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Culture War Roundup for the week of June 26, 2023

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I appreciate the concrete prediction, but I find the idea that Russia was will due to manpower and production advantages dubious at best.

Leaving aside the former, in the latter regime they're not just competing against Ukraine's anemic MIC, but the largesse of NATO as a whole. Even breadcrumbs dropped from the whiskers of Uncle Sam hit like MOABs.

Russia has a population of around 150 mil while Ukraine's population is around 40 mil. Russia simply has much deeper reserves to pull from. It is true that NATO is committing some production capacity to the Ukraine war, but it is still a fraction of what Russia is willing to commit. The Russian regime will fight the war of attrition until the regime collapse.

I see the most likely outcome becoming a stalemate and white peace, or withdrawal after an internal collapse of Russia, most likely the former. What I don't see are decisive Ukrainian or Russian victories.

If Russia is able to consolidate on its territorial gains, this is decisively a win for Russia. It is not the total victory that they originally hoped for, but it is still a clear win based on the instigating causes of the war.

I'm also highly leery of claims of NATO being able to subvert the Russian military hierarchy to that degree. If that was the case, they'd be able to outright buy out most of Russian leadership. Russia might be corrupt, but I don't think it's that corrupt.

A lot of my favorite anon Twitter accounts said that the rebellion was overblown from the beginning and was a nothingburger. But still, it went farther than most people would have thought possible the day before. Given that NATO's win condition is regime change in Russia, the reason for suspicion is obvious.

It seems like Russia has more manpower reserves to pull from, but Ukraine is willing to pull deeper.