site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 26, 2024

This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.

Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.

We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:

  • Shaming.

  • Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.

  • Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.

  • Recruiting for a cause.

  • Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.

In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:

  • Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.

  • Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.

  • Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.

  • Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.

On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.

6
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

The problem here is the Russian progress in the east. Once Kramantorsk falls, the line gets much harder to defend, and the chances of a rapid collapse of everything east of the Dnieper gets a lot higher. Also, this is an industrial war, not a low intensity police action like the two Afghanistan wars. Barring a Korean War-style partial armistice, one of the sides is going to get too heemed to continue, sooner rather than later.

The problem here is the Russian progress in the east. Once Kramantorsk falls, the line gets much harder to defend, and the chances of a rapid collapse of everything east of the Dnieper gets a lot higher.

Rapid as in, what, another century?

This is a funny misreading of the map and the progression of the last year of the war, but still a misreading. Setting aside that the Ukrainian collapse cascade trope has been trotted out for every significant urban area since the start of the war, the fundamentals of why Russian progress has been limited to marginal advances in very narrow parts of the east remain. Marginal advances over time add up, but there's a reason you need regional zoom-in maps rather than the early-war whole-of-country maps of the frontline to see an appreciable difference between the end of 2022 and current 2024. It's the same reason the Russians characterize their advances as 'significant' or 'consistent' more often than 'large'- large implies a lot of territory, when what has actually changed hands in 2024 is very small compared to metrics like, say, what the Russians achieved in early 2022, or the even larger breakthroughs that would be needed to reach the Dnieper. The 2022 meme of Russia's imminent encirclement of Ukraine's eastern forces comes to mind- and note how many of the main cities you've heard about in the last year or two are in that snapshot.

And these Russian fundamentals rely on things that are limitations as well. The Russians have been relying on overwhelming artillery overmatch since mid-2022, but don't have the logistics or mobility means to push that artillery fast. The Russians have made a policy-level decision to rely on volunteer/contract soldiers rather than mass mobilization to carry on the offense, but the ever-increasing signing bonuses are indicative of a military not meeting its recruitment goals for what it thinks it needs, and it's highly doubtful they could continue this sort of personnel expenditure for years more. The level of equipment for the units the Russians do have are indicative that the limiting factor of the Russians now is their equipment rather than manpower to fit the kit, which mitigates much of the utility of a mass conscription for numbers alone but also demonstrates a retrograde from mobility warfare given that the equipment is more and more earlier cold-war standard.

These limiting factors do not mean 'Russia will be unable to fight,' but rather that even as Russia chooses to fight, that doesn't mean it has the capabilities- militarily, politically, structurally, manpower- to do any sort of 'everything to the east bank of the Dnieper' breakthrough.

Also, this is an industrial war, not a low intensity police action like the two Afghanistan wars. Barring a Korean War-style partial armistice, one of the sides is going to get too heemed to continue, sooner rather than later.

Later rather than sooner, given what both sides have demonstrated their ability / willingness to mobilize, and at current industrial trajectories the Russians at maximum relative advantage have been unable to threaten the sort of gains made in the opening months of 2022, let alone destroy the Ukraine coalition's industrial base.

As an industrial base argument, Russia isn't against Ukraine, it's against Ukraine and the West, and there is a large difference between 'Russia's economy is not failing and will not for years' and 'Russia's economy is doing well and doing better at sustaining the war indefinitely than the west.'