billbindc

The good news about the Chinese balloon is that it is unlikely Xi wanted this to happen. The bad news about the Chinese balloon is that it is unlikely Xi wanted this to happen. He clearly wants to ease things with the US which is why he was willing to break protocol and meet as head of state to the US secretary of state and why China immediately apologized in a public manner. That tells us that there's a control or planning problem with the PLA...who right now contain elements that are not at all happy with a rapprochement. I'm betting the former. .

"Der Antisemitismus ist der Sozialismus der dummen Kerle" Ferdinand Kronawetter

No.

That's not politically incorrect, it's pure unadulterated anti-Semitism.

The twitter NatSec balloon guys are having their Telenko moment:

Then again.... https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/national-security/suspected-chinese-spy-balloon-found-northern-us-rcna68879

True. But Putin showed that there was no proof of concept on how to swallow up a neighbor. Add in that 100km of strait to cross militarily and logistically, the immediate intervention of the USN and allies, a potentially constrained energy conduit, the economic/trade effects, etc and XI has quite a bit to think about and he's not isolated from reality (I think) in the way that Putin has become. Clearly, nations make enormous strategic blunders but rarely does one repeat it after another has just shown the way.

I remain pretty convinced that nothing is actually imminent and eventually something like a blockade is a far more likely outcome than an abrupt invasion across the strait. I mean seriously...who thinks those chip factories won't be columns of smoke almost immediately in the latter case?

That is certainly the vibe. The US, Philippines, Japan, etc are moving as if a war for Taiwan is just around the corner.

Here's where we go back to the fact that what Putin imagines to be a 'bottom falling out' event and what actually is one may be two different things. Putin would certainly choose option A above because he believes option B probably gets him defenestrated and in any case his sense of the world means backing down is anathema. But option A, in which the financial (and thus elite) supports of the regime wither away would lead to the same place. As to the definition, the bottom falling out for Putin's regime is any situation in which it cannot militarily or politically maintain the Crimea and/or the Donbas region. This includes getting cut off by China/India/etc., crude military reverses, a political upheaval that overturns the current ruler and/or an economic collapse that makes sustaining the effort impossible. This is where the fragility of the Russian state comes into play...all Ukraine has to do is keep fighting. Russia must win before any of those conditions...and some I haven't thought of...happen.

In trillions of rubles, the current state of the Russian Federation budget:

Israel isn't "let off the hook". The US has a balance of interests in which Israel figures in many important ways. That balance is certainly changing, it will likely change further and there is quite a bit of friction in it these days. Aaron David Miller is a very even handed guy if anyone wants to dig into this further. That's it for me on this (off) topic: https://foreignpolicy.com/2023/02/01/biden-israel-netanyahu-right-coalition-palestinian-authority-blinken-trip/

Bad analysis and more than borderline to places you do not want to go. Israel has interests in Syria and elsewhere that are vital to it where Russia can make things quite difficult for the Israeli armed forces. Leave the essentializing out please. PS: https://www.thedefensepost.com/2023/02/01/netanyahu-military-aid-ukraine/

I've said earlier in this thread that I expected that Russia has one more offensive worth the name left in it before it's all done. The Economist military correspondent seems to think so too.

Exercises. Pipeline construction. Diplomatic time and effort. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2023-01-31/putin-s-war-is-unnerving-russia-s-old-friends

We should make a distinction between what a leader or elite might think is a good outcome and what objectively is a good outcome. Russians may tell themselves that destroying their military and soft power was worth it emotionally and neuralgically...but empirically those losses will have real world effects. The 'stans going out of Russia's sphere of influence, loss of leading power status to Turkey in Azerbaijan, high dependence on China for trade, an absolutely buggered energy sector with concomitant effects on state budgets, loss of younger skilled workers, exacerbated demographic problems, sanctions, etc. And even a Russian 'victory condition' of gaining a buffer is debatable given that the problems above will continue the erosion of state power that the invasion was intended to reverse.

This last point deserves emphasis. Russia didn't invade Ukraine because it was winning anywhere. It invaded because its situation...as seem from the POV of the oligarchic dictatorship that runs the country...was declining. Color revolutions, ally defections, economic indicators, demographic trends and peer military challenges (or so they thought) were all working to erode Russian status as a major power. Attempting to reverse all of that was a degenerate gamble based on a complete misapprehension of reality even in the near abroad. If you are wondering who is winning or losing here...well, what among all of those factors is getting better now?

This is the major legitimate worry...that Trump or someone like him gets into office in 2024. Yes, the Senate will remain on board for helping Ukraine but execution of the policy is entirely up to the White House. If you get a rank isolationist, Russia gets to try and turn this into a frozen conflict. That said, the pressure on any President to hang in there with Ukraine is going to be intense. Don't be surprised if one of the Trumpist alternatives gets in and decides to stick with it. I would not spend much time considering this war in the same terms as Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq for the many reasons that Steve mentioned above. There are no body bags coming home and the cost/benefit analysis is just too dramatically and obviously in America's favor to bear the comparison. This is what Americans call a "good war".

But that's just it...US interests in Ukraine are entirely tangible. There's no "Mission Accomplished" banner and a slightly embarrassed backing away from carrying this war forward. If America does not, it and its NATO allies...and Taiwan, Japan, etc...will suffer accordingly in terms of security costs, trade, etc. Anyone smart enough in American politics to look a couple years into the future knows it...which is why our GOP friends in the Senate are completely on board as well. Also, I had that damn game. Amazing but impossible to find anyone to play against.

Actually I was and I've spent a fair amount of time there...including a bit up in the mountains around the Hmong. No intention to be harsh but I feel like the point is one that is often missed: the Russian invasion of Ukraine is *not* like other conflicts post-WWII and the Ukrainians are not in the position of the folks you mention above because Putin managed to both challenge the vital interests of NATO and the West without giving himself any easy path to back down. That fact changes the analysis rather profoundly and I think is the essential flaw in the arguments made by several folks above.

None of those poor folks were in a war where vital US interests were at stake. Nor is Ukraine surrounded by powerful enemies...and no, Transnistria doesn't count. And I don't know about you but sending HIMARs, M-1's and the like is a far cry from being afraid of causing offense to me. I understand the desire to avoid over confidence but lets at least attempt to stick with apples to apples comparisons.

For the record, the Doomsday Clock was several minutes farther from midnight while Able Archer was putting us one slight miss step from Armageddon in 1983. It's made by scientists but it ain't science.

Yep. Precision out to 150km. DefMon3’s map on this is pretty terrifying for the RA.

Putin and his government are *not* Tsarist Russia. They have far less accumulated political capital and the elites that make up the ruling class are extraordinarily lupine in nature. Russia probably has one more big offensive left in the tank. Then we’ll see.

A Ukraine that takes back Crimea and everything but DNR/LNR has lost? And if it did just that, do you really imagine there would not be fairly serious repercussions in Russia? As for war making ability, it's hard to square the hard data in the attached with the idea that Russia can maintain a longer term ability to fight this war on anything like equal terms with Ukraine backed by the West. https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/econographics/global-sanctions-dashboard-how-sanctions-will-further-squeeze-the-russian-economy-in-2023/