How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?

[Seminole]

7 hours ago, Battlefront.com said:

False comparison.  You're comparing sanctions against a country not fighting a war with an economy that had almost no ties to the West in any meaningful way. 

The ‘ties to the West’ distinction didn’t matter, because the scope of the sanctions was global.  Iraq’s trade was shut down.  It basically represents the extreme end case for sanctions efficacy.  Even North Korea has China with its back.

7 hours ago, Battlefront.com said:

To this you're comparing it to Russia bleeding itself white in a war it can not win while at the same time having it's Western dependent economy trashed by sanctions?  It's not even close to the same situation.

The closer comparison would be Iraq 1990-2003 and Russia 2015-2021.  Even then, not a good comparison.

Steve

The comparison is - Iraq was cut off from the world.

Russia is cut off from ‘the West’.  And the relative size of ‘the West’ in the global market has changed substantially since 1990.  

Also, Russia can feed itself and has resource wealth that further favor it in the Iraq comparison.

Lord knows I’m no econometrician, and think you can lop half the value off the BRICS in that graph posted earlier (completely agree with LFF’s takes on the true ‘bloc’ nature of BRICS) and it still makes the point that ‘sanctions’ in the case of Russia unfortunately don’t offer the degree of leverage they did in Iraq - and that was long recognized would never be enough to accomplish our goals of getting Iraq back in its borders.

 

[billbindc]

18 minutes ago, kevinkin said:

Not sure if the writer was tossed out of the Obama admin or what, but read with a grain of salt and don't kill the messenger:

https://www.theamericanconservative.com/ukraines-endgame/

Not once in the years between 1991 and now has Ukraine been able to produce a governing elite capable of recognizing that while its geographic position is its Achilles heel, it is also its greatest strength, that they could leverage their geographic position in a way that would advance the common good. But having refused to do so, the population at large, looted to its last hryvnia, sunk deeper and deeper into poverty: By 2015, Iraq, Mongolia, and Albania had higher rates of personal income than Ukraine.

Yet in the view of President Biden, his advisors, and the near-entirety of the media-political establishment in Washington, this is a war, as the president put it in January, that “is about freedom. Freedom for Ukraine, freedom everywhere. It’s about the kind of world we want to live in and the world we want to leave our children.”

Freedom? Only if the definition of freedom is permanent dependency.

For any chance of survival, Ukraine’s governing elites clearly believe they must hitch their futures to the E.U. and NATO. Yet should they join NATO, they will become yet another military dependency of the United States. Should they become members of the E.U., they will become yet another vassal of Berlin, and will have to place its future at the mercy of the European Central Bank in Frankfurt and an unaccountable bureaucracy in Brussels.

Carden is a Nation magazine writher (edited to add: I meant "writer" but some mistakes are too fortunate to change) and Mearsheimer acolyte. I don't feel the need to add anything else.

Edited February 25, 2023 by billbindc

[Beleg85]

10 hours ago, LongLeftFlank said:

Pass the pickled herring....

* IIRC, amber was a key commodity traded down the Dnipr, from Neolithic times. @Beleg85?

Yes, it was a commodity there, but it started to be traded on truly massive scale on axis North-South only after arrival of Vikings and development of "Varangian way" in circa 8th cent. AD (curious thing is that it was probably then that word "russian" appears; and it was not widely used for another five cent.). Before that, most developed amber trade network was from Baltics, through Poland, Czech/Slovakia and into Pannonia and Roman Mediterranean:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amber_Road

 

A lot of obligations in RL (backlog of 10 pages already- this topic goeas fast ) , so only a quick shot of news from Bakhmut:

Berkihvka and Jahidne are taken by muscovites, they also slowly but steadily push defenders out from Eastern Bakhmut. Ukrainian counterattack on Krasne was stemmed, but it did managed to move danger away from the road a little. Right now UA have something like 5kms of open terrain behind their backs; various dirt roads are used to supply the city.

[billbindc]

11 minutes ago, Seminole said:

The ‘ties to the West’ distinction didn’t matter, because the scope of the sanctions was global.  Iraq’s trade was shut down.  It basically represents the extreme end case for sanctions efficacy.  Even North Korea has China with its back.

The comparison is - Iraq was cut off from the world.

Russia is cut off from ‘the West’.  And the relative size of ‘the West’ in the global market has changed substantially since 1990.  

Also, Russia can feed itself and has resource wealth that further favor it in the Iraq comparison.

Lord knows I’m no econometrician, and think you can lop half the value off the BRICS in that graph posted earlier (completely agree with LFF’s takes on the true ‘bloc’ nature of BRICS) and it still makes the point that ‘sanctions’ in the case of Russia unfortunately don’t offer the degree of leverage they did in Iraq - and that was long recognized would never be enough to accomplish our goals of getting Iraq back in its borders.

 

Haven't followed this in detail but if the main point is that Russia has the internal resources and external gas sales to keep this war going until the regime cracks then yes, I agree. A better question would be whether or not Russia has enough to have any prospect of winning. I think that is a fairly definitive no and help from China is more than likely to just accelerate countervailing and more than countervailing Western aid. 

[panzermartin]

13 hours ago, billbindc said:

This sort of thing happened routinely during the Cold War without things ever escalating into WW3. What close brushes happened were related to mistakes made outside of the warmer conflicts. And that makes sense. Violent proxy wars get a lot of attention or include a lot of 'communication' as the Capt'n would put it. And while deplorable, China supplying Russia with arms actually gives China a lot more say in what Russia does than if it had not. 

But Cold War never went that hot, Ukraine 2022 hot. 300.000 military casualties in Europe in a year of conflict , german tanks in the steppes again after 70yrs , US weapons killing russian soldiers en masse. This conflict doesn't feel to have a Cold War vibe, where things never went out of control. Partially thanks to more capable leadership in both camps. 

[Eddy]

To add to the discussion on Russia's economy:

Starts with a short discussion of the Chinese FM visit to Moscow and Putin being forced to use the 'small table'! Then goes on to the Russian economy, before the war, during and what's to come.

Worth watching it all I think but the interesting points for me are:

• Around about May and June Russia was raking it in because the energy shock pushed prices so high but this has now stopped.
• Russian exports of oil now have a price ceiling and the buyers have no incentive whatsoever to pay more than that ceiling.
• Russia is not making any money i.e. it's not covering it's costs and the price of a barrel of Ural oil is 35% down on a barrel of Brent. And it's not selling hardly any gas to Europe anymore so that income stream has dried up. So in effect there is no income and Russia is relying on it's savings account i.e. the National Wealth Fund.
• So Russia is tapping into it's national wealth fund. This has fallen since the start of the year from 12% of Russian GDP to 7%
• If that carries on Russia Govt. completely runs out of money in 3.5 years (I don't follow his maths here. To me it's sooner than that)
• But that's only if the events are linear, could burn through the fund faster )or slower I guess)

Like I say, don't understand how he got to 3.5 years before that fund runs out.

[Kraft]

8 minutes ago, panzermartin said:

But Cold War never went that hot, Ukraine 2022 hot. 300.000 military casualties in Europe in a year of conflict , german tanks in the steppes again after 70yrs , US weapons killing russian soldiers en masse. This conflict doesn't feel to have a Cold War vibe, where things never went out of control. Partially thanks to more capable leadership in both camps. 

Korea had US boots on the ground, Vietnam too, with millions dead in years long wars.

 

[kevinkin]

1 hour ago, billbindc said:

I don't feel the need to add anything else.

Ok, the writer has his past. What what about his thoughts on Ukraine's past and future? Is the writer pointing out "let the buyer beware"? A very quick look at Carden indicates he is a typical Nation writer: anti-big business, anti-war, "better red then dead" kind of guy. But the point that Ukraine will become dependent on the west, at least for a while, and a prime place for investment (in the name of freedom) seems to coincide with a lot of the discussion here. But to place blame directly on Ukraine for not getting its act together since '91 would require mounds of research into the inner workings of the state and its foreign policy. You can't just throw that out there. Especially in light of who Ukraine is fighting. Absolute butchers. For 30 years, Ukraine’s leaders also squandered a chance to consolidate a viable multiethnic nation state. As an American, the writer should know how hard that is and that resisting a mono-ethnic state, a “Ukraine for Ukrainians.” is a constant struggle. Perhaps the antithesis of The Nation, the WSJ today: Ukraine Is the West’s War Now The initial reluctance of the U.S. and its allies to help Kyiv fight Russia has turned into a massive program of military assistance, which carries risks of its own. They don't go as far as mentioning dependency. But there is some overlap. 

Edited February 25, 2023 by kevinkin

[The_Capt]

9 hours ago, sross112 said:

So if I am thinking through this right, the MC/DC ratio is going to be very dependent upon your communications ability and C4ISR. If you can't trust your communications for real time changes or updates you need to be more DC. The more real time C4ISR or situational awareness you have and the lower it goes the more reliant on MC your forces can be.

The exact opposite actually.  MC provides advantage the less control you have, while DC favours higher control and communications.   That is why as we enter into the totally integrated battlefield DC starts to make a lot of sense.  People are conflating DC with “attritional warfare” but that is not entirely the case.  You can do dislocation warfare with DC, you just have to really be wired in and higher command needs to have full situational awareness.  

You can absolutely achieve annihilation through dislocation this way - proof = air campaigns.  Air power is far more tightly controlled than land power for a lot of reasons, but we have seen deliberate dislocation campaigns work in this domain.  They also have a lot of C4ISR, traditionally far more than land forces, but that is changing. 

MC is specifically designed for losing control but sustaining command, two different concepts.  However as the battlefield becomes digitized higher commanders will lose control less and less (in theory).

[poesel]

17 hours ago, Seminole said:

‘Determined to believe’?

Not at all, but I’m open the notion that as global productivity continues to increase the relative dominance enjoyed by ‘the West’ shrinks in relative size. 

 

17 hours ago, sburke said:

China is going to face some very big challenges in the next decade(s).  The CCP sits on top of a social contract of improving the lives of it's people.  A contract it has largely lived up to.  However, that contract is now at risk with an aging demographic and regional pension plans failing. 

 

13 hours ago, LongLeftFlank said:

I love the Chinese people; after a freeking awful 150 years (mainly self inflicted, although they do love blaming it on opium and Brits), they are just back to doing what they've always done: getting rich (well there is that despoiling the planet thing, but that's a species wide problem).....

So here's the interesting thing, true all through history:  the moment Chinese get out from under the full grasp and control of the Emperor in Beijing (or you have an enlightened Emperor who gives up a little control, always temporarily though), that's when they do REALLY well.

Historically, China has been the number one country wrt to industrial production. They took over from Rome in about 500 AD and lost the spot in about 1750 to the UK, respective to the West. The last 270 years happened only because China missed out the industrial revolution, and now things just move back to normal.

Of course, the US became a player in just about the same time frame and tips off the balance a bit. But still, China becoming the biggest economy in the world is just what you have to expect.

[sburke]

5 hours ago, IanL said:

The singular was 'ye'.

wait what?!  Ye?

 

 

[The_Capt]

12 hours ago, Battlefront.com said:

It is "easier" for a MC force to do DC than a DC force to do MC because MC involves a crudload of investment and culture to work correctly.  DC?  Not even close.

Sorry but that does not track.  The high water point of DC was during the late 18th early 19th centuries - everyone points to WW1 but it was a monument to the failure of DC.  The forces in the War of 1812 did not lack for investments in “culture”.  Nor was training troops to parade manoeuvre and stand in a straight line while someone shot cannon balls at them “easier” by any stretch.

Your guitar analogy is a bit off kilter.  It is not a question of the sophistication of the playing, command systems are about how C2 is exercised in the playing.  So in your analogy MC is a guitar player free-running or jamming with an overall intent of what the composer want to convey…”gimme something angry teenage Steve, because no one understand you!”.  DC is being given a sheet of music and told to stick to it until a conductor directs otherwise. Guitar Hero is sort of the ultimate DC for playing that instrument.  As to sophistication, well large philharmonic orchestras are commanded using DC and I do not think anyone could call them unsophisticated or “easy”.

Both systems have advantages and disadvantages - for example, DC is a lot more efficient, a bunch of MC empowered units driving all over the countryside burns a lot more gas than tight controls.  But DC can be a lot more constipated when it come to exploiting opportunities.  MC shoots for opportunity but can become chaos pretty quick.

Neither system is inherently “easier” in my experience.  And swinging from one system to the other is probably one of the hardest things to do.  If you have built an MC-centric organization, asking them to stand still is really hard - high agency outfits do not simply forget that agency easily.  For DC you have largely beaten the initiative out of them, so do not expect it to flip like a light switch.

The only organizations that can really do the extremes are SOF.  In a direct action role they are under extreme DC.  In other roles such as irregular warfare they are so far into MC that they become a negative capability.  It can be done, but right now it cannot be massed produced.  Finally, there is not proof I have seen that SOF from DC-centric militaries perform MC better or worse than we do - so the ability for a human do to it regardless of cultural backgrounds is likely inherent.

In nature we are built for MC, it is where we started as monkeys in the tree.  All tribal warfare going back to pre-history is MC-centric.  It is likely our natural inclination is for MC.  DC is a modern invention, something we had to engineer to create effective mass.  The Mongols are probably the best example of creating a hybrid system, and they conquered pretty much the known world with it.

Edited February 25, 2023 by The_Capt

[sburke]

9 hours ago, NamEndedAllen said:

You are assuming that the USA right wing Congress isn’t the chief nod-nod, wink-wink player? Bad assumption.  Even if something were worked out before 2024, to ratify any “Amber” treaty requires Senate ratification. With 60 votes minimum. Don’t bet on getting those votes any time soon. You think a *new* military commitment to another war in Europe against Russia would be easy and quick to get through? The price demanded for a deal would be so high that senators on the other side would start refusing to go along. Welcome to business as usual now, in the deadlocked Congress. Heck, right now Congress can’t even agree to pay the USA debts, with default looming.  

The debt is an internal political football and has been for decades.  The war in Ukraine is not and except for a handful of tik tok politicians there is a high degree of unity in the US gov't and the general population to back Ukraine.  The house would be harder than the Senate mainly because McCarthy would have to put it to a vote.

[FancyCat]

2 hours ago, kevinkin said:

By 2015, Iraq, Mongolia, and Albania had higher rates of personal income than Ukraine.

Why would anyone use stats after Russia invaded Ukraine....without tons of salt and analysis?

[Artkin]

9 minutes ago, FancyCat said:

Why would anyone use stats after Russia invaded Ukraine....without tons of salt and analysis?

Ukraine did lose two of its largest cities and historically part of the most resource rich areas around. 

[Beleg85]

Russians doing Russian things...near Vuhledar:

 

[kevinkin]

The writer is inappropriately pointing blame at Ukraine for not be a purrfect kitten for 30 years when everything would be just fine for Ukrainians. That's water under the bridge. What he should ask is whether we can expect something different coming out for the war given the challenges Ukraine faces. He is insulting calling Ukraine a failed state. But it's not insane to say Ukraine will be dependent on the west for the foreseeable future. But goes without saying. Ah, the drive to create content strikes again. 

[dan/california]

1 hour ago, The_Capt said:

Sorry but that does not track.  The high water point of DC was during the late 18th early 19th centuries - everyone points to WW1 but it was a monument to the failure of DC.  The forces in the War of 1812 did not lack for investments in “culture”.  Nor was training troops to parade manoeuvre and stand in a straight line while someone shot cannon balls at them “easier” by any stretch.

Your guitar analogy is a bit off kilter.  It is not a question of the sophistication of the playing, command systems are about how C2 is exercised in the playing.  So in your analogy MC is either guitar player free-running or jamming with an overall intent of what the composer want to convey…”gimme something angry teenage Steve, because no one understand you!”.  DC is being given a sheet of music and told to stick to it until a conductor directs otherwise. Guitar Hero is sort of the ultimate DC for playing that instrument.  As to sophistication, well large philharmonic orchestras are commanded using DC and I do not think anyone could call them unsophisticated or “easy”.

Both systems have advantages and disadvantages - for example, DC is a lot more efficient, a bunch of MC empowered units driving all over the countryside burns a lot more gas than tight controls.  But DC can be a lot more constipated when it come to exploiting opportunities.  MC shoots for opportunity but can become chaos pretty quick.

Neither system is inherently “easier” in my experience.  And swinging from one system to the other is probably one of the hardest things to do.  If you have built an MC-centric organization, asking them to stand still is really hard - high agency outfits do not simply forget that agency easily.  For DC you have largely beaten the initiative out of them, so do not expect it to flip like a light switch.

The only organizations that can really do the extremes are SOF.  In a direct action role they are under extreme DC.  In other roles such as irregular warfare they are so far into MC that they become a negative capability.  It can be done, but right now it cannot be massed produced.  Finally, there is not proof I have seen that SOF from DC-centric militaries perform MC better or worse than we do - so the ability for a human do to it regardless of cultural backgrounds is likely inherent.

In nature we are built for MC, it is where we started as monkeys in the tree.  All tribal warfare going back to pre-history is MC-centric.  It is likely our natural inclination for MC.  DC is a modern invention, something we had to engineer to create effective mass.  The Mongols are probably the best example of creating a hybrid system, and they conquered pretty much the known world with it.

This question may or may not make any sense. Will/would it be easier to move Western doctrine back towards DC just because the entire force has enough military education to understand that higher levels of command really are working with a vastly better picture of the battlefield? When all the platoon commanders understand that the battalion commander really does have something approaching a CM players understanding of what is going on? Which has historically never been anywhere close to true. That when the radio/datalink says to stop fifty meters before the next intersection there is probably a reason.

I can see the hardest part being the need for two almost completely different training regimes and doctrines. One for when the battalion/brigade C4ISR is working like the contractor said it would, and one for when it isn't.

36 minutes ago, Beleg85 said:

Russians doing Russian things...near Vuhledar:

 

If you tried to put this level of military incompetence in a bad novel, the editor would make you take it out. That is if editors were still a thing.

30 minutes ago, kevinkin said:

The writer is inappropriately pointing blame at Ukraine for not be a purrfect kitten for 30 years when everything would be just fine for Ukrainians. That's water under the bridge. What he should ask is whether we can expect something different coming out for the war given the challenges Ukraine faces. He is insulting calling Ukraine a failed state. But it's not insane to say Ukraine will be dependent on the west for the foreseeable future. But goes without saying. Ah, the drive to create content strikes again. 

Ukraine seems to be perfectly aware of what there choices are to me. They are rather convinced that Europe is the better one.

[sburke]

https://news.yahoo.com/tense-moment-russias-un-ambassador-134223757.html

Ukraine's foreign minister Dmytro Kuleba addressed members of the UN Security Council in New York, asking them to stand and observe a minute of silence for those who had died on the first anniversary of Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

Video shows members standing in silence when Vasily Nebenzya requested to make a statement, and representatives sat down again to listen.

Nebenzya emphasized that the council should honor "all victims of what happened in Ukraine, starting in 2014."

"All of those who perished, all lives are priceless," he said.

At the end of his statement, Nebenzya stood again, and he appeared to gesture for others to do the same — but the other representatives awkwardly remained seated until Nebenzya was thanked for his statement.

The rest of the members eventually stood once again, and the minute resumed, showing that even a moment meant to honor the dead presented possibilities for conflict.

[dan/california]

 

Quote

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/25/business/economy/janet-yellen-ukraine-g20.html

Summary of G-20 meeting, a lot of diplomatic complications. The thing I still can't wrap my head around is India thinking it can fight/oppose China with Russian weapons even as Russia becomes a Chinese client state. How does that work? 

Also a lot of discontent with Ukraine sucking up all the oxygen. The list of countries that deserve to have their calls answered at the White House and Foggy Bottom needs to be adjusted.

[The_Capt]

40 minutes ago, dan/california said:

This question may or may not make any sense. Will/would it be easier to move Western doctrine back towards DC just because the entire force has enough military education to understand that higher levels of command really are working with a vastly better picture of the battlefield?

As compared to a force that is already built for DC?  No.  To use Steve’s analogy we are basically talking about taking a very well trained jazz musician and sticking them into an orchestra.  In many ways it is easier to take a totally untrained guitarist because they do not need to unlearn years worth of muscle memory.  It is incredibly hard to unlearn something especially after it has been beaten in with a hammer - they saw this with UAS drivers, pilots actually are harder to train.  Now taking a DC-centric force and turning it into a ballet dancing manoeuvre outfit is no easy task either.  In fact “which on is easier” to do really does not lead anywhere in overall force generation as we are talking major retooling one way or the other.

Comparative force generation advantage, which is what we are really talking about, has a lot more factors at play than which command system a force leans towards.  Now if you want the force to be capable of both extremes at the same time, we are into SOF space.

Edited February 25, 2023 by The_Capt

[Butschi]

4 hours ago, kevinkin said:

Should they become members of the E.U., they will become yet another vassal of Berlin, and will have to place its future at the mercy of the European Central Bank in Frankfurt and an unaccountable bureaucracy in Brussels.

At least in this it shows that the author either has no clue what he is talking about or has a political agenda. Probably the latter.

Let's ignore the "vassal of Berlin" BS (or did I miss the part where our Polish neighbors bent the knee before their liege lord Scholz instead of being cocky about Leopard tanks? ) No EU member is forced to have the Euro as currency. Sweden being an example that certainly meets the criteria but just opted against it. And "unaccountable burocracy"? That's the usual talk by populist politicians who want to blame the EU for their own failings. In Brussel nothing happens that didn't receive an ok from the respective national governments first.

[womble]

5 minutes ago, Butschi said:

And "unaccountable burocracy"? That's the usual talk by populist politicians who want to blame the EU for their own failings. In Brussel nothing happens that didn't receive an ok from the respective national governments first.

And yet similar nationalist populist demagoguery managed to rip the UK out of the EU... It needs countering. Biden's doing okay at the moment, but it worries me.

 

[chrisl]

2 hours ago, The_Capt said:

The exact opposite actually.  MC provides advantage the less control you have, while DC favours higher control and communications.   That is why as we enter into the totally integrated battlefield DC starts to make a lot of sense.  People are conflating DC with “attritional warfare” but that is not entirely the case.  You can do dislocation warfare with DC, you just have to really be wired in and higher command needs to have full situational awareness.  

You can absolutely achieve annihilation through dislocation this way - proof = air campaigns.  Air power is far more tightly controlled than land power for a lot of reasons, but we have seen deliberate dislocation campaigns work in this domain.  They also have a lot of C4ISR, traditionally far more than land forces, but that is changing. 

MC is specifically designed for losing control but sustaining command, two different concepts.  However as the battlefield becomes digitized higher commanders will lose control less and less (in theory).

I've been thinking about this since the MC/DC discussion came up, and struggle a little to fully agree with this.

My first thought was along the lines of what you wrote here: if you have "perfect" ISR and comms, then you can run DC very effectively.  In principle all the way down to the individual level with Borg spotting.  And then as you lose ISR and/or the ability to get it to the pointy end, the pointy end has to shift to MC, with the caveat that they need to have some "far point" to keep them from getting too far out in front of the rest of the mission.

But then I thought about RU and the timetables.  Aren't they essentially using DC in the near absence of C4ISR?  At best they seem to have C2.5R, and even that's questionable.  So they give a detailed timetable and punish flexibility, leading the lower echelons to just keep throwing meat into the grinder until they run out.  

The difference, of course, is training.  RU has more rigid training to start with, apparently less combined arms training than a box of CMBO, and has to resort to fairly crude DC because that's all they can do.  "Go that way, annihilate anything in your path, be at point X by Y time, then stop.  If you turn around, Wagner will shoot you." 

So what you really need to train is the continuum and the transition.  If we take the extreme limit with the totally integrated battlefield, you start out with DC, but even there, if you micromanage/DC too much you might as well just have robots/UXVs, each controlled by an individual far back from the lines.  And then those robots need autonomy to switch to their robotic version of MC when they lose C2. Ideally it's progressive autonomy that fills in little gaps when the comm loss is short, and increasing, including a defined mission goal and maybe local meshing to neighboring bots who are also out of comm back to the rear.  We don't have that level of AI yet, so we send "robots with wetware" - well trained infantry who can work with DC when it's available and understand why that's a good thing, even if it sometimes doesn't make sense, and then transition smoothly to whatever level of MC is necessary as the integration disintegrates.

 

[chrisl]

1 hour ago, dan/california said:

If you tried to put this level of military incompetence in a bad novel, the editor would make you take it out. That is if editors were still a thing.

Hey - I edit bad novels as a side gig and I agree that I'd tell you to take it out.