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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   26936 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 25, 2023

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There is evidence Russia was positioning for a large scale war and being isolated for years. They cleaned up their finances a lot since 2014. Still had 350 billion to be claimed out there but they had positioned their budget to be able to handle being cutoff.

The whole peace thing makes sense if Russia was willing to take a deal on Crimea plus breakaway republics but their actions indicate their peace condition was Ukraine not being in the EU and orienting their trade to Russia instead of the richer west.

There is evidence Russia was positioning for a large scale war and being isolated for years.

I don't understand why this makes them less likely to want a peaceful solution. If I wanted peace and felt threatened that's what I would do, were I big or small.

It’s evidence that Russia wasn’t looking for a “reasonable” peace deal but were always angling to conquor the whole thing.

Yes Ukraine should want peace. Nobody disagrees with that but it feels a bit like a Jew wanting peace with Hitler. He was only offering them the gas chamber.

Once you've invested sufficiently in military build-up, you need to somehow translate that buildup into some sort of gain for yourself, or you've wasted a lot of money for nothing. Armies have inertia.

That's fair enough, although one would expect that using them as leverage in negotiation and the odd colonial intervention would be enough right?

This is why I didn't expect the war to happen in the first place. Sustained wars have the ability to sap your military standing and it is almost always better to use strength as a diplomatic tool if you can.

I guess Boris was sent to call the bluff, and not without reason when we look at the Russian performance.

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