War. Albeit Nigeria tends to vote with NATO and western nations.
The only countries which consistently vote with Russia are North Korea, Syria and Belarus
Iran too, although they're so much better than to be voting with Russia. Venezuela it seems, and there must be another.
Russia’s governance model for centuries has been “strong men surrounding an autocrat” with a strong dose of Orthodox Christianity exceptionalism thrown in. The labels may have changed from aristocrat to oligarch and tsar to president, but the model is essentially the same.
It is the legacy of the Russian lands being united by Muscovy, and not Kiev or Novgorod. Russian culture is a criminal Muscovite one, built out of autocratic, Mongol-style rule. Russia can only be brought in from the cold if it abandons its current mentality and creates a new one in rejection of it, as Germany did after 1945.
More likely is that the Russian Empire breaks up, as Ukraine succeeds a la Poland or Czechia, and some regions want to recreate the success free of Moscow's dominance.
So is Russia right to see this as a battle for its own survival then? Putin is always described as a paranoid nutjob, but yet the long term plan for Russia from most US commentators, foreign policy wonks, and politicians (clearly the ones influencing your posts at any rate) always lead to the break up of Russia. And this is all well before the current conflict.
No, the battle for Russia's survival depends on whether it chooses to embrace a future as a democratic, decent nation or not. This war is inevitably lost because you can't endlessly occupy a country of 40 million people that hate you.
Also, your obsession with the US bogeyman behind everything is hilarious. My comments are my own judgments based on my knoweldge of Russian and Ukrainian history. The idea that some American congressman behind them is even more fanciful than Britain solving its vegetable shortage with fracking.
Russia’s governance model for centuries has been “strong men surrounding an autocrat” with a strong dose of Orthodox Christianity exceptionalism thrown in. The labels may have changed from aristocrat to oligarch and tsar to president, but the model is essentially the same.
It is the legacy of the Russian lands being united by Muscovy, and not Kiev or Novgorod. Russian culture is a criminal Muscovite one, built out of autocratic, Mongol-style rule. Russia can only be brought in from the cold if it abandons its current mentality and creates a new one in rejection of it, as Germany did after 1945.
More likely is that the Russian Empire breaks up, as Ukraine succeeds a la Poland or Czechia, and some regions want to recreate the success free of Moscow's dominance.
So is Russia right to see this as a battle for its own survival then? Putin is always described as a paranoid nutjob, but yet the long term plan for Russia from most US commentators, foreign policy wonks, and politicians (clearly the ones influencing your posts at any rate) always lead to the break up of Russia.
What’s your evidence for that ? It very clearly isn’t the policy or desire of the current administration.
His evidence is his massive chip on his shoulder about the US. He has far more animosity to America than he does to Russia, Iran or China.
Russia was understood as a European power up until the Second World War as far as I’m concerned.
All this stuff about Mongols is picturesque but not I think very explanatory in terms of how Russia sees itself or our own policy.
That is not strictly speaking true: in April 1941, at the signing of the Soviet-Japanese neutrality pact, Stalin famously declared "we too are Asiatic". The historical struggle in nineteenth century Russia was between Europeans and Slavophiles, or if you prefer, between those who believed in a unique, exceptional or even mystical destiny for Russia and those who wanted Russia to develop as a modern state.
So you could say Gorbachev was closer to a European moderniser and Putin an Asiatic with a Slavophile, mystic belief in Russia, but both have failed because in the past two hundred years Russia has failed to emerge as a complex state and society, but remained in various guises ultimately a personal fiefdom, whether Tsarist, Communist or Putinist.
Russia was and is a backward country, socially, politically and economically. It is backward because the primitive political system has not created a socially cohesive polity, so there is little to no social trust and no balances and checks upon its leaders. The complexities of the democratic capitalist political/social contract do not exist in Russia and indeed are not even understood. (These views are shamelessly cribbed from James Sherr and I commend his work to you).
My own views are closer to P.J. O´Rourke´s: "Russia has been part of- at least an idiot stepbrother to- Western civilization for a thousand years. There´s no alibi for the place."
I’d like it to be true, but I don’t see how Russia loses this “outright”
Putin has successfully made the war existential. Therefore Russian defeat in Ukraine is the conquest of Russia. That cannot happen because Russian is a great power WITH NUKES. Even if Putin is toppled no replacement will be allowed to negotiate “surrender”
This is Korean War 2.0. Quagmire and Armistice beckons, eventually
Pretty much. Apart from anything else, Russia has an almost limitless supply of cannon fodder.
It all ends with partition along a line of control as per Kashmir, with neither side recognising the territory held by the other de jure, but an accommodation being reached de facto. The 80% of Ukraine that remains unoccupied will then be pumped so full of cash and weapons that the cost of trying to resume the war of conquest at some point in the future will be too steep for Putin or his successors to stomach.
This state having been reached, the key challenge will then be to maintain a degree of unity with respect to the ostracism of Russia. Fundamentally, this is a fascist state with a fascist leadership and an overwhelmingly fascist-sympathising population: the existence of a handful of doomed internal dissidents and Pussy Riot does nothing to alter the fact that most Russians back both Putin and his imperial ambitions to the hilt. There will have to be a lot of determined diplomacy to prevent potential backsliders like Italy and Germany from trying to resume antebellum positions on trade and appeasement.
"Russia has an almost limitless supply of cannon fodder."
I'm far from convinced that's the case. Look at the Second World War: Germany had over 700,000 men in the Caucus in January 1943; the Soviets had a million. And that was just one front for both. The Ukraine war might be the largest land war we've seen for some years, but it's tiny compared to past wars.
Russia is, and wants to remain, a modern society. The modern world requires so many more skilled people than war did 80 years ago: there are loads of jobs that simply did not exist, but are critical to society and to war. We can't just send the Bevan Boys in to perform them as it takes years to learn the skills.
Then there are the demographic issues mentioned below.
The same also applies to Ukraine, as it happens.
I think this is spot on.
The pool of "talent" for Russia to draw upon is:
Men, aged 17 to 30, in decent physical shape, who don't have important jobs that are required for the war effort, and who haven't fled the country.
Russia's population pyramid is narrowest in the 20-24 (i.e. the prime fighting age) segment.
And a significant chunk of that group has already been called up, has been killed or injured, has fled, or is otherwise unsuitable for fighting.
The Russians have been enlisting prisoners, people who are HIV+ or have tuberculosis. These are not the actions of a country with unlimited cannon fodder.
And even if they did have another million men (which is half the number of Russian men in their early twenties), if they are unsupported, unsupplied, barely trained, and attacking entrenched defenders with Western weapons, then it's not going to end well for them.
At some point, the flow of shells dries up. At some point, too many artillery pieces have been destroyed by HIMARS or just by the warping of barrels from constant firing. At some point, going to the front is considered such a death sentence, that people would fancy their chances fighting the internal police.
At some point, waging offensive war no longer becomes an option for the Russians. Now, it may be they can then defend their positions in a long war of attrition and frozen fronts. Or it may be that long range artillery makes those dug in positions far from Russia and far from working railheads impossible to supply.
And then the war stops, one way or another.
And at that point Putin (or his even madder successor) drops a test nuke over the Black Sea and says Peace Now
Then what? We would agree to a peace, at that point. Probably something like Korea
For your preferred outcome to play out you must assume that Russian will NEVER use nukes even when faced with humiliating defeat. A very very dangerous assumption
It's not my "preferred outcome", I'm just pointing out the fallacy of the "Russia has unlimited resources to throw into the conflict" brigade, of which you are a member.
Russia does not have unlimited resources.
The fact is we're all guessing, and at times we've all been wrong. If I tally my beliefs vs what actually happened:
- I expected the invasion and wasn't surprised by that - I thought Ukraine would be overrun in days and was surprised by their resilience - When Russia withdrew from Kiev I expected stalemate but actually Russia went on to capture Severodonetsk - I was surprised like most by the rapid Ukrainian advances in the NE but not surprised when Kherson fell - But then unpleasantly surprised at how Russia fought back and started to advance again in the East
Now most people expect stalemate but a few expect a successful Ukrainian offensive in spring. It's really too difficult to tell.
It is very unpredictable. I don't know what will happen and don't know what is for the best (which I define as the course that minimises human suffering).
Curiously, PB.com is full of people who do know what will happen and are very convinced that they are right.
Is it ? Most express the same uncertainty about outcomes as you; they just disagree about actions. Topping appears also to have the habit of lumping together everyone who disagrees with him as a PB armchair general.
On the bright side, it does appear from the piece that superior intelligence information makes the US a great deal better at judging the probabilities of outcomes in Ukraine than the rest of us - including most European leaders.
Topping appears also to have the habit of lumping together everyone who disagrees with him as a PB armchair general.
Fair enough, surely.
I would have said that @TOPPING and @Dura_Ace are the only ones amongst us who have experienced actual fighting.
If you have fought in a war, you do bring rather different insights to the table.
So, I kinda weight their views more than someone who has only seen active service from the Morrisons in Cambourne.
Aw, shucks. Thanks for the vote of confidence.
The problem with that is that *their* experience will also be limited. True, they might have more knowledge than myself, but knowing how to land a plane on an aircraft carrier does not inform you of the way tanks might be used to create a bridgehead; or being a sergeant in a trench does not tell you the nest way to target missile strikes on critical enemy infrastructure. They may know a lot about things like how to fire a gun or how to lead a platoon in an attack, but that's not much help with the bigger-picture stuff that we're mostly interested in.
Take Topping's argument that Russia is not running out of kit (say, artillery and missiles). He may be right and they are not. But if he is right, he has failed to explain why we're seeing fewer missile attacks on Ukraine, why Russia appears to be using much less artillery, and why they seem to be using much older kit.
I've provided a possible explanation - that Russia is holding back the material ready for a big assault - but he even ignores that. (I think there may be valid arguments against that counter-argument, but that's another matter).
I don't know what Topping did in the army, but even if he was an expert on Russian tanks, the situation with Russia's tanks and their storage will have changed and developed in the last couple of decades, assuming he has not recently left the forces. And if he knows a great deal about tanks, he might know very little about missiles, or artillery systems etc.
So whilst I thank him and everyone who has served the country in the military (especially if they have been deployed to warzones), and will defer to their expertise in areas they're expert in, I'd treat 'evidence' they give in areas outside their areas of expertise with less certainty.
This debate reinforces the fact that Fukuyama was right: there is no coherent alternative vision for economics and political organisation that threatens capitalistic liberal democracy.
Many vassal states and autocracies have populations that yearn to join the Western world. Millions year round travel hundreds of miles and endure untold indignities to make a new life in Europe or the US. No Western populations yearn to be more like Russia, or more like China, or Syria or Venezuela or Iran.
Immigration flows (real or attempted) are a great proxy for economic and cultural success. The more people banging on the door, the more successful the country - and the more able to pick the brightest and best to keep growing the economy.
And it's also why it is the interests of Western liberal democracies to get their neighbours richer and more democratic: simply, it means that the likelihood their citizens will be climbing on boats and trying to get to your country is reduced.
So whilst I thank him and everyone who has served the country in the military (especially if they have been deployed to warzones), and will defer to their expertise in areas they're expert in, I'd treat 'evidence' they give in areas outside their areas of expertise with less certainty.
We really need someone with experience as a despot to comment on what Putin might do next, but as far as I'm aware there isn't one posting on here.
This debate reinforces the fact that Fukuyama was right: there is no coherent alternative vision for economics and political organisation that threatens capitalistic liberal democracy.
Many vassal states and autocracies have populations that yearn to join the Western world. Millions year round travel hundreds of miles and endure untold indignities to make a new life in Europe or the US. No Western populations yearn to be more like Russia, or more like China, or Syria or Venezuela or Iran.
Immigration flows (real or attempted) are a great proxy for economic and cultural success. The more people banging on the door, the more successful the country - and the more able to pick the brightest and best to keep growing the economy.
And it's also why it is the interests of Western liberal democracies to get their neighbours richer and more democratic: simply, it means that the likelihood their citizens will be climbing on boats and trying to get to your country is reduced.
Getting rich and getting democratic are two different things. Enriching autocracies is a bad idea.
Russia’s governance model for centuries has been “strong men surrounding an autocrat” with a strong dose of Orthodox Christianity exceptionalism thrown in. The labels may have changed from aristocrat to oligarch and tsar to president, but the model is essentially the same.
It is the legacy of the Russian lands being united by Muscovy, and not Kiev or Novgorod. Russian culture is a criminal Muscovite one, built out of autocratic, Mongol-style rule. Russia can only be brought in from the cold if it abandons its current mentality and creates a new one in rejection of it, as Germany did after 1945.
More likely is that the Russian Empire breaks up, as Ukraine succeeds a la Poland or Czechia, and some regions want to recreate the success free of Moscow's dominance.
So is Russia right to see this as a battle for its own survival then? Putin is always described as a paranoid nutjob, but yet the long term plan for Russia from most US commentators, foreign policy wonks, and politicians (clearly the ones influencing your posts at any rate) always lead to the break up of Russia. And this is all well before the current conflict.
No, the battle for Russia's survival depends on whether it chooses to embrace a future as a democratic, decent nation or not. This war is inevitably lost because you can't endlessly occupy a country of 40 million people that hate you.
Also, your obsession with the US bogeyman behind everything is hilarious. My comments are my own judgments based on my knoweldge of Russian and Ukrainian history. The idea that some American congressman behind them is even more fanciful than Britain solving its vegetable shortage with fracking.
I’ve discovered another one of those fundamental divides in opinion since the Ukraine war started. We already had economic left vs right, and from 2016 onwards we became aware of social authoritarian vs liberal.
But there is another clear distinction that cuts across left and right, leave and remain. People who, deep down, believe in the Pax Americana and those who don’t.
A few years ago I’d have said I was in the latter camp. I hated the Iraq war, I looked in despair at first the neocons with their adventurism and then the tea party, Obamaites and MAGAs with their insularity. But from the Scripal poisonings onwards I realised I still believed that US hegemony is better than almost any other scenario. On that I have an odd collection of bedfellows from Boris Johnson to Paul Mason.
This debate reinforces the fact that Fukuyama was right: there is no coherent alternative vision for economics and political organisation that threatens capitalistic liberal democracy.
Many vassal states and autocracies have populations that yearn to join the Western world. Millions year round travel hundreds of miles and endure untold indignities to make a new life in Europe or the US. No Western populations yearn to be more like Russia, or more like China, or Syria or Venezuela or Iran.
Immigration flows (real or attempted) are a great proxy for economic and cultural success. The more people banging on the door, the more successful the country - and the more able to pick the brightest and best to keep growing the economy.
Most but now you are starting to find some Trump and Farage and Le Pen supporters who would probably rather live in Russia under Putin now and his nationalist social conservativism than the liberal Western nations they do live in.
Corbyinites would probably rather live in Cuba than the UK too
This debate reinforces the fact that Fukuyama was right: there is no coherent alternative vision for economics and political organisation that threatens capitalistic liberal democracy.
Many vassal states and autocracies have populations that yearn to join the Western world. Millions year round travel hundreds of miles and endure untold indignities to make a new life in Europe or the US. No Western populations yearn to be more like Russia, or more like China, or Syria or Venezuela or Iran.
Immigration flows (real or attempted) are a great proxy for economic and cultural success. The more people banging on the door, the more successful the country - and the more able to pick the brightest and best to keep growing the economy.
And it's also why it is the interests of Western liberal democracies to get their neighbours richer and more democratic: simply, it means that the likelihood their citizens will be climbing on boats and trying to get to your country is reduced.
Getting rich and getting democratic are two different things. Enriching autocracies is a bad idea.
Taiwan and South Korea got richer and then became democratic, so I don't think it's that simple.
Forbes is in theory the most dangerous opponent for Unionists, but a very large number of peers don’t want her, and that in itself so destabilising that I struggle to see her being successful even if she wins.
Neither Humza nor Regan look very impressive from afar.
I theorise that the electorate at large would probably prefer Forbes, SNP voters themselves are probably decently split between each of the three candidates, and SNP MSPs would prefer Humza.
At a risk of being a Scotspert, no outcome here looks good. A Sturgeon post 24 is surely possible.
Didn’t Ash LOOK the part today! Her top was fantastic.
The problems begin when she tries to answer questions. When it reaches point she is stuck for answer she goes “Look-“ and everything stops. That’s normally about 14 seconds into the interview.
Sad really 🥺
I may have got the wrong end of the stick (because I had the TV on as background noise and wasn't paying much attention,) BUT... wasn't she doing an interview with the BBC in which she revealed her grand plan for independence to be winning the majority of Scottish seats at the next general election, demanding immediate talks on secession from Westminster on that basis, and sending out emissaries to foreign Governments asking for recognition of a Scottish state? This approach can hardly be faulted for its zeal - it edges pretty close to UDI - but it also ends with Keir Starmer telling her to talk to the hand, and the First Minister of Scotland proudly announcing to a grateful people that she has secured the backing of North Korea and Eritrea for the bold leap forward into the sunlit uplands of sovereignty. Whilst a handful of the loopier kinds of nationalists will be thrilled by such decisiveness, I nonetheless doubt that this is a genius stratagem likely to secure broad-based public consent.
If this is the best she's got then the choice returns to Kate Forbes, whose statements about her religious beliefs have already alienated a large chunk of her parliamentary caucus, and Humza Yousaf, who is the continuity Sturgeon candidate only without the charisma or the broadly positive approval ratings. One cannot see how this ends positively for the SNP, regardless of which candidate eventually prevails.
For my money, while the overall consensus continues to be for a long-running grind, there are enough straws in the wind to entertain the prospect of a possible “early” (ie 2023) Russian collapse.
I do find the Archbishop of Canterbury’s argument compelling. No-one wins long term by humiliating Russia. Defeat is humiliation enough.
I do favour a return to 1991 borders, but I can see a decent case for the resumption of the Kharkiv Pact allowing for Russian naval in Sebastopol, a commitment by Ukraine not to join NATO, and perhaps even some special status for Crimea and the Donbas, along the lines of Northern Ireland for example.
Long-term, our policy should aim to bring Russia into Western economic, political, and defence structures.
There's a contradiction between saying we shouldn't humiliate Russia but bring it into Western structures, because from the perspective of Russians like Putin, that's precisely the scenario they regard as humiliating.
Do they regard being brought into European structures as humiliating, or just US-dominated ones? In many ways it would be desirable for the EU to form closer links with Russia itself - the influence on Russia could be democratising, economically-diversifying and pacifying, whilst Russia could provide access to its space programme, and massive energy supplies. This would be undesirable for the US, because it could result in a serious rival power bloc to the US. But not necessarily undesirable for the EU, or the UK - indeed as an outcome it would be a lot better than the de facto colonisation of Russia by China. At the moment, the prospect is far away, and the US (of course helped by Russia's own brutish actions) has successfully driven a wedge between Russia and Western Europe that has benefited its own foreign policy aims.
I think the idea of the EU seriously rivalling the US in another stretch again, but the general thinking here is reasonable and very switched on UK policymakers should be considering it.
In a way, the UK-Ukraine relationship could be the kernel of something like this.
(I have previously suggested that Ukraine’s joining NATO is not appropriate at this current moment, but entry into the Commonwealth is not a useless idea).
If you desire a negotiated peace, then Ukraine membership of NATO is possibly the only security guarantee they will accept. And they desire membership of the EU (which up was in quite a big way how this all kicked off). I’m not sure the Commonwealth would mean much to them.
Isn't South Africa in the commonwealth? And IIRC South Africa is very much on Russia's side in this?
South Africa is neutral, like India on most UN votes on the Ukraine War. Albeit Nigeria tends to vote with NATO and western nations.
The only countries which consistently vote with Russia are North Korea, Syria and Belarus
Iran too, although they're so much better than to be voting with Russia. Venezuela it seems, and there must be another.
Iran abstained on the last UN Ukraine War vote
Well done Iran!
So it seems Belarus, NK, Eritrea, Mali, Nicaragua, Syria, and Russia. (7).
Russia’s governance model for centuries has been “strong men surrounding an autocrat” with a strong dose of Orthodox Christianity exceptionalism thrown in. The labels may have changed from aristocrat to oligarch and tsar to president, but the model is essentially the same.
It is the legacy of the Russian lands being united by Muscovy, and not Kiev or Novgorod. Russian culture is a criminal Muscovite one, built out of autocratic, Mongol-style rule. Russia can only be brought in from the cold if it abandons its current mentality and creates a new one in rejection of it, as Germany did after 1945.
More likely is that the Russian Empire breaks up, as Ukraine succeeds a la Poland or Czechia, and some regions want to recreate the success free of Moscow's dominance.
So is Russia right to see this as a battle for its own survival then? Putin is always described as a paranoid nutjob, but yet the long term plan for Russia from most US commentators, foreign policy wonks, and politicians (clearly the ones influencing your posts at any rate) always lead to the break up of Russia. And this is all well before the current conflict.
No, the battle for Russia's survival depends on whether it chooses to embrace a future as a democratic, decent nation or not. This war is inevitably lost because you can't endlessly occupy a country of 40 million people that hate you.
Also, your obsession with the US bogeyman behind everything is hilarious. My comments are my own judgments based on my knoweldge of Russian and Ukrainian history. The idea that some American congressman behind them is even more fanciful than Britain solving its vegetable shortage with fracking.
But if we grow a giant peach, and use thermal depolymerisation to convert the organics into synthetic oil we could solve the energy crisis....
Russia’s governance model for centuries has been “strong men surrounding an autocrat” with a strong dose of Orthodox Christianity exceptionalism thrown in. The labels may have changed from aristocrat to oligarch and tsar to president, but the model is essentially the same.
It is the legacy of the Russian lands being united by Muscovy, and not Kiev or Novgorod. Russian culture is a criminal Muscovite one, built out of autocratic, Mongol-style rule. Russia can only be brought in from the cold if it abandons its current mentality and creates a new one in rejection of it, as Germany did after 1945.
More likely is that the Russian Empire breaks up, as Ukraine succeeds a la Poland or Czechia, and some regions want to recreate the success free of Moscow's dominance.
So is Russia right to see this as a battle for its own survival then? Putin is always described as a paranoid nutjob, but yet the long term plan for Russia from most US commentators, foreign policy wonks, and politicians (clearly the ones influencing your posts at any rate) always lead to the break up of Russia. And this is all well before the current conflict.
No, the battle for Russia's survival depends on whether it chooses to embrace a future as a democratic, decent nation or not. This war is inevitably lost because you can't endlessly occupy a country of 40 million people that hate you.
Also, your obsession with the US bogeyman behind everything is hilarious. My comments are my own judgments based on my knoweldge of Russian and Ukrainian history. The idea that some American congressman behind them is even more fanciful than Britain solving its vegetable shortage with fracking.
I’ve discovered another one of those fundamental divides in opinion since the Ukraine war started. We already had economic left vs right, and from 2016 onwards we became aware of social authoritarian vs liberal.
But there is another clear distinction that cuts across left and right, leave and remain. People who, deep down, believe in the Pax Americana and those who don’t.
A few years ago I’d have said I was in the latter camp. I hated the Iraq war, I looked in despair at first the neocons with their adventurism and then the tea party, Obamaites and MAGAs with their insularity. But from the Scripal poisonings onwards I realised I still believed that US hegemony is better than almost any other scenario. On that I have an odd collection of bedfellows from Boris Johnson to Paul Mason.
Pax Americana is the best stopgap until Australia is ready to step up to global leadership.
And yet give little apparent weight to the views of others have also experienced fighting, and who have proved rather closer to the mark in their predictions.
Russia’s governance model for centuries has been “strong men surrounding an autocrat” with a strong dose of Orthodox Christianity exceptionalism thrown in. The labels may have changed from aristocrat to oligarch and tsar to president, but the model is essentially the same.
It is the legacy of the Russian lands being united by Muscovy, and not Kiev or Novgorod. Russian culture is a criminal Muscovite one, built out of autocratic, Mongol-style rule. Russia can only be brought in from the cold if it abandons its current mentality and creates a new one in rejection of it, as Germany did after 1945.
More likely is that the Russian Empire breaks up, as Ukraine succeeds a la Poland or Czechia, and some regions want to recreate the success free of Moscow's dominance.
So is Russia right to see this as a battle for its own survival then? Putin is always described as a paranoid nutjob, but yet the long term plan for Russia from most US commentators, foreign policy wonks, and politicians (clearly the ones influencing your posts at any rate) always lead to the break up of Russia. And this is all well before the current conflict.
No, the battle for Russia's survival depends on whether it chooses to embrace a future as a democratic, decent nation or not. This war is inevitably lost because you can't endlessly occupy a country of 40 million people that hate you.
Also, your obsession with the US bogeyman behind everything is hilarious. My comments are my own judgments based on my knoweldge of Russian and Ukrainian history. The idea that some American congressman behind them is even more fanciful than Britain solving its vegetable shortage with fracking.
I’ve discovered another one of those fundamental divides in opinion since the Ukraine war started. We already had economic left vs right, and from 2016 onwards we became aware of social authoritarian vs liberal.
But there is another clear distinction that cuts across left and right, leave and remain. People who, deep down, believe in the Pax Americana and those who don’t.
A few years ago I’d have said I was in the latter camp. I hated the Iraq war, I looked in despair at first the neocons with their adventurism and then the tea party, Obamaites and MAGAs with their insularity. But from the Scripal poisonings onwards I realised I still believed that US hegemony is better than almost any other scenario. On that I have an odd collection of bedfellows from Boris Johnson to Paul Mason.
Pax Americana is the best stopgap until Australia is ready to step up to global leadership.
The worrying thing is that could happen in the event of a thermonuclear exchange between NATO and Russia. It would be Australia vs China for Hegemon.
For my money, while the overall consensus continues to be for a long-running grind, there are enough straws in the wind to entertain the prospect of a possible “early” (ie 2023) Russian collapse.
I do find the Archbishop of Canterbury’s argument compelling. No-one wins long term by humiliating Russia. Defeat is humiliation enough.
I do favour a return to 1991 borders, but I can see a decent case for the resumption of the Kharkiv Pact allowing for Russian naval in Sebastopol, a commitment by Ukraine not to join NATO, and perhaps even some special status for Crimea and the Donbas, along the lines of Northern Ireland for example.
Long-term, our policy should aim to bring Russia into Western economic, political, and defence structures.
There's a contradiction between saying we shouldn't humiliate Russia but bring it into Western structures, because from the perspective of Russians like Putin, that's precisely the scenario they regard as humiliating.
Do they regard being brought into European structures as humiliating, or just US-dominated ones? In many ways it would be desirable for the EU to form closer links with Russia itself - the influence on Russia could be democratising, economically-diversifying and pacifying, whilst Russia could provide access to its space programme, and massive energy supplies. This would be undesirable for the US, because it could result in a serious rival power bloc to the US. But not necessarily undesirable for the EU, or the UK - indeed as an outcome it would be a lot better than the de facto colonisation of Russia by China. At the moment, the prospect is far away, and the US (of course helped by Russia's own brutish actions) has successfully driven a wedge between Russia and Western Europe that has benefited its own foreign policy aims.
I think the idea of the EU seriously rivalling the US in another stretch again, but the general thinking here is reasonable and very switched on UK policymakers should be considering it.
In a way, the UK-Ukraine relationship could be the kernel of something like this.
(I have previously suggested that Ukraine’s joining NATO is not appropriate at this current moment, but entry into the Commonwealth is not a useless idea).
If you desire a negotiated peace, then Ukraine membership of NATO is possibly the only security guarantee they will accept. And they desire membership of the EU (which up was in quite a big way how this all kicked off). I’m not sure the Commonwealth would mean much to them.
NATO membership for Ukraine is dead in the water, if I'm correct and this ends with a Kashmiri solution - a ceasefire, where Russia holds onto its gains but both sides continue to make further claims against each other, i.e. a permanently frozen conflict. It could be achieved as part of a grand bargain, in which Ukraine lets Putin keep his conquests in exchange for a treaty in which Russia concedes Ukrainian strategic autonomy, and NATO then admits Ukraine (Russian promises obviously being worthless, but membership of NATO being priceless, as the Baltic States have discovered.) But somehow I don't see Ukraine ever conceding all that territory.
I think NATO membership would be extremely likely if post war Russia remained any kind of immediate threat. After all, NATO membership was given to the Federal Republic of Germany even though they did not control a good third of the recognized German lands, and it is the only guarantee that Kyiv could accept after the abject failure of the Budapest memorandum. No one will trust Russian good faith, so only good fences can make good neighbours.
This debate reinforces the fact that Fukuyama was right: there is no coherent alternative vision for economics and political organisation that threatens capitalistic liberal democracy.
Many vassal states and autocracies have populations that yearn to join the Western world. Millions year round travel hundreds of miles and endure untold indignities to make a new life in Europe or the US. No Western populations yearn to be more like Russia, or more like China, or Syria or Venezuela or Iran.
Immigration flows (real or attempted) are a great proxy for economic and cultural success. The more people banging on the door, the more successful the country - and the more able to pick the brightest and best to keep growing the economy.
And it's also why it is the interests of Western liberal democracies to get their neighbours richer and more democratic: simply, it means that the likelihood their citizens will be climbing on boats and trying to get to your country is reduced.
And yet give little apparent weight to the views of others have also experienced fighting, and who have proved rather closer to the mark in their predictions.
Russia’s governance model for centuries has been “strong men surrounding an autocrat” with a strong dose of Orthodox Christianity exceptionalism thrown in. The labels may have changed from aristocrat to oligarch and tsar to president, but the model is essentially the same.
It is the legacy of the Russian lands being united by Muscovy, and not Kiev or Novgorod. Russian culture is a criminal Muscovite one, built out of autocratic, Mongol-style rule. Russia can only be brought in from the cold if it abandons its current mentality and creates a new one in rejection of it, as Germany did after 1945.
More likely is that the Russian Empire breaks up, as Ukraine succeeds a la Poland or Czechia, and some regions want to recreate the success free of Moscow's dominance.
So is Russia right to see this as a battle for its own survival then? Putin is always described as a paranoid nutjob, but yet the long term plan for Russia from most US commentators, foreign policy wonks, and politicians (clearly the ones influencing your posts at any rate) always lead to the break up of Russia. And this is all well before the current conflict.
No, the battle for Russia's survival depends on whether it chooses to embrace a future as a democratic, decent nation or not. This war is inevitably lost because you can't endlessly occupy a country of 40 million people that hate you.
Also, your obsession with the US bogeyman behind everything is hilarious. My comments are my own judgments based on my knoweldge of Russian and Ukrainian history. The idea that some American congressman behind them is even more fanciful than Britain solving its vegetable shortage with fracking.
I’ve discovered another one of those fundamental divides in opinion since the Ukraine war started. We already had economic left vs right, and from 2016 onwards we became aware of social authoritarian vs liberal.
But there is another clear distinction that cuts across left and right, leave and remain. People who, deep down, believe in the Pax Americana and those who don’t.
A few years ago I’d have said I was in the latter camp. I hated the Iraq war, I looked in despair at first the neocons with their adventurism and then the tea party, Obamaites and MAGAs with their insularity. But from the Scripal poisonings onwards I realised I still believed that US hegemony is better than almost any other scenario. On that I have an odd collection of bedfellows from Boris Johnson to Paul Mason.
Pax Americana is the best stopgap until Australia is ready to step up to global leadership.
Russia’s governance model for centuries has been “strong men surrounding an autocrat” with a strong dose of Orthodox Christianity exceptionalism thrown in. The labels may have changed from aristocrat to oligarch and tsar to president, but the model is essentially the same.
It is the legacy of the Russian lands being united by Muscovy, and not Kiev or Novgorod. Russian culture is a criminal Muscovite one, built out of autocratic, Mongol-style rule. Russia can only be brought in from the cold if it abandons its current mentality and creates a new one in rejection of it, as Germany did after 1945.
More likely is that the Russian Empire breaks up, as Ukraine succeeds a la Poland or Czechia, and some regions want to recreate the success free of Moscow's dominance.
So is Russia right to see this as a battle for its own survival then? Putin is always described as a paranoid nutjob, but yet the long term plan for Russia from most US commentators, foreign policy wonks, and politicians (clearly the ones influencing your posts at any rate) always lead to the break up of Russia. And this is all well before the current conflict.
No, the battle for Russia's survival depends on whether it chooses to embrace a future as a democratic, decent nation or not. This war is inevitably lost because you can't endlessly occupy a country of 40 million people that hate you.
Also, your obsession with the US bogeyman behind everything is hilarious. My comments are my own judgments based on my knoweldge of Russian and Ukrainian history. The idea that some American congressman behind them is even more fanciful than Britain solving its vegetable shortage with fracking.
I’ve discovered another one of those fundamental divides in opinion since the Ukraine war started. We already had economic left vs right, and from 2016 onwards we became aware of social authoritarian vs liberal.
But there is another clear distinction that cuts across left and right, leave and remain. People who, deep down, believe in the Pax Americana and those who don’t.
A few years ago I’d have said I was in the latter camp. I hated the Iraq war, I looked in despair at first the neocons with their adventurism and then the tea party, Obamaites and MAGAs with their insularity. But from the Scripal poisonings onwards I realised I still believed that US hegemony is better than almost any other scenario. On that I have an odd collection of bedfellows from Boris Johnson to Paul Mason.
Pax Americana is the best stopgap until Australia is ready to step up to global leadership.
The worrying thing is that could happen in the event of a thermonuclear exchange between NATO and Russia. It would be Australia vs China for Hegemon.
Australia is already effectively part of NATO via AUKUS.
This debate reinforces the fact that Fukuyama was right: there is no coherent alternative vision for economics and political organisation that threatens capitalistic liberal democracy.
Many vassal states and autocracies have populations that yearn to join the Western world. Millions year round travel hundreds of miles and endure untold indignities to make a new life in Europe or the US. No Western populations yearn to be more like Russia, or more like China, or Syria or Venezuela or Iran.
Immigration flows (real or attempted) are a great proxy for economic and cultural success. The more people banging on the door, the more successful the country - and the more able to pick the brightest and best to keep growing the economy.
And it's also why it is the interests of Western liberal democracies to get their neighbours richer and more democratic: simply, it means that the likelihood their citizens will be climbing on boats and trying to get to your country is reduced.
Getting rich and getting democratic are two different things. Enriching autocracies is a bad idea.
Taiwan and South Korea got richer and then became democratic, so I don't think it's that simple.
And other countries stayed poor and became democratic, and other countries got rich and stayed autocratic. As I said, they are two different things. It is in our interest to only enrich countries once democratization has happened. In fact, to use the temptation of money to incentivize democratization.
This debate reinforces the fact that Fukuyama was right: there is no coherent alternative vision for economics and political organisation that threatens capitalistic liberal democracy.
Many vassal states and autocracies have populations that yearn to join the Western world. Millions year round travel hundreds of miles and endure untold indignities to make a new life in Europe or the US. No Western populations yearn to be more like Russia, or more like China, or Syria or Venezuela or Iran.
Immigration flows (real or attempted) are a great proxy for economic and cultural success. The more people banging on the door, the more successful the country - and the more able to pick the brightest and best to keep growing the economy.
And it's also why it is the interests of Western liberal democracies to get their neighbours richer and more democratic: simply, it means that the likelihood their citizens will be climbing on boats and trying to get to your country is reduced.
Getting rich and getting democratic are two different things. Enriching autocracies is a bad idea.
Staying rich is massively more difficult as a despotism. Argentina was very wealthy in 1946. Not so much after 9 years of Peronism, then repeated military coups and instability to our own day.
Most but now you are starting to find some Trump and Farage and Le Pen supporters who would probably rather live in Russia under Putin now and his nationalist social conservativism than the liberal Western nations they do live in.
Corbyinites would probably rather live in Cuba than the UK too
We'd be better off if those idiots pissed off to those countries.
Most but now you are starting to find some Trump and Farage and Le Pen supporters who would probably rather live in Russia under Putin now and his nationalist social conservativism than the liberal Western nations they do live in.
Corbyinites would probably rather live in Cuba than the UK too
We'd be better off if those idiots pissed off to those countries.
... The Daily Mirror is read by people who think they run the country; The Guardian is read by people who think they ought to run the country; The Times is read by the people who actually do run the country; the Daily Mail is read by the wives of the people who run the country; the Financial Times is read by people who own the country; the Morning Star is read by people who think the country ought to be run by another country, and the Daily Telegraph is read by people who think it is.
Russia’s governance model for centuries has been “strong men surrounding an autocrat” with a strong dose of Orthodox Christianity exceptionalism thrown in. The labels may have changed from aristocrat to oligarch and tsar to president, but the model is essentially the same.
It is the legacy of the Russian lands being united by Muscovy, and not Kiev or Novgorod. Russian culture is a criminal Muscovite one, built out of autocratic, Mongol-style rule. Russia can only be brought in from the cold if it abandons its current mentality and creates a new one in rejection of it, as Germany did after 1945.
More likely is that the Russian Empire breaks up, as Ukraine succeeds a la Poland or Czechia, and some regions want to recreate the success free of Moscow's dominance.
So is Russia right to see this as a battle for its own survival then? Putin is always described as a paranoid nutjob, but yet the long term plan for Russia from most US commentators, foreign policy wonks, and politicians (clearly the ones influencing your posts at any rate) always lead to the break up of Russia. And this is all well before the current conflict.
No, the battle for Russia's survival depends on whether it chooses to embrace a future as a democratic, decent nation or not. This war is inevitably lost because you can't endlessly occupy a country of 40 million people that hate you.
Also, your obsession with the US bogeyman behind everything is hilarious. My comments are my own judgments based on my knoweldge of Russian and Ukrainian history. The idea that some American congressman behind them is even more fanciful than Britain solving its vegetable shortage with fracking.
I’ve discovered another one of those fundamental divides in opinion since the Ukraine war started. We already had economic left vs right, and from 2016 onwards we became aware of social authoritarian vs liberal.
But there is another clear distinction that cuts across left and right, leave and remain. People who, deep down, believe in the Pax Americana and those who don’t.
A few years ago I’d have said I was in the latter camp. I hated the Iraq war, I looked in despair at first the neocons with their adventurism and then the tea party, Obamaites and MAGAs with their insularity. But from the Scripal poisonings onwards I realised I still believed that US hegemony is better than almost any other scenario. On that I have an odd collection of bedfellows from Boris Johnson to Paul Mason.
Pax Americana is the best stopgap until Australia is ready to step up to global leadership.
The worrying thing is that could happen in the event of a thermonuclear exchange between NATO and Russia. It would be Australia vs China for Hegemon.
Australia is already effectively part of NATO via AUKUS.
New Zealand is more neutral, Australia isn't
Nonsense. It isn't committed to defending Norway, is it?
There's a real gap in my understanding about the Ukraine war.
It seems that its possible that a delegation from India, Sir Lanka, SA, Bangladesh, Pakistan could turn up on my doorstep (or much more likely someone who matters doorstep) and argue a case that isn't so clear as it seems to us.
These nations are about as friendly as it gets - or at least they should be. What do they see that we don't?
This debate reinforces the fact that Fukuyama was right: there is no coherent alternative vision for economics and political organisation that threatens capitalistic liberal democracy.
Many vassal states and autocracies have populations that yearn to join the Western world. Millions year round travel hundreds of miles and endure untold indignities to make a new life in Europe or the US. No Western populations yearn to be more like Russia, or more like China, or Syria or Venezuela or Iran.
Immigration flows (real or attempted) are a great proxy for economic and cultural success. The more people banging on the door, the more successful the country - and the more able to pick the brightest and best to keep growing the economy.
And it's also why it is the interests of Western liberal democracies to get their neighbours richer and more democratic: simply, it means that the likelihood their citizens will be climbing on boats and trying to get to your country is reduced.
I disagree. People are attracted by the money in the west but many despise the social policies in the west....from gay marriage and trans rights to extreme feminism....Putin alluded to this in his speech
Russia was understood as a European power up until the Second World War as far as I’m concerned.
All this stuff about Mongols is picturesque but not I think very explanatory in terms of how Russia sees itself or our own policy.
That is not strictly speaking true: in April 1941, at the signing of the Soviet-Japanese neutrality pact, Stalin famously declared "we too are Asiatic". The historical struggle in nineteenth century Russia was between Europeans and Slavophiles, or if you prefer, between those who believed in a unique, exceptional or even mystical destiny for Russia and those who wanted Russia to develop as a modern state.
So you could say Gorbachev was closer to a European moderniser and Putin an Asiatic with a Slavophile, mystic belief in Russia, but both have failed because in the past two hundred years Russia has failed to emerge as a complex state and society, but remained in various guises ultimately a personal fiefdom, whether Tsarist, Communist or Putinist.
Russia was and is a backward country, socially, politically and economically. It is backward because the primitive political system has not created a socially cohesive polity, so there is little to no social trust and no balances and checks upon its leaders. The complexities of the democratic capitalist political/social contract do not exist in Russia and indeed are not even understood. (These views are shamelessly cribbed from James Sherr and I commend his work to you).
My own views are closer to P.J. O´Rourke´s: "Russia has been part of- at least an idiot stepbrother to- Western civilization for a thousand years. There´s no alibi for the place."
This is interesting.
I take the view that the type of political structure informs the personality and mindset of types who rise to the top.
Nigerian politicians enriched themselves shamelessly because there would be no second chances at power.
Russian leaders under the Soviets were ruthless bureaucrats. Russian leaders now are ruthless mafiosi.
The secret to doing business is to bribe the top guy, or so my business contacts tell me.
But the geography of the Russian Federation and the country's difficulties in uniting a myriad of national and language groups also informs their mindset. They have never established control over their borders in the way modern Western states have. You could argue that like the Chinese they are struggling to control what they do have (but you may retort Formosa).
But retaining a sphere of influence requires the neighbours to be fearful of the bully and the consequences of upsetting him.
Most but now you are starting to find some Trump and Farage and Le Pen supporters who would probably rather live in Russia under Putin now and his nationalist social conservativism than the liberal Western nations they do live in.
Corbyinites would probably rather live in Cuba than the UK too
We'd be better off if those idiots pissed off to those countries.
Corbyn is certainly a regular traveller to Cuba and Venezuela.
Nick Griffin now lives in Orban's Hungary I believe
There's a real gap in my understanding about the Ukraine war.
It seems that its possible that a delegation from India, Sir Lanka, SA, Bangladesh, Pakistan could turn up on my doorstep (or much more likely someone who matters doorstep) and argue a case that isn't so clear as it seems to us.
These nations are about as friendly as it gets - or at least they should be. What do they see that we don't?
this war is ultimately about preserving the US dollar as reserve currency...as Russia promotes de dollarisation of the world...thats why the US is uninterested in peace talks
For my money, while the overall consensus continues to be for a long-running grind, there are enough straws in the wind to entertain the prospect of a possible “early” (ie 2023) Russian collapse.
I do find the Archbishop of Canterbury’s argument compelling. No-one wins long term by humiliating Russia. Defeat is humiliation enough.
I do favour a return to 1991 borders, but I can see a decent case for the resumption of the Kharkiv Pact allowing for Russian naval in Sebastopol, a commitment by Ukraine not to join NATO, and perhaps even some special status for Crimea and the Donbas, along the lines of Northern Ireland for example.
Long-term, our policy should aim to bring Russia into Western economic, political, and defence structures.
There's a contradiction between saying we shouldn't humiliate Russia but bring it into Western structures, because from the perspective of Russians like Putin, that's precisely the scenario they regard as humiliating.
Do they regard being brought into European structures as humiliating, or just US-dominated ones? In many ways it would be desirable for the EU to form closer links with Russia itself - the influence on Russia could be democratising, economically-diversifying and pacifying, whilst Russia could provide access to its space programme, and massive energy supplies. This would be undesirable for the US, because it could result in a serious rival power bloc to the US. But not necessarily undesirable for the EU, or the UK - indeed as an outcome it would be a lot better than the de facto colonisation of Russia by China. At the moment, the prospect is far away, and the US (of course helped by Russia's own brutish actions) has successfully driven a wedge between Russia and Western Europe that has benefited its own foreign policy aims.
I think the idea of the EU seriously rivalling the US in another stretch again, but the general thinking here is reasonable and very switched on UK policymakers should be considering it.
In a way, the UK-Ukraine relationship could be the kernel of something like this.
(I have previously suggested that Ukraine’s joining NATO is not appropriate at this current moment, but entry into the Commonwealth is not a useless idea).
If you desire a negotiated peace, then Ukraine membership of NATO is possibly the only security guarantee they will accept. And they desire membership of the EU (which up was in quite a big way how this all kicked off). I’m not sure the Commonwealth would mean much to them.
NATO membership for Ukraine is dead in the water, if I'm correct and this ends with a Kashmiri solution - a ceasefire, where Russia holds onto its gains but both sides continue to make further claims against each other, i.e. a permanently frozen conflict. It could be achieved as part of a grand bargain, in which Ukraine lets Putin keep his conquests in exchange for a treaty in which Russia concedes Ukrainian strategic autonomy, and NATO then admits Ukraine (Russian promises obviously being worthless, but membership of NATO being priceless, as the Baltic States have discovered.) But somehow I don't see Ukraine ever conceding all that territory.
I think NATO membership would be extremely likely if post war Russia remained any kind of immediate threat. After all, NATO membership was given to the Federal Republic of Germany even though they did not control a good third of the recognized German lands, and it is the only guarantee that Kyiv could accept after the abject failure of the Budapest memorandum. No one will trust Russian good faith, so only good fences can make good neighbours.
The post-war German situation was rather different. The zones of occupation were recognised by both the Soviet Union and the Western powers and clearly demarcated; indeed, the East German state itself was eventually recognised diplomatically by the Western allies. Thus the borders of East Germany, whilst representing frontiers between the rival power blocs, did not take the form of a ceasefire line or line of control in a frozen conflict, such as the eventual border between free Ukraine and its occupied territories will be should the Ukrainian military prove unable to expel Russia wholly from its internationally recognised borders.
Under such circumstances, I would expect the unoccupied portion of Ukraine to integrate de facto but not de jure with the Western military alliance. Admission to NATO won't be forthcoming, but the Ukrainians will benefit from aid with economic reconstruction and the acquisition of advanced military training and equipment such that they will become far too strong an opponent for Russia to attempt to overcome with its crippled economic base and much reduced conventional capabilities. There's also no particular reason why Ukraine could not eventually join the European Union, although that will require a very lengthy programme of civil reform and legislative preparation and is only a realistic aim in the long term.
I think that NATO accession only comes with a formal bargain with Russia, but that would require the Ukrainians to cede territory and the Russians to admit that Ukraine has been permanently lost to the Western sphere, and I don't think either side is willing to make such compromises.
For my money, while the overall consensus continues to be for a long-running grind, there are enough straws in the wind to entertain the prospect of a possible “early” (ie 2023) Russian collapse.
I do find the Archbishop of Canterbury’s argument compelling. No-one wins long term by humiliating Russia. Defeat is humiliation enough.
I do favour a return to 1991 borders, but I can see a decent case for the resumption of the Kharkiv Pact allowing for Russian naval in Sebastopol, a commitment by Ukraine not to join NATO, and perhaps even some special status for Crimea and the Donbas, along the lines of Northern Ireland for example.
Long-term, our policy should aim to bring Russia into Western economic, political, and defence structures.
There's a contradiction between saying we shouldn't humiliate Russia but bring it into Western structures, because from the perspective of Russians like Putin, that's precisely the scenario they regard as humiliating.
Do they regard being brought into European structures as humiliating, or just US-dominated ones? In many ways it would be desirable for the EU to form closer links with Russia itself - the influence on Russia could be democratising, economically-diversifying and pacifying, whilst Russia could provide access to its space programme, and massive energy supplies. This would be undesirable for the US, because it could result in a serious rival power bloc to the US. But not necessarily undesirable for the EU, or the UK - indeed as an outcome it would be a lot better than the de facto colonisation of Russia by China. At the moment, the prospect is far away, and the US (of course helped by Russia's own brutish actions) has successfully driven a wedge between Russia and Western Europe that has benefited its own foreign policy aims.
I think the idea of the EU seriously rivalling the US in another stretch again, but the general thinking here is reasonable and very switched on UK policymakers should be considering it.
In a way, the UK-Ukraine relationship could be the kernel of something like this.
(I have previously suggested that Ukraine’s joining NATO is not appropriate at this current moment, but entry into the Commonwealth is not a useless idea).
If you desire a negotiated peace, then Ukraine membership of NATO is possibly the only security guarantee they will accept. And they desire membership of the EU (which up was in quite a big way how this all kicked off). I’m not sure the Commonwealth would mean much to them.
Isn't South Africa in the commonwealth? And IIRC South Africa is very much on Russia's side in this?
Hard to imagine Mandela falling into Putin's orbit.
Russia squandered close ties with the South African government by overplaying its hand and getting caught up in a corrupt nuclear energy pact. But still close enough.
This debate reinforces the fact that Fukuyama was right: there is no coherent alternative vision for economics and political organisation that threatens capitalistic liberal democracy.
Many vassal states and autocracies have populations that yearn to join the Western world. Millions year round travel hundreds of miles and endure untold indignities to make a new life in Europe or the US. No Western populations yearn to be more like Russia, or more like China, or Syria or Venezuela or Iran.
Immigration flows (real or attempted) are a great proxy for economic and cultural success. The more people banging on the door, the more successful the country - and the more able to pick the brightest and best to keep growing the economy.
And it's also why it is the interests of Western liberal democracies to get their neighbours richer and more democratic: simply, it means that the likelihood their citizens will be climbing on boats and trying to get to your country is reduced.
I disagree. People are attracted by the money in the west but many despise the social policies in the west....from gay marriage and trans rights to extreme feminism....Putin alluded to this in his speech
Can you give us an example of extreme feminism? Is it along the lines of giving the gentle flowers the vote?
So whilst I thank him and everyone who has served the country in the military (especially if they have been deployed to warzones), and will defer to their expertise in areas they're expert in, I'd treat 'evidence' they give in areas outside their areas of expertise with less certainty.
We really need someone with experience as a despot to comment on what Putin might do next, but as far as I'm aware there isn't one posting on here.
Russia’s governance model for centuries has been “strong men surrounding an autocrat” with a strong dose of Orthodox Christianity exceptionalism thrown in. The labels may have changed from aristocrat to oligarch and tsar to president, but the model is essentially the same.
It is the legacy of the Russian lands being united by Muscovy, and not Kiev or Novgorod. Russian culture is a criminal Muscovite one, built out of autocratic, Mongol-style rule. Russia can only be brought in from the cold if it abandons its current mentality and creates a new one in rejection of it, as Germany did after 1945.
More likely is that the Russian Empire breaks up, as Ukraine succeeds a la Poland or Czechia, and some regions want to recreate the success free of Moscow's dominance.
So is Russia right to see this as a battle for its own survival then? Putin is always described as a paranoid nutjob, but yet the long term plan for Russia from most US commentators, foreign policy wonks, and politicians (clearly the ones influencing your posts at any rate) always lead to the break up of Russia. And this is all well before the current conflict.
No, the battle for Russia's survival depends on whether it chooses to embrace a future as a democratic, decent nation or not. This war is inevitably lost because you can't endlessly occupy a country of 40 million people that hate you.
Also, your obsession with the US bogeyman behind everything is hilarious. My comments are my own judgments based on my knoweldge of Russian and Ukrainian history. The idea that some American congressman behind them is even more fanciful than Britain solving its vegetable shortage with fracking.
I’ve discovered another one of those fundamental divides in opinion since the Ukraine war started. We already had economic left vs right, and from 2016 onwards we became aware of social authoritarian vs liberal.
But there is another clear distinction that cuts across left and right, leave and remain. People who, deep down, believe in the Pax Americana and those who don’t.
A few years ago I’d have said I was in the latter camp. I hated the Iraq war, I looked in despair at first the neocons with their adventurism and then the tea party, Obamaites and MAGAs with their insularity. But from the Scripal poisonings onwards I realised I still believed that US hegemony is better than almost any other scenario. On that I have an odd collection of bedfellows from Boris Johnson to Paul Mason.
Pax Americana is the best stopgap until Australia is ready to step up to global leadership.
The worrying thing is that could happen in the event of a thermonuclear exchange between NATO and Russia. It would be Australia vs China for Hegemon.
Australia is already effectively part of NATO via AUKUS.
New Zealand is more neutral, Australia isn't
Nonsense. It isn't committed to defending Norway, is it?
Australia's main role is defending South Korea and Japan and with the US deterring China from threatening Taiwan.
However if Russia invaded Norway Australia would also almost certainly be involved in supporting NATO there too
There's a real gap in my understanding about the Ukraine war.
It seems that its possible that a delegation from India, Sir Lanka, SA, Bangladesh, Pakistan could turn up on my doorstep (or much more likely someone who matters doorstep) and argue a case that isn't so clear as it seems to us.
These nations are about as friendly as it gets - or at least they should be. What do they see that we don't?
this war is ultimately about preserving the US dollar as reserve currency...as Russia promotes de dollarisation of the world...thats why the US is uninterested in peace talks
Well, that's pretty much the daftest thing I've ever seen posted on PB. Obviously you're a propaganda bot type person, but even so.
There's a real gap in my understanding about the Ukraine war.
It seems that its possible that a delegation from India, Sir Lanka, SA, Bangladesh, Pakistan could turn up on my doorstep (or much more likely someone who matters doorstep) and argue a case that isn't so clear as it seems to us.
These nations are about as friendly as it gets - or at least they should be. What do they see that we don't?
this war is ultimately about preserving the US dollar as reserve currency...as Russia promotes de dollarisation of the world...thats why the US is uninterested in peace talks
Comments
In fact, I think you are on surer ground talking about Eastern Europe than Scotland & Wales -- far away countries of which you know nothing.
I have emphasised elsewhere that this war is unpredictable & should be assessed via probabilities. I tried to give likely outcomes & probabilities here
https://vf.politicalbetting.com/discussion/comment/4314228#Comment_4314228
You are welcome to post your own assessments & probabilities & I would be very interested to read them
Beware however -- Feynman's Law. “The first principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool.”
One way we fool ourselves is by imagining that we are experts.
Anyway, the West is hopefully broader than necessitating Russia sign up to trans marriage and affirmative action or whatever. It needs to be a broad enough concept that a future Russia can indeed onboard.
Whatever Russia’s history of despotism, it also remains a country that has made a profound contribution to Western art, literature, music, and indeed ideas of how to organise society.
Most express the same uncertainty about outcomes as you; they just disagree about actions. Topping appears also to have the habit of lumping together everyone who disagrees with him as a PB armchair general.
FWIW, the US administration appears to share much the same doubts, fear of possible nuclear escalation, and disgust at the cost of the war.
At the risk of boring everyone, I’ll yet again recommend this piece, which sets that out pretty clearly.
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2023/02/24/russia-ukraine-war-oral-history-00083757
On the bright side, it does appear from the piece that superior intelligence information makes the US a great deal better at judging the probabilities of outcomes in Ukraine than the rest of us - including most European leaders.
In a way, the UK-Ukraine relationship could be the kernel of something like this.
(I have previously suggested that Ukraine’s joining NATO is not appropriate at this current moment, but entry into the Commonwealth is not a useless idea).
The West needs to go in the opposite direction, and make access to Western markets and institutions dependent on democratization.
Russia, after Ukraine, not so much.
Admittedly, and judging by the histories of Britain and France, Russia is unlikely to reach this conclusion alone without sophisticated overtures from the West.
We can also expect China to want to flatter Russian imperial nostalgia while all the while essentially grabbing its assets and using it for various diplomatic puppetry.
More likely is that the Russian Empire breaks up, as Ukraine succeeds a la Poland or Czechia, and some regions want to recreate the success free of Moscow's dominance.
Russia is a resource economy and so it has attained a reasonable standard of living without really modernising its economy. It still mourns the loss of its superpower status. But what about the younger generation? Many of the most enterprising have left but we know from the polls that the post soviet generation are much less brainwashed/likely to support the war and get their information online rather than through the television. Part of Putin's motivation in undermining and eventually invading Ukraine was a fear that a westward facing Ukraine would lead to similar pressure in Russia. Such fears suggest that the idea is not without credence.
And they desire membership of the EU (which up was in quite a big way how this all kicked off). I’m not sure the Commonwealth would mean much to them.
I grant you that that required significant investment - in particular occupation - but I don't believe that countries and people are not capable of change.
Fair enough, surely.
I would have said that @TOPPING and @Dura_Ace are the only ones amongst us who have experienced actual fighting.
If you have fought in a war, you do bring rather different insights to the table.
So, I kinda weight their views more than someone who has only seen active service from the Morrisons in Cambourne.
It was in the 19th century it turned inward.
https://twitter.com/AlexNeilSNP/status/1629152662460502018?s=20
I think Ukraine is too poor to join EU at present. Also, too corrupt. Sure, it can and has entered a process of membership but there’s a lot of work to do.
I don’t pretend that the Commonwealth is hugely meaningful, but it a very modest way it might be a way to underpin UK and other countries’ support for Ukraine’s judicial systems, also higher education linkages. And it provides Ukraine, again modestly, with another window on the world. Also, the French would hate it.
https://twitter.com/MarkHertling/status/1497035826139738125
After one of my @CNN appearances, one of the anchors asked me off-air why I had confidence in Ukraine's army to push back agains the illegal Russian military onslaught.
I used a bit of "battlefield math" to explain my rationale. 1/16
Most British soldiers’ experience of war since Korea has been counter-insurgency, or fairly limited conventional fighting.
This is war on a much bigger scale.
Between Russia and the EU I would see a more formal relationship developing. I don't want the UK involved, but I do see it as desirable for a powerful European bloc to emerge that is not the USA. The UK has always striven for balance of powers; the hegemonic power of one is toxic - when it happens, you get things like GOF research and Covid, and very little possibility of meaningful redress.
Anyway the Commonwealth is obviously not a geopolitical bloc. At present it’s difficult to see what use it has, although I can see benefit in a club for non-USA led democracies sharing legal, democratic, and educational practices.
That would be far too humiliating for the Greater Russian Nationalists - a wall against their expansionism that would be way, way too close.
The BBC are running a documentary about the QE aircraft carrier - it's mostly a cruise ship.
Our armed forces would be completely hopeless if we had to fight a war, and their deaths would buy us a tiny window of time such that those who can fight well will have a chance to do so. There is nothing at all in British military history that suggests we have ever been well prepared.
All this stuff about Mongols is picturesque but not I think very explanatory in terms of how Russia sees itself or what our own policy should be.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5AdydnxoFCo
I think it’s safe to say the Commonwealth idea would for now be a non starter.
At best it will be a frozen conflict - a European Panmunjeom.
But that only came about with permanent US bases on Korean soil.
https://twitter.com/FraserNelson/status/1629144215123787783?s=20
It very clearly isn’t the policy or desire of the current administration.
The only countries which consistently vote with Russia are North Korea, Syria and Belarus, Eritrea, Mali and Nicaragua
The problems begin when she tries to answer questions. When it reaches point she is stuck for answer she goes “Look-“ and everything stops. That’s normally about 14 seconds into the interview.
Sad really 🥺
Many vassal states and autocracies have populations that yearn to join the Western world. Millions year round travel hundreds of miles and endure untold indignities to make a new life in Europe or the US. No Western populations yearn to be more like Russia, or more like China, or Syria or Venezuela or Iran.
Immigration flows (real or attempted) are a great proxy for economic and cultural success. The more people banging on the door, the more successful the country - and the more able to pick the brightest and best to keep growing the economy.
Also, your obsession with the US bogeyman behind everything is hilarious. My comments are my own judgments based on my knoweldge of Russian and Ukrainian history. The idea that some American congressman behind them is even more fanciful than Britain solving its vegetable shortage with fracking.
So you could say Gorbachev was closer to a European moderniser and Putin an Asiatic with a Slavophile, mystic belief in Russia, but both have failed because in the past two hundred years Russia has failed to emerge as a complex state and society, but remained in various guises ultimately a personal fiefdom, whether Tsarist, Communist or Putinist.
Russia was and is a backward country, socially, politically and economically. It is backward because the primitive political system has not created a socially cohesive polity, so there is little to no social trust and no balances and checks upon its leaders. The complexities of the democratic capitalist political/social contract do not exist in Russia and indeed are not even understood. (These views are shamelessly cribbed from James Sherr and I commend his work to you).
My own views are closer to P.J. O´Rourke´s: "Russia has been part of- at least an idiot stepbrother to- Western civilization for a thousand years. There´s no alibi for the place."
The problem with that is that *their* experience will also be limited. True, they might have more knowledge than myself, but knowing how to land a plane on an aircraft carrier does not inform you of the way tanks might be used to create a bridgehead; or being a sergeant in a trench does not tell you the nest way to target missile strikes on critical enemy infrastructure. They may know a lot about things like how to fire a gun or how to lead a platoon in an attack, but that's not much help with the bigger-picture stuff that we're mostly interested in.
Take Topping's argument that Russia is not running out of kit (say, artillery and missiles). He may be right and they are not. But if he is right, he has failed to explain why we're seeing fewer missile attacks on Ukraine, why Russia appears to be using much less artillery, and why they seem to be using much older kit.
I've provided a possible explanation - that Russia is holding back the material ready for a big assault - but he even ignores that. (I think there may be valid arguments against that counter-argument, but that's another matter).
I don't know what Topping did in the army, but even if he was an expert on Russian tanks, the situation with Russia's tanks and their storage will have changed and developed in the last couple of decades, assuming he has not recently left the forces. And if he knows a great deal about tanks, he might know very little about missiles, or artillery systems etc.
So whilst I thank him and everyone who has served the country in the military (especially if they have been deployed to warzones), and will defer to their expertise in areas they're expert in, I'd treat 'evidence' they give in areas outside their areas of expertise with less certainty.
liberal.
But there is another clear distinction that cuts across left and right, leave and remain. People who, deep down, believe in the Pax Americana and those who don’t.
A few years ago I’d have said I was in the latter camp. I hated the Iraq war, I looked in despair at first the neocons with their adventurism and then the tea party, Obamaites and MAGAs with their insularity. But from the Scripal poisonings onwards I realised I still believed that US hegemony is better than almost any other scenario. On that I have an odd collection of bedfellows from Boris Johnson to Paul Mason.
Corbyinites would probably rather live in Cuba than the UK too
If this is the best she's got then the choice returns to Kate Forbes, whose statements about her religious beliefs have already alienated a large chunk of her parliamentary caucus, and Humza Yousaf, who is the continuity Sturgeon candidate only without the charisma or the broadly positive approval ratings. One cannot see how this ends positively for the SNP, regardless of which candidate eventually prevails.
So it seems Belarus, NK, Eritrea, Mali, Nicaragua, Syria, and Russia. (7).
I take it all back about Venezuela!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XEECxN5P1nw
New Zealand is more neutral, Australia isn't
US believes China is considering delivering artillery and drones to Russia that could extend the war
... The Daily Mirror is read by people who think they run the country; The Guardian is read by people who think they ought to run the country; The Times is read by the people who actually do run the country; the Daily Mail is read by the wives of the people who run the country; the Financial Times is read by people who own the country; the Morning Star is read by people who think the country ought to be run by another country, and the Daily Telegraph is read by people who think it is.
It seems that its possible that a delegation from India, Sir Lanka, SA, Bangladesh, Pakistan could turn up on my doorstep (or much more likely someone who matters doorstep) and argue a case that isn't so clear as it seems to us.
These nations are about as friendly as it gets - or at least they should be. What do they see that we don't?
I take the view that the type of political structure informs the personality and mindset of types who rise to the top.
Nigerian politicians enriched themselves shamelessly because there would be no second chances at power.
Russian leaders under the Soviets were ruthless bureaucrats. Russian leaders now are ruthless mafiosi.
The secret to doing business is to bribe the top guy, or so my business contacts tell me.
But the geography of the Russian Federation and the country's difficulties in uniting a myriad of national and language groups also informs their mindset. They have never established control over their borders in the way modern Western states have. You could argue that like the Chinese they are struggling to control what they do have (but you may retort Formosa).
But retaining a sphere of influence requires the neighbours to be fearful of the bully and the consequences of upsetting him.
Nick Griffin now lives in Orban's Hungary I believe
Under such circumstances, I would expect the unoccupied portion of Ukraine to integrate de facto but not de jure with the Western military alliance. Admission to NATO won't be forthcoming, but the Ukrainians will benefit from aid with economic reconstruction and the acquisition of advanced military training and equipment such that they will become far too strong an opponent for Russia to attempt to overcome with its crippled economic base and much reduced conventional capabilities. There's also no particular reason why Ukraine could not eventually join the European Union, although that will require a very lengthy programme of civil reform and legislative preparation and is only a realistic aim in the long term.
I think that NATO accession only comes with a formal bargain with Russia, but that would require the Ukrainians to cede territory and the Russians to admit that Ukraine has been permanently lost to the Western sphere, and I don't think either side is willing to make such compromises.
Russia squandered close ties with the South African government by overplaying its hand and getting caught up in a corrupt nuclear energy pact. But still close enough.
However if Russia invaded Norway Australia would also almost certainly be involved in supporting NATO there too