Russia and Ukraine

[The Architect Of Fate]

Pure fantasty 

[The Grand Nudger]

Whatever future plans russia has, even those, seem like they might be well served by a change in management.

[Thumpalumpacus]

Only maybe 50 are on intercontinental ballistic missile that can reach the US.

That's enough for the sake of deterrence. Look at how NATO is trembling at the thought of a tactical nuke being used in Europe.

Additionally. Chinese SLBMs have a range of 7,000km, so discounting them is not very useful. All told, they appear to have around 250 warheads capable of targeting American cities as far inland as Dallas, and the SLBMs could obviously reach further.

Here's the chart I'm basing this on, from the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists:



As for the rest of your post, I think you're fundamentally misreading the shift in power between Russia and China that has happened in the last three decades. Power is economic as well as military as a measure. Deciding to positively stay in Ukraine will only sap Russian military and economic strength, making Putin's regime more unpopular and at best nudging Russia into the status of Chinese vassal as a matter of economics. Those tanks and planes ain't gonna pay for themselves.

[Deesse23]

it becomes clear Russia really no longer has any interest in ending this war relatively quickly.  

Sun Tsu: If you can not win a war at all, at least drag it out as long as possible.
Clausewitz: If your plan of attack does not survive first contact with the enemy, keep lumbering on.

[Anomalocaris]

Only maybe 50 are on intercontinental ballistic missile that can reach the US.

That's enough for the sake of deterrence. Look at how NATO is trembling at the thought of a tactical nuke being used in Europe.

Additionally. Chinese SLBMs have a range of 7,000km, so discounting them is not very useful. All told, they appear to have around 250 warheads capable of targeting American cities as far inland as Dallas, and the SLBMs could obviously reach further.

Here's the chart I'm basing this on, from the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists:



As for the rest of your post, I think you're fundamentally misreading the shift in power between Russia and China that has happened in the last three decades. Power is economic as well as military as a measure. Deciding to positively stay in Ukraine will only sap Russian military and economic strength, making Putin's regime more unpopular and at best nudging Russia into the status of Chinese vassal as  a matter of economics. Those tanks and planes ain't gonna pay for themselves.

i am not discounting china’s economic power.  The chinese economy on purchase power parity basis is at least 6-7 times larger than Russia’s.  And the ratio doesn’t begin to show the difference in financial power wielded by the two states.   China’s infrastructure is far superior and her overall industrial base is much more diverse and in most respects better organized and more advanced. 

But at the same time one should not oversell stronger economy and underestimate other aspect of geopolitical strength.     Russia can provide an existential guaranty to china in the later’s increasingly fraught and antagonistic relationship with the US, in addition Russia can provide china with interior lines of communication immune to western maritime interference to the most of Euroasia.   

China has money and products, and in many areas technology to offer russia, but nothing comparable to existential security and alternate world access immune to rival’s maritime power to offer to Russia.

So I think most people are too focused on Russia’s comparative small economic and lack of competitive value added industry and service, and underestimate russia’s geopolitical strength and potential  that she has through her geography and nuclear arsenal.


It is late.  I will address the near term nuckear deterrence capability of china against the US in another post.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

It's difficult to imagine that Russia's strategy all along was to turn this into a long, drawn-out war.  They're struggling to keep enough troops, vehicles and command officers in the field for what they imagined would be a short, intense conflict. Furthermore, the unprecedented level of sanctions has already cratered the Russian economy - they simply can't afford to fight a long insurgency, even if they restrict their activities to the eastern portions of the country.

Boru

edit: Just saw a video (which I can't post for stupid internetty techy reasons) of Russian troops handing out humanitarian aid to Ukrainian civilians in Mariupol.

Maybe the next time they do this, they should remove the UKRAINIAN labels from the UKRAINIAN products they're passing out, so people don't get the idea that these items were either stolen from aid convoys or looted from UKRAINIAN stores and warehouses.

[The Valkyrie]

It's difficult to imagine that Russia's strategy all along was to turn this into a long, drawn-out war.  They're struggling to keep enough troops, vehicles and command officers in the field for what they imagined would be a short, intense conflict. Furthermore, the unprecedented level of sanctions has already cratered the Russian economy - they simply can't afford to fight a long insurgency, even if they restrict their activities to the eastern portions of the country.

Boru

edit: Just saw a video (which I can't post for stupid internetty techy reasons) of Russian troops handing out humanitarian aid to Ukrainian civilians in Mariupol.

Maybe the next time they do this, they should remove the UKRAINIAN labels from the UKRAINIAN products they're passing out, so people don't get the idea that these items were either stolen from aid convoys or looted from UKRAINIAN stores and warehouses.

I'm seeing reports of Russian soldiers killing men and boys before they left an occupied town.

If true, an intervention is desperately needed.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

It's difficult to imagine that Russia's strategy all along was to turn this into a long, drawn-out war.  They're struggling to keep enough troops, vehicles and command officers in the field for what they imagined would be a short, intense conflict. Furthermore, the unprecedented level of sanctions has already cratered the Russian economy - they simply can't afford to fight a long insurgency, even if they restrict their activities to the eastern portions of the country.

Boru

edit: Just saw a video (which I can't post for stupid internetty techy reasons) of Russian troops handing out humanitarian aid to Ukrainian civilians in Mariupol.

Maybe the next time they do this, they should remove the UKRAINIAN labels from the UKRAINIAN products they're passing out, so people don't get the idea that these items were either stolen from aid convoys or looted from UKRAINIAN stores and warehouses.

I'm seeing reports of Russian soldiers killing men and boys before they left an occupied town.

If true, an intervention is desperately needed.

The Russian forces no longer get to be called an 'army'. A more accurate term would be 'gangs of pillaging, raping, looting thugs'.

Boru

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

Same guy who had his joes dig trenches at chernobyl last week?   He's playing ten dimensional chess today.  Doubtful.

'You can take the Russian soldiers out of Chernobyl, but you can't take the Chernobyl out of the Russian soldiers.' - Old Ukrainian proverb

Boru

[Thumpalumpacus]

A Russian perspective on the sanctions:

Russian writer Egor Kotkin said economic sanctions imposed on Russia after its invasion of Ukraine last month have illustrated continued Western power in the economic realm.

“Right now, the balance of power, producing power, population power, economic power, is shifted very much to outside of the West. And the rest of the world is looking to Russian example and they see now the West still controls much of the relationship through the economic power,” Kotkin said while appearing on HillTV’s “Rising.”

“If you act politically as a sovereign country —— even talking about some aggressive acts of violence like invasion or war or some domestic oppressions, particularly independently from the West — you will be called out economically. You might be destroyed,” he added.

Nonetheless, Kotkin said support for Putin is growing in Russia, like it did after his 2014 invasion of Crimea and for President Bush after the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

Kotkin said Russians feel that sanctions are another form of war as Moscow continued its assault on Ukraine.

“I mean Russian people feel these economic sanctions as a separate war and it’s actual a separate war or at least a separate front of the same war,” he said.

“There is going on an economic assault on Russia,” he added.

https://thehill.com/news/3256472-egor-ko...ing-power/

It's comparable to Clausewitz's aphorism that "war is an extension of politics."

I wonder how accurate is the idea that Putin's support is growing domestically. I can't argue against that, except to point out that only a fool would express dissent in Russia at this point.