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You lost me here. The idea that Russia is even capable of threatening more conquest is just silly. Ukraine was the softest target in Europe, and Putin has spent years beating his head against it. Both Ukraine and Russia have been bled dry by the war, so even if Putin won a total victory today he still wouldn't get back the manpower and materiel he spent conquering it. There is no way that he's going to come off a victory in Ukraine and move on to Poland, especially not after Poland has had so much time to prepare. And Poland wouldn't even have to fight Russia alone, since it's a NATO member. Given that Putin couldn't even get a clean win against Ukraine, it's safe to say that if he ever goes toe-to-toe with the core members of NATO his ass is grass.
Russia is poor and weak, and it just spent a whole bunch of its dwindling manpower to laboriously pry a few provinces out of Ukraine's cold, dead hands. This was its last gasp.
Ukraine had the largest army in Europe outside of Russia. It had conscription and a pretty large pool of veterans of the conflict with Russia that started in 2014. It had a decent amount of Soviet weaponry, including SAM systems (largest in Europe) that prevented Russia from gaining air superiority. Last but not least, Ukraine is large that allowed them to consolidate defense. A small country would be wiped out if Russians advanced 150 km.
Of all the countries neighboring Russia in Europe (China would definitely be a different matter), Ukraine was the hardest target. Putin invaded for two reasons: he expected Ukraine to fold and not defend (essentially a repeat of Crimea capture but with some token fighting) and secondly, of all targets, Ukraine is the most precious. Subjugating Ukraine would make all the other countries that are not NATO protected to become subjugated, too.
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The Baltics exist. They are a lot weaker than Ukraine. By helping Ukraine, we do two things:
Both of which deters Russia from messing with the Baltics later on. Yes, the Baltic states are in NATO, which precisely makes it worse, because fighting over them has a good chance of leading to WW3 or nuclear Armageddon, with a far higher likelihood than a war in Ukraine. So in this case, "we fight them over there so we don't have to fight them over here" makes sense. It's also not even "we fight them over there", it's "we give the Ukrainians weapons so they can fight them over there" which makes the calculus even better.
I believe the current NATO assessment is that Russia's warfighting capacity has increased and that it will be stronger and better-prepared to fight NATO after the hostilities end.
I'm not aware of that assessment but it's not unbelievable the Russian military at this point in time is more capable than it was in 2022, simply because of the necessity to fight a high intensity conflict in Ukraine. However, long term Russian war fighting capacity is still being degraded due to the accumulating effects of battlefield losses, economic sanctions and their inefficient war economy. The more we can deplete their strategic reserves, cause more casualties, and inflict economic damage, the less of a threat Russia is in the long term, and the more time they'll need to re-organize and re-arm before their next military adventure.
So if Ukraine capitulates today and Russia decides to immediately shift to attacking NATO, then, yes, that would indeed be a poor outcome. If we keep supporting Ukraine and Russia gives up because of war exhaustion, that's the best outcome. If we keep supporting Ukraine and it becomes a frozen conflict, it's still a good outcome because Russia is still occupied with Ukraine. If we keep supporting Ukraine and it eventually loses in a year or two, that would be suboptimal but still better than forcing Ukraine to capitulate now since it will keep Russia occupied for longer, depleting more of their resources, and they'll need a longer recovery period to reconstitute their strength before they can think about attacking the countries we really care about.
Yes, the Russians have blown through their Soviet-era artillery munitions stockpile. But pull back for a second. When was the American military more capable, 1941 or 1945 after taking a million casualties? Was the US more of a threat over the long term after 1945 or less of one?
Or heck, let's say you think the US isn't a good comparison because we destroyed all of Europe's industry. Fine, let's take Russia - more of a threat in 1941 or 1945 after losing 27 million people? I'm sure that theoretically caused them long term problems but we still had a couple of decades where "nuking Germany repeatedly" was basically our best bet at stopping them.
I think this is context-dependent on what we're supporting Ukraine with. If we're supporting them with our own munitions stockpiles and we're sending weapons to Ukraine faster than we can reconstitute them, then we'll be the ones needing a long recovery period. This knife also cuts both ways when it comes to advanced weapons systems, the more of which we supply Ukraine with the less capable they will be if we ever use them against Russia.
Russia has blown through its stockpiles and it is not doing well economically, which impacts its military production and force generation. Sure, their military capability might have increased through adaptations and experience, especially with drones, but it's not a significant departure from their army in 2022. In fact, in terms of equipment, their formations are probably less mechanized today than three years ago. I don't see a parallel between the Russia today and the US or USSR from 1945.
Yes, if we (NATO) are depleting our materiel faster than we are depleting that of Russia, then that's a problem. So far, I don't see good evidence that's the case. Further, Ukraine itself is also producing a significant amount of war materiel like ammo, armored vehicles and drones, so having Ukraine by our side is still better than forcing it to surrender.
Hmm. A quick Google tells me they made 3.6% growth last year. That seems...fine. Better than the US, even.
How large was the collective NATO artillery park in 2022 versus now? How about tanks? Mines-clearing vehicles?
Why is Germany's military now less ready than it was in 2022, falling to 50% readiness rates? Probably has nothing to do with shipping gear to Ukraine (spoiler: it has something to do with shipping gear to Ukraine).
I feel like you are just trying for gotchas without addressing the core of my argument here.
EDIT: but let me just respond quickly - The 3.6% growth number is self-reported by Russia, no longer independently verifiable because they stopped reporting a lot of their economic stats after the war started. Even if taken as true at face value, we know that they are experiencing high inflations even with record high interest rates, 21% to be exact, this indicates any economic growth is propped up by an aggressive fiscal policy that's unsustainable. But what are you actually arguing for with the 3.6% number, which is apparently better than the US? Are you claiming that Russians are simply immune to the effects of economic sanctions (then why do they want those lifted?), and having a sizable portion of their work-force and industrial output being blown up in Ukraine is actually good for their economy?
The NATO equipment parks questions, I don't know. I have not seen people do analysis on NATO equipment numbers from satellite imagery, unlike the Russian equipment parks. But if you have a link, I'd be interested. My premise is that we (NATO) are not depleting our materiel faster than Russia is. Germany's readiness going down from 65% to 50% is evidence that one of the NATO countries is being affected, it does not demonstrate NATO as a whole is seeing lower readiness numbers. For example, at least Poland is seeing an increase of its own military capabilities. And even if NATO is seeing a net depletion of its own reserves, it does not demonstrate that it is depleting it at a rate higher than Russia. We have a visual database of equipment losses that tracks individual equipment types for us to estimate the relative loss rates between Russian and NATO equipment (The page actually links to Ukrainian losses as a whole, of which only a fraction is NATO supplied equipment). Also, even if this is a problem, the correct solution is to increase NATO's military production, kind of like what EU is doing right now, rather than ceding Ukraine to Russia. Again, I remind you that Ukraine is producing a significant amount of its own weapons and under no circumstances that NATO + Ukraine vs Russia is worse than NATO vs Russia + Ukraine.
Whoops, sorry I missed your edits.
No. I don't have a very firm opinion about the economic stuff. I think the Russians are probably still making bank by selling natgas and oil at a markup through a third party, so their economy has not been hit as hard by sanctions as you'd think. But I think the Russian economy probably is damaged by the war. It just might not necessarily be catastrophic or notable. To the extent that I have an argument here, it's that people have been saying their economy was on the brink of collapse ever since we first slapped sanctions on them, so I'm inclined to think that instead they will muddle through (even if it's painful) unless I see a very compelling reason why their economy is shot.
My premise is that NATO sent Ukraine hundreds of tanks and as far as I know they haven't made hundreds of tanks. They sent Ukraine dozens of high-end cruise missiles, which probably are either out of production or being produced fairly slowly. They sent Ukraine a large portion of EU NATO's mine-clearing vehicles – again, as far as I know they haven't produced any more. Poland, which you mention, is "increasing spending" which means they sent actual tanks they had on hand to Ukraine and bought a lot of fancy US gear that they plan to receive in the future. I'm not saying that's stupid, but I think it means Poland has less equipment now than it did and will have to wait around a bit to receive replacements.
Just a quick head-count, of about 1,000 tanks, about 180 (nearly 20%) on the list are clearly marked as coming from NATO (that might not count all of the NATO-provided gear since NATO sent Ukraine a lot of old Soviet bloc stuff). It includes 19 M1A1s, and I believe we only sent 31, 8/10 Strv 122s, 39 Leopards out of around 74 provided, etc. So Russia is attritting NATO-provided equipment at a pretty decent rate.
Yes, the EU should be doing this regardless of what happens.
I'd be very interested to know exactly what percentage, because Russia's been shelling the absolute heck out of them for a couple of years. But yes, I've never argued that Ukraine + NATO is weaker as a whole in raw military strength. That's not exactly the arrangement we have, though, the Ukrainians are doing most of the fighting and NATO is arming them.
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The core of your argument as I understand it is that sending weapons to Ukraine is going to make Russia weaker. Now, on the one hand, this is axiomatically true inasmuch as your weaken any power by killing its people. And I definitely think Ukraine wants everything it can get. So I don't think sending weapons to Ukraine is stupid necessarily.
But on the other hand, it seems very clear that supporting Ukraine is weakening NATO's military capability through irreversible arms transfers and that the war has given Russia the opportunity to strengthen and modernize its armed forces, even as it has taken numerous losses. So I think the basic idea at the core of your argument ("fight them over there so we don't have to fight them over here") is questionable because it appears that Russia's army will be stronger after the war, even if they lose. And, on the other hand, I don't think the odds of Russia attacking NATO are particularly high, so I am not sure we're really fighting them over there to stop us from fighting us over here. (If anything I suspect Russia juicing its armed forces and NATO giving its arms away to Ukraine increases the risks of Russian aggression against NATO, although I still sort of doubt anything comes of it.)
So, unless NATO attacks Russia before they can reconstitute their forces or the weapons transfers are much more effective than NATO's brass foresees, it seems plausible that after a certain point arms transfers might do more harm to NATO than good. This seems less true to me of, say, shells, if we can still produce a surplus, than, say, Patriot interceptors or mine-clearing vehicles.
Of course, on the gripping hand, there's the argument that, basically, NATO has nukes, so it could go bone dry on conventional munitions and it wouldn't really adversely effect their security against Russia. I do think there's something to this argument. But unless I missed something it's not the argument you're making.
How's that for a fair address of the core of your argument, with some extra arguments for your consideration thrown in for good measure?
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How is it going to fight NATO if it can't even take more than 1/5th of Ukraine?
Yes Russia's progress has been slowed heavily thanks to US aid. But presumably "fighting NATO" would imply levels of direct involvement from the US and its allies beyond what we've seen in Ukraine.
I mean - it probably isn't. I don't think Vladimir Putin wants to fight NATO. That's part of why he attacked Ukraine before they joined up.
But without copious amounts of American air power I do think that the Russians would tear a hole through NATO EU right now (well assuming away the fact that their hands are full of Ukrainians). The Europeans are just not ready to deal with Russia casually vomiting thousands of drones, mines, and cruise missiles in their direction and then sending a hundred nominally obsolete tanks to do donuts in the rubble. The European cope is that Ukraine's NATO-trained troops are actually retards and that NATO's
indigenous ways of knowingmodern means of warfighting would carry the day but I think the truth is that we're witnessing fires lap maneuver again and they would get shellacked.More options
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