This has been a decade of Western powers realizing they aren't militarily invincible. I was told that NATO weapons would obliterate the inferior Russian hordes, Americans would dominate the Taliban entirely, that Israel would grind Palestine into dust within the first week.
this post was submitted on 03 Dec 2023
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Death to NATO
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Calling Russia's bluff in regards to NATO joining Ukraine is going to be remembered by historians as the pivotal event of the 21st century in my opinion. Until then, it was simply assumed that NATO was the strongest military force in the world, and that it could not be challenged. Even the humiliation that US suffered in Afghanistan wasn't enough to dispel the myth. And then we saw that Russia could take a NATO proxy all on its own, and that full NATO backing didn't make a lick of difference. Not only that, but it turned out that the G7 couldn't isolate Russia economically either. All of a sudden the sanctions regime fizzled and we're now seeing large parts of the world moving away from the dollar.
Now that NATO has depleted itself in Ukraine, it's a question of how much actual support can even be provided to Israel. The reality is that Israel doesn't have a huge industrial base of its own the way Russia does, and if they end up getting mired in Gaza, they will quickly run through their existing stocks of weapons at which point they could see themselves in an operational crisis. We might actually see Palestine finally freed at the end of all this.
full NATO backing didn't make a lick of difference
We're seeing what "full NATO backing" really means: we'll sell you weapons, but we're not dying for you or risking a wider war. That's a lot less valuable than what NATO was sold as.
To be fair, Ukraine is technically not part of NATO, but I really can't imagine that the level of support would be significantly different if an actual NATO member was under attack.
I imagine actual NATO members are wondering the same thing, which doesn't bode well for NATO.
They'll start demanding more money from the member states and trying to increase membership. They're already putting pressure on the Irish government to drop our "neutrality".
The most bonkers part being how ambivilent everyone seems to be about it. Not that we were ever actually neutral, but still.
Bonkers as in you expected more people to oppose it, or that you thought more people would support it?
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Indeed, and the fact that US is basically the only member of NATO with a serious military must be increasingly concerning for Europe now. If US gets bored of Europe and decides to pivot to China or the Middle East, then European NATO members are going to be in a very difficult position.
Where do I go in 15 years when my kids are drafted to fight for the noble polish invasion of Kaliningrad?
I do wonder how crazy things are gonna get in Poland in the next few years.
Pray that they remembered what you taught them about how to get away with fragging their officers.
Now that NATO has depleted itself in Ukraine, it's a question of how much actual support can even be provided to Israel. ... We might actually see Palestine finally freed at the end of all this.
I vacillate on this point. Isn'treal, with US backing, has more than enough bombs and fuel to completely ethnically cleanse Gaza, which I believe is its primary goal. What it lacks is the ability to wage an actual war against a state like Iran. Iran is never going to start that war, and in any case, Isn'treal has nukes that it wouldn't bat an eye about using.
There are limits to what you can do with bombing in practice. If you want to hold territory then you have to put boots on the ground sooner or later. And of course, Hamas now has a very extensive tunnel system all over Gaza. This is a great watch on how difficult it is to counter such tunnels. So, all IDF can do is just massacre civilians, and then the whole world sees these atrocities making it very difficult for their western sponsors to continue providing support.
I also don't expect that Iran would want an open war, I think it's much more likely that there's going to be a lot of asymmetric warfare happening. We're also starting to see attacks on shipping from Yemen which could cause serious economic damage in the long term as well.
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Bad news for NATO means good news for the rest of the planet.
...They're going to have to stop at just taking Crimea rather than push all the way to Moscow? 
Ukrainian liberation forces will stop at Moscow instead of pushing on to Vladivostok :(
I'm thinking a wide collapse of the front due to shortages in munitions and personnel
That's a very real possibility at this point. NATO is admitting they simply don't have any more weapons left to give, and as we're seeing with mass mobilization of children, women, and the elderly, Ukrainian manpower has now been depleted now. The reality is that people conscripted off the street without any training aren't going to be able to effectively fight a seasoned professional army even if they did get all the weapons they need.
The copium is also running out.
United States Strategic Copium Reserve
Pretty sure that Stancil guy is single handedly burning through that reserve by coping about how the economy is good, actually.
NATO would still give Ukraine just enough to avert this, but no more offensives are possible.
Various NATO countries have been digging into their own special reserves of munitions already. I wonder how much there actually is left to give.
What kind of bad news exactly? Any ideas?
My guess is that Russia is likely to go on a serious offensive soon, and whatever is left of the Ukrainian army is not going to be able to hold that back. At that point the whole stalemate narrative is going to start collapsing because Russia will start taking serious amounts of territory.
I don't think Russia is able to do a significant offensive soon. The war is basically WW1 with tanks and drones now, more likely it will draw on with Ukraine going the way of Paraguay in the War of Triple Alliance.
Thing is that Ukraine is now running out of ammunition, that the west can no longer supply in quantity, as well as trained and motivated soldiers. The whole point of running a war of attrition is to break the other army as opposed to take territory. As Mearsheimer explains in this article. The war has been primarily an artillery battle, and Russia has been firing something like 10x as much artillery as Ukraine. So, the losses are disproportionately on the Ukrainian side. Once the professional core of the Ukrainian army is gone, it's not going to be possible for Ukraine to keep holding the line.
It's worth noting that the whole offensive the west pushed Ukraine into this summer was a huge gift for the Russians because it drastically accelerated the whole process.
Yes, that's why I said about Ukraine turning into Paraguay as mobilization measures become more desperate to compensate for deficiencies in armaments. Still, current positional tendencies mean that Russia would have a hard time actually advancing forward, so they just keep on doing attrition warfare.
Thing is that mobilized troops aren't as capable or motivated as a professional army. Right now, Ukraine still retains a professional core that's been augmented by the people they kidnap off the street. However, there's going to be an inflection point where there isn't a sufficient ratio of professional troops to hold things together. I expect that's the point when we start seeing big offensives from Russia. Given the losses Ukraine suffered during its summer attempts at an offensive, it might not be long before that happens.
Ukraine still maintains significant numerical superiority due to much higher level of mobilization. Plus Russian mobilized troops also suffer from the same morale and training problems. They were good enough for defense, but it goes both ways too.
Russia would probably build up a strategic reserve for offensive, while continuing positional warfare, but Ukrainian army isn't going to crumble soon. They can conscript much higher percentage of their population due to not needing to care about the economy as they are supplied by the West.
Most analysts believe that Russia actually has a numerical superiority at this point. Russian forces are estimated to be at over 400k now, and most of them haven't been engaged yet. Most of the fighting right now is still done by the former LPR and DPR militias that have been absorbed into Russian army. Russia is taking the time to actually train and equip the new recruits, rotating small batches in with experienced units. It's a completely different approach from Ukraine just throwing people into combat with a few weeks of training.
Russia is also largely recruiting volunteers instead of mobilizing. The military offers salaries that are around 10x what people make in poor parts of Russia, so they've had no trouble getting people to sign up. Especially now that it's starting to become clear that Russia is winning.
And completely disagree with the Ukraine being able to conscript a large portion of the population because they don't need to worry about their economy. Western support is running out in front of our eyes. Both financial and material support is only at a fraction of what it was last year. If Ukraine is banking on this while mobilizing, that's just going to create an even bigger disaster for them.
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Plus Russian mobilized troops also suffer from the same morale and training problems
Do they, though? The Ukranians are the ones taking the heavy losses, the ones mobilizing women, teens, and the elderly, the ones sending in soldiers with a few weeks of training if that, and they're the ones thoroughly exhausted and fighting an unwinnable and- for anyone with sense- unjustifiable war, while their country (and effectively, their lives) are being auctioned off to the west.
Russia has its issues, but the state of its troops, its economy, morale, and domestic support are all steadily improving, if anything. Ukraine is the slaughtering-house for unlucky Ukranian conscript/press-ganged troops, but it's a training ground for the Russians.
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Zelenskyy's penis has fallen off.
Ukraine's victory is merely overwhelming, rather than extraordinary
Ill tidings, bodings of inopportune augury. I think a spring loaded toilet seat would avoid pissy seats left down at bars and other public places.
Best part is that China barely got involved meanwhile the entire western world sent weapons to Ukraine, even the small countries like Cyprus, mfs shot themselves in the foot so hard with this one
I do wonder if US sees this development as a consolation prize. One big worry for US was that Europe was becoming increasingly integrated with Russia and China economically. This necessarily meant that Europe would eventually fall out of US sphere of influence and might even start developing their own independent foreign policy. The war rekindled all the old fears from the Cold War while depletion of weapons in Europe now made it dependent on US for protection going forward.
I suspect this strategy isn't going to work in the long term because decoupling from the east is destroying European economies, and eventually we're going to see countries in Europe realize that it makes more sense for them to find common ground with Russia than to continue being vassals of the US. However, it definitely helped get everyone in line in the immediate term.
A guy over on AskLemmy wanted to know how the war was going, subtly implying they were looking for good news.
If you sent them this their head would pop a fucking gasket.
That thread is a fascinating window into the alternate reality wonderland that western libs inhabit.
They literally think they can imagination themselves into the world they want, and act with hostility to anyone/anything saying they can't.
Liberalism become so much like a cult, the more their world view becomes divorced from reality the more they refuse to engage with facts.
Always been tbh. I mean it kind of has to be when the ideology at a core is nothing more than nazism with progressive aesthetics.
I agree, it's just becoming ever more clear just how unhinged these people are now that the liberal world order is under pressure.
It's going to be glorious when they finally snap back to reality. Maybe then things will finally get better around here.
We could end up seeing a major backlash against liberalism when people are finally forced to grapple with the reality of the world. People tend to get angry when they realize they've been made fools of.
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