4 ms·

Poll: What do you think will be the outcome of the Russia-Ukraine war?

12 points by Victerius 5y ago

awb 5y ago
Other: Quagmire, Afghanistan-style
simonblack 5y ago
It will lead to a 'West against the Rest' war. The West has not enough manpower and manufacturing capacity to win that one. India, alone, or China, alone, has more manpower than the West (5 eyes, Europe, Japan) combined. China alone, has more manufacturing capacity than the West combined. In the words of the old 1960s motto: "Bend over and kiss your ass goodbye."
- KHRZ 5y ago
  Not likely, Russia only had 4 countries' support against the Ukraine invasion condemnation resolution in the UN, and 141 for.
  - gus_massa 5y ago
    The 141 countries does not matter. The important metrics are GDP, population, conventional and nuclear weapons, ...
    - ceejayoz 5y ago
      The 141 countries far outweigh the four in all but one of those metrics, and have parity with Russia on the nuke front.
  - simonblack 5y ago
    How many people in the 4 countries? How many people in the 141 countries?
    - ceejayoz 5y ago
      The four "no" vote countries were Belarus (9M), North Korea (25M), Eritrea (6M), and Syria (17M), for a total of 57M people. Quite a few individual "yes" countries in the 141 - US, Germany, France, Mexico, Brazil, Turkey, Egypt, Indonesia, etc. - outnumber them by themselves.
  - kragen 5y ago
    5 countries' support if you count Russia itself: North Korea, Belarus, Eritrea, Russia, and Syria. There were 35 abstentions, including the world's two most populous countries, India and China. According to https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/3/3/unga-resolution-against-ukraine-invasion-full-text https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/3/3/unga-resolution-agai... the other 33 were Algeria, Angola, Armenia, Bangladesh, Bolivia, Burundi, CAR, Congo, Cuba, El Salvador, Equatorial Guinea, Iran, Iraq, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Laos, Madagascar, Mali, Mongolia, Mozambique, Namibia, Nicaragua, Pakistan, Senegal, South Africa, South Sudan, Sri Lanka, (the rest of) Sudan, Tajikistan, Uganda, Tanzania, Vietnam, and Zimbabwe. Additionally, no vote is listed for Azerbaijan, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Eswatini, Ethiopia, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Morocco, Togo, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Venezuela, totaling 12 more countries. These 52 countries include the majority of the world's population and I think oil resources, but only about 30% of world GDP and 15% of terrestrial land area. (Pleasingly, the UN seems to have licensed the graphic of the vote results under a Creative Commons license.) Likely if it looked like Russia was winning, some of those countries would declare in its favor, but the general principle is that those who can avoid getting embroiled in a conflict suffer less from it than those who are directly involved. Sometimes, as with the Melians, the victorious power wreaks vengeance on them afterwards for their neutrality, but not usually.
Blackstrat 5y ago
One possibility is that forces inside Russia eliminate Putin. He’s costing the oligarchs a lot of money.
kragen 5y ago
It's extremely unpredictable. I could list a variety of improbable outcomes, but people would find some of them distressing, so they would heavily downvote my comment, so I won't. In 02022 HN is not a place where issues like this can be debated, because people downvote and flag things they disagree with or that upset them. Maybe it never was. Hair-trigger responses promote emotional reactions rather than careful reasoning, and two hours to edit and 14 days to reply is certainly not enough for the best ideas to arise. Even the previous four hours to edit and 28 days to reply fell short. And there's a strong negative correlation between comment length and comment score, while, as pg pointed out in 02009, there's a strong positive correlation between comment length and comment quality. However, I do want to point out that if we get "Ukrainian victory", "Total Ukrainian victory", or "Total Russian victory" (which seems unlikely, if only because millions of Ukrainian insurgents would have safe havens in neighboring NATO nations), that's only the beginning. In any of those three cases the world order definitely will not settle down to anything similar to how things were two weeks ago. Obviously this holds a fortiori for "Global thermonuclear war". You can download most of my previous notes in Dercuano: http://canonical.org/~kragen/dercuano http://canonical.org/~kragen/dercuano. For the time being there's a copy on the web at https://dercuano.github.io/ https://dercuano.github.io/. Specifically: My notes on the Ukraine issue from 02016 are at https://dercuano.github.io/notes/wwiii-genesis.html https://dercuano.github.io/notes/wwiii-genesis.html ("World War III is starting (?)") and https://dercuano.github.io/notes/state-of-the-world.html https://dercuano.github.io/notes/state-of-the-world.html. In 02013 I prognosticated gloomily about where an international order based on states and warfare will lead us in https://dercuano.github.io/notes/critical-defense-mass.html https://dercuano.github.io/notes/critical-defense-mass.html, along with some alternative dystopias. In 02014 I wrote about how pervasive surveillance would change politics in https://dercuano.github.io/notes/surveillance.html https://dercuano.github.io/notes/surveillance.html, but I didn't foresee the central role censorship would play in directing social movements in what were still at that point liberal democracies. (Recall that this was a year before Trump's candidacy.) In 02018 I described the world situation from the viewpoint of a fictional extraterrestrial plant species in https://dercuano.github.io/notes/2017-sap-allocation.html https://dercuano.github.io/notes/2017-sap-allocation.html. Unfortunately I didn't finish the story, but several people have found it hilarious. It only mentions Ukraine briefly. The energy market is a huge factor in the current conflict, because Russia supplies a significant amount of Europe's energy, entirely in the form of fossil fuels; those exports are about 40% of Russia's total exports (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_exports_of_Russia); https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_exports_of_Russia); and those exports are exempted from the various economic sanctions. Dercuano contains extensive calculations on the renewable energy transition, starting in 02008 with https://dercuano.github.io/notes/solar-economics.html https://dercuano.github.io/notes/solar-economics.html, notably including an outline of what will and won't happen from 02014 in https://dercuano.github.io/notes/energy-future.html https://dercuano.github.io/notes/energy-future.html and a case study of Japan in 02017 in https://dercuano.github.io/notes/japan-energy-autarky.html https://dercuano.github.io/notes/japan-energy-autarky.html, and continuing through to Dercuano's publication in 02019. These all calculate that the transition will not happen until the late 02020s or even 02030s, putting the rest of Europe in a very difficult position if Russia turns off the tap. But when it does happen, Russia's exports will drop by US$220 billion a year, 40% of its present exports and 13% of its GDP. Even over the course of a few years, that will be a heavy shock to its economy. The sequels to Dercuano, including notes on historical political instability with reference to the pandemic and on China's energy use, are Derctuo (02020, http://canonical.org/~kragen/derctuo http://canonical.org/~kragen/derctuo) and Dernocua (02021, http://canonical.org/~kragen/dernocua http://canonical.org/~kragen/dernocua). All of these are in the public domain.

12 points by Victerius 5y ago

awb 5y ago

Other: Quagmire, Afghanistan-style

It will lead to a 'West against the Rest' war. The West has not enough manpower and manufacturing capacity to win that one. India, alone, or China, alone, has more manpower than the West (5 eyes, Europe, Japan) combined. China alone, has more manufacturing capacity than the West combined. In the words of the old 1960s motto: "Bend over and kiss your ass goodbye."

KHRZ 5y ago
Not likely, Russia only had 4 countries' support against the Ukraine invasion condemnation resolution in the UN, and 141 for.
- gus_massa 5y ago
  The 141 countries does not matter. The important metrics are GDP, population, conventional and nuclear weapons, ...
  - ceejayoz 5y ago
    The 141 countries far outweigh the four in all but one of those metrics, and have parity with Russia on the nuke front.
- simonblack 5y ago
  How many people in the 4 countries? How many people in the 141 countries?
  - ceejayoz 5y ago
    The four "no" vote countries were Belarus (9M), North Korea (25M), Eritrea (6M), and Syria (17M), for a total of 57M people. Quite a few individual "yes" countries in the 141 - US, Germany, France, Mexico, Brazil, Turkey, Egypt, Indonesia, etc. - outnumber them by themselves.
- kragen 5y ago
  5 countries' support if you count Russia itself: North Korea, Belarus, Eritrea, Russia, and Syria. There were 35 abstentions, including the world's two most populous countries, India and China. According to https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/3/3/unga-resolution-against-ukraine-invasion-full-text https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/3/3/unga-resolution-agai... the other 33 were Algeria, Angola, Armenia, Bangladesh, Bolivia, Burundi, CAR, Congo, Cuba, El Salvador, Equatorial Guinea, Iran, Iraq, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Laos, Madagascar, Mali, Mongolia, Mozambique, Namibia, Nicaragua, Pakistan, Senegal, South Africa, South Sudan, Sri Lanka, (the rest of) Sudan, Tajikistan, Uganda, Tanzania, Vietnam, and Zimbabwe. Additionally, no vote is listed for Azerbaijan, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Eswatini, Ethiopia, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Morocco, Togo, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Venezuela, totaling 12 more countries. These 52 countries include the majority of the world's population and I think oil resources, but only about 30% of world GDP and 15% of terrestrial land area. (Pleasingly, the UN seems to have licensed the graphic of the vote results under a Creative Commons license.) Likely if it looked like Russia was winning, some of those countries would declare in its favor, but the general principle is that those who can avoid getting embroiled in a conflict suffer less from it than those who are directly involved. Sometimes, as with the Melians, the victorious power wreaks vengeance on them afterwards for their neutrality, but not usually.

Blackstrat 5y ago

One possibility is that forces inside Russia eliminate Putin. He’s costing the oligarchs a lot of money.

kragen 5y ago

It's extremely unpredictable. I could list a variety of improbable outcomes, but people would find some of them distressing, so they would heavily downvote my comment, so I won't. In 02022 HN is not a place where issues like this can be debated, because people downvote and flag things they disagree with or that upset them. Maybe it never was. Hair-trigger responses promote emotional reactions rather than careful reasoning, and two hours to edit and 14 days to reply is certainly not enough for the best ideas to arise. Even the previous four hours to edit and 28 days to reply fell short. And there's a strong negative correlation between comment length and comment score, while, as pg pointed out in 02009, there's a strong positive correlation between comment length and comment quality. However, I do want to point out that if we get "Ukrainian victory", "Total Ukrainian victory", or "Total Russian victory" (which seems unlikely, if only because millions of Ukrainian insurgents would have safe havens in neighboring NATO nations), that's only the beginning. In any of those three cases the world order definitely will not settle down to anything similar to how things were two weeks ago. Obviously this holds a fortiori for "Global thermonuclear war". You can download most of my previous notes in Dercuano: http://canonical.org/~kragen/dercuano http://canonical.org/~kragen/dercuano. For the time being there's a copy on the web at https://dercuano.github.io/ https://dercuano.github.io/. Specifically: My notes on the Ukraine issue from 02016 are at https://dercuano.github.io/notes/wwiii-genesis.html https://dercuano.github.io/notes/wwiii-genesis.html ("World War III is starting (?)") and https://dercuano.github.io/notes/state-of-the-world.html https://dercuano.github.io/notes/state-of-the-world.html. In 02013 I prognosticated gloomily about where an international order based on states and warfare will lead us in https://dercuano.github.io/notes/critical-defense-mass.html https://dercuano.github.io/notes/critical-defense-mass.html, along with some alternative dystopias. In 02014 I wrote about how pervasive surveillance would change politics in https://dercuano.github.io/notes/surveillance.html https://dercuano.github.io/notes/surveillance.html, but I didn't foresee the central role censorship would play in directing social movements in what were still at that point liberal democracies. (Recall that this was a year before Trump's candidacy.) In 02018 I described the world situation from the viewpoint of a fictional extraterrestrial plant species in https://dercuano.github.io/notes/2017-sap-allocation.html https://dercuano.github.io/notes/2017-sap-allocation.html. Unfortunately I didn't finish the story, but several people have found it hilarious. It only mentions Ukraine briefly. The energy market is a huge factor in the current conflict, because Russia supplies a significant amount of Europe's energy, entirely in the form of fossil fuels; those exports are about 40% of Russia's total exports (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_exports_of_Russia); https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_exports_of_Russia); and those exports are exempted from the various economic sanctions. Dercuano contains extensive calculations on the renewable energy transition, starting in 02008 with https://dercuano.github.io/notes/solar-economics.html https://dercuano.github.io/notes/solar-economics.html, notably including an outline of what will and won't happen from 02014 in https://dercuano.github.io/notes/energy-future.html https://dercuano.github.io/notes/energy-future.html and a case study of Japan in 02017 in https://dercuano.github.io/notes/japan-energy-autarky.html https://dercuano.github.io/notes/japan-energy-autarky.html, and continuing through to Dercuano's publication in 02019. These all calculate that the transition will not happen until the late 02020s or even 02030s, putting the rest of Europe in a very difficult position if Russia turns off the tap. But when it does happen, Russia's exports will drop by US$220 billion a year, 40% of its present exports and 13% of its GDP. Even over the course of a few years, that will be a heavy shock to its economy. The sequels to Dercuano, including notes on historical political instability with reference to the pandemic and on China's energy use, are Derctuo (02020, http://canonical.org/~kragen/derctuo http://canonical.org/~kragen/derctuo) and Dernocua (02021, http://canonical.org/~kragen/dernocua http://canonical.org/~kragen/dernocua). All of these are in the public domain.