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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   1332 thread views

Transnational Thursday for October 17, 2024

Transnational Thursday is a thread for people to discuss international news, foreign policy or international relations history. Feel free as well to drop in with coverage of countries you’re interested in, talk about ongoing dynamics like the wars in Israel or Ukraine, or even just whatever you’re reading.

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Pump up aid: military readiness declines further, escalation risks, Russia takes hostile actions elsewhere, still very unlikely Ukraine secures 2014 borders.

I doubt more aid will really affect American military readiness, the bigger question is what the US gets back. Zelensky is not able to answer the big unspoken question: why should anyone help Ukraine win the war decisively?

There's option A: the US spends 100 billion dollars, Ukraine and Russia bleed out on the battlefield, at least one of them sells its prime assets to MNCs to fix the economy

And there's option B: the US spends 500 billion dollars, Ukraine kicks Russia out, at most one of them sells its prime assets to MNCs to fix the economy

Why spend more money on a potentially worse outcome?

B) also implies civil war in Russia

Not necessarily. A civil war requires competing elites, and Putin has been constantly pruning anything that could be considered a nascent counter-elite. Given how even Ukraine didn't really have a civil war I doubt Russia will. The PRC could support separatists in the Far East, but this would mean the bigger part of Russia would realign itself with the US, which not what they need.

Given how even Ukraine didn't really have a civil war I doubt Russia will.

Russia and Ukraine are having a civil war right now, it's just one that happens to straddle an existing border.

Don't forget in option B: Russian ethnics are dispossessed at least and massacred at worst in Crimea and DPR/LPR, with NATO weapons.

Russian ethnics are dispossessed at least and massacred at worst in

Russian ethnics are being dispossessed at least and massacred at worst in Ukraine right now, by Russians.

Yes but not, or at least only marginally, with US support and weapons.

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