War in Ukraine

A Condor flies the coop and escapes the Ukraine War intact, much to the chagrin of Russian milbloggers and the Kremlin. The An-124 Condor flew to Germany to escape the war and possibly contribute on another day. Maybe it could be used to haul a hundred tons of Tomahawk cruise missiles back to Ukraine to deliver the final blow against Russia.

Details Emerge About An-124 Condor's Mystery Flight Through Kyiv's Restricted Airspace

 

It is logical to assume that IF Europe invested more in defense then they MAY not have invaded. But it isn’t a foregone conclusion. Do you really think that if Europe had put in 3.0% of GDP it would have made a difference?

I think it’s obvious that Russia didn’t think we or Europe would respond in a major way, otherwise they wouldn’t have done it. But Ukraine is not part of NATO, so I’m not sure how or why Russia would think we would forcefully respond when we didn’t have a stated objective of doing so.

It is also worth saying that nations becoming complacent with peace and often it takes an act of aggression to increase defense. After the Cold War the US ramped down and GWB actually ran on a platform is we should not spend the money and resources to be able to fight two wars. Then 9/11 happened and in a couple of years we were fighting 2 wars

 

No, it is not. And I don't suggest I know what absolutely would or would not have happened if we had only done this or not done that. I only argue that the woefully inadequate military spending of most of our allies informed Russian decision making. Since this war started, people have been making lots of ill-informed, politically motivated arguments about would have happened if only this or that. MAGA nation and Trump himself have declared as an incontrovertible fact that if he had remained in office, then Russia would not have even tried to invade, out of -- I don't know -- fear, respect, admiration, or whatever. The Left has counterargued that if Trump would have remained in office, then Russia would have succeeded in its military aims within its scheduled timeline because, like, Trump would have helped Russia, stifled the allies, demoralized the Ukrainians, etc. Both of those arguments lack serious reflection and attention to the facts, and unless one is writing an alternate history novel, it does not matter one bit in terms of the current situation. I am not trying to make a similar argument except within the scope of its effect on Russian decision making, and my only purpose is to learn from it so we, the coalition of liberal democracies, do not make the same mistake with Taiwan and assume that anything other than traditional, cold military capability and demonstration of will to use it is going to deter the CCP from trying to invade Taiwan. That does not mean we should not also buttress military capability and will with other forms of deterrence (economic, informational, diplomatic), but we should not try to substitute these measures for military ones.

I think that it is possible, and I am positive that we will never know for sure.

Well, let’s tease that out a bit more. I agree with the basic assumption that NATO would not have physically intervened immediately just because it had more military capability in this scenario. Let’s say Russia had assessed that NATO had a greater military capability but still concluded that NATO would not intervene. I think it’s a fair assumption that NATO would still have aided Ukraine with material support as did in our timeline, only this time it would have had greater stocks of weapons, munitions, etc immediately on hand to donate to Ukraine. Might that have made a difference? It certainly would not have hurt.

I agree with all of that. It’s a classic dilemma of being a liberal democracy or being, as we are, in a network of alliances with liberal democracies. If you arm and train yourselves to a degree that the revisionist powers do not look upon you with covetous eyes about what “used to be” theirs, then the people will eventually cry out about the waste of money, the inevitability of militarism, etc, and will demand cuts. And if you cut your defense to the bone, hoping that measures other than military ones will sufficiently deter your enemies, then war is probably inevitable (or as close to “inevitable” as anything gets in history) and the people who demanded those cuts are the same people who cry out the loudest at their military and elected leaders, “Why weren’t you ready?! How could you let this happen to us?!” Personally, I think history strongly suggests you adopt the first course of action and deal with the relatively low level of grumbling about the “waste” of large standing militaries in peace time. I would rather have a strong, well-trained armed force that we never need to employ in a violent manner than having to build one in a crisis. But history also suggests that we will continuously choose the second course of action no matter how many times it has burned us.

 

That and sending a never ending stream of sacrificial soldiers to charge machine gun nests.

 

Meat waves trope.

WWII lend-lease trope.

Russian military quagmired in Ukraine but poised to roll over Europe trope.

 

And no, Putin didn’t fool Trump. Putin simply rebuffed Trump’s demands for a ceasefire and Trump sought to save face with his base.

 

You troping again? You might want to check your meds and make sure you are getting the right dosage.

 

I’ll explain this to you like you’re fully vaccinated and boosted. 8 out of 9 Nazi KIA perished on the Eastern Front. 90% of lend-lease arrived after the Third Reich was essentially defeated. US contributed 10% of Russian tanks, 13% of Russian aircraft and overall, less than to 2% of material aid. Murica was like my wife’s obstetrician. During my wife’s 12 hours of labor the nurses did all the grunt work. The doctor waltzed in at the last minute and essentially caught our son.

Bonus: Russian wars …

List of wars involving Russia - Wikipedia

US wars in Twentieth Century …

List of wars involving the United States in the 20th century - Wikipedia

 

That last one isn't so much a trope, as a laughable contradiction.

Very scary Russia... finna go Hitler, and steamroll eastern Europe... bc lookit how easy they sailed through the Ukraine!!!!



...and never you mind nun of that MAD business... why that ceased to be a thing after Reagan left office...



Guess our combined 11,000+ nukes have outlived their shelf lives, and have devolved to hollowed out barn silos, just there to look groovy...

 

I agree with what you are saying, but military spending should be informed by how our potential adversaries are spending on their militaries, so we should have some indication that a buildup is going on in Russia or China that justifies additional spending. Waiting until they attack someone before spending does not work well. We should have recognized 20 years ago that China was spending massive amounts of money on a modernized military, and that would lead to a confrontation sooner or later. Not only should there have been more military spending under GWB and Obama, but we should have worked more with Europe to put limits on economic trade with China to reduce their income. Further, Bill Clinton should have recognized the potential for China, as a communist country, to become militarized and threatening to other countries in the region, and he should have restricted the kinds of technology that could be sent to China, and worked with Europe to do the same. This would have also had the positive effect of protecting value-added manufacturing in the U.S. Let China make clothing, toys, and furniture, but don't teach them how to make cars, airplanes, computers, robots, and cell phones.

The main thing I have a problem with is not disabling an adversary's military apparatus once they are defeated. I'm not talking about the army and naval forces, I'm talking about the factories. We managed to re-build Russia after their country collapsed in 1991 without requiring them to destroy their weapons factories. Again, another screwup by an incompetent president, Bill Clinton. Had we even forced Russia to destroy half of their weapons factories, it's doubtful that Russia would be ready by 2022 to invade Ukraine. They would have lost a lot of their experience in making weapons as engineers retired before they could afford to build new factories. And they would be forced to use diplomacy instead of military force to deal with their neighbors.

 

Add: we’re the only nation that has used nukes in anger. Interestingly, Hiroshima began rebuilding, almost immediately, with no notable uptick in birth defects, a FAR cry from that ominous assessment in the movie China Syndrome: “rendering an area the size of Pennsylvania permanently uninhabitable.”

I don’t doubt for a moment the destructive power of large munitions, but what if nukes are mostly bluster?

 

If so, they've been and remain, extraordinarily effective bluster, respected by both sides (all sides?) of the military divide...

Let it ever remain so!

 

Of course. On the other hand, maybe nobody’s let loose for fear the response might be, “Wait, that’s it? That’s why we’ve been hiding under school desks all that time?”

 

If you understood WWII history, Germany was not all that impressive against Poland, either. Poland's cavalry was on horseback, while Germany had tanks. Poland's air force was at the level of spotter planes, while Germany had capable fighters and bombers. And yet Germany still took three weeks to subdue Poland.

Military invasion is not the only way to take over a country. Russia almost took over Ukraine without an invasion. Putin inserted Russian immigrants with weapons into eastern Ukraine in 2014 with orders to destabilize the country with sabotage and vandalism on a large scale, and call for more Russian assistance in controlling the violence. They got a pro-Russian candidate elected in 2014. The idea of sending the Russian military in with this arrangement is to maintain civil order and ostensibly protect Russian citizens (who were actually criminals) from "persecution" by people who were declared "Nazis". Smaller countries around Ukraine could easily be taken over by this method. On the surface, it would look like an independent country, but with Russian troops in every city maintaining order, and secret police everywhere causing political dissenters (and independence-oriented politicians and writers) to disappear. The invasion actually united Ukraine (thankfully under a capable leader) to resist the Russian takeover.

It is all well and good to look at the simple-minded approach (he's "finna go Hitler") to which side has how many weapons of which level of technology and soldiers to fight with them and decide what will happen, but in reality, international politics is much more complicated than that.

 

Stalin disagreed with your poor evaluation of the situation. And he had every reason to downplay the effect of U.S. assistance to make the Russian victory sound more heroic. When it comes to your credibility vs. Stalin's in this particular matter, I'll take Stalin's. He was a little closer to the action than you were.

 

Interesting how blithe you are to take a 1943 quote from Stalin at face value, but are loathe to trust anything the Russians say in 2025.

Lend Lease contributed 4.8% of Russia’s wartime production.