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If you ignore the things Mearsheimer actually got wrong and ignore things that Petraeus or Hodges actually got right, this would indeed be a compelling line of argument. But if we don't, it's not, and little more than cherry picking.
The war's progression defied multiple of Mearsheimer's prognosis, starting from whether it would start, to how it would last. Other parts of Mearsheimer's prognosis that have been born out- like Ukraine being wrecked- were never contested in the first place. Even the tools of prognosis have repeatedly been exposed as lacking- the crux of Mearsheimer's analysis on inevitable attrition has rested on artillery advantage, even as the late/post-23 trends have demonstrated that the artillery was far more circumstantial, while he's regularly made arguments on capabilities (such as Russia eviscerating Ukrainian air defenses) that have been more than a little overreaching. There's a reason that Russia's turn to airpower has hinged on glide bombs from the ranges they have.
You like to appeal back to 2014 for Mearsheimer, but I see no reason not to go further to the 1990's- as early as 1992- when Mearsheimer was on record advocating for nuclear proliferation to the Germans and Japanese, aka historic Russian strategic rivals, which would have brought permanent nuclear presence to the border of the Russian sphere of influence that Mearsheimer called for respecting... which has been part of the nominal cassus belli for Russian intervention on grounds of proximate nuclear threat.
In other words, Mearsheimer has been advocating crossing contemporary Russian narratives of security red lines for about as long as the Soviet Union's been dead. He's just done it in different forms, but not forms that would escape a revanchist narrative of malign activity of western encroachment.
Mearsheimer is as deserving as the 'expert' title as anyone else, and unsurprisingly not any more impressive outside his field of actual expertise than anyone else. People just tend to forget his field of expertise is international relations theory as a political scientist, not international relations in action, or in policy, or anything particularly to do with the military in general, or as any kind of analyst of the countries he opines on.
I tend not to ask, but what nationality are you for the 'we'?
For whatever reason- admittedly perhaps conflating you with someone else- I thought you presented yourself as a German in the past, or at least European, which wouldn't make sense in this more recent context unless the 'we' is rather expansive. And in the inverse, there are enough Europeans on this forum that 'we' would also be awkward in this context.
The US already had nuclear weapons based in Germany and Japan in the Cold War and still has them based in Turkey. Nuclearization isn't a major change like NATO expansion eastwards towards Georgia and Ukraine, it only alters deterrence logic for those countries themselves. A nuclear Japan could be useful in countering China (another area where Mearsheimer was a decade or so ahead of the curve). Anyway, nuclear threat from Japan and Germany is less than from Turkey and far less than from Ukraine or the Baltics.
Mearsheimer did not say that a Russo-Ukrainian war wouldn't start, he described the conditions under which it would start if US/NATO foreign policy wasn't changed. He described the limitations of Russian power and the difficulties of occupying a whole country. He says that Russia will withstand considerable pain to pursue its security (this was before sanction-proofing) and that it will devastate Ukraine if the West doesn't change its policy, that logically implies war. Where did he say that Russia wouldn't go to war with Ukraine?
He even foresaw the war back in 1992, advocating that Ukraine should acquire nuclear weapons since the West was hardly likely to extend nuclear deterrence to Ukraine. He raises Crimea, mixed populations and nationalism on either side, control of the Black Sea Fleet, the fact that the Russians are always going to be stronger conventionally, historical antipathy... all factors we're dealing with decades later! He thought the Ukrainians would be less willing to bow to US pressure than they were, yet surely his predictive value is high.
https://www.mearsheimer.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Mearsheimer-Case-for-Ukrainian-Nuclear-Deterrent.pdf
Meanwhile, what have all the talented NATO Ukraine hands and generals gotten us? Hodges seemed to think the Ukrainian counteroffensive was a great idea and would succeed, despite being a telegraphed attack into a fortified and well-prepared enemy who has air superiority. Petraeus was in the same camp! What were they thinking?
https://www.newsweek.com/ukraine-breakthrough-could-come-weeks-former-us-general-says-1823389
And then there's the whole 'Putin's Russia is so weak that we can head them off by giving Ukraine more arms but so strong that he'll invade NATO if he wins' camp that is so well-represented in think tanks and media output, especially ISW. Which is it?
I maintain that Mearsheimer has been far more useful on the course of this war than the credentialed experts who seem to be hyping Ukraine.
Australian, we do show up for even the silliest US wars and will presumably be called in against China. What is the point of AUKUS if not to tie our fates together?
Okay, I believe the Australian claim off this alone, definitely not a European-attuned perspective.
You can try to argue that Mearsheimer didn't deny a different war would start, but the war Mearsheimer argued against on grounds of Russian limitations- that Russia wouldn't try to conquer all of Ukraine- is precisely the kind of war Russia launched. It failed, Russia was incompetent, but it is an illustration of Mearsheimer not actually recognizing or acknowledging Russian divergences from his predictions, and the later retreat to semantics of what degree of invasion is / is not conquest of all of Ukraine.
Basic motte and bailey.
Not really, and this goes back to the point of Mearsheimer's limitations outside of his field, in this part how the Europeans view nuclear proliferation.
Setting aside the contextual inaccuracy- Ukraine wasn't in a position to acquire nuclear weapons in 1992, it was in a position to negotiate away the nuclear weapons it had already inherited by 1996, this is ignoring what Russia wanted in this context, and why, and how such a policy pursued by Mearsheimer could be reflected in the current Putin-imperialist zeitgeist, as well as what doing such a policy would have naturally lead to in terms of American involvement with Ukraine.
Mearsheimer was not someone who was advocating foreign policy prescriptions that actually recognized and respected Russian security concerns for their own sake. Mearsheimer is someone who is selective in which security concerns he recognizes as valid, and treats them as transactional devices while downplaying or ignoring the relevance of security concerns he doesn't recognize the validity of. Nuclear proliferation is one of these blind spots.
Put another way, Mearsheimer is someone who believes in great powers dividing spheres of influence and horse-trading power blocks, without realizing he's less an Bismark and more of a Wilhelm at coalition building.
A Ukraine that continues to exist more than two years after nearly all observers thought the state would collapse in two weeks, a Russia that having destroyed its modernized force is in the process of face-tanking its reactivated Soviet stocks while humiliating its pre-war martial reputation, a NATO with a significantly stronger Baltic position and significantly greater available manpower and material capacity, European defense recapitalization as a policy consensus, and the strongest constituent member support for NATO in the last quarter century, and for the EU since before the 2009 Financial Crisis. This is without other things like the changes to the international arms market via displacing Russia, the value of discrediting territorial irridentalist wars of aggression, the confluence of the US and Europeans against China as a second-order effect of China's alignment with Russia, and so on.
I'm surprised you walked into that cluster.
Also, misuse of 'us', since you're not in NATO not part of the NATO constituency interests.
Come now, as a native English speaker, you know the difference between could and would.
Your source is a newsweek article where Hodges doesn't say he believes the Ukrainian counteroffensive was a great idea and would succeed. It says Hodges says a breakthrough could happen, after Hodges says he ('we' in a context including himself) didn't know the accurate situation to make a conclusion.
Probably, among other things, that the Russians didn't have air superiority, which their tactics over the last years have validated given their reliance to behind-the-lines glide bombing, and that there's no such thing in major wars as a non-telegraphed offensive thanks to the satellite imagery easily available of buildup. These words do not mean what you appear to think they mean.
Otherwise, the question doesn't really make sense unless you didn't mean it. The answer is directly in the article: an offensive gain southward that went far enough could expand direct fires coverage to the E-W routes of the Crimean land bridge, complicating the Russian position in Crimea substantially.
By your ! and ? and emotional tone, I suspect you feel this was obviously a bad idea. It's less clear what you think was actually the cost incurred, the chances of success, or what you'd concede were the benefits possible.
E+U > R > E
Both. There's no contradiction unless you reject the Europeans a right to their own perspective of their relative power versus Russia.
Russia can have more military power than Europe, but not more than Ukraine with European support. If Russia were to compel / achieve a victory over Ukraine, then depending on the form it could take those forces locked down in Ukraine and move them to other potential areas. If a Russian victory meant that the Russians could move through Ukraine to the Balkans, a Russian intervention wouldn't even trigger NATO depending on the country.
Okay, but it's a silly maintenance. The guy's a goober you'd be lambasting had he had his way based on your past history of other American impositions, which he is by no means opposed to, which makes the utility far more of a stopped clock dynamic than I think you recognize.
Mearsheimer is not a person who's a fan of restrained American conduct for its own sake. In another era, he'd be an overt American imperialist. Much of the media around him in the last years is basic university tenure politics of old professors protecting their original thesis that are the basis of their reputation.
Depends on if you think that's a silly one. Mearsheimer doesn't, except in so much that his views of the Russian sphere of interest was transactional to get them on board for a land war in Asia.
It is a reach bordering on consensus building for you to use 'us' or 'we' to make common position with Americans or Europeans on things the Australians aren't immediate party to and which you do not share common views of, such as NATO, so I will be noting that more often going forward.
The post-Brexit British capitalizing on Australian disgruntlement with the French military arms deal tendencies which were weakening Australia's ability to contribute/support a US-based anti-China coalition without French support despite increasing divergences in the French and Australian government perspectives on China, after the French spent several years having a shadow-feud with the British over the execution of Brexit.
Also, long-term technology transfer.
No, Russia did not aim to conquer all of Ukraine with the thunder run to Kiev, fielding maybe 200-300,000 men in all theatres. They hoped the Ukrainian state would disintegrate and that they could install a new government.
That's an interesting choice of words. The US has, in marked contrast to Mearsheimer's proposals, created a coalition of Russia, China and Iran! Wilhelm was a strategic genius compared to what passes for American leadership. Was it truly impossible to pass up on inviting such mighty powers as the Baltic States, Georgia and Ukraine into NATO, was it absolutely necessary to antagonize a great power with thousands of hydrogen bombs? Apparently so!
Significantly? Finland and Sweden make up maybe 5% of NATO's military potential. This war has already been pretty disastrous for the West.
The effectiveness of sanctions has been greatly undermined. Russia and China are working together more and more. Europe has taken a massive hit to their economy, suffering at least a trillion dollars in damage. Apparently they had to spend 700 billion in subsidies to reduce the pain by 2023: https://www.eeas.europa.eu/eeas/singapore-speech-hrvp-borrell-shangri-la-dialogue_en
Most importantly, Western stockpiles of key weapons have been greatly diminished. Western military industrial capabilities have been revealed to be shockingly weak. What good is our spending if Russia, Iran and North Korea are outproducing us in munitions? ATGMs, MANPADs, artillery shells are all important and would be needed for war with China, especially if it escalates beyond Taiwan, into Korea and elsewhere. Stockpiles have been greatly diminished for Ukraine and cannot be quickly refilled.
A multi-year period of vulnerability is opened up right as the threat from China becomes most acute. I expect some sneer about Australian bias for Asia but let's be realistic - China is the primary threat. Ukraine is not a key node of the world economy like East Asia.
Furthermore, the war is not going well for Ukraine.
10/10 for quibbling, we still showed up to Afghanistan and Iraq. We'd almost certainly join America in any war, unlike a good chunk of NATO. We're helping in Ukraine with Wedgetails, we sent over some Bushmasters. Australia is absolutely a party to this war. Furthermore, I am also Western and have a legitimate stake in the affairs of matters that concern the West, such as the conflict with Russia and China.
It's interesting that you seem to think that the extensive use of Russian helicopter gunships and drones don't show air superiority. Apparently dropping glide bombs doesn't count as air superiority either. I'm sure that reassures the poor troops on the ground dealing with FABs!
If you use some niche definition of air superiority like 'controlling the airspace directly above the grey zone so much that your aircraft can fly at all altitudes unmolested by AA' then sure, I guess the Russians don't have air superiority. Though that definition sounds rather more like air dominance. In practical terms if you're being bombed by enemy aircraft much more than your aircraft are bombing the enemy, then you don't have air superiority. In practical terms, why would the Russians fly any closer than needed to an enemy with plentiful SAMs, Manpads and so on? Do they need to be firing their cannons before they have air superiority? The practical definition is the superior definition because it actually matters and is relevant to the substance on the ground. The Russians can use air power to bomb/ATGM the Ukrainians, not with impunity but with considerable effect. That's why normal people and even such revered institutions as the Atlantic Council agreed that Russia had air superiority.
https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/ukrainealert/it-is-still-far-too-early-to-write-off-ukraines-counteroffensive/
What is the point of these perverse language games?
Chance of success was negligible, they were relying on 'and then a miracle happens' like the Ardennes offensive. The goal was as you say, to sever the land bridge and threaten Crimea, just like how the Germans wanted to split up the Allied armies and repeat 1940. That makes sense. But the goal was not achievable against a well-prepared enemy with superior resources. The Ukrainians should have recognized this and refrained from attacking a superior force with what they had available.
I think it is tragic that enormous costs are being incurred in pursuit of delusional and undesirable goals.
I'm lost for words. Europe, which contains two nuclear powers, is weaker than Ukraine with European support? Europe, with thousands of aircraft, is weaker than Ukraine which might get a few F-16s to supplement a handful of remaining Soviet aircraft? Didn't you just say the Russians were a worn-out husk?
The Russians somehow move into the Balkans? Through Romania or Hungary, NATO members that decide that the Warsaw Pact was underrated and lobby to rejoin? Russia invades Moldova, another huge and valuable territory of enormous import to world affairs? Or do they teleport across into Serbia to enjoy the unique strategic advantages of total encirclement by a hostile alliance bloc? I'd say 'These words do not mean what you appear to think they mean.' But I can't even conceive of what they might mean.
Yes. This is the retreat to the semantic bailey that I noted before.
That the Russians thought they only needed 200-300,000 men in all theaters to overthrow the Ukrainian government, rearrange borders, and establish a compliant state that would implement the Russian kill-lists on pro-western influencer persons was incompetent, but that is what they thought they needed for what they tried to do. That the Russians were incompetent does not negate the intent, which is the Mearsheimer argument on basis of intent as indicated by size failed, and why his maintenance of the position has evolved into the semantic retreat that simultaneously tries to ignore intent and then quibble on the back end what conquest entails if it does succeed.
This goes back to the point that it's not a contrast, but simply a non-falsifiable assertion that can politely ignore that Mearsheimer's proposals also created a basis for a coalition of Russia, China, and Iran, and the factors within the leadership of Russia, China, and Iran that would exist regardless (and because) of Mearsheimer's proposals.
It's also another example of Mearsheimer's tendency to slide into hyperagent / hypoagent faming bias, which is another of Mearsheimer's common failings in international affairs. The US creates conditions, other actors have conditions imposed by the US, their own leader's actions are a consequence of American agency, and so on.
Very sophmoric, and Mearsheimer's inexperience in international affairs and unfamiliarity with how other actors make decisions shows in this field.
This is another one of those claims where it's evident you aren't really party to the cultural touchpoint for the reference, and thus miss the metaphor.
I'll skip forward a bit because basically everything between is old hat at this point that's been hashed a dozen hundred times at this point, just to point to a thing I think makes the general point better for the audience.
The point of perverse languages games is as you just demonstrated: to claim the connotations of a state of affairs described by a descriptive doctrinal ('niche') definition, when the conditions to meet that state aren't being met, by substituting a watered down ('practical') definition that can be retreated to if challenged but otherwise can be used to claim the authority / argumentative advantage of the stronger descriptive definition.
In other words, a banal motte-and-bailey argument.
The motte is that a Ukrainian offensive was obviously a non-starter idea because the Russians were [controlling the airspace directly above the grey zone so much that their aircraft can fly at all altitudes unmolested by AA], the bailey is that Russians could apply enough air power from a distance and didn't need to be closer to have effects, and the discrepancy is that the conditions implied by being able to fly over the enemy unmolested are not the same conditions if you refuse to fly over the enemy because they still have plentiful SAMs, MANPADs, and so on.
This discrepancy matters, because the difference between those two states is what determines the viability of limited offensives. After all, it's not like Russia suddenly or just recently in 2023 gained the superior air position, regardless of whether you call it air superiority or air dominance- there had been two separate major Ukrainian successes that occurred despite the same general match of airpower.
Your loss of words is forgivable, given your evident lack of familiarity with the European capabilities, or the degree of European military support to Ukraine.
Yes, the Europeans, with their thousands of planes, lack the land force to match what Ukraine has fielded in a conflict which has demonstrated there is no substitute for land force volume. Much like Russia, the investment in their aircraft and nuclear weapons do not, in fact, automatically translate to land force capability, and unlike the Ukrainians the Europeans have not been investing for the better part of the last decade into how to generate a large standing ground army. Doing so now would be long, difficult, politically disruptive, economically expensive in the midst of major military recapitalization, and quite likely to be unfeasible in terms of scope and effectiveness in the near term.
As such, the Europeans could try to prioritize all resources into generating a large, cohesive, land force by the time the Russians finish the Ukraine War, or they could funnel resources to empower the already large, cohesive land force so the Russians can't finish the Ukraine War.
It doesn't matter whether E > U or U >E, but rather if E < R, and U < R, but E + U > R.
I think we could both CTRL-F the previous arguments to find out if I did, or if you just attempted a perverse language game for a strawman that reverses a position in the previous post.
No, Mearsheimer proposed competition with China and rapprochement with Russia and Iran, or at least not going out of our way to antagonize them.
Have you actually read Mearsheimer's books or journal articles? If so, you clearly haven't understood them. At no point does he say this. He has a structural model of international relations where the great powers act according to various motivations. This is pretty basic undergraduate-level stuff.
Kherson and the other counteroffensives in 2022 were successful because the Russian army was barely there or decided to withdraw, assessing that it was too risky to be potentially cut off behind a river. The differences between the 2022 pre-mobilization Russian army, spread more widely across unfortified or difficult-to-defend land and the situation in 2023 are considerable.
You need to understand that Russia possessed air superiority and that air superiority is NOT the sole determinant of battles (I think I understand why US struggles so much with COIN with this mindset). Attacking an absent enemy with air superiority is one thing, a fortified and numerous enemy with air superiority is something totally different.
I'm especially staggered that you spend a paragraph lambasting me for motte and bailey and then admit the Russians had the 'superior air position' through the whole war. You just invented a synonym for air superiority that perfectly undermines both your motte-and-bailey argument and your 'Russia didn't have air superiority' point. Wake up! You're defending positions so silly even the Atlantic Council has written them off.
No, they don't. Between Britain, France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Poland and Turkey... they can muster a larger army than Ukraine with active troops alone, let alone reservists (or disabled draftees). They are much stronger than Ukraine. This isn't a debate, you're just wrong. Check wikipedia if you like, it's pretty obvious how much larger the European NATO armies are than Ukraine's.
Sounds pretty worn out to me. But I'm sure you can conjure up some elaborate meaning where worn-out means something totally different. And of course you can create some fantasy world where the face-tanked, unmodern (but not worn out!) Soviet stocks are capable of struggling with Ukraine but would beat Europe's far larger and better militaries.
Supporting nuclear proliferation to countries that a party is actively trying to prevent from having nuclear weapons and has active territorial disputes with is absolutely going out of your way to antagonize them.
Mearsheimer's books and journal articles are consistently framed in hyperagent and hypoagent paradigm. This is a meta-crticism, and it is a significant part of why much of his stuff is merely undergraduate-level, as the models don't actually reflect how coalitions of allies operate.
A laugh is competing with a yawn. The motte and bailey you were accused of was precisely because of the overreach of degree, and you yourself conceded the doctrinal definition did not apply, which itself undermined the earlier appeal to authority of the Atlantic Council for using the same term.
While I am glad to see you conceding that air superiority (and thus also less dominating degrees of aerial advantage, or whatever term you prefer to for that degree) alone is not decisive, this was rather the point you were being led to in the original contestation of your original framing, which also rested on other unreasonable points you long since abandoned (as befits the retreat to the motte).
Ah, yes, wikipedia. That infallible source of all the context we need to know on military readiness. Why if we go by wikipedia, the Germans have 270 Leopard 2 tanks of various sorts!
And if we look back to 2018, the Germans had 9 operational Leopard 2s available for a NATO task force expected to have 44. Which they also couldn't support in various other fills either- 3 of 14 Marauder infantry fighting vehicles, aircraft able to fly only 1/3rd of the year, and generally unable to compose a ready force of 5000 people despite a wiki-size of over 180,000 active personnel... and it wasn't even the only country sending to it. Wiki doesn't list the number of machine guns the German army has, but they certainly showed up to a NATO exercise in 2015 with broomsticks painted black due to a lack of working ones available.
This is sad- and mockable- but hardly unique. The tank donation effort in 2023 showed that countries that nominally had hundreds of tanks, like Spain, only had a few dozen in readiness or near-readiness states they could spend, with repairing 20 taking a year. When the propaganda of 'NATO is running out of key weapon systems!' is raised, the kernel of truth being exagerated is that some systems being donated- such as tanks- are running out because most can't run at all. They weren't meaningfully maintained for decades, to a degree that some countries had less than 10% in a condition to hand over to fight.
While I am pleased that you are including Turkey as European for the sake of the argument- it's one of the only reasons anyone does, and I'll admit I hadn't been when I was referred to the Europeans- there is a reason they and the third most tank-heavy force in NATO are aimed at eachother, and the readiness counter-point remains: the on-paper strength of the Europezns is not their real power level,. And this is without the many other obstacles to a coherent land force, ranging from expeditionary projection to political willingness to pursue. Recapitalizing, repairing, and restoring a capable European ground force will be long and expensive without being forced to fight while doing it.
By contrast, and returning to the basis of the earlier argument, the Ukrainians are already in the field, have already proven their ability to do significant damage ot the Russians if armed, and arming them avoids the European weaknesses while letting them plan (and bolster) their strengths.
No need. In the non-fantasy world, the Europeans have been neglecting their ground forces for decades to the degree that their actually available forces are not far larger, or far better.
It's not like this is traditional proliferation. A huge number of Soviet nuclear weapons ended up in Ukraine with messy questions of PALs and operational control, especially of bombers. There's a distinction between the US sponsoring Ukrainian nuclear weapons like with Britain and simply not pressuring them to denuclearize. The latter is much less aggressive. Furthermore, the US had more freedom to impose upon Russia in the mid-1990s than the late 2000s, for obvious reasons. Creating a favourable status quo in the 1990s but not continuing to prod the bear has advantages. Incorporating the militarily weak and hard to defend Baltics is much less reasonable, long-term costs for negligible gains. Then consider the frankly sadistic-in-retrospect policy of prodding Ukraine into denuclearizing, then wooing them towards the West (without actually promising to defend them), incentivizing Russia to maul the country and derail such efforts.
Likewise with Taiwanese nuclearization. The US quashed that twice. I imagine there's regret floating around in Washington over that decision, if the self-consciousness for regret exists.
I said Russia had air superiority for the 2023 counteroffensive and that they had extensively fortified and prepared for a Ukrainian attack in that area (it was telegraphed not merely via satellite imaging but also being the obvious route for any Ukrainian attack). Most people agree with this. This was in service to my broader point that the celebrated NATO generals who expected a successful counterattack were foolish, they seemed to expect the Russian army to disintegrate upon contact with NATO-supplied armour.
You said first that Russia didn't have air superiority, they were merely dropping glide bombs, using attack helicopters (where have the Ukrainian attack helicopters gone I wonder) and drones. You then said that I wasn't using the doctrinal term correctly when I pointed out how you were necessarily changing the goalposts by taking 'air superiority' well beyond the realms of common sense. Then you said I was motte-and-baileying regarding the distinction between air superiority and air supremacy.
Here's US doctrine: https://www.doctrine.af.mil/Portals/61/documents/doctrine_updates/du_17_01.pdf?ver=2017-09-17-113839-373
The Ukrainians received prohibitive interference from Russian airpower during their counteroffensive, from Ka-52s for instance. The Russian defence was not similarly pounded by Ukrainian airpower.
Here's another article saying the Russians had air superiority: https://english.elpais.com/international/2023-07-31/ka-52-alligator-the-russian-helicopter-slowing-ukraines-counteroffensive-in-the-south.html
I can find more if you like!
Sure, the German army is weak. The Europeans don't have much ammunition relative to force size. I'll even say that the Ukrainian army might be the strongest army in Europe aside from Russia and maybe Turkey. But the combined power of all the European states is much much greater than Ukraine's! They actually have navies and even aircraft carriers. They have nuclear weapons. Yes, nuclear weapons are relevant to military power, they render the whole idea of a Russian invasion ridiculous. There is no plausible gain for a Russian invasion of Europe that outweighs the high risk of a nuclear exchange, even a nuclear exchange they 'win'.
You started off saying "Russia can have more military power than Europe, but not more than Ukraine with European support" then quickly shifted to 'land force power' and mass when I pointed out the vast difference in air power, naval power and nuclear power. Navies and air forces are relevant here. And just consider the military potential! Ukraine has 36 million at most. Europe has about 500 million. Please stop trying to twist your words around to justify these silly positions.
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See this is the reason Mearshimer and the vatnik brigade was wrong in 2022: Russia did not in fact have the million man army of commie fame, it had a corrupt and underprepared army that was so incompetent Ukrainian spies in Belarus were convinced the invasion could not be real because the Russian forces and logistics were so poorly provisioned. The Kyiv thrust was so badly executed that Ritter, McGregor, Serge and all the other worthless vatniks Mearshimer cited as 'experts' had to 180 their assessment of Russian 2022 assaults from 'there are no russian losses kyiv has already fallen anf zelensky is in poland' to 'kyiv was a genius feint to allow capture of the donbass'. Most of this brigade remained continually humiliated by the Kharkiv counteroffensive (my specific introduction to this forum was seeing BigSerge cited here by someone and my supplier mocking that particular vatnik, with BigSerges 'its a genius trap!' rhetoric betraying a laughable understanding of military operations dressed up in distinctly pro-Russian dour seriousness) and the Kherson grind (where the retard brigade once again insisted that Ukraine had no chance of driving Russia back only to pivot into claiming the withdrawal was a sign of Russian genius).
2023 is when Russian force generation let it be the army Mearshimers fools imagined Russia to always be, and when more limited successes started, but that is hardly a reflection of the analytic powers of the vatniks. Russia stumbled into being the army of mass versus Ukraines army of mass, and the slow grind there still does not validate Mearshimers assessments. That Mearshimer is spoken of at all whereas Timothy Synder is ignored points to deliberate ignorance of the intellectual spheres and quality of discourse around: I hold little respect for academics as a whole but if people wish to appeal to academic authority it is necessary to parse competing academic points on their own merits. Sucking off Mearshimer tells me all I need to know and frankly the subsequent cherry picking reinforces my own suspicions: the argument for Russias inevitability is weak and those advancing it don't know enough to dismiss charlatans claiming its inevitability.
Synder is, to use your preferred terminology, retarded.
https://news.err.ee/1609348263/timothy-snyder-war-should-have-ended-in-2022-with-ukraine-s-victory
Look at the things he's willing to say! It's the same old rubbish about nominal GDP magically translating into military power. He still hasn't cottoned onto what RUSI was talking about in 2022 when it comes to shell production not actually being a function of GDP. Just today he's making wildly inappropriate metaphors for it being 1938: https://x.com/martenkokk/status/1792110889841066040
A few things have changed since 1938. The global balance of power. Nuclear weapons. Military affairs generally. Russia and Ukraine being totally different to Germany and Czechoslovakia in terms of politics, aspirations, goals, geography and industrial power...
He's a fantasyland ideologue who lacks any kind of military understanding, sophistication or nuance.
Mearsheimer is overwhelmingly superior. He actually predicts things (often decades in advance) because he has strategic models that work, not just a desperate desire to say what people want to hear. He foresaw this conflict, he foresaw China-US struggle, he foresaw that invading Middle Eastern countries wouldn't work out... What has Synder ever predicted? You're smearing Mearsheimer because he cited some other people that were themselves wrong about different matters.
Did Mearsheimer say 'Russia will stomp Ukraine instantly'? No, he said the exact opposite for years. He said that Russia would struggle to conquer even the eastern part of Ukraine but that it would incur that cost to achieve various strategic goals and that Ukraine cannot win a war of attrition with Russia. That's what we're seeing, from Ukraine's increasingly desperate conscription and Russia's recent advances.
Good! Call Synder retarded, Bloodlands is a polemic! But I never claimed he was THE intellectual authority, only that he is one of many, and stroking off Mearshimer just is an appeal to authority. Snyder is RIGHT about Russias revanchism, and he predicted THAT while Mearshimer in 2014 till 2022 was, per your OWN citation, predicting that Russia was peaceful in its intentions and should be courted as a reliable ally against China. Have you READ his shit? He treats Russia as a weak animal with no choice but to lash out in the 2015 lecture you cite. After Russia attacked and starts their insane rhetoric about nuking London and nazis is when Mearshimer goes off the deep end into supporting pro-Russia military inevitability, a laughable statement before Surovikins force generation efforts paid off in 2023.
Mearshimer is by no means a military genius, which is the criteria by which you judged his intellectual heft. Unbound to the neocon or neolib establishments that predicted happiness and sunshine for all in the wake of US 'freedom bombs'? Yes. Blind to his own hyperfocus on China as a threat to focus on? That is my assessment. Mearshimer (fuck I hate typing his stupid longass name) did your standard vatnik cope of 'Russia clearly had a grand plan when they attacked with their weak forces, look at me I'm so smart.' when the reality is much simpler: Putin fucked up, and Russia doubled down on a bad bet.
He didn't say this. Mearsheimer:
He then said that, before the Russians started sanction-proofing, the Russian military and economy was too weak to conquer Eastern Ukraine. And that's basically correct, they haven't easily conquered Eastern Ukraine!
He foresaw basically everything ten years in advance! He clearly knows more than I do, I thought the war would end much sooner. John "Cassandra" Mearsheimer was consistently proven right in the past. I trust he'll be right now that he's had extra time to analyse recent events.
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