Heirloom_Tomato

https://www.ctvnews.ca/world/putin-pledges-truce-if-ukraine-exits-occupied-areas-and-drops-nato-bid-likely-a-nonstarter-for-kyiv-1.6926626
Stop resisting, give us what we want, and we will leave you alone.

I think it's worth considering this in terms of the Galeotti analysis I posted above. Putin's two modes are to either prevaricate or over react...with what I would argue is a very strong lean towards the former. How he reacted to the challenge Prigozhin presented illustrates the dynamic well. He literally disappeared for a while when it began and then negotiated a bad deal for himself which he revised later with the assassination of Prigozhin and Wagner's core leadership. Putin did not "go nuclear" in any way during the entire episode. No purges, no mass arrests, no lashing out. He did the bare minimum to protect himself without unleashing forces that might get out of control.
The war in Ukraine so far shows a similar mix of aggression and timidity. Yes Russia invaded and yes it is struggling mightily to win but it is quite difficult to find anything Russia has done outside the lines that goes beyond nuisance value. Dragging a Norwegian data line or paying some clown to toss a firebomb at some vans in Prague are not exactly attempts to dramatically broaden the strategic scale of this war despite the fact that Western aid has killed Russian troops in windrows and is very effectively destroying the Russian military.
And why not? Because the elites under Putin as a group simply must have stability to safeguard the control they exert over power and money in Russian society and his primary job is to ensure it. Dropping a nuke, in any context, destroys that compact and as we have seen Putin now certainly knows that large sections of the security state will remain on the sidelines if he is challenged on that basis.
So while I would never entirely deny the possibility of Russia doing something idiotic, I think the invasion itself has used up Putin's allowance on that front unless and until dropping a nuke is seen as the only way in which the current internal order can be defended. That is only comprehensible in the case of a civil war...which goes a long way towards explaining American policy in this milieu.  
 
 

https://www.ctvnews.ca/world/putin-pledges-truce-if-ukraine-exits-occupied-areas-and-drops-nato-bid-likely-a-nonstarter-for-kyiv-1.6926626
Stop resisting, give us what we want, and we will leave you alone.

https://www.ctvnews.ca/world/putin-pledges-truce-if-ukraine-exits-occupied-areas-and-drops-nato-bid-likely-a-nonstarter-for-kyiv-1.6926626
Stop resisting, give us what we want, and we will leave you alone.

You forgot - “and leave yourselves entirely unprotected so we can come back and finish the job later.”

https://www.ctvnews.ca/world/putin-pledges-truce-if-ukraine-exits-occupied-areas-and-drops-nato-bid-likely-a-nonstarter-for-kyiv-1.6926626
Stop resisting, give us what we want, and we will leave you alone.

Looks like this might be happening:
https://www.ctvnews.ca/politics/g7-leaders-finalizing-deal-to-use-frozen-russian-assets-to-fund-ukraine-war-efforts-1.6924866

@Shinglhed  Absolutely. Every single scenario included with the game can be played either single player against the AI OR with a human opponent. Your options against a human include the ever popular PBEM, play by email, or the automated PBEM+ system, where the game sends the turns for you. There are also Hot Seat, LAN and Internet options available if you prefer.
Many, if not most, of the members here would agree, while playing CM against the AI is fun, playing against a live opponent lets the game truly shine.

https://www.regeringen.se/pressmeddelanden/2024/05/militart-stodpaket-16-till-ukraina--ny-formaga-som-starker-ukrainas-luftforsvar-och-stod-som-moter-ukrainas-prioriterade-behov/
 

Probably the last bone for BP2 before release. A small thing, but the main menu screen is getting cluttered.  

I wonder is China restricting the use of Chinese weapons to only Russian territory.

What?!?? We would never, ever stoop to that level. What a gross mischaracterization!
 

How to bypass a government not doing what you want it to do.
Not sure it would work in America.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-68843542
 

On the topic of democracy (democracy indexes, democratic backsliding and the like) I can actually contribute with more than my typical "expert amateur's" opinion since poli sci is my academic background.
The Economist Democracy Index appears to be from 2021 (based on Norway's and Sweden's scores of 9.75 and 9.26 respectively). That year Switzerland dipped down below 9.00, which changed its colour in the map @The_Capt posted. It might be a colour vision thing @kimbosbread? Personally I know that my red-green colour vision is in the dumps, and I cannot make out any distinction what so ever between the colours assigned to 8, 7 and 6 in that map. That still places it as a full democracy though.
It should be noted for the Economist Democracy Index's use of the term "Flawed democracy" doesn't mean that it's not a democracy, undemocratic or the like:
In the case of the USA, this likely refers to issues such as voter turnout, gerrymandering, first-past-the-post and the virtual two party system, civil rights, etc. Emphasis on "likely" though, because the Economist Democracy Index is based on anonymous scoring from undisclosed experts, so no one can say with certainty what particular aspects influenced a state's scoring.
 
V-dem is in my experience the preferred democracy index, notwithstanding any personal bias (it's from my alma mater). What makes the most difference (going by the examples cited here) though is how you measure democracy: Visual Capitalist choses to measure shares of the global poluation as opposed to number of states. This leads to statistical oddities/misrepresentations of the scale of democratic backsliding, since states are entities: if say State A and State B have become democracies whereas State Z has become an autocracy, that's a net increase in democracy, regardless of the fact that State A & B only have a combined population of say 20 million whereas State Z has a population of 1 billion. That's how Visual Capitalist arrives at the dire conclusion of "2010 Democracy: 50.4% vs 2021 Democracy: 29.3%".
India alone being reclassed from "electoral democracy" to "electoral autocracy" is behind a not insignificant portion of that change: the number of people living in electoral autocracies increased by 1.76 billion between 2010 and 2021 (India's population today reaching 1.41 billion). The remaining net global population which has shifted from "liberal/electoral democracy" to "electoral/closed autocracy" is "only" 0.7 billion. I.e., one single country falling back into autocracy is behind a smidge over 2/3 of that shift.
 
If we were to look at states instead (the typical poli sci method and arguably the more accurate measurement), we get this more positive picture:

Between the end of the Cold War and 2022, liberal democracies have remained virtually the same, more than half the world's closed autocracies have gone the way of the dodo, and electoral democracies and electoral autocracies are tied at 32.58%: back in 1990, electoral autocracies were almost 30% ahead of electoral democracies, and a staggering 36.84% of the world's states were closed autocracies. Closed autocracies were by far the most common form of government in the world when the Cold War ended: today its the opposite, it's the least common.
 
That was an argument against Visual Capitalist's measurement of democracy. Democratic backsliding is accepted among most experts, but there's not much certainty as to whether or not this will turn out to be a lasting development or if it's simply a symptom of many politically and socially underdeveloped/unprepared states which were democratised when the Cold War wrapped up simply having reverted to forms of government which are more in line for what could be expected of them.
 
 
Edit: I was going to write a brief reply. Instead I wrote more here than I've gotten done on my thesis during the last two months combined. FFS...

And here I thought you were referring to a Windows problem.
Oh wait.  It is a windows problem and not a doors problem!

Saw this quote from Tim Snyder and thought it fitting to this discussion. It seems to me, Mike Johnson is looking ahead.

This. The war in Ukraine is getting people thinking about it but the first terrorist attack on a city conducted by heat seeking, pattern recognition driven autonomous drones is going to galvanize the entire West.

We're all arguing this on a board that's dedicated to a wargame that has implemented at least some level of autonomy at the small unit level for 20 years.  And made it work in reasonable compute times for battalion sized swarms on computers that were nothing special.  The only thing it doesn't have is the physical sensor inputs, and those are pretty straightforward.  And it was all implemented by Charles and maybe a helper (I haven't kept up).  Charles himself might even count as an autonomous biocomputer, since he's really just a brain in a jar.

The issue with fully autonomous is that it offers superiority for a deterministic system.  That driver will pretty much ensure any attempts at regulation/proliferation are going to fall apart.  Now if autonomous systems achieve the level of a WMD with a MAD component, perhaps.  But the best counter to stop fully autonomous weapon systems...are other fully autonomous weapon systems.  We already have this in maritime warfare with missiles and point defence systems.  The CWIS is entirely autonomous once someone flips the switch.  They can target and engage on their own.  Why?  Because a machine can react far faster than a manned gun.
I don't think it is a question of Warhawk shrugging, it is the recognition that the odds of regulation that 1) we can agree upon and 2) sticks, is simply very unlikely.  Nuclear proliferation is a bad example because the morale imperative is not why the major powers did it.  They did so they could exclusively remain the major powers.  The other examples really are somewhat historical anomalies that we are also likely to walk back from as wars become more existential in nature.  Probably the best example is bio or chemical weapons, but we also know that neither of these really stuck either.
Trying to outlaw weapons is like trying to outlaw warfare.  We believe we can because we think that war is solely a political extremity and we can use political legality to control a political mechanism.  The reality is that the nature of warfare we currently subscribe to is the 2nd generation.  The 1st generation was "war is an extension of survival by violent means." That is the older darker nature of warfare that Clausewitz all tried to forget...right up to the point it throws itself in our faces.  In reality, we live in a third generation nature of warfare - "viable violence to achieve political ends."  The introduction of nuclear weapons put us all in a box whereby we can only really wage warfare in a constrained manner.  Go too far and one faces mutual annihilation.  The problem is when 3rd generation collides with the first one. 
So I fully believe in and adhere to the Law of Armed Conflict.  I think we should definitely aspire to be better than we really are.  But I know an existential capability when I see it. And fully autonomous weapon systems are definitely on that list.

Saw this quote from Tim Snyder and thought it fitting to this discussion. It seems to me, Mike Johnson is looking ahead.

Saw this quote from Tim Snyder and thought it fitting to this discussion. It seems to me, Mike Johnson is looking ahead.

Saw this quote from Tim Snyder and thought it fitting to this discussion. It seems to me, Mike Johnson is looking ahead.

Saw this quote from Tim Snyder and thought it fitting to this discussion. It seems to me, Mike Johnson is looking ahead.

This sort of narrative reminds me of WW1 generals who also thought the airplane was a fad.  First off Russian glide bombs need to carry so much HE because they are inefficient and imprecise.  A whole lot of HE is not necessarily a good thing.  For example, if I have 10 enemy in a build I can use a large 500lb HE munition to drop the building.  The energy it takes to get that heavy munition to that building is significant, costly and has a high ISR signature.  If I have 10 micro-drones with a .45 cal round that will not miss, that simply fly into the building and kill all 10 enemy, I am using far less energy and cost to deliver the same effect.  I am using precision and processing as an offset.
So the Russian AF lobbing large glide bombs is not a sign that “big booms are back baby!”  It is a sign that 1) Russian ISR is still fairly low res, 2) Russia does not have a lot of higher tech precise munitions and 3) we should really be worrying about air denial for Ukraine because if that fails then a whole lot of this is largely academic.
As to “someday soon C-UAS will make this all go away and we can go back to Grandpa’s war” - there is a lot of hand waving on “someday C-UAS”.  Yes, counters will be developed but they will likely reshape the battle space in doing so.  For example, let’s say we invent a nifty micro-smart missile or laser that can blast those pesky UAS out of the sky, even when they are in swarms.  “Huzzah!  Now that is over with, let’s roll out the tanks and do this Persian Gulf style…USA.USA!”
Well except for the part where we have operationalized a technology that can find and hit a flying target the size of a bird with a very small munition at crazy scales.  What do we suppose the impact of that technology is going to have on conventional ground units?  That level of ISR alone means nothing can move without being picked up for kms.  Individual infantry are screwed, vehicles may as well be battleships.  The changes such technology would bring would be f#cking profound.
So there is no going back after this with or without UAS.  Unmanned, plus ISR, plus processing power, plus miniaturization, plus cheap production are all conspiring against our entire current theories of warfare. They have been for decades while we tried to ignore them.  So we can do “hope and denial” or we can can see the shift for what it is and adapt.
 
 

What ticks me off is that he is going to go off and sulk now, muttering about how we are all “high on copium” and “smother alternative views.”  I resent the echo chamber accusation immensely.  Many people have put in a lot of time and effort to keep up with this war.  We are definitely pro-Ukraine but we also try to avoid the blinders as best we can. If they do not want to get beat up, come in with stronger arguments…and maybe some actual facts.
Is Russia still in this thing?  Definitely.  I am not sure exactly how but it is undeniable that they are still holding and even capable of tactical advances.  However as many from this individual’s camp are prone to do, there is a double standard against Ukraine in just about all things. I am willing to bet Russia winds up taking about as much as Ukraine re-took last summer.  To them this is a clear sign “Russia can never be beaten!”  Meanwhile when Ukraine did it last summer, “see they will never push Russia out!”  It really doesn’t matter what happens the conclusions are always the same.
Ukraine is holding on just as well, if not better than Russia.  The UA is undergoing reforms.  The West is slowly getting its act together - this NATO collective mechanism for support is a good idea, if it doesn’t get weighed down in bureaucratic sludge.  Russia is not “getting better” by any stretch.  Advances come at horrendous costs.  Losses continue to stack.  They do appear to have some concerning glimmers of C4ISR daylight but they never really coalesce.  Ukraine continues to demonstrate significant strategic strike acumen.
As to the finish line…who knows?  Could Russia operationally collapse…sure, they have twice before.  Can the full on strategic collapse…definitely.  They did in 1917 and 1991, they can do it again.  Hell Priggy’s wild ride had real potential.  Will they?  Again, we do not know.  The second anyone from either side of this goes “this is how this war will end”, I for one, stop listening.  All we can do is hold on and hold fast.