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PaperclipPerfector  10mo ago (text post)   1761 thread views

Transnational Thursday for January 4, 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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Do you consider it worth the lesson to Putin and other belligerent world leaders that war is something you generally shouldn't start, because it leaves you weaker - in terms of your reputation among your own people, in terms of your economy, in terms of your population, relative to the value of the territories you gain - than you would have been had you just stayed home?

(I admit that I'm not just asking a rhetorical question, here. The US spent $7.7x10^10 on teaching a lesson to a handful of misbehaving despots that any grade school teacher will tell the same number of misbehaving kids for $4x10^5)

I guess it depends on how much other people will go "lol, Russians were totally incompetent unlike our glorious empire".

Though maybe there will be some learning from that? But I would not describe as worth having, at most it is better then Russia clearly wining and lesson being "you can invade country in Europe and nothing bad will happen for you".

If the Ukraine war is in fact, The Last War, I will concede the point. But more likely, people will simply reach the conclusion that the Russians are just not very competent. Just as the Iraq War, which left the US weaker for nebulous gain, did not teach the world that war was never acceptable.

*interestingly, I've read that the Chinese, great students of the Soviet collapse, were strongly influenced by the failure of the Soviets in Afghanistan. Which is why they're so peaceful today.

Maybe I'm not understanding you, but this feels like two contradictory ideas. I grant that onlookers may just see Russia as inept, but if the Chinese were influenced by the failure of the Soviets in Afghanistan, wouldn't various aggressive powers also tend to be influenced by the failure of Russia today?

I was being sarcastic about China being peaceful. They are currently plotting to invade Taiwan and have been for many years.

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