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Since we can just make fuzzy predictions and not face any consequence, let's go ! 1. The Russian military (aided if needed by mercenaries) is bringing entire c
by phtrivier 5y ago
Since we can just make fuzzy predictions and not face any consequence, let's go !
1. The Russian military (aided if needed by mercenaries) is bringing entire cities to the ground in the south of Ukraine, and just buying times before leveling substantial parts of Kyiv. Source : the news.
Painting that as a "military defeat in the making for Russia" is just insane propaganda.
2. There is a perfectly "acceptable" diplomatic compromise, where Ukraine is split into roughly east/west of the river, buffer puppet states protect Russian border, and Ukraine is free to join EU - except Ukraine does not have all the eastern mines anymore, and is basically another poor country that northern Europe is going to refuse people from.
The compromise is "acceptable" by everyone except Ukrainian gouvernement, of course - but it's astonishing what having the rest of the world urge you to bail (before the winter gets cold) can do.
3. Putin will stay in power as long as his health and / or close guard of oligarchs permits. As long as gas and oil remains sold to EU, he only has to fear about the former - which we know nothing about, and I'm tired of hearing people speculate about.
4. Eric Zemmour and Marine Le Pen dropped a couple points in the poll - thankfully for them, the elections are in an eternity of four weeks, so this will not prevent one of them to be on the 2nd round. None of them is planning on winning anyway (baring a last minute scandal for the president), financially getting their 15% each will ensure the success of their campaigns - so business is going fairly according to plan.
5. I think I vaguely remember this author of the post saying things about the end of history after the wall fell - so as assume we could both be wrong in the end, right ?
- zozbot234 5y agoLeveling cities into rubble does not necessarily help the attacker, see Stalingrad. It hurts civilians of course, but not necessarily military defense. The thing is that modern urban warfare is so favorable to defense that the attacker has little other choice - it's rolling the dice and nothing more. West Ukraine is not even all that poor, they have a legacy of good institutions as part of the European West and their human capital has a lot of potential. Like many middle-income countries (including Russia itself) they're hobbled by bad policy, but joining the EU would encourage them to fix this.
- KineticLensman 5y ago> Leveling cities into rubble does not necessarily help the attacker, see Stalingrad. Yes. It wasn't a city, but when the Allies bombed the Italian hillside monastery of Monte Cassino [0] in 1944, it left a pile of rubble that the Germans managed to hold for another three months. If you don't rubbleise a city, they are horrendous to assault. Most battle tanks (western and Russian) can't elevate their main guns high enough to take out attackers in a nearby multi-story towerblock (the 'urban canyon'), some military comms systems and GPS lose signals, defenders can use subways to transit, etc etc. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Monte_Cassino https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Monte_Cassino
- ch4s3 5y agoTo point 1, the rubbling of cities will make for much more dangerous block to block urban combat. Experts seem to think you need good supply lines and a 6 to 1 numerical advantage to win in urban guerrilla combat as the attacker. The 2nd Chechen war was ~15 years ago, the Russians have no real experience doing this. That’s why they’re recruiting Syrians. The Ukrainian defenders were trained by NATO based on urban combat doctrine developed in Fallujah and Syria. The Ukrainians could feasibly bleed the Russians until they’re out of combat ready units. Ultimately it’s going to be a slow rolling atrocity, and there’s no way to know what next week will look like.
- petermcneeley 5y ago#5 Fukuyama is almost certainly wrong or at best he is too early with his prediction "What we may be witnessing is not just the end of the Cold War, or the passing of a particular period of postwar history, but the end of history as such: that is, the end point of mankind's ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Fukuyama#The_End_of_History_and_the_Last_Man https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Fukuyama#The_End_of_Hi...
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- syrrim 5y ago> The compromise is "acceptable" by everyone except Ukrainian government, of course It's acceptable to everyone except the people actually hurt by it. A common problem.
- bob66 5y ago
- rayiner 5y agoThe populists win the French election no matter who wins. The left has collapsed completely, and Macron is sounding pretty right wing attacking wokeness and defending western values versus Islam.
- phtrivier 5y agoMacron is definitely more right-wing than might have been expected five years ago. That being said, even with the largest possible definition of "populist", he hardly qualifies. The most likely outcome of this election round (president + assembly) is a macron presidency with an "official" right-wing coalition of macron's party with the most "centrist" part of the right wing. Very run of the mill stuff. And populists keeping their job as "yelling from the side". Then again, "eternity of one month".
- rayiner 5y agoI’m not saying he’s a populist, I’m saying that the populists have scored a significant victory by pushing him to the right on cultural issues even if he ultimately wins reelection.
- zozbot234 5y agoMilitant secularism is not a right wing position in France. It's very much part of the shared zeitgeist. This is the country that once had a "Cult of the Reason Goddess" as their state religion, and their modern über-secular laïcité is not very different.
- rayiner 5y agoThe secularism isn’t right wing, but he’s also had strong words against American progressive ideology: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/09/world/europe/france-threat-american-universities.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/09/world/europe/france-threa...
- BlueTemplar 5y ago
- pphysch 5y agoOn 2, the diplomatic option has been on the table since the civil war started in 2014 (Minsk agreements). However, it is critical to understand that it is not merely "the Ukrainians" (i.e. the current Zelensky-Klitschko-Pinchuk oligarchy) that are opposed to it, it is also Washington. After all, the latter spent billions of dollars and decades of effort tearing down the Budapest Memo, and they weren't going to easily return to that status quo. This is also blindingly obvious in the fact that the Overton window here in USA ranges from "no fly zone! WW3! Hoo-rah!" to "we will merely arm the Ukrainian civilians with Javelins" -- surrender and life-saving compromise isn't even on the table. What would the Kagans get out of that?!
- hkpack 5y agoThere never was a civil war in Ukraine. In 2014 - that was still Russian forces both in Crimea and in eastern part of Ukraine. Russia got sanctioned since 2014 exactly for that.
- pphysch 5y agoWow. 14,000 Ukrainians have been killed by Ukrainians since 2014 in the Donbass region. Heavy weaponry involved. If that is not a civil war, what is it?
- mopsi 5y ago> If that is not a civil war, what is it? Russian invasion of Donetsk and Luhansk regions of Ukraine. Ironically, since most people living there are Russians, it's Russians killing Russians in Ukraine in the name of Putin's delusions.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]