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PaperclipPerfector  6d ago (text post)   892 thread views

Transnational Thursday for December 12, 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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Letter from Biden to the Speaker of the House on US deployments is interesting. I appreciate how it subverts various mechanisms for Congressional oversight.

From doctor to brutal dictator: the rise and fall of Syria's Bashar al Assad

An article in Haaretz openly talks about Israel's nuclear program, noting a shift from Israel's official stance of "strategic ambiguity"

China warships near Taiwan nearly double in 24 hours, ahead of possible wargames. China also expressed dissatisfaction with visits to Hawaii and Guam from Taiwan's president

Syria rebels name transitional prime minister, Mohammed al-Bashir. He was the previous prime minister of the statelet in the region controlled by HTS.

NK saber rattling. My sense is they might test a nuclear weapon in the next few months (15% by April?)

US transition of power soon

Belarus president confirms that nuclear weapons are stationed in Belarus, reports Russia Today.

Putin claims that its intermediate-range missile system, the Oreshnik minimizes the need of using nuclear weapons.

Ukraine war: US gives $20bn to Kyiv funded by seized Russian assets. It's deposited to a World Bank fund, where it nominally can't be spent to buy military assets (though it of course funges with civilian spending).

Zelensky says that Ukraine has lost 43K soldiers since the start of the war, with an additional 370K wounded, and that losses oon the Russian side are around 200K, with an additional ~500K injured. With a population of 37.9M for Ukraine, that corresponds to 0.11% dead, 1% wounded. Wikipedia reports similar numbers. The ratio of repoprted Ukranian to Russian losses is also very steep. The Economist instead estimates 60K to 100K deaths for Ukraine. But these are just... not that high? Very, very far from "total war".

Genetic analysis of H5N1 in kid in California: "the virus gene segments sequenced most closely resemble those segments from recent B3.13 viruses detected in California in humans, dairy cattle and poultry. This analysis supports the conclusion that the overall risk to the general public associated with the ongoing HPAI A(H5N1) outbreak in U.S. dairy cattle and poultry has not changed and remains low at this time."

UK considering ring-vaccination campaign to tackle new mpox outbreak if more cases emerge

Drone strikes UN vehicle on way to inspect Ukrainian nuclear plant

Israel arrested 30 people to whom Iran was paying relatively small amounts of money for spying and sabotage tasks

Assad fell, some good coverage here. Israel also took the opportunity to get a buffer zone in Syria.

Various European countries are stopping or revering asylum claims from Syrians

Arrakan Army now controls the Myanmar/Bangladesh border.

The Russian Federal Security Service arrests a German-Russian man for allegedly planning to sabotage a rail line in Nizhny Novgorod, Russia, on behalf of the Security Service of Ukraine.

Saudi Arabia to host 2034 world cup

Ukraine’s losses don’t look that high because Ukrainian official figures are a bunch of lies. Zelensky claims that Ukrainian forces suffered 30 thousand deaths in the first four months of the war, and that they have only suffered 10-30 thousand additional deaths in the subsequent two and a half years.

The Economist gives a higher yet still small number as a proportion of total population.

The claim that the Ukraine even had a population of almost 38 million at the start of the war (which I assume does not include the population under Russian control but nominally of Ukrainian citizenship in this particular context) is rather questionable (there has been no census since 2001). The same goes for the idea that there's only one war dead for every 9 wounded.

Do you believe the war dead-to-wounded ratio is lower, or higher?

Higher.

What ratio and why?

Worse dead-to-wounded ratios historically depend more on the impacts of disease than fighting, with ratios getting better (more wounded to killed) the more access to defensive fortifications, stable rear areas, and mechanized evacuation that are available. This is especially true in artillery wars, where the predominance of shrapnel as a primary threat increases wounds relative to direct kills for forces that are better fortified.

Ukraine certainly has its challenges, but a lack of trenches, helmets, and rear areas to withdraw to are not among them.

Those are valid points. The claim of a ratio of 1:9 is still rather suspicious.

The Economist instead estimates 60K to 100K deaths for Ukraine. But these are just... not that high? Very, very far from "total war".

Ukraine had about 8 million military-aged males (25-54), so a loss of 80k is 1% dead. If 400k more were wounded, that's 5% more. I agree this doesn't sound like WWI, where a similarly-sized France lost more than a million dead.

I'd be skeptical about the 8 million figure.

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